CD players are back ?

[The_K-Man]

49 minutes ago, marce said:

100's of thousands at least...

 

And to impress whom?  Other audiophiles?

 

smh...

[fas42]

1 hour ago, The_K-Man said:

 

The sonic differences between USB cables likely pale compared the differences between different masterings of the same song or album, or differences between different headphones or speakers hooked up to the rig.

 

And what defines "system that is up to the job"?   How many tens of $thousands are we talking here?    

 

Different masterings will sound different, of course - but they will all have that quality of being, err, "musical". But a USB pathway may do enough to upset the integrity of the system, so that everything you play lacks that spark, that enjoyability factor that got you interested in this pastime - changing the cable may tip the rig over the edge, into the "good zone", and hence mean everything.

 

System up to the job is the one that delivers the oomph in the musical event that was recorded - if you experience that, and then conventional playback quality - there's a yawning chasm between the two varieties, it's a no-brainer. Money is highly, highly unlikely to solve the problem - it's the knowledge to assemble a setup that has all the right attributes, that is key.

[marce]

I presume you did see the smiley face on the post that started all this, never mind the snarks comment. It was a more humorous reply to recent activity, the emoji should have indicated this... It was a GUTB response.

At the end of the day its not what you listen on its the music that's important.

[The_K-Man]

22 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Different masterings will sound different, of course - but they will all have that quality of being, err, "musical". But a USB pathway may do enough to upset the integrity of the system, so that everything you play lacks that spark, that enjoyability factor that got you interested in this pastime - changing the cable may tip the rig over the edge, into the "good zone", and hence mean everything.

 

System up to the job is the one that delivers the oomph in the musical event that was recorded - if you experience that, and then conventional playback quality - there's a yawning chasm between the two varieties, it's a no-brainer. Money is highly, highly unlikely to solve the problem - it's the knowledge to assemble a setup that has all the right attributes, that is key.

 

And I possess at least some of "the knowledge to assemble a setup that has all the right attributes":

 

- Speakers positioned equidistant from listening sofa or area.

- Proper left & right orientation of all speakers, and wiring of input sources.

- No frayed wires, cables, or torn or damaged speaker cones or other elements.

- Speakers used are within specified impedance and power output range of amp or receiver connected to.

- Speaker wire gauge employed is more than sufficient given distance between amp/receiver and said speakers.

- Physical playback sources(CDs, LPs, cassettes) are cleaned properly before playing.

- Turntable tonearm height, counterweight(tracking force), and antiskate are properly set.  Turntable itself is leveled, front to rear and from side to side.

- Everything is plugged into receptacle on same electrical branch, using same, and not multiple, grounds.

 

So what MORE need I do to bring my system up to Holy Roman Audiophile Empire standards??!

[Ralf11]

21 minutes ago, marce said:

... the emoji should have indicated this... It was a GUTB response.

 

 

[Ralf11]

1 minute ago, The_K-Man said:

 

And I possess at least some of "the knowledge to assemble a setup that has all the right attributes":

 

- Speakers positioned equidistant from listening sofa or area.

- Proper left & right orientation of all speakers, and wiring of input sources.

- No frayed wires, cables, or torn or damaged speaker cones or other elements.

- Speakers used are within specified impedance and power output range of amp or receiver connected to.

- Speaker wire gauge employed is more than sufficient given distance between amp/receiver and said speakers.

- Physical playback sources(CDs, LPs, cassettes) are cleaned properly before playing.

- Turntable tonearm height, counterweight(tracking force), and antiskate are properly set.  Turntable itself is leveled, front to rear and from side to side.

- Everything is plugged into receptacle on same electrical branch, using same, and not mulitple, grounds.

 

So what MORE need I do to bring my system up to Holy Roman Audiophile Empire standards??!

 

If you want advice, post an Upgrade my System type thread.

 

For a quick answer, start with new speakers - or don't.

[The_K-Man]

5 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

If you want advice, post an Upgrade my System type thread.

 

For a quick answer, start with new speakers - or don't.

 

 

If 'advice' includes spending tens of $thousands on boutique items whose sonic improvement won't mount to a hill of beans, you can keep it.

