.. True that.. You guys are making my ..very slowwwwww day ... P you should put your poetic skills to better use ..like ..writing poems
Analog Apologist
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.. True that.. You guys are making my ..very slowwwwww day ... P you should put your poetic skills to better use ..like ..writing poems
P.....i'm not touching your post.
objectivity. it requires exposure to evidence. you need to be open minded to what any format can do. that takes investment in time, gear, and software to get the experience for yourself.
you gotta listen.
my path in this hobby has been defined somewhat by investigation of all formats.
in 1995 i got back into vinyl to see if it was as good as Fremer said it was.
in 2000 i got deeply into SACD to see if that might be better than vinyl.
in 2005 i added multichannel SACD to my 2-channel room.
in 2007 i dived into RTR big time....also got into the vintage tt's.
in 2008 i added a music server and later hirez downloads.
in the last few months i purchased a mono cartridge and cleaned my 300 mono Lps; i've been investigating how good mono's can sound.
i don't have any agenda other than listening to music in the best possible format.
so no; it's not about be deluded by anything other than how well the music can communicate. i like all the formats and listen to them all. but when people who have not made the commitment to listening to all the formats make claims based on things other than listening at the best level possible then i'm not too tolerant.
if someone says; i've done this specific listening to this specific gear and this specific software and i drew this conclusion then i'm reading with great interest. but speaking about how something can't be this way because of 'blah, blah, blah' and i'm smarter than you.......please spare me.
objectivity. it requires exposure to evidence. you need to be open minded to what any format can do. that takes investment in time, gear, and software to get the experience for yourself.
you gotta listen.
my path in this hobby has been defined somewhat by investigation of all formats.
in 1995 i got back into vinyl to see if it was as good as Fremer said it was.
in 2000 i got deeply into SACD to see if that might be better than vinyl.
in 2005 i added multichannel SACD to my 2-channel room.
in 2007 i dived into RTR big time....also got into the vintage tt's.
in 2008 i added a music server and later hirez downloads.
in the last few months i purchased a mono cartridge and cleaned my 300 mono Lps; i've been investigating how good mono's can sound.
i don't have any agenda other than listening to music in the best possible format.
so no; it's not about be deluded by anything other than how well the music can communicate. i like all the formats and listen to them all. but when people who have not made the commitment to listening to all the formats make claims based on things other than listening at the best level possible then i'm not too tolerant.
if someone says; i've done this specific listening to this specific gear and this specific software and i drew this conclusion then i'm reading with great interest. but speaking about how something can't be this way because of 'blah, blah, blah' and i'm smarter than you.......please spare me.
Might be time to take a good hard listen at active. It is a palpable leap on a par with finally getting good room acoustics.
P
So subjective is okay now. Nice, at least we are starting to have some common ground now P in that what we choose is what we like more because of what we hear and not just by what's been measured.
Subjective has always been ok, Jack, and I believe we already got there....
It's making very objectivist, fact-like statements without any facts that I have an admitted personal problem allowing to stand. You prefer vinyl? I really have no desire to talk you out of that. But imply that I am living in a sub-audiophile world were true resolution does not exist because I don't prefer what you prefer, I'll be asking you for something to back that up. Again, a personal quirk. My problem, not yours. Enjoy the music.
P
P you should put your poetic skills to better use ..like ..writing poems
For years I put them to use describing immeasurable audiophile tweaks. Then one day a friend of mine talked me into switching back and forth between my prized new possession and the piece it was replacing...blind. That changed everything.
P
P
Do you mean zero crossover points Frantz? Digital has this between every single plus to minus and minus to plus transition. This is exactly what noise shaping attempts to address. Analog has it based on transistor switching. So digital gets it not just during the process but post conversion as well.
I fail to see how noise shaping in the form of inserting random information via algorithms can be better than altering the levels of the signal via EQ when the former alters the signal itself. How can these "predictions" of where bits should go between quantizations be closer to the microphone pickup aka how things are, than straight up analogous voltage level recording? Look up any decent microphone and they come with their own EQ charts. Digital does not spare anybody from EQ. Besides it is only some strange audiophile dogma that says EQ is inherently bad in the first place. In truth it is a scientific necessity borne from the fact that, like no cutter head, no mic can record perfectly flat across a wide enough bandwidth.
