An Edifying Journey ...

[fas42]

Just now, Bev pointed out what the journey is all about ... just switched on the gear, from overnight; put on one of my test CDs, classical, layback solo violin meandering, with piano - and after 5 minutes Bev exclaimed, unprompted, "This is lovely!" ...

 

Because it was. That wraparound quality of beautiful, lyrical violin tone, stimulating the senses, was there in full force - yet, this same CD can very, very easily drive one batty - that same violin, when reproduced below par, becomes like a mosquito; in the end, you can't stand it, and have to squash it ... the gap, between being infuriating, versus being a delight, is so small, that absolutely everything has to be on its best behaviour to allow the Good Energies to manifest, .

 

This is the world of playing with reaching competent playback - extremely frustrating, and disappointing, when some weakness is too prominent ... but oh so satisfying when it does hit the mark ... .

[fas42]

Still happy with latest tweaks ... which is effectively improving the integrity of the digital link between DVD player, and speakers. First, by altering the vibration the circuitry producing the optical signal experiences, and secondly by adjusting the physical stability of the linking cable ... which says what? That the measurable qualities of that optical waveform matter, and that there will be some point of escalating diminishing returns on trying to make that link have higher effective integrity - I will do some moderate exploring of this, to squeeze a bit more out.

 

Longer term, I aim to organise some optical input switcher, with a optimised reclocking of the output out - this would give me the ability to send, say, any audio stuff originating from my laptop, at the other end of the house, to the system - with a final signal in the best shape to drive the speakers ...

[fas42]

Having some fun here ... . Because, this is the first time I've used a digital, in this case optical, link between source and rest of chain. Yes, I fell into the trap that is so easy to do, with audio -  a little bit of something helped, with SQ, so, went even more aggressive with using such - which was adding mass, and damping to the Toslink plastic cable ... uh oh, on the 80's compilation CD I mentioned before I was now losing ground - so I now undid a few of the extra bits of damping - right, sounding better now.

 

This going backwards was because I was too enthusiastic in the tweaking - I should have tried just a single increment, and then let it tell me whether I was making progress or not. And it turns out a collection of 80's pop hits is now doing this nicely - the tracks have huge, deep echo on the layers in the mix; get this wrong and it just sounds bad - a very good test for playback integrity.

 

 

[fas42]

Still having fun here ... why not try,

 

 

Woah!! This song is huuuge - massive reverb, layering, everything to level 11 - fabulous, fabulous when I get the alignment that much closer - this type of material is quite superb at pointing how critical it is to get the optical link in exaaaactly the best physical arrangement and stabilising;  a tiny bit the wrong way, and this song just collapses - becomes a mess ...

[fas42]

As mentioned earlier, a digital link, optical in this case, is new territory for me ... but it is so obvious that the circuitry is sensitive, at the receiving end, to the precise physical status of that cable. What to do about it? Could get an "audiophile" optical cable, at high cost, which may be somewhat effective - or maybe not. Or improve the decoder inside the speakers, of the Toslink signal, so that its 'muttering', trying to process a less than optimum waveform, doesn't pass down the line, and degrade SQ - not in the mood for that sort of thing at the moment. Or, the simplest option, stabilise the cable to make the waveform "better"; as I have mentioned I'm doing.

 

Experiments so far show that the sensitivity is near the speaker. Which makes sense - the back of the speaker, where the optical socket is, is going to vibrate somewhat; which 'jiggles' the cable, ever so slightly. So far, applying a bit of tension to the cable so that the plug would tend to pull out, with damping material cushioning the variation of tension with any movement is looking promising - I'll work towards improving how that's arranged, and see what that gives me ...

 

NB: This is a good example of how I go about things ... with something new, I assume any and everything can be an influence, until I have repeated many variations of trying things - if no changes can be heard, all's good. If the opposite, I'll keep playing with that area until I feel confident I've achieved a decent optimum - for the moment, at least, .

[fas42]

A bit more refining, of the damping of the optical link cable, and of the case of the DVD player - every slight adjustment makes an easily heard difference - and the positive variations are pushing me very, very close to completely invisible speakers; some chamber music CDs, the ones I've mentioned earlier here, are really showing the benefits of edging ever closer to audibly accurate reproduction.

