IS EVERYTHING DEBATABLE, REALLY?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

6 hours ago, beerandmusic said:

why then, the need to create such a thing as a reclocker to feed a dac?  and why with such high praise?

 

Hi Beery,

The 'reclocking thing' seems to be a recurrent theme in your postings and I haven't been able to grasp why it has seemingly captured your focus. I assumed it was some *new* technical thing.  *Old* reclocking and timing issues has been around since at least early 90's with endless discussions over jitter and reclocking close to the DAC chips. There has been huge attention to clocks and accuracy to femtoseconds in more modern DACs. The newer kids on the block have ( as I read it) have been "noise" and digital filters. The only area where timing issues have been resurfaced as something new or novel is in MQA, and I confess I have no idea what exactlty they are talking about, if not jitter.

 

I keep on saying I am not an EE so I am asking, not challenging, what is the fascination with reclocking?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

7 hours ago, davide256 said:

Noise  basically means signal added that doesn't belong.

 

Apropos to nothing other than noise having been raised a few times now I found this interesting

 

There are in fact many types of "noise" that are either not directly related to the signal or are correlated with the signal.

 

There is thermal noise, which is essentially white noise and cumulatively can be heard as the "hiss" one hears from many electronics. This is usually simple noise and not generally correlated with the signal in any way.

 

There is hum, which can be mechanical, electrical or both. This is seen as harmonics from the AC line frequency (60, 120, 180, 240 etc. in the US and 50, 100, 150, 200 etc. in Europe). This can be either simple noise and uncorrelated with the signal OR it can be correlated with the signal in some circuit designs. This can be clearly seen in an FFT scan where the harmonic distortion components are surrounded by a lot of "fuzz", which is modulation of the harmonic distortion components with the frequencies generated from the line voltage. So, from noise we get a new kind of distortion on the signal. Here is a clear indication of where power cleanliness is potentially very important to the sound we hear.

 

Look at this link to see what I mean by modulation of the harmonic distortion with power supply harmonics.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/...r-measurements

 

What you can see is that there is a regular series of line harmonics in the noise floor (Figure 3)

There is clear evidence of modulation in the 50hz FFT (Figure 8)

There is clear evidence of modulation in the 19+20Khz IMD FFT (Figures 9 and 10) below 5Khz...it is more evident at 1 watt where the high order harmonics have dropped to the noise floor. There is also a lot of fuzz around the 19 and 20 Khz peaks as well as the sidebands at 100 watts.

 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/...r-measurements

 

This one also shows intermodulation with the power supply harmonics.

 

 

There are even worse examples but I thought an example from a couple very modern designs would highlight that this is far from a solved problem in most amps.

 

 

 

Then there is RFI and EMI, these can also work there way into the signal chain and although I have not seen measurements showing their impact (like the line noise example) on audio, I have seen the effects first hand working with Mass Spectrometers and laser systems. Our laser system was a pulsed Nd:YAG system that had some ultra high speed switches. These switches and the high voltages controlled by them generated huge bursts of RFI that we were picking up on the coaxial (shielded of course) signal cables. Clearly the shielding they had was not adequate, which is why we were wrapping critical areas with aluminum foil and then running grounding wires from that foil. It didn't eliminate the problem but reduced it. So, I know these parasitic RFI and EMI signals can pollute your noise floor but even worse is when these things get modulated with the signal (like the hum example) and create more "noise", which is in fact a new kind of distortion.

 

There is also back EMF "noise", which is really a form of distortion but will only afflict amplifiers with substantial amounts of negative feedback. This was first pointed out by Matti Otala in a couple of papers in the 1980s. This is another form of signal correlated noise that then gets intermodulated with the music signal thus further reducing fidelity.

 

Finally there is negative feedback itself. Negative feedback reduces the levels of lower order harmonics and results in the generation of high order harmonics. This has been demonstrated by Baxandall, Crowhurst, Pass and others. The argument is that THD is reduced but as Crowhurst pointed out you get an endless array of high order harmonics, multiples of multiples of multiples. This creates a complex "noise" floor that is signal correlated and modulated. This means it is moving up and down. It is fundamentally different than the thermal noise or unmodulated hum noise, which are not correlated with the signal and you can actually hear correlated content BELOW a true random noise floor...what you cannot do is hear those very soft signals below a non-random noise floor because the correlation matters to our ear/brain pattern recognition.