As for the crux of the matter, at least to me what I associate with reality is what I experienced voices and instruments sound like live or what we have been taught to identify or learned ourselves. Obviously that is what is familiar. One can only have a frame of reference from personal experience so I don't really get what you mean. Even if we do hear things differently from person to person there is a collective baseline, an average if you will, of learned characteristics of timbre, dynamics and tone by those exposed that allow identification not just by individuals but by groups of people of common experience. Even deaf people can dance to music and can be taught to feel the difference between a bass line and kick drum sequence. That's just an extreme example of how variant that baseline can be. Now I do believe both 16/44.1 and LP are way above any such base line. A transistor radio is above the baseline well enough for us to tell which shock jock is on the air.
The crux may well be then, what better simulates an event rather than just the sound of the event. Here we depart from just the ears but a sensory package that includes every other sense. In music we won't get smell, sight and taste but touch, like the deaf folks has got to be in there. When we talk touch we're now talking about frequency extension above and below audibility. If I may correct you on one point, LP cutting dictates calibration of frequency extension up to 50kHz not 20kHz. The pre-emphasis is a requirement to achieve this not because the information is not there but rather as a work around for the needed amplification power for the cutter head to reach that frequency. It is 16/44.1 digital that brick walls at 20kHz or so. This is what I have been saying. Since the 60s the LP format has been spec'd for still limited but wider high frequency response than redbook. High frequency response that psychoacoustics says helps us to recreate in our minds a sense of dimensionality ergo not just the sounds emanating from the performers but of the space they were recorded in as well. Plus one for analog. Dynamic punch which has nothing to do with space plus one for redbook. Both make things more realistic, neither format has a monopoly even on just these two. Which of the two makes it more real for the individual? You could choose one or the other criteria and still be right.
I've already said that on the low end redbook has a very clear advantage over LP and why. There is however one aspect where it is irrefutable that digital, even low bit rate mp3s betters LP. Channel Separation. Yet nobody talks about it. Nobody has assailed LP for having crosstalk where digital has none, zero, zip. It may well be that in the scheme of things, within a hierarchy of acceptable trade offs, it falls at or near the bottom. I mean we all know what 60Hz hum sounds like but what does 5% crosstalk sound like? I can measure it on a scope while checking cartridge azimuth but in terms of image stability where it is supposed to matter, is 0 crosstalk that much better? I guess not. Not even the most experienced champions of either camp have made mention of it as far as I can recall. Nobody has said digital images better, again, as far as I can recall.
My only agenda in joining this discussion is to present an alternate view. A view that takes into account not just where one medium is comparatively better but one that pinpoints the individual and inherent weaknesses of each sans comparison. Why? I'm not out to change anybody's hierarchy of trade offs just perhaps have some folks accept the fact that all of us have such a hierarchy wether we knew it or not at the outset of this discussion
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You are making me cringe Jack
. Noise shaping is an optional component of CD and PCM reproduction. It is only necessary in case of SACD due to use of a single bit of precision. Noise shaping is not used to fill anything between samples. That is done with the reconstruction filter. And that filter, in theory, does perfect reconstruction. There are no holes in the data conveyed. Again, at theory level. What you are describing is dither. And as non-intuitive as it sounds, the science shows that dither fully eliminates quantization noise from digital samples. Yes, it is noise. But that noise has magical characteristics in how it takes harmonic distortion created due to discreet samples and turns it into benign noise. Not a perfect analogy but bias signal is used in R2R to deal with the limitations of that medium.
You are giving me ideas for a number of articles I need to write about these topics to bring better clarity
.
Greater clarity is sorely needed. There have been quite a few statements in this thread that have revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of how digital audio works. I don't know all that much, but I know better. I look forward to your articles.
