IMO nothing is "perfect", and the perception of perfect depends on the individual, and how much they nitpick things.
Being reasonable, the satisfaction of something, anything, can be had, or sometimes perhaps improved, but there's a point in which pinpoint perfect is just not worth the bother.
People who struggle to reach a 0.000000001% distortion or absoluteness are IMO in need of medication or counseling.
Have some hi res titles. Also have tried converting CD rips to DSD256. That often helps a lot, depends on the dac though.
Good music from the previous millennium was recorded on tape machines which degraded and/or they got remastered and then burnt into CDs so the the original quality was lost. If you had a time machine, you could go back to the time of the first release on vinyl, these first pressings would sound better than any formats available now.
I have been listening to LP's since 1960 and CD's since 1980. I have some recordings on both media. I can make them sound the same, barring the ticks & pops if I haven't washed the LP lately. I have had cartridges & arms that didn't damage the LP since 1970, I accumlated about 700 LP's bought new, which were carried off by the burglar in 2018 when vinyl became an antique instead of old junk.
It is true LP had to compress orchestral music to fit the format. I played in competent bands & orchestras 1964-68 so I know what the original is supposed to sound like from a position on stage. A well engineered LP, you can't hear the recording engineer pump the volume. A badly engineered LP, you can. I recommend Mercury Living Presence, Colombia Masterworks, Telearc
CD's became gadgets to drive the car owner in the next parking place crazy so the format was ruined by compression wars. At least in the pop rock metal house realm. Classical recordings weren't so damaged by the recording engineer at the behest of the marketing department.
I'm not going to criticize your choice of tracks to listen to. I will say in setting up a system, knowing what the original sounded like is required. Impossible with pop rock metal house tracks. Even the guitars are played through amps that modify the sound at the source. Then they pass through the recording & mastering desk. I set up the reproduction system with solo grand piano, Steinway if available. I can go and hear a real one at the Center for the Arts, or any of several local churches, several times a year. Then the closer my system sounds to the real thing, the happier I am. Acoustic piano is Very difficult to reproduce. I have used Colombia Three Beethoven Sonatas performer Rudolf Serkin for years. There are surely better recordings than this 1958 classic but I have both LP & CD version. It was obviously recorded with condensor mikes, which were very new at the time, and not yet used by RCA. Appassionnata goes particularly low and high.
I'm suspicious of the $2500-3000 recommendations in previous posts. I started with a $60 1961 "legendary" AR turntable which might have been fine in a cement slab apartment but made my woofers bounce with every step on my wood floor. The original cartridge was underwhelming even with a new stylus. A Grado FTE improved things a lot but blew a chunk of diamond in 15 months. These are 1.5 g cartridges. They sounded terrible at 1 g tracking. I found a Shure M97 Era IV in 1979, and never looked back. I spent the next 40 years improving the speakers, which were the biggest limitation. Also in '79 I took a trial on a BIC 940 record changer, which solved the floor pumping problem, tracked great at 1.5 g, and sounded great. I still have it. $80. I did have to put a washer under one side of the cartridge to make it line up properly. In view of the 40 year old rubber in the M97 Era IV, I bought a new one in 2918, but the burglar liked it too much to pass it up. The 1979 BIC940 is still here. If I don't play it for months, the belt wows a little, but a couple of plays fix that.
The Dynaco PAS2 preamp had no defficiencies other than parts wearout, and the ST70 was okay at 1% HD until I found something better, a Peavey CS800s with .03% HD. I couldn't find suitable volume pot or paper coupling capacitors for the PAS2 in the 00s so I bought a $15 RA-88a disco mixer (op amp) and spent 2 years exorcising the hum & hiss built into it. Now it sounds as good as the PAS2 before parts wearout, and uses 1/100 the wattage.
