Testing audiophile claims and myths

[analogsurviver]

Oh boy. When you lose defending vinyl on all other fronts, you bring crest factor on the table as if it was relevant. We don't hear the way we see. We see pictures of squarewaves, but we don't hear squarewaves, only lowpass filtered versions on them. Our hearing has a rise time too around the same area as 16/44.1 digital audio. Our hearing also has temporal masking, even pre-masking which smears fine temporal structure of signals. Then of course we have the question of just how short risetime we need for music. Well, vinyl has got clicks and pops that definitely have short rise time, but I prever my music without those.

Are you sure you really hear the risetime difference of vinyl and 16/44.1 or is it just your imagination?

Well, I wish you all could have witnessed just how a 3 microsecond rise time audio SYSTEM - from input to output - can sound. Big Maggies with true ribbon line source tweeter and amps with specs that would probably make @bigshot start petition against the use of so overspec'd electronics for audio. I had it at disposal at the Benz Micro Switzerland when I worked there , did not have to pay for it ( yikes - only TODAY I found out what it cost new back then ... ouch&yikes, again ) - so why not use it ?

OK, no one of you would probably contradict that sound travels in solids faster than it does in gassses. You might have - or might have not - had the chance to experience it live. In a concert hall with wooden floor, if you seat say at least 10 metres away from the orchestra, you can experience the whack on the tympani as felt trough the floor slightly faster than you can hear it with your ears. With concrete/stone floors, the energy of tympani is generally not enough to excite the floor enough to feel it with your body (legs, back). Before the renovation of our philharmonics building ( late 90s ), we had such wooden floor; now, they are sadly missed. And I have attended lots of concerts in that hall...

Be it as it may, that prototype cartridge was the first - and sadly, last time - I have heard ( better said first felt, then heard ) the tympani being struck - from any audio system, from any storage medium. Replace the cartridge for the normal ( still faster than CD ) - POOF - that explosive sound that captivates and demands attention has , for the most part, gone.

After that - do you seriously think anyone would consider even mentioning the CD, let alone taking the trouble of connecting it to THAT system ?

It is sad that the level of sound quality - or realism, if you prefer it called it this way, comes at so punishing price most of us will never be able even to afford, let alone justify the purchase.
But, I did have the privilege to experience it - and report best I possibly can.
No longer possible; the premises once occupied by Benz Micro Switzerland /Empire where this system has been set up in one of its BIG halls, has been since sold and BMS itself sold to one of its former employees and relocated to approx 1 km away, in a much smaller building. At the apogee of analogue audio, Benz employed > 80 workers that occupied those big premises to the last corner ; by 1990, this numer has shrunk to less than 10 and it became no longer reasonable nor sustainable to stay in that large building. It had a large "listening room" - for free, so to speak.

Even if you do have the equipment required, at least a similar building is required - and that is beyond the possibilities of all but the really well to do. But I will not forget the experience as long as I live.

The really succesfull analogue playback equipment has to be FASTER than the ticks and pops in the vinyl material itself. That means it has to pull every and any trick available - either mechanical or electrical - to keep itself as large bandwidth and as quiet as possible. What we USUALLY hear as tick and pop from the vinyl record is actually resonances in the stylus/cantilever/suspension/cartridge body/headshell/tonearm/tonearm bearings/tonearm support/turntable plinth on one side - and record itself/record support/platter/main bearing/turntable plinth. The most telling test of the analogue record player is - listening to it without being even plugged into phono preamp etc. Really good turntables are almost inaudible in operation - next to no "needle talk" that can be heard. Back in the day, Dynavector has introduced Karat series of cartridges - DV-100D and DV-100R. One with diamond cantilever, another with ruby cantilever. Otherwise, practically the same. Prices in 1980 : 1000 $ and 300$ respectively. There is a very quickly perceptible difference in sound and freedom from ticks and pops between the two - and both are generally in a class above anything else as far as audibility of ticks and pop goes to begin with. There were a few generations of both Diamond and Ruby Karats - and at one time, Ruby has been dropped altogether - not to even mention very short lived aluminium cantilever model. Diamond is so much better as cantilever material than ruby that it did not make any more sense to proceed with ruby model - once the price of diamond model D17D3 has more or less stabilized at some 1300 $, much less than the price of the original DV-100D if adjusted for the inflation across the last 38 years.