 

IMO, what people talk about when there is no music playing and what they mean by a lowered noise floor when the music is playing are two quite different things. The noise with no music playing is the intrinsic noise in the system from thermal and hum maybe some RFI/EMI effects as well. However, when the music plays, you have potential intermodulation with all the noises listed above except perhaps the white thermal noise (maybe there as well). How well a circuit design rejects interference from power supply noise, RFI/EMI, back EMF will have a big impact on how low it's "noise" floor is and especially if there is a lot of negative feedback involved, which will make many of these intermodulation effects more rather than less likely.

 

I think when people hear a big benefit from a power cable that is good at rejecting RFI/EMI, it indicates that their electronics were being negatively impacted and a percpetion of a "blacker background" is one of the most common benefits. I also think that this is one of the reasons good SET amps, if not pushed too hard, often do a better job of making a 3d image/soundstage because they are not being hampered by the negative feedback and back EMF issues (although they most certainly can have issues with the power supply inter-modulation and RFI/EMI contamination).

Industry Affiliation:

 

Sound Castles klg

Swiss Importer/distributor for Aries Cerat Ltd.

 

[fas42]

On 08/11/2017 at 12:20 PM, fas42 said:

 

Okay, found the key bit,

 

<<You won't read about this in these regulators' datasheets, but it has been documented in articles such as Erol Dietz' "Understanding and Reducing Noise Voltage on 3-Terminal Voltage Regulators", Electronic Design (issue unknown) , and Steven Sandler's "Spice Uncovers Regulator-Stability Problems", Personal Engineering, August 1998. From these you would also learn that an LM317's output inductance varies with its output current, and hence that the above noise peaking is load-variant to boot. Just what we needed: a signal-modulated noise generator!>>

 

I'll see if I can track these down, and what they add to the story ...

 

OK, located those articles, and they are not saying anything particularly significant, IMO. The stability problems are due to using a non-optimum bypass capacitor on the adjustment terminal - this area is equivalent to the feedback loop on a conventional amplifier, and as is well known circuits using a poorly chosen capacitor in feedback duties can suffer ringing, instability. Reducing noise voltage on the output is again about poor choice of value of output smoothing cap - too low a value may cause some issues; but just inserting very high value capacitance swamps any tendency to nasty behaviour. This is what I would always do anyway - a sensible choice of part automatically pushes the output impedance at higher frequencies way down.

 

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

Because designers of digital playback gear are very, very slow learners ... while mainstream manufacturers spat out cheap CD players with "fabulous" spec's, and everyone who was fussy in the listening thought that they all sucked, nothing particularly interesting happened. Finally, the general public, and those manufacturers got bored with the exercise - and interest in high quality sound lapsed. Now there is a resurgence of people who genuinely want to create components that deliver true high quality, and it's getting interesting again.

 

For the first time, playback of recordings in the digital domain are demonstrating the potential that was always there ...  a lot of people do struggle with the concept that in some areas one has to be very, very careful with implementation - it's not by the way stuff, it's of make or break importance ...

I still maintain, that if you want to hear either analog or digital where full advantage has been taken of either format's potential, you have to "roll your own". Not even so-called "audiophile labels" have ever produced a CD, SACD, DVD-A or Blu-ray-A release that sounded anything even close to being as good as the master. I must tell you now that a well recorded 16-bit/44.1 KHz master will sound so good that most audiophiles will wonder why anybody would have felt that there was a need for High-Res! It's just that something is lost in the commercialization of master tapes during their journey to the silver disc!

This loss of quality is so profound, that many, after hearing these modern (and expensive) 1-to-1 1/2 track 15ips copies of master tapes from companies like The Tape Project and others, have come away profoundly changed. They mis-perceive what they have heard as proof that analog is better than digital, when what they have actually heard is the difference between the quality captured by the master, and what they got when they bought that same title on either vinyl, some commercial silver disc format or downloaded file. 

[beerandmusic]

25 minutes ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

The 'reclocking thing' seems to be a recurrent theme in your postings and I haven't been able to grasp why it has seemingly captured your focus. I assumed it was some *new* technical thing.  *Old* reclocking and timing issues has been around since at least early 90's with endless discussions over jitter and reclocking close to the DAC chips. There has been huge attention to clocks and accuracy to femtoseconds in more modern DACs. The newer kids on the block have ( as I read it) have been "noise" and digital filters. The only area where timing issues have been resurfaced as something new or novel is in MQA, and I confess I have no idea what exactlty they are talking about, if not jitter.

