Jump to content
IGNORED

Fas42’s Stereo ‘Magic’


Recommended Posts

18 hours ago, fas42 said:

Just fired up the Edifiers, after much cursing from the awkwardness of working in the tight space that the internal wiring afforded me, bypassing the mains on/off switch - ahh, good sound ... welcome, dear friend! ... Bit of Brendel recorded in the early 60's - piano, as piano should sound ...

 

Which Edifiers are these for those who might want to also try?

 

 

Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile.

Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism.

:nomqa: R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

 

Link to comment
10 hours ago, Racerxnet said:

Must have been that stupid switch you bypassed. 

 

Yes and no. These speakers do sound good, from cold, but still have a warming up pattern, in the SQ. But if you look at the latest posts in my Edifying thread, it's not all beer and skittles - the pattern of how the quality changed was quite different, and in fact got quite bad at the end. So, I've "upset the speakers!", and am now reaping the 'reward', 🤔.

 

Will things get better over the next few days, if nothing is done? Have I disturbed some subtle tweak that the manufacturer incorporated, that wasn't easily visible? Do I have do more to improve the stability of that part of the wiring 'loom'? ... We shall see ...

Link to comment
30 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

The gory details are all here,

 

Great, thanks. I checked out the Edifier S2000 MkIII a little while back and it wasn't bad for the price and the capabilities were pretty good as well. Yeah, I think they can be optimized and tweaked...

 

 

Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile.

Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism.

:nomqa: R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

 

Link to comment

How about talking about cables, then 🤪..

 

Hmmm, a first search at Archimago's site, for cables, and this was the first hit, https://archimago.blogspot.com/2013/05/measurements-toslink-optical-audio.html ... oh dear,

 

Quote

I have a few old TosLink cables hanging around of varying qualities and build. Let's have a peek in the closet:

 

and

 

Quote

 

Cable E:
The "worst" Dr. Frankenstein cable I could construct from what I had was with the use of a $3 TosLink coupler off eBay. This adds an extra transmission interface and of course extends the length of the cable which could worsen signal integrity. I coupled the 2 cheapest TosLink cables I described above - the VITOnet (Cable A) and Thunder Cable (Cable B) - for a total length of 12'. I tested the cable looking just like this with it coiled up.

 

 

and

 

Quote

Subjective listening to the 12' coupled Cable E likewise did not show any musical anomaly - was able to enjoy Jorma Kaukonen's Blue Country Heart thoroughly through the AKG Q701's :-)

 

Ta da ... 😜

Link to comment
3 hours ago, fas42 said:

How about talking about cables, then 🤪..

 

Hmmm, a first search at Archimago's site, for cables, and this was the first hit, https://archimago.blogspot.com/2013/05/measurements-toslink-optical-audio.html ... oh dear,

 

 

and

 

 

and

 

 

Ta da ... 😜

 

Absolutely no problem! And I'll do better for you right here and now 😱:

 

- Digital cables that pass 1's and 0's don't make a difference if bit-perfect. The Dr. Frank's SPDIF cable sounded fine and was worth every penny at a mere $4999.99 at the intro price!

- Smallish amounts of jitter make no audible difference. Not to say anyone should look for high-jitter products of course!

- Sometimes we see time shifts (like between S/PDIF and USB inputs), again, not audible but easily measured when present.

- And yes - BITS ARE BITS generally.

 

Of course, none of this has to do with XLR and RCA analog outputs and cables from the other thread, right? 😉

 

 

Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile.

Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism.

:nomqa: R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

 

Link to comment

Yes, I thought you would pull out the "But, it's digital transmission!" card 😉 ... okay, I'll let you off lightly - but be warned, I might do a deeper dig for some telling, analogue cable, throwaway lines ... 🤪.

 

Hopefully, Kunchur can get some solid data when only the brand of analogue cable is changed; and then, venture into the very deep, and murky, waters of 'purely' a digital link. We quiver with anticipation ...

 

I suspect optical will always be the least problem ... I've only ventured into this with my current actives, and am just using the out of the box freebie, to connect to the DVD player - nothing indicates, so far, that it's limiting SQ.

