Is this guy for real?

[Andre Marc]

As I posted earlier in this thread, MW says analog tape is not "hi-res"; by implication one might infer that tape isn't SOTA, but I'm pretty sure that's not how he phrases it. If anyone cares

No, he has been pretty clear about it, posting about the technical limitations of tape and why, to him, it is not only not high rez, but not SOTA.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

But again..we are talking about native RECORDING formats, not playback formats.

There are camps that will profess their love for high end digital servers, turntables, and tape machines. I don't see the point, I am format agnostic.

But if you listen to music recorded from the around 2000 on, 95% of was recorded on DAW's.

So delivering those recordings on LP or tape is exactly what Neil Young said they were..fashion statements.

I am willing to bet you agree..analog recordings will sound best on an LP or tape. Digital recordings will sound best as master files on a server.

what will determine what I actually buy and listen to is what I most connect with as music and what sounds the best. analog sourced recordings make up the vast majority of my serious listening.

that said; most recordings sound best in their originally mastered format.....as a generalization I'd agree with that.

there is a good reason I mostly avoid/don't even pay attention to recent pop, jazz or classical. there are exceptions but not that many......

I do listen a lot to hirez classical dsd (analog and dsd based) and 2xdsd (vinyl and tape dubs) when I multitask.

 

[esldude]

snip
hearing something accurate to the source is way different than something 'complete' to the source on playback. digital always misses something in the translation. analog maybe adds something. turns out our ears and all our senses much prefer complete to accurate.

Sounds like an artificial distinction without meaning to me. Accurate to the source is just that.....accurate. Completeness would be part of it for incompleteness is inaccuracy. How would something be accurate, but not complete, further, and more curiously, how is something complete yet not accurate?

One can have total transparency to the source via different routes. One could have something less than transparency to the source with various formats lacking in different aspects of transparency. This complete and accurate dichotomy rings false to me.

 

[amirm]

everyone is certainly entitled to have their own opinion. and the 'mic feed' comment is misguided. you can loop a mic feed thru an analog panel and not tell the difference either. hearing something accurate to the source is way different than something 'complete' to the source on playback. digital always misses something in the translation. analog maybe adds something. turns out our ears and all our senses much prefer complete to accurate.

You did well stating your opinion Mike then all of a sudden, in the last sentence, expressed a scientific fact. What you want to say is that your ears and brain consider analog to be complete and digital not. There is no universality there as we can prove objectively that what you said is not correct. I realize you disagree with that and that is the point. There is differing opinions of the fact and therefore you cannot draw that conclusion as to apply to everyone.

To get more concrete, I know how to create a situation where you can't tell the difference between digital and the source. And you will tell me that you can create a situation that would be otherwise .

 

[amirm]

Sounds like an artificial distinction without meaning to me. Accurate to the source is just that.....accurate. Completeness would be part of it for incompleteness is inaccuracy. How would something be accurate, but not complete, further, and more curiously, how is something complete yet not accurate?

One can have total transparency to the source via different routes. One could have something less than transparency to the source with various formats lacking in different aspects of transparency. This complete and accurate dichotomy rings false to me.

When I bought my tape deck from Ki, he brought a very nice tape. It sounded great so I asked him the origin of it. He said it was SACD copy!!! Before I could say any more, he said, "I like my women with lipstick." I suspect that is what Mike is going after. The euphonic transfer function of analog is what he seeks, and the absence of that seems too plain to him.

 

[Andre Marc]

what will determine what I actually buy and listen to is what I most connect with as music and what sounds the best. analog sourced recordings make up the vast majority of my serious listening.

that said; most recordings sound best in their originally mastered format.....as a generalization I'd agree with that.

there is a good reason I mostly avoid/don't even pay attention to recent pop, jazz or classical. there are exceptions but not that many......

I do listen a lot to hirez classical dsd (analog and dsd based) and 2xdsd (vinyl and tape dubs) when I multitask.

I hear you.

But what you says veers dangerously close to being a formatist.

