You say you want some resolution, we-ell you know....

[tfarney]

Discussion of bit rates and re-clockers and the seriously resolving systems required to reveal them has had me thinking lately about hifi in general, high resolution in particular, and what it all means. Here are a couple of examples:

 

My current system is by far the most resolving I've ever owned, due mostly to very high quality headphones as the primary transducers. While I'm sure it's not as transparent and revealing as some high-end systems, it is sometimes too revealing. I can hear bad mastering, digital compression and pumped-up eq well enough with my warm, loving Senns that it makes some disks hard to listen to. I really don't think I want a pair of Stax unless they're an alternative, not a main system.

 

The current economics have me working in retail, and exposed daily to the high end of midfi or the entry level of hifi, depending on your attitude (Denon, Pioneer Elite, high-end Yamaha, Martin Logan, Vienna Acoustics, Definitive Technology...). I listen to a lot of music on that gear, in different combinations. A lot of it, maybe even most of it, sounds better to me on the more forgiving Definitives than it does on the Viennas. And I really just don't like the Martin Logans at all. Very detailed. Cold as ice. Horrible off-axis.

 

What does it all mean? I'm not completely sure, but I think it might mean that all of our audiophile pursuits are at the mercy of our favorite recordings, and seeking equipment that makes most of them sound worse, not better, is counter productive.

 

The other day I said if you had $6,000 to spend on audio, put it into the best $6,000 speakers you can find. I think that might be too much. For my part, I might be better putting it into the best $3,000 speakers I can find and putting the rest of into music. MHO. YMMV and all that.

 

Tim

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Tim - very good point. On one hand the most resolving systems will reproduce the best source material unlike anything else. But, how often do we play back the best source material. I think it all comes down to what you like and nothing else.

 

If you ever want to push yourself into purchasing more music try getting a 5 TB NAS drive! I am on a mission to fill mine up with great music. This could be my funnest audiophile pursuit in years.

 

[tfarney]

Wow. That's a whole lotta lossless files. Have fun with that.

 

This epiphany is liberating. It not only frees me to enjoy the music and stop chasing phantoms, it frees me to understand and embrace those whose taste and tendencies are very different from my own. Tubes? Horns? Vinyl? Sure. I'd personally rather keep the source neutral and season for taste at the transducers, but if it brings you joy and you love the sound of it that's all that matters. Of course there will always be those who will be unable to accept that their personal choices are not objectively superior to everyone else's, but such is life.

 

Tim

 

[Innertuber]

All I can tell is brother you have to wait

Don't you know it's gonna be all right

 

[mpmct]

Was visiting with the one and only sales guy at my local

high-end place last week. He's in his late 40's, was a musician,

then a music critic. For most of his adult life he's also worked

at this same shop, now full time. He told me that because his

son started college and he needed funds, he had to sell his expensive gear.

1200 lb Krells, tube preamps, Sonus Faber monitors, yadda yadda.

And that was just one of his two systems.

He replaced both systems with one: a pair of ~$600 floorstanders, forget

the brand, but they are very efficient, ( horns I think ), so he's using small

and inexpensive ... I think he said 'class T' (?) amplifier(s).

And a $300 CD changer.

He said that for the first time in when he can remember,

he's really enjoying the *music*, and not obsessing about his equipment.

 

 

[shenzi]

Good point, Tim. I have a set of speakers which I know (because the enclosure designer said so) introduce a mild, warm distortion in the bass. And an amplifier which rolls off a little at the low end. So I know neither of them are entirely accurate but fortuitously, they complement each other and give pleasant results. I wouldn't change without very careful testing.

 

And I sometimes wonder if KNOWING that you don't have the highest resolution system helps stop you listening for imperfections . It's the same when I draw - strive for realism and the slightest inaccuracy leaps out, do a more stylised cartoon and I can get away with outrageous shortcuts and inaccuracies.

 

[mpmct]

Shenzi,

 

The whole *idea* of making a drawing ( picture ) is abstract. ;-)

As, from what I'm gathering, is recording and mastering.

 

Picasso, when asked about one of the many late

portraits of his fifth beautiful wife ...

 

Q: "Why does she look so .... fractured?"

 

A: "I painted her as I see her when I open my eyes as we kiss."

 

Nailed it. :-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[PeterSt]

Allright. So now everybody agrees that we should downgrade ? come on now.

 

Tim, I know you don't believe much of what I say, but I'll have another attempt anyway.

Just trying to invalidate your subject for 50% :-)

The other 50% is correct of course (like your euqalizing example).

 

A.o. a system as a whole can

 

Show extreme timbre, while at the same time things get too square, even up to near distortion.

XOver problem, but also an XOver tweak (it can be tuned).

 

Show extreme dynamics while at the same time instruments "fall apart".

Everything smashes around, and listening to the individual strings is interesting, but wrong. The greatest detail, but still wrong.

 

Show great detail, overdone by itself. Singers start to spit in microphones which clearly wasn't intended, but is now audible anyway.

This does not go along with other anomalies, like lacking mid etc. Just plain too much detail.

 

Show e.g. a nylon string of an acoustic guitar as pure cold straight as hell, or as warm because of micro vibrato (internal resonance). And everything in between it of course. Same system, same track, but the system is fed differently (think in jitter areas).

 

Show a singer singing on key, or just not at all.

No, this is not a wacky DAC clock thing, but just the micro interaction of waves. Also this is not room related. It is about acuracy though.

 

Show an artist being able to play the instrument, or just not.

This one is maybe not fair as a separate subject, because it goes along with the above mentioned too much dynamics.

 

I really could let you hear all of these things, and I am sure that per element (apart from the last one) you will believe me instantly. However, it may be very difficult to catch, that while each of these things can be wrong and destroy for there own merit, they also can come together in a good version, and it is this what I am always working on.

 

Now about this last example, which may be the unbelieveable part, but which is also the easiest to prove / show.

Mike Oldfield with his Tubular Bells I is the best example of it;

One of my first versions of the WASAPI part of XXHighEnd showed the beforementioned "crazy dynamics". Any hit on a drum, often the start of a track, could make you duck away because of sheer speed. With this version, Mike Oldfield seems to be the lousiest guitar player, playing off key all over, rambling the strings (I mean back and forth), breathing too loud in the background, and I really was shocked. I was sure I never had such a good playback means, and it showed exactly your complaint. The lousy recording was audible as such as never before, and the artist, well, wasn't an artist anymore.

 

Where above is a clear downside, at first there were many upsides as well;

It was so beautifully audible how the guitar player touched the strings, and instead of hearing a chord, you could hear the indivdual strings forming the chord. If that wasn't good playback ...

Also it occurred that every guitar player in the world seemed to show off his rambling (back and forth) over the strings, so good audible with the wound metal lower note strings. Hmm ...

 

Although nothing disturbed really, some things started to be annoying. One of them was that rambling over the strings, and it brought a signature to all music of a special kind. But, one signature to all can't be right ...

Besides my own ears and my wifes' I got myself a couple of well known others, and while everybody was completely shocked the first two hours, they too started to hear the signature throughout. Then one of the guys could point out that the instruments had fallen apart, meaning that e.g. strings were audible separately from the cabinet, and that sure couldn't be right.

 

These cracy dynamics came from a special application in the software, which should reduce jitter highly (remember, no DSP, and all as bit perfect as can be), and whether it reduced jitter to a certain amount, or jitter was just added in other frequencies, it caused this anomaly. But it *was* the most resolving ...

 

The other subjects I mentioned are in similar areas, and although not all impeeded by software, they can each (or all) workout wrongly for its element, and it 100% sure will make you think it is a bad recording (or artist).

 

A few examples, possibly for reference, hopefully showing how things can be judged and changed :

 

The Division Bell, High Hopes, shows a fly in the beginning. This fly may last 5 seconds or over 15 seconds, and strangely enough this is not related to the system being able to show detail. The more detail, the LESS long the fly is audible. But now listen carefully to the sound of the fly : these are squares. So, the more squary the sound is, the better the fly is audible.

This goes along with timbre.

