Have to admit I don't read much Audio press these days so am not really upto speed on the state of the art , having managed to content myself with my current system. 
Now , I have not & do not posess an iPod and I don't want one , just don't have the gene !
From what I understand of the technology the sound quality cannot be as good as CD , let alone vinyl. Or , am I incorrect there ?
So , is a good , tweaked CD player still the best Digital source ?
Now , I have not & do not posess an iPod
and I don't want one , just don't have the gene !From what I understand of the technology the sound quality cannot be as good as CD , let alone vinyl. Or , am I incorrect there ?
So , is a good , tweaked CD player still the best Digital source ?
best digital source is a compltely digital source: streaming lossless files from a digital support (HD, possibly SSD) to a DAC, this allows for no mechanical parts, probably a computer is needed to take control over the streaming process...
perhaps a no-fan pc with a big hd. its also future-proof as you'll be able to play new standars with higher bit-rates than the cd you can download or rip right now.
perhaps a no-fan pc with a big hd. its also future-proof as you'll be able to play new standars with higher bit-rates than the cd you can download or rip right now.
i would not spend a penny on techonologies agonizing and going to die, count blue rays in... if you look at just the boost that hd video streaming had this last year it's easy understood that audio will follow. for now there are several sites where you can download hi-quality stuff, like linn records.
ripping with jitter correction is quite a safe process, ripping a vinyl to a sample rate higher than cd can give some good results i think but i don't know...
a standard pc alone is unsuitable, but with a good DAC it can be world class... talking transporters even a chep wireless transporter like the apple airport express (99$) does transport with bit wise accuracy of the original wave file, it relays on a proprietary fork of the lossless flac format.
many lossless music is easily find on the net altought you already have a considerable library of the mentioned SACD DVD-A HDCD (hey, three proprietary formats?? isn't it crazy?) i don't know how it would be pocket friendly road
ripping with jitter correction is quite a safe process, ripping a vinyl to a sample rate higher than cd can give some good results i think but i don't know...
a standard pc alone is unsuitable, but with a good DAC it can be world class... talking transporters even a chep wireless transporter like the apple airport express (99$) does transport with bit wise accuracy of the original wave file, it relays on a proprietary fork of the lossless flac format.
many lossless music is easily find on the net altought you already have a considerable library of the mentioned SACD DVD-A HDCD (hey, three proprietary formats?? isn't it crazy?) i don't know how it would be pocket friendly road
The emphasized part points to a flaw in your reasoning. Where do you think this lossless music came from?
I wrestled with the same question a few years ago. For me it became a question of where the source material was going to come from and how it was going to be stored. I would imagine a hard drive based system along with jitter free downstream equipment would be the ultimate. It seems the state of the art playback equipment only stays that for about 6 1/2 minutes these days.
The choice for me was, do I chase the technology or settle on a format such as Red Book and optimise it as much as possible. In the end, probably because of my age more than anything, I chose to stick with Red Book. It's not the ultimate, but it sure is fun.
The choice for me was, do I chase the technology or settle on a format such as Red Book and optimise it as much as possible. In the end, probably because of my age more than anything, I chose to stick with Red Book. It's not the ultimate, but it sure is fun.
ilimzn, what do you mean? phisycally? it will come from some kind of digital support without jitter, like and hd (be it solid, mechanic or tape-like huge amount of TeraBytes one) that is read server-side and downloaded bit-wise on your hd...
redbook has word of 7bits describing it's data, that's one of the factors for which jetter happens, altought digital data is stored, it's odd numbering forces the reading process to catch the right piece of data with a certain amount of probability, everytime for any reason it skips from following the data linearly... or something like that, all of this does not happen with a real 'even' storage like hd...
if you intended, where will the recordings come from, well i hope from the masters themself in the time to come... or from the highest quality version for old things... perhaps many of the things we own on cds someone else secretly has somewhere in better quality...
being it the future, and seeing the price/quality ratio it can already allow for, with any of the already available media (i imagine DVD-A can be read by a normal dvd or BRay reader, i never seen the others) it is already a best solution for the aforementioned standard like red-book... and for less than the price of a comparable stand-alone solution... and with way more possibility to mod it, evolve, and upgrades...
