Yes, it's quite strange how much some of these 'outlandish claims of sound improvements' seem to produce such a vehement reaction - somehow, it seems to be a threat to established knowledge, or known engineering principles or something.
An anecdote of my own - a friend of mine uses one of those Bedini spinning gadgets before playing a cd and I'm firmly convinced, it does change the sound noticeably.
However illogical this is in a technical way, I've just assumed that the psychological effect seems to be at work and accept the contradiction and listen to what I think is a better quality of reproduction
I've tried a few of these 'weird things' over the years and some occasionally do seem to work but these things tend to be rather marginal effects in comparison to circuit design, power supplies, etc and the major bogey-man of hifi called 'room acoustics' that curiously, does rely closely on well known engineering principles.
To me, these 'different ideas' do help to keep an 'open mind' as we're inundated with new information and there's a reaction to just stay with established/known ideas - this is one of the real benefits of the whole diyA format.
... IMhO, naturally!
An anecdote of my own - a friend of mine uses one of those Bedini spinning gadgets before playing a cd and I'm firmly convinced, it does change the sound noticeably.
However illogical this is in a technical way, I've just assumed that the psychological effect seems to be at work and accept the contradiction and listen to what I think is a better quality of reproduction
I've tried a few of these 'weird things' over the years and some occasionally do seem to work but these things tend to be rather marginal effects in comparison to circuit design, power supplies, etc and the major bogey-man of hifi called 'room acoustics' that curiously, does rely closely on well known engineering principles.
To me, these 'different ideas' do help to keep an 'open mind' as we're inundated with new information and there's a reaction to just stay with established/known ideas - this is one of the real benefits of the whole diyA format.
... IMhO, naturally!
Ah, yes, Luskin and Bennet - 'Stinking Thinking' and the creation of 'Expectation Bias' (Luskin) and "Logical Fallacies Vs Cognitive Biases and Heuristics"
And I'm not so sure that a study of Logical Fallacies will eradicate the occasional 'bovine excrement', as you quaintly put it - some people are resigned to their limitations - it's an 'age thing' - an expectation, if you will ...
I love this one don't have such an open mind that your brain falls out - you might add that 'a closed mind doesn't let anything new inside'
Pleas excuse this off-topic 'discussion' - not much to do with CD conversion.
And I'm not so sure that a study of Logical Fallacies will eradicate the occasional 'bovine excrement', as you quaintly put it - some people are resigned to their limitations - it's an 'age thing' - an expectation, if you will ...
I love this one don't have such an open mind that your brain falls out - you might add that 'a closed mind doesn't let anything new inside'
Pleas excuse this off-topic 'discussion' - not much to do with CD conversion.
I used to think floppy discs were magic. To think that they could contain music, pictures, writing even, was nothing short of miraculous. If you have never seen a transparent plastic before, part of you would think it was the product of magic. I came to this thread to ask for advice, and was spoken to by a physicist who (I think) works on the hadron collider. Now that I am blessed with new, authenticated knowledge, I can (on topic) rip CDs along with the best of them.
If you are wondering why I am so lighthearted, it is because life has become unrelentingly grim. Right now I will laugh at anything. ToS
If you are wondering why I am so lighthearted, it is because life has become unrelentingly grim. Right now I will laugh at anything. ToS
It happens to all of us at times. I think the finality of music being reduced to a finite number of immutable bits bothers a lot of folks, for some even the work of the "devil". Erik Margan who I think has posted here (or at least has had work posted here) is the only audio person I know that actually works at the LHC.
Oh dear, I thought it was you, not Erik Margan. Anyway, I did mean well.
It bothers a lot of artists that light has become reduced to pixels on a screen, but that doesn't stop me spending six months glued to a computer producing gigapixel sized panoramic vistas. It has taken me to places within my imaginarium I never knew existed, and I have the pictures to prove it.
On topic (well slightly) yesterday, I walked down to the barn, set up the hornspeaker and played some ripped WAVs of Ginette Nevue playing violin. Sounded like magic to me. Perhaps it is because I live in a factual world that is willing to accommodate myths and magic. Or that her life's work as recordings are contained inside a player no bigger than a book of matches. Heck, if you look or listen long enough, or hard enough, then everything becomes magic.
Thinking about it, digitisation is but a conduit between one parallel universe to another.......a combination of profundity and absurdity - all within the same sentence, because as an artist I can and often do.
Must go and polish up some CDs ..... thank you for that, Bill.
ToS
Most people would have now forgotten that a lot of the earlier CD's were mostly analogue recorded and mixed and digitally mastered. You could tell by the marking on the case or CD with the letters AAD. About SPARS Code.
Not suprising you could hear the higher noise floor during the quieter passages.
Not suprising you could hear the higher noise floor during the quieter passages.
Funny thing is digitally recorded music is today also printed on vynil.
The youngsters go back to vynil because it is fun and few of their material has analogic reccordings.
Btw I should have some Lou Reed's CDs wich the reccordings were proceeded with tubes devices.
On the snake oil side, some companies were selling spray to enhance the sound of CDs : after analysis one could see it was just water but people were hearing a real improvement.
Think it could have been used for directly into ears as well...
The youngsters go back to vynil because it is fun and few of their material has analogic reccordings.
Btw I should have some Lou Reed's CDs wich the reccordings were proceeded with tubes devices.
On the snake oil side, some companies were selling spray to enhance the sound of CDs : after analysis one could see it was just water but people were hearing a real improvement.
Think it could have been used for directly into ears as well...
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The tape hiss was free dither accidentally curing a problem with some early CD's.
Free dithermaybe I can convince myself that my multi-tonal tinnitus can be of some similar benefit? It may well be time to get tested for the latest technology of hearing aids.
You use headphones right? I find listening with my HD650's (as mediocre as that is) helps, that is it seems less intrusive.
Probably you can find the bias you really want to use if you look through the list.
Expectation bias:
"The tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations."
Taken from: List of cognitive biases - Wikipedia
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It actually is helping and it is used by physicians and psychiatrists to help people with hearing problems like this and to treat stress related problems .Free dither
It seems that vinyl and tape noise actually make our brain process better what we hear as well as very high frequency content if there's a way for it to be received by the cranial bones and transmitted to the brain .
Dolby was the first in the audio industry to understand the relationship between perceived noise and sound.I think that trying to understand dolby c and s(sr) is really important for an audio engineer.The sliding band system actually relates perfectly with the most revealing patent about valve sound like reproduction with semiconductors and that is not just a coincidence , it is because the brain itself is a continuous sliding band noise reduction system with the ability to treat separately different types of noises.
Sometimes i think that DBX and its eastern copies were to Dolby like hardware 8x oversampling applied to a 44khz recording compared to a 96-192khz natural sampling rate where you actually perceive the 96khz native sampling rate and its bitrate a bit more natural , but only in a lower noise setup.In a noisy environment you need additional noise to fully process the basic information.
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