 

What does this variability of SQ from this latest tweaking mean? That, unfortunately, the standard mechanisms for moving digital data from one box to another are a can of worms ... yes, most of the fussier audiophiles have known this for ages, but it's interesting for me because here only optical transmission is occurring. Hence, the "madness" of the vast array of 'enhancements' to try and get on top of this.

 

What it says to me is that the right optical signal regenerating box of tricks is what will give sufficient integrity to this transmission weakness - so, down the track definitely another project will be to create a value for money beastie to do this .

[fas42]

The SQ is still not overall satisfactory, in spite of me saying otherwise on the Step by Step thread ... why? Because the doctoring of the Toslink cable, so far, is still too much of a kludge - the integrity of the waveform is not consistent; sometimes it appears to be good enough, and then it's not ...

 

Best solution is to regenerate the optical signal, right next to the receiving circuitry. Full stop. But in the meantime it will be interesting exploring what fiddling with the cheap cables gives me. And I say cables, because I found a second one - I'm going to try some adding of various damping materials around one, or both - and switching between the tweaked ones, to see how much variability that gives me.

 

As said before, this is new territory for me - but rather than going out, and buying some ridiculously expensive, supposed upgrade to the link, I'm going to fool around and see what easy to do tweaking does. This is exactly what I have done over the last 30 plus years, in all the areas of a particular rig - this is how one learns, and understands where the weaknesses are. With a bit of luck, I'll get a far more robust link at the end of it; which will consistently deliver sufficient integrity to that part of the setup.

[Summit]

16 hours ago, fas42 said:

As said before, this is new territory for me - but rather than going out, and buying some ridiculously expensive, supposed upgrade to the link, I'm going to fool around and see what easy to do tweaking does. This is exactly what I have done over the last 30 plus years, in all the areas of a particular rig - this is how one learns, and understands where the weaknesses are. With a bit of luck, I'll get a far more robust link at the end of it; which will consistently deliver sufficient integrity to that part of the setup.

 

And see how far you have come after 30 years of fooling around 😉.

[fas42]

8 hours ago, Summit said:

 

And see how far you have come after 30 years of fooling around 😉.

 

Where I've come, is to acquire the understanding and experience that allows me to evolve a system, any system, to a level of greater accuracy. I could not put up with the awfulness of most, ahem, hifi reproduction; especially when it costs big bucks - so, what matters is the ability to lift the standard of replay from mediocre, or sub-par, to that of competent sound ... that's mighty satisfying to do ...

 

In the world of computer games there are two sorts of people: those that love playing the purchased game; and those that love developing the game in the first place - the creator. I'm one of the latter - playing the actual game is far less interesting; unless you are trying to understand how another creator went about it, his way.

 

So, what interests me is how far I can push the set of gear in front of me to be more capable - any recording, any volume level, any place when listening. I don't sit down and make it a thing "to listen" - a setup has to work well enough that when I pay zero attention to it, from another room in the house, and also when I concentrate on what's coming out from a particular driver, that it always performs.

 

Digital cables are new to me - so, I need to understand how playing with them alters things ... that then becomes part of the 'toolkit'.

[Confused]

On 5/4/2022 at 4:11 PM, Summit said:

 

And see how far you have come after 30 years of fooling around 😉.

Also, I notice that this thread celebrated its second anniversary this week.

 

Happy birthday tweaked Edifiers, wishing you many happy returns!  

[fas42]

Thanks ...

 

Just at the moment, they're in a good groove ... and playing some piano and cello pieces. And to point out what is on the recording, and to dispel the nonsense that Redbook can't deliver fine detail, I just checked out the sound directly next to the drivers, and there, plain as day, was the cellist breathing, the intake of breath, and the sounds that accompany someone working assiduously on some physical task ... now, I wouldn't want to be right next to a musician, to the point where every sound of the human body was so clear - but it demonstrates how the normal microphone can easily pick up these accompanying noises.

[fas42]

This is a good one to catch out a rig,

 

 

First track on a Roxy Music compilation CD I have, and it's so, so much more difficult to get it to come up well, compared to the following tracks ...

