There is a good point here. As there is often a lot less high end energy in vinyl (hence most MCs have a 2dB tip up in the top octave) a system optimised for vinyl may well have an excess for digital. Of course neutral cartridges are not the vogue these days, but still available.
I'm not sure I follow you, and I'm not sure how your comment doesn't confirm my contention of player performance problems in at least some early players. There have always been good and bad sounding recordings on CD from the beginning. (True for vinyl too for that matter)
I live with a range of recorded quality because despite my interest in high quality sound (and a penchant for designing stuff) ultimately I am still pretty interested in the music and performance; sound quality is secondary unless it is unlistenable in which case I might look for another release (like an import) of the material.
Not directly related to your comment, but perhaps relevant is that I have found that some recordings I previously thought sounded pretty mediocre or even bad I have had to change opinion on upon hearing them played on better gear. Typically these recordings sounded pretty murky and confused on the culprit player(s) and on a better unit things previously not audible were revealed and the murk and confusion disappeared. It is not at all obvious as other recordings sounded fine on the particular player, so you would tend to blame the disk rather than the player. (I know I did)
Hi and thanks for the valuable advice.
This is a very good news ... i do not keep the cd very carefully
Regards, gino
This has been my experience as well.
Goes for vinyl and cds.
Unfortunately in audio price is a poor indicator of quality, so much so that when it comes to high end performance appears to be inversely proportional to cost. Many so-called mid-fi components outperform their expensive blinged up high end competition.
I was under the impression you were after non-fatiguing digital, not analog.
Here's a multibit DAC which you can mod to your hearts content L1387DAC 8X °Ë²¢ÁªTDA1387 Hifi½âÂëÆ÷ Îʶ¦TDA1541Ö®Á¦×÷£¡-ÌÔ±¦Íø (there are Taobao agents who'll source it for you) or you can go directly here - L1387DAC 8X eight TDA1387 TDA1541 parallel Hifi decoder to work! (choose the 'Black' option). Don't be put off by its low price - in stock form its decent but to my ears very slightly fatiguing, but with several mods as described on this thread - http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digi...-check-its-design-mod-not-play-music-not.html digital fatigue will just be a distant memory.
Yes, this is a typical symptom - and unfortunately still many of the most expensive setups suffer from this issue. It is a distortion problem, and irrespective of how good the numbers apparently are that are currently measured they still don't register what's going on here. This is low level distortion, in the presence of high level sound, of a type which is difficult, and tiring for the brain to process. If one deliberately learns how to tune into the characteristics then it becomes easy to subjectively register the artifacts immediately - you don't need an hour or two for agitation to build up, 🙂.
To fix this may require some major effort - just buying more and more expensive gear to hopefully kill it once and for all is a pathway to audio hell, 😀!! Why the problem is still hanging around after all these decades is because the audio engineers still haven't worked out how to easily measure the behaviour - and sometimes the easiest solution is for them to claim that it doesn't exist, and it's all in your, the listener's, head !!! 😛
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Yes, this is the principle. What I discovered is that this can be pushed to the n'th degree, meaning that even the "impossible" recordings can be brought to life, rescued. The more you want those bottom of the barrel albums to come to the party, the more the effort has to go into fine tuning the setup - and this can be immensely rewarding: very dense, 'congested' pop recordings turn into "symphonic masterpieces", because your ear now understands what's going on, in every corner and tiny space of that recording; they become an immense delight, 🙂 ...
This thread is probably another example of why audio reproduction as a hobby is not moving forward or gaining a larger younger audience....
So many miss founded negative myths surrounding digital, yet lp playback is presented in a golden glowing light...
A good look at the facts regarding both media may be called for and a good dose of reality, and them maybe we can move foreword and attract a wider younger audience to chapion god fidelity replay for the next generation....
I am a cruel and bad person Frank, mentally inside I suffer for this🙂
So many miss founded negative myths surrounding digital, yet lp playback is presented in a golden glowing light...
