Background
With a halfway decent sound system, I started looking for new music to listen to. "New" meaning music I have no heard before, and that would mean a trip to the 1970s over again, where the music I like originated. As part of my journey, I came across, or to be more accurate, searched for and found Bostons song and "More Than A Feeling" and their also album "Third Stage" on my streaming provider. Interest in the band led me to watching an interview with Tom Sholz, who basically founded the band, and created that guitar sound that we all know and love. He said something intriguing: that he could never get the CD recordings to sound as he wanted them to sound.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...l-insights-as-a-producer.398525/#post-7331773
He said he found it difficult to mix for the CD format, and he was able to come up with a final recording that 'did not annoy him too much' as I recall he said.
If there really a problem with the CD format, then I should think of buying some other format. Maybe vinyl. Vinyl had that clarity, but it never impressed me with its bass output. The cassette tapes I have are now beyond restoration, at least to the level of quality I can now hear on the mp3s and CD recordings.Playing a CD or two, I could hear a somewhat metallic ring to the sound (I am able to detect the difference between some Digital amplifiers and Analog amplifiers over You Tube, so the effect is real)
Listening to the dreaded Crosley turntable reviews over YouTube again, I was able to hear a clarity that was pleasing: I knew of course better turntables connected to better systems would sound much better, and I was intrigued. I have ordered my first turntable and a record to test it with as well, it is, shall we say, a turntable that is not really recommended by anyone here. Think Crosley and you are not far from the truth. My journey has begun, it seems, hopefully not a false step.
From watching reviews of the lowest end of the turntable market (There was one reviewer who purchased a turntable for $10, it sounded ok but let's leave it at that), I was directed by YouTube to the very highest end of the market, it seems, the OMA turntable:
I was listening to an incredible story. From the thousands of hours of research, to the cast iron casing, only 1 in 10 is acceptable, a powerful direct drive motor, and a dedicated motor controller, I could not believe the amount of money and effort that had gone into this design.
Was there a better way?
A Possible Solution
The main problem that seem to plague the turntable are variations in speed of the turntable and vibrations. You can add surface noise to that as well.
One approach is to maintain the speed of the turntable no matter what. The other is to try to correct for these variations. Immediately there is a problem, as OMA has pointed out, the variation in speed changes the character of the music itself.
Is it possible, and I know it is possible, I should ask how successful is it to use a method used with CD players and digital music, to convert the signal into digital format, and then store this signal in blocks of data for processing and correction, and then output that data to the amplifier at exactly the correct speed? The corrections will have to incorporate the following.
1. Corrections for wow and flutter using a turntable speed sensor as input
2. Corrections for surface noise from a 'surface noise library' that matches the surface noise pattern
Apparently there are some related patents:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US3983316
https://patents.google.com/patent/US3873764
Has this ever been attempted? If not, anyone on this forum may develop this further, I only ask that the idea be acknowledged, that it came from me in this post.
With a halfway decent sound system, I started looking for new music to listen to. "New" meaning music I have no heard before, and that would mean a trip to the 1970s over again, where the music I like originated. As part of my journey, I came across, or to be more accurate, searched for and found Bostons song and "More Than A Feeling" and their also album "Third Stage" on my streaming provider. Interest in the band led me to watching an interview with Tom Sholz, who basically founded the band, and created that guitar sound that we all know and love. He said something intriguing: that he could never get the CD recordings to sound as he wanted them to sound.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...l-insights-as-a-producer.398525/#post-7331773
He said he found it difficult to mix for the CD format, and he was able to come up with a final recording that 'did not annoy him too much' as I recall he said.
