Concert Hall sound

[fas42]

7 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

I am using easy-to-drive IEMs and I have no desire to solder my IEMs to either the DAP or my ears so there's really nothing to tweak.

 

I guess I'm doomed to listen to my music just as it was recorded... for better or worse.

 

The best solution is to encourage manufacturers of gear to "get it right", in the first place - out of curiosity, what's the model of DAP you're using?

 

A torch does the job well enough to see where you're going - but switch on the sun, and it's a whole different "world" - the places you visit are exactly the same, either way.

[fas42]

Just looked it up, the review makes all the right noises about its subjective performance - certainly better than the raw capabilties of the players that my friend uses. Implies that it betters very well recognised DACs - have you ever tried using it to drive your speaker rig?

[fas42]

4 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

Yes... and bad recordings were still bad. 

 

OK, give us an example of a particularly disappointing bad recording, and what about it made it so disappointing.

[fas42]

10 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

 

You tease us with such remarkably vacuous statements, but we need you and your remarkable powers here or, at least a road map to how to achieve this remarkable nirvana which you and only you have achieved.

 

 

Come on, we all want the sun to shine in.  But, you are not showing us the way.  You are just feeding us evasive foreplay.  Give it to us, man.  

 

 

 

Well, at the moment I'm trying to "tease out" some useful information from kumakuma, that I can work with - we'll see how long he lasts ... .

[fas42]

And an excellent example it is, too! I have no trouble hearing the potential there, that would fabulous to listen to, on a sorted setup. Down the road we use old Oscar Peterson tracks; I have an Errol Garner CD with tracks in very bad shape, far worse than the Bud Powell item.

 

The vocalisations are part of how it was recorded; not much can be done about that - but the rest should come together.

 

When you listen to this, does it work better as a coherent musical experience on the headphones, or when hooked up to the rig, via the speakers?

 

And ... this is where I will have to take a break - I have some real world things to do; will be back later in the day ... .

[fas42]

6 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

 

ALL of flaws I mentioned are in recording.

 

In answer to your question, the music sounds better with my speakers because my speaker system is LESS "sorted" than my DAP and the flaws in the recording are less noticeable, allowing me to better enjoy the music.

 

Using the DAP I mentioned and high quality IEMs, the track is almost unlistenable as every flaw in the recording sticks out like a sore thumb. 

 

Yes, the recording has issues - I have numerous such items; the Errol Garner tracks sound somewhat worse than an Edison roll!

 

There is a path that occurs with optimising a rig, that happens nearly every time - the current NAD runs somewhat counter to this trend, at the moment. That is, a setup starts off sounding reasonably pleasant, then becomes nigh impossible with certain recordings at a certain point in the evolution; then, you're over the hurdle, it's all downhill from now on.

 

If "every flaw in the recording sticks out like a sore thumb" then the musical message still lacks the coherence and integrity to counter your awareness of the flaws ...

 

And I'll stop there ... I just realised you probably used a source other than the DAP to listen to this track, over the speakers. Is this correct?

[fas42]

7 hours ago, mansr said:

 

 

The FBI couldn't make out the lyrics despite trying for months.

 

And, I have used this track on occasion as a measure for progress - indeed, a toughy ...

[fas42]

6 hours ago, gmgraves said:

In other words, Frank, you've been caught with your pants down AGAIN!

 

Silly boy! ... it's a motto that I cheerfully use, because it stops me falling in the same trap as everyone else - if I have this as a goal then it prods me not to rest on my laurels; I have been caught out far too many times, over the years, in thinking that a particular recording was unrescuable - only to prove myself wrong in the end ...

 

There is recent effort by Amy Winehouse, where they have added badly constructed, fake vinyl noise. This could probably resist most efforts to undo the damage, because it is embedded as a meaningless, emphasised sound effect - this at the moment would probably top my list of truly "bad" recordings - because it's making a deliberately irritating, pseudo-random sound part of the musical message.

[fas42]

6 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

I so wanted to hear what Frank hears! Like you, I kept asking him to share his wisdom. After many questions and a detailed description of my system, Frank finally diagnosed the main problem!!! My speakers binding posts may not have been soldered on the inside of the speaker (mind you, I’d have to flip over and take apart a 107lbs speaker just to look inside to see if there is or isn’t a soldered connection).

