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CD Availability Nearing It's End And The Consequences


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4 hours ago, TubeLover said:

No question, especially in the early days of the introduction of cd's, the digital signature was simply too strident and analyitcal in many cases. As the years went on,  the masterings for CD's, the DAC and digital sections in the players improved. Thats why cd's became the choice for something on the order 80- 90% of audiophiles who, over time, dumped vinyl as the format they purchased. Out of perhaps a dozen serious audiophiles and musicophiles that I personally know well, only two have been long term, primary vinyl only users all this time.  

 

I recall the last large scale Detroit area audio show, The AK Fest, perhaps a dozen or so years back. Out of nearly fifty rooms where components and systems were being demoed, only four had turntables and vinyl in evidence. The vast majority were cd based demoes, along with a few reel to reels as sources, and perhaps ten early adapter laptop and digital file based rooms using Amarra, as I recall. That was the status quo at the time. 

 

To each his own as far as what format they pledge allegiance to.

 

I am just very concerned that my future ability to be able to access some music that I easily can now, will be gone with the disappearance of the cd format for reasons I noted in my previous post. And again, the music from the many less known groups/individuals that I always will be unavailable to me in any remaining format.   

 

JC

I don't know if you have read the results of my research - the original 'digital' CD sound was a heinous pattern of mismastering that I call 'FeralA'.  It is an EQed DolbyA compression (without the decoding expansion.)  The result of that kind of twisted mastering is almost plausible, and ONCE IN A WHILE does sound good, but it is not the natrual sound of decoded DolbyA.   This scourge has been prevalent since the beginning of CD, and still persists.   Take a look at the comments about FeralA and decoded DolbyA.  The decoding technology for digital releases is not 100% perfected yet, but is getting VERY VERY close.  (This is NOT commercial snake-oil, but is quite the opposite.)

 

John

 

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1 hour ago, Iving said:

 

May I politely ask you to summarise:

1. How I can know whether a given rip has DolbyA compression without the decoding expansion; and,

2. In such cases whether it is possible to correct the matter without advanced technical knowledge or expertise - you have developed something?

 

Thank you

I know this is somewhat off topic, but might be of interest to those who aren't into my 'fringe' interests :-).  Further discussion might best be private or refer to my 'FeralA' commentary in the 'General' area of the forum.  Most of my communications in AS, but also I pop up in other forums from time to time -- but I 'live' here most of the time.   Below is a general & rambling discussion about FeralA and a working solution for it:

====================================================================

 

There has been an experimental decoder of such recordings, and it is moving from 'experimental' to being 'usable' for motivated indvidiuals.  It is NOT commercial, and it is NOT 'snake-oil', but fairly sophsticated DSP software that runs on Windows and/or Linux.

 

1) The 'sound' of the compression can be subtle, and I am not 100% accurate detecting it, even with my long experience working with the decoding methods, but here are some hints:  1) a 'swishy' high end, high hats/cymbals having a rather strong sense of HF compression/too soft.  2) A woody lower midrange, almost like a boost in the 500-1kHz freq range.  It is almost repulsive when not use to it, and encourages turning down the level.  3) Hiss...  Older recordings REALLY needed DolbyA for NOISE REDUCTION, and without full decoding, tends to push the hiss up on older stuff.  4) On a spectogram, you can sometimes see a noise band that gets stronger above about 12kHz -- more than what tape noise would by itself.  5) Distorted stereo image, I notice a 'hole' in the image between 90deg and 45deg (0deg being straight forward, 90deg being left or right.)  6) Strange bass sound.

The compression is 10dB below about 100Hz, 10dB from 3k to 9kHz, 15dB from 9kHz to 20+kHz, and there is active compression at lower levels in the 80-3kHz range, where it is pinned at no compression down to -20dB or so in the midrange.  DolbyA compression is NOT active much above -10dB, so doens't give the 'ducking' quite like a normal compressor might.

 

(NOT ALL SIGNAL MODIFICATIONS ARE MANIFEST STRONGLY -- but the recordings do have those characteristics.)  'FeralA' is a 'stealthy' form of damage esp if one is accomodated to it!!!

