[Sonnova]

On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:20:10 -0800, wrote
(in article ):

On Nov 23, 1:03 pm, Sonnova wrote:
But let me put to an alternative question. What would
you say if those same master tapes that yield a perfect
CD copy were to yield an LP that sounded better (as in
more real) than the master tape?

If whatever copy of the "x" (in this case "master tape") does
NOT sound identical to "x" then, by definition, it is an imperfect
copy of "x". This is not a value judgement, it is an objective
statement. It does not say whether the copy is better or worse
simply by avoiding altogether definitions of "better" or "worse."
Indeed, event the term "imperfect" is, well, less than perfect.
It is to identify that the copy is NOT a perfect copy, i.e.,
information was lost (adding new information is, in
an information theory sense, equivalent to losing
information: this new information must be spurious as
it was not present in the original "x").

Now, if you LIKE the copy of "x" more than "x", you have
DEFINED "better" FOR YOU. And no one is arguing with
YOUR definition of "better" as it applies TO YOU.

But without a definition of "better" that EVERYONE agrees
on, further discussion of which is "better" is futile.

When people such as myself start to get bothered is
'when someone else declares THEIR definition of
"better" as absolute and inviolable "better" for everyone
else.

I'm more reasonably sure that if you heard the comparison for yourself, that
you would agree with me. Everybody that I have played it for has agreed that
this Classic Records release of "The Firebird" is goose-pimple real sounding.

[Greg Wormald]

In article ,
vlad wrote:

On Nov 23, 10:06 am, Greg Wormald wrote:

. . .

And lastly, if sound quality was most important to the masses, we're
going to have a hard time explaining the overwhelming migration to 128
bit MP3's and the huge popularity of Itunes-sold music. Of course, if
your ears and mind can't tell the difference between LP or CD and 128
bit MP3, you are in the wrong newsgroup.

Greg

Is not it a little bit elitist: if you don't hear the difference, you
don't qualify for this group?

I do hear a difference in LP and CD, I do not hear difference between
CD and MP3-320mbps. And I prefer CD or MP3 on my iPod to LP's. Does it
disqualify me?

Hi Vlad,

Did you miss the "128 bit" part in my rave?
I agree that 320 bit on limited range music (most pop and rock and much
jazz--which are my preferences) is hard to pick.

And yes, my statement is elitist--and so is the newsgroup! It's not
called rec.audio.HIGH-END so we can discuss the lowest common
denominator. If anyone wants to discuss Ipod quality reproduction then
an Ipod group would be appropriate.

*snip*
I don't know about you but I consider it as a great progress, I listen
much more music now then before. *snip*
vlad

Again, the newsgroup is about **high-end** not large quantity. For the
record I use my Ipod much more than any other source. I listen to it for
at least 3 hours every day in the car, but I'm not going to kid myself
by thinking of that as high-end listening, any more than listening while
walking, etc is high-end listening.

Greg

[vlad]

On Nov 24, 8:29 pm, Sonnova wrote:
On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:09:11 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):



"Sonnova" wrote in message

. . .

So you'er saying that you can't hear it? Hmmmm. Very interesting.


Your writings below show your poor understanding of how computer
algorithms work.

Under certain circumstances, I certainly do believe in masking, but an
algorithm by itself can't apply a lossy compression scheme to music in a
foolproof manner. Here's an analogy - don't take it too literally, but it is
illustrative. Do you watch digital TV? You know, DVDs, digital cable or
satellite? If so, then I'm sure that when watching a TV program that you have
noticed the picture momentarily break-up into a screen full of little boxes
with some scenes but not with others. I'm sure that you have also noticed
that this almost NEVER happens on purchased DVDs of hollywood movies. Reason?
The TV station or satellite provider uses an automatic compressor to encode
the video into mpeg2 or mpeg4-H.264. This compressor is utilizing an
algorithm to do the compression.

I would guess that when you are doing compression in real time
algorithm simply don't have enough time to do a good job.

The algorithm can apply very limited
intelligence to the compression process, following as it does, a set of
rules.

The 'intelligence' (actially it is complexity) of the algorithm is
limited only by amount of computing power and amount of time allowed
for compression. When you are doing it in real time, like in streaming
video, you are sverely limited in time.

However if you are doing compression off-line you don't have this
limitation. Also the power of modern CPU's in desk top computers is
sufficient for very sofisticated algorithms.

Certain types of scene changes, changes in lighting level, speed of
motion in the scene, etc, catch the algorithm out and compression artifacts
in the form of pixillation occur. The reason why you don't see this in DVD
releases of, for instance, Hollywood feature films, is that they don't use an
algorithm - at least not by it itself.

Imagine the following algorithm: the program itself immediately
after compresiing of audio/video segment makes decompressionand
compares result wqith original signal. Gross distortions (pixelation,
clipping, etc.) will be discovered immediatley. Then if these
distortions are unacceptable, the program changes level of compression
(or other parameters) and then repeats this step (compression/
decompession) again until level of distortion will be inaudible or
unnoticable. This way without human intervention you can have variable
level of compression keeping levels of distortion at a minimum. Take
any text book on algorithm design and read it. You will be surprised.

They have a human being watching the
film frame-by-frame as it's being transferred to adjust the amount of
compression being applied on a scene-by-scene basis. At a point where the
picture would pixillate using an algorithm, the human compression engineer
will cut-back on the amount of compression until the pixillation disappears.
In some scenes like the lightbulbs popping and flashing when they hit the
cold Atlantic water that was quickly filling the ship in "Titanic". They had
to transfer those scenes to DVD with NO compression at all during the frames
where the screen goes completely white during light-bulb "explosions" to keep
them from pixillating.

What you described is the process of overcoming defficiencies of a
dead-brain algorithms by applying enormous amount of human labor.
There are no reasons to use brain-dead algorithms.

If you watch the movie on HBO, you'll see that the
algorithm can't handle those scenes and the picture breaks up for several
frames every time a lightbulb pops. That's what's wrong with algorithms. They
have very limited range over which they can make compression "decisions".

Again, not with algorithms in general but if you are severely
limited in time (like in real-time processing) and in hardware (like
in cheap cable boxes) you have to make compomises.


Now, I'm very sure that given complete control over the MP3 encoding process,
someone who is very familiar with the failings of the compression algorithm
and very familiar with the music could make a compressed MP3 of, say, Ravel's
"Daphne et Chloe" ballet in such a way that NOBODY could tell that it was
compressed using a lossy compression scheme even when ABXed with the original
source material. Unfortunately, MP3s are all compressed using an algorithm
and artifacts do show up and they show up in some kinds of music more than
they show up in others.


