A blog by any other name ...

[fas42]

From http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...-is-a-bad-idea&p=110262&viewfull=1#post110262 ...

Especially if you archive vinyl with a DR >120dB - re: Keith O. Johnson

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! People need to get a grip on what 120dB accuracy, or dynamic range, really means ...

Get in your car and drive down the road exactly one mile. And I mean exactly 1 mile, with tremendous precision to the point where you stop. How precise? Well, try 120dB's precise, which is 1 part in a million. And what does that translate to on the road, a mile away from where you started? Well, 0.06 inches -- less than 1/10th of an inch!!

Now, have a look at a blown up photo of the LP groove, full of bits of rubbish, with ridges, craters and markings everywhere, and tell me again you can get 120dB accuracy from that ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

As Tom (tomelex) would say, nothing like an effects unit ... . All this discussion elsewhere about how changing an active device, a tube type, "transforms" the sound of very expensive amplifiers. So, have we finally eliminated that "inaudible" distortion during recording playback by that alteration, or is there still another step to go ...?

Frank

 

[fas42]

From http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...l-a-Preference&p=111063&viewfull=1#post111063 ...

For someone who posts so authoritatively you are remarkably unsophisticated and unknowledgable about audio.

From http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...l-a-Preference&p=111104&viewfull=1#post111104 ...

Assuming the noise is inaudible -- it both measures below audible levels and cannot be heard by humans with perfectly good hearing abilities -- then that is the baseline. That is the demonstrated reality with nothing to prove. The question, then, is how can inaudible noise affect the music?

I guess this says it all, there appears little chance of Tim "getting" it, especially when he is so resolute about the matter. Maybe he can try looking up material on modulation distortion, especially with regard with radio frequency signal interference. Or why designers struggle with getting class D audio amplifiers to really perform. But I don't think he'll bother ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

Bob, thanks for the communique! Unfortunately, the PM system is busted from my end, and but, hey, it's software: from decades of experience with the stuff I have enormous respect for the integrity and general excellence of this animal ...

As for me, basically fine, getting on with the studio monitor project, doing things to work out the monitor's circuit. There has been a mild diversion: the HT went off song some days ago, because too much fiddling caused a cable to come astray, as mentioned elsewhere. One thing led to another, I thought I had it under control again, but it wasn't the case. The thing relatively few people realise, or want to take on board, is that a finely performing system is the result of everything being in good order, and if just one thing is out of alignment or not correctly addressed then the outcome is well back from optimum sound. Basically, the cables within the speaker cabinet needed to be correctly dressed, organised, and it took me several attempts to get it right. And none of this had anything to do with the nominal electrical circuit of the setup: this is all about making sure that secondary effects don't interfere with the sound: so very, very critical once you get to a certain level of playback ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

Thanks, Tom ...

Frank

 

[Bruce B]

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! People need to get a grip on what 120dB accuracy, or dynamic range, really means ...Frank

Well Frank, I guess you need to take that up with "Prof" Keith O. Johnson

 

[fas42]

From http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...-the-bandwagon&p=112061&viewfull=1#post112061 ...

So what is Tim’s point? Ambience is there, but it’s not there. It’s there, but it’s not ‘real’ or it doesn’t meet his standards for how it should be recorded to get his seal of approval. Whatever. I’m over it

The main problem is that Tim gives the ear no credit for being to unravel the acoustic clues trapped, picked up by the microphones. In his world, the recording engineers are the "Masters of the Universe", you'll shall hear no audible information apart from what they carefully, knowingly, inserted, in their masterful stew of sound. The fact that that their monitoring systems are way below the mark of what's required to pick up that low level stuff seems to have escaped him ...

Why do I say this? Having spent several days listening to the standard of what the currently ranked studio monitors produce, fed with the mediocre, heavily veiled mush of sound emerging from the grab bag of studio installed electronics, it's perhaps a wonder that many recordings come off as well as they do ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

A lot of nonsense is being talked about at the moment about having "correct", characteristic, impedance. 50, 72, 75 ohms ... this is totally, 100%, irrelevant for anything to do with audio signals.

