How can a non-oversampling DAC sound good?

[Miska]

Of course not all IM with ultrasonics is distortion. Real instruments have ultrasonic harmonics and we hear the audible-frequency results of intermodulation those harmonics cause.

 

Yes, that's different, because in those cases, and for vinyl, you don't have the same ultrasonic content structure. You only have normal harmonics, not repeating base-band (audio-band) spectrum where every second band has inverse frequency content... So the level and content of the ultrasonic frequencies is different. However, both are correlated to the audio-band, but in a different way. For vinyl, the intermodulation source frequencies are from lower frequency content and not from ultrasonic content as such.

 

Let's say you have 1 + 1.5 kHz tones from vinyl, this gives rise to 500 Hz IMD tone, but the spectrum is not repeating up to MHz range frequencies. But with filterless NOS DAC at 44100 kHz sampling rate the output will repeat again at 42600 + 43100 + 45100 + 45600, 86700 + 87200 + 89200 + 89700, etc frequencies. This already creates sum of multiple different IM tones... If there's an analog filter in the DAC output, it will attenuate these to some extent, but the level for the lowest sampling rate multiples will still be high...

 

IOW, what vinyl player or hires recording won't have from natural sources is the stair-stepping waveform that is source of these...

[VenturaRV]

I'm not sure what is old, I remember only back to late 90's.

 

 

I know about Audio Note. For Luxman I didn't quickly find info on DA-07. But DA-06 and the other current models are all normal oversampling DACs based on TI/BB DAC chips (mostly PCM1792).

You're right about Luxman.

 

They stopped selling NOS, filterless models a few years ago (their last ones included PCM Shannon and Fluency conversions up to 24/196k and DSD*64 proccessing).

 

Wadia "old" models I have in mind are from the late '80s (I repeat I can be wrong in this case, but they are mentioned in papers when it comes to NOS and filterless CD standard converters).

 

VenturaRV

[Miska]

Wadia "old" models I have in mind are from the late '80s (I repeat I can be wrong in this case, but they are mentioned in papers when it comes to NOS and filterless CD standard converters).

 

OK, the available DAC technology and amount of available DSP processing power was so much different those days that it is not as such comparable to modern things...

[Jud]

Yes, that's different, because in those cases, and for vinyl, you don't have the same ultrasonic content structure. You only have normal harmonics, not repeating base-band (audio-band) spectrum where every second band has inverse frequency content... So the level and content of the ultrasonic frequencies is different. However, both are correlated to the audio-band, but in a different way. For vinyl, the intermodulation source frequencies are from lower frequency content and not from ultrasonic content as such.

 

Let's say you have 1 + 1.5 kHz tones from vinyl, this gives rise to 500 Hz IMD tone, but the spectrum is not repeating up to MHz range frequencies. But with filterless NOS DAC at 44100 kHz sampling rate the output will repeat again at 42600 + 43100 + 45100 + 45600, 86700 + 87200 + 89200 + 89700, etc frequencies. This already creates sum of multiple different IM tones... If there's an analog filter in the DAC output, it will attenuate these to some extent, but the level for the lowest sampling rate multiples will still be high...

 

IOW, what vinyl player or hires recording won't have from natural sources is the stair-stepping waveform that is source of these...

 

What's interesting is the degree to which we are not sensitive or can become desensitized to gross frequency distortions in the audible band. That is what piqued my curiosity about the information you provided about vinyl, which I didn't know before. Have those of us who listened to a lot of vinyl, CD players, or DACs that allowed this been trained to tolerate or even expect the characteristics of IMD in "high end audio"? Of course, on the other hand, people will argue overemphasis on keeping out IMD in many DACs may have desensitized us to time domain distortions in our audio reproduction.

 

I can't say either view is incorrect.

[VenturaRV]

OK, the available DAC technology and amount of available DSP processing power was so much different those days that it is not as such comparable to modern things...

Well, I do really think that then and now the point is more a question of attitude and approach than available technology.

 

One, for me,remarkable example: I've downloaded orchestral music recorded today in 24/192k format. My PC sound card is seriously customized and converts high res files very properly, and its CD unit is a high quality SONY able to read up to DSD*64 discs.

I own quite a lot of Mercury Living Presence CD releases. I must sadly say that NO modern hi res recording reaches the feeling of reality and presence (never better said) an old Mercury record delivers.

 

The Luxman combo is out of the equation in this case, because I use for the comparison only the PC sound card, and the built in SONY CD reader.

