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Topic: People showing how great their turntables sound (Read 52457 times) previous topic - next topic
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People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #25
There CAN be times where a waveform isn't accurately represented at 44.1 khz.
I take it that you are referring to frequencies above 22.05kHz only?
lossyWAV -q X -a 4 -s h -A --feedback 2 --limit 15848 --scale 0.5 | FLAC -5 -e -p -b 512 -P=4096 -S- (having set foobar to output 24-bit PCM; scaling by 0.5 gives the ANS headroom to work)

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #26
I think 24/48 would be a nice upgrade in sound

It doesn't seem as if you've read our rules before posting.  Please do so!

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=3974

If you want to claim an upgrade in sound the burden is on you to prove it, per TOS #8.  If you can't then you have no business saying it.

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #27
There CAN be times where a waveform isn't accurately represented at 44.1 khz.
I take it that you are referring to frequencies above 22.05kHz only?


I'm not going to start an argument here, but no.  If a song was just a single sine wave tone, then yes, but music is a mixture of sounds, and sounds of a mixture of waves.  I just don't see what it would hurt to raise the bar in this world of INCREASING bandwidth.  For the music industry it would be good.  How long does it take to download an uncompressed CD anymore?  MP3 was piracy's answer on dialup, making a whole album less than 100 MB.

I made a wave of high frequency (a sine of 10 khz and one of 15 khz) and mixed them in a 192 khz file, then downsampled to 44.1 and then back up to 192.  It did not look the same as the original.  That's just my own observations.  A simple single sine wave will be unharmed in the process, though.

I keep all my music on a 750 GB hard drive, FLAC.  I use AAC for portable.  So I am not totally biased on the lossless part of things.  There is just a big difference for me with sitting down in a quiet room with headphones at the computer versus using a portable in a car or some other noisy place.

I am able to ABX between a 24/48 and a 16/44.1.  Towards the end of testing a bunch of times it gets harder, but I CAN.  That just shows there's a difference, not saying which one is better, but different.  Opinion doesn't seem welcome here, ban me.  I'm not telling other's that that's what they need, it's just what I like, and what I want.  I don't like skating on bare minimum, I like everything to be the best it can be, even if it is unnecessary and excessive.

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #28
I'm not going to start an argument here, but no.  If a song was just a single sine wave tone, then yes, but music is a mixture of sounds, and sounds of a mixture of waves.

It's good that you aren't trying to start an argument because it seems pretty clear that you do not understand enough about digitizing analog signals to successfully argue.

I am able to ABX between a 24/48 and a 16/44.1.

Samples and log please!

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #29
I did this on foobar, is this acceptable? And how many tests, and how do I prove the files are what they are?  Maybe you could point me to a better tester, because the log only showed what the results were, no technical info.  The difference is so miniscule, maybe I have superhumans ears  It takes a lot of brain power to tell the difference, but I can, but barely, and it's not a 100% result towards the end.  I will arrive home in a few hours, and I will get to testing.

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #30
I made a wave of high frequency (a sine of 10 khz and one of 15 khz) and mixed them in a 192 khz file, then downsampled to 44.1 and then back up to 192.  It did not look the same as the original.  That's just my own observations.  A simple single sine wave will be unharmed in the process, though.
It would seem that your resampling algorithm may not be up to it. Did you try the single tone example? Also, you said that it did not look the same as the original. In what way? How were you looking at the audio?
lossyWAV -q X -a 4 -s h -A --feedback 2 --limit 15848 --scale 0.5 | FLAC -5 -e -p -b 512 -P=4096 -S- (having set foobar to output 24-bit PCM; scaling by 0.5 gives the ANS headroom to work)

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #31
... and how do I prove the files are what they are?
You could upload up to 30 seconds of each version of the sample in the uploads forum to allow others to duplicate your results.
lossyWAV -q X -a 4 -s h -A --feedback 2 --limit 15848 --scale 0.5 | FLAC -5 -e -p -b 512 -P=4096 -S- (having set foobar to output 24-bit PCM; scaling by 0.5 gives the ANS headroom to work)

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #32
This shouldn't even be discussed as a waveform image is not supposed to mean anything there.  It was in Goldwave though.  Not the best algorithm, but with a single tone it operates fine with resampling between those 2 rates.  I'd imagine it would treat 192 to 48 better rather than 192 to 44.1 because of integer division.