P
P.....i'm not touching your post.
objectivity. it requires exposure to evidence. you need to be open minded to what any format can do. that takes investment in time, gear, and software to get the experience for yourself.
you gotta listen.
my path in this hobby has been defined somewhat by investigation of all formats.
in 1995 i got back into vinyl to see if it was as good as Fremer said it was.
in 2000 i got deeply into SACD to see if that might be better than vinyl.
in 2005 i added multichannel SACD to my 2-channel room.
in 2007 i dived into RTR big time....also got into the vintage tt's.
in 2008 i added a music server and later hirez downloads.
in the last few months i purchased a mono cartridge and cleaned my 300 mono Lps; i've been investigating how good mono's can sound.
i don't have any agenda other than listening to music in the best possible format.
so no; it's not about be deluded by anything other than how well the music can communicate. i like all the formats and listen to them all. but when people who have not made the commitment to listening to all the formats make claims based on things other than listening at the best level possible then i'm not too tolerant.
if someone says; i've done this specific listening to this specific gear and this specific software and i drew this conclusion then i'm reading with great interest. but speaking about how something can't be this way because of 'blah, blah, blah' and i'm smarter than you.......please spare me.
Well, Mike, it's good to know where your interests lie. I'll bear that in mind as I compose my posts. My methodologies are a bit different than yours. Your sounds far to time-consuming and expensive when there is still so much great music I haven't heard. Mine is simple: I have my reference systems, and a lot of components have come and gone and have been auditioned in those systems over the years. They almost always came in with a liberal return policy, and the overwhelming majority of them got returned. I listen to new components blind whenever I can figure out a way to do it (headphones present a difficult challenge
). That's my criteria for taking user reports seriously; Did you get a friend involved and figure out a way to compare the new component to the reference without knowing which one you were listening to? If you did, then I'll be reading with great interest.By the way, I don't think I ever said I was smarter than you. It may very well be true, but you are the one who brought it up, not me.
P
Well, Mike, it's good to know where your interests lie. I'll bear that in mind as I compose my posts. My methodologies are a bit different than yours. Your sounds far to time-consuming and expensive when there is still so much great music I haven't heard. Mine is simple: I have my reference systems, and a lot of components have come and gone and have been auditioned in those systems over the years. They almost always came in with a liberal return policy, and the overwhelming majority of them got returned. I listen to new components blind whenever I can figure out a way to do it (headphones present a difficult challenge
By the way, I don't think I ever said I was smarter than you. It may very well be true, but you are the one who brought it up, not me.
P
I don't think there's any shortage of software at Chez Lavigne either. He probably has enough to last him the rest of his life.
Well, Mike, it's good to know where your interests lie. I'll bear that in mind as I compose my posts. My methodologies are a bit different than yours. Your sounds far to time-consuming and expensive when there is still so much great music I haven't heard. Mine is simple: I have my reference systems, and a lot of components have come and gone and have been auditioned in those systems over the years. They almost always came in with a liberal return policy, and the overwhelming majority of them got returned. I listen to new components blind whenever I can figure out a way to do it (headphones present a difficult challenge
By the way, I don't think I ever said I was smarter than you. It may very well be true, but you are the one who brought it up, not me.
P
so now we go from 'digital is better than vinyl but; i have not had any sort of reasonable vinyl reference...ever' to 'blind testing'.
i think this is where i'm outta this thread......or rather; i've played this 'end game' more times than i care to think about and i don't need to do it again.
Mike,
The forum is titled "What's Best" not what's easiest or what costs the least. Then again I replied to PP on 7-04-2010 with this
Seems pretty much what Mike is saying. PP replied to my response with this
Now his response is that he has not listened to anything approaching state of the art and defense for digital is
So now we are all on board with both my original reply and Mikes response.
Where was it, gentlemen, that I said I had not heard any good vinyl rigs? Or that I chose digital for the convenience only? In debate, these are called straw men. in this old argument, let's just call it changing the subject. Again...if you like the sound and the process that is vinyl and get joy from it, good, good for you. But if you insist that it is better in some substantive way, I disagree, and I'd like to see some substance.
