Step by step surgery

[fas42]

A bit more of the Meitner interview - and talking about whether vinyl playback can hit "the zone" ... N. down the road has been working, and working, on myriad refinements to his, at the core, just pretty good quality LP setup for year after year - nothing has really changed in the technical sense for years, except he went to a better Ortofon cartridge at one point. And it has gone from being "Nahhh ...!!" to "Wow!", back and forth. Currently in the latter status - quite special listening, digital definitely has to scramble, to match the subjective presentation ...

 

What's the point? That the technical issues, as mentioned by Meitner, can be circumvented if enough care goes into ensuring that the best balance is achieved with what one has at hand ... good enough to deliver SQ that makes you forget the medium; you are connecting to the musical message, fully.

[Confused]

12 hours ago, fas42 said:

A bit more of the Meitner interview - and talking about whether vinyl playback can hit "the zone" ... N. down the road has been working, and working, on myriad refinements to his, at the core, just pretty good quality LP setup for year after year - nothing has really changed in the technical sense for years, except he went to a better Ortofon cartridge at one point. And it has gone from being "Nahhh ...!!" to "Wow!", back and forth. Currently in the latter status - quite special listening, digital definitely has to scramble, to match the subjective presentation ...

 

What's the point? That the technical issues, as mentioned by Meitner, can be circumvented if enough care goes into ensuring that the best balance is achieved with what one has at hand ... good enough to deliver SQ that makes you forget the medium; you are connecting to the musical message, fully.

Out of interest, which model Ortofon cartridge in N running now?

[fas42]

Can't remember - will check with him soon, and get back to you.

[fas42]

Finished watching the Meitner interview - lucky fellow, he's still powering; the creative juices are flowing nicely, and his energy reserves are backing him up fully - ahh, that would be a nice place to be ... 🙂.

 

Noted some words and concepts: "hygiene", which is another way of saying "integrity"; "art" ... hmmm, where would that come from? 😝 ; and "driving is the go" - yes, I find longer distance driving to be a meditative process; some people go fishing, I'm happy to be behind the wheel, "with no particular place to go".

[fas42]

Back to tweaking the video of the recent acquired TV - had left it untouched for a few days, and was building up a sense of the colour balance not being as good as it could be; the sum of every program, clip and different shot was indicating a slight colour cast, still ... from my experience from the previous set, this said it was all about the Green - so, nudged it up 0.5 %, 1% was too much.  ... Definitely better, an outside sports broadcast had eucalyptus leaves in strong sunlight right next to the talking head - the shade of grey green was now even more on the money.

 

Why bother? Because, it makes the viewing that much more comfortable; the subtle colour cast was just enough to start bugging me - and, I had the means to cancel it out - there is an optimum set of numbers for this set, and I'm happy to spend the time to nail them ... the bigger the set, the more any incorrectness will nudge you, in the corner of your eye.

 

Obviously, this relates to how I hear audio sound - I allow it to "sink in", and if I feel there's something wrong ... well, it is wrong - I have the 'evidence' that there is something yet that can be done to make it better - and all my years of experience have shown me that there is always something that can be tweaked; where this 'fails' is when the effort/money to get it better becomes pointless, with respect to the intrinsic value of the system.

[fas42]

Surgery can be done to the source material, too - if the 'damage' is fairly straightforward ... Archimago posted that this latest  Pet Shop Boys track was looking pretty yucky, so I thought I would have a look at it. Downloaded a decent audio format version from YouTube - after a couple of gos, got the settings pretty right for undoing the compression, with the result,

 

 

Note the original version has been attenuated 8.5dB, to allow for the expansion of dynamic range - one major gain is clarity of the big reverb of the drum beat, which is highly squashed in the original.

[fas42]

Had another go at extracting decent sound from the big Aldi TV yesterday - was up and down in the exercise; at its best, did a very nice job of a recording with orchestra and pipe organ, good authority from the organ, and respectable bloom from the string section, etc, backing. A nice touch ... clearly hearing the mechanicals of the organ being activated, just before the first note rang out.

