Paul's view on Cables, Audio Precision Analyzer, etc.

[fas42]

8 hours ago, Confused said:

In a way, I know what you mean here, but the statement that it is "never ever the recording" is a bit far fetched I feel.  As an example, if I look at my own music library I have many tracks for which I have multiple versions.  They are the same actual recording, the same track length etc., but the versions are different.  Examples of this may be where I have a track on an album, and maybe a second version ripped from a "compilation" CD.  If one sounds superb on my system, and one does not, by your logic is the system, and under no circumstances can it possibly be that the second version of the recording is duff.  And if I endlessly tweak my rig to make the second version sound good, what if the first one then sounds terrible?  As an example, I have identified a CD that sounds good, but the second CD was recorded with pre-emphasis but does not have the pre-emphasis code on the CD.  If I play the second version and it sounds bright, it is the rig, not that the recording has "feral pre-emphasis"?  That is an example that can be identified, but what if there are other errors in the mastering, bad EQ, distortion due to clipping, so on and so on.

 

I have said that there will most likely be a 'favourite' if there are multiple versions - there are more options to how a recording sounds than just, unlistenable, or superb, 😉 ... what the goal is, that a particular musical event that was captured can be thoroughly enjoyed, if you only have a single version of that event to listen to.

 

Two examples: the audio friend down the road has many masterings of Yes albums, a band he's into - all the 'audiophile' remasterings sound fine as a track - until you hear the original! The richness of the textures, and fullness of the mix of the very first release knock all the others off the perch, straightaway. And, I have a Gene Pitney greatest hits CD, which is a street stall needledrop knock off, with the most hamfisted noise reduction you could imagine applied - plus, the same tracks in a "proper" release. Obviously, the latter will be "superior" - but it's the first one that I use to check the system status - is it excrutiatingly irritating to listen to, or does my rig bring out the core content strongly enough so my mind can discard the botched mastering anomalies? On the same day, that recording can be in either camp, depending on how successful my tweaking is during that time period.

 

Quote

 

To be honest, I do have one or two CD's that sound truly terrible.  They sound bad on my well sorted rig, they sound bad in my car, they sound bad played on my laptop speakers or laptop with headphones, or my iPod, they sound bad on everything I can conceivably find to play them on.  But nevertheless, it is never ever the recording, so all these devices need sorting.  And how do I sort an iPod?

 

Well, I would have said the same during my early years of tweaking ... it took me years to reach the attitude I now have - the plus is that the "terrible" CDs are a challenge, and 'force' me to think further down the road ... what could be looked at, as something that is handicapping the SQ of the playback, that may be improved just enough to get me over the 'hurdle' of that recording.

 

Note, what specifically in the sound is so "terrible" is a vital clue - there are a vast range of possible unpleasantnesses in playback, so one has to be able to fairly accurately point to what annoys one, rather than just utter a generic "It's terrible!"

 

An iPod? Amusingly, N. the audiophile down the road has been optimising media players for years - the best replay very often has been via a tiny handheld device, which is storage and DAC combined ... he has no trouble demonstrating that precisely how it's being used makes major differences in the SQ ...

 

Quote

 

To me, the recording is part of the chain, it is just the first link and a link I have no control over.  Because I have no control over this link, I can see the point of optimising the rig so that it can cope with most of I want to play on the rig, I get this, you have a good point here, but this does not mean that there is never ever a bad recording.  Indeed, how can anyone possibly have listened to ALL of the recordings in the world, there is not enough time.  Maybe you are plain lucky and never found a bad one, I know for sure that I have found a few.

 

Rant over - I'll go away or get back on topic now! 🙂

 

Care to name a couple of these hideous beasts you have there ... it might help my understanding if you do, 😉.

[kumakuma]

12 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

An iPod? Amusingly, N. the audiophile down the road has been optimising media players for years - the best replay very often has been via a tiny handheld device, which is storage and DAC combined ... he has no trouble demonstrating that precisely how it's being used makes major differences in the SQ ...

 

 

What can be optimized on a DAP other than perhaps the cable that connects it to the amp?

[Ralf11]

the power cord

[fas42]

4 hours ago, 4est said:

You are not alone. His "I have all of the answers" BS seems to get to many of us.