Good MP3 codec at 320kbps gives results that cannot be
distinguished from original non-compressed signal in direct listening.
So, your statement about "MP3s are all" is simply wrong.

vlad

[Arny Krueger]

"Sonnova" wrote in message

On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:09:11 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article
):

"Sonnova" wrote in message

On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:45:33 -0800, Steven Sullivan
wrote (in article ):

Sonnova wrote:

Depends on the music. I can always tell an MP3 on
classical,

Color me skeptical. 'Classical' isn't necessarily
harder to encode than nonclassical music.

Why don't I color you "not thinking about it enough"
instead? No, classical isn't necessarily harder to
encode than pop. But because of the much larger dynamic
range of classical music (ppp to fff) it's easier to
hear the artifacts than with pop and rock which tends
to run the gamut from ff to fff!

Later on you admit that you don't ever listen to pop and rock. Therefore
these comments must be based on hearsay, not personal experience. Figures,
because anybody who listens to pop and rock knows that it can easily have
dynamics that are at least as great as those in clasical music.

While this isn't
always the case with pop, it is with the vast majority
of it. The limited dynamic range (read that LOUD) that
most pop music has masks most of the audible artifacts.

Doesn't wash. Dynamic range is often the enemy of the
audibility of artifacts.

I'm sorry. You're wrong. It's during soft passages and
during changes from loud to soft (and vise-versa) where
compression artifacts are most likely to be heard.

Pardon me for being factual.

Also, the idea that pop music necessarily has limited
dynamic range is yet another old high end audiophile's
tale.

Frankly I don't care. I don't listen to pop and rock
ever. I just know that loud rock masks the effects of
compression almost completely.

So your comment is based on ignorance. I can live with that! ;-)

Classical music has some built-in
limitations on dynamic range. While there might be some
creschendos and a few sonic spectaculars, most of it is
pretty tame from a dynamic range standpoint.

Pure bull. There are thousands of works in the standard
repertoire that go from triple pianissimo to triple
fortissimo (or vice-versa) rather instantaneously. and
many more cases of the music going from a single
instrument playing softly one moment, to the entire
orchestra in crescendo the next.

Pianoissimo and triple fortissimo are music notation, not precise
measurements of actual sound levels. In fact, they are just suggestions, not
technical specifications. They are most definately measurements of actual
performance.

Because orchestral music has to be recorded in large
rooms with
something like 100 people in attendance, and distant
micing is the style,

It's not everybody's recording style, but that's not what
I'm talking about anyway. Unless the original recording
was compressed in dynamic range when it was captured, the
difference in dynamic contrasts between a single flute
playing softly and the entire 80-100 piece orchestra
playing an fff crescendo can be as much as 40dB, that's
100:1 in terms of voltage - more than enough to make
these artifacts apparent.

40 dB is a very meager amount of dynamic range. Both popular music and
classical music can have dynamic range on the order of 55-70 dB, with a few
exceptional popular pieces reaching into the lower-mid 70s.

the noise floor is higher than what can be achieved in a
well-isolated studio with a few closely-miced musicians.

And that's relevant, how?

That's how most popular music is recorded. Of course, since you don't listen
to it ever, how would you know?

We're discussing the change in
signal level between the loudest point in a piece of
music and the softest, not where the noise floor is
located.

I'm of the opinon that sounds that are the consequence of playing music,
such as reverb tails, are part of the musical performance and hopefully the
recording.

If I could ensure you wouldn't use any wav analysis
tricks to identify the mp3 from source, I'd be happy to
test your hearing on this.

Since this poster uses a handle, and not a legal name,
he would probably not to want to submit to any proctored
tests.

And since we likely live thousands of miles apart, how
would one establish such a test? You're talking nonsense.

I have authorized representatives in many different parts of the world.

However you may not be part of the world, since you are posting from an
unassigned URL! ;-)

http://www.whois.net/dnr/index.php?d...torium&tld=com

It's not that hard. Believe me, when the dynamic range
changes suddenly there is an accompanying, uncorrolated
artifact that is as unmistakable as it is unpleasant
that you cannot miss once you've heard it.

I've heard that story many times, too. It's another
thing we hear right before the random guessing starts!
;-)

So you'er saying that you can't hear it? Hmmmm. Very
interesting.

I never said any such thing.

You don't actually think that a lossy compression
algorithm could throw portions of the waveform away
without it being noticeable at least occasionally, do
you?

Sure why not? Or, don't you believe in masking?

Under certain circumstances, I certainly do believe in
masking, but an algorithm by itself can't apply a lossy
compression scheme to music in a foolproof manner.

All it has to do is apply it well enough that the ear is fooled.

Here's
an analogy - don't take it too literally, but it is
illustrative. Do you watch digital TV? You know, DVDs,
digital cable or satellite? If so, then I'm sure that
when watching a TV program that you have noticed the
picture momentarily break-up into a screen full of little
boxes with some scenes but not with others. I'm sure that
you have also noticed that this almost NEVER happens on
purchased DVDs of hollywood movies. Reason? The TV
station or satellite provider uses an automatic
compressor to encode the video into mpeg2 or mpeg4-H.264.

False. The reason why the momentary breakup occurs is an interruption of the
digital data stream. The underlying compression scheme is not that bad,
given that the necessary data rate is maintained and data is not lost.

This compressor is utilizing an algorithm to do the
compression. The algorithm can apply very limited
intelligence to the compression process, following as it
does, a set of rules. Certain types of scene changes,
changes in lighting level, speed of motion in the scene,
etc, catch the algorithm out and compression artifacts in
the form of pixillation occur.

Wrong again. Modern video compression schemes do have visible artifacts, but
none are that gross. On the worst day if its life, a digital video
compression scheme can simply slow the frame rate down.

The reason why you don't
see this in DVD releases of, for instance, Hollywood
feature films, is that they don't use an algorithm - at
least not by it itself.

It is true that humans are used to "help" the algorithms along, but I've got
plenty of experience with digitizing video, and I know what the actual
artifacts look like. Artifacts as obvious as pixelation are the result of
lost data during transmission, not failure to capture the speed of motion of
the screen. Newer compression techniques don't pixelate, even when data is
lost.

