Sayer
Sensei
Chasing better sound.
Posts: 145
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Post by Sayer on Apr 20, 2023 18:56:30 GMT -5
Did anyone take photos of the front of the new processors? I'm wondering if they will look any different from Gen 3.
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Post by geebo on Apr 24, 2023 11:49:47 GMT -5
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Post by marcl on May 5, 2023 6:50:56 GMT -5
I've been watching a number of videos on AXPONA 2023 from various sources. The headline of this one caught my eye. On The Absolute Sound YouTube page it says "Is High End Audio Dying?". I watched the discussion with Michael Fremer and Andre from TAS, and curiously ... I don't recall this topic being addressed exactly .... hmmmm .... But some of what they talked about was interesting. I agree 100% that the selections of music in demo rooms could be a lot better. More variety, more dynamics ... and might I add, higher resolution and higher quality recordings. What was interesting was they both gave some examples of recordings they brought along for dealers to play. All vinyl, needless to say. And being who they are, the dealers mostly obliged. Not so with mere civilians ... just TRY to get someone to play any classical music before 5:30 .... fuggeddaboudid! Near the end Fremer spoke about a secret demo of a revolutionary new product that really impressed him. He could not say the name of the product nor even the music that he heard. But get this ... they played a song from the highest quality streaming source, and then they played a CD on this special CD player, and the CD sounded ... BETTER! Well imagine his surprise. Is it not blatantly obvious that CD's always DID sound better than streaming services? And if they had played a vinyl record it would have sounded worse than both? Mind-boggling! Anyways ... here it is  |
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KeithL
Administrator 
Posts: 10,271
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Post by KeithL on May 5, 2023 14:14:16 GMT -5
I'll check out that video tonight... I always find it unsatisfying when anyone refers to something as "the highest quality streaming source"... There are far too many variables going on there... For example, are we talking about a lossless FLAC file, streamed losslessly at 24/192k... Or are we talking about an MQA track on Tidal, which I personally would NOT consider to be the highest quality streaming content? And which streaming platform are we talking about - both hardware and software? Interesting trivia: Amazon Music is claimed to support a bit-perfect option on the BlueSound Node and Arylic streamers... But their Windows and Apple computer clients do NOT support bit-perfect playback at the sample rate of the original content. (They do support lossless high resolution playback... but it will resample if you don't configure your computer to match the source.) And neither do their clients for portable devices like phones... If anyone is going to compare I would MUCH prefer that they compare high resolution files... played locally... on a player that actually supports bit-perfect playback. (Streaming is streaming... and whether streaming can, when set up and done properly, match the quality of local file playback, is a whole separate question.) And, yes, isn't it odd that nobody ever seems to have any high resolution files, playing on a good DAC, in the same room as a turntable... And, as you said, if they did, odds are they would have a very good reason why they couldn't play the test files that you or I had brought... It's almost as if they don't want anyone to do a direct comparison... As if someone might be disappointed... or embarrassed... if they did.  As for their claim... I'm not sure that it is so much that "high end audio is dying"... But what is happening is that it is becoming fragmented... Now you've got high end digital audio, and high end vinyl, and I suppose even high end streaming... And virtually everyone who likes any of those has a strong preference for the one they like... And has very little interest in products in the others... So now there are several different high end audio markets... Which, in turn, means that each one occupies a proportionately narrower niche... And, yes, all of those niches are collectively competing with "lifestyle audio" from the likes of folks like Sonos... (Expensive lifestyle audio products clearly are competing for the purchasing power of the same group that might otherwise buy "high end gear".) I've been watching a number of videos on AXPONA 2023 from various sources. The headline of this one caught my eye. On The Absolute Sound YouTube page it says "Is High End Audio Dying?". I watched the discussion with Michael Fremer and Andre from TAS, and curiously ... I don't recall this topic being addressed exactly .... hmmmm .... But some of what they talked about was interesting. I agree 100% that the selections of music in demo rooms could be a