 

I'm supplying "answers" in the same way as those who insist "You must get the speakers and room right!! Otherwise, you have no hope!"

 

What has disturbed over the years is that progress in audio has been so slow - when I started getting "good sound" all amplifiers were pretty hopeless - it's taken decades to get power amps to the point where you can point to a few which are genuinely "blameless", for issues in the sound. So, I'm doing my bit as regards pointing to what I've found to matter.

 

These days, if you throw enough money at it, with careful analysis of what's available, off the shelf - then you can get decent SQ ... my interest is in what can be achieved with everyday gear - the value for money approach.

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

What can be optimized on a DAP other than perhaps the cable that connects it to the amp?

The power supply for the charger. Gotta have clean, linear power in that battery. Charging it even once with an SMPS is ruinous. On discharge, some of the noise remains in the battery, forever contaminating the power. Even homoeopathic amounts make a night and day difference to the discerning ear. On a quiet night, I can — and this should be no surprise — sense the disapproving sighs of my future wife rippling back in time from the kitchen in the house we will one day inhabit. I should have known better than to live next door to a heathen with an SMPS. It was years ago, but the noise still lingers. I replaced all my audio equipment, to no avail. The noise must have survived in the static electricity on my clothes. It's a nightmare. I pray to every deity — extant, imaginary, or purely hypothetical — that it not infect my nervous system. As long as that doesn't happen, there is still hope that I may some day be rid of it.

[fas42]

35 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

What can be optimized on a DAP other than perhaps the cable that connects it to the amp?

 

Several things ...

 

The precise static settings in the player matter, and the precise way one starts a track playing matter; how one selects a track, to be played and then initiates the actual playback - the sequence of 'clicks' matters ... here, think PeterSt media player tricks. ... He had no trouble demonstrating the variations, in playback quality, from this to me.

 

How the DAP is powered - internal battery is not good enough, nor is using the external charger. Solution, add a huge capacity external battery energy supply, very carefully optimised so that it can be charged before serious listening starts.

 

Buffer the output of the DAP - he has done enormous amount of experimenting with trying to hit the sweet spot of getting the output level "just right" - too low a level, and the gain stages are below par; too high, and the SQ obviously degrades - the current requirements of the preamp in the Naim are too much for the DAP. Solution, add a pre-preamp - which of course adds its own "colouring" - a you can't win! scenario ... but a decent compromise has been found. And constantly evolves ...

 

Yes, alter the cable to the amp has been tried, and has mattered - super short, very rigid twisted single core conductors. But the connectors are still a weakness, 😜 ... very easy to demonstrate the impact of refreshing the connections. I've been at him to hardwire this area, and he appreciates the need to do this - but it will be hard to do, and he wants to use the players in other ways ... it's a Round Tuit thing, put off indefinitely.

[fas42]

Oh, forgot to mention that damping the DAP is valuable - that is, placing it on a vibration attenuating substance makes a difference.

 

What happens if the tweaks are not quite done well enough? No, not the trollish problems mentioned above 😁 ... good test material he uses is some old, fairly marginal Oscar Peterson tracks - when not in the zone the piano is pretty hard to handle, teeth grinding stuff; you're glad when the next track comes! ... Get it right, and the SQ snaps into shape; you wonder why you had a problem listening to it earlier ...

[lucretius]

20 hours ago, John Dyson said:

*The introduction of the FeralA variant of DolbyA encoding appears to be closely correlated to the introduction of CDs/digital audio distribution to the masses.

 

How many variants of DolbyA encoding are there?  And what distinguishes FeralA from other variants of DolbyA encoding?  Thanks.

[mansr]

14 minutes ago, lucretius said:

How many variants of DolbyA encoding are there?  And what distinguishes FeralA from other variants of DolbyA encoding?  Thanks.

• Wild-A. The ancestor. Majestic. Very difficult to master. Only a few recordings remain.
• Domestic-A. Fairly docile. Bred to fill a variety of needs. Common on LP vinyl.
• Feral-A. Descended from escaped Domestic-A. Somewhat temperamental, but submissive if treated with patience.
• Hybrid-A. Mostly descended from Feral-A interbred with B, C, and occasionally even dbx. Unpredictable. Difficult to tame.
• Fossil-A. Extinct, known only from ancient Greek pottery fragments. Believed to be a common ancestor of A, B, and C.

