• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

The most important parameter of all: overall system integrity

OP
fas42

fas42

Major Contributor
Joined
Mar 21, 2016
Messages
2,818
Likes
191
Location
Australia
...
  • being told that digital has been developed to the point of removing hard-to-measure (i.e. non-existent) anomalies has caused them to hear what they wanted to hear all along. Now they, too, can enjoy all the music in the world for £10 a month, 15 years after everyone else, without continually persuading themselves that it sounds metallic or plastic or like a staircase.
I see. So I could swap your current rig with a pricey digital setup from the 1980's, right now, and you would be 100% happy, zero complaints?
 

Cosmik

Major Contributor
Joined
Apr 24, 2016
Messages
3,075
Likes
2,180
Location
UK
I see. So I could swap your current rig with a pricey digital setup from the 1980's, right now, and you would be 100% happy, zero complaints?
You're rather moving the goalposts there: making the comparison between 1980s and now, rather than the more recent conversion that you say the vinyl people have gone through. Nevertheless, if the question is whether I (or anyone else) would notice if the DAC in a modern passive system was swapped for the 8x oversampling one in the Sony CD player I bought in 1987(?), the answer is almost certainly no.
 

Frank Dernie

Master Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 24, 2016
Messages
6,445
Likes
15,779
Location
Oxfordshire
Okay, I'll play it another way:

* Many people mock audiophile enthusiasts who believe analogue replay is superior to digital - including people on this forum
* The people who mock the others claim that a key reason is that vinyl replay adds "nice distortion" to the sound - making it more appealing, palatable compared to "neutral" digital
* Which means digital replay for those vinyl advocates is doomed to always sound "less good" - because, as all here know, digital is already perfect ;).
* The fly in the ointment in this tale is that many of those poor audiophiles are now assembling digital chains, from components which measure beautifully - and, it sounds as good as analogue! ... Oh, horror!!
* What can this mean? Have those crafty manufacturers slipped in a bit of analogue wobbliness on the sly, to placate these deprived listeners? Or, could it mean that they've managed to reduce some hard to measure anomalies so that the listening is more pleasurable? ... Hmmm ... I'm on ASR ... naahhh!!

WBF generally makes me want to chuck up so I haven't looked at it in a while.
The actual recording is the thing that makes the most difference IME. I have fabulous sounding LPs and awful ones. I have superb sounding CDs (one of which is one of the first I bought giving the lie to huge improvements in digital bollox one reads) and some dire ones (the most recent REM CD I bought is really crap) so the difference between CD and LP is swamped by recording/mixing quality differences anyway.
My digital recorder is transparent as far as I can hear, that is to say I can not tell the microphone feed from the output of the recorder. That has been the case for some years on the sort of music I record. Maybe there are some sounds where this is not the case, but I haven't heard any.
Where I have the LP and CD of the same performance the mix is obviously different.
Where I have recorded a LP digitally the recording sounds like the LP, not the CD. As far as I am concerned digital can be, and usually is, transparent, and has been for years.

I know quite a bit about record players and their shortcomings from working at Garrard in the mid 1970s. Nothing I have noticed people are writing about today is new, it was all well known and addressed in different ways by record player designers back then. No record player addresses all the weaknesses of LP playback equally well since sorting some exacerbate others - it is simply a case of balancing colourations to one's personal taste.

The least linear bits of a record player are the pivoted arm and all conventional cartridges. The standard cartridge design is compromised in order to ride warps and eccentricities and being tolerant of defects gives a big loss of fidelity. It is rare for a cartridge to have less than 2% distortion, and then never anywhere near that good at higher frequencies.