A good look at the facts regarding both media may be called for and a good dose of reality, and them maybe we can move foreword and attract a wider younger audience to chapion god fidelity replay for the next generation....
I am a cruel and bad person Frank, mentally inside I suffer for this🙂
yes and no. The 'ritual' is the part that makes vinyl fun. Getting satisfaction from that is perfectly acceptable. If we can persuade one person that is why they like vinyl and nothing to do with the digital demons it will be a service.
Hi i have a question
Could it be possible to like better an LP than the digital master from which the LP is made ?
I do not want to be provokative, but i had this impression using a decent tape cassette player (Yamaha).
I liked the sound of the tape copy better than the sound out from the cd player.
The cd was from Guns and Roses ...
Thanks a lot, gino
Could it be possible to like better an LP than the digital master from which the LP is made ?
I do not want to be provokative, but i had this impression using a decent tape cassette player (Yamaha).
I liked the sound of the tape copy better than the sound out from the cd player.
The cd was from Guns and Roses ...
Thanks a lot, gino
If you 'prefer' the added distortion and admit that, then no one should have a beef with that. However it can never be better.
Where it's confusing is that a lot of new albums have the odd position that the LP is mastered with a lot less compression than the CD so subjectively could sound better. However this is a problem with the music industry NOT the medium.
Where it's confusing is that a lot of new albums have the odd position that the LP is mastered with a lot less compression than the CD so subjectively could sound better. However this is a problem with the music industry NOT the medium.
Very much so, gino, 😉 ... this is nothing about the distortion from the LP replay, it's about, gasp!!, distortion from the digital replay. Objectivists will now pound the desk with clenched fists, eyes bulging and veins on forehead throbbing 😀 - but, unfortunately, that is indeed what happens. It's the sort of thing that once you become aware of it, then you can easily pick it happening - the replay chain is not, double gasp!!, perfect ...
The good news is, that being aware of this behaviour one can start to resolve the underlying issues - and sparkling digital does then emerge. And it's better than LP, then ...
Objectivists may pound, but those with a science/Engineering background will point out that 'perfect' is a marketing term.
Hi and thanks a lot for the very valuable replies.
I cannot only say that i liked the distortion from the cassette better.
I see digitalist assuming that the technology is technically perfect. While is not.
Just put a magnet close to a dac chip and listen the **** ...
There is nothing like perfection in the world.
have a nice day
Regards, gino
I cannot only say that i liked the distortion from the cassette better.
I see digitalist assuming that the technology is technically perfect. While is not.
Just put a magnet close to a dac chip and listen the **** ...
There is nothing like perfection in the world.
have a nice day
Regards, gino
That's basically my point in this all.
Those old records do not sound so good ('magical') because of some long lost analogue mojo. According to all objective measurements they pish poor but they have been recorded with everybody in the same room at the same time huddled around one carefully placed microphone.
Once you start tracking (the now normal way of recording one instrument at a time and later mixing it all together) you start losing the artistic 'magical' part of the performance.
Some expensive '80s analogue recordings are just as dead as some present day digital ones but with those '80s ones they comped one 'perfect' vocal track out of dozens of takes. So my conclusion is that excessive editing is the culprit, not the recording medium. It's just that digital allows anybody with a laptop to do in minutes what used to take weeks and cost thousands back then.
And there are of course the Loudness Wars conspiring to give us crap sound but that is another story/thread.
Think on this. Anytime equipment comes out with truly stellar measured performance where every known parameter is below audibility thresholds some reviewer will say it is 'sterile' or 'lacks PRAT'. Either this means that there is some magic in audio that the boutique monks and gurus know about OR people like a bit of added harmonics and mangled frequency response. It is up to you which you believe, as a lot of audio is belief mechanisms at play.
There is a third alternative ... that equipment may perform superbly both subjectively and objectively, by current measurements standards. But this occurs but rarely, quite often because of the mindsets of the people engineering, developing the equipment - there is no reason for there not being this overlap in performances, apart from the motivation of the people in the game.
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