'FeralA' decoder -- free-to-use

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Don't forget Linux  

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Wow!

 

The decoding of Supertramp's "Breakfast In America" is remarkable!

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At the moment I am working on: 1974 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (VJCP-68096-097)

The intro to the first song is useful because there is a fly which flies around the soundstage during the intro -- the setting --wof 1.19 didn;'t help! Hmm maybe tone=-14.25 and I still need to try various settings ...

 

The good thing about my workstation is that I can use HQPlayer's EQ modulators at DSD128 while I run da-avx 😳

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I'm thinking 1978 And Then There Were Three... (VJCP-68102)/11 Follow You Follow Me

 

fc=X -12.85 ??

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So wow stuff like Supertramp & Carpenters is vastly better with decode but perhaps old Genesis isnt so vastly better — either that or I’m just not great at  using the tool, 

 

so I guess old stuff that sounds thin and aweful is the best candidate for feral A decoding ... what do people have?

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11 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

Apple, on the other hand, does have a windows emulator -- maybe that might work (it used to work.)

Apple often compiles command line stuff for *nix straightforwardly using homebrew 

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2 hours ago, John Dyson said:

If you can send me a snippet -- I can either figure out if the decoder is missing a feature, maybe figure out if there is compression after the FeralA?  Might not even be FeralA...

 

If you privately send me a problematical selection, I'll try to figure it out.   I want to learn of any problems also.

 

Will do, I’m not sure it’s a “problem”, per se. Maybe source not feralA ? I wrote a little script to pipe the sox and the tag the output name with the main settings

 

does a $1.f$2$3.$4.flac for output name with:

da-avx —f$2=$3 —tone=-$4

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Here is my little script:

#!/bin/bash
sox "$1.flac" --type=wav -  | da-avx --info=1 --f$2=$3 --tone=-$4 --xpp | sox --type=wav - "$1.f$2$3t$4.flac"

and then you can generate a number of different versions to listen to:

#!/bash
for itone in 12.85 13.40 14.25
do
 daavxpipe.sh $1 a 2 $itone
 daavxpipe.sh $1 a 3 $itone
 daavxpipe.sh $1 b 3 $itone
 daavxpipe.sh $1 b 4 $itone
 daavxpipe.sh $1 c 3 $itone
 daavxpipe.sh $1 c 4 $itone
 daavxpipe.sh $1 c X $itone
done

 

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Led Zep — would be great to have the settings!

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The Led Zep settings are good so far!

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Ok here is a tougher one: “1995 - Whitney Houston” ... I’ll go at it also but I’d really like to see what you do with this vocal 

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11 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

How about 1985 "Whitney Houston" and 1987 "Whitney"?

Ummm yeah 1985 Whitney Houston!

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Nice John ... I am finding that fc=x seems to tame the heat, and I will iterate on itone ...

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Ha ha ... i have scripts that iterate over settings and i let the workstation crunch while I listen ...

so far I think I like fD=x and now iterating on tone settings ... vocals are tricky because its easier to make them worse...

I think the goal is to remove that upper end grit and let the music come through

 

Your settings for Led Zep come close to Barry Diament's remasters which is saying something, and still room for more tweaking

 

I must say that so far the Qobuz 24/96 version of "1985 Whitney Houston" is the best, but more work

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Wow! using settings fD=x tone=-13.45 wof = 1.19 on “1985 Whitney Houston” is remarkable — I need to turn the volume up by 3dB to get the same effect, that is it removes the painful HF grit from my ears    
 

This is now better than the Qobuz 24/96 (obviously remastered!) version

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11 hours ago, One and a half said:

Am trying Carpenters Close to You, and similar effects on the ABBA material in that the sound stage collapses (on headphones), more mono ish. 

 

Command used :

 

da-win --info=1 --fb=4 --tone=-13.425 --input="06 - (They Long to Be) Close to You".wav --overwrite --output="06 - (They Long to Be) Close to You_FA01".wav

 

Can @John Dyson expand a little more using the SQRT switches to alter the soundstage,

 

I like to compare references, and the Voulez Vous CD (UICY-25288) played with analog out direct has that extra clarity, I can't achieve from the decoder. What's really missing is for dummies like me to copy the command line for the ABBA albums as a baseline. The EQ tweaks are fine, but so are tone controls... I like to keep things 'flat' If there is a database of settings to keep EQ flat, then if someone has EQ'd a certain album and it may sound great on their system, it may not work on other playback equipment, digital is notorious for adding noise at the wrong times,  and stuffing up imaging for example.

