Will ripped CDs really equal the musicality of a great CD player?

853guy

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Aug 14, 2013
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You are NOT diluded -- whether or not there are technical reasons for this or that, or there might be some subtle real technical differences, it is YOUR enjoyment of the music that is important. When I put my engineering hat on, then I am a very precise and logical engineer. When I am doing something to enjoy mself, as long as it is ethical -- I will enjoy myself. Don't get confused and conflate physics/engineering with enjoying your music. If it sounds better to you -- then it sounds better.

I am not just saying what will make you feel good or whatever, but simply it is a fact that the environment (or restaurant) is just as important as the entertainment (food) itself...

John

Hello John,

Oh, deluded is easy is for me. I can remember EQing a snare drum for about ten minutes hearing subtle, nuanced improvements before I realised the track was muted.

Was I tired? Hungry? Over- or under-caffeinated? Was I looking at what I was doing more than I was listening to what I was hearing? Should I really be mixing at two in the morning? Did that snare even need that EQ (1)?

Those are good questions, and sometimes my perception fails to take into account all the variables that go into the process of subjectivized evaluation.

However, as you suggest, when it comes to pursuits of a non-crucial nature low in real-world potential for harm, I’m all for going with what feels good. For matters pertaining to insurance, invasive medical procedures and investment advice in which the potential for real-world harm is high, I try and go with something more robustly objective.

Be well,

853guy

(1) No. It didn't.
 

Pb Blimp

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Oct 30, 2017
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There be lots of snake oil in certain pseudo-technical subjects!!!
Just be skpectical of those who can benefit from others being confounded. The technology is NOT all that complex, it is just the terminology can make things seem more complex than they really are. Part of being an expert is having a large vocabulary of truly technical language, but also there is the confusing language of marketing speak. Mixing each together can make it seem complicated even to those who understand what is going on.

John

Ding, ding, ding....we have a winner! Welcome aboard John.
 

Empirical Audio

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I suspect the DAC being used is going to be the biggest variable with how it will sound. Is your external DAC better than your CD DAC?

This will certainly make a difference, but more often than not, it is the internal jitter that makes the big difference, not the analog side of the DAC or the D/A chip. These are small differences.

If you are going to use the CD DAC via digital in then the digital cable is another big variable in how it will sound.

Absolutely, the jitter added by the cable is the culprit.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

Empirical Audio

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Jitter in a real design is not possible unless the timing clock itself jitters.

This would be nice if it were true, and make digital audio design a LOT easier.

Jitter is added to the Master Clock by every gate and flip-flop that selects, buffers and divides-down the Master Clock. These add jitter dependent on the di/dt of the power subsystem and the rise-time of each gate. Jitter is added by crosstalk and ground-plane noise from other circuits. Jitter is added by losses and dielectric absorption in conductors and cables, including FR4. Jitter is added by reflections on transmission-lines that arrive at the source driver before the edges have completed transitioning. And on and on......

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

Empirical Audio

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separating the data time base and the clock isn't really something that can be done without a design flaw
(repaired spelling)

It's called resampling or upsampling and can work quite well if the algorithm is a good one. My Synchro-Mesh reclocker upsamples to 24/96 and delivers jitter of 8psec at the end of a 4 foot coax cable. Sounds like the original, but better. Upsampling algorithms have not always been good, but the latest designs are excellent because of better algorithms.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

Empirical Audio

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I confess I expected a simpler answer to the original question. I think the responses can be summed up by saying “It’s complicated!”

I had not realized how complicated the issue of jitter is. For those interested, here’s a couple of interesting articles addressing the complications of jitter pulled from the OPPO website as it pertains to their UDP-205 product and how they addressed the complications of jitter and HDMI audio.

“About Jitter - Digital Audio’s Weakest Link”
http://www.esstech.com/files/4614/4095/4305/about-jitter.pdf

“Understanding the HDMI Audio Jitter Reduction Circuit in the Oppo UDP-205
https://www.oppodigital.com/KnowledgeBase.aspx?KBID=129&ProdID=UDP-205

Jitter from my Oppo:

https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=154408.0

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

Empirical Audio

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Hello Steve,

After much experimentation, I personally settled on Delkin Devices Archival Gold CD-Rs for making copies of existing CDs and bounced recording sessions for evaluation on other systems.

Eventually, I came to prefer the sound of any CD when re-written in real-time to those discs over all other discs I tried (Taiyo-Yuden, HBB, Verbatim, etc), even in as much as I admit the variables involved in copying digital data to a spinning disc inside an electro-mechanical device cannot be fully controlled, and the results not always replicable.