Link to comment
4 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Yes, I thought you would pull out the "But, it's digital transmission!" card 😉 ... okay, I'll let you off lightly - but be warned, I might do a deeper dig for some telling, analogue cable, throwaway lines ... 🤪.

 

Hopefully, Kunchur can get some solid data when only the brand of analogue cable is changed; and then, venture into the very deep, and murky, waters of 'purely' a digital link. We quiver with anticipation ...

 

I suspect optical will always be the least problem ... I've only ventured into this with my current actives, and am just using the out of the box freebie, to connect to the DVD player - nothing indicates, so far, that it's limiting SQ.

 

Thank you for your mercy 😒.

 

"Digital transmission" is a useful "card". Happy to "hear" of any results you might find as you dig deeper...

 

Best regards...

 

 

Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile.

Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism.

:nomqa: R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

 

Link to comment

Had a bit of a look around - a general parade of people hurling tomatoes at Kunchur, currently - "how dare he disturb our precious world of subjectivists and objectivisits, who enjoy abusing each other; we're comfortable with these old slippers, and want to keep wearing them, for decades to come ... !!!" 🙃

 

However, some people are more reasonable in describing what this chap is about, http://boson.physics.sc.edu/~kunchur/papers/HIFI-Critic-article-by-George-Foster.pdf.

Link to comment

In the World of hi-fi, hearing the difference between cables or not is a diagnostic. Cables are passive and lossy, in that if you figuratively put 100% in,  you’re not going to get 100% out. If you can’t hear that loss, or perhaps improvement in the case you install an improved, less lossy cable,  you can be 100% certain that there’re losses elsewhere in your system that are masking the differences that cables make.  Cables are only 1 area of fidelity loss. There are many others  

Link to comment
8 hours ago, John Dyson said:

 

You can have noise encroach through any connection though -- but it isn't about the cable alone, but poor interface design & grounding.   Even a human touching a 'knob' can create noise on an inadequately designed, or misapplied piece of equipment.  Eventually, everything can be reduced to the absurd, so I'd rather look at things as what really causes the problems, and digital carrying cables cause problems only if there is a failing somewhere else in the system, or the cable is poorly designed for the application.   Even cables which are 'perfect' can open up a poor design to various problems, but not possible to predict that by a general lab comparison.  (Again, refer to the 'human touch' above.)

 

With cables carrying analog information, there are certainly more variables, and there CAN be variations between good quality cables carrying analog signals. So, an analog cable, even designed for the application, can measure to be technically inferior/superior to another.  Whether or not the differences are audible is usually based on the person's ability to detect the differences on the order of -90dB FS more or less.  (Disclaimer, very strong EMI can cause troubles even on reasonably well chosen cables and/or reasonablly well designed equipment.)  I don't do 'wetware', so won't comment on that.

 

 

All spot on. My only quibble is the levels of anomalies - my experience is that they occur in the area of about 60dB down; that is, at the level of vinyl groove noise, tape hiss, etc. IOW, if you can hear the latter, then you can certainly hear the deleterious effects of this noise/distortion 🙂 - they are the unpleasantness that make "bad recordings" sound, well, bad, 😆. Which is why when you get rid of the causes, all the recordings become good to listen to, 🤪.

 

Literally at this very moment I have a SQ issue with my active speakers - a less than perfect tweaking to eliminate the on/off switch means that even though the electrical paths are all nominally fine, that the new, temporary arrangement of the internal cables is way less than optimum. And I can hear it ... plain as day. A subtle offness, lack of clarity, uncomfortableness builds up, slowly - a reset brings back the good stuff, only for the cycle to begin again ...

Link to comment

As suspected, our very "even handed" member, Alan, 😉 pulled a post of mine from one of his threads - what it said, was this,

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

 

A thought experiment, on soundstage ...

 

You have two recordings, one intimate, recorded in a very small acoustic; the other, expansive, constructed to have huge depth, etc - containing two unrelated pieces of music.

 

You have an accurate audio setup, which is capable of playing both the intimate recording, and the expansive one, at some, identical for the two, volume level where the soundstages are clearly defined, for each recording.

 

You then mix these two recordings, with some attenuation as necessary, identical for each, so that the final mix never clips. And play that on that setup, at the same volume as before.