[John Dyson]

2 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

How many variants of DolbyA encoding are there?  And what distinguishes FeralA from other variants of DolbyA encoding?  Thanks.

Of course, there is DolbyA -- I have only encountered that on two commercial recordings (more probably exists)...  Nena, 99 Red Ballons and Sheffeild Labs "I've got the music in me".

 

FeralA is a complex of similar EQ schemes which makes the horrible, shreaking, shrill DolbyA sound more tame.  FeralA results from pure EQ of a DolbyA signal, and I have developed a prelim specification for UNDOING FeralA (converting from FeralA to DolbyA.)

 

Basically, the spec describes a family of curves that are all based upon Q=0.50 shelving filters, all have a dual 6dB (maybe sometimes 3dB) interleaved dip somewhere between 1kHz and 3kHz (exact frequencies in my document).  The general key to keeping sibilance, etc clean in some cases is a 250Hz offset between sets of filters.  (Most variants like the 250Hz offset, but some do not need it.)  In addition to the dual 6dB dips (sometimes one is 3dB), is a descending gain starting in the 3kHz range on up to 12kHz.

 

Because of what DolbyA does to the signal, independently created 'FeralA' versions all do similar things.  Over the last 2-3 months, I have been formalizing a spec, currently for my internal use to be able to write a program that does the needed math for building the filters.

I have distributed that spec to others (a few professionals, a few trusted hobby people) for review -- I don't want a partially incorrect document with my name on it to be sent around very far.

 

The FeralA document is still a little bit of a work in progress, but is close to final.

 

The FeralA name seems to be slowly, but surely more and more positively received.  Things are still preliminary, but the decoding filters, as defined, REALLY DO work very well.

 

Included are a undecoded, direct from feralA CD snippet, and then a decoded, true recording decoded snippet.

*FeralA might sometimes seem a little more bright, but that is a matter of my own choice.  I can adjust the decoded version within some limits.  I chose the more natural, not enhanced sound.

 

John

 

14 Dionne Warwick - Walk On By - I Say A Little Prayer-decodedSNIPPET.mp3 14 Dionne Warwick - Walk On By - I Say A Little Prayer-CDSNIPPET.mp3

[fas42]

31 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

Included are a undecoded, direct from feralA CD snippet, and then a decoded, true recording decoded snippet.

*FeralA might sometimes seem a little more bright, but that is a matter of my own choice.  I can adjust the decoded version within some limits.  I chose the more natural, not enhanced sound.

 

John

 

14 Dionne Warwick - Walk On By - I Say A Little Prayer-decodedSNIPPET.mp3 1.69 MB · 1 download 14 Dionne Warwick - Walk On By - I Say A Little Prayer-CDSNIPPET.mp3 1.8 MB · 1 download

 

This is one which is not working, for me ... the backing, on the far left, has been too flattened; and the crescendo later on in the song actually comes across as being distorted - compared to the original.

[kumakuma]

1 minute ago, fas42 said:

 

This is one which is not working, for me ... the backing, on the far left, has been too flattened; and the crescendo later on in the song actually comes across as being distorted - compared to the original.

 

@John Dyson

 

I suggest changing the files names so Frank doesn't know which is which. 

[John Dyson]

4 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

This is one which is not working, for me ... the backing, on the far left, has been too flattened; and the crescendo later on in the song actually comes across as being distorted - compared to the original.

As my grandma used to say -- "whatever blows your skirt up" :-).  One of my friends, after hearing the exact same snippet (actually full song in his case), is asking for some more of his CDs to be decoded.  He always had the same opinion as me (he comes from the same timeframe), that CDs never sounded right.  My own experience is that I actually recorded stuff back when I was young -- orchestras and things like that.  I know what sound is supposed to sound like.

 

I am not a mastering person, and there are a few modes that can be chosen -- it is very much like a tone control now, no distortion for an indication.  My feralA spec is really nicely flexable within reason.

 

My project partner rightfully claims that an A/B comparison from a contemporaneous (but probably scratchy) vinyl would be helpful when recovering things like the Universal archives...  Hint hint...

