The Real Kick Out Of Sound...

Vinyl sounds nice no doubt about it, 2nd level harmonics, I enjoy it ,a bit in valve amps, but if you really want to hear everything you listen to digital, if you design an amp or a loudspeaker you use digital, because you need a reliable and repeatable , uncoloured source .
Keith.
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BUT the thing is Keith CD is coloured just as much as vinyl is coloured or else all CD players would sound the same.....BUT they don't and you know that - I hope. If digital was that good you would own a cheap Philips 850 or better still we would not be having this discussion. If 50% of us are pro-vinyl what does that say about CD?

2nd harmonic distortion maybe pleasant but don't forget you are adding these up in your preamp and poweramp and at different frequencies. At some frequencies they'll be major peaks and others nothing. Is this good? It's like eating chocolate, take a bite, then the whole bar, then get another bar and another until it's too much. High levels of any single harmonic distortion is NO GOOD, you are better off with a mixture.
 
RobHolt said:
I've no preference either way, though I do find that older recordings from the pre digital days seem to be better on vinyl than the CD transfer.
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Are you refering to older pop & rock recordings here, or do you include classical as well?


I find it amusing that this thread is titled "The Real Kick Out Of Sound..." and not "The Real Kick Out Of Music..."
 
Rob I don't use a CD player I use a Mac/Amarra software and either Weiss or Metric Halo DACS much better than any cd player.
 
Analogue is a linear system across the bandwidth and at all levels. It does not drop anything from +10dB to -60dB whereas PCM isn't, as the lower you go down in terms of level the less bits you have to play with. By the time the music starts to fade you'll be lucky to have 8 bits running. So if you want to preserve the original signal it's best to put it on to a system that does not 'drop' bits as you get nearer -30dB and below. PCM is not a good system at all. It is a shame the DSD died as that had real potential.
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That really isn't the case at all, because in the analogue system you are only just above the noise floor at -60dB.

With only 16bits PCM you've still got 33dB to go, before you take into account the perceptual effects of dither which does to digital what you are arguing for in the analogue realm. Dither decouples the bit limit from the perception of resolution, at the cost of +3dB rise in the noise floor (to -93dB). IOW you can then 'hear into' the noise, up to 30dB below (!) in tests cited by Meridian. All from 16bits done well.

DSD is a mess. Above 10Khz it actually has less resolution than 16bit/44.1khz PCM digital, and monstrous out-of-band (spurious) energy.
 
quote

Legzr1 said:
I'd like to see it :D





You call that a rant?


:ffrc:

I know some very nice train spotters - what's your problem with them?

They may have faults but most of them have moved to digital cameras - even they understand sticking with analogue is futile ;)

So,you used to work in recording studios long ago - you know what?
Even before that I was a new born baby - does that make me an expert on midwivery?


:MILD:

Chill grandad ;)
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it does not make you superior nor me inferior,.
 
dance a yard befor you dance abroad, famous lir5ics of advice to the youth,
nando.
 
robM said:
Don't kid yourself. I've yet to see a pair of horn speakers in any major studio. I've worked in all the major ones in the UK and will to brutally honest with you.... I've NEVER EVER SEEN a pair of horns.
Have a look at the list of studios using ATCs, you can pick that up on their website. Then go to PMC and Genelec. Between the 3 companies I bet they are in all the MAJOR studios worldwide. You might find a pair of your horn things in some small 'audiophile' hi-rez studio BUT all the REAL music comes from elsewhere.

As for tracking distortion.... how about jitter and error correction with digital? I suppose if you love a lack of bandwidth, then CD is great! Because the last I heard violins have a huge amount of harmonic content above 20Khz and CD has a brick wall filter there:D
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"I've yet to see a pair of horn speakers in any major studio"

"REAL music come from elsewhere"?

Real music? I suppose that doesn't include the best selling album of all time then?;)

http://www.westlakeaudio.com/Speakers/Professional_Series/hr-1.html

http://www.thelakestudios.com/Studios/studios.html

Arguably one of the worlds finest studios, and they use horns.:MILD:
 
DSD is a mess. Above 10Khz it actually has less resolution than 16bit/44.1khz PCM digital, and monstrous out-of-band (spurious) energy.
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If DSD is actually worse than 16bit PCM above 10Khz, then why on earth did a lot of you digital fans buy in to SACD?


Purite:
I don't use a CD player I use a Mac/Amarra software and either Weiss or Metric Halo DACS much better than any cd player.
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So Keith, I need to ask this question:
Are you saying the Mac/Amarra is better than ANY high-end audio transport available today?

 
If DSD is actually worse than 16bit PCM above 10Khz, then why on earth did a lot of you digital fans buy in to SACD?
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Very many didn't, hence Sony dropped it. Well that and the fact that studios didn't see why they should re-equip simply to be able to handle/edit a proprietary format.
 
Quote

Basil said:
Are you refering to older pop & rock recordings here, or do you include classical as well?


I find it amusing that this thread is titled "The Real Kick Out Of Sound..." and not "The Real Kick Out Of Music..."
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THAT IS WHY I NAMED SO. CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT.
NANDO
 
do you all know what a famous "so called" format on cd tried to saple to 194khz even to word sampling at 196khz, and failed,
nando.
 
robM said:
Name me one CD that has a dynamic range of 96dB... no let's make that even simpler... name me one CD in your entire collection that has a dynamic range of 50dB?
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I never claimed there were any recordings that used the full dynamic range of a 16 bit system. You claimed CD was limited by 16 bits, and those bits represent the dynamic range and SNR of the system.
So if the dynamic range and SNR are sufficient, then 16 bits are sufficient.

