I have as examples - Dark side of the Moon, Van Morrisons Moondance, Beatles Studio albums, I Robot, Joni Mitchel's Blue, Led Zepplin's 1,2,3,4,5 etc, Neil Young first decades albums , etc
Music we are intimately familiar with for 40 years or more - listened to countless times on 8 track, cassette, vinyl, Japanese vinyl, FM, half speed MFSL vinyl, CD, remastered CD, and now high bit rate download, Blue Ray audio etc...
You know the music well and the latest high bit rate versions sound better than the earlier formats played back on the same system. An Oracle Mk VI, SME V, Dynavector XX2 vynil setup is good, but high bit rate material is often better on my discrete jfet/fet class A power amp system, ( mid fi products dilute the improvement)
Scott's correct a lot can go wrong in digital reformatting. I can only compare the various tape, vynil, and high bit rate versions we have been repeatedly resold as gullible consumers...... MBL often demos with reel to reel first generation copies of master tapes ....... Wonderful too!
Music we are intimately familiar with for 40 years or more - listened to countless times on 8 track, cassette, vinyl, Japanese vinyl, FM, half speed MFSL vinyl, CD, remastered CD, and now high bit rate download, Blue Ray audio etc...
You know the music well and the latest high bit rate versions sound better than the earlier formats played back on the same system. An Oracle Mk VI, SME V, Dynavector XX2 vynil setup is good, but high bit rate material is often better on my discrete jfet/fet class A power amp system, ( mid fi products dilute the improvement)
Scott's correct a lot can go wrong in digital reformatting. I can only compare the various tape, vynil, and high bit rate versions we have been repeatedly resold as gullible consumers...... MBL often demos with reel to reel first generation copies of master tapes ....... Wonderful too!
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it seems obvious that listening early Beatles tracks (mixed in mono) can be painfull on a 24-96 system when we remember the pleasure we had, listening to them by night on a Am radio station ;-)
Some magic lost, isn't it ?
The Beatles collection are currently a $300 24 bit /44khz USB FLAC and MP3 in it's best digital release so far. ( 24/96 or 192 - is probably Christmas 2017's Apple records sales gimmick). The Beatles USB is good in some respects, but not as open as 96 or 192 sampled material. There was a lot of fuss when it was revealed that the initial vinyl re-releases were cut from the the digital restorations.
Yes nothing beats a 72 Chevelle SS 8 track for memories
Yes nothing beats a 72 Chevelle SS 8 track for memories
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The supercap mention is not in the thread, but from phone conversation with him....this makes sense in that supercaps make a close to ideal zobel/damping network when connected across supplies.Yikes, Joe's Filter isn't directly about the powersupply.
He loads the output of the SD DAC with a filter that shaves off a few dB around 20k. This apparently takes away some of the 'SD DAC harshness' even when the fewdB@20k is corrected for digitally (preDAC) or anallypostDAC .
[The filter is manually dialed-in, and is apparently interacting with the internals/deepprocess of the SD DAC to properly load it, or compensate some phasey drifting, or something, I don't git ... ]
That's Joe's Filter.
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I also don't quite get what's going on with adding 1uf directly across the DAC output pins.
He talks of shunt cap loading across the output lines in order to cause around 2dB droop at 20 kHz, and that this droop factor is to be selected on subjective testing, and mentions a sweet spot value.
His further claims that the loading improves the subjective sound despite pre digital or post analog eq to return to 20kHz flat response.
Maybe the loading cap is rounding (attenuating rf) the PWM transitions causing less LSB IMD products in the output stage opamps...dunno.
Either way, Joes claims are curious and in need of verification.
Dan.
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Agreed, there is plenty of 60's/70's music that sounded sort of great on old gear, but when played on good modern gear the recording faults like mic pre overloads, general distortions and lousy SNR etc are ruthlessly revealed.
If the groove/performance of the song is good/strong then one can mostly ignore the faults, but some songs do get shunted to the 'never bother to play again' category.
I have never regarded Beatles recordings as good/great recordings, but they did capture a vibe of the time, and the distortions were part of the intended effect.
Clever mastering really, in that these recordings did not fall apart when played on lousy gear, in fact they sort of improved when played on low fi equipment, including AM radio.
Dan.
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I just got back from working Future Music Festival, which tours Oz capitals each year and features Hip Hop and similar artists.
My vantage point was high above stage, operating a follow spot lamp from the rear lighting truss.
The show I did was Drake.
