Anyone using super tweeters... this could be interesting.
Are we missing an opportunity to try something here ? I'm not involved in the thread but it seems to cover issues that get raised here.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/lounge/272900-blindtest-between-sample-rates.html#post4293155
Are we missing an opportunity to try something here ? I'm not involved in the thread but it seems to cover issues that get raised here.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/lounge/272900-blindtest-between-sample-rates.html#post4293155
And I was making the point that despite all the shortcomings of the system, I (and many others) routinely enjoy very much listening to vinyl.
If you don't even read what people write, why comment into the blue?
Jan
I would say if they are music related then its down to the electronics as to how they are handled i.e. does the amp produce non linear/IMD distortion. And of course those with super tweeters should be 'hearing' or detecting some kind of difference. If the HF content is there (for better or worse) then it should be detectable.
Whatever the pros and cons of the files and whatever criticism/s (if there are any) can be laid at their door, the acid test (as always) is whether any audible difference can be discerned.
I'll give these another listen later but I haven't a DAC that will handle these in their native form. I have to convert them all to essentially CD quality to play via my main set up. My laptops will play them as they are but the audio stages aren't as good.
Whatever the pros and cons of the files and whatever criticism/s (if there are any) can be laid at their door, the acid test (as always) is whether any audible difference can be discerned.
I'll give these another listen later but I haven't a DAC that will handle these in their native form. I have to convert them all to essentially CD quality to play via my main set up. My laptops will play them as they are but the audio stages aren't as good.
The two factors working against the TT and LP are a shrinking market and the new marketing techniques.
I don't know what the current figures are, but I'm willing to bet it's something like 100 CDs to 1 LP, possibly more. Smaller series always equal to higher per piece prices. Add to that that you can have a 20 CD case in your car, but can't have a 20 LP case in that same car - let's face it, CD wins on practicality hands down.
This also translates into LP playback gear as well, big time. As an example, I purchased my Ortofon LM20 cartridge for something like 150 DM in its day, which was in 1979. On Ortofon's site, the replacemet stylus costs now €256, equavlent to DM 512. For the cost of the replacement stylus, you can now buy a reasonable quality CD player. And the LM20 was never a High End cartridge, rather it offered a lot for the money, which is why it survived to this day, and is still their bestseller. It's only caveat is that it's fickle about that 400 pF capacitative loading to make it display its best tonal character.
Because it's a shrinking hobby, most manufacturers see it as an almost ideal milking cow. Not many have the wherewithall to dish out $75k for a phono stage, approximating that their entire system would be extension have to cost at least $500k. I am NOT knocking or questioning its price, John, but that's the cold, hard truth. Also, good as it may be, it will never be the only contender on the market limited both by intent and finances. It falls squarely into the above High End, the Prestige, market. Like Rolls-Royce, nobody can claim that they NEED a RR to ride around.
But, as several people here pointed out, we should be looking at what's possible for still reasonable money and our free construction time if we are to make that segment of the hobby come back to life at better than gasping for air. Bypassing the cliche that for that kind of moola EVERYBODY'S good or no sales, I have to say I recently heard a phono eq stage a friend made at home, using as he always does, tubes. When I first saw it, the cliche that tubes are noisy kicked in, but was soon dispelled when I heard it working. It may measure as noisier than the best of SS, but it played LPs better than I have heard for a long, long time, and cliches be damned. He said it cost him around €120 in tubes and around €100 in other parts - design and construction time being free, of course. Fun and function evened up.
I don't know what the current figures are, but I'm willing to bet it's something like 100 CDs to 1 LP, possibly more. Smaller series always equal to higher per piece prices. Add to that that you can have a 20 CD case in your car, but can't have a 20 LP case in that same car - let's face it, CD wins on practicality hands down.
This also translates into LP playback gear as well, big time. As an example, I purchased my Ortofon LM20 cartridge for something like 150 DM in its day, which was in 1979. On Ortofon's site, the replacemet stylus costs now €256, equavlent to DM 512. For the cost of the replacement stylus, you can now buy a reasonable quality CD player. And the LM20 was never a High End cartridge, rather it offered a lot for the money, which is why it survived to this day, and is still their bestseller. It's only caveat is that it's fickle about that 400 pF capacitative loading to make it display its best tonal character.