 

Where are the issues? The usual suspects - stopping the telly processing video content is key, as mentioned before; so some means of freezing the image is still to be found; the workaround of hitting a button on the remote every time a new track restarts the OSD, to cancel it, is tooo painful. And power supply quality and static noise - playing with adjusting where the units are plugged in, and what else is using power; and carefully dressing how the cords are organised moves the quality from irritating to acceptable, and back again.

 

I aim to get a good standard, without doing "bigger stuff" like inserting mains filtering accessories, etc - which means, it ticks the boxes when heard from the other end of the house, and, is not obviously misbehaving when standing directly in front of the set.

[fas42]

And, just had a chat with N., the audio mate ... right, the cartridge is the Ortofon 2M Black, their MM flagship - very deliberately bought for its highly regarded qualities.

 

Other aspects of the vinyl setup, since it all adds up: a Pro-Ject TT which is quite unrecognisable, it's basically just the motor with just about everything else DIY; the speed controller from Pro-Ject is used; Rega tone arm, and Musical Fidelity X-LPS, Ver.3 phono preamp - the latter is very heavily modified, with all unused circuitry bypassed, shut down, lots of key parts have been swapped for higher grade ones.

[fas42]

And the TV again ... happy now with the overall colour balance - but the set still had issues with the near black gradations, especially on the side edges. Why? Something to do with how the lighting LEDs are arranged here, perhaps? There was a Green bias, so adjusted Offsets to better cancel that - which then threw everything out slightly. Slight tweaking everywhere rebalanced the overall ... what I do is have one temperature setting as the current reference, and use another which starts as a copy of that, that is fiddled with, to see what gains are possible. So I ended up with two almost identical picture variants, one with near black issues, and one where this area of the colour presentation was definitely better - easy to choose the winner, 😀. I also gained the ability to push the colour slider a click higher - fully saturated colours when the broadcast gives me that, which never irritate.

 

I now have 4 sets of settings which cover viewing conditions: bright sunlight, cloudy, twilight, and nighttime ... still working on the best numbers for each conditions combo ...

 

Still believe that the adjacent to full black can be better done - there are clues in the service menu that this may be possible, so I am going to explore further, to see what altering some of the more esoteric numbers will do.

[fas42]

Just having to do some surgery on Firefox ... isn't it incredibly irritating when a tool, like a piece of software, stops working in a comfortable, old slippers mode? This happened when FF slipped in an update of itself a couple of days ago - bloody hell!! All of a sudden the browser has the handbrake on, ALL THE TIME - depending upon whatever, going to a frequently visited website often causes FF to go into zombie mode, for up to 30 secs; what ... are ... you ... doing!!! No disk activity, it just sits there, sulking ...

 

Tried a variety of things ... no luck. Then checked around a bit, and Ver. 72 could be a dud - other people are talking of chucking FF completely, because of its misbehaving. Okay, back to version 71 ... then the stupid installer went silly, and left a folder locked .. going around in circles for a while on that one ... finally, Ver. 71 running, and beautifully fluid in operation - we're back "in the zone", 😄.

 

I couldn't care less WHY the latest edition is crap, for me ... just DON'T DO THIS, software developers!! Maybe, 'they' should make a rule that if  a piece of software that one uses constantly is updated, that they MUST always leave the previous version sitting there, fully functional, until the user is happy with the new variety, and can then elect to throw out the old. If not happy, allow the user to instantly switch back to the prior, perfectly OK version.

 

I'm getting too cranky these days to want to deal with nonsense like this, 😉.

[Archimago]

On 1/26/2020 at 2:41 AM, fas42 said:

Surgery can be done to the source material, too - if the 'damage' is fairly straightforward ... Archimago posted that this latest  Pet Shop Boys track was looking pretty yucky, so I thought I would have a look at it. Downloaded a decent audio format version from YouTube - after a couple of gos, got the settings pretty right for undoing the compression, with the result,

 

 

Note the original version has been attenuated 8.5dB, to allow for the expansion of dynamic range - one major gain is clarity of the big reverb of the drum beat, which is highly squashed in the original.