Like many others I love my record players and the sound they generate. I have 4, they all sound different as I would expect and for reasons which have been known for decades.
Having a digital system where a CD or stream sounds like an LP is spectacularly unlikely. Not only are the masters different (mono bass, boost to low levels and limited level at high frequencies needed for the LP) but the tracking distortion of the arm and cartridge distortion are certainly high enough to be audible (and different between cartridges, often a very great deal). Luckily this distortion, and the effect of the compromises needed to cut and play an LP are euphonic :)
To produce the same or similar sound from a digital source as an LP would require a specially designed DAC with similar levels of distortion to a record player - and these are indeed being attempted, or I suppose a plugin for a digital player, though that would probably not be expensive enough or analogue enough for some people.
When I went from recording on R2R to digital the better fidelity of digital was immediately apparent on comparing microphone feed to recording but I must say the "graceful" way a tape recorder overloads does give a pleasant sound. I have heard that the plugin which emulates tape overload is one of the most popular amongst digital recordists :)
 

Cosmik

Major Contributor
Joined
Apr 24, 2016
Messages
3,075
Likes
2,180
Location
UK
...I must say the "graceful" way a tape recorder overloads does give a pleasant sound. I have heard that the plugin which emulates tape overload is one of the most popular amongst digital recordists :)
To me, this illustrates two different views of 'sound'. The most common view is that sound is regarded as a kind of stew, and you add salt or pepper to your preference. Stereo just means that the stew comes from two speakers and is smeared between them, making it more 'room-filling'.

Another view only becomes apparent when a stereo recording is reproduced somewhere near properly. In this case, a phantom scene is created, and the amount of information and complexity in the recording suddenly seems ten times greater than the vinyl version. Addition of blanket distortion, graceful overload etc., whether euphonic or not, would simply destroy the scene.

I do wonder how many people have ever heard the real 'phantom scene' version.
 

watchnerd

Grand Contributor
Joined
Dec 8, 2016
Messages
12,449
Likes
10,408
Location
Seattle Area, USA
Okay, let me pull down my Wikipedia from the shelf now ... ...

Let's see,


Hmmm, not too bad ...

So now that you've looked up the definition of parameter, and it includes measure, how does one objectively measure it and what are the units?
 
OP
fas42

fas42

Major Contributor
Joined
Mar 21, 2016
Messages
2,818
Likes
191
Location
Australia
So now that you've looked up the definition of parameter, and it includes measure, how does one objectively measure it and what are the units?
Ummm ... you're going hardball on this word "measure", I can just tell ...

Okay, since this audio hobby is really about enjoying the recordings of musical events that have occurred in the past, and nothing majorly important apart from that - how do you personally measure that, and what are the units?
 

Thomas savage

Grand Contributor
The Watchman
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 24, 2016
Messages
10,260
Likes
16,298
Location
uk, taunton
Ummm ... you're going hardball on this word "measure", I can just tell ...

Okay, since this audio hobby is really about enjoying the recordings of musical events that have occurred in the past, and nothing majorly important apart from that - how do you personally measure that, and what are the units?
That's what we do here fas, we measure! Establish objective knowns, we deal in what's known not just 'what we reckon'.

No one here is the slightest bit interested in WBF or anything much that gets posted there..

Asking what the most important parameter is when in fact you can't define even one of them is kinda amusing but also shows the ridiculousness of pure subjective conjecture masquerading as reliable knowns.

I'm getting bored, it's not really a ASR compatible discussion.

Edit, the only good thing about this thread is It afforded me the opportunity to learnt how to spell 'masquerading'....
 
OP
fas42

fas42

Major Contributor
Joined
Mar 21, 2016
Messages
2,818
Likes
191
Location
Australia
Another view only becomes apparent when a stereo recording is reproduced somewhere near properly. In this case, a phantom scene is created, and the amount of information and complexity in the recording suddenly seems ten times greater than the vinyl version. Addition of blanket distortion, graceful overload etc., whether euphonic or not, would simply destroy the scene.

I do wonder how many people have ever heard the real 'phantom scene' version.
Indeed. The "real 'phantom scene' version" has levels of robustness about it, and in IME there are no limits to the quality of this presentation - it can always "get better" ...
 

Thomas savage

Grand Contributor
The Watchman
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 24, 2016
Messages
10,260
Likes
16,298
Location
uk, taunton
Ok, Iv not being clear..,

NO MORE CUT AND PASTE POSTS FROM OTHER FORUMS IF THE CONTENTS ARE JUST SUBJECTIVE BABBLE..