If there really a problem with the CD format, then I should think of buying some other format. Maybe vinyl. Vinyl had that clarity, but it never impressed me with its bass output. The cassette tapes I have are now beyond restoration, at least to the level of quality I can now hear on the mp3s and CD recordings.Playing a CD or two, I could hear a somewhat metallic ring to the sound (I am able to detect the difference between some Digital amplifiers and Analog amplifiers over You Tube, so the effect is real)
Listening to the dreaded Crosley turntable reviews over YouTube again, I was able to hear a clarity that was pleasing: I knew of course better turntables connected to better systems would sound much better, and I was intrigued. I have ordered my first turntable and a record to test it with as well, it is, shall we say, a turntable that is not really recommended by anyone here. Think Crosley and you are not far from the truth. My journey has begun, it seems, hopefully not a false step.
From watching reviews of the lowest end of the turntable market (There was one reviewer who purchased a turntable for $10, it sounded ok but let's leave it at that), I was directed by YouTube to the very highest end of the market, it seems, the OMA turntable:
I was listening to an incredible story. From the thousands of hours of research, to the cast iron casing, only 1 in 10 is acceptable, a powerful direct drive motor, and a dedicated motor controller, I could not believe the amount of money and effort that had gone into this design.
Was there a better way?
A Possible Solution
The main problem that seem to plague the turntable are variations in speed of the turntable and vibrations. You can add surface noise to that as well.
One approach is to maintain the speed of the turntable no matter what. The other is to try to correct for these variations. Immediately there is a problem, as OMA has pointed out, the variation in speed changes the character of the music itself.
Is it possible, and I know it is possible, I should ask how successful is it to use a method used with CD players and digital music, to convert the signal into digital format, and then store this signal in blocks of data for processing and correction, and then output that data to the amplifier at exactly the correct speed? The corrections will have to incorporate the following.
1. Corrections for wow and flutter using a turntable speed sensor as input
2. Corrections for surface noise from a 'surface noise library' that matches the surface noise pattern
Apparently there are some related patents:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US3983316
https://patents.google.com/patent/US3873764
Has this ever been attempted? If not, anyone on this forum may develop this further, I only ask that the idea be acknowledged, that it came from me in this post.
OMA just uses Technics Drive
then adds a ridiculous marked up casting plate to call it there own.
He's pretty annoying actually
When beam tetrodes came out, all the old school triode guys cry and scream that
getting the right sound was impossible. Tubes were ruined forever
blah blah blah.
Tom Scholz just crying and screaming like everyone does when new tech comes out.
Real truth. Everyone was so use to running mixes hot to tape. The distortion
worked out well and they were all use to doing it.
With Analog to Digital you cant distort the digital signal and run it Hot like every
producer was use to doing with tape.
They actually had to use compression correctly and not saturate tape
Funny because his guitar tone and distortion effects were all multi band
compression then bathed in delay.
Rather amazing basement hit maker really. Those recordings are timeless
then adds a ridiculous marked up casting plate to call it there own.
He's pretty annoying actually
When beam tetrodes came out, all the old school triode guys cry and scream that
getting the right sound was impossible. Tubes were ruined forever
blah blah blah.
Tom Scholz just crying and screaming like everyone does when new tech comes out.
Real truth. Everyone was so use to running mixes hot to tape. The distortion
worked out well and they were all use to doing it.
With Analog to Digital you cant distort the digital signal and run it Hot like every
producer was use to doing with tape.
They actually had to use compression correctly and not saturate tape
Funny because his guitar tone and distortion effects were all multi band
compression then bathed in delay.
Rather amazing basement hit maker really. Those recordings are timeless
FWIW, the producers behind the famous Blue Note jazz label were delighted with the change to digital and CDs from vinyl.
Audacity, and I assume other sound editing programs, let you sample the noise from an LP, muck about with and (hopefully) correct it, then apply that correction to the file. However, doing this also affects the music; the most extreme example for me was when I recorded the 1926 Fritz Kreisler Beethoven Violin Concerto from the LP. I sampled the hiss and scratches from the quiet bits but when I applied the cleanup to the whole file it sounded awful.
