Thread: New site up

Posts: 211
Page: prev 1 ... 11 12 13 14 15 ... 22 next

Post by diw August 17, 2015 (121 of 211)
windhoek said:

Thanks David, that's more useful info.

You're welcome.

Post by Chris August 18, 2015 (122 of 211)
AmonRa said:

Can you give the exact quote?

He mentioned it in a conversation I had with him.
And he has mentioned it as one of the important factors in his designs. ie increased timing temporal resolution over rbcd and some other products,in discussions online about his products Hugo and other DACs.
I made one more mistake,some musicians can resolve down to 3 milliseconds,sorry I wrongly wrote " 4 microseconds" 3 milliseconds is the correct term, temporal resolution of pitch and timing according to recent research as evidenced for example in this article: recently published at Phys.org.

Human hearing beats the Fourier uncertainty principle
February 4, 2013 by Lisa Zyga feature

And the format you argue is all we will ever need has a timing resolution of 22 milliseconds.
It is of course possible that I completely misinterpret the data provided and what I keep hearing from rbcd. But to me it has always sounded as if the format is not even close to what the human ear brain is actually capable of resolving. No wonder it sounds artificial imho.
To few bits and too low a sampling rate equal too low resolution.
32 bits and 768 kHz seems to be the pro frontline now for PCM and with DSD DSD 128 and 256 are becoming the new standards.
With complex acoustic music rbcd has always sounded like the compromised format it was and is to me.
Luckily basically everybody who records and releases digitally recorded acoustic music has abandoned 16/44.1 as a recording format long ago.
And for very good reasons too,it seems.
Enjoy your perfect sound forever rbcds.

Post by Adrian Cue August 18, 2015 (123 of 211)
AmonRa said:

Your kind of writing proves how ignorant lay people are about scientific matters and testing, and how easily they are manipulated.

Thank you for your remarks. Very helpful in that they made me delve deeper into the tests. The result is even less convincing that I had thought. The tests in question were conducted 8 years ago at 4 different locations.

From the list of equipment I note that, although the principal system seems to be worth several tens of thousands of dollars, the source players used were not quite of the same caliber. No dedicated Super Audio player, but “In the early going we used the Pioneer DV-563A Universal DVD/CD/SACD/DVD-Audio player” (a rather simple piece of entry level equipment with an original price tag of $129.99), then “some tests with the Sony XA777ES”, once (2001) Sony’s flagship SACD player (price: $3000). Why was it dropped from the tests and why did the test panel switch to the Yamaha DVD-S1500 ($ 450.00), “used for the remainder of the tests”? This player didn’t do well when it was tested (3 stars out of 5!).

In a further test series (system 4) another DVD player was used as source player: a Denon 2900 universal, markedly better, but still not the gear which might have been expected for conducting a potentially devastating test, trying to prove high resolution audio useless.

Part of the test was carried out with students. “Most of them had an upper limit in our test of 16 to 18 kHz”, which is of no importance whatsoever for the quality of the sound. It is the quality of the music that counts, not the extent of the frequency range. Should quality be impaired by a limited frequency range, this would mean that it makes no difference if you stay at home and listen to a CD or go to a concert hall with a real life orchestra. I find that hard to believe!

It should, furthermore, be interesting to know what kind of music was played since a small combo is much less demanding than unravelling a large symphony orchestra playing Mahler or Shostakovich.

Luckily a list is available. Limiting myself to the classical SACD’s used, with the exception of Shakespeare in Song, Phoenix Bach Choir, Bruffy, SACD (Chandos CHSA 5031), none have been recorded in high resolution. It is all ‘remastered’ fare: (1) Perahia, Bach piano concerti, original RBCD release Date: March 12, 2002. Comment on this site: “the stereo SACD transfer of the original PCM RBCD does not add a great deal sonically”. (2) Perihia, Mozart: Piano Concertos (Nos. 21 & 26), partly from his early digital recording (1983), of which ‘Ramesh’, SA-CD.net official site reviewer said: ‘It sounds like a 16 bit recording, but the DSD upsampling has removed quite a bit of digital glare’, rewarding the sonics 3 stars out of 5. (3) Stephen Hartke: Tituli, Cathedral in the Thrashing Rain. Comments on this site “this SACD does not get more than 3½ stars from me” / “I would say that many ECM CDs have a warmer, more direct sound than this SACD” (sonics: three stars out of five). (4) Carlos Heredia, Gypsy Flamenco. This is an SACD multi-channel remastering of a 1994 CD album. Review on Amazon.com: “On the technical side of the recording, this album didn't deserve to be on SACD. Its studio engineering is doubtful at best.” And finally: (5) Saint Saens, original Living Stereo analogue recording with the Boston Symphony under Münch. I don’t know exactly when the recording was made, but the conductor, Charles Munch, died 6 November 1968, long before the first CD was introduced. A review of the remastered SACD version (Amazon.com) says: “Good Sound, but Not Much of an Improvement over the CD. Five Star Performance, but the engineers dropped the ball.”

