Why Do Old Technologies Persist in Audio?

[EJ3]

And of course, the reason I have the Oppo 205 is because I really enjoy playing the physical discs in my CD/DVD-A/SACD collection, even though I have ripped everything and have a very convenient computer-based music server.

Nostalgia is incredibly powerful, and enjoyment is enjoyment. We don't always consciously choose what, how, or why we enjoy.

I have the Technics SL-M3, OPPO 205 UDP & SONY CDR-500 CD recorder (can do 20 bitperfect) and am recording all of my vinyl, CD's, cassettes & RtRs to archival CDs. They will also all be backed up to digital files (only for backup, until the time that I don't have a way to play the wonderful silver discs). Cassettes are from my own radio days, RtRs are a husband wife world traveling piano & guitar band. So much history, my mother & father, etc. Just as I have 8 & 9.5 MM film transferred to DVD of my grandfathers & my mothers home movies of my family. Those in my family that are here after we are gone can see us, here us & know what music we liked. Or maybe not. It will depend on them. But unlike for most, it will be available to them from 1927 to now.

 

[Inner Space]

Toole was talking about awareness under controlled listening conditions. That's different. You are abusing his message if you think it applies to sighted listening, ie this case.

Almost all trained listener involvement in R&D is sighted. You know this. Amir says so often, and both Toole and Olive make it plain. It's done sighted for the sake of speed and efficiency - possible because once learned, artifacts are easily recognized again.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Almost all trained listener involvement in R&D is sighted. You know this. Amir says so often, and both Toole and Olive make it plain. It's done sighted for the sake of speed and efficiency - possible because once learned, artifacts are easily recognized again.

As someone who does a substantial amount of R&D (), what you say is absolutely true. Usually the potential problems are already known, and listening for their presence or not doesn't take a blind or ABX procedure. More to the point, in the normal course of a day, nothing would get produced other than a nice stack of spreadsheets (and customers don't buy spreadsheets), the answers on which are already known and acted upon.

 

[Joe Smith]

What we grew up with - though I've never owned an 8-track, and very proud of it. As to younger people and the resurgence of vinyl - a really interesting phenomenon. The collecting bug, the tangibility of owning a library of music, I guess. I never dumped my cassettes and still have most of the vinyl I've bought in my life (other than what was lost in a flood in my Dad's basement when I was off at college) so, I play it...because it's there. But all in all, I'm probably listing to streaming sources 70% of the time, because I love new things.

As to the other equipment - amps, preamps, speakers - they still sound pretty darn good.

Cassettes are under-rated, in general. I enjoy the convenience of them, still, and the process of making a tape.

 

[EJ3]

Cars over 25 years old do not need to be tested. That is different than not having to meet the standards. The law against removing cats does not have a time limit. You can't meet a 1996 tailpipe standard without a 3-way catalytic converter, which is why I wondered what you were talking about. A multi-spark ignition and tuning alone will not reduce NOx. As for your comments on formally trained engineers not being taught to come up with new solutions, well, that's ridiculous. As is the story about auto manufacturers reaping some sort of benefit from using best known practices for emissions reduction. I haven't learned anything from your post about automotive technology, but I have learned a lot about your thinking.

Obviously you have not been testing your own stuff & finding ways to make it meet newer standards. It took a number of innovative people to make it happen. & I drive empirical evidence that my vehicle met 1996 standards without a CAT. Now, was that the cheapest way to meet the standard: not by a long shot. I spent the money to do it in 1992 to prove a point (yes, it took more than a year to make it happen & originally my goal was to only meet 1980 emissions but it seemed more ludicrously fun to go as far as I could at the time). That the CA 1996 emission standard (including evaporative emissions) could be met without the equipment that they demanded. And they proved my point by refusing to register the car due to a standard based on a visual inspection of not having a CAT in spite of the fact that it did meet the 1996 New Car emission standards without the CAT. As soon as it had the cats in place, then they wanted a SMOG pump. Even though it had the NISSAN smog pump substitute on each bank of cylinders. At that point, I folded (because I had proven my point and can pass any drive by or tailpipe inspection of the car for the build years of 1979-96), I just chose to register the car in another state at the time. Now it is registered in another country. No reason for me to ever be in CA anyway.
I understand your thought process too, it's called "Go by the LETTER of the RULES & DON'T innovate & get the same result (actually an even better result: emissions are down, fuel economy is up & power is up [and if I were to do it today I could get even better results but would likely not be able to meet anything newer than 1996 without the CATs]). The next iteration will come in time and my goal will be better economy & fuel efficiency while retaining at least (or better) the same emissions. I feel sure that with the new tech available those goals can be met.
Most of the engineers I have met (a number of whom I know well through businesses that I currently own & others that I have owned: ranging from plumbing, heating, air-conditioning, massage and others) that innovate these days were already innovating before they became engineers. It was not something that they learned in school. They became engineers because they wanted to be innovative, not the other way around.
And it looks like the new DIY amps by Bruno (three 950 watt amps [1 sub at 2 ohms, one for each stereo channel at 4 ohms] may be the way to go for the home stereo). I'll wait a year or so to see. What to do with the car stereo in a few years remains to be seen.

