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A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

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Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#331

Post by dusted »

e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #307
timpattinson wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem only defines the sample rate to perfectly reproduce a signal of a certain bandwidth. It says nothing about noise, distortion, dynamic range. In these areas it is impossible to create a "perfect" DAC, although granted the best DACs are indistinguishable from perfect as far as human perception is concerned.

I'm unfamiliar with the mathematics involved, but this is what Wikipedia says the theorem states: > If a function x(t) contains no frequencies higher than B hertz, it is completely determined by giving its ordinates at a series of points spaced 1/(2B) seconds apart I took this to mean that it's any continuous function x(t), including amplitude information. I took a quick read through the proof and that's correct as f…

Yes, now we just need mathematically pure materials... Like..

Wires without resistance, capacitance and inductance. Resistors without capacitance and inductance. Capacitors without resistance and inductance. Inductors without capacitance or resistance.

While we're at it, semiconductors with perfect linearity and so on and so on..

I'm not going to argue that audiophiles generally achieve much of these, or even that it's especially important for the perceived audio quality.. But, perfectly recording and reproducing anything is still not possible, not in audio, not in video.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#332

Post by apohn »

jamiek88 wrote: post #327
apohn wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think I'm in the right vintage for that, but did cassettes ever sound good? Compared to CDs? Definitely not! Not to mention how many people listened to homemade mixtapes and copies, which made the audio quality even worse. Did they sound good enough that you could dance, relax, have a good time, be consoled when you were unhappy, or whatever people did with music? Absolutely. Even when CDs did eventually come out,…

Yep plus early ‘discman’ didn’t have anti skip and battery life was terrible. Cassettes we’re easy to remix, record, share. The physical mixtape was a cultural touchstone of romance and friendship for a while there. So yeah, I guess ‘good enough’.

>Yep plus early ‘discman’ didn’t have anti skip and battery life was terrible.

I had completely forgotten about the development of anti-skip. And now that you've made me remember it, I suddenly feel old.

I knew somebody (with very rich parents) who basically had a shoulder bag (read: man purse) so he could carry around his Discman (early Sony version, no anti-skip), an extra CD case or two, and an extra set of batteries. It was awful.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#333

Post by crtasm »

brigandish wrote: post #241
kstrauser wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That whole line of thinking just blows me away. It's possible to accurately sample and reproduce any vinyl recording in the digital realm. It's absolutely not possible to accurately record every digital recording onto vinyl. For instance, it's not hard at all to make bass so loud that it causes the needle to leap out of the track, or treble so high that the needle can't accurately track the high frequency vibrations.…

> For instance, it's not hard at all to make bass so loud that it causes the needle to leap out of the track I was a drum and bass dj when it was all still vinyl. Even in a club with huge speakers, I've never seen the needle jump due to the bass (although some places used to tape a penny to the top of the headshelf). The weighting on the tone arms can be adjusted so if you've got a needle dancing around it's due to y…

They're not referring to amplified sound. If you press a record with too much bass on it the 'wobble' of the groove itself can end up so extreme it'll make the needle jump out - no speakers required.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#334

Post by naikrovek »

atoav wrote: post #288
naikrovek wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if your DAC is a DAC, truly (that is not a high bar) then the audio that comes out of it is a perfect reproduction of the audio that went into the ADC that produced the digital audio, provided it is a true ADC (also not a high bar at all). Nyquist theory proves it. The Ogg people have a fantastic video explaining this. Technology Connections on YouTube has a video about it as well (the Ogg video explains things bette…

As both a sound and an electrical engineer the issue here is the if . Many DACs claim 24 Bits, while their power rails are so noise that they will meaningfully reproduce much less. The you'd also have jitter on the DAC clock etc. Just because it says 24 bits on the datasheet of the used DAC IC doesn't mean your circuit will output a voltage that represents your input with 24 bits of precision. Designing and layouting…

DAC jitter is not the major problem people make it out to be. even the lowly, uncontrolled, $2, +-20ppm frequency stability crystal oscillator has less jitter than is audibly perceptible to a human, especially given that the jitter is dependent mostly on temperature variations.

you are right about bit depth. a jellybean 24-bit ADC has around 8 bits of noise floor, maybe more. To improve that, you sample at an insane rate (making jitter even less of a significant factor in the final audio) and average your measurements, and you can get 2-3 more bits out of that.

my overall point is that these problems you hear from people trying to sell you audio hardware are almost all not problems at all, as far as human ears and human perception are concerned.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#335

Post by twangist »

Shorel wrote: post #305
Night_Thastus wrote: post #248

"In the world of audiophiles — where provenance is everything and the quest is to get as close to the sound of an album’s original recording as possible — digital is considered almost unholy." Out of context of the rest of the article, this is total nonsense. While some in the audiophile scene like going analog, none of them debate against the truth that objectively , vinyl is far lower quality. Vinyl doesn't have ne…

> But with good recordings and mastering That's the issue here. The loudness war made any CD mastering a race to make the most compressed track, just to sound louder than the competition. Technically, digital should sound better. The technology is better. Sound engineers are making sure this is not the case.