 

Good job on the restoration, Frank. I'll have to give it a try as well to "hear" if it sounds better...

 

[fas42]

See how you go ... I chopped off 30 or so secs, from this fairly quick attempt at decompressing, exactly as seen in that post above, as a sample,

 

Pet Shop Boys - Burning the heather(decomp).wav

 

 

[fas42]

Squeezing a bit more out of that Aldi telly ... the blacks weren't quite there, as I've mentioned - could I do better? Indeed I could ... I cut back strongly on the colour offsets - too much of a good thing, now! All the controls interact to some degree, and there's a gamma curve being applied, somewhere - I haven't been able to make the colour gradation curve alter yet, even though what I'm altering in the settings indicate that it should be doing something - no info out there that I can find, so I'm not not going to be too adventurous trying things ...

 

Reduce the cutting of offsets to only a small amount - not bad, but this now throws out all the other, normal settings; do a round of dialing up a new set of numbers for the usual stuff. The intrinsic gamma curve of the display is now working better for me, so fiddling there may be pointless.

 

What have I got? Super blacks, visually it can't get "blacker", with nice gradation in the deep shadows. And white at the other end which totally "pops"; something like a spotlight is almost a shock, with how bright it seems. In fact, I had to cut the contrast a bit; the subjective dynamic range was just too strong, and some broadcasts which were trying to make their presenters "pop" on the screen were OTT ... so, what's this HDR malarkey all about then ...? Skin tones have remained spot on throughout the latest go, because I've carefully kept the balance between RGB aligned as I went.

[fas42]

Might just mention here, that this thread is called "Step by step surgery" - not "Step by step plastic surgery" ... that is, the point is not to create "The new you!!" but to progress you, or some audio system to correct functioning - meaning, in the latter case reproducing the recording, and only the recording ...

[fas42]

Very interesting that this Question and Answers  thread came up,

 

I had exactly this problem with my original good system, and used the same technique as @sbenyo to reset the setup - however, I didn't have his luck in that the SQ was retained for a full listening day; mine would lose its clarity well within the hour - very frustrating! ☹️

 

Never had the situation occur again with a later rig where the the culprit wasn't clear; so never resolved what the underlying cause of this was - probably now instinctively avoided because I look at so much more as being a cause of anomalies. I will note that poor volume controls, and potentiometers used anywhere are always a prime suspect for this dulling down behaviour - I always get rid of these parts, as an early step.

[gmgraves]

On 1/26/2020 at 2:41 AM, fas42 said:

Surgery can be done to the source material, too - if the 'damage' is fairly straightforward ... Archimago posted that this latest  Pet Shop Boys track was looking pretty yucky, so I thought I would have a look at it. Downloaded a decent audio format version from YouTube - after a couple of gos, got the settings pretty right for undoing the compression, with the result,

 

 

Note the original version has been attenuated 8.5dB, to allow for the expansion of dynamic range - one major gain is clarity of the big reverb of the drum beat, which is highly squashed in the original.

Looks like the original was horribly compressed and limited. Must sound terrible! Is a lot of modern pop in that category? I see you are using Audacity, probably the best audio application ever written (and it’s FREE, laddie!). I’ve even used it to record live symphony orchestras with great results.

[fas42]

46 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Looks like the original was horribly compressed and limited. Must sound terrible! Is a lot of modern pop in that category? I see you are using Audacity, probably the best audio application ever written (and it’s FREE, laddie!). I’ve even used it to record live symphony orchestras with great results.

