Can digital get to vinyl sound and at what price?

[wil]

Maybe your DAC is making poor recordings sound good.

NO

 

[Rexp]

NO

So why do some recordings sound good on most digital players and some only sound good on high end players?

 

[SoundMann]

Take a look at my thread, as I have also come to the conclusion that the mastering process has the most overall impact on sound quality, regardless of medium:

Re-Mastering Your High-End Audio System

It certainly makes a big difference.

 

[Amir]

George, in reading all your posts it is very apparent to me that you are still stuck in the 80’s, at the advent of digital with Sony and Phillips. Most of what you write is very dated. You speak of sampling associated with PCM, but not a single word on Direcr Stream Digital.

Have you listen to current state of the art digital playback lately? I’m not talking about dCS, or MSB, or Wadax. I’m speaking of the T+A SD3100HV or DAC200 dacs feed 512x48 native DSD or 1024x48 DSD from HQPLAYER?

Take a look at the Signalyst website and learn about the digital filters and modulators that have been developed and used in HQPLAYER to not only extract low level information and increase perceived resolution of digital recordings but to also address some of the issues found in digital files. HQPLAYER is powerful enough to allow you perform your own convolutions.

It is a great new digital world today and it’s time for you to leave the 80’s in the past.

100% wrong Conclusion

your idea will change 180 degrees if you listen to digital filters in a high performance system.

 

[SoundMann]

This reminds me of how top quality film in static photography did, possibly still does, have more resolution than digital backs.

Yes. I am a dedicated film photographer.

 

[SoundMann]

So why do some recordings sound good on most digital players and some only sound good on high end players?

Resolution and refinement.

 

[Carlos269]

100% wrong Conclusion

your idea will change 180 degrees if you listen to digital filter in a high performance system.

Can you elaborate some more? I have many high performance systems that are superior to your system so you would need to step up substantially to be on the same level. Let me know if you ever get there and what you hear; then come back and tell me that I was correct.

 

[Amir]

Digital Technology at it's highest quality has good objective measurements but the question is :
1) what measurements?
2) how those measurements are related to our hearing system?


I can not answer the question "why Analog is better to my ears?"

I just have some limited experience that I can list the result :
1) overally I prefer Analog
2) best digital playback comes from high quality AAD format not any kind of digital processing

 

[Carlos269]

Digital Technology at it's highest quality has good objective measurements but the question is :
1) what measurements?
2) how those measurements are related to our hearing system?


I can not answer the question "why Analog is better to my ears?"

I just have some limited experience that I can list the result :
1) overally I prefer Analog
2) best digital playback comes from high quality AAD format not any kind of digital processing

FYI - the “D” at the end of AAD stands for “Digital”

 

[SoundMann]

George, in reading all your posts it is very apparent to me that you are still stuck in the 80’s, at the advent of digital with Sony and Phillips. Most of what you write is very dated. You speak of sampling associated with PCM, but not a single word on Direcr Stream Digital.

Have you listen to current state of the art digital playback lately? I’m not talking about dCS, or MSB, or Wadax. I’m speaking of the T+A SD3100HV or DAC200 dacs feed 512x48 native DSD or 1024x48 DSD from HQPLAYER?

Take a look at the Signalyst website and learn about the digital filters and modulators that have been developed and used in HQPLAYER to not only extract low level information and increase perceived resolution of digital recordings but to also address some of the issues found in digital files. HQPLAYER is powerful enough to allow you perform your own convolutions.

It is a great new digital world today and it’s time for you to leave the 80’s in the past.

I have tried to keep up the best I can regardless of my advanced stage of brain cancer.

I heard the Wadax with DSD256 just over a month ago. It was impressive (for digital), but it ultimately lacked inner detail.

Digital remains essentially the same underneath, regardless of all the tricks to make it sound better. But DSD holds promise, especially if we can get the bit rate high enough.

 

[Carlos269]

I have tried to keep up the best I can regardless of my advanced stage of brain cancer.

I heard the Wadax with DSD256 just over a month ago. It was impressive (for digital), but it ultimately lacked inner detail.

Digital remains essentially the same underneath, regardless of all the tricks to make it sound better. But DSD holds promise, especially if we can get the bit rate high enough.

George, I’m deeply sorry to hear about your health issues.

please take a look at:

HQPLAYER

It is the inner detail that HQPLAYER does so right.

