What determines "believability of the reproduction illusion"
- Thread starter jkeny
- Start date
Well the best 20 bit R2R dacs from the 90s are still very competitive IMO, at least with redbook. To my ears they have a higher "believability" factor than most delta sigma dacs.
For sure digital produces some VERY unnatural artifacts but never forget that it has an analog amplifier on the end as well. If that amp is a cheap opamp then chances are high to exacerbate the problem. I think this is why Lampizator is so hot right now, they "maxed" out the analog output stage and minimized the damage it does.
Same goes, btw., with the phono stage. If it is not superb it will significantly degrade believability...more so than the other components in an analog system.
What you have to realize is that at the end of each chain is an amplifier and this matters a lot in the final sound you get.
I think though that elimination of that "digitalness " is nearly impossible and will continue to haunt the format.
There are some artifacts that give digital a somewhat "synthetic " feel, regardless of how good. It is fundamental in how digital works and humans will always sense that it is not of the natural world. Scraping a stone against something and getting a sound is very much rooted in the natural world even if the exact materials are not natural. We stil know what to expect in terms of harmonics produced as even new materials obey the physical laws as the old materials. Digital though makes artifacts that have no roots in real world materials behavior, so we have no evolutionary experience with them. Therefore the standout. Jitter seems to be detectable on the PICOseconds level!!!
I shouldn't have to tell you that this truly incredible that we could sensitive to this level. The engineers in the beginning could not have imagined it could be so.
Well... I require both low and high volumes to sound good....and that the speaker can play at realistic SPLs, which can be quite high in the case of many genres of music.
The speaker I'm designing is about 105 dB efficient and uses simple first order crossovers, just a single high quality capacitor on both the mid and super tweeter... but it's also a 3-way with a massive 15" woofer and can hit 120 dB with no strain at all. The mid is a custom 4.5" driver with a 2-gram cone and a huge motor... when put in the horn it can play at any SPL you'd want within reason and is one of the best possible speakers at low SPLs as well.
It's actually very similar in concept to the Odeon horns, but my midrange horn covers a lot more of the frequency range, from 400 Hz to 15 kHz in fact... it's really the custom midrange driver combined with a horn designed specifically for the driver that makes it work...
Also, as far as quality low-SPL listening I think you'll find crossoverless single drivers in a nearfield setup with a small SET amp about the best solution possible if you use a quality driver from AER, Feastrex or Omega.
In fact I heard a very good sounding single driver in a back born in Munich. It was driven by a KR Audio Kronzilla and it rocked.
Not this human and many others out there I suspect. This forum is a very small microcosm of humanity. Say 0.0000000000000000000 %. Fill in the last number. If WBF is all you read, you will get a very slanted, biased perspective of analogue versus digital. I don't enter in the A v D discussions anymore on WBF. Many folks are way too serious about the relative importance of this topic.
Most humans are simply not like this. I'll let others judge if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
And what, pray tell, constitutes proof positive that something is from the "natural world"?
How silly.
I don't agree that digital can't be fixed - I've heard digital audio that sounds completely natural & in my opinion probably better than SOTA analogue (but I haven't heard SOTA analogue so this is just opinion). I agree that getting there isn't easy & has a lot to do with how stable & noise free the PS is, particularly in critical sections of the D to A stage. In a lot of ways this is not unlike the care that is needed in designing & implementing phono preamplifiers.
I also agree that we are far more sensitive to some aspects of sound than has been recognised up to now. This sensitivity is perceived as a lack of believability but exactly what these factors are hasn't yet been isolated & identified yet - lots of speculative ideas but testing involves isolating factors such as noise modulation in the presence of dynamic music-like signals
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Not this human and many others out there I suspect. This forum is a very small microcosm of humanity. Say 0.0000000000000000000 %. Fill in the last number. If WBF is all you read, you will get a very slanted, biased perspective of analogue versus digital. I don't enter in the A v D discussions anymore on WBF. Many folks are way too serious about the relative importance of this topic.
Most humans are simply not like this. I'll let others judge if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
And what, pray tell, constitutes proof positive that something is from the "natural world"?
How silly.
Jitter is not a sound that you will have encountered in nature, noise modulation is not something that occurs in nature. I'm sure there are others - lots of sounds are synthesised that don't actually naturally occur & only exist because they can be generated by digital electronics?
Not this human and many others out there I suspect. This forum is a very small microcosm of humanity. Say 0.0000000000000000000 %. Fill in the last number. If WBF is all you read, you will get a very slanted, biased perspective of analogue versus digital. I don't enter in the A v D discussions anymore on WBF. Many folks are way too serious about the relative importance of this topic.
Most humans are simply not like this. I'll let others judge if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
And what, pray tell, constitutes proof positive that something is from the "natural world"?
How silly.
Who really cares about the masses of people that lack the senses and observational powers to notice and appreciate fine audio reproduction?? If you are sensitive to something you are either repelled by it or drawn to it. At least in my case I was drawn to audio because A) I like music, B) I am sensitive to the quality of sound itself and C) I like thinking about complicated subjects and understanding why things are the way they are and what the measurements really tell us (I have a Ph.D in Analytical Chemistry so figuring out how to measure things and interpreting data is my profession).
Who says that I am reading only WBF?? Actually you will see that I don't have so many posts. I just got interested in a couple of discussions so I am now posting again.
