He can't make it indistinguishable as I have just pointed out to him above. He realises this so he changes the "story" to be when the amp is performing at its optimum (statically). He therefore can't emulate any SET performing with your speakers under normal circumstances - they will sound different.
Great article on "Analogue Warmth"
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He can't make it indistinguishable as I have just pointed out to him above. He realises this so he changes the "story" to be when the amp is performing at its optimum (statically). He therefore can't emulate any SET performing with your speakers under normal circumstances - they will sound different.
They will sound better. Because you will have all of the good, and none of the bad.
So you think all of these vibrations and everything from the room will make things sound better than if the amp was on a vibration isolated platform, under perfect conditions while the measurement sweeps were taken?
You are right, it will be better. It will have all the sound characteristics people love about the gear, without all of the drawbacks. The best of both worlds. Is anyone passionate about the sound of a SET amp when driven to 70% distortion? Why not connect a 1 watt SET amp up to a pair of power hungry apogee's?
I think this is an inapposite reply. Flight, electricity and radio are obviously amazing inventions achieved with the application of technology, aiming toward perfection. No amount of technology can perfectly extrapolate and synthesize and recreate the interstitial musical information lost in the digital sampling of an analog waveform (unless, I suppose, the sampling rate is infinite). In my audio philosophy any information dropped from the continuous waveform makes the resulting conversion inferior to the original analog waveform.
Analog seeks to approximate perfection. Digital selects a sampling rate and seeks to perfect an approximation. (Edward Rothstein)
I appreciate that you are turned off by the messiness and "organicness" of LP playback and the discomforting "black art" aspects of cartridge alignment. But why go though all of your digital and electronic complexity, technology and brain damage in the first place, only to wind up with a sonic result which is at least theoretically inferior and, to many, practically inferior? Just get a turntable and play an LP.
I don't know whether it will be better or worse, with some recordings and not others. People say they want to recreate "live music". One of the key differences between live and recorded music is acoustic feedback from the room into the microphones and instruments themselves (sympathetic vibration of strings etc.). Some of the supposed magic of valves and vinyl could be acoustic feedback.
I think this is an inapposite reply. Flight, electricity and radio are obviously amazing inventions achieved with the application of technology, aiming toward perfection. No amount of technology can perfectly extrapolate and synthesize and recreate the interstitial musical information lost in the digital sampling of an analog waveform (unless, I suppose, the sampling rate is infinite). In my audio philosophy any information dropped from the continuous waveform makes the resulting conversion inferior to the original analog waveform.
Analog seeks to approximate perfection. Digital selects a sampling rate and seeks to perfect an approximation. (Edward Rothstein)
I appreciate that you are turned off by the messiness and "organicness" of LP playback and the discomforting "black art" aspects of cartridge alignment. But why go though all of your digital and electronic complexity, technology and brain damage in the first place, only to wind up with a sonic result which is at least theoretically inferior and, to many, practically inferior? Just get a turntable and play an LP.
So are you saying an LP is better than the mic feeds, or analog tape it was sourced from?
I would love to gather all of the anti digital guys from this forum together for a blind test. Not a single one of you would be able to tell apart an R2R playing a tape, and a DAC playing back a DSD 256 copy in the same system. Then what will you say when you find out you chose the digital over the analog? Let me guess, pretend it never happened and go on with life trying your best to block what you experienced out of your memory.
But analogue noise e.g. finite vinyl substrate 'grain size' is exactly that loss of continuity of the waveform. In bucket loads.
When people use live music as a reference, they necessarily refer to the rare experience of unamplified live music. Microphones don't enter into the equation.
Tim
Acutually someone on another forum (F1eng) moved his Goldmund Ref to another room to do exactly as you say and moved it back because it sounded lifeless by comparison so you might well be on to something.
Maybe so, but not always. But anyway, that's why I also mentioned "sympathetic vibration of strings etc."
No amount of technology can perfectly extrapolate and synthesize and recreate the interstitial musical information lost in the digital sampling of an analog waveform (unless, I suppose, the sampling rate is infinite). In my audio philosophy any information dropped from the continuous waveform makes the resulting conversion inferior to the original analog waveform.
Analog seeks to approximate perfection. Digital selects a sampling rate and seeks to perfect an approximation. (Edward Rothstein)
I appreciate that you are turned off by the messiness and "organicness" of LP playback and the discomforting "black art" aspects of cartridge alignment. But why go though all of your digital and electronic complexity, technology and brain damage in the first place, only to wind up with a sonic result which is at least theoretically inferior and, to many, practically inferior? Just get a turntable and play an LP.
Well, here we disagree, Ron.
After having studied it, with the help of the knowledgeable technical input of some members here, I have concluded that digital theory is correct. In theory digital does allow for a perfect reconstitution of the analog waveform even with limited sampling, and it is only the practical implementation that is at issue. And the dCS Vivaldi stack, with a no-holds-barred effort towards practical implementation as well as currently possible, shows that the potential of even Redbook CD is immense (and I am sure that even the Vivaldi has not yet reached the peak of digital).
And yes, the playback on the dCS Vivaldi sounds incredibly organic.
I think this proves, once again, that much honest disagreement here originates in the differing philosophies of high-end audio.
I believe there are three primary alternative objectives of high-end audio:
1) recreate the sound of an original musical event,
2) reproduce exactly what is on the master tape, and
3) create a sound subjectively pleasing to the audiophile.
I subscribe to the first philosophy. I want my audio system to recreate as realistically and as believably as possible the sound of an original musical event. See http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?19261-Introduction-and-Listening-Biases
I believe that you, Blizzard, out of the three choices, would subscribe to philosophy 2) (reproduce exactly what is on the master tape).
Since I subscribe to philosophy 1), I am saying that the LP can be better than the mic feed (with "better," as defined by philosophy 1), as better able to recreate the sound of an original musical event).
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