In the last 20 years there has been an absurd amount of sublime music recorded that for me to ignore the intense pleasure and emotional/intellectual
flights these artists take me on would be a crime, and quite frankly, would make my life incomplete. And that is not counting all the legacy artists who recorded to analog in their hey dey, like Robert Plant, Robin Trower, Wayne Shorter etc etc etc who are still making mind bogglingly amazing albums.

Sorry, format (recording OR playback) 2nd, music first.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Amir,

I cannot help but only consider the listening, and you cannot help but only consider the science.

no worries. we view the world differently. the why to me is always beside the point.

when I sip my Rye Whiskey......I'm not concerned with it's chemical makeup....only whether it hits the spot.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I hear you.

But what you says veers dangerously close to being a formatist.

In the last 20 years there has been an absurd amount of sublime music recorded that for me to ignore the intense pleasure and emotional/intellectual
flights these artists take me on would be a crime, and quite frankly, would make my life incomplete. And that is not counting all the legacy artists who recorded to analog in their hey dey, like Robert Plant, Robin Trower, Wayne Shorter etc etc etc who are still making mind bogglingly amazing albums.

Sorry, format (recording OR playback) 2nd, music first.

when I get around to feeling musically incomplete you never know what I might do. when I sample new stuff the 'hit' rate is not promising......like it use to be. maybe it's just me and the height of the bar that has been raised in my mind.

 

[garylkoh]

A couple of years ago, we did a session where we put a vinyl source through a ADC -> DAC conversion and when we had a bunch of audiophiles try to distinguish if the signal had gone through the digital conversion, the result was essentially random. You can say that the system was not transparent enough to hear that difference, but you cannot say that as a scientific fact the analog/digital/analog conversion is transparent. Opinion vs fact. Preference vs fidelity.

We can prefer the music if it has not gone through a digital conversion, but as far as I know, we have not been able to compare the two analog versions without first converting them to digital. This is something I keep saying - we don't know yet what it is that we don't know how to measure.

Tres Amigos heard this during the Dragon Party

The speakers weren't run-in and it was set-up in a warehouse, but may be they can chime in on the two different versions played using "preferential subjective adjectives". I certainly know what I heard.

 

[garylkoh]

When I bought my tape deck from Ki, he brought a very nice tape. It sounded great so I asked him the origin of it. He said it was SACD copy!!! Before I could say any more, he said, "I like my women with lipstick." I suspect that is what Mike is going after. The euphonic transfer function of analog is what he seeks, and the absence of that seems too plain to him.

As a designer and manufacturer, I would love to discover the secret of lipstick!

 

[Andre Marc]

when I get around to feeling musically incomplete you never know what I might do. when I sample new stuff the 'hit' rate is not promising......like it use to be. maybe it's just me and the height of the bar that has been raised in my mind.

..it's definitely just you......

In all seriousness, you are either in tune with current artists or you are not. I discover 3 to 5 new artists a month.

Latest one..a 24 year old kid from Chicago who mines Tim Buckley, John Martyn, John Fahey, etc, and his new album just came out...
disturbingly good.

I have gigs and gigs of hi rez classic rock, jazz, blues, folk, all the stuff I devoured growing up, not to mention tapes, SACDs etc, but I need more...

NOT to mention all the world music I would never get to hear if I confined my self music recorded on tape. Nothing from Real World records, nothing from ECM from the past 25 years, nothing form NoneSuch, and more. No, this would not fly.

 

[esldude]

A couple of years ago, we did a session where we put a vinyl source through a ADC -> DAC conversion and when we had a bunch of audiophiles try to distinguish if the signal had gone through the digital conversion, the result was essentially random. You can say that the system was not transparent enough to hear that difference, but you cannot say that as a scientific fact the analog/digital/analog conversion is transparent. Opinion vs fact. Preference vs fidelity.

We can prefer the music if it has not gone through a digital conversion, but as far as I know, we have not been able to compare the two analog versions without first converting them to digital. This is something I keep saying - we don't know yet what it is that we don't know how to measure.



The speakers weren't run-in and it was set-up in a warehouse, but may be they can chime in on the two different versions played using "preferential subjective adjectives". I certainly know what I heard.

Following the logic of your language, as a hint of your thinking, You think you know what you heard, but don't know if what you know is really something you know. Hah!

 

[Andre Marc]

A couple of years ago, we did a session where we put a vinyl source through a ADC -> DAC conversion and when we had a bunch of audiophiles try to distinguish if the signal had gone through the digital conversion, the result was essentially random. You can say that the system was not transparent enough to hear that difference, but you cannot say that as a scientific fact the analog/digital/analog conversion is transparent. Opinion vs fact. Preference vs fidelity.

We can prefer the music if it has not gone through a digital conversion, but as far as I know, we have not been able to compare the two analog versions without first converting them to digital. This is something I keep saying - we don't know yet what it is that we don't know how to measure.

Tres Amigos heard this during the Dragon Party View attachment 20171

The speakers weren't run-in and it was set-up in a warehouse, but may be they can chime in on the two different versions played using "preferential subjective adjectives". I certainly know what I heard.

I've go the 7.5 ips tape!! Lucky me!

 

[c1ferrari]

in fact; since right now I only have one 1/4" and one 1/2" machine (sob, sob) if I'm brought a 1/4" dub I can only dub to 1/2". I'm thinking of acquiring another 1/4" machine to give me the choice to dub to 1/4" from 1/4".

Mike,

Another option is to well-maintain two Studer A820-2CH machines with two sets of 1/4" rollers, two sets of 1/2" rollers, two 1/4" stacks, and two 1/2" stacks

 

[garylkoh]

Following the logic of your language, as a hint of your thinking, You think you know what you heard, but don't know if what you know is really something you know. Hah!

I know what I know, I know some of what I don't know so I am learning, but I don't know what I don't even know that I don't know.

 

[garylkoh]

Mike,

Another option is to well-maintain two Studer A820-2CH machines with two sets of 1/4" rollers, two sets of 1/2" rollers, two 1/4" stacks, and two 1/2" stacks

You'd need a Tupperware full of stacks like Ki has :-D

 

[c1ferrari]

You'd need a Tupperware full of stacks like Ki has :-D

Haha...I'm going green -- using the Studer cardboard boxes
Paper vs Plastic...don't ya know

 

[rockitman]

..it's definitely just you......

In all seriousness, you are either in tune with current artists or you are not. I discover 3 to 5 new artists a month.

Latest one..a 24 year old kid from Chicago who mines Tim Buckley, John Martyn, John Fahey, etc, and his new album just came out...
disturbingly good.

I have gigs and gigs of hi rez classic rock, jazz, blues, folk, all the stuff I devoured growing up, not to mention tapes, SACDs etc, but I need more...

NOT to mention all the world music I would never get to hear if I confined my self music recorded on tape. Nothing from Real World records, nothing from ECM from the past 25 years, nothing form NoneSuch, and more. No, this would not fly.

I'm with Mike...most of the best music was recorded long ago....I find most stuff nowadays crap in comparison....fitting for the millenial generation.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I'm listening to a new Dean Martin 45rpm reissue "Dream With Dean; the Intimate Dean Martin".....right now.

http://store.acousticsounds.com/d/9..._The_Intimate_Dean_Martin-45_RPM_Vinyl_Record

it's a minimalist 1964 analog recording. it is an amazing recording. such realism. priceless!

I'm a Dean Martin fan on many levels......this blows my mind. what a voice. he is here in the room with me right the hell now.

 

[amirm]

I'm with Mike...most of the best music was recorded long ago....I find most stuff nowadays crap in comparison....fitting for the millenial generation.

With the advent of the Internet and ease of distribution, there has been an explosion of new artists and music. I discover new music constantly. Then again I love modern music. If you are a fan of classics then by definition all that exists, is old.