 

2)  I have been working on a true, high quality DolbyA compatible decoder which is essentially complete and incredibly accurate/smooth/clean.  'Correcting' or 'decoding' these mismastered recordings requires a corrective EQ back to raw DolbyA, and then do a proper DolbyA decoding.

 

The FeralA  'decoding' software combination is just starting to be plausibly full quality, even though the results had been significantly improving the FeralA sound for several months.  Perhaps the best description is that the decoding results have gone from 'better than original FeralA material', to 'accurate, near master-tape'.

 

The decoding software for the 'FeralA' recordings is free-to-use, but is unfortunately a Windows (or Linux) command line program.   It takes CD .wav file input and creates an 88.2k/FP .wav file output (can also create 24 bit unsigned .wav file also.)   The FeralA decoding software is NOT commercial and money does not change hands for use as the consumer recording converter.

 

So -- the internal operations in the software to correct the recordings is:

From CD ->  corrective EQ -> DolbyA decode -> Ideally, hopefully, more clean sounding recording.

 

================================

As a base, there is a DolbyA decoder, which ALONE  is NOT intended for consumers.   However, I have added some EQ which does the corrective EQ so that the DolbyA decoding mechanism can finish the correction.   When running the professional DolbyA decoder in the 'FeralA' mode as I call it, then it becomes a piece of software that is free to use.

================================

 

The 'FeralA' decoding software is still experimental, but is getting VERY CLOSE to fully working.  Originally, it was a 'science project' to use it, because the decoding required EXTERNAL EQ and using the DolbyA decoder separately.  Now, it is all built in, and I offer the software for free use in 'FeralA' mode.

 

When the '--fa' command line switch is used, it is NOT commercial software and is intended for anyone to use responsibly.   Even though there might be commercial software in the future, the FA decoder that I wrote is NOT commercial and there is zero motive for any direct profit.  It is a learning tool and a technology platform where a plug-in developer in the future might be motivated to develop a 'FeralA' decoder and/or high quality/complete DolbyA compatible decoder.  (It is higher quality than the original DolbyA HW, not because of 'precision', but instead it is improved algorithms.)

 

So -- that is the jist of it...  If anyone needs a DolbyA decoder also (effectively a real product, paradoxically a part of the non-commercial FeralA decoder), the DHNRDS DA mode can produce almost astonishingly clean and beautiful results -- it must be VERY VERY good at decoding DolbyA, because the FeralA decoding is necessarily working with damaged recordings, and the DolbyA decoder must be very tolerant and able to ferret out the distortions that would otherwise be created...

 

John

 

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2 hours ago, firedog said:

It simply shows the contempt the recording industry has for it's customers, especially it's best ones. The cost to providing that info is next to nothing, yet it isn't done in most cases, even in expensive audiophile or deluxe versions. Few businesses treat their customers with such lack of respect. 

The worst lack of respect has been the sales of cr*p mastered material since the inception of DolbyA.   While they would still produce vinyl that is correctly mastered, the same CD would be the 'different' kind of recording.  The only two rational reasons for cheating everyone:  1)  they didn't want the consumers to have the family jewels, so give them defective product.  2) it was easier to do the digital version incorrectly because of a process issue.

Either reason shows contempt against the customer.  They must have known that they aren't selling what we early CD customers had expected.

Of course, imy story of being an audiophile, I got disgusted and walked away back in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

 

John

 

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4 hours ago, Rexp said:

I only got into digital in the 90's when my hi-end store sold both CD Players and Turntables. About a year in, I realized I wasn't spending as much time listening to music and figured it was because I was doing demos for clients, but in fact the real reason was I was listening to CD's. Soon after I closed the store, as I couldn't justify selling CD Players any longer. 

I 99% quit my audiophile hobby back in the late 80s because CDs didn't sound 'right' to me, and I didn't want to mess around with turtables & ticks/pops anymore.  I gave up because CDs sounded so bad -- but the problem wasn't witih 'CDs', 'digital' or anything WRT the transport.  The problem was with the demonically bad mastering, which was plausible, but still terrible because it sucked people in.  It got people used to the woody midrange, the swishy/compressed highs, and distorrted lows.  But, those defects were NOT because of digital by itself as vinyl could sound just as bad, if they mastered the vinyl in the same way as CDs had been all along.

