Great article on "Analogue Warmth"

[TBone]

Groucho ... a 40hz filter is often used with LP, however ...

example below is a live CD track which was originally recorded to 16bit DAT ...


the same LP rip to CD (not my rip) ...


Notice the infrasonic energy, and the very fact the 30hz peak is retained.

This is but one example, many more exist .... yet to be fair, I can display examples of just the opposite, so as I said, vinyl reproduction is very much a moving target.

 

[Groucho]

Digital perfectly reconstitutes the analog waveform if the analog waveform has limited bandwidth and limited dynamics - exactly the case of audio signals. What we can debate is the sound quality of the practical implementations.

Not quite. Sampled audio on its own does what you say, but "digital" means there's quantisation error.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

This thread has reached the point at which its direction is being driven by ignorance and denial. It is now impossible to address some of the positions being held without, subtly or otherwise, insulting the intelligence of those who hold them. So it's violate the TOS, acquiesce to the ignorance, or be silent. Peace out.

Tim

 

[spiritofmusic]

Mr. Ponk, I'M not complaining. Blizz has been telling me all day how he's going to get this magic box to me. I just CANNOT wait. 300-600W of Class D, all that power but also as intimate as you could want w.3W/ch SET beauty, all the analog warmth that every Class D amp I've heard can only dream of providing. Sounds like win-win to me.

 

[Purite Audio]

Digital perfectly reconstitutes the analog waveform if the analog waveform has limited bandwidth and limited dynamics - exactly the case of audio signals. What we can debate is the sound quality of the practical implementations.

Micro tut tut, you will give digital a bad reputation, the waveform is reconstructed perfectly in a band limited system, dynamics are completely unaffected.
Keith.

 

[Al M.]

That's ok, Al.

When I visit you and Peter A. next year I am open to trying to understand how, in theory, digital perfectly reconstitutes the analog waveform even with limited sampling,

Ron, I look forward to your visit! I would recommend that, while you are in the area, you also listen to Madfloyd's (Ian's) system, it's pretty incredible to my ears.

 

[Purite Audio]

Digital perfectly reconstitutes the analog waveform if the analog waveform has limited bandwidth and limited dynamics - exactly the case of audio signals. What we can debate is the sound quality of the practical implementations.

This might help,
http://www.audiorecordingschool.com/blog/chris-montgomery-explains-digital-audio/

Keith.

 

[Al M.]

Chris Montgomery's videos are extremely informative:

D/A and A/D | Digital Show and Tell (Monty Montgomery @ xiph.org)

Yes, that's a great video. We also discussed the issue on this thread,

Redbook 44.1 kHz standard: theoretically sufficient timbral resolution?

 

[spiritofmusic]

Hope it's better than the Tad M2500 I had a few months back lol. You can't beat class a for me or a/b. But this will change. I had a audio research ref 3 pre that was thin and very pants not at all tube like so each technology can be comprisimsed often by trying too hard to be what is is not. In the case of Audio research trying to be solid state maybe. No bit of kit has disappointed me more than the two bits of audio research I have had.

Er Spaz, I'm not holding my breath.
You've got to love mind experiments/flights of fancy/streams of consciousness.

Time to get the thread back to like something resembling the inspired idea that supports the idea of the thread.

I'm due to have Ron over in a couple of weeks to hear my newly configured analog front end. He's a guy who stands for no coldness in his sound, and likes the warmer, sweeter end of analog replay.
My tt tends twds the more analytical/stop-start/precise, presentation. I'm curious to see if he feels this is less warm than a more conventional tt front end (I run direct rim drive tt and linear tracking arm), and isn't drawn to my sound.
Fascinatingly, even w/a more crystalline, precise, less bloomy presentation, I actually feel there is no shortfall in warmth - now my tt has more of what I term "natural warmth", and less "euphonic warmth".
But I've had to work hard in synergy matching and tt/arm setup to get the very best, and it's been worth the effort.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Spaz, I could have stayed down the belt drive/pivoted arm/SS/mod efficiency box spkr route. But at various points moved beyond, and the more radical choices I've made have had effects on all aspects of sound reproduction incl maxxing natural warmth.
For me, faithful representation of tonal density is a big function of natural warmth (a positive) as opposed to euphonic bloom, which can be a negative.
Unlike you, I've been to loads of live jazz - at least a couple of dozen of live concerts a year, and my system is much closer to the warmth I hear in a club or restaraunt. Certainly much more than the loosey goosey sound I started with.