[fas42]

Signs are good that tweaking the stability of the DVD player and the optical link will get me full invisibility - crossing my fingers! At the moment the slightest adjustments in this area swing the SQ from acceptable to disappointing, and back - highly critical that the digital waveform is in the best shape for the receiving circuit, so that it has the least difficulty decoding, would be the most likely reason. I keep getting ideas as to how to best tweak the physicals - at the moment I'm considering how to optimise the stiffness vs. damping of the thin plastic Toslink cable, to squeeze the best out of it. Yes, I could go out and buy a whole bunch of up market Toslink items, and try them, to see which gave me best sound - which would cost way more than everything in the rig so far, that is, the DVD player, and the Edifiers combined ... gee, what a smart way to resolve things!

 

The big difference between the current situation, and my first exposure to competent SQ, decades ago, is that in the latter the system just snapped into shape, from one minute to the next - it blew my mind, so to speak . With all the experience since, I can edge towards the optimum with full knowledge of what's going on - and so the transition is far less dramatic, with each step forward; I can hear the positive signs, and yet be annoyed with the remaining anomalies still audible ...

[fas42]

No changes for a bit ... I have a new toy to play with, a workstation with enough grunt to properly indulge in another interest of mine: photogrammetry, reality meshes, creating, er, visual realities which fool one - anyone notice a link here, ...

[Summit]

On 5/5/2022 at 1:31 AM, fas42 said:

 

Where I've come, is to acquire the understanding and experience that allows me to evolve a system, any system, to a level of greater accuracy. I could not put up with the awfulness of most, ahem, hifi reproduction; especially when it costs big bucks - so, what matters is the ability to lift the standard of replay from mediocre, or sub-par, to that of competent sound ... that's mighty satisfying to do ...

 

In the world of computer games there are two sorts of people: those that love playing the purchased game; and those that love developing the game in the first place - the creator. I'm one of the latter - playing the actual game is far less interesting; unless you are trying to understand how another creator went about it, his way.

 

So, what interests me is how far I can push the set of gear in front of me to be more capable - any recording, any volume level, any place when listening. I don't sit down and make it a thing "to listen" - a setup has to work well enough that when I pay zero attention to it, from another room in the house, and also when I concentrate on what's coming out from a particular driver, that it always performs.

 

Digital cables are new to me - so, I need to understand how playing with them alters things ... that then becomes part of the 'toolkit'.

 

If you would had any real understanding and experience you wouldn't try to put lipstick on a pig. Sorry but that's how I see it.  

[fas42]

8 hours ago, Summit said:

 

If you would had any real understanding and experience you wouldn't try to put lipstick on a pig. Sorry but that's how I see it.  

 

You fundamentally misunderstand the the intent of audio reproduction - the quality exists in the recording, NOT in the equipment used to replay it ... if this wasn't the case, then all those recordings you thought you knew so well wouldn't suddenly sound superb, when played on some "supa dupa" rig - the latter is not adding lipstick, ie. euphonic distortion, to a pig of a recording; the tracks are as they have always been - and are usually heard as a very pale shadow of what they can sound like ...

 

An audio rig, whether ultra expensive, or low cost, good value for money, can do the job of being relatively transparent to the recording - the more ambitious setups should do some things better: be able to go louder, have deeper bass, a touch more finesse in reproducing certain musical tones; but overall they shouldn't sound that different. The biggest gain is maxxed out bling - which if that's your thing is perfectly fine to have to enjoy.

 

The putting "lipstick on a pig" thing comes from the belief that somehow a high street cred system can make a recording sound better than it actually is - ummm, no, it doesn't work that way. The job of a reproduction chain is to do the least damage to what's actually on the recording - unfortunately, that is still very hit and miss, to this day ...

[fas42]

Right, had a chance this morning to play THE test CD, at bar PA sound levels, ,

 

 

As mentioned many times before, I used this album 30 years ago to demo systems I came across - was easily capable of bringing Krell sized amps to their knees; their power supplies collapsed when decent volumes were asked for, and they then sounded like a mediocre car radio .

 

But the real value of this recording is to clean out the cobwebs, in one's own rig - at house pounding levels it gets the amps and speaker drivers nicely warmed up, real fast! This morning it was colder and some days since last running the system - how long before the SQ got to an acceptable standard, starting with it, on first switch on?

 

Took most of the album ... at the beginning fairly clogged sound, well down on its potential. But by about the above track, towards the end of the CD, it was really starting to open up; clarity, depth, size, separation were all at good levels. Absolutely no problem with delivering sound levels comparable to what you would hear, if next to the actual band playing, minus the PA nonsense, .

