---"..., a recording of the playback should be able to fool you ...."
Right there, the closer to that goal the better off we are. :b
Right there, the closer to that goal the better off we are. :b
Thread: A Search for Truth and Tonality, Part 2 ...
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For me it started very close to the beginning of digital, 1986. A little story with that: I actually purchased the previous generation TOL Yamaha player, the CD2000 I think it was, and it was performing quite nicely to my ears at the time. But, companies were having "issues" with getting the laser reading mechanisms to behave themselves then, and this Yamaha suffered this hiccup. So, back to the dealer it went, but the new model was out, and he graciously just did a straight swap with one of those, which is the one I have to this day and where my real audio journey began. A fortuitous event, because the later one was considerably better constructed, and had just the right characteristics as a platform to give me the "big" sound when all cylinders were firing. Someone just mentioned bad Led Zep CDs, but it was the first album that floored me way back then with the massive, overwhelming soundstage that was produced on this player -- there was no turning back now ...
At the same time, I was visiting all the hifi shops, and I could only shake my head at the miserable, typically sh!tty sound that the demo CD setups were producing. So, there was quite a way to go ...
Frank
Sometimes it's just good to get a little jolt of inspiration ...
There's a scene in the movie "American Graffiti" where the Fonz character gets ready for the drag race climax by going to the garage and swapping in the "hot" spark plugs. And for some reason that has always stuck in my mind ...
Anyway, by a fortunate combination of factors of leaving the HT system on longer, and trying a couple of things to improve interference resistance the Philips beast was really firing last night. I really wanted to compare and contrast a couple of combinations of tweaks, but it was sounding tooo good: I just had to mellow out and listen to the music. This was Benjamin Britten's Canticles on Collins Classics, first time I've heard this music: tremendous dynamic range, huge acoustic spaces; just a Steinway and rich, soaring voices.
So when people say that audio technology is not there yet, or that speakers can't reproduce real sound, you just need moments like this to comfortably assert that this type of thinking is a load of bollocks ... :b
Frank
There's a scene in the movie "American Graffiti" where the Fonz character gets ready for the drag race climax by going to the garage and swapping in the "hot" spark plugs. And for some reason that has always stuck in my mind ...
Anyway, by a fortunate combination of factors of leaving the HT system on longer, and trying a couple of things to improve interference resistance the Philips beast was really firing last night. I really wanted to compare and contrast a couple of combinations of tweaks, but it was sounding tooo good: I just had to mellow out and listen to the music. This was Benjamin Britten's Canticles on Collins Classics, first time I've heard this music: tremendous dynamic range, huge acoustic spaces; just a Steinway and rich, soaring voices.
So when people say that audio technology is not there yet, or that speakers can't reproduce real sound, you just need moments like this to comfortably assert that this type of thinking is a load of bollocks ... :b
Frank
---But then, when you go to a good Classical concert hall,
and that a good performing band (opera) is taking place; your home seems like peanuts! :b
and that a good performing band (opera) is taking place; your home seems like peanuts! :b
Not really, Bob, that's the point! What I enjoy with music is the intensity, the texture of the sound washing over me, that's what I'm looking for. Normal hifi reproduction is just a caricature: it gets some things right, other aspects are totally wrong. And the main thing that is typically wrong is that the sound is tied to the speakers, it never gets much bigger than they are. Those Steinways speakers I heard a few days ago were monsters, and expensive, but the sound was absurdly lopsided, had nothing to do with what live music sounds like.
What I got from the HT last night was the concert hall feel, the volume was effectively on maximum, the sound filled the whole house. As a comparison, I tried the best Mackie studio monitors instore some weeks back with a well recorded Organ recital, and that was a bit of a joke: they were running into overload most of the time and they still couldn't deliver the goods. Managed to kill the left hand unit in fact ...
Frank
Frank, in a good concert hall the music is massaging you all over the body (from the tip of your toes to the tip of the hairs on your head; if you have some), plus enveloping and caressing you all over your senses and organs. ...And with real LIVE power, plus the visual/emotional vibes from the stage performers.
At home, you don't have that full enchilada (better have a hi res Audio/Video Blu-ray with a HD front projector for the very Best simili experience).
You follow, you dig? :b
At home, you don't have that full enchilada (better have a hi res Audio/Video Blu-ray with a HD front projector for the very Best simili experience).
You follow, you dig? :b
Bob, you expressed it beautifully, that's what I'm after: and I do get it when the system's firing -- and all that's missing are the visuals. The massaging, enveloping, caressing do happen, but, and, again, the big but, this can only happen when the level of audible distortion drops below a certain level. People are so used to the standard of normal low level hifi distortion that they somehow feel that you can never get rid of it; but you can, you have to firstly believe it's possible, and secondly, persevere with the fine tuning, tweaking, etc, until it's eradicated. Unfortunately, it's a bit of an all or nothing thing: to use a car analogy, drive the Ferrari at 150mph, firstly with a single wheel out of balance, secondly wiith that defect corrected by adding a miserable little piece of metal to the wheel rim. One experience will be a nightmare, the other will be magic.