I happen to listen to both digital and analog in fairly equal portions and it is driven more by the music I own on each format than by the ultimate sound quality because both my digital and analog sound good but there is no mistaking one for the other. The distortions made by each are different. Both need electronics on the end, which are also not rooted in the natural world. Electronic circuits are only about 100 years old and there was nothing similar throughout the evolution of man. These distortions are ones without precedent in human or in fact world history.
Digital distortions are even more recent (40 years give or take) and are completely disconnected from distortion patterns found in nature and this means they are dissonant and anharmonic in character.
When you look at the distortion patterns the ear itself generates and how masking and other phenomena work, then you realize that what the ear/brain considers natural is not well captured in most electronics and digital designs.
THis was basically my point. I am not as optimistic as you that these things can be resolved and I have yet to hear a digital system that truly cures them. However, I too have heard digital that I thought sounded better than the majority of analog...I do not dispute this...and yet I still knew somehow that it was digital...it is an ease that is missing somewhere and it can buried deep but still there nonetheless. Some analog, even expensive rigs, can sound pretty far off as some basic things, like speed stability, are simply not up to the level they need to be.
Yes, I call the missing aspect in digital audio but found in spades in analogue - "flow". The "flow" of the music in analogue is often effortless & more "natural sounding" whereas this is often missing in digital. It's part of what I think is inherent to "believability".
Yes, it is difficult to achieve this - I believe it requires the use of multibit non sigma-delta DACs i.e R2R DAc configurations & even then the stability of the reference voltage or current is crucial to achieving this. In my limited experience this can best be achieved by using discrete R2R configurations as chip based R2R DACs don't seem to have stable enough references.
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Correct. Redbook CD playback over the dCS Vivaldi or dCS Rossini comes to mind.
I did hear SOTA analog and it's really, really good. I am not sure if the best digital playback is better, but from my limited experience it may be more or less comparable. Of course there will be those who claim that analog still is soooo much better but I don't buy it, not anymore.
I'm sorry if I misunderstood but you said "humans" (I took it in a general sense) and you didn't specify a extremely narrow, minute segment of the population.
In the end, for myself, I listen to enjoy music. I don't listen for or internalize "distortion" that negatively impacts my enjoyment of music. If there is distortion, I am not repelled by it or drawn to it. IMHO, doing so destroys the very thing you are trying to enjoy and encourages self inflicted neurosis.
I believe you have the wrong end of the stick here. I think your phrase "listening for distortions" is the wrong slant on this.
If this were a discussion about TVs, all that's being discussed here is what determines a more believable picture? We all watch TVs & can appreciate & enjoy the programs we watch whether on standard TV, HD TV, 4K TV or whatever the next level of reproduction is. Nobody would deny that there is a quality difference between these different presentations & nobody is saying that seeing a 4K TV makes one stop enjoying the programs viewed on a standard resolution TV
I respectfully disagree. If you read the various posts made on this forum over the years, there are numerous examples that substantiate my position.
Best.
Well then I find this whole black & white attitude is wrong i.e it's not the case that people's enjoyment of music is negatively impacted by their own evaluation of their reproduction system.
It's part of this hobby (which is no different from any other such hobby) that most people are interested in achieving the best possible reproduction they can afford - it doesn't mean they don;t enjoy what they have while at the same time recognising better sound when they hear it.
Luckily, you're wrong. Digital can sound subjectively "perfect" - when I listen to analogue I'm comparing how good it sounds compared to better quality digital sound -and the analogue is usually found wanting. Bizarrely, to my ears the vinyl world is going backwards to some degree, I used to hear better LP sound years ago, as compared to now.
The problem for getting clean digital playback is that, firstly, as has just been talked about the artifacts are disturbing in nature, and they're often subliminal in the hearing - one's not comfortable while listening, but can't put a finger on it; and secondly, it's not clear precisely what area of the circuitry is being interfered with, and what's the best method of resolving things. Because I've been doing this sort of tweaking for many years now, the anomalies in digital sourced sound are completely obvious to me, it takes me a mere few seconds to pick misbehaviour in the sound - this is similar to Amir immediately hearing vinyl noises, irrespectively of how good the sound is in other respects.
Through trial and error, over the years, I've nailed various approaches that bring this under control - I steadily "steer" the system to the point where digital "hash" and grunge is inaudible; the end result may still have faults that other people would be disturbed by, such as not enough bass extension; but in the key area of being completely relaxed and natural to the ear, the system is in a good space.
My approach is to "hang loose" when first listening - I'm waiting for the music to come to me, and say, Hey! I'm good stuff, go with the flow, man!
. But if that doesn't happen, then there is something 'wrong', and I move into critical mode, I actively listen for precisely where the distortion is, and start to think about what is the best approach for sorting the setup ...IMHO it is not a question of being right or wrong - we report our opinion based in our experiences. None media can be considered "perfect", as in some aspects one is better than the other and vice-versa in other aspects.
In my experience in my system and other people systems, using excellent quality recordings listened in both vinyl and CD, almost systematically the vinyl wins in the main aspect being debated in this thread - believability. Something that puzzles me is how critical the matching of the digital source can be in a system - I have listened to the Vivaldi system some people consider to be the "best" sounding really "believable" with ordinary CDs and the same Vivaldi system sounding miserable, artificial and aggressive.