Of course, it’s fully possible I was delusional, and I think we’re all aware the fact that the data is identical suggests those of us who claim such things may indeed be worthy of suspicion or derision. Did I just hear what I wanted to hear? Maybe. Would I have been able to choose which was which under double-blind conditions? Maybe not.

All I can say is I liked the copy more than the original. And that I found shiny gold discs in clear cases to be aesthetically pleasing in a way conventional discs were not.

Best,

853guy

What you are hearing is small jitter reduction. If you like that, you can get even more jitter reduction by coating the top surface of the disk several times with Plasti Dip from Home Depot. Make sure you mask the center chuck area with tape or cardboard. This is the best treatment I have found, better than liquids or re-writing.

I can also sell you a really good S/PDIF coax cable for $275. It is a 75 ohm BNC cable with RCA adapters. BNC is the ONLY way to effectively terminate a coax cable because they are made specifically for each cable type. 30-0day money-back, less shipping.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

Empirical Audio

Industry Expert
Oct 12, 2017
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Hello John,

Oh, deluded is easy is for me. I can remember EQing a snare drum for about ten minutes hearing subtle, nuanced improvements before I realised the track was muted.

Was I tired? Hungry? Over- or under-caffeinated? Was I looking at what I was doing more than I was listening to what I was hearing? Should I really be mixing at two in the morning? Did that snare even need that EQ (1)?

Those are good questions, and sometimes my perception fails to take into account all the variables that go into the process of subjectivized evaluation.

However, as you suggest, when it comes to pursuits of a non-crucial nature low in real-world potential for harm, I’m all for going with what feels good. For matters pertaining to insurance, invasive medical procedures and investment advice in which the potential for real-world harm is high, I try and go with something more robustly objective.

Be well,

853guy

(1) No. It didn't.

It's really easy to go down the garden path on audio. Many end-up buying tone-control cables to roll-off harshness from their preamp or digital source rather than dealing with the offending component. Active preamps are one the most common offenders, as is digital with high jitter. Many are fooled by harmonic distortion of poorly designed tube equipment or just using the wrong tubes. It takes a LOT of experience to detect these things and avoid the garden path. It's useful for audiophiles to partner with a small company that is willing to help you through these things with personal service.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

Al M.

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It's really easy to go down the garden path on audio. Many end-up buying tone-control cables to roll-off harshness from their preamp or digital source rather than dealing with the offending component. Active preamps are one the most common offenders, as is digital with high jitter.

I have never tried to 'correct' one component with another. It's a bad strategy that at a minimum leads to a loss of overall resolution.

And often the room is a culprit, not the gear. People routinely seem to underestimate the importance of the room. Even I as a room tuning enthusiast have recently done so again, only to be corrected by the evidence of yet another acoustic improvement that I tried (simply just a certain type of carpet no less). It was not another incremental improvement, but a massive one.

Often what I perceived as 'digital harshness' in the past was just uncontrolled room reflections. The gear itself was fine -- or at a minimum, much less a culprit than I had incorrectly imagined.
 

John Dyson

Member
Jul 2, 2018
41
1
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This would be nice if it were true, and make digital audio design a LOT easier.

Jitter is added to the Master Clock by every gate and flip-flop that selects, buffers and divides-down the Master Clock. These add jitter dependent on the di/dt of the power subsystem and the rise-time of each gate. Jitter is added by crosstalk and ground-plane noise from other circuits. Jitter is added by losses and dielectric absorption in conductors and cables, including FR4. Jitter is added by reflections on transmission-lines that arrive at the source driver before the edges have completed transitioning. And on and on......

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
The typical jitter in a flip flop (unlelss it is a very messy slow technology) is totally nil WRT audio. All of the actual jitter is caused by the last flip flop, because if there was a sampling problem with an edge triggered or latch flip flop before the end, then it would be an error -- and that is worse than jitter. The jitter in-between is hidden by the sampling process of the clock. The only real jitter is WRT the timing clock at the very end of the chain. The digital audio signal itself ion the disk is self-clocked and clock is tied directly to the signal with nothing but an error as an alternative. Tha dead pefect timing is just resynced wit a FIFO, and reclocked to the system clock rate. If the drive rotational timing deviates too far, then you get an error -- not jitter. This same kind of thing has been done in primitiave video recorders since color came in to being. Since digital techniques came in -- the signal is so clean that there is a choice between the signal being 100% accurate or an error (I am speaking of digial video decks.) Digital video cannot withstand much jitter at all when compared with audio because the frequencies and timing is so fast in comparison. Even an HDMI connection is more stringent than CD stuff.