> Sound engineers are making sure this is not the case

That's pretty offensive and ignorant. The loudness wars ended at least 10 years ago.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#336

Post by cwillu »

wrycoder wrote: post #229
cwillu wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm imagining a recording of a nuclear blast with sufficiently deep grooves to accurately reproduce the shock wave. With the satisfying full warm tone vinyl is known for.

Fermi just dropped small pieces of paper :)

Was going more for: “Rabbit hands Duck a phonograph of a nuclear detonation. Duck carefully places the needle on the record. Duck sits quietly in front of the phonograph's horn. Blastwave from nuclear detonation is emitted from the horn while Rabbit looks at the viewer smugly.”

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#337

Post by relaxing »

yobbo wrote: post #271
naikrovek wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if your DAC is a DAC, truly (that is not a high bar) then the audio that comes out of it is a perfect reproduction of the audio that went into the ADC that produced the digital audio, provided it is a true ADC (also not a high bar at all). Nyquist theory proves it. The Ogg people have a fantastic video explaining this. Technology Connections on YouTube has a video about it as well (the Ogg video explains things bette…

Audiophiles sometimes claim they can hear artefacts of the "low" sample rate 44.1 kHz, and only 16 bit samples. Nowadays there exists audio files recorded in up to 96 kHz with 24 bit samples.

> Nowadays there exists audio files recorded in up to 96 kHz with 24 bit samples.

24/192 is becoming common, and you can even find 384 kHz files for sale (transcoded from DSD recordings.)

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#338

Post by ncmncm »

naikrovek wrote: post #315
ncmncm wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to believe this, based on the mathematical proof referred to. But every proof relies on assumptions, treated as axioms, ideally (but rarely) all noted. This particular proof assumes that the clock is perfect, with no jitter or delay between one place it is used and another. There are more ways for a clock and uses of it to vary than you probably imagine possible. It also assumes the A/D and D/A converters prod…

it's almost always far more than good enough for human ears. audiophiles' continuous search for "perfection" is pointless because human ears are not perfect. not by a long shot. I don't care who you are. just like how your eyes lie to you, so do your ears. 48kHz is not a difficult clock rate to maintain perfectly. at all. all you need is a DAC of regular every day commodity quality, and an equalizer if you think "war…

Lots of things are not especially difficult for someone paying attention to get right. But that doesn't mean they are always got right. Thermodynamically speaking, it is easier to have a digital system that fails to reproduce a sound waveform accurately than one that achieves it, because there is only one way to the right output, and uncountable ways for it to be wrong.

So, even leaving aside gross incompetence (is that smart?), anything that could be sufficiently perturbed thermodynamically, e.g. by age or decay, could throw off your results.

The great advantage of digital electronics is that they make most of the system relatively insensitive to commonly encountered thermodynamic effects, within limits. Most such effects that exceed limits make your thing just not work anymore. (We have all experienced this.) But some can have a more subtle result, some of those without even exceeding those limits.

Fortunately, most of those involve only a few components. Those components are mostly only in your power supply, your amplifier, your DAC, and the clock circuit driving the digital stuff, including the DAC. Of those, the ones that make a difference to sound quality are mostly in the power supply and amplifier, which usually makes sound obviously bad, and the clock, which can make sound subtly bad.

Fortunately, clocks involve very few components and those are not operated anywhere near physical limits, so they rarely go bad. Furthermore, most when they go a little bad don't affect the clock's output in any way that affects what it drives.

Unfortunately, when they do, the effect on the sound you get may be hard to describe beyond "not right". Then, fortunately, you can swap out the whole subsystem with the clock in it to see if that is at fault.

So the most usual danger from a dodgy clock or other source of subtle wrongness is that, as for the case of a needle dragged down a wiggling groove, you might get used to how that sounds, and want it all the time. And that can be hard to match in another system.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#339

Post by kazinator »

wolrah wrote: post #148
kazinator wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if the artifact you prefer actually exists and you can confirm it in a double blind test.

You're not wrong in the general "audiophile" world where fools and their money are parted over snake oil magical cables claiming benefits only those with the most golden of ears can enjoy. Where you're getting pushback is that this thread is talking about vinyl records and tube amps, things where the noise and distortions introduced by their operation are well known, well documented, audible to anyone with normally f…

A quality tube amp for audio reproduction (not guitar playing) has very low distortion.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#340

Post by CamperBob2 »

dusted wrote: post #331
e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unfamiliar with the mathematics involved, but this is what Wikipedia says the theorem states: > If a function x(t) contains no frequencies higher than B hertz, it is completely determined by giving its ordinates at a series of points spaced 1/(2B) seconds apart I took this to mean that it's any continuous function x(t), including amplitude information. I took a quick read through the proof and that's correct as f…

Yes, now we just need mathematically pure materials... Like.. Wires without resistance, capacitance and inductance. Resistors without capacitance and inductance. Capacitors without resistance and inductance. Inductors without capacitance or resistance. While we're at it, semiconductors with perfect linearity and so on and so on.. I'm not going to argue that audiophiles generally achieve much of these, or even that it…

But, perfectly recording and reproducing anything is still not possible, not in audio, not in video.

Which is an argument in favor of getting the signal into the digital domain as early as possible and maintaining it there for as long as possible.

The audiophile's stereotypical myth of analog supremacy is the assumption that the opposite is somehow true. Weird, but everybody needs a hobby.

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