| john curl |
| Vinyl records still sound better than SACD, unfortunately. Also, power amps have not improved that much. Just more powerful. |
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| ShinOBIWAN |
| quote: | Originally posted by john curl
Vinyl records still sound better than SACD, unfortunately. Also, power amps have not improved that much. Just more powerful. |
I don't see much progress with amps or drivers in the past 30 years, small nudges here and there but nothing that's really moved things on. These days digital is where the interest is, I've no doubt this will eventually sweep away analogue. Sadly its lacking at the moment but given another 30 years I expect that to have changed. You only need to look at upcoming tech such as DRC and digital filtering to realise how far things have come.
Software is a fast moving field, hardware less so. |
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| john curl |
| Of course, digital will be all that is left, but records, today, still sound better. No perfect, but just better. I'm sticking with analog till the day I die, except for home theatre. |
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| bear |
Software is a fast moving field?
Not so sure about that at all.
For software to be moving much would require new algorithms to be "discovered" and implemented. Is that happening?
Seems to me that the number of programmers is increasing, and the size of programs is increasing due to the increasing size of memory, the number of operations per clock tick possible today - bigger not newer??
_-_-bear |
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| ShinOBIWAN |
| quote: | Originally posted by bear
Software is a fast moving field?
Not so sure about that at all.
For software to be moving much would require new algorithms to be "discovered" and implemented. Is that happening?
_-_-bear |
New algorithms are done everyday, an algorithm is just bunch of operators, evaluators, conditioners and flow control stringed together to perform a task. There's an awful lot of scope there. I think what your talking about is audio theory and physics.
Its not so much the theory but successfully implementing, optimising and making the most of that. Lots of room for improvement in the current state of affairs. When I say software I'm really talking about up and coming technology such as that afforded by digital and mainly things like DRC, digital filtering, auto correction, user interfaces etc. If you've heard and used these things you can see the potential but its a bit a limp and hit and miss. You need to know a lot to get the best out of them. Markets such as home theater and studio are driving advances in this field and its quite lucrative, in the past 3 years alone I've seen huge amounts of progress. Efforts such as the Dolby Lake processor and Acourate are testiment to this but there's still a long way to go. |
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| Bonsai |
I have to disagree with the assertion that amplifier technology has not improved over the last 30 years. Just take a look at the results published in Stereophile (I only use this as an example because John Atkinson does th electrical tests and therefore brings some consistency to the technical evaluation). Most amplifiers he reports on show exempliary technical performance whether with or without feedback. Designers have learnt, and are still learning, about how to design and bring to market beter products. Take a typical 'high end' design from 30 years ago - TID problems, slew rate limiting, massive amounts of OLG, un-degenerated LTP's, thermal tracking problems etc etc. On another thread a while back, John Curl passed a few comments about the original Ampzilla design and the compromises in that design vis-a-vis a modern approach. We have made progress folks!
I agree, it is not perfect, but its progress. As to the Vinyl vs CD discussion I think I know what the issue is. I played Jeff Buckley's Grace LP on a $240 Pproject turntable (you know, the one from the Check Republic) and the CD on my player and switched between the two. The LP blew the CD away and my 18 year old son who is a musician could not believe the difference. So why was CD such a success? Because Sony and Philips bamboozled the world? Partly. But I think most people went for CD because it it did not suffer from scratches and pops, and sounded 'clean' - i.e. it was convenient and did not require extraordinary care to maintain the original quality. Its as simple as that. Unfortunately, this is the reason for th esuccess of MP3 - its convenient and that is what most people go for. |
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| AndrewT |
| quote: | Originally posted by ShinOBIWAN
People still use CD's?!?
I put them in the same category as Vinyl - an obsolete inconvenience. :) |
Shin, you're a lost cause.
Be ashamed for accepting and promoting low bit rate compressed music. |
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| stoolpigeon |
| quote: | | I played Jeff Buckley's Grace LP on a $240 Pproject turntable (you know, the one from the Check Republic) and the CD on my player and switched between the two. The LP blew the CD away and my 18 year old son who is a musician could not believe the difference. |
You left out the bit about him being in another room. |
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| PMA |
Bonsai san,
"Check Republic" wa Czech Republic desu ;) |
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| hermanv |
It's not the technology, it's the low expectations.
Certainly we are far from "perfect" technology, but most modern audio applications don't even bother to implement a reasonable cost compromise.
My very expensive sports car has a "premium sound system", there are no tweeters. The sound system is priced high enough to do a creditable job, but falls far short. At speed the car is noisier than most, you'd think I could just crank in some more volume. Nope, the sound just becomes more unbearable.
My cell phone at 32Kbits/second is just plain awful. I occasionally wonder at the relationship between driver cell phone distraction and the sheer processing power the brain needs to apply to make a cell phone conversation intelligible. No one seems nearly as distracted by talking to passengers.
The latest big screen HDTV have modern all digital video processing and a beautiful picture, yet 2"x 3" stereo speakers. What the h**l? Why bother? Do it right or let the surround receiver handle the audio. Pretending that 2"x 3" speakers will work is crazy. |
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| ShinOBIWAN |
| quote: | Originally posted by AndrewT
Shin, you're a lost cause.
Be ashamed for accepting and promoting low bit rate compressed music. |
No, no, no. Haven't you heard of bit perfect or lossless. All the quality of CD, actually arguably better with error corrected ripping, without the inconvenience.
Move with the times man. |
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| AndrewT |
Hi Shin,
Did you mean you listen to CDs that have been lossless compressed onto your computer?
