Another DAC - Audio Note

[tfarney]

sgbaird -- If you're not over on Steve Hoffman's music forum, you have not found your home. Japanese pressings, German pressings, targets, older is almost always better...this is very familiar territory. I haven't drunk the full glass of kool aid there (I prefer cabernet), but the thing is, they may be a bit...um...obsessive, but they're often right. And while you won't find me on the net searching for the first made in Germany for America pressing of whatever, you will find me in the used cd stores a couple of times a week, buying another man's trash for pennies on the dollar and relishing the fact that just about everything manufactured before the mid-90s sounds better than the high-priced remastered box sets. Just last week I picked up a Barry Diamet-masted Physical Grafitti for $10. And it sounds goooooooood!!!

 

Tim

 

[tfarney]

"STOP IT!!! ... and thanks. ;-) .... I'm well aware of Brothers in Arms, BTW. Via vinyl. I got to see them on the tour too.

 

markr"

 

Yeah...I remember thy vinyl. The vinyl was good.

 

Tim

 

 

[sgbaird]

We appear to be on the same page.

 

Uh, those guys at the Hoffman site do get a bit extreme, for sure, and at the risk of sounding more arrogant than I really am, I go there once every 10 days or so just to see if there are any threads worth reading. Don't you just love all those polls, like, "What's your favorite bubble bath?" or, "When was the last time you scratched your left ear?" I'm sorry, and all this after my new year's resolution to remain calm and non-derisive.

 

I'll give SH his due though, he does have the issue of original CD pressings usually sounding better than the stuff they're putting out now properly documented, with all of the whys and wherefores. And, since you've got that avatar here of Van the Man, let me tell you that it was when WB released the super-duper 24 bit reissue of It's Too Late To Stop Now in the mid nineties that I started to realize that something might be rotten in Denmark. I really wanted to like that new reissue since the first one had a few segments in it that bottomed out my (then current) Martin Logans, but it was pretty evident that the guy who had put the new reissue together compressed the S-H-EYE-T out of it. (Confession: at the time I didn't even know who SH was, I only knew that something was wrong.)

 

Oh, & I didn't know who Barry Diament was either... All I knew back then was that when Mirage sent me a set of speakers to review for T$S, I stuck a few Zep CDs in my player & was awestruck at how pure Plant's voice sounded on "Dazed & Confused" (from I) and "Since I've Been Loving You" (from III... never liked II). I had to call one of my audio buddies who had just moved 250 miles away to Houston to come listen to these tunes on these speakers. By then, though, the Diament Zep stuff was already out of print, and it took him a month or so to find them used — even in a place so big as Houston.

 

My favorite sound guy? Bernie Grundman's digital work for Classic Records is hard to beat.

 

You've been right all the time when you've posted the gospel about how it all boils down to who's at the controls when this great old analog stuff gets mastered to digital, Tim. And I'll add to that that often the selection of the equipment these engineers use will make a difference. There's one more thing I'll add, and that is that some of the highly-touted audio equipment used in the home could be a curse or a blessing, depending, as you have said elsewhere, on one's room (your three most important audio components), and the synergy that your other components may or may not produce in that room. If I move, I will probably have to take my room with me. They say that, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," so I have something of an antique audio system. Many of my components have been with me for more than 25 years.

 

I'll have to say, too, that I had not been prepared for the improvement in sound that loading a major portion of my CD collection onto a hard drive has brought me. There's just an ease and rightness to what I hear; even my wife hears enough of this to stop and listen. Now that's saying something.

 

[tfarney]

Yeah, the main draw of the Hoffman forum for me is music threads like the album-by-album Van Morrison thread and similar ones for Dylan, King Crimson, etc. Costs me a lot of money though. I'm far from a completist, but the Van and Crimso threads made me buy stuff. Quite a bit of stuff. Dylan will soon. On that subject, the 30th anniversary King Crimson re-masters are not brick walled. They are killers. The older ones, like pre-Lark's Tongues, sound much better than the originals. If you like KC, do not pass Go, etc.

