[analogmusic]

OK so I went ahead and bought the Masterclass software, and after listening to it for a few hours, wow it really does work the A+ processing. Everything is more emotional, more musical, and without degradation of sound (there is a difference when one turns A+ on and off, always in favour of the A+).

I already have high a hi-end Naim/Dynaudio system and it makes quite an improvement. I can't go back to listening to music without A+ now.

The Maker of the software will not rightfully give away his trade secrets, but one hardly needs to worry about that in my view once I heard what the A+ does.

Plenty of samples on his website, and I listened to the samples carefully many times, and was convinced.

It's easy to hear the musical difference, the music without A+ sounds boring and lifeless by comparison, and has digital traces. With A+ all digital traces are completely gone and it sounds like real music, instruments and sounds previously blurred are now clear to hear and understand.

And this is only with A+, I turned the EQ off.

 

[gregorio]

It's easy to hear the musical difference, the music without A+ sounds boring and lifeless by comparison, and has digital traces. With A+ all digital traces are completely gone and it sounds like real music, instruments and sounds previously blurred are now clear to hear and understand.

What are "digital traces"?

G

 

[analogmusic]

Harshness.

 

[gregorio]

Harshness.

There is no "harshness" in digital audio because digital audio is accurate/high fidelity. You obviously prefer a sound which is less "harsh" and that's fine but it means you prefer less accurate, lower fidelity reproduction. However this invalidates your other claim, because as digital audio is so accurate, whatever harshness exists in digital audio is there because it was put there by those who created the recording. And, if you are changing the amount of harshness put there by the artists then obviously you are NOT getting the "real music, instruments and sounds"!

G

 

[analogmusic]

I can report what I find, but I'm 46 years old now, and find the claim that digital is perfect, complete fairy tale. I knew it had problems 30 years ago when I compared my Vinyl to the CD versions.

The latest creation by Chord is a million tap upscaler Blu2 with 740 core processor for Chord Dave DAC.

Why is this needed? If digital audio were perfect.... LOL

 

[old tech]

Which CDs are you comparing with vinyl? Most of mine easily sound better than vinyl, particularly with regard to detail and clarity in the lower and upper frequencies. Sure masterings can tilt the sound quality any way but that has nothing to do with the format. A CD played on a 400 dollar CD player will trounce a 20,000 dollar turntable playing a LP record on any measure of accuracy and hence, high fidelity. If you prefer the coloured sound of analog devices and media which results from its inaccuracies, particularly the highly compromised LP, there is nothing wrong with that after all sound is to some degree subjective, but spare us the paradoxical claim that it is more accurate or a more natural sound.

 

[castleofargh]

someone picking analogmusic for nickname, happens to have a huge bias about digital and assumed quality of vinyls. what a surprise.

 

[analogmusic]

Oh I don't have a bias against digital since I got the Chord Hugo.

But then Rob Watts released the Blu2 with a million taps digital filter... when does it end.....

 

[bigshot]

If you have a system that has an unbalanced frequency response and perhaps some sort of high frequency distortion, it will sound harsh. That is a fault of your system, not the recording itself. A high frequency roll off, like the ones common on LP records will certainly solve the problem by removing all the frequencies that cause harshness. This can give you a nice "warm analogue sound". If you like that, great. A DSP that is designed to do that will probably do an even better job of that than by just depending on the limitations of LPs. But you aren't really solving the problem that way- you're just eliminating the harsh part of the sound entirely.

The better option is to deal with the issues creating the harshness, not just sweeping all the harsh frequencies under the rug. That would involve balancing your response through EQ and room treatment (if you use speakers). If distortion is the problem, figuring out which component is introducing the distortion and replacing it would correct that.

 

[bfreedma]

Oh I don't have a bias against digital since I got the Chord Hugo.

But then Rob Watts released the Blu2 with a million taps digital filter... when does it end.....

When does it end? When audiophiles stop immediately believing that more of something (taps, cost, weight) automatically results in audibly improved audio.

