I suppose that if my business were dependent on a technology which is being rapidly superseded by a less expensive but better performing one, I might also try to mislead. Hey, my abacus has 100 beads, but my computer only has 64 bits!
Thanks again and very interesting.
Do you see also the schematic of the output stages ? 😱🙂
I would be curious to see how they are done.
Very very interesting and thank you again.
Some tape machines can be seen and heard in action lately at the audio fairs with unbelievably expensive equipment
And the sound is really fantastic.
The importance of the source quality is of course paramount.
Maybe to design and build quite transparent electronics is less demanding.
From a practical point of view while i understand the great opportunities for tape machines for mastering purposes i see their use in a home context a little trick.
More over i have some evidence that some digital copies of analog master tapes are at least decent sounding.
Not like the original but decent anyway.
In my specific case i have come to the conclusion that ground loops are destroying more the sound. Transformers isolating the ground could be beneficial in this sense.
Kind regards, gino
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😱 Hi and yes ... i should be more cautious in my statements
No i think ground loops is what i am experimenting
As i said ... without source and preamp shorted even with volume at max no noise from the speakers
With the source connected and raising the volume i get noise
The source should also be completely silent
So the only explanation is ground loops.
I will isolate the digital source (PC) using a toslink cable before the dac.
It should be the easiest way
Thanks again, gino
No, there are many possibilities. Start with the nature of the noise (hum, hiss, crackle) to start narrowing down the cause.
Where can I buy these analogue systems with better resolution than 192kHz 24 bit digital systems? I bet the tape has to move really fast! Does it use helical scanning?
Hello and thanks again.
I do not know how to do this noise nature evaluation.
But i understand i should do it.
i guess i would need a scope ? and also to be able to use it rightly ?
Is this thing enough ?
http://www.ebay.it/itm/PC-Laptop-USB-Oscilloscope-Digital-2-Channel-Storage-Scope-Includes-Software-/261387645389?pt=UK_BOI_Electrical_Test_Measurement_Equipment_ET&hash=item3cdbeaf1cd
Thanks and regards, gino
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Yes of course ... but i could not say what it is ... it is not silence.
Maybe with a nice and cheap scope i could see some curves ...
Maybe the ground loops have a peculiar shape on the scope ?
It will be very educating i think
seriously i cannot rely only on my ears ... they are gross 😱
I would prefer something pc based ... for convenience
Thanks again, gino
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If you can't tell the difference between hum, crackle, and hiss, audio is probably not the hobby for you. 😀
I think you are right 😱 but i am stubborn 🙄
I have bought this hoping to "see" this noise on the rca lines ...
Hantek 6022BE PC Based USB 2CH Digital Oscilloscope 20MHz Bandwidth 48 M SA s 1M | eBay
okey it is cheap but now i have nothing ...
Actually i do not know if there are software to be used with an audio card
Anyway this instrument will be my first entry in the lab measurements
I have always liked the lab lessons ...
I want to see the shape of the noise ... trying to understand something about its causes. I am very curious.
If i will be able to reduce the noise i would be very happy
Thanks again, gino
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Don't get me wrong but as much as I am strictly an analog buff, I can honestly say that even 24bit at 96khz is quite acceptable.
Just remember that when CD's came out they were made with 16bit at 44.1Khz resolution and this was all they could get out of the technology at the time.
So, it became the standard and it took another 15 to 20 years later to do anything better.
In 1999 I had got the best 16bit card I could afford and at $200 the phillips PSC706 was no slouch as it rivaled the +$2000 Sony PCM-2600 DAT machine that we had used since 1994 to do our mastering to CD's with.
Then the Gina24 sound card came out in about 2000 or so and is when my partner from the studio had got it.
He gave it to me in 2010 and I am still using it today.
My very first 24bit card is the Creative X-FI Elite Pro and I got it when it came out in 2005 or so and I was just amazed at what it could do and how it sounded!!
The fact the Creative's software can interpolate the 16bit resolution to 24bit was very impressive indeed!!
I could now hear and make out the words of a vocalist that otherwise I could not for the life of me understand what they were saying!!
I am now craving an ASUS XONAR !!!
But, you can't beat the simplicity of setting up and quickly working the board when it comes to analog.
Recording is a breeze too (except for waiting for the tape to rewind) you don't ever have to worry about about clipping or whether or not your signal is high enough without clipping to utilize the fullest resolution of your A/D's.
No tiny screens with not enough data or where it is so jumbled up you can read it or juggling of a mouse or track ball.
You just set the controls arm the tracks and hit Record, rewind and Play throughout the whole session, except for the occasional tweaks here and there.
Once you get to the mix down, you have all of the time in the world to optimize the levels going into the A/D's if you are converting to digital.
Digital is great but it takes a lot more skill to get it right the first time, and it is rare that a band will get it right the First time around.