So I put my money last year into $400 worth of speakers, a couple of Peavey SP2(2004) which I run at 1/8 -50 watts instead of the rated 500. 5 w is where the harmonic distortion is down 20 db from 60 hz to 12 khz. See the datasheet. With the money I saved I bought a 1940 Steinway console piano. which sounds lovely anytime after I've tuned it. The burglar didn't steal my sheet music, no resale value since it takes 8 years to learn to play piano competently. I have plenty of time now to practice.
One tip, the Shure 97 brush never spread any hairs on the LP. Destaticed the LP adequatly, too. Helped the needle ride somewhat warped LP's. Unfortunately, Shure exited the cartridge market 2020.
Have fun on your quest. $3000 is not required in diyaudio, just some reading research, and equipment mods & upgrades.
It is true LP had to compress orchestral music to fit the format. I played in competent bands & orchestras 1964-68 so I know what the original is supposed to sound like from a position on stage. A well engineered LP, you can't hear the recording engineer pump the volume. A badly engineered LP, you can. I recommend Mercury Living Presence, Colombia Masterworks, Telearc
CD's became gadgets to drive the car owner in the next parking place crazy so the format was ruined by compression wars. At least in the pop rock metal house realm. Classical recordings weren't so damaged by the recording engineer at the behest of the marketing department.
I'm not going to criticize your choice of tracks to listen to. I will say in setting up a system, knowing what the original sounded like is required. Impossible with pop rock metal house tracks. Even the guitars are played through amps that modify the sound at the source. Then they pass through the recording & mastering desk. I set up the reproduction system with solo grand piano, Steinway if available. I can go and hear a real one at the Center for the Arts, or any of several local churches, several times a year. Then the closer my system sounds to the real thing, the happier I am. Acoustic piano is Very difficult to reproduce. I have used Colombia Three Beethoven Sonatas performer Rudolf Serkin for years. There are surely better recordings than this 1958 classic but I have both LP & CD version. It was obviously recorded with condensor mikes, which were very new at the time, and not yet used by RCA. Appassionnata goes particularly low and high.
I'm suspicious of the $2500-3000 recommendations in previous posts. I started with a $60 1961 "legendary" AR turntable which might have been fine in a cement slab apartment but made my woofers bounce with every step on my wood floor. The original cartridge was underwhelming even with a new stylus. A Grado FTE improved things a lot but blew a chunk of diamond in 15 months. These are 1.5 g cartridges. They sounded terrible at 1 g tracking. I found a Shure M97 Era IV in 1979, and never looked back. I spent the next 40 years improving the speakers, which were the biggest limitation. Also in '79 I took a trial on a BIC 940 record changer, which solved the floor pumping problem, tracked great at 1.5 g, and sounded great. I still have it. $80. I did have to put a washer under one side of the cartridge to make it line up properly. In view of the 40 year old rubber in the M97 Era IV, I bought a new one in 2918, but the burglar liked it too much to pass it up. The 1979 BIC940 is still here. If I don't play it for months, the belt wows a little, but a couple of plays fix that.
The Dynaco PAS2 preamp had no defficiencies other than parts wearout, and the ST70 was okay at 1% HD until I found something better, a Peavey CS800s with .03% HD. I couldn't find suitable volume pot or paper coupling capacitors for the PAS2 in the 00s so I bought a $15 RA-88a disco mixer (op amp) and spent 2 years exorcising the hum & hiss built into it. Now it sounds as good as the PAS2 before parts wearout, and uses 1/100 the wattage.
So I put my money last year into $400 worth of speakers, a couple of Peavey SP2(2004) which I run at 1/8 -50 watts instead of the rated 500. 5 w is where the harmonic distortion is down 20 db from 60 hz to 12 khz. See the datasheet. With the money I saved I bought a 1940 Steinway console piano. which sounds lovely anytime after I've tuned it. The burglar didn't steal my sheet music, no resale value since it takes 8 years to learn to play piano competently. I have plenty of time now to practice.
