One good thing about HD TV is some master-tapes are coming out of hibernation . Period 1968 to 1972 PAL before U-matic . I was told NTSC mater-tapes to be especially good . The transmitted quality very poor . I saw by accident 813 lines ( ? ) Secam in 1966 , very good . It seems where I stayed must have been a government crony as it was cable only and friends of who got it ( Mairie des Lilas Paris ) . 1968 PAL is neither film nor modern . Stunning and surreal .
There are still file formats and filing systems to become obsolete. NTFS seems fairly stable, but Linux seems to have a new FS every few years.qusp said:
I suppose what is needed is some audio format which assumes nothing more than an ordered bag of bytes. Everything else is described within the bytes: bit-length, sampling rate, number of channels etc. XML could be a step in this direction.
And possibly even some specific encoding of the exact local time? Maybe not for each sample, but once in a while? Just a thought.
Wow, you gents are really developing a new technology here. 
Why not just keep it simple and ask yourself the one key question: do I like that sound?
If so, then for all I care it might be made of horse manure, I'll take one, thank you.
I realize that the time and circumstances also play a part - just look at Nige and me enthuse about long gone, never to come back days, in the tradition of Eric Burdon and The Animals:
"When I was young,
It was more important,
Pain more painful,
Laughter much louder ..."
(yeah, I own the collected works in both analog LP and digital CD formats).
What we'd like and what the industry does are two TOTALLY separate things, which NEVER work in our favor.
Why not just keep it simple and ask yourself the one key question: do I like that sound?
If so, then for all I care it might be made of horse manure, I'll take one, thank you.
I realize that the time and circumstances also play a part - just look at Nige and me enthuse about long gone, never to come back days, in the tradition of Eric Burdon and The Animals:
"When I was young,
It was more important,
Pain more painful,
Laughter much louder ..."
(yeah, I own the collected works in both analog LP and digital CD formats).
What we'd like and what the industry does are two TOTALLY separate things, which NEVER work in our favor.
Also, Nige, you should be aware by now that standards are the dirtiest swearword in almost any industry today.
The Chinese are the first who **** on any standards, as long it does the job. They have no time for such niceties, but, truth be told, their western counterparts are not complaining much (how can they, when they manufacture it all in China?), while governments are notoriously spineless and castrated. All they know how to do well is to raise taxes and the Devil take the rest.
The Chinese are the first who **** on any standards, as long it does the job. They have no time for such niceties, but, truth be told, their western counterparts are not complaining much (how can they, when they manufacture it all in China?), while governments are notoriously spineless and castrated. All they know how to do well is to raise taxes and the Devil take the rest.
Getting hazardously close to politics again, but I predict the offshore outsourcing is going to undergo significant upheavals and much manufacturing will come home. It will be a while, but a lot of folks are coming to realize the real cost of what used to be irresistibly cheap labor.
The design of the item in itself is not the point, it's that the simple radio I was speaking of is an all-in-one product, it exists as a fully functional item in its own right.
Again, this is where audio misses the point, and why so often it sounds "wrong". People believe in separate black boxes, and this imediately introduces a whole swag of weaknesses which help to degrade the sound to the normal, "hifi" standard. The trouble is, everyone now is so used to this standard that it's generally accepted to be "as good as it gets" ...
Frank
C'mon Nige spare us some details bud and what no rubber duckie ...
.......Wow, you gents are really developing a new technology here.
Why not just keep it simple and ask yourself the one key question: do I like that sound?
If so, then for all I care it might be made of horse manure, I'll take one, thank you.
I realize that the time and circumstances also play a part - just look at Nige and me enthuse about long gone, never to come back days, in the tradition of Eric Burdon and The Animals:
"When I was young,
It was more important,
Pain more painful,
Laughter much louder ..."
(yeah, I own the collected works in both analog LP and digital CD formats).
What we'd like and what the industry does are two TOTALLY separate things, which NEVER work in our favor.
Yep, look at the silly notion and waste in making 8 ohm speakers, all that heat and induced distortion, now if everyone had 1 ohm speakers look how simple life would be , no resistor distortion, less bobbin weight, good low -z amps barely needing more than 50 watts/ch think of the efficiency increases across the board ....
@bcarso, vacuphile
While I am not a professional service man, I have on occasion done a few repairs for a few close friends. Most of the gear was Chinese, not only because it was "Made in China", but because it originated from Chinese companies, under totally unknown (to me) trade names. In other words, it didn't pretend to be anything else than it was.