They have a human being watching
the film frame-by-frame as it's being transferred to
adjust the amount of compression being applied on a
scene-by-scene basis. At a point where the picture would
pixillate using an algorithm, the human compression
engineer will cut-back on the amount of compression until
the pixillation disappears. In some scenes like the
lightbulbs popping and flashing when they hit the cold
Atlantic water that was quickly filling the ship in
"Titanic". They had to transfer those scenes to DVD with
NO compression at all during the frames where the screen
goes completely white during light-bulb "explosions" to
keep them from pixillating. If you watch the movie on
HBO, you'll see that the algorithm can't handle those
scenes and the picture breaks up for several frames every
time a lightbulb pops. That's what's wrong with
algorithms. They have very limited range over which they
can make compression "decisions".

I don't happen to watch HBO, but I do watch a lot of compressed video. If
HBO has artifacts this gross either the compression ratio is too high, or
the algorithms being used are outdated, or the cause of the visible errors
is other than what you say.

I shoot, transcribe and edit video. I can make whatever kind of video I
like. I can compress it using any of dozens of algorithms, and with any
degree of compression that is available. I know what the artifacts look like
and I know how to keep them from being a problem.

Now, I'm very sure that given complete control over the
MP3 encoding process, someone who is very familiar with
the failings of the compression algorithm and very
familiar with the music could make a compressed MP3 of,
say, Ravel's "Daphne et Chloe" ballet in such a way that
NOBODY could tell that it was compressed using a lossy
compression scheme even when ABXed with the original
source material.

It is almost an axiom of audio discussions that whenever someone starts
equating audio to video, they have lost the audio discussion. There are
similarities, but there are far more differences.

I've been working with compressed audio for over a decade. I've done my
homework. I

Unfortunately, MP3s are all compressed
using an algorithm and artifacts do show up and they show
up in some kinds of music more than they show up in
others.

As a rule, classical music is easy to compress.

[Harry Lavo]

"vlad" wrote in message
...
On Nov 23, 10:06 am, Greg Wormald wrote:

. . .

And lastly, if sound quality was most important to the masses, we're
going to have a hard time explaining the overwhelming migration to 128
bit MP3's and the huge popularity of Itunes-sold music. Of course, if
your ears and mind can't tell the difference between LP or CD and 128
bit MP3, you are in the wrong newsgroup.

Greg

Is not it a little bit elitist: if you don't hear the difference, you
don't qualify for this group?

I do hear a difference in LP and CD, I do not hear difference between
CD and MP3-320mbps. And I prefer CD or MP3 on my iPod to LP's. Does it
disqualify me?

Before invention of portable MP3 players the only option to listen to
music was to spend time washing your LP and then spend couple hours
sitting and doing nothing but listening to music. For many busy people
who could not afford this luxury it meant that they did not listen
music at all.

Now with invention of portable digital players you can have all you
music collection in a cigarette pack ( I have 32GB of music in my
iPod, neatly classified and I am adding every day). Not only you can
listen to music wherever and whenever you want, but the easy access
makes all the difference in a world. Before that if I wanted to listen
some obscure recording of Samuel Barber, I would have to spend time
searching for it on my CD shelves, then putting it into CD player,
after all not to forget to put it back, etc. etc. All this hassle made
it almost impossible. Now 2 clicks on iPod bring me to Samuel Barber
and the next click brings me to a piece that I want. After listening
no hassle either, just turn iPod off.

I don't know about you but I consider it as a great progress, I listen
much more music now then before. In a way of putting my music in my
iPod I made few discoveries in my collection, like there were two
recordings of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" that I did not even
know that I have. Now they all neatly organized in my iPod with easy
access. Is not it a progress?

My $0.02

It may be progress in convenience, but an iPod particularly (when listened
through earbuds, or when playing lower bitrate recordings) is simply not
high-fidelity. So in the strictest sense, no, you do not belong in this
group if the best possible ( highest fidelity) reproduction of music is
no longer your goal.

[Jenn]

On Nov 24, 8:22 pm, vlad wrote:

Before invention of portable MP3 players the only option to listen to
music was to spend time washing your LP and then spend couple hours
sitting and doing nothing but listening to music.

Really? You seem to have skipped some steps: Cassettes and CDs, for
example.

For many busy people
who could not afford this luxury it meant that they did not listen
music at all.

Now with invention of portable digital players you can have all you
music collection in a cigarette pack ( I have 32GB of music in my
iPod, neatly classified and I am adding every day). Not only you can
listen to music wherever and whenever you want, but the easy access
makes all the difference in a world.

I agree that this is a great attraction for iPod type players. I
certainly do this myself. On a five hour drive yesterday, I listeded
to a VERY wide variety of music; some for study and some for simple
pleasure. I would have NEVER hauled those CDs in my car. Plus, there
is the wonderful "spur of the moment" listening possible with the
iPod.

Before that if I wanted to listen
some obscure recording of Samuel Barber,

I'm sure you mean "of music of Samuel Barber" as Barber didn't make
recordings himself, AFAIK ;-)

I would have to spend time
searching for it on my CD shelves, then putting it into CD player,
after all not to forget to put it back, etc. etc. All this hassle made
it almost impossible.

A simple filing system would make it far from "almost impossible", of
course.

Now 2 clicks on iPod bring me to Samuel Barber
and the next click brings me to a piece that I want. After listening
no hassle either, just turn iPod off.

I don't know about you but I consider it as a great progress, I listen
much more music now then before. In a way of putting my music in my
iPod I made few discoveries in my collection, like there were two
recordings of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" that I did not even
know that I have.

Aren't those discoveries great fun!

Now they all neatly organized in my iPod with easy
access. Is not it a progress?

My $0.02

vlad

Yes, I certainly believe that it's a kind of progress. Anything that
enables and encourages one to listen to more music is progress in my
book.

Enjoy!

[Keith Hughes]

Sonnova wrote:
On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:07:44 -0800, Keith Hughes wrote
(in article ):


Sorry, I must've come in too late in the thread to see that statement.
That's not something that happens here (IME) - i.e. an LP 'enthusiast'
recording an LP to CD for comparison. Most find reasons why this just
cannot be a valid test. Clearly you've found that it is. And also that
the 'magic' is not in the playback, but further upstream.

Not necessarily. When transferring these LP sides to CD I still used my
turntable, my cartridge, and my phono preamp. But the point here is that
whatever makes this LP sound so damn good is transferrable to another medium
(digital) with the "magic" intact. . I.E. whatever it is, it's on the
records!