lot better. More variety, more dynamics ... and might I add, higher resolution and higher quality recordings. What was interesting was they both gave some examples of recordings they brought along for dealers to play. All vinyl, needless to say. And being who they are, the dealers mostly obliged. Not so with mere civilians ... just TRY to get someone to play any classical music before 5:30 .... fuggeddaboudid! Near the end Fremer spoke about a secret demo of a revolutionary new product that really impressed him. He could not say the name of the product nor even the music that he heard. But get this ... they played a song from the highest quality streaming source, and then they played a CD on this special CD player, and the CD sounded ... BETTER! Well imagine his surprise. Is it not blatantly obvious that CD's always DID sound better than streaming services? And if they had played a vinyl record it would have sounded worse than both? Mind-boggling! Anyways ... here it is |
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KeithL
Administrator
Posts: 10,271
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Post by KeithL on May 5, 2023 14:30:42 GMT -5
I actually DID take the opportunity to listen to the last few minutes... I especially liked the comment about how "listening to your vinyl was much better after you digitized it and got rid of all the clicks and pops and other vinyl artifacts". I've always wondered why it's never occurred to anyone to offer a high quality digitizing service. That way people could "have all the sonic benefits of vinyl with none of the cost and aggravation". "Send in your album; we'll clean it for you, we'll play it on an expensive turntable, with a cartridge you can't afford, digitize it with a good quality A/D, and give you a nice 24/192 digital copy." You could even offer premium packages featuring your album being played on your choice of three cartridge and phono preamp combinations. (The fact that this hasn't happened just reinforces my notion that what most people really enjoy about vinyl probably is not how it sounds.) Now, if you really wanted to be surreal, you could suggest that, along with 24/192k FLAC, WAV, and DSD versions of albums... Places like HDTracks should also be offering "a 24/192k digital copy of the vinyl album version". Hmmm.... now there's an idea for a product. I've been watching a number of videos on AXPONA 2023 from various sources. The headline of this one caught my eye. On The Absolute Sound YouTube page it says "Is High End Audio Dying?". I watched the discussion with Michael Fremer and Andre from TAS, and curiously ... I don't recall this topic being addressed exactly .... hmmmm .... But some of what they talked about was interesting. I agree 100% that the selections of music in demo rooms could be a lot better. More variety, more dynamics ... and might I add, higher resolution and higher quality recordings. What was interesting was they both gave some examples of recordings they brought along for dealers to play. All vinyl, needless to say. And being who they are, the dealers mostly obliged. Not so with mere civilians ... just TRY to get someone to play any classical music before 5:30 .... fuggeddaboudid! Near the end Fremer spoke about a secret demo of a revolutionary new product that really impressed him. He could not say the name of the product nor even the music that he heard. But get this ... they played a song from the highest quality streaming source, and then they played a CD on this special CD player, and the CD sounded ... BETTER! Well imagine his surprise. Is it not blatantly obvious that CD's always DID sound better than streaming services? And if they had played a vinyl record it would have sounded worse than both? Mind-boggling! Anyways ... here it is |
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Post by marcl on May 5, 2023 14:58:22 GMT -5
I actually DID take the opportunity to listen to the last few minutes... I especially liked the comment about how "listening to your vinyl was much better after you digitized it and got rid of all the clicks and pops and other vinyl artifacts". I've always wondered why it's never occurred to anyone to offer a high quality digitizing service. That way people could "have all the sonic benefits of vinyl with none of the cost and aggravation". "Send in your album; we'll clean it for you, we'll play it on an expensive turntable, with a cartridge you can't afford, digitize it with a good quality A/D, and give you a nice 24/192 digital copy." You could even offer premium packages featuring your album being played on your choice of three cartridge and phono preamp combinations. (The fact that this hasn't happened just reinforces my notion that what most people really enjoy about vinyl probably is not how it sounds.) Now, if you really wanted to be surreal, you could suggest that, along with 24/192k FLAC, WAV, and DSD versions of albums... Places like HDTracks should also be offering "a 24/192k digital copy of the vinyl album