Popular Post semente Posted October 6, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted October 6, 2019 1 hour 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. No. For several reasons, starting with the frequency response of microphones. Neumann TLM 103 Neumann M 150 I wonder if early reel-to-reel tape recorders extended to 20kHz. But 78 rpm shellac records did't go as far as 20kHz. lucretius, esldude and marce 3 "Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256) Link to comment
marce Posted October 6, 2019 Share Posted October 6, 2019 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? Link to comment
Popular Post esldude Posted October 6, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted October 6, 2019 1 hour ago, marce said: So how high can we hear? I can confirm hearing to at least 38,000 feet (11,500 meters). Teresa, Kyhl, lucretius and 3 others 6 And always keep in mind: Cognitive biases, like seeing optical illusions are a sign of a normally functioning brain. We all have them, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something that affects our objective evaluation of reality. Link to comment
Popular Post PeterSt Posted October 6, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted October 6, 2019 Very high, here. But I must admit I don't know the measure for a joint or two. lucretius and marce 2 Lush^3-e Lush^2 Blaxius^2.5 Ethernet^3 HDMI^2 XLR^2 XXHighEnd (developer) Phasure NOS1 24/768 Async USB DAC (manufacturer) Phasure Mach III Audio PC with Linear PSU (manufacturer) Orelino & Orelo MKII Speakers (designer/supplier) Link to comment
Ralf11 Posted October 6, 2019 Share Posted October 6, 2019 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... Link to comment
marce Posted October 6, 2019 Share Posted October 6, 2019 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. Link to comment
fas42 Posted October 7, 2019 Share Posted October 7, 2019 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. Link to comment
Popular Post John Dyson Posted October 7, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted October 7, 2019 21 minutes ago, fas42 said: 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. Actually, if you look at the vast array of differing kinds of distortion in digital audio, by far the worst was the difference in mastering. My most 'fun' example is 99 Red Balloons which came both with CD pre-emphasis AND lack of DolbyA decoding. Also, even premium labels (Sheffield labs) mis-mastered their 'I got the music in me' CD. I cannot even find a 100% reliable basis as to the 'correct sound' for certain groups, because their CD (and other releases) are so very different from each other -- some are TOTALLY different -- from the same apparent 2trk master!!! A little difference of a bit or two of additional distortion or noise at the LSB are relatively insignificant -- the differences in mastering are much more pronounced than most A/D & D/A imperfections. The lack of proper mastering effectively blows away all of those important least signficant bits as being significant at all. Of course, we can easily show that transducers have less precision than perhaps every other piece of equipment -- including good digital equipment 25yrs or more ago. If you add up all of the defects, including infinitely poor/missing mastering, then I can agree that some of the older D/As for example were only 14bits, some of the older recordings were also made on relatively inferior digital equipment. The lack of DolbyA decoding and other mastering differences will *totally* blow away the sonic difference in 14bits vs 16bits of resolution. Excessive dynamic range compression (as on many recent releases) actually eliminates almost any value of resolution beyond 14bits -- why bother, it is all distorted anyway.? (This statement intended rhetorically.) Given that the listener is totally dependent on the quality of the source recording, small differences in dither noise seem to be the proverbial angels on the head of a pin. Hopefully, some recordings DO deserve 16bits or more precision at a rate faster than 48k!!! Most commercial/consumer directed recordings seem to have been provided with such low quality control -- will we ever hear the old recordings in the way that they were indended? (That is, as it was recorded by the recording/mix engineer?) John lucretius and The_K-Man 2 Link to comment