Right, so the LP playback has it, and it can be recorded to, and played
back on, CD. Therefore, your 'magic' is not an artifact of the
storage/playback medium (i.e. CD/LP). Unless your claim is that the
methods used to physically create the LP adds this 'magic' (a claim that
would require that an electromechanical process - uncorrelated to the
musical performance - somehow creates realism that isn't in the master
recording), then it must be upstream in the record/mix/master process.

Hence the futility of comparing different mixes on different formats and
trying to attribute sonic differences to the format.

Keith Hughes

[Norman M. Schwartz]

A while back when digital "anything" first appeared in the marketplace (and
my hearing was better) I remember comparing the sound from many Sony, Delos,
and Telarc digital LPs vs.their CD counterparts. My impression was that the
only difference lied in accumulated vinyl surface noice, dust and dust balls
on my stylus, etc.. Listening was done via Stax headphones and various model
Maggie Tympani loudspeakers. The same holds true today, the only difference
being that both my vinyl and hearing show the typical signs of wear. (I
assume my CDs remained the same.)
Norman

[Steven Sullivan]

Sonnova wrote:
On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:05:31 -0800, Steven Sullivan wrote
(in article ) :

willbill wrote:
Steven Sullivan wrote:

Doug McDonald wrote:

The SACD has great merit because it is multichannel.

It isn't necessarily so . And it's not the only
multichannel-capable format.

for audio only, besides SACD and DVD-A, what else
is there for decent multichannel sound?

(not that DVD-A is decent!)

DTS, Dolby Digital, both in various flavors.

But these are lossy compression schemes. SACD is not compressed.

Actually, it is, losslessly. But so what?

And yes, DVD-A is more than decent.

It can be, yes, but not with uncompressed 5.1 channel sound.

Why on earth not?

OTOH, I've heard
some DVD-A at 24-bit/192KHz that I thought was astoundingly good.

It's unlikely that 192kHz made any difference whatsoever.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason

[Steven Sullivan]

Sonnova wrote:
On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:09:11 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Sonnova" wrote in message

On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:45:33 -0800, Steven Sullivan wrote
(in article ):

Sonnova wrote:

Depends on the music. I can always tell an MP3 on
classical,

Color me skeptical. 'Classical' isn't necessarily harder
to encode than nonclassical music.

Why don't I color you "not thinking about it enough"
instead? No, classical isn't necessarily harder to encode
than pop. But because of the much larger dynamic range of
classical music (ppp to fff) it's easier to hear the
artifacts than with pop and rock which tends to run the
gamut from ff to fff! While this isn't always the case
with pop, it is with the vast majority of it. The limited
dynamic range (read that LOUD) that most pop music has
masks most of the audible artifacts.

Doesn't wash. Dynamic range is often the enemy of the audibility of
artifacts.

I'm sorry. You're wrong. It's during soft passages and during changes from
loud to soft (and vise-versa) where compression artifacts are most likely to
be heard.

Also, the idea that pop music necessarily has limited dynamic range is yet
another old high end audiophile's tale.

Frankly I don't care. I don't listen to pop and rock ever. I just know that
loud rock masks the effects of compression almost completely.

Well, not all rock is 'loud', and even 'loud' rock isn't necessarily loud
*all the time*. Frankly if you don't listed to pop and rock 'ever' , you aren't
in any position to proclaim on its sonic characteristics.

Classical music has some built-in
limitations on dynamic range. While there might be some creschendos and a
few sonic spectaculars, most of it is pretty tame from a dynamic range
standpoint.

Pure bull. There are thousands of works in the standard repertoire that go
from triple pianissimo to triple fortissimo (or vice-versa) rather
instantaneously. and many more cases of the music going from a single
instrument playing softly one moment, to the entire orchestra in crescendo
the next.

And there is rock that does the same. But either way, Arny used the word
'most'. Most classical music does not consist of a series of pppp ffff
transitions, right?

You don't actually think that a lossy compression
algorithm could throw portions of the waveform away
without it being noticeable at least occasionally, do you?

Sure why not? Or, don't you believe in masking?

Under certain circumstances, I certainly do believe in masking, but an
algorithm by itself can't apply a lossy compression scheme to music in a
foolproof manner.

It doesn't have to be foolproof (transparent in all instances) to fool
you in a particular instance.

And for someone to say they 'believe in' masking or not, is peculiar.
MAsking is a real psychoacoustic phenomenon, whether you 'believe in'
it or not.

Now, I'm very sure that given complete control over the MP3 encoding process,
someone who is very familiar with the failings of the compression algorithm
and very familiar with the music could make a compressed MP3 of, say, Ravel's
"Daphne et Chloe" ballet in such a way that NOBODY could tell that it was
compressed using a lossy compression scheme even when ABXed with the original
source material. Unfortunately, MP3s are all compressed using an algorithm
and artifacts do show up and they show up in some kinds of music more than
they show up in others.


I don't think you really know what you're talking about.

There are VARIOUS mp3 algorithms (codecs) and settings that ANY user can
employ. THere are recommended ones that are derived from extensive
ABX testing against difficult sources (which do NOT tend to be
symphonic music, that is NOT inherently more difficult to encode
than other genres). It's quite likely that you and most other
listeners would NOT be able to tell such wel-made mp3s from source.
And that includes a source like 'Daphnis and Chloe'

WHy don't you go hang out on www.hydrogenaudio.org
for a week, ask a few pertinent question of the MP3 codec *developers*
and *testers* that frequent the place -- the people who actually
'know' mp3 inside and out -- and thus educate yourself?

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason

[vlad]

On Nov 25, 8:32 am, Sonnova wrote:
On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:22:43 -0800, vlad wrote
(in article ):

On Nov 23, 10:06 am, Greg Wormald wrote:

. . .

And lastly, if sound quality was most important to the masses, we're
going to have a hard time explaining the overwhelming migration to 128
bit MP3's and the huge popularity of Itunes-sold music. Of course, if
your ears and mind can't tell the difference between LP or CD and 128
bit MP3, you are in the wrong newsgroup.

Greg

Is not it a little bit elitist: if you don't hear the difference, you
don't qualify for this group?

Oh, That's right. Almost forgot. Anything that even suggests a hint of
elitism is politically incorrect. Everybody's opinion, even if it's totally
ignorant, has worth. God, what nonsense. Next time you need to see a doctor,
call me instead, I don't know anything about medicine, but doctors are
elitists, and my opinion is just as good as theirs under the doctrines of
"PC" and I'll charge you less.


You are comparing apples and oranges. I wonder, why?