You can go and look for link for downloads of the diamond cantilevered carts I posted not so long ago - they are also extremely quiet in the groove, but unfortunately also extremely expensive..

 

[pinnahertz]

If you're going to use the numbered response format, please number the quoted item so it corresponds. G does it right.

1. ) Will post ASAP.

Just post it before one of us dies, some time this century.

2. ) I know enough to be aware of the potential problems. Actual experience is of course better.

Your statements show you neither know the problems, nor accept them as real. That reveals no experience.

7.) If you say so - you know how you did those analogue disc masters. I do not want to brush you off in this way, please refer again exactly to what bothers you in my response.
8.) Old, true. As valid as ever - also true.

I can't tell what these are referring to.

 

[pinnahertz]

2. Yes @pinnahertz stop pointing that out and for exactly the same reason, please do NOT point out that Santa Claus, Unicorns and the Tooth Fairy don't exist.

Normally, when I keep hitting a nail with a hammer it eventually goes in. Some surfaces are pretty hard, though, and the hardest just bends the nail. Then I get a hammer-drill.

6. NEXT what? Next lie or next completely made-up bit of delusional nonsense?

G

Can't wait! I'm sure we won't have to!

 

[analogsurviver]

I disagree. "Most" music today is saturated with distortion caused by loudness war processing, and the distortion is pretty much continuous and very audible.
While that's true, record groove related distortion shows up on solo piano attacks quite early.
Like the CD does.
It's not clear to me that you know it because you've refuted it several times and keep stating vinyl response as a single figure of 27kHz without regard to level.
Huh. The guys trying to track the Telarc 1812 cannon shots would disagree with you (and so do I).

You really don't want me to answer that one!
Not a chance! Do you not understand what crest factor is? The CD MUST win because of it's flat 0dBFS response!
Wrong...and I simply don't have time to go into it.
Go google crest factor and think about the above again. Dead wrong.

Rise time and bandwidth are tied, but only meaningful if the result falls within the audible spectrum, which invalidates your argument.

No, there are other reasons, primarily the pseudo-nostalgic anti-new-tech crowd, the hipster-organic crowd, and the experience of play vinyl, which is very tactile and visual. It has nothing to do with the resulting sound quality, except for a tiny handful of vocal and deluded audiophiles.
We would not be having this conversation if one of us were not posting complete mythological nonsense. Shot itself in the foot? Hmm...the market analysis doesn't support the shot, or the foot. CD won.

1. ) I would certainly not bother with any of the loudness wars compressed and with distortion saturated recordings for the vinyl release. It is both amusing and sad to be forced to listen to anything approaching natural dynamics on LP , while digital is many times not only saturated, but downright clipped, with dynamics approaching nil.
2.) Certainly, piano is next on the audibility of distortion vs time list as far as analog is concerned. But, it is a less often encountered in practice.
3.) Agreed
4.) One absolutely DOES NOT need to know that RIAA even exists - in order to be able to hear that better/lower mass styli perform better. If the absolute limits are required, there is no cartridge that can track the amplitudes below 1 kHz cutting head is capable of - nor there is any cutter head capable of recording in real time frequency range that could tax the HF capability of the best styli.
Here only a part of the whole Ortofon literature on cutting I quickly found online; I have the whole enchilada in paper, for more than 30 years : http://www.torbenteknik.dk/Ortofon ...Manual - Part 1 - Fundamentals - 21111632.PDF Neumann can not be much different.
5.) Telarc 1812 is even much less "music" as is the 6.x Hz from organ. The SPL required to cover the gun blast exceeds anything anyone might want to have in the living room - and it is compressed/clipped to begin with, or else it would not be possible to engrave the amplitude required to the master disk lacquer - let alone finding a cartridge that could track that excursion. There are three different analogue masters for 1812 available - and they differ primarily how the cannon shots have been transfered from the digital master to the record release. The recorded levels of any normal music are different, without any such large amplitudes/excursions as required for the cannons. For anything of normallly encountered amplitudes below 1 kHz, most cartridges in the same line perform pretty much the same. Differences begin higher up in frequency range, where effective mass of the stylus related problems begin.
6. ) No comment
7. ) No flat system capable of 0dBFS required for music. All acoustic music has falling levels above certain frequencies - and 0dBFS is theorethically required only to slightly above 2 kHz, with some reasonable "safety margin" that would then mean around 5 kHz. That does not mean chopping off anything above 20 kHz is allowed if the quality of the reproduction is required - no matter at how low levels these >>20 kHz components lie. They are no higher in live music and , in case of analogue record, the system can record anything required - if not in real time, than in half speed mastering.
8.) & 9. ) One could also put it this way - analogue record has higher change of level per amount of time than CD - so and so many dB/microsecond. Analog record wins. And of course, everything about this if frequency response related.
I disagree regarding this has to fall within audible band to be meaningful. When say a drummer hits his kit, there is no one preventing the soundwaves containing ALL the spectra from reaching me. If I am at reasonable distance from the drum kit and there are no larger obstacles between the drum kit and me.
10.) I agree there are other reasons for analog record staying power, as stated.. However, I am not the hipster buying levitating turntable for the sheer appearence sake - nor giulty of other charges, with the exception of being loud.