Popular Post John Dyson Posted October 11, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted October 11, 2019 On 10/6/2019 at 10:34 PM, John Dyson said: Actually, if you look at the vast array of differing kinds of distortion in digital audio, by far the worst was the difference in mastering. My most 'fun' example is 99 Red Balloons which came both with CD pre-emphasis AND lack of DolbyA decoding. Also, even premium labels (Sheffield labs) mis-mastered their 'I got the music in me' CD. I cannot even find a 100% reliable basis as to the 'correct sound' for certain groups, because their CD (and other releases) are so very different from each other -- some are TOTALLY different -- from the same apparent 2trk master!!! A little difference of a bit or two of additional distortion or noise at the LSB are relatively insignificant -- the differences in mastering are much more pronounced than most A/D & D/A imperfections. The lack of proper mastering effectively blows away all of those important least signficant bits as being significant at all. Of course, we can easily show that transducers have less precision than perhaps every other piece of equipment -- including good digital equipment 25yrs or more ago. If you add up all of the defects, including infinitely poor/missing mastering, then I can agree that some of the older D/As for example were only 14bits, some of the older recordings were also made on relatively inferior digital equipment. The lack of DolbyA decoding and other mastering differences will *totally* blow away the sonic difference in 14bits vs 16bits of resolution. Excessive dynamic range compression (as on many recent releases) actually eliminates almost any value of resolution beyond 14bits -- why bother, it is all distorted anyway.? (This statement intended rhetorically.) Given that the listener is totally dependent on the quality of the source recording, small differences in dither noise seem to be the proverbial angels on the head of a pin. Hopefully, some recordings DO deserve 16bits or more precision at a rate faster than 48k!!! Most commercial/consumer directed recordings seem to have been provided with such low quality control -- will we ever hear the old recordings in the way that they were indended? (That is, as it was recorded by the recording/mix engineer?) John Regarding the 99 Red Balloons example, I can make snippets availalble right away -- BLOWING AWAY the so called 'digital distortion', when it is not actually 'distortion' at all, but rather DolbyA encoding and erroneous EQ. The 'I have the music in me' example needs clearance for me to do a snippet, but it is BEAUTIFUL once decoded -- very much like the old vinyl copy impacted me when first listening. Digital did NOT generally have severe distortion, but instead most of the problems were with mastering. I can make 100's if not 1000's examples of improvement by proper clean-up (DolbyA decoding, etc.) My results are NOT perfect because of nebulous changes done by the previous errsatz-mastering, and needing to undo those changes, however many (most) examples are improved by a simple decoding process... I have to say, that except for the 'de-emphasis' issue, the DolbyA decoding problem is probably the beginnings of the masses of listeners tolerating horrible compression (start of the loudness wars) and also the sum-total of the old 'digital distortion' matter. John Teresa and lucretius 1 1 Link to comment
Popular Post John Dyson Posted October 11, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted October 11, 2019 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 01-99 Red Balloons.flac-deemphNOTdecoded-snippet.mp3 01-99 Red Balloons-decoded-snippet.mp3 Confused and Archimago 2 Link to comment
Rexp Posted October 11, 2019 Share Posted October 11, 2019 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? Link to comment
Popular Post John Dyson Posted October 11, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted October 11, 2019 6 hours ago, Rexp said: Didn't you say vinyl was equally affected? I am 100% sure that some DolbyA vinyl had sometimes leaked through, but not very often at all in the past. It is probably more likely that old recordings done with DolbyA, distributed on vinyl with DolbyA intact is leaked nowadays than in the past. Possible reasons why vinyl might leak more often nowadays would include -- 'we are expecting the compressed DolbyA sound'. I believe that I have run into at least one example of feral DolbyA on vinyl, but not very often. * There is one actual VALID reason for skipping the DolbyA decoding step -- sometimes DolbyA decoding is problematical -- if doing an A/B comparision, sometimes undecoded DolbyA can sound better for various technical or judgement reasons. Commentary about processing 'on top of' DolbyA without decoding: In some cases, nowadays the DolbyA copy is further processed with severe compression on top of DolbyA -- making for a 'bright' sound, and 'very loud' sound, but sound is not so good in general (IMO.) (Example of severe compression: The Complete Studio Recordings/ABBA/ABBA/SOS -- Peak-RMS: 12.1dB, Vinyl Rip (ancient): 18.23dB, DHNRDS decoded version: 18.47dB. The DHNRDS DA decoding creates fewer errant peaks, so might seem like the peak-RMS is worse (lower) than it really is. Also, vinyl copies with cartridge/various kinds of EQ/phase/etc might make the Peak-RMS seem higher than it should be.) Bottom line is that