 

Needless to say, my system is still mediocre, since I didn’t follow through on Frank’s suggestion. But I’m sure if and when I do, my system will sound incredible!

 

Tsk! You gave up far too easily - I have had a setup of mine drop off the perch so often because a single connection wasn't up to scratch - constant experimenting and adjusting guarantees that the wrong things will be disturbed from time to time; leading to me wondering why the sound is not up the par, doing a major hunt, and discovering an uh-oh!!

 

Thought experiment: the technician for a space flight says, I only checked 99.99% of the seals for airtightness, but my gut feeling says the last bit is OK - you'll be happy to climb on board the capsule for Mars; if the air runs out on the way only dead you and me will know this ...

 

Yes, it's a pain, and probably it's not an issue for your speaker - but this is the type of thinking I need to use, to get the results.

[fas42]

9 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

You're starting from the wrong end, and your approach will lead to years of frustration before one finds any real issues. When troubleshooting, I highly recommend to try to address the major causes first, and not those that might have little or no effect at all.

 

That approach is exactly what gave me convincing sound the first time round - completely unexpectedly. Once achieved in one situation, and able to to understand the conditions which enabled, and disabled that quality  - without understanding all the why's - I then repeated the exercise for various other combinations of gear. Unlike apparently some, , I tend to be logical - if something happens , and I can make it happen with the right efforts, then I start to believe that there might be something in it ... .

 

The 'learning' makes a difference - as said before, the current NAD gear on first test switch on was midfi mediocre - so I dived straight in, and did major surgery before trying to take it seriously. Immediately had huge gains, and knew I had something very promising to work with.

 

9 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Thought experiment: would you start by checking every last one of the seals first if you had a huge hole open in the side of your space capsule?

 

The "huge hole" being speakers and room? If so, completely wrong - competent sound doesn't require very much from here.

[fas42]

6 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

With all due respect, I don't believe this is possible.

 

Ummm, that's exactly how it works - no pain, no gain ... the pattern has repeated over and over again, year after year. Why this happens is possibly because when the SQ is very close to the right level the mind wants it to all make sense - but, subconsciously, is frustrated because it still manifests defects which the mind can't see past; when the sound is midfi, then mind has no expectations and doesn't try to find more in the sound than the obvious elements.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Not just room and speakers, but practically everything else in the audio chain. But I get it, if the sound is all in your head, nothing else matters but what you believe.

 

The "everything else" in the audio chain is in pretty good shape - what people still seem to have great problems appreciating is that the circuitry if working as designed, as intended, does do a extremely good job of replicating what's on the recording. Which is why "cheap" gear can be pushed up to very high standards of subjective quality - the core functionality is fine. Which brings it all undone are the poorly chosen parts or methods of implementing the circuitry and the ways different areas are connected - going back the 100 lbs pull chain, most parts of a rig can do the 100 lbs, easy peasy - it's the other links which don't have the glamour of the circuitry parts which are below strength, that.do the damage.

 

I note people want answers, but it HAS TO FIT IN WITH THEIR CURRENT BELIEF SYSTEMS - if it doesn't, then then don't bug them about it any more ... for those who think that way, very little can be done - for those whose minds are not set in concrete, there is hope ...

[fas42]

46 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Just as we suspected.

 

Do you have a degree in electronics, Frank? You say that you "dive right-in" making changes. What changes? And don't just say "circuit changes". Take the NAD amp that you are talking about, for instance. When you "dove-in" what did you change? Describe the part of the circuit you changed and tell us specifically what parts you change and why. I need to see phrases like "The NAD's input stage used a pair of LM301 OP Amps and I changed them to LME47910s". Or, "I replaced all of the NAD's interstage coupling capacitors with jumpers making the amp direct-coupled". Things like that. Then tell us why you did it and what specific benefit you expected to gain from the modification. Things like: "I changed the op-amps to LM47910s because they have much better slew rate than the LM301s and they have much better self noise specs. I did it because the newer parts' symmetrical slew when compared to the LM301 will give better square-wave response and the noise and distortion figures for the LME47910s gives a lower noise floor and cleans up the signal in a very noticeable way."