But, what it does have something to do with is interference, that nasty little bugger that messes up your sound; very high frequency muck, that has got into your system by some means can get passed around via all the connections, and then the characteristic impedance of the links, and termination point impedances, can become relevant: depending upon the precise RF qualities of the cable connections then less, or more, high frequency noise is able to get where it can modulate the audio signal, creating audible "dirt" in the sound ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

yes Frank, a lot of nonsense if we are talking phono or cd to pre amp and pre amp to power amp, but when we are transferring ones and zeros (digital bits as square waves) then we agree that this stuff matters a bit, depending on cable length and impedance.

If one is really worrying about correctly matching source and receiver impedance with that of the cable then the length matters not one iota, classic transmission line theory. As regards a SPDIF link, I looked it up at one time, and it's a fantasy of it having a "perfect" square wave being sent along it, looks like a bloody 'orrible analogue mess to me. The receiver does a lot of work sorting it out, and the recovered clock then steps the data nicely, as a "clean" digital signal, to where it counts ...

Of course, lots of spurious muck on this line can still bypass the filtering of the receiver, unless it's made to be bulletproof -- and we all know audio companies spend lots of money making sure this is done right ...

Frank, your blog is quite an interesting solution for you,. yes?

Cheers

Tom

Indeed it is ... :b

Frank

 

[fas42]

Bob, just saw that you copped an injury a couple of days ago; sorry to hear that, hope you get better as soon as possible ...

Some "little" knocks can be amazingly persistent, I have over-exerted, over-twisted my forearm a couple of times, the last just recently, and it it takes a long, long time to settle down -- still gives me an unpleasant twinge now and again ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

Let's imagine an even more robust test: Several high end and pro monitoring systems, experienced hifi and pro listeners among the participants, dozens of DBT trials in different locations, with different systems, in a well-designed study carried to statistically sound conclusions.

Interesting that the dynamic, time dependent, element of sound quality is so often put to one side, completely disregarded. That is, the sound of a system changes over a period of time, for myriads of reasons. And the better the system, the more this can be a factor. Once one is aware of this "phenomenon" it becomes easy to pick; for example, in the showroom yesterday the Gryphon and Wilson rig started off well, and gradually deteriorated in quality the longer it played.

Yet the hard core DBT enthusiasts are so convinced that such simplistic back, forth, back, forth switching is going to reveal all that is worth knowing -- oh, for life in general to be so simple to unravel ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

RIP Ray Bradbury

As a former science fiction "nut", I devoured every book in the libraries that had the SciFi tag as a youngie, and I would like to add my thoughts of appreciation to his contributions in the field ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

People get very "jittery" in their understanding of jitter: one can never have enough explanations about the whole matter. So, yet another series of articles, a Primer about Jitter, in a set of Word documents: http://www.eetimes.com/design/analo...surement-and-Phase-Locked-Loops--Part-1-of-8-

Frank

 

[fas42]

It's always a buzz to find a NOM, New Old Muso, whom you've never heard of before, that does it for you: Walter "Wolfman" Washington, album "Get On Up", 1981. Jazz Blues, think George Benson, Robert Cray for slickness, classiness, density of musical texture of instrumentals, but a voice straight from the archives of the best male blues singers, tremendously expressive, does gratey, ballsy, Nat King Cole, even has a go at Robert Plant's throne ...

Very well recorded, a true find!!

Frank

 

[fas42]

From http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...-Take-Her-Baby&p=115700&viewfull=1#post115700 ...

It took 32 years to get the coroner's ruling?

It's complicated, that was the fourth ruling! There's quite a subplot with this tragedy, demonstrating the strangeness of the human condition: to get some of the flavour of why there were so many twists and turns, read this: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/an...n-the-right-side/story-e6frf7jo-1226392973849 ...

 

[fas42]

Just tried a couple of new library CDs: this is a real lucky dip now for popular music because they've replaced a lot of the older, good material with new releases -- I can hear people shuddering everywhere :b!

Well, a couple of beauties, for the wrong reasons! Firstly, a local recorded rock band from 2007 who was obviously pushed around by the mastering "geniuses", or, alternatively had gone deaf some time ago. Imagine Schwarzenegger in his physical prime, and that the top half of his body was squashed down to a third of its normal height -- same width, but no elevation! Trying to be impressive, and gutsy, but just ends up becoming ludicrous, the big guitar sounds are completely emasculated. Now, this is classic overdone compression, which is recoverable: the cymbals, at a relatively low level, are clean as a whistle, haven't been damaged -- at least on some tracks. This recording can be brought back to life ...

