16 bit files almost unlistenable now...

[fas42]

10 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

As I mentioned previously, I have an extremely large library of music. Probably less than 5% are recording that I rarely listen to because of poor recording quality.

 

Fair enough. But you did post a recording here which "wasn't up to snuff" - that's exactly what I then turn to, use as a guide for further tweaking of a system ... it's the refinement of a setup to the degree that those sort of recordings can "work their magic", that demonstrate what's possible.

[sandyk]

54 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

So you are unhappy with the sound of your system?

 

Unlike you, I am always open to further improvements.

[kumakuma]

23 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

Unlike you, I am always open to further improvements.

 

See Frank. Even Grumpy Alex appears to be happy with the sound of his system.

[fas42]

Ahhh, happiness ... .

 

To perhaps help with getting the message across, a CD I used quite a bit last time when looking at the NAD was this,

 

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Great-Proms-Premieres/release/10499010

 

The main tracks are from 1994, and 2007 recordings - and they're "fine". But track 8 is a bonus, the first performance of Ireland's "Epic March", recorded 1942. The contrast between the '42 track and the others when the NAD was just OK is dramatic - you feel that the old performance is emerging from a tin horn; there is no comparison. Yet, at a high state of tune the ol' un kicks up its legs, and take on a vitality such that it no longer is shamed in the company of the others - it still sounds 'different', but the "old relic" is now revealed to be dramatic, has the character and life of music being produced by living people ... it's enjoyable, rather than sounding slightly ridiculous.

[gmgraves]

17 hours ago, fas42 said:

George, you work so hard at times to be as unpleasant as possible ... give it a break, eh?

Now, just what did I say that was unpleasant? I merely told the truth. I also asked you is you were anticipating Spring in your neck-of-the-woods. I know that it can snow in the winter in the Blue Mountains because there are ski resorts up there. If you're like most people, winter gets tiresome after awhile.

 

And I'll give it a break if you take your broken record off the turntable and trash it! Hows about that?

 

17 hours ago, fas42 said:

I write the posts because I want to stimulate others to consider alternative approaches to getting optimum sound - I can put energy into things in short bursts, like doing forum messages - the trouble begins when I need to sustain focused attention on something, for days and weeks - like sorting a rig ... this has got worse, lately.

 

But that's just it, Frank. You don't stimulate others, you piss 'em off with your endless bragging about how great your system is while assuming (and intimating) that everybody else's system sounds sub-par. 

 

17 hours ago, fas42 said:

I have pointed many times to people who have had the same or similar results to me - but I irritate because I don't keep quiet about it. Getting better sound should be something more widespread - I'm just doing my bit to try and make this happen ...

No, Frank. That's the problem. You're not doing your "bit". You're just antagonizing people into speculating about your mental health. The results you say you get from the equipment that you say you have is unlikely in the extreme. And your comments about recordings makes it seem like your system favors the lowest common denominator. I.E. you system doesn't raise the level of the performance of poor recordings to that of great recordings, it lowers the performance of great recordings to the level of poor ones. 

[gmgraves]

16 hours ago, sandyk said:

 

 Obviously the OP isn't, although most who rarely post in other areas of the forum appear to be.

None of this recent stuff has anything to do with the title of the thread.

I think that' because as a blanket statement , this thread's title has very little meaning. The fact is (and you know this) the listening quality of a recording often has little to do with bit-depth or sampling rate. I'm sure that we all have CD quality recordings that sound better than some SACDs or hi-res LPCM recordings. We've discussed this before. It seems to have more to do with the care in the production of a recording than any other factors. Sure, I have great sounding SACDs and hi-res PCM stuff (so do you, I'm sure), but as I've said previously, I have some Red Book CD releases that just destroy SACD or other hi-res format releases of the same material. Whatever hi-res format you want talk about, the results are only as good as the care that went into the production. So, how can anyone say with impunity that they can't listen to 16-bit/44.1 KHz any more when the release quality of all current formats is all over the map? 

[gmgraves]

16 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Fair enough. But you did post a recording here which "wasn't up to snuff" - that's exactly what I then turn to, use as a guide for further tweaking of a system ... it's the refinement of a setup to the degree that those sort of recordings can "work their magic", that demonstrate what's possible.