* A simple existence proof about my position on the jitter matter where the last timing jitter in a functioning digital system (where the input is self-clocked) is the only important jitter: My very sophisticated compressor/expander system, where the connections between the threads are effectively fifos that can asynchronously fill up and empty in very crazy ways, but still produce the same timing as if they were a stationary, repeatable delay. The reason is that the output is queued and clocked -- and all of the compoenents of the signal going into the processor do come out at the same time. Even the time delay between the input and output is always a constant fixed time -- having nothing to do with the crazy interactions between the inter-thread queuing and the operating system scheduling. This crazy queueing behavior is infinitely worse than any normal hardware that we might be talking about on a CD rom or music CD. Essentially, the input signal is self-clocked, and the output clock is driven by the program. The only difference on a CD is in the need to speed up or slow down the rotating medium -- but in that case, the rotation is a kind of fifo in its own right, and as long as that weird HW buffer isn't overrun (essentially that is an error), then the signal will be 100% intact with no jitter resulting from the rotating media. All of the buffering is known as 'elastic.' If there is an error reading the medium where the clock and the data are too noisy to use, then theat wouldn't be jitter, per se -- but would be an error that might be corrected by ECC. On things like CDroms, the data is the clock and the clock is the data -- in that they are not seperate things. This is (in a way) similar to a modulated RF signal -- you really cannot logically have the modulated data witihout the RF signal -- you either have both or neither. The same is true of the clock and data on CDs, laser disks, and most other rotating media nowadays.

If there was that many jitter problems in current technology (anything near current), we probably wouldn't even have 486 processors, let alone what we have today. Internally, such processors typically have massive resychronization and crazy clocking schemes to minimize power/etc. Geesh, we make radio receivers at over 100MHz with 14dB dynamic range (before performing tricks to get amazing SNR) out of the same kind of technology -- and our HDTVs have similar kinds of technology also -- and they are far, far more stringent than audio stuff. In fact, even the old NTSC color system was so fragile that even a degree of error at 3.58MHz produced bad color noise (that is why cheap VHS VCRs had bad troubles with color -- yet similar technology gave me my D9 decks which were little different than a digital frame store in accuracy. If we cannot do audio without significant jitter, then any kind of quality video would have been too much high tech (which it wasn't.)

Nowadays, the average consumer can have studio quality HDTV -- and lots of reclocking at hideous speeds (e.g. memory modules.) Jitter is NOT an issue. True data errrors ARE the issue.

Of course, there is such a thing as jitter, but it doesn't manifest in the way that some audio people might think. Again -- the only real jitter that is audible(except for true data errors in between) is the last jitter source in the chain, and it is NOT likely to even be detectible at that point.

IMO, most of the differences are in the DAC quality, different sample rates, different op-amp designs (op amps are really big sources of all kinds of odd timing effects), and too many things to count. A digital cable makes no TECHNICAL differences execpt when it is so bad that it causes errors. An analog cable can make some difference -- but sometimes the fancy designs cause more trouble than even zipcord for speakers (some cables used to have too much capacitive loading for some amplifiers, just for example -- probably/hopefully fixed today.)

On the other hand -- as I wrote above, I believe that if someone really believes that something sounds better -- then it really does sound better to them. I cannot argue that point, and will always support people when they make claims about their perception. Frankly, I have SOMETIMES found that signal defects sound good -- but of course, such situations cannot always be sustained when playinjg different material. IMO, it is always best to have the simplest flattest/lowest noise/least distortion design, and then change it from there for personal taste...

You know, that food sometimes tastes better in a restaurant than at home, even if the food is the same. For me, if I am at a fish market -- NOTHING tastes good, even a wonderful steak. We have both our environments and psychological needs, but the technical world is different than that. I live in the technical world, and sometimes have troubles realizing what people are really saying about how they feel. Once I realize that, then I am happy -- becuase I have made the technical argument known, and the REAL reality is how the music makes us all feel. Audio often has both the 'feel' of a salon and the real technical stuff. Conflating the two is not a good thing (IN MY OPINION.)

John
 
Last edited:

microstrip

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I have never tried to 'correct' one component with another. It's a bad strategy that at a minimum leads to a loss of overall resolution.(...)

