[Mxsmanic]

I am generally not a pioneer when it comes to new technology. I prefer to let
someone else spend the big bucks and pay to get the bugs out of new gadgets.
However, one important exception I made was audio CDs. When they first came
out, they seemed to have so many advantages over phonograph records--and so
few disadvantages--that I was literally one of the first people in the city to
buy a CD player and a CD (Vivaldi, which I still have). It seemed like a
technology that just couldn't lose.

So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph records?
Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if you've
always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever), why
did you/do you prefer it?

[William Sommerwerck]

I had always preferred open-reel tape to LP, so the switch to CD was easy.
Once I bought a player -- it was a not-expensive Yamaha -- I started buying
CDs. This was fairly early in the introduction.

What one might more profitably ask is... When did you stop playing LPs? Last
year I sold almost all my audiophile LPs (which I thought I never would do).
I rarely listen to LPs, and it's mostly to hear SQ quadraphonic disks, 99%
of which have never been transferred to a digital multi-ch medium.

[cedricl[_2_]]

On Jan 26, 1:53*pm, Mxsmanic wrote:

So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph records?
Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if you've
always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever), why
did you/do you prefer it?

I combined LPs and CDs very early in their development. I worked at a
record store, so I was getting good discounts on records. It was sort
of an "all in" kind of thing with the CD. You had to have the hardware
to play them. So, once I invested in a CD player (the second
generation Sony Diskman, the one with the docking station so it worked
as a regular CD player), I started buying more CDs as they released
recordings that I wanted. I'd guess, through the '90s, I still bought
LPs and CDs, depending on what format had what I wanted (I listen to
Jazz almost exclusively, and not "smooth" jazz) so a lot of what I was
looking for was only on LP. Once everything started to be released and
re-released on CD, I just listen to CD now. I'll pull out the old LPs,
every now and then, but the convenience of playing a CD is so much
more attractive. The dog won't walk by (I have a big dog) and make the
CD skip. I don't have to turn it and holding it without touching the
playing surface can be accomplished with one hand.

[Mxsmanic]

Soundhaspriority writes:

I switched in the late 80's. At that time, a lot of CDs sounded really
rotten, but I was attracted to the convenience and durability. The early
90's were a time of rapid progress, rapidly diminishing the negative aspects
of subjective sound quality, eventually exceeding that of LP's.

I recall hearing people say that early CDs sounded terrible, but at least the
ones I bought sounded okay to me. What was wrong with the way early CDs were
made? Or was it only an isolated problem?

[Arkansan Raider]

Mxsmanic wrote:
I am generally not a pioneer when it comes to new technology. I prefer to let
someone else spend the big bucks and pay to get the bugs out of new gadgets.
However, one important exception I made was audio CDs. When they first came
out, they seemed to have so many advantages over phonograph records--and so
few disadvantages--that I was literally one of the first people in the city to
buy a CD player and a CD (Vivaldi, which I still have). It seemed like a
technology that just couldn't lose.

So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph records?
Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if you've
always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever), why
did you/do you prefer it?

I had around 110 or so vinyl albums right up to USMC boot camp in 1985.
When I came home, all but two had been stolen.

I went without anything but cassette until the end of 1987, when I
bought myself my first cd deck and a few cds.

Got back into vinyl around 2005 or so. I listen to both for a number of
reasons. Vinyl for the different sound, experimentation on the cheap,
and nostalgia. CD for easy handling and easy clean sound. If I want it
even easier and handier, I go with my computer or iPod.

But I'm still not throwing away the records. I still get way too much
enjoyment out of 'em.

JMHSO

---Jeff

[hank alrich]

Mxsmanic wrote:

Soundhaspriority writes:

I switched in the late 80's. At that time, a lot of CDs sounded really
rotten, but I was attracted to the convenience and durability. The early
90's were a time of rapid progress, rapidly diminishing the negative aspects
of subjective sound quality, eventually exceeding that of LP's.

I recall hearing people say that early CDs sounded terrible, but at least the
ones I bought sounded okay to me. What was wrong with the way early CDs were
made? Or was it only an isolated problem?

Crap conversion.

--
shut up and play your guitar * http://hankalrich.com/
http://www.youtube.com/walkinaymusic
http://www.sonicbids.com/HankandShaidri

[Scott Dorsey]

Mxsmanic wrote:
Soundhaspriority writes:

I switched in the late 80's. At that time, a lot of CDs sounded really
rotten, but I was attracted to the convenience and durability. The early
90's were a time of rapid progress, rapidly diminishing the negative aspects
of subjective sound quality, eventually exceeding that of LP's.

I recall hearing people say that early CDs sounded terrible, but at least the
ones I bought sounded okay to me. What was wrong with the way early CDs were
made? Or was it only an isolated problem?

A lot of it had to do with early CD players having horribly screechy sounding
converters, due to linearity issues. The second generation Philips was actually
much worse than the first generation in that regard.

Add to that the original mastering being done with pretty nasty sounding
converters on those PCM-1610 machines. Thank God all of those are gone.

