The fact that Atkinson showed up here

[John_Atkinson]

22 minutes ago, mav52 said:

Announcement of MQA was made on 4 December 2014 at a launch held at The Shard in London,^[3] although the concepts underpinning the development had previously been the subject of a presentation to the Audio Engineering Society British Section (10 June 2014)^[4] and a paper (published 8 October 2014) presented at the Audio Engineering Society 137th Convention in Los Angeles, CA in October 2014.^[

 

Thank you. As I said, three years ago, not four :-)

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[mansr]

2 hours ago, opus101 said:

Which is of course correct but Rob's point (as far as I can see) is that the bandwidth limiting of the impulse should rightly be done by the anti-aliasing filter prior to the ADC, not by any reconstruction filter (analog or digital).

The anti-aliasing must be in front of the ADC or any digital resampling to a lower rate as that is where aliasing occurs. The reconstruction filter is an anti-imaging filter without which spectral images of the base band will repeat infinitely. The desired properties of both these filters are the same: sharp cutoff at Nyquist and linear phase response. They are also both required; deficiencies in one cannot be compensated for in the other.

[mansr]

On 23/12/2017 at 8:10 PM, mansr said:

What is that supposed to mean? Anti-aliasing and anti-imaging (reconstruction) filters both suppress frequencies above Nyquist. The only thing that could be matched between these filters is the phase response in the pass band, in which case you'd be talking about an overall linear response, and you might as well just use linear phase filters on both ends and not worry about matching them.

I'm still waiting for an answer.

[plissken]

3 hours ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

Thank you. As I said, three years ago, not four :-)

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

 

In reading the initial release it's always sounded promotional even though MQA wasn't available in the wild. 

[Don Hills]

8 hours ago, John_Atkinson said:

Thank you. As I said, three years ago, not four :-)

 

My, how time flies when we're having fun.

[Allan F]

22 hours ago, semente said:

It depends on what you mean by sound quality.

 

To me it means accurate reproduction of the recorded signal and yes you can use a comprehensive set of measurements to characterize performance, or sound quality.

 

Measurements may not tell you if you will like how one particular equipment reproduces recordings but that has nothing to do with sound quality.

 

Nothing personal but, IMO, you appear to be talking in circles.

 

23 hours ago, semente said:

I don't know who John Curl is.

 

John Curl is very well known. He has been the designer for Parasound for some time. Early in his career, he worked with Mark Leviinson.

 

And Andrew Jones, who you do know, agrees that the final aribiter is listening.

 

Quote

Accurate measurements and a sufficient set of measurements go a long way to revealing the performance, and allow us to get towards the final result very much quicker than with just listening alone. My approach is to set a design goal for the measured performance, meet this as close as possible, then evaluate the result by listening, but ONLY once I believe I have met the initial design objective. Then I try and honestly evaluate the result, and if (when……) I hear something wrong I go back and see if I can correlate this to the measurements. Maybe I was too enthusiastic in my evaluation of having met my target. Maybe my target is just wrong. I go back and make changes based on the re-evaluation, then re-listen. But I am always cross referring to the measurements.

 

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

[sandyk]

24 minutes ago, Allan F said:

John Curl is very well known. He has been the designer for Parasound for some time. Early in his career, he worked with Mark Leviinson.

DIY Audio members know him well !

 Note that this is from Part 2 , NOT the original thread.

 Note the huge number of replies to this thread.

John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

Lounge

98,825

37mins

nezbleu

[Fair Hedon]

2 hours ago, Don Hills said:

 

My, how time flies when we're having fun.

3 years of being clueless is I guess more forgivable.

[semente]

11 hours ago, Allan F said:

 

Nothing personal but, IMO, you appear to be talking in circles.

 

 

John Curl is very well known. He has been the designer for Parasound for some time. Early in his career, he worked with Mark Leviinson.

 

And Andrew Jones, who you do know, agrees that the final aribiter is listening.