 

John

 

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13 minutes ago, Rexp said:

Most digital recording & mastering still sucks. 

Digital mastering AND vinyl that uses the same mastering -- which is more and more, does suck.  That is the WHOLE REASON fo rmy project.  (Yes, I have heard/seen even have rips of FeralA vinyl.)

 

My project has sometimes gone slowly, because reverse engineering a proprietary design can be tricky -- ask the most picky audiophles now, the FeralA decoding is coming along very nicely -- maybe never perfect though, unless the recording wasnt molested.  Unmolested FeralA recordings (that is, just encoded from the DolbyA tape) -- they can be fantastic.  The decoded copy of  'Crime of the Century' is probably as good as the best vinyl now, without the vinyl impairments.


John

 

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1 minute ago, Rexp said:

As I already have vinyl copies of the old stuff, I'm more interested in what you can do for modern recordings. 

Some modern recordings are 'interesting'.   On a lark, I tried decoding Taylor Swift's 'Shake it Off' and Carly Rae Jepsen 'Call me Maybe", and oddly they decode cleanly with no artefects.  WTF...  Are they using feralA now for 'the expected sound'?

 

John

 

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5 minutes ago, Rexp said:

Shake if off, sounds awful, are you saying you got it to sound good? 

Actually, by decoding it - you can hear the background details more cleanly.

I didn't spend much effort on the 'decode' because it isn't worth wasting time trying to adjust the EQ filters -- but you can hear the background better.  The stereo is better also.   Of course, I started with a crap digital copy from a kid -- never know the provenance. 
Call me maybe" actually comes out pretty well.


Also, I have vinyl rips of certain groups, and the digital decoded versions are INFINITELY better -- because vinyl was also meddled with also and vinyl aging/ticks/pops.   The CDs just started off bad mastered, and seldom were done correctly.

 

 

shakedemo.mp3

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15 minutes ago, Rexp said:

Probably beyond help then.. 

 

Yea -- I wasn't decoding it to show that it could be recovered, but instead that they JUST MIGHT be doing the 'feralA' sound for the sound effect -- because peoples hearing is now conditioned to hear the 'woody' midrange, swishy highs, distorted lows, messed up stereo image of FeralA encoding.

 

I wasn't claiming that the results were 'good', but instead more details were revealed -- because tof the natural effect of undoing all kinds of weird modulation effects further obscuring the sound.

 

John

 

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3 hours ago, Iving said:

 

This is my first appreciation of your work and, so, please forgive me if I've not got on track.

 

May I address the main idea as I see it. The remedy you describe does not seem to be calibrated. It is an algorithm or process which is applied to recordings which are contaminated. Diserning whether a recording has been contaminated is not always straightforward - even for accustomed ears such as yours. Indeed, the tells you list 1) thru 6) convey the possibility that contamination is a matter of degree rather than category. Whether this is true seems vital. 

 

The simple/best scenario would be the identification of recordings contaminated or not contaminated. I wonder whether records exist even assuming the publishers mightn't want to confess. Otherwise we punters have to decide - and will we agree. The database would be simple - yes or no to a given recording. I feel I have seen the the same barcode used for different masterings of the same Album, so I'm not sure how that would work.

 

The loudness wars database as I read it is more sophisticated in that different recordings are affected by degree - both quantitavely and qualitatively. If the same applies here then the application of your process-remedy will have to be a great deal more sophisticated.

 

Again - apologies if I have misunderstood. I guess I am just interested in the potential for improvement of the valued medium under discussion in this thread.

Regarding the 'contamination' -- you have most of the idea correct.   The 'contamination' is relatively consistent though -- the mis-mastering (inexpensive and very fast)  appears to be a 2/3 regular and mechanized process.  The other part of it, when the 'regular' process doesn't result in a good sounding recording, so there is a last phase tweak, that can be done by any moderately well trained person sitting in the long laid off mastering professionals seat, to finish the 'feralA' process.  There is also an optional twisting of the L+R stereo image, where classical recordings tend not to

possess the image twisting, but POP usually does.