On top of THAT, record companies were reaching into the back catalogue and
trying to get everything available as quickly as possible, and that meant
using whatever tapes were handy, and as little time spent in the mastering
room as possible. There was a huge press buildup when the first four
Beatles albums first came out on CD... but when they did, they were clearly
full-track mono tapes played on a stereo machine without the channels summed,
and on one of them the deck azimuth was off so the sound was a little cockeyed
from the delay.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Doug McDonald[_6_]]

On 1/26/2012 3:53 PM, Mxsmanic wrote:
I am generally not a pioneer when it comes to new technology. I prefer to let
someone else spend the big bucks and pay to get the bugs out of new gadgets.
However, one important exception I made was audio CDs. When they first came
out, they seemed to have so many advantages over phonograph records--and so
few disadvantages--that I was literally one of the first people in the city to
buy a CD player and a CD (Vivaldi, which I still have). It seemed like a
technology that just couldn't lose.

So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph records?
Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if you've
always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever), why
did you/do you prefer it?

I was the fifth in our town to buy a CD player ... the CDP-101, which
I still have and which still works. I also still have and
listen to the first disks I bought.

Why? Because I expected better sound, and, except for
audiophile LPs played the very first time, I got it.
But Barclay-Crocker open reel Dolby tapes were and
still are excellent, though I have digitized all of those I won and
retired my beloved Sony TV-755.

Doug McDonald

[Mxsmanic]

Soundhaspriority writes:

The A/D converters weren't good enough, noise shaping wasn't in wide use,
and the DAW chains weren't good enough. On a superficial level, they didn't
have enough resolution, but there were many internal problems, related to
incomplete engineering knowledge. Modern A/D converters are much more
refined, using combinations of techniques to provide excellent high and low
level linearity. The first good A/D converters had a lot of custom chips and
high parts counts, so they were extremely expensive, and available only to
the well-heeled. So the best recordings of the 80's were still analog, mixed
to two channels before conversion. By 1987, there were some good digital
recordings, and these were distinguished by advertising and labeling. But my
personal impression (and ears will vary) is that before noise shaping, there
was always a subjective lack. Many audiophile products used doubtful methods
to make those early recordings listenable: DACs with deliberate coloration,
tubes in the chain, etc.

Does this apply at both ends? Will old CDs sound better on newer equipment, or
was the damage done when they were made, permanently leaving them with poorer
sound?

On the DAW end, mixing was originally done with 16 bits, then 24, and
finally, floating point. Before floating point, mixing introduced additional
quantization error.

So I should prefer 32-bit floating point WAV files to 24-bit signed WAV files?
I've been using the latter because I don't know how many bits of precision
32-bit provides (if the total length of the number is 32 bits, then the
precision is far lower than 32 bits and probably less than 24 bits, depending
on the floating-point format used).

[Adrian Tuddenham[_2_]]

Mxsmanic wrote:

[...]

So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph records?
Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if you've
always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever), why
did you/do you prefer it?

I was given a secondhand CD player, so I went out and bought one CD to
test it; the music was a compilation transfered from 78s, many of which
I had already collected and knew extremely well. The transfer had been
beaten to pulp by badly-operated Cedar and the sound quality was
dreadful.

I went back to listening to 78s for pleasure.

--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

[William Sommerwerck]

"hank alrich" wrote in message
...
Mxsmanic wrote:

I recall hearing people say that early CDs sounded terrible, but at least
the ones I bought sounded okay to me. What was wrong with the way
early CDs were made? Or was it only an isolated problem?

Crap conversion.

This is partly true -- the early Sony ADCs weren't that good. It also
appears that many recordings weren't transferred from the original
recordings, but from "masters" made for LPs. These often had HF EQ and other
manipulations not needed for CDs.

[Arny Krueger[_4_]]

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...

So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph
records?

I decided to switch to digital audio over analog in 1981 or so, based on
hearing PCM-F1-based recordings that a certain unnamed and unnamable
engineer was bootlegging from events he worked.

I switched to CDs as my favored medium in March 1983. I bought a CDP 101
(one of the first few sold in Detroit). There were a whopping 16 different
CD titles at the local record store (now long departed). I bought them all.

In those days I did quite a bit of business travel, and found any number of
new titles in various places like Chicago (obvious) and Bismarck North
Dakota (not so obvious). It turns out that there were a goodly number of
wealthy farmers who were interested in the arts but were cut off from them
from the standpoint of broadcast audio and video by their location. Many
parts of the great plains had maybe 1 TV station that delivered a
substandard picture even with heroic antennas and receivers. So, they were
early adopters of various formats of pre-recorded audio and video.

BTW, AFAIK the most heroic personal TV reception system I've seen belonged
to a farmer in Ontario who lived north of 403 between Sarnia and London. He
had a 300+ foot tower built and put the best Yagi he could find on top of
it. This was a six-figure project, if memory serves.

Of course the yagi was on a rotator and the feed line (over 600 feet long)
had booster amps. It turned out to be only marginally successful. No
serious problems with signal strength, but he was never able to find a
commercial VHF antenna that had enough directivity to separate stations in
Detroit, Toledo, and Cleveland. There were stations on alternate channels
(Detroit/Toledo) or the same channels (Detroit/Cleveland) that interfered
with each other. Some problems with propagation.

[Arny Krueger[_4_]]

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
Soundhaspriority writes:

I switched in the late 80's. At that time, a lot of CDs sounded really
rotten, but I was attracted to the convenience and durability. The early
90's were a time of rapid progress, rapidly diminishing the negative
aspects
of subjective sound quality, eventually exceeding that of LP's.

I recall hearing people say that early CDs sounded terrible, but at least
the
ones I bought sounded okay to me. What was wrong with the way early CDs
were
made? Or was it only an isolated problem?

For the most part the early CDs that sounded bad (which were IME in a tiny
minority) sounded bad due to production mistakes.