But Frank, the kind of control over a system's sound that you brag about doing simply isn't possible. Amplifiers sound different, but good ones don't sound THAT different. The differences are fairly subtle. Soldering one's interconnects from one component to another, again could possibly yield a slight difference, but again, that difference would be subtle, and in some cases would yield no improvement whatsoever. There's not a lot one can do with commercial speakers and making your own will probably yield more control over your overall sound than any other tweak you can perform. I remember once, a number of years ago, that I replaced the mylar capacitors in my Magneplanar Tympani IIIb speakers' crossover with polypropylene "Wonder Caps" of the same value. A friend was visiting and while I was down on my hands and knees replacing caps, he was sitting in my listening chair reading a magazine. We had been listening before I made the change, and when I finished, I put on the same recording that we had been listening to before. My friend was still engrossed in whatever he was reading and oblivious to what I was doing. when the music started, he looked up from his reading and asked: "What did you just do?" I asked him why and he said that the treble and upper midrange were suddenly much cleaner and much clearer. So, I walked around to the front of the speakers, an I heard the same improvement. But again, while instantly noticeable, I can't say that I would have noticed any difference at all if some time had passed between the before and after listening test. Most of this stuff is so subtle, that if you strung a hundred tweaks of that magnitude together, it would not possibly reach the level of audio quality that you continually brag about!

Below: a Pair of Tympani III's exactly like the ones I owned. 

[numlog]

2 hours ago, gmgraves said:

I think that' because as a blanket statement , this thread's title has very little meaning. The fact is (and you know this) the listening quality of a recording often has little to do with bit-depth or sampling rate. I'm sure that we all have CD quality recordings that sound better than some SACDs or hi-res LPCM recordings. We've discussed this before. It seems to have more to do with the care in the production of a recording than any other factors. Sure, I have great sounding SACDs and hi-res PCM stuff (so do you, I'm sure), but as I've said previously, I have some Red Book CD releases that just destroy SACD or other hi-res format releases of the same material. Whatever hi-res format you want talk about, the results are only as good as the care that went into the production. So, how can anyone say with impunity that they can't listen to 16-bit/44.1 KHz any more when the release quality of all current formats is all over the map? 

but it never had anything to do with the recording quality, it had to do with the difference between 16 bit and 24, whether it be the same recording or different.

We agree that some of the best recordings of many genres are on CD,

if these  CDs were captured/available in 24 bit how much better would they be?

 

If 24 bit is important then these CDs have more to gain than most recordings (i.e they suffer the most from 16 bit). Sample rate is also important but with upsampling options it doesnt feel like much of a problem, nothing can be helped for bit depth.

 

Before settling on anything related to bit depth I need to use a different DAC, The topping D50 should be a better tool for this than UDA38Pro .

[kumakuma]

21 minutes ago, numlog said:

but it never had anything to do with the recording quality, it had to do with the difference between 16 bit and 24, whether it be the same recording or different.

We agree that some of the best recordings of many genres are on CD,

if these  CDs were captured/available in 24 bit how much better would they be?

 

In my experience, the mastering/recording quality is much more important than resolution. I have compared a number of albums with the SAME mastering in 16/44.1 format to higher resolution releases and I have found the differences to be extremely small, if evident at all.

[numlog]

46 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

In my experience, the mastering/recording quality is much more important than resolution. 

And they are completely seperate things . Nobody will not agree that the recording is very important, it is the basis of any good musical experience. resolution is a grey area and that's why it's a subject of discussion. 

[kumakuma]

1 hour ago, numlog said:

And they are completely seperate things . Nobody will not agree that the recording is very important, it is the basis of any good musical experience. resolution is a grey area and that's why it's a subject of discussion. 

 

I agree that they are completely separate things but often when folks are talking about higher resolution releases sounding better they are comparing releases of the same album that have different masterings which is a meaningless way to answer the question you posed.

 

If you'd like to do a proper comparison, go buy this album in 16/44.1 and 24/192 resolutions and see how much difference you can hear between the two:

 

http://www.hdtracks.com/waiting-for-the-sunrise-654795

 

[fas42]

5 hours ago, gmgraves said:

I know that it can snow in the winter in the Blue Mountains because there are ski resorts up there. If you're like most people, winter gets tiresome after awhile.