 

Yep, Hoffman gets it. Some of his devotees have drunk a bit too much of the kool aid, though, and believe that if it is older and rarer it is, therefore, better. Not so. AD and DA converters, like all digital technology, march forward, and pretty rapidly. The stuff from the 90s that was not overly compressed, or for that matter, contemporary stuff that is mastered well, is better than targets from the dawn of digital. It just about has to be.

 

Here's the thing I can't say over there for fear of being virtually body-slammed: I have only one of Hoffman's DCC discs, Jackson Browne's "Late For The Sky." It's too dark. There, I said it. It ain't right by my ears. Somebody, I have to assume it's Steve, hates harsh and bright so much that he was willing to sacrifice clarity and detail for warmth. MHO. YMMV. Some people like it. Some people like digital compression. It's a big tent.

 

Where does It's Too Late To Stop Now bottom out on your Martin Logans? Cause if they are the ones with the integrated subs, that's one big bottom! Can't say I've ever heard it on my much more modest equipment, but I have an early (don't really know when) Polydor cd set and it sounds good. Really good. Could use a touch more bottom end, but the dynamics, clarity and sense of space are pretty dogone juicy. I had the vinyl up until a couple of weeks ago. I don't play vinyl anymore, I'm not set up for it, so I sent that and a pristine "Irish Heartbeat" to a Van freak on the Hoffman forum. Random act of kindness. Made a friend for life.

 

Speaking of bad mastering and brick-walling, shuffle in iTunes just kicked in a cut from the Ultimate Who set. Compressed to devoid of dynamics, equalized to burnt bacon crisp, and noise-reduced to lifelessness.

 

I hate it when that happens, especially in headphones...

 

Tim

 

[TimH]

Tim, big King Crimson fan here. Where can one buy the 30th Anniv remasters you mentioned - regular places like Amazon or direct from their label site, DGM? I have the original vinyl of everything but would love a nice digital version to rip.

 

Showing my newbieness here, but who is Steve Hoffman and how can I find out more?

 

Thanks,

 

TheOtherTim

 

 

[tfarney]

Tim - Yeah, I got Court, Poseidon, Starless, Red and Discipline all from Amazon. I already had a good-sounding EG cd of Lark's Tongues. I can't believe I waited this long to replace all that other stuff on cd, but it was almost good. It had been so long since I'd heard Red and Starless and Bible Black that it was almost new to me. And I havent run into any new music that provides the kind of sonic whack to the side of the head one gets from Red in a long, long time. That Wetton, Bruford, Fripp and sometimes Cross lineup was just remarkable. In my own defense, I was not Crimsoless all those years. I had The Great Deceiver. So I had it all live, and multiple performances of a good bit.

 

Wow, have we ever hijacked this thread! Chris, anytime you want to tell us to take it to the "music" room, that would sure be fair.

 

Tim

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I love it! Let's keep it going.

 

The only thing I can say is, "You can't judge a book by its cover, or a forum topic by its title!"

 

[tfarney]

Alrighty then! I could do this all night...

 

In the world of badly eq'd, horribly digitally-mastered cds, Bruce Springsteen's recent "Magic" is up for some sort of award. I'm not talking about the material, mind you, just the production, and it actually starts with the mix, an affair in which every silence was filled up like white space in a grocery store ad, and it ends with some of the worst digital mastering on record -- there are absolutely no dynamics. The lightest strum of an acoustic guitar is as loud as the slam of a kick drum. It's awful. I can only listen to it in the car, where it renders road and wind noise a non-issue. But...

 

1987's Tunnel of Love is as good as Magic is bad. It is full of space, air, warmth: it contains some of the sweetest, wamest, most spacious reverb this side of Mark Knopfler's work. You just want to take a bath in the stuff. There are a few cheesy 80s-era synths in there, and they are totally forgiven. I don't know if it has ever been remastered. My cd is of the period of the original release. It is a thing of great beauty. If all we got were the title cut, "When You're Alone," and "Spare Parts," it would be worth the price of admission. But we get so much more.