 

[castleofargh]

Would love to hear it, but now it seems I need an account to access it! Who's the communist twinkle-toed little - never mind! - over at Drop Box who made that dumb decision? Same happy horsesh- as over in Pinterest. Need an 'account' there too, to view images. Do I need to log in to flush my OWN TOILET?!

just replace the 0 at the end of the link by 1. it's an old joke on dropbox.

 

[castleofargh]

Guys, I know there were many posts about cables and how they (do not) change the sound but I can't find anything about crosstalk. Since I recently saw this: "Cables - as proved pages ago do make a difference due to noticeable changes in cross-talk. It has been measured and confirmed." I'm wondering is this a true statement or another fairy tale?

crosstalk becomes clearly noticeable for me when reaching louder than -40db. not an impossible number to get with say a really really low impedance IEM and an amp that already isn't amazing in the crosstalk department unloaded, otherwise it's really unlikely to reach such high numbers. sure cables with various threading methods and insulation thicknesses will result in pretty significant changes in crosstalk(as in clearly measurable), but unless you don't believe in hearing thresholds, I wouldn't worry much about that on IEMs and absolutely not for anything else from headphones to interconnects. here are my own 2 reasons why:
1/ for low impedance IEMs where it could matter and make a pretty noticeable change in perception in a worst case scenario, the real solution would be not to use very low impedance IEMs. that would have a much more massive impact on crosstalk compared to messing with cables while trying not to make a mess of the other electrical variables. also we're still talking IEMs, I personally wouldn't want to carry a big fat cable that doesn't flex to avoid twisting, just in the name of slightly reduced crosstalk.
2/ subjectively I kind of like crosstalk when I can notice it. which so far has been mainly when testing gears with an extreme load, or when creating my own files with various levels of crosstalk. oh and I guess vinyls could count as louder than -40dB, but there is so much to notice that it would be hard to specifically identify crosstalk by ear for me.

 

[Yuurei]

Understood, thank you @castleofargh

 

[pinnahertz]

Just edited a previous post re: crest factor. Too many dead brain cells this morning. See the correction here.

Short story, yes vinyl mastering can result in higher crest factor than the CD master. But there's no technical reason the CD couldn't have the same crest factor, and the fact that it doesn't is artistic choice.

 

[bigshot]

The paper focuses on how bias can affect perception of quality of music performances, rather than perception of sound quality, but IMO it has some relevance to our topic.

That seems to be about *introducing* bias, not eliminating it. It would relate to people who believe that high data rates "sound better" even though they sound exactly the same to human ears. A blind test would remove that bias.

 

[Phronesis]

That seems to be about *introducing* bias, not eliminating it. It would relate to people who believe that high data rates "sound better" even though they sound exactly the same to human ears. A blind test would remove that bias.

Yes, the paper is mainly about how the bias works and its effects. It's not a good title, because the paper doesn't focus on overcoming bias. Still a fascinating and important paper though, IMO.

 

[bigshot]

It would be very useful to high end audio snake oil salesmen for perfecting their pitch!