I do hear a difference in LP and CD, I do not hear difference between
CD and MP3-320mbps. And I prefer CD or MP3 on my iPod to LP's. Does it
disqualify me?

Before invention of portable MP3 players the only option to listen to
music was to spend time washing your LP and then spend couple hours
sitting and doing nothing but listening to music. For many busy people
who could not afford this luxury it meant that they did not listen
music at all.

I agree, but why not use a loss-less compression scheme instead of MP3. The
one that I'm most familiar with, Apple Loss-less (ALC), is indistinguishable
from the source CD.

First of all I, personally, don't like Apple. They are running
their business as a religious cult. I am software professional and in
my practice I do work on Windows, Mac and Linux machines. I don't want
to wake up one day and find out that Apple abandoned AAC and replaced
it with another proprietary codec.

Putting my collection of CD's in a computer server is a big job.
Before starting I evaluated available compression schemes. After my
own listening I had difficulties to find differences between 320kbps
MP3 and original CD. I even made an informal experiment and took my
iPod to my 'high-end' friend and asked him to evaluate pieces of music
on his "all-tube", "mega-back" speakers (he is an elitist, ok?). He
failed to distinguish between MP3(320kbps), AAC and original CD of the
same piece. We did use symphonic and chamber classical pieces for
comparison. I understand that this argument is of "even my wife heard
the difference" type but for my purposes it worked fine.

So returning back to your original question, I picked MP3(320)
because it takes half space in comparison with AAC, and to my ears it
sounds the same as AAC on my main high-end system. If for the next
Valentine's day I will get 160G iPod form my wife, I may return to
this issue. But now, I already have 40G of music in my 80G-iPod and it
is less then half of my collection of CD.

But my goal is not Ipod. I consider it as a secondary device. I am
putting my collection on a music server. I also routed three audio
systems in my house to this server using SONOS (sorry for blatant
advertising :-) boxes. So now with couple clicks on my remote control
I can listen any CD from my music collection instantly. Even on my
music server there is a huge difference between backing up 40g or
200G. So compression is reasonable even on my music server.

Some folks say that loss-less is better than CD because
the ripping software keeps on re-playing the same word over and over until it
transfers error-free (something that even the best CD player can't do in real
time.) or times out. That means much fewer read errors. Does this make any
difference? It shouldn't , but some say it does.


This is technically ignorant believe. Ignore it.


Now with invention of portable digital players you can have all you
music collection in a cigarette pack ( I have 32GB of music in my
iPod, neatly classified and I am adding every day). Not only you can
listen to music wherever and whenever you want, but the easy access
makes all the difference in a world. Before that if I wanted to listen
some obscure recording of Samuel Barber, I would have to spend time
searching for it on my CD shelves, then putting it into CD player,
after all not to forget to put it back, etc. etc. All this hassle made
it almost impossible. Now 2 clicks on iPod bring me to Samuel Barber
and the next click brings me to a piece that I want. After listening
no hassle either, just turn iPod off.

I don't know about you but I consider it as a great progress, I listen
much more music now then before. In a way of putting my music in my
iPod I made few discoveries in my collection, like there were two
recordings of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" that I did not even
know that I have. Now they all neatly organized in my iPod with easy
access. Is not it a progress?

Not at all, Lossy compression is a step backward from CD. Loss-less
compression, OTOH, is step forward by allowing you to pack a lot of music
into a relatively small space with no loss of quality. My iPod gas nothing
but ALC ripped music on it and it sounds as good as the D/A in the ipod will
allow it to sound.

I think you are over-obsessed with loss-less. Don't LP's deviate
grossly from master tape with their euphonic distortion, clicks, pops,
etc.? However, high-end audiophiles are more then willing to ignore
them. The same thing with compression. Not all compression schemes are
bad. You have to make your own judgment what works for you and what is
not.

vlad

[Steven Sullivan]

Sonnova wrote:
On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:22:43 -0800, vlad wrote
(in article ):

On Nov 23, 10:06 am, Greg Wormald wrote:

. . .

And lastly, if sound quality was most important to the masses, we're
going to have a hard time explaining the overwhelming migration to 128
bit MP3's and the huge popularity of Itunes-sold music. Of course, if
your ears and mind can't tell the difference between LP or CD and 128
bit MP3, you are in the wrong newsgroup.

Greg

Is not it a little bit elitist: if you don't hear the difference, you
don't qualify for this group?

Oh, That's right. Almost forgot. Anything that even suggests a hint of
elitism is politically incorrect. Everybody's opinion, even if it's totally
ignorant, has worth. God, what nonsense. Next time you need to see a doctor,
call me instead, I don't know anything about medicine, but doctors are
elitists, and my opinion is just as good as theirs under the doctrines of
"PC" and I'll charge you less.

I do hear a difference in LP and CD, I do not hear difference between
CD and MP3-320mbps. And I prefer CD or MP3 on my iPod to LP's. Does it
disqualify me?

Before invention of portable MP3 players the only option to listen to
music was to spend time washing your LP and then spend couple hours
sitting and doing nothing but listening to music. For many busy people
who could not afford this luxury it meant that they did not listen
music at all.

I agree, but why not use a loss-less compression scheme instead of MP3. The
one that I'm most familiar with, Apple Loss-less (ALC), is indistinguishable
from the source CD. Some folks say that loss-less is better than CD because
the ripping software keeps on re-playing the same word over and over until it
transfers error-free (something that even the best CD player can't do in real
time.) or times out. That means much fewer read errors. Does this make any
difference? It shouldn't , but some say it does.

You're confusing issues here. Ripping is a distinct
action from lossless (or lossy) compression. THe benefits of 'lossless'
compression having nothing to do with ripping per se.

Ripping can be either 'high security', where error sectors are re-read until a
'good enough' read is obtained, or it at the other extreme it
can be done in 'burst mode' which trades 'security' for speed.
So depending on the disc, the hardware, and the software,
a rip can contain errors (and in that sense be 'lossy' compared to
the CD itself). CD tracks are usually ripped to an uncompressed
('lossless') FORMAT like .wav, .aiff or a disc image, but that doesn't
ensure that the rip itself was error-free. SUbsequenlty the ripped tracks can
be compressed either lossily or losslessly (some ripping
software can do this on the fly).

So it's best not to confuse 'lossiness' as an option for data compression,
with 'lossiness' as a result of disc reading error.

--

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason

[Steven Sullivan]

Greg Wormald wrote:
In article ,
vlad wrote:

On Nov 23, 10:06 am, Greg Wormald wrote:

. . .