 

==========================================

 

The best ideal IS to find material which is not feralA -- PERIOD.  In some genres, the 'ideal' non encoded material either does not exist or is as scares as hens teeth.   Some MFSL recordings for pop ARE properly decoded/mastered*.   On the other hand, I have some Analog Productions material which is DEFINITELY NOT decoded.  Purchasing from HDtracks and other companies like that does NOT change the liklihood of getting a feralA vs properly mastered digital copy.

* Even though MFSL is at least sometimes properly mastered, I have been sometimes been able to produce better, more clean results because of the extreme quality of the DHNRDS DA decoder portion of the feral decoding process.

 

====================================================

 

The decoding process produces a result that is audibly and technically more accurate than the purchased feralA recording, but is NOT a perfect rendition of a master tape unless the decoding parameters are 100% correct.   The decoding process is more accurate & complete than a 'sounds good' tone control, because the 'settings' in the FA decoder are steps that are pretty close to what was orginally used to 'encode' the materal -- these are not just tweaks.   There is sometimes tweaking, but it is a very fine adjustment that most people wouldn't notice.  (Undoing FeralA, on unmolested material, can theoretically produce a master tape, and I can come close on some material.)

 

====================================================

 

Also, the feralA decoding effects a much more complete cleanup than just a tone control, but corrects/re-expands a very sophsticated and repeatable -- I mean, repeatable with great precision, kind of compression.   This compression is 'DolbyA' encoding.  That is, feralA is precisely the following:

 

1)  A mid-side DolbyA encoded signal, with some scaling of the L+R matrix BEFORE encoding.

2)  A fixed EQ from the LF through the midrange, same or very nearly so for all recordings. (fixed AS FAR AS it seems)

3) A tricky set of treble boost shelving filters between 2.5kHz through 3.25kHz. (fixed, AS FAR AS IT seems)

3)  A variable EQ from the lower highs (2.75kHz) on up, and the EQ is zero, one or two well defined 1st order simple filters. (generally selectable in steps.)

 

=============================================

 

Where there might be some confusion:  this is not primarily related to the DR thing.  The feralA compression does have a minor effect on dynamic range, but where the feralA compresses the audio, it is a less prominent part of a typically measured dynamic range.  For example, I  use a non-hearing weighted dynamic range measurement in the command line program SOX.  It is less sophsiticated in some ways than the community accepted 'DR' measurement, but it is still very useful for my purposes.   When I decode material, the SOX version of 'DR' only changes a little bit -- but it IS improved by decoding.  The best ideal IS to find material which is not feralA -- PERIOD.  However, importantly, the feralA encoding is the SMALLEST part of the 'loudness wars' DR problem.

 

Also, unlike DR, there isn't much of a VARYING damage in feralA, it is a fairly well controlled set of 'damage' or 'contamination'.   FeralA is ON or off -- no in-between.  Loudness wars compression is highly variable, where the damage can go from 'slight improvement' for certain uses of the recording, to 'total destruction, only intended for playing on a moving motorcycle.'.

 

I KNOW that this is long, but I tried to keep each concept separate.  Read each section separately so it isn't confusing.  It is overwhelming for me!!! :-).

 

*  Note, my poor language/composition skills can result in confusing prose -- I think that the facts are right, but might require rereading from time to time 🙂

 

John

 

 

 

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6 minutes ago, JoeWhip said:

I agree Andy about the future of downloads, which is why I grab stuff I like now and back everything up.

Actually, I grab every version of everything that I like (which I can afford it.)   Perhaps some percentage of the time, I find a good version, but so much material is fatally damaged, most useful for listening in moving car.

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31 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 Elitist ! :P

 My experience with many of the Classical recordings that I have heard doesn't live up to your claims of being anywhere near what the CD medium is capable of revealing .

 (Please check your PMs shortly)

I agree -- Alex (you) have recentlly impressed me with the best CD that I think that I have heard -- it was so good that I wasn't prepared for the quality.  It was classical, but not typical of what I have seen.

 

Perhaps of maybe 10 classical CDs that I have encountered recentlyin the last 5yrs - I do believe that it was the only one (maybe the 2nd, if I might have made an error somewhere) that was NOT improperly mastered.  In fact, I just checked one of my early Mozart collections, alas I ripped it mp3 over a decade ago when I cared about disk space - alas, just as I expected, it had all of the characteristics of latent DolbyA, benefitting from FA decoding.

