Great article on "Analogue Warmth"

[Blizzard]

Sorry AKM is a great company with excellent products, but "Velvet sound" looks like pure marketing. The objective crowd will probably spend part of 2016 dissecting it in the science section of WBF. http://www.akm.com/akm/en/product/featured/velvetsound/ .

I'm basing my thoughts on the velvet sound filters on personal experience, not the marketing literature.

 

[Blizzard]

Why should I? My musical interests are very far from the recordings we can expect to be available in this format.

Many people say then. But change their minds after actual hearing it.

 

[Blizzard]

Thanks Mike that is what I thought. Merging sure has a small dealer network :-(

That's because their NADAC is their first product for the high end home audio market. And it just came out last year. First deliveries were in the summer.

 

[microstrip]

Why do these people buy these watches then? Only to see what time it is?

Seeing the time is secondary for them.

 

[Blizzard]

Seeing the time is secondary for them.

Yes so they are buying it because they are cool. Or perhaps an investment. But for something to have value as an investment, you need people to think they are cool.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

That is in your not so humble opinion, LOL.

IMHO, the sound of the best stuff from the 60's and even the 50's is leaps and bounds ahead of the latest quad DSD stuff or any digital that I have heard on great systems with great digital gear!
I really do think you may want to go and listen to a great analog set up, whether that be vinyl or tape and then get back to us with your ( hopefully at that point) humble opinion. Until then, I submit that
everything else from you is 'supposition'.

In my not so humble opinion, nothing sounds better than the best small combo jazz recordings of the late 1950s and early 1960s, but it was the way they were recorded, not the technology that created that sound. Take a similar combo, record them "live/in studio" with very few overdubs and poor, by today's standards, isolation of instruments, on top quality digital equipment, and it would sound even better -- quieter, more accurate, wider dynamic range, better stereo imaging -- the list is long. The magic in those recordings was in the technique, not the gear.



Isolate the instruments, and you lose so much. "Bleed" of another instrument into the mic, filtered through the acoustics of a good room, is magic. Unfortunately isolation is the common technique these days because it gives the engineers so much more control in the mix. But it loses a lot in the process. Then of course that is John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly, Miles Davis and Bill Evans. If only we could "model" them!

Tim

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

fair enough and I did not intend to be patronizing if that is how you took it.

another way to put it is that good ole redbook as we know it is still a fine way to hear music considering the cost/benefit/ease of use. with a little effort (and I assume you do what you can to optimize things) it sounds pretty good. but as we try to make it better and better some of the weakest aspects of it get exposed as not musical. at those 'points of departure' to another level of redbook performance we do look back and wonder how we did not recognize those 'issues/nasties/'characterisitcs' as non-musical at the time. well......that is always how it is with distortion.....we don't see it clearly until it gets removed. i realize my use of the word 'distortion' will cause consternation since it infers some sort of measurement. but I'm not intending for that meaning. only that distortion is something 'non-musical' that when removed the performance is better.

i guess we might never agree on that unless we could listen to a before and after together. no worries.....we don't have to agree.

one driver for me is living with analog every day for decades makes me pursue that degree of musical involvement in my digital since there is so much great digital and it's so easy to listen to.

I didn't take it as patronizing at all, Mike. As I said, I've heard that argument made in the most dismissive, snarky way possible. I still think it's a weak argument, but you deliver it like a gentleman.

Tim

 

[nc42acc]

I buy watches because they are cool and I like the variety of man jewelry, just like my obsession with audio equipment. Do we have any therapists in the house.

Yes so they are buying it because they are cool. Or perhaps an investment. But for something to have value as an investment, you need people to think they are cool.

 

[Blizzard]

I buy watches because they are cool and I like the variety of man jewelry, just like my obsession with audio equipment. Do we have any therapists in the house.

I'm a huge watch man myself. Is this ever a marvel of engineering:

 

[Gregadd]

One would hope such sophomoric deductive reasoning would have been self edited by deciding not to post it.

I was quite the genuis when I was a sophmore. If only this friendly(I hope0advice was given and taken with my first post in this thread.:b

 

[amirm]

I have but one obligation, If I may parapharse the quotation, "To thine own self be true" -To thine own ears be true. Accepting digital as flawless would violate that.

No it wouldn't. That is what we have been explaining. Your experience is based on recordings, not formats and technologies. That opens the options to more than the one answer you give as the cause.

Long time ago we did a listening test of MP3 versus another codec that had extended frequency response. All but one listener gave the extended response better score. The last hold out did not. I went and interviewed her and asked why. I played the original again for her and the MP3 and showed how much more high frequency it had. She said that was what bothered her! She liked the MP3 because it was less bright than the original. In other words, she had scored the diminished version as being superior to the original according to her ear.

So here we were and the original music with its far better fidelity lost out to the highly compressed version due to one's preference. There was no flaw in the original because the MP3 came from that version and no processing was done to it.