And so it is also for audio ...
Frank
I realised 25 years ago that the typical, separate preamp only adds weaknesses to the system. The 2 extra sets of RCA connectors alone will do enough damage to cancel any gains: yes, it may sound better in some ways, but one is further away from getting truly undistorted sound. Of course, if you have multiple sources then there is a problem, but the way I would "solve" that is to create, or use, a very high quality "integrated amplifier".
Of course the industry in general doesn't believe in such things; that solution is only for the "cheaper stuff" :b. But, an all out, everything in one box should have no trouble besting the separates ...
Frank
Bob, it's not smartness or anything like that, it's the inquiring mind. I'm certain that many thousands have heard exactly what I've heard happening, but they've passed on it: they've just taken it as one of those things, a momentary special moment, caused by cosmic turnings or too much alcohol, myriads of excuses can be dragged out :b. But I have the classic engineer's or scientist's mind: if I hear something happening that doesn't make sense then I need to understand what's going on, that's what I've spent the last 25 years, on and off, foolin' around with.
But it's mighty tricky to track down, to grab a handle on. Which is why I'm sure a lot of others who've investigated to a certain point finally give up; because it all gets too hard!
There are many "secrets" in getting good sound, none of which are actually secret!! Keeping things as simple as possible is one of those: every, I repeat, every added complexity most likely will make the end task, of getting top notch sound, just that little bit harder.
The biggest "secret" of all, is that you have to combine all the little, individual "secrets", until the sound comes right. Mighty simple, but seemingly so very hard for many people to grasp ... :b
Frank
But it's mighty tricky to track down, to grab a handle on. Which is why I'm sure a lot of others who've investigated to a certain point finally give up; because it all gets too hard!
There are many "secrets" in getting good sound, none of which are actually secret!! Keeping things as simple as possible is one of those: every, I repeat, every added complexity most likely will make the end task, of getting top notch sound, just that little bit harder.
The biggest "secret" of all, is that you have to combine all the little, individual "secrets", until the sound comes right. Mighty simple, but seemingly so very hard for many people to grasp ... :b
Frank
Since it's being talked about at the moment, the volume control is a good one to mention. As far as I'm concerned, if it's a typical potentiometer, no matter how many $100s of dollars it costs, then it will never allow the playback to rise to the level that I'm after. Even if the rest of the system is worth half a million, then that one aspect will prevent the sound getting to where it should ...
Frank
Frank
I will take it seriously, Tom, sorry about that, because commenting on it bears repeating over and over again. That disappearance into a black hole of digital high frequencies is a form of distortion, everyone knows vinyl distortion characteristics through decades of hearing such, but the digital variation is more subtle, less obviously something you can point the finger at. The first time I heard this happening on another system I nearly fell off my chair -- where the hell's the sound gone, I thought!
I can't explain in technical terms what exactly is happening, I haven't got the equipment or expertise to pinpoint precisely the interactions causing the behaviour. What I do know is that if you give the part of the circuitry that does the D to A conversion the cleanest possible electrical environment to work in, if you baby that key part, then this distortion disappears. If you read up about the highest rated D/A units, the common characteristic is that the engineers went totally anal about shielding this circuitry, and stabilising power supplies feeding the electronics ...
Frank
It can't help but degrade, unless it manages to compensate in key areas for deficiencies elsewhere. Rather than a car analogy, I'll use a trucking one, might appeal to people more! Load up a flatbed truck with goods to be transported in a sloppy, poor integrity way, and the driving to the destination will typically be a quite a disturbing one, every bump on the road and going around a corner will be an adventure, in a negative sense! Add another parcel of goods, and it just might do the trick, it manages to jam the badly organised other parcels together in such a way that they don't move around quite as much, so it is a "solution" of sorts ...
Of course, the real answer is to fully organise and tie down all the items with complete integrity, and then you drive over rough roads, etc, as fast as you like, without any headaches. But this is not as "exciting" a way to deal with the issue, horses for courses ...
:bFrank
My suspicion on what was happening, is that interference was being transferred from the CD player to the power amp. Or vice versa. Through the connectors between the two: yes, this shouldn't happen, especially for expensive gear, but the cost of a component gives very little guide as to how impervious equipment is to these sort of interactions. There are lots, and lots of "shouldn'ts" in audio ...
So what was the preamp doing to help the situation? Possibly, being the equivalent of a very, very expensive ferrite core, in other words acting as a filter, or screen, stopping unwanted electronic muck leaking between the CD and power amp. No-one can say that audio is easy ... :b
Frank
You'd better not let Tim see this ... never hear the last of it ...
:bBass "control" is only part of it: though having just heard a high end system with oodles of bass, giving a totally unbalanced sound, I can understand this aspect ...
