Random thoughts on hifi

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Spannko
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by Spannko »

FairPlayMotty wrote: 2020-09-12 17:01 I'm with the science on HiRes. In my view the one really good thing to come from the HiRes movement is a whole array of digital remasters that are often better than any CD of the album.
Science? What science? Can you provide links to the “science” please?

Also, can you provide examples of “digital remasters” which you think outperform earlier CD releases?
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by FairPlayMotty »

Spannko wrote: 2020-09-12 21:28 Science? What science? Can you provide links to the “science” please?

Also, can you provide examples of “digital remasters” which you think outperform earlier CD releases?
The science on HiRes relates to the potential of the human ear - that's indisputable. You can use Google Spannko - it's rather easy to find the relevant articles. Sony/Philips didn't settle on 16/44 by accident. The intriguing aspect for me of HiRes is how the parts of the spectrum outwith the range of human ears affect the brain and how. The science of how that mechanism works is an unknown the last time I looked.

I'll give you one example of the many thousands of digital remasters which leave the original for dead. The Rickie Lee Jones debut album was re-issued on SHM-CD (with extreme care on the remastering). As soon as I ripped it digitally it was obvious why HiFi dealers used to use the record for demos. The original is flat and devoid of detail. Thank god the Japanese still remaster for spinning silver discs.

Did you know the original Steely Dan CDs were produced using extremely dodgy masters? Or do you belong to the first CD is the best club?
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by ThomasOK »

FairPlayMotty wrote: 2020-09-12 19:10 Prior to my Linn amps and my Rega P9 turntable my best musical experience was a very early Sony Walkman (with young ears) :-)
Which Sony Walkman?
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by Lego »

beck wrote: 2020-09-12 08:48 A small story:

My father and his brother amused themselves by playing a game with some mentally disabled people coming past the farm when they were young.
An asylum for those people was placed near by.

My father would offer the person to take one of two coins. A big one not worth much and a smaller one worth more.
They always chose the bigger one. The game became an ongoing event.

Who fooled who?
Run that by us again Beck !!??
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by FairPlayMotty »

ThomasOK wrote: 2020-09-15 20:39
Which Sony Walkman?
rps20200915_210842.jpg
That's the beast. Back then I don't recall passing anyone else wearing headphones outside. People looked at you like you were a freak. Around 5 bits from my Rotel cassette deck. But the music sounded great. One album each side of a C90.
I got my first disciplinary warning for having the walkman in a briefcase and listening to music as I walked from appointment to appointment. It was deemed unprofessional.

My brother and my friend both had Walkman Professionals later. Different class.
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by ThomasOK »

I still own a Walkman Pro and used it as my cassette deck in my Linn and Linn/Naim systems back when I was using cassettes. It was actually a very good machine.
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by FairPlayMotty »

I'm pretty sure I bought mine in 1980 - they came out in 1979. The pro version was effectively a high quality HiFi cassette deck miniaturised and was available from 1985 to 1999.

I still have mine somewhere and a metal Sony CD Walkman - a machine which never gave me the joy the cassette version did.
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by beck »

Yes, cassette with recordings from ones turntable. A sure winner when it comes to emotional contact.

My walkman in my youth:

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QoyTb4lNwNk/ ... og%2B7.jpg

Digital has showed me that the emotional contact (that I cannot live without) only appears when ones setup is almost perfect.

This makes it very hard to get to the point where music becomes music and not just a fake model.

Luckily I am there now with my cd player.


With digital it is important to get the sound near analog, not the other way round.
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by beck »

I should have said that for me it is important to get near “analog” sound with my cd player.

My woolly sock theory :-) has once again made sense to me.

In the studio we can have rock played with full focus on groove and dense sound. When the recording has been made and it ends up in our home, we can change the sound in any direction we want by choosing the hifi equipment we like and experiment with setup.

We can get near the same as in the studio (woolly sock in relaxed shape) or we can start to stretch it getting nearer the fibers and focussing on details within the recording.
It is all there all the time but what we see (hear) changes depending on how much we stretch the sock.
In the end it is up to the person listening to find the shape of the sock that is preferred.