Al M.,

IMHO, semantics, nothing else. The high-end is permanently "correcting" the recording to our preference. But yes, it is more fashionable calling it "enhancing" or similar. If we do not want to correct, we put an wire with gain ... :)
 

Al M.

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Al M.,

IMHO, semantics, nothing else. The high-end is permanently "correcting" the recording to our preference. But yes, it is more fashionable calling it "enhancing" or similar. If we do not want to correct, we put an wire with gain ... :)

I said what I said in a specific context.
 

Empirical Audio

Industry Expert
Oct 12, 2017
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www.empiricalaudio.com
The typical jitter in a flip flop (unlelss it is a very messy slow technology) is totally nil WRT audio. All of the actual jitter is caused by the last flip flop, because if there was a sampling problem with an edge triggered or latch flip flop before the end, then it would be an error -- and that is worse than jitter. The jitter in-between is hidden by the sampling process of the clock. The only real jitter is WRT the timing clock at the very end of the chain. The digital audio signal itself ion the disk is self-clocked and clock is tied directly to the signal with nothing but an error as an alternative. Tha dead pefect timing is just resynced wit a FIFO, and reclocked to the system clock rate. If the drive rotational timing deviates too far, then you get an error -- not jitter. This same kind of thing has been done in primitiave video recorders since color came in to being. Since digital techniques came in -- the signal is so clean that there is a choice between the signal being 100% accurate or an error (I am speaking of digial video decks.) Digital video cannot withstand much jitter at all when compared with audio because the frequencies and timing is so fast in comparison. Even an HDMI connection is more stringent than CD stuff.

* A simple existence proof about my position on the jitter matter where the last timing jitter in a functioning digital system (where the input is self-clocked) is the only important jitter: My very sophisticated compressor/expander system, where the connections between the threads are effectively fifos that can asynchronously fill up and empty in very crazy ways, but still produce the same timing as if they were a stationary, repeatable delay. The reason is that the output is queued and clocked -- and all of the compoenents of the signal going into the processor do come out at the same time. Even the time delay between the input and output is always a constant fixed time -- having nothing to do with the crazy interactions between the inter-thread queuing and the operating system scheduling. This crazy queueing behavior is infinitely worse than any normal hardware that we might be talking about on a CD rom or music CD. Essentially, the input signal is self-clocked, and the output clock is driven by the program. The only difference on a CD is in the need to speed up or slow down the rotating medium -- but in that case, the rotation is a kind of fifo in its own right, and as long as that weird HW buffer isn't overrun (essentially that is an error), then the signal will be 100% intact with no jitter resulting from the rotating media. All of the buffering is known as 'elastic.' If there is an error reading the medium where the clock and the data are too noisy to use, then theat wouldn't be jitter, per se -- but would be an error that might be corrected by ECC. On things like CDroms, the data is the clock and the clock is the data -- in that they are not seperate things. This is (in a way) similar to a modulated RF signal -- you really cannot logically have the modulated data witihout the RF signal -- you either have both or neither. The same is true of the clock and data on CDs, laser disks, and most other rotating media nowadays.

If there was that many jitter problems in current technology (anything near current), we probably wouldn't even have 486 processors, let alone what we have today. Internally, such processors typically have massive resychronization and crazy clocking schemes to minimize power/etc. Geesh, we make radio receivers at over 100MHz with 14dB dynamic range (before performing tricks to get amazing SNR) out of the same kind of technology -- and our HDTVs have similar kinds of technology also -- and they are far, far more stringent than audio stuff. In fact, even the old NTSC color system was so fragile that even a degree of error at 3.58MHz produced bad color noise (that is why cheap VHS VCRs had bad troubles with color -- yet similar technology gave me my D9 decks which were little different than a digital frame store in accuracy. If we cannot do audio without significant jitter, then any kind of quality video would have been too much high tech (which it wasn't.)

Nowadays, the average consumer can have studio quality HDTV -- and lots of reclocking at hideous speeds (e.g. memory modules.) Jitter is NOT an issue. True data errrors ARE the issue.

Of course, there is such a thing as jitter, but it doesn't manifest in the way that some audio people might think. Again -- the only real jitter that is audible(except for true data errors in between) is the last jitter source in the chain, and it is NOT likely to even be detectible at that point.