Btw, I love my sound - Ron's opinion will have no bearing on that - but he's on a bit of a tour to hear a lot out there and publish his thoughts, and I am curious as to his take.

 

[Blizzard]

When people don't understand how things work, you'll always have the same guys with the same mindset trying to bash the idea. It doesn't matter what the topic is. Ask anyone who's ever accomplished anything noteworthy, and they will tell you criticism is the story of their lives. You would think people would just say "Wow great idea, but since I have no idea how stuff like this works, I'll just sit back and let the pros work on it" but instead you get a wave of revolt from naysayers who cringe at innovative ideas if they are outside the bubble of their understanding and comfort. Well can't do nothing about those guys. But one thing for sure, once you prove them wrong, and the majority hops on board with your system, the same guys will be the ones defending your product, if someone else comes along threatening to make a better mouse trap through innovation.

 

[spiritofmusic]

The mods get angsty if you talk socialised medicine/gun laws/Tea Party.
I don't know why, a Hell of a lot more mileage in these than objective v subjective blind alleys.
Btw, correction, go to a couple of dozen live jazz concerts a year. I like live classical too, but my parameters are set more by comparison to live jazz than anything else.

 

[esldude]

Either the push pull triode amp was intrinsically colored or the speaker load was too much to handle for it. One comment I have repeatedly heard about my system over the years is that my amps "don't sound like tube amps".

Yes, I get this every time I describe what I did. My amps were over loaded, my amps weren't really good triode amps, blah, blah, blah. Except no they weren't and yes they were good sounding amplifiers.

I guess my question to you is if your tube amps sound like transistors why not use transistors? I am not saying it isn't possible to make clean tube amps that sound like good solid state because it is. Just why put up with tubes if they sound un-tube-like?

 

[spiritofmusic]

Blizzard, I guarantee I'll be your first customer if it works as you say. Just make the damned thing already. And don't cheat by expecting the rest of us to help w/yr tube signature programming. You make the claim, make the device, and do all the tube listening and sampling you need, just why should anyone of us help you other than handing you the cash when we audition and choose to buy. All else is hot air, like the kind swirling around my 211s right now.
There's no commercially available unit that does what you say. Not one. Noone else other than you talking about it. Not anyone. Noone else really backing you up on yr claims. Not one.
As I said, I like you a lot, one must be bold in coming up w/new solutions and new paradigms. But until that becomes a reality, I reserve my basic human right to be a total skeptic.
You have my PM, you keep me posted.

 

[esldude]

Can I vote myself for this role? Please. Please!
The only prob, is that I'll be so mesmerised by the sounds I'm hearing, I just won't have the time to "cut and paste" those samples to the magic box, and send it back to you sounding as far away from real music as it's possible. Too bad for your business model.

Btw, once you're done w/audio, maybe it's time for you to clone the perfect woman, make fast food taste like Haute Cuisine in pill form, make voting for one party the natural thing to do. Put it this way, if you can make Class D INDISTINGUISHABLE from the most intimate SET sound, the rest of these will be child's play :b

You should look into Universal Audio emulation plug ins. They aren't for home playback. They model classic studio gear, and make it available as a plug in for DAW software. Their approach is to take the physical item and measure/model each part of the circuit even the physical layout and any interactions that causes. They are successful at this.

The idea of emulation is not crazy by any means. The idea despite measurably inferior results tube gear, analog gear, holds some undiscovered magic that can't be copied and emulated is the idea that is goofy. And where does that idea come from? It comes from being guided by your ears as if infallible in the judge of accuracy and reality. Then being told nope, not only did your ears mislead you, they were fooled seems far too personal. The key point is aurally pleasing and highly accurate sound is not the always the same thing for reproduced music.

 

[esldude]

The whole argument is ridiculous. That we can, or should, try to capture the essence of analogue playback using digital technology is fairly silly - because we don't know that 'the magic' of analogue playback is anything but expectation bias, nor do we know that it isn't a careful tradeoff of one primitive technology against another, nor do we know that it isn't down to 'selective' choices of recordings.