 

I keep on saying I am not an EE so I am asking, not challenging, what is the fascination with reclocking?

the usb reclocking isn't a recurrent theme....just the new hoopla about the sotm ultra and clock mods.  This post is a one-off..and i have been talking down usb toys since the regen...not that i don't think they work, just that i believe it should be handled in the dac....there is no enthusiasm with usb reclockers...

 

My interest is in network players, and I have no desire to go down the usb path ever again.  It makes more sense to me to eliminate that interface all together.

 

the concept of the sclk-ex in the sotm is the only thing i am enthusiastic about...and not so much in that device only, just what is different that i should look for a next generation network player is where my only interest is.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

3 hours ago, christopher3393 said:

 

7 hours ago, wgscott said:

Summary:  Audiophile Ethics Monksplained

 

(1) Everything is debatable.

 

(2) It is uncivilized behavior to debate anything.

Read more  

 

"It is a tale told by an idiot...signifying nothing." 

 

Perhaps all the "Monksplaining' going on just signifies "The lady doth protest too much, methinks"

[fas42]

19 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

I still maintain, that if you want to hear either analog or digital where full advantage has been taken of either format's potential, you have to "roll your own". Not even so-called "audiophile labels" have ever produced a CD, SACD, DVD-A or Blu-ray-A release that sounded anything even close to being as good as the master. I must tell you now that a well recorded 16-bit/44.1 KHz master will sound so good that most audiophiles will wonder why anybody would have felt that there was a need for High-Res! It's just that something is lost in the commercialization of master tapes during their journey to the silver disc!

This loss of quality is so profound, that many, after hearing these modern (and expensive) 1-to-1 1/2 track 15ips copies of master tapes from companies like The Tape Project and others, have come away profoundly changed. They mis-perceive what they have heard as proof that analog is better than digital, when what they have actually heard is the difference between the quality captured by the master, and what they got when they bought that same title on either vinyl, some commercial silver disc format or downloaded file. 

 

The CD or whatever release should make no difference, whatsoever. If the data on the medium matches that of the master, assuming the latter is digital, there should be zero loss of quality - if there is perceived to be an audible loss, then the playback chain being used to audition the release is faulty - it's no more complicated than that. Of course, if the master is analogue then losses via the ADC may occur, though these should be very subtle; if playback of an analogue master tape sounds "fabulous" then the chain being used at that moment is the reason for the superior subjective quality.

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

I still maintain, that if you want to hear either analog or digital where full advantage has been taken of either format's potential, you have to "roll your own". Not even so-called "audiophile labels" have ever produced a CD, SACD, DVD-A or Blu-ray-A release that sounded anything even close to being as good as the master. I must tell you now that a well recorded 16-bit/44.1 KHz master will sound so good that most audiophiles will wonder why anybody would have felt that there was a need for High-Res! It's just that something is lost in the commercialization of master tapes during their journey to the silver disc!

This loss of quality is so profound, that many, after hearing these modern (and expensive) 1-to-1 1/2 track 15ips copies of master tapes from companies like The Tape Project and others, have come away profoundly changed. They mis-perceive what they have heard as proof that analog is better than digital, when what they have actually heard is the difference between the quality captured by the master, and what they got when they bought that same title on either vinyl, some commercial silver disc format or downloaded file. 

Hi George

Perhaps much of the loss is at the mixing stage where the more tracks you mix in , the poorer the S/N becomes. I have a CD-r with quite a few tracks copied from the original master. Peggy Lee-Fever is a  real standout before they mixed more stuff in.

Regards

Alex

[gmgraves]

23 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

The CD or whatever release should make no difference, whatsoever. If the data on the medium matches that of the master, assuming the latter is digital, there should be zero loss of quality - if there is perceived to be an audible loss, then the playback chain being used to audition the release is faulty - it's no more complicated than that. Of course, if the master is analogue then losses via the ADC may occur, though these should be very subtle; if playback of an analogue master tape sounds "fabulous" then the chain being used at that moment is the reason for the superior subjective quality.