 

[Newman]

@Jim Taylor

"As the understanding of technically-measurable parameters and their audible importance increased, it was possible to design training sessions that improved the ability of listeners to hear and to identify specific classes of problems in loudspeakers. With the aid of computers, this training has been refined to a self-administered procedure, which keeps track of the student’s progress [5]. From this we have also been able to identify program material that is most revealing of the defects that are at issue, thus improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the tests.
Pulling all of this together is an important study [6] in which the opinions of 12 selected and trained listeners are compared to those of 256 listeners from various backgrounds. The relative ratings of the products were essentially the same for small groups of listeners extracted from each population. The consequential difference was in the statistical confidence one could place in the opinions. The selected and trained listeners were much more reliable in their ratings, meaning that trustworthy results could be obtained in much less time. The trained listeners also provided comments that were easily interpreted by design engineers to help them focus on aspects of performance that needed working on, while other listeners tended to use less technically descriptive terms." F Toole, "Audio - Science in the Service of Art".

It's an old article, so not sure if he would still stand by those comments. My understanding is that the training saved time but made no difference to the rankings of loudspeakers with various audible imperfections.

cheers

 

[Robin L]

So for instance, I can enjoy just "Music" on virtually anything, and do so: in my car, on my desktop computer, smart speaker, even on my iphone speaker. Same with anyone else in my family and a great many music lovers.

But when I sit down in front of my 2 channel system I expect something else, something more: the possibility of "better sound" - where the sound quality itself is appreciable. Certainly this can merge with enjoying the music as it often does. But it's not the same thing: if it was, then music lovers would have to be audiophiles, but they aren't, because audiophile denotes someone who cares about the quality of THE SOUND not simply "the music."

I have owned a lot [probably too many] of audio systems, usually running towards the middling but sometimes towards the high end. If I had all the best bits running at the same time, instead of over fifty years [what with good and bad bits sliding in and out of the system depending on circumstances often out of my control] I'd have one hell of an audio system. Maybe if I could be listening to the LP-12 with the High-output AT moving coil cartridge going into the Audible Illusions pre, then into the Marantz 8b into the properly restored Vandersteens, I'd appreciate music more than I do now. But what I'm using right now does more of what I have been seeking all along anyway.

When you get to this end of the audio road, you realize that many tunes you love are---objectively speaking---total failures of audio engineering. I have been listening to hours and hours of oldies lately. My ripped files as playlists includes a 14-hour playlist of top-40 tunes, early fifties through 1969, pretty much the endtime for top-40 AM radio. These are mostly, but not entirely, taken from Time-Life compilations, reasonably mastered transfers from master tapes, though some are needledrops, some from off-center 45s, some [Beatles/Stones] come from the authorized sources, which never authorized release on "Oldies" CD compilations. At least not the "authorized" compilations. Sound quality is all over the place---One the one hand, the Roy Orbison Monument singles, absolute classic early stereo, on the other, Gary "U.S." Bonds "Quarter to Three", with more dynamic crushing than you will find in any modern "Brickwalled" title.

My sense is that those totally hooked on Audible Illusions will want gear that came from the age of the recordings being played, thus the persistence of obsolete tech. But, as music is my actual interest, I really want to know what the recording sounds like, even if it sounds as awful [technically, in the "audiophile" sense] as "1/4 2 3". And my current system is as clear a window into the actual sound of these recordings as any I have owned, past or present. I think it really boils down to being able to hear more musical lines, the countermelodies, the inner voices of Bach's great polyphonic works, all the woodwind parts in something by Ravel or Debussy. And if it means that the sound can be ugly at times, the reality is that sound is ugly sometimes. And I think some audiophile tendencies come from wanting everything to sound glorious all the time when it really doesn't.