 

The same track, shows a clear flanger at the beginning of the second part singing, from some background synth. This same synth plays at the first part of singing, but without flanger ... or ... ? I can show you that there too it can have the same flanger as at the second part ...

 

I can show you a track from a Belgian artist (Raymond van het Groenewoud), where hitting the snare drum shows as 100% distortion. All good ears are 1000% sure this is a bad recording. Sadly I can prove them wrong, because this hitting of the snare drum (in a fair rythm) lasts for over 1 minute, and the hitting goes from outside the veil towards the inside slowly, and the distortion can be shifted where I want it. Note that it sounds as completely oversteered.

So, the frequency of the complex sounds slowly shifts from more dry and higher (the edge of the veil) towards more warm and lower (the middle), and the distortion can be directed to either side.

Only Foobar doesn't show it at all. Hahaha.

 

Billy Cobham with some "best of" album (the brownish with the box with drum sticks) is one of the most difficult albums to get right. The man hits more cymbals on that album than one average drummer in his whole life, and once those cymbals start to be profound on your system, you better have them right or the album is unlistenable. I can tell you, I had it working quite allright, but since I have my new DAC working since a week, I can start all over.

 

Please mind the latter. There are no knobs as such in my system. I won't change cables and I won't go back to my old DAC. The new DAC shows way better detail of the good kind, and it makes me hear unwanted things in those cymbals now. To me (with some reference knowlegde) this means that most probably the jitter signature works out for the wrong now. I don't know yet. But as always I will keep on looking for the solution, and I will do that until I have it. So far I can always manage but it takes years of time.

But I certainly won't grab Foobar to flatten out those cymbals.

 

Peter

 

[tfarney]

Peter, I'm not advocating downgrading. I'm advocating upgrading until your music sounds best to your ears. That may mean less esoteric equipment and it may mean the opposite.

 

And it's not that I don't believe you. It's that we're listening for very different things.

 

Tim

 

[gmgraves]

I have been thinking about "Hi-Rez" digital formats. I record using DSD (SACD) 24/96, and 24/192 as well as 16/44.1, 16/48 and 24/48 PCM. My conclusion is that their is no audible difference between 24/48, 24/96, and 24/192 (or any intermediate sampling rate between them) but there is a big difference between 16-bit and 24-bit. In fact in a double-blind test using the same recording made by me of a local jazz sextet, no one could distinguish the recording as it changed from 24/48 to 24/96 and back again. But a good number of listeners (including me) could fairly easily hear the difference between 16/48 and 24/48.

 

Since all that increased sampling rate does is to increase the bandwidth from 22.05 KHz (44.1 KHz sampling) to 24 KHz (48 KHz sampling) and 48 KHz (96 KHz sampling) this is more or less what one would expect. But 24-bit over 16-bit not only gives more headroom but gives a lower noise floor and better resolution of low-level signals. This latter can be especially heard with regard to ambience retrieval.

 

[PeterSt]

Should make sense, as far as I can overlook it ...

 

Peter

 

[firedog]

Is that you end up with a system that reveals the limitations of some of your source material.

 

I have found some of the newer well done remasters of some of my old recordings sound better than the old LPs or original Cds, and have solved this problem for these recordings

 

[esldude]

George, I largely agree with you. I really think quality 48/24 may really be all needed. I certainly see little reason we could possibly need more than 88/24 or 96/24.

 

However, if turned from the original 24 bit recording to a well mastered 16 bit, even then 16 bit might be enough. Not for mastering, but for the final playback medium though with modern digital there is no reason not to do 24 bit.

 

My reasoning is that the dynamic range of 16 bits is rarely exceed by domestic equipment available. By this I mainly mean amplifiers. There are good amps with a real 90+ db of S/N, even some with a 100 db or so. You don't get much further than this in practice. But yes, going to 24 bit for the source signal to the amp is not as much overkill as going to 192 khz for instance.

 

It was a revelation to me upon hearing 48/24 A/D then 48/24 D/A in a high end system a decade or so ago. It just left little if anything wanting. Seemed completely transparent. No analog pre-amp was able to match it. It was a modest MSB A/D Audio Director, feeding a mighty Wadia 25 DAC directly feeding a power amp played over Quad ESL 63 speakers. I have been moving everything possible to digital since then in my audio system. For a few years now nothing in my audio system is analog until it hits the speaker at the amp output.