The only other thing going on here is that Mike gave me a detailed description of his method for trying out new gear. I gave mine in return. I'm struggling to understand how that is offensive.
Informal blind listening has served me well, though I know it is no substitute for a controlled ABX test carried to a statistically significant sample. But even in its simplest form, it has helped me to debunk some of my own myths, determine what I hear and don't hear, and identify what is important and needs to be addressed next. It is not much more than listening with your eyes closed, hearing with one very influential distraction removed. Well, except that it sometimes reveals some rather uncomfortable information. I once learned, for example, that there was not a clear difference between 3 dedicated headphone amps, at pretty radically different prices and technologies, and the headphone jack of a digital AV receiver. That was pretty embarrassing, given that I'd spent weeks singing the praises of one of those amps and swearing it squeezed more dynamic range and detail out of my Senns than I'd ever heard before. I tried the test repeatedly. I tried it in short, quick switches and after a week of listening to only one amp. I tried it on friends and relatives. Ah well....
But if you guys don't think it is possible for you to be influenced by expectation bias, I salute your confidence. The mere mention of unsighted listening seems an odd reason to get angry and stomp off, though. Nevertheless...
Enjoy the music.
P
The only other thing going on here is that Mike gave me a detailed description of his method for trying out new gear. I gave mine in return. I'm struggling to understand how that is offensive.
Informal blind listening has served me well, though I know it is no substitute for a controlled ABX test carried to a statistically significant sample. But even in its simplest form, it has helped me to debunk some of my own myths, determine what I hear and don't hear, and identify what is important and needs to be addressed next. It is not much more than listening with your eyes closed, hearing with one very influential distraction removed. Well, except that it sometimes reveals some rather uncomfortable information. I once learned, for example, that there was not a clear difference between 3 dedicated headphone amps, at pretty radically different prices and technologies, and the headphone jack of a digital AV receiver. That was pretty embarrassing, given that I'd spent weeks singing the praises of one of those amps and swearing it squeezed more dynamic range and detail out of my Senns than I'd ever heard before. I tried the test repeatedly. I tried it in short, quick switches and after a week of listening to only one amp. I tried it on friends and relatives. Ah well....
But if you guys don't think it is possible for you to be influenced by expectation bias, I salute your confidence. The mere mention of unsighted listening seems an odd reason to get angry and stomp off, though. Nevertheless...
Enjoy the music.
P
'P',
anger has nothing to do with my reasons for not seeing any rational for continuing this particular dialog.
when listening perspectives get catagorically invalidated by participants by invoking 'the blind testing pont of view' then there is no longer common ground to base exchange of ideas. there are forums where blind testing is required to justify everything. i don't set any agenda here on this forum but when posters hide behind the skirts of blind testing (as a result of their listening experience being questioned) then i drop out of that dialog. it is a matter of having no interest in that subject. and this is not any new sequence of events. the pattern is familiar.
added note; there should be an effort to always inject objectivity into any decision making while system building. but multiple listening sessions and extended time auditioning are more valid than any short term blind testing in my experience. regarding objectivity in judging software, or even formats. there is no substitute for listening to the multiple formats daily over extended time periods.......which is what i do. added to that are many sessions with multiple listeners switching from format to format. part of the hobby is a pursuit of the truth and my long term efforts with all formats i believe has accomplished that. i just want to be clear that seeking the truth of my perspectives is not a casual issue to me.
you have every right to have any opinion that you like.
repectfully,
Mike
PP posts:
No basically you blew Mike off inferring he was just into listening to expensive high-end gear and your route was holier and mighter because you are spending your money on the music and not equipment. You've basically stereotyped Mike and you don't know him one whit. In fact, your music collection probably pales in comparison to Mike's, believe me.
No basically you blew Mike off inferring he was just into listening to expensive high-end gear and your route was holier and mighter because you are spending your money on the music and not equipment. You've basically stereotyped Mike and you don't know him one whit. In fact, your music collection probably pales in comparison to Mike's, believe me.
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