 

--wof=1.19 is often helpful for soundstage

 

Since this is all copyrighted material and without permission from the copyright holder, you can't legally distribute "remastered" copies, what we *can* do is distribute a list of settings, including eq settings, and then individuals can tweak the settings for their own systems.

 

You can then downconvert from 24/88 to 16/44 and burn your own copy to your own CD and listen that way if that sounds best for you

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I really like these options, particularly they don't seem to cut down the high end to the same extent ... I've run some options for Whitney Houston and placed at: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/b6za0hueskbzv59/AADJaiVoX-5b3XOPqMLXlgHca?dl=0

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23 hours ago, sandyk said:

 

 I tried that for Demo use with a recent version from John of "Crime" , and boy, did the resulting CD sound dull in comparison to the files saved on USB memory. The converted files did however still sound pretty good before they were burned to a cheap CD-R  

 

I have no idea --  everyone can do as they wish -- just pointing out that the feralA decoding is orthogonal to the media on which the files are stored.

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On 5/3/2020 at 8:04 PM, John Dyson said:

However, questions like this -- are great to discuss in the forum here!!!

 

--fb=b  --fd --tone=-13.76 --xpp  --wof=0.8409

 

Help me here: -fb=b (or a) is easy to understand, but how do we get --tone=-13.76 exactly, I mean is this different from -13.75? or --wof=0.8409 ... is the 4th decimal point significant, e.g why not 0.85?

 

I am trying to develop a strategy for iterating over the parameter domains ... and as you know each iteration has a good amount of data and requires time, and we have --at least-- three variables

 

Also does the avx version use AVX2? what about AVX512?

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I am liking the new version/settings a lot. What I am seeing is that the settings across many albums are converging which is important. My goal is to reverse “feralA” encoding and so playing with EQ is somewhat orthogonal to that.
 

My workstation is now busy chugging away with queued jobs so it can decode while I’m out of the house and then use HQPlayer when I’m listening  

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@John Dyson the most recent release has major improvements in usability.

 

I have been investigating decoding, and frankly, before this most recent iteration, it was rather difficult to get the decoding parameters right. To the extent that it was rather difficult to make a decode sound better than many original CDs, let along SACDs/DSF

 

This most recent release is now ready for prime time testing. There really are only several different options (letting equalization etc aside).

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On 9/22/2020 at 7:53 PM, John Dyson said:

Since there is so little public interest -- the attempt at getting some interest for the FREE work is coming to an end.   Those who might really be interested are still encouraged to talk to me privately.

 

It breaks my heart to see $10k or even $2k systems as an attempt to improve sound quality, when almost everyone are listening to totally damaged recordings.  This damage is extreme,and the decoder DOES  undo it.  There was a minor problem, now fixed, that seemed to encourage destructive naysayers.

 

 

Don't give up yet.

 

Yes if you can tweak eq that might be an improvement. 

 

No question that this offers changes in SQ that vastly outweigh many tweaks.

 

C,mon folks who are testing power cables for DC supplies, capacitors, different disk drives, ummmm ... @John Dyson is providing this software for free! ... I mean if you really care about SQ, right?

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I'm going for broke right now with Joni Mitchell, whose vocal recordings have some notorious difficultues:

 

So far from Studio Albums(2012): Clouds 

settings: --floatout --cddemphasis --fcsequence="6,-44.5,fcx=G" --dh=off --fz

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48 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

Vocals can be a real pain in the b*tt!!!   After all of this time, I have just barely figured out 'The Carpenters', and 'ABBA' -- problems because of vocal sibilance and vocal chorus.

 

ADD-ON:  Since I don't know if you are having troubles or not -- assumed that you were.  However, if you are getting good results, then let us all know!!!

 

I'm just starting on this one, also court and spark. The initial settings aren't bad!

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Yeah I just ran --floatout --cddemphasis --fcsequence="6,-44.5,fcx" --fz and its a little brighter and interestingly DR when from 7 to 8