 

Actually, combination of Audacity and Reaper - Audacity is a good tool for general manipulation, but its processing modules are quite limited. Plenty of very, very sharp DSP plug-ins around which do the tricky stuff, and those from Reaper actually did the decompression - I probably have about 100 or so such external modules from various people working under the hood of Audacity; it's a good, straightforward umbrella program to do manipulation in.

[gmgraves]

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Actually, combination of Audacity and Reaper - Audacity is a good tool for general manipulation, but its processing modules are quite limited. Plenty of very, very sharp DSP plug-ins around which do the tricky stuff, and those from Reaper actually did the decompression - I probably have about 100 or so such external modules from various people working under the hood of Audacity; it's a good, straightforward umbrella program to do manipulation in.

That’s my experience as well.

[Confused]

On 3/26/2020 at 10:30 PM, fas42 said:

I will note that poor volume controls, and potentiometers used anywhere are always a prime suspect for this dulling down behaviour - I always get rid of these parts, as an early step.

I have to agree that potentiometers can be problematic.  That said, they can work too, I have a very old (late 80's) Kenwood amp that just refuses to die.  I use this as a desktop amp with a PC, it powers headphones and speakers and the volume control is smooth and crackle free to this day.  It amazes me the thing is still working at all, I kind of keep using it just for the fun of it, to see just how long it can keep going.  Interestingly, the bass control potentiometer does crackle and drop out, but this is easily fixed has it has a "source direct" button that defeats the tone controls.  So signs of age, but it hasn't stopped yet.

 

This got me thinking, does anything actually use potentiometers these days?  As an example, I have a 20 year old Arcam Alpha 10 amp, still working.  But even this relatively old piece has electronic volume control.  Yes, it has a big volume knob on the front, but this is not in the signal path, and you can control the volume by remote control.

 

Of course, older kit uses potentiometers, but are they still used by anything of reasonable quality in new production as a device actually in the signal path?

 

Maybe they are?  This is a genuine question.

[fas42]

11 hours ago, Confused said:

 

This got me thinking, does anything actually use potentiometers these days?  As an example, I have a 20 year old Arcam Alpha 10 amp, still working.  But even this relatively old piece has electronic volume control.  Yes, it has a big volume knob on the front, but this is not in the signal path, and you can control the volume by remote control.

 

Of course, older kit uses potentiometers, but are they still used by anything of reasonable quality in new production as a device actually in the signal path?

 

 

I don't know - I would be interested as well in a count of how many models of better units would go into each basket. The audio friend, N., uses 2 recent, identical, Naim units which have the classic Alps blue pot - one went bad in a quite obvious way; the sound went dull within minutes of refreshing the setting - he purchased a replacement part, same item, but had significant problems doing the swap - still wasn't happy, and ended up ditching the unit entirely ... now hardwired with fixed resistors, to give a compromise gain setting.

 

The other Naim is still OK with its original pot - perhaps it was a chance, really good specimen? - and certainly allows vinyl replay to nicely "bloom" ... other factors are still more important at the moment; perhaps consider redoing down the track ...

[fas42]

Chris has gone walkabout - indefinitely, it appears ...

 

This post by George on the Stereo 'Magic' thread needs to be responded to, and this is a more appropriate thread for such,
 

Quote

 

I hear you. People like Frank don’t understand the economics of designing and building high-end audio electronics.

 

The reality is that a major chunk of the outlay ensures sufficient bling in the product for it to be visually attractive to buyers, and this normally guarantees an "excessive price".

 

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The way he writes, one would think that he believes that all amplifiers, for instance, are basically alike, and one can make a midfi amp sound like a Nelson Pass design simply by doing some nebulous unspecified “tweaks” and by soldering the leads from the source component directly to the amp inputs and by soldering the amp directly to the speakers!

 

I would hope that a midfi amp doesn't sound like a Nelson Pass design - the latter are engineered "to sound good" by enabling decent amounts of harmonic distortion to generated on the path through - as he cheerfully admits ... at least the midfi is trying harder to be accurate.