 

Things become, paradoxically, far better and even with hi res downloads of RCA remasters from records made in the late '50s (about the same period of Mercury golden years).

 

VenturaRV

[Miska]

Well, I do really think that then and now the point is more a question of attitude and approach than available technology.

 

DACs are technology thing. What I'm doing with DSP these days wasn't really practically available in 80's in a way that you could fit it in a reasonably sized audio gear, at any price. Even if you'd spend a million dollars on it.

 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Moore%27s_Law_over_120_Years.png

 

I must sadly say that NO modern hi res recording reaches the feeling of reality and presence (never better said) an old Mercury record delivers.

 

Probably not kind of music I listen. But from classical sector you can try for example recordings from Channel Classics and 2L and they are actually really good. Cannot say I remember hearing anything nearly as accurate from CD's.

 

Things become, paradoxically, far better and even with hi res downloads of RCA remasters from records made in the late '50s (about the same period of Mercury golden years).

 

Well made hires makes things much better. But I have not heard any old recording where all kinds of recording defects wouldn't still be apparent one way or the other. But obviously the old masters of Pink Floyd for example are pretty good for the day.

 

But still, new things like Mark Knopfler's Privateering and Tracker in hires are much cleaner and better. Or David Gilmour's Rattle That Lock. Or Steven Wilson's solo albums in hires.

 

With hires, especially at 176.4k and higher rates and modern DAC you get rid of many technical problems.

[Miska]

I can't say either view is incorrect.

 

Yes, that is likely the case. Like when current teenagers are played MP3 and hires content and then asked which one they consider the most correct one, some of them end up saying MP3. Because that's what they've been listening and are using as a reference.

 

But also in many cases, once you know how certain types of errors sound like, it is much easier to recognize those. For example encoding some music to 64 kbps CBR MP3 and comparing it to uncompressed version makes it quite easy to hear the errors and then finding the similar errors in 128 kbps version is much easier than before hearing the error emphasized with 64 kbps version.

 

Another factor is just that different people are more or less sensitive to different kinds of errors. So overall, if you have two cases where both have equal amount of different type of error, two different persons may have different opinion on which one is better. And neither of them are right or wrong, just different. When you have a compromised format like RedBook, there will likely be always weightings one way or the other.

[VenturaRV]

DACs are technology thing. What I'm doing with DSP these days wasn't really practically available in 80's in a way that you could fit it in a reasonably sized audio gear, at any price. Even if you'd spend a million dollars on it.

 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Moore%27s_Law_over_120_Years.png

 

 

 

Probably not kind of music I listen. But from classical sector you can try for example recordings from Channel Classics and 2L and they are actually really good. Cannot say I remember hearing anything nearly as accurate from CD's.

 

 

 

Well made hires makes things much better. But I have not heard any old recording where all kinds of recording defects wouldn't still be apparent one way or the other. But obviously the old masters of Pink Floyd for example are pretty good for the day.

 

But still, new things like Mark Knopfler's Privateering and Tracker in hires are much cleaner and better. Or David Gilmour's Rattle That Lock. Or Steven Wilson's solo albums in hires.

 

With hires, especially at 176.4k and higher rates and modern DAC you get rid of many technical problems.

I agree with you in the fact that today technology and DSP capabilities are better than those available in the '80s (not to mention in the '50s and '60s).

 

My point was, in my example, why a, say, a 2L orchestral recording sounds so clean, impollute and... incredible in the worst sense of the term. A symphonic orchestra does not sounds that way in real life at all. These type of sound seems more like a synthetizer than an actual orchestra.

 

I've heard many times Mark Knopfler's "Privateering", 'cause I have it in my CD collection and in hi res download (better, but not ashtonishing better). It sounds great in both cases, but this is a totally different battle field. It is a product inherently made with lots of mixing and processing in order to achieve a pleasant result to the ears, not a credible one, like most of Pop/Rock music.

 

I'm affraid we're talking about very different subjects: truthfulness to the original thing and pleasure to the hearing . They are not, by no means, the same thing.

 

VenturaRV

[VenturaRV]

By the way:

I absolutely agree with you in your comment about MP3 format and the surprising way many young people reacts when they hear uncompressed and no lossy sound.

Maybe the answer lays in the sad fact that many of them has irreversible lost hearing accuracy, and needs to listen to music always at high level, a level below what they cannot hear both extremes of the spectrum. In other words: they have the hearing of very old people.