Without going into too much detail, the build quality ranged from very poor to reasonable, with only one product I'd say was well built - most were in the poor quality.
Only one was a down and out copy of a Panasonic DVD player, and I found this out on a million to one chance as I just happened to have the original with me on testing. Even the PCB boards had identical markings, though they are inside, not visible from the outside. The only technical difference between the two (not counting the external looks) was in the PSU board, the Panasonic had a 110-240 VAC switchmode PSU of good quality, the other had a classic analog PSU 210-240 VAC.
The Panasonic was easily serviced, the other had a profile of screws I have never seen before, which I had trouble even opening, despite an impressive collection og power screwdriver tips, covering both the millimeter and inch range. This also happened with a few other samples from China, indicating that they tend to use a format not known outside China. Once, it's a freak accident, 5 or 6 times, it's a practice.
I won't go into the components used, while many were unknown to me, I ASSUME (right or wrong, but I'll wager wrong) this is solved by obtaining proper data books (I doubt many, if any, are easily available). The odd thing was that 3 different players had 3 different drives, and all 3 had different dimensions, off by 1-3 mm, although of course all easily accepted the standard format music CD or DVD. This indicates poor serviceability, as phsical drive mechanisms are not easily interchangeable.
My acid test for DVD players are three pirated, totally illegal Chinese copies of well known films. I discovered that MOST brand name (Sony, Sony and Sony BD+Denon, for wife/son/myself, only the cat doesn't have his own system) DVD products will struggle to read them, and in many cases will eventually fail; on the other hand, the Chinese units will have no trouble reading these, but may struggle with legal copies of DVDs (but not music CDs).
Not to even mention ridiculous problems like Chinese power plugs being too big for European sockets and so forth.
Therefore, I do not speak off hand, I speak from personal, first hand experience.
And while I maintain that this is so, I also realize that this a quickly passing stage of their expansion, new models are really improved on related to older series. Just 12 years or so ago, you could count Chinese companies trading under their own banner on the fingers of one hand with change, today there are many more of just such companies, and some of them have moved well up the quality and price scale.
I am old enough to draw the parallel between this and the rise of the industry of the Rising Sun, only now things are moving much faster, and generally the times are different, way back then the Japanese stuck to adopted standards straight away in most cases.
I would venture a guess that in say 10-15 years' time, the Chinese industry will have accepted most standards of the industrialized world, as they will have developed enough to be able to adhere to them well enough and still stay competitive. It's a process.
@Brad
I would agree with this. I recently spoke to a Chinese trade representative who told me that there is a clear trend of Chinese companies moving their manufacturing to India because manufacturing costs were lower there. He did mention that these were mostly ultra low cost companies, while those striving for upper market segments firmly remained in China.
Now, why does this remind me so strongly of the Japanese business story?
50 years ago, "Made in Japan" was not too encouraging, but today, this is an asset in respect to all those "Made in China" products. Today, "Made in Japan" means costlier, but superior products, usually reserved to top of the line products.
While I am not a professional service man, I have on occasion done a few repairs for a few close friends. Most of the gear was Chinese, not only because it was "Made in China", but because it originated from Chinese companies, under totally unknown (to me) trade names. In other words, it didn't pretend to be anything else than it was.
Without going into too much detail, the build quality ranged from very poor to reasonable, with only one product I'd say was well built - most were in the poor quality.
Only one was a down and out copy of a Panasonic DVD player, and I found this out on a million to one chance as I just happened to have the original with me on testing. Even the PCB boards had identical markings, though they are inside, not visible from the outside. The only technical difference between the two (not counting the external looks) was in the PSU board, the Panasonic had a 110-240 VAC switchmode PSU of good quality, the other had a classic analog PSU 210-240 VAC.
The Panasonic was easily serviced, the other had a profile of screws I have never seen before, which I had trouble even opening, despite an impressive collection og power screwdriver tips, covering both the millimeter and inch range. This also happened with a few other samples from China, indicating that they tend to use a format not known outside China. Once, it's a freak accident, 5 or 6 times, it's a practice.
I won't go into the components used, while many were unknown to me, I ASSUME (right or wrong, but I'll wager wrong) this is solved by obtaining proper data books (I doubt many, if any, are easily available). The odd thing was that 3 different players had 3 different drives, and all 3 had different dimensions, off by 1-3 mm, although of course all easily accepted the standard format music CD or DVD. This indicates poor serviceability, as phsical drive mechanisms are not easily interchangeable.