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

Mxsmanic wrote:
Soundhaspriority writes:

The A/D converters weren't good enough, noise shaping wasn't in wide use,
and the DAW chains weren't good enough. On a superficial level, they didn't
have enough resolution, but there were many internal problems, related to
incomplete engineering knowledge. Modern A/D converters are much more
refined, using combinations of techniques to provide excellent high and low
level linearity. The first good A/D converters had a lot of custom chips and
high parts counts, so they were extremely expensive, and available only to
the well-heeled. So the best recordings of the 80's were still analog, mixed
to two channels before conversion. By 1987, there were some good digital
recordings, and these were distinguished by advertising and labeling. But my
personal impression (and ears will vary) is that before noise shaping, there
was always a subjective lack. Many audiophile products used doubtful methods
to make those early recordings listenable: DACs with deliberate coloration,
tubes in the chain, etc.

Does this apply at both ends? Will old CDs sound better on newer equipment, or
was the damage done when they were made, permanently leaving them with poorer
sound?


Broken is broken. The first CD I even bought was "Hotel California" and
it sounds remarkably like the vinyl. For years, I'd thought it
was the pressing - nope.

On the DAW end, mixing was originally done with 16 bits, then 24, and
finally, floating point. Before floating point, mixing introduced additional
quantization error.

So I should prefer 32-bit floating point WAV files to 24-bit signed WAV files?

You should prefer *mixing* in 32 bit floating point. 24 vs 16 is your
call for storage, but I know of no compelling reason to save stuff in
32float.

I don't know how you'd mix in anything other than 32float these days.
You'd have to go back to software targeted for pre-Pentium
era computers ( or whatever the corresponding Mac is)

I've been using the latter because I don't know how many bits of precision
32-bit provides (if the total length of the number is 32 bits, then the
precision is far lower than 32 bits and probably less than 24 bits, depending
on the floating-point format used).


No - not true. The exponent is information, too - not just the
mantissa.

You'll get a pretty accurate picture of the analog noise of the
recording chain at 24 bit. This being said, with 32float,
you're more likely to survive level mistakes than in pure linear PCM
without damage.


--
Les Cargill

[Edi Zubovic]

On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:12:41 -0500, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:


"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
.. .

So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph
records?

I decided to switch to digital audio over analog in 1981 or so, based on
hearing PCM-F1-based recordings that a certain unnamed and unnamable
engineer was bootlegging from events he worked.


--------------8-----------------------------

-- On a very good German site I've found a story on how Mr. Studer met
Mr. Morita at IFA or CeBIT in 1987. This is a Google translation (oh,
"Race Cars" = Boliden = Studer reel to reel machines, of course). A
legend or not, it shows how an era began to go towards its end:--

http://translate.google.hr/translate...e.html&act=url

(hope the link works well)

Edi Zubovic, Crikvenica, Croatia

[Scott Dorsey]

William Sommerwerck wrote:
What one might more profitably ask is... When did you stop playing LPs? Last
year I sold almost all my audiophile LPs (which I thought I never would do).
I rarely listen to LPs, and it's mostly to hear SQ quadraphonic disks, 99%
of which have never been transferred to a digital multi-ch medium.

I just cut two sides yesterday afternoon. If that counts as listening...
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Anahata]

On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 06:06:00 +0100, Mxsmanic wrote:

Does this apply at both ends? Will old CDs sound better on newer
equipment

Both ends.

So I should prefer 32-bit floating point WAV files to 24-bit signed WAV
files? I've been using the latter because I don't know how many bits of
precision 32-bit provides (if the total length of the number is 32 bits,
then the precision is far lower than 32 bits and probably less than 24
bits, depending on the floating-point format used).

IEEE 32 bit float is 8 bit exponent and 24 bit signed mantissa, which
means it's at least as good as 24 bit linear and mostly much better.

--
Anahata
-+- http://www.treewind.co.uk
Home: 01638 720444 Mob: 07976 263827

[Scott Dorsey]

PStamler wrote:

And crap post-production; many early CDs were edited on a Sony editing
console which (I'm told) stopped being 16-bit resolution and reverted
to 14-bit whenever the master gain was set at something other than
unity. And there was this bizarre idea of "following the fade" -- that
is, as the sound died out after the last note the mastering engineer
would fade the signal out in parallel, making the fade down to ambient
noise into a (truncated-word) fade into total silence.

Oh, yeah. I forgot all about that. Those things also had weird zipper
noises when you adjusted the gain.

I first heard decent digital recording on, of all things, a consumer
DAT deck -- Sony's first generation of home DAT recorders using 1-bit
converters. I liked it, and I bought it, even though you could only
record analog at 48kHz sampling rate. Used it to make some nice-
sounding recordings.

For me, it was the PCM F-1 at the NPR affiliate in Atlanta. The low end
was just so clean and solid... it was the first time I had ever heard a
recording with the kind of low end that you hear in the hall. It took me
a bit of listening to realize just how awful the high end was, though.

When did I buy my first CD player? Actually, I didn't; it was given to
me by my parents when they got a better one. It was about 1990, which
was also the time the improved Sony DAT machines came out. One reason
I waited: most of the music I was interested in didn't start coming
out on CD until the 90s. (I had a buddy say he wouldn't buy a CD
player until he could get a CD of Robert Jr. Lockwood. It was the
mid-90s before that happened.)