Because it's a shrinking hobby, most manufacturers see it as an almost ideal milking cow. Not many have the wherewithall to dish out $75k for a phono stage, approximating that their entire system would be extension have to cost at least $500k. I am NOT knocking or questioning its price, John, but that's the cold, hard truth. Also, good as it may be, it will never be the only contender on the market limited both by intent and finances. It falls squarely into the above High End, the Prestige, market. Like Rolls-Royce, nobody can claim that they NEED a RR to ride around.
But, as several people here pointed out, we should be looking at what's possible for still reasonable money and our free construction time if we are to make that segment of the hobby come back to life at better than gasping for air. Bypassing the cliche that for that kind of moola EVERYBODY'S good or no sales, I have to say I recently heard a phono eq stage a friend made at home, using as he always does, tubes. When I first saw it, the cliche that tubes are noisy kicked in, but was soon dispelled when I heard it working. It may measure as noisier than the best of SS, but it played LPs better than I have heard for a long, long time, and cliches be damned. He said it cost him around €120 in tubes and around €100 in other parts - design and construction time being free, of course. Fun and function evened up.
Exactly! Includes me, and I have a very modest LP playback chain. I also learnt that my TT and cartridge were in fact more than simpy "decent" when I switched over to the Luxman C-03 phono stage, which turned out to be way more capable that I initially gave it credit for, it demonstrated why that little premp was Luxman's biggest ever hit, on the market for over 8 years, ending around 1994.
I won't lie that making a still better one has crossed my mind, but in truth, I don't see it happening soon. But I do see quite a bit of rotating vinyl.
Does raise an interesting point tho. Since the late 70s when the MM and MC camps bifurcated there have not been many attempts to reconcile that. I fell into the MM are cheap and nasty camp until recently. But actually is there any reason why (say) an AT150 is not the match of some wonder MC made of rare materials with coils wound by virgins then painted with rare unguents. Most of the arguments raised against MM are due to poor understanding of loading or a preference for the distortions of MC as far as I can tell.
But hey carved exotic wood. I love my benz
But hey carved exotic wood. I love my benz
To John Curl.
As a designer, i had two patents about strait arms with no angle errors and no skating forces, in the 70th. So, a little idea about how this stuff works in every details.
As a music listener, i use a modified Technics SL-7 linear tracking turntable.
(No relationship between your endless references to the prices of the things and their qualities, this was one of the most clever turntable never produced... and cheap ).
As a sound engineer, i had hundreds of tapes cut in Vinyl, and could compare (and cry). And still have some masters and their vinyls to compare.
So, please, don't tell fairy tails. Vinyls can be agreeable to listen too. But Hifi ? NEVER !
While it is VERY difficult to figure out a difference between, let say an analog master tape and its copy in digital.
You can enjoy the Van Gogh paintings, but, please, don't pretend they are closer to reality than a modern digital photography.
As a designer, i had two patents about strait arms with no angle errors and no skating forces, in the 70th. So, a little idea about how this stuff works in every details.
As a music listener, i use a modified Technics SL-7 linear tracking turntable.
(No relationship between your endless references to the prices of the things and their qualities, this was one of the most clever turntable never produced... and cheap ).
As a sound engineer, i had hundreds of tapes cut in Vinyl, and could compare (and cry). And still have some masters and their vinyls to compare.
So, please, don't tell fairy tails. Vinyls can be agreeable to listen too. But Hifi ? NEVER !
While it is VERY difficult to figure out a difference between, let say an analog master tape and its copy in digital.
You can enjoy the Van Gogh paintings, but, please, don't pretend they are closer to reality than a modern digital photography.
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I had one of those for a while, with an EPC205C3 cartridge in it. Yes, excellent piece of gear, very clever engineering (which costs a manufacturer no more than mediocre engineering). What have you done to modify it?
The main problem of this turntable was the plate. Pretty resonating. Just replaced the original light rubber cover plate with a heavy silicone one, glued. You need to redo the little wholes that detect the disk size.
Worked on the arm too, with piece of wood inside, to dump the resonances too. And changed the wires from the head for silver thinner ones to minimize the torque forces.