 

As you know -- the sound of poorly mastered material actually bugged me so much that I dropped the audiophile hobby 20yrs ago.

 

EDITED:  30yrs ago.

John

 

 

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53 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

I agree -- Alex (you) have recentlly impressed me with the best CD that I think that I have heard -- it was so good that I wasn't prepared for the quality.  It was classical, but not typical of what I have seen.

 

Perhaps of maybe 10 classical CDs that I have encountered recentlyin the last 5yrs - I do believe that it was the only one (maybe the 2nd, if I might have made an error somewhere) that was NOT improperly mastered.  In fact, I just checked one of my early Mozart collections, alas I ripped it mp3 over a decade ago when I cared about disk space - alas, just as I expected, it had all of the characteristics of latent DolbyA, benefitting from FA decoding.

 

As you know -- the sound of poorly mastered material actually bugged me so much that I dropped the audiophile hobby 20yrs ago.

 

EDITED:  30yrs ago.

John

 

 

I regret my semi-hateful post above.  It isn't directed against anyone -- but the problem is that quality and the value of music enjoyment isn't really restricted to any genre.  Some kinds of music that are louded as 'elite' by some are intolerable to me.  I am sure the same is true of some kinds of music that I like, others can righfully barely tolerate it or not tolerate it at all.

 

A perfect example is that wonderful CD that Alex and I were discussing a few days ago.  It was the of the best mastered material that I have heard -- it totally blew away most of my technical evaluations...  However, the music wasn't my taste, and I don't even have the patience to listen to the entire CD.  That is NOT a complaint about the CD at all -- it just isn't my taste.

 

Some people MIGHT consider the CD contents as being an elite genre -- not to me, it is simply inapplicable to me, but is probably a great piece of music.   I couldn't even ponder the idea it being somehow more 'elite' than anything -- it is musically meaningless to me other than for technical evaluation.  I do RESPECT it though.

 

On the other hand, when I want a candy bar, I sometimes listen to ABBA.  I will NOT defend ABBA for example about their lyrics and many characteristics of their music, but I don't have to think when I listen to it...  It is like a candy bar -- too much 'ABBA' all of the time just might make you sick.  On the other hand, there is some real 1970s technical innnovation (sometimes failed - and the results show it) in some of the ABBA recordings.  I can appreciate ABBA on both the candy bar level and some of the technical aspects.  Geesh, some people like the girls, but those girls aren't really my own taste -- but are nice looking...

 

My favorite female friend was different in a lot of ways, too bad she and I couldn't be romantic, but even her parents would not have been angry if we got together -- it was my own feeling wrongness about  me grabbing a 19yr old genius out of the crib, totally beautiful & pretty, when I was an aged 32yrs old.  She ended up being a brilliant Bell Labs engineer, ending up with a corner office (a real bank officer, not one of those branch bank officers) in  a major bank on Manhattan.

 

So, each of us has different taste about all kinds of things -- and I'd suspect that my taste about Yelena would be VERY elite, but that is my opinion -- other people might be more comfortable with something different (or even different gender, I guess.)  She WAS a challenge in some ways -- her mind was certainly 'different'.   I didn't care -- we just got along.

 

Elite is in the eyes of the beholder.

 

AGAIN -- sorry for the intensity of my response...  I do care about how people feel -- and NEVER want to change any feelings towards the negative.

 

John

 

 

 

 

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8 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I must say, this is about as far out there as it gets. 
 

You have zero information about the specific record labels he’s talking about and you’re throwing in the whole made up issue of generational degradation with digital data. 
 

P.S. I sure hope that decimal point separating dollars from cents on my bank statement disappears one of these days due to all the generations of data used to produce the statement. 

If there was significant digital bit degradation, my computer wouldn't run much longer than a few nanoseconds -- probably would fail before the first instruction.  The analog signal-to-noise ratio for the digital signals in  CPUs is pretty narrow -- yet because of the consistency and lack of drift -- computers even without much ECC seem to work surprisingly well.  Of course, computers using vacuum tubes with those nice 10 or 20 volt noise margin in their digital signal -- those computers seemed to fail quite often.  (Geesh -- I cannot keep on subject at all, can I?)

