Then why does it seem to come as such a surprise to some people that ears can hear distortion from dacs that doesn't show up on a FFT? 🙂
Honest question.
It comes as a surprise to me that some people who claim to hear clear differences from dacs refuse to display that talent under controlled circumstances.
That is my honest answer.
That is my honest answer.
A lowly $250 Denon 103 with its limited resolution is enough to bury any 16/44 CD, IMHO.
Not sure nonlinear is the right word, or at least its confusing, it means out does not = in x gain. Doesnt apply to instruments. A syth with a clean sinewave run through an envelope generator will have sidebands, The envelope creates the sidebands. Run a sinewave thru your preamp and turn the volume up, this will create sidebands. Think of a graph of the sine as the amplitude goes up, its not a sine anymore, its distorted, this distortion is in the sidebands, is this a nonlinear system? Yes. So any instrument with envelope will have sidebands. The question is do they matter.
Honest question provide some data. I showed data that the ESS DAC hump is easily measured. You seem to have no interest in instrumentation and measurement so you have little to say about what is or is not possible.
Thanks, RNMarsh for the ack on that idea of what may be happening.
@dave, I never though about the significance of musical content above the range of human hearing, as being perhaps necessary to properly hear musical events within that range. It seems intuitively obvious, as they exist in the performance, but have been eliminated in the recording / reproduction process by someone who determined they're not necessary.
They sure liked the electrolytic coupling caps on the op-amp outputs in those player schematics!
I think cymbals, as a musical instrument, are pretty non linear. Hit one softly with your stick and then hit it with all you've got. It doesnt sound the same only louder the second time. How the metal radiates and dissipates the imparted energy isnt linear wrt the amount of energy imparted.
I've always wondered how a sax player makes his (/her) horn squeal. Seems that instrument can make the stopped notes or the squeal, depending. Seems pretty non linear to me.
@dave, I never though about the significance of musical content above the range of human hearing, as being perhaps necessary to properly hear musical events within that range. It seems intuitively obvious, as they exist in the performance, but have been eliminated in the recording / reproduction process by someone who determined they're not necessary.
They sure liked the electrolytic coupling caps on the op-amp outputs in those player schematics!
I think cymbals, as a musical instrument, are pretty non linear. Hit one softly with your stick and then hit it with all you've got. It doesnt sound the same only louder the second time. How the metal radiates and dissipates the imparted energy isnt linear wrt the amount of energy imparted.
I've always wondered how a sax player makes his (/her) horn squeal. Seems that instrument can make the stopped notes or the squeal, depending. Seems pretty non linear to me.
Ok. But how does this relate to the linear summing of two signals before passing through a (linear) LPF? How is any discussion of musical instruments related?
I still think that we're conflating several meanings of the word "modulation" and that it's tripping us up. Linear systems don't modulate, in the classic (mixtures and harmonics) sense of the word.
And discussions of envelopes in a linear system is a very wrong turn, IMO. Way too easy to jump onto the wrong frog.
All good fortune,
Chris
Not working on an ESS dacs anymore, no hump to measure. Good tip though, thank you. And thank you for the honest answer.
If it isn't clear, I do value instrumentation and measurement. Always have. For audio though, other people find I do best if I spend a lot of time listening. It doesn't count for much among some of this group, I know. So I won't dwell on it.
You can't make claims of hearing and not measuring without doing both, so where is the data to support the claims?
Still have a lot more work to do. Last time I wrote a blog about what I was doing, not this time. Still doing research to find out what sounds best to me. A time will come to write about it, don't know how it will turn out yet.
In the meantime we probably ought to get back on topic for now.
Any words on the acoustics of the room in which the high end audio system like that is situated? I'm asking in case you left it out by accident...
What sounds best to you may not mean anything to someone else.
