Yes, I started a thread at what I thought might have been the most appropriate forum-not sure there was much appreciation for it. https://gearspace.com/board/music-c...racks-restore-dynamics-remove-congestion.html
Obscene. Industry professionals are painfully aware of the long and vast history of these sonic crimes.
https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/ap...-in-cd-recordings?_pos=1&_sid=0eeb1f150&_ss=r
https://gearspace.com/board/mastering-forum/1401406-intersample-clipping-audible.html
But as one there said, it can come down to a matter of doing what they want or getting fired.
I know all of that all too well. I'm hoping that by not playing my favorite but "congested" (tape saturated?) tracks loudly the damage won't be very noticable. If only the problem was clipping distortion rather than this. At least that way I'd have a far better chance of repairing them. https://www.izotope.com/en/products/rx/features/de-clip.htmlIt appears you have a very revealing audio play back stereo.
But...
"YOU CAN'T MAKE A SILK PURSE OUT OF A SOW'S EAR"
It's all about compromise
I've been converting my old vinyl to bits lately. There is such a variance in quality. I just did some mobile fidelity's. Fantastic quality. It can be done. I have some direct to disks that are fantastic as well. Then there is my Concert for Bangladesh. Noticeable hum recorded on the whole disk set is one of the lesser warts. One of the worst recordings I have I think. Still like the album though.
RC crossover rolling? No, that too far out there for me. But I haven't even started shopping for DACs yet. I thought of the Halo May, which may have one kind overall signature (??) and another DAC that would sound........how?
Izotope Rx pretty much lets you literally wipe that hum right off the spectrogram, with very little if any audiible artifacts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrogram
Exactly the accolades from Aikido owner PierreQuiRoule. It's crazy that tubes as popular as the 6SN7 and nearly identical tubes are still out of production. What do we do when our stock of such tubes are all dead? I'll probably take my chances and build it-and with as many of the best film caps I can afford in the power supply. Though Pierre said he would never use EQ over tube and cable rolling, I can't see any difference, especially using what's probably among the best sounding of such plugins. https://www.sweetwater.com/store/de...udio-uad-pultec-passive-eq-plug-in-collection
Try a passive, switched resistor volume control. At least it won't make things worse.
I don't know who PierreQuiRoule is, but I was fairly low-key in my comment. I'm happy to go further. ;-) I LOVE my Aikido preamp. Especially, piano tone is very realistic. I use it with a pair of homemade classic Williamson amplifiers. They're the perfect compliment, since the Williamsons like a fair bit of gain up front, and they also have a pleasing, relaxed low-distortion signature. Consider that the 6SN7 is arguably the most linear, low-distortion small-signal tube there is. As a medium-gain tube, it doesn't do too much or too little, just right. The noise-cancellation inherent in the Aikido makes for a musically quiet and calm sound. If you build one I highly recommend a three-way volume control, that is left, right and stereo master. The Aikido does have a lot of gain but this can come in handy with low-output sources like phono stages. And the three-way control provides balance, which I need in my listening room.
Don't worry about 6SN7's going out of production. They are ubiquitous in preamps, audio amps and guitar amps and will always be made. And there are a gazillion NOS 6SN7s out there still, and if you're worried about it buy a few extra sets, they last forever. I use the GE 6SN7GTB, a very good, well-balanced tube and even new-in-box are cheaper than new manufacture.
Don't worry about 6SN7's going out of production. They are ubiquitous in preamps, audio amps and guitar amps and will always be made. And there are a gazillion NOS 6SN7s out there still, and if you're worried about it buy a few extra sets, they last forever. I use the GE 6SN7GTB, a very good, well-balanced tube and even new-in-box are cheaper than new manufacture.
Tape saturation is gradual. The sound becomes "hard". Instruments are no longer distinct. There is too much high-frequency energy.
Ed
Pierre built these babies; possibly the only one on this forum who perfected the EQ essential for the Radian745 beryllium drivers; https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/beyond-the-ariel.100392/page-764 posts 15,266, 15,276.
So the Aikido has a "musically quiet and calm sound." Probably a whole lot like Pierre's speakers. That is, neutral, not warm, yes? That's probably what I want any, even if it hardly hides the bad aspects of my recordings.
But are there very low third harmonic, low noise tubes which do deliver some kind of perfect touch of warmness, and which can easily be swapped into the Aikido?
Thanks for emphasizing those volume balance controls. I've no doubt they will come in handy very often.
As for the Aikido's high gain, could there be a better preamp/power amp match?
https://www.firstwatt.com/pdf/prod_f4_man.pdf
Consider the price of a preamp, then another, then another, until you get the sound you want on some CDs,
Or perhaps you never get on those 'bad' CDs.
Instead, spend the money on CDs that sound good.
Your music and my music tastes are probably not the same.
Not all of your style of music CDs will sound good, but you will find some that sound great on the system you already have.
Here is an example of a studio album, the original Tape Recording was transferred to CD; it sounds very good to me.
Billy Holiday, "Lady in Satin", Columbia/Legacy, Ray Ellis, CK65144.
This recording, February 1958 - said to be Billy's personal favorite.