But then failing to fully analyse the analogue playback system is even sillier. For example, one of the main contributors to the 'valve sound' could well be the highly-measurable phenomenon of microphony i.e. acoustic feedback from the speakers to the valves. This will be dependent on resonances in the room, so even if your model captures it, you can't make it work in a different room or even in the same room with different humidity or temperature or a change in the furniture. Ditto vinyl and feedback through the arm.

Well a friend wanted to digitally copy his albums over his system, and said the copies were pretty good though not equal to the LP itself. Using the idea he wanted the cleanest possible copy he of course didn't record while playing the music over his speakers. I had him play music from a digital source while recording his analog circuit to show him the platter, arm and tube phono stage were picking up a low level of sound. So record with the music playing to fully match the result. Which it then did.

 

[amirm]

You guys are going at speed of light here . I will make two comments:

1. The original article talks about a lot of sources of distortion in analog audio chain. Have not seen people say those distortions are not real. If so, how many of you hear these analog distortions and can identify them? Do you always hear them as a collection of goodness???

2. Emulation of analog distortions as described in SOS article collectively and with high fidelity is very hard to impossible. Imagine just modelling scrape flutter of tape. How that tape jumps from one speed to another every few milliseconds depend on the tape, temperature, machine and heaven knows dozens of other causes. Correct emulation would involve physical simulation of the entire unit with measurements of every component. You cannot profile this as scrape flutter will change as the tape spools fill, machine warms up, etc. Ditto for channel crosstalk, self-erasure, etc. These are time variable things that cannot be modeled in single sitting/measurements.

That said, I think a much better approximation can be done than current plug-ins in pro world. It is something I like to build one day (in software) but it is a lot of work.

So emulation of analog distortions while feasible in theory, as a practical matter, is not in front of us as a matter of simple profiling.

 

[Blizzard]

Blizzard, I guarantee I'll be your first customer if it works as you say. Just make the damned thing already. And don't cheat by expecting the rest of us to help w/yr tube signature programming. You make the claim, make the device, and do all the tube listening and sampling you need, just why should anyone of us help you other than handing you the cash when we audition and choose to buy. All else is hot air, like the kind swirling around my 211s right now.
There's no commercially available unit that does what you say. Not one. Noone else other than you talking about it. Not anyone. Noone else really backing you up on yr claims. Not one.
As I said, I like you a lot, one must be bold in coming up w/new solutions and new paradigms. But until that becomes a reality, I reserve my basic human right to be a total skeptic.
You have my PM, you keep me posted.

What are you talking about cheating?? How is allowing someone to add a coloration profiles to the database cheating? I told you there will be about 25-30 profiles to play with off the bat, but the database will continue to grow. In a year or 2 there could be 1000 profiles available for free download. But of course nobody will be obligated to participate with obtaining sound profiles.

Another cool feature will be the ability to blend different profiles to custom Taylor desired sounds. For example. Say you had a Lampi GG with tube A. You really like some of the attributes of this tube, but you wish it had just a tad bit of what tube B offered. No problem, blend a little bit (at your desired ratio) of the tube B profile, into tube A's profile until it sounds just right Then if it sounds great, you can name the new profile, save it, and upload it to a special section of the database for others to try. The combinations can be limitless. Tweakers paradise, and never run out of options Best of all free to do, no going out and spending thousands on expensive, unreliable tubes to roll

 

[esldude]

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).

Well stereo is incapable of recreating the original musical event. Fidelity on playback can only be to the source material.

Which means your camp #1 becomes a variant of camp #3. If the master tape accurately reproduced doesn't sound like music, and LP or any other medium moves closer to the sound of an original musical event it can only be because the original source signal has been altered. Colored, improved, processed, but in any case it has been altered.

So then you have the strange idea that LP can be better than the mic feed at creating a musical event which necessarily means it changed the signal. Yet many will poo poo the idea some digital manipulation of the signal can be beneficial in the same manner or that digital manipulation can do the same 'beneficial' thing that LP can do.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Bad choice of words Blizz, apologies.
The phrase "For those who are about to die, we salute you!" seems MIGHTY appropriate after yr last post .
And I thought I had heard everything LOL.
Good thing we don't let you loose w/the master tapes, maybe you'd like to Pro Tools Baker's/Bonzo's/Elvin's/Buddy's/Moon's drums from the Golden Age. You know, so we have a choice.
This is SO surreal.