 

Not in my area. I'm much further North from the ski resort area; the most we get is a slight dusting of snow once every 20 years. Spring is due, we getting the perhaps the last Winter cold chill right now ... the biggest problem is rain; 100% of the state of NSW is now in drought.

 

5 hours ago, gmgraves said:

And I'll give it a break if you take your broken record off the turntable and trash it! Hows about that?

 

But that's just it, Frank. You don't stimulate others, you piss 'em off with your endless bragging about how great your system is while assuming (and intimating) that everybody else's system sounds sub-par. 

 

No, Frank. That's the problem. You're not doing your "bit". You're just antagonizing people into speculating about your mental health. The results you say you get from the equipment that you say you have is unlikely in the extreme. And your comments about recordings makes it seem like your system favors the lowest common denominator. I.E. you system doesn't raise the level of the performance of poor recordings to that of great recordings, it lowers the performance of great recordings to the level of poor ones. 

 

I'll stop talking about it, when people take seriously the need to eliminate flaws in the playback chain; the latter is what I always hear with other systems, indeed making them "sub-par" - my system isn't "great"; it's merely working correctly!  I get the results I do because I've made it my thing to address these areas; something you fight against doing, venomously.

 

Well recorded pieces still sound as "good" as they always do; lifting the standard of playback allows one to become emotionally immersed in the music making captured in technically poor recordings, rather than just having them sounding like quaint, historical curiousities - I prefer to enjoy the spirit of the music, as compared to indulging in being an aggressive critic of the recording artifact.

 

[fas42]

5 hours ago, gmgraves said:

But Frank, the kind of control over a system's sound that you brag about doing simply isn't possible. Amplifiers sound different, but good ones don't sound THAT different. The differences are fairly subtle. Soldering one's interconnects from one component to another, again could possibly yield a slight difference, but again, that difference would be subtle, and in some cases would yield no improvement whatsoever. There's not a lot one can do with commercial speakers and making your own will probably yield more control over your overall sound than any other tweak you can perform. I remember once, a number of years ago, that I replaced the mylar capacitors in my Magneplanar Tympani IIIb speakers' crossover with polypropylene "Wonder Caps" of the same value. A friend was visiting and while I was down on my hands and knees replacing caps, he was sitting in my listening chair reading a magazine. We had been listening before I made the change, and when I finished, I put on the same recording that we had been listening to before. My friend was still engrossed in whatever he was reading and oblivious to what I was doing. when the music started, he looked up from his reading and asked: "What did you just do?" I asked him why and he said that the treble and upper midrange were suddenly much cleaner and much clearer. So, I walked around to the front of the speakers, an I heard the same improvement. But again, while instantly noticeable, I can't say that I would have noticed any difference at all if some time had passed between the before and after listening test. Most of this stuff is so subtle, that if you strung a hundred tweaks of that magnitude together, it would not possibly reach the level of audio quality that you continually brag about!

 

Which says that you've done exactly the sort of things that I do - I do nothing conceptually different from what you did there.

 

You say "strung a hundred tweaks of that magnitude together, it would not possibly reach the level of audio quality"  ... you're still trapped in the mental swamp of thinking, Adding Goodness - each tweak is actually Subtracting Badness ... and there are only a finite numbers of Badnesses in a particular rig. It's just a process of finding each in turn, and sorting it - convincing SQ falls out automatically, when the last one has been tackled.

 

"He said that the treble and upper midrange were suddenly much cleaner and much clearer." - translation: the expensive Magneplanar speakers were flawed, by using capacitors of insufficient quality; they produced audible distortion, which was resolved by changing the caps - you Subtracted some Badness.

 

The SQ I talk about is what is the end result of doing this everywhere in a setup where it's dragging down the quality to a "sub-par" level ...

