High-res audio comparison: Linn Records Free High Res Samples

[Francis Vaughan]

Did I get that right?

Lovely.
It is interesting how different people get to the point of understanding by different routes. The point about single possible solution is how I get there too, but for many the idea just sounds like voodoo. But there are other intuitions that can bridge the gap. Just none as satisfying.
But you can get into weird conversations about metaphysics and whether emotions can be captured or described by the mathematics. Which is all a bit sad. The education process ill serves many people, giving them the impression that mathematics is an opaque thing that they just can’t do. Then they miss out on more beauty in the universe than they know.

 

[Francis Vaughan]

but for the life of me I can’t recall a reference source to the actual measurements. May I ask your source, please.

I used to use some basic tables, but this seems a great deal more useful and takes a lot more into account:
https://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/Demos/Absorption/Absorption.html
However if you want to use it locally you need to install the Mathematica player and download the .cdf file.
And a useful sanity check here:
https://noisetools.net/barriercalculator

 

[restorer-john]

Yup. I didn’t mean alignment, but the wording wasn’t the best. I was thinking more about the exact gap and pole geometry and how the final field as it affects the tape would subtly affect the response. Thus changes in head could make small changes.
As it is it seems that the Plangent Process uses a custom head anyway to recover the bias signal.

Nothing more important in the tape path than azimuth.

The flaws in the process paper you have linked tend to gloss over the biggest issue with bias which I mentioned previously. It is all over the place in terms of frequency stability and has been since Adam was a boy. Take any bias generator and monitor its stability. It depends on just about everything else that is drawing current in the deck. They sat on general rails with little care for isolation or regulation.

It was never intended to be extracted as a clock source and demodulating such an FM signal (assuming you could strap on a additional wideband head in the first place) it will be subject to everything from tape skewing, the W&F of the playback deck plus the W&F of the record deck and the bias stability.

But, interesting nonetheless.

 

[Francis Vaughan]

Take any bias generator and monitor its stability. It depends on just about everything else that is drawing current in the deck. They sat on general rails with little care for isolation or regulation.

All true, but when we start to talk about stability of clocks it gets horridly complicated. We have to start working out the spectrum of the variation, and then the stability of different clocks gets very difficult to compare. We get into the world of Allen Variance. So long as the phase noise spectrum of the bias clock doesn't have much energy near the scrape flutter band it is reasonable to recover the scrape flutter. Where it gets evil is as you say, when the bias oscillator has phase noise in the same band as other sources of flutter. Then you can't tell them apart.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Yes, and you can understand why non-mathematical people see it as one of those 'free lunch' claims that can't possibly be true. And why same people find the idea, that digital 'steps' mean there is missing music between samples, to be perfectly logical.

What's really sad is that the mainstream audio/hifi media could have been, since 1984, leaders and standard-bearers for the truth -- the illogical, hard-to-credit truth that needs to be repeated -- about digital audio accuracy. Instead, they chose the exact opposite path. Chances are, if you have come across myths about digital 'steps', the sound of jitter etc, you probably read it first in the mainstream audio media. Quite likely the journalist writing about their interview with some guru who makes super-pricey gear, not just turntables etc but also very pricey DACs and purist direct-signal-path gear.

To their eternal shame IMO.



I like to say it this way: the sampling and reconstruction completely captures the waveform that lies below half the sampling frequency and above the noise floor set by bit depth.

You know in 1984 mainstream media were shouting the wonders of digital audio. Stereo Review, Audio and High Fidelity mags. A certain portion of the audio world turned toward Stereophile and later the Absolute Sound precisely with the introduction of the CD. Those subjective mags had been around languishing previously. Neither could maintain a consistent publishing schedule. When CD came out those mags took off eventually dominating the business to the point the other mags disappeared. It has fascinated me that the introduction of an essentially perfect reproduction format caused such a reaction.

 

[respice finem]

...When CD came out those mags took off eventually dominating the business to the point the other mags disappeared. It has fascinated me that the introduction of an essentially perfect reproduction format caused such a reaction.

I suppose the "logic" is relatively simple - because a hobby is a diagnosis.

No room for improvement? hell no, that can't be! We have to find something... etc. The mags especially, no new "better" stuff, no ads, no revenue, no reason to exist. But also, and maybe even more, on the consumer side. If you think you have something that is perfect, no motivation to get anything new (apart from new functions and "nice to haves"). It wouldn't happen, because everyone hears diffrently, but the uncertainty was there (and it was "palpable").

I describe this phenomenon with sports shooting (which I do). There you may also meet some strange beliefs and some "snake oil sellers". Imagine you would suddenly hit the "10" every time, all day every day. Not only you would not buy different guns and ammo, worse, you would get bored with the sport. Luckily, our own imperfection prevents this, which again leads to... possibly believing in "snake oil" because "it can't be that I missed again"

 

[Francis Vaughan]

When CD came out those mags took off eventually dominating the business to the point the other mags disappeared. It has fascinated me that the introduction of an essentially perfect reproduction format caused such a reaction.

