What makes piano sound so hard to reproduce? - Page 9

Quote:

Originally Posted by xnor 

Square waves, really?

 

The problem I see is that you keep on posting walls of text with claims, anecdotes and a lot of irrelevant stuff. When somebody dissects your posts, all you do is moving on to a bunch of new claims etc. posting another wall of text, instead of actually addressing the criticism.

Maybe you just like to see your own writing, or it is cognitive dissonance or you just don't care.

 

Anyway, looking forward to your burn-in measurements. Repeatable, right?

Regarding burn-in; I know it works - since 1986 or so. It is repeatable - in a sense that if you use another new headphone of the same type, you will get about the same result in the end. DID NOT use 2 or more HPs of the same type just to cater to statistical reasons. So far, each and every of my headphones have benefited from this process which is for the most part ireversible - the headphone will not return to its new out of the box condition. Whether they return a bit into that direction from the max result achieved in 48 hour process and measured imediately after completion of that 48 process, remains to be seen/heard/remeasured after say a week time of complete inactivity. If it does, it is not much from experience with my other HPs - the benefit is there to stay.

The only catch is that generating the signal that can produce the desired goal is difficult enough for most not to even attempt it. 1 Hz ( in a word : one Hertz ) square wave at 3 V peak to peak amplitude without any DC component WITHOUT ANY VISIBLE SAGGING as observed on the DC coupled oscilloscope. You can superimpose on that any white/pink noise if you feel the square wave with its harmonics is not enough for the high frequency burn-in, but the biggest difference will always be in the low frequency range. I have described the method on head-fi using what is available online for free - ending up with 15 Hz square wave, which is not as effective and takes more time to accomplish the goal to somewhat limited degree. 

I MUCH prefer listening/working with equipment, attending concerts, etc, etc -  than being on any forum. I joined head-fi for the simple reason I am looking for some good closed HPs or IEMs for monitoring live recording with musicians present in the same acoustic space, which rules out any open headphones, no matter how much I might prefer them in quiet enviroment. I just thought I might share some of my experience with the community in exchange for the useful info I am getting here. I particularly enjoyed helping a young member with the advice for his first turntable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick_charles 
 

Well, I wish that original LP sound played "live" and digital copy sounded the same. They still do not, even using DSD at 5,6 MHz although this does come very close. I am not familiar with the reference you posted, but equipment used to make such comparisons matters a lot - not great advocate of cables, for example, but they can make a difference with such close comparisons. The end transducer, be it headphone or speaker, is VERY important and if it is not fast enough, can lead to false impressions. That "fast enough" part is particularly hard for loudspeakers - full range ESLs perhaps best suited to the task.

A 44.1/16 recording is much easier to tell apart from the original LP sound - its soundstage will be less wide and the feeling of depth in particular will be diminished.

It is also very important to choose a recording on LP that has been recorded in analog or hi rez digital, at least 88,2 kHz sampling rate, as otherwise there is no content above 20 kHz to begin with.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE !

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot 


Everyone I knew who had 4 channel records hated them because they wore out so fast. All of my friends but one abandoned the format. (He had a reel to reel capable of 4 channel.)

Explaining why that happened takes a wall of text. But it probably did boil down to the fact that vynil of the US pressings was appreciably softer than its original Japanese counterpart, leading to premature wear. Here, the wall, not by me this time:

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/Magazine/rickerinterview/ricker7.htm 

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot 

There is something wrong with your capture system if you can't capture an LP without sound quality loss. I have a Mac and an outboard 16/48 video capture box, and it is perfectly capable of reproducing an LP transparently. I did a test using Lincoln Mayorga and Distingushed Collegues 2 and when burned to a CD, the sound was identical to the LP.