 

I really do think higher sampling rates are not needed. I will say that I haven't gotten anything higher than 48 khz to listen to however. Even if higher rates offer a bit more, 48/24 is capable of offering so much, few audiophile systems are able to exhaust the fidelity on offer.

 

[Miska]

In fact in a double-blind test using the same recording made by me of a local jazz sextet, no one could distinguish the recording as it changed from 24/48 to 24/96 and back again.

 

Depending on the original recording if it contains ultrasonic content, usually the difference can be obvious in the transient attacks. But for getting most out of the increased sampling rate, one has to check that all the electronics and loudspeakers can actually reproduce it...

 

Since all that increased sampling rate does is to increase the bandwidth from 22.05 KHz (44.1 KHz sampling) to 24 KHz (48 KHz sampling) and 48 KHz (96 KHz sampling) this is more or less what one would expect. But 24-bit over 16-bit not only gives more headroom but gives a lower noise floor and better resolution of low-level signals.

 

In a way yes, but the increased bandwidth can be also used to increase dynamic range (lower noise floor). With my noise shapers, I can get roughly 24-bit worth of dynamic range in audio band even with 16-bit data output. This makes it possible to use wide range of digital volume control, etc, without losing audio band dynamic range.

 

 

[Encore]

"He said that for the first time in when he can remember,

he's really enjoying the *music*, and not obsessing about his equipment."

 

Exactly, this thread touches a sore spot of this hobby. Recently, I was staying a couple of days in my mother's house. She has an Audio Pro Stereo One compact system, which actually plays great. Of course, I mean that it plays well for the price--it doesn't match my too expensive system, but it plays music better than some of the incarnations of my system along the road have done.

 

I enjoyed the music from the Stereo One, and I focused on the music instead of worrying about the sound. In addition, the experience eased my mind--if I ever have to sell my gear, or if I ever decide to give up on this sometimes frustrating hobby, there's music to be enjoyed without hassle and great expense. I would probably go for an Audio Pro Stereo Two. And keep my fingers crossed that the step up from the Stereo One won't prove to be one step too far and set off a new wave of upgrades ... :-D

 

[realhifi]

Submitted by mpmct on Thu, 12/04/2008 - 14:22. Joined: 07/05/2008 .:. Offline .:. Comments: 233

Amen

Was visiting with the one and only sales guy at my local

high-end place last week. He's in his late 40's, was a musician,

then a music critic. For most of his adult life he's also worked

at this same shop, now full time. He told me that because his

son started college and he needed funds, he had to sell his expensive gear.

1200 lb Krells, tube preamps, Sonus Faber monitors, yadda yadda.

And that was just one of his two systems.

He replaced both systems with one: a pair of ~$600 floorstanders, forget

the brand, but they are very efficient, ( horns I think ), so he's using small

and inexpensive ... I think he said 'class T' (?) amplifier(s).

And a $300 CD changer.

He said that for the first time in when he can remember,

he's really enjoying the *music*, and not obsessing about his equipment."

 

All I can say is he must have one awfully badly balanced system!

I hear both high end and low end all day long and there is literally no way that a beautifully balanced $8,000 - $10,000 system won't bring daily musical joy and if you had to go back down to $600 speakers you would be delusional (or in denial) that you loved it more than the system you had to get rid of. I have a feeling your friend is experiencing either one or both.

I find it extremely odd when I hear about people that need to completely go "cheap" in order to stop "obsessing" about a system. It's hif, not crack for god's sake!

 

[DaveLew]

So, a typical high end system costs what, $15,000, 20, maybe 25K. If you really love music, That's 1,500 great seats to the Met opera, the main stage at Carnegie Hall, the NY Philharmonic and the new Alice Tully Hall (which is the most precise, best sound isolated hall you could imagine. Whats a better musical experience for your money?

 

Oh, 5 TB, that's nothing. The latest price for a 2 tb drive I spoted was about 125.