I bought a 14-bit Philips when the 16-bit ones came out, on the advice of
Audio Amateur.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Frank Stearns]

Mxsmanic wrote:

So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph records?
Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if you've
always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever), why
did you/do you prefer it?

I had been perfectly happy with LPs played by a Shure V15-IV MR (IIRC) into a custom
phono preamp built around API 2520s by one of the guys at Quad-Eight.

But then several new classical releases I wanted were only on CD. This was around
1988 or so.

I began a 2 year quest to find a CD player that sounded half-way decent.
Auditioning some 20+ units, from cheap to as much as a new car of the day, the
disappointment was epic. All of them had terrible imaging, and way too many had grit
or other sonic issues, sometimes intential problems designed to "fix" other
underlying problems.

Then I was loaned a stock Pioneer PD75. This was pretty good. No grit, better (but
not perfect) imaging. Then the dealer next loaned me a PD75 they'd hot-rodded
(better caps with bypasses, additional PS bypasses, removing the botched balanced
outputs, etc) and wow! What great sound. Razor perfect imaging, zero grit or edge
(unless the CD had been badly done); none of the inherent sonic limitations of
recoards. I was hooked.

Years later, I dug in a bit to what Pioneer had done. There were several separate
power supplies completely isolating digital, analog, and transport power needs.
They'd used a stereo DAC for EACH channel, with a clever inversion scheme designed
to linearize the conversion process. They'd done several things to mitigate jitter,
which had been a serious problem and was a contributor to what many folks disliked
about "digital sound".

I still have the thing, it still works, and in some ways it still sounds the best
(even compared to the Avocet monitor controller), though it does have its own
signature -- just happens to be a pretty good one.

Frank
Mobile Audio
--

[Mxsmanic]

Les Cargill writes:

No - not true. The exponent is information, too - not just the
mantissa.

Yeah, but it's magnitude rather than precision. Just like any other floating
point. When I hear 32-bit, I wonder about the size of the mantissa. If it's a
32-bit mantissa, great, but if it's eight bits of exponent and two sign bits,
plus 22 bits of mantissa, it's potentially worse than signed 24-bit.

For high accuracy in other types of computer processing, very large integers
are often used rather than floating point--although that's also a question of
performance and decimal precision, and the latter probably isn't important for
audio.

You'll get a pretty accurate picture of the analog noise of the
recording chain at 24 bit. This being said, with 32float,
you're more likely to survive level mistakes than in pure linear PCM
without damage.

I guess with the poor quality of my gear I'm splitting hairs, but I still
worry about accuracy and precision.

[gregz]

Mxsmanic wrote:
I am generally not a pioneer when it comes to new technology. I prefer to let
someone else spend the big bucks and pay to get the bugs out of new gadgets.
However, one important exception I made was audio CDs. When they first came
out, they seemed to have so many advantages over phonograph records--and so
few disadvantages--that I was literally one of the first people in the city to
buy a CD player and a CD (Vivaldi, which I still have). It seemed like a
technology that just couldn't lose.

So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph records?
Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if you've
always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever), why
did you/do you prefer it?

Mid 80's, bought a cd player to be cool, a hitachi, about $180 .
Took it along with my DJ friends to play some good old cd music. Had to
almost hold it to keep it from skipping while playing from floor vibration.

Greg

[Mxsmanic]

William Sommerwerck writes:

What one might more profitably ask is... When did you stop playing LPs? Last
year I sold almost all my audiophile LPs (which I thought I never would do).
I rarely listen to LPs, and it's mostly to hear SQ quadraphonic disks, 99%
of which have never been transferred to a digital multi-ch medium.

My listening to LPs fell way off once I had bought my first CDs. In many cases
it wasn't so much that the LPs sounded worse, it's just that there was too
much overhead to playing them, as opposed to popping a CD into a player.

I recall brushing each LP with some special brush I got before each play, and
squirting anti-static something-or-other at it before playing it. I could
never tell if the anti-static gun thing actually did any good, though (I
wasn't sure, but I figured it wouldn't hurt). I think there was even some sort
of liquid that I was supposed to put on the LP before brushing it to
perfection.

[Mxsmanic]

Edi Zubovic edi.zubovic[rem writes:

-- On a very good German site I've found a story on how Mr. Studer met
Mr. Morita at IFA or CeBIT in 1987. This is a Google translation (oh,
"Race Cars" = Boliden = Studer reel to reel machines, of course). A
legend or not, it shows how an era began to go towards its end:--

http://translate.google.hr/translate...e.html&act=url

So if I understand the translation, Morita gave Studer two of the first
digital recording devices, and (apparently) Studer did not have much
experience with digital?

[Edi Zubovic]

On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:40:47 +0100, Mxsmanic
wrote:

Edi Zubovic edi.zubovic[rem writes:

-- On a very good German site I've found a story on how Mr. Studer met
Mr. Morita at IFA or CeBIT in 1987. This is a Google translation (oh,
"Race Cars" = Boliden = Studer reel to reel machines, of course). A
legend or not, it shows how an era began to go towards its end:--

http://translate.google.hr/translate...e.html&act=url

So if I understand the translation, Morita gave Studer two of the first
digital recording devices, and (apparently) Studer did not have much
experience with digital?