You can't keep making the universe of answers be what you say. That is, if you prefer one set of recordings, it translates into flaws in the technology of the other. Your experiments were not set up to prove that point or even demonstrate it.

Attempts have been made to demonstrate what you say but they always fail to show such flaws in controlled tests. The artifacts that we say so readily are audible to every analog audiophile, fails them when it comes to recognize them without knowing which is analog and which is digital.

 

[microstrip]

Yes so they are buying it because they are cool. Or perhaps an investment. But for something to have value as an investment, you need people to think they are cool.

One of my friends knows is watches extensively. He knows about the mechanics, the technological achievements, the history and cultures associates with watches. And about investments also.

 

[Blizzard]

One of my friends knows is watches extensively. He knows about the mechanics, the technological achievements, the history and cultures associates with watches. And about investments also.

But he doesn't think they are cool?

 

[microstrip]

But he doesn't think they are cool?

But it is not the main reason of his hobby. Do you think your DACs are cool?

 

[Blizzard]

But it is not the main reason of his hobby. Do you think your DACs are cool?

Yes of course! Same with my watches.

 

[nc42acc]

My Line Magnetic LM-500ca is super cool with the gold anodized face, unfortunately it doesn't sound as cool as it looks, not bad though.

But it is not the main reason of his hobby. Do you think your DACs are cool?

 

[Al M.]

No it wouldn't. That is what we have been explaining. Your experience is based on recordings, not formats and technologies. That opens the options to more than the one answer you give as the cause.

Long time ago we did a listening test of MP3 versus another codec that had extended frequency response. All but one listener gave the extended response better score. The last hold out did not. I went and interviewed her and asked why. I played the original again for her and the MP3 and showed how much more high frequency it had. She said that was what bothered her! She liked the MP3 because it was less bright than the original. In other words, she had scored the diminished version as being superior to the original according to her ear.

So here we were and the original music with its far better fidelity lost out to the highly compressed version due to one's preference. There was no flaw in the original because the MP3 came from that version and no processing was done to it.

You can't keep making the universe of answers be what you say. That is, if you prefer one set of recordings, it translates into flaws in the technology of the other. Your experiments were not set up to prove that point or even demonstrate it.

Attempts have been made to demonstrate what you say but they always fail to show such flaws in controlled tests. The artifacts that we say so readily are audible to every analog audiophile, fails them when it comes to recognize them without knowing which is analog and which is digital.

The interesting thing though is not that, like in the caricature of "analog warmth", I find SOTA analog appealing because it has muted high frequency response. On the contrary, I admire that on the best pressings of great recordings it delivers the most transparent sound and high frequencies that I have heard from stereo systems so far. Very close comes SOTA digital in the form of the dCS Vivaldi stack. I have never previously heard high frequencies from digital that are as transparent. Peter A. who was at the same listening session at Goodwin's where we heard it commented to me at one point during that extraordinary session "I have never heard triangles sound like that from digital before." Yep.

So that perceived high frequency extension and transparency is what SOTA analog and SOTA digital have in common, it is not where they deviate from one another.

This puts the silly meme of "analog warmth" to rest for me.

 

[nc42acc]

I have accepted many of the digital flaws because digital has enabled the LAAS in me. I love my analog system, it does many things remarkably well.

Lazy Ass Audiophile Syndrome.

 

[Gregadd]

No it wouldn't. That is what we have been explaining. Your experience is based on recordings, not formats and technologies. That opens the options to more than the one answer you give as the cause.

Long time ago we did a listening test of MP3 versus another codec that had extended frequency response. All but one listener gave the extended response better score. The last hold out did not. I went and interviewed her and asked why. I played the original again for her and the MP3 and showed how much more high frequency it had. She said that was what bothered her! She liked the MP3 because it was less bright than the original. In other words, she had scored the diminished version as being superior to the original according to her ear.

So here we were and the original music with its far better fidelity lost out to the highly compressed version due to one's preference. There was no flaw in the original because the MP3 came from that version and no processing was done to it.

You can't keep making the universe of answers be what you say. That is, if you prefer one set of recordings, it translates into flaws in the technology of the other. Your experiments were not set up to prove that point or even demonstrate it.

Attempts have been made to demonstrate what you say but they always fail to show such flaws in controlled tests. The artifacts that we say so readily are audible to every analog audiophile, fails them when it comes to recognize them without knowing which is analog and which is digital.

Refuting someones position is a daunting task For now I'll be happy that what I am hearing is not a figment of my imagination. I've spent decades fighting tnat. Baby seps.

 

[astrotoy]

How on earth could you possibly isolate the contribution or otherwise of a dac in two different systems in two different rooms!

Keith.

I replaced my E28, with my mch NADAC. I had the demo NADAC in my home for a week before I made the decision, switching between the E28 and the NADAC. NADAC was definitely better, however, the E28 was really fine. If you want a good deal on an E28 which is great condition, PM me.

Larry