Or do you have another digital source for your uncompressed high bit rate music?
And no, I don't believe in bit perfect audio from MS Windows yet. |
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| ShinOBIWAN |
| quote: | Originally posted by AndrewT
Hi Shin,
Did you mean you listen to CDs that have been lossless compressed onto your computer?
Or do you have another digital source for your uncompressed high bit rate music?
And no, I don't believe in bit perfect audio from MS Windows yet. |
Yes the PC is the source with APE, FLAC and WAV(uncompressed) formats.
WinXP offers bit perfect playback with ASIO drivers. Any half decent pro sound card offers this nowadays and the better ones with AES hookup to external converters are about as good as it gets in consumer digital right now. |
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| janneman |
I just finished installing a Logitech Squeezebox duet system. My audio now lives on a NAS drive in the cellar, connected to the wifi network. The squeezebox receiver connects to the digital input of the DEQX DAC/xover at the sound system. The squeezebox handheld works much like an iPOD: you scroll through your collection, by artist, genre, album title, what have you. It even shows album art while you peruse your collection. Then press play and the audio rides the wifi to the receiver into the DEQX bit-perfect. The only thing to worry about is the DEQX jitter performance, and that's prettty good. Did I mention all CD's were ripped to the NAS drive in FLAC lossless?
I'm with Ant on this.
Jan Didden |
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| KSTR |
I have been using bit transparent output with a proper (semi-pro) 8-Ch. soundcard since the days of WIN98. I'm completely with Shin, there is a lot of unjustified bad rap with PCs as a source.
Lossless format are available (though not that necessary given storage space and price), and you can do things like proper(!) resampling to 192/24 before playback to avoid the many pitfalls of 44.1 CD playback, like intersample overs, ringing/aliasing filters. Plus any XOVER/linearization stuff is perfectly convenient in use. Shin is a precursor here, with his incredible (hell yeah) LGT "bones" active speakers, driver/room-corrected/xovered with the excellent Acourate s/w package. As for outboard DACs, the reference project here at DIYA is the ESS Sabre, IMHO (or you just buy something like a big Lavry DAC)
That's the future, IMHO. And not because it's just another tech gimmick, rather it gives true performance gain.
- Klaus |
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| KSTR |
| Outputs with the venerable LL1527, lecker.... |
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| john curl |
| Now I know why we have such differences in opinion as to whether amplifiers really make a difference. It is in the source references that are so different between hi end designers and many electronic engineers around the world. |
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| Nelson Pass |
| quote: | Originally posted by ShinOBIWAN
All the quality of CD, actually arguably better with error corrected ripping, without the inconvenience. |
The problem is usually that the people who make the CD's have
dynamically compressed the material in an effort to make it "sound
better" on crappy equipment. Often the recording engineer and the
artist have no control over this, and if they do, apparently it is not
a major issue with many of them. |
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| Terry Demol |
For a box of this calibre you think they could have put
some Jensens in there.
T |
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| MikeBettinger |
| quote: | Originally posted by john curl
Now I know why we have such differences in opinion as to whether amplifiers really make a difference. It is in the source references that are so different between hi end designers and many electronic engineers around the world. |
Very important point. |
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| ShinOBIWAN |
PMA you have exquisite(read: expensive) taste! |
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| ShinOBIWAN |
| quote: | Originally posted by Nelson Pass
The problem is usually that the people who make the CD's have
dynamically compressed the material in an effort to make it "sound
better" on crappy equipment. Often the recording engineer and the
artist have no control over this, and if they do, apparently it is not
a major issue with many of them. |
Sadly your right Nelson. An awful lot of junk sounding CD's out there for sure. Most electronic or popular music is shot to hell.
I'm less critical these day. I spend at least an hour a day in the car and can happily enjoy music from mp3 or the radio just as much as my home system. I think we do get carried away sometimes with this search for fidelity. That isn't essential to enjoy music but is essential for us to take part in this hobby and be taken seriously. A case in point would be Andrews post light heartedly condemning my taste in sources. |
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| hermanv |
Near the earlier days of SACD, albums were being sold at SACD prices where the source was Redbook files digitally converted to DSD. Columbia(Sony) claimed they did not understand why this would upset anyone.
I think this means it all sounded the same to the marketing types who wanted to quickly expand the SACD availability catalog. These same people supervise the release of new CDs. I agree sound quality variations on CDs vary as much if not more than variations between commercial amplifiers.
Worse, I've run into two recording engineers on the forums who not only argue that cables/amplifiers/capacitors don't make any difference, they argue that it's not possible for them to make a difference. Usually their posts end with words similar to "I'm a recording engineer, I know these things".
Of course they also quickly get on the "snake oil" bandwagon and tell me what a fool I am to be taken in by scam artists (I think that supposed to include you JC and NP :cannotbe: ). I of course find it remarkably stupid to believe that 10's of thousands of people worldwide hear no difference and can't wait to unload excess cash. I myself have little trouble in hearing the improved sound quality of a superior product (thanks, not only for the products, but for prodding an industry to get better JC and NP :) ). |
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| Nelson Pass |
There are many recording engineers who do hear the difference
and care very much. |
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| ShinOBIWAN |
| Its completely impossible to believe someone who says there aren't audible differences in amps, cables maybe but not amps. If these people are mixing engineers or whatever than that's worrying. |
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| hermanv |
| quote: | Originally posted by Nelson Pass
There are many recording engineers who do hear the difference
and care very much. |
Of course. Some sources always reliable include, Blue Note, Rhino, Mobile Fidelity, Mapleshade and many others.
