DolbyA decoding feedback -- 'feral' examples (yes/no)

[fas42]

John, the real value of what you are doing could be shown by taking some non-Dolby recording, having that encoded by genuine Dolby A hardware in good condition; then decoding that by a) a reasonable Dolby A decoding circuit board, b) Satin , c) DHNRDS  - three outputs of decoding processing; which then could be compared in listening, and by comparing software like DeltaWave, to the original. Is there any reason why this would be hard to do, etc?

[John Dyson]

3 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

I have in fact borrowed some remasterings of ABBA from the local library - there were indeed grotesque, pumped up bass, squashed treble, a travesty of the early releases I have.

If you work WITH me, we can do much better.  I have learned though -- I don' t trust my own listening ability, and even a 2nd individual alone isn't good enough either.   When a small group of people work together, we can make ABBA sound better for the consumer than it ever has.  (If this was a very complex technical issue, I could do it by myself -- but this requires people to help, and that is why I try to engage people in disucssions.)  I am not intending on hoarding the results, but cannot freely distribute the results to everyone in the world either.  Anyone who is an 'ABBA' lover has all of the albums anyway -- so it is a little easier to semi-ethically share.

 

IMPORTANTLY:  I am NOT remixing -- first, I cannot remix because I don't have the multi-track tapes, and also I don' thave the skill or the background that the ABBA team had.

 

However, there IS damage in  many of their released recordings - as they end up at the consumer.  You can tell by each distributed version sounding so very different.  The only semi-consistent ones were the Polydor vs. Polar versions.   Even then -- there is something wrong with most of the consumer CDs& albums.

 

I KNOW that ABBA can sound better, because there are elements in the recording that tells me that they worked hard to sound good -- but then, someone dropped the ball.  ABBA quality has been stunted since day one because of this.  Some of their songs are not totally able to be 'perfectly cleaned-up' (e.g. Waterloo - even though it can be helped quite a bit.)  However, believe it or not, the 'loud' part of the Livingstone chorus can be helped a lot, and the strange graininess in the beginning of SuperTrouper can be eliminated.  I am still not satisfied with the results on SuperTrouper yet, and that is why I haven't asked for comments on it.

 

The story about sounding good on AM radio only goes so far.   RingRing has the elements of being very bright sounding, but the vinyl sounds muddy... What is going on?  Muddy sound isn't good for AM radio, you want very clear sound with a bias towards frequencies below about 6-8kHz, maybe with a strong presence peak at 5-6kHz, but that isn't 'RingRing'.  As I implied above -- someone cheated ABBA's quality.  I don't think that it was anyone in the group or even Tretow.  *A lot of damage can occur if the parameters are mistatated on the tape label -- and I actually think that might be part of the problem with the ABBA consumer distributions*.

 

ABBA CAN sound better than it historically has sounded.  I have the tools, and there are people who might have interest in working together?  I am not insulting ABBA at all, but actually the opposite -- trying to help.

 

John

 

[sandyk]

32 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

I have in fact borrowed some remasterings of ABBA from the local library - there were indeed grotesque, pumped up bass, squashed treble, a travesty of the early releases I have.

 Don't you think that John also has access to those early releases too, for comparison purposes ?

Recordings including the attached which is from Sweden, and is as early as (perhaps earlier than ?) any of your early CD  releases ?

[fas42]

1 hour ago, kumakuma said:

 

The fact that both you and your "audiophile friend" appear to be unable to keep your systems in this state of 'robustness' for any extended period of time indicates to me that this goal isn't worth the effort.

 

Should you stop trying to have a peak experience drinking red wine, if most of them don't measure up to the best you've sampled?  The pleasure can be purely in seeing how close they get to that remembered optimum, .

 

The reality is, one keeps experimenting to try and reach a better standard - and things have to be undone, reversed to allow this; or, one can accidentally 'damage' some area that was working beautifully, and not realise it. Also, the typical scenario is that external influences become more and more important, in terms of determining the SQ, and so you either have to work on that, or try and mask this aspect in some way.

 

My most down to earth recommendation would be to buy one of the current, high performing active monitor solutions, and then work hard to make that 'robust' as possible, done purely externally. When that takes you as far as possible, then gulp hard, dive inside and see what can be improved there - that's what I would do if given free rein to get good sound as fast as possible

[John Dyson]

15 minutes ago, fas42 said:

John, the real value of what you are doing could be shown by taking some non-Dolby recording, having that encoded by genuine Dolby A hardware in good condition; then decoding that by a) a reasonable Dolby A decoding circuit board, b) Satin , c) DHNRDS  - three outputs of decoding processing; which then could be compared in listening, and by comparing software like DeltaWave, to the original. Is there any reason why this would be hard to do, etc?

