Discussion
qube_TA said:
Mine are the standard Mk1 models, they power a pair of B&W 603 floorstanders, the whole set-up is really quite old now but I enjoy the sound.
AFAIK the A was the same but had improved software to make it compatible with Spotify, not a service I use so can't comment if it's good at it.
There's various different modes to how it handles the media with upscaling and all that stuff, I find that if it's fed a 320kbps MP3 it sounds pretty much as good as a CD. I don't have a huge amount of love for digital formats as they're always overly dynamically compressed these days, but for convenience you can't beat having a ton of music available at a push of a button.
The 17 range were excellent but were priced a little too highly putting the CD17 up against the cheaper Meridian 506.24 and 508.AFAIK the A was the same but had improved software to make it compatible with Spotify, not a service I use so can't comment if it's good at it.
There's various different modes to how it handles the media with upscaling and all that stuff, I find that if it's fed a 320kbps MP3 it sounds pretty much as good as a CD. I don't have a huge amount of love for digital formats as they're always overly dynamically compressed these days, but for convenience you can't beat having a ton of music available at a push of a button.
Truth be told, there was very little difference between the 'standard' fare and the KI version (mine were the mk.I versions too) bar a badge, certificate and a slightly gutsier amp.
On sound quality alone Id take a CD17 and a decently mastered CD over a pioneer N50 any day of the week (I'm not convinced of the merits of higher bit rate and word lengths of HD tracks...).
I didn't bother with MP3 - all the stuff I played through the N50 were ripped or downloaded FLACs and no amount of messing with the on-board filters changed my opinion - decent and inoffensive but missing the depth and sparkle of CD through the Marantz.
As far as convince goes, then no contest - having your whole catalogue at your finger tips controlled from a nice app is a revelation.
Now, imagine a top quality streamer with well implemented dacs and analogue stages being controlled by a well developed app.....I thought the Cambridge SM6 was it but, while it does sound very, very good there's something still missing.
Having said that, since getting it I haven't turned on the CD player in over a year (I might sell it to fund a really good DAC).
Stick with the 17 pairing - great SQ together with excellent build quality isn't cheaply or easily replaced
legzr1 said:
qube_TA said:
Mine are the standard Mk1 models, they power a pair of B&W 603 floorstanders, the whole set-up is really quite old now but I enjoy the sound.
AFAIK the A was the same but had improved software to make it compatible with Spotify, not a service I use so can't comment if it's good at it.
There's various different modes to how it handles the media with upscaling and all that stuff, I find that if it's fed a 320kbps MP3 it sounds pretty much as good as a CD. I don't have a huge amount of love for digital formats as they're always overly dynamically compressed these days, but for convenience you can't beat having a ton of music available at a push of a button.
The 17 range were excellent but were priced a little too highly putting the CD17 up against the cheaper Meridian 506.24 and 508.AFAIK the A was the same but had improved software to make it compatible with Spotify, not a service I use so can't comment if it's good at it.
There's various different modes to how it handles the media with upscaling and all that stuff, I find that if it's fed a 320kbps MP3 it sounds pretty much as good as a CD. I don't have a huge amount of love for digital formats as they're always overly dynamically compressed these days, but for convenience you can't beat having a ton of music available at a push of a button.
Truth be told, there was very little difference between the 'standard' fare and the KI version (mine were the mk.I versions too) bar a badge, certificate and a slightly gutsier amp.
On sound quality alone Id take a CD17 and a decently mastered CD over a pioneer N50 any day of the week (I'm not convinced of the merits of higher bit rate and word lengths of HD tracks...).
I didn't bother with MP3 - all the stuff I played through the N50 were ripped or downloaded FLACs and no amount of messing with the on-board filters changed my opinion - decent and inoffensive but missing the depth and sparkle of CD through the Marantz.
Having said that, since getting it I haven't turned on the CD player in over a year (I might sell it to fund a really good DAC).
Stick with the 17 pairing - great SQ together with excellent build quality isn't cheaply or easily replaced
qube_TA said:
Hi, you're slightly missing my motivation, I have over 2500 CD's, when I moved house in 2007 they were all boxed up and as the new house needed a lot of sorting out they went into storage, they're still there! I have about 1500 albums and boxed-sets on vinyl which I enjoy from time to time when I have the house to myself. All my music is on the computer as MP3, have about 3000 albums on there, if I buy something on CD then I'll rip it and the disc will join the others in a box for safe keeping. From there they're streamed to a number of Airplay or iTunes devices around the house or end up on my phone to be played in the car. Yes they sound a bit better than when transcoded to mpeg or something else but it's not sufficiently better that having to find a home for everything becomes appealing, I don't really like the sound of either as I prefer playing records (Have a Linn Sondek). The Pioneer wasn't as much money as anything else I've bought but given what it does I don't think it's too bad. I really enjoy SACD's and DVDA's, they sound really amazing but there are very few available and quite a few I've bought have really clipped audio where they've been mastered to be as loud as possible, all got a bit depressing so I sacked that format off.
I hear you. 
Just seems a shame you've ripped to MP3 rather than lossless - storage is so cheap and modern PCs so quick it's what I chose to do. I'm guessing some/most of your rips where done before lossless became an option?
Whilst not quite up to LP12 quality I've dabbled with vinyl for years but got fed up with the faffing around and the odd 'mistake' either taking out another £100+ stylus or scratching the hell out of an album you've taken care of for decades!
The loudness wars has ruined mainstream sound quality - no doubts whatsoever and there's a fair argument to say crap like X-factor has done a similar thing to music quality although there are pockets making a comeback - I too tired of DVD-A and SACD (two channel only) and sold my Toshiba and Shangling players some time ago.
Funny thing is I kept hold of the discs for a while thinking it might make a comeback - I lost interest and stuck the discs on eBay and made more from them (less than 50 in total) than I did for the players - someone paid me £70 for the Top Gun soundtrack on SACD for gawds sake!
legzr1 said:
qube_TA said:
I hear you. Just seems a shame you've ripped to MP3 rather than lossless - storage is so cheap and modern PCs so quick it's what I chose to do. I'm guessing some/most of your rips where done before lossless became an option?
Whilst not quite up to LP12 quality I've dabbled with vinyl for years but got fed up with the faffing around and the odd 'mistake' either taking out another £100+ stylus or scratching the hell out of an album you've taken care of for decades!
My LP12 isn't the highest spec in the world, but it still cost quite a bit; I bought it in 1994 for £450 as a refurb, earlier in the year I had it all pimped again, has a new arm, cart, bearing, power supply, suspension, wiring, mat, baseboard (there's very little of the original deck left!), listening to say the new David Gilmour album the sound quality knocks your socks off, has a delicious sound. If I want that 'hi-fi moment' to really enjoy some music then I'll put up with the fiddling and the expense and use the LP12, but if I just want to listen to some music I'm too old to be that bothered and iTunes to the Pioneer via AirPlay is perfectly fine for what I want.
qube_TA said:
Yes when I started with MP3 FLAC was a bit of an oddball, it could only play on a computer. But TBH I don't really like it as a format, sure it claims to be 'lossless' but you still get a bit of colourisation when you transcode audio so it still sounds a little different, comparing a high bitrate MP3/4 to a FLAC there isn't enough of a difference for me to be interested. Plus I like everything to be the same, if I buy digital the chances are it'll be available in MPEG only, so I'd then have to convert those to FLAC. The advantage of MP3 is that everything will play it, FLAC is more selective, having to convert files so they'll play on a different device isn't worth the effort, the wife likes her playlists on her iPod or iPhone to go running with, she's not going to be arsed with converting tracks from FLAC, importing them into iTunes to then copy to her iDevice. If I have a new mix of a piece of music I'm working on which I want to audition in the car I can bounce it straight to my phone as an MP3, I could bounce as a WAV, then convert to FLAC but there's no point, if I'm auditioning on the hi-fi I'd burn a CD and do it that way. Plus as I listen to a lot of ambient, prog and classical music pieces are split into different tracks, getting a seamless gap between tracks is also not as easy to achieve with some players. So despite it's 'lossy' nature, having everything under iTunes in the same format, all with correct artwork and details is keeps it all hassle free with maximum compatibility. So whilst I understand the appeal of FLAC and other lossless formats the benefits for me aren't yet worth the trade off.
My LP12 isn't the highest spec in the world, but it still cost quite a bit; I bought it in 1994 for £450 as a refurb, earlier in the year I had it all pimped again, has a new arm, cart, bearing, power supply, suspension, wiring, mat, baseboard (there's very little of the original deck left!), listening to say the new David Gilmour album the sound quality knocks your socks off, has a delicious sound. If I want that 'hi-fi moment' to really enjoy some music then I'll put up with the fiddling and the expense and use the LP12, but if I just want to listen to some music I'm too old to be that bothered and iTunes to the Pioneer via AirPlay is perfectly fine for what I want.
That's fair enough and I understand YOUR reasons for sticking with MP3 (although I was under the impression that iThings need to convert MP3 to apples chosen format before playing on iPads and the like...) - perhaps I was lucky in getting interested in a NAS/streamer solution when FLAC had already matured into an excellent sounding option supported by everything I use - together with DBpoweramp for ripping and tagging and grabbing artwork in a choice of resolutions it's an (almost) one click solution with issues like gapless playback actually non-issues.My LP12 isn't the highest spec in the world, but it still cost quite a bit; I bought it in 1994 for £450 as a refurb, earlier in the year I had it all pimped again, has a new arm, cart, bearing, power supply, suspension, wiring, mat, baseboard (there's very little of the original deck left!), listening to say the new David Gilmour album the sound quality knocks your socks off, has a delicious sound. If I want that 'hi-fi moment' to really enjoy some music then I'll put up with the fiddling and the expense and use the LP12, but if I just want to listen to some music I'm too old to be that bothered and iTunes to the Pioneer via AirPlay is perfectly fine for what I want.
I know you say there's little difference between lossless and lossy codecs but it would be interesting if you ripped a favourite album to MP3 and FLAC and then compared them directly to the original CD through the same amp and speakers
legzr1 said:
That's fair enough and I understand YOUR reasons for sticking with MP3 (although I was under the impression that iThings need to convert MP3 to apples chosen format before playing on iPads and the like...) - perhaps I was lucky in getting interested in a NAS/streamer solution when FLAC had already matured into an excellent sounding option supported by everything I use - together with DBpoweramp for ripping and tagging and grabbing artwork in a choice of resolutions it's an (almost) one click solution with issues like gapless playback actually non-issues.
I know you say there's little difference between lossless and lossy codecs but it would be interesting if you ripped a favourite album to MP3 and FLAC and then compared them directly to the original CD through the same amp and speakers
They're encrypted on an iDevice to stop you copying files between them but they're not transcoded. Modern iTunes purchases are in MP4 format now, still 16/44.4 for the most part though (which is the biggest issue as you need to use dithering and oversampling to hide the aliasing you get).I know you say there's little difference between lossless and lossy codecs but it would be interesting if you ripped a favourite album to MP3 and FLAC and then compared them directly to the original CD through the same amp and speakers
If you were comparing wav to mpeg to FLAC then arguably they'd all need to use the same DAC also to really be fair. Also transcoders aren't all equal, I've found that there are differences in quality regardless of bitrate between different software.
teI understand the copy protection with iTunes purchases but I was angling towards your reason for sticking with MP3 then your mention of iThings - not so much purchased downloads, rather already ripped MP3s on a device which then need transcoding to store and play on the iThing.
In general, I've found well ripped and encoded MP3 files at 320 can sound fine but it's a bit of an eye opener when they're streamed to a device and then compared to a FLAC file and the same CD played using the the digital input on the same device (so, same DAC, same reclocking and up sampling / filtering and same analogue output).
I have struggled to tell CD from FLAC.
MP3 - well, not as easy to tell on simple acoustic pieces but the gap gets greater the more complex the music - I suppose that's how the codec actually works and probably means 1400Khz from CD is overkill when 320 is adequate with this style of music.
MP3 is excellent for modern, dynamically flat, turned up to 11 recordings - I feel it falls down with anything dynamically interesting.
Whether that matters to anyone listening through a phone using earbuds on a crowded and noisy train is another thing.
Strange then that vinyl has become so popular when it offers none of the convenience of compressed digital....
Interesting times - I had high hopes for SACD and DVD-A but it's dead and buried - perhaps BR music will fill the niche?
In general, I've found well ripped and encoded MP3 files at 320 can sound fine but it's a bit of an eye opener when they're streamed to a device and then compared to a FLAC file and the same CD played using the the digital input on the same device (so, same DAC, same reclocking and up sampling / filtering and same analogue output).
I have struggled to tell CD from FLAC.
MP3 - well, not as easy to tell on simple acoustic pieces but the gap gets greater the more complex the music - I suppose that's how the codec actually works and probably means 1400Khz from CD is overkill when 320 is adequate with this style of music.
MP3 is excellent for modern, dynamically flat, turned up to 11 recordings - I feel it falls down with anything dynamically interesting.
Whether that matters to anyone listening through a phone using earbuds on a crowded and noisy train is another thing.
Strange then that vinyl has become so popular when it offers none of the convenience of compressed digital....
Interesting times - I had high hopes for SACD and DVD-A but it's dead and buried - perhaps BR music will fill the niche?
itunes stopped using DRM ages ago, it was only there at the beginning at the request of the license owners, they just encrypt the file on portable devices to stop you copying between devices. They use MP4 now instead of MP3 also, there's an option to convert files to 3 if you want them that way, and the application supports higher resolution files.
I think the reason vinyl is more popular now is that people like to buy a physical thing, I read a study that suggested that most new record purchases never actually get played, they usually come with a download code so you can put it on your phone or computer.
I prefer it as the modern idea to really squash the dynamic range on music to make it really loud can't really be done to the same extent on vinyl. In the 80's and early 90's when vinyl was dying they were getting thinner and thinner, the sound quality was tanking, CD's were gaining popularity, once they started using oversampling and the sound quality of DAC's improved I stopped buying records. If I rip one of my old CD's and look at the waveform then they're almost never clipped, they sound great. But pretty much without exception they're all this nasty wall without any dynamic range. It doesn't matter then if you're listening to MP3, FLAC, Ogg, Ape, AIFF, WAV, CDA, or anything else they sound awful, but nicely loud on little in-ear speakers on your phone. As vinyl is niche now they're a premium purchase, vinyl is always 180 or 200g, nice glossy cover, high quality master, they're really lovely to own.
I think the reason vinyl is more popular now is that people like to buy a physical thing, I read a study that suggested that most new record purchases never actually get played, they usually come with a download code so you can put it on your phone or computer.
I prefer it as the modern idea to really squash the dynamic range on music to make it really loud can't really be done to the same extent on vinyl. In the 80's and early 90's when vinyl was dying they were getting thinner and thinner, the sound quality was tanking, CD's were gaining popularity, once they started using oversampling and the sound quality of DAC's improved I stopped buying records. If I rip one of my old CD's and look at the waveform then they're almost never clipped, they sound great. But pretty much without exception they're all this nasty wall without any dynamic range. It doesn't matter then if you're listening to MP3, FLAC, Ogg, Ape, AIFF, WAV, CDA, or anything else they sound awful, but nicely loud on little in-ear speakers on your phone. As vinyl is niche now they're a premium purchase, vinyl is always 180 or 200g, nice glossy cover, high quality master, they're really lovely to own.
I hear all of the arguments and don't disagree. There is a trade off these days though between sound and portability for many people but unlike in the days of the Walkman where people bought the source record and then recorded to tape for portability lots of people are shunning the source and buying MP3 direct. To me that highlights a requirements change for many and I guess sitting at home listening to music playing stuff for a while for the amp to warm up etc just isn't generally wanted anymore.
The biggest thing for me though when discussing HIFI is the same as when discussing television. Nobody ever mentions the biggest limiting factor when it comes to quality of experience. It's not the format, the speakers or anything along those lines. It is simply the quality of your ears (or your eyes too with TV). A friend of mine has milk bottle thick glasses but has bought a 4K TV. Even with that level of correction to his sight I am not convinced the benefits will be realised and for many the same is true with HIFi. Due to your own natural limiting factor there is a diminishing point of benefit for many.
The biggest thing for me though when discussing HIFI is the same as when discussing television. Nobody ever mentions the biggest limiting factor when it comes to quality of experience. It's not the format, the speakers or anything along those lines. It is simply the quality of your ears (or your eyes too with TV). A friend of mine has milk bottle thick glasses but has bought a 4K TV. Even with that level of correction to his sight I am not convinced the benefits will be realised and for many the same is true with HIFi. Due to your own natural limiting factor there is a diminishing point of benefit for many.
craigjm said:
I hear all of the arguments and don't disagree. There is a trade off these days though between sound and portability for many people but unlike in the days of the Walkman where people bought the source record and then recorded to tape for portability lots of people are shunning the source and buying MP3 direct. To me that highlights a requirements change for many and I guess sitting at home listening to music playing stuff for a while for the amp to warm up etc just isn't generally wanted anymore.
The biggest thing for me though when discussing HIFI is the same as when discussing television. Nobody ever mentions the biggest limiting factor when it comes to quality of experience. It's not the format, the speakers or anything along those lines. It is simply the quality of your ears (or your eyes too with TV). A friend of mine has milk bottle thick glasses but has bought a 4K TV. Even with that level of correction to his sight I am not convinced the benefits will be realised and for many the same is true with HIFi. Due to your own natural limiting factor there is a diminishing point of benefit for many.
I don't recall ever listening to a Sony Walkman and thinking that they were too quiet.The biggest thing for me though when discussing HIFI is the same as when discussing television. Nobody ever mentions the biggest limiting factor when it comes to quality of experience. It's not the format, the speakers or anything along those lines. It is simply the quality of your ears (or your eyes too with TV). A friend of mine has milk bottle thick glasses but has bought a 4K TV. Even with that level of correction to his sight I am not convinced the benefits will be realised and for many the same is true with HIFi. Due to your own natural limiting factor there is a diminishing point of benefit for many.
As for whether your ears (or eyes) limit your ability to tell the difference that is true but your brain will interpret the information it receives from the senses and compensates accordingly. The higher resolution TV's get, the less distinct the improvement will be, eventually there won't be any noticeable improvement and the manufacturers will struggle to get you to buy that 16K screen. But by having more information available to your senses regardless of their quality more will generally get through and your brain will note that it's now better.
With digital audio it was determined that to avoid aliasing you need to sample at 4 times the highest frequency. As human hearing is generally between 20hz and 20Khz you'd need to sample at 96Khz (a sample is the rate the music is 'photographed' at). Aliasing is where the highest frequencies you're recording lose their roundness and become square waves. When CD's and whatnot were invented it wasn't possible to read data that quickly and you'd have huge discs to fit the information on.
If you listen to an 80's CD player you'll notice this problem straight away, the sound is very bright and 'glassy' this is the aliasing right there.
In the 90's they started using over-sampling, they called this 'bit-stream' or 1-bit DAC and similar. Even though the resolution of the media is unchanged they can upscale the resolution by adding in 'extra' samples to smooth it all out. This process massively improved the quality of the sound and made it more natural sounding.
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversampling for a more complete explanation.
Another thing they did is that during the mastering process they used 'dithering' this is where they add low level noise to the audio to avoid the 'quantisation' errors you get in the sample information that occurs between samples, particularly when resampling HD audio recorded in the studio to standard resolution, the effect here is similar to oversampling. You could negate the need for it if you could have a variable sample rate that changed according to the frequencies present but this isn't possible on a CD. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither
If you sample at 4 times the maximum frequency then you don't really need to do any of this 'cheating' to make digital audio sound right. Incidentally although this cheating means that the sound is slightly artificial we've all gotten used to it and regard it as the proper way music should sound which is one reason why when presented with accurate high resolution audio many think that there's nothing to gain with it or prefer the old sound, CD became the new vinyl!
The vinyl people heard early CD players and concluded they were rubbish compared to vinyl, despite 30 years of improvements they've made up their minds, the problem was that it was digital not that the resolution was low. Many people heard the first MP3 players and concluded that they were rubbish compared to CD, despite improvements to the codecs, conversion, bit-rates and resolutions the problem was 'lossy' compression and have decided that they're rubbish, it's the same argument again.
So for the most part it probably matters not what you actually see or hear, just your perception of it.
R8VXF said:
This article explains what MQA is doing in a nice simple manner: http://www.stereophile.com/content/ive-heard-futur...
And this review is from FLAC encoded to MQA and mirrors my listening experience, Enter Sandman in particular: http://www.stereophile.com/content/meridians-mqa-o...
I'll just leave these here...And this review is from FLAC encoded to MQA and mirrors my listening experience, Enter Sandman in particular: http://www.stereophile.com/content/meridians-mqa-o...
PS Audio
Archimago's Musings
Neither of these offer particularly favourable reviews.
TonyRPH said:
I'll just leave these here...
PS Audio
Archimago's Musings
Neither of these offer particularly favourable reviews.
Problem is that they are using files from 2l.no that are, as far as I can see, not encoding the MQA from the original masters, rather re-encoding from the file they are testing against. Also, the first example is not really a fair comparison, again in my opinion, as MQA is a streaming format and he is not comparing apples with apples. Also, someone who does not believe in a double blind test being a valid test, is largely ignorable on any subject he proclaims to be an expert in.PS Audio
Archimago's Musings
Neither of these offer particularly favourable reviews.
Troubleatmill said:
If you ever get into a discussion with a really good mastering engineer
I had the pleasure of sitting next to one at dinner one night. ( Grammy winner )
He gives great though to the positioning of each particular instruments in each track. Not only can he make it closer or further away, but also position the stereo image to a particular point he wants it to appear in.
A great deal of thought and care can go into an album.
We just see the end result.
Edited - for giving the right job title.
Shame the job title is wrong. A mastering engineer masters a completed mix, so instrument placement and levels have already been set.I had the pleasure of sitting next to one at dinner one night. ( Grammy winner )
He gives great though to the positioning of each particular instruments in each track. Not only can he make it closer or further away, but also position the stereo image to a particular point he wants it to appear in.
A great deal of thought and care can go into an album.
We just see the end result.
Edited - for giving the right job title.
Edited by RedLeicester on Wednesday 24th February 19:33
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