I have not commented on sound during this test, because I knew what Karl was preparing, so my comment would have been unfair.
Now, when the test is over, I have to say that the sound quality of the original track of "The Directors Cut_Has It Got Rhythm And Soul.wav" seems to be horrible. It is dynamically compressed and tonality of musical instruments is so much shifted that it is almost impossible to assess anything. Not good for test.
Now, when the test is over, I have to say that the sound quality of the original track of "The Directors Cut_Has It Got Rhythm And Soul.wav" seems to be horrible. It is dynamically compressed and tonality of musical instruments is so much shifted that it is almost impossible to assess anything. Not good for test.
Maybe it sounds fine on plastic speakers, but on my main system with reasonable size of speakers it sounds unnatural and manipulated, like most of the polished remastered recordings that are now issued on jazz and swing CD collections.
I might try a similar test again for myself using your last "clean" track. Burn it to disc and record it in the same way as I did for this test. I would like to know myself how much of a bottleneck the A/D process has been during these tests.
Picking suitable tracks is difficult, and ultimately "typical" CD's with whatever problems they may have with mastering are what we listen too.
As my motto is "There's no such thing as a bad recording" I couldn't very well deny this particular example ... 😉.
My 'method' has always been to do whatever it takes to lift the standard of playback to that which means that the limitations of the recording no longer matter, subjectively. And I found that it didn't take that much for this recording ...
My 'method' has always been to do whatever it takes to lift the standard of playback to that which means that the limitations of the recording no longer matter, subjectively. And I found that it didn't take that much for this recording ...
A good test with a track is low pass filtering out above about 150Hz with steep filter. Listen to the low end alone. With Pavel's clean tack it still has punch and definition. The Supertramp is super trampled. Rythmm and Soul is mud soup.
Have to agree with you on that one Frank. As I have said many times over in the past. What good is the "perfect" signal chain (be it amp or source component etc) that when you sit down to listen you, find you don't actually like it.
I can speak from experience and expensive "mistakes" on that score. I want a system that sounds great with pretty much everything I throw at it, not just a few select tracks.
My own views are that the big differences in subjective quality come at the power amp and speaker interface end of things.
Oh dear, I'm in big trouble on that one! The PC has a big fat zero below 100Hz ...
Tell you what, Barleywater, I'll make you a deal ... I'll take all your recordings but only the content above 150Hz in each one - and you have that remaining, very important bit below 150Hz ... fair offer?! 😛, 😀
Some people won't believe this, but when "little, plastic speakers" are working well, really well - and a musician in a recording kicks the bass drum hard, you jump! All the impact of the real thing is there, your brain can reconstruct the missing low end bits quite easily - I never feel I'm missing something, in fact when I hear 'proper' speakers doing their low bass thing, many times they sound a bit ridiculous ...
My listening room is shaking 😀
But 150Hz is just a frequency where Frankie wants have it all cut with a high-pass filter, so this test method would not help him 😉
Just tried a 150Hz high pass as well. A plastic PC speaker box is modeled to a high degree of fidelity 😀
And, as a last throw-in, the HT system used heavily until recently had a separate subwoofer, that handled the 150Hz down. As mentioned in other posts, because of my hacking there were times when the subwoofer went totally off the air, unbeknowst to me - and I didn't pick it for an album or two! Side by side, obviously the subwoofer makes a difference, but I find my hearing very rapidly adjusts, what's lost is a bit of extra tonal "heaviness" or thickness, without the bass - but it's not disasterous ...
I wasn't proposing that LP recording be passed around as test track, only that quality of LF content is often indicative of how messed up the rest of the audio band will likely be.
Frank, what kind of high pass filter do your PC speakers use? No such thing as zero output below 100Hz. Steep FIR filter will get close. Steep roll off sounds very unnatural. It is amazing how televisions, and little speakers can sound as good as they sometimes do.
Frank, what kind of high pass filter do your PC speakers use? No such thing as zero output below 100Hz. Steep FIR filter will get close. Steep roll off sounds very unnatural. It is amazing how televisions, and little speakers can sound as good as they sometimes do.
Zero would certainly be exaggerating, but it does fall off the cliff at this point. I did some experiments a while ago, and below this frequency the cone just stops moving, no 2nd or 3rd harmonics are audible. At almost exactly 100Hz it comes to life, with quite high levels of 2nd and 3rd dominating, and steadily improves from then on.
I haven't investigated how the filtering has been done, something to do down the track perhaps.
The simplicity and directness of the circuitry and parts is a major part of why budget audio can work so well at times, I feel. The other PC speakers I have here are slightly more ambitious in execution, but are considerably poorer in performance - garbled bass, lots of resonances, no comparison in quality terms
I haven't investigated how the filtering has been done, something to do down the track perhaps.
