Ah sjeez. Both sides. There is no the ear. There is no the brain. No hay banda!
There is the auditory system which is a wonderfully intertangled mess of acoustical amplifiers, mechanical resonators, neuro-mechanical amplifiers, neurons (with lateral inhibition functions smack at the cochlea) and several layers of the nerve system to be traversed before it gets to the part of the brain that is consciously involved with hearing. And a bunch of local feedback loops thrown in.
And the purpose of all of this together is to discard a lot of data in order to feed the consciousness the remaining part which is deemed relevant: information. The second purpose of this all is self-preservation. Self-preservation of the auditory system's transducer, and of the owner of the lot.
It tells us that it is impossible to separate simple folk-intuition and superstition about how things work from perception of "sonic qualities".
Heavy, smooth, precision turntable = stable, "authoritative", deep bass. Top is open, so "soundstage" is huge. Large discs must be handled carefully, ergo they are precious.
Electromechanical transducer = continuous output, resembles part of a musical instrument itself so it sounds "musical"
Compared to:
CD player = Lightweight, so has no "authority". Resemblance to music is faked by sequencing electronic bleeps and tones. CD is small and can be handled without care, ergo it is worthless. "Soundstage" is no bigger than the CD player itself.
Digital Analogue Converter = binary, on or off, discontinuous. 1960s computer imagery, no resemblance to any musical instrument
From these intuitive, common sense observations an entire industry (and 1600 posts) can be sustained.
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At least we managed to get a link to a seven year old article confirming everything that Jan has (IMO correctly) been on about- that the capabilities of the CD medium are often wasted by loudness-war mastering abortions.
Who likes to admit that their system is flawed, and who vouches for CD yet has never heard a record through a worthy system? (or worse, may think they have...)
Bad CD players sound OK. Bad turntables sound decidedly ghastly, with many systems at some median point along that line. Bad stylus, worn vinyl, poor cartridge termination, physical resonance, poor tracking...
Considering the turntable's relative obscurity, lack of good new media and the CDs relative lack of really bad examples, the hype, and the fact that CD does sound good enough for many people, this is a tough thread.
The problem with cd´s when you listen mostly to rock music like i do is the high and midrange.With my old cheap sony cd player when the amp volume was higher then 1/3 my ears hurt ! that´s why i always used equalizer to tame those mids/highs . This has improved a lot since i bought the cambridge audio player, also because it upsamples . If the original media was 24 or 32 bits / 384khz or higher it would improve things a lot but 16/44.1 is very limited.When i turn off the upsample it makes a lot of difference , you can ear it !
This is an interesting topic and here are my 2 cents:
CD: The sound is OK. when you use optimized transport, pay attention to digital jitter and use a high quality DAC. I have to say that the ease of use is apealing to me as well. I recently changed to a digital transport instead of disk and the lower jitter definately improved the sound quality.
Vinyl: I'm one of the lucky ones owning a top notch player with a great MC cartridge. The price difference Vinyl to digital is probably 100:1 and keeping the LP's spotless is a challenge as well.
However listening to the "black gold" simply makes me smile more and at the same time opens my mind to let the music in. Logically this makes no sense as most of my LP's are far from spotless and some cracling can be heared.
Also did some recording with 192K 32bit PCM comparing the reccord with the digital reccording. When the digital jitter is under 20Ps no one from my friends could not hear a difference between the digital and the analog source. In the normal 44K / 16bit format the score was 100% correct in a double blind test.
Interestingly I also got hold of some 384K 32bit recordings from a friend who is a recording engineer. Listening to those files, the digital domain wins by far!
In all cases I've found that time alighnment, dynamic capability of the system, dynamic capability of the recording as well as specific forms of distortion determines the subjective experience.
So here's my advice for the msic industry: Keep pressing reccords and get rid of the CD's. This way you can prevent piracy and at the same time diliver the quality I prefer. My preference: make high definition masterfiles available and I would be prepared to buy more music.
CD: The sound is OK. when you use optimized transport, pay attention to digital jitter and use a high quality DAC. I have to say that the ease of use is apealing to me as well. I recently changed to a digital transport instead of disk and the lower jitter definately improved the sound quality.
Vinyl: I'm one of the lucky ones owning a top notch player with a great MC cartridge. The price difference Vinyl to digital is probably 100:1 and keeping the LP's spotless is a challenge as well.
However listening to the "black gold" simply makes me smile more and at the same time opens my mind to let the music in. Logically this makes no sense as most of my LP's are far from spotless and some cracling can be heared.
Also did some recording with 192K 32bit PCM comparing the reccord with the digital reccording. When the digital jitter is under 20Ps no one from my friends could not hear a difference between the digital and the analog source. In the normal 44K / 16bit format the score was 100% correct in a double blind test.
Interestingly I also got hold of some 384K 32bit recordings from a friend who is a recording engineer. Listening to those files, the digital domain wins by far!
In all cases I've found that time alighnment, dynamic capability of the system, dynamic capability of the recording as well as specific forms of distortion determines the subjective experience.
