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Lies about vinyl vs digital


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7 hours ago, rvb said:

The music industry is a very strange industry. They put a lot of effort, time and money to register every frequency that is in the air, but they do not write it back on the compact disc, because they decide that we can not hear that high frequencies.

 

However that frequencies are present on a record, a  playback system developed in 1888.

So how high can we hear?

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2 hours ago, marce said:

So how high can we hear?

 

My stock answer is that use of non-sinusoid waves has apparently never been tested, much less freqs. > 20 kHz in music.

 

There are at least 3 people on here who are well equipped to do such a test and they all live "back East" so not far from each other...

 

 

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1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

 

My stock answer is that use of non-sinusoid waves has apparently never been tested, much less freqs. > 20 kHz in music.

 

 

 

There is information on hearing disorders from bomb blast which are rather shocking! I should imagine the tests could be rather painfull if not  damaging. Are we subject to such sounds, probably more so today with the bang crash of society and our ability to create in-harmonious noise.

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16 hours ago, rvb said:

The music industry is a very strange industry. They put a lot of effort, time and money to register every frequency that is in the air, but they do not write it back on the compact disc, because they decide that we can not hear that high frequencies.

 

However that frequencies are present on a record, a  playback system developed in 1888.

 

This was often said, because the subjective impression when listening to much CD material, especially in earlier years, was that the treble is "not right" - this is the classic distortion artifact that digital has taken so long to thoroughly tame, on the playback side ... don't worry, even the earliest CDs are fine; it just requires a good enough system, and then the sound falls into place, with ease.

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1 hour ago, John Dyson said:

Sorry that I didn't have time to sneek in on the previous posting to create the examples.  Three snippets of 99 Red Balloons...   Copy 1 -- direct from CD, no deemphasis.  Copy 2 -- direct from CD, but deemphasis.   Copy 3 -- DolbyA decoded.  This disk didn't require any corrective EQ for decoding except for the deemphasis.

 

Audio tastes have changed, so the decoded version might seem a little more dead, but when actually reflecting on what it should sound like -- it certainly comes closer to good sound than the direct from CD or even the deemphasized version...

 

These examples are perfect exemplars of the old, traditional 'digital distortion', much of  it should instead be attributed to incorrect mastering for the CD (or other) digital media.   NEW recordings have less of this original DolbyA decoding problem, but new recordings have often been HF enhanced.  This 99 Red Balloons example is egregious because on the undecoded CD versions, therewas no 'errsatz' mastering/EQ, thereby providing pure DolbyA encoded material in all of its ugliness without 'softening'.  (Most errsatz mastered material was 'tone controlled' down to be more listenable.)

 

Because of the (lack of) decoding travesty back in the 1980s,  the listening pubic is now used to and accepting the overly processed sound.  It is a sad state of affairs.

01-99 Red Balloons.flac-NOTdecoded-snippet.mp3 2.1 MB · 7 downloads 01-99 Red Balloons.flac-deemphNOTdecoded-snippet.mp3 2.1 MB · 5 downloads 01-99 Red Balloons-decoded-snippet.mp3 2.1 MB · 5 downloads

Didn't you say vinyl was equally affected? 

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47 minutes ago, rvb said:

Compact Cassette - stopped

Mini disc - stopped

DCC - stopped

DAT - stopped

SACD - terrible

Compact Disc - terrible, will stop?

Vinyl - terrible, not dead yet

 

So he / she who can make a new music medium is a genius.

 

What do you need a new medium for? We have files and streaming. Who needs the clutter?

"Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes

 

HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256)

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9 hours ago, The_K-Man said:

 

 

I think you and I are among the only participants here who are willing to acknowldege this fact.

 

I suspect the vast majority of lay-listeners, and even many on these forums, believe that an artist/band just goes into a studio, records their stuff, and magically, out pops a record, CD, or digital file.  Most are woefully un- or underinformed of all the steps that take place from after the sessions to before the shrink-wrap goes on the physical album, and thus they blame the format, the wiring in their systems, or even Saturn's position in Capricorn(!), for anything undesirable they hear in the finished recording.