this world pc-based is evolving at a rate that was unthinkable for the hardware 'some-proprietary-standard' world... and it so cheap, not beacause it's cheap stuff, but because this kind of technologies interests almost all the human kind and not only some audiophile... have you an idea what would be the cost of the stuff is in your 400$ laptop if it was made for the audiophile's people?
most important things, is if you start it today, and i suggest to do it for reasonable prices since there is no state of the art in technology and that 6 1/2 minutes stay time we shall hope to get even shorter, you will familiarize with the future, and enter the optic of a quickly evolving world of possibilities.
the review of the music streamer+ (299$) on sixmoons, is very informative, and think that it's a compromised device, reciving energy directly from the pc...
redbook has word of 7bits describing it's data, that's one of the factors for which jetter happens, altought digital data is stored, it's odd numbering forces the reading process to catch the right piece of data with a certain amount of probability, everytime for any reason it skips from following the data linearly... or something like that, all of this does not happen with a real 'even' storage like hd...
if you intended, where will the recordings come from, well i hope from the masters themself in the time to come... or from the highest quality version for old things... perhaps many of the things we own on cds someone else secretly has somewhere in better quality...
being it the future, and seeing the price/quality ratio it can already allow for, with any of the already available media (i imagine DVD-A can be read by a normal dvd or BRay reader, i never seen the others) it is already a best solution for the aforementioned standard like red-book... and for less than the price of a comparable stand-alone solution... and with way more possibility to mod it, evolve, and upgrades...
this world pc-based is evolving at a rate that was unthinkable for the hardware 'some-proprietary-standard' world... and it so cheap, not beacause it's cheap stuff, but because this kind of technologies interests almost all the human kind and not only some audiophile... have you an idea what would be the cost of the stuff is in your 400$ laptop if it was made for the audiophile's people?
most important things, is if you start it today, and i suggest to do it for reasonable prices since there is no state of the art in technology and that 6 1/2 minutes stay time we shall hope to get even shorter, you will familiarize with the future, and enter the optic of a quickly evolving world of possibilities.
the review of the music streamer+ (299$) on sixmoons, is very informative, and think that it's a compromised device, reciving energy directly from the pc...
I settled down with this:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digi...ory-card-transport-project-6.html#post1986035
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digi...ory-card-transport-project-6.html#post1986035
You have to look at the format of data storage separately from the process of storing and retrieving the actual data with integrity, and also from converting it to analog.
Music files that come 'from the internet' indeed do come from a hard drive somewhere, but this is only hardware intended to store data in digital format. How the data is structured, the hard drive does not care. It's sole purpose is to store it and retrieve it with no errors, or if errors do exist, to detect them and either correct them or mark the data stream as corrupt.
Converting the data to analog does require the knowledge of how the data is structured (NOT how it is stored), in order to prepare it into a correct format for the converting hardware. Keep in mind that jitter really only applies at this point in the process, where the data telling you what the sampling rate is, becomes the actual sampling rate. Data on a disc or even in a stream is just data - it does not posses the property of having a sampling rate per se. For it, it is only required that it is available in time to satisfy uninterrupted streaming at the required sample rate at the input of a DAC, which is handled on the digital side by a means of a protocol. In case of a CDP, the protocol is implemented as a phase locked loop spinning the disc at the required speed, when it comes to hard drives and streaming channels, it gets more complex, but the principle is the same. BTW the jitter you are referring to with CD as a medium for data storage does not apply here - it is a misnomer. It has to do with skipping tracks (either due to user command or data read errors) and represents the inability of the read process to calculate the exact beginning of a track on-fly unless the whole CD is read as a whole - the reason it does not apply is that we are really talking about data ripped off a medium, where it will be done exactly in this manner - as a whole (I'm not going further into this, it's very well covered in the red book standard as well as PC CD ROM extensions of it).
My question was about the actual data in those files 'from the internet'. Most are actually (illegal or at the very least gray area) rips of existing media. Ripping takes out the data integrity measures taken to make the media reliable. In other words, for the grand majority of stuff out there, you have no idea how well it was ripped or indeed, what source it came from. It may well be a WAV or FLAC file converted from an MP3 or WMA lossy compression file some kid somewhere downloaded and thought how popular he's going to be by converting it to FLAC in order to be the first making the supposedly lossless version available on the net. If you do not have the original, you have no way to tell - and this is the problem even with those materials the CDs we have now were made from. Unfortunately, this is to an extent a chicken - egg argument, but I hope you see my point.