On the deeper meaning/musical relevance stuff of this back and forth, I'm as lost as you, Chris. I just tried to answer your question to the best I could in terms of how one could have a linear system and end up something close to what is being described. There's a lot of confusing terminology going back and forth and in word form as opposed to forms that might provide greater clarity.
Hi Zung, many of us 'could' hear differences between CD and vinyl using just a Denon 103C, but many here have lowish cost phono cartridges that they think are good enough, and they aren't. I had both a Denon 103C and 103D back in the 70's. Good, but a little too forgiving.
For the record, the listening room this weekend was really nice sounding, as well as the equipment was. (I don't dare to tell you how much it cost)
For the record, the listening room this weekend was really nice sounding, as well as the equipment was. (I don't dare to tell you how much it cost)
We kept all customers masters (analog tape/U-Matic 1630/DLT/R-DAT/CD-A/CD-ROM DDP, etc...) and matrix in a locked vault, ready for re-orders. We, or I had no particular reason to pull them and compare...
Indeed we had a >5000 ft^2 ISO 1 glass mastering suite on site which I specified and set up (quite a learning experience!). We had 4 LBRs and all of the other accoutrements of glass mastering and electroplating to make CD & DVD stampers. Whether we ran more than one piece of glass, or made a family of metal depended on the order volume and how many stampers we thought we would run simultaneously.
Our LBRs were equipped with DRAW (Direct Read After Write) using a play laser on track a few mm behind the write laser to do immediate pit characteristic and data comparisons. An advantage was if there was indeed an E22 or E32 error, we could abort mastering immediately and not waste time. The glass was also EFM decoded and real-time compared against the stored master data using Eclipse ImageVerify.
When replication began, all initial discs were checked using ImageVerify against the customer master. This verified all the data and only the customer data was on the replicated disc...it also had the benefit of catching if an operator put the wrong stamper on the mold![/QUOTE]
Big dude, but very soft spoken and nice! I wanted to get a dinner with him to ask about the Alan Parsons Project which I love but it didn't happen...
I can't remember the exact year, it was mid-1990s and it was supposed to be an anniversary remastering edition. I never looked for it in shops, having both the commercial CD, Harvest and MFSL LP, and an (ahem) test copy of the one we made.
Cheers!
Howie
Derfy,
One idea for recording classical music is to reproduce what the conductor heard. Often that is the person who listens to the recording and has influence on the entire process.
Of course if you sit in the back of a decent çoncert hall you hear quite a bit different sound blend than the conductor. So contrary to some folks theories there is no single right answer.
In a club situation folks who sit in the front tend to pay more sttention to the performance and the folks in the back to their companions.
Now we could talk about 45% humidity! Personally I like air-conditioned rooms, or heated as the case may be. Air-conditioning by dropping the temprrature does not permit the air to hold as much humidity as warmer air. What is not as clear is that the temperature in the air heat exchanger is much lower than the final room air. This when you cool the air, moisture drops out and is drained away. As the air heats back up the humidity drops. Around the places ibhave been folks try to get the humidity back up to 25-35%.
When you are heating, it really is the same thing. If you start with cold humid air when you heat it, the capacity to hold moisture increases, the result being the % relative humidity drops.
Now we could talk about how small your place is and why you have a shower in your listening space! 😉
Well, I lived quite a long while in San Diego, and we didn't use heat nor conditioning. Being so close to the ocean, rent was high on a tiny place so maybe you're more right than you think. 😉
I was running off the thought that it was a pure crapshoot about where in a hall a mix was supposed to match, if at all. All I know is the mix engineer sits pretty far away in the concert halls I've been to. But I was also alluding to a mix coming from a recording studio is synthetic sound. Absolutely nothing wrong with that but any appeal to realism breaks the rubber band.
Evenharmonics, the listening room was in the Audio Solan in Santa Monica, CA. Why not look them up and ask them? I'm sure it was a professionally done listening room.
I looked up but found no info or graphs of room tuning. If it's a professional mastering room, I would be sure but the display room of high priced audio electronics store, not so much.