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

[Purite Audio]

I do not subscribe to the notion. I merely alerted you to the inconsistency. Many use vinyl in their design process.

I am sure they probably do, and that would explain a lot.
Keith.

 

[Gregadd]

Lol

 

[esldude]

I do not subscribe to the notion. I merely alerted you to the inconsistency. Many use vinyl in their design process.

So your pointing out the inconsistent practices of those using vinyl in design.

 

[Gregadd]

So your pointing out the inconsistent practices of those using vinyl in design.

No the inconsistencies of those who try to blame digitals woes in vinyl.

 

[Purite Audio]

No the inconsistencies of those who try to blame digitals woes in vinyl.

Remind me what are digital's woes again, is it the huge dynamic range, magnificent channel separation, lack of tracking,tracing distortion, wow,flutter ?
Keith

 

[spazmatron]

Remind me what are digital's woes again, is it the huge dynamic range, magnificent channel separation, lack of tracking,tracing distortion, wow,flutter ?
Keith

seriously lacking in nostalgia value...

 

[Purite Audio]

seriously lacking in nostalgia value...

It's in its mid thirties, I wish I was!
Keith.

 

[spazmatron]

It's in its mid thirties, I wish I was!
Keith.

well i am

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

It's in its mid thirties, I wish I was!
Keith.

Hell, brother, I'd take 50.

Tim

 

[Gregadd]

Remind me what are digital's woes again, is it the huge dynamic range, magnificent channel separation, lack of tracking,tracing distortion, wow,flutter ?
Keith

In this case we are discussing glare. The excuse du jour is having your system optied for vinyl. for v8nyl.

 

[Purite Audio]

In this case we are discussing glare. The excuse du jour is having your system optied for vinyl. for v8nyl.

We could just agree, you might say, despite digital's technical superiority I prefer the sound of vinyl.
I might retort , despite vinyl's poor measured performance it still manages to sound wonderful, everybody happy.
Keith.

 

[jkeny]

Remind me what are digital's woes again, is it the huge dynamic range, magnificent channel separation, lack of tracking,tracing distortion, wow,flutter ?
Keith

At it's worst, it has unbelievable sound - at it's best it can nearly sound as good as vinyl

 

[esldude]

At it's worst, it has unbelievable sound - at it's best it can nearly sound as good as vinyl

I don't think that he wanted to promote the fairy tale.

 

[opus112]

Remind me what are digital's woes again, is it the huge dynamic range, magnificent channel separation, lack of tracking,tracing distortion, wow,flutter ?

Not all digital has 'huge dynamic range' when subjectively evaluated. Sure, the measurements do show huge dynamic range, greater than vinyl without a doubt. Subjectively though 'dynamics' tends to suck when opamps are used in the output stages of DACs. Which does account for a very large proportion of DACs in current operation.

 

[awsmone]

Not all digital has 'huge dynamic range' when subjectively evaluated. Sure, the measurements do show huge dynamic range, greater than vinyl without a doubt. Subjectively though 'dynamics' tends to suck when opamps are used in the output stages of DACs. Which does account for a very large proportion of DACs in current operation.[/QUO

Isnt differences in dynamic range difficult to judge in most people's systems

The ambient noise floor of most listening rooms is 35 to 45 dB

And most hifis don't go above 120dB at the most, many closer to 100-105dB before mass distortion or clipping

so majority of people could only achieve 60dB and 80dB under ideal conditions

On top of that most recordings are compressed for this vary reason

Early dsd recording were interesting for opposite reason as because with scarlet book you cannot go above a certain saturation....

Thus many were very quiet, and people complained they were too quiet to hear in their systems, I have a Firebird recording just like that

If you can hear it at the start its way to loud on playback when it gets louder later lol

Maybe the dynamic range of digital is irrelevant for us, but its most definitely larger.

Recording compression, due to limitation of playback, is more of an issue... much pop has virtually no dynamics

 

[opus112]

You seem to be citing measurements here, and I'm not in disagreement that measurements (those we currently use) do show incontrovertibly that digital has greater dynamic range. Even at the 16bit level.

Nevertheless subjective differences in dynamics are not hard to discern. Try an experiment.

If you have a smartphone to play music, connect it to your amp and play music from it through your system. Then get a pair of headphones and connect those to the same output. You'll need a one to two 3.5mm adapter. Then listen again.

 

[fas42]

The key term opus112 used was "subjective" - this obviously is very hard to quantify, but if one has the ability to adjust a system from "flat, lifeless" to "subjectively dynamic", and back again by performing seemingly trivially changes to the system's environment - at will, as I can with my current setup - then it all makes sense. Digital sound typically suffers from the disease of being a bit take-it-or-leave-it, easily falls into the rut of coming across as background sound - the volume has to be overly pushed to inject some energy into the replay. Luckily, this impasse seems finally to have been breached, there are encouraging signs that standard, although expensive, digital playback components can now reproduce Redbook material correctly - it will steadily improve from now on, I feel.

Regarding current pop, one of my benchmarks is Adele's 21 - I'm quite pleased that my latest tweaking project has this nicely sorted, very impressive rendition - lots of "dynamics", and musical too ...

 

[opus112]

Luckily, this impasse seems finally to have been breached, there are encouraging signs that standard, although expensive, digital playback components can now reproduce Redbook material correctly - it will steadily improve from now on, I feel.

It has been on that path for some time, its just a matter of time for the cost to descend low enough in the mass-market. My latest DAC has a BOM cost considerably under $10 but still needs some hand-matching of filter components. We will get there...

 

[fas42]

Good to hear that things are still humming!

Just on the aspect of the age of the recording, I was listening to a Readers Digest CD, literally minutes ago, on the NADs, of Jim Lowe's Green Door, from 1955 or so - and slapping my thighs to the energy and drive of that track ... a 'correct' system favours no one style or era ...

 

[Geardaddy]

Does anyone know what is the cause of PCM glare or edge? Some recently remastered cds I have, such as from MoFi seem to not have it at all. And some better dacs reduce it when playing older CDs.

Where do these artifacts come from? how do they get on the disk? Can the best dacs completely banish it?

The absence of a good grounding box....