I understand your interest in experimenting with all three versions.   1) it is a pain to set up a DolbyA and do all of the D/A & A/D...  DolbyA is not amenable to being used with a computer because of how the calibration works.  2) Satin REALLY IS a lost cause.  Satin sucks for accuracy.  I am not making the statement because of competing -- they do NOT compete with the DHNRDS at all.  3) The DHNRDS really DOES sound like a DolbyA, except a little more transparent.  If the material is harsh, the DHNRDS is much better.

 

The only potentially useful experiment would be with the DolbyA, and it really *IS* a waste of time.  The pre-made comparisons that I really have (again) are master tapes that I have no permission to distribute.  (The DolbyA doesn't have a calibration adjustment, but the inputs/ouputs have to be scaled -- that makes it a pain in the butt without having a set-up, and Richard is the one with the setup for DolbyA...)   He uses the DHNRDS for obvious reasons -- it sounds better, smoother, cleaner but clearer.

 

John

 

[John Dyson]

28 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 Don't you think that John also has access to those early releases too, for comparison purposes ?

Recordings including the attached which is from Sweden, and is as early as any of your early CD  releases ?

 

Yea, we discussed this privately -- I think that I have only 5 flac grabbed  copies of different RingRing CDS (including the mega-excellent and un-normalized Polydor Japan POCP-2201.)  It is the least molested of all of the ABBA CDs, it is so unmolested that it is still 100% accurate DolbyA encoded (modulo some EQ.) Polydor Europe 843 642-2 is pretty good also (almost the same as POCP-2201), but it seems to have maybe been converted to/from analog -- or maybe a sight amount of processing as there seems to be some very slight, very low level disturbances in it.  (I do have some mp3s that I grabbed years ago, but I don't use them except for reference.)

 

The problem with the Swedish Polar POLCD-242 for my purposes of decoding is that it was compressed and clipped a little.  POLCD-242 IS a very good example of ABBA though, but for technical reasons have to be more careful than a 'good' source, it has to meet a certain criteria or it just wont' result in perfect DolbyA decoding.  POLCD-242 does have the DolbyA encoded footprint, and the DHNRDS DA can/does make sense of the POLCD-242 -- the results won't be 'perfect' though.

 

Ring Ring is one of my least collected albums.  I also have very few 'ABBA' CDs.

 

I was very pleasantly surprised that 'sandyk' actually picked out one of the technically best CDS though.   There are precious few of CDs that are really technically accurate & good.  (Sounding good is different than technically clean DolbyA -- for listening, it is best that the DolbyA was actually decoded.)

 

Another side note:  I am often amazed at who has ABBA CDs.  I sure wish they were treated better in the distribution realm though.

 

 

John

[fas42]

25 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 Don't you think that John also has access to those early releases too, for comparison purposes ?

Recordings including the attached which is from Sweden, and is as early as any of your early CD  releases ?

 

 

The CD I have is of the '75 album, from Discogs,

 

ABBA ‎(CD, Album, RE),

Polydor,

831 596-2,

UK & Europe,

1987

[fas42]

24 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

I understand your interest in experimenting with all three versions.   1) it is a pain to set up a DolbyA and do all of the D/A & A/D...  DolbyA is not amenable to being used with a computer because of how the calibration works.  2) Satin REALLY IS a lost cause.  Satin sucks for accuracy.  I am not making the statement because of competing -- they do NOT compete with the DHNRDS at all.  3) The DHNRDS really DOES sound like a DolbyA, except a little more transparent.  If the material is harsh, the DHNRDS is much better.

 

The only potentially useful experiment would be with the DolbyA, and it really *IS* a waste of time.  The pre-made comparisons that I really have (again) are master tapes that I have no permission to distribute.  (The DolbyA doesn't have a calibration adjustment, but the inputs/ouputs have to be scaled -- that makes it a pain in the butt without having a set-up, and Richard is the one with the setup for DolbyA...)   He uses the DHNRDS for obvious reasons -- it sounds better, smoother, cleaner but clearer.

 

John

 

 

Which is a shame. Having a full set of files to check things over will make it easier to understand where the winning and losing is occurring ...

[John Dyson]

2 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

The CD I have is of the '75 album, from Discogs,

 

ABBA ‎(CD, Album, RE),

Polydor,

831 596-2,

UK & Europe,

1987

If you could run 'sox stats' on the Ring Ring cut (or any of them) we can compare to see if it is equivalent to any of my CDs.  You might actually have a better one than I do.   I think that  I have the best one available, but I could be wrong...