 

So, this is a way to fast track getting a setup into a well conditioned status; otherwise, at normal listening levels it still takes about 3 CDs worth for the DVD player and active speakers to hit a really nice, "sweet zone" - all the tweaking to date hasn't really shifted that need ...

 

Edit: But I'm really bummed!! The physical CD has developed the notorious cancer, and a big flake of the silver has come off, along with some smaller  ones - will have to do rescuing, on this.

 

 

[fas42]

That rotted CD mentioned above, I fed to EAC ... and didn't that program make a meal of it! Grind, grind, grind - painfully slow, millimetre by millimetre, pit by pit, it dragged the content back ... hours and hours and hours went by; but, eventually, success! That is, EAC did the best job it could of the poor rations I gave it; a whole 3 badly damaged tracks were now 'rescued'. No, not a perfect reconstruction; but on a casual listen to one track I couldn't pick an issue ... 👍.

 

Got another round of donated CDs to an opportunity shop. All classical, and lo and behold, a baaad recording !! Ummm, by a highly recognised and regarded organisation, done only 15 years ago - at first I thought it was my Edifiers not firing; but today I confirmed what was going on. And this is why I steer clear of recent classical recordings - sloppy, unthinking procedures used by companies chasing time, and not quality ...

 

The problem? Switching the recording gear on from cold, not letting the circuitry stabilise - and using the first take of that recording session on the final master. The symptoms? Digititus !!! Like a crappy CD setup, that you can't stand listening to for any length of time ... . At least 2 tracks of this album suffer badly from this; easily confirmed by jumping from good to bad tracks, and back again ... chamber music, a famous piece, and on the bad ones it's scrape, scrape, shriek, saw, saw; congested, unpleasant - you could understand why the CD was ditched by the former owner ...

 

Which says that some modern recording engineers are deaf; too busy being excited by all the options they have for fiddling with every tiny thing, as against actually listening to what has been captured.

 

Can the off tracks be, er, 'rescued'? I don't know ... but it would be an interesting exercise analysing what the poor quality clips have in their waveform, that makes them low grade ...

[fas42]

On 6/4/2022 at 2:36 PM, fas42 said:

 

Got another round of donated CDs to an opportunity shop. All classical, and lo and behold, a baaad recording !! Ummm, by a highly recognised and regarded organisation, done only 15 years ago - at first I thought it was my Edifiers not firing; but today I confirmed what was going on. And this is why I steer clear of recent classical recordings - sloppy, unthinking procedures used by companies chasing time, and not quality ...

 

The problem? Switching the recording gear on from cold, not letting the circuitry stabilise - and using the first take of that recording session on the final master. The symptoms? Digititus !!! Like a crappy CD setup, that you can't stand listening to for any length of time ... . At least 2 tracks of this album suffer badly from this; easily confirmed by jumping from good to bad tracks, and back again ... chamber music, a famous piece, and on the bad ones it's scrape, scrape, shriek, saw, saw; congested, unpleasant - you could understand why the CD was ditched by the former owner ...

 

 

Lo and behold ... hoisted with my own petard - so easy to fall into the trap of thinking you have a "bad recording" ...

 

Today, after a yesterday realisation of a possible cable issue - and that it was now sounding particularly together ... I thought, I wonder how that CD sounds, now. Yep, you guessed it ... what was I complaining about ?!!

 

And that's happened over and over and over again, to me over the years - the status of the setup is such that a particular quality of some albums, or tracks on them, like the first couple of this one, just happen to emphasise a shortfall in SQ. And the resolving of that playback chain issue makes the problem go away, every time.

 

Obviously, if it's a recording new to you, that's when you make the mistake - once you have heard what it can sound like, then you know what's going on, and can then use those tracks as test articles ...

[Confused]

6 hours ago, fas42 said:

Lo and behold ... hoisted with my own petard - so easy to fall into the trap of thinking you have a "bad recording" ...

 

Today, after a yesterday realisation of a possible cable issue - and that it was now sounding particularly together ... I thought, I wonder how that CD sounds, now. Yep, you guessed it ... what was I complaining about ?!!

 

And that's happened over and over and over again, to me over the years - the status of the setup is such that a particular quality of some albums, or tracks on them, like the first couple of this one, just happen to emphasise a shortfall in SQ. And the resolving of that playback chain issue makes the problem go away, every time.