 

Have I mentioned yet, my undying love for Bill Evan's "Sunday At The Village Vanguard?" This one was digitally remastered recently, by the original engineer whose name currently escapes me. I know vinyl heads who claim that the room ambiance of live recordings is lost in the digital medium. I send them to this disc. I can not only hear the room, I can smell the waitresses' perfume. I can see the stage lights cut through the smoke.

 

David Crosby's first solo album, "If I Could Only Remember My Name." This aptly-named smoky hippie opus from 1971 is an unmitigated masterpiece. First of all, it is so unique and original that it would sound just as fresh, or just as dated, if it were released today. It is a thing unto itself, and I like that. Second, the thing sounds gorgeous. It is half hippie jam band, half acid-soaked Gregorian choir singing in tongues (and some really bad French). Acoustic guitars loom and shine like huge harvest moons, basses rumble as if the were the drone strings of a giant's sitar. Voices, many voices, strange, incomprehensible voices, ebb and flow and rise up out of the black to fill cavernous spaces, like abstract string sections, like church organs, like God, I don't know, just buy it.

 

I can't imagine that it has been remastered as long as you're not getting cuts from comps. Get the original disc and you should be ok. There are a lot of guest players of the So Cal genre of the era - Joni, Jorma, Graham, etc, but the band is basically The Grateful Dead, whom Crosby loved. I think Crosby's "If I Could Only Remember My Name" is The Grateful Dead's best album by a good margin.

 

Tim

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Bill Evan's "Sunday At The Village Vanguard"

 

Analogue Productions has an absolutely superb sounding version of this. Link Here

 

[tfarney]

I'll bet it's wonderful in SACD. It is such a stunning recording, it's sort of the mastering engineer's to screw up. Thankfully, that hasn't been done, to my knowledge. It's only weakness in my view is the extreme panning of Lefario's bass to the left channel. A bit hard to take in headphones. Fortunately my amp has a crossfeed circuit, it's not something I use much, but it comes in handy in extreme cases like this. Keeps fatigue at bay.

 

Tim

 

[rom661]

Just spotted this one. Thanks for the encouragement. Actually I am pretty good but there are lots of pretty good designers out there. The major thing I can say about my stuff is that it gets my priorities right. I told someone once that I design from the midrange out. Funny that you mentioned the Quattros. The speakers in my living room are Vandersteen 5A's. The bass is even better than the Quattros. If I could "marry" two speaker designs it would be the Wilson Watt/Puppies and the 5A's. They each do things I love. The Vandersteens are so harmonically right and get the nuance so well, plus they have amazing low bass as mentioned. Sometimes, though I would trade off just a little of that for the incredible dynamics and slam of the Wilsons. They are both great, I have just never been very good at compromise.

 

[markr]

Saw KC in three of their configurations. Also, I have nothing of them in the digital domain.

 

markr

 

[markr]

... It was indeed too late. To add punch to your warning, the Mac would not read the CD. I had to take it over to the PC and have it read by the Plextor optical drive in that. I duped the CD and then ripped it via CDParanoia. The results are actually pretty satisfactory. Have I ever mentioned here that I don't like the sound of most CD's?. ....anywho,... You need to listen to "River" the Herbie Hancock tribute to Joni Mitchell. I think you will enjoy it. No matter how "unfortunate" the production may be. It is great music.

 

markr

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I second that. River is pretty good and it certainly pissed off plenty of popular music fans when it took home the Grammy for album of the year.

 

[tfarney]

"Have I ever mentioned here that I don't like the sound of most CD's?"

 

So do you rip to your server system from needledrops?

 

I haven't heard River yet, though I like both Herbie and Joni, so it's a pretty good bet for me, I suppose.