 

Maybe send the first 1 minute of the Ring Ring cut, and I can compare.  If you have a better one, I might try to get a copy.

 

John

 

[sandyk]

24 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

The CD I have is of the '75 album, from Discogs,

 

ABBA ‎(CD, Album, RE),

Polydor,

831 596-2,

UK & Europe,

1987

 The point here, was that this is a genuine Swedish CD  from the 1973 recording .

 There is no guarantee that yours isn't a remastered copy, or that it even sounds the same as the genuine Swedish release !

 Neither does it have tracks like  Me And Bobby And Bobby's Brother which John has provided comparisons for.

 Yours is a very different CD !

[John Dyson]

1 minute ago, fas42 said:

 

Which is a shame. Having a full set of files to check things over will make it easier to understand where the winning and losing is occurring ...

Comparing Dolby equivalent units isn't important to me for the ABBA project.  No matter what, if the decoder 'decodes' reasonably well, it is better than not decoding at all (well, Satin doesn't make any difference -- it really doesn't sound right as a decoder.)

 

I am trying to make ABBA sound better -- the same formula can be used for ANY decoder, I'll make the mastering steps available, so if someone wants to 'waste' the time and try other units, then they can do it :-).

 

John

 

[John Dyson]

9 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 The point here, was that this is a genuine Swedish CD  from the 1973 recording .

 There is no guarantee that yours isn't a remastered copy, or that it even sounds the same as the genuine Swedish release !

Polydor and Polar are usually very similar. I have often noticed that the best quality releases are from Japan believe it or not!!!  Weird, huh?  SO, if there is a European and Japanese Polydor, the Japanese version usually technically has fewer flaws, and the European Polydor vs Polar are often (not always) the same (exactly -- within 0.01dB literally.)

 

Discomate and others are also often very good.  I might even be using a Japan Discomate for one of my source albums.  I check the stats on the CDs very, mega carefully!!!   I don't think that I am using Atlantic or any of those right now -- I am not religious to the brand.  Also not using any of those 'remastering' brands  -- they sometimes seem to have huge generation loss.  I do use some of the off-brands for an alternative reference, and my first recognition of DolbyA material was an ABBA Gold CD (1992, Japan.)

 

Of course, no matter what, I do listen to the CD also to make sure that the stats didn't show the whole truth.   I have some source material with tape dropouts also.

 

Esp for ABBA and the variability of the releases -- it can be tedious to find the best material.

 

John

[John Dyson]

47 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

The CD I have is of the '75 album, from Discogs,

 

ABBA ‎(CD, Album, RE),

Polydor,

831 596-2,

UK & Europe,

1987

Below, I am NOT criticizing your disk AT ALL, rather trying to explain the DolbyA decoding problesm with material which might come from different albums. 

 

I just checked -- the Ring Ring on that ABBA disk is not on the original album.  For decoding,  is critical that the levels be correct.  It is more likely that the levels are correct on the original albums.  Mastering is often done on an albumb basis like what I am doing -- but splitting the cuts might/might not cause inconsistencies.  That is -- if the distributor normalizes the songs on the disk, then I cannot decode it nearly as easily.  It is a royal pain in the butt to find the correct calibration levels, and bad enough to do it once for an entire album.  It is downright evil-tedious to have to find the calibration for each cut individually!!!  (When doing an entire album, one can cross check different cuts for errors -- when doing songs individually, it is so very easy to make mistakes -- I make mistakes ALL of the time when entering things like gains and calibration levels.)

 

On those 'combo' disks, the material might be normalzied, might not be normalized, or the source might just be copied form the source of another album with a different calibration level.

 

When doing a DolbyA decode, it is better to do it on an album basis (as an entire album), or make sure that all of your files come from the same album and have exactly the same calibration.   When they have normalized each song, that means that the DolbyA decode must be recalibrated for EACH SONG instead of on an album basis.

 

On top of that (which would be beneficial for you) -- the CD might actually be properly decoded!?!?  I don't know!!!  The ideal state is if a disk has actually been properly mastered...

 

John

 

[fas42]

Quick rip, and listen - suspect it's the same as what you already have ... anyway, here's 30 secs from the start,

 

RingRing,30s.wav

[sandyk]

15 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Quick rip, and listen - suspect it's the same as what you already have ... anyway, here's 30 secs from the start,

 

RingRing,30s.wav 5.05 MB · 1 download

 

That sounds like undecoded Dolby A to me !

 The original POLCD -242 version is way more balanced sounding.

[John Dyson]

9 hours ago, sandyk said:

 

That sounds like undecoded Dolby A to me !