 

I also think that listening when choosing (system building) should be the final arbiter, particularly when it comes to such a flawed equipment as a loudspeaker. I rely on measurements (not specs) for shortlisting purposes and also to identify shortcomings.

But for design purposes listening is used to identify problems and I wouldn't be surprised if Andrew Jones would use pink noise and some other test signals instead of music. Unless you are targeting a particular "house sound" (pattern of colourations).

 

Two more examples:

 

The Audio Amateur:
How do you rate the merits of listening tests to instrument tests?

Peter Walker (Quad)
We designed our valve (tube) amplifier, manufactured it, and put it on the market, and never actually listened to it.
In fact, the same applies to the 303 and the 405.
People say, "Well that's disgusting, you ought to have listened to it."
However, we do a certain amount of listening tests, but they are for specific things.
We listen to the differential distortion - does a certain thing matter?
You've got to have a listening test to sort out whether it matters.
You've got to do tests to sort out whether rumble is likely to overload pickup inputs, or whether very high frequency stuff coming out of the pickup due to record scratch is going to disturb the control unit.
But we aren't sitting down listening to Beethoven's Fifth and saying, "That amplifier sounds better, let's change a resistor or two. Oh yes, that's now better still."
We never sit down and listen to a music record through an amplifier in the design stage.
We listen to funny noises, funny distortions, and see whether these things are going to matter, to get a subjective assessment.
But we don't actually listen to program material at all.

 

 

PAROXYSMAL DISCHARGE
What is your personal system at home like?

Daniel Weiss (Weiss)
I don’t have anything special.
I have Chario speakers, an Italian high-end brand.

PAROXYSMAL DISCHARGE
How do you audition the equipment that you build?
Do you do listening tests at all?

Daniel Weiss
No, basically I don’t do that.
I have some Stax headphones for some listening, but I don’t judge the electronics based on listening tests.

PAROXYSMAL DISCHARGE
Does anyone else in the company do that?

Daniel Weiss
No.

PAROXYSMAL DISCHARGE
So it’s purely an engineering product?

Daniel Weiss
Yes.

PAROXYSMAL DISCHARGE
Aren’t you worried then that you’re missing some parameter that you’re not able to measure?

Daniel Weiss
There might be, but we try to measure a lot of different parameters.
Of course you’re never sure you’ve covered it all.
But so far it’s worked out well.

[PeterSt]

3 hours ago, semente said:

I also think that listening when choosing (system building) should be the final arbiter, particularly when it comes to such a flawed equipment as a loudspeaker.

 

Generally I think I would agree with this. Still this is not how I operate myself. Or at least not any more. Things should just work from theories and next measurements. Of course the theories must be of some value and the measurements must have relevant content, but do notice that beyond some point there isn't much to measure for. Only design flaws. But for example with the DAC or amplification as far as I have that, it is all beyond analyzer limits. So the duality in this is that theories still should be (say) better than a previous incarnation and a relatively small listening test should confirm that, but is preceded by measurement to show no failure. This can also easily be soldering or assembly failure.

 

Ah, you talked about loudspeakers. After some base development and well known "working" parts, an actually new design was finalized by measurement alone. This came in yesterday :

Re: Sneak Preview of New Orelos

and it is the result of exactly that. Mind you, measurements - or better put : tuning (of the filters etc.) took 8 months or so. And despite these kind of speakers were in my own room as a (listening) pilot, they were never used for listening to the tuning results of the day. So what it comprises is getting the crossovers exactly right, find out how to measure anyway (a huge problem for loudspeakers) and eliminate distortion where you can.

The great thing of a loudspeaker is that this by very far does not measure beyond analyzer limits and thus the analyzer can be used to do all. No ears needed.

 

Thus it depends.

But I hope you will believe at least me that a loudspeaker like this one is in no single way tuned by any listening session of not even one minute. Checked yes, but this is something very different. And, because the bass section is freely (DSP) tunable by customers and also by myself, it does happen that people try to mangle with the measured response of the lot - doing that by ear. As far as I can tell, nobody let such tweaks stick because they never work out. I also couldn't do it myself. Oh, for a day. But then the coloring starts to be your negative share. It's actually all said in that link (and by this USA customer I didn't speak one word to after he received these (OK, he ordered a Lush USB cable by email )).

 

I'd wish that all could go by measurement so easy as a loudspeaker.

Peter

[mordante]

On ‎24‎-‎12‎-‎2017 at 9:58 PM, Fair Hedon said:

 

While I appreciate the tone of your post, I really do..

 

this really boggles my mind:

 

"then can we please take this opportunity to educate John, not alienate him.."

 

The editor of Stereophile and other quasi-technical publications is positioned by default as an AUTHORITY. They are the in the position to educate US..by doing due diligence, using their staff to do research, examining very closely the technical claims of new audio technologies, and above all, they are in the position to protect the consumers from charlatans, and frauds.

 

it is NOT the job of the readership and the community at large to educate the editor/authority. He or she would have industry professionals and experts at their disposal.

 

What has in fact happened is that members here have protected the consumer from the editor(s).

 

 

I don't agree at all.

 

The magazines are not here to satisfy your pet peeves.

 

Do you think food magazine should do in-depth scientific research into chemicals used in food. Or should car magazines do an analysis of the cars control system to validate claims of the manufacturer.

 

Some members here just have an anal obsession trying to scientifically prove why something sounds bad or good. I honestly do not care.

 

IMHO DSD and MQA are dead formats. Both are a solutions looking for a problem.

[Fair Hedon]

1 hour ago, mordante said:

 

I don't agree at all.

 

The magazines are not here to satisfy your pet peeves.

 

Do you think food magazine should do in-depth scientific research into chemicals used in food. Or should car magazines do an analysis of the cars control system to validate claims of the manufacturer.

 

Some members here just have an anal obsession trying to scientifically prove why something sounds bad or good. I honestly do not care.

 

IMHO DSD and MQA are dead formats. Both are a solutions looking for a problem.

I am not sure what you are on about...

 

The POINT, which all you defenders seem to miss utterly and completely, is that it is not about science.

 

it is about both TAS and Stereophile whole heartedly accepting a fake format, which is bad for the consumer, bad for sonics, with no reservations, and evangelizing this new garbage. Every writer for TAS and Stereophile seemed to be spouting Fox News like talking points to point of absurdity.

 

DSD is not dead, and clearly you have no idea what you are talking about. Funny, for a dead format, I have 1500 SACDs ripped to my hard drive, and on order, 30+ SACDs on the way. In fact, the superb Audio Fidelity SACD of Jeff Beck's Truth just arrived. Hmmm. Not bad for dead.

 

 

[mordante]

4 hours ago, Fair Hedon said:

I am not sure what you are on about...

 

The POINT, which all you defenders seem to miss utterly and completely, is that it is not about science.

 

it is about both TAS and Stereophile whole heartedly accepting a fake format, which is bad for the consumer, bad for sonics, with no reservations, and evangelizing this new garbage. Every writer for TAS and Stereophile seemed to be spouting Fox News like talking points to point of absurdity.

 

DSD is not dead, and clearly you have no idea what you are talking about. Funny, for a dead format, I have 1500 SACDs ripped to my hard drive, and on order, 30+ SACDs on the way. In fact, the superb Audio Fidelity SACD of Jeff Beck's Truth just arrived. Hmmm. Not bad for dead.

 

 

A fake format, bla bla bla. I'm sorry to me that sounds like hollow rhetoric. Let it be said that I'm not a fan a MQA. But that doens't mean it should get burned at the cross. Let the consumers deicide what they want. Albeit the larger the group the lower the avg IQ, but that's human nature.

 

Where I live SACD never made it even to the stores. The content of the site DSD is laughable at best, about 1300 titles. I might be wrong but I doubt more that 10% of my music collection is available in DSD.

