[rumlyne]

Yep and that's basically what I articulated up there.

Yes, you did. I am sorry. I had to reread the passage before I understood it. I'm (obviosly) not a native speaker.

Those Philips speakers aren't really "high fidelity" - I've had some of those before and the sound was tuned to be on the warm side with rolled off treble. That helps the bass become more audible without the problems of boosting bass, like distortion, and is generally more pleasing - the sort of sound you expect from speakers that many buyers would use for background music in an office or small lobby for example.

I know they are not really what I would like them to be with spongy unclear bass, a bit on the warm side and barely audible treble, but as you said corectly, that's what they were built for. I'll keep them untilI can afford a decent pair of speakers.

I wouldn't really put much faith on anything with a sticker on it that says "HD," and neither with vinyl. HD aside from actual video or audio resolution (which usually has more to do with the audio embedded in a video file) barely means anything beyond marketing really - kind of like how HTiB sets and some other kinds of sources say "HD audio" but while they can decode most audio on BluRays they can't read a real 24bit/96khz stereo track (not that I think that's the only criteria for being a better copy). Vinyl is headed towards the same direction, considering it's not only audiophiles with budget Regas or expensive Clearaudio TTs listening to vinyl but a also many of hipsters who hook up vintage gear to crap headphones. A hipster store over here that sells hipster cameras and vinyl sells really crappy headphones for example. Heck it's not like their TTs are even equipped with the cleanest cartridges - some of these people consider cereal sound effects to be the "natural" way of listening to music, regardless of the fact that Snap, Crackle, and Pop aren't exactly part of any of the bands they're listening to.

Another error from me: by HD I meant tracks with 24bit depth, HighRes would've been the better word.
What is an HTiB-set? A BluRay-player? Well that's marketing: BluRay no problem but if you want to play 24bit tracks you'll have to spend another 200.
Well, I thought it already was annoying enough having to bear these people on the streets and now you're telling me that there are actual stores fot them?! Why do they get their own shops and I would have to emigrate to find a real recordshop?!
And again I think it is a matter of principle! Even if more and more people buying vinyl and HighRes music are willingly or not willingly badly equipped and/or just don't care as long as they can show off their vinyl collection, I as a record company do have to make sure that it (even if poorly mastered) at least doesn't hurt your ears when played on decent gear! It's not like I have reference/studio equipment no its a middle class DAP and 2 pairs of middle class headphones and in my opinion I should be able to enjoy the music I paid for with it! But let's not turn this into an "I hate the music industry"-rage-thread.
I don't get what you mean by 'cereal sound effects'. What is that? I googled the three they are part of cereal ads, ok.



Good news! I wrote qobuz.com an angry letter and now I get a free Album of choice. So at least the 17,48€ aren't wasted.
Well played qobuz!

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I know they are not really what I would like them to be with spongy unclear bass, a bit on the warm side and barely audible treble, but as you said correctly, that's what they were built for. I'll keep them untilI can afford a decent pair of speakers.

 

I use a Philips micro set in my kitchen - I haven't migrated to iPod/smartphone while cooking yet. I haven't even gone off to using my iPad as a recipe book on a stand - at most I check out what spices (and in what proportions) I need for a rub/curry sauce.
 

Another error from me: by HD I meant tracks with 24bit depth, HighRes would've been the better word.

 

I am genuinely surprised they actually released it in high res. Then again, same thing - some people slap labels over everything. Hell there was time in the last decade where people were ranting about some Telarc releases that kind of sucked, then they released them on SACD and they still sucked. If an audiophile studio would do something like that, I won't be surprised if Disney would.

 

Still, it may not necessarily be just marketing on bad mastering - it's possible it wasn't sharp to the engineers' ears when they worked on it and you're more sensitive to the sound. KInd of like how some people feel excruciating pain or extreme discomfort when somebody scratches a blackboard.
 

Well, I thought it already was annoying enough having to bear these people on the streets and now you're telling me that there are actual stores fot them?! Why do they get their own shops and I would have to emigrate to find a real recordshop?!

 

They do get their own shops - except the ones here aren't the annoying hipsters I see on the internet. Of course, I still refer to them as "hipsters" because they are, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it ridiculous that after all the time we've spend improving cameras for example and they just reproduce stuff with old tech meant to deliberately distort the image. And then some go off about the "purity" of vinyl - never mind that I call such things "impurities," they're using crappy 32ohm fashion headphones with otherwise good enough receivers but have a 120ohm output impedance. They're absolutely astounded by Grados though, but then I show them the RS1's price online and they all forget about getting it (not that I'd bet the same receivers would do any better - I had the same issue with my NAD amplifier).