One tip, the Shure 97 brush never spread any hairs on the LP. Destaticed the LP adequatly, too. Helped the needle ride somewhat warped LP's. Unfortunately, Shure exited the cartridge market 2020.
Have fun on your quest. $3000 is not required in diyaudio, just some reading research, and equipment mods & upgrades.
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Hmm... I need a WAV program to tie the new stuff I bought.... my Cubase SE is ancient.
The new set up is a Windows 10 PC with an RME ADI Pro RS AD/DAC and a Nektar Panorama control board. Currently I'm still using the MAudio Firewire with a Windows XP laptop.
I recall playing around with a free version of Audacity a long time ago... will they control the RME and the control board? I got simple needs... volume, faders, record, playback, pause... I can set the bit rates, etc.. directly on the front panel of the RME.
Are you writing about optical cartridges? I haven't heard them but the reviewers seem to be very enthusiastic about them...
DS-Audio stuff looks interesting, but entry level is about 6000 bucks. I missed out on a used one for $2500 ( cartridge and equalizer ).
The $2500 is an MSRP number... go and get a new TT ( like a Rega ) with a reasonable cartridge and a used phono preamp. Pretty much I reached up and pulled it out of thin air.
The ST70... That's an interesting beast. I really ought to get one and update it, or maybe just buy an updated one ( most are not original anyhow ). But at 35 wpc I don't have the speakers.
With time you can probably do much better in the used and DIY (preamp) market but that will take know how than a self admitted newbie doesn't have.
Did I tell you I got a Lingo power supply for 500 bucks, including an extra motor and belts? It took like six years, but I found it. And I got my used LP12 many eons ago on a complex deal that included a thousand bucks, a Sony 25" XBR, an Infinity Reference Video Projector with a 9 foot screen and a Proton 19" TV? And something else.... I recall having to borrow a big van for that deal. That was FUN.
Oh we sold the piano. Sad, but we're empty nesters now and only our kids played it. It was awesome then, we had sonatas on the porch. Truly much better sounding than ANY stereo. Or my son's band in the garage... they'd get in a groove and you'd swear we had a bunch of brothers from Philadelphia in there, instead you had some Orange County kids with pimples and all kinds of ethnicities. Did you know that teenage Chinese American rock/jazz drummer can be awesome?
Yeah, I miss those days. 😛
Here's some...
https://ds-audio-w.biz/
https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/ds-audio-master1-optical-cartridge-and-master1-equalizer
https://www.canuckaudiomart.com/det...o-cartridge-amp-equalizer-phono-pre-60-hours/
http://www.musicalsurroundings.com/brand/ds-audio
I always wanted a Sound Smith strain gauge but it seems like this might be better...
What did you play CD's on?
Because this quote:
Sony CDP-101
The first CD player, released by Sony on Oct. 1, 1982. It originally cost $1,000 in 1982 (about $2,230 today).
I don't have the receipt but I paid $100 for it and I still use it. New wall transformer. RCA made a quality product whatever year that was. I've had a couple of others since that broke the cover latch or the CD latch , responded stupidly to the rubber switches, or in some other way died their designed death before 3 years had passed.
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DS may now optionally sell (some?) cartridges without equalizers. For example Meitner offered or offers an optical equalizer of their own: https://www.emmlabs.com/dseq1.php
As an aside IIUC Nelson Pass has two optical phono systems at his house. IIRC he may have mentioned that in another thread.
As an aside IIUC Nelson Pass has two optical phono systems at his house. IIRC he may have mentioned that in another thread.
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Could you please teach me that magic trick... I don't exactly have a lazy $6k sitting about...
One idea I had was to find someone local with a good set up who could kindly play my vinyl, or even record it for me, so at least that way I'll have a benchmark to aim for and compare against.
Any idea where I can find Hi-res of my Gunship albums? They only have MP3 and FLAC listed on their webstore.... https://gunship.tmstor.es/product/32732
Or maybe other good Synthwave artists perhaps?
