[librarian]

Quote:

Your last sentence proves the difficulty and the misunderstanding here. I would say exactly the opposite, music listening does "revolve around just one component":- Listening to the music! I want to hear, as accurately as possible, the music created by the musician/producer team. I don't want to hear distortion, musicality, warmth or anything else created by my playback equipment. I want to listen to the music, not my equipment.

Removing detail, adding warmth or deliberately changing anything on the recording to me is like going to view a Picasso or a Turner at an art gallery wearing pink tinted sunglasses.

G

Any component will add something.
 

 

[gregorio]

Any component will add something.

Not necessarily, some digital components have a linear response. But yes, I agree with you in principle that a perfectly linear system does not exist. But I go back to my analogy with viewing say a Turner painting in a gallery. There are compromises which have to be made, the gallery has different light to when the painting was created (to protect it for prosperity) so I'm not going to be able to see the painting precisely as Turner intended or expected. But just because there are some necessary compromises doesn't result in me saying "well to hell with it then, I might as well compromise even more and wear pink tinted sunglasses". I still want to get as close to Turner's intent as I can, even knowing that I can't get 100% there (95% is still better than say 50%).

G

 

[librarian]

I can follow you. In that case I'd say I like my Turner in the living room, sitting in a big chair with candle lights lightning up smoking a cigar or something...I'm not sure about that, though, but let's play...  Problem is: this Turner painting is not my only painting.
 
The ideal situation is having a seperate room for each painting.
 
Searching for the perfect headphone setup for each track in your collection is a very complex affair. But it is possible to find good synergy between different  music styles/different types of recordings/hifi-components and so on. And to me this is kind of what head-fi is all about, and this is where all the fun starts  I like my vinyl setup for some things. And I admittedly tend to look for that sound signature in my digital setup as well. That's probably because I often listen to the same albums, same genres and music styles whether it is a flac file or a LP-record. But I also recon that a more "digital sound" (meaning more detail oriented and "hard/forward" and "unforgiving" sound) is best for some recordings too. That way, I find it hard to say that one sound signature or one component is "superior" to others. It allways depends on more than one component (where music is also considered to be one component among others).

 

[gregorio]

I can follow you. In that case I'd say I like my Turner in the living room, sitting in a big chair with candle lights lightning up smoking a cigar or something...I'm not sure about that, though, but let's play...  Problem is: this Turner painting is not my only painting.
 
The ideal situation is having a seperate room for each painting.
 
Searching for the perfect headphone setup for each track in your collection is a very complex affair. But it is possible to find good synergy between different  music styles/different types of recordings/hifi-components and so on. And to me this is kind of what head-fi is all about, and this is where all the fun starts  I like my vinyl setup for some things. And I admittedly tend to look for that sound signature in my digital setup as well. That's probably because I often listen to the same albums, same genres and music styles whether it is a flac file or a LP-record. But I also recon that a more "digital sound" (meaning more detail oriented and "hard/forward" and "unforgiving" sound) is best for some recordings too. That way, I find it hard to say that one sound signature or one component is "superior" to others. It allways depends on more than one component (where music is also considered to be one component among others).

My painting analogy is working out better than I thought it would, as it's highlighted a problem which I see quite often in the audiophile world. You are saying that you'd like your Turner in a separate living room with candles and cigars. But even though it may have been created in a sitting room with candles, it was designed to be viewed by lots of people in a gallery (albeit without modern lighting).

The analogy here is that the music product has gone through the process of mastering, to enable it to be appreciated by the public, rather than just in the recording studio in which it was created.

You talk of sound signatures, but a sound signature to me is pink tinted sunglasses. You might like a sound signature, you might prefer different sound signatures for different music and that's your choice but what I want is no sound signature! Or rather, the only sound signature I want is the one put there by the musicians/producer/engineers! And, it's possible to get pretty close to that ideal, using the most accurate equipment I can afford.

G

 

[Willakan]

If you want colouration, fine. But why on earth would you buy equipment with built in probl...colourations when we have equalisers and sophisticated digital signal processing?

 

[librarian]

The painting analogy is allright, but like all analogies, it also has it's limitations. Would you like looking at your Monet painting all up front picking up every detail? LOL  Maybe that would be like listening to New Orleans jazz or some very old blues recordings on a very detailed and forward sounding system...I guess you'll have to agree with me, that some recordings needs coloration to sound their best.
 