Geoff
Audacity, and I assume other sound editing programs, let you sample the noise from an LP, muck about with and (hopefully) correct it, then apply that correction to the file. However, doing this also affects the music; the most extreme example for me was when I recorded the 1926 Fritz Kreisler Beethoven Violin Concerto from the LP. I sampled the hiss and scratches from the quiet bits but when I applied the cleanup to the whole file it sounded awful.
Geoff
exactly
everyone just moans at change
when overall distortion at small signal or broadcast line levels
have drastically improved since the 40's and 50's
tubes went from triode to pentode/beam tetrode
everyone cried the world was ruined.
Tube to solid state
everyone cried the world was ruined
AB to D
boo hoo hoo
record to tape
oh no!!!
tape to CD
ohhhhh my gosh
everyone just moans at change
when overall distortion at small signal or broadcast line levels
have drastically improved since the 40's and 50's
tubes went from triode to pentode/beam tetrode
everyone cried the world was ruined.
Tube to solid state
everyone cried the world was ruined
AB to D
boo hoo hoo
record to tape
oh no!!!
tape to CD
ohhhhh my gosh
I think there are way more imperfections to vinyl than you listed. Distortion being the main one. Take a look at distortion curves for the typical cart. Channel Separation? Here are some measurements. https://www.hi-fiworld.co.uk/index.php/vinyl-lp/70-tests/103-cartridge-tests.html?showall=1 Frequency response? What amp/preamp could get away with the variance in response that cart's get? As the article points out, you could use the Shure and get a rolled off high end or get the Ortofon and get a more pronounced high end. I think nostalgia drives a good but of the vinyl resurgence. I know for me the smell and process of playing records evokes pleasant memories of the past. But I also know I would never put up with vinyl's deficiencies without those memories.
Servo motors/drives have been doing this in industry for many decades, since WWII in fact. It's no big deal.
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The sky's the limit, right?
Some kind of dual cartridge with 2 needles operating at slightly different angles, followed by a decoder, could be devised for improved channel separation. Otherwise, a slight imperfection of the needle angle away from 90 degrees on a linear scale will always produce a disproportionately large amount of leakage.
A heavy turntable doubles as a flywheel. And "direct drive" simply replaces belts with a planetary gearbox, and I wouldn't be sure if the latter would be as smooth. Belt slip could be compensated for with some kind of speed sensing and feedback system. A scaled-up version of those optical encoders in ball mice comes to mind.
Some kind of dual cartridge with 2 needles operating at slightly different angles, followed by a decoder, could be devised for improved channel separation. Otherwise, a slight imperfection of the needle angle away from 90 degrees on a linear scale will always produce a disproportionately large amount of leakage.
A heavy turntable doubles as a flywheel. And "direct drive" simply replaces belts with a planetary gearbox, and I wouldn't be sure if the latter would be as smooth. Belt slip could be compensated for with some kind of speed sensing and feedback system. A scaled-up version of those optical encoders in ball mice comes to mind.
That video, and any other ones of that guy, who goes on and on like an old gossiping woman, annoys me as well.
He's a classic oddball eccentric, obsessed, consumed into discussing trivial issues, and wants the viewer to be as nutty as he is.
There are others on youtube like him, a bunch of wanna-be Einsteins on steroids.
Bill Gates is one of those monsters too.
Nitpicking to death some (in their minds) rediculously insane created troubles that the average human couldn't care less about.... like me.
Listen, I like to approach the "perfection" and satisfying enjoyment of listening to music, but I draw the line at being reasonable, and keeping my two feet on the ground, not letting my head and brain float into the clouds of insanity.
Well, chronologically...yes!
Some forgot to Say Digital tape (Philips) and later mini disc.
Then, at the end of the eighties, the Evolution of the mainframe took Place and...
Off-centre pressings are one cause of speed variation - a turntable speed sensor won't help with this, although with some source material you could run an estimator in software to compensate I'm sure.
Vertical warping of a disc can impart flutter as the point of sylus contact is modulated - no easy way to sense this.