 

🤦‍♂️

 

The "anything undesirable" is some quality in the recording which catches out the playback chain - spotlights the weaknesses in the replay quality, which makes the particular recording significantly more unpleasant to listen to. 

 

A sorted setup will reproduce all 'standards' of recordings with ease - just like a modern car can handle all types of road surfaces far better than the ones engineered many decades ago - only in audio is the road required to be of 'prime' quality, to be fit for human consumption ... :P.

 

Just tried John's latest decoding examples - but even over the tinny sound of my current laptop it is clear that far too much has been lost in the processing; the treble of the synthesizer sounds has been dulled down to a completely boring component in the mix.

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10 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

image.png.fa72a50707cd80745d0674cee780e392.png

 

Your explicit lyrics ?

 

 

It's not often that I agree with Kumakuma, but on this occasion I completely agree with him. The decoded version sounds markedly better to me in all respects through my ATH M70x headphones. I did however DL them previously and then save them as .wav files

 

How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file.

PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020

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23 hours ago, The_K-Man said:

 

 

I think you and I are among the only participants here who are willing to acknowldege this fact.

 

I suspect the vast majority of lay-listeners, and even many on these forums, believe that an artist/band just goes into a studio, records their stuff, and magically, out pops a record, CD, or digital file.  Most are woefully un- or underinformed of all the steps that take place from after the sessions to before the shrink-wrap goes on the physical album, and thus they blame the format, the wiring in their systems, or even Saturn's position in Capricorn(!), for anything undesirable they hear in the finished recording.

 

🤦‍♂️

I agree with you 100%...  I talk to recording people (well, mostly email since my voice is gone) a lot of the time.  There is a great amount of art and imprecision all the way through the ENTIRE PROCESS.   This imprecision persists even to the point of creating the CD master itself and/or pressing the vinyl.  The imprecision isn't only electromechanical (ticks, pops, etc) but also is ELECTRONIC -- to the extent of EQ being used on vinyl and/or CD and/or digital distributions, all for varying reasons.   There is sometimes (often) even compression after the master tape itself (I mean the recording master, not the distribution master) is made.  The material that is pressed onto vinyl and/or digital distribution is NOT always the recording master (call it tape -- mostly likely on digital media now.)

 

John

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13 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

The "anything undesirable" is some quality in the recording which catches out the playback chain - spotlights the weaknesses in the replay quality, which makes the particular recording significantly more unpleasant to listen to. 

 

A sorted setup will reproduce all 'standards' of recordings with ease - just like a modern car can handle all types of road surfaces far better than the ones engineered many decades ago - only in audio is the road required to be of 'prime' quality, to be fit for human consumption ... :P.

 

Just tried John's latest decoding examples - but even over the tinny sound of my current laptop it is clear that far too much has been lost in the processing; the treble of the synthesizer sounds has been dulled down to a completely boring component in the mix.

You have to remember an important thing -- I am starting with material that has been damaged so that it is minimally listenable.

 

That is, without doing true DolbyA decoding, the various preprocessing steps done before making the distribution material require EQ.  This EQ can be nebulous to undo.  I have been decoding the various EQ formulas being used by different distributors for different albums.

 

So, my attempts are iterative -- I have a tool that is amazingly able to deal with imperfections in the material (far better than a true DolbyA), so I am taking advantage of that fact.

 

Here is an example of the iterative improvement -- neither Alex nor anyone else has heard this yet -- I respect him and don't want to waste his time, but my ONJ results have much more of the sibilance removed -- why?  because I figured out another one of the filters that they used to obscure the DolbyA shrillness.  When I know that it won't waste anyones time listening, I will start with Alex and a few others to doulbe check, and move on wider distribution.