And lastly, if sound quality was most important to the masses, we're
going to have a hard time explaining the overwhelming migration to 128
bit MP3's and the huge popularity of Itunes-sold music. Of course, if
your ears and mind can't tell the difference between LP or CD and 128
bit MP3, you are in the wrong newsgroup.

Greg

Is not it a little bit elitist: if you don't hear the difference, you
don't qualify for this group?

I do hear a difference in LP and CD, I do not hear difference between
CD and MP3-320mbps. And I prefer CD or MP3 on my iPod to LP's. Does it
disqualify me?

Hi Vlad,

Did you miss the "128 bit" part in my rave?
I agree that 320 bit on limited range music (most pop and rock and much
jazz--which are my preferences) is hard to pick.

And yes, my statement is elitist--and so is the newsgroup! It's not
called rec.audio.HIGH-END so we can discuss the lowest common
denominator. If anyone wants to discuss Ipod quality reproduction then
an Ipod group would be appropriate.

Ipod quality reproduction is mostly dependent on the files you play on
it. Its DAC and output stages are quite good. SO to speak of 'Ipod
quality reproduction' shows not elitism, but ignorance of how well
Ipods have performed in bench tests.

Again, the newsgroup is about **high-end** not large quantity. For the
record I use my Ipod much more than any other source. I listen to it for
at least 3 hours every day in the car, but I'm not going to kid myself
by thinking of that as high-end listening, any more than listening while
walking, etc is high-end listening.

But that's because you listen in the car. Connected to your 'high end
system at home, playing well-recorded/encoded music, your ipod shold
perform excellently.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason

[Steven Sullivan]

Harry Lavo wrote:

It may be progress in convenience, but an iPod particularly (when listened
through earbuds, or when playing lower bitrate recordings) is simply not
high-fidelity.

Again, it's wrong to phrase this a something deficient about the player itself.
As you have. It's not the 'ipod particularly' at all, Harry.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason

[vlad]

On Nov 25, 8:34 am, Greg Wormald wrote:
In article ,

. . .

Hi Vlad,

Did you miss the "128 bit" part in my rave?
I agree that 320 bit on limited range music (most pop and rock and much
jazz--which are my preferences) is hard to pick.


Classical music too, believe me. In a controlled environment you
want be able to distinguish 320kbps MP3 from original CD.

And yes, my statement is elitist--and so is the newsgroup! It's not
called rec.audio.HIGH-END so we can discuss the lowest common
denominator. If anyone wants to discuss Ipod quality reproduction then
an Ipod group would be appropriate.


Now , tell me what makes iPod that is streaming original digital
stream to external DAC inferior to say CD? Or CD is a "lowest common
denominator", too?

*snip*
I don't know about you but I consider it as a great progress, I listen
much more music now then before. *snip*
vlad

Again, the newsgroup is about **high-end** not large quantity. For the
record I use my Ipod much more than any other source. I listen to it for
at least 3 hours every day in the car, but I'm not going to kid myself
by thinking of that as high-end listening, any more than listening while
walking, etc is high-end listening.

Greg

I thought that this group first of all is about listening music.
iPod makes listening high quality music is much easier and more
available. What is wrong about "quantity" in this case? Open your
eyes.

Of course, if high-end is all about esoteric overpriced electronic
components and technologies than you are right. But to me it seems
silly and distracting from real goal - listening to music.

vlad

[vlad]

On Nov 25, 9:02 am, "Harry Lavo" wrote:
"vlad" wrote in message

...



On Nov 23, 10:06 am, Greg Wormald wrote:

. . .

And lastly, if sound quality was most important to the masses, we're
going to have a hard time explaining the overwhelming migration to 128
bit MP3's and the huge popularity of Itunes-sold music. Of course, if
your ears and mind can't tell the difference between LP or CD and 128
bit MP3, you are in the wrong newsgroup.

Greg

Is not it a little bit elitist: if you don't hear the difference, you
don't qualify for this group?

I do hear a difference in LP and CD, I do not hear difference between
CD and MP3-320mbps. And I prefer CD or MP3 on my iPod to LP's. Does it
disqualify me?

Before invention of portable MP3 players the only option to listen to
music was to spend time washing your LP and then spend couple hours
sitting and doing nothing but listening to music. For many busy people
who could not afford this luxury it meant that they did not listen
music at all.

Now with invention of portable digital players you can have all you
music collection in a cigarette pack ( I have 32GB of music in my
iPod, neatly classified and I am adding every day). Not only you can
listen to music wherever and whenever you want, but the easy access
makes all the difference in a world. Before that if I wanted to listen
some obscure recording of Samuel Barber, I would have to spend time
searching for it on my CD shelves, then putting it into CD player,
after all not to forget to put it back, etc. etc. All this hassle made
it almost impossible. Now 2 clicks on iPod bring me to Samuel Barber
and the next click brings me to a piece that I want. After listening
no hassle either, just turn iPod off.

I don't know about you but I consider it as a great progress, I listen
much more music now then before. In a way of putting my music in my
iPod I made few discoveries in my collection, like there were two
recordings of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" that I did not even
know that I have. Now they all neatly organized in my iPod with easy
access. Is not it a progress?

My $0.02

It may be progress in convenience, but an iPod particularly (when listened
through earbuds, or when playing lower bitrate recordings) is simply not
high-fidelity. So in the strictest sense, no, you do not belong in this
group if the best possible ( highest fidelity) reproduction of music is
no longer your goal.

Hmm, I wonder what moderating team thinks about that. Should I be
banned from this group?

[ Moderator's note: The appearance of this post should clarify the
moderators' feelings on this. Also please see the group guidelines for
our opinion on what is high-end. -- deb ]

I agree with you that $19.95 earbuds are not proper. And you are
not forced to use low bitrate compression on y
our iPod. I am not arguing for that.

My goal is to get to the soul of the omposer listening his music. Some
pieces in Josef Krips recording of Mozart's "Don Giovanny" give me
goos bumps even on my car radio. I thought that the main goal is
music. Everybody has his own way to it. Is not high-end audiophilia
defending LP using exactly this argument "don't bother me with
technical details, I am getting goos bumps from LP"?

Still, if you feel I am not qualified, complain to moderation
team :-)

vlad

[vlad]

On Nov 25, 9:05 am, Jenn wrote:
On Nov 24, 8:22 pm, vlad wrote:

Before invention of portable MP3 players the only option to listen to
music was to spend time washing your LP and then spend couple hours
sitting and doing nothing but listening to music.