 

 

John

 

[fas42]

2 hours ago, John Dyson said:

As my grandma used to say -- "whatever blows your skirt up" :-).  One of my friends, after hearing the exact same snippet (actually full song in his case), is asking for some more of his CDs to be decoded.  He always had the same opinion as me (he comes from the same timeframe), that CDs never sounded right.  My own experience is that I actually recorded stuff back when I was young -- orchestras and things like that.  I know what sound is supposed to sound like.

 

 

CDs "never sounded right", because the playback was faulty - 99% of what you hear fails to deliver, because it can't present the energy and impact of live sound without throwing in a solid dollop of distortion, at the same time. Remember, I've been hearing the same defective CD replay on other rigs over the decades as you have, and indeed it "sounds wrong".

 

It is indeed clear that many 'audiophiles' chase after watered down sound - something that won't offend no matter how many things are wrong with the playback. But this won't deliver the visceral sensations that hearing live music making provides.

 

Live acoustic sound has certain qualities, but typical CD replay won't provide that - and I'm after the experience that hearing live music creates. I also know what "sound is supposed to sound like" ... and I'm not interested in diluting the recorded sound into a low strength version, to make it 'compatible' with non-optimum playback.

[sandyk]

7 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

the power cord

 

In the case of the Oppo 205, you could try the attached and report back

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-computer-audio-streaming/page/633/#comments    # 15813

[Ralf11]

Hey Sandman - take two placebos and call me in the morning

[John Dyson]

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

CDs "never sounded right", because the playback was faulty - 99% of what you hear fails to deliver, because it can't present the energy and impact of live sound without throwing in a solid dollop of distortion, at the same time. Remember, I've been hearing the same defective CD replay on other rigs over the decades as you have, and indeed it "sounds wrong".

 

It is indeed clear that many 'audiophiles' chase after watered down sound - something that won't offend no matter how many things are wrong with the playback. But this won't deliver the visceral sensations that hearing live music making provides.

 

Live acoustic sound has certain qualities, but typical CD replay won't provide that - and I'm after the experience that hearing live music creates. I also know what "sound is supposed to sound like" ... and I'm not interested in diluting the recorded sound into a low strength version, to make it 'compatible' with non-optimum playback.

Please, don't even go-on about playback faulty -- that wasn't the problem, unless the faulty playback was the missing feralA decoding, that  NO_ONE knew about until about 2012 when I figured there was something about DolbyA going on.  Because of the need for a full DolbyA decoder that NEVER fails, that I could not start producing reliable curves a few months ago.   The latest versions of the decoder are so solid that they have strong defensive measures against natural distortion caused by the fast expansion becoming confused.  A new parallel project will be to TRY to detect material that should not be decoded.

 

Decoding was previously poissible, but was too much of a science project until a few months ago, now it is at the level of a 'tone control', but with 'clicks' instead of tweaks.   Just recently, I have narrowed the curves down further.

 

As a real recording professional told me -- this just might be a partial solution to the loss of the Universal archives. (That was a *serious* comment, not musing.)

 

Just did a decoding of Norah for a friend -- changed an edgy, raspy, boxy recording into something more real.  DolbyA (even FeralA) can be very uglifying, even though a lot of the time it isn't all that destructive, but just makes the sound unnaturally compressed.

 

John

 

[fas42]

11 hours ago, John Dyson said:

Please, don't even go-on about playback faulty -- that wasn't the problem, unless the faulty playback was the missing feralA decoding, that  NO_ONE knew about until about 2012 when I figured there was something about DolbyA going on.  Because of the need for a full DolbyA decoder that NEVER fails, that I could not start producing reliable curves a few months ago.   The latest versions of the decoder are so solid that they have strong defensive measures against natural distortion caused by the fast expansion becoming confused.  A new parallel project will be to TRY to detect material that should not be decoded.

 

Doesn't work like that, John 🙂 ... I've had decades of using a particular track from some CD, which can be a marvellous, emotionally charged, "bigger than life" experience - or sound like a pile of sh!t on some very expensive, ambitious rig I come across. Which do you think is more likely, that the encoding magically changed between these playings; or that the fancy gear revealed the "true nature" of the recording, and the good replay was a 'distortion artifact' - or, that the playback of the non-opitimised rig was, yes, faulty ... ?