But, When they do, you had better be ready or else you will have a bunch of band members that will be very POed if they have to do it again!! He,he,he,he 😉
Anyhow, as digital was coming about in 1992 (when I First started the studio), and, it started to rival analog (although there was some 24bit stuff but it was big big big bucks to have any of it, even just two channels worth), 3M had a big breakthrough in tape formula's it was called 3M 996.
This tape had save analog recording industry for a while longer, then digital became quite affordable as it is today.
But the sound of this tape was incredible and it needed no noise reduction!!!
You could hit this tape as hard as you could and never get over .1% THD in the range of levels the tape deck could handle.
I think the .1% THD was some where around +9db range and .02%THD or so was at 0db level of recording and better than that at lower levels.
The new ATR tape and the 499 was very similar, but to this day I think the 996 was the best that had ever been formulated.
I got a reel of 996 out the other day and I still like it but it is very old now and does have some shedding issues as can be expected.
But is still sounds as good as the day as when it was recorded on 20 years ago!!!
The new ATR stuff is incredible in this manner and surpasses the 996 in many ways, except I believe that the 996 is still superior when it comes to THD but not by far.
I have lost my data sheets on the 996 to compare and I can't seem to find the on the web anymore. 🙁
When 3M stopped making it I was crushed and we were forced to use 499.
I had just got back into recording last year (after a 15 year hiatus) and I was very lucky to have found the ATR Magnetics stuff.
It is now an award winning formula, and, there are stories of some of the biggest studios in Nashville have done away with there digital systems and are converting back to analog!!
Analog is coming back in a big way!!! 😉
I just wanted to give a little more history. 🙂
Yes, I have the full schematics the the tape machines and they just use opamp's in normal configurations for the balanced In and Out's as you would find in these threads and anywhere else.
Nothing special there!! 😉
I am sure that the ATR-90's are no different, I know a guy in town that has one and I will ask him sometime when I see him again just to be sure.
If you want to get into studying noise with a scope, get a good ole' analog scope!!
I have a 30 year old 40Mhz Hitachi V-425 and it works great for this kind of stuff!!
I paid $1000 for it, but you can find an even better scope on Ebay for much cheaper than what they used to cost new.
In order to get any kind of decent resolution with digital you would need to be in the 200 m/s to 500m/s range or higher if you are just looking at noise.
Not to mention Bit Depth as most of the USB type are only 8 or 10 bit at the most.
One of my projects is to build a digital scope too!!
I just found a cool one that uses a PIC chip and it is open sourced!!
It is called expEYES and it can be found here,
http://expeyes.in/
Although Visual Analyzer does a nice job at picking out a signal on the noise floor with just my good sound cards, it is not the same as an analog scope and you don't see the detail as good.
It is at least a 16bit resolution if not 24bit with the proper interface.
And it is free!!
The interface for VA is just a PCM290x codec and can be made DIY very easily.
I just got the chips to build one, I just haven't planned out and made the board for it yet.
I have some tests that I can show you of this here,
The Visual Analyzer VA 2011
I can get down to 1mv per division on my scope so I can actually see down to the uv range with it.
With today's low noise precision opamp's I could easily make a 10X or even 100X buffer to expand this range.
But!!!
But, getting my surroundings electrically quiet enough for any use in this range has proven to be quite a challenge.
Just too even use the range that I have!!!
I have the stuff to build such a buffer, but I have not been working on it much lately as it is one of the many irons I have in the fire at this time!!! He,he,he
It is discussions like these that get me all fired up again to get it done!!!!! 🙂
Cheers!!!
jer 🙂
Just remember that when CD's came out they were made with 16bit at 44.1Khz resolution and this was all they could get out of the technology at the time.
So, it became the standard and it took another 15 to 20 years later to do anything better.
In 1999 I had got the best 16bit card I could afford and at $200 the phillips PSC706 was no slouch as it rivaled the +$2000 Sony PCM-2600 DAT machine that we had used since 1994 to do our mastering to CD's with.
Then the Gina24 sound card came out in about 2000 or so and is when my partner from the studio had got it.
He gave it to me in 2010 and I am still using it today.
My very first 24bit card is the Creative X-FI Elite Pro and I got it when it came out in 2005 or so and I was just amazed at what it could do and how it sounded!!
The fact the Creative's software can interpolate the 16bit resolution to 24bit was very impressive indeed!!
I could now hear and make out the words of a vocalist that otherwise I could not for the life of me understand what they were saying!!
I am now craving an ASUS XONAR !!!
But, you can't beat the simplicity of setting up and quickly working the board when it comes to analog.
Recording is a breeze too (except for waiting for the tape to rewind) you don't ever have to worry about about clipping or whether or not your signal is high enough without clipping to utilize the fullest resolution of your A/D's.