I didn't mean to imply all sources, many studio's have upgraded both their equipment and wiring. According to Cardas at least one did DBT to pick a cable vendor.
In general as the digital playback equipment improved many studios "got it" and recording quality has improved. |
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| Terry Demol |
| quote: | Originally posted by Nelson Pass
There are many recording engineers who do hear the difference
and care very much. |
Unfortunately most of them are not doing the mainstream stuff.
And if it does get out of the recording studio unscathed, there's
always the mastering engineer waiting with his army of various
compressors... :devilr:
T |
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| Nelson Pass |
Having said that, there's some great new vinyl out there. Some of it
comes on 6 sides as the equivalent of a CD. That's two cuts a side,
and you can see the land between the grooves. |
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| john curl |
| What record company, Nelson? |
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| PMA |
Vinyl is fine for bar jazz or rock. For philharmonic orchestra, its dynamic range is insufficient and one can never get 60dB between loud and silent passages of music. I have never been satisfied with classics on vinyl.
IMHO much of vinyl's popularity is due to groove noise spectrum. We know that many prefer vinyl cut to master tape. There is nothing else that makes sense but groove noise. This is just audio, so many tastes and no reasonable reasoning. |
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| john curl |
| OH Please! Vinyl forever! |
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| janneman |
| quote: | Originally posted by Nelson Pass
The problem is usually that the people who make the CD's have
dynamically compressed the material in an effort to make it "sound
better" on crappy equipment. Often the recording engineer and the
artist have no control over this, and if they do, apparently it is not
a major issue with many of them. |
Very true Nelson. It is my experience that a well-ripped-to-CD LP often sounds much better that its CD 'equivalent' from the store.
Jan Didden |
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| PMA |
| Depends on kind of music we listen to. |
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| AndrewT |
Hi Guys/Gals,
when are Shinobiwan, Janneman & Kstr going to get together and write a Wiki for PC recording and storage of lossless music files? |
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| PMA |
| quote: | Originally posted by janneman
It is my experience that a well-ripped-to-CD LP often sounds much better that its CD 'equivalent' from the store.
Jan Didden |
I have to admit that well A/D sampled LP and well burnt to CD sounds on good system much like the original LP, with all its attributes and "sound advantages" :D |
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| h_a |
| quote: | | going to get together and write a Wiki for PC recording and storage of lossless music files? |
Honestly, when I see how little success the wiki here has (I even got recently an email where one member wanted to know where one could find the Aleph-Wiki which I set up aeons ago), it's probably a bit of a waste of time.
Just do a google for FLAC or lossless audio you'll get swamped by the results. Don't forget to use a proper ripper like EAC (exact audio copy, for free at http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ ) so that you do get a genuine bit copy on your harddisc.
How you manage the wealth of tracks on your pc is completely up to you.
All the best, Hannes
| quote: | | Having said that, there's some great new vinyl out there. |
This is so true!
I'm lucky that I have a musical taste that brings to a certain degree excellent mastering (if limited then usually by the lack of cash for proper equipment, not by the requirement to sound properly on a ghetto blaster). However I could imagine that in these cases the CD editions are equally nice than the lp-edition (I never checked since my CD-player is exclusively used by my girl friend). |
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| janneman |
| quote: | Originally posted by PMA
I have to admit that well A/D sampled LP and well burnt to CD sounds on good system much like the original LP, with all its attributes and "sound advantages" :D |
Well, yes, except when Netlist does the sampling, because he takes out pops and ticks and such ;)
And yes, *well recorded CD's* to my taste sound more open, more clear, wider response and soundstage than a good LP. Problem is, the majority of CD's are *not* well recorded. They are recorded to win the loudness wars. They misuse a technologically advanced medium (the CD) for other purposes than to improve sound reproduction. And then the CD, as a format, gets blamed, totally wrongly. Sad.
Jan Didden |
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| PMA |
| quote: | Originally posted by janneman
Problem is, the majority of CD's are *not* well recorded. They are recorded to win the loudness wars. They misuse a technologically advanced medium (the CD) for other purposes than to improve sound reproduction. And then the CD, as a format, gets blamed, totally wrongly. Sad.
Jan Didden |
I agree, fortunately my music taste does not cover much of those compressed recordings. I also wonder why people who listen to mainstream compressed pop/rock would need any highend hifi audio ;) |
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| Netlist |
| quote: | Originally posted by h_a
Honestly, when I see how little success the wiki here has |
One day we'll have a full fledged Wiki, in conjunction with a discussion thread.
I can't wait to see what an improvement this will be.
Imagine the essence of a topic condensed on a well structured page…
Vinyl to CD is one of my occupation. When the source is real good and one masters the software well (took me much trial and error over the years) the results can be exceptionally good. There, another topic for a Wiki page. :)
/Hugo |
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| Bonsai |
Well, I have also noticed a massive difference in the recording quality between CD's - so like a few people earlier on this thread have commented, the recording and mastering engineers have a huge impact on the final sound of a CD (and an LP for that matter). Some recordings CD's just sound natural and open (e.g. Elian Elias 'Something for You') while others really sound terrible (e.g. Roma Trio - I don't know what they did to this CD but it sounds gross).
