Great article on "Analogue Warmth"
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This is great. Good for you. But this does not mean innovation should grind to a halt just because you have a fetish for outdated technology. Perhaps you should open a museum. Either that or a pawnshop
I personally would rather describe the goal as achieving a "believable impression of an original event". That is a goal easier to accomplish -- it takes less to suspend one's disbelief than to replicate the sound of an event. Especially when it's impossible to do the latter, beginning with the microphones. They 'hear' differently than humans and are often located where the ear listening to the event would never be.
Yeah, sure. Many digital projector mavens absolutely rate the Barco as still unbeatable wrt anything digital under $100k. It was 4k compatable, years before digital projectors were. Not bad two decades on when JVC etc are trying to prise cash out of their loyal customer base every 18 months, w/yet another SOTA digital model. Just try and watch Blu Ray and not get hit in the face w/judder on any digital projector under $50k, where the max refresh rate of 48kHz can't keep good company w/SOTA Barco analog at 96kHz.
The Citroen DS is STILL rated by a broad cross section of the designers of today's cutting edge cars as the most significant automobile since the model T. Maybe when you're being jostled over the merest speedhumps in yr so-called superb modern performers you'd value cutting edge oleo-pneumatic suspension taking these in it's stride. Other than electric engine technology, no car has such cutting edge hydraulic control on suspension, gears and braking as the sturdy old Citroen. Why would Rolls Royce after all these years still use the tech basically unchanged in it's $1m+ statement cars? All achieved 60 years ago.
Fascinatingly, the guys like me who are sympathetic to mature technology, don't criticise new stuff anywhere as much as young upstarts LOL like y'self, who as a reflex, sweep everything not current away, just assuming all that is new must be better.
Maybe you ought to check the technology on stuff like the Barco and the Citroen before dismissing it, tech that has existed for decades. But of course, that wouldn't fit w/yr raison d'etre.
Blizz, this is descending into being a little vitriolic, I remain interested in your updates on this boutique-signature amp you will be releasing. In meantime, I hope the thread rights itself, or it will capsize for good w/all this navel gazing/blind alley detouring. As much my fault as your's :b.
The Citroen DS is STILL rated by a broad cross section of the designers of today's cutting edge cars as the most significant automobile since the model T. Maybe when you're being jostled over the merest speedhumps in yr so-called superb modern performers you'd value cutting edge oleo-pneumatic suspension taking these in it's stride. Other than electric engine technology, no car has such cutting edge hydraulic control on suspension, gears and braking as the sturdy old Citroen. Why would Rolls Royce after all these years still use the tech basically unchanged in it's $1m+ statement cars? All achieved 60 years ago.
Fascinatingly, the guys like me who are sympathetic to mature technology, don't criticise new stuff anywhere as much as young upstarts LOL like y'self, who as a reflex, sweep everything not current away, just assuming all that is new must be better.
Maybe you ought to check the technology on stuff like the Barco and the Citroen before dismissing it, tech that has existed for decades. But of course, that wouldn't fit w/yr raison d'etre.
Blizz, this is descending into being a little vitriolic, I remain interested in your updates on this boutique-signature amp you will be releasing. In meantime, I hope the thread rights itself, or it will capsize for good w/all this navel gazing/blind alley detouring. As much my fault as your's :b.
Yes, I agree with that. But Ron thought I misquoted or misused his ideas. Though again, your description of a believable impression falls into his camp #3 from where I sit.
Of course all of this is grossing over the fact 99% of recordings are done in such a way they can never reach the maximum ability of stereo to reproduce a musical event. With stereo at its best still being inadequate it does reach far enough toward real perceived accuracy to work pretty well. If, and it is a big if, the recording is done in a way to allow that. For nearly all recorded music it is all a matter of colorations to taste to make a pleasurable result upon playback. An allowing of suspension of disbelief as said.
Your one of those fundamentalist nutjobs Marc lol I like the sound of this all but the naim
I find laying a log more satisfying than sitting on one.
Spaz, Naim AV1 only for rear cinema sound duties. I'd never let those pesky Salisbury chappies intrude onto the front soundfield.
Very, very well said. I've been doing a lot of listening with my free time this last week or so. Does what I hear sound like the real thing? Not even close. Were the microphones used transparent to the source? Not even remotely close. But am I transported into the music-making event in the same way the rectangular frame of my TV set and my viewing environment "disappears" when I get absorbed in a good movie or well-written, acted and filmed TV series? Yes, of course. Do I enjoy the aural hi-fi experience in my living room and what to keep coming back for more? Absolutely. The only thing keeping me from spinning disks (black or silver) this two weeks is food, hygiene, sleep and exercise "commitments"!
So if someone offered you a straight across swap with the latest and greatest cutting edge Barco projector, with yours, you would turn down the offer because older technology is better? Has Barco lowered the bar over the years, and is now offering an inferior product than to did back in the 90's?
I actually think my Krell 750mcx monoblocks are superior to the current best models being produced by Krell both in terms of build quality but also measurements and sound.
