It's always been like that, Wayne, nothing new under the sun, only there are more players this time round.
But that shouldn't stop you from investigating this or that. The Real Time DAC, and I've had it for four years now, can transform a player from something completely mundane to an interesting device. I've done it many times by taking it over to one or another friend's place. Obviously, the better the player is, the more interesting the results become, hardly surprising.
But that shouldn't stop you from investigating this or that. The Real Time DAC, and I've had it for four years now, can transform a player from something completely mundane to an interesting device. I've done it many times by taking it over to one or another friend's place. Obviously, the better the player is, the more interesting the results become, hardly surprising.
Interesting how it always comes back to this type of comment - people listen to flawed digital playback, and then condemn the format. The "sterile and hard" when playing a CD is a distortion, very audible in spite of all the "great measurements" - last night at the other chap's place the sound had the classic 'dead' digital sound for the first hour or so, and then managed to stabilise into very acceptable reproduction. This is a problem digital often has, in the same way vinyl has tracking, and groove noise problems - if people would just acknowledge that playback can be faulty, without jumping up and down and pointing at the hefty price tag as "proof" that the sound is 'correct', then we might get somewhere ...
So the 'hard' and 'uninvolving' and 'sterile' remarks also apply to Thorsten's stuff? Which models and did you give this feedback to him?
Compared to analog all digital is hard and sterile even the 100 K dCS stack. Its what is noticed immediately switching between them, its like surface noise with analog vs digital, SS glare vs toobs ,
Yaddy yada ...
Yaddy yada ...
The interesting trend at the moment, for me, is that typical analogue appears to be getting worse - I'm quite surprised at how poorly much expensive gear comes across, subjectively; definitely seems to be getting worse compared to what one came across, say, 20 years ago.
If you examine carefully what a.wayne is claiming you'll see it can't. He's made a claim about formats (analog, digital) which nobody can listen to, blind, double blind or otherwise.
If you separate the issue of "involving music reproduction" from simple fidelity to the source you find that analog recording (even the best tape) fails against digital in a basic sense. A digital recording can capture and reproduce the nuances and artifacts of an analog recording quite well (As Mikey Fremer shows often with his recordings from disk) but analog recording doesn't show the "artifacts" of digital well at all. Notwithstanding that most vinyl from the last 30 years or so passed through a primitive AD-DA chain in the mastering process.
I have heard and been involved with some of the best analog recording and digital recording and playback. The digital just works better at the recording stage when handled by someone really skilled in recording.
Good analog tape is quite good but even then everything from head bumps to phase eq issues to noise and decay with time really limits it. Early digital (PCM-F1 for example) was really poor. But that's no more relevant than early electrical recordings. The tools are more than good enough today. Its the goals and skills of the engineers and artists using them that matter.
I have worked on state of the art turntables, I have one of the best tape machines ever made in storage (3M-M79 1/2"-1/4") but spent my free time for the last 5 years working on the Auraliti digital source. Everything from ease of use to access to a really large library plus really good results made those other efforts seem pointless. But fashion trumps facts often.
There is a disappointing lack of ritual and magic to the process in digital. Some are making efforts to bring it back with $1,000 Ethernet cables and other mumbo jumbo but digital resolutely resists the mystical parts of audio.
I would be the first to admit that pure fidelity may not provide the best emotional experience. Sometime added elements help a lot. I know that a standard tweak for mastering is to pass the audio through a tape machine to add some noise, distortion and flutter that make the recording seem more enjoyable. Clearly less accurate to the source but more "likeable".
I have heard and been involved with some of the best analog recording and digital recording and playback. The digital just works better at the recording stage when handled by someone really skilled in recording.
Good analog tape is quite good but even then everything from head bumps to phase eq issues to noise and decay with time really limits it. Early digital (PCM-F1 for example) was really poor. But that's no more relevant than early electrical recordings. The tools are more than good enough today. Its the goals and skills of the engineers and artists using them that matter.
I have worked on state of the art turntables, I have one of the best tape machines ever made in storage (3M-M79 1/2"-1/4") but spent my free time for the last 5 years working on the Auraliti digital source. Everything from ease of use to access to a really large library plus really good results made those other efforts seem pointless. But fashion trumps facts often.
There is a disappointing lack of ritual and magic to the process in digital. Some are making efforts to bring it back with $1,000 Ethernet cables and other mumbo jumbo but digital resolutely resists the mystical parts of audio.
I would be the first to admit that pure fidelity may not provide the best emotional experience. Sometime added elements help a lot. I know that a standard tweak for mastering is to pass the audio through a tape machine to add some noise, distortion and flutter that make the recording seem more enjoyable. Clearly less accurate to the source but more "likeable".
Both have distortion Demian , prefering one over the other is just the by product , digital should have ended it for analog as it was touted years ago if it delivered as promised , it didnt then and still not so today And yes , obviously no one has ever claimed analog was technically superior to digital , the differnce was always and will always be subjective and ironically enough, those making fhe claim have all the mega buck boutique digital ever made ....
Digital is the only intelligent way to go, for the reasons Demian mentioned - I haven't listened to analogue in my own environment for 30 years, and never feel I've missed something when I listen to 'superb' analogue. Way back then I experienced how brilliantly superb CD playback could be, so then hearing the typical mediocre quality nearly all systems produced meant nothing to me, I knew what the goalposts were.
Ok, analog can sound good, but good digital is overwhelmingly better in my books.
Analog colourations, noise and lack of channel separation don't quite do it for me.
If the music is good, then digital can deliver it very well indeed.
It takes a little tuning (Bybee etc) to get digital sounding right, and then the convenience takes over.
For me, anyway.
Dan.
Analog colourations, noise and lack of channel separation don't quite do it for me.
If the music is good, then digital can deliver it very well indeed.
It takes a little tuning (Bybee etc) to get digital sounding right, and then the convenience takes over.
For me, anyway.
Dan.
OK. I'll throw my 2 cents in..... I guess I am one who chases after the next new thing to see what it offers..... first tubes then to SS. I got tube circuits to work very well, then I got SS to work very well. I got TT systems to work very well, then i got CD/SACD to work very well. Tape machines, speaker systems... cone, electrostatic, planar, subs, surround. Room EQ systems [I published the first RTA circuit design and construction for consumers]. I try every technology. Right now? Digital and analog/digital master downloads via the Internet is the source closest yet to the sound of real music in my room. It just keeps getting better.
-Richard Marsh
-Richard Marsh
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We're not talking finish line, as in you have to "beat" someone else, numerous people can arrive there at various times, by various means, and they've all "won".
The huge advantage when you have clear sight at what you're aiming for, is that you always have a reference, a comparison, in your mind as to what precisely what you're after. It's never "Is this better?" - it's "How close am I to the goal posts?" - hence every significant movement in that direction is highly satisfying.
What has impressed me over the years is that the goal posts are also getting more "impressive" - levels of replay quality that I hadn't earlier considered possible have been revealed, at odd times - so far, there appears almost no limits to "how good does it get", if one is prepared to put the effort in ...
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