 

You're right, it shouldn't make any difference whatsoever if the master is transferred directly to whatever digital medium, it should sound just like the master and the check-sums should be the same. Here's the rub, what you get is NOT a direct copy of the master. It's a copy of a modified copy of the master that has been diddled with by the record company. Why, you ask? The short and dirty answer is because audiophiles are not the record company's primary market and most ordinary* people don't want recordings with full dynamic range and deep bass that will make their cheap speakers double, or highs that cause cheap amplifiers to clip. 

 

*Ordinary People = NON-audiophiles.  

[sandyk]

16 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

 

You're right, it shouldn't make any difference whatsoever if the master is transferred directly to whatever digital medium, it should sound just like the master and the check-sums should be the same. Here's the rub, what you get is NOT a direct copy of the master. It's a copy of a modified copy of the master that has been diddled with by the record company. Why, you ask? The short and dirty answer is because audiophiles are not the record company's primary market and most ordinary* people don't want recordings with full dynamic range and deep bass that will make their cheap speakers double, or highs that cause cheap amplifiers to clip. 

 

*Ordinary People = NON-audiophiles.  

 

 Agreed.

 Barry Diament also found that CDs from different replication plants often sounded a little different despite identical binary content. 

[gmgraves]

22 hours ago, sandyk said:

Hi George

Perhaps much of the loss is at the mixing stage where the more tracks you mix in , the poorer the S/N becomes. I have a CD-r with quite a few tracks copied from the original master. Peggy Lee-Fever is a  real standout before they mixed more stuff in.

Regards

Alex

 

That's certainly one reason, Alex, but as I just finished explaining to fas42, the main reason is that digital recordings, even so-called "audiophile recordings" are simply not made for audiophiles alone. Sure, audiophile labels like Telarc used to be, did release recordings that sounded closer to the masters than do most "regular" labels, but make no mistake, the main market for recordings is not the audiophile market, which, in the overall scheme of things, is miniscule. It's the average listener with their sub-hi-fi equipment to which the record companies are catering. The average Joe or Josephine does not want the full dynamic range of the master ("can you turn that down? "; or conversely: "Can you please turn that up, I can't hear it?), they don't want the deep bass available on digital, either, because it will make their puny speakers double and make horribly distorted sounds, full treble out to 22 KHz will make their puny amplifiers clip causing terrible distortion. Keeping that in mind, record companies take their masters, digital or analog, and "dummy them down" to the lowest common denominator. I know because I've heard many a master played back in recording studios and based on that, I've bought the CD and have always been very disappointed because the commercial release is a pale shadow of the master. When I asked why, I got the answer that I just related to you and fas42!  Now, as a recording engineer myself, I have made bit-for-bit CDs directly from masters and I have transferred analog master tapes through decent ADCs direct to digital and then transferred them to CD, and DVD-A without any gain riding, compression, or EQ of any kind, and I can assure you thatches digital transmission and storage mediums are certainly capable of exactly mirroring the most demanding of programing material. 

[kumakuma]

5 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 Agreed.

 Barry Diament also found that CDs from different replication plants often sounded a little different despite identical binary content. 

 

And that those differences disappeared when the CDs were ripped to his HDD.

[gmgraves]

2 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 Agreed.

 Barry Diament also found that CDs from different replication plants often sounded a little different despite identical binary content. 

 

To that I cannot speak, but who am I to argue with Barry Diament? I'm sure he has much more experience at that sort of thing than I. The last time that I had a recording that I made come out on a commercial release was many years ago when "The Musical Heritage Society" released a lute recording that I and a friend of mine recorded. 

[gmgraves]

Just now, kumakuma said:

 

And that those differences disappeared when the CDs were ripped to his HDD.

 

Isn't that odd?

[kumakuma]

2 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

 

Isn't that odd?

 

Why odd?

[sandyk]

3 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Now, as a recording engineer myself, I have made bit-for-bit CDs directly from masters and I have transferred analog master tapes through decent ADCs direct to digital and then transferred them to CD, and DVD-A without any gain riding, compression, or EQ of any kind, and I can assure you thatches digital transmission and storage mediums are certainly capable of exactly mirroring the most demanding of programing material. 

 George

 I presume that you are talking here about CDs that have been ripped again to HDD/SSD for playback ?

If not, have you ever tried burning them to a BR disc using the Blue Laser, and playing them from a decent BR player ?