 

The first big mistake is to conceptualize a CD signal/encoding/data as being anything like the composite FM video on a video Laserdisk.  After letting that analogy leak-in, the all of the following analogies start failing worse and worse as the assumptions continue. 

 

I am not afflicted by the confusion -- but I can understand how it happens.  Imagine someone who is tech savvy, but not at a day-to-day professional level.  Busy thinking about lots of other things, not needing to complete major/complex projects -- so takes shortcuts in understanding.   As a person who used to be a professional in the field, I found that shortcuts are mostly rabbit holes that eventually lead to whack-a-mole.   After a few rounds of such punishment - then a  very precise understanding with minimal underlying assumptions ends up being easier than a quick jab at understanding/solving a problem.  When I take a 'swag' at a solution, it usually ends up taking lots and lots of time (e.g. my current project, over and over again.)

 

John

 

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3 hours ago, Vangelis said:

The point I was trying to make earlier was that it is painful to spend $20 plus on a Hi-Rez download just to find out your 16/44 CD sounds better. Of course this is not always the case, but happens far too frequently. I’ve purchased too many expensive downloads that ended up sounding like somebody just threw a tarp over my speakers.  I’ve often thought that these companies musr get feedback from their customers that this or that release that they’re selling does not sound as good as a CD, but alas many of those crummy sounding downloads stay in their catalog.   It’s easy to get involved with the technical aspects,  regarding perfect fit rates and which master was sent but the bottom line is, too much of the time what’s purchased doesn’t sound as good as the  inferior format. When CDs disappear I will be more dependent on streaming and downloads from companies like Qobuz & HD tracks. I’m hoping to find out that a purchased high res download from Qobuz will sound better than their normal streaming Hi-Rez. I have yet to try that. 

One problem when listening to 'snippets' on HDtracks is that they aren't sufficient (for me) to evaulate quality.   As you might  know -- I am interested in material that is either 'properly mastered' out of the box for immediate listening, or something that can be corrected.   I cannot always distingush, by simple listening, random bad mastering from the specific kind of 'bad mastering' that can be corrected.   The typical commercial digital quality starting from the middle '80s just doesn't cut it -- finding 'good stuff' is really hard.  (Good stuff meaning 'good immediately', or correctable.)

 

I guess I dont count much as a customer anyway - my concept of Hi Fi died in the late 1980's when I finally bought my last CD expecting that it would be 'audiophile quality'.  Now, I generally know that most pop CDs that I can purchase are NOT 'audiophile quality', and that includes pop *high res* downloads that I have purchased.

 

Losing a few customers like me didn't cost the industry very much, and they just keep on cheaply producing inferior quality over and over again -- who cares?, right?   The industry still has 99.999% of their customers who kept on buying the messed-up stuff, learning to accept/accomodate the damaged goods.

 

John

 

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18 hours ago, jabbr said:


So which medium do you purchase? LPs?SACD? I hope not “none” because you are missing a lot of great music. 

After my HiFi hobby *it died in about 1989/1990*, I would purchase a few CDs just for casual listening.   It was casual listening in about 2012, when all of the ducks came in order that I noticed a technically reproduceable pattern in the defective CDs.  That started a long investigation, and a few wierd starts, because the recordings are NOT pure DolbyA, but eventually ended up writing the DA and FA decoder (C4 someday -- but C4 is NEVER for consumer use.)

 

*  I think that my brain/hearing was fully mature in 2012, also without the pressure/stress of a job, that I could mentally process the audio more completely than when I was working VERY hard through my career between 1974 through 2012 timeframe (modulo some times for breakdowns/stress-out/etc.)  I had to be 100% alert and use all of abilities in most of my jobs/projects (e.g. if it cant be done, then give it to John, because he'll make it work.)

 

So, starting in the early 1990s',  instead of purchasing at least several CDs per week -- looking for the ultimate quality from MFSL (or Sheffield labs/whatever from the day), just buying 'music' from HiFi buys/Frys', wherever and generally PURPOSEFULLY ignoring the quality...  If I didn't ignore the quality during purely casual listening, Id' restart the feeling that I was being cheated.

 

John

 

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