 

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He ignores the fact that designers like Pass and Curl, for instance, agonize over things like feedback, what kind of output transistors, for instance, to fit; bi-polar or FET, and if the latter what kind and what characteristics the design needs. One of the big differences between midfi and high-end amps is that usually the midfi stuff are what EEs used to call “cookbook” designs, using off-the-shelf inexpensive components. I’m not condemning cookbook designs, after all, a Williamson tube amp design is a cookbook design. I and probably you can see the entire circuit in your mind’s eye. But I’ve heard some mighty nice sounding Williamson amps (some of the French Jadis amps come to mind).

 

Yes, the key word in there is "nice" - a completely standard design is fine, but it's the implementation that will determine whether "nice" is in fact what you get. The Perreaux amp that I have is a straight copy of the circuit in Hitachi's datasheet for its MOSFETs, apparently - but the company did their homework, so that the model could in fact sound, well, nice ... 😉.

 

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The reason why these amps can be high end is because of the care taken to select the best parts available. Well designed power supplies, the best bi-filar wound output transformers (like MacIntosh used to use), the best, lowest ESR capacitors, the lowest thermal noise resistors, etc. In solid state designs, the stiffest power supplies, and the lowest overall feedback (often none) will translate to the best sound. These are things that Frank doesn’t seem to take into consideration (or, perhaps, is unaware of) when he thinks that inexpensive equipment can be made to sound as good as costly high-end equipment simply by performing his “method” on whatever happens to be at hand.

 

Depends. Excellent power supplies are normally critical, and plenty of my mods involve enhancing the performance of them, by various means. Capacitors with the right characteristics also figure, so they get changed if necessary.

 

It would help, George, if you took some time to read what I have done - rather than pulling your shotgun out, and waving it madly in the air, firing completely at random, with close to zero understanding of what you are attempting to hit.

 

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Of course the thing that gives real pause to Frank’s credibility are the boom-box speakers he thinks sound so good that they “disappear”.

 

As an excellent example of your inability to read, I have repeatedly stated that these speakers haven't "disappeared", as yet - never let facts get in the way of a good story, eh ...

 

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He doesn’t even take them out of the ghetto blaster plastic case they came in and house them in a properly designed enclosure! Hopeless. And if you try to tell him that his tweaks simply aren’t enough to get the kind of performance out of the components he’s using that he claims, he accuses his detractors of not being interested in getting the best sound possible from one’s recordings (which, by the way, all sound great through his “rig”).

 

 

The movie "The Eagle Has Landed" has been playing on a movie channel a few times lately - and there are two key American characters in it, Captain Clark and Colonel Pitts ... I keep thinking of one of those two when reading your recent posts, George ... guess which one?

 

BTW,

 

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

23 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The movie "the Eagle Has Landed" has been playing on a movie channel a few times lately - and there are two key American characters in it, Captain Clark and Colonel Pitts ... I keep thinking of one of those two when reading your recent posts, George ... guess which one?

 

A great movie and Michael Caine was exemplary as Colonel Steiner.

 

My vote is that you Frank would be well cast as Colonel Pitts, who doesn't get that his message is not being received or at least believed...

• Colonel Pitts : You speak English? [speaking to German Corporal]

  Corpral Kuniski : Yes.

  Colonel Pitts : I'm gonna give you five minutes to lay down your arms, and surrender your hostages. You understand what I'm saying?

  Corpral Kuniski : Yes.

  Colonel Pitts : Where's your commanding officer?

  Corpral Kuniski : Yes.

  Colonel Pitts : Are you makin' fun of me, soldier?

  [Kuniski just grins] 

[kumakuma]

9 hours ago, fas42 said:

Chris has gone walkabout - indefinitely, it appears ...

 

Another possibility is that, like many others on this site, Chris has you on his Ignore List...