 

[gregorio]

[1] I can report what I find, but I'm 46 years old now, and find the claim that digital is perfect, complete fairy tale.
[2] The latest creation by Chord is a million tap upscaler Blu2 with 740 core processor for Chord Dave DAC. ... Why is this needed? If digital audio were perfect.... LOL
[2a] ... when does it end.....

1. But you obviously haven't tried to "find" anything, if you had, you would have found some facts/science. What you have instead reported is your personal preferences and your assumptions and presented them, here in the science forum, as fact. As this is the science forum, please provide some reliable evidence to support your claim of audible imperfections in digital audio.
2. Oh dear, of course it's not needed! Or rather, it is needed by Chord themselves, to separate ignorant/gullible audiophiles out of their money and make Chord a profitable company.
2a. You're joking right? As long as there are enough audiophiles ignorant of the facts and gullible enough to believe and buy into the marketing BS, it will OF COURSE never end!

G

 

[Leporello]

I knew it had problems 30 years ago when I compared my Vinyl to the CD versions.

How did you know this? You obviously preferred your vinyl to Cd versions back then, just like you prefer the sound of A+ to non-A+ sound. How do you know you did not actually prefer the shortcomings of vinyl? Please note that you are ultimately asking the rest of us to accept your personal preferences as facts. This is a common fallacy among vinylphiles (not all of them are guilty of it, of course).

 

[old tech]

How did you know this? You obviously preferred your vinyl to Cd versions back then, just like you prefer the sound of A+ to non-A+ sound. How do you know you did not actually prefer the shortcomings of vinyl? Please note that you are ultimately asking the rest of us to accept your personal preferences as facts. This is a common fallacy among vinylphiles (not all of them are guilty of it, of course).

It does appear odd that he came to this conclusion at a tender age of 16 and at a time when CDs were not badly afflicted by the loudness wars.

Personally I like vinyl. I have more records in my collection than CDs (started buying records in the mid 70s) though these days most of my music are files on a server. Some of my records do indeed sound better than the CD, or file, and that is either because a better master was used or that the nature of the music just suits the way vinyl changes the sound (though this is subjective of course and I usually do a needle drop of these records which the now digitised version sounds the same as the record).

I don't mind having these sort of subjective discussions with vinylphiles but I switch off if they claim some sort of technical superiority despite there not being one measurement of fidelity where vinyl matches, let alone exceeds that of a CD. I have invested quite a lot (>$12k) on my T/T and cart over the years and funnily enough, the better the rig became the more it sounded like good digital.

 

[ev13wt]

Someone has been doing to much stair stepping in the fitness room again!

Fun tidbit: Here in Germany, we have a word for it. "Treppensteigen". It translates to "Stair climbing". I means that a young man, that is not getting any, but does not want to pay a whore, wandering up and down the stairs in each house of the red light district looking at all the girls in the floors."

Hey, lets go clubbing tonight!
yea ok, but wanna go Treppensteigen first?
Hell yea!
Cue music.



I don't understand you windows-x - we talked about this before. Did you program that Audiophile EQ yet? The one that doesn't play with boring frewuencies? The one with knobs labled "Thump, Body, Subsonics, Loudness, Air, clarity, presence and PRaT? Hop to it. Sell it for 29.95

I'll even define the frequencies and -dBs and Q for you.
We will make the differences very tiny, but audible. 1.5, 2 dB?
We will claim that most people won't hear a difference anyhow. (They will buy to prove they can)
We will explain about some "direct" loop to hear the unaltered sound (it will sound quieter, thus bad compared to all other settings)
Will will provide instructions to A: Set a filter. B: Expect it to be a bit quieter. C: Bring the volume "back" to listening level. (lol)

Go!

Paypal me later.

 

[ev13wt]

Me making claim? What did I claim? All I ever said was he claimed something and I asked what do you guys think about his claim.

I didn't try to take his claim as a gospel or reverse the engineer to make competitive product. I'm just curious in how it works.

There might be some of off-topics debate about CD VS SACD but that has nothing to do with A+. If it's not possible to find out. That's OK. That's all.

And to note, yes, the OP reads more like "I am interested in" than his older one MQA one. Give the dude some credit, as his native laguage obviously isn't eglish.