 

VenturaRV

[semente]

Following on from my DAC comparison thread (http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f6-dac-digital-analog-conversion/digital-analogue-converter-test-old-school-vs-new-kid-31354/), I simply don’t understand how the Altmann Attraction DAC, a non-oversampling and filterless DAC, can sound as accurate as it does. On listening to its output, it manages to reproduce a very convincing facsimile of the original file (see aforementioned thread for details).

The aliasing is clearly visible on the Altmann spectra, and yet it sounds more accurate than the 2Qute. I know there are some serious filter designers here (Miska and PeterSt spring immediately to mind) and a bunch of other very knowledgeable people too. Could you help me understand how this could be? Is the total elimination of pre- and post-ringing in the Altmann a more important factor than the introduction of some aliasing?

 

Mani.

 

@lmitche and I just happen to have been guests at a "mad scientist's lair" last weekend and heard a *very* interesting presentation of a filterless DAC. (Not in production, all discrete parts, the internal cabling you wouldn't believe....) It was feeding speakers well capable of 50KHz response, through a custom designed amp.

 

The immediacy was captivating, showing me what we're missing with the necessarily at least slightly more "polite" filters in the software or hardware we're accustomed to. Percussion hits, instrumental and vocal attacks, had an absolute "you are there" feeling, and the timing of all the transients seemed to me as if it helped with localization.

 

However, for any extended period, it was teeth-gritting. When we listened through the filtering of one of the software players on the market, everyone's feet started tapping and we were really enjoying ourselves for the first time all day. This is something I think the "mad scientist" and his lovely wife were loath to admit, even to themselves, but their feet were tapping too.

 

So yes, I think we are missing some dimension of reality that is very much emphasized by filterless DACs. The results are often sonically spectacular. But I don't want to listen to "sonic spectaculars," I want to listen to music. With the state of the art today, I am literally happier listening to music that *doesn't* have that last ounce of reality in the time dimension at the cost of teeth-gritting distortion.

I would call it "perceived realism" and not accuracy, which I would define as an as faithful as possible reproduction of the source signal, something which is very difficult to assess through listening in an objective, observational manner.

 

I have owned a NOS filterless DAC (Shigaraki) for a while and to be honest I really wished I could have been able to track the causes for that increased "perceived realism".

But in the end, just like Jud, I found that in a direct comparison with a high performance (or accuracy) CD player the latter sounded "smoother", less "gritty", more "loose", less "reproduced"...

[audiventory]

Very interesting about vinyl. Wonder if ears trained to vinyl might hear some IMD as "right."

 

Vinyl is sound enhancer. It is not matter of distortions.

[semente]

I agree with you in the fact that today technology and DSP capabilities are better than those available in the '80s (not to mention in the '50s and '60s).

 

My point was, in my example, why a, say, a 2L orchestral recording sounds so clean, impollute and... incredible in the worst sense of the term. A symphonic orchestra does not sounds that way in real life at all. These type of sound seems more like a synthetizer than an actual orchestra.

 

I've heard many times Mark Knopfler's "Privateering", 'cause I have it in my CD collection and in hi res download (better, but not ashtonishing better). It sounds great in both cases, but this is a totally different battle field. It is a product inherently made with lots of mixing and processing in order to achieve a pleasant result to the ears, not a credible one, like most of Pop/Rock music.

 

I'm affraid we're talking about very different subjects: truthfulness to the original thing and pleasure to the hearing . They are not, by no means, the same thing.

 

VenturaRV

 

I think that in the case of 2L it has more to do with mic positioning than High Resolution per se.

 

I would agree with Miska that with today's much more accurate mics, mic preamps and ADCs should produce better results that what was possible in the 50s.

 

 

On the other hand, the response of Mercury's 3 spaced omnis wasn't flat not flat nor did they produce a realistic stereo image...

[manisandher]

I would call it "perceived realism" and not accuracy, which I would define as an as faithful as possible reproduction of the source signal...

 

No, the Altmann capture really is a faithful reproduction of the original file. Don't take my word for it, take a listen for yourself - the original file and the Altmann capture are here: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f6-dac-digital-analog-conversion/how-can-non-oversampling-digital-analogue-converter-sound-good-31458/#post629348. Just listen to the original file (on as accurate a DAC as you can get your hands on) and compare that to the Altmann capture. You'll hear two very similar-sounding files.

 

BUT...

 

The Altmann capture may not be a true representation of how the Altmann actually sounds, because in taking the capture the ADC's anti-alias filter has removed all the ultrasonic imaging content from the Altmann's output. I agree with you, if one were to compare the Altmann's actual output (vs. the linked capture) to a high performance/accurate DAC, it may well be that it sounds brighter, more forward and more gritty.