Wow and flutter from the recording process for old analog recordings can be frozen in to the track, no matter how accurate the turntable is, as this comes from the master tapes.
And here's something to think about: which is cheaper at a given level of performance, a speed sensor or a weighted platter? Weighted platter probably has it unless you turn it from solid gold! How do you measure instanteous angular velocity accurately anyway? High-count encoders are expensive, analog tachogenerators might have issues with drag/noise on the turntable, but again for high accuracy you pay a lot.
Think of the earth spinning - yes its slowing down gradually, but its rotation speed is mighty accurate! Weighted platter!
Vertical warping of a disc can impart flutter as the point of sylus contact is modulated - no easy way to sense this.
Wow and flutter from the recording process for old analog recordings can be frozen in to the track, no matter how accurate the turntable is, as this comes from the master tapes.
And here's something to think about: which is cheaper at a given level of performance, a speed sensor or a weighted platter? Weighted platter probably has it unless you turn it from solid gold! How do you measure instanteous angular velocity accurately anyway? High-count encoders are expensive, analog tachogenerators might have issues with drag/noise on the turntable, but again for high accuracy you pay a lot.
Think of the earth spinning - yes its slowing down gradually, but its rotation speed is mighty accurate! Weighted platter!
THIS is surely the "secret" - the sound of tape saturation, both on the multitrack, and on the 2-track. Perhaps Tom Scholz was trying to mix a record to digital without first recording on a 2-track tape to get "The Sound" he wanted, then put that on CD.
There's a lot of "stuff" to go through here ... as far as speed variations, it doesn't really matter how fast the data is read off the CD, it gets buffered and clocked out of the D/A based on a quartz crystal oscillator. The data was originally recorded also based on a quartz crystal oscillator, so it's hard to get much better than that, or anywhere near it from analog source based on a physically moving disc or tape.
I did hear of something 10-15 years ago at the AES show, a tape with a lot of wow and flutter was restored by reading the ultrasonic bias frequency from the tape along with the audio signal, of course digitizing it all, and reclocking it based in the bias tone, which was originally much steadier than the tape movement mechanism. Another possibility is finding a low-level 16kHz signal on a recording and clocking to that. This was originally an analog TV horizontal sweep signal (at 15,750Hz), generated in the air by the TV deflection yoke acting as a speaker, and picked up by the studio microphones (or perhaps transferred electrically like RF interference). There's also the 50/60Hz AC power frequency that may or may not be totally eliminated in power supplies and such, but as this is at such a lower frequency, it may not work as well.
As for pops and noise on the LP, the FIRST thing to do before putting the stylus down is always clean and dry the LP. I've read of the Keith Monks being the "standard" but a much less expensive Nitty Gritty should get you most of the way there. A couple decades ago I made my own from an old turntable and a shop-vac.
The second thing is "real time" noise and click reduction. I've used commercial software made specifically to remove clicks on LPs (It's so long I forget the name), but that presumed it was already recorded onto a .wav file. There was a company that made real-time noise-and-click reduction devices (with perhaps a fraction of a second delay, as it used digital processing internally), and it appears they're still around: https://www.cedar-audio.com/
I did hear of something 10-15 years ago at the AES show, a tape with a lot of wow and flutter was restored by reading the ultrasonic bias frequency from the tape along with the audio signal, of course digitizing it all, and reclocking it based in the bias tone, which was originally much steadier than the tape movement mechanism. Another possibility is finding a low-level 16kHz signal on a recording and clocking to that. This was originally an analog TV horizontal sweep signal (at 15,750Hz), generated in the air by the TV deflection yoke acting as a speaker, and picked up by the studio microphones (or perhaps transferred electrically like RF interference). There's also the 50/60Hz AC power frequency that may or may not be totally eliminated in power supplies and such, but as this is at such a lower frequency, it may not work as well.