 

Regarding speakers, I'll get new speakers if and when mine no longer work properly, or are damaged in any of the ways I previously listed, in addition to cracked and otherwise damaged cabinets, ripped or decomposing surrounds around the drivers,  loose or faulty wire connects, etc.

 

Thank you.

[Ralf11]

Thx for Trolling

 

 

 

[audiobomber]

59 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

If you want advice, post an Upgrade my System type thread.

He doesn't want any advice, regardless of whether he asks or not.

[The_K-Man]

On 1/12/2019 at 10:18 AM, jabbr said:

If you actually were just in love with the music why would you want to get up and look for a specific CD? or record? 

 

What do you mean by "specific" CD or record?

[fas42]

4 hours ago, The_K-Man said:

 

And I possess at least some of "the knowledge to assemble a setup that has all the right attributes":

 

- Speakers positioned equidistant from listening sofa or area.

- Proper left & right orientation of all speakers, and wiring of input sources.

- No frayed wires, cables, or torn or damaged speaker cones or other elements.

- Speakers used are within specified impedance and power output range of amp or receiver connected to.

- Speaker wire gauge employed is more than sufficient given distance between amp/receiver and said speakers.

- Physical playback sources(CDs, LPs, cassettes) are cleaned properly before playing.

- Turntable tonearm height, counterweight(tracking force), and antiskate are properly set.  Turntable itself is leveled, front to rear and from side to side.

- Everything is plugged into receptacle on same electrical branch, using same, and not multiple, grounds.

 

So what MORE need I do to bring my system up to Holy Roman Audiophile Empire standards??!

 

Very tricky to answer, because it depends on the weakest points on the system - which may be anywhere.

 

My approach is very different from nearly everyone else - I track down where poor design or implementation aspects are doing the most damage to the sound, and work forward from there. An excellent guide is to use a recording that you want to sound really good, but which falls short most of the time - that becomes your measuring stick as to progress made.

[The_K-Man]

32 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Very tricky to answer, because it depends on the weakest points on the system - which may be anywhere.

 

My approach is very different from nearly everyone else - I track down where poor design or implementation aspects are doing the most damage to the sound, and work forward from there. An excellent guide is to use a recording that you want to sound really good, but which falls short most of the time - that becomes your measuring stick as to progress made.

 

Your approach - use a recording that you want to sound really good - reminds me as a video calibrator of using a certain TV channel or program to adjust the picture settings on ones TV.  Exactly the wrong approach.  

 

If you dial in one channel to make the TV look as accurate as can be, it will throw off how all other sources(channels, DVD, etc) look.  That's why I use reference patterns to set things like brightness, contrast, color, grayscale, etc, so the screen displays all material  from all sources, as accurately as possible.

 

Tying that into audio: You want to tune the system to reference patterns: IE. Use A-weighted noise and a spectrometer to EQ the speakers flat, so all music played over it sounds as its artists intended, not just your favorite artist, album, or particular song.

 

Now, if you still want to make that recording sound "really good" - to you - load it into a DAW, and using studio-grade monitors(not 'audiophile' speakers!), just remaster away at that song, until it sounds exactly the way you, and not Stevie Wonder, the Rolling Stones, or Chuck Mangione, want it to sound.  Capeche?

[fas42]

Just now, The_K-Man said:

 

Your approach - use a recording that you want to sound really good - reminds me as a video calibrator of using a certain TV channel or program to adjust the picture settings on ones TV.  Exactly the wrong approach.  

 

Yes, that can easily happen if you listen in the wrong way - from experience nearly every audiophile listens the "wrong way" - I use the analogy of a rattling noise in a brand new car; audiophiles work their guts out trying to make that rattle the sweetest thing you've ever heard ; the correct approach of course is to completely eliminate the completely unnecessary irritation, by working out where it's coming from ...

 

This means one has to learn to listen the right way ... and I do accept that is hard to do, for people who have been in the audio game, for too long . Best advice? Ask a female friend, "What sounds better?"

