What's wrong with Redbook, really?

If I want to know the differences at detail level it is rapid AB.
Say 4 to 6 seconds otherwise my short term auditory memory is overtaxed
If I want to know if I really like what I’m hearing, long time listening.
My personal burn in time is 3 month before I realize to its full extend if I really like it or not.
As this is in excess of the 30 days money back guarantee there is fortunately eBay.

Vincent, could you please tell me what sounds Best to you?

And how did you arrive to that conclusion?

And Redbook CDs, are they any good to your own set of ears?

TY & Best 2 you, :b
Bob

No
I’m not a poet, I can’t open a lyrical vein and express emotions.

My “conclusions” are just what they are, a local truth.
Valid for me, not valid for anybody else.

I can listen to JRiver, I can listen to e.g. MusicBee and enjoy (or detest) the music.
I “feel” they do sound different.
If I want to know, only rapid AB will work in my case.
If I listen to an entire track I stop listening to the tool.
If I switch to another player using the same track then initially I do hear a difference but after a while I only hear music.

Likewise Redbook.
I’m one of those who replaced the classical part of the vinyl collection by CD.
Beethoven wrote his string quartets for 4 delicate strings instruments.
Not for 4 delicate strings instruments and the surface noise of vinyl or a blowhole
Obvious silence is important to me.

If you are as old as I am (not recommended) and live close to the North Sea, you have listened to the pirate stations in the 60's. Low Fi unless the weather was bad, then sound quality dropped a little.
But what a great music.

I have Fats Waller recordings, 1930. Low Fi but what a great music.
Don’t listen to file formats, listen to music.

Sounds good, a true music lover who enjoys music regardless of the circumstances.

So when I bought my new smart phone (the ones you need to be very smart to control) I plugged in my Etymotics and start to puke.
The Galaxy II has some chip set really capable of resolving at least 8 bits of the 16.
What a disgrace.
So I’m looking for something to improve sound quality.

I don’t know how it works.
I can be perfectly happy listening to listening to music but if SQ drops below a certain quality level, it ends. If I listen to e.g. Fats Waller (1930 recordings so an audiophile disgrace) I don’t bother and enjoy.

There is only one thing I know for sure, humans are excellent in deceiving them self and perception is the name of this game.

Phelonious Ponk said:

Vincent knows more than he admits. And that was pretty poetic.

Tim

Click to expand...

I second that .

There's certainly something here in the business of perceiving the quality of sound. I know Tim has a hangup about my "imagineering" of sound, and at times I indeed wondered whether it was only my take on the situation. But my wife and others have confirmed over and over again that what I perceive as good sound, versus ordinary hifi, is indeed valid, at least for a few Aussies!

With regard to deceiving, if you have to "work" on enjoying the sound that to me is a type of deceiving: many ambitious systems have a look at me!, look at me! quality, they're saying "I'm very, very impressive, you should be gob smacked at what you're hearing!!". Well, that's not my scene; I want the sound to blend in with the environment, not be a fireworks spectacular. So if I listen to that type of system, I do have to up, raise the self deception control ...

Frank

Mixing multitrack was probably my favorite active audio activity. Fast switching via the solo,group and recall (on boards with automation) functions was the only way to actually be sure those tiny adjustments were real, worthwhile and not imagined (like accidentally making an adjustment on the wrong channel strip LOL Hey, it happens!)

Now I wouldn't call this doing things blind nor do I think it should be approached blind but rather pragmatically. There's a sound in your head, an expectation if you will, that you're trying to translate into reality. Fast switching many times is needed to tell you if you are getting closer or nearer or whether or not the "eureka" moment is really "all that".

I understand that from a fidelity point of view any deviation from the signal is a no-no. I just want to inject into the discussion some insight on how the signal came about in the first place. It's the result of a long chain of human decisions from the pen of the composer to the QC dude at the pressing plant.

So my personal position on the argument is that:

I disagree with Frank that fast switching will not yield anything worthwhile.

I disagree that blind is the way to go for tuning or system setup. What's needed is a firm grasp on variables and the environment so one can get consistent, repeatable results even if the subject is yourself. This requires being able to go back to the starting point if need be for the all important reality checks.