What is happening now, regarding source material, is similar to what happened to vynil. Some discs are out of print and have never been published on another more current digital (or analog, for that matter) medium, and the availability of master tapes is uncertain at best. So, for this, you are at the mercy of some 'kind soul' who will put themselves at risk by providing a propperly digitized version - emphasis on the word 'properly'. With so much data on the net it is still amazing how many get this completely wrong and you get supposedly perfect rips with audible clicks and pops anyone with experience will recognise as read errors.
Regarding formats, we are moving to file storage, which enables the data to be stored on any medium that can hold data - without it being implicitly tied to the data structure or the mechanics of retrieving it (like on CDs etc). Further, because size is no longer a problem, the data is structured with very generous overheads - for instance 32bits, 384k sampling. The reason behind it is that you always want to convert your raw data to 'less' if it must be converted - so your data structure has to be a superset of all current structures, hence higher resolution and sampling rate. In reality, it is simply impossible to make a 32-bit resolution DAC (even 24-bit is at the bleeding edge of technology). So, 32-bit resolution should 'hold us for a while'. Similar with the sampling rate, it is doubtful that it is really required. However, this does not prevent anyone to take a rip of a red book 16 bit 44.1k sampling CD, and convert it to this format - unless you had the same material from a better source, you would never know.
In other words, looking at what is found on the net, we have all gotten used to not thinking too much WHERE it actually came from and who put it on the net, far too often replacing this consideration with 'it came from somewhere' and for some reason automatically trusting the content - just like in public forums, for instance
There are a number of companies offering Hi-Res downloads. Chesky is one and others are in the process of coverting their catalog to Hi-Res. It's probably just a matter of time before most of the labels are offering their music in this format. I've heard some of the Hi-Res music and it's pretty good.
Best Regards,
TerryO
Best Regards,
TerryO
Links to high resolution audio files ("copies" from the masters):
To be sure of downloaded data accuracy you just need to check hash code.
Copy the file to a solid state drive - SSD (such as Secure Digital High Capacity SDHC) and play it at a dedicated transport (this is really a good SDHC example: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/142562-microsd-memory-card-transport-project.html).
No moving parts, no noise from computer, no USB jitter, files equivalent to the digital masters [okay, except DSD masters (DSDIFF/DFF/DSF files); or DXD (24bits/352.8kHz) until we have consumer DAC's processing that type of files] etc.
I think that's the future for high-end market, although hi-fi would stick too hard-drive music servers also (not so reliable as solid state drives though
).
Perhaps we will see more phonorecords in the future, I mean tangible forms of expression for sound (phonorecords are material objects embodying fixations of sounds, such as cassette tapes, CDs, vinyl disks; http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf). In other words any storage device that holds digital files.
I think many data storage technologies will reach the market and change that scenario (i.e., New Method Of Self-assembling Nanoscale Elements Could Transform Data Storage Industry).
Best regards,
Jose Luis
High Resolution Music DOWNLOAD services
Download quality and file type
STING If On A Winter's Night... 4/4 - Catalogue - Deutsche Grammophon Classical Music Shop for Downloads, CDs & DVDs (lossless flac at 16bit/44khz only...)
Download quality and file type
STING If On A Winter's Night... 4/4 - Catalogue - Deutsche Grammophon Classical Music Shop for Downloads, CDs & DVDs (lossless flac at 16bit/44khz only...)
To be sure of downloaded data accuracy you just need to check hash code.
Copy the file to a solid state drive - SSD (such as Secure Digital High Capacity SDHC) and play it at a dedicated transport (this is really a good SDHC example: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/142562-microsd-memory-card-transport-project.html).
No moving parts, no noise from computer, no USB jitter, files equivalent to the digital masters [okay, except DSD masters (DSDIFF/DFF/DSF files); or DXD (24bits/352.8kHz) until we have consumer DAC's processing that type of files] etc.