Also helping to a large degree, the speakers were locked to the scaffolding, so the vibrations of the cabinets were very effectively damped. The speakers were well clear of other electronics, and possibly using a dedicated mains power feed.
Some of the best sound I've ever heard has been through PA systems: normally pretty unlistenable to, but when they get it right it thrashes typical high end audio. Once at an Expo pavilion, and another effort at an Al Jolson story theatre production, in the latter they had a full big band running through the house system, and it was clean as a whistle! Unlike, some appalling disasters I've had to suffer through ...
Frank
Note the "killer" element of the darTZeel, an "optical" volume control mechanism, no nasty potentiometer, or mechanical switches in that key area. I suspect if Mike tried any preamp now, no matter how expensive, that used conventional volume control mechansims, that he would find the drop in quality because of this factor unacceptable ...
Frank
Actually, it's the other way round ...!! Most amplifiers sound less powerful than they should, considering the rated power of the units. Tim is one of the, seemingly rare, audio engineers who does "get" what's important for making an amplifier work properly: a true, I repeat true, 20 watt amp, driving conventionally sensitive speakers should be able to create a very impressive, highly convincing sound picture. If that doesn't happen then there is something "wrong" -- it's as simple as that ...
Frank
Very easily: consider if the input has very high frequency, inaudible noise riding on top of it, and the inbetween component does an excellent job of pretending to be a piece of wire, apart from the circuit through the choice of parts acting as an excellent filter, discarding that unwanted and nominally inaudible extra signal element. The following power amp, say, doesn't like ultrasonic nonsense, which upsets its working, so now the end result is markedly superior reproduced sound. Better sound from greater complexity -- sometimes the fates are on your side ...
Frank
Without "pudding" anyone down , the answer to knowing whether a system is working correctly or not is pretty easy: if you have to ask yourself, switch on the left side of your brain, spin the intellectual gears to do the internal "enquiry" -- is my system working OK or not? -- then the answer is always, no, it's not up to scratch! Because, the psychoacoustic element in the hearing mechanism is crucial, and that doesn't involve the thinking brain: the mind, and body, knows when the sound is right and doesn't need to go into an involved, inner debate as to whether enough of the boxes have been ticked. My judgement of sound is instantaneous; it either sounds good or it doesn't, and I couldn't give a damn whose moniker is on the bits, whether it cost a million bucks, or it's only worth $5 ...
Most people in this game have had these moments, which is why they're still in the "madness"; they know it's possible because at least once they've heard the "magic", organic sound, liquid, dense, satisfying, how many adjectives do you want? -- these are all synonyms for sound with a sufficiently low level of distortion that the brain can accept the sound as being music, rather than something pretending to be music, struggling to get it right but juuust not hitting the spot ...
Frank
, the answer to knowing whether a system is working correctly or not is pretty easy: if you have to ask yourself, switch on the left side of your brain, spin the intellectual gears to do the internal "enquiry" -- is my system working OK or not? -- then the answer is always, no, it's not up to scratch! Because, the psychoacoustic element in the hearing mechanism is crucial, and that doesn't involve the thinking brain: the mind, and body, knows when the sound is right and doesn't need to go into an involved, inner debate as to whether enough of the boxes have been ticked. My judgement of sound is instantaneous; it either sounds good or it doesn't, and I couldn't give a damn whose moniker is on the bits, whether it cost a million bucks, or it's only worth $5 ...Most people in this game have had these moments, which is why they're still in the "madness"; they know it's possible because at least once they've heard the "magic", organic sound, liquid, dense, satisfying, how many adjectives do you want? -- these are all synonyms for sound with a sufficiently low level of distortion that the brain can accept the sound as being music, rather than something pretending to be music, struggling to get it right but juuust not hitting the spot ...
Frank
Everything like this is very easy to understand, so long as one drops the fantasy of audio components being "scientific" black boxes: the layman's version of this concept is that something exists in space totally independent of everything that's around it; no matter what happens in its vicinity, the behaviour of the item remains sacrosanct, untouched by the external goings on. To take an "extreme" example, someone plugs in a heavy duty arc welder into the socket next to the A/D unit's plug and starts fooling around on the other side of a soundproof wall: the measurement people might, foolishly, assert that this will make absolutely no difference to the audible results
.So, in this case, a different power cable will probably make a dramatic difference, because its electrical characteristics will filter out a much greater level of the enormous amount of electrical rubbish being fed into its power supply.
But, we don't have this nasty electronic noise maker right next to the sensitive recording device!! Okay, we'll shift to a few rooms away, but still on the same circuit. Hmmm, not good enough. Okaaay, let's it plug into a different circuit still going back to the main board -- oh dear, those naughty electrons are still clever enough to run back to that point and come back down the circuit we're using: this misbehaviour must be controlled :b!! I know, we'll take the arc welder out of the hall, and take it to the house next door, surely that will fool those annoying electrons! Blast, they've worked out that they can run out to the road, along the wire, and come back down to the circuit breakers in the hall. What, oh what, is to be done ...???
:bFrank
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