A disturbingly dim affair? As far as this layman is concerned: What it proves is that a remastered non-HiRes original does not differ much from the original. I can live with that, while looking forward to more of the ‘real thing’ coming from producers that care about high resolution recording!

Post by DSD August 18, 2015 (124 of 211)
windhoek said:

Good news! HRA now includes blu-ray video!

That is good news as all but one of my Blu-ray discs have video. Quite a bit of AIX's catalog is on Blu-ray with 24/96 in both multichannel and stereo plus high resolution video of the performance.

There are also many great Blu-ray concert videos from the major labels but usually only at 24/48.

I get Blu-ray for high resolution audio plus high resolution video. If I want audio only I get SACDs or high resolution downloads.

Post by AmonRa August 18, 2015 (125 of 211)
Chris said:


32 bits and 768 kHz seems to be the pro frontline now for PCM

If we imagine there really is this newfangled 32 bit converter, how does it get the 32 bit deep analog signal with about 195 dB of dynamic range?

Lowest possible voltage is determined by the thermal noise of the analog system, highest level is the voltage supply rails voltage. Typical thermal noise is around one microvolt at room temperature, this is the low limit for the analog dynamic range. Now multiply this by 2 to the power of 32 and you arrive at 43000 volts, so you would need +- 22 kiloVolt power supplies to run all analog stages of the recording system, and also at home your amplifiers would need to be similar.

The other solution would be to cryogenically cool everything to near absolute zero with liquid helium, but the temperature would have to be 0.0001 Kelvin. Possibly too expensive, especially for average homes. For this reason small record companies are also not rushing to get 32 bit converters any time soon.

By the way, even the best 24 converters give only 21 real bits, so where is the quantum jump coming from?

Post by AmonRa August 18, 2015 (126 of 211)
Adrian Cue said:

What it proves is that a remastered non-HiRes original does not differ much from the original.

Yes to that.

It also proved that using normal SACD players and normal (badly done) SACD disks the difference cannot be heard, no matter what the advertisers say.

Post by Chris August 18, 2015 (127 of 211)
AmonRa said:

If we imagine there really is this newfangled 32 bit converter, how does it get the 32 bit deep analog signal with about 195 dB of dynamic range?

Lowest possible voltage is determined by the thermal noise of the analog system, highest level is the voltage supply rails voltage. Typical thermal noise is around one microvolt at room temperature, this is the low limit for the analog dynamic range. Now multiply this by 2 to the power of 32 and you arrive at 43000 volts, so you would need +- 22 kiloVolt power supplies to run all analog stages of the recording system, and also at home your amplifiers would need to be similar.

The other solution would be to cryogenically cool everything to near absolute zero with liquid helium, but the temperature would have to be 0.0001 Kelvin. Possibly too expensive, especially for average homes. For this reason small record companies are also not rushing to get 32 bit converters any time soon.

By the way, even the best 24 converters give only 21 real bits, so where is the quantum jump coming from?

I strongly suggest you adress both your questions above, and supply your superior technical knowledge to the people wasting our time and money,by developing anything more than 16/44.1 for recording or playback. After all, you can prove beyond any doubt that 16/44.1 is already perfect.

I am sure all those ignorant designers would benefit a lot from your valuable input.
I being a mere ignorant layman,will continue to listen to the music I love in hi res pcm and DSD.
And I will also play the occasional LPs both for their wonderful music and superior timing and impulse response over rbcd 16/44.1
Adios AmonRa

Post by AmonRa August 18, 2015 (128 of 211)
Engineers designing digital recording systems already know the physical limits caused by resistor thermal noise, so there will not be better than 24 bit converters, ever. At the moment they are at the same level as the best possible reproduction systems and better than human hearing.

Too bad you can not accept the laws of physics when they go against your audiophool and audioignorat dreams.

Post by AmonRa August 18, 2015 (129 of 211)
Chris said:

bla bla bla
I being a mere ignorant layman,
bla bla bla

I am curious why you are angry at me if I point out that 32 bit resolution is a practical impossibility and would not be of any use anyway? Now you can enjoy your system knowing that it is not going to get better any time soon. You do not want to be better informed?

Post by Adrian Cue August 18, 2015 (130 of 211)
AmonRa said:

Yes to that.

It also proved that using normal SACD players and normal (badly done) SACD disks the difference cannot be heard, no matter what the advertisers say.

agreed

Page: prev 1 ... 11 12 13 14 15 ... 22 next

Closed