 

[Robin L]

More of a hope than an expectation.

Any analysis of statistically predictable behavior indicates that "universally rational" is never an option.

 

[Robin L]

About 100 lb of CD's in cases will fit on a single 2.5" portable hard drive.

Or the single 8mm x 10mm x .5 mm 512 gb Micro-SD drive inside my 45mm x 95mm x 12mm Fiio M3K DAP---about 1/3 the size of my smartphone.

 

[MattHooper]

This is precisely my point. Still. Per Amir, per Toole, once identified, an artifact becomes perpetually noticeable, sometimes intrusively. Someone who started with digital simulations many decades ago will have become aware of their defects at the time, and will hear their faint descendants forever. That's what "trained listener" means, per orthodoxy.

I think you must accept that awareness of artifacts is a thing. It doesn't go away. Unless you want to argue the whole "trained listener" thing is wrong.

I've given up on ever expecting Newman to interact with what I write with any charity, or interest in understanding. At this point I think he just sees a bunch of trigger words.

Yes, you were along the right track in what I was trying to get across.

In the very early days of digital keyboards even the digital samples were pretty awful. Anyone who disagrees? I'll play them the old horn and string samples from my late 80's Yamaha keyboard.

As keyboards progressed the sound of the samples and AWM samples got better, but for quite a while they hardly competed with the real instruments being played, or the real instruments in a good recording, playing a piece.

I of course was not arguing that "digital capture and playback can not capture a good semblance of the real thing." (My goodness, I've been recording real sounds in various digital formats since the introduction of DAT, manipulating digital sound on various DAWs, and have had my work mixed digitally in some of the best local studios for decades...so aside from just being a music consumer, I have a bit of experience with digital sound quality).

While it took quite a while for digital keyboard samples to become more natural and convincing, digital recording of music is, and has been for a long time, essentially transparent. Especially in comparison to vinyl. If a sufficient converter/sample rate etc is used to do a needle drop of a vinyl LP, in a blind test I will in all likelihood be unable to tell it apart from the actual record playing on the turntable. Because digital is that much more capable and transparent than vinyl.

So I am hardly in the Fremer camp of folks who would say digital ADDS some sort of "unnatural" artifact to recorded music. Rather, it all depends on the quality of the sound capture/mixing/mastering etc. When it is poor, for instance in regard to string sections, I find it reminiscent of the canned, unconvincing sound of early strings on keyboards, and I'm sensitive to that. If the strings are such that I can easily imagine I'm hearing a keyboard patch vs the real thing, I find it disappointing. And I have heard that many times on many recordings. But, again, that will come from the provenance of the recording NOT from some inherent thing digital adds to the sound.

I have heard tremendous recordings of brass, strings, symphonies on digital. I often revel in them!

I was simply saying that ONE of the things that I can find lacking WHEN IT OCCURS, to my ears, in recordings of string sections, is a loss of texture, the physical sense of bows-playing-on-strings. The playback medium is already struggling to sound "right" and the more you smooth away strings, the more than can take on a sort of "thin sheen of ambiguous, lacking-complexity tone" similar to what I often experienced in keyboard patches. IMO.

I've found vinyl, on my system anyway, to often produce a sort of texture to the sound which, for me, substitutes for or slightly mimics the texture I hear in the real thing. I presume it's a distortion, but one that I find can add some presence my mind seizes on as a bit "more real." Not a huge thing at all, subtle, but then we audiophiles often care about subtlety.

And again this is just my own take. I don't expect other people to feel the same way about strings on vinyl or anything else.

 

[Newman]

I think I became very sensitive to, and annoyed by, the character of digitally sampled/recorded instruments, through playing keyboards from the 70's through to the late 90's (and somewhat beyond). I often had to fill out the sound with horn parts, string parts, grand piano parts etc, and always looked for keyboards and samples that sounded convincing. I never really found them, especially back in the early days, there was this thin, steely, glazed character to strings, horns and piano samples sounded plasticy and plinky.

Unfortunately those are still characteristics I pick up on when listening to recorded music, especially digital.

Thanks Matt for clarifying your original post, extract above.

 

[xaviescacs]

To me this is like asking why people still drink alcohol or smoke, if they are known to be harmful. Let's not pretend there is anybody whose behavior is not dominated by emotions.

 

[MattHooper]

Thanks Matt for clarifying your original post, extract above.

My pleasure, thank you Newman!