[PeterSt]

Wat is sad, is that people can hide behind bad recordings, which in my view is the most weak "act" because it is so easy to diminish everything over it. The reason I'm saying this, is that I personally don't see bad recordings anywhere. I do see, however, many, many (many !) recordings which behave poorly just because my system apparently (!) can't deal with them. This is often related to "eras of recording" or types of music and instruments or a combination of both. Example of a last whole group that I could make my system suitable for, is stuff like Kiss, Boston, Foreigner, Toto, Journey - don't ask me how to exactly name/group that, but I suppose it is about how the fullness of the distortion guitar is applied (like full chords on them and then three of them together). So while this is music of my younger years, only recently (2-3 years ago) I could satisfactorily play it in my system (and at some decent level - which usually is crucial for something really working vs being painstaking).

 

At some stage, maybe 30 years ago, I had 800 or so CD's and I recall that I started a journey of having those CD's and a system, more than half being bad recordings, and how to improve on the playback of them. My CD rack was divided into areas with bad/poor recordings and just good ones. I could see how far I was with tweaking by the number of CD's in each department. This with the notice that I far more play(ed) the bad recordings because they need improvement. I ended up with FIVE bad recordings, at a moment I meanwhile collected 2000 CD's. Say that it took me 10 years to get there. Always tweaking. And btw, always the same system. One thing : my goal for audio life is making the poor sound good. And, of course be so ignorant that you think it can be done (contrary to the consensus of this thread, for some - no worries I am not accusing or anything).

 

The better the system, actually the harder it gets. For example, with almost real level cymbals today, while quite a while back I was happy to perceive some reality of a hi-hat (which was the first major achievement were it about SQ in general - unrelated to poor recordings) - read : when you hardly hear a hi-hat which is distinct and hardly anything to distort because it is always showing at a fairly low level (and often the only instrument in the drum kit that needs amplification at a performance), there is no fear to have from normal cymbals, just because they are of a too low level, too grey and they can't hurt. But wait until they start to show real levels (which would be 110dBSPL at 1 m) ... then things get infinitely more difficult.

 

Today I have 54K CD's and although I will never be able to play them all, readily by heart I can not tell about baddies in there, or bad or poor recordings. However, I have a "demo" gallery which contains some which can be improved upon, and I guess this quest will never really end. Oh, Michael Jackson is in it, with Bad and Thriller and the like. They G-D one day will play fine in my system, although you can sense from any angle that they only perform on PA systems. Still I keep on trying. And mind you, a LOT is about the stupidly synthesized drums of the 80's which ... well, still can vastly improve. Recognize Enigma with its distinct grey sound in the highs ? ... it can turn into completely normal fresh highs. Really. ELO, same thing but more (improved).

Those who visited me know that I play Get Back of The Beatles to them, and without exception they are sure it is a cover band who recorded it a year ago. But it is not and it is the super grey sound with something which looked like cymbal hash back in the 60s, which now sounds like super real normal cymbal with the most beautiful recording technique. You just can't imagine and therefore you won't believe it either. OK, you don't believe Frank and I am easily with you. But claiming that he thus mesmerizes all into poor recording and therefore all sounding the same (and good to Frank's ears) ? no. Well, sort of No. Point is, I do it too, although maybe per different means.

All, OK, almost all hits from the end 60's and 70's, sound like brand new and from yesterday but better. A while ago I put up a list of it (stuff like Give up your Guns and 40 more) .

 

Moral : out of 1000 bad recordings as how they come to "you" (not addressing anyone in particular) the chance is very fair that NONE remain poor when you play them in my system. Most probably you can't even define poor, other than from some idea of wrong microphone placement, perceived wrong panning, flat as a pancake whatever sourced reason or plain shrill because of no-idea-how. It is all not true once you represent it in a quite infinitive "tweaked" means (but all formally ending up in commercially available means), which btw still is on-going but not anymore to improve recordings. To make them super special, yes. Some ^2 cable is the latest example of that, this making everything down-right spooky and every piece, disregarding the type, a thriller or "play" and theater. It turns out that we don't need Mahler or Stravinsky or Bartók for that, because actually all music makers are artists, and this shows. So don't think that e.g. Ian Dury or Elvis Costello and even Grandmaster Flash (and some furious five) and 1000s more are not artists. They play for you. And btw, they don't play for recordings really. They make theater.

 

Let's keep in mind : all I have been doing the past years is improve the 16 bits 44.1 stuff, hunting for one thing only : genuine representation of the real thing through loudspeakers. I don't even attempt 24 bits or higher sampling rates.

