T
Tim Gillett
Banned
Lt Bob,
It's good to talk about this stuff . Until I discovered this forum I so rarely got a chance to.
CD Convenience for sure. But because it's convenient, and less prone to wear, dirt etc doesnt say anything either way about its quality. It means it's more convenient, that's all.
The cassette too was convenient, far more so than the open reel. And in that case it WAS weaker in sound quality than open reel,(all other things being equal) but that was because it was a very cut down version of open reel, using only a fraction of the tape.
I didnt say anything about the quality of the turntable, preamp etc but totally agree it makes a difference, sometimes a huge difference. As a kid our first family turntable was a wind up Columbia Grafonola, all mechanical for 78's, from the 1920's I guess. Then the family graduated to a crappy BSR changer with ceramic cartridge with really cheap amp and speakers. So I grew up listening to crap equipment but also got lots of listening enjoyment from both. And while I dont currently own a really top notch turntable, I've heard them and agree they sound pretty good.
No, noise isnt the only factor in good sound and I didnt say it was. It was you who mentioned the possible need for 20 bits, implying that 16 bit, which is quieter than the best vinyl setup, was too noisy! You said it, not me! You seemed to be implying that the noise on the best vinyl is poor.
Does CD of itself "cut off 'verb tails"? I know without a doubt that some CD reissues do just that and it drives me crazy too. But what is the cause of that. I thought it was due to the addition of denoising or gating at the remastering stage so as to make older tape masters seem to have less hiss and so sound more "modern" and in keeping with quieter noise floors on modern recordings. "Cleaning up" old tapes and vinyls seems to have been promoted as some sort of miracle tool but the reality is, normally you can only reduce residual noise on any recording by also removing some of the ambience and room reverb. That's why I'm so reluctant to use it. But that's a human production choice and as far as I know has nothing to do with the Redbook CD format.
"analog lets it (the ambience and reverb) disappear into the noise floor". I noted you said analog, not just vinyl. Do you mean that this is part and parcel of the digital problem or that higher bit rates would fix this? And which noise floor are we talking about? The actual performance's noise floor before it even gets into the recorder, whether digital or analog, or the noise floor of the end product we play at home? Even on a 16 bit CD, I would expect the noise floor from the actual program and its ambience and reverb, would normally be somewhat above the CD's own digital noise floor. If that were the case, to expect the ambience to disappear into the DIGITAL noise floor would be unrealistic. You would hear a reverb tail and maybe some concert hall ambience, and then relative silence. Turn up the volume and yes you would now hear digital noise (or whatever was the noisiest part of the playback system) but the concert hall ambience cannot disappear into a noise floor in the sense of becoming MASKED by it. The reverse would be true, if anything. The ambience and reverb tails would mask the digital noise, if indeed it needed to be masked, in that it was audible without the ambience/reverb present. You can only mask a sound with a louder sound it that first sound was audible in the first place.
In any case, if it were true that CD audio did downwardly expand quiet passages, it should be measurable both with equipment, showing level mismatching at certain points, and apparent to listeners in double blind listening tests- even casual listening tests. Yes, our ears ought to be able to pick it. What do others think on this?
Read my earlier post where I object to just that sort of ham fisted attempts to "clean up" old recordings. I think most of us dont mind a bit of tape hiss or surface noise so long as the recording is overall clean and true. Less is more when it comes to fiddling with classic recordings.
When I first listened to CD's I was all at sea with setting volume levels. I was used to listening to the beginning tape hiss or the vinyl surface noise and that gave me a cue as to how loud to set the gain. With CD's the noise floor was so much lower I ended up turning the gain up way too high and when the music started it just about blew the speakers and me out of the room.
But again, having a much lower noise floor doesnt prove that it cuts the reverb tails. It proves that it has a lower noise floor. When I make a good quality CD copy of a good quality analog source, I play the CD back and the reverb tails sound the same as they did when I played the analog. The tape hiss or surface noise is where it was before. And thats what I'd expect.
To my ears aggressive mp3 coding really does cut off reverb trails and often a lot more besides and again I hate it for that reason. On the other hand, moderate, tasteful mp3 compression is useful, even though in certain professional archiving circles, it's regarded almost as the enemy. This must be an audiophile obsession only. Most of us happily watch DVD movies. How many of us refuse to watch them because of the quite severe compression of the video?
As to the extended supersonic response, and its effect on our perception I admit I cant judge from personal experience. I've never done one of those A/B listening tests so I only mentioned about the stresses that pressing the disc to those limits can cause. A related question that you or somebody else might be able to answer for me is how well those quadraphonic records from the 70's lasted compared to normal stereo issues. I know there were a few different formats. But I know from analog tape experience that you dont usually get anything for nothing. Boosting highs raises the signal above the noise but also reduces your headroom. Adding a quadraphonic carrier signal would have eaten into the the high frequency headroom, I would have thought. It's all additive.
And because the disc is spinning at constant rotation, not constant stylus speed, the inner grooves are bound to be of poorer quality to the outers and will really struggle with high volume high frequencies. 45khz? Usable? On the inner grooves? Is this in theory or in practice?
Dont misunderstand. I started out on 78's at the age of 5 and progressed to vinyl, first on cheap players and then on better ones, though probably not nearly as good as your machine. I have read some of the history of the whole disc cutting process in my audio cyclopedia , and at the Vintage Wireless and Gramophone Club I belong to, they recently showed a video of the incredible technology and care that went into disc cutting and duplication. An awesome feat in my view. A really mature technology by the 80's. BTW I still have all my vinyls and play them, but not before the ritual of careful handling and stylus and disc cleaning. Like you, I value my vinyl collection.
Best wishes, Tim
It's good to talk about this stuff . Until I discovered this forum I so rarely got a chance to.