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #33
I don't believe that work on improving recording techniques is impeded by work done on improving vinyl playback.


You're cherry picking one issue from among a great many that all have a common source - people who are wasting money on technological dead ends in audio.

If you add to the money wasted on trying to improve vinyl, all of the work done to address alleged problems that can't be ABXed, then you come up with a huge pile of money because it includesall of the tens and hundred  of millions of dollars that were blown on things like SACDand DVD-A, plus about 80% of all the money spent on high end audio.

Yes, I think that about 80% of the money spent on high end audio is pure waste in the sense that it has no tangible benefits.

Quote
Further more, all the work done on improving recording techniques will only pay forward. It will do nothing to help us enjoy Coltrane or Hendrix.


Arguing that we should never spend money on things that can't fix the mistakes of the past is pretty strange, Scott.



People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #34
I think it's not that important what mastering engineers use to monitor the sound. There are recordings from decades ago that were monitored on goodness knows what - modern systems reveal that the mastering engineers generally didn't wreck these recordings - we can hear details now that they never could, and they sound fine. Great usually. Mostly, even if they listened on a system with a 10dB peak in some frequency range, they didn't notch it out of the recording to compensate. Or if they did, it didn't get released, because the problem was obvious on any other system.


I'll put forward a hypothesis that I half believe:

When we listen to music at home, the following factors are different from a live performance:
1. we usually listen far quieter than the original real life performance
2. we can't see the performers (unless it's a DVD/BluRay - and even then, that's just a picture - not real) - either way, our eyes tells us that the performers are not there in the room with us
3. we have 1, 2 or 5.1 signal sources - none of these re-creates the original acoustic space

My guess is, some things in the playback chain which are non-ideal, and cause the reproduced audio to be less like that captured by the microphone, help in some subjective way to "compensate" for one or more of the above, and make many people think the result sounds more like (what they imagine!) the live performance (to sound like).

There are (IMO!) obvious psychoacoustic reasons why adding some kinds of distortion may help with issue (1), and possible reasons why the not-quite-perfect stereo imaging and subtle reverb-like effect of certain analogue media and electronics might help a little with (3).


I agree with everything you say above. hope it doesn't hurt your good standing here at Hydrogenaudio 





People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #35
I'm not going to start an argument here, but no.  If a song was just a single sine wave tone, then yes, but music is a mixture of sounds, and sounds of a mixture of waves.
Nyquist was right, Shannon was right, and we've had this discussion many times before.

There's a little "FAQ" link at the top-right of the page. Try it

An audible difference between sample rates on your PC may say more about your PC/OS/drivers/soundcard/etc than the fundamental limits of 44.1kHz sampled audio.

Cheers,
David.

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #36
I did this on foobar, is this acceptable?


Could be.

Quote
And how many tests, and how do I prove the files are what they are?


16 trials is a good start.

Quote
Maybe you could point me to a better tester, because the log only showed what the results were, no technical info.


The results in the log are what we sant to see.

Quote
The difference is so miniscule, maybe I have superhumans ears  It takes a lot of brain power to tell the difference, but I can, but barely, and it's not a 100% result towards the end.  I will arrive home in a few hours, and I will get to testing.


Also, please upload 30 second samples of the two files that you were comparing so we can try to duplicate your results.

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #37
If a song was just a single sine wave tone, then yes, but music is a mixture of sounds, and sounds of a mixture of waves.


You are right that music is just a collection of sine waves.

Digital handles mixtures of sine waves just fine, thank you.


People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #38
There CAN be times where a waveform isn't accurately represented at 44.1 khz.


You are right, a musical waveform as it exists in the air before being picked up by the microphone rarely if ever is accurately represented by 44.1 KHz sampling, in the technical sense.

Most of the microphones that are used for recording don't have anything like flat frequency response. Very many of them start rolling off as low as 12 KHz, some even lower. They also roll off quite a bit of bass. Very, very few if any microphones have flat response that can be compared to that of a CD player or an amplifier. They are rarely if ever used for real world recordings.  Very few microphones that are usued for recording have flat response above 20 KHz. Many of them are very non-flat at all normal audio frequencies. Some popular microphones have response curves look like the profile of rough ground.

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #39
Oh boy, you got me talking about stuff no one here wants said....