If there's a intresting point of data that we can build meaningful discussion around then that's fine but...
 

Thomas savage

Grand Contributor
The Watchman
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 24, 2016
Messages
10,260
Likes
16,298
Location
uk, taunton
Indeed. The "real 'phantom scene' version" has levels of robustness about it, and in IME there are no limits to the quality of this presentation - it can always "get better" ...
The limit is whatever has been recorded and mastered in during post production.

Also your room, imo the floor ceiling interaction can severely compromise the integrity of the stereo image but that is only my opinion.
 

watchnerd

Grand Contributor
Joined
Dec 8, 2016
Messages
12,449
Likes
10,408
Location
Seattle Area, USA
Ummm ... you're going hardball on this word "measure", I can just tell ...

Well, it's ASR, it's kind of the point.

Okay, since this audio hobby is really about enjoying the recordings of musical events that have occurred in the past, and nothing majorly important apart from that - how do you personally measure that, and what are the units?

Scans of the pleasure centers of the brain. Units in number of neurons firing.

bgwZY.gif
 
OP
fas42

fas42

Major Contributor
Joined
Mar 21, 2016
Messages
2,818
Likes
191
Location
Australia
And the numbers are?
 
OP
fas42

fas42

Major Contributor
Joined
Mar 21, 2016
Messages
2,818
Likes
191
Location
Australia
The limit is whatever has been recorded and mastered in during post production.
Precisely. Since recording and mastering technology works to a very high standard, well beyond virtually all playback systems, there is plenty further to extract. Personally, I have realised that I have not yet heard the best from my recordings, except in snippets of time.
 

Thomas savage

Grand Contributor
The Watchman
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 24, 2016
Messages
10,260
Likes
16,298
Location
uk, taunton
Precisely. Since recording and mastering technology works to a very high standard, well beyond virtually all playback systems, there is plenty further to extract. Personally, I have realised that I have not yet heard the best from my recordings, except in snippets of time.
I don't agree, imo playback is not the limit now. The limit is the recording .
 
OP
fas42

fas42

Major Contributor
Joined
Mar 21, 2016
Messages
2,818
Likes
191
Location
Australia
I don't know, as I the experiment hasn't been conducted. But at least I know what the units are.

How about your parameter?
What will measured, also some day, will be the levels of distortion that are required - so inaccuracies expressed as percentages, from various tests, can be tabled. Say, doing a perfect differencing operation between the output and source data, and analysing everything one finds in that.
 
OP
fas42

fas42

Major Contributor
Joined
Mar 21, 2016
Messages
2,818
Likes
191
Location
Australia
I don't agree, imo playback is not the limit now. The limit is the recording .
So, if you listen to a recording via the very best headphones setup you could possibly get your hands on, and then play that recording at all possible volume settings on your speakers, it would be a perfect replica of the headphone experience at all times?
 

Thomas savage

Grand Contributor
The Watchman
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 24, 2016
Messages
10,260
Likes
16,298
Location
uk, taunton
So, if you listen to a recording via the very best headphones setup you could possibly get your hands on, and then play that recording at all possible volume settings on your speakers, it would be a perfect replica of the headphone experience at all times?
Not really sure what your talking about there Frank, I believe the limit lays in what we can capture and how we capture it ( mic etc) rather than the playback systems we have.. assuming high fidelity playback ( that can be measured and or quantified by science ) .

You want to believe a microphone is a magical device that captures sound like the human ear and all we need do is faithfully reproduce that capture in order to get true to origin sound, have at it but I'm not interested in debating it.

The end :D
 

Kal Rubinson

Master Contributor
Industry Insider
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 23, 2016
Messages
5,271
Likes
9,774
Location
NYC
Scans of the pleasure centers of the brain. Units in number of neurons firing.
Not a good measure, too simple. The "pleasure centers" are not homogeneous and, usually, inhibitory neurons outnumber excitatory neurons in most cortex.
 
Top Bottom