 

[Phronesis]

It would be very useful to high end audio snake oil salesmen for perfecting their pitch!

I don't know about that, the paper doesn't provide any special insights about how to create bias. It just says that if someone is told that X is good, within seconds they'll change the way they perceive (by paying more attention) such that X is perceived to be good, and it will tend to be difficult for subsequent evidence to the contrary to change their minds. So the part that's perhaps surprising is how quickly the bias kicks in and how persistent it is. I've experienced that myself. Even after gathering evidence that any difference in the sound of the Hugo 2 vs Mojo is negligible, I still feel a subconscious pull to wonder if my testing methodology is inadequate and I've missed a real and significant audible difference (the fact that we can't be 100% certain either way on something like this keeps the door open to that line of thinking, so in the end we have draw working conclusions and make decisions accordingly).

 

[bigshot]

Every day I see reviews on the internet that do just that. They talk about the "musicality" of the sound when sound quality isn't responsible for musicality. They mention how wonderful certain albums sound on a set of speakers and end up spending more time discussing how great the music is rather than the speakers. They infer that other equipment may be fine for "common music" but this one is for connoisseurs. They make allusions to race cars, fine wine and masterpieces of art, when none of those have anything to do with a headphone amp or DAC.

The whole point of a lot of high end audio sales pitch is creating and controlling bias so the consumer doesn't notice that one amp or DAC is functionally pretty much the same as any other. They're usually selling bias, not sound quality. Without bias you discover quickly that the "gold standard" in home audio electronics isn't really any different than "run of the mill" when it comes to sound quality.

 

[71 dB]

Well, I wish you all could have witnessed just how a 3 microsecond rise time audio SYSTEM - from input to output - can sound.

Yeah, but we are not bats and I doubts even they can hear 3 microsecond rise time. My guess is what you think was short rise time is actually distortion caused by inadequate damping/resonances at high frequencies.

 

[Phronesis]

Every day I see reviews on the internet that do just that. They talk about the "musicality" of the sound when sound quality isn't responsible for musicality. They mention how wonderful certain albums sound on a set of speakers and end up spending more time discussing how great the music is than the speakers. They infer that other equipment may be fine for "common music" but this one is for connoisseurs. They make allusions to race cars, fine wine and masterpieces of art, when none of that has anything to do with a headphone amp or DAC.

The whole point of a lot of high end audio sales pitch is creating and controlling bias so the consumer doesn't notice that one amp or DAC is functionally pretty much the same as any other. They're usually selling bias, not sound quality.

The way you dispose of all that is to do a simple blind listening test. If you don't know what you're listening to, bias can't affect you.

To be fair, I find that some equipment, specifically speakers and headphones, tend to sound less artificial and more 'musical' than others, to my ears. But I think that's mainly due to how recordings mesh with the transducers, given that both recording characteristics and transducer characteristics are all over the place. To me, 'musicality' of transducers is about my being able to experience the music without the transducers distracting me and drawing attention to themselves - similar to what many people think of as 'transparency'. An analogy is that if we notice how good the acting is, it's not good - we shouldn't notice the acting at all, we should just get lost in the characters and story.

I don't think audio sales people need to do much in terms of sales pitches. If the product looks good and has favorable reputation and buzz, it will tend to sell, and the sales can go like a runaway train. Higher prices can also give the impression of quality and boost sales. And it can work the other way too - products which look modest and/or are lower priced may be dismissed for those reasons alone.

Example: I recently tried the $4K Focal Utopia for several days, then the $1K Focal Elear for several days, then both back to back for an hour. I had almost dismissed the Elear because I assumed it had to be much inferior to the Utopia, which I liked, but I tried the Elear to at least satisfy my curiosity. I found that the sound signature is very similar, and the difference in sound quality is incremental, much smaller than I would have guessed; for some tracks, the less bright Elear might even be preferred. But if you share these findings with Utopia guys, they'll be upset, make accusations of poor hearing ability, and say that the gap between them is huge (hence the 4x greater price). Meanwhile, the Elear may be losing sales to even competitors in its own price range because the potential Elear buyer wants the Utopia, finds it too expensive, and is unwilling to compromise and get the Elear because it's perceived as too big a step down. Wacky stuff!