 

As Miska has pointed out in the other thread, I could simply have used a preamp and compared the DACs directly. I've given my reasons for going the way I did in the other thread.

 

Mani.

[VenturaRV]

I would call it "perceived realism" and not accuracy, which I would define as an as faithful as possible reproduction of the source signal, something which is very difficult to assess through listening in an objective, observational manner.

 

I have owned a NOS filterless DAC (Shigaraki) for a while and to be honest I really wished I could have been able to track the causes for that increased "perceived realism".

But in the end, just like Jud, I found that in a direct comparison with a high performance (or accuracy) CD player the latter sounded "smoother", less "gritty", more "loose", less "reproduced"...

This is exactly the opossite of my own experience.

The fatigue comes after hours of listening to a high accuracy (?) CD oversampling sound, instead to listening to NOS, filterless DA-07, when fatigue never comes.

On the other hand, what I perceive as more "reproduced", lees "real" is the sound of a "high performance" CD or DAC oversampler and filtering unit, not the case with my non-Shannon, filterless DAC.

Very curious.

 

VenturaRV

[audiventory]

On the other hand, the response of Mercury's 3 spaced omnis wasn't flat not flat nor did they produce a realistic stereo image...

 

Realistic image is matter of re-creating sound field of concert hall in listening room. Hi-res can't solve the task without proper electro-mechanical systems of capturing and playback.

[manisandher]

Don't say that, I think you're one of the most articulate and clever folks around here, and this is also having read your posts on other sites

 

Cheers!

 

The idea is to perform this process first with the 'soundcard calibration' feature, and then save this file. Then, all subsequent measurements would use this file (you have to load it) to compensate some of the capture hardware's characteristics automatically by REW while capturing new gear. This will then provide a more accurate picture of the new gear captured, with less of the 'signature' of the capture gear.

 

I didn't know about this. Thanks. I'll definitely give it a go at some point. The Prism AD-124 that I'm using is a seriously good ADC - the best I've ever come across (yes, better than the Pacific Microsonics Model Two to my ears). The Tascam DA-3000 is considered a pretty good unit for the money, but as an ADC it sounds totally flat and grey compared to the Prism. Julian Dunn, the Prism's designer, died almost 14 years ago to the day, at the age of just 41. He had a special talent by all accounts.

 

Definitely check those Log-scale graphs too and let us know what you find in the 0-30Hz region.

 

Will do.

 

Mani.

[VenturaRV]

I think that in the case of 2L it has more to do with mic positioning than High Resolution per se.

 

I would agree with Miska that with today's much more accurate mics, mic preamps and ADCs should produce better results that what was possible in the 50s.

 

 

On the other hand, the response of Mercury's 3 spaced omnis wasn't flat not flat nor did they produce a realistic stereo image...

Agree with you what selection and positioning of mikes are at the nucleus of not only 2L modern recordings (and in many cases the overabundance of them... up to more than 50!) lack of realism . This was exactly what engineers like Robert Fine and Lewis Layton worked out so well.

 

Of course , hi res is not the cause of bad practices. On the contrary, it would be great that today recording engineers took full advantage of its wider dynamics and extended freq response, but not forgeting the basics of the art, in case they have known them at any time.

 

Another point (and this one concerns not only to today recordings, for sure):

When an orchestra (or another acoustic source being recorded) passes from playing loud to play soft, it does not goes far away from the listener, as it seems in most recordings, hi or low res, one thing you never feel in Mercury or RCA Living Stereo records. This is to clarify things about the supposed weirdness of stereo imaging in Mercury recordings.

 

VenturaRV

[semente]

Agree with you what selection and positioning of mikes are at the nucleus of not only 2L modern recordings (and in many cases the overabundance of them... up to more than 50!) lack of realism . This was exactly what engineers like Robert Fine and Lewis Layton worked out so well.

 

Of course , hi res is not the cause of bad practices. On the contrary, it would be great that today recording engineers took full advantage of its wider dynamics and extended freq response, but not forgeting the basics of the art, in case they have known them at any time.

 

Another point (and this one concerns not only to today recordings, for sure):

When an orchestra (or another acoustic source being recorded) passes from playing loud to play soft, it does not goes far away from the listener, as it seems in most recordings, hi or low res, one thing you never feel in Mercury or RCA Living Stereo records. This is to clarify things about the supposed weirdness of stereo imaging in Mercury recordings.