I am in the special opportunity of "being able to" control 100% of the playback chain; Playback software including Operating System tweaking, Audio PC, D/A converter, amplification and loudspeakers. Oh, and some gadgets like cables. Point is : many of you use one part of it only. Now, all will admit that it helps them, or otherwise it wasn't used. Now use two. Or three (like software, PC, DAC - or - USB cable, DAC, Interlinks). This is still far from all. But what you achieve with that will (hopefully) be beyond imagination. So moral :

 

Each element helps vastly, once it has been explicitly made for a purpose and was developed (coincidentally ?) in the midst of a consistent chain. Say that each element is a reference for the other, so we can build upon it.

If you stack all of these elements together, well, then ...

Then Get Back sounds like recorded yesterday but better ? What a great hobby this actually is ...

[diecaster]

23 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

Moral : out of 1000 bad recordings as how they come to "you" (not addressing anyone in particular) the chance is very fair that NONE remain poor when you play them in my system.

 

Yes, you have the most wonderful system on the planet !? Which direction do I need to bow toward? ?

[PeterSt]

Frank @fas42, Let my rant be an example of how everybody can put up such an indeed rant from his own perspective. This is my second of the same in this thread. Possibly I did it similarly in maybe 5 occasions, one of them that thread of a year back where I put up that list of 40 or so hits of the 60s and 70s.

If I would put up my act as often as you do (which is in every existing thread in CA), I would most certainly be banned after the 5th in a row in say a week of time, because of self advertising. That is my "downside" and that seems to hold me back from posting again and again. You have no limits and keep on spreading the word. But people can't utilize it. It is empty. Trust me.

You are right, especially in your own context (which is how audio is anyway). But you can't tell people to tweak. Then better turn it into a product, label is snake oil if you want and then people can decide for their own. People buy it or they don't. Now people can not buy anything because you don't sell anything. Sounds odd eh ?

If I had to tell what I all did in 10 years of "tweaking" to end up with only 5 poor recordings ... I wouldn't even know. I also know that it would be completely useless to tell about a first wire to connect from A to B for better grounding. It helps me, but it won't help you. You don't even have a A or B. 

 

Done. 

 

[PeterSt]

5 minutes ago, diecaster said:

Yes, you have the most wonderful system on the planet !? Which direction do I need to bow toward? ?

 

Make that East.

It is not about my beautiful whatever system. It is about bad recordings which don't exist really. OK ?

[pkane2001]

21 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

It is not about my beautiful whatever system. It is about bad recordings which don't exist really. OK ?

 

There are no bad recordings, only bad listeners . A bad recording is purely subjective. To me, a noisy, distorted recording from the early 20th century might sound better than the best audiophile recording of this decade. So what? What does that mean to anybody but me?

 

[fas42]

Peter, some very thoughful posts there, ?...

 

Quote

But people can't utilize it. It is empty. Trust me.

 

In the flesh, they can. I have my good audio friend down the road, who provides this feedback, again and again - I patiently point out what is wrong in the sound he has spent so much time working up, prior to me visiting - and the balloon sags ... his wife allows a wry smile to cross her lips ...

 

But that was some time ago ... much, much better handle on it now - and he explores avenues that I haven't even thought about.

 

Turning it into a product? Some years ago, yes, that was the plan ... but I've run out of energy - maybe something can still happen, maybe not. Why it didn't happen earlier is that I didn't have enough control over, understanding about what is necessary to get right - I was still learning, and in fact, still am - so I felt I didn't have something "good enough" to put out there. I hated the thought that people would try it, and some extra factor that I hadn't taken account of would cripple it, in their situation.

 

To end with - some good news: Michael Jackson's Bad can become a "killer" album - my wife loves this one! You can only admire the skill of the producer of this; brilliant stuff ...

[fas42]

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

Those who visited me know that I play Get Back of The Beatles to them, and without exception they are sure it is a cover band who recorded it a year ago. But it is not and it is the super grey sound with something which looked like cymbal hash back in the 60s, which now sounds like super real normal cymbal with the most beautiful recording technique. You just can't imagine and therefore you won't believe it either.