Yeah, the fact that it's called EUPHONIC distortion shows just how very taboo the idea is.   

And as for your self-satisfied belief that you're opening 'some of us' here up to something new -- here's what I wrote in 2008 on a RAHE thread called "Best way/quality to record vinyl".

Note especially the reference BACK TO HA...and the part in bold too:


http://groups.google.com/group/rec.audio.h...mp;dmode=source


Quote
Perhaps it's synchronicity, but a few threads have popped up related to this topic on other
forums lately , independent of this one

Here's one on Hydrogenaudio about a device that basically purports to re-create vinyl euphonic
distortion.  Despite the initial negative reaction, the author of the site in question
(Richard Brice) doesn't seem to be the flooby type -- he's got a technical background, has
written a respectable book on music engineering, and responds intelligently on that thread ,
to critiques and questions.

He does seem to have done measurements , too, to confirm something about LP playback that can
make certain kinds of recording (e.g., from cardioids) 'sound better' in terms of imaging, to
him, than even the master tapes, due to addition of what he calls 'beneficial distortion', a
synonym for 'euphonic distortion'.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=6644

and here's his current site

http://classicproaudio.com/franci.htm

Btw, there's a quote on that HA thread from Brice's book that mirrors a hypothesis I have put
forward before -- and one that JJ has also hinted at on some posts on other forums --
to explain the 'vinyl sound's' fanbase, namely, that some kinds of distortion might happen to
compensate for deficiencies of some recording:


(p. 313):
"Interestingly investigations reveal that distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that ther may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative -- though not, as they invariably
suppose, due to digital mysteriously taking something away but due to the analogue equipment
adding beneficial distortion."

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #40
Oh boy, you got me talking about stuff no one here wants said....


Yeah, the fact that it's called EUPHONIC distortion shows just how very taboo the idea is.   

And as for your self-satisfied belief that you're opening 'some of us' here up to something new -- here's what I wrote in 2008 on a RAHE thread called "Best way/quality to record vinyl".

Note especially the reference BACK TO HA...and the part in bold too:


http://groups.google.com/group/rec.audio.h...mp;dmode=source


Quote
Perhaps it's synchronicity, but a few threads have popped up related to this topic on other
forums lately , independent of this one

Here's one on Hydrogenaudio about a device that basically purports to re-create vinyl euphonic
distortion.  Despite the initial negative reaction, the author of the site in question
(Richard Brice) doesn't seem to be the flooby type -- he's got a technical background, has
written a respectable book on music engineering, and responds intelligently on that thread ,
to critiques and questions.

He does seem to have done measurements , too, to confirm something about LP playback that can
make certain kinds of recording (e.g., from cardioids) 'sound better' in terms of imaging, to
him, than even the master tapes, due to addition of what he calls 'beneficial distortion', a
synonym for 'euphonic distortion'.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=6644

and here's his current site

http://classicproaudio.com/franci.htm

Btw, there's a quote on that HA thread from Brice's book that mirrors a hypothesis I have put
forward before -- and one that JJ has also hinted at on some posts on other forums --
to explain the 'vinyl sound's' fanbase, namely, that some kinds of distortion might happen to
compensate for deficiencies of some recording:


(p. 313):
"Interestingly investigations reveal that distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that ther may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative -- though not, as they invariably
suppose, due to digital mysteriously taking something away but due to the analogue equipment
adding beneficial distortion."




  Great stuff Steve! Really. Thanks for reminding me. Hope you don't mind if I use this info to respond to another post.

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #41
Ultimately every playback system is colored. Ultimately every recording is colored as well. And (this is a big point to me) the very system of recording and playback in stereo or even multichannel is inherently colored or flawed.


So far so good.

Quote
The question is are there euphonic colorations that are universally preferable/compensatory when in play with a wide range of recordings.


The answer to that question is pretty much no. You look at the marketplace and you find that the overwhelming proportion of equipment was designed, despite their flaws, to be as uncolored as possible.  Vritually every piece of mainstream electornics is designed to be flat within a fraction of a dB over the audible range. Speakers are a little weird because of their interaction with the rooms that they are used in, but even so the notions of flat smooth response show up all over the place. The reason for this has already been given - flat response is always the same thing while euphonic colorations are personal and/or specific to a miniscule fraction of all listening environments. 

