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Mike27

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  1. Great pair of articles. I’m thinking measuring source impedance might be, ah, “non-trivial.” But if you have access to an oscilloscope, you could *very carefully* observe the AC waveform for noise in both conditions. A DSO could capture both waveforms for comparison, null test, etc. Might or might not tell you anything useful. But don’t electrocute yourself! We want to read part 3!
  2. I eagerly await your next report. I’m hoping the inverters don’t put garbage on the AC line. Not just for audio’s sake, but also RF communications. I’m hoping to put up a modest ham antenna in retirement. New sunspot cycle and all that. It would be of great interest to me if you could check weak AM radio signals before & after! Very good info so far. Thanks!
  3. I wish I had run across this thread 4 years ago. I was just getting started using “Perfect Declipper.” Life being full of distractions, I didn’t get to focus on it until a couple years ago when I found some time. Now I have about 12,000 declipped tracks & still plugging away at it. It’s surprising the number of CDs that are clipped. ‘50s jazz, all manner of stuff. Here’s “Return to Sender” from 2007’s “The Essential Elvis Presley.” Top stereo pair as ripped, 2nd pair reduced 6.02 dB for comparison with the third, declipped tracks. We’ll likely never know what was lost in the Universal fire.
  4. I do, actually. I rotate about 20,000 music tracks with radio jingles, sound FX, etc. It’s kind of an outgrowth of when I was a kid in the ‘60s and ran a micro-powered FM station from my parents’ basement. That neighbor girl never did notice.
  5. No one I think is in my tree. I just want something that will let me stream any audio in “real time” from a PC running broadcast automation software to my car. I’m actually doing this right now (ok, I’m on the patio, not driving) but only as 128k AAC. It actually sounds surprisingly good. And I can listen about a couple hours a day without jacking up the phone bill. But, I depend on the good graces of a friend who lets me have a little server bandwidth for free. What I’d like is something flexible enough to handle 5-10 connections at once, mostly because of coverage dropouts reconnecting without closing the now-lost blah blah not relevant. 16/48 would be adequate. Probably not much money to be made though, as I am a notorious skinflint. Most of the time. But I devour these articles and hope I can find some usable edge case. Thanks!!
  6. I just want to thank everyone, fascinating thread even though I live in MS-world except for the phones. Food for thought here. I had previously struggled with Chrome Audio but eventually gave up. Also you’ve reminded me to ID & decode more HDCD files since I don’t have anything that does it in real time. And the latest additions may have me re-thinking this whole Airplay thing that I rejected years ago. Carry on...
  7. @Dan Gravell: I was peripherally aware of the Apple “Match” hijinx, but not how convoluted. Hideous! Never considered YouTube because yuck. Bliss looks interesting, but I’m a notorious cheapskate. Historically, though, if I find something I really like, and can squeeze into the budget, who knows? Certainly some interesting info in that blog, thanks! @agladstone: I have looked at Google Drive. Might be my best solution. They already know what I’m doing before I do. Or maybe Dropbox; I’ve used the free allotments for file transfer with no problem, except once someone invited me to share their space, only to find they put me on their employer’s corporate server, which then declared they owned my data before I even uploaded any... that didn’t last long. Meanwhile Windows networking somehow decided my Ethernet crossover cable is a public network, and blocked “rover” from “mothership” but not the other way round. Argh!! Thanks for the replies!
  8. Me, 2009: “I’ll never put my music on the computer! MP3s suck!”

     

    Me, 2010: “Wait, you’re tossing this 24/96 card? Ooh, S/P-DIF! Just the thing for those DATs full of 45 dubs! Hmm, FLAC seems OK. MP3s still suck!”

     

    Me, now: “Should only take a couple days to copy these files. MP3s still suck!”

     

    Me, also: “grumble grumble crowdsourced metadata, what rules of capitalization are those?? And you know that extra space makes it a whole different album...”

  9. “...some services have been known to wipe tags from music files.” Wait, what? I’m well past the point I should have implemented some rigorous backup process. Swapping hard drives with my brother is one thing, but I’m better at accumulating things than organizing them. Metadata is just one part of the headache. I need revision control. I may have a half dozen versions of, say, an LP dub. Raw, clicks & noise repaired, an archival version and maybe one with a little EQ for general listening. Some random category that applies only to those files, perhaps. I may or may not want to keep all the intermediate versions. Keeping track via tags is difficult enough without something deleting them! Yet I am not really surprised. Having just skimmed this article, I’ll dive in further soon. Thanks!
  10. I completely agree. The track (first pic) is from a late-1980s CD issue of Wishbone Ash's "Argus." I have an original MCA LP (you can see where the Decca logo was airbrushed from the jacket art) for comparison, and the difference is quite audible. Many elements are panned to the center. I chose this example partly because it's unusually bad, but also it points out the need to trust your ears and your monitoring above all. Also, as much as we want the engineering to be perfect, there are many opportunities for error, human and electronic/mechanical. In this case I suspect that, under pressure to get product out the door in the then-new CD medium, someone eyeballed it wrong and QA didn't catch it. And, I did "remaster," and it does sound different. In this case I also messed around a bit with the bass, and removed some noise below 20 Hz. The second screen cap shows the final result. Still doesn't sound quite like the LP, though, but I didn't expect that anyway.
  11. I stumbled across a free VST “stereo scope” plugin that might be useful here. The X-Y display illustrates the relationship of L/R to M/S in real time. https://www.meldaproduction.com/MStereoScope I have no affiliation with the vendor, but they offer an interesting array of effects for various prices, in some cases free. Below is a screen cap, from a major label CD reissue of a well-known ‘70s album. The entire disc has been mastered about 3 dB out of balance. Oopsie!
  12. Ha, I never got past opening a few files; was already using an old version of Studio One for a few simple projects, & have enough I/O to mix analog if I want. None of which is germane to the article. But I do sometimes make certain... adjustments... to favorite music I find “lacking.” It’s really just an outgrowth of decades of making safety copies, maybe using a click reducer or other such toy. So I’ll be interested in any observations, discussion of technique, etc.
  13. As often happens, I’m starting this series here, will circle back to the first two articles. But I wanted to mention that Tracktion DAW is available as a full-featured free version. This started with their making earlier versions free a few years ago. I may want to update mine... https://www.tracktion.com/products/waveform-free But in all honesty I use Audacity more often, partly out of familiarity, but mostly because it’s often the most efficient tool, at least for low track counts.
  14. As an aside, there exists a (Windows) command-line utility that performs the HDCD level compensation function, but not the other dynamic EQ stuff I’ve not seen coherently explained. Still, it made a huge improvement on my Tom Petty box set. I could probably track it down again.
  15. Thanks to joebah and baoshan for exploring the needle drop issue. Since more than half my files are from vinyl, I’ll keep an eye on this.
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