I think that's the future for high-end market, although hi-fi would stick too hard-drive music servers also (not so reliable as solid state drives though
).Perhaps we will see more phonorecords in the future, I mean tangible forms of expression for sound (phonorecords are material objects embodying fixations of sounds, such as cassette tapes, CDs, vinyl disks; http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf). In other words any storage device that holds digital files.
I think many data storage technologies will reach the market and change that scenario (i.e., New Method Of Self-assembling Nanoscale Elements Could Transform Data Storage Industry).
Best regards,
Jose Luis
i'm on your points. italian way of say i fully agree. thanks for the clarification about jitter.
hold on people, it will come a day information will be available without any need for supports, data will be streamed full quality with error correction... in this scenario we can see that new compromised formats will come out to found a sweet spot beetween demand and technological connection resources... i hope there will be a time we will pay to hear something but not to own it...
take a shoot: YouTube - What is Google Chrome OS?
hold on people, it will come a day information will be available without any need for supports, data will be streamed full quality with error correction... in this scenario we can see that new compromised formats will come out to found a sweet spot beetween demand and technological connection resources... i hope there will be a time we will pay to hear something but not to own it...
take a shoot: YouTube - What is Google Chrome OS?
That is a very interesting video. I thought cloud computing was already a goal of Microsoft. Can you imagine slave computers with no software at their hard-disk, only on-line logged access? It is a world without unauthorized copies. Perfect for authors of intellectual property, including software developers, operational systems, video games, video distributors and musicians!
There was a world where phonorecords were no ubiquitous, at least not as ubiquitous as literature already was after xerox (it had been since Johannes Gutenberg mechanical printing press and it much more now with PDF copies).
There was already many ways to copy the phonorecord, but the copies were limited and it was difficult to retain the same quality from the master. It was possible to copy a Long Play with a tape recorder. But you did that to listen to that music at your car.
Digital technologies started to change that world. Nowadays you can copy the phonorecord without quality degradation. You want to listen to your CD’s without the hassle of opening CD boxes. You just have to navigate in your music server.
Once you have a digital copy at your hard disk, sharing that files with a whole bunch of people is very easy. You had to make a lot of tapes to share your music taste with, I don’t know, ten friends. It took a lot of time to do those copies. Now your master equivalent phonorecords are vulnerable to sharing in many hard-disks. Now only one selling means millions of unauthorized reproduction.
And that’s a problem for many people: artists, studios and the whole recording industry. This is a problem with video authoring also, so we are talking about the whole entertainment industry. I am narrowing to the audio industry.
Although I really believe that internet high resolution audio downloads are the inevitable future, we are going to see a lot of struggle.
The main problem is how to deal distribution and copy protection.
Some consumers think music is expensive. Others do not want to pay at all for electronic reproduced music: they prefer to pay the live music artist. There are many ways of thinking how authors are remunerated. It is a question of business model.
Artists are also struggling to acquire more profit share from the audio distribution chain. But the music companies used to capture much of the profit, because they supported new talents, gave them a good structure to be creative, made a secure distribution etc. No artist was able to reach the market without a record label when your market was only consuming long plays phonorecords. The thing is artists need to earn some money.
Nowadays artists can record their tracks and distribute their content at the web. They potentially would not need a music company. But they still have the problem of multiple unauthorized copies. Some defend strong music companies with strong copyrights: they want gold record awards and fortune. Others defend phonorecords freedom: they prefer live touring to get their profit.
There are people from governments trying to impose taxes over writable CD’s to remunerate authors (musicians mainly, but every authors suffers with unauthorized copies, just as Microsoft). Now you need flash drive taxation... And so on... But download or streaming taxation will be very difficult to enforce, don't you think? And how do you share that public revenue within artists? Humm, that seems a centralized economy...
The software industry is finding their way to capture value. They are imposing cloud computing, protecting their valuable software at main servers and allowing logged in people (those who pay) to access their functionalities.
The music industry have not found their way yet (video also). SACD has suffered some consumer rejection because of copyright restrictions. That’s why we not see DSD downloads. Digital radio or internet streaming shall be an option. It will depend on consumer acceptance.