Pavel, on e of th e very best recrodings I ever heard was the Berliner Orchestra playing Swan Lake (Deutche Gramaphone recording) - stunning, so 60dB dynamic range can sound good. Thanks for correcting my geography btw and apologies if I offended - arigato gozaimaas as they say here in Japan.
:) |
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| jacco vermeulen |
Yawn :yawn:
As if all albums recordings are/were that great.
(arigato gozaimasu ni anata mo) |
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| PMA |
Bonsai, it is no problem with the geography typo, I understand why you wrote it, the reason is that you in Japan call it "Cheko" ;)
Ovidiu, these Linn flac studio masters are very good, I bought several of them. |
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| scott wurcer |
| quote: | Originally posted by h_a
Just do a google for FLAC or lossless audio you'll get swamped by the results. Don't forget to use a proper ripper like EAC (exact audio copy, for free at http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ ) so that you do get a genuine bit copy on your harddisc.
|
I took the ripper that came with my daughters keychain mp3 player and ripped at 8x several long cuts from different CD's and used EAC on the same cuts. I then transfered them as raw data to my UNIX workstation and did a byte by byte diff. No difference. I had to get to a completely unplayable totally scratched CD to get 2 one bit errors in a 23min cut.
In retrospect, the most interesting thing to me in this exercise was that the later CD was unplayable in any CD player I tried, but even the most ordinary ripper on my computer was able to recover it almost perfectly even at 8x speed. |
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| AndrewT |
Scott,
you are added to my authors list for the Wiki writing.
We (as in us illiterates) need good advice on getting started on the correct route. |
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| h_a |
Dear Scott, I'm glad you got excellent results! However, don't forget it depends on the CD/DVD-drive. Some have poor reading capabilities and equally poor hardware error correction. Quality has its price. AFAIK the only program checking what the drive read & corrected is EAC.
Of course, if one finds that some other ripper suits equally well, feel free to use it!
All the best, Hannes
PS: oh and honestly I would not put Scott onto the mp3-Wiki wish list :D It feels a bit like Nelson Pass on Wine. Or John Curl on Porsche. (However would be interesting reading for sure!) |
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| spind |
| quote: | Originally posted by AndrewT
We (as in us illiterates) need good advice on getting started on the correct route. |
Simplest way---Apple iTunes; rip to your computer using the Apple Lossless option. |
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| ShinOBIWAN |
Best ripper I've found so far is EAC with Accurate Rip:
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
http://www.accuraterip.com/
Since last year EAC comes with Accurate Rip integrated as standard. All you need is a Key Disc to find the read offset for your drive(s) and away you go - perfect rips every time.
Using this setup you can rip an entire CD within minutes and have 100% certainty that you either got a 1:1 copy or fixed any error on the disc and got a 1:1 copy of an undamaged disc. |
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| mlloyd1 |
pma:
i agree about these recordings! i was introduced to them several years ago when i met the producer at the chicago ces. i've got about 7 of these cds. whenever i take them to friend's houses to listen to their systems, my friends constantly try to misplace them so i can't take them back home with me.
as the saying goes, you can pry them from my cold, dead fingers ...
:-)
mlloyd1
| quote: | Originally posted by PMA
But there are examples of well-recorded CDs, not only classical, and better than vinyl. You may try
http://www.marecordings.com/ |
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| janneman |
| quote: | Originally posted by h_a
Dear Scott, I'm glad you got excellent results! However, don't forget it depends on the CD/DVD-drive. Some have poor reading capabilities and equally poor hardware error correction. Quality has its price. AFAIK the only program checking what the drive read & corrected is EAC.
Of course, if one finds that some other ripper suits equally well, feel free to use it!
All the best, Hannes
PS: oh and honestly I would not put Scott onto the mp3-Wiki wish list :D It feels a bit like Nelson Pass on Wine. Or John Curl on Porsche. (However would be interesting reading for sure!) |
Dear Hans,
Please consider that that cheap, poor hardware reads all those 100's of megabytes of software faultlessly, everytime you install a new software package, or everytime you make a backup on CD.
The reality is that even the cheapest 10$ drive perfectly reads the bits off the CD. Audio or software, no difference. They all depend on the same built-in error correction.
Jan Didden |
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| andy_c |
| quote: | Originally posted by janneman
The reality is that even the cheapest 10$ drive perfectly reads the bits off the CD. Audio or software, no difference. They all depend on the same built-in error correction. |
Actually, the error correction of data CDs is different from and much more robust than that of audio CDs. In addition, audio CDs have the read offset issue which gets in the way of accurate rips. |
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| PMA |
Scott,
would you take the ripper that came with your daughters keychain mp3 player and rip the file I am enclosing, that was previously burnt to CD? |
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| ShinOBIWAN |
| quote: | Originally posted by andy_c
Actually, the error correction of data CDs is much more robust than that of audio CDs. In addition, audio CDs have the read offset issue which gets in the way of accurate rips. |
Hey Andy. Read offset can be accurately and reliably taken care of with EAC and Accuraterip as I detailed above. It does however need a one time calibration and this must be done with a known disc that's in the accuraterip key disc database. |
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| h_a |
Edit: woay, tons of replies while I was typing...anyway:
Dear Jan, this is unfortunately not correct. Error correction is largely different. You need to separate between standard error correction and the additional bitsnbytes that are reserved for error correction by the Red Book standard.
Please believe me - or even better don't believe me and read up the articles on the internet!
Error correction is different. The CD/DVD-drive does recognize what it reads and treats differently! Same for dvd-rippers by the way. There are drives out there that read DVDs slower than CDs...why? To hinder the consumer makeing probably illegal copies.
