Analog: Still Better?

[kumakuma]

4 minutes ago, Rexp said:

I do have a growing ignore list but squashing Franks audio myths is hard to resist.

 

There's a lot of truth in Frank's posts and he seems like a nice enough guy but the repetition was driving me crazy.

 

Way, way, way too many posts essentially saying the same thing over, over, and over... again, again, and again...

[fas42]

How you react to me depends on whether you want to play equipment games; or whether you want to extract maximum satisfaction from any recording you have at hand - the former will get it very little useful from me, I do agree ...

 

An audio myth that does need squashing is that a recording is bad(!!), when it sounds bad(!!!) on my, so very close to my heart and oh so very special equipment ... people who can let this one go have a far greater chance of reaching, gasp!!, Nirvana ...

[Rexp]

23 minutes ago, fas42 said:

How you react to me depends on whether you want to play equipment games; or whether you want to extract maximum satisfaction from any recording you have at hand - the former will get it very little useful from me, I do agree ...

 

An audio myth that does need squashing is that a recording is bad(!!), when it sounds bad(!!!) on my, so very close to my heart and oh so very special equipment ... people who can let this one go have a far greater chance of reaching, gasp!!, Nirvana ...

Agreed, those happy with crap recordings are more content and sometimes incontinent.

[botrytis]

13 hours ago, Rexp said:

I do have a growing ignore list but squashing Franks audio myths is hard to resist.

 

Let him keep his fantasies. You are not going to change his mind and in fact, will force one to usually double down on their believes (whether it real or imaginary).

[Guest]

For the Audiophile who has it all......Cochlear Implants.

 

Bypass that crappy analog system called an ear drum and all those faulty parts that do nothing but degrade over time.

 

Today's implants still depend on in coming analog, but sometime in the near future you will be able to plug yourself in directly to pure digital. Get Bit-Perfect Sound from the source directly to the Brain.

 

With an add-on MQA processing chip you can unfold sound directly in the auditory nerve. The future is going to be all Digital Baby !!!! And its Meta-verse compatible. 👍😁

 

[Confused]

21 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Yep, that's a lot of it. What I'm after is the sense of "rightness" - that is, no matter the technical standard of the recording, the genre of music, the style of the piece - they all just sound, well, right. Nothing in what I hear disturbs me; the music itself is conveying its message, fully - this means, I can listen to some bizarre composition, that I have never heard before, and its integrity as a production by musicians passionate about their craft comes through.

I actually agree with every word of that.

 

Where we are different is in terms of how to achieve it, and here also, what would work for you would not work for me, and vice versa.

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

On 2/18/2022 at 7:32 PM, Iving said:

One of the reasons analogue tends to be more satisfying than digital is because digital systems are way more susceptible to electrical noise. "Digital harshness" spoils music. Assuming good amps and really good speakers [and an ordinary urban electricity supply], I'd rather listen to low-end record decks than mid-range digital front ends - even if the latter are more resolving

 

Ah, a clearer post than your rant on copyright (said with some humor).

 

Yes, digital is indeed highly susceptible to noise, and (practically) no DAC manufacturer has solved this issue. Even with very high end DACs (with indecent prices) you still see users investing in high end sources, and finding variability in sources/DAC inputs.

 

This point is not new, it is a well known weakness of digital ever since its origins. 

 

The question then becomes: is there an optimal digital configuration (a combination of source and DAC) that offers low noise and can be comparable to the best analog rigs? Who is to say what is a "low noise" digital source? We don't know, do we? 

 

Then of course there is the much more pessimistic consideration that many recordings that have been made using digital processes (starting in the early 80s?) were ruined. 

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

Here is  a good point of view on this issue: http://www.high-endaudio.com/philos.html#Anlg

[fas42]

2 hours ago, hopkins said:

 

Yes, digital is indeed highly susceptible to noise, and (practically) no DAC manufacturer has solved this issue. Even with very high end DACs (with indecent prices) you still see users investing in high end sources, and finding variability in sources/DAC inputs.

 

Okay, this is the meat: DACs have always had the potential to produce top notch SQ; the standard measurements put out, right in the earliest days make this quite clear. But, and it's a very big but, there has been a blindness to the need to maintain very high levels of noise hygiene for the whole system for that to actually happen; and that still remains, to this day. This is why there has always been the odd chap around the place, who magically extracted "marvellous sound", and the people who heard it scratched their heads, wondering what his "secret sauce" was, .

 

Umm, there has never been a mystery! Digital reproduction just needs scrupulous attention to detail, to make it "sound right" - it's never been anything else than that, since the beginning ...

 

People who think I have fantasies just want to believe in the story of how most stuff in the world evolves: you have to throw lots of technology, and money, at getting something to work better ... well, in audio, this is not actually how it works; I can visit some ultra expensive rig anytime, and cringe at what I hear - fundamental mistakes are still being made, and the SQ suffers ...