 

Have a look at my collection. See if you can find many titles in there that are available in DSD.

 

https://www.discogs.com/user/mordante/collection

[Fair Hedon]

11 minutes ago, mordante said:

 

A fake format, bla bla bla. I'm sorry to me that sounds like hollow rhetoric. Let it be said that I'm not a fan a MQA. But that doens't mean it should get burned at the cross. Let the consumers deicide what they want. Albeit the larger the group the lower the avg IQ, but that's human nature.

 

Where I live SACD never made it even to the stores. The content of the site DSD is laughable at best, about 1300 titles. I might be wrong but I doubt more that 10% of my music collection is available in DSD.

 

Have a look at my collection. See if you can find many titles in there that are available in DSD.

 

https://www.discogs.com/user/mordante/collection

 

Seriously, you are clueless...

 

your posts cease to have any credibility for me..just on the first 5 or 6 pages I can tell you the entire Peter Gabriel, Kinks, and Genesis catalogs are on SACD. There are 3 or 4 David Bowie titles.  NOT to mention the entire Stones Abko output in stereo and mono. There is an outstanding sounding Animals compilation, and the whole Dire Straits catalog as well.

 

Now..try again.

[mordante]

32 minutes ago, Fair Hedon said:

 

Seriously, you are clueless...

 

your posts cease to have any credibility for me..just on the first 5 or 6 pages I can tell you the entire Peter Gabriel, Kinks, and Genesis catalogs are on SACD. There are 3 or 4 David Bowie titles.  NOT to mention the entire Stones Abko output in stereo and mono. There is an outstanding sounding Animals compilation, and the whole Dire Straits catalog as well.

 

Now..try again.

 

In my collection I have 1 Stones single, 1 Peter Gabriel,1 Kinks and 2 Genesis albums, and some David Bowie. Would you buy a SACD player for say 10% of a music collection. I don't like any jazz or blues.

 

Dire straights is boring, most of that kind of stuff came from an inheritance. While I like 80's and 90's pop Like Leonard Cohen, Depeche Mode, some new/dark-wave, neue welle kind of stuff. I never liked Dire straights, ToTo, Simply Red, U2, etc way too smooth and over produced.

 

Best albums for me from 2017

 

Amenra ‎– Mass VI
Ulver ‎– The Assassination Of Julius Caesar
Sólstafir ‎– Berdreyminn
Kari Rueslåtten ‎– Silence Is The Only Sound
Anathema ‎– The Optimist

[fas42]

7 hours ago, PeterSt said:

I'd wish that all could go by measurement so easy as a loudspeaker.

Peter

 

Nearly everyone wories like crazy about speakers ... I don't ... .

 

Their sins are not particularly relevant to the quality of sound I'm after - I have not once thought. "Gee, I need better speakers to get somewhere with this combo!" - I make sure their integrity as an assembly of bits is in good shape, and work on stabilising them in the position they're in - and that's it!

 

Why this appears to work is because speakers don't introduce the disturbing, low level distortions that electronics do - those telltale anomalies that disturb the illusion of a realistic presentation.

[Fair Hedon]

43 minutes ago, mordante said:

 

In my collection I have 1 Stones single, 1 Peter Gabriel,1 Kinks and 2 Genesis albums, and some David Bowie. Would you buy a SACD player for say 10% of a music collection. I don't like any jazz or blues.

 

Dire straights is boring, most of that kind of stuff came from an inheritance. While I like 80's and 90's pop Like Leonard Cohen, Depeche Mode, some new/dark-wave, neue welle kind of stuff. I never liked Dire straights, ToTo, Simply Red, U2, etc way too smooth and over produced.

 

Best albums for me from 2017

 

Amenra ‎– Mass VI
Ulver ‎– The Assassination Of Julius Caesar
Sólstafir ‎– Berdreyminn
Kari Rueslåtten ‎– Silence Is The Only Sound
Anathema ‎– The Optimist

Ok, but any body into classic, rock jazz, blues, folk or classic, which is MOST music lovers, will have a huge amount of titles to choose from. And more coming every month from MoFi, AF, AP, Intervention, and loads from Japan.