 

Tim

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hey Tim - Have you heard the PS Audio DL III DAC or their GCHA headphone amp? I know you are a serious headphone user and often these two products go together nicely.

 

I have both on the way and will be reviewing them very soon.

 

[tfarney]

I haven't heard those, Chris, but I'll look them up.

 

Tim

 

[markr]

... I keep saying that I don't like the sound of CD's in posts here on CA - and it is a true statement for the most part. The reality is that many many releases that I own were only available on CD. Not that I was happy with that fact - far from it -, but it is just something that I've had to put up with since the 80's.

 

No 'needle drops' as of yet (vinyl converted to digital), but that isn't far away at this point. I will be converting vinyl as soon as that is economically possible for me. I want to do it right. The post that was made somewhere here on CA about the best way to do it (including a dbx noise reduction system), rang clear and true to me. While I had dbx back in the day, I no longer do. I've been looking around to see what I can see in that realm before I begin the ripping of vinyl. It would be cool if someone would make an appropriate dbx plugin for Sound Forge....... come to think of it, I should research that because it might already be there....

 

ALSO, no 'real' server exists here yet. My focus and money has gone to production rather than to reproduction of music for the biggest part for many years now. I certainly have the hardware, it is just used for other purposes. My distaste for most CD audio sound ALMOST kept me from buying any music for years as well, in favor of my trying to find musicians that I could help produce music for. When I wasn't working my 'day job' that is.... I knew that the "sound" of digital would change, because I knew that the 'CD standard' was made prematurely and would eventually improve. Computer Audiophile has brought me 'back into the fold' of audiophillia. (albeit, kicking and screaming...) - it's a good thing though....

 

markr

 

[tfarney]

FWIW, Mark, the purists over on Steve Hoffman's forum don't believe in noise reduction - not in mastering, not in needle-dropping. They believe it has an adverse effect on...well it depends on who you're listening to when, but the general consensus is that it's not a good thing.

 

I guess I'm lucky. I don't like bad production or mastering any more than anyone else who is paying attention, but all things being equal, I'm fine with the sound of CDs, in fact, I've gotten so used to it that I'm pretty distracted at this point by the surface noise that shows up on even the most pristine vinyl as soon as the needle touches down. The truth, I suppose is that the formats each have their strengths and weaknesses. I've convinced myself that I prefer the strengths of the medium that is most convenient and available. It works out rather well, actually.

 

Tim

 

[sgbaird]

That calliope in the first KC album has always fascinated me; my old original Atlantic LP always did this best — far better than the relatively rare MoFi. As for CD, I'll take Tim's recommendation & buy the 30th anniversary edition of this as my 4th digital stab at finding something to live with. Haven't heard a digital rendition of the Crosby LP although I've been enjoying this one for years, so, I guess my wallet will be a little thinner after another trip to Amazon.

 

While I'm thinking about this kind of thing, does anybody have a favorite version of two Santana albums, Abraxas & Caravanserai? I enjoy both of these & have the single layer SACDs of both. Obviously I cannot load these into my iTunes library so I am looking for PCM alternatives. Has anybody heard the new MFSL Abraxas? Any threads on it over at Hoffman's site?

 

Evans at the V.G. is a great album, and, no doubt, Doug Sax did a great job on the SACD for AP. Since the gears were switched to Jazz momentarily, do your best to locate a copy of the aluminum MFSL Art Pepper +11. These go cheaply at ebay when they show up there, but, uh, this is one of those instances where the old CD really does play music better than the new reissues. I posted this a few years back at another site: http://www.sa-cd.net/showreviews/1607#1980 In other words, despite the MoFi heavy handedness, theirs plays music better than the new SACD.

 

Getting back to something Tim said about DCC CDs... um, I wouldn't disagree with you, Tim about many of these. The Eagles GH stinks to high heaven; BUT the Nat Cole discs, all 3 of them, are to die for. As I said earlier, the very few Classic Records CDs that Bernie Grundman engineered for the company really do represent the best sounding digital in my experience.