 

My equivalent is the original Revolution, with the full distorted guitar intro - this almost literally blows you over; the sound of that distortion is probably my all time favourite example of what such a sound element can be like - it grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go. And the balance of that against the undistorted rest of the insruments, and vocals is nigh perfect ...

[numlog]

2 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

Make that East.

It is not about my beautiful whatever system. It is about bad recordings which don't exist really. OK ?

I would have to agree with that, the best example of a 'bad recording' I had encountered a few years ago as a beginner to hifi was a lot of recently produced pop music, its loud as hell, modern hip hop doesnt even go that loud, my low end system could not render it in way that didnt sound awful but listening to any of it now you can only be impressed by how the engineers can make something so loud while still sounding good.

 

another example of ''bad recording'' would probably be within electronic music.

 

A lot of aphex twin's work has a homemade/underprocessed sound to it,  with sub optimal gear it tended to sound harsh and seemed like it could be an example of bad recordings, dealing with artificial sounds there is no frame of reference so it's hard to know. this was common with a lot electronic music, specifically those featuring analogue synthesis, and listening now this harshness is actually valuable high frequency data that gives the music an immense organic character that you will rarely encounter anywhere else 

 

So yeah, what seemed like the worst offenders are not even close to being bad... they are infact great and the 'good recordings' are now a bit boring and predictable.

[PeterSt]

54 minutes ago, numlog said:

and listening now this harshness is actually valuable high frequency data that gives the music an immense organic character that you will rarely encounter anywhere else 

 

Exactly.

 

54 minutes ago, numlog said:

and the 'good recordings' are now a bit boring and predictable.

 

Even more Exactly.

 

55 minutes ago, numlog said:

the best example of a 'bad recording' I had encountered a few years ago as a beginner to hifi was a lot of recently produced pop music, its loud as hell

 

Oops. This is so far from my "genre" that I didn't even think about that. Yes, all this modern bill-sh*t-100 is total crap for the recording, style and "artist value". It is nothing (to me).

 

59 minutes ago, numlog said:

A lot of aphex twin's work has a homemade/underprocessed sound to it,  with sub optimal gear it tended to sound harsh and seemed like it could be an example of bad recordings

 

Although not really my style of music, I am mentioning it more often - try Bucephalus Bouncing Ball (from Come to Daddy). It's a genuine "system tester" with its square sounding bounding ball which ever bounces faster (closer to the ground) and the square frequency goes up. Try that on a "poor" sounding system and you wouldn't even understand the purpose, as with almost exclusively all "electronic" music.

 

[diecaster]

Right. Supposed "bad" recordings are actually "great" recordings that can only be played on your equipment. Supposed really "good" recordings are really pedestrian  and offer nothing special. Give me an freakin' break......

[danadam]

19 hours ago, numlog said:

Sample rate is also important but with upsampling options it doesnt feel like much of a problem, nothing can be helped for bit depth.

You can always add <96dB noise. It will reduce digital glare and make sound more analogue, cause you know, the steps are smoother now (at least some of them). /s

 

17 hours ago, numlog said:

And they are completely seperate things . Nobody will not agree that the recording is very important, it is the basis of any good musical experience. resolution is a grey area and that's why it's a subject of discussion.

Is it?

Can't you take the best 24 bit recording you have, convert it to 16 bit and back again and compare in some ABX test? This should un-grey it I think.

[Jud]

6 hours ago, diecaster said:

Right. Supposed "bad" recordings are actually "great" recordings that can only be played on your equipment. Supposed really "good" recordings are really pedestrian  and offer nothing special. Give me an freakin' break......

 

All he's saying is that his method of working is to try to make "bad" recordings of decent artists sound as good as possible by attempting to get at how they actually sounded.  That encompasses 16/44.1 recordings as a whole (do you feel RedBook is inadequate?), and then a lot of specific artists (he mentioned the Beatles - I think George Martin did a pretty good job, but there's some early Stones that definitely sounds pretty primitive on my system).

 

I don't see anything wrong with that, do you?

 

By the way, I had an earlier version of @PeterSt's DAC in my home for a month, on loan from a friend, and it's the best, most accurate DAC I've ever heard to this day.