That's one thing. Another is personal preference. We hear things differently. Some people are more sensitive to harsh or fatiguing sound than others. I guess all people have some kind of sensitivity and I guess all hifi equipment seeks to find the good spot where detail retrieval is high yet still not harsh sounding...
 
I don't have an answer to all this. Music listening is a complex task, and I'm glad it is.
 
 

 

[Chris J]

Willakan,
Why do you have an avatar showing significant post and pre-ringing?

 

[gregorio]

If you want colouration, fine. But why on earth would you buy equipment with built in probl...colourations when we have equalisers and sophisticated digital signal processing?

If we take vinyl as an example, there are all sorts of distortions and non-linearities occurring which have not, as yet, been modelled by digital processors completely convincingly.

G

 

[Chris J]

Frankly both digital and analog recording and playback have their place.
I own a lot of recordings in both vinyl and CD. I don't mean to say I have lot of the same recordings in both formats, I am only trying to say I have a reasonably good cross section of good and bad analog and digital classical, rock and jazz, etc. recordings.
I have always had a lot of trouble with digital classical recordings, I find a lot of them have a very unmusical string sound to them, something is just not accurate. On the other hand, the pure analog recordings, i.e. analog recording, analog playback often have a sound which is certainly not accurate, but I find it to be more musical and enjoyable.
I can think of a lot of classical recordings which sound quite bad in both analog and digital format.
IMHO I feel that a large proportion of the digital Reference Recordings and Telarc releases are outstanding in almost every way. By the same token, it is shocking how fantastic many 55-45 year old Mercury, RCA,, etc. classical recrdings sound today in either vinyl or CD.

The same goes for the jazz recordings I love so much. Guys like Rudy van Gelder and Fred Phaut did fantastic work in the 50s and 60s with analog gear, in the present day, guys like Al Schmitt do fantastic work with a mix of digital and analog gear and the CDs sound first rate. For old analog, check out Coltrane's Blue Train, a surprising vivid and lifelike recording from the late 50s. Miles's work on Prestige and Columbia. In it's own way just as good a recording as what Roy Schmitt has does for Roy Hargrove or Jane Monheit. I don't think that either era of jazz recording is better than the other era, but they certainly do sound different.

Take a listen to the Sony Legacy LPs of Electric Ladyland or Axis Bold as Love. Very few rock recordings sound this good......what gives?

But what really burns my bacon is when the digital camp says digital measures better so it must be better.

 

[gregorio]

I guess you'll have to agree with me, that some recordings needs coloration to sound their best.

Absolutely not, that's exactly the same as saying some paintings are better viewed through rose tinted sunglasses. Regardless of whether or not I think a painting has been well painted, even if I think the painting could do with a bit of pink tint, I still want to view it as close to the intention of the artist as I can. Maybe the painting has been poorly painted or maybe the artist deliberately wanted a lack of pink to create a particular effect. It's up to me to interpret and judge the painting as it is, not to repaint it!

The painting analogy is allright, but like all analogies, it also has it's limitations. Would you like looking at your Monet painting all up front picking up every detail? LOL  Maybe that would be like listening to New Orleans jazz or some very old blues recordings on a very detailed and forward sounding system...

OK, you're right, the painting analogy is wearing a bit thin. Music isn't like a painting, it's been designed to be listened to on speakers. Unless your system is actually adding something in addition to what is on the recording, you cannot have too much detail in a recording. Unless it's been badly made, the only detail on a recording which is not designed to be heard is the noise floor, everything else is designed to be heard. I might not like the detail and I might think the recording sounds better without it but I don't try to re-master it, I just avoid that combination of artists in the future.

But what really burns my bacon is when the digital camp says digital measures better so it must be better. Perhaps we are measuring the wrong things? Take a look at the low level linearity of a digital signal. Take a look at the high frequency phase shift added by the AD and DA process. It really comes down to exchanging one set of distortions for another set of distortions. So what's your pleasure, red or white wine?

What low level linearity of digital? What phase shift added by AD and DA? There can be no doubt that CD as a format is orders of magnitude more accurate than vinyl in every conceivable way. What I would say, is that regardless of the fact that CD is clearly the better format, knowing this gives us no indication whatsoever of the quality of what is on the format. I would far rather listen to a great recording on vinyl than I would to a rubbish recording on CD.