 

Just now, The_K-Man said:

If you dial in one channel to make the TV look as accurate as can be, it will throw off how all other sources(channels, DVD, etc) look.  That's why I use reference patterns to set things like brightness, contrast, color, grayscale, etc, so the screen displays all material  from all sources, as accurately as possible.

 

 

Umm, been there, done that. I used "reference patterns", the DVE guide - and still ended up with fairly crap picture. Only further finer, manual optimising actually nailed the settings - which was via a combination of transmitted material; I did this years ago, for a cheap TV, and that set still outshines other, more recent, fancier sets I come across - the broadcasts which have natural colour look exactly so, and the pumped up colours for shows where the director has got really twitchy with the knobs look like too much makeup has been applied - which is the intention.

[The_K-Man]

10 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Umm, been there, done that. I used "reference patterns", the DVE guide - and still ended up with fairly crap picture.

 

That's because - and you are not alone in this regard - you aren't accustomed to accurate.  Consumer TV factory settings are anything but:  Vivid mode, color temperature preset to coolest possible, color and contrast cranked up to space shuttle status(!), every damn 'enhancement' in the advanced settings menu checked off, etc.  

 

Just disabling all those enhancements and selecting Movie mode alone will get you a lot closer to what's 'there' compared to the previous disaster.

 

Same with audio:  You can't use your favorite songs to optimize a stereo system.  Adjust to one song, and anything else played over that rig will sound skewed.

[fas42]

23 minutes ago, The_K-Man said:

 

That's because - and you are not alone in this regard - you aren't accustomed to accurate.  Consumer TV factory settings are anything but:  Vivid mode, color temperature preset to coolest possible, color and contrast cranked up to space shuttle status(!), every damn 'enhancement' in the advanced settings menu checked off, etc.  

 

Which is why you work out how to access the service menu, and acquire full control over the RGB 'guns'. The guides don't supply the information to do that - it's a learning exercise, 'remapping' the colour engine. When you get the colours right, you can watch a 'sensible' gardening program, say, and the bloom, leaf, earth, sky colours all are spot on - they match what you see if you look out the window ... there's always a sense of 'rightness' to the presentation, no matter what you watch.

 

Quote

Same with audio:  You can't use your favorite songs to optimize a stereo system.  Adjust to one song, and anything else played over that rig will sound skewed.

 

Again, if you do it correctly, that's not the case. Properly adjusted, every recording presents better - the one downside is that 'audiophile' recordings become rather boring - because, they rely on rig distortions to give them their 'lift' ...

[jabbr]

1 hour ago, The_K-Man said:

 

What do you mean by "specific" CD or record?

Simply when I want to listen to a particular CD, I type the title or group into my phone and the music starts playing. I don’t need to get up and search through a wall of CD cases ... 

[Ralf11]

• I had to get up and search through a wall of CD cases just today ... I wanted to find out which mastering of Aja I bought 34 years ago.  

[The_K-Man]

7 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Which is why you work out how to access the service menu, and acquire full control over the RGB 'guns'. The guides don't supply the information to do that - it's a learning exercise, 'remapping' the colour engine. When you get the colours right, you can watch a 'sensible' gardening program, say, and the bloom, leaf, earth, sky colours all are spot on - they match what you see if you look out the window ... there's always a sense of 'rightness' to the presentation, no matter what you watch.

 

 

Again, if you do it correctly, that's not the case. Properly adjusted, every recording presents better - the one downside is that 'audiophile' recordings become rather boring - because, they rely on rig distortions to give them their 'lift' ...

 

More and more current flat panels place the RGB(bias/drive) settings in a sub- of the Picture Menu called "Advanced".  Easily accessible.

 

The problem now is that puck kits, like CalMan, are discontinued.  So it is harder to find calibration kits that you hook up to the laptop and do the advanced calibration.

[The_K-Man]

6 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

• I had to get up and search through a wall of CD cases just today ... I wanted to find out which mastering of Aja I bought 34 years ago.  

 

Which leads me to the point:  I have weeded my CD collection of most so-called 'remasters', so now it consists mainly of first-issue CD releases of material going back 30-50 years.  So now I know I have as *close to* the original sound as is possible in my collection, and few left of 'compress/limit & crank-em-ups' billed as 'remastered'.