So here's my advice for the msic industry: Keep pressing reccords and get rid of the CD's. This way you can prevent piracy and at the same time diliver the quality I prefer. My preference: make high definition masterfiles available and I would be prepared to buy more music.
1) 24 bit is physically barely possible. 32 bit is physically nonsense.
2) upsampling = oversampling. Almost all CD-players and DACs since the late 80s (I am generous now) employ up/oversampling. If you switch upsampling 'off' on the Cambridge it is not off. The oversampling process (i.e. the digital reconstruction filter) just moves from one chip to the other, or it just changes its target rate. This is done for marketing, since many people believe that '192' has magical properties. Or '384'. Or whatever. But in the end all these filters do the same: cut-off at 22kHz. Just the implementation details differ.
The reason that your ears hurt have more to do with crappy loudspeakers (many modern speakers are unbearably bright) and with the simple fact that digital in general can contain a lot of treble, while magnetic tape loses treble (look up: tape saturation), and LPs have to limit the treble during cutting, and further lose it during pressing and during playback. Small wonder that CDs sound brighter, or LPs warmer and cozier.
This is not fundamentally different from tweaking equalizers at either end.
Decades ago I spent time in a studio listening to rock records straight off the multitrack through the mixer. It sounded remarkably bright and fatigueing, you know, 'digital'. But the source was all-analogue ...
ELP Laser Turntable: Plays Vinyl Records without a Needle
Since almost 20 years.
I have heard one. Not bad. Not very good either.
Since almost 20 years.
I have heard one. Not bad. Not very good either.
Since we've been discussing hearing and perception, I consider this on-topic:
When I was interviewing Malcolm Hawksford a few years ago, we discussed that 'blind' listening in a darkened room is not the same as closing your eyes in a lit room. The effort to close your eyes and the light that still comes trough would be a distraction.
A darkened room does not have this negative effect; you have no visual stimuli but you know you can see things if there was light; it's more natural, maybe.
I did try it a few times and believe that listening with open eyes in a darkened room makes it easier to focus on the music than listening with closed eyes.
Now someone has taken this to the next level: the MusicMask. Apart fromn the fancy name, it seems just to be modiofied ski glasses, darkened in this case. Yet, I find it interesting enough to have ordered a pair. I'll keep you posted
Musicmask - In Focus With the Music
jan didden
When I was interviewing Malcolm Hawksford a few years ago, we discussed that 'blind' listening in a darkened room is not the same as closing your eyes in a lit room. The effort to close your eyes and the light that still comes trough would be a distraction.
A darkened room does not have this negative effect; you have no visual stimuli but you know you can see things if there was light; it's more natural, maybe.
I did try it a few times and believe that listening with open eyes in a darkened room makes it easier to focus on the music than listening with closed eyes.
Now someone has taken this to the next level: the MusicMask. Apart fromn the fancy name, it seems just to be modiofied ski glasses, darkened in this case. Yet, I find it interesting enough to have ordered a pair. I'll keep you posted
Musicmask - In Focus With the Music
jan didden
I Believe it´s possible to record in a dvd 24/192 khz , each 5 min song about 200MB +-
i dont know if the problem with modern speakers isn´t badly designed crossovers
i think that producers put too much treble in cd´s and i cant understand why , maybe to create a false sensation of detail
Yes. 192kHz/24bit is part of the DVD-A spec.
And the relevance is?
Or did you want to point at that '24'?
24 is conventient. It is 16 plus 8. That is nice from a system architecture point of view.
But remains that room-temperature ADCs are limited to 18-19 bit performance. Perhaps 20-21 bit for the top-dog dCS or DAD.
One day true 24 bit performance may be feasible, if not necessarily economic.
32 bit is totally impossible.
Not that any of this really matters. For domestic replay without further DSP and given correct dithering 16 bit is - just- sufficient for a distribution medium. A bit more is desired when replay DSP is involved(*), and also, of course, at the recording side.
(* So actually always, as replay reconstruction filtering is done mostly in the digital domain.)
That is easy, its always been the same reason.
The audio hobby has many, many compromises and priorities. Everyone simply has a choice. Its not fancy, its not earth shattering, its simply choice.
There is that too....not sure how that even works because its still a 'choice'
How many of you had a turntable, a cassette deck, and reel to reel ?
There's always live for yankers : may you sing like no one is listening - youtube of the day
There's always live for yankers : may you sing like no one is listening - youtube of the day
See, you're even worse.
My view on CD (transport +DAC) and a TT, is as having a shower and a bath tub.
From a technical point of view, a shower is more efficient, more convenient.
A tub is oldfashioned, time consuming, but has it's merits, in particular if you make it do bubbles (and according to the kids, farting in a tub is much more pleasant).
My view on CD (transport +DAC) and a TT, is as having a shower and a bath tub.
From a technical point of view, a shower is more efficient, more convenient.
A tub is oldfashioned, time consuming, but has it's merits, in particular if you make it do bubbles (and according to the kids, farting in a tub is much more pleasant).
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