 The original POLCD -242 version is way more balanced sounding.

Yes -- it (RingRing.30s.wav) sounds like DolbyA that has been EQed to be listenable.

I cannot judge how people other than myself perceive the sound, so I cannot/will NOT take away other peoples (incl Frank's) enjoyment.  Compressed/EQed DolbyA does have a certain character that one can get used to and enjoy, but my project isn't to replicate what is commonly available.

 

The sad thing (for me) is that I am so tired of their wonderful music, but still must complete the (hopefully collaborative)  effort of all 8 albums (I misttated 7 albums before -- I forgot to decode one album, and only counted those that I had processed/remastered in my current working area.)

 

The RingRing album demo is complete/ready convert to a final demo format (starts with 96k/24, then I convert to mp3, flac, opus or whatever the most reasonable demo format currently is.)  Since Frank provided .wav, I also produced a 16bit/44.1k wav (if that is what people like around here -- I am happy to do it!!!)   This is a version that I have ready for review, but haven't posted it (which will be the complete RingRing album -- in snippet or full form, depending on the situation.)

 

I have included a snippet from both the 'remastered' version and also rip from original vinyl done at 96k/24 converted to 44.1k/16.  I have another vinyl rip of lower quality with very similar general sound characteristics of the higher quality vinyl rip.   I normally like to provide 55secs, but I truncated shorter because the size is adequate....   An EQed DolbyA copy has already been posted.

 

 

01. ABBA - Ring Ring.wav 01. ABBA - Ring Ring-vinylrip.wav

[John Dyson]

I have mentioned 'DolbyA fog' in the past.  When doing the 2nd pass (actually first pass done right) Arrival album, I found a pretty obvious case of DolbyA fog.   Even though I probably used different parameters for the mastering (actually turned out moderately close to the vinyl) -- there is a difference, between the two, in sound that goes beyond EQ.

 

I have provided two examples, one from the original vinyl, which I used 'DolbyA' in the filename.  The other is from the best DolbyA encoded CD that I could find, but used the DHNRDS DA to do the conversion from the DolbyA form to the natural form.  I added 'DHNRDS' to the the name of the DHNRDS DA decoded version.

 

When doing the reference comparison -- making sure that the mastering attempt isn't too far in error, I found a pretty obvious case of DolbyA fog, and shows the primary difference in sound between a true DolbyA and the DHNRDS in the high quality mode.  In the lower quality modes, the DHNRDS can produce a slight amount of fog -- if needed. On much, less-ABBA-like material, the DHNRDS and DolbyA sound close to identical, except for a bit more precision/clarity -- not enough to complain OR advertise the difference.

 

What to listen for on the fog?  there are two primary aspects of fog on this example 1) choral vocals 'smooth out' into a tonal average instead of maintaining as much individuality 2) there is left-over compression in the DolbyA version.  This left-over compression-like sound is caused by similar mechanisms as the 'choral' tonal average fog.

 

The 'fog' doesn't always sound bad, even though it sometimes does sound bad -- because other kinds of distortion can be associated & generated by it.  In a way, the 'fog' produces a 'ghosty' veil kind of sound -- which can be a valid sound-effect, but it isn't accurate.  The DHNRDS has both the advantage and disadvantage of being very, tediously, extremely accurate.  Sometimes a little original DolbyA soft-focus is a good thing, but DolbyA wasn't mostly intended as a sound effect.

 

John

 

01-When I Kissed The Teacher-DolbyA.wav 01-When I Kissed The Teacher-DHNRDS.wav

[John Dyson]

Many of the latest decoding attempts are now uploaded to the Dropbox sites.   There is a full review version for Arrival&RingRing on the test site.  The 'quick review' site has fairly long snippets, unfortunately the snippets are mostly mp3 -- but if there are problems with mp3, just avoid the Dropbox player.

 

I actually tried a first cut of remastering  'Arrival', which has some eccentricities that makes processing difficult to do correctly.  It isn't so much 'EQ' as it is dealing with that rubbing grain in 'Dancing Queen'.   The Dancing Queen mp3 review copy is SO BAD when playing through the dropbox mp3 player, it really needs to be downloaded to listen to (it swirls all over the place on the Dropbox player.)  I think that a FLAC snippet version for Dancing Queen will also be uploaded the review site in a few minutes.  MP3 is slightly challenged by the Dancing Queen 'rubbing' sound.

 

The test (alternative) site provides more precision for those might actively help -- and so it is always 16bit flac -- I finally given up on mp3 for the serious collaborative criticism and review.  I am keeping mp3 for the cursory review site because it is so very easy to play the examples through the dropbox player (sometimes with some loss of precision.)