CD Convenience for sure. But because it's convenient, and less prone to wear, dirt etc doesnt say anything either way about its quality. It means it's more convenient, that's all.
The cassette too was convenient, far more so than the open reel. And in that case it WAS weaker in sound quality than open reel,(all other things being equal) but that was because it was a very cut down version of open reel, using only a fraction of the tape.
I didnt say anything about the quality of the turntable, preamp etc but totally agree it makes a difference, sometimes a huge difference. As a kid our first family turntable was a wind up Columbia Grafonola, all mechanical for 78's, from the 1920's I guess. Then the family graduated to a crappy BSR changer with ceramic cartridge with really cheap amp and speakers. So I grew up listening to crap equipment but also got lots of listening enjoyment from both. And while I dont currently own a really top notch turntable, I've heard them and agree they sound pretty good.
No, noise isnt the only factor in good sound and I didnt say it was. It was you who mentioned the possible need for 20 bits, implying that 16 bit, which is quieter than the best vinyl setup, was too noisy! You said it, not me! You seemed to be implying that the noise on the best vinyl is poor.
Does CD of itself "cut off 'verb tails"? I know without a doubt that some CD reissues do just that and it drives me crazy too. But what is the cause of that. I thought it was due to the addition of denoising or gating at the remastering stage so as to make older tape masters seem to have less hiss and so sound more "modern" and in keeping with quieter noise floors on modern recordings. "Cleaning up" old tapes and vinyls seems to have been promoted as some sort of miracle tool but the reality is, normally you can only reduce residual noise on any recording by also removing some of the ambience and room reverb. That's why I'm so reluctant to use it. But that's a human production choice and as far as I know has nothing to do with the Redbook CD format.
"analog lets it (the ambience and reverb) disappear into the noise floor". I noted you said analog, not just vinyl. Do you mean that this is part and parcel of the digital problem or that higher bit rates would fix this? And which noise floor are we talking about? The actual performance's noise floor before it even gets into the recorder, whether digital or analog, or the noise floor of the end product we play at home? Even on a 16 bit CD, I would expect the noise floor from the actual program and its ambience and reverb, would normally be somewhat above the CD's own digital noise floor. If that were the case, to expect the ambience to disappear into the DIGITAL noise floor would be unrealistic. You would hear a reverb tail and maybe some concert hall ambience, and then relative silence. Turn up the volume and yes you would now hear digital noise (or whatever was the noisiest part of the playback system) but the concert hall ambience cannot disappear into a noise floor in the sense of becoming MASKED by it. The reverse would be true, if anything. The ambience and reverb tails would mask the digital noise, if indeed it needed to be masked, in that it was audible without the ambience/reverb present. You can only mask a sound with a louder sound it that first sound was audible in the first place.
In any case, if it were true that CD audio did downwardly expand quiet passages, it should be measurable both with equipment, showing level mismatching at certain points, and apparent to listeners in double blind listening tests- even casual listening tests. Yes, our ears ought to be able to pick it. What do others think on this?
Read my earlier post where I object to just that sort of ham fisted attempts to "clean up" old recordings. I think most of us dont mind a bit of tape hiss or surface noise so long as the recording is overall clean and true. Less is more when it comes to fiddling with classic recordings.
When I first listened to CD's I was all at sea with setting volume levels. I was used to listening to the beginning tape hiss or the vinyl surface noise and that gave me a cue as to how loud to set the gain. With CD's the noise floor was so much lower I ended up turning the gain up way too high and when the music started it just about blew the speakers and me out of the room.
But again, having a much lower noise floor doesnt prove that it cuts the reverb tails. It proves that it has a lower noise floor. When I make a good quality CD copy of a good quality analog source, I play the CD back and the reverb tails sound the same as they did when I played the analog. The tape hiss or surface noise is where it was before. And thats what I'd expect.
To my ears aggressive mp3 coding really does cut off reverb trails and often a lot more besides and again I hate it for that reason. On the other hand, moderate, tasteful mp3 compression is useful, even though in certain professional archiving circles, it's regarded almost as the enemy. This must be an audiophile obsession only. Most of us happily watch DVD movies. How many of us refuse to watch them because of the quite severe compression of the video?
As to the extended supersonic response, and its effect on our perception I admit I cant judge from personal experience. I've never done one of those A/B listening tests so I only mentioned about the stresses that pressing the disc to those limits can cause. A related question that you or somebody else might be able to answer for me is how well those quadraphonic records from the 70's lasted compared to normal stereo issues. I know there were a few different formats. But I know from analog tape experience that you dont usually get anything for nothing. Boosting highs raises the signal above the noise but also reduces your headroom. Adding a quadraphonic carrier signal would have eaten into the the high frequency headroom, I would have thought. It's all additive.
And because the disc is spinning at constant rotation, not constant stylus speed, the inner grooves are bound to be of poorer quality to the outers and will really struggle with high volume high frequencies. 45khz? Usable? On the inner grooves? Is this in theory or in practice?
Dont misunderstand. I started out on 78's at the age of 5 and progressed to vinyl, first on cheap players and then on better ones, though probably not nearly as good as your machine. I have read some of the history of the whole disc cutting process in my audio cyclopedia , and at the Vintage Wireless and Gramophone Club I belong to, they recently showed a video of the incredible technology and care that went into disc cutting and duplication. An awesome feat in my view. A really mature technology by the 80's. BTW I still have all my vinyls and play them, but not before the ritual of careful handling and stylus and disc cleaning. Like you, I value my vinyl collection.
Best wishes, Tim
There's a few of you Aussies floating around here, not too many other Kiwi's though. 
, but I have that huge terrible wall-to-wall resonance in here... so I respond in a rather very bouncy manner.