 

[rumlyne]

I use a Philips micro set in my kitchen - I haven't migrated to iPod/smartphone while cooking yet. I haven't even gone off to using my iPad as a recipe book on a stand - at most I check out what spices (and in what proportions) I need for a rub/curry sauce.

I guess that's one fine way to use it.

I am genuinely surprised they actually released it in high res. Then again, same thing - some people slap labels over everything. Hell there was time in the last decade where people were ranting about some Telarc releases that kind of sucked, then they released them on SACD and they still sucked. If an audiophile studio would do something like that, I won't be surprised if Disney would.

So was I! And naive as I am I gave the MP3-Stream on qobuz a short try and it was nice and then, well... you know the rest.

Still, it may not necessarily be just marketing on bad mastering - it's possible it wasn't sharp to the engineers' ears when they worked on it and you're more sensitive to the sound. KInd of like how some people feel excruciating pain or extreme discomfort when somebody scratches a blackboard.

That's possible, but I let some friends listen to is and they heard it as well and nearly pulled off my headphones on the worst passage because it's not bearable if listening with a little bit louder settings. I don't think we'll ever know what the reason was for them torelease it like that.

They do get their own shops - except the ones here aren't the annoying hipsters I see on the internet. Of course, I still refer to them as "hipsters" because they are, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it ridiculous that after all the time we've spend improving cameras for example and they just reproduce stuff with old tech meant to deliberately distort the image. And then some go off about the "purity" of vinyl - never mind that I call such things "impurities," they're using crappy 32ohm fashion headphones with otherwise good enough receivers but have a 120ohm output impedance. They're absolutely astounded by Grados though, but then I show them the RS1's price online and they all forget about getting it (not that I'd bet the same receivers would do any better - I had the same issue with my NAD amplifier).

I can understand the thing with old cameras from art's perspective... but with vinyl? The one and only purpose of a music medium should be to transport the information the musicians and sound engineers generated to me. Nothing more and nothing less. That's why I'm no big friend of MP3! I don't like the idea of some math nerds at an university deciding on what pieces of information would be worth keeping and what could be cut out and thrown away. Same thing with CD's! Even with EAC it's not always possible for me to get a full 100% accuracy with my LG disc drive! Not to speak of their limited bit depth and frequency range. Vinyl does deliver both of these but get's scratched easily and worn out by the needle/pin (what ever the right word is for it), also it sounds a little bit special (if that's good or bad is something somebody else has to discuss) and the required equipment is utterly expensive. SACD! - nice try but no playback or backup on the computer possible. No way of getting it on your portable DAP. As far as I know the only way to get to the HighRes layer is with a cracked PS3slim - how wicked is that! Same thing with DVD-Audio and BluRayMusic or what they're called. All that's left is HighRes download (if available) without any possibility to find out in advance wether or not the quality is up to your liking with online stores only offering an MP3 preview if they offer one at all!

I think the reason they are so astounded by Grados is their looks and the company's appearence.
Also kind of rich people mixing expenxive with rubbish gear are all around. Look at all those with BluRay players and HD-ready (1080i or 720p) screens or hobby photographers with professional cameras and lenses editing their pictures on a TN-panel monitor. It's not hipsters exclusively.

 

[BeatsWork]

For grins have you tried downsampling the 24/48 tracks to 16 bit?  Theoretically 16 bit covers the entire dynamic range in the audible spectrum. I've always wondered why you would want to task DAC/Amp with producing frequencies outside that range and if the additional overhead might tax lower power devices and ironically introduce unwanted distortion?

 

[rumlyne]

Yes. Didn't do any better to the 'S'.

 

[BeatsWork]

If you're in the mood to experiment you could try a de-esser plugin. Unfortunately it's meant to be applied only to the vocal track, not an entire track, but it might give you some additional insight. Kind of with other commentary though, if it's just this one album probably not worth the effort. http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?plugin=Lisp&id=1662 

 

[rumlyne]

Thanks for the link! I tried it with foobar and the VST-Wrapper. It works somehow, though not perfectly. The problem is that it has that 'Q' control which lets you chose wether you want to filter the noisy esses or the sharp ones. Unfortunately it would have to filter both to sound natural. Of course you can set it somewhere in the middle but then it doesn't filter the sharp ones enough. When I switch it to address the sharp esses I can at least listen to it without any pain. It is somehow depressing that a free VST can do a better job than who ever is to blame for that albums poor mastering :/

 

[fiascogarcia]

I've burned a CD into itunes and loaded on an iPod, and discovered the high treble S's hissing (more of a distortion) on certain songs, both in iTunes and the iPod.  I erased and reburned, and voila!, no hiss.  Maybe it was just that specific download that somehow corrupted the files in the process.  I have no answer why!