 

There has been NO 'creative' enhancement to the remastering copies, only decoding and the needed EQ to bring the signal to DolbyA specs, and a minor correction sometimes needed for DolbyA decodes.  There is ZERO artistic modification, serious equalization, anything like that.   Any 'artistic' changes will result only from those who comment and tell me what to change (or even people who might want to directly collaborate on the project.)   My listening skill is more tuned to finding errors rather than trying to make things 'sound good'.  Anything that I try to change to 'sound good' usually ends up 'sounding bad' to everyone else, so I avoid doing it.

 

Probably the biggest difference in sound between the vinyl originals and the remastering attempts -- other than the actual mastering done on the vinyl copies -- is that the DHNRDS enables significantly more transparent detail, when the detail exists.  (There is almost zero 'soft focus' in a DHNRDS decoding at high quality levels.)  The vinyl copies have much more mastering/modification than the DHNRDS versions.  I have tried to keep the decodes/mastering VERY 'vanilla' with minimal changes to produce technical correctness only.

 

Constructive criticism where I can act on the changes are greatly appreciated, and a credits log will be maintained.  It would not imply endorsement, but only an attempt at thanks - and will be included in any proper commercial releases if they ever happen.  (Sometimes, my hobbies turn into something important, and I almost always collaborate with others --almost always  participating a collective effort with mutual respect and acknowledgement.)

 

(The Dropbox locations have already been shared, but I'll provide the locations upon request.)

 

On the ''Pink Panther':  The latest 'Pink Panther' is the best that has been decoded so far, it is ONLY a decode, so the only possible changes are for the calibration level or corrective EQ on the input (converting the EQed listenable version to proper DolbyA frequency response.)  The only likely needed tweak -- as it is on almost any high quality DolbyA decode EVEN ON DolbyA HW, is a modification of the calibration level.

 

John

 

 

 

[kumakuma]

14 hours ago, fas42 said:

My most down to earth recommendation would be to buy one of the current, high performing active monitor solutions, and then work hard to make that 'robust' as possible, done purely externally. When that takes you as far as possible, then gulp hard, dive inside and see what can be improved there - that's what I would do if given free rein to get good sound as fast as possible

 

Way ahead of you, mate.

 

I've been using active monitors for years.

 

[Ralf11]

but are your monitors magically tuned?

[kumakuma]

3 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

but are your monitors magically tuned?

 

Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for unicorns to magically appear in the sweet spot between them.

[John Dyson]

13 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for unicorns to magically appear in the sweet spot between them.

The designers of your equipment have to toil very intensively and with great effort to produce those unicorns.  Even MIT/Stanford graduate PHds have problems with some of those techniques.  Often, the highly advanced institutes in Haiti have to be called upon to do the level of design that supports manifestation of unicorns.  I *have* heard that there are some institutes in the southwest US have special resources that they call on that encourage the manifestation of unicorns and other associated sensory experiences.  The gov't seems to frown on such advanced technology, but the leading edge has never been simple to deal with.

 

For my own very settled down lifestyle, I prefer the more mundane -- because  my days of recreational 'listening' are long long gone... :-).

 

John

 

[John Dyson]

A first cut remaster of the 'SuperTrouper' album is done for the test site, and I'll upload the snippet examples to the quick review site in a few hours.   The SuperTrouper results are pretty good -- esp considering the IMD and MD prone 'SuperTrouper' song.   I had to do something cringeworthy -- making me very uncomfortable that I had to do a little EQ.  I am still trying to find some way to work around the need to do any serious EQ.   I have been restricting changes to adaptations for DolbyA decoding and temporal corrections - SuperTrouper really needed work.

However, I fully expect criticism on the SuperTrouper album -- maybe just for the abstract reason that I did do some EQ that I tried to commit to avoid.   I did nothing drastic -- not like 'treble boost' but  3dB boost/cut from 5kHz to 8.5kHz or so.  I don't like peaky or resonant type parameteric corrections unless there is an overriding reason, so it is just a modification to produce a bit more presence.  I might find a a solution to that -- IMO -- HACK -- later on.

The SuperTrouper snippet examples like 'SuperTrouper', and a few other interesting songs will be on the 'quick review' site later on (probably in 2-3Hrs.)

 

John

 

[lucretius]

On 9/16/2019 at 12:29 PM, John Dyson said:

(The Dropbox locations have already been shared, but I'll provide the locations upon request.)

 

Hi John,

Could you PM the locations to me?  I'm especially interested in the ABBA recordings. Thanks.

[John Dyson]

I posted something that I  shouldn't have ...  Had to delete!!! :-).