 

Not to mention DSD is a real recording format.

 

I will give this THIS my friend...Solstafir is awesome..

 

Your collection is cool. 

[Kal Rubinson]

1 hour ago, mordante said:

Where I live SACD never made it even to the stores. The content of the site DSD is laughable at best, about 1300 titles. I might be wrong but I doubt more that 10% of my music collection is available in DSD.

I do not know what site you are referring to (or where you live) but I have more than 3000 SACDs already ripped to my server and full shopping bags more in the closets.  The website sa_cd.net lists 10,308 SACDs which does not include DSD downloads.  Sorta makes MQA not an issue for me either way.

 

 

[MikeyFresh]

2 hours ago, mordante said:

The content of the site DSD is laughable at best, about 1300 titles.

 

As mentioned above, tough to say what site you are even referring to, but the only thing laughable is how inaccurate your take on DSD is. 

 

All fine and good if your particular music tastes don't align nicely with available SACD, or DSD download content.

 

However to suggest someone should take a look at your collection, and then when it's pointed out you have several artists just in the first few pages of the link you provided whose titles are available in DSD, you quickly shift to say you don't even like that music?

 

So which one is it, 10% of your collection or less is available in DSD, or you don't like/listen to that music even though it resides in your collection?

 

Forget it, no one cares, as mentioned in previous posts there are many thousands of titles available in DSD, whether you like them or not, or whether or not you wish to buy them.

 

Sorry if this seems off-topic, but its not when considered in the context of various accusations that DSD is somehow akin to MQA. It most certainly is not, including the point made in another post about DSD actually being a viable recording format, and also a very fine archival format for older analog tape recordings, as well as very often providing a multi-channel mix.

[realhifi]

32 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

I do not know what site you are referring to (or where you live) but I have more than 3000 SACDs already ripped to my server and full shopping bags more in the closets.  The website sa_cd.net lists 10,308 SACDs which does not include DSD downloads.  Sorta makes MQA not an issue for me either way.

 

 

Thatsa lotta titles!  

[realhifi]

After seeing where this thread has gone I’m actually surprised that JA came to this site. 

[Rt66indierock]

19 minutes ago, realhifi said:

After seeing where this thread has gone I’m actually surprised that JA came to this site. 

 

To kill two birds with one post. A few minutes ago there were 4,892,266 CDs and records on Amazon. I'm not impressed with any number less 100,000 albums in a format. SACD works for Kal and it doesn't work for me because our musical tastes differ. 

 

John Atkinson came to this site to recon the opposition to MQA with a few careful posts. He's been getting constant criticism since May on Audio Asylum eventually he was going to stop by. I left a little litter for him to pick up on Jana's Noho Sound post and he picked it up (deleted it.)

[John_Atkinson]

8 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

I left a little litter for him to pick up on Jana's Noho Sound post and he picked it up (deleted it.)

 

Indeed I did delete it as having no relevance to the topic being discussed (high-end audio retailing). If you wish to discuss MQA on the Stereophile website, please do so in one of the 3 current threads, where there are plenty of anti-MQA postings.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

40 minutes ago, realhifi said:

After seeing where this thread has gone I’m actually surprised that JA came to this site. 

 

Me too :-)

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[Mordikai]

3 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Nearly everyone wories like crazy about speakers ... I don't ... .

 

Their sins are not particularly relevant to the quality of sound I'm after - I have not once thought. "Gee, I need better speakers to get somewhere with this combo!" - I make sure their integrity as an assembly of bits is in good shape, and work on stabilising them in the position they're in - and that's it!

 

Why this appears to work is because speakers don't introduce the disturbing, low level distortions that electronics do - those telltale anomalies that disturb the illusion of a realistic presentation.

Wow, you and I live on different planets. Can I ask what speakers you use? What kind of music do you listen to?