version". Hmmm.... now there's an idea for a product. I've been watching a number of videos on AXPONA 2023 from various sources. The headline of this one caught my eye. On The Absolute Sound YouTube page it says "Is High End Audio Dying?". I watched the discussion with Michael Fremer and Andre from TAS, and curiously ... I don't recall this topic being addressed exactly .... hmmmm .... But some of what they talked about was interesting. I agree 100% that the selections of music in demo rooms could be a lot better. More variety, more dynamics ... and might I add, higher resolution and higher quality recordings. What was interesting was they both gave some examples of recordings they brought along for dealers to play. All vinyl, needless to say. And being who they are, the dealers mostly obliged. Not so with mere civilians ... just TRY to get someone to play any classical music before 5:30 .... fuggeddaboudid! Near the end Fremer spoke about a secret demo of a revolutionary new product that really impressed him. He could not say the name of the product nor even the music that he heard. But get this ... they played a song from the highest quality streaming source, and then they played a CD on this special CD player, and the CD sounded ... BETTER! Well imagine his surprise. Is it not blatantly obvious that CD's always DID sound better than streaming services? And if they had played a vinyl record it would have sounded worse than both? Mind-boggling! Anyways ... here it is The ultimate irony being that all the newer audiophile very expensive vinyl being sold was cut from digital masters ... of course AFTER they rolled off the highs and lows at 16KHz and 30Hz, summed the bass below 200Hz to mono, de-essed the treble, etc. And ... playing a song from any streaming source and then playing a CD means nothing. There is no way to know if they both came from the same master, let alone what was done to them since. And seems to me, when a streaming service says "lossless" it just means the streaming process is lossless ... it doesn't mean the files had not been compressed before they were streamed ... right? |
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KeithL
Administrator
Posts: 10,271
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Post by KeithL on May 5, 2023 16:47:02 GMT -5
I always find reality to be highly entertaining... Here's another one you'll find entertaining (but some vinyl fans may not)... Here's a link to the video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOuQDMy__QkI'll summarize what it says: When vinyl is mastered the cutting lathe must be adjusted to optimize the track spacing based on the content. Tracks with heavy bass need to be spaced further apart to make room... but using that wider spacing for all of your tracks cuts down too much on your total playing time. And, at least until the development of really recent computerized equipment, the recording engineer actually adjusted the track spacing by hand. And, in order to do so, the engineer received a "preview" of the audio, and got to "read his or her meters", before the "actual audio" was sent to the cutting head. This gave the engineer time to read the meters, and make adjustments, before the signal to be recorded reached the cutting head. This was originally accomplished by using a specially customized master tape deck that had two separate playback heads separated by some distance. However, when these special decks became very expensive and difficult to obtain, this scheme was replaced by a delay mechanism. So, the engineer heard and metered the actual audio from the tape, while the signal actually going to the cutting head, and eventually to the vinyl, was the delayed version. The "scandalous" part is that, on Neumann lathes, the most widely used and "best" lathes, this delay mechanism was digital... And, even worse, it was actually originally implemented using a lower bit depth than the one used for plain old CDs... So, according to the information he quotes, almost all "recent older vinyl" was actually cut to the master, after passing through a digital delay of slightly lower than CD quality. So, in fact, almost all vinyl, including vinyl made from analog masters, was really actually cut to the master from a digital audio signal, and not even an especially good one. (And the funny thing is that everybody seems to think that most of it sounds just fine... ) ...................................... The ultimate irony being that all the newer audiophile very expensive vinyl being sold was cut from digital masters ... of course AFTER they rolled off the highs and lows at 16KHz and 30Hz, summed the bass below 200Hz to mono, de-essed the treble, etc. And ... playing a song from any streaming source and then playing a CD means nothing. There is no way to know if they both came from the same master, let alone what was done to them since. And seems to me, when a streaming service says "lossless" it just means the streaming process is lossless ... it doesn't mean the files had not been compressed before they were streamed ... right? |