The simplicity and directness of the circuitry and parts is a major part of why budget audio can work so well at times, I feel. The other PC speakers I have here are slightly more ambitious in execution, but are considerably poorer in performance - garbled bass, lots of resonances, no comparison in quality terms
This is ridiculous. I have a couple of small sets of loudspeakers that I have designed, all with flat frequency responses, well integrated drivers and across a range of sizes and design types (both full range, two way and multiway). The tiny full range offerings sound amazing, given their limitations. But there is absolutely no way you are going to confuse yourself into believing that the bass they provide is in anyway comparable to what the properly designed full range (read 20Hz-20kHz) multiway system can do.
If all I've been listening to for a couple of days is the small, single driver, full range systems for a couple of days, then the main system does take me by surprise when I first listen to it and I'm like, ahh so this is what proper bass sounds like again. And it most certainly does NOT sound ridiculous.
The bass limited full range speakers do sound nice, no doubt about it and you are easily able to enjoy the music they produce, but they ain't gonna cause me to 'jump' like the big system does when you're watching an action scene in something like the incredibles. And no, this isn't a system tuned to HT, it's just that it does that part well too.
It could be interference from electronic ballasts in general lighting as they run nominal 20khz. 19.2 is close enough.
Hmmm, earlier, you denied this occurred but, here, you freely admit to your brain being "conditioned"? As Pauline (Australian politician and renowned lunatic, Australian joke unknown to the rest of the world as to not cause embarrassment to the country) once said, "please explain"?
Abs
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Hmmm... thanks, but that wouldn't explain why I see it on my Acer though. It really does seem to be an exact frequency that occurs with a narrow spectrum.
Examining and working with the files in these tests.
In all the listening tests that I have conducted on the forum, one question continually crops up... is the hardware (my PC) up to the job or is it masking detail and rendering the tests... at best... of curiosity value only.
Pavel has very kindly agreed to allow me to use his "music 2" file from out of his own listening and comparison thread as an example of an excellently recorded track. Thanks 🙂
So, if any of you are interested and still folllowing all this here is what I had in mind. There is much talk of such things as sampling rate (which is best) when using Audacity, and does Foobar do things to the files etc etc. Many questions I want answers too, so lets see.....
I wanted to try things for myself in stages and see what actually happens and how good or bad things are.
So first off... lets keep it simple 😀 Is my PC up to the job ?
I took Pavels track and burned it to CDR so that I could play it on the Micromega. The track was cropped in Audacity. Levels were matched as best I could by the same method of using a -10 db track. This track was then played back on the Micromega and recorded on the Dell using the line inputs. I put the two files into Foobar and had a listen and then tried an ABX test. Two ABX runs were done, and these are the results. I didn't have multiple tries... it is as it happened.
These are the two files if anyone is interested in giving them a listen. "Cropped music 2" is the original and "Dell AD" is the burned CDR played on the Micromega.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4551gtxjklfjrbx/cropped music2.wav
https://www.dropbox.com/s/s9afaw2kb5ulkpo/Original Dell AD.wav
So first question I suppose... does the playback/record chain of Micromega and Dell hold up ?
In all the listening tests that I have conducted on the forum, one question continually crops up... is the hardware (my PC) up to the job or is it masking detail and rendering the tests... at best... of curiosity value only.
Pavel has very kindly agreed to allow me to use his "music 2" file from out of his own listening and comparison thread as an example of an excellently recorded track. Thanks 🙂
So, if any of you are interested and still folllowing all this here is what I had in mind. There is much talk of such things as sampling rate (which is best) when using Audacity, and does Foobar do things to the files etc etc. Many questions I want answers too, so lets see.....
I wanted to try things for myself in stages and see what actually happens and how good or bad things are.
So first off... lets keep it simple 😀 Is my PC up to the job ?
I took Pavels track and burned it to CDR so that I could play it on the Micromega. The track was cropped in Audacity. Levels were matched as best I could by the same method of using a -10 db track. This track was then played back on the Micromega and recorded on the Dell using the line inputs. I put the two files into Foobar and had a listen and then tried an ABX test. Two ABX runs were done, and these are the results. I didn't have multiple tries... it is as it happened.
These are the two files if anyone is interested in giving them a listen. "Cropped music 2" is the original and "Dell AD" is the burned CDR played on the Micromega.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4551gtxjklfjrbx/cropped music2.wav
https://www.dropbox.com/s/s9afaw2kb5ulkpo/Original Dell AD.wav
So first question I suppose... does the playback/record chain of Micromega and Dell hold up ?
Hi Karl,
would you mind me asking a question, the "cropped music 2.wav" is the same file as my "music2.wav"? I am asking for the reason they have different size in kB. Maybe I only did not understand your post correctly, please let me know.
Thanks, Pavel
P.S.: my ABX result in the next post.
would you mind me asking a question, the "cropped music 2.wav" is the same file as my "music2.wav"? I am asking for the reason they have different size in kB. Maybe I only did not understand your post correctly, please let me know.
Thanks, Pavel
P.S.: my ABX result in the next post.
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