 

By the way that 'AJA' from decades ago is the ONLY version that will reside in my collection! lol

[Samuel T Cogley]

2 hours ago, The_K-Man said:

 

 

By the way that 'AJA' from decades ago is the ONLY version that will reside in my collection! lol

 

Now we're talking.  These are the ones to seek out:

 

MCAD-37214 DIDX 55 Japan

MCLD-19145 UK

 

The years I spent over at Hoffman weren't completely wasted.  😎

[accwai]

3 hours ago, The_K-Man said:

More and more current flat panels place the RGB(bias/drive) settings in a sub- of the Picture Menu called "Advanced".  Easily accessible.

 

The problem now is that puck kits, like CalMan, are discontinued.  So it is harder to find calibration kits that you hook up to the laptop and do the advanced calibration.

 

So what's wrong with something like off the shelf i1Display Pro with open source ColorHCFR? Like this for example:

 

 

Actually the above was done with a first generation i1Pro, which is rather clunky by today's standard. Would greatly appreciate it if you would share your advanced software and sensor configuration for the benefit of us noobs.

[The_K-Man]

7 hours ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

Now we're talking.  These are the ones to seek out:

 

MCAD-37214 DIDX 55 Japan

MCLD-19145 UK

 

The years I spent over at Hoffman weren't completely wasted.  😎

 

I own the top release.

 

[fas42]

10 hours ago, The_K-Man said:

 

More and more current flat panels place the RGB(bias/drive) settings in a sub- of the Picture Menu called "Advanced".  Easily accessible.

 

The problem now is that puck kits, like CalMan, are discontinued.  So it is harder to find calibration kits that you hook up to the laptop and do the advanced calibration.

 

Which is good.

 

Maybe the "adavanced calibration" kits will get you there. Maybe not. Either way, manual twiddling with broadcast material will give feedback as to what extra may be gained doing this - if there is always some loss, somewhere, by altering the numbers reached through calibration then you know it's about as good as it gets.

[Teresa]

17 hours ago, fas42 said:

the one downside is that 'audiophile' recordings become rather boring - because, they rely on rig distortions to give them their 'lift' ...

 

That is wrong. Audiophile and other naturally made recordings don't require any distortions or lifts. They have full dynamic range as they are not part of the loudness wars. Audiophile and other naturally made recordings just require a natural sounding audio system capable of full frequency response, fast transient response, etc.

 

The only way you will get a natural sounding audio system is by using natural recordings for setup. Recordings made in real performance spaces, with real ambiance, correct instrument and vocal timbres, etc. Using the fake crap from the major labels (especially their pop and rock recordings) will not work, period! 

 

What audiophile recordings have you heard? Perhaps they were not audiophile recordings at all, you just believed they were. Audiophile recordings are most definitely not boring, if anything major label recordings are boring as well as distorted due to the loudness wars.

 

Here are some of my favorite audiophile labels:

• Analogue Productions Originals (recorded live direct to 2-track analog with no editing in Blue Heaven Studios, a church-turned-recording studio)
• AudioQuest Music (SACDs are back in print reissued by Sledgehammer Blues)
• Channel Classics
• Chesky Records (Their philosophy is to create the illusion of live musicians in a real three-dimensional space.)
• DMP (no editing within a single song or composition as owner Tom Jung believes editing destroys the flow of the music.)
• Groove Note
• MA Recordings
• Opus 3
• PentaTone Classics
• Reference Recordings
• Sheffield Lab
• Stockfisch Records
• ViTaL Records (Vacuum Tube Logic) especially the SACD and DSD versions as rereleased by fonè)
• Wilson Audiophile

Are any of your so-called audiophile recordings on the above labels?

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

Another "audiophile" label was DCC ("Digital Compact Classics").  Steve Hoffman definitely used some specialized tube gear between the tape playback and digital capture devices for "warmth".  So there is precedent for "distortions" in the mastering chain.  Were the DCC discs the best masters in their day?  I would say almost always.  Do they all hold up today to modern, "white glove" mastering?  Meh.