G

 

[librarian]

@gregorio:
 
I don't know why you think recordings from the beginning of last century sounded perfect and therefore do not need any coloration to sound good. It's allright with me if you prefer it that way, though.
 
I don't know why you think you can reproduce sound exactly the way it was intended to (and how you know what was intented)
 
I don't think digital sound is superior to analogue. In fact I find it easier (and cheaper) to get a good sound (what I find to be good sound)  in a vinyl based system than in a digital setup.
 
I like vinyl. I find that it has a very natural sound to my ears. If you want to call that noise, you do that
 
I rest my case for now and just enjoy the music

 
 
 
 

 

[gregorio]

@gregorio:
I don't know why you think recordings from the beginning of last century sounded perfect and therefore do not need any coloration to sound good. It's allright with me if you prefer it that way, though.
 
I don't know why you think you can reproduce sound exactly the way it was intended to (and how you know what was intented)

Where did I say recordings from the beginning of the last century sound perfect? Where did I say I can reproduce sound exactly as it was intended? You obviously haven't read any of my posts, so who are you replying to?

I don't think digital sound is superior to analogue. In fact I find it easier (and cheaper) to get a good sound (what I find to be good sound)  in a vinyl based system than in a digital setup.
 
I like vinyl. I find that it has a very natural sound to my ears. If you want to call that noise, you do that
 
I rest my case for now and just enjoy the music.

As I've said all along, you're entitled to like whatever you want to like and I'm not telling you what you should like. You want to look at a Turner, Monet or whatever wearing pink tinted sunglasses because you think it's more "natural", you do that. But if you're going to state publicly that you think analogue is superior to digital, I can state publicly that the entire scientific and pro-audio communities prove you wrong.

G

 

[Head Injury]

Quote:

I don't know why you think recordings from the beginning of last century sounded perfect and therefore do not need any coloration to sound good. It's allright with me if you prefer it that way, though.

If you want to "fix" recordings, noise and distortion is not the way to go about it. An EQ would be. It is a fact that some vinyl recordings sound better than digital recordings, but it is far from the truth that it's because of vinyl. It's because of the mastering. Were the same mastering on CD, without the obvious faults of vinyl, it would be better than the vinyl.

 

[Edoardo]

Quote:

Based on my experience, a properly done digital rip from a vinyl recording is almost always guaranteed to sound better than any purchasable 24/96 version of the same album.

Even at 16/44, a well-done vinyl rip can sound far better than the hi-res recordings that the labels release.

It may sound better to you, but it is much more PHYSICALLY limited then the CD.
More news: old recording could have also been compressed, originally, for recording on the tape.
Compression does not belong only to the digital area. Sometimes it's necessary to make a good recording
 
Actually you are listening to the vinyl's characteristic distortion, limited dynamic and even more limited frequency response.
(highs, recorded on vinyl, are represented by very very very little "protuberances" in the track and wear out while the needle runs on them, in a few listenings)
 
It's a nonsense to say that a worn-out vinyl,  which had once been recorded from a master tape, converted into 16/44 with an ADC (which one???) and then re-converted back into analog with DAC sounds better than a 24/96 file recorded directly from a master tape with top-notch equipment.
I think audio engineers can do better and with specialized equipment, moreover, there is so much resolution missing.
 
You may like the coloration added by the electric distortion and a cut frequency range... I like it, too! John Lee Hookers on vinyl rocks!!!
But it's much further from what was originally recorded than anything esle
 

 

[gregorio]

It's a nonsense to say that a worn-out vinyl,  which had once been recorded from a master tape, converted into 16/44 with an ADC (which one???) and then re-converted back into analog with DAC sounds better than a 24/96 file recorded directly from a master tape with top-notch equipment.
I think audio engineers can do better and with specialized equipment, moreover, there is so much resolution missing.

What you are saying is absolutely true in theory. In practice though not necessarily. There is unfortunately a great deal of extremely poor mastering going on, mainly because the basic technology is so cheap and easily available compared to say 15 or more years ago. Given that they often re-master when selling 24/96 versions and that it's often done on the cheap (some kid in a bedroom) rather than by real mastering engineers; it's entirely possible that a modern 24/96 commercial rip is of poorer quality than a straight 16bit rip of an old (very well recorded) vinyl disk.

However, given a good mastering engineer with the right equipment and a high quality master to work with, the commercial rip should be of higher quality.

G