 

11 hours ago, John Dyson said:

 

Just did a decoding of Norah for a friend -- changed an edgy, raspy, boxy recording into something more real.  DolbyA (even FeralA) can be very uglifying, even though a lot of the time it isn't all that destructive, but just makes the sound unnaturally compressed.

 

John

 

 

Edgy, raspy, boxy playback is classic poor digital playback SQ - I have heard the difference between competent, and incompetent replay of tracks that provoke this misbehaviour vastly more than I want to; to the point where I have "burnt out" on doing this type of stuff ... good reproduction is possible, but as George Harrison would say, "It don't come easy ..." 😉.

 

[John Dyson]

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Doesn't work like that, John 🙂 ... I've had decades of using a particular track from some CD, which can be a marvellous, emotionally charged, "bigger than life" experience - or sound like a pile of sh!t on some very expensive, ambitious rig I come across. Which do you think is more likely, that the encoding magically changed between these playings; or that the fancy gear revealed the "true nature" of the recording, and the good replay was a 'distortion artifact' - or, that the playback of the non-opitimised rig was, yes, faulty ... ?

 

 

Edgy, raspy, boxy playback is classic poor digital playback SQ - I have heard the difference between competent, and incompetent replay of tracks that provoke this misbehaviour vastly more than I want to; to the point where I have "burnt out" on doing this type of stuff ... good reproduction is possible, but as George Harrison would say, "It don't come easy ..." 😉.

 

You are prejudging the quality of my equipment and my ability to discern. I take exception to that uninformed prejudice. 

 

Remebmer, I have high quality CDs that are not feralA -- they don't happen often on pop material, but they DO happen (e.g. premium Supertramp, a few other CDs, for example, I do have one of 'Crime'.)   I didn't think that it sounded very good -- ham-handed decoding even when decoded.  The much touted rule that Dolby says 1dB DolbyA calibration error is acceptable is actually NOT acceptable on pop music.   The meters on DolbyA units are not known to be very accurate, so the person doing the decoding is probably not at fault, just didn't have the tools to easily do a better job of decoding.

 

(High quality DolbyA decoding, which most material HAD been DolbyA encoded, is tricky to do cleanly.)

 

The signal damage (nothing to do with my equipment) doesn't sound good to me.  You are making absolute judgements about something, while you are confusing that judgement with your own 'sounds good to me'.  'Sounds good to you', but I can tell the difference betwen feralA or not -- maybe some people, maybe you, cannot.

I am quite sure that I can hear the FeralA sound on your equipment, probably better, more cleanly if your equipment is better than mine.  If the equipment is clumsy and has poor quality, I might not even be able to hear the damage (like on a boombox.)

 

There are variatiions in damage from CD to CD, not at all corrected by any practical equipment without a DolbyA decoder, with specific PER recording adjustements.  Each mastering individual, company, source, etc has a varying set of parameters, and seem to stabilize on a certain set per artist, etc.

 

If you do not hear the VARIABLE distorted dynamics from CD to CD, and your equipment does not have signficant automatic variations in settings between recordings -- then maybe the problem is not with electronic 'equipment' per se.  Maybe it is a lack of discernment or maybe even the fact that kind of 'distortion' is not bothersome to you.

 

FeralA is not anything to do with 'sounds good to me', it is more like 'experienced person doing recording knows what recordings sound like.'.  I also knew that the sound was distorted by signal processing of some kind, even back in the 1980s.   Without adjustment, the BEST equipment in the world at the time could not undo that kind of signal processing.  Even now, the signal processing in many CDS  CAN NOT be undone without adjustment on a per recording basis.    I guess some people cannot even detect the variations in the damage from CD to CD? 

 

Someone put a 'big electronic garble device' in the signal, yet some people like you dont care that the signal was damaged.    That unnatural signal might sound good to you.   Many people at the time, in the 1980s, with the best available equipment, KNEW something was wrong, but learned to accept the signal processing damage.  I could not accept the damage caused by the bad choices in mastering, and stilll cannot.