If you do not like the Columbia Studio Sound of 1958, then do not purchase this album (what is not to like?).
Those who are familiar with that studio sound of the recordings there, know what I am talking about.
As a famous reviewer once said, Enjoy the Music.
Or perhaps you never get on those 'bad' CDs.
Instead, spend the money on CDs that sound good.
Your music and my music tastes are probably not the same.
Not all of your style of music CDs will sound good, but you will find some that sound great on the system you already have.
Here is an example of a studio album, the original Tape Recording was transferred to CD; it sounds very good to me.
Billy Holiday, "Lady in Satin", Columbia/Legacy, Ray Ellis, CK65144.
This recording, February 1958 - said to be Billy's personal favorite.
If you do not like the Columbia Studio Sound of 1958, then do not purchase this album (what is not to like?).
Those who are familiar with that studio sound of the recordings there, know what I am talking about.
As a famous reviewer once said, Enjoy the Music.
For the Aikido preamp? If yes, how will that improve things? And how is that "improvement" different from tube/cable rolling or EQing?
Furthermore, what I still don't get is what you said here https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/aikido-pre-for-ss.372151/ That "The best tube circuits do not change the sound or add harmonics, rather they are more transparent."
But certainly loads of SS preamps can do that. And if at least most can do so without changing the sound then would you not classify them as sounding neutral, which you apparently consider a good thing. However, you also said that the best tube preamps are "more transparent". So, if transparent's the same as neutral, then what is it about the sound of the "best" tube preamps that many people (e.g. Aikido owners) still prefer over the "best" ss preamps? How can there be much, if any, any sonic differences between them if both are the best and they are equally transparent (or neutral)?
As you're keen on Broskie's Aikido why not just build an Aikido dac.Read tubecad.com/2006/12/blog0091.htm
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I'm trying to avoid terms like "warm" and "neutral," since they mean different things to different people. ;-) Is the Aikido neutral? No, it has some of the colorations usually associated with tube equipment, and it will reflect the choice of tubes you make, even within the range of 6SN7s. Is it "warm"? Well, certainly "warmer" and "tubier" than an ARC, to the best of my recollection. OTOH, it's much "faster" and more transparent than, say, a Cary SLP-98, which it replaced in my system. The Cary, by comparison, is sluggish and thick, to my ears--and not just because of the components used but because of the topology, which uses parallel 6SN7s. It's smoother and sweeter than the Schiit Freya S I experimented with--not a bad preamp for $600 but coarse and fatiguing by comparison. It has more life and liveliness than a very fancy Penny & Giles passive, but I need gain in my preamp anyway due to the low sensitivity of the amps. Again I have to come beck to "natural" because it does everything you'd want from an active preamp--clean, transparent, good transients, coherency of the instruments and voices-- without imposing anything artificial or taking anything away. People who try them usually end up liking the very much because they do so many things well, and for a price that's thousands of dollars less than similarly sophisticated commercial preamps. Would it be a good match for the First Watt? I don't see why not.
First of all, I think Rayma was suggesting a simple passive preamp as the least intrusive of options.
For the rest, you're getting into a very elusive area here. Sure, why not just go to Audiosciencereview, pick the components with the best measurements, assemble your system and boom, you're done, right? But then one day you hear a different system, and you begin noticing nuances you never noticed before and suddenly you're not just hearing sound coming out of the speakers but a performance by a person sitting in the room with you. The sound doesn't just spool along, there's now a sense of event, of time and place and spontaneity. And maybe the recording isn't even that great, but you hear a personality there. Good single-ended systems can do a lot of this, despite their other flaws. I like my Williamson amps because they do a lot of what a single-ended system can do with more power and much better bandwidth, so that they handle challenging material like classical piano, orchestra, etc. I think one of the reasons a lot of people prefer tubes is because of the time factor, which sounds very mysterious but can be explained, IMO.
I guess what I'm saying is, forget about the terms like "neutral" or "transparent." There's equipment that takes you inside the recording and let's you hear the performers, for better or worse. And it does this without adding annoying artifacts. And it's not "magic"--there are real technical reasons why some equipment does this better than others. The Aikido is a circuit that, to my ears, does this very well and in a very simple and affordable fashion.
Just last night I was listening to Peter Serkin playing Chopin. This was new to me, and he's not a performer I normally associate with great Chopin playing, but I was very taken with his playing and could hear that he brought some very special things to music I'm quite familiar with. The recording had some age on it, and traces of distortion here and there, but the uniqueness of the performance was quite evident. That's what I want from my system.
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No Aikido line stage, just a 10k volume control. This will work well as long as you have enough gain in the system.
Bad recordings won't be so bad if the playback system doesn't make them worse. In fact, they may be better than you think.
Transparent (hearing through to the source) is not the same as neutral (tonal balance not skewed).
All audio components, being imperfect, have their own sound, including the "best" ones.
IMO, the real problem is that most recordings are made by mixing the outputs of many microphones placed too close to the instruments. This kind of recording can never sound like a live, unamplified performance.
My system can give a fairly convincing impression of being in the same room with the musicians, but only on recordings made with two microphones. All other recording methods sound like dreck. I don't fault the system for telling the truth.
Ed