The other one, though, appears to an unmitigated disaster: David Bowie, Aladdin Sane, remastered in 1999 at 24 bits. So far, I think this will go down as the worst recording/rematering I've heard. And the reasons are fairly clear: there was obviously a lot of acoustic and interesting texture captured in the original 1973 sessions, but the idiots at Abbey Road have run the masters through 2 lots of noise fiddling paraphenalia, as they proudly state in the pamphlet. And the damage done is atrocious, all the crucial low level detail has been so mutilated that now the sound is just, plain, wrong. At all volumes, it never sounds better than something coming through a studio monitor , I and my wife couldn't stand more than a couple of tracks, no matter how softly it was playing. This may be an example of an unrecoverable recording, but only because the low level distortion injected by the too-clever-by-half mastering engineers is simply overwhelming ... I could be wrong, hah , but this looks as if it's going to take the crown of the worst recording I've experienced ...

Hmmm, I was going to post this yesterday, but I decided to give the Bowie another chance the next day ... man, no go, the first word my wife and I came up with is "mangled", FUBAR, to put it plainly!! The cymbals, and piano tone, have been devastated -- only fit to play over an AM radio I'm afraid. Adele 21, and Springsteen are pinnacles of excellence in comparison ...

To put things into context, I have the 1990 "Ziggy Stardust" and this is excellent, even the demo tracks on that version are very reasonable.

Last word: wound up "The Jean Genie", the wife came out of the shower in a foul mood, "Turn that rubbish off!". AM radio sound at its worst, I don't think there is any hope for this version, I'll need to get hold of the 1990 remastering for something fit to listen to ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

From http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...s-MPS-3-inside&p=114888&viewfull=1#post114888 ...

Playback Designs MPS-3 inside

I'm impressed! This shows very fine design thinking: power supply as far as possible from the crucial DAC, and well shielded; an absolute minimum of cables running around; the D/A circuitry in a fully shielded environment, as close as possible to the outputs. All good, obvious stuff, nicely executed!

Frank

 

[fas42]

Also, got at the library at the same time, Itzhak Perlman, A La Carte, 1995: violin bon bons. And, problems here too! Guess what, both the Bowie and Perlman done at Abbey Road Studios, and notes proudly state for both that B&W speakers used for monitoring! What's to blame? Well, my guess is the sloppiness of the engineers, a get it out the door mentality ...

Bruce mentioned this: the care formerly taken is missing, and the evidence is far too plain.

What was wrong with the Perlman? The same thing I've heard in a number of recent classical releases, most likely the result of not properly warming up, conditioning the A/D converters in a consistent manner. During a piece each sliced in take is defined by the sweetness of the violin: one second, rich, full sound, and in the next breath it turns scrawny and dull: up, down, inbetween in quality, every so many minutes -- very distracting ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

From http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...Saga-Continues&p=116686&viewfull=1#post116686 ...

I'm still surprised that if you pay Krell for a recap job that they don't automatically replace the big filter caps in the power supply. They only replace them if they are bad, and not as part of a preventative maintenance program.

Those big filter caps are expensive, and only form a very tiny part of the equation of what gives good sound: all the much smaller electrolytics elsewhere are far more important, they're much closer to, physically and in circuit terms, to the crucial, quality determining, areas.

Mighty fat capacitors, that look so impressive, are pieces of junk, electrically speaking ... no matter how expensive the amplifier. Their electrical properties, as capacitors, are absolutely terrible even when brand new. What they do do, is to act as large reservoirs of rough and ready DC voltage, with the emphasis on rough, sort of like car batteries; the advantage of bigness, is that there is extra reserves of energy to theoretically handle the needs of a series of big bass notes - which is why small amps are normally never convincing when there's a strong bass line. The real engineering, further down in the bowels of the amplifier, is how that poor quality DC is refined to the necessary degree to suit the amplifier circuit areas ...

Frank