 

Ummm, you will never get it ... because I have never, ever altered a component with those sort of ideas - see my previous post. The NAD was a mess because it had too much extraneous circuitry, with cheap pots and cheap switches controlling those areas - ditch all that functionality, and one starts to get somewhere ...

 

You see, you're still trapped in the "That link has 105 lbs strength; I need to up it to 114 lbs!" mindset - completely ignoring the cheap bit of hardware which is the next link - which is only 75 lbs. So, what happens when you pull on the chain?

 

Quote

 

You get specific with what you did, and what if you did makes technical sense, then perhaps you can regain some credibility here.

 

Sound reasonable?

 

No, it doesn't. There are pointless mods, and then there are genuinely useful ones - I tend to focus on the latter ...

 

[fas42]

Just now, kumakuma said:

 

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you on this point.

 

The issue is more your contention that you can take your equipment past accurate playback into a mystical state where shitty recordings suddenly start to sound good.

 

Not mystical, merely where the detail is recovered cleanly enough for the mind to sort the good, from the irrelevant. This transition occurs for any sort of genre, style of music, age of recording - I have heard classical, blues, jazz, pop, folk CDs sound one time like a heap of poo; and at another as something that makes sense, and comes to life as an enjoyable experience - I have heard Louie Louie many, many times; often extremely sludgy, and then I hear it when the rig is in better shape - Ah-hah!! That's what's going on!

[fas42]

14 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Frank, your beliefs are not supported by any known scientific, engineering, or psychological framework. For this reason, you need to supply real evidence and not anecdotes about your personal experience or analogies to car mechanics. Until you provide something more solid than that, you’ll keep getting the same responses.

 

Do you get the concept that a chain is as strong as the weakest link - and that addressing those lesser elements is the most useful strategy? If not ...

 

The aspect of why the mind switches into another mode when listening to high quality sound is more precarious - Bregman and all those who are following his lead are most likely closest to getting a handle on that.

 

Most people in the audio game have experienced at least one occasion when a rig has produced 'magical' sound - the only thing unusual about me is that I have made it my "thing" to chase down what is required to make this happen, at will.

 

[fas42]

14 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

How about sharing some photos of what you've done to the innards of the NAD?

 

Would be no point. I've disconnected parts of the circuitry, link other bits in permanently. I use the shortest, simplest way of doing this, a length of copper wire a couple of mms long if I can - there is almost nothing to show, and anything significant always looks very messy - I have no interest in neatness when investigating, a rough and ready fix so long as it has the necessary electrical integrity is all I worry about.

[fas42]

7 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Show us what extraneous parts you ditched and what did they do; or more importantly, what did they NOT do that made you feel that they were extraneous, and how did you know?  You can't just go into a circuit and start ditching parts willy-nilly. For instance, what did you replace the pots with? Which brand and how do you know they were better than what NAD used? You can't tell my looking, you know! Were the NAD pots carbon pots or plastic film pots? were the pots you replaced them with plastic film? If so, what brand? 

 

Go to STC's thread - I posted some photos of the amp's exterior, etc - picked up on the net. Huge array of switches and knobs on the front - not a single one now does anything, they're all eliminated. That is, all pots are now non-functional, even the volume!

 

7 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

 

And forget the pointless mods. Tell us which ones are are  "Genuinely Useful". WE WANT SPECIFICS!

 

I'm not trapped anywhere Frank. This isn't about me, this is about you. Trying to deflect the conversation won't work.  I'm trying to find out specifically what you did to that NAD and other components to elicit this incredible performance you brag constantly about. 

I back-up KumaKuma's request that you post a photo of the innards of your and and highlight on it what you changed or deleted. 

 

 

Have you read what I posted on my blog?

 

The problem with trying to get a handle on what I do is that there is almost no overlap with the original Perreaux amp, so far. The latter had biggest issues with its power supply, and I haven't even started looking at this area on the NAD.

[fas42]

14 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Of course it wouldn't. But humor us, Frank, post it anyway and mark the places you where you changed things and describe the changes in an accompanying text. Oh, yes, and how would you know if a circuit mod were necessary or not? You still haven't told us what your electronic background is that would allow you to know what parts in a given circuit are extraneous or necessary? 

IOW Frank, we're asking you to put-up or shut-up!