[fas42]

Noting discussion on fuses,

 

 

I worry about fuses, but have never tried "audiophile" variants - the trouble with a fuse and the fact that it normally is just slipped into a fuse holder, where it relies on fairly rough and ready metal to metal contact to ensure contact integrity, is that it has non-linear behaviour when you look at it over all possible conditions, and time periods. Yes, shouldn't make a difference, but the power supplies are in many ways marginal in their performance, especially in power amplifiers - so, enough non-ideal electrical behaviour gets through to make their presence audible under some circumstances.

 

A solution that works well enough for me is to ensure high quality contact between the fuse and its holder - either solder, or silver contact enhancers have been adequate.

[gmgraves]

On 3/29/2020 at 11:27 PM, fas42 said:

Chris has gone walkabout - indefinitely, it appears ...

 

This post by George on the Stereo 'Magic' thread needs to be responded to, and this is a more appropriate thread for such,
 

 

The reality is that a major chunk of the outlay ensures sufficient bling in the product for it to be visually attractive to buyers, and this normally guarantees an "excessive price".

Well, I can’t argue with you there! Equipment like D’Augostino, dCS,and others  have casework that is so fancy with it’s CNC machined front panels, knobs and switches that it surely must account for at least half of a unit’s selling price! One of the reasons why I admire equipment like Audio by Van Alstine, and Schiit is that all the money goes in the equipment’s guts, not in the casework bling.

 

Quote

I would hope that a midfi amp doesn't sound like a Nelson Pass design - the latter are engineered "to sound good" by enabling decent amounts of harmonic distortion to generated on the path through - as he cheerfully admits ... at least the midfi is trying harder to be accurate.

Where did you get the notion that Pass designs his equipment to “enable decent amounts of harmonic distortion”? I know one of his designers quite well, and he says that’s patent nonsense. One reason Pass uses class A in his amps is to reduce the distortions inherent in class A-B amps. 
 

Quote

Yes, the key word in there is "nice" - a completely standard design is fine, but it's the implementation that will determine whether "nice" is in fact what you get. The Perreaux amp that I have is a straight copy of the circuit in Hitachi's datasheet for its MOSFETs, apparently - but the company did their homework, so that the model could in fact sound, well, nice ... 😉.

Lots of designs use device “cookbook” circuits as points of departure for their designs. Always have. Nothing wrong with that at all.

 

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Depends. Excellent power supplies are normally critical, and plenty of my mods involve enhancing the performance of them, by various means. Capacitors with the right characteristics also figure, so they get changed if necessary.

Tell me, Frank, where did you obtain your knowledge that allows you to second-guess a piece of equipment’s power supply designs? How do you know, for instance, that (A) the capacitors you replace willy-nilly are an improvement over the original design? Do you do the maths? (B) when your PS mods are finished, what improves? Voltage regulation? Current sourcing? Lower ripple? (C) How do you measure these improvements to the power supply; or do you just “guess” that the equipment sounds better?

 

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It would help, George, if you took some time to read what I have done - rather than pulling your shotgun out, and waving it madly in the air, firing completely at random, with close to zero understanding of what you are attempting to hit.
 

Frank, I have “read what you have done” for several years now. And just judging from what you have posted here, it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. If you have, at one point or another, posted everything that you have done, then, that’s from  where I have formed the opinion that your “method” cannot possibly enable the improvements in SQ that you have bragged about.

 

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As an excellent example of your inability to read, I have repeatedly stated that these speakers haven't "disappeared", as yet - never let facts get in the way of a good story, eh ...

Those speakers are never going to disappear, and that’s my point.

 

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The movie "The Eagle Has Landed" has been playing on a movie channel a few times lately - and there are two key American characters in it, Captain Clark and Colonel Pitts ... I keep thinking of one of those two when reading your recent posts, George ... guess which one?

I have no idea. I have never seen that movie. At first, I mixed it up with “Where Eagles Dare”, which I did see when it was in the theaters first run in ‘67 or’68. But I don’t remember much about it or its characters either, so, either way, your analogy is therefore lost on me, Frank.

 

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BTW,

 

??????????!!!!!!