All the best, Hannes
from the FAQ (I know an insufficient answer, please search the net!)
| quote: | Audio extraction is purely digital, how could unremarked errors occur?
The data transmission itself is purely digital and also the data stored on the CD. But the Red Book standard (standard for audio CDs) is very weak and only little error correction will be performed in the drive. So on bad CD-ROM drives it is possible that you receive erroneous results. |
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| PMA |
| quote: | Originally posted by mlloyd1
pma:
i agree about these recordings! i was introduced to them several years ago when i met the producer at the chicago ces. i've got about 7 of these cds. whenever i take them to friend's houses to listen to their systems, my friends constantly try to misplace them so i can't take them back home with me.
|
I am glad you have the same experience. There are good recordings, we only have to try hard to find them. Our hobby is a niche, and average consumers dictate different standards than those we are willing to accept .... |
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| andy_c |
| quote: | Originally posted by ShinOBIWAN
Hey Andy. Read offset can be accurately and reliably taken care of with EAC and Accuraterip as I detailed above. It does however need a one time calibration and this must be done with a known disc that's in the accuraterip key disc database. |
Yup. dBpoweramp also does this, but it's not free. There was a discussion over at Audio Asylum about the relative merits of EAC and dBpoweramp here. |
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| ShinOBIWAN |
| quote: | Originally posted by andy_c
Yup. dBpoweramp also does this, but it's not free. There was a discussion over at Audio Asylum about the relative merits of EAC and dBpoweramp here. |
Thanks for the link Andy.
I've tried dBpoweramp but as you say its not free and we all like something for nothing every now and then :) From my own experiences, EAC and dBpoweramp gave the same results so I stuck with EAC and accuraterip.
Slightly off topic but I remember a few years ago where you had to literally buy a couple of drives in order to get decent result because some drives were incapable of bit perfect ripping. Plextor was always a safe bet back then but nowadays even cheap drives and combi drives work fine once setup. |
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| AndrewT |
| please turn those last dozen or so posts into plain english. |
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| KSTR |
| quote: | Originally posted by janneman
The reality is that even the cheapest 10$ drive perfectly reads the bits off the CD. Audio or software, no difference. They all depend on the same built-in error correction. |
Not quite, Jan. Audiotracks are organized in logical 2352-byte frames (after EFM-demod and EC, giving us 75frames/sec for 2Ch-44.1/16 data), while Datatracks use only 2048 of these for the data, the remaining bytes are used for an additional level of error detection/correction. Thus, data is safer than audio but consumes more low-level data for the same amount of net data.
WRT ripping, I use PlexTools that came with the CD-burner and get excellent results
- Klaus
EDIT: I see Andy addressed that already. Damn "write-only"-mentality I sometimes trap into....
EDIT2: Oh well, the WIKI. Never saw/used that here I have to admit... |
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| janneman |
| quote: | Originally posted by KSTR
Not quite, Jan. Audiotracks are organized in logical 2352-byte frames (after EFM-demod and EC, giving us 75frames/sec for 2Ch-44.1/16 data), while Datatracks use only 2048 of these for the data, the remaining bytes are used for an additional level of error detection/correction. Thus, data is safer than audio but consumes more low-level data for the same amount of net data.[snip] |
OK, clear. So, how do these programs like EAC work, then? I mean, how do they know there is an error in the bit stream, and how do they know how to fix it?
Jan Didden |
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| KSTR |
| quote: | Originally posted by janneman
OK, clear. So, how do these programs like EAC work, then? I mean, how do they know there is an error in the bit stream, and how do they know how to fix it?
Jan Didden |
Hi Jan,
they can only fix errors to the level that is provided for in the rather simple CDDA error correction mechanism (which can compensate for some 250 low-level bit errors per second). But, and that's the difference between a rip and a standalone CDP playback, the ripper can try to re-read the CD several times, adjusting things like rotation speed, laser power level etc and use the best bits of these individual scans to get as much valid data as possible. With my plextools software ie I can precisly tell the program what to do when errors occur.
- Klaus |
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| janneman |
| quote: | Originally posted by KSTR
Hi Jan,
they can only fix errors to the level that is provided for in the rather simple CDDA error correction mechanism (which can compensate for some 250 low-level bit errors per second). But, and that's the difference between a rip and a standalone CDP playback, the ripper can try to re-read the CD several times, adjusting things like rotation speed, laser power level etc and use the best bits of these individual scans to get as much valid data as possible. With my plextools software ie I can precisly tell the program what to do when errors occur.
- Klaus |
My question was more geared to how the ripper knows there's an error. All it sees is the bitstream, no? Corrected (or not) by the built-in ec.
Jan Didden |
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| ShinOBIWAN |
| quote: | Originally posted by janneman
My question was more geared to how the ripper knows there's an error. All it sees is the bitstream, no? Corrected (or not) by the built-in ec.
Jan Didden |
Hi Jan,
There's 'redundant' data stored with the useful data. This redundant information is like a parity or CRC check for the particular block of useful information its resides with. A comparison between the two is enough to assert whether there is or isn't errors. There's not enough info within the redundant data to build up a complete error free copy in the event the useful data has completely degenerated but as KSTR points out the drive and software can keep going over the data identified with errors and eventually extrapolate the correct data to fill in the errors. |
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| ezkcdude |
| quote: | Originally posted by janneman
Dear Hans,
Please consider that that cheap, poor hardware reads all those 100's of megabytes of software faultlessly, everytime you install a new software package, or everytime you make a backup on CD.