No tiny screens with not enough data or where it is so jumbled up you can read it or juggling of a mouse or track ball.
You just set the controls arm the tracks and hit Record, rewind and Play throughout the whole session, except for the occasional tweaks here and there.
Once you get to the mix down, you have all of the time in the world to optimize the levels going into the A/D's if you are converting to digital.
Digital is great but it takes a lot more skill to get it right the first time, and it is rare that a band will get it right the First time around.
But, When they do, you had better be ready or else you will have a bunch of band members that will be very POed if they have to do it again!! He,he,he,he 😉
Anyhow, as digital was coming about in 1992 (when I First started the studio), and, it started to rival analog (although there was some 24bit stuff but it was big big big bucks to have any of it, even just two channels worth), 3M had a big breakthrough in tape formula's it was called 3M 996.
This tape had save analog recording industry for a while longer, then digital became quite affordable as it is today.
But the sound of this tape was incredible and it needed no noise reduction!!!
You could hit this tape as hard as you could and never get over .1% THD in the range of levels the tape deck could handle.
I think the .1% THD was some where around +9db range and .02%THD or so was at 0db level of recording and better than that at lower levels.
The new ATR tape and the 499 was very similar, but to this day I think the 996 was the best that had ever been formulated.
I got a reel of 996 out the other day and I still like it but it is very old now and does have some shedding issues as can be expected.
But is still sounds as good as the day as when it was recorded on 20 years ago!!!
The new ATR stuff is incredible in this manner and surpasses the 996 in many ways, except I believe that the 996 is still superior when it comes to THD but not by far.
I have lost my data sheets on the 996 to compare and I can't seem to find the on the web anymore. 🙁
When 3M stopped making it I was crushed and we were forced to use 499.
I had just got back into recording last year (after a 15 year hiatus) and I was very lucky to have found the ATR Magnetics stuff.
It is now an award winning formula, and, there are stories of some of the biggest studios in Nashville have done away with there digital systems and are converting back to analog!!
Analog is coming back in a big way!!! 😉
I just wanted to give a little more history. 🙂
Yes, I have the full schematics the the tape machines and they just use opamp's in normal configurations for the balanced In and Out's as you would find in these threads and anywhere else.
Nothing special there!! 😉
I am sure that the ATR-90's are no different, I know a guy in town that has one and I will ask him sometime when I see him again just to be sure.
If you want to get into studying noise with a scope, get a good ole' analog scope!!
I have a 30 year old 40Mhz Hitachi V-425 and it works great for this kind of stuff!!
I paid $1000 for it, but you can find an even better scope on Ebay for much cheaper than what they used to cost new.
In order to get any kind of decent resolution with digital you would need to be in the 200 m/s to 500m/s range or higher if you are just looking at noise.
Not to mention Bit Depth as most of the USB type are only 8 or 10 bit at the most.
One of my projects is to build a digital scope too!!
I just found a cool one that uses a PIC chip and it is open sourced!!
It is called expEYES and it can be found here,
http://expeyes.in/
Although Visual Analyzer does a nice job at picking out a signal on the noise floor with just my good sound cards, it is not the same as an analog scope and you don't see the detail as good.
It is at least a 16bit resolution if not 24bit with the proper interface.
And it is free!!
The interface for VA is just a PCM290x codec and can be made DIY very easily.
I just got the chips to build one, I just haven't planned out and made the board for it yet.
I have some tests that I can show you of this here,
The Visual Analyzer VA 2011
I can get down to 1mv per division on my scope so I can actually see down to the uv range with it.
With today's low noise precision opamp's I could easily make a 10X or even 100X buffer to expand this range.
But!!!
But, getting my surroundings electrically quiet enough for any use in this range has proven to be quite a challenge.
Just too even use the range that I have!!!
I have the stuff to build such a buffer, but I have not been working on it much lately as it is one of the many irons I have in the fire at this time!!! He,he,he
It is discussions like these that get me all fired up again to get it done!!!!! 🙂
Cheers!!!
jer 🙂
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This of course has nothing to do with 16 bits versus 24, merely that the quality of the playback was improved by using the hardware in a mode where it produced less distortion ...
Not sure about that.
It was a function in their software called the Creative X-Fi - Crystalizer.
It sounded pretty good but not on all CD's as there is some information you just can't add if it is not there to begin with.
But yes, it does take having the X-Fi chip to have it.
My friend (studio partner) has an ASUS Crossfire motherboard that has the X-Fi chip on it with the Phenom II X6 1090T CPU that I referred for him to get because I was so impressed with the X-Fi at the time back in 2010.
And it is a pretty good sounding board for its day.
Here is a thread on it, I have not read this whole thread but the first post is interesting.
[H]ard|Forum - View Single Post - Crystallizer: The Verdict?