I don't think it is particularly controversial. The counter-intuitive part is that the 'gaps' between the samples are "interpolated" (the word you correctly used earlier) by the filter at the DAC output. This filter has specific mathematical properties and does not just join the dots in a linear, or even 'cubic spline' fashion. Based on 'all' of the samples on either side of the current sample, it calculates a specific function that, by mathematical definition will be (has to be) exactly the same as the one that was sampled by the ADC. Thus the filter output can end up going higher or lower than either of the adjacent samples. The filter output is perfectly smooth and exactly matches what was sampled by the ADC.
That's the perfect theory. In practice the window of samples on either side of the current sample has to be finite but large enough to achieve some specified performance level. The samples are quantised according to the bit depth. The errors caused by quantisation can, through the addition of the correct dither, be rendered as benign noise - no different in theory or practice from vinyl or tape noise, but much lower in level if the bit depth is sufficient. As mentioned before, the bandwidth of the incoming signal has to be constrained. Again, in the real world this cannot be absolutely perfect, but has to be sufficient to achieve a desired target and can be way above what we reasonably expect any recording to contain, or amplifier and speaker to be able to reproduce.
But as you were saying earlier, this gives you "what was on the master tape" and nothing else (except a tiny, tiny amount of noise). If you want to 'improve' this, and you understand what it is that you think will improve it, digital audio is so accurate that you can modify it mathematically with little penalty (but not necessarily modelling microphony as I was saying earlier). But if the idea is that vinyl/valves/transformers etc. are beyond our understanding, then digital audio cannot help. I am being devil's advocate, because I don't think it is viable to improve on the master tape as long as the rest of our system has the guts to play it properly. Individual recordings may benefit superficially from 'enhancement' but to use a phrase mentioned earlier this would be a sticking plaster that would make some tracks worse, and could never fix just a problem with the vocal, for example, without affecting everything else in some small way. Only access to the multitrack recording could allow that - and I'd rather spend my time listening to music than second guessing the recording engineer.
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I now understand what you are writing. Thank you for elaborating.
I am making choices which convince me that the sound from the stereo is closer to the sound of an original musical event. I do not agree that that effort collapses 1) into 3).
OT nut this needed to come off my chest
Really? In video comparisons can be made rather easily. Pause. Watch pictures and literally "see" and/or measure. No such things in Audio so it is always a battle.. Any tests that would support your views? I have followed Video some and if you go to most forums very few to no Analog stalwarts. Hardcore videophiles are all over Digital to an extent that there is virtually no one making CRT projector anymore...
As for the Rolls ... It is more a Status Symbol not a High Tech machine. For that see Tela S or any model...
As for the Citroen DS-21 in its days it might have been Head and Shoulders over almost any other cars but right now .. It is thoroughly trashed by too many modern day cars in a way that is pitiful... I dreamed of owning one by the tie I coudl afford it was no longer interested ... I drive a car with most of its technology dating back 30 years although mince is fairly new a MB G-350 Blutec ... It has its charms but the Range Rover or Lexus G470 are by a mile, much better cars with the Lexus seemingly never needing to go to the Repair Shop .. The G-Wagen ? Ask any G owner about its seats control after a year or two: they either don't work or works haphazardly... You push the button to move the seat in front it moves down the headrest only or the back of the seat reclines .. your memory settings? Rear view moves anyway it wants. The AC? It depends how it feels about the day of the week 'cause it can quit at any time.. yet ...I love it (The G-Wagon) still
I did not want to leave y'all in suspense, so I watched the video now.
Thank you for directing me to the video.
The first part of the video debunks the stair-step representation of the digitally-sampled signal. I never suggested that the stair-step is the problem or even a problem. (I actually never thought about it.)
I wrote that I believe that the loss of, or the interpolated approximation of, the interstitial musical information between the sampling points is the problem.
At approximately 9:42 on the video Monty says: “The sampling step is perfect. It loses nothing.” I was looking forward to his explanation of why this is so. But, surprisingly, he does not explain this in any way. He does not explain why the sampling step is “perfect” or why the sampling loses “nothing.”
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I wouldnt swap my 454 stingray for a Nissan GTR .. no matter how much better it is than my yank tank in just about every department..
To understand that you will need to look at the work of this gentleman.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fourier
Keith.
There is no interstitial musical loss. If you watched the entire video that should have been clear. Though it is a sampled signal it will fully reconstruct the analog wave between samples because as long as the bandwidth is below nyquist each possible set of samples only corresponds to one waveform, and that waveform is recreated at all points even though it is not sampled at all points. Even if a waveform changes shape between samples that change in shape will be captured and reproduced between samples upon reconstruction.
Perhaps you could explain what you have in mind when you write:
"I wrote that I believe that the loss of, or the extrapolated approximation of, the interstitial musical information between the sampling points is the problem."
Yeah, I have a slightly modified Subaru WRX... don't see the point of spending more. There's no point in owning a car like the STi. GTR, etc. unless you race it (imo) as you just can't use all the performance on a public street, and then you're getting into a hobby that makes audio seem cheap...
video-schmideo.
it isn't until you hear redbook PCM done right by the Trinity (a no holds bared $56k PCM only dac) that you are able to recognize why it's always sounded wrong. so sure; you can fix it with enough dollars, but it does need fixing.
if redbook's sampling step is perfect......then there are other inherent issues somewhere in the PCM stew.
and the Trinity, for all it's goodness, still is not analog by a long shot. but the Trinity does rid redbook of the nasties.
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