I suspect there was a confluence of effects. CD was just one of the things that occurred about then. CD brought about a lot of interest in HiFi. Lots of people were re-buying their LP collection on CD and getting interested in better sound. The convenience and robustness of CD had a big part to play. It was and is a very male dominated market. A friend of mine worked in sales, and worked for a time in a HiFi shop. He asked me once if I had any interest in photography. Well I had a nice Nikon camera outfit. Of course, said he, he found most HiFi enthusiasts were camera nuts too.
The early 80's saw the birth of the audio snake oil industry with the appearance of Monster Cable. And HiFi journalism as entertainment became a thing. Rather like car magazine reviews as entertainment. (Really, you are reading that review of a Lamborghini Countach because you are thinking of buying?)

Anyone remember this? My salesguy friend admitted he was in tears of laughter when he saw it in the cinema.

 

[Frgirard]

In France Jean Hiraga and the cable brand Espace has been open the fire.
And of course Monster came.

 

[Sashoir]

Yes, and you can understand why non-mathematical people see it as one of those 'free lunch' claims that can't possibly be true. And why same people find the idea, that digital 'steps' mean there is missing music between samples, to be perfectly logical.

I suspect (with no real evidence) that this has something to do with the fairly commonplace graphic which used to accompany "high resolution" products (I think I saw it first in relation to DVD-A), which depicted some trigonometric function with a series of rectangles underneath, and then the same trig function with more rectangles, which doubtless triggered consumers' dim recollections of learning integration at school; where a greater sample rate would be analogous to the old "taking the limit as n approaches infinity" trick.

 

[respice finem]

You may be up to something here... framing, NLP... "The best propaganda is the unnoticed".

 

[dualazmak]

Hello friends,

To "edit" the HF-noise accompanying HiRes tracks to cut-off the noise portion is another (ultimate?) self-defence solution for this issue. I just tested and confirmed this solution at here.

I myself still would like, however, to use the High-Cut digital filters in the EKIO crossover configuration before DAC8PRO.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Hello friends,

To "edit" the HF-noise accompanying HiRes tracks to cut-off the noise portion is another (ultimate?) self-defence solution for this issue. I just tested and confirmed this solution at here.

I myself still would like, however, to use the High-Cut digital filters in the EKIO crossover configuration before DAC8PRO.

I wonder though if this noise is causing any problems with any of your gear which changes what you can hear? Seems possible in some cases repeated filtering will cause an issue compared to doing nothing.

The ultrasonic noise may indicate sloppy recording practice or that nothing useful is up there, but it is uncommon for what is there to cause audible issues (though such is possible).

 

[dualazmak]

I wonder though if this noise is causing any problems with any of your gear which changes what you can hear? Seems possible in some cases repeated filtering will cause an issue compared to doing nothing.

The ultrasonic noise may indicate sloppy recording practice or that nothing useful is up there, but it is uncommon for what is there to cause audible issues (though such is possible).

Hello Blumlein 88,

I understand your point.

I still would like to have my self-defence measures as I wrote here as follows;

In any way, mentally and psychologically, (and also maybe physically and electronically better to avoid), I would like to avoid the high level and high mass of UHF noises would go into DAC8PRO, and this is why I am preparing and testing EKIO's configurations with digital high-cut filter at 22.049 kHz before sending the digital signals into DAC8PRO.

I am really afraid of the possible damage on DAC8PRO (or damages on ES9028PRO DAC chip and other IC chips in DAC8PRO) given by the high level and high mass of UHF noises.

Furthermore, the UHF noises in analog line level may have unfavorable negative effects (or damages) to our amplifiers and SP drivers, especially highly sensitive tweeters and super-tweeters (and also to our ears and brain?). Not good, and we should avoid it as far as we can.

 

[amirm]

I am really afraid of the possible damage on DAC8PRO (or damages on ES9028PRO DAC chip and other IC chips in DAC8PRO) given by the high level and high mass of UHF noises.

I don't see a reason for this concern. A DAC should produce whatever it is told to produce, noise and all.

 

[dualazmak]

I don't see a reason for this concern. A DAC should produce whatever it is told to produce, noise and all.

Thank you, amirm. Your point is giving me a little bit of relaxation. How do you think about the rest of my worries after DAC?

 

[respice finem]

The question this raises to me is if a DAC chip can overheat with such material (which would probably be the only way to damage it).
This can be tested with an IR cam.

 

[Blumlein 88]

The question this raises to me is if a DAC chip can overheat with such material (which would probably be the only way to damage it).
This can be tested with an IR cam.

Are we inventing problems we've not seen?

 

[respice finem]

All the time, in case you didn't notice That's what a hobby is about, I'm afraid.
But even in science many things we know today, we wouldn't know without such "silly" curiosity.

Then, there are even solutions looking for their problem, as one discussed here

 

[Blumlein 88]

All the time, in case you didn't notice That's what a hobby is about, I'm afraid.
But even in science many things we know today, we wouldn't know without such "silly" curiosity.

Then, there are even solutions looking for their problem, as one discussed here

I get the curiosity thing.

Think about for a minute that almost all modern DAC chips are delta sigma. They are running at very high rates and a few bits.

Not mentioning that if DACs overheating with high frequencies being a problem would have surfaced many years ago. It isn't a new discovery waiting to happen.

 

[respice finem]

Yes, but, many years ago we didn't have too many companies coming with crazily high data rates.
I think checking things relatively simple to check isn't harmful, even if only to confirm they don't matter.