 

Us magicians have special powers, you see, George - an important henchman is Google, and that faithful companion provided me with a service manual for the beast; I now had a circuit, which was vital - the amp when I got it was dead, wouldn't power up. Had to do quite a bit of troubleshooting, from the diagram to work out how a special chip monitored conditions, before it allowed power up. Was that chip faulty? No! Turned out to be that a simple resistor in one of the sensing paths had gone open circuit - replace, voila!

 

Guess if I can work that out, that I know enough about such stuff to do other things as well, eh ... .

[fas42]

42 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Since you mentioned my thread, did you overlook the possibility that I too could have done the same before in search of perfect sound?  

 

AND, I think I got the least components in my chain compared to most here. I don’t even have a preamp in my signal chain. My power amp got 500 less component than a typical digital amp. I have been there, done that so nothing you tell us is new or relevant. 

 

Of course I'm not covering new ground in what I do! Many of things that I have done over the years have been picked up from all the experiences of people out there; I've learnt a lot by just reading what others have done - and tried variations for myself.

 

What is the difference, is that I managed to fluke getting a very high standard of SQ over 3 decades ago, when all I had for help was the hifi mag I regularly got, HiFi News. And, electronics books from the library, etc.

 

What is relevant is that I've confirmed, for myself, that this high standard of playback is not a fluke, but is just the automatic result of taking sufficient care with correcting enough weaknesses - by tweaking. Others who tweak may not get these results - there are no guarantees; if one doesn't take care of all the critical weaknesses then the SQ will never get that good - that's guaranteed!

[fas42]

6 hours ago, semente said:

 

Would you mind describing the surgery step by step?

 

 This is grotesquely off-topic now, but for the sake of answering in the first instance here is what I posted in my blog in October 2015, word for word, https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8257461568062445791#editor/target=post;postID=3859634021411227148;onPublishedMenu=publishedposts;onClosedMenu=publishedposts;postNum=31;src=postname:

 

Quote

 

I've been motivated to fix up and optimise another cheap system: some discarded NAD units, almost 20 year old CD player and amplifier driving good, "boombox" speakers. Very promising early signs, tonnes of genuine dynamics in the raw state; has the usual flaws of developing a very 'dirty', unpleasant edge with steady playing - quite a bit of cleaning up and tidying to be done, but excellent potential ...

 

There's a NAD C 540 CDP (CD only player), 304 integrated amplifier, and Sharp boombox speakers - from a classic, modern 3 identically sized boxes with all the electronics in the middle system; the speakers have a solid bass/mid unit, rated to take 200W, so no prob's there.

 

As usual, all the issues are with the electronics: to start with, the full setup had a cheap but cheerful sound, at least for a while from startup, until the electronics got really a dirty tone with ongoing use. As expected, the internals are riddled with weaknesses, poor implementation details, which all have to be sorted - the unfortunate thing is that mildly ambitious units like the NAD get lots of things right, but all the leftovers then combine to drag down the potential dramatically, they often sound considerably worse than a very simple, totally unambitious sound unit, in the sense of being less "musical".

 

Which is a way of saying that I'm in that awkward middle stage of tweaking, where quite a number of flaws have been bypassed, lifting the standard in some aspects, but putting the remaining ones in much sharper focus - the whole now very easily produces downright unpleasant sound, ? . Many people could give up now, saying they preferred the easier to listen to, somewhat gunked up sound of the raw units - but that would be a failure of effort, big time !!

 

The CDP has a pretty hopeless reader mechanism engineered, CD-Rs are a huge obstacle, sound much worse than an LP with continual crackling and popping as the error correction struggles, all my other rubbishy computer and audio CD drives handle these disks with zero audible problems. But, NAD is known for this, ?   - will explore some avenues here.

 

My other recent fiddling with cheap stuff was much easier, because so many flaws were eliminated by virtue of close integration of the electronic elements - the designers got that part right! The NADs, like nearly all of this type of electronics, have flaky elements everywhere  - and each and every one has to be tracked down to get the best out of the whole.

 

A couple of thoughts on current progress: can do big orchestral climaxes with greater SPL than my other recent efforts, but tonality still has some way to go; massed strings, piano and such are often not right, sweetness goes off far too quickly ...

 

 

Woah, time flies!! ... That long ago ...

 

That's part 1, there are 12 more parts to it - but further comment should be put in another thread.