currently, compression is often crazy bad... Peak-RMS of 12.1dB results from SEVERE amounts of processing. The reason for this mention is that there IS DolbyA encoded material that was further processed without DolbyA decoding -- using DolbyA as a compressor for HF. Along with a serious radio-station type compressor, the result can certainly be intense, but I don't prefer *extreme* compression. Not all compression is bad, I tend not to like it (it is an artistic tool IMO.) I do NOT know all of the reasons why the DolbyA leaked through into digital distribution, but there was something wrong with the 'process' in creating the CDs instead of the vinyl copies*. I have some direct rips that show the difference between ancient vinyl and ancient CD -- the CD isn't decoded, while the vinyl was properly decoded. Sometimes an undecoded CD might sound better than a decoded CD -- but decoded versions are seldom worse with the advanced DHNRDS modes (assuming that the DolbyA encoding is adequately intact.) * I have been given public information on at least one plausible scenario (from experience) as to why/how some DolbyA leaks had previously occurred (mistaken/missing documentation), but that would not explain the vast amount of leaked DolbyA material on digital media. Also, I have some documentation about LOC (Library of Congress) digital archiving procedures that (if followed) would produce the exact scenario where leaked DolbyA is likely to happen. My biggest proof is by example -- and it is definitely hit-or-miss whether or not the CD/digital distribution is left encoded. Answering your question specifically -- I believe that vinyl leaks have seldom/sometimes occurred (I think that I have a ripped example), but the feral DolbyA on vinyl definitely happened less often in the past than leaks on digital media. John sandyk, Rexp and lucretius 2 1 Link to comment
Popular Post The_K-Man Posted October 13, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted October 13, 2019 On 10/6/2019 at 10:34 PM, John Dyson said: Actually, if you look at the vast array of differing kinds of distortion in digital audio, by far the worst was the difference in mastering. 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. 🤦♂️ Teresa, John Dyson and marce 2 1 Link to comment
rvb Posted October 13, 2019 Share Posted October 13, 2019 That's a part of my point. Much time and effort to record music, but no time and effort to make it interesting for music lovers to buy. Compact disc and vinyl sales is laughable. Link to comment
rvb Posted October 13, 2019 Share Posted October 13, 2019 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. Link to comment
semente Posted October 13, 2019 Share Posted October 13, 2019 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? daverich4 1 "Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256) Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted October 13, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted October 13, 2019 On 10/10/2019 at 9:20 PM, 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 · 11 downloads 01-99 Red Balloons.flac-deemphNOTdecoded-snippet.mp3 2.1 MB · 9 downloads 01-99 Red Balloons-decoded-snippet.mp3 2.1 MB · 9 downloads Thanks John! "Ear opening" example. Enjoyed this old pop song but the recording always sounded terrible. Very nice decoded conversion... lucretius and John Dyson 1 1 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
fas42 Posted October 13, 2019 Share Posted October 13, 2019 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 ... . 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. kumakuma, John Dyson and The_K-Man 3 Link to comment
PeterSt Posted October 13, 2019 Share Posted October 13, 2019 Your explicit lyrics ? Lush^3-e Lush^2 Blaxius^2.5 Ethernet^3 HDMI^2 XLR^2 XXHighEnd (developer) Phasure NOS1 24/768 Async USB DAC (manufacturer) Phasure Mach III Audio PC with Linear PSU (manufacturer) Orelino & Orelo MKII Speakers (designer/supplier) Link to comment
sandyk Posted October 13, 2019 Share Posted October 13, 2019 10 minutes ago, PeterSt said: 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 kumakuma 1 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 Link to comment
John Dyson Posted October 14, 2019 Share Posted October 14, 2019 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 The_K-Man 1 Link to comment
John Dyson Posted October 14, 2019 Share Posted October 14, 2019 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 ... . 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 Link to comment
Confused Posted October 14, 2019 Share Posted October 14, 2019 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 ... . 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. Link to comment
fas42 Posted October 14, 2019 Share Posted October 14, 2019 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, . Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now