 

What do you hear?

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Link to comment
19 hours ago, John Dyson said:

You can have noise encroach through any connection though -- but it isn't about the cable alone, but poor interface design & grounding.   Even a human touching a 'knob' can create noise on an inadequately designed, or misapplied piece of equipment.  Eventually, everything can be reduced to the absurd, so I'd rather look at things as what really causes the problems, and digital carrying cables cause problems only if there is a failing somewhere else in the system, or the cable is poorly designed for the application.   Even cables which are 'perfect' can open up a poor design to various problems, but not possible to predict that by a general lab comparison.  (Again, refer to the 'human touch' above.)

ESD is just one potential noise source, not the whole of it all. It would be a straw-man hat argument to assume all devices that show differences with upstream gear to be ESD unprotected.

Link to comment
2 hours ago, opus101 said:

I've just had a soundstage response memory holed by said 'even handed member'. And @One and a half's 'adios' post was scratched within about a minute of posting. So I take it detailed investigation of soundstage is verboten.

 

I assume you both know how to start your own thread, no? ;)

 

 

Link to comment
23 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

All spot on. My only quibble is the levels of anomalies - my experience is that they occur in the area of about 60dB down; that is, at the level of vinyl groove noise, tape hiss, etc. IOW, if you can hear the latter, then you can certainly hear the deleterious effects of this noise/distortion 🙂 - they are the unpleasantness that make "bad recordings" sound, well, bad, 😆. Which is why when you get rid of the causes, all the recordings become good to listen to, 🤪.

 

Literally at this very moment I have a SQ issue with my active speakers - a less than perfect tweaking to eliminate the on/off switch means that even though the electrical paths are all nominally fine, that the new, temporary arrangement of the internal cables is way less than optimum. And I can hear it ... plain as day. A subtle offness, lack of clarity, uncomfortableness builds up, slowly - a reset brings back the good stuff, only for the cycle to begin again ...

If you are getting audible analog  encroachment when playing a recording with -60dB full scale hiss/rumble, etc -- then there is a real problem somewhere.  For defects otherwise, on single ended just make sure that your driver is low impedance, and the receiver of the signal is high impedance, also a short connection.   If you try to do single ended with low impedance on driver/receiver, you might be in for trouble.   If you are doing a matched situation, like 600/600 ohms, then balanced is the only way to go.

 

Frankly, with the noise in most consumer recordings, almost any imperfection on a reasonably good setup is much less important than 'ssssssssss' (hiss) or rumble in the case of poor turntables.   I am very surprised that more people don't complain about the terrible noise in many consumer recordings -- but since we cant generally control that situation, then other, less important tweaks is all that we can do.   Just take a look at the background noise when doing a spectrogram -- it isn't very nice.   I am working on software to make that background coloration on the spectrogram decrease significnatly, but until my botches are fixed, there is little that we can do about that.  A sophisticated FFT NR system just cannot do nearly the clean up that I am working on -- but my hearing is so poor that the final step, the VERY VERY final step on the processor has been impossible so far to complete.

 

Anyway -- the quality of recordings in the genre/timeframe that I listen -- mostly made before 1990's, they really DO have lots of noise.   This includes classical, jazz, pop.  I hear the hiss, but the other noise is of little consequence to me until the noise on the recordings is corrected.   Don't even get me started on the dynamics distortions in the recordings -- YUCK!!!

 

Attached is a raw demo from Brubeck -- simply downconverted from the full 176k/24 bit splendor, size limited.   Please listen for the overly harsh/sharp cymbals, and the very obvious hiss.   The hiss sometimes is more clean on the old stuff, but sometimes just a little worse.   Newer recordings aren't quite as bad, perhaps 10-20dB less hiss, but the recordings before the middle '80s are touch and go WRT hiss.   The overly enhanced low level highs still persist to today.

Unlistenable -- so i don't worry about minor noise sources...