The reality is that even the cheapest 10$ drive perfectly reads the bits off the CD. Audio or software, no difference. They all depend on the same built-in error correction.
Jan Didden |
The key is whether the CD/DVD is actually new. There are not too many problems imposed on a CD player error correction scheme with brand new CDs (audio or otherwise). However, what about old scratched up CDs? I would venture that most of us don't routinely install very old beatup installation CDs, so it's difficult to say how good the error correction really is. |
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| janneman |
| quote: | Originally posted by ShinOBIWAN
Hi Jan,
There's 'redundant' data stored with the useful data. This redundant information is like a parity or CRC check for the particular block of useful information its resides with. A comparison between the two is enough to assert whether there is or isn't errors. There's not enough info within the redundant data to build up a complete error free copy in the event the useful data has completely degenerated but as KSTR points out the drive and software can keep going over the data identified with errors and eventually extrapolate the correct data to fill in the errors. |
Hi Ant,
I'm aware of the way red book CD players do Reed-Solomon interleaved error correction in hardware, in the player, using redundant data.
But here, are you suggesting that apps like EAC, that live in the PC and not on the drive, receive two data streams from the drive, one the data, the other the redundant data, and that it is up to the program to put humpty dumpty together again? Are you also suggesting that such an app can go in to the drive and adjust laser power?
Jan Didden
Bu |
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| andy_c |
Hi Jan,
There's a pretty decent description of how EAC rips here. Some of what it does is dependent on the features of the drive (C2 error detection, etc.).
Since you have your SB Duet now, it's definitely worthwhile to check out some of this kind of info. Now that there's a thread dedicated to this, that will help all the more. |
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| ShinOBIWAN |
| quote: | Originally posted by janneman
But here, are you suggesting that apps like EAC, that live in the PC and not on the drive, receive two data streams from the drive, one the data, the other the redundant data, and that it is up to the program to put humpty dumpty together again? Are you also suggesting that such an app can go in to the drive and adjust laser power?
Jan Didden
Bu |
Exactly that Jan.
Error checking and correction is used extensively throughout data storage.
It might be worth taking a quick glance at how RAID 5 operates because the same very basic theory is at work with most digital storage. ECC RAM would be another example. They're all interrelated and share the same end result of avoiding and correcting errors or data loss but not the same operating specifics. |
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| janneman |
Wow! I definitely need to read up on that....
Jan Didden |
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| scott wurcer |
| quote: | Originally posted by PMA
Scott,
would you take the ripper that came with your daughters keychain mp3 player and rip the file I am enclosing, that was previously burnt to CD? |
I don't get it???
Sorry to rattle a few cages. Some of the CD ripping sites have stuff that is as pure a nonsense as any. Some even provide files to flash the firmware on your drive or players, and failure of that can render them useless.
To be fair EAC has mostly way too much nerdy information which I assume is mostly technically correct. It's free so who cares, use it.
Don't tell me the same CD ripped with it and another program to the same hard drive and played off of the same hard drive sound "dramatically" different even though the bits are exactly the same by comparison. This has been told to me by at least two people. |
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| peufeu |
| quote: | Originally posted by janneman
Hi Ant,
I'm aware of the way red book CD players do Reed-Solomon interleaved error correction in hardware, in the player, using redundant data.
But here, are you suggesting that apps like EAC, that live in the PC and not on the drive, receive two data streams from the drive, one the data, the other the redundant data, and that it is up to the program to put humpty dumpty together again? Are you also suggesting that such an app can go in to the drive and adjust laser power?
Jan Didden
Bu |
Actually EAC used to read everything at least twice, and possibly multiple times, to be sure to get a current reading. This was because older drives did not report read errors on audio data. But newer drives do report read errors on audio data, so it is perfectly possible to rip an audio CD at 40X without any errors. If the drive detects errors, the application will then tell it to slow down and re-read the spot where the error occured, at much lower speeds, like 1X. This way it is possible to rip accurately and fast. A clean CD will take a few minutes, but a badly scratched CD will take forever.
EAC handles this. Since I have a Plextor burner, I use PlexTools, which also supports this feature. I believe some other programs do.
I have also had success is using disc polishers like DiscDoctor to rescue unreadable scratched CDs. In that case the rip will probably outlast the physical disc itself by a few decades (since I store them on RAID5 and I also have backups).
Anyway, the physical CD is dead. It is so damn obsolete. I'm waiting for the record companies to wake up and offer 24-196 FLAC downloads. This will not come from the majors, but Magnatune does it (actually 24-96 FLAC). |
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| ShinOBIWAN |
Scott,
I can't recall any talk of rips from differing software being audibly superior. As long as we get 1:1 rips with any errors corrected then I think everyone is happy and the software is doing its job. |
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| scott wurcer |
| quote: | Originally posted by h_a
PS: oh and honestly I would not put Scott onto the mp3-Wiki wish list :D It feels a bit like Nelson Pass on Wine. Or John Curl on Porsche. (However would be interesting reading for sure!) |
That's fine with me, I wouldn't bet that I could tell the difference between a 192K mp3 and the 24/96 original of some LP's that I transfered anyway, though I will agree the LP'ness makes it into the mp3. |
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| ShinOBIWAN |
| quote: | Originally posted by peufeu
I'm waiting for the record companies to wake up and offer 24-196 FLAC downloads. This will not come from the majors, but Magnatune does it (actually 24-96 FLAC). |
Hear, hear!