IMO, most of the differences are in the DAC quality, different sample rates, different op-amp designs (op amps are really big sources of all kinds of odd timing effects), and too many things to count. A digital cable makes no TECHNICAL differences execpt when it is so bad that it causes errors. An analog cable can make some difference -- but sometimes the fancy designs cause more trouble than even zipcord for speakers (some cables used to have too much capacitive loading for some amplifiers, just for example -- probably/hopefully fixed today.)

On the other hand -- as I wrote above, I believe that if someone really believes that something sounds better -- then it really does sound better to them. I cannot argue that point, and will always support people when they make claims about their perception. Frankly, I have SOMETIMES found that signal defects sound good -- but of course, such situations cannot always be sustained when playinjg different material. IMO, it is always best to have the simplest flattest/lowest noise/least distortion design, and then change it from there for personal taste...

You know, that food sometimes tastes better in a restaurant than at home, even if the food is the same. For me, if I am at a fish market -- NOTHING tastes good, even a wonderful steak. We have both our environments and psychological needs, but the technical world is different than that. I live in the technical world, and sometimes have troubles realizing what people are really saying about how they feel. Once I realize that, then I am happy -- becuase I have made the technical argument known, and the REAL reality is how the music makes us all feel. Audio often has both the 'feel' of a salon and the real technical stuff. Conflating the two is not a good thing (IN MY OPINION.)

John

I understand FIFO queues and I've even designed some products using them. I still stand by my assertion. I have measured this effect and I hear it in my reference system. You can believe what you like.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

microstrip

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I understand FIFO queues and I've even designed some products using them. I still stand by my assertion. I have measured this effect and I hear it in my reference system. You can believe what you like.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Although I disagree with most of John Dyson points, it is possible to erase the "past memory" of jitter if you accept a delay of a few seconds. I never understood why the industry never embarked on it. Vinyl lovers easily accept a few seconds wait while their tonearm goes down ... :cool:
 

cjf

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Nov 19, 2012
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I recently made modifications to my Synchro-Mesh reclocker that reduced the jitter from 22 picoseconds to 8 picoseconds.

This isnt meant to be a jab at anyone in particular but I often see digital designers/manufacturers tout single digit Jitter specs but I'm curious why when measured in the real world by a rag like Stereophile or similar that we almost never see these figures reproduced. Usually best case is in the low 100's or so on any given Output/Input. Any theories on why this is the case?
 

John Dyson

Member
Jul 2, 2018
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I understand FIFO queues and I've even designed some products using them. I still stand by my assertion. I have measured this effect and I hear it in my reference system. You can believe what you like.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

You don't need a 'couple of seconds', but rather just enough to handle the speed variations in the drive. It is sometimes nice to be able to handle the 3sigma case, but that isn't always in the budget. Back in the day, video tape decks didn't need 'seconds' of delay, but just enough time to incorporate the variations in speed. Later on, with memory being cheap, then they just did the brute force frame store thing. The large frame stores could impart a frames worth of delay or more (1/25 or 1/29.97 second.) On average, the delay was one half the frame or field rate -- but that isn't really necessary in the straight FIFO design (full buffering only needed if the CD speed cannot be controlled by hardware.)

It is all FIFO queueing -- I successfully do it all of the time, and don't get jitter (other than the last timing clock in the chain.) I can get errors -- but not jitter.

John
 

Empirical Audio

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This isnt meant to be a jab at anyone in particular but I often see digital designers/manufacturers tout single digit Jitter specs but I'm curious why when measured in the real world by a rag like Stereophile or similar that we almost never see these figures reproduced. Usually best case is in the low 100's or so on any given Output/Input. Any theories on why this is the case?

Stereophile uses the AP system, which is IMO inaccurate for measuring DIRECT JITTER. Not enough bandwidth. It is okay for measuring the jitter effect on the spectrum from the analog output of a DAC, and this is usually what they publish. I do not consider this a good direct measurement for a digital source, since it involves a particular DAC.

I on the other hand use a 7GHz B/W, 50GHz sampling programmable scope with a jitter software package on it and a 75 ohm internal termination to measure jitter directly. This scope with software was $130K when new. The single number that I mention is the standard deviation of the jitter distribution measured over 50K samples. The distribution is created playing a music track, not a single frequency. Here is the jitter plot showing ~7psec of jitter:

https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=157348.0

I have found these jitter distribution and spectrum plots to be more useful for correlating to sound quality and characterizing a given digital source. The shape of the distribution matters and the standard deviation matters, as well as the spectral distribution. I have shared this with John Atkinson, who I know, but curiously have gotten no response.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

853guy

Active Member
Aug 14, 2013
1,161
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38
What you are hearing is small jitter reduction. If you like that, you can get even more jitter reduction by coating the top surface of the disk several times with Plasti Dip from Home Depot. Make sure you mask the center chuck area with tape or cardboard. This is the best treatment I have found, better than liquids or re-writing.