There are whole communities of users over at AudiophileStyle:

AudiophileStyle


and over at ROON Labs Community:

ROON Labs Community

using and sharing their knowledge on HQPLAYER. Jussi Laako is the HQPLAYER developer is an active participant on both sites.

It would be worth your while to find out what real State of the Art digital playback is about today.

 

[SoundMann]

George, I’m deeply sorry to hear about your health issues.

Thanks for your condolences

It would be worth your while to find out what real State of the Art digital playback is about today.

I looked at it for awhile. But what put me off is all of the expensive gadgets required to make it sound acceptable.

 

[Amir]

AudiophileStyle

This forum (AudiophileStyle) is the most worse forum I have ever seen, it is full of wrong information

 

[Carlos269]

Thanks for your condolences



I looked at it for awhile. But what put me off is all of the expensive gadgets required to make it sound acceptable.

It doesn’t sound acceptable, it sounds phenomenal. It is the best digital playback available today.

 

[Carlos269]

This forum is the worse forum I have ever seen, it is full of wrong information

Amir, you want to be a know it all but the more you post the more it is evident that your knowledge is very limited. There are some extremely knowledgeable users on that forum. Some of those users also participate on this forum. Keep an open mind and learn something new today.

 

[SoundMann]

It doesn’t sound acceptable, it sounds phenomenal. It is the best digital playback available today.

The demonstrations I heard does sound like a pinnacle for digital. But the amount of time, money and effort it would take to get it going is too much for me at this point.

 

[RCanelas]

This reminds me of how top quality film in static photography did, possibly still does, have more resolution than digital backs. Similar subject IMO.
But yes, I can see how 'kind' distortions, artefacts and even tape hiss can do strange things to our auditory system. I have no idea medically why, I am relaying just what I can hear. Anyone have any other theories on why?

This is actually a good analogy, but I'm going to go the other way. I have my own darkroom, do plenty of formats from 35mm with nice Leica glass all the way to 8x10". I have prints of mine in a few public and private collections. This is to say I know the medium to a fair extent.

A film negative absolutely does not have equivalent resolution to a digital capture. It is orders of magnitude lower. Again, physics is a bitch. Film works with silver crystals, that have a minimum size (depending on sensitivity and processing), hence the classic grain of an analog BW photo. Equivalent digital sensor resolution was achieved ~15 years ago for normal 35mm consumer film.

Of course you'll see online that you need a lot of resolution to scan a 35mm film, much more than the effective resolution, but that is because you'll want to capture the grain itself in the digital file! So the grain is such a pleasant artifact that we want to capture it as well. Not because it is resolving anything objectively useful (you can't distinguish things apart bellow grain scale, the definition of resolution, same for audio), but because the artifact itself is beautiful and needs to be preserved. And the digital is so much more capable (technically) that you can represent the analog defects (noise) as normal signal, way above the digital noise floor.

There is a defect, visible to the naked eye in this case, that hacks our perception. I perceive it as 'better' given the context and my culture. I like it more. But it's obviously technically a lesser representation. So there is more than just specs, there is something else beyond what we're describing with technical metrics and definitions.

It doesn't require misrepresentations of reality to justify human preferences.

 

[Rexp]

Amir, you want to be a know it all but the more you post the more it is evident that your knowledge is very limited. There are some extremely knowledgeable users on that forum. Some of those users also participate on this forum. Keep an open mind and learn something new today.

No that forum is full of computer geeks who have little interest in music and run by a guy who hates vinyl. Didn't you learn that already?

 

[Carlos269]

The demonstrations I heard does sound like a pinnacle for digital. But the amount of time, money and effort it would take to get it going is too much for me at this point.

Okay George. Now we are on the same page. Yes I agree that it is a lot of effort, cost, and knowledge needed to implement HQPLAYER to its fullest. I can understand that this is not a viable road, for you to take, or a path that you would want to undertake, but for all the others on this forum that consider themselves “hardcore” audiophiles they should know where the mountain top lies and it is not with the Apex, Fento33, with the Akasa, or over the horizon.

 

[Carlos269]

No that forum is full of computer geeks who have little interest in music and run by a guy who hates vinyl. Didn't you learn that already?

What I have read from your posts is that you would benefit from learning a thing or two from those computer geeks.