I did test with Lincoln Mayorga too, and DSD recording at 2.8 MHz far outstrips anything possible with CD. Goes to show that most probably I demand/expect more than you consider as transparent reproduction. DSD at 5.6 MHz is appreciably better still , but still not indistinguishable from the original. Direct to disc recordings are the best for such tests, with an ocassional very well made half speed mastering analog recording that might offer a tad more extended high frequencies ( analog tape good to about 35 kHz, half speed mastering flat to 50 kHz > overall, good to 35 kHz -  real time cutting good to approx 27 kHz ); for obvious reasons, no half speed mastered direct to disc is possible, as some overzealous seller in recent memory was describing his item(s) .

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot 


Everyone I knew who had 4 channel records hated them because they wore out so fast. All of my friends but one abandoned the format. (He had a reel to reel capable of 4 channel.)
When you were cutting LPs, were you doing the mastering as well? Generally, there would be a cutting master that would have the roll off and RIAA curve applied.

The RIAA curve is never applied to a tape master, it's applied while cutting the lacquer (the actual master disc cut on the lathe), and is placed in the chain just ahead of the cutter driving electronics.  The chain would start with the master tape playback (digital or analog), mastering equalizers, which are very specialized equalizers that are adjusted subjectively for balance, but that can have their settings logged so they can be exactly re-set if another lacquer is ever required.  Following the equalizers there may be a variety of dynamics processors, including HF limiters, peak limiters, etc., but these are not required unless the goal is to record a louder than normal groove.  In my projects all of those processors were bypassed.  Part of recording extra-loud records is to control peak content and especially high frequency content.  A cutter head, and also a playback stylus, are limited in maximum velocity in part because of the physical size and shape of their stylii and the resulting groove wall.  It is possible, for example, to over-cut a groove, especially with high frequency content, such that the trailing facet of the cutter contacts one of the groove walls damaging the groove it is cutting. One solution is high frequency limiting which responds to a model of the maximum cutter velocity curve.  It has the advantage that it's action is only present when required, and absent the rest of the time.  A fixed HF rolloff could accomplish the same goal, but would be audibly dull all of the time.  Not likely that was used much past the early 1960s, and not at all for records that didn't require unusually high levels (like 45s destined for juke-box play). Any audiophile-grade record would be mastered with as little HF control as possible, and in many cases, none at all.  However, more run-of-the-mill records would certainly have had at least some HF limiting done to make them louder.

No such thing as a "cutting master", unless you're referring to the "equalized master", but that EQ was more about a subjective overall adjustment of balance, but was also sometimes created outside of the mastering lab with sort of unpredictable results.  Some of the bad rap early CDs got was because the CDs got made from an equalized master rather than the actual master.  These often sounded really bad.  But there was no RIAA EQ on any master tape of any kind, ever.  This is because the curve is quite radical, being derived from two time-constants, and spans a level variation of 40dB from it's maximum to minimum.  Simply not practical to put that on tape, and not necessary either.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot 

Maybe it's different in the digital era. Back when I was just starting out, you'd do a bouncedown off the 24 track to a four track that would be all set for cutting. It would have RIAA and EQ, which was a rolloff at top and bottom. (This was mass market LPs, not audiophile.) i'm pretty sure I remember seeing stickers that said RIAA on the boxes sometimes.

You might have seen an RIAA sticker on the box but there's no way the RIAA curve was actually pre-recorded on that tape!  Look at what the record curve is (shown in green), you'll understand why that would absolutely have to be post-tape.  If you tried to do that and stay below saturation, you'd have one very low-level (and thus noisy) tape on your hands.  There's already a little eq going on in the record, though fairly slight at 15ips.

And there's no reason to put it on the tape and subject it to the inaccuracies of tape response.  It's a fixed precision network that never need be touched, and sits inside the lathe electronics.

The bottom and top end rolloff was a means of packing more loud signal onto records.  But there is no standard for that EQ, it was used variably and on a per-project basis, and there were and are far better means of doing the same job.  

I also pre-date digital, like by a dozen career-years, I'll be we're within a decade in age.