Really? You seem to have skipped some steps: Cassettes and CDs, for
example.

You are right, but you know what I meant.


For many busy people
who could not afford this luxury it meant that they did not listen
music at all.

Now with invention of portable digital players you can have all you
music collection in a cigarette pack ( I have 32GB of music in my
iPod, neatly classified and I am adding every day). Not only you can
listen to music wherever and whenever you want, but the easy access
makes all the difference in a world.

I agree that this is a great attraction for iPod type players. I
certainly do this myself. On a five hour drive yesterday, I listeded
to a VERY wide variety of music; some for study and some for simple
pleasure. I would have NEVER hauled those CDs in my car. Plus, there
is the wonderful "spur of the moment" listening possible with the
iPod.

That is what makes iPod priceless in my eyes.


Before that if I wanted to listen
some obscure recording of Samuel Barber,

I'm sure you mean "of music of Samuel Barber" as Barber didn't make
recordings himself, AFAIK ;-)

you are right.


I would have to spend time
searching for it on my CD shelves, then putting it into CD player,
after all not to forget to put it back, etc. etc. All this hassle made
it almost impossible.

A simple filing system would make it far from "almost impossible", of
course.

I prefer computers doing filing. With my 2000+ collection any
filing is too time consuming.


Now 2 clicks on iPod bring me to Samuel Barber
and the next click brings me to a piece that I want. After listening
no hassle either, just turn iPod off.

I don't know about you but I consider it as a great progress, I listen
much more music now then before. In a way of putting my music in my
iPod I made few discoveries in my collection, like there were two
recordings of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" that I did not even
know that I have.

Aren't those discoveries great fun!

Now they all neatly organized in my iPod with easy
access. Is not it a progress?

My $0.02

vlad

Yes, I certainly believe that it's a kind of progress. Anything that
enables and encourages one to listen to more music is progress in my
book.

Enjoy!

Looks like first time in years we understand each other :-)
Thanks.

vlad

[Doug McDonald]

Steven Sullivan wrote:
Doug McDonald wrote:
Sonnova wrote:

But in this case it IS. Like I said in another post, this LP sounds better
than any of the more than 2000 CDs I own. I would just like to know why.
Instead of discussing it, we sit here arguing back and forth over who said
what to who.


Well, once both are digital, they are forever, so we have forever to
try to find WHY the LP sounds better (to you).

The first this to try is to actually COMPARE them digitally. Load them
into some sort of audio program, carefully select out identical,
as as can be told by eye looking at waveforms, sections, and compare
the Fourier transform amplitude. Is the frequency response different?

Next is to write a computer program that time-aligns then by computing
the cross-correlation every 1/20 second or so to measure the
time-slippage and then resample the LP one so it lines up, in
the high frequencies, with the other one. Then you see how the
frequency response in both amplitude and phase differs across the
whole piece.

Then you correct the phase of the LP one. Finally you
subtract the two files, now that they are time-aligned at all frequencies,
and see what sort of distortion differences they show.

Doug McDonald

ahh.. Audio Diffmaker!

http://www.libinst.com/Audio%20DiffMaker.htm

I suspect LP (or LP-on-CDR) vs CD waveforms will be too grossly different for
Diffmaker to really work well

Ah, no. It actually sys it is not suitable for LP use.

LPs suffer from timing slippage and also frequency dependent phase problems.
The procedure I describe corrects for those.

Doug McDonald

[Jenn]

On Nov 25, 1:36 pm, vlad wrote:

I would have to spend time
searching for it on my CD shelves, then putting it into CD player,
after all not to forget to put it back, etc. etc. All this hassle made
it almost impossible.

A simple filing system would make it far from "almost impossible", of
course.

I prefer computers doing filing. With my 2000+ collection any
filing is too time consuming.

I, like others, had the same problem. I made a simple Excel sheet. I
enter each work on each recording and give each recording a number.
Then it's a simple matter of keeping the recordings in that order. It
was a pain to start, of course, but I did a stack every night after
work and it was finished in no time. I keep a copy on my Treo
cellphone for access when shopping for recordings. It has sure
simplified things!

Looks like first time in years we understand each other :-)
Thanks.

vlad

See, there's hope for the world! ;-)

[Codifus]

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Sonnova" wrote in message



The LP sounds incredible, the CD sounds mediocre.


LPs go tic-tic-tic and rumble, rumble, rumble. I've never been to a live
concert that had inner groove distortion. Have you?

When I listen to an LP, especially now that most of my musical sources
are digital, the 1st thing I get blown away by is the wow and flutter.
How in the world did we, as a human race, accept these waywardly speed
variations? It was like the performance was recorded on a cruise ship
Then there's the noise floor. Being used to CD now the surface noise of
the needle running over the record is more apparent to me than it ever
used to be. Of course there's all those tics and pops as well.

As I listen, though,I get more involved with the performance and tend to
forget/cast aside/ignore, all those vinyl foibles and enjoy the
performance. This is the human factor in the way we listen to music. If
the rumble keeps bothering you, are you really enjoying the music, or
are you continually analysing it?

CD

[Sonnova]

On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:26:25 -0800, Steven Sullivan wrote
(in article ):

Sonnova wrote:
On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:09:11 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Sonnova" wrote in message

On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:45:33 -0800, Steven Sullivan wrote
(in article ):

Sonnova wrote:

Depends on the music. I can always tell an MP3 on
classical,

Color me skeptical. 'Classical' isn't necessarily harder
to encode than nonclassical music.

Why don't I color you "not thinking about it enough"
instead? No, classical isn't necessarily harder to encode
than pop. But because of the much larger dynamic range of
classical music (ppp to fff) it's easier to hear the
artifacts than with pop and rock which tends to run the
gamut from ff to fff! While this isn't always the case
with pop, it is with the vast majority of it. The limited
dynamic range (read that LOUD) that most pop music has
masks most of the audible artifacts.

Doesn't wash. Dynamic range is often the enemy of the audibility of
artifacts.

I'm sorry. You're wrong. It's during soft passages and during changes from
loud to soft (and vise-versa) where compression artifacts are most likely
to
be heard.

Also, the idea that pop music necessarily has limited dynamic range is yet
another old high end audiophile's tale.

Frankly I don't care. I don't listen to pop and rock ever. I just know
that
loud rock masks the effects of compression almost completely.