I tried this and was surprised to find just how good they sounded.

Alfe put this down to much less Read Jitter due to the greater precision of the Blue Laser and it's Optical block.

The real reason though for me doing this, was for Archival purposes after the failure of 2 HDDs in 12 months.

It doesn't hurt either to have quite a few of your favourite albums on the one disc.

 

Regards

Alex

[gmgraves]

1 minute ago, kumakuma said:

 

Why?

 

Really? You don't think that a commercial CD release from different plants that when compared, were found to sound different from each other, but when ripped to one's computer, sound identical because the differences have disappeared, is odd? Well, I hope I don't offend you when I say that I find your reaction to that conundrum odd!

[opus101]

Just now, sandyk said:

 

Alfe put this down to much less Read Jitter due to the greater precision of the Blue Laser and it's Optical block.

 

Did he test his hypothesis? Seems downright implausible to me.

[Ralf11]

'test' or test?

 

 

of course it is odd, surprisingly so - and such claims require strong evidence

[kumakuma]

Just now, gmgraves said:

 

Really? You don't think that a commercial CD release from different plants that when compared, were found to sound different from each other, but when ripped to one's computer, sound identical because the differences have disappeared, is odd? Well, I hope I don't offend you when I say that I find your reaction to that conundrum odd!

 

The stamping of commercial CDs is basically an analog process so perhaps minor differences between CDs causes the CD player to have to work a little harder on some CDs than others, causing minor differences in sound quality.

 

However once the CD has been ripped, you're into the digital domain and any physical differences that once existed between these CDs no longer exists.

 

 

[sandyk]

6 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

And that those differences disappeared when the CDs were ripped to his HDD.

 

And that those differences disappeared when the CDs were ripped to his HDD.

 Nevertheless, it didn't prevent he and his wife from both hearing differences with the Comparison CD-Rs that I sent him !!!

 

Barry wasn't using improved non SMPS PSUs etc. with his Mac computer as verified by others to improve SQ.

 I often wonder just how much better Barry's high res recordings could have sounded if he had used techniques and products with his Mac as described in the Uptone Forum which many members have verified to result in lower noise floors, improved transparency  etc. No SMPS for example.

 

Of course you have NEVER tried such things based on purely IDEOLOGICAL grounds !

 

[gmgraves]

1 minute ago, sandyk said:

 George

 I presume that you are talking here about CDs that have been ripped again to HDD/SSD for playback ?

If not, have you ever tried burning them to a BR disc using the Blue Laser, and playing them from a decent BR player ?

I tried this and was surprised to find just how good they sounded.

Alfe put this down to much less Read Jitter due to the greater precision of the Blue Laser and it's Optical block.

The real reason though for me doing this, was for Archival purposes after the failure of 2 HDDs in 12 months.

It doesn't hurt either to have quite a few of your favourite albums on the one disc.

 

Regards

Alex

 

I'm talking about master recordings made on digital recorders such as computers, DATs, and even Beta video recorders and then transferred directly to some silver disc format; CD, DVD-A or Blu-ray either being burned directly from the computer where the master file resides or from the computer to a Pro CDR/RW recorder such as the TASCAM CDRW-700 or CDRW-900. Obviously DVD-As and Blu-Ray audio discs are burned to a computer DVD and Blu-ray burner connected via USB or IEEE1394 bus and using an application designed for that purpose (such as DiskWELDER) from the same computer where, again, the master file resides.  

[sandyk]

10 minutes ago, opus101 said:

 

Did he test his hypothesis? Seems downright implausible to me.

 

 If you knew what his daytime job and qualifications were, perhaps you wouldn't find it so implausible ! 

Alfe has several Patents in the Optical device area, as well as previously having designed the internal LG GGW H20L BR writer that I use.

[kumakuma]

2 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

Of course you have NEVER tried such things based on purely IDEOLOGICAL grounds !

 

 

I have a confession to make.

 

My reluctance to try these tweaks is due to FEAR.

 

I have a compulsive personality disorder with strong perfectionist tendencies so I'm deeply afraid that if I start down this road I will end up like this poor lost soul:

 

 

[sandyk]

2 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

I have a compulsive personality disorder with strong perfectionist tendencies so I'm deeply afraid that if I start down this road I will end up like this poor lost soul:

 

 

 And considerably poorer as well ?