 

 

 

[tfarney]

Do a search on Abraxas over on the Hoffman forum. I'm sure it has been discussed. If not, start a thread. You'll get a lot of opinion. The Abraxas I have is old but nothing special. It sounds fine. I haven't listened to it in awhile. Every time I reach for Carlos, I'm unable to resist Lotus.

 

Tim

 

[rom661]

I think it really comes down to what bothers you most. I love much of what vinyl does in terms of the sense of ease and the proper integration of fundamentals with harmonics. I rather dislike surface noise and inner groove distortion. For each individual, it really comes down to what bugs him the most. I understand Mark's position, but it is not universal and is certainly subjective. My desires are simple; I want the best of both worlds. And for the record, Mark, I once owned and proudly wore the Sheffield Labs T-Shirt which proclaimed "Stop Digital Madness"

 

[tfarney]

There's a big vinyl discussion going on over on the Hoffman forum now. There almost always is. This one though, was inspired by an old interview with Bob Ludwig in which he supposed that the enhanced sense of space folks hear on vinyl may have to do with an illusion created by the surface noise. It sounds pretty strange, but I'm not so sure it's that far fetched. If you're interested, go over there and look up the thread. Pretty interesting stuff.

 

Tim

 

[sgbaird]

Tim, I went to Amazon to order a copy of the 30th Anniv ed of Court of King Crimson only to find that the site lists it as the Caroline release, out of print and only used for sale. I went to check my 3 copies & it appears I have one of these. But just to confirm that this is the one you recommended, this one's UPC is 01704-61502-24. I also have an earlier Polydor and a Japan Mini LP of this, neither of which sound quite as good as the Caroline. This is such an exceptional album that I don't mind buying it again. I am always a little cautious about buying used items without verifying that the seller actually has what he has listed. If the above is not the version you are recommending, please provide the correct UPC #.

 

After a little digging over @ Hoffman, I decided to take a chance on the two Santana albums I asked about, choosing those reissued in 2003. There was little consensus on Abraxas, so, in addition to the 2003 version, I ordered the new MoFi too. It would be difficult for me to comment on these compared to the SACDs I have, Caravanserai possibly being the best sounding analog > SACD I own in the genre, with Abraxas not far behind.

 

I also sprang for a copy of the Crosby. Have not listened to this in probably > 25 years.

 

Thinking about a great sounding vintage rock album so that I can offer up some tit-for-tat, I recommend Steve Miller's second album for Capitol:

 

 

 

If you don't know much about Steve Miller prior to his big hits, then this one should be a real treat for you both musically and in the sound camp too. Some really great stereo images come at the beginning of the album where we get some electric guitar meant to sound like a foghorn out on the ocean; then there's the drag race that begins way off in the distance on your left with the dragster driving in front of you then disappearing off to your right. Further into the album, the backup vocals and bell tree in "Quicksilver Girl" ought to be pretty amazing to anyone with a high quality system. Don't know what this would sound like on headphones, but its pretty terrific in a good sounding listening room.

 

Oh, and I almost forgot: that IS Boz Scaggs you're hearing in a few of the lead vocals. IIRC both he and Miller met in HS in Texas, but I did not check that fact.

 

[tfarney]

I have this really bad habit of discarding jewel boxes and docs and putting my cds in binders, so I don't have any documentation. But if you can look at the disc itself, it is impossible to miss. It is pink, an HDCD, and says Original Master Edition right on the disc. Actually, now that you made me think about this, it seems that there was a 30th Anniversary Edition (Like my Poseidon, Starless and Red) at one point. But only one side of that one was from the original master. The subsequent OM edition is the one to get. And I'm pretty sure it's the one that is common these days. You shouldn't have to search for it. I just ordered Court and that's the one that came.

 

Tim