Well, it wasn't quite $6000 that I came up with.... my number is $2500, I pulled up a good TT, about $1700 for a Project, Rega, Music-Hall with a nice cartridge. About $800 for a reasonable phono preamp.
https://www.audioadvisor.com/products.asp?dept=78#/perpage:500
https://www.musicdirect.com/search/?query=turntable#/turntable/0/score/desc/?tab=product
Since I do follow the hobby, I am familiar with what's available, so pulling out of the air, isn't exactly pulling it out of THIN air.... it's an intelligent number, not a complete Wild *** Guess (WAG).
If you want to go used you can make some true savings, except that with turntables at this price range you may not get the best deals. IMHO, you get good deals from buying used Linns, etc... but then you start from a higher price point and you will likely have to plan on some more money to get the TT tweaked. Unless you are planning on getting quite hard core, I would not recommend a Linn, VPI, etc...
Check out all those babies at around $2000..
https://www.hifishark.com/search?q=linn+lp12
I don't even know who Gunship is. The only "synth" I got is Walter Carlos (classic) and Yello (Euro Techno).
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I think the equalizers are sold separate from the cartridge. Pretty much you pick your poison.
It'd be nice if there was a DIY optical cartridge equalizer/preamp.
Either way, it's a lot of coin for what seems like steep diminishing returns... I'm still on the fence as to whether i dip my tow into this... as I have enough expensive hobbies as it is LOL
Question was more directed at DNic. But they are the group I recorded from vinyl in my first post. Did you listen to my recording?
I'm familiar with them. I suppose they are the grandfathers of the genre... but they're certainly a bit weird. And I'd categorise Wendy Carlos as more experimental atmospheric instrumentals, as opposed to "actual music".
But maybe as just an experiment, could you maybe please make a short Hi-res sample to share? As i'd love to get a taste of what your setup sounds like.
(1) Being an audiophile CAN be an expensive hobby... but I've been at it since '74... so everything is incremental. At some point you do realize you got lots of cash into it.
(2) OK
(3) How can I record what my set up sounds like? I would need a couple of Telefunken U47s. And then, how would you recreate the sound of my system?
1) Actually, i think i'd rather not count all of the dollars i've already incinerated with my hobbies... But generally speaking, I can't keep spending with my eyes closed, and maybe accept my 1970s mid-fi setup for now, and just improve on the zero cost things i can improve such as cleaning etc.
3) Ok, so maybe a perfect capture of your setup is impossible, especially without you spending even more big dollars... But my external sound card was only like $80 and isn't high end at all. I'm sure any recent PC sound card that you have kicking about could record 24/96. It mightn't be the best quality, but it'll at least start to give me an idea what to expect, as currently I don't have anything to compare against, other than your descriptive words. Heck, even 16/44 would be better than nothing. edit on my end, i'd play it on both my headphones and on my HT receiver through speakers.
3) Ok, so maybe a perfect capture of your setup is impossible, especially without you spending even more big dollars... But my external sound card was only like $80 and isn't high end at all. I'm sure any recent PC sound card that you have kicking about could record 24/96. It mightn't be the best quality, but it'll at least start to give me an idea what to expect, as currently I don't have anything to compare against, other than your descriptive words. Heck, even 16/44 would be better than nothing. edit on my end, i'd play it on both my headphones and on my HT receiver through speakers.
Look into the semi-pro studio business.... look into their reviews and look for used products. All you need is a two channel I/O with an USB connection.
The Audio Cards are exposed to the innards of the PC.
https://www.proaudiosolutions.com/Recorders-Players-s/28.htm
I did get the RME... but that's me.... mostly because my M-Audio uses Firewire which has become obsolete.
I figure new, you should be able to find something in the 300 to 500 range for the AD/DAC... but you will still need a PC and a phono preamp. For audio, a low cost refurbished I3 should be sufficient, you won't be needing a power processor, except that for 100 bucks more or less you can likely get an I5.