Added on the front of the chariot a little brush in carbon fibers, in order both to clean the vinyl while it plays and remove static from it (removable, with black conductive painting in contact to the ground). When the arm lifts, the brush lifts in the same time.
I use an ADC cartridge on it.
Indeed, the most clever design i ever seen, every problem received a wonderful solution. Intelligence 1, hype money 0 !
As the arm is in the cover, you cannot play a record under the durst. As, when you lift the cover, the arm lifts with it, no risk to hurt the head, even if you open the cover while it was playing. And the arm begin to park itself automatically. And no need to extra space outside the LP diameter to park the arm: the turntable is 30cm square
The detection of the size of the disk is so simple, with diodes in the plate and sensors in the cover !
There is a pressure roller in the cover that press the vinyl and dump its resonances. There is a single 45tr centering adapter in the plate that you just have to turn a quarter to lift-it.
And everything is automatic: put your record in i-it, close the cover, push the play button, and it plays with no tracking errors ans no skating force the time you go sit at your place. When the record is finished, the arm is parked the time you stand-up to remove the vinyl.
The turntable itself is very heavy, well suspended and dumped, the direct motor provide very low rumble, wow and flutter, and very good acoustic isolation to the head. hit everywhere, it is matt.
The electronic inside is beautiful looking, and works flawless for more than 30 years (just a little recap) !!!!.
Who could ask for more ?
Oh, yes: Digital ;-)
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I had a Technics SL-5, and it did sounded nice. Linear turntables are no longer manufactured, but pondering on it with respect to cheaply available electronics these days I was wondering if one could have a system like this...
When one plays a record, a laser distance sensor would test the horizontal cartridge movement to see if record is off center. This would be without any servo control i.e. the arm would be free to move. After the calculations the servo control starts and compensates for the off center (if any) to track the vinyl. Would take only few seconds before actual play starts I think.
Was also wondering since direct drive turntable have accurate speed control circuits. Can the circuit be used to give feed back to Tonearm servo control to position the tonearm perfectly across the record ? Pardon me as I have no knowledge of electronics.
Regards.
When one plays a record, a laser distance sensor would test the horizontal cartridge movement to see if record is off center. This would be without any servo control i.e. the arm would be free to move. After the calculations the servo control starts and compensates for the off center (if any) to track the vinyl. Would take only few seconds before actual play starts I think.
Was also wondering since direct drive turntable have accurate speed control circuits. Can the circuit be used to give feed back to Tonearm servo control to position the tonearm perfectly across the record ? Pardon me as I have no knowledge of electronics.
Regards.
Not exactly. As you said, the arm is free, strait and tangential. No lateral forces. When the groove move the head in direction to the center, the arm is no more perpendicular to his chariot. You just have to detect this little angle error, and fire the motor to move the chariot in direction to the center for he recover its perfect perpendicularity. It will track till the end of the grove that way. And can even in both direction compensate centering errors of the record.
There is no attempt to modify the rotation speed to compensate the induced wow: a record is not supposed to be badly centered. But that could be a amusing idea, indeed. But who cares, digital solved all those problems. And John Curl love all those artifacts, wows, cracks, surface noises, distortions, grove wear, bad tracking and diamond wear, head resonances and personality ;-)
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In order to optimize the density of the information, the cutting machine has an head advance variable in function of the bass levels. In case of big modulation, it will spread more the head from the previous grove. (i don't know how to express-it, there is only one grove in spiral ;-))
So i imagine it would be counter productive to try to regulate the speed of the plate to reduce any wow due to bad centering of the vinyl. A wow due to this variable advance exists during the cutting process, and is compensated because it is played the same way with the constant rotation speed of the vinyl.
Here, the performance of this Technics SL-7:
Speed accuracy: within +-0.002%
Wow and flutter: 0.025% WRMS
Rumble: -78dB
Not bad, isn't-it ?
Is this one at 500 000€ a lot better ?:
So i imagine it would be counter productive to try to regulate the speed of the plate to reduce any wow due to bad centering of the vinyl. A wow due to this variable advance exists during the cutting process, and is compensated because it is played the same way with the constant rotation speed of the vinyl.
