What stereo(s) do you listen to? What do you want? - Page 5

When I've made recordings (analog or digital), the CD dub has always been a let down. Something feels like it's missing. Cymbals have a funny sss sound and the whole thing sounds flat to my ears. Don't even talk to me about MP3.

I made an album project back in 2001. The goal was strictly analog in every step. Nothing digital. The recording studio thought I was nuts, but we had fun doing it. I first mastered the record down in Nashville, and had kind of a budget pressing done. It didn't really sound that great. With records, it's very hit or miss, with many things in the chain to go wrong. The Nashville pressing was noisy, pitchy, and not very vibrant sounding. It still sounded better than the CD.

Not ready to give up, we got the record mastered by Stan Ricker, who is one of the all time greatest record mastering guys. The record was then pressed at RTI at lots of expense.

The second pressing sounded incredible, and I finally heard what records can do, since I had been involved in each step of the recording (playing, mixing. mastering) . The LP actually sounded more pleasing than the analog tapes on the Ampex machine. The cymbals sounded real--you could hear the ping of the stick. The stereo separation gave the illusion of being very wide. The sounds seem to float in space as if they were coming from some place other than the speakers. The record still had its share of funny noises, pops ticks and something called inner groove distortion (songs near the center of the record have noticeably less cleaner sound).

I only wish more people could hear good quality analog recording, because then they might understand what all the hoopla's about!

That's awesome you have that experience! Do you still work with analog tape? Everyone likes to say that it's extinct, which is so sad.

This thread is giving me the jitters. Can you please go back to talking about styrafoam and hocky pucks. Those are the kinds of things I can understand.

The audiophile stuff we're discussing seems much less intricate than how Oxxford cuts their shoulders or how seven-fold ties are constructed.

"I'm convinced that some people prefer tubes and vinyl because the subtle distortion they add sounds pleasing to them." Ethan Winer, "Audiophoolery."

In the family room

Sony Strd-711 with what appears to be a short somewhere so I think I am going to have to replace it.
Pioneer CD/DVD I think it is the DV-400V
Altec Lansing 83s Speakers
Bose 101 speakers wired outside in the back yard.

Living Room
30G Ipod
JBL On stage docking station

And this is a pretty good statement of why so many people like how LP sounds. It isn't because it's more accurate or has wider bandwidth --- how can it be more accurate than the master tape? Its various distortions are pleasing to the ear, and there's nothing wrong with that.


You make it sound as if it's an intractable problem to read a CD accurately. When people have monitored the error rates of CD players reading normal CDs, they've found that the data is completely recovered, and accurate down to the bit.


CDs are pretty much flat and distortion-free to 20 kHz. I'm not sure where you got your 18 kHz number from.

LPs do have suprasonic response, but no one ever talks about how non-linear and noisy they are throughout their entire range. And then you have to ask the question of how important frequency response above 20 kHz (even if it's busted like LP's) is to the human hearing system.

A more common cause of 100 kHz response in LP isn't music-related. Scratches, dust, and other physical artifacts on LPs can create very high energy in the suprasonic range. This is why people who restore old LPs digitize them at very high sampling rates well above CD's, so that the noise artifacts can be accurately characterized, and then edited out. However, this really doesn't have anything to do with the musical information contained on LPs.


That's not jitter. Jitter is the instantaneous change in speed accuracy from moment to moment. When you play an LP too fast or too slow resulting in a pitch change, that's just the accuracy of the motor. Crystals or clock oscillators used for CD players characterize this as clock accuracy. The difference is that clock or motor accuracy is about a consistent error, whereas jitter is an error that changes moment to moment. It might be too fast for one clock cycle, and too slow for another clock cycle. Phase noise is another name for jitter than better describes the phenomena.

An analogy is a clock that consistently loses 1 second a day. That's your changed pitch. A clock that might gain 1 second, and then lose 1 second moments later has jitter.

Their effects are also completely different. Jitter (or wow in an LP system) causes frequency modulation of the music. Speed accuracy just causes a consistent pitch change.


That's also not the jitter we're talking about. This passage only applies to when you rip a CD on a computer.

--Andre

Kef 104/2 speakers Mirage 150i subwoofer Panasonic XR55 Receiver Samsung blueray DVD player

If it's anyways similar to their conventional DVD players, I would assume that it'll be amazing.

We'll have to wait and see.

Where did you read about the oppo blue ray player? I have the DV-981HD and its the best dvd player out there for the money.