My acid test for DVD players are three pirated, totally illegal Chinese copies of well known films. I discovered that MOST brand name (Sony, Sony and Sony BD+Denon, for wife/son/myself, only the cat doesn't have his own system) DVD products will struggle to read them, and in many cases will eventually fail; on the other hand, the Chinese units will have no trouble reading these, but may struggle with legal copies of DVDs (but not music CDs).
Not to even mention ridiculous problems like Chinese power plugs being too big for European sockets and so forth.
Therefore, I do not speak off hand, I speak from personal, first hand experience.
And while I maintain that this is so, I also realize that this a quickly passing stage of their expansion, new models are really improved on related to older series. Just 12 years or so ago, you could count Chinese companies trading under their own banner on the fingers of one hand with change, today there are many more of just such companies, and some of them have moved well up the quality and price scale.
I am old enough to draw the parallel between this and the rise of the industry of the Rising Sun, only now things are moving much faster, and generally the times are different, way back then the Japanese stuck to adopted standards straight away in most cases.
I would venture a guess that in say 10-15 years' time, the Chinese industry will have accepted most standards of the industrialized world, as they will have developed enough to be able to adhere to them well enough and still stay competitive. It's a process.
@Brad
I would agree with this. I recently spoke to a Chinese trade representative who told me that there is a clear trend of Chinese companies moving their manufacturing to India because manufacturing costs were lower there. He did mention that these were mostly ultra low cost companies, while those striving for upper market segments firmly remained in China.
Now, why does this remind me so strongly of the Japanese business story?
50 years ago, "Made in Japan" was not too encouraging, but today, this is an asset in respect to all those "Made in China" products. Today, "Made in Japan" means costlier, but superior products, usually reserved to top of the line products.
C'mon Nige spare us some details bud and what no rubber duckie ...
Yep, look at the silly notion and waste in making 8 ohm speakers, all that heat and induced distortion, now if everyone had 1 ohm speakers look how simple life would be , no resistor distortion, less bobbin weight, good low -z amps barely needing more than 50 watts/ch think of the efficiency increases across the board ....
Rubber duck , and why not ?
Why not have speakers with double coils ( as have existed in the past ) ? We could have all sorts of fun then . 2 x 3R might be interesting . Even feedback experiments .
https://data.epo.org/publication-server/html-document?PN=EP0903961 EP 0903961&iDocId=4753914
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Hi to Everyone !
First i would like to say that this for me is the most important of all 3d
I am not sure that a correlation between sound quality and measurements is ready available but the subjectivity of measurements is indeed a precious quality.
I promise i will try to read the most of the 850 pages ...
But from the article mentioned I quote
" Test tones are too simple and predictable; music is far more complex and random "
Ok ! this is quite reasonable.
But there are equipment rated good sounding that are not very good at reproducing even "simple and predictable test tones"
is this a guarantee that they are great at reproducing "far more complex and random tones" ???!!!
for me this is bizzarre
A good equipment should pass perfectly at least simple test signals ... as a basis
Moreover I have just one direct question
If you should mention the test for an amp more telling of its sound quality what it would be ?
Thanks and kind regards,
gino
First i would like to say that this for me is the most important of all 3d
I am not sure that a correlation between sound quality and measurements is ready available but the subjectivity of measurements is indeed a precious quality.
I promise i will try to read the most of the 850 pages ...
But from the article mentioned I quote
" Test tones are too simple and predictable; music is far more complex and random "
Ok ! this is quite reasonable.
But there are equipment rated good sounding that are not very good at reproducing even "simple and predictable test tones"
is this a guarantee that they are great at reproducing "far more complex and random tones" ???!!!
for me this is bizzarre
A good equipment should pass perfectly at least simple test signals ... as a basis
Moreover I have just one direct question
If you should mention the test for an amp more telling of its sound quality what it would be ?
Thanks and kind regards,
gino
Last edited:
@ginetto61
In regard to testing capabilities, I agree with Speedskater. In addition, there's always your own ingenuity in creating a new torture test you feel is relevant. Electronic testing is a sadist's paradise.
I also agree with your 3D concept - if it sounds dead and strictly 2D, I don't want it, no matter what's written on it and its price tag.
Regarding test more pertinent to actual sound quality than the traditional static tests, well, for one thing, you could use a real world crossover network instead of a static resitor, further bolstered by increased tolerances, for example, make all passive components a +/- 20% tolerance. This is not unrealistic, it is often forgotten that speakers will change as a load when they heat up, and especially when pushed hard for a longer period of time.