As you know as the signal level drops in PCM the bit rate drops also... no so good, because as the bit rate drops the distortion goes UP!!!
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It's called bit depth, bit rate is something else.
And you won't get distortion, you'll get white noise.

"[W]hen the right dither is used, the resolution of the digital system becomes infinite. What results from a sensible digitisation or digital operation then is not signal plus a highly-correlated truncation distortion, but the signal and a benign low level hiss. In practical terms, the resolution is limited by our ability to resolve sounds in noise. Just to reinforce this, we have no problem measuring (and hearing) signals of –110dB in a well-designed 16-bit channel."
-- J. Robert Stuart, Coding High Quality Digital Audio, Meridian Audio Ltd.

So the difference between 8, 16, 24, or any other bit depth is how much white noise you'll get, and thus how far down the noise floor is.

robM said:
You can reel off all manner of theorems but at the day it's not down to theorems is it?
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The Nyquist theorem is the foundation for all implementations of digital audio. So if you don't understand Nyquist, you don't understand digital audio.

Here is a good introduction: http://www.lavryengineering.com/documents/Sampling_Theory.pdf

Dolby SR running at 30ips has a noise floor equivalent to 16bit PCM, and that was back then!
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With modern noise reduction you can get close to it, but that does not make up for all the other serious problems with tape.

For comparison almost all digital recordings are done at 24 bits.

SR has been developed further BUT PCM stays the same.
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All problems with PCM have been with practical implementation, and that has changed considerably since it was introduced in the 70's.

robM said:
Analogue is a linear system across the bandwidth and at all levels.
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Digital systems can be made almost completely linear and that is pretty much impossible (because of the physics involved) with analog systems.

PCM is not a good system at all. It is a shame the DSD died as that had real potential.
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Are you familiar with the technical aspects of DSD at all?
If you didn't know DSD is PCM in every sense of the word, just based on an outdated implementation of it (1bit/64xFS Delta-Sigma modulation).
So if you like DSD, then you must love modern PCM! ;)
 
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felix said:
Very many didn't, hence Sony dropped it. Well that and the fact that studios didn't see why they should re-equip simply to be able to handle/edit a proprietary format.
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i worked with sony japan on that project of sacd, from the beguining i thought it was the biggest bollocks to come out of the woodwork, i told them why via an interpreter, they would not listen, fine i said whhaat dual layer ,ooohm, how much to the buyer? whattt? for miles!!!!!!/? then a bigger blow came, the sacd player, pre-amp power amps and speakers, try this they said, by the way they said no double layer, we went to abbey road and A.P. we supply dsd, what a shambles that was, specially when they tried to release the beatles and rolling stones, the day sacd died,
nando.
 
Fascinating posts D Lundberg, please do stick around, Rob to answer your question a Mac and Amarra and Metric Halo is better than any optical based system I have heard, DCS Scarlatti is the most expensive we have compared to so far.
Keit.
 
robM said:
And quoting THD figures....please!! I have a 1980's Technics integrated amplifier that measures better than your whole system BUT sounds like cr*p. We all know THD figures aren't related to audio reproduction or else Sony, Technics, Aiwa and Kenwood would all be in our main systems.
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That ranks as one of the daftest comments I've seen on a forum - of course THD is important and related to audio quality. I certainly haven't claimed, and neither has anyone else here, that THD is the sole arbiter of sound quality but it is certainly a very important factor when at elevated levels, such as with your cartridge which btw is clearly well into double figures at HF.

As for us 'digital guys' always going on about dynamic range - well you raised the subject!

Talk of Japanese amplifiers with good specifications sounding like 'Crap' is typical audiophile hyperbole. Give me a good Sony, Technics or Kenwood amp over some barely stable hair-shirt black box any day. Oh, but then the mystique would be swept away and there would be no room left for 'experts'.
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By me
As you know as the signal level drops in PCM the bit rate drops also... no so good, because as the bit rate drops the distortion goes UP!!!
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It's called bit depth, bit rate is something else.
And you won't get distortion, you'll get white noise.
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what type of system is this..... instead of music - just white noise. Reminds me of Kraftwerk.

So if you like DSD, then you must love modern PCM!
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I actually don't like CD in any format. I own a Nagra CDP which is like every other CD player I've heard.... unmusical and lacking in detail.....yes DETAIL.
 
robM said:
I actually don't like CD in any format. I own a Nagra CDP which is like every other CD player I've heard.... unmusical and lacking in detail.....yes DETAIL.
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Why on earth would you buy such an expensive cd player if it sounds like that?

Are you on a wiind up?

I can recommend you a cambridge 640C at £250 and it doesn't sound anything like your description of CD.
 
By RobHolt

Talk of Japanese amplifiers with good specifications sounding like 'Crap' is typical audiophile hyperbole. Give me a good Sony, Technics or Kenwood amp over some barely stable hair-shirt black box any day. Oh, but then the mystique would be swept away and there would be no room left for 'experts'.
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well you've finally lost it.

I take it then you own a technics amp or would that be a midi system ;)
 

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