-- I can't tell whether the situation mentioned in the article was a
fact or fiction. However, I think that Studer _did_ almost miss the
digital train. Why it is so I can't explain. What Studer did with
microprocessors has been more automation and synchronisation and
better handling of analog tapes. The only Studer DAT machine known to
me is D780. But then again, the article deals with DAT devices in
1978, but I think that Sony begun the digital recording era with the
Sony PCM-1600 , based on U-Matic. A friend of mine told me about his
first experiences with that machines in the 80's. DAT as RDAT cassette
format came later. I have a Sony SDT-9000 streamer which has a
firmware version allowing reproduction and recording of DAT. With a
specialized software (I use WaveDat, a Japanese software best suited
for the purpose, there are some other programs too) I am able to
transfer DAT tapes to the hard drive without the hassle with DAT
machines.

Edi Zubovic, Crikvenica, Croatia

[Scott Dorsey]

Mxsmanic wrote:

So if I understand the translation, Morita gave Studer two of the first
digital recording devices, and (apparently) Studer did not have much
experience with digital?

Nobody did. Outside of a few folks in Japan, the whole idea was pretty
alien in the industry.

The thing is, Studer got to see early DAT systems before anyone else did,
and that led them to being one of the first of the old line outfits to
get into the digital market.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[[email protected]]

On Jan 27, 6:58*am, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
"Mxsmanic" wrote in message

...

Soundhaspriority writes:

I switched in the late 80's. At that time, a lot of CDs sounded really
rotten, but I was attracted to the convenience and durability. *The early
90's were a time of rapid progress, rapidly diminishing the negative
aspects
of subjective sound quality, eventually exceeding that of LP's.
I recall hearing people say that early CDs sounded terrible, but at least
the
ones I bought sounded okay to me. What was wrong with the way early CDs
were
made? Or was it only an isolated problem?

For the most part the early CDs that sounded bad (which were IME in a tiny
minority) sounded bad due to production mistakes.

Many early CDs were bad. Arguably most.

I got rid of my records in the early 90s because of moving and
personal issues. The sad thing is that that was well after people
noticed there was something not right with CD. I have stayed with CD
but also have got back into vinyl because I enjoy many LPs not
available on CD or available only with lousy, squashed mastering, plus
LP is fun to tinker with. I now have a much better table (actually
two: a much modified Linn Sondek and a vintage Fairchild) than I did
before.

Neither vinyl nor CD sounds as good as tape....but there's no way I'm
paying "Tape Project" prices.

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

Mxsmanic wrote:
Les Cargill writes:

No - not true. The exponent is information, too - not just the
mantissa.

Yeah, but it's magnitude rather than precision.

It's both. If you seriously want to understand floating point, you have
to play with 'em.

Just like any other floating
point. When I hear 32-bit, I wonder about the size of the mantissa. If it's a
32-bit mantissa, great, but if it's eight bits of exponent and two sign bits,
plus 22 bits of mantissa, it's potentially worse than signed 24-bit.


Not really... so do this:

1) Write a 'C' program to read in a 24 bit file.
2) In the same program, convert every sample to a 32 bit float.
3) Write that file out.
3.1) Bring up the resulting file in a .wav editor to make sure it's
scaled properly.
4) Write a different program to read in the 32 bit float file.
5) Convert each sample to 24 bit.
6) Write that back out.
6.1 Bring the result up in a .wav editor...
7) Literally take the difference signal between the original 24 bit
file and the resulting 24 bit file. IOW, for each sample s in
each file, subtract one from the other and then look at
*that* result.

If you have CoolEdit*, you may not even have to write any 'C' code.
*others may do this as well, but I don't know that.

You may need to scale things. And really, you should dither.

It's been forever since I had done this, but I do not recall any loss
at all.

And what we're both not talking about is: as you do math with 32 bit
floats, you get *less error* in things like plugins. The 'error
spectrum' for 23 bit float is way better than for pure PCM samples.

For high accuracy in other types of computer processing, very large integers
are often used rather than floating point--although that's also a question of
performance and decimal precision, and the latter probably isn't important for
audio.


Bigints have their place, but I've never been in that place.... to
be brutally honest, everything I do is still 16 bit, so....

You'll get a pretty accurate picture of the analog noise of the
recording chain at 24 bit. This being said, with 32float,
you're more likely to survive level mistakes than in pure linear PCM
without damage.

I guess with the poor quality of my gear I'm splitting hairs, but I still
worry about accuracy and precision.


That's a good thing. But it's important to do experiments so you
know what to worry about. Very nearly all gear made in the last 10
years or so simply doesn't *have* any digital signal processing
problems.

--
Les Cargill

[Ralph Barone[_2_]]

"Arny Krueger" wrote:
"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...

So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph
records?

I decided to switch to digital audio over analog in 1981 or so, based on
hearing PCM-F1-based recordings that a certain unnamed and unnamable
engineer was bootlegging from events he worked.

I switched to CDs as my favored medium in March 1983. I bought a CDP 101
(one of the first few sold in Detroit). There were a whopping 16 different
CD titles at the local record store (now long departed). I bought them all.

In those days I did quite a bit of business travel, and found any number of
new titles in various places like Chicago (obvious) and Bismarck North
Dakota (not so obvious). It turns out that there were a goodly number of
wealthy farmers who were interested in the arts but were cut off from them
from the standpoint of broadcast audio and video by their location. Many
parts of the great plains had maybe 1 TV station that delivered a
substandard picture even with heroic antennas and receivers. So, they were
early adopters of various formats of pre-recorded audio and video.

BTW, AFAIK the most heroic personal TV reception system I've seen belonged
to a farmer in Ontario who lived north of 403 between Sarnia and London. He
had a 300+ foot tower built and put the best Yagi he could find on top of
it. This was a six-figure project, if memory serves.