Quote
It is pretty hard to answer that question definitively. There are many variables involved. I have to go with my experience.


Scott, you're on  a fool's mission because you think that there possibly can be "euphonic colorations that are universally preferable/compensatory when in play with a wide range of recordings" in this day and age. In the days of vinyl, I think that there might have been some possibility of that because of the rather gross limitations of that medium. Today, no.  You'd have to invent a universe where all there was is vinyl, for your basic ideology to have a chance of being relevant.

I just don't see any sense to comitting to redesigning the universe to protect some odd ideology that I picked up some where.



Maybe you might want to look into this from Steve Sullivan

"Perhaps it's synchronicity, but a few threads have popped up related to this topic on other
forums lately , independent of this one

Here's one on Hydrogenaudio about a device that basically purports to re-create vinyl euphonic
distortion. Despite the initial negative reaction, the author of the site in question
(Richard Brice) doesn't seem to be the flooby type -- he's got a technical background, has
written a respectable book on music engineering, and responds intelligently on that thread ,
to critiques and questions.

He does seem to have done measurements , too, to confirm something about LP playback that can
make certain kinds of recording (e.g., from cardioids) 'sound better' in terms of imaging, to
him, than even the master tapes, due to addition of what he calls 'beneficial distortion', a
synonym for 'euphonic distortion'.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=6644

and here's his current site

http://classicproaudio.com/franci.htm

Btw, there's a quote on that HA thread from Brice's book that mirrors a hypothesis I have put
forward before -- and one that JJ has also hinted at on some posts on other forums --
to explain the 'vinyl sound's' fanbase, namely, that some kinds of distortion might happen to
compensate for deficiencies of some recording:

(p. 313):
'Interestingly investigations reveal that distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that ther may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative -- though not, as they invariably
suppose, due to digital mysteriously taking something away but due to the analogue equipment
adding beneficial distortion.'"


People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #43
I love the use of weasel words (which I have put in bold):
He does seem to have done measurements , too, to confirm something about LP playback that can
make certain kinds of recording (e.g., from cardioids) 'sound better' in terms of imaging, to
him, than even the master tapes, due to addition of what he calls 'beneficial distortion', a
synonym for 'euphonic distortion'.
[...]
Btw, there's a quote on that HA thread from Brice's book that mirrors a hypothesis I have put
forward before -- and one that JJ has also hinted at on some posts on other forums --
to explain the 'vinyl sound's' fanbase, namely, that some kinds of distortion might happen to
compensate for deficiencies of some recording:

(p. 313):
'Interestingly investigations reveal that distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that ther may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative -- though not, as they invariably
suppose, due to digital mysteriously taking something away but due to the analogue equipment
adding beneficial distortion.'"

A far more reasonable explanation is that these people are predisposed to the distortions that are borne out of the use of vinyl.

I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime.

There will always be Luddites grasping at the hope (however faint) that they are justified in their beliefs.

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #44
I love the use of weasel words (which I have put in bold):
He does seem to have done measurements , too, to confirm something about LP playback that can
make certain kinds of recording (e.g., from cardioids) 'sound better' in terms of imaging, to
him, than even the master tapes, due to addition of what he calls 'beneficial distortion', a
synonym for 'euphonic distortion'.
[...]
Btw, there's a quote on that HA thread from Brice's book that mirrors a hypothesis I have put
forward before -- and one that JJ has also hinted at on some posts on other forums --
to explain the 'vinyl sound's' fanbase, namely, that some kinds of distortion might happen to
compensate for deficiencies of some recording:

(p. 313):
'Interestingly investigations reveal that distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that ther may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative -- though not, as they invariably
suppose, due to digital mysteriously taking something away but due to the analogue equipment
adding beneficial distortion.'"

A far more reasonable explanation is that these people are predisposed to the distortions that are borne out of the use of vinyl.


What makes it "far more reasonable?' And how does such reason supercede actual research done by folks such as JJ?

I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime.


Indeed such fools buy into things like dither 

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #45
As if dither is even remotely close to this magical inverse anti-reality transform that vinyl recording and playback are being almost-but-not-quite credited as providing.

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #46
As if dither is even remotely close to this magical inverse anti-reality transform that vinyl recording and playback are being almost-but-not-quite credited as providing.