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KeithL
Administrator
Posts: 10,271
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Post by KeithL on May 5, 2023 16:54:17 GMT -5
Well, at least in theory, we might hope that they're starting with an actual bit-perfect copy of the CD. (Unless, of course, it's Tidal and MQA, in which case we know that the bits have been altered by the MQA processing.) As for the other stuff... there are a variety of features that act to "level the volume of various tracks"... And, again at least in theory, you are given the option of turning them off in the player client... But, to be quite blunt, in most cases you aren't even told which CD pressing the track came from... And, in many cases, different versions of "the same CD" can be very different, and even different pressings or batches of "the same version" (same album and date) sometimes vary... So who knows what they're starting with... ....................................... The ultimate irony being that all the newer audiophile very expensive vinyl being sold was cut from digital masters ... of course AFTER they rolled off the highs and lows at 16KHz and 30Hz, summed the bass below 200Hz to mono, de-essed the treble, etc. And ... playing a song from any streaming source and then playing a CD means nothing. There is no way to know if they both came from the same master, let alone what was done to them since. And seems to me, when a streaming service says "lossless" it just means the streaming process is lossless ... it doesn't mean the files had not been compressed before they were streamed ... right? |
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Post by marcl on May 5, 2023 17:10:49 GMT -5
I always find reality to be highly entertaining... Here's another one you'll find entertaining (but some vinyl fans may not)... Here's a link to the video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOuQDMy__QkI'll summarize what it says: When vinyl is mastered the cutting lathe must be adjusted to optimize the track spacing based on the content. Tracks with heavy bass need to be spaced further apart to make room... but using that wider spacing for all of your tracks cuts down too much on your total playing time. And, at least until the development of really recent computerized equipment, the recording engineer actually adjusted the track spacing by hand. And, in order to do so, the engineer received a "preview" of the audio, and got to "read his or her meters", before the "actual audio" was sent to the cutting head. This gave the engineer time to read the meters, and make adjustments, before the signal to be recorded reached the cutting head. This was originally accomplished by using a specially customized master tape deck that had two separate playback heads separated by some distance. However, when these special decks became very expensive and difficult to obtain, this scheme was replaced by a delay mechanism. So, the engineer heard and metered the actual audio from the tape, while the signal actually going to the cutting head, and eventually to the vinyl, was the delayed version. The "scandalous" part is that, on Neumann lathes, the most widely used and "best" lathes, this delay mechanism was digital... And, even worse, it was actually originally implemented using a lower bit depth than the one used for plain old CDs... So, according to the information he quotes, almost all "recent older vinyl" was actually cut to the master, after passing through a digital delay of slightly lower than CD quality. So, in fact, almost all vinyl, including vinyl made from analog masters, was really actually cut to the master from a digital audio signal, and not even an especially good one. (And the funny thing is that everybody seems to think that most of it sounds just fine... ) The ultimate irony being that all the newer audiophile very expensive vinyl being sold was cut from digital masters ... of course AFTER they rolled off the highs and lows at 16KHz and 30Hz, summed the bass below 200Hz to mono, de-essed the treble, etc. And ... playing a song from any streaming source and then playing a CD means nothing. There is no way to know if they both came from the same master, let alone what was done to them since. And seems to me, when a streaming service says "lossless" it just means the streaming process is lossless ... it doesn't mean the files had not been compressed before they were streamed ... right? Yeah I knew most of that ... except for the last bit about the sub-CD fidelity bit depth. But once again, if the bandwidth sent to the cutting head needs to be 30-16KHz, that's already cut down from CD quality in the mastering process. And related to what you said about track spacing and heavy bass ... there's the bit (pun intended) about how tracks closer to the center of the record do not sound as good as those near the edge. Etc. |
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