 

[dsnyder]

Hello,

 

Quote: Oh, 5 TB, that's nothing. The latest price for a 2 tb drive I spoted was about 125.

 

True, but that 2TB drive will store about $85,000 worth of FLAC'ed CDs. Happy shopping...

 

 

 

[Paul R]

The endless jockeying for a better more perfect system can be the delusional nightmare. And far too many people get wrapped up in it as an endless cycle.

 

Sure, you have to put a system together that delights you - but if it is the system itself that delights you, and not the music it plays for you... well, I think that can definitely be a problem.

 

-Paul

 

 

[Lece]

Today I spent some time at DXC, a local headphone store here in Los Angeles, listening to the Audeze LCD-2 and the Beyerdynamic T1 headphones. While they were both great for headphones, they really couldn't compare with my main system. I admit there is a major difference in price points between the two, but those two cans are considered some of the best in the world and as such should be jaw dropping. Neither had a lack of resolution, dynamics, or scale, in fact both cans performed above admirably, but instead the issue was a general lack of realism. Your post got me thinking as to why that might be and all of a sudden it hit me: all of the recordings I was listening to were not geared for headphones. Binaural recordings, like Explorations of Space and Time, show just how far the argument for recordings/media first goes. Binaural recordings are geared for headphone listening and sound dramatically more realistic and present than standard recordings do on headphones. Better equipment does reveal more of what is there, but if what is there is poorly mastered, down-ressed, or meant for a different purpose (speaker or headphone) who cares.

 

[Lece]

Case in point (listen to the Barbershop track with your headphone on/in)...

 

http://jaxov.com/2009/09/top-10-binaural-recordings-auditory-illusions/

 

 

 

[esldude]

Should be no surprise that a high quality, hi-rez system will show poor recordings to be what they are. No accurate, hi fidelity system will make everything sound good. But how good does it sound with quality source material? And do you gain anything discernible with more than 48/24 sampling rates?

 

Now some very good tube systems can color the source beautifully, make it better than what it is. Make good recordings sound great, and mediocre ones sound pretty good. Actually make it subjectively better than the quality of the source has in it. But this is not hi fidelity. It doesn't so finely display the different levels of source quality. Now since the only true object of domestic audio is musical enjoyment, I have no problem with those who say a beautiful coloration is better than an accurate, but less enjoyable reproduction. Though it is needed that one knows what is going on versus claiming the beautifully colored tube sound is in fact more accurate when it is not.

 

[Soundproof]

Is perfection always the highest possible resolution?

Should our listening rooms be stand-ins for a sound engineer's workspace, where one hunts for what's wrong; or a place to sit back and relax, where one enjoys what's right?

 

It comes down to what kind of listener you are. Do you sit down to find errors in the playback, whether at home or somewhere else? Or do you actually listen to the music? And what is it about the music you listen for - the sum of all the details, or the absolute smallest details you can hear?

 

I think a lot of people are missing out on the enjoyment, because they are obsessing about an unattainable perfection, and wondering what's wrong, instead of simply savoring all that's right.

 

[firedog]

I've got a pretty resolving main system, which is a lot of system for the small room I listen in. On good recordings it definitely gets me involved in the music and "toe tapping" along.

 

In my bedroom I have a SB Boom, which is basically a boom box that works wirelessly with the SB software. For casual (background) listening I find it quite enjoyble. Logitech voiced it so the the sound seems balanced acoustically, and it gives the illusion of full frequency playback. It doesn't involve me in the music the way my good system does, and I wouldn't want it to be my only avenue for listening to music, but it does a good enough job that I don't think about spending more on a second system for the bedroom.

 

It has the added bonus that it hides the flaws in most recordings - it makes everything sound enjoyably sort of the same, which is just what good non-audiophile systems do. That also has its place in the world of music reproduction.

 

[Kevin_O]

One thing I want to make clear is that going from 16-bit to 24-bit or 32-bit, does not give you more headroom. Digital "0" is the same at 16, 24 or 32 bit. What it does is give you a greater dynamic range by lowering the noise floor.