 

The beauty of it all is -- the FeralA decoding techniques might be usable to re-populate the destroyed archives!!!  That kind of thing was the original goal of the DHNRDS DA by both Richard and me.  Consumer decoding was never intended -- it is too complicated for all but advanced technical hobbyists, and there is just not enough of those.  I am sure that there are some of those reading this message, but some are happy with the compressed sound (like you apparently are.)

 

I am not happy with the compressed sound, and wouldn't be listening much to music right now, with equipment vastly superior in most ways than what was available to most of us back in the 1980s'.

 

John

 

[mansr]

2 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

You are prejudging the quality of my equipment and my ability to discern. I take exception to that uninformed prejudice. 

John, just ignore Frank. Everybody does.

[fas42]

50 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

You are prejudging the quality of my equipment and my ability to discern. I take exception to that uninformed prejudice. 

 

John, try not to take this personally ... I would have been very happy to have had the industry steadily improve the standard of the engineering of the components they produce, until it was generally available - but at the moment only the most expensive combos out there get it right; it still hasn't filtered down to equipment that is good value for money. My point is that if some individuals can improve what they currently have, if sufficiently motivated, then this should be encouraged - you obviously have ignored my posts describing what the audio acquaintance down the road achieves from his tweaking, and that we have listening sessions full of the material that you do your processing on.

 

Quote

Remebmer, I have high quality CDs that are not feralA -- they don't happen often on pop material, but they DO happen (e.g. premium Supertramp, a few other CDs, for example, I do have one of 'Crime'.)   I didn't think that it sounded very good -- ham-handed decoding even when decoded.  The much touted rule that Dolby says 1dB DolbyA calibration error is acceptable is actually NOT acceptable on pop music.   The meters on DolbyA units are not known to be very accurate, so the person doing the decoding is probably not at fault, just didn't have the tools to easily do a better job of decoding.

 

(High quality DolbyA decoding, which most material HAD been DolbyA encoded, is tricky to do cleanly.)

 

The signal damage (nothing to do with my equipment) doesn't sound good to me.  You are making absolute judgements about something, while you are confusing that judgement with your own 'sounds good to me'.  'Sounds good to you', but I can tell the difference betwen feralA or not -- maybe some people, maybe you, cannot.

I am quite sure that I can hear the FeralA sound on your equipment, probably better, more cleanly if your equipment is better than mine.  If the equipment is clumsy and has poor quality, I might not even be able to hear the damage (like on a boombox.)

 

Yes, recordings have different masterings, inherent distortion, "signatures" - what you have failed to register from what I've been saying is that human hearing is highly effective at doing its own filtering, and can present a subjective experience that discards what is objectionable in the recording itself, leaving you with the musical events captured. I have recordings here which are truly execrable played on other systems, and are just as bad on mine, when not at the right standard ... do I throw them out? No, I work towards raising the standard of the replay ... because this always works. Never fails.

 

You keep calling mastering which doesn't suit your hearing, distortion - which is somewhat of an insult to all the people who have bought these recordings, in their 100's of millions, and thoroughly enjoyed them.

 

Quote

Someone put a 'big electronic garble device' in the signal, yet some people like you dont care that the signal was damaged.    That unnatural signal might sound good to you.   Many people at the time, in the 1980s, with the best available equipment, KNEW something was wrong, but learned to accept the signal processing damage.  I could not accept the damage caused by the bad choices in mastering, and stilll cannot

 

 

The signal is not damaged - but gets damaged on its way through the replay chain ... you don't seem willing to accept that this happens. And this would be because you haven't heard what the difference is when the playback is finally competent. You see, with sub-par reproduction, "everything is wrong" - nothing sounds real, or natural; there's an edginess, an unpleasantness, which you can't get rid of; a lot of the detail of what's happening musically is completely lost, half of what's on the recording is a blur, and is meaningless as being part of the performance; you can only play at a certain volume, because louder or softer sounds worse; there's a build up of listening fatigue, and you have to stop, you can't keep "enjoying the ride"  ... it's a fail, on every count.

 

All of these issues vanish, when you eliminate the critical distortion anomalies in the replay chain.

 

Quote

 

 

The beauty of it all is -- the FeralA decoding techniques might be usable to re-populate the destroyed archives!!!  That kind of thing was the original goal of the DHNRDS DA by both Richard and me.  Consumer decoding was never intended -- it is too complicated for all but advanced technical hobbyists, and there is just not enough of those.  I am sure that there are some of those reading this message, but some are happy with the compressed sound (like you apparently are.)