When is the sock stretched so much that we do not recognise it anymore?
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by Spannko »

It can probably be stretched quite a way before music is unrecognisable (because our brains are unbelievably tolerant), but just the slightest stretch will begin to affect not only the musics coherence, but also the sound reproduction, and more importantly, the enjoyment we get from our systems.

However, if my wife borrowed my socks it would be game over!
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by beck »

Spannko wrote: 2020-09-25 08:58 It can probably be stretched quite a way before music is unrecognisable (because our brains are unbelievably tolerant), but just the slightest stretch will begin to affect not only the musics coherence, but also the sound reproduction, and more importantly, the enjoyment we get from our systems.

However, if my wife borrowed my socks it would be game over!
What, does she have bigger feet than you? :-)


I like to hear that the music has been recorded using “flawed” microphones and amps. Maybe I am a minority here.


I guess many hunt a reproduction that has moved itself away from the above “flawed” sound towards something where the constraints of the recording equipment cannot be heard.
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by Spannko »

beck wrote: 2020-09-25 09:02
Spannko wrote: 2020-09-25 08:58 It can probably be stretched quite a way before music is unrecognisable (because our brains are unbelievably tolerant), but just the slightest stretch will begin to affect not only the musics coherence, but also the sound reproduction, and more importantly, the enjoyment we get from our systems.

However, if my wife borrowed my socks it would be game over!
I like to hear that the music has been recorded using “flawed” microphones and amps. Maybe I am a minority here.
This is an interesting approach I’ve not come across before beck! What’s your thinking behind this?

In contrast to your “sock” hypothesis, I think of our HiFi as being a “transport system”. So, the performing artist is the original source and its the job of the microphone to encapsulate the performance in such a way that the performance can be transported into our listening room in a totally undamaged state. Of course, this is currently impossible, but it gives us something to aim for.

For me, this means that the microphone has a critical role, since it sets the bar for the maximum “fidelity” achievable.
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by beck »

Just that everything is a kind of filter imposing it’s own characteristics.

When listening to a band playing through PA systems the musicians listen to the end result (or an intermediate) on the other side of the amplification and adjust accordingly making the music enjoyable.

If we want this “filter” to disappear we might be doing something wrong if we want the musicians “view”.

Then what about acoustic music? Well, we can either accept a degraded recording or hunt for “pure” sound. This hunt might bring us sound bliss while slightly changing the music.
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by Whatsmynaim »

We should be able to hear the limitations of the technology used in the recording studio. If we can't then some of the music most likely is gone as well, right? I think it was ThomasOK who wrote that if he clearly can hear the hear tape hiss on old recordings, that's a good thing! Not the exact words but yeah.

This is of course not the same as hearing lots of surface noise when playing an LP because that's not good at all ;)
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by beck »

Whatsmynaim wrote: 2020-09-25 14:32 We should be able to hear the limitations of the technology used in the recording studio. If we can't then some of the music most likely is gone as well, right? I think it was ThomasOK who wrote that if he clearly can hear the hear tape hiss on old recordings, that's a good thing! Not the exact words but yeah.

This is of course not the same as hearing lots of surface noise when playing an LP because that's not good at all ;)
I agree and to follow my own logic above hearing the recording limitations includes the imprint (distortion) of the microphones and amps used.
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by tokenbrit »

beck wrote: 2020-09-25 19:31
I agree and to follow my own logic above hearing the recording limitations includes the imprint (distortion) of the microphones and amps used.
But how do you know that it's recording distortion you're hearing, and not playback distortion? 🤔
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by beck »

We can never be sure but even our hifi should according to the above contribute with it’s own “filter” quite similar to get the music across to the listener presented in the way musicians hear the music when performing it.

We can “seek” elsewhere and find sonic splendor but at a cost (if I am right).
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by beck »

I do not listen to this man normally but the first minute of this video is spot on for me. Trivial maybe, but spot on:

https://youtu.be/__OEOMIH_5I


The focus on how the listener behave is key. Not the sound itself.
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by donuk »

I too like hearing imperfections on old recordings. Like mains hum from the guitar amplifier after the final chord of a sixties recording. Makes it more authentic...
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by beck »

donuk wrote: 2020-10-02 08:28 I too like hearing imperfections on old recordings. Like mains hum from the guitar amplifier after the final chord of a sixties recording. Makes it more authentic...
Me too, though my posts before the Steve Guttenberg video post are not about the “being in the recording studio” thing exactly.