Dither is added noise.


"I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime."

Dither does exactly what you find odd that people "want to believe."

Apparently you find it odd that JJ "wants to believe"...."distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that ther may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative"

But why does JJ "want to believe" this? Oh yeah, "investigations reveal" it.
That JJ, what a ludite   



People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #47
Dither adds noise at the least significant bit.

Are you suggesting that this mystical vinyl transform that supposedly restores reality to recorded music only operates at the threshold of silence?  Any and all accounts I've read about the coloration caused from vinyl works a levels far higher than that.  Perhaps dither at the 13th or 14th bit might have energy that approaches the surface noise of vinyl, but surface noise is just *one* aspect of reproduction of vinyl that introduces degradation.

Concerning what investigations reveal, you make it sound black and white.  Nothing that you've quoted or alluded contains any of the definitive language that you've just purported.

I'll gladly hear what JJ has to say about it himself.  I certainly don't trust what you have to say about it in his stead.

We can sit here and may and might and possibly and seems as if all night long but at the end of it all no one can sit back and assure me that they have evidence that can rule out the conditioning resulting from having listened to vinyl for years if not decades prior to the digital age.  This is pretty much characteristic of just about every post by you related to this topic has only served to reinforce my point: these tepid conclusions are fraught with expectation bias.  It should not come as a surprise to anyone here that you would hold it up as your latest champion for subjectivity! 

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #48
Guys, there's no point arguing about this - a hypothesis has been advanced - the HA way is to provide audio samples for verification.

The YouTube samples are far too low quality (and call me cynical, but I believe the one I linked to may be fake).

We need something properly captured from vinyl and CD to compare.

FWIW we've been through this before, and some examples have the vinyl mastered so obviously differently from the CD that it tells you nothing about the vinyl format. Even where the differences are subtle, the CD version can usually be tweaked to sound like the vinyl.

Even so, I'd be amazed if somewhere in scott's record collection there isn't some disc which sounds nicer on vinyl than CD (in his opinion) and I think it would be helpful to hear it so we can check (a) whether other people can hear a difference at all, and (b) what other people prefer.

Cheers,
David.

People showing how great their turntables sound

Reply #49
I love the use of weasel words (which I have put in bold):
Quote

BTW, there's a quote on that HA thread from Brice's book that mirrors a hypothesis I have put
forward before -- and one that JJ has also hinted at on some posts on other forums --
to explain the 'vinyl sound's' fanbase, namely, that some kinds of distortion might happen to
compensate for deficiencies of some recording:

(p. 313):
'Interestingly investigations reveal that distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that there may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative -- though not, as they invariably
suppose, due to digital mysteriously taking something away but due to the analogue equipment
adding beneficial distortion.'"

A far more reasonable explanation is that these people are predisposed to the distortions that are borne out of the use of vinyl.


What makes it "far more reasonable?' And how does such reason supersede actual research done by folks such as JJ?


My Scott, how quickly you blow an offhand comment by JJ about something he says that "may be", into "actual research".

Do you know what JJ meant by "may be", Scott?  While I don't know for sure, I have read enough research papers by JJ that he doesn't use "may be" to describe his evaluation of the main thesis of his work.  "may be" for sure means far less than a 50% chance. It could describe a 0.001% chance. 

Also remember Scott that I've known JJ personally for over a decade. I've been out to dinner with him twice in the past 6-8 months. I have a pretty fair idea whet he means by "may be" and trust me, it can easily mean something very speculative.

In this context, I would interpret his "may be" as "perhaps your shouldn't  totally dismiss".

What I come up with, based on decades of experience trying to do such things, is that the odds of random influences actually compensating for some nonlienar distortion are pretty much slim and none. and mostly none Even when you know what you are doring and you are desperately  trying, compensating for distortion by adding other distortion is a tricky business. This is particularly true for nonlinear distortion because nonlinear distortion has so many parameters that you have to hit square on.

Quote
Quote from:  link=msg=726800 date=0
I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime.


Indeed such fools buy into things like dither 


The last comment about dither Scott shows just about anybody who really understands the role of dither in digital audio that sometimes you just piece words together for effect - you don't really know what you are saying much of the time. Combine that with your inflation of an offhand "may be" into "research, and we've got a clear image of someone clutching at straws.