Digital that sounds like analog

[opus111]

The Tchaikovsky disc I recommended earlier was out of a boxed set of 10 'Master Recordings' by Herbert von Karajan. Having played over half of them now, I can confidently recommend the whole box. I've just finished listening to the ravishingly mellifluous violin tone of the young Anne-Sophie Mutter in Beethoven's Violin Concerto, recorded in 1979, another disc in this set.

http://www.amazon.com/Herbert-von-Karajan-Recordings-Digital/dp/B000W99II4/

 

[opus111]

Here's another boxed set, this time of Wilhelm Kempff playing the works of Robert Schumann. I learned quite a lot of Schumann myself as a student of piano so he'll always hold a place in my heart. Whilst this set is by no means complete, its excellent value for money both for the quality of the playing and the recording, and the fact that these 4 CDs are stuffed full of wonderful music. The total playing time is just a whisker short of 5 hours.

http://www.amazon.com/Schumann-Piano-Works-Robert/dp/B000001GFJ/

 

[Kindhornman]

Richard,
Are you ending this thread here and going to the thread with the photos only? Anything new in your testing phase here?

 

[LL21]

Here's another boxed set, this time of Wilhelm Kempff playing the works of Robert Schumann. I learned quite a lot of Schumann myself as a student of piano so he'll always hold a place in my heart. Whilst this set is by no means complete, its excellent value for money both for the quality of the playing and the recording, and the fact that these 4 CDs are stuffed full of wonderful music. The total playing time is just a whisker short of 5 hours.

http://www.amazon.com/Schumann-Piano-Works-Robert/dp/B000001GFJ/

Nice! I got Ashkenazy playing Schumann piano works...have you heard them? Just curious

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00006IU8T/ref=wms_ohs_product_img

 

[opus111]

Are you ending this thread here and going to the thread with the photos only? Anything new in your testing phase here?

Thanks for the prompt Steven - I had a few guys over for listening to the Ozone four days ago and I decided to make some small tweaks - primarily to the filter. I had a small board with ferrites on it in one of the pictures and I have added some damping resistors across those as I'm not sure their inductance vs freq is totally linear. But also I realized I would be better off with 50R impedance in the filter, rather than 100R as the lower figure gives a worthwhile noise improvement with the AD605. So I've been recalculating the new values and yesterday was almost a whole day winding new coils. I'll post up the revised filter shortly.

@Lloyd - I have Ashkenazy playing Chopin and Beethoven and some Rakmaninov but no Schumann, no. I like him

 

[opus111]

Here's the newly revised filter which I predict will give slightly lower hiss levels. The amp I'm currently using doesn't have balanced inputs - if it did then I'd have even lower hiss as balanced is lower noise.



I plan to incorporate the ferrite beads into the input and output inductor values, so the actual coils I'm winding for those 4 are slightly lower in value than this schematic by around 5-10uH. Those are the only coils which don't need to be particularly high Q as they're seeing series resistance anyway so performance doesn't much suffer if some of that inductance is made from relatively low Q beads to quench parasitics.

 

[NorthStar]

-- Richard, you're like Marantz; they love their ferrite beads. :b

 

[opus111]

Ha I never knew that - so Ken Ishiwata is a ferrite fan too?

 

[NorthStar]

-- Well, I'm not sure about Ken himself, but regular Marantz products (AV receivers, CD players) sure do use quite a few berrite feads.

 

[opus111]

How do you find that out? You look inside or you have a penchant for poring over schematics?

 

[NorthStar]

How do you find that out? You look inside or you have a penchant for poring over schematics?

A mix of the three.

 

[opus111]

What does the classic NOS droop look like?

Yesterday I coaxed LTSpice (the free simulator you can download for yourself at http://www.linear.com/designtools/software/#LTspice) into showing me what the frequency response of a NOS DAC looks like, uncorrected. This is what you hear if your NOS DAC does nothing to flatten the natural sinc roll-off - say if you have a TDA1543 with only a resistor for I/V. Here's the plot :



If anyone's interested in replicating this for him/herself, then shout and I'll share the schematic which generated it. I'm currently checking over my 'LAID' transversal filter's FR with the elliptic filter in place.

 

[NorthStar]

-- Looks like the THX target curve.

 

[DonH50]

It's just a sin(x)/x (sinc) function. It should be down 3.54 dB at Nyquist (fs/2) theoretically for 50% duty cycle IIRC.

If you use a conventional ("NOS") DAC but run it at a higher rate (oversampling, though not a delta-sigma design) you can reduce this effect. ADI used to have a DAC or three that would do this; not sure now that the audio world has gone so heavily for delta-sigma designs.

 

[TBone]

Some (I claim some cause I've not seen 'em all) of Linn's digital players also used Ferrite.

tb1

 

[opus111]

Latest boxed set recommendation...

I'm about three-quarters through this set of 10 discs of Beethoven's String Quartets. No reservations at all about the SQ or the playing - crisp, dynamic and totally engaging. Oddly the Amazon pic shows its Decca but my version has the Philips label - no hints of 'Bitstream' sound though, thank goodness

http://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Com...8&keywords=beethoven+string+quartets+complete

 

[opus111]

Tchaik Symphonies that are quite simply bursting out of my speakers with intensity!

http://www.amazon.com/Tchaikovsky-Symphonies-Pathetique-Pyotr-Ilyich/dp/B000001G8B/

The Amazon reviewers for these recordings say it all, I have nothing to add. You do need a DAC with huge dynamics though to get the best from these, if you listen on an S-D DAC then the mind-blowing brass and frenetic strings simply won't deliver the bite.

 

[NorthStar]

-- Alright, name few DACs* that would render those type of music recordings in all their splendor, please. :b

* Available in the now.

 

[opus111]

Well I haven't heard these DACs but based on their designers' abilities and the parts used then AMR's CD-77, Audial's Model S and EC Designs' SD player would be my suggestions. That's because they're all using the TDA1541A, but as far as I know none of them use a steep output filter to keep the image frequencies >22kHz out of the downstream components. Therefore to get the best dynamics the preamp and amp need to be chosen with care.

 

[LL21]

Well I haven't heard these DACs but based on their designers' abilities and the parts used then AMR's CD-77, Audial's Model S and EC Designs' SD player would be my suggestions. That's because they're all using the TDA1541A, but as far as I know none of them use a steep output filter to keep the image frequencies >22kHz out of the downstream components. Therefore to get the best dynamics the preamp and amp need to be chosen with care.

Interesting...what would one need to look for in the preamp and amp then? Particularly interested since as you know, i run a 1541A double crown DAC in my system.