 

Obviously, if it's a recording new to you, that's when you make the mistake - once you have heard what it can sound like, then you know what's going on, and can then use those tracks as test articles ...

What was wrong with the cable?

[fas42]

13 hours ago, Confused said:

What was wrong with the cable?

 

The Toslink optical was resting against a hard edge - the setup is very Rube Goldberg, as in that cables wend their way in a carefully set up manner - the point is to damp vibration and maximise stability; these are the factors that can be critical - plastic cabling resting lightly against a hard surface, unnoticed, can be enough to do the damage. And in adjusting some area it's very easy to undo some careful dressing adjacent - and then you wonder why it doesn't sound so good, .

 

Cheap Toslink can work, I've found - but requires careful stabilising, as mentioned earlier. An expensive cable may solve the variability; but I'm interested in what affects the performance, by playing with what I have now. Yesterday showed that not getting this right is the difference between satisfying immersiveness, and there being a touch of 'wrongness' about the sound ... I still need to work on improving this link; the aim is to find when no more is gained, by more fidding.

[fas42]

Just tried that Doors album - worked fine, in spite of a cable having moved ... phew, got away with that one!

 

So, why not this, next- with cable, ahem, sorted ...

 

 

Picked up for less than $1; a sample,

 

 

No prob's filling the house with this stirring stuff, .

[fas42]

Are We There Yet ... nope!! Tried my compilation CD of 1987's pop hits - which most decidedly showed up an issue! Full of tracks with huge soundstages, massive reverb and driving rhythm sections, and powering at high volume, this was not sparkling ... why? Thought it was the umbilical between right and left speaker - many experiments of changing the damping on this link, getting nowhere - finally, could it be the optical between DVD and speaker? And, yes - temporarily altering the damping on this cleared up things, a great deal.

 

Now, I had already stabilised this plastic Toslink connection quite a bit - and it seemed to be adequate. But, heavy driving of the bass unit meant that the back panel was in constant motion, although subtle, and therefore the optical cable, plugged into the connector there, and which was then firmly tied to a stable edge some distance away, was slightly flexing. Enough to be audible, .

 

So, I need to improve the mounting, damping and stability of the optical link another, significant notch. This is one downside of active speakers; critical waveforms are fed into an enclosure which is not perfectly stationary, especially with high energy music- meaning that it may be essential to spend a decent amount of time stabilising this area, by one means or another.

[fas42]

A slight advance ... tried a very rough version of an additional damping arrangement, and that 80's CD compilation, from cold. After 5 minutes or so to settle down, very promising. But, about halfway through, uh-oh - starting to go off, and stayed that way. Now, was it because of the warm-up characteristics of the components - if one traces back through the posts here, I found early on that there was a cycle of SQ variation going through the first 3 albums or so - was this a confirmation of that deeply embedded pattern? Or was it because of my rough and ready damping experiment not being up to the mark?

 

Unfortunately, ran out of time to confirm the first possibility. Won't have a chance to investigate further for a couple of days ...

 

This is a good example of where things can get quite difficult. More than a single variable can be operating, over some time frame, and it can take some careful untangling to find what is actually the main offender - combinations of sound degrading factors, which are time variant, can easily lead one to wrong conclusions. Only lots of repetition, checking and trying every permutation of the situation may give an answer which holds up over the long term ...

[fas42]

Had a chance to test further - and, it confirmed that how I damp the Toslink plastic at the speaker end is critical. I tried two variations of damping at once, on the theory that the better controlled the cable was, the less the problems ... well, no. The SQ started to sag, removing one piece of damping immediately lifted the standard; but even then it was not up the mark - a particular track was not sounding as good as it did on a previous, recent day.

 

So, I'm going to have to work at this until I get a satisfactory result - perhaps much experimentation, all sorts of ideas to be tried ... bugger!!

 

Why hasn't this been so noticeable before? Well, because of the nature of the tracks on this 80s CD - driving, driving rhythm section, with hooks that just cry out for Big Volume; this means the back of the connected speaker is vibrating constantly, all the deadening already applied is still not enough to eliminate this - and the Toslink cable is absorbing this. The way to get a final answer is to apply quite ridiculous levels of damping until the issue completely disappears; then work out the smartest way to get the equivalent in a more reasonable manner.