 

I am not happy with the compressed sound, and wouldn't be listening much to music right now, with equipment vastly superior in most ways than what was available to most of us back in the 1980s'.

 

John

 

 

The fact that you are remastering, to provide variations of recording which suit people who have certain types of systems is fine, but to call it "the destroyed archives!" is way, way beyond the pale ...

[Confused]

On 2/13/2020 at 10:24 PM, fas42 said:

 

I have said that there will most likely be a 'favourite' if there are multiple versions - there are more options to how a recording sounds than just, unlistenable, or superb, 😉 ... what the goal is, that a particular musical event that was captured can be thoroughly enjoyed, if you only have a single version of that event to listen to.

 

 

I actually agree with this, but the comment does have implications.  Lets say there are two versions of a recording and one sounds brighter than the other.  This could be because of different EQ during mastering, so a preference of the engineer performing the final mix. But lets say it is an error, such as the CD being recorded with pre-emphasis and the CD not having the pre-emphasis tag.  I listen to these two, and my favourite is the less bright version.  By picking my favourite, I am simply picking the copy that does not have the pre-emphasis error.  If I just have one copy, the one where pre-emphasis is not decoded, I listen to it on my well sorted rig, and I think "this sounds too bright", is this a problem with the rig being too bright or an error with the recording?  To me this is completely straightforward, a transparent system performing correctly will, and indeed should, sound too bright if presented with un-decoded pre-emphasis.  It may well still be listenable, I may still be able to connect to the essence of the music and the performance, but it will not be correct, and this due to an error in the recording.  So in terms of "high fidelity" or accurate fidelity, the recording matters, as does everything else in the chain.  I know you view is that if you think there is a problem in the recording, there is not, it is the rig.  I know this because you have posted this view.  That is fine, I understand your view, but what might be useful would be if you try to understand the position of others.

[Confused]

On 2/13/2020 at 10:24 PM, fas42 said:

 

Care to name a couple of these hideous beasts you have there ... it might help my understanding if you do, 😉.

Happy to help, understanding is good otherwise we will forever simply talk past each other.

 

To start, I would like to offer one specific example of the brightness issue I mentioned in my previous post.  Last year I bought a copy of Sparks "No.1 in Heaven 40th Anniversary Edition".  This was a 2019 release of the 1979 original.  (an old favourite that I have on vinyl somewhere)   The 40th anniversary version sounds unacceptably bright to me on my "rig".  As it happens, I am lucky to have tone controls on my Devialet amp.  So as an experiment, I try turning the treble down -9dB, which is a rough approximation of removing pre-emphasis.  With -9dB off the treble, it sounds reasonable.  Do I blame my rig for this?  After all, with a well sorted rig everything should sound fine.  So I try the CD in my car, it sounds too bright, I try a ripped copy on my iPod with headphones, it sounds too bright, on my PC desktop speakers, it sounds too bright.  I was very disappointed with this CD, it sounds just bad enough to be plain annoying and does take away much of the pleasure I might gain from the actual music.  I have no idea if this is actually a pre-emphasis issue or if the 40th anniversary CD simply has "hot" EQ.

 

By a complete coincidence of the above, I was listening to some music in my car this week, just random stuff on an iPod that feeds my car stereo.  Up came the track "No. 1 Song in Heaven".  This really struck me, because it sounded superb, I mean really very good just on my car stereo.  Checking later, this is a different version that I had forgotten I even had.  This was just the one track on a compilation CD "Anthems Electronic 80's disc 2 - Ministry of Sound.  I am listening to this version now on the "big rig", treble set to 0dB, it sounds great.  As an aside, both albums have a copy of the single version of "Beat the Clock", much the same thing.

[Confused]

Had a check on youtube.  This is the nearest I could find.  This one is listenable, I can connect to the music, but it is spoiled to a degree because the treble / mix is as hot as hell.

 

 

[Confused]

And here is an example of a bad recording.  Still listenable as it happens, but still bad!  So an example of where my rig lets me connect to the emotion of the music, but I would still say it is a bad recording.  I mean, yes, I would prefer something better.