Of course the yagi was on a rotator and the feed line (over 600 feet long)
had booster amps. It turned out to be only marginally successful. No
serious problems with signal strength, but he was never able to find a
commercial VHF antenna that had enough directivity to separate stations in
Detroit, Toledo, and Cleveland. There were stations on alternate channels
(Detroit/Toledo) or the same channels (Detroit/Cleveland) that interfered
with each other. Some problems with propagation.

I'll third the CDP-101. Bought it used in (I think) 1985. First CD was
"Turn of a friendly card", by Alan Parsons, which my girlfriend bought me
for Christmas. I had to wait a month or so to play it, as I had bought the
CDP-101 on layaway and hadn't finished paying for it. Still have the Sony
and it still works.

[Dave C]

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
PStamler wrote:
snip.

When did I buy my first CD player? Actually, I didn't; it was given to
me by my parents when they got a better one. It was about 1990, which
was also the time the improved Sony DAT machines came out. One reason
I waited: most of the music I was interested in didn't start coming
out on CD until the 90s. (I had a buddy say he wouldn't buy a CD
player until he could get a CD of Robert Jr. Lockwood. It was the
mid-90s before that happened.)

I bought a 14-bit Philips when the 16-bit ones came out, on the advice of
Audio Amateur.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Likewise - a CD350 in fact. Ran faultlessly and rather better then many of
that era for 15 years plus.

Dave


--- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to ---

[Hank]

In article ,
Mxsmanic wrote:
I am generally not a pioneer when it comes to new technology. I prefer to let
someone else spend the big bucks and pay to get the bugs out of new gadgets.
However, one important exception I made was audio CDs. When they first came
out, they seemed to have so many advantages over phonograph records--and so
few disadvantages--that I was literally one of the first people in the city to
buy a CD player and a CD (Vivaldi, which I still have). It seemed like a
technology that just couldn't lose.

So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph records?
Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if you've
always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever), why
did you/do you prefer it?

I bought a Yamaha CD player in 1986 along with a few new classical
recordings. The speakers I had clearly did not do justice to the
music, so I got a pair of Klipsch Cornwalls. I was quite pleased with
the results and never really looked back.

Hank

[Mike Rivers]

On 1/27/2012 1:14 AM, PStamler wrote:

One reason
I waited: most of the music I was interested in didn't start coming
out on CD until the 90s. (I had a buddy say he wouldn't buy a CD
player until he could get a CD of Robert Jr. Lockwood. It was the
mid-90s before that happened.)

That sounds like a good reason. I decided that when someone
gave me a CD that I wanted to listen to, that would be when
I would buy a CD player. I don't remember the year, but when
one of my best friends, a recording engineer from
California, came to visit me and brought me a copy of his
first project that had been made as a CD (it was an analog
recording of a jazz band), I figured that would be a good
time to get a player. So we went to the local appliance
store together and came home with a Magnavox, which has a
S/PDIF output and which still works - which is more than I
can say for the Yamaha that a friend gave me (it has a tray
problem that can be dealt with using a finger).

I rarely play music that I own any more, but I still get
something out on occasion. Mostly I listen to radio over the
Internet these days and I don't let the lack of audiophile
fidelity spoil my listening experience.

--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[Sean Conolly]

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
I am generally not a pioneer when it comes to new technology. I prefer to
let
someone else spend the big bucks and pay to get the bugs out of new
gadgets.
However, one important exception I made was audio CDs. When they first
came
out, they seemed to have so many advantages over phonograph records--and
so
few disadvantages--that I was literally one of the first people in the
city to
buy a CD player and a CD (Vivaldi, which I still have). It seemed like a
technology that just couldn't lose.

So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph
records?
Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if
you've
always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever),
why
did you/do you prefer it?

I was always interested in digital audio as a concept, and as soon as CD
players dropped below the $200 mark I bought one - 84 or 85. And despite the
flaws, which I couldn't hear, CD's sounded vastly better than the LP and
cassette tape systems *in that price range*. For me it was a trade of flaws
which were constant distractions for flaws that weren't.

If I had been used to listening to a high end system with a good
reel-to-reel, I might not have been so impressed.

Sean

[ChrisCoaster]

On Jan 26, 4:53*pm, Mxsmanic wrote:


So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph records?
Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if you've
always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever), why
did you/do you prefer it?
___
1988. Didnt really 'switch' to CD, that was just the year I got a
player and started buying discs for it.

-CC

[geoff]

Mxsmanic wrote:
Soundhaspriority writes:


Does this apply at both ends? Will old CDs sound better on newer
equipment, or was the damage done when they were made, permanently
leaving them with poorer sound?

It surprises me how many CDs of 70s and 80s pop/rock music have essentially
NO LOW BASS to speak of.

Was there none recorded or were these taken from a dodgey master ?

Can't think of a title off the top of my head, but will try.

And then there are ones likeOscar Petersen's 1965 'We Get Requests' which
has wonderful bass (such asw You Look Good To Me), but tinny piano ....

geoff

[William Sommerwerck]

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...

I've personally gone back and analyzed and carefully listened to some of
the most damned digital recordings (e.g. Ry Cooder's Bop Till Your Drop),
recorders (PCM-F1) and players ( CDP-101) and the bottom line is that
they both represented dramatic advances in terms of sonic accuracy as
compared to where analog was before, during and even after them.

