Analog: Still Better?

[Rexp]

17 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

 

Analogy: get a beautiful girl, and shine a powerful light on her face; and move in really, really close to her skin - yuck !!! Looks awful! - where's the beauty gone, now?

You didn't have this girl tied up at the time did you? 

[sandyk]

24 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Just to say, Simon and Garfunkel tracks are some of my all time favourites - this stuff is brilliant to listen to, on a capable setup.

 Did you actually listen to what I posted ? The sibilance is bloody terrible, and this was from a BluSpec CD.

IF this sounds OK to you then you have major problems with your setup and should perhaps ask your vinyl buddy how it compares with LP.

[fas42]

3 hours ago, sandyk said:

 Absolute Bulldust ! 🤣

Your digital setup is presently obviously incapable of the needed resolution to highlight these niggling problems just as you used to claim that Abba etc. didn't need much of that added HF EQ removed.

Kenny Rogers-The Gambler (and others) have annoying sibilance as do some from Simon and Garfunkel , for starters .

https://www.dropbox.com/s/27zix27xhm9k9g0/01 Simon %26 Garfunkel.wav?dl=0

 

BTW, how do you normally play your " sibilance free" CDs ? 😊

 

OK, that has natural sibilance, that which the human voice has as part of its makeup - poor replay makes this unpleasant to the ear ... a system which is in fine tune never exaggerates this; it sounds completely normal, as in, that's how it would sound if they were live in the room.

 

No annoying sibilance is automatically part of the package with competent playback - if replay is that bad that it's a problem, then I would have noticed other issues right at the beginning - and sorted them, right then.

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, sandyk said:

The sibilance is bloody terrible, and this was from a BluSpec CD

To clarify this a bit. The track sounds far worse when played locally from System Memory when using JRiver 26 which is far more revealing than the very mediocre DropBox player. JRiver is way more revealing, and of a  far higher replay quality than many other players, especially those that do not play from System Memory.

  A little wile ago I tried playing it from Dropbox again and it sounded quite dull compared with previously, but still played without obvious problems.

 I then remembered that there was a video conversion running, and tried it again after it finished. 

It had improved substantially, but was still far less revealing than with JRiver .

This suggests that some laptops etc. may be way less revealing of actual sound quality., just as stock standard Mac Minis can be as evidenced in the Uptone forum after a Linear PSU is retrofitted.

[sandyk]

31 minutes ago, fas42 said:

OK, that has natural sibilance, that which the human voice has as part of its makeup - poor replay makes this unpleasant to the ear ... a system which is in fine tune never exaggerates this; it sounds completely normal, as in, that's how it would sound if they were live in the room.

 I completely disagree. It's the other way around.

See my previous post from just after you posted this reply.

Many members find audio quality from a typical Laptop such as yours quite disappointing/lacklustre due to the necessary PSU compromises made to improve time between battery charges, which result in a masking of HF detail.

IOW, like heavy veils .  Which S/W player are you using, and does it play from System Memory ?

 

 P.S. 

 This could also help to explain why John Dyson and yourself had so many run ins about non decoded Dolby-A CDs and ABBA not sounding shrill to you.

[Confused]

4 hours ago, sandyk said:

 I completely disagree. It's the other way around.

See my previous post from just after you posted this reply.

Many members find audio quality from a typical Laptop such as yours quite disappointing/lacklustre due to the necessary PSU compromises made to improve time between battery charges, which result in a masking of HF detail.

IOW, like heavy veils .  Which S/W player are you using, and does it play from System Memory ?

 

 P.S. 

 This could also help to explain why John Dyson and yourself had so many run ins about non decoded Dolby-A CDs and ABBA not sounding shrill to you.

Whilst the above factors might be significant at a certain level, say when using the laptop as a source for a system, I would have thought that the lap top speakers themselves whould be the largest factor here?

[sandyk]

9 minutes ago, Confused said:

Whilst the above factors might be significant at a certain level, say when using the laptop as a source for a system, I would have thought that the lap top speakers themselves whould be the largest factor here?

Agreed. However, we do not know whether Frank in this case was listening to the lap top's speakers, or exporting the files.

[fas42]

5 hours ago, sandyk said:

 I completely disagree. It's the other way around.

See my previous post from just after you posted this reply.

Many members find audio quality from a typical Laptop such as yours quite disappointing/lacklustre due to the necessary PSU compromises made to improve time between battery charges, which result in a masking of HF detail.

IOW, like heavy veils .  Which S/W player are you using, and does it play from System Memory ?

 

 P.S. 