As for pops and noise on the LP, the FIRST thing to do before putting the stylus down is always clean and dry the LP. I've read of the Keith Monks being the "standard" but a much less expensive Nitty Gritty should get you most of the way there. A couple decades ago I made my own from an old turntable and a shop-vac.
The second thing is "real time" noise and click reduction. I've used commercial software made specifically to remove clicks on LPs (It's so long I forget the name), but that presumed it was already recorded onto a .wav file. There was a company that made real-time noise-and-click reduction devices (with perhaps a fraction of a second delay, as it used digital processing internally), and it appears they're still around: https://www.cedar-audio.com/
Geoff do you have still the original file froom Fritz Kreisler?
If yes could you send it to me, i would like to see if i can manage better results than the one you've got.
If ok pm me please.
Cedar was great tool. Now they are specialised into restauration for police investigation, spy games,... there is 'better' solution now imho.
I don't have the original file unfortunately, it was on a PC which crashed but I think I may still have the LP, unless I gave it to my father - he was born the same year! It was on the EMI 'Da Capo' label and was one of the first 'electrical' recordings, a real piece of history.
There is a later recording by Kreisler and it sounds better, but lacks the magic. If I can find the LP I'll re-do the file for you.
Geoff
There is a later recording by Kreisler and it sounds better, but lacks the magic. If I can find the LP I'll re-do the file for you.
Geoff
I remember that one, and also another that I had a free trial of. It actually analyzed the music and audio and corrected based on that. Mostly used for optical film tracks and it worked surprisingly well. No memory of what it was called, tho.
OMA use a Thin Gap motor SAT uses the Technics SP10R motor.
DD TT's do have speed variations and the consumer lever DD's are particularly bad. Not all DD motors are created equal. It's critical for the drive wave form to mirror the back EMF wave of the motor. Most consumer DD's use a BLDC motor with trapezoidal BEMF making it almost impossible for the drive waveform to mirror the BEMF, this creates harmonic noise and significant torque ripple in the motor. The Technics SP10mk2 motor has perfect sinusoidal BEMF and generating a sinewave to drive the motor is far easier which lowers harmonic noise and torque ripple.
There is NO way to remove speed irregularity from a complex signal once it's encoded. Speed variations alter the pitch of every note and then to make it more complex this pitch varies slightly. Not to mention the FM sidebands these speed variations create on every note.
BD TT's with massive platters sacrifice drift for better W&F. Increasing MoI of a DD platter can have the same affect as long as the motor has enough torque to spin the platter. The benefit of this approach is to lower the frequency of the speed irregularity to less than a few Hz where our ears are far less sensitive to the variations as well as masking the sidebands if they are far enough below the fundamental.
The next level of complexity - is the rest of the system capable of resolving the detail, ie will you hear the difference between a Techdas Airforce Zero and a cheap USB TT through a boombox.
DD TT's do have speed variations and the consumer lever DD's are particularly bad. Not all DD motors are created equal. It's critical for the drive wave form to mirror the back EMF wave of the motor. Most consumer DD's use a BLDC motor with trapezoidal BEMF making it almost impossible for the drive waveform to mirror the BEMF, this creates harmonic noise and significant torque ripple in the motor. The Technics SP10mk2 motor has perfect sinusoidal BEMF and generating a sinewave to drive the motor is far easier which lowers harmonic noise and torque ripple.
There is NO way to remove speed irregularity from a complex signal once it's encoded. Speed variations alter the pitch of every note and then to make it more complex this pitch varies slightly. Not to mention the FM sidebands these speed variations create on every note.
BD TT's with massive platters sacrifice drift for better W&F. Increasing MoI of a DD platter can have the same affect as long as the motor has enough torque to spin the platter. The benefit of this approach is to lower the frequency of the speed irregularity to less than a few Hz where our ears are far less sensitive to the variations as well as masking the sidebands if they are far enough below the fundamental.
The next level of complexity - is the rest of the system capable of resolving the detail, ie will you hear the difference between a Techdas Airforce Zero and a cheap USB TT through a boombox.