That's true, but it's not the same thing as being perfect. I won't disagree
that digital represented a significant improvement over analog, but the idea
that early digital equipment was therefore necessarily perfect is an invalid
conclusion. In fact, it's simple intellectual foolishness.

I made simultaneous recordings with the Nakamich version of the PCM-F1 and
the dbx 700. The recordings did not sound the same (the Sony was harder and
brighter-sounding), so they could not have both been perfect.

[Arny Krueger[_4_]]

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
news
Soundhaspriority writes:

The A/D converters weren't good enough, noise shaping wasn't in wide use,
and the DAW chains weren't good enough.

Audiophile myth.

Prior to the introduction of the CD we did DBTs of an Ampex digital delay
that was designed to assist with vinyl cutting. No matter how we examined it
with high resolution playback systems, and no matter how we stressed it with
live feeds and playback of high speed wide track analog masters, it was
simply audibly perfect.

I've personally gone back and analyzed and carefully listened to some of the
most damned digital recordings (e.g. Ry Cooder's Bop Till Your Drop),
recorders (PCM-F1) and players ( CDP-101) and the bottom line is that they
both represented dramatic advances in terms of sonic accuracy as compared to
where analog was before, during and even after them. The noise shaping
comment is a red herring because noise shaping isn't needed for sonic
transparency with 16 bits: 1 LSB unshaped TPDF dither suffices. The
evidence that can be heard in the many fine recordings of the era is the
There was widespread use of entirely adequate production techiques . OK,
there were screw ups but what technology is immune to screw ups?

On a superficial level, they didn't have enough resolution,

False claim.

but there were many internal problems, related to
incomplete engineering knowledge.

The many fine digital recordings from the early 80s onward belie that. If
the technology had inherent or even common implementation flaws, then there
would not be so many fine-sounding recordings from that era.

Modern A/D converters are much more refined, using combinations of
techniques to provide excellent high and low
level linearity.

In fact, the only signfiicant thing that has happened since the late 1970s
is that sonically transparent digital converters have gotten smaller and
cheaper by several orders of magnitude. There were sonically perfect
converters in the late 1970s, but they were physically large, contained
inherently expensive parts, required careful care and feeding, weren't the
rule, and weren't sold on every street corner for $40 or less in finished
products. Today, all those problems have been solved, and have been solved
for at least 5 years.

The first good A/D converters had a lot of custom chips and
high parts counts, so they were extremely expensive, and available only
to
the well-heeled. So the best recordings of the 80's were still analog,
mixed
to two channels before conversion.

Not the rule the author pretends it is because many of the finest classical
and some pop and jazz recordings of that era were being made using
minimal-microphone techniques. IOW there was no analog mixer, just two mics,
two mic preamps, and a digital recorder. This trend had evolved well before
digital, and as far as classical recording was concerned, it was the most
generally accepted way to do things. Many of the first generation of
practical digital recorders that were in use supported 4 channels which is
pretty much all that existed in the way of analog recorders just 15-20
years earlier.

The Soundstream Digital recorder that was used for Telarc's earliest digital
recordings (from 1978 onward) had 4 channels and used a 50 KHz sample rate.
4 channels allows the use of one channel per mic for most generally accepted
high quality orchestral recording techniques to this day.

By 1987, there were some good digital
recordings, and these were distinguished by advertising and labeling.

There were good all-digital recordings from the onset. Does anybody remember
Telarc?

Does this apply at both ends? Will old CDs sound better on newer
equipment, or
was the damage done when they were made, permanently leaving them with
poorer
sound?

IME the CDs that sounded great in 1983 through 1985 still sound great.

On the DAW end, mixing was originally done with 16 bits, then 24, and
finally, floating point. Before floating point, mixing introduced
additional
quantization error.

False. It is trivial to do good digital mixing with fixed point arithmetic.
Furthermore, when as few as 16 bits are used, the remaining analog
components of the production chain (ncluding irreducable sources such as
microphones and rooms) have more than enough noise for self-dithering unless
there is gain riding and/or fade-outs.

[Anahata]

On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:03:48 -0500, Arny Krueger wrote:

Soundhaspriority writes:

The A/D converters weren't good enough, noise shaping wasn't in wide
use, and the DAW chains weren't good enough.

Audiophile myth.

There were sonically
perfect converters in the late 1970s, but they were physically large,
contained inherently expensive parts, required careful care and feeding,
weren't the rule, and weren't sold on every street corner for $40 or
less in finished products.

I don't doubt that there were perfect converters in the late 1970's, when
they were more of a research item, designed by people who knew what they
were doing, and cost didn't matter much.

However it also seems pretty clear that the subsequent rush to go digital
resulted in a lot of cheap and poor products by designers who didn't
understand digital conversion and processing properly, or were simply
under pressure to cut corners.

Today, all those problems have been solved,
and have been solved for at least 5 years.

Sure; the dark ages were somewhere in 80s and 90s.

--
Anahata
--/-- http://www.treewind.co.uk
+44 (0)1638 720444

[Scott Dorsey]

In article ,
geoff wrote:
Mxsmanic wrote:
Soundhaspriority writes:

Does this apply at both ends? Will old CDs sound better on newer
equipment, or was the damage done when they were made, permanently
leaving them with poorer sound?

It surprises me how many CDs of 70s and 80s pop/rock music have essentially
NO LOW BASS to speak of.

Was there none recorded or were these taken from a dodgey master ?

In many cases there was none recorded. Low end extension makes it hard to
cut LPs, so often tracking and even arrangement was done with the basic
intention of not having a huge amount of low end.