 

VenturaRV

 

In my experience, when one gets the impression of "instruments moving away from the listener when playing soft" this usually means that some component of the playback might not be resolving low-level sound/signals properly (high noise-floor or some other masking effect).

 

When you turn down the volume, do you feel a loss of detail?

 

Mics used by Mercury and RCA had a distinct toppy treble and this may give an impression of increased perceived detail.

[Jud]

Yes, that is likely the case. Like when current teenagers are played MP3 and hires content and then asked which one they consider the most correct one, some of them end up saying MP3. Because that's what they've been listening and are using as a reference.

 

But also in many cases, once you know how certain types of errors sound like, it is much easier to recognize those. For example encoding some music to 64 kbps CBR MP3 and comparing it to uncompressed version makes it quite easy to hear the errors and then finding the similar errors in 128 kbps version is much easier than before hearing the error emphasized with 64 kbps version.

 

Another factor is just that different people are more or less sensitive to different kinds of errors. So overall, if you have two cases where both have equal amount of different type of error, two different persons may have different opinion on which one is better. And neither of them are right or wrong, just different. When you have a compromised format like RedBook, there will likely be always weightings one way or the other.

 

I would call it "perceived realism" and not accuracy, which I would define as an as faithful as possible reproduction of the source signal, something which is very difficult to assess through listening in an objective, observational manner.

 

I have owned a NOS filterless DAC (Shigaraki) for a while and to be honest I really wished I could have been able to track the causes for that increased "perceived realism".

But in the end, just like Jud, I found that in a direct comparison with a high performance (or accuracy) CD player the latter sounded "smoother", less "gritty", more "loose", less "reproduced"...

 

 

I was saying something a little bit different: I can't say that people who want realistic time domain performance or people who want realistic frequency domain performance are wrong. And when they find something that reminds them of real life - the absolute sharpness of the drum hit for those sensitive to the time domain, the clarity and black background of no distortion for those sensitive to the frequency domain - they can hardly be blamed for how much they like it. When I heard that NOS unfiltered DAC, yes, it was unlistenable for any length of time, but it still reminded me of that taste of ultimate response in the time domain I am missing with my choice of more "balanced" filtering from my software players and the rips from ordinary production line CDs that make up the bulk of my collection.

 

As I said to @lmitche: The Grateful Dead's bus driver, Neal Cassady (about whom Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road) used to talk about how he'd read that it took 1/32 of a second from the time light entered the eye until we were aware we'd seen it. Cassady said it was his ambition to take enough methedrine to cut that 1/32 of a second down to nothing, so he could live in the now. That's what that NOS non-filtered DAC reminded me of.

[Miska]

I was saying something a little bit different: I can't say that people who want realistic time domain performance or people who want realistic frequency domain performance are wrong. And when they find something that reminds them of real life - the absolute sharpness of the drum hit for those sensitive to the time domain, the clarity and black background of no distortion for those sensitive to the frequency domain - they can hardly be blamed for how much they like it. When I heard that NOS unfiltered DAC, yes, it was unlistenable for any length of time, but it still reminded me of that taste of ultimate response in the time domain I am missing with my choice of more "balanced" filtering from my software players and the rips from ordinary production line CDs that make up the bulk of my collection.

 

As I said to @lmitche: The Grateful Dead's bus driver, Neal Cassady (about whom Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road) used to talk about how he'd read that it took 1/32 of a second from the time light entered the eye until we were aware we'd seen it. Cassady said it was his ambition to take enough methedrine to cut that 1/32 of a second down to nothing, so he could live in the now. That's what that NOS non-filtered DAC reminded me of.

 

Except that NOS DAC get's the timing wrong. Your transient timing practically never coincides with time of a sample, and 1/44100'th of second (22.676 µs) is very poor time resolution. But still the information is there in the adjacent samples, and the reconstruction filtering, both digital and analog domain together take the information out from those multiple samples and actually puts the transient precisely where it should be in time. And that accuracy for RedBook is theoretically 346 ps.

 

For example you can see that 19 kHz sinewave is very unstable with the same NOS DAC:

 

Sample position is just drifting all the time in respect to the waveform timing and there are very few samples to describe the waveform. And since the analog reconstruction filter doesn't do much the 19 kHz sinewave is very poorly reconstructed.

 

However, we can help it again with digital filter by upsampling to 384k and then the same source data produces much better looking and steady 19 kHz sine:

[Miska]

Agree with you what selection and positioning of mikes are at the nucleus of not only 2L modern recordings (and in many cases the overabundance of them... up to more than 50!) lack of realism . This was exactly what engineers like Robert Fine and Lewis Layton worked out so well.