This guy has one awards and a bunch of top 100 hits, but it ain't music to me.
Back line was a drum kit, a keyboard player and some punce with a laptop and a couple of DJ decks.
The drums and keyboard got used on a couple of songs, the DJ pushed a few buttons and then stood back hands in pockets until the next song.
The man, strutted around stage and blowharded, and introduced a couple of fellow blowhards who co-performed on a few songs.
From back of stage the sound was atrocious, but the crowd loved it....go figure.
If this is the future of music there is exactly no point in seeking to improve dynamic range, snr or distortion in playback or live systems.
Dan.
My vantage point was high above stage, operating a follow spot lamp from the rear lighting truss.
The show I did was Drake.
This guy has one awards and a bunch of top 100 hits, but it ain't music to me.
Back line was a drum kit, a keyboard player and some punce with a laptop and a couple of DJ decks.
The drums and keyboard got used on a couple of songs, the DJ pushed a few buttons and then stood back hands in pockets until the next song.
The man, strutted around stage and blowharded, and introduced a couple of fellow blowhards who co-performed on a few songs.
From back of stage the sound was atrocious, but the crowd loved it....go figure.
If this is the future of music there is exactly no point in seeking to improve dynamic range, snr or distortion in playback or live systems.
Dan.
Really? At what bandwidth and sample rate?
Bill,
Properly done symphony reinforcement should have no noticeable sound coming from the loudspeakers. All it should do is allow more folks to hear an outdoor concert.
Just keep a 15 mS time delay and less than 10dB level increase.
Ah outdoor. This was indoor and using the standard rock concert flying arrays. I was incensed.
Scanning the list most of those were remastered for the latest releases though so you are not comparing like for like. I posted a link a couple of days ago showing the 24 bit zep remasters are lower dynamic range than previous CD box sets.
Now I have the latest zep albums on 16/44.1 and FWIW i am impressed how much has been hauled off master tapes that are as old as I am. Would be interesting to compare some snippets from each version to see what the actual differences are.
I hope we can all agree that buying the led zep reissues on vinyl is patently daft tho?
Try an old tyme generation loss test if you have the front end’s to compare.
Pick some good test music, do the record / playback / re-record DA / AD process say 10 times, make a 10 generation version and see how much the entire process degrades the music when compared to the original . One is hard pressed to go more than about 2 or 3 generations before being unlistenable with a loudspeaker but the electronic end is far more faithful and should go many generations. The nice part is you hear what isn’t signal faithful because each generation is an increasing caricature which may help identify what aspect is the limiting factor (or at least has been for me with loudspeakers).
Best,
Tom Danley
Pick some good test music, do the record / playback / re-record DA / AD process say 10 times, make a 10 generation version and see how much the entire process degrades the music when compared to the original . One is hard pressed to go more than about 2 or 3 generations before being unlistenable with a loudspeaker but the electronic end is far more faithful and should go many generations. The nice part is you hear what isn’t signal faithful because each generation is an increasing caricature which may help identify what aspect is the limiting factor (or at least has been for me with loudspeakers).
Best,
Tom Danley
Do you know why all old concert hall are good ones and some of the new ones are just plain bad?
They eventually tear down the bad ones.
Except the Royal Albert hall. Old and bad and likely to remain that way for a long time to come. circular with a domed roof. What a great design
Thanks Simon. It doesn't ring any bells. If you stick it into Google it comes up as China Peoples Mobile Telephone.
Perhaps a timely reminder that everyone should be using strong passwords.
Yes, it did appear to me that you were advocating if not defending staying with 16b.
I have 5 brands of SDelta DAC right now... all using sota chips. I have the BenchMark 2 because of its measured performance overall. Not for its marketing story. But they do have some good points as well. I dont know what thier BenchMark One used for converter.... but, this one measures and sounds better on familiar source material..... especially good on 24/96+ source files.
I have no doubt there could be others as good. i just dont have the time to test and listen to all of them... leave that up to people who do it for a living. If what they say or show picks my interests, i will try it.
So far, I think it would be best (not necessarily a money making idea, at this time) to just leave the original files as 32 bit and give it to me that way also. The fewer bit conversions the better.
The internet speed is there, the cpu and DSP speed is there, the memory storage capacity is all there now at mainstream affordable costs. So now is the right time to start using 24b exclusively and someday, down the road, 32 bit downloads.
IMO.
THx-RNMarsh
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A well designed forum is supposed to be protected against brute force attacks.
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