Some of this, though, was the result of the push in the 1970s to build
rooms that were severely damped at high frequencies without any low end
control. Everybody wanted isolation and I don't think people really
understood what was happening to the bottom end at the time.

And of course some of it was cocaine.

On the other hand we get "Itchykoo Park" with this weird cardboard-sounding
kick drum that was a great test for tonearm setup... cheap turntables just
couldn't track it without skipping because it was all sub-bass. The CD reissue
is totally different sounding on the bottom.

Can't think of a title off the top of my head, but will try.

Well, here's a counterexample: Leon Russell Live, where the LP had no low
end and the CD had far more extension.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Arny Krueger[_4_]]

"geoff" wrote in message
...
Mxsmanic wrote:
Soundhaspriority writes:


Does this apply at both ends? Will old CDs sound better on newer
equipment, or was the damage done when they were made, permanently
leaving them with poorer sound?

It surprises me how many CDs of 70s and 80s pop/rock music have
essentially NO LOW BASS to speak of.

When you are producing music for cutting on LPs, particularly LPs you know
are going to be played on cheap players, any kind of serious bass is your
enemy.

In some recording studios, the bass disappeared in the console channels. I
happen to personally know 2 of the 3 top tech people at Motown when they
were in Detroit. They tell me that their consoles had high pass filters
right in the input stages. If memory serves, the filters were 4th order with
a corner frequency of 80 Hz.

This feeds back into things like micing because if you can't hear it on the
monitors, there's no need to worry about how it is played or miced.

Was there none recorded or were these taken from a dodgey master ?

Often, none recorded.

Can't think of a title off the top of my head, but will try.

Check the Motown catalog from before they moved to LA.

And then there are ones likeOscar Petersen's 1965 'We Get Requests' which
has wonderful bass (such asw You Look Good To Me), but tinny piano ....

Many possible causes, but in fact the piano might have been tinny.

[Scott Dorsey]

In article ,
Arny Krueger wrote:

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
news
Soundhaspriority writes:

The A/D converters weren't good enough, noise shaping wasn't in wide use,
and the DAW chains weren't good enough.

Audiophile myth.

Prior to the introduction of the CD we did DBTs of an Ampex digital delay
that was designed to assist with vinyl cutting. No matter how we examined it
with high resolution playback systems, and no matter how we stressed it with
live feeds and playback of high speed wide track analog masters, it was
simply audibly perfect.

If you mean the Ampex ADD-1, it did some interesting trickery. 14-bit
converters running really fast to avoid having sharp slope anti-aliasing
filters, and aggressive pre-emphasis and de-emphasis to deal with the
distortion issues. There must have been a million inductors in those
filters.

I am pretty surprised it passed a good DBT.... it was very clean for its
day, but it sure wasn't clean by modern standards. Studer made a similar
unit at the time.

For a really interesting experience, try and run signal through something
like this with the peak level at -50 dBFS or so. You very quickly get a
sense of what units were well-designed and what ones were not.

I've personally gone back and analyzed and carefully listened to some of the
most damned digital recordings (e.g. Ry Cooder's Bop Till Your Drop),
recorders (PCM-F1) and players ( CDP-101) and the bottom line is that they
both represented dramatic advances in terms of sonic accuracy as compared to
where analog was before, during and even after them. The noise shaping
comment is a red herring because noise shaping isn't needed for sonic
transparency with 16 bits: 1 LSB unshaped TPDF dither suffices. The
evidence that can be heard in the many fine recordings of the era is the
There was widespread use of entirely adequate production techiques . OK,
there were screw ups but what technology is immune to screw ups?

You can point the blame at the technology or you can point the blame at the
equipment or you can point the blame at the users and sometimes it can be
hard to really know what is responsible. But so many of those recordings
just sounded so bad....

In fact, the only signfiicant thing that has happened since the late 1970s
is that sonically transparent digital converters have gotten smaller and
cheaper by several orders of magnitude. There were sonically perfect
converters in the late 1970s, but they were physically large, contained
inherently expensive parts, required careful care and feeding, weren't the
rule, and weren't sold on every street corner for $40 or less in finished
products. Today, all those problems have been solved, and have been solved
for at least 5 years.

Not really. An enormous amount of research has gone into making converters
with good linearity, most of it in the 1990s when people started noticing how
bad the early digital stuff was.

A couple things happened: first of all, we started getting oversampling
converters, then we started getting sigma-delta converters to deal with the
filtering issues.

At the same time there was a big push to make everything monolithic for low
cost, and that has some real advantages for ladder converters because you can
keep the whole ladder at the same temperature.

Things have changed a _lot_ in converter design since the seventies, beginning
with having actual stability and not having to constantly tweak offset values
all the time. That's something else sigma-delta systems finally eliminated
completely.

But even more importantly, it wasn't until the 1990s that people actually
realized what attributes were needed to make a good-sounding converter. A
lot of crazy stuff happened early on.. and some of the crazy stuff turned out
to be a good idea (such as the 14-bit oversampling systems turning out to
sound better than 16-bit systems, which surprised everywone), and some of
the crazy stuff turned out to be really bad (such as Wadia's converters
without reconstruction filters).

On the DAW end, mixing was originally done with 16 bits, then 24, and
finally, floating point. Before floating point, mixing introduced
additional
quantization error.

False. It is trivial to do good digital mixing with fixed point arithmetic.

Yes, but Sony didn't.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."