 

[rumlyne]

I downloaded it as wav, flac, track by track and the whole album as a zip-archive - same result.
Neither do I! Just have some more and less plausible guesses...

 

[GhreatKhups]

Sorry to jump in like a hair in a soup, just my 2 cents here. It happened to me too; some sibilance at certain specific higher frequencies. In my case it was very subtle but I traced it down to volume leveling. Could well be something else in your case though. Life being life, I have all kind of file resolutions (mp3, flac, etc. even bad one for which I can't find the masters) and considerable loudness differences.
 
I have no solid proof of that, but It looks like the loudness averaging algorithm does not account all the spectrum, resulting in some cut-offs at play time. The cut-off being a relatively high pitch distortion, you could perceive it as sibilance. I came to this assumption while playing around with the problem, but if someone could teach us more on that, great! Reproduced when leveling at ripping, and leveling at playing. It could be the seller, or it could be you. I followed the signal dynamics from source through software stacks using MediaMonkey output plugins and Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 interface. 

 

[billybob_jcv]

It might be interesting to pull the file up in a sound editor or sound analyzer software and zoom in on an area with sibilance. Maybe there would be something to see in the signal (or maybe not).

 

[rumlyne]

Sorry to jump in like a hair in a soup, just my 2 cents here. It happened to me too; some sibilance at certain specific higher frequencies. In my case it was very subtle but I traced it down to volume leveling. Could well be something else in your case though. Life being life, I have all kind of file resolutions (mp3, flac, etc. even bad one for which I can't find the masters) and considerable loudness differences.

I have no solid proof of that, but It looks like the loudness averaging algorithm does not account all the spectrum, resulting in some cut-offs at play time. The cut-off being a relatively high pitch distortion, you could perceive it as sibilance. I came to this assumption while playing around with the problem, but if someone could teach us more on that, great! Reproduced when leveling at ripping, and leveling at playing. It could be the seller, or it could be you. I followed the signal dynamics from source through software stacks using MediaMonkey output plugins and Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 interface. 

That's an interesting theory! It would somehow match my problem with the esses being extremely annoying/painful with volumes a bit on the louder side. On the other hand it doesn't make much sense to me that the loudness averaging algorithm would cut out some frequencies - even if it is the high one - but who knows! I certainly don't.

It might be interesting to pull the file up in a sound editor or sound analyzer software and zoom in on an area with sibilance. Maybe there would be something to see in the signal (or maybe not).

I could post a zoom screenshot of the file in audacity if you like! I don't know what I'm actually looking for...

Or would a different sound editor/analyzer work better? Name me a free one and I'll post a screenshot.

 

[GhreatKhups]

Quoting rumlyne:

 ... On the other hand it doesn't make much sense to me that the loudness averaging algorithm would cut out some frequencies - even if it is the high one...

 

I didn't mean cut out, I should have used the word "clipping" instead of "cut-off". Sorry. I meant an amplitude truncation in time domain, which results in harmonic distortion (some spikes in laplace domain). So depending if it was peak-normalized or average-normalized, and to what average (album?, playlist?, all collection?) some clipping could occur if the player (or encoder if at rip time) does not actively performs dithering to reduce harmonic distortion before/after clipped peaks.
 
Quoting billybob_jcv:

 It might be interesting to pull the file up in a sound editor or sound analyzer software and zoom in on an area with sibilance. Maybe there would be something to see in the signal (or maybe not).

There is a lot of fun to have doing this, esp with an actual music file... but it always lead to speculations because it contains thousands of frequencies changing in time (definition of music). The easiest way to have a conclusion without using signal generator devices is to generate a multitone wav of known frequencies at same amplitude and passing it through your chain (somewhat like 20 sines from 10 to 12000Hz following a log-ish scale and maybe more around the frequencies you find culprit). It is quite easy with matlab/simulink (well... it's one of my work tools). Putting it back in the frequency spectrum after each step will show you where and how your samples are affected. To verify, use an output plugin for your player, take its wav, and feed it to simulink into a plot after a Fourier transform. argh... still with me here?
 
... Or just read this thing: http://www.hometracked.com/2008/04/20/10-myths-about-normalization/
 
And again, that may not be it at all.