But no matter what you do and how you measure, in the end, the final judge will be your own hearing and perception of sound, as it will take literally everything on line into account, including your room, cables amplifier, preamplifier, CD player and software (which is what it is).
In regard to testing capabilities, I agree with Speedskater. In addition, there's always your own ingenuity in creating a new torture test you feel is relevant. Electronic testing is a sadist's paradise.
I also agree with your 3D concept - if it sounds dead and strictly 2D, I don't want it, no matter what's written on it and its price tag.
Regarding test more pertinent to actual sound quality than the traditional static tests, well, for one thing, you could use a real world crossover network instead of a static resitor, further bolstered by increased tolerances, for example, make all passive components a +/- 20% tolerance. This is not unrealistic, it is often forgotten that speakers will change as a load when they heat up, and especially when pushed hard for a longer period of time.
But no matter what you do and how you measure, in the end, the final judge will be your own hearing and perception of sound, as it will take literally everything on line into account, including your room, cables amplifier, preamplifier, CD player and software (which is what it is).
Another way of looking at it is that some distortion is of a type that the ear/brain can comfortably ignore, and other types are extremely irritating or fatiguing. Nearly everyone agrees that the ways for testing gear should be more sophisticated, but last time I looked absolutely no-one was doing anything about it ... we're all too lazy, it's nice and comfortable jus' doing things the same ol' way they've always been done ...
Frank
Frank
This is the only reason I would champion digital . To hold music in a storage device whilst the amplifier is prepared is a valuable win/win/win situation ( re-clock ) . Also to have no phase shift correction in a crossover using DSP ( seeing as we have done this thing) . Perhaps I should digitize vinyl ? Like the Pope retiring it is unthinkable ? Or is it ?
As far as I know there are two distortion trends which are acceptable to the ear . Zero distortion and perfect exponential decay of harmonic spectrum . I would hazard a guess that as long as the lumped distortion products do not reach 3 % that is still hi fi ? We all know the rest so I wont bore you . The reason the exponential harmonics works is the ear produces similar ( the sound bouncing around inside the ear ) .
There is a quality of sound reproduction that is totally acceptable to the ear, I can't say precisely what its characteristics are in a numbers measurement sense, but I have numerous subjective methods of "measuring" it. This standard of playback may not suit everyone, but I will say that everyone I know who has experienced it doesn't comment negatively on it.
One of its characteristics is that it can be extremely loud from a sound meter POV but it doesn't register as being loud, rather it conveys a great sense of power and vitality. Just today I put on a brand new symphonic work at close to maximum volume and my wife who walked into the room was oblivious to this fact, because there was nothing in the sound that registered as being disturbing, aggressive or uncomfortable.
Frank
One of its characteristics is that it can be extremely loud from a sound meter POV but it doesn't register as being loud, rather it conveys a great sense of power and vitality. Just today I put on a brand new symphonic work at close to maximum volume and my wife who walked into the room was oblivious to this fact, because there was nothing in the sound that registered as being disturbing, aggressive or uncomfortable.
Frank
I think the fading into noise qualities are important . Equally class A is not great where dynamics are concerned . To be able to store a signal so as to switch the amp from A to AB seems ideal .
Digital distortion appears to be highly connected with minute periods of time . A layer of unfortunate extra complexity when it was supposed to make our lives easier . Seeing the world we now live in is digital lets accept it and use it's virtues . In my opinion we haven't as yet ? The Asynchronous 32 bit Pioneer DAC I heard the other day got me thinking . Not for any other reason than them saying asynchronous . Doubtless years from now I will realize asynchronous had nothing to do with anything . It will be the word that woke me up .
Digital distortion appears to be highly connected with minute periods of time . A layer of unfortunate extra complexity when it was supposed to make our lives easier . Seeing the world we now live in is digital lets accept it and use it's virtues . In my opinion we haven't as yet ? The Asynchronous 32 bit Pioneer DAC I heard the other day got me thinking . Not for any other reason than them saying asynchronous . Doubtless years from now I will realize asynchronous had nothing to do with anything . It will be the word that woke me up .
Digital basically allowed a whole new lot of gremlins to get into the game -- in part because of those minute periods of time. The engineers still haven't really "got it", because it's harder to capture, see the little, fleeting things that make all the difference.
The good news is, digital can be made to work "right". And when it does, it's spectacularly impressive -- I've been there many times and it's a good place ...
frank
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