 

Another improvement --  my source material for ABBA Arrival had a defect that I kept on ignoring.   I thought that defect was in the original recording -- which it was.   However, I was working with material that had been excessively processed, and I couldn't undo that defect on the source material that I had been using.  Luckily, I have about 5-6 copies of Arrival, 2-3 are candidate sources, and I found one that had less generation loss and have produced a better version.   I am in the midst of QC and that iterative EQ correction right now, hopefully ready to have some ABBA stuff ready to demo tonight.

 

This is NOT plug and chug, and far more sophisticated than most my engineering co-workers  (EE/DSP/CS) could likely do (and I used to work at the REAL AT&T Bell Labs, with some top notch people) -- this is DIFFICULT stuff, and I AM NOT PERFECT.   The big difference -- I am willing to try to do it, and have been AMAZINGLY successful with the DolbyA compatible decoder working so well, and maybe moderately successful resurrecting the damage done to peoples hearing & taste by this travesty started in the 1980s.

 

John

 

 

 

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17 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

The "anything undesirable" is some quality in the recording which catches out the playback chain - spotlights the weaknesses in the replay quality, which makes the particular recording significantly more unpleasant to listen to. 

 

A sorted setup will reproduce all 'standards' of recordings with ease - just like a modern car can handle all types of road surfaces far better than the ones engineered many decades ago - only in audio is the road required to be of 'prime' quality, to be fit for human consumption ... :P.

 

Just tried John's latest decoding examples - but even over the tinny sound of my current laptop it is clear that far too much has been lost in the processing; the treble of the synthesizer sounds has been dulled down to a completely boring component in the mix.

So how did you find the comparison of the uncoded clips with and without pre-emphasis?

Windows 11 PC, Roon, HQPlayer, Focus Fidelity convolutions, iFi Zen Stream, Paul Hynes SR4, Mutec REF10, Mutec MC3+USB, Devialet 1000Pro, KEF Blade.  Plus Pro-Ject Signature 12 TT for playing my 'legacy' vinyl collection. Desktop system; RME ADI-2 DAC fs, Meze Empyrean headphones.

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10 hours ago, John Dyson said:

You have to remember an important thing -- I am starting with material that has been damaged so that it is minimally listenable.

 

John, I come from a rather unusual perspective, compared to most - I evolved my thinking, over time, to consider that the recording, no matter how flawed it may be, to perhaps most listeners, as being the 'master' of the situation. This means that I must optimise my playback to the point where the words "minimally listenable" is never part of the equation; and the huge gain using this approach is that I can put on any recording, sight unseen, and it always opens up as a powerful listening experience - I may strongly disagree with the mastering decisions, and query 'mistakes' and sloppiness; but it still comes across as 'genuine' music making.

 

So, I don't want to remaster what the source is - I'm happy with the listening with what I have, but if I can hear different versions of some original recording sessions, I will still have my favourites, :).

 

Intense levels of treble hold no terrors for me. Live instruments do this as part of their sound making, and this is a fundamental reason why live, acoustic music has such a powerful impact - that sense of intensity is something I do not want to lose; and if such is part of the creative mix of a track, I want it to be there, in spades.

 

Quote

 

 

 

Here is an example of the iterative improvement -- neither Alex nor anyone else has heard this yet -- I respect him and don't want to waste his time, but my ONJ results have much more of the sibilance removed -- why?  because I figured out another one of the filters that they used to obscure the DolbyA shrillness.  When I know that it won't waste anyones time listening, I will start with Alex and a few others to doulbe check, and move on wider distribution.

 

Disturbing sibilance or shrillness in the playback are markers of distortion anomalies in the replay chain. If you 'sort out' the weaknesses in the setup, then the disturbing quality vanishes - because, you have eliminated the sources of the distortion artifacts. "Shrillness" is replaced with "intensity" - a vastly better alternative, ^_^.

 

 

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