Also Pavel linked to Linn Records earlier in this thread and they provide 24bit 96Khz recordings for most of their offerings.
My digital filters are double precision floating points at 192Khz so I'd dearly like to avoid having to use SRC hardware. 192Khz recording would solve this problem, I can but hope!. |
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| scott wurcer |
| I tried this a while back; transfer a whole side of an LP to your hard drive , now without changing anything move the needle back and do it again. Using a pop or tick common to the leadin groove line the the left channel from one up with the right channel of the other in Audition or whatever and play the result. Quite a revelation, you might think your turntable is one sick puppy. |
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| PMA |
| quote: | Originally posted by scott wurcer
I don't get it???
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It is Julian Dunn jtest, 11025Hz -6dB sine + toggle LSB 229Hz. When I tried to rip it back from properly burnt CDs, I got different wav files. Audiograbber changed ratio between amplitude of sine and toggle, made toggle bit with higher amplitude. Also, problems with burning to CD, "skirt" around base frequency. Properly ripped by foobar and properly burnt by Nero.
The spectrum of the ripped wav should look like this: |
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| PMA |
| Result by Audiograbber. Everything OK, checksum OK. |
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| PMA |
| Result by foobar, this result is correct. |
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| planet10 |
| quote: | Originally posted by spind
Simplest way---Apple iTunes; rip to your computer using the Apple Lossless option. |
wth error correction. Max is also supposed to be good.
dave |
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| peufeu |
| I'm burning this file now. |
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| Netlist |
Interesting, Pavel.
None of the programs I use can cope with it.
Audition, Nero, EAC, Foobar. I get different but consistent results every time I burn/rip.
I still have to find out which program is responsible for the inaccuracies.
First, I burned with Audition. I had to convert from mono
to stereo before burning.
Then, I ripped with EAC and compared both with Audition's Mix paste>invert. Files were different.
Next I burned with Nero, ripped with EAC, same result (different files)
Finally, I burned with Nero, ripped with Foobar. Again different AND different from EAC's rip.
What's the CRC of the original?
/Hugo |
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| john curl |
| What turntable, cartridge, Scott? |
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| scott wurcer |
| quote: | Originally posted by PMA
It is Julian Dunn jtest, 11025Hz -6dB sine + toggle LSB 229Hz. When I tried to rip it back from properly burnt CDs, I got different wav files. Audiograbber changed ratio between amplitude of sine and toggle, made toggle bit with higher amplitude. Also, problems with burning to CD, "skirt" around base frequency. Properly ripped by foobar and properly burnt by Nero.
The spectrum of the ripped wav should look like this: |
Sorry, am I being thick today? There's no ripping involved, I just open the WAV in Audition. It's a mono 44.1/16 WAV the spectrum looks like what you show. Do you want me to burn it and then rip it? This looks more like a test of pathological behavior. I don't know what's going on except some programs might have problems with mathematically generated files that violate the assumed sampling relationship.
I thought we were talking about dropped or interpolated bits. |
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| scott wurcer |
| quote: | Originally posted by john curl
What turntable, cartridge, Scott? |
VPI and Grado Platinum. The main thing is how the speed variations show up. Listening to the difference is even more fun. Another test I want to do, since I'm working on some mikes, is to play the same cut on repeat from a CD with a mike in front of the speakers and look at two consecutive plays, could be interesting.
John, I never asked you about that Wilson LP comparison with only a Soundstream in and out of the path. When I transfered both to my computer they didn't compare even closely. I meant the spectrum of short bits that I lined up carefully had 5 or 6dB differences in the short term spectral content and they didn't even get close to lining up. |
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| KSTR |
WRT to ripping and burning, I have found to get the best results when using the bundled software that came with my Plextor (PlexTools and a OEM Nero 5). As I do also some CD authoring, I have a reference how the track boundaries should look like, and when I burn and rip back I get consistent and correct results, which are also stable when I rip back the actual production CD's from masters I did. So little chance that there is something going wrong here.
Pavel's JTEST result are strange, tracks offsets are to be expected, but manipulated data in the way you described isn't.
- Klaus |
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| andy_c |
| quote: | Originally posted by scott wurcer
I thought we were talking about dropped or interpolated bits. |
It's possible to get dropped data in the burn/rip cycle under the following circumstances.
1) The original WAV file has no silence at the beginning or end
2) The read offset of the CD drive is not zero (all drives that I know of)
3) The drive cannot read into the lead-in or lead-out (all drives except a very small number) |
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| peufeu |
OK, so burned it with Nero, ripped it with Nero, no problem. With a Plextor and an el-cheapo €20 DVD burner.
In the process I wrote a little tool to compare wav files, it skips the silence at the beginning of the files and tells you how much the ripper has eaten at the end of the file. Then it tries to find the offset between the files, and compares them.
I put it in attachment in case someone finds it useful. It's Python and you need numpy, though ;)
No guarantees, lol.
In my case both drives used to rip ate about 600 samples at the end of the file. I should have used EAC instead of Nero, lol. Plextools crashes for some reason. |
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| myhrrhleine |
| quote: | Originally posted by Bonsai
I have to disagree with the assertion that amplifier technology has not improved over the last 30 years. Just take a look at the results published in Stereophile (I only use this as an example because John Atkinson does th electrical tests and therefore brings some consistency to the technical evaluation). Most amplifiers he reports on show exempliary technical performance whether with or without feedback. Designers have learnt, and are still learning, about how to design and bring to market beter products. Take a typical 'high end' design from 30 years ago - TID problems, slew rate limiting, massive amounts of OLG, un-degenerated LTP's, thermal tracking problems etc etc. On another thread a while back, John Curl passed a few comments about the original Ampzilla design and the compromises in that design vis-a-vis a modern approach. We have made progress folks! |
imo,For progress, compare SOTA today with say JC-1, 2, 3 |
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| myhrrhleine |
Keep in mind, it's all digital.