I do not disagree with the philosophy of ultimate fidelity to the signal. I just do not adopt it in toto but rather In toto et pars continetur. In other words, I will knowingly deviate from as flat as I could get it to something else whenever I want to. This also means I can go back whenever I want to as well (see above) hence the "et pars continetur". I put myself and my reactions to the signal into the premise making BOTH the signal and myself part of the whole. This puts me in line with Micro methinks.

I have absolutely nothing against doing things blind. If you can't hear the difference, go with whatever's cheaper. If you want to buy something that costs more just because it looks better, I'm cool with that too. Just know that that is the reason.

I have nothing against expectations or expectation bias. Life would be boring without it. Success is always sweeter the harder you have to work for it.

Interesting points, Jack. Now, I agree with you 100% on the rapid switching with regards to mastering. Because there you are dealing with balancing the content of the recording, not the quality, as in the level of unwanted non-linear distortion, of that content. In my earlier post I was referring totally to the situation of assessing whether something youhave done to the system was improving the level of fidelity of playback, not anything to do with the creation of the material being played back.

BTW, absolutely no reaction to my experiments with resampling: considering the massive efforts and money being spent on this play off between one sample rate versus another I find the silence curious ...

Frank

JackD201 said:

(...) I do not disagree with the philosophy of ultimate fidelity to the signal. I just do not adopt it in toto but rather In toto et pars continetur. In other words, I will knowingly deviate from as flat as I could get it to something else whenever I want to. This also means I can go back whenever I want to as well (see above) hence the "et pars continetur". I put myself and my reactions to the signal into the premise making BOTH the signal and myself part of the whole. (...)

Click to expand...

Jack,
Although you seem prepared to read it, take a long breath before reading the full article and commenting the attached text. It is part of a controversy article that created a great bias expectation in me, and has already attracted the interest of a WBF member who started a thread on it. The full article can be found at :

http://www.bsgt.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/tas_feb2012_review.pdf

If you do not like the message, please kill the message, not the messenger!

Magic Bullet? I don't think so. Another tool that might make music listening a better experience for some, yes, why not?

All components in all our systems are just tools anyway. As Bruce pointed out he could do the same using other tools at his disposal.

I think this post crystallized my position, so thank you Micro. Stripped down, the BSG is really just another processor. Processors are used during the production stages so the question is should you or shouldn't you use them in the playback chain? My vote is yes. So I'm good with EQ, DSP, Power Conditioning, Noise suppression, vibration control or even more traditional choices like tube rolling in tubed gear, modding, choosing class of operation or whatever else under the sun to make playback as un-distracting from the music as possible.

We're all after particular end results. Some of us do it by feeling their way through, others as empirically as possible. ALL of us just really want our systems to ultimately get out of the way. One thing for sure is our end goals do vary, often times wildly, as dictated by the goals themselves.

Relativist as it may appear, I think it isn't so if we accept that at this point in time the deck of cards is stacked against all of us in both the electronic and acoustic realms. Compromises simply cannot be avoided. So while someone like Tim with active nearfield or Tom with Binaural has sacrificed tactile deep bass to be as true to the signal and true to the recorded ambience respectively as possible, I would rather make other compromises such as having to deal with room FR and spatial non-linearities among others so I can get the bass I personally need to make the experience more complete. Something they don't need to accomplish the same.

Is it about finding what pushes the right buttons for you with perhaps Frank and Vince the extreme on one end and guys like Ethan and the ABX guy (I forget his name, sorry) on the other? I think so and I'll continue to think so until the paradigm busting day that we can actually all agree what perfect sound really is.

How's that for a segue to get this thread back on topic! LOL.

Yes, what's wrong with Redbook ...

Absolutely nothing from my point of view, especially if offline resampling will do the job of adjusting the SQ as necessary: still waiting for some feedback on this ...

Frank

Vincent Kars said:

No
I’m not a poet, I can’t open a lyrical vein and express emotions.

My “conclusions” are just what they are, a local truth.
Valid for me, not valid for anybody else.

