What is the cause of PCM glare? Bad recording or Bad DAC? Anything banish it?

[opus112]

Some people seem to be confusing strong treble, with distorted treble.

Weakening the treble is at least one poster's 'solution' to having noisy treble. I prefer to say 'noisy treble' rather than 'distorted treble'. Personally I prefer to fix the root of the problem rather than apply a band-aid.

Strong treble is what one gets in real life, from real instruments; distorted treble is what a very high percentage of audio systems deliver when they're not working correctly, and you can call that "glare" - just fiddling with a tone control is using aspirin to ease the discomfort, not solving the problem.

+1

 

[Folsom]

If you have any glare in your system Norah will rip your ears off bleeding. Good test CD.

Interesting, I consider it one of the most relaxing CD's I have... But my setup has some pretty damn good power treatment.

 

[nc42acc]

Am I confused but isn't most glare focused in the presence region, 4khz to 6khz, not the treble region?

 

[nc42acc]

Folsom same here, Norah has a spectacular voice.

Interesting, I consider it one of the most relaxing CD's I have... But my setup has some pretty damn good power treatment.

 

[fas42]

Am I confused but isn't most glare focused in the presence region, 4khz to 6khz, not the treble region?

A way of looking at it is that classic harmonic distortion of that region will create spurious frequencies smack bang in the middle of the treble area, your tweeter will be working its backside off spitting out that unwanted addition - this is why listening to a tweeter alone can be mighty disturbing ... I use the technique of listening directly to the tweeter, when highly unpleasant this is a giveaway of faulty reproduction.

 

[nc42acc]

Makes sense, I can see how it can overload a tweeter. Thank you.

A way of looking at it is that classic harmonic distortion of that region will create spurious frequencies smack bang in the middle of the treble area, your tweeter will be working its backside off spitting out that unwanted addition - this is why listening to a tweeter alone can be mighty unpleasant ... I use the technique of listening directly to the tweeter, when highly unpleasant this is a giveaway of faulty reproduction.

 

[Folsom]

I don't think what Frank is saying is true in the slightest as described, but either way same results.

The reason treble (beyond 800hz?) Is affected more is because the changes to the music from noise affect it more. It's simple to consider that the treble is changing faster in not only frequency but amplitude at very small difference compared to large frequencies that are changing much less. Every phase change and frequency change represents a perfect moment for noise to change the music more detrimentally than other points in time, and this happens at way higher rates the higher in frequency you go.

Now consider out of control 2-5khz is considered the harshest range often, well, you've got a recipe for fatigue.

 

[fas42]

Yes, fair enough. Trouble is defining what you mean by treble, where does it start? I gave up using terminology like bass, midrange, presence, treble, etc, etc, decades ago; I only worry about whether the sound is "right" or "wrong" - and it's easiest to hear the "wrongness" from the tweeter ... the first thing I would do if I walked in onto an unknown system, and it jarred, would be to walk up to close to a tweeter and listen ... yep, it sounds like garbage - major problems here ...

 

[Ken Newton]

Am I confused but isn't most glare focused in the presence region, 4khz to 6khz, not the treble region?

That's generally been my experience. I perceive glare as being in the mid to upper midrange, which may only be because the ear is most sensitive in that band. I notice it most readily with massed instruments, such as horns, strings and chorus. I think it most intriguing when glare is produced by chorus, as there's no high treble produced by the human voice. This argues that glare doesn't necessarily originate in the high treble. That glare seems most evident with massed instruments leads me to wonder whether it is caused be some sort of complex intermodulation effect.

My library reference CD for provoking glare is the "Raider's of the Lost Ark" soundtrack, mastered by Steve Hoffman on DCC. The massed horns on this CD used to drive me to eject the CD. It's only when I upgraded my DAC enough that I finally heard the horns on this CD without the glare. Part of the solution to removing digital glare is definitely in the DAC. I'm uncertain as to how much, if any, is inextricable from the recording.

 

[fas42]

The massed horns on this CD used to drive me to eject the entire CD. It's only when I upgraded my DAC enough that I finally heard the horns without the glare.

Which makes it so funny when people say that competent digital replay has been around for ages, what's the problem? Certain combinations of sound do invoke "some sort of complex intermodulation effect", and the result is "impossible" to listen to - using something like Fast Car, by Tracy Chapman, is never going to tell you anything about this behaviour.

 

[DaveC]

Keith I have to agree with caesar, an excellent vinyl rip is the best digital there is or might I better say "that I have heard". Top rippers these days in conjunction with their record cleaning machines are using ultrasonic cleaning, record revirginizer or winyl record cleaner and together with proper post processing (ie: Izotope RX3 for recording, resampling and cleaning without tampering with the music so no equalization, noise reduction or normalization) the result leaves you with a sound that is more natural and open than any DSD I have heard to date. No clicks, no pops, no static, no groove noise, simply the wonderful sound vinyl offers with none of its drawbacks. The good thing is phenomenal results can be achieved without having a super expensive rig as Pbthal has proved time after time.

Yeah, I have a bunch of his rips too and they are good. I have some better ones but very few.

I've gotta try out some of the Stockfisch recordings...

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?19411-The-Ultimate-Vinyl-Rip

 

[DaveC]

I'm still not sure I have any better idea what "pcm" glare is

Audition a Schiit Bifrost DAC.

 

[DaveC]

That will be because it doesn't exist.
Keith.

I agree (can't believe I said that ) but many DACs have issues with glare. It's getting much better as DACs improve.

 

[Fiddle Faddle]

What you dislike about digital is not something inherent in digital, because it's not added back in when you rip vinyl to digital. 2) What you love about vinyl is not something digital is incapable of, because it's still there when you rip to vinyl.

I can't speak for others, but I have never heard a digital transcription of vinyl that sounds like the original, nor as subjectively good as the original. Granted, I have not heard a large number of analogue to digital converters, but the ones I have heard all add their own colouration to the sound, thus degrading it as compared to the original. They may not necessarily add digital "glare" to the sound (for want of a better expression), but they do degrade the original sound nevertheless. Michael Fremer has also done a fair few analogue to digital conversions from vinyl and has come to the same conclusion. They are not as good as the vinyl played back "live" and that each model converter contributes it's own sonic signature to the rip. Perhaps extremely expensive converters are sonically transparent (and I have heard one or two anecdotal reports that a couple of extremely high end professional ones are), it is just that I have not heard one myself.

A mitigating issue here is of course the quality of the source to begin with. Perhaps the more modest the calibre of the source, the less the effects of the conversion to digital are noticed. In my own experiments, for example, running a state of the art 24/192 fully digital orchestral recording through an analogue to digital converter versus vinyl results in the deficiencies of that process being much more evident from the digital source rather than from the vinyl source.

 

[Whatmore]

Audition a Schiit Bifrost DAC.

That's Bifrost glare then, not pcm glare

 

[fas42]

That's Bifrost glare then, not pcm glare

http://www.tonepublications.com/review/the-schiit-bifrost-dac/ ... sounds like a personal audition is necessary ...