 

No, if you look at the recording photos, in most cases 2L uses two microphone setups, a stereo pair and second set for 5.0/5.1 channel tree for multichannel.

 

When an orchestra (or another acoustic source being recorded) passes from playing loud to play soft, it does not goes far away from the listener, as it seems in most recordings, hi or low res, one thing you never feel in Mercury or RCA Living Stereo records. This is to clarify things about the supposed weirdness of stereo imaging in Mercury recordings.

 

I have not experienced such with any of the modern hires recordings I have...

[Miska]

I didn't know about this. Thanks. I'll definitely give it a go at some point. The Prism AD-124 that I'm using is a seriously good ADC - the best I've ever come across (yes, better than the Pacific Microsonics Model Two to my ears). The Tascam DA-3000 is considered a pretty good unit for the money, but as an ADC it sounds totally flat and grey compared to the Prism. Julian Dunn, the Prism's designer, died almost 14 years ago to the day, at the age of just 41. He had a special talent by all accounts.

 

I'm not sure how much colorations the AD-124 may have, because ADC shouldn't sound like anything. Do you have any measurements for it? AFAIK, DA-3000 measures pretty well.

 

I have Prism Lyra for making room measurements, it has the same ADC section as their other newer models (Titan, Atlas and Orpheus). Cannot say that it would have any certain sound...

[Miska]

My point was, in my example, why a, say, a 2L orchestral recording sounds so clean, impollute and... incredible in the worst sense of the term. A symphonic orchestra does not sounds that way in real life at all. These type of sound seems more like a synthetizer than an actual orchestra.

 

2L has lot of small ensemble recordings and to me, they sound exactly like I've been hearing such small ensembles in similar places at close distance of about 5 meters or so. In such conditions you can clearly hear material nuances of a solo violin and you can hear roughness level of the hairs in the bow. I've been playing piano myself, and I like to hear piano like I would be playing it myself. Not like someone in the back row 30 meters away.

 

I don't remember any symphonic orchestra recordings from 2L, only from Channel Classics and the Channel Classics recordings are realistic to me.

 

But a lot depends on the concert hall, this is where I hear most live stuff:

https://www.musiikkitalo.fi/en/spaces/concert-hall

In first / second row the reproduction is very accurate and brighter clearer than most recordings I've heard. Especially compared to anything in RedBook format. It has very precise acoustics design with well controlled (adjustable) reverb. As you can see, no straight angles or anything.

 

I hate classical recordings that sound like mumbling, hard to pinpoint each and every player and their every move.

[VenturaRV]

2L has lot of small ensemble recordings and to me, they sound exactly like I've been hearing such small ensembles in similar places at close distance of about 5 meters or so. In such conditions you can clearly hear material nuances of a solo violin and you can hear roughness level of the hairs in the bow. I've been playing piano myself, and I like to hear piano like I would be playing it myself. Not like someone in the back row 30 meters away.

 

I don't remember any symphonic orchestra recordings from 2L, only from Channel Classics and the Channel Classics recordings are realistic to me.

 

But a lot depends on the concert hall, this is where I hear most live stuff:

https://www.musiikkitalo.fi/en/spaces/concert-hall

In first / second row the reproduction is very accurate and brighter clearer than most recordings I've heard. Especially compared to anything in RedBook format. It has very precise acoustics design with well controlled (adjustable) reverb. As you can see, no straight angles or anything.

 

I hate classical recordings that sound like mumbling, hard to pinpoint each and every player and their every move.

So, the points you remark are precisely where old Mercury and RCA recordings shine: detail (you can hear even small movements of the musicicians in their chairs), air, transparence, realism and so forth.

 

VenturaRV

[Miska]

So, the points you remark are precisely where old Mercury and RCA recordings shine: detail (you can hear even small movements of the musicicians in their chairs), air, transparence, realism and so forth.

 

With Mark Knopfler, and Gilmour recordings, pick an instrument, like for example a cymbal, and focus on how the snap of the stick sounds on it, block all other sound out and just listen on that one item. Then switch focus to other items, this way you can analyze if there are problems in for example high frequency transient attack or frequency structure.

 

With leaky filters, often combined with rolled of top, such don't sound as clean clear and bright as they should be, but a bit soft while at the same time the snap breaks down not being clean, just like the stick and metal surface wouldn't be smooth but instead have rough surface added. Especially if I listen such through speakers with metal dome tweeters I get same kind of feeling like dentist drilling my teeth.