Here, the performance of this Technics SL-7:
Speed accuracy: within +-0.002%
Wow and flutter: 0.025% WRMS
Rumble: -78dB
Not bad, isn't-it ?
Is this one at 500 000€ a lot better ?:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
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Ahh. Got it. You mean to say groove pitch is not constant. i.e. grooves are not perfect equidistant. Thanks. I listen to vinyls only because Indian Classical and Film music audio CDs are not of very well mastered quality.
Sorry getting little carried away. In a cutting lathe, why not use a standard 9" pivoted arm to cut vinyls ?
Just one more offshoot question. Theoretically speaking lets say we are comparing linear and pivoted tonearm. From what I understand is linear tracking arm will have minor tracking error through out the record where as pivoted arm will have zero tracking error at two null points but significantly very high tracking error as we move away from these null point. So how high these tracking error is compared to minor tracking error of linear tonearm ?
Regards.
Sorry getting little carried away.
In a cutting lathe, why not use a standard 9" pivoted arm to cut vinyls ? Just one more offshoot question. Theoretically speaking lets say we are comparing linear and pivoted tonearm. From what I understand is linear tracking arm will have minor tracking error through out the record where as pivoted arm will have zero tracking error at two null points but significantly very high tracking error as we move away from these null point. So how high these tracking error is compared to minor tracking error of linear tonearm ?
Regards.
I would think that the inertia of a massive cutting head would preclude this?
I do not believe this specs of the SL 7 are true.
How and where are they measured?
Which Test Disc was used?
Which measure unit was used?
The EMT 950 is known as real good Direct Drive TT.
They specd. W & F 0,05 % and rumble 70db resp 75 dB.
They clearly declared they can NOT make it better, since there is no Test Record which have better specs than this machine.
The Test records are not better than the best cutting machines.
And they had a special antiresonance table with apx 180 kg weight, without this it was not possible to measure accurate.
This only one table exists still and is used from SwissThales Tonarm Manufacturer for proper testing their products.
And it is still true, that cantilever based cartridges have to use 17 um Radi spheric tips for proper stereo tracking, every other styli introduces uncontrollabel distorsions, depending of the signal. Some people call it air or brilliance or soundcolors.
Most records are precompensated, thus a non spheric tip introduces more distorsions, not lesser.
Tracking with elliptic styli is only accurate without modulation. Thats simple physic, geometry and last but not least a fact.
If you think, Analog records is not Hi-Fi, so be it.
30 years ago most people used Analg as High End Gear, some had State of the Art systems. Analog has countless errors and is somewhat compressed, ok.
But much easier to tolerate for the ear than digital errors.
And since we have digital, we have real heavy compression, and in the last decade the compressed material has been compressed once more again and ended in the loudness war we have today.
Which did not really exist in the 80's or before. My 2 Cents.
How and where are they measured?
Which Test Disc was used?
Which measure unit was used?
The EMT 950 is known as real good Direct Drive TT.
They specd. W & F 0,05 % and rumble 70db resp 75 dB.
They clearly declared they can NOT make it better, since there is no Test Record which have better specs than this machine.
The Test records are not better than the best cutting machines.
And they had a special antiresonance table with apx 180 kg weight, without this it was not possible to measure accurate.
This only one table exists still and is used from SwissThales Tonarm Manufacturer for proper testing their products.
And it is still true, that cantilever based cartridges have to use 17 um Radi spheric tips for proper stereo tracking, every other styli introduces uncontrollabel distorsions, depending of the signal. Some people call it air or brilliance or soundcolors.
Most records are precompensated, thus a non spheric tip introduces more distorsions, not lesser.
Tracking with elliptic styli is only accurate without modulation. Thats simple physic, geometry and last but not least a fact.
If you think, Analog records is not Hi-Fi, so be it.
30 years ago most people used Analg as High End Gear, some had State of the Art systems. Analog has countless errors and is somewhat compressed, ok.
But much easier to tolerate for the ear than digital errors.
And since we have digital, we have real heavy compression, and in the last decade the compressed material has been compressed once more again and ended in the loudness war we have today.
Which did not really exist in the 80's or before. My 2 Cents.
A visit to Soundsmith - Rob Doorack - Vinyl Asylum some nice pics of a lathe if you scroll down. And the huuuuge power amps needed.
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