Article: Announcing Josh Mound's Club TBVO

[Josh Mound]

A new post responding to a great question posted by @Wonderer in the forums.

 

 

[Josh Mound]

Hello All,

 

Sorry for the lack of posts in the past few weeks. I've been leveled by a sinus infection-turned-laryngitis. Now that the Matrix X-SABRE Pro is on closeout sale, I wanted to update several previous DAC reviews, including my Matrix review.

 

 

[Josh Mound]

The first "Mini-TBVO" on Steely Dan's Can't Buy a Thrill (prompted by the new Bernie Grundman mastering) is up on Club TVBO:

 

 

[M1chael]

I think your TBVO articles are great and I will be donating. I’m in the vinyl still sounds more real than digital camp though. But digital has improved dramatically since its inception. I listen to digital exclusively, I have an inexpensive turntable but it doesn’t make sense for me right now. But some of my needle drops are some of my best sounding discs. I read an article years ago by Wojciech Pacuta explaining why analog sounds better. It went something like this. Reel to reel tape has 80 million samples per second, while DSD has 2.8 million samples per second. I’m kind of an old dude so I remember way back, it seems I never experienced listener fatigue playing records on a much inferior system. Now I have a better amp and speakers and an OPPO disc player, but experience listening fatigue after an hour or two. Can anybody relate to or explain this, I think I still have excellent hearing. 

Thanks!

[PeterG]

3 hours ago, M1chael said:

I think your TBVO articles are great and I will be donating. I’m in the vinyl still sounds more real than digital camp though. But digital has improved dramatically since its inception. I listen to digital exclusively, I have an inexpensive turntable but it doesn’t make sense for me right now. But some of my needle drops are some of my best sounding discs. I read an article years ago by Wojciech Pacuta explaining why analog sounds better. It went something like this. Reel to reel tape has 80 million samples per second, while DSD has 2.8 million samples per second. I’m kind of an old dude so I remember way back, it seems I never experienced listener fatigue playing records on a much inferior system. Now I have a better amp and speakers and an OPPO disc player, but experience listening fatigue after an hour or two. Can anybody relate to or explain this, I think I still have excellent hearing. 

Thanks!

 

Fatigue is not necessarily digital.  Just for example, your speakers may be "better", but still fatiguing, especially if you grew up with a more laid back sound.  I had a pair of B&W 805s that I enjoyed for years and were very highly reviewed.  But after a while I realized they were fatiguing.  I swapped them for Wilson TuneTots and the fatigue disappeared.

[Josh Mound]

On 11/15/2022 at 5:11 AM, M1chael said:

I think your TBVO articles are great and I will be donating. I’m in the vinyl still sounds more real than digital camp though. But digital has improved dramatically since its inception. I listen to digital exclusively, I have an inexpensive turntable but it doesn’t make sense for me right now. But some of my needle drops are some of my best sounding discs. I read an article years ago by Wojciech Pacuta explaining why analog sounds better. It went something like this. Reel to reel tape has 80 million samples per second, while DSD has 2.8 million samples per second. I’m kind of an old dude so I remember way back, it seems I never experienced listener fatigue playing records on a much inferior system. Now I have a better amp and speakers and an OPPO disc player, but experience listening fatigue after an hour or two. Can anybody relate to or explain this, I think I still have excellent hearing. 

Thanks!

 

Hi Michael, I believe @Archimago has written about this on his blog, but I'm not quite sure what to make of the analog tape "sample" claim. It was recently brought up in Absolute Sound:

 

 

However, I don't think that particles are the same thing as samples. Wouldn't the equivalent of the magnetic particles on tape be the particles on a CD or a disk drive? How much information does a single particle on tape capture? Regardless, that discussion is really tape versus digital, not vinyl versus digital. Vinyl's a much more limited format than studio-quality tape.

 

I do agree, though, that it's possible for different setups to be fatiguing. For me, it mainly has to do with things like frequency response and distortion profile. I'm sure there's a DAC/amp/transducer combination that you'd find as non-fatiguing as vinyl, assuming the digital file and the record had the same mastering.

[M1chael]

I don’t think it’s my stereo system that’s fatiguing, it’s not harsh at all except on CD’s that we’re not well made. The particles on magnetic tape conform to the input and play back that signal, if there are 80 million per second or per inch that’s pretty hi Rez. Really tape recording is a form of digital just with particles, if they use more bits or length digital would probably sound as real. I did a lot of photographing when I worked at a print shop, it took digital cameras years to have high enough resolution to compete with film. I still don’t think digital can compete with the best film. Vinyl maintains that physical signal without reconstruction. I bet with the right playback equipment vinyl can come pretty close to the source. I wish digital playback was perfect, it’s so darn convenient. Things that are missing with digital, height, width, depth, venue space, tone, everything. The goal is to recreate instruments that sound like they would if they were there, that why headphones don’t sound right. When you compare different pressings of vinyl you know why they sound different. But shouldn’t different issues of digital sound the same if they’re using a decent source, but they don’t.  I have multiple versions of the Doors, two SACD’s, a DVD Audio, HDCD version, the Steve Hoffman CD, and probably the official issue somewhere. The Steve Hoffman CD is the most listenable by quite a large margin. Also why can a vinyl record made from a digital source sound better than a digital copy, I think it’s because the vinyl is more faithful to the source even if the source is digital. OK, somebody stop me!

[fas42]

25 minutes ago, M1chael said:

Vinyl maintains that physical signal without reconstruction. I bet with the right playback equipment vinyl can come pretty close to the source. I wish digital playback was perfect, it’s so darn convenient. Things that are missing with digital, height, width, depth, venue space, tone, everything. The goal is to recreate instruments that sound like they would if they were there, that why headphones don’t sound right.

 

Digital can be subjectively 'perfect'. The reason it's not with most playback from data files is that one has to be more particular about every tiny aspect of the chain - and vinyl has 'spoilt' people; you can be 'sloppy' with the standard of the playback setup, and it will still deliver a satisfying listening experience. You won't get away with this on digital systems, and all those things you mentioned that go missing, are indeed not in place with many rigs.

 

Currently, only the most expensive, or extremely well tweaked combos of gear deliver the potential of digital playback; the industry is still learning how to do this, so one has to be patient for the moment ...

[M1chael]

I see, digital is so good that it requires the best playback system to hear it, but analog is so sloppy that it sounds good on everything. I don’t know why people are so passionate about this issue, it’s almost like politics, people can’t admit Biden is obviously a bumbling fool. Let’s just be honest about things, I don’t have a playback system of sufficient quality in either analog or digital to know for sure. But Michael Fremer does, and while we disagree politically, I trust his audio judgment. At what point does digital sound better than analog, 4 bit, 8 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit, does all digital sound better than analog.

[Josh Mound]

Hello All,

 

I'm back from COVID and the holidays with a few new posts.

 

The first finishes my series about being an ethical music consumer in the age of streaming by getting into how I source my TBVOs, including example of the costs:

 

 

The second is about Etymotic's awesome home hearing test:

 

 

[Josh Mound]

After a while without many new posts, I have a new (nearly belated) Valentine's Day Mini TBVO: