More 'Audiophile' bullsh*t
Discussion
nebpor said:
SteveKTMer said:
Good for you but you won't get 8x Chord DACs in a rack for £1k.
And your expensive DAC is playing back music recorded on my “eight for a grand” RME ADCsOutInTheShed said:
Sporky said:
Conversely, if we're allowing the possibility of a perfect CD player, no turntable can be perfect. An ideal turntable cannot be as accurate to the studio master as an ideal CD player can be.
..
But the talented record producer knows this, and is creating a disc which will sound as he wants, when played on a suitable deck...
The master is not the goal, it is just a step in the process.
It's a bit different if the source music is say an orchestra, where the goal is clearly reproducing a real sound.
People forget how good vinyl can be, and that listening in a real home, on real speakers, with real background noise, the theoretical SINAD etc is buried by the noise of traffic two streets away
It's not for me, because I want something which lasts and a fairly good CD player is probably cheaper than a top end gramophone.
Tracks were mixed to get the best out of reasonable consumers kit, so when CD came along it sounded far to 'bright'
Gary C said:
Wasn't this a problem in the early days of CD
Tracks were mixed to get the best out of reasonable consumers kit, so when CD came along it sounded far to 'bright'
The problem was due to the DACs in the CD players. Roll off of the interpolation filters was too high and slow.Tracks were mixed to get the best out of reasonable consumers kit, so when CD came along it sounded far to 'bright'
911hope said:
Gary C said:
Wasn't this a problem in the early days of CD
Tracks were mixed to get the best out of reasonable consumers kit, so when CD came along it sounded far to 'bright'
The problem was due to the DACs in the CD players. Roll off of the interpolation filters was too high and slow.Tracks were mixed to get the best out of reasonable consumers kit, so when CD came along it sounded far to 'bright'
There was a lot of 'back catalogue to get on the shelves ASAP.
Also early affordable CD players often didn't have great DAC ICs in them.
In those days a good 16bit audio DAC was an expensive chip.
Then there's the interface with the amp.
Some amps are wide open to HF on the inputs, so anything not filtered properly in the player can mix, intermodulate and whatever.
Even now, you find things like USB DACs which look good on paper because they have a respectable DAC chip in them, but it's just been slapped on a PCB with no attention to the analogue end.
But back in the 80s, it all generally sounded better than LPs which had been played a hundred times.
You have to remember it was in the context of what was on the radio at the time too! We didn't have 'on demand' services, and a lot of use were not much impressed with what was on Radio 1 and local radio at the time, yet still way too young for Radio 2.
911hope said:
Gary C said:
Wasn't this a problem in the early days of CD
Tracks were mixed to get the best out of reasonable consumers kit, so when CD came along it sounded far to 'bright'
The problem was due to the DACs in the CD players. Roll off of the interpolation filters was too high and slow.Tracks were mixed to get the best out of reasonable consumers kit, so when CD came along it sounded far to 'bright'
The recombination, interpolation was only bit to bit but if they were that slow they would tend to make it dull not bright ?
Anyone tried recordings by Spitfire Audio? https://www.spitfireaudio.com/
911hope said:
Being sensible..the ADCs used in professional studio equipment have somewhat higher performance than the prosumer equipment used by hobbyists.
RME isn’t prosumer though so that’s an odd thing to say - they’re just very clean. The more expensive stuff is usually for the higher quality mic preamps where people desire a particular colour, but obviously that is different from a straight ADC for a line level signal 
In the early days of CD players, there were many complaints about 'gritty' hard sound.
What many failed to realise, was that the CD player had an output of 2v RMS and many amps of the time (especially British gear) had input sensitivities of 150mV or so (some even lower!) and these amps were grossly overloaded by the CD player resulting in distortion.
Meanwhile, the CD players themselves were really not that bad (with the exception of the absolute bargain basement stuff).
I've had various players (mostly Sony and some Marantz) over the years, and because I have built my own amps and preamps, have made allowances for the high output. Net result was the clean sound one can expect from CD.
Even today, I have some vintage CD players, and whilst they don't sound as good as the latest DACs, they do sound quite respectable.
With regard to poor sounding remasters; I often find that the bass is lacking when compared to the vinyl equivalent, and I believe this is simply down to poor mastering, as mastering for vinyl requires that the bass is rolled off as part of the RIAA equalisation - and when the album is remastered for CD, insufficient bass is applied.
What many failed to realise, was that the CD player had an output of 2v RMS and many amps of the time (especially British gear) had input sensitivities of 150mV or so (some even lower!) and these amps were grossly overloaded by the CD player resulting in distortion.
Meanwhile, the CD players themselves were really not that bad (with the exception of the absolute bargain basement stuff).
I've had various players (mostly Sony and some Marantz) over the years, and because I have built my own amps and preamps, have made allowances for the high output. Net result was the clean sound one can expect from CD.
Even today, I have some vintage CD players, and whilst they don't sound as good as the latest DACs, they do sound quite respectable.
With regard to poor sounding remasters; I often find that the bass is lacking when compared to the vinyl equivalent, and I believe this is simply down to poor mastering, as mastering for vinyl requires that the bass is rolled off as part of the RIAA equalisation - and when the album is remastered for CD, insufficient bass is applied.
robinessex said:
Anyone tried recordings by Spitfire Audio? https://www.spitfireaudio.com/
Yes, I have a few of their recordings used with my DAW. They are excellent and Spitfire appear suitably “committed” to the cause of good repro.TonyRPH said:
In the early days of CD players, there were many complaints about 'gritty' hard sound.
What many failed to realise, was that the CD player had an output of 2v RMS and many amps of the time (especially British gear) had input sensitivities of 150mV or so (some even lower!) and these amps were grossly overloaded by the CD player resulting in distortion.
....
Not sure that's exactly the full story.What many failed to realise, was that the CD player had an output of 2v RMS and many amps of the time (especially British gear) had input sensitivities of 150mV or so (some even lower!) and these amps were grossly overloaded by the CD player resulting in distortion.
....
Analogue levels are relative to some mumbo-jumbo 0dBu level, which music is allowed to exceed by all those dB in the red side of the comedy flappy needle meter.
Digital levels are defined by full scale, from 0000 to FFFF. Because that's what a DAC does.
The RMS level of a music signal will vary according to the content.
Your 150mV rms 'normal' level might allow 1.5V rms 'loud bit' 20dB up, and 1.5V rms would be over 2Vpeak if it was a sine wave.
Back when I actually owned a tape deck, the same setting of the volume knob on my amp produced much the same volume from both CD and Tape. Although tapes vary from one to the next as I recall.
I don't understand how the audio world manages to be so vague about all this, particularly people who write articles and books about amps.
Roughly speaking, a 'trad' power amp (or PA stage of typical domestic amp?) with say +/-40V rails will have a voltage gain in the region of 30? so will clip at (instantaneous) peak inputs of 1 and a bit volts?
The actual gain of the pre-amp stage is harder to see by eyeballing the schematic, but looking at a couple of amps, 'more than 1' at full volume seems to be the case?
I wonder if my scope still works....
It seems to me there is also scope to get more peak volts due to the phase response of any filters
OutInTheShed said:
Not sure that's exactly the full story.
Analogue levels are relative to some mumbo-jumbo 0dBu level, which music is allowed to exceed by all those dB in the red side of the comedy flappy needle meter.
Digital levels are defined by full scale, from 0000 to FFFF. Because that's what a DAC does.
The above is largely irrelevant in the context of this discussion. 0dB analogue, 0dBFS digital (but not really comparable).Analogue levels are relative to some mumbo-jumbo 0dBu level, which music is allowed to exceed by all those dB in the red side of the comedy flappy needle meter.
Digital levels are defined by full scale, from 0000 to FFFF. Because that's what a DAC does.
OutInTheShed said:
The RMS level of a music signal will vary according to the content.
Your 150mV rms 'normal' level might allow 1.5V rms 'loud bit' 20dB up, and 1.5V rms would be over 2Vpeak if it was a sine wave.
A typical CD player when playing music recorded at 'normal' levels (e.g. peaking just below 0dbFS will output just below 2v constantly.Your 150mV rms 'normal' level might allow 1.5V rms 'loud bit' 20dB up, and 1.5V rms would be over 2Vpeak if it was a sine wave.
A 1kHz sine wave at 0dBFS will register 2v output.
An older preamp (Quad 33/44 being a typical example) with an input gain stage before the volume control will usually be driven into overload - this will of course depend on the overload margin - however I've seen this happen even with decent overload margins.
The specs for the Quad 44 cite an input sensitivity of 100mV (for full output) for the radio and aux inputs, with a maximum of 5v.
However... the output level of the preamp is 5v.... So 100mV / 5000mV = a gain of 50.
2v input will (attempt) to drive the output to 100v RMS.... not possible, and much distortion.
It was for this reason that back in the 80's, inline attenuators became popular, to drop the 2v down to a more manageable level.
OutInTheShed said:
Back when I actually owned a tape deck, the same setting of the volume knob on my amp produced much the same volume from both CD and Tape. Although tapes vary from one to the next as I recall.
I don't understand how the audio world manages to be so vague about all this, particularly people who write articles and books about amps.
There's nothing vague about it. Tape decks and tuners had quite common output voltages, although tape decks were often a fair bit higher.I don't understand how the audio world manages to be so vague about all this, particularly people who write articles and books about amps.
The issue is the differences between professional and consumer levels, where 0.775mV is 0dB (professional) but 1v is 0dB (consumer) - BUT - even then there are other so called "standards" with differing levels / input impedance etc.
Amazingly, the consumer world tended to be (note the past tense) fairly standard with this, however newer Class D amps are often rated for 4v input (and sometimes higher) so these so called standards have gone out of the window (ignoring balanced inputs for now).
These increased levels are all in the name of chasing ever higher sinad figures.
OutInTheShed said:
Roughly speaking, a 'trad' power amp (or PA stage of typical domestic amp?) with say +/-40V rails will have a voltage gain in the region of 30? so will clip at (instantaneous) peak inputs of 1 and a bit volts?
The actual gain of the pre-amp stage is harder to see by eyeballing the schematic, but looking at a couple of amps, 'more than 1' at full volume seems to be the case?
I wonder if my scope still works....
It seems to me there is also scope to get more peak volts due to the phase response of any filters
Yes - the power amp is not a problem though, assuming there is some sort of level control of course. Otherwise a CD player injected directly into a power amp with no level control will result in extreme overload.The actual gain of the pre-amp stage is harder to see by eyeballing the schematic, but looking at a couple of amps, 'more than 1' at full volume seems to be the case?
I wonder if my scope still works....
It seems to me there is also scope to get more peak volts due to the phase response of any filters
I can demonstrate with some screenshots from my own scope if so desired.
EDIT: Mixed up my pro and consumer levels. Now fixed.
Edited by TonyRPH on Sunday 9th April 21:33
Gary C said:
That doesn't make a great deal of sense.
The recombination, interpolation was only bit to bit but if they were that slow they would tend to make it dull not bright ?
Some background...The recombination, interpolation was only bit to bit but if they were that slow they would tend to make it dull not bright ?
Interpolation is not bit to bit..
Interpolation is reconstructing the signal between the converted samples. This is done through the use of a low pass filter, with stop band at sample rate/2. Perfect reproduction requires a perfect filter, which does not exist. Infinite attenuation on the stop band.
Nyquist is responsible for this basic sampling theory work.
Early CD players had DACs, which were far from perfect so had inadequate roll off rates in the stop band and hence inadequate attenuation and allowed aliasing frequencies through.
A reasonable work around was to reduce the frequency of the stop band below FS/2. Harmless for CD with FS of 44.4kHz. 20kHz was a reasonable compromise.
Another widely believed hifi falsehood....
Separate pre and power amp boxes is better than an integrated amp.
Better for the sellers of the equipment and cables...but not for performance.
It is obviously wrong to split the ground plane between 2 boxes, lots of cable and 2 power supplies. It is obviously wrong to have a long signal path, when a short one is possible..
Separate pre and power amp boxes is better than an integrated amp.
Better for the sellers of the equipment and cables...but not for performance.
It is obviously wrong to split the ground plane between 2 boxes, lots of cable and 2 power supplies. It is obviously wrong to have a long signal path, when a short one is possible..
911hope said:
Spleen said:
Er, what happened to the thread? It’s been boffinised.
Nothing wrong with a little knowledge distribution.I have no axe to grind, just have no idea what people are on about. Bring back the humour!
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