 This could also help to explain why John Dyson and yourself had so many run ins about non decoded Dolby-A CDs and ABBA not sounding shrill to you.

 

I'm comparing how it comes across, on the laptop, with how it sounds played through a decent, proper system - from memory. The tonality is about right - through all the compromises of the dropbox player, and my laptop, it comes out fairly balanced. I recall visiting the home of a member of the Sydney hifi club, who had middle of the range B&W speakers - now, subjectively, the uptilt of that was ferocious - this was ripping your head off stuff. Now, you might call that revealing 🤪 ... but I prefer my music to be satisfying, thank you.

 

Treble sounding shrill, unpleasant is the result of distortion of the replay chain - if you fix this, strong treble content sounds intense - just like it does in real life.

[sandyk]

9 hours ago, fas42 said:

Treble sounding shrill, unpleasant is the result of distortion of the replay chain - if you fix this, strong treble content sounds intense - just like it does in real life.

No, not necessarily.

 As John Dyson has demonstrated on numerous occasions it is quite often the improper use of HF EQ, and sometimes used in the earlier days to make some recordings sound better for airplay on bandwidth limited A.M. radio.

This also sounds likely with ABBA, which  BTW, Barry Diament has heard directly from the masters during his time with Atlantic Records. He described them as Shrill sounding and worse .

 If it sounds OK to you, then your system is insufficiently revealing . 😉

 

 Did you try downloading it and playing it locally ? When playing stuff like this locally , which program do you use, and do you play files from System Memory ?

[semente]

On 1/16/2021 at 10:09 PM, davide256 said:

I suspect most opining about CD being better than vinyl have not experienced a good turntable. Even before CD's existed, over 80% of the turntables out

were techno garbage like Pioneer, Technics and Denon. Only a few stumbled across and bought a  Linn, Sota, Thorens or the briefly lived "the AR" turntable,

machines where competent mechanical engineering allowed one to hear the full dynamics recorded on vinyl. You would think  now that the cogging issue

with direct drive is understood and addressed there would be more affordable good turntables but as best I can tell the isolation designs for TT's below $2k

are still poor, causing dynamic range collapse and muddiness in detail.

 

I suspect most opining about vinyl being better than CD have not experienced a good CD player....

[semente]

21 hours ago, sandyk said:

High Res releases from HD Tracks etc. in 24/192 are usually sourced from Tape, with rarely much more than 30kHZ HF information due to the limitations of both the microphones and Tape medium.

I doubt that there'll be much more 20kHz HF information... Just look at the response of the typical mics.

[fas42]

3 hours ago, sandyk said:

No, not necessarily.

 As John Dyson has demonstrated on numerous occasions it is quite often the improper use of HF EQ, and sometimes used in the earlier days to make some recordings sound better for airplay on bandwidth limited A.M. radio.

This also sounds likely with ABBA, which  BTW, Barry Diament has heard directly from the masters during his time with Atlantic Records. He described them as Shrill sounding and worse .

 If it sounds OK to you, then your system is insufficiently revealing . 😉

 

 

 

We'll continue to disagree on this matter, Alex - because I come from a different angle ... as you well know, 😉. I don't use my system to tell me whether I have a good or bad recording; I use recordings to tell me whether I have a good or bad system. If ABBA sounds shrill, then you have a bad system - that's how it works.

 

There are two levels of revealing: the first is that you hear everything that's wrong with the recording; the second is that you hear everything that's right with the recording - the latter is definitely superior, to my ears ... and where I want to be ... 😜

 

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, semente said:

I doubt that there'll be much more 20kHz HF information... Just look at the response of the typical mics.

 Many of the more recent ones do

e.g. 

Norah Jones-Feels Like Home >30K
Alexis Cole-A Kiss in the Dark >37K

 

  Looks like some earlier ones are fake , with the look of a typical CD cutoff around 21K

 

 

 

[sandyk]

4 minutes ago, fas42 said:

If ABBA sounds shrill, then you have a bad system - that's how it works.

 Frank

 To put it bluntly , that's BS !

I prefer the word from a highly respected recording and mastering engineer, or for that matter John Dyson who apparently also has access to some of the Masters of different recording artists via his Industry contacts.

What you are currently using to evaluate high quality Audio files will NEVER be up to the task.

 I understand however that SWMBO would be unlikely to approve the expenditure on something way more suitable,

just as I can no longer afford to indulge with what I would like to, so I have to go the DIY route a bit at a time. 

[Rexp]

1 hour ago, semente said:

 

I suspect most opining about vinyl being better than CD have not experienced a good CD player....