I believe that everybody that buys a CD have the right to listen that phonorecord in their IPOD, at their cars, at their living room stereo system or at their bedrooms using a music server. But I think it is unfair to distribute this phonorecord at the internet. Some think that this is culture and must be freely distributed to people that can’t afford them. The ones who can afford might pay a premium for a live show.
I really do not know the answer.
I am saying all that because the question of “what’s the best digital source?” is always answered with the audiophile view. But that is not the only view. Copyright structure will always affect the digital source technologies.
There was a world where phonorecords were no ubiquitous, at least not as ubiquitous as literature already was after xerox (it had been since Johannes Gutenberg mechanical printing press and it much more now with PDF copies).
There was already many ways to copy the phonorecord, but the copies were limited and it was difficult to retain the same quality from the master. It was possible to copy a Long Play with a tape recorder. But you did that to listen to that music at your car.
Digital technologies started to change that world. Nowadays you can copy the phonorecord without quality degradation. You want to listen to your CD’s without the hassle of opening CD boxes. You just have to navigate in your music server.
Once you have a digital copy at your hard disk, sharing that files with a whole bunch of people is very easy. You had to make a lot of tapes to share your music taste with, I don’t know, ten friends. It took a lot of time to do those copies. Now your master equivalent phonorecords are vulnerable to sharing in many hard-disks. Now only one selling means millions of unauthorized reproduction.
And that’s a problem for many people: artists, studios and the whole recording industry. This is a problem with video authoring also, so we are talking about the whole entertainment industry. I am narrowing to the audio industry.
Although I really believe that internet high resolution audio downloads are the inevitable future, we are going to see a lot of struggle.
The main problem is how to deal distribution and copy protection.
Some consumers think music is expensive. Others do not want to pay at all for electronic reproduced music: they prefer to pay the live music artist. There are many ways of thinking how authors are remunerated. It is a question of business model.
Artists are also struggling to acquire more profit share from the audio distribution chain. But the music companies used to capture much of the profit, because they supported new talents, gave them a good structure to be creative, made a secure distribution etc. No artist was able to reach the market without a record label when your market was only consuming long plays phonorecords. The thing is artists need to earn some money.
Nowadays artists can record their tracks and distribute their content at the web. They potentially would not need a music company. But they still have the problem of multiple unauthorized copies. Some defend strong music companies with strong copyrights: they want gold record awards and fortune. Others defend phonorecords freedom: they prefer live touring to get their profit.
There are people from governments trying to impose taxes over writable CD’s to remunerate authors (musicians mainly, but every authors suffers with unauthorized copies, just as Microsoft). Now you need flash drive taxation... And so on... But download or streaming taxation will be very difficult to enforce, don't you think? And how do you share that public revenue within artists? Humm, that seems a centralized economy...
The software industry is finding their way to capture value. They are imposing cloud computing, protecting their valuable software at main servers and allowing logged in people (those who pay) to access their functionalities.
The music industry have not found their way yet (video also). SACD has suffered some consumer rejection because of copyright restrictions. That’s why we not see DSD downloads. Digital radio or internet streaming shall be an option. It will depend on consumer acceptance.
I believe that everybody that buys a CD have the right to listen that phonorecord in their IPOD, at their cars, at their living room stereo system or at their bedrooms using a music server. But I think it is unfair to distribute this phonorecord at the internet. Some think that this is culture and must be freely distributed to people that can’t afford them. The ones who can afford might pay a premium for a live show.
I really do not know the answer.
I am saying all that because the question of “what’s the best digital source?” is always answered with the audiophile view. But that is not the only view. Copyright structure will always affect the digital source technologies.
being me with the ones who believe it is culture, and also with the political paranoical-anzxious people about technology, take a breath: the more the power the more the possibilities to tweak and crack it, the more centralized, the more it will loose control in its structure. when you see it enforced expect to see more hacks and more freedom.as long as the system is service provider independent, and open sourced i don't see a very neat reason to don't think it's an orizontal effort of the community and not a vertical controled system. and also note, those are note thin clients: web-apps run localy on the hardware, that's an hybrid.
deutche grammophone as a nice online store, you can stream any disc for a week for .99cents... copyright has to be rethought but it's a long way
deutche grammophone as a nice online store, you can stream any disc for a week for .99cents... copyright has to be rethought but it's a long way
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