I have never really looked into what made it tick as I have basically written off all 16bit formats since then except for what I do have to deal with when I have to do a mastered/Re-mastered CD.
When it comes to the world of digital audio the are some very impressive VST's out there that I use as well.
But, I love my tape machines the most!!!
I guess I always will. 😉
Cheers!!!
jer 🙂
It was a function in their software called the Creative X-Fi - Crystalizer.
It sounded pretty good but not on all CD's as there is some information you just can't add if it is not there to begin with.
But yes, it does take having the X-Fi chip to have it.
My friend (studio partner) has an ASUS Crossfire motherboard that has the X-Fi chip on it with the Phenom II X6 1090T CPU that I referred for him to get because I was so impressed with the X-Fi at the time back in 2010.
And it is a pretty good sounding board for its day.
Here is a thread on it, I have not read this whole thread but the first post is interesting.
[H]ard|Forum - View Single Post - Crystallizer: The Verdict?
I have never really looked into what made it tick as I have basically written off all 16bit formats since then except for what I do have to deal with when I have to do a mastered/Re-mastered CD.
When it comes to the world of digital audio the are some very impressive VST's out there that I use as well.
But, I love my tape machines the most!!!
I guess I always will. 😉
Cheers!!!
jer 🙂
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Hi Jer and thank you so much again.
Very interesting history of the coming of digital.
I also think that to get digital right is not that easy. Analog seems more straightforward.
Anyway speaking of scopes i have to start somewhere.
I like the pc based instruments in general, also because i have a small laptop laying around that i do not use.
I understand that i bought a unit with limited features and characteristics
But it is just a start ... to see what i can get.
Yes, my main targest are noise in amp and power supplies and distortion measurements.
Especially noise i would say. Noise is noise .... an unwanted presence.
The less the noise the better ... always.
Thanks a lot again, gino
You've nailed it there, gino! It's quite easy to get pleasant, reasonably satisfying sound from a rough and ready analogue setup - but so much harder with digital ... the latter has to be almost "perfect" for the sound to truly come together.
A pretty good analogy is TV reception: a dodgy analogue picture was still very acceptable, you could still work out what was going on, follow the story, get into the show. But bad digital reception is impossible to watch, the breakup is so distracting, disturbing that one gives up very quickly on viewing it ...
Ahhhh,ha,ha,ha,ha...Its all Good !!! 🙂
No matter how you look at it!! 😉
Gino, Any scope is Better than having No scope at all!!!
At least you will be able to see something of what you are hearing!!
And having it will be priceless once you start building circuits!!! 😉
I learned a lot when I First started out building opamp preamp's and fuzzbox's for my guitar and working on my amps and such.
I was just using an old tube scope that I got from the electronics room at my High School and being able to see what I was hearing was priceless!!
I used it for many years until I got the one I have now in 1984!!
I haven't gotten a better one since because I never need anything more than 40mhz even for fixing TV's....My how times have changed!!! He,he,he 😉
Back then the fastest CPU you could get was only a few Mhz topping out at a whopping 20Mhz!!
Cheers !!
jer 🙂
No matter how you look at it!! 😉
Gino, Any scope is Better than having No scope at all!!!
At least you will be able to see something of what you are hearing!!
And having it will be priceless once you start building circuits!!! 😉
I learned a lot when I First started out building opamp preamp's and fuzzbox's for my guitar and working on my amps and such.
I was just using an old tube scope that I got from the electronics room at my High School and being able to see what I was hearing was priceless!!
I used it for many years until I got the one I have now in 1984!!
I haven't gotten a better one since because I never need anything more than 40mhz even for fixing TV's....My how times have changed!!! He,he,he 😉
Back then the fastest CPU you could get was only a few Mhz topping out at a whopping 20Mhz!!
Cheers !!
jer 🙂
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Hi and thanks you for confirming my feelings.
There is something in digital that when it goes wrong it goes really really wrong.
Listening to an analogue source can go from decent to spectacular.
But it is almost always at least decent, and musical.
The very very strange thing is that i recorded on casettes some cds and i liked the sound from the cassettes better 😱😕😡
I like the sound when it stands outs from the so called noise carpet.
Like a sculpture compared to a painting.
Digital is complex ... filters, jitter, clock, and so on ... very complex.
Another weird experience ... i liked so much better this old Grunding cd player here
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
than more recent products. But digital was not supposed to improve with the years and technology development ???
Thanks again, gino
Hi and thanks a lot again Jer !
i have understood that analogue ones should be better to see the noise
The usb scope card i purchased is maybe a small step for the humankind but a giant leap for Gino 😱😀
Then after i first experience maybe i will be more able to understand my needs.
Kindest regards, gino
Not strange. It just means that you prefer limited bandwidth, lumpy LF response, peak distortion, and some noise. Quite common - some people pay a lot of money for sound like that.ginetto61 said:
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