I can listen to JRiver, I can listen to e.g. MusicBee and enjoy (or detest) the music.
I “feel” they do sound different.
If I want to know, only rapid AB will work in my case.
If I listen to an entire track I stop listening to the tool.
If I switch to another player using the same track then initially I do hear a difference but after a while I only hear music.

Likewise Redbook.
I’m one of those who replaced the classical part of the vinyl collection by CD.
Beethoven wrote his string quartets for 4 delicate strings instruments.
Not for 4 delicate strings instruments and the surface noise of vinyl or a blowhole
Obvious silence is important to me.

If you are as old as I am (not recommended) and live close to the North Sea, you have listened to the pirate stations in the 60's. Low Fi unless the weather was bad, then sound quality dropped a little.
But what a great music.

I have Fats Waller recordings, 1930. Low Fi but what a great music.
Don’t listen to file formats, listen to music.

Sounds good, a true music lover who enjoys music regardless of the circumstances.

So when I bought my new smart phone (the ones you need to be very smart to control) I plugged in my Etymotics and start to puke.
The Galaxy II has some chip set really capable of resolving at least 8 bits of the 16.
What a disgrace.
So I’m looking for something to improve sound quality.

I don’t know how it works.
I can be perfectly happy listening to listening to music but if SQ drops below a certain quality level, it ends. If I listen to e.g. Fats Waller (1930 recordings so an audiophile disgrace) I don’t bother and enjoy.

There is only one thing I know for sure, humans are excellent in deceiving them self and perception is the name of this game.

Click to expand...

That was an awesome post to read Vincent, Thanks! :b

And you are a poet who doesn't know it yet! :b

* I'll be only 57 this Spring; just a young duck still. :b

Too many audiophiles listen to the gear and not the music IMO.

DonH50 said:

Too many audiophiles listen to the gear and not the music IMO.

Click to expand...

Hi Don,

What is/are your life expertise(s) sir?

"What is Music? ... It's an intimate connection between two souls.
... A comfort zone, an appreciation, a communion, a completion." - Bob A C

:b

Phelonious Ponk said:

But when, upon removal of the breathless, well-primed expectation, the Strad or the Goldmund is indistinguishable from options accessible to millions more music lovers, while an entire hobby and industry insists that it can't be so....well, that bothers me. Call it an over-zealous sense of democracy. I just think of it as my way of putting the music first.

If more people think that a first-rate listening experience is accessible to them (and it is), perhaps more of them will pass by the iPod dock for something a bit more substantial, perhaps serious listening will grow as a hobby, perhaps good recordings will become a market worth persuing. Perhaps we'll benefit. I think audiophiledom's oppressive, insecure elitism is a shot in its own foot.

Tim

Click to expand...

I highlighted a couple of sentences from your post, Tim.
Couldn't agree more. You would think that high-enders would find it worthwhile to recruit more people, but I can't free myself of the impression that the goal is to scare away as many as possible. A result achieved through the dogmatic adherence to "largest/most expensive/heaviest is best", resulting in ludicrous component configurations required to achieve the suspension of a credible tone in the air of a listening room.

Couple that with the incessant mumbo-jumbo, and total disregard of evidence that runs counter to personal fabulations, and you end up with a dogmatism that at least ensures outsiders get to wear a bemused expression when coming across practitioners.
When an audiophile has to spend money and time replacing the joists of his listening room, to be able to carry the weight of the equipment, and also has to consider strategies for ensuring that the temperature in this room is somewhere below Sahara Midday Summer Mean because of all the tubes about to be lit up*, then one can safely ask whether the goal has long since shifted from its actual purpose: the enjoyment of music, which is perfectly possible with Redbook.

*(Not made up. Actual conundrum being faced by an adept).

Except of course the fact that dogmatism isn't attributed to "high enders" alone. I think we've all come across personalities who've painted themselves as the shining lights off to save man from the foolish idolaters who call themselves audiophiles as often as we have seen some "high enders" act as though they were looking down from Mount Olympus. LOL.

I'm glad you didn't.