One electron at a time.
The question then is how many samples @what sample rate :) |
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| scott wurcer |
| quote: | Originally posted by andy_c
It's possible to get dropped data in the burn/rip cycle under the following circumstances.
1) The original WAV file has no silence at the beginning or end
2) The read offset of the CD drive is not zero (all drives that I know of)
3) The drive cannot read into the lead-in or lead-out (all drives except a very small number) |
| quote: | Originally posted by peufeu
OK, so burned it with Nero, ripped it with Nero, no problem. With a Plextor and an el-cheapo €20 DVD burner.
In the process I wrote a little tool to compare wav files, it skips the silence at the beginning of the files and tells you how much the ripper has eaten at the end of the file. Then it tries to find the offset between the files, and compares them.
I put it in attachment in case someone finds it useful. It's Python and you need numpy, though ;)
No guarantees, lol.
In my case both drives used to rip ate about 600 samples at the end of the file. I should have used EAC instead of Nero, lol. Plextools crashes for some reason. |
Aw c'mon Andy the lead in stuff is a mis-direction, a detail. In UNIX you can just move around and chop files at will and then line them up. |
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| andy_c |
| quote: | Originally posted by scott wurcer
Aw c'mon Andy the lead in stuff is a mis-direction, a detail. In UNIX you can just move around and chop files at will and then line them up. |
It's not a detail if the number of samples of silence at the beginning (or end) of the WAV file you're burning, then ripping, is less than the drive offset, and the drive cannot read into the lead-in (or lead-out as appropriate). If there is no silence at beginning or end of the WAV file, and no lead-in/lead-out reading capability in the reader/burner, you'll never get the missing non-zero data back on a burn/rip cycle. It will be permanently lost.
EAC automatically fills in zeros for these missing samples if the appropriate option is chosen. But if the samples aren't actually zero, they're gone and you cannot get an exact copy. The only reason it works with the majority of music CDs is that there is plenty of silence at the beginning and end of the CD - more than the drive offset. But if you've got a computer-created WAV file for example, and it starts and/or end with no silence, it's impossible to not miss data at the beginning or end, unless your drive can successfully read into the lead-in or lead-out (depending on if the drive offset is positive or negative).
Look, I'm as "anti-audiophile-BS" as anybody here - perhaps more than most. The stuff I'm talking about is verifiable with controlled experiments. |
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| PMA |
| quote: | Originally posted by scott wurcer
It's a mono 44.1/16 WAV the spectrum looks like what you show. Do you want me to burn it and then rip it? |
Yes, that is what I was asking for. |
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| janneman |
Apparently, at least one manufacturer recognized this:
"An innovative hard disk master recorder to automatically store and catalogue your CDs.
Hush Technologies Deutschland GmbH – Atrium 4, room E106
Hush Technologies intends to set new benchmarks in the area of hard disk recording with their new “Hush HDR6” recorder. Users
may store and catalogue their CDs quite easily and conveniently with this digital recording device. It is operated by remote control;
titles and covers are maintained over the internet. Cataloguing takes place automatically by album, title or genre. In addition, songs may be downloaded over the internet from all available music portals. Digital master copies may even be produced by means of an additional piece of software. The CD is read repeatedly until no more read errors are present and subsequently compared with a check sum from the original master. Users are therefore ensured that every bit is reproduced in master quality when playing back from the hard disk. "
I like the bit where they compare the checksum of the rip with the original master over the internet. presumably, that original master is available *somewhere* ?
Jan Didden |
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| peufeu |
| Those are nice appliances, but I don't really see what they can do that a silent Linux PC cannot do. You can get small Micro-ATX mobos for really cheap prices now... and you can hack it too... |
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| scott wurcer |
Ok Andy I understand, it's an important detail but not related to the sound of one ripped file vs another.
So I remembered last night one of the important things I wanted to discuss. Has anyone had success at doing RIAA in software after transfer? I think needing only a generic flat low noise preamp would be very appealing. In fact a single JC-2 stage might be all you need.
I'm shooting from the hip on this, but pre-RIAA wouldn't you have more bits in the mid's and high's. A double precision LOOOONG convolutional filter is probably a piece of cake with all the computing horsepower these days. |
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| PMA |
| I have ripped a lot of LPs, but always through RIAA preamp. Is there any advantage to make it in software? Filter algorithm, truncation? And RIAA preamp does suppress HF stuff, which is not bad at all. |
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| janneman |
Scott,
Since the 'RIAA encoding' is a kind of pre-emphasis, wouldn't you limit your dynamic range of the ADC if you would use it as-is?
Jan Didden |
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| scott wurcer |
| quote: | Originally posted by PMA
I have ripped a lot of LPs, but always through RIAA preamp. Is there any advantage to make it in software? Filter algorithm, truncation? And RIAA preamp does suppress HF stuff, which is not bad at all. |
Of course you could have a simple high rolloff in the preamp. I was thinking double precision floating point filtering on 24/96 data for instance. Maybe a 4096 tap filter? |
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