My posts above were trying to point out that when using mics and amps to record and amps and speakers to play back recorded music we cannot expect the sound to be fantastic. We should expect a degradation of the sound we hear.

To me fantastic sound can be a sign that something musically fundamental has been changed.
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by OscarH »

beck wrote: 2020-10-02 07:23 I do not listen to this man normally but the first minute of this video is spot on for me. Trivial maybe, but spot on:

https://youtu.be/__OEOMIH_5I


The focus on how the listener behave is key. Not the sound itself.
There’s a lot of truth in this. The pure joy of music comes before anything else.

I must say though that it gets tricky when, towards the end of the minute, he begins to suggest that if you’re not in the mood to listen to music there may be something wrong with your system.

Sometimes you might just want to read a book instead...
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by beck »

OscarH wrote: 2020-10-02 09:30
There’s a lot of truth in this. The pure joy of music comes before anything else.

I must say though that it gets tricky when, towards the end of the minute, he begins to suggest that if you’re not in the mood to listen to music there may be something wrong with your system.

Sometimes you might just want to read a book instead...
I love to read with music playing. I used to study with music playing. It actually helped me study better and dig deaper.

But I do get your point OscarH.
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by donuk »

ThomasOK wrote: 2020-09-15 23:39 I still own a Walkman Pro and used it as my cassette deck in my Linn and Linn/Naim systems back when I was using cassettes. It was actually a very good machine.
I have one too. Excellent machine. I remember one of the UK flat earth hifi magazines in the 1980s maintained that it was the most musical cassette player available, better than Nak's &c.

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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by ThomasOK »

donuk wrote: 2020-10-02 10:35
ThomasOK wrote: 2020-09-15 23:39 I still own a Walkman Pro and used it as my cassette deck in my Linn and Linn/Naim systems back when I was using cassettes. It was actually a very good machine.
I have one too. Excellent machine. I remember one of the UK flat earth hifi magazines in the 1980s maintained that it was the most musical cassette player available, better than Nak's &c.

Donuk
Interesting you mention that. I actually compared it to the Nakamichi Dragon a friend and customer owned back in the day. It was very close with me feeling the WM-D6C was a bit more musical but him liking the Dragon a touch more (considering what he spent on it there may have been some bias). Another interesting point is that the Sony Pro Walkman WM-D6C (to give the full name) is one of only two products from companies other than Linn and Naim that I heard Julian Vereker praise, saying it was a "very good" cassette unit. The other was the Harmon Kardon Citation 14 FM Tuner which he also liked and paid homage to with the NAT 101. I owned one of those as well for many years until I picked up a Pekin, since replaced by a Kremlin which I still use regularly. Interestingly the Sony is still popular enough that it mostly sells on eBay for the same or more than what it sold for new.
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Re: Random thoughts on hifi

Post by Spannko »

I’ve compared the Walkman Pro to a Dragon and the Revox cassette deck. The Revox had a very precise and accurate sound, neutral and pure - very Germanic. The Nakamichi sounded less stable and not as well defined, in comparison to the Revox. The Sony’s sound was even less well defined than the Nakamichi. Musically, the Dragon and Revox were poor, whilst the Sony probably set the musicality benchmark for cassette decks. The biggest disappointment of the three was the Dragon. With a name like that, its reputation and its external appearance, I was expecting something special, but in reality, it was just slightly better than one of the 3 head Denon’s for a third of the price.

The Sony was great for a cassette deck. But tbh a record played on a Rega was better than the same record played on the Sony when using an LP12 as the source.

My random thought on HiFi for the day is: if the most musical cassette deck produces a recording which is obviously inferior to the original, and Ivor T was unable to detect the presence of a 16 bit A-D/D-A converter in the signal path when listening to an LP12, then what does it say about the potential for digital recording and playback?
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