 

2 hours ago, hopkins said:

 

The question then becomes: is there an optimal digital configuration (a combination of source and DAC) that offers low noise and can be comparable to the best analog rigs? Who is to say what is a "low noise" digital source? We don't know, do we? 

 

Much progress can be made if one doesn't insist that "it's the DAC!!", or, "it's the speakers!!!" that are the culprit - It's The System, Stupid, should be the thought that's uppermost.

 

2 hours ago, hopkins said:

 

Then of course there is the much more pessimistic consideration that many recordings that have been made using digital processes (starting in the early 80s?) were ruined. 

 

Nope. A setup working at a high enough quality level makes all those bad thoughts go away - there are some staggeringly impressive recordings out there, amazing to listen to, which have had every digital trick in the book thrown at them ... a sub-par rig will make a mess of them, allowing the owner to immediately add the tag, Bad Recording!

[fas42]

2 hours ago, hopkins said:

Here is  a good point of view on this issue: http://www.high-endaudio.com/philos.html#Anlg

 

In that he says,

 

Quote

Digital's one major problem is that is has a very high "sound-floor"*, at least compared to high-quality analog.

 

That's exactly right ... but it's not the fault of digital technology, per se - it occurs because enough of the implementation of the system is sloppy - and all the critical data that the ear relies upon is lost. The solution, as it has always been, is to eradicate that sloppiness, by whatever means - and then the SQ snaps into shape ... every time .

[Guest]

A Topping dac has 124dB SNR 0.0004% THD.

 

What analog piece of gear has a better noise floor?

 

Errrrrr 'sound floor'

 

Oh and lets not forget the most important factor.....the threshold of human hearing....make that a middle aged male hearing....BTW your hearing only gets worse with age, your wallets might get bigger but hearing shrinks.

 

😁

[fas42]

29 minutes ago, Dynobot said:

A Topping dac has 124dB SNR 0.0004% THD.

 

What analog piece of gear has a better noise floor?

 

Errrrrr 'sound floor'

 

Oh and lets not forget the most important factor.....the threshold of human hearing....make that a middle aged male hearing....BTW your hearing only gets worse with age, your wallets might get bigger but hearing shrinks.

 

😁

 

Yes, we're so certain that standard measurements tell us everything, aren't we?

 

Read people's impressions of digital replay, when the presentation becomes fully holographic, and the sound experience is truly immersive ... that's when the sound floor is true to the recording. This occurs relatively rarely, which is a sad indictment of the industry - but that doesn't mean an individual can't do something to make things better ...

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Yes, we're so certain that standard measurements tell us everything, aren't we?

 

Read people's impressions of digital replay, when the presentation becomes fully holographic, and the sound experience is truly immersive ... that's when the sound floor is true to the recording. This occurs relatively rarely, which is a sad indictment of the industry - but that doesn't mean an individual can't do something to make things better ...

 

So when you say "Sound Floor" you mean a purely subjective impression.

 

Okay thats fine.

 

Enjoy👍

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

2 hours ago, Dynobot said:

A Topping dac has 124dB SNR 0.0004% THD.

 

What analog piece of gear has a better noise floor?

 

Errrrrr 'sound floor'

 

Oh and lets not forget the most important factor.....the threshold of human hearing....make that a middle aged male hearing....BTW your hearing only gets worse with age, your wallets might get bigger but hearing shrinks.

 

😁

 

All of this has been debated before. Those who do think that noise stil has an audible impact on the DAC's analog output point out that the performance of a DAC may vary between sending a single tone (measurement) and playing an actual music track (too complex to measure). 

 

Moreover there may be other aspects that are loosely encapsulated under the banner "noise", such as so-called "glitches" (https://e2e.ti.com/blogs_/b/analogwire/posts/what-s-with-all-this-glitch-ing) which may escape measurements as well and are of course specific to digital. 

 

So perhaps some humility is in order and we have to allow for the possibility that we don't have all the science to explain/measure everything when it comes to DAC performance?. 

 

DAC manufacturers themselves (well, maybe not Topping) admit that they don't understand it all, so why should we know better? 

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

6 hours ago, Dynobot said:

A Topping dac has 124dB SNR 0.0004% THD.

 

What analog piece of gear has a better noise floor?

 

Errrrrr 'sound floor'

 

Oh and lets not forget the most important factor.....the threshold of human hearing....make that a middle aged male hearing....BTW your hearing only gets worse with age, your wallets might get bigger but hearing shrinks.

 

😁

 

Out of curiosity, if a Topping DAC is so good and any noise below hearing levels why do you bother tweaking software as you do? 

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

Here is a good video on the topic, that is also fun to watch. 

 

 

[fas42]

What made people think it was so bad? Well, because when they listened to it, it did! Even at the last hifi show I went to, only about half a dozen rigs "made music", the rest were instantly dismissable as having too many problems to take seriously ... . The only bright note, if you can call it such, was that the few analogue setups there were even more mediocre - headshaking stuff, really.