 

[Newman]

Almost all trained listener involvement in R&D is sighted. You know this. Amir says so often, and both Toole and Olive make it plain. It's done sighted for the sake of speed and efficiency - possible because once learned, artifacts are easily recognized again.

Show me the bit in bold, please.

 

[JJB70]

Something to keep in mind is that there's a fundamental difference between recognizing objective performance and what we like.

Trying to claim analogue is "better" than digital is silly as by every metric digital is a superior technology. However, it is perfectly reasonable to like analogue and prefer old gear.

I am one of those who thinks that the gear doesn't matter for listening to music. Most of my listening is via my mid-range (OnePlus Nord) smartphone and a cheap dongle driving Etymotic ER4SR IEMs, it meets my needs and I see absolutely no reason to spend any more on a DAC or headphone amplifier. However I love my old Sony ES gear and have just spent enough to buy a very respectable system which would almost certainly be better to have it serviced. I didn't do that because I am under any illusions about performance, but I do think the build and tactile quality of the old Sony gear is wonderful.

 

[rdenney]

I don’t know what you mean about illusions—there’s little reason to expect that the Sony ES stuff wouldn’t sound as good as “digital”, though it bothers me that we’d think of, say, a CD player into an older integrated amp into IEMs as being more “analogue” than a streamer into a DAC into a headphone amplifier into IEMs.

Either way, it’s a data stream until the DAC and analogue after that, through four or five (or six) amplification stages. We even still prefer the stage that has the volume control to do that in the analogue domain, to avoid reducing bit depth even at low volumes.

What has changed is how that data stream gets delivered to the DAC. Is it a CD transport? Streamer? Computer music app? Architecturally, it’s all the same.

“Analogue” means, to my thinking, baseband audio sources: vinyl or tape.

Analogue amplification has improved with higher power per input watt (and per dollar), better signal/noise, and (less important) reduced distortion, but perhaps not audibly so for most folks in most situations.

Speakers have definitely improved, but those are obviously analogue.

Rick “good vintage line-level stuff routinely provides S/N in the 90’s—16 bits worth of dynamic range” Denney

 

[JJB70]

I don’t know what you mean about illusions—there’s little reason to expect that the Sony ES stuff wouldn’t sound as good as “digital”, though it bothers me that we’d think of, say, a CD player into an older integrated amp into IEMs as being more “analogue” than a streamer into a DAC into a headphone amplifier into IEMs.

Either way, it’s a data stream until the DAC and analogue after that, through four or five (or six) amplification stages. We even still prefer the stage that has the volume control to do that in the analogue domain, to avoid reducing bit depth even at low volumes.

What has changed is how that data stream gets delivered to the DAC. Is it a CD transport? Streamer? Computer music app? Architecturally, it’s all the same.

“Analogue” means, to my thinking, baseband audio sources: vinyl or tape.

Analogue amplification has improved with higher power per input watt (and per dollar), better signal/noise, and (less important) reduced distortion, but perhaps not audibly so for most folks in most situations.

Speakers have definitely improved, but those are obviously analogue.

Rick “good vintage line-level stuff routinely provides S/N in the 90’s—16 bits worth of dynamic range” Denney

Oh, I think the audible performance of my ES gear is as good as anything. Once you reach transparency then it is mission accomplished, and both amplifiers and CD players achieved that years ago. However newer gear would almost certainly measure better for those into measurement, have way more functionality (streaming, wireless capability, USB, possibly built in room correction and DSP etc) and would use less energy (I suspect that a Class D amp would give a noticeable reduction in electricity consumption). However from what I can see I would have to pay frankly silly money to get anywhere near the build quality and tactile feel.

 

[JJB70]

We have a Technics system which I need to recover from storage at some point which is our everyday system. The centre unit is the sort of lifestyle system audiophiles seem to hate but it works perfectly well. The coaxial speakers are superb, I have always been amazed they are all but ignored/unknown as I prefer them over a lot of more trendy and popular speakers I have heard.

 

[BoredErica]

To me personally, dealing with old audio gear on purpose because they are old is like wanting to ride a horse to work, using a 2003 laptop as my daily driver for nostalgia, or buying ice to cool my food instead of using a fridge. I think I've heard enough 'records are analogue and therefore always superior to digital' arguments for a lifetime.

But if people aren't believing BS and just want to have fun in their own way there's nothing wrong with that.

 

[Offler]

About 100 lb of CD's in cases will fit on a single 2.5" portable hard drive.

They certainly do, however flash drives and harddisk do lack certain archival quality when compared to any optical media.