PlayClassics master file giveaway for CA members

[Tony Lauck]

Today I downloaded the 96/24 master file of pianist Luis Grané's recording of Iberia by Albéniz. The download went quick (at the full speed of my DSL line). After unizipping the FLAC files I played them using HQPlayer on my Windows computer, a Mytek 192-DSD DAC and a pair of powered Focal Twin 6 near field studio monitors with a Sub 6 subwoofer.

 

I had no problem adjusting my volume so that the piano sounded natural at realistic concert level volumes on my Focal studio monitors. At this point, I began to appreciate just how superb an artist Luis Grané was. Every detail of musical phrasing, pedaling, and selection of piano tone was in perfect service to the music. The loud portions were brilliant, without any harshness. (I'm intimately familiar with the sounds of live pianos, having lived with a pianist for forty years and before this studied piano myself for a number of years.)

 

In summary, I don't believe I've heard a better recording of a piano.

[Tony Lauck]

I can assure you nobody touched anything

 

That effect around the 1 minute mark is just the result of the drummer hitting harder and maybe in a slightly different sport of the membrane which produced both a higher volume with a slightly different tone. If we were editing that is probably the kind of thing that we would have edited out.

 

We are not using dynamic range compression so that makes this kind of "accidents" really hearable. The use of dynamic range compression does not just allow for a higher playback volume, it also helps mask minor volume unevenness on the instruments.

 

One interesting thing about these experiment is how it affected the drummer himself. He had never been recorded this way. He had always been recorded using multiple close mics with lots of compression. When you apply that much compression to an instrument you are making it very difficult for the performer to try to create layers of sound. It is very interesting to see how as he progressed further in the recording session he started to experiment more with this kind of layer effect. He heard the playback of each improvisation right after he played them. So my guess is he realized that there was room for that possibility and he tried to take advantage of it. You can tell that at the end of the third take (after minute 3:36) he was already experimenting quite a bit with these layer effect.

 

Ha Ha! Now that the drummer can hear how he sounds to others, perhaps he will change his playing.

[Tony Lauck]

Hi Jud and mansr,

I do not have insider or specific information about playlist changing the phase of tracks vis-a-vis album play mode.

I found that out a couple of years ago by listening. And over different versions of iTunes, the change persisted.

You may try a track or two of solo voice with which you are very familiar. Listen carefully and attentively if you aren't accustomed to picking up phase difference. In the album play mode you will hear the mouth "spitting" out words towards you whereas in the playlist mode, the same words are "sucked" in. To get a feel of it, you say the word "go". it is spitted out from the mouth. You say the same word by sucking in air into your throat. The same word is produced by both methods but in opposite phase.

Nowadays, phase change is recognised and you will find in high end pre-amps and DACs a phase change switch. I understand phase change is NOT measurable by instruments.

 

It would be very helpful if you could give specific examples of how to elicit this effect that you have found to be repeatable. If so, then there would be specific experiments that could be performed to measure and document the polarity reversal, for example by capturing the signal sent to a DAC under both circumstances.

 

This is certainly possible, because all things are possible with software (although nothing is easy). It seems rather implausible, because normal bugs would not reverse polarity in any digital signal processing that I've ever looked out. But who knows?

 

BTW, I am a firm believer in audibility of polarity, with many recordings and some speaker systems. (Comment does not apply to phase incoherent recordings or to phase incoherent speakers, of which there are many.)

[Tony Lauck]

I've done a fair amount of work on audio codecs, and accidentally inverting the polarity is actually quite easy (and even easier to spot if you compare the output to a reference digitally rather than merely listening to it). However, having a the polarity flip depending on whether a high-level playback manager is working off an "album" or a "playlist" seems exceedingly unlikely.

 

That's been my experience as well.

[Tony Lauck]

I'm not interested in specific tracks that are inverted phase (or not) nor what that means, since there being no standard for polarity this has to do with the particular playback system used.

 

My interest was specifically an experiment that one could perform with specific software that produces different phase playback according to the sequences of user actions. I don't care whether the polarity is "right" or "wrong" at any given point in the experiment, just that it changes. (And this can absolutely be verified to 100% accuracy by taking an SPDIF output going to a DAC and looping it back and recording it (or recording it on a second computer. Then one can inspect individual samples in the file with any audio editor and immediately note polarity reversals when comparing two versions.)

 

I won't say more. It belongs on another thread. Personally, I don't care one iota about what iTunes does or doesn't do as I don't and won't use Apple products. I also don't care whether a particular recording is "in phase" or not. If I can tell that it's out of phase it's just one mouse click to fix.