Which CD player would you suggest? The last one I tried was an Audio Research CD9. The MSB sounded good at a show but very expensive. 

[fas42]

32 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 Frank

 To put it bluntly , that's BS !

I prefer the word from a highly respected recording and mastering engineer, or for that matter John Dyson who apparently also has access to some of the Masters of different recording artists via his Industry contacts.

What you are currently using to evaluate high quality Audio files will NEVER be up to the task.

 I understand however that SWMBO would be unlikely to approve the expenditure on something way more suitable,

just as I can no longer afford to indulge with what I would like to, so I have to go the DIY route a bit at a time. 

 

Alex, a recording engineer should master so that his product sounds reasonable on the widest range of playback equipment. So his perspective is very different from that of someone who aims to get best SQ from the recordings he acquires, from whatever source.

 

Note, my playback has always used Redbook standard material - because absolutely nothing I have come across has even slightly made me interested in anything "better", as regards formats. CD quality replay can deliver completely convincing replay, with the speakers being 100% subjectively invisible, no matter how you listen to them - especially, with ABBA! Now, if your rig can do this with any recording that happens to be thrown your way - then what you're saying would indeed be worth investigating. As an example, @ray-dude sounds like he's got it happening - therefore, what he's using is very much of interest.

[sandyk]

32 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Alex, a recording engineer should master so that his product sounds reasonable on the widest range of playback equipment. So his perspective is very different from that of someone who aims to get best SQ from the recordings he acquires, from whatever source.

 

Note, my playback has always used Redbook standard material - because absolutely nothing I have come across has even slightly made me interested in anything "better", as regards formats. CD quality replay can deliver completely convincing replay, with the speakers being 100% subjectively invisible, no matter how you listen to them - especially, with ABBA! Now, if your rig can do this with any recording that happens to be thrown your way - then what you're saying would indeed be worth investigating. As an example, @ray-dude sounds like he's got it happening - therefore, what he's using is very much of interest.

Recording Engineers who don't have to answer to "the guys in suits" will invariably provide the highest quality recording, and it will STILL sound O.K. on playback gear such as yours, even though it will not be capable of fully doing it justice.

 My gear is transparent enough to basically  output a close facsimile  of what came off the recording, warts and all, although the speakers are no longer SOTA..

 If you can't hear the completely unacceptable sound of many early CD releases compared with even a decent Vinyl pressing of the same recording session via a good vinyl setup, then your equipment is filtering it out, aided and abetted by your brain, the deficiencies of the mastering that was used for the CD release .

 

Simples !

[fas42]

8 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 If you can't hear the completely unacceptable sound of many early CD releases compared with even a decent Vinyl pressing of the same recording session via a good vinyl setup, then your equipment is filtering it out, aided and abetted by your brain, the deficiencies of the mastering that was used for the CD release .

 

And on that, we'll have to agree to disagree ... 😀

[sandyk]

8 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

And on that, we'll have to agree to disagree 

I strongly suspect that in this area you won't have too many members that agree with you.

 IF you believe otherwise,  you could always start a Poll  to see what % of members agree with your pronouncements in this area . 😜 

 

[fas42]

9 minutes ago, sandyk said:

I strongly suspect that in this area you won't have too many members that agree with you.

 IF you believe otherwise,  you could always start a Poll  to see what % of members agree with your pronouncements in this area . 😜 

 

 

Alex, I've been in this space for 30 years now ... I listen to other rigs, of all varieties, and normally, internally, roll my eyes -  without saying much. People get pleasure from this hobby, in all sorts of way - my interest is in retrieving everything a particular recording has to offer; which may not be what a sizeable percentage of enthusiasts are focused on ...

[trailblazers_song]

When the needle touches the LP groove, game over 🤣🤣

[sandyk]

12 hours ago, trailblazers_song said:

When the needle touches the LP groove, game over 🤣🤣

Yeah, we can hear Trailblazers song, Amplify it a little and Kellogg's could use it in an ad for Rice Bubbles 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLeqzEUmymU

 

[EvilTed]

Are you guys still arguing over this?

I've been buying up rare records on Discogs and reliving my youth :)

[botrytis]

This is good enough for me 😁

[trailblazers_song]

I used to have aurender w20 & MSB select. Not comparable to Air Force One , Axiom & Koetsu Coralstone/ Madake. Downgraded to warm up my system

 before sitting down to listen to music seriously. Of course , vinyl is not comparable to my Studer A80 R2R but the tapes are too pricey .

Tidal & Roon changed my listening habits & now I m enjoying digital & discovering music with a cheap digital set up