 

 

 

 

hissdemo.flac

Link to comment
1 minute ago, John Dyson said:

If you are getting audible analog  encroachment when playing a recording with -60dB full scale hiss/rumble, etc -- then there is a real problem somewhere.  For defects otherwise, on single ended just make sure that your driver is low impedance, and the receiver of the signal is high impedance, also a short connection.   If you try to do single ended with low impedance on driver/receiver, you might be in for trouble.   If you are doing a matched situation, like 600/600 ohms, then balanced is the only way to go.

 

 

Most rigs do have a real problem somewhere - if they were of a really good standard, then they would all sound the same, playing the same recording - how could they not do so, if their inputs are identical 😆 ... it's part of the bizarre thinking in the audio world, that things are better, when they are more different ...

 

It's how one makes progress ... you assess what is wrong with the sound of a recording one knows well, and knows how good it can sound - and make the changes to the system to resolve those faults. Step by step 😉. Most people seem to be incapable of recognising extremely obvious poor quality sound; I've been amazed at meetings of audiophiles to hear them listening to severely degraded SQ, and seemingly completely oblivious to the problems.

Link to comment
1 minute ago, fas42 said:

 

Most rigs do have a real problem somewhere - if they were of a really good standard, then they would all sound the same, playing the same recording - how could they not do so, if their inputs are identical 😆 ... it's part of the bizarre thinking in the audio world, that things are better, when they are more different ...

 

It's how one makes progress ... you assess what is wrong with the sound of a recording one knows well, and knows how good it can sound - and make the changes to the system to resolve those faults. Step by step 😉. Most people seem to be incapable of recognising extremely obvious poor quality sound; I've been amazed at meetings of audiophiles to hear them listening to severely degraded SQ, and seemingly completely oblivious to the problems.

It CAN be an iterative process to find the bugs.   It worries me about the state of equipment quality -- the stuff should be good out-of-the box.    I know that there are lots of opportunities for noise to encroach (esp when dealing with high power devices next to low noise circuitry), but there are well established ways to mitigate the interference.  Real electronic *design* is hard, and usually onerous when compared with copying a schematic, tweaking the design, do a board layout, and put it in a box.

 

Audio hobbyists apparently seem frustrated at times.

 

I REALLY don't know what is going on in analog audio design, but the feedback that I see on these forums -- saddens me a little.   The audio consumer should NOT have to worry about noise, EMI, etc problems except in occasional/exceptional cases.

 

Won't comment any further, I know that I am not helpful in this kind of discussion.   I wanna help with the HW problems, but it just isn't possible without doing a design.  I am too rusty to do a good low noise design for a noisy environment -- but good designers can do it.   I know that it isn't standard in general, but I'd be tempted to use balanced coupling between everything, but there be dragons there also.

 

John

 

Link to comment

Just a quick thought, inspired by a post or two I just came across ... what most people don't appreciate is the enormous amount of detail that has been captured in recordings; they would be floored with amazement with how incredibly rich these sound worlds are - especially if they use the barebone, "audiophile" recordings as reference pieces, 😉. The unfortunate truth, for them, is that if the noise clutter of the playback chain is too much for the ear/brain to handle, then all of this inner depth goes completely missing in action - because the human hearing system is overloaded, and rejects what it can't digest - you just shake your head a lot of time listening to ambitious rigs; because the obvious stuff, on the track, is really obvious - and everything else is just not there ... the tapestry of sound is quite threadbare, 🙃.

Link to comment

Noting in the Trust your ears thread how much people on both sides don't appreciate that the magic lies in the recordings ... not in the playback rig!! The latter is supposed to be either an incredibly accurate Open Sesame, capable of exposing the awfulness of so many captures of sound events; or a Magic Carpet ride which by a combination of bling and fairy dust specialness of its parts imparts a fabulousness to a select set of recordings ... luckily for those who care for music, 🤪, neither of those attitudes is correct. The contents of the recording is the truth, and remains steadfastly the same, irrespective of the tumult around it - all that has to be done is to present those contents with the least amount of makeup and added detritus from the playback chain ... and the true magic emerges ... every time 🙂. Those who have arrived at this understanding are the lucky ones, and reap the benefits every time the play button is pushed ... incredible measurements, and sumptuous bling, are things that can be thrown in after the basics are got right, as tasty accompaniments to the satisfying main course ... 😉.

Link to comment
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.



×
×
  • Create New...