Well, making CD-R copies was all fun and games pre-children, but post-children it ceased to be a productive endeavour and in any case, I rediscovered vinyl, which happened to also coincide with many of the artists I like forgoing physical media releases. I'm mostly a record and downloading kinda guy these days. Heck, I'm even considering buying a cassette deck.

I can also sell you a really good S/PDIF coax cable for $275. It is a 75 ohm BNC cable with RCA adapters. BNC is the ONLY way to effectively terminate a coax cable because they are made specifically for each cable type. 30-0day money-back, less shipping.

Thanks, but my JBL GO only has a USB port.

It's really easy to go down the garden path on audio. Many end-up buying tone-control cables to roll-off harshness from their preamp or digital source rather than dealing with the offending component. Active preamps are one the most common offenders, as is digital with high jitter. Many are fooled by harmonic distortion of poorly designed tube equipment or just using the wrong tubes. It takes a LOT of experience to detect these things and avoid the garden path. It's useful for audiophiles to partner with a small company that is willing to help you through these things with personal service.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

There's a path?

Best,

853guy
 
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Al M.

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There's a path?

Best,

853guy

Sure, for those who know what they want from a system according to their priorities, which they are very much aware of.

Of course, many audiophiles "want it all", not willing to recognize that all audio inherently is a compromise (beginning with something as 'trivial' as speaker position in the room). They have no clear priorities and get sidetracked and distracted every time they hear a system do certain things better than their own. They wave in the wind, and their "path" becomes more like a zigzag course with even the occasional step backward.

My basic priorities didn't change much over the years. But I have added to them, with the most important one being a quest for more timbral resolution. I did follow a path that was more or less clear (yes, sometimes less, but still) at any point in time.
 

853guy

Active Member
Aug 14, 2013
1,161
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38
Sure, for those who know what they want from a system according to their priorities, which they are very much aware of.

Of course, many audiophiles "want it all", not willing to recognize that all audio inherently is a compromise (beginning with something as 'trivial' as speaker position in the room). They have no clear priorities and get sidetracked and distracted every time they hear a system do certain things better than their own. They wave in the wind, and their "path" becomes more like a zigzag course with even the occasional step backward.

My basic priorities didn't change much over the years. But I have added to them, with the most important one being a quest for more timbral resolution. I did follow a path that was more or less clear (yes, sometimes less, but still) at any point in time.

Hi Al,

Must remember humour does not translate via the internet, or that I suck at it, or both.

Sure. I don’t disagree with you. Priorities and preferences dictate most people’s paths, though I think it may be true to say those paths are not only varied in terms of geography, but often divergent in destination.

Most paths are often not linear. Mine has been very zig-zagged, with steps both sideways and back and up and down. I think most experiential pursuits inevitably are, because as true as it that we change paths, the path changes us.

Certainly, once I started ignoring the opinions of those who wrote stuff for a living and began hanging out with practitioners who made stuff for a living, my preferences and priorities changed as my understanding of which variables contributed to which sonic parameters grew clearer. I did once chase individuated phenomenon, but found that my quest for first-order effects came with deleterious second- and third-order ones I only discovered much later.

At one time I could never have imagined being a vinyl, SET, horns kinda guy, but then like I say, my path’s been anything but linear. And even though I know pretty much exactly where I want to head, it’s not to say that a fair amount of learning curve won’t need to be scaled when theory has to give way to practice.

The map is not the terrain.

Best,

853guy
 

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  • What’s Best Forum is THE forum for high end audio, product reviews, advice and sharing experiences on the best of everything else. This is THE place where audiophiles and audio companies discuss vintage, contemporary and new audio products, music servers, music streamers, computer audio, digital-to-analog converters, turntables, phono stages, cartridges, reel-to-reel tape machines, speakers, headphones and tube and solid-state amplification. Founded in 2010 What’s Best Forum invites intelligent and courteous people of all interests and backgrounds to describe and discuss the best of everything. From beginners to life-long hobbyists to industry professionals, we enjoy learning about new things and meeting new people, and participating in spirited debates.

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Steve Williams
Site Founder | Site Owner | Administrator
Ron Resnick
Site Co-Owner | Administrator
Julian (The Fixer)
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