Well, not all rock is 'loud', and even 'loud' rock isn't necessarily loud
*all the time*. Frankly if you don't listed to pop and rock 'ever' , you
aren't
in any position to proclaim on its sonic characteristics.

Classical music has some built-in
limitations on dynamic range. While there might be some creschendos and a
few sonic spectaculars, most of it is pretty tame from a dynamic range
standpoint.

Pure bull. There are thousands of works in the standard repertoire that go
from triple pianissimo to triple fortissimo (or vice-versa) rather
instantaneously. and many more cases of the music going from a single
instrument playing softly one moment, to the entire orchestra in crescendo
the next.

And there is rock that does the same. But either way, Arny used the word
'most'. Most classical music does not consist of a series of pppp ffff
transitions, right?

No, but that's where the MP3 artifacts are particularly noticeable.

You don't actually think that a lossy compression
algorithm could throw portions of the waveform away
without it being noticeable at least occasionally, do you?

Sure why not? Or, don't you believe in masking?

Under certain circumstances, I certainly do believe in masking, but an
algorithm by itself can't apply a lossy compression scheme to music in a
foolproof manner.

It doesn't have to be foolproof (transparent in all instances) to fool
you in a particular instance.

And for someone to say they 'believe in' masking or not, is peculiar.
MAsking is a real psychoacoustic phenomenon, whether you 'believe in'
it or not.

"Belief" was Arny's phrase, not mine.

Now, I'm very sure that given complete control over the MP3 encoding
process,
someone who is very familiar with the failings of the compression algorithm

and very familiar with the music could make a compressed MP3 of, say,
Ravel's
"Daphne et Chloe" ballet in such a way that NOBODY could tell that it was
compressed using a lossy compression scheme even when ABXed with the
original
source material. Unfortunately, MP3s are all compressed using an algorithm
and artifacts do show up and they show up in some kinds of music more than
they show up in others.


I don't think you really know what you're talking about.


There are VARIOUS mp3 algorithms (codecs) and settings that ANY user can
employ. THere are recommended ones that are derived from extensive
ABX testing against difficult sources (which do NOT tend to be
symphonic music, that is NOT inherently more difficult to encode
than other genres). It's quite likely that you and most other
listeners would NOT be able to tell such wel-made mp3s from source.
And that includes a source like 'Daphnis and Chloe'

WHy don't you go hang out on www.hydrogenaudio.org
for a week, ask a few pertinent question of the MP3 codec *developers*
and *testers* that frequent the place -- the people who actually
'know' mp3 inside and out -- and thus educate yourself?

I know what I hear and I can hear MP3 compression artifacts often, especially
on decent headphones. Therefore I don't use it. All the music on my iPOD is
ALC and I see no reason and have no motivation to try MP3 merely because it's
the "popular" thing to do.

[Sonnova]

On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:28:11 -0800, vlad wrote
(in article ):

On Nov 25, 8:32 am, Sonnova wrote:
On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:22:43 -0800, vlad wrote
(in article ):

On Nov 23, 10:06 am, Greg Wormald wrote:

. . .

And lastly, if sound quality was most important to the masses, we're
going to have a hard time explaining the overwhelming migration to 128
bit MP3's and the huge popularity of Itunes-sold music. Of course, if
your ears and mind can't tell the difference between LP or CD and 128
bit MP3, you are in the wrong newsgroup.

Greg

Is not it a little bit elitist: if you don't hear the difference, you
don't qualify for this group?

Oh, That's right. Almost forgot. Anything that even suggests a hint of
elitism is politically incorrect. Everybody's opinion, even if it's totally
ignorant, has worth. God, what nonsense. Next time you need to see a doctor,
call me instead, I don't know anything about medicine, but doctors are
elitists, and my opinion is just as good as theirs under the doctrines of
"PC" and I'll charge you less.


You are comparing apples and oranges. I wonder, why?

No, I was chiding you for your PC comment about elitism. As someone else
pointed out, this group is about elitism. That's why its called
rec.audio.HIGH-END. I see nothing wrong with being elitists. All the great
movers and shakers of history were elitists.



I do hear a difference in LP and CD, I do not hear difference between
CD and MP3-320mbps. And I prefer CD or MP3 on my iPod to LP's. Does it
disqualify me?

Before invention of portable MP3 players the only option to listen to
music was to spend time washing your LP and then spend couple hours
sitting and doing nothing but listening to music. For many busy people
who could not afford this luxury it meant that they did not listen
music at all.

I agree, but why not use a loss-less compression scheme instead of MP3. The
one that I'm most familiar with, Apple Loss-less (ALC), is indistinguishable
from the source CD.

First of all I, personally, don't like Apple. They are running
their business as a religious cult. I am software professional and in
my practice I do work on Windows, Mac and Linux machines. I don't want
to wake up one day and find out that Apple abandoned AAC and replaced
it with another proprietary codec.

That's ridiculous. First of all, a computer is a tool. You use the one that
fits your "hand" the best. Apple doesn't run their company as a cult, they
run it as a business. The fact that many Mac users are unusually fond of
their computers (and linux users too) is because if it's minority "underdog"
status. Besides if you use an iPod you almost have to have iTunes installed,
even on a Windows box and ALC is built into iTunes. All you have to do is go
into the app's prefs and select it as your default compression method.

Putting my collection of CD's in a computer server is a big job.
Before starting I evaluated available compression schemes. After my
own listening I had difficulties to find differences between 320kbps
MP3 and original CD. I even made an informal experiment and took my
iPod to my 'high-end' friend and asked him to evaluate pieces of music
on his "all-tube", "mega-back" speakers (he is an elitist, ok?).

Fine. Elitism is not a dirty word.

He failed to distinguish between MP3(320kbps), AAC and original CD of the
same piece.

I don't doubt it. It's far easier to do with headphones than with speakers.
But since I only listen to my iPod via headphones, to use a loss-less scheme
was my choice.

We did use symphonic and chamber classical pieces for
comparison. I understand that this argument is of "even my wife heard
the difference" type but for my purposes it worked fine.

So returning back to your original question, I picked MP3(320)
because it takes half space in comparison with AAC, and to my ears it
sounds the same as AAC on my main high-end system. If for the next
Valentine's day I will get 160G iPod form my wife, I may return to
this issue. But now, I already have 40G of music in my 80G-iPod and it
is less then half of my collection of CD.

But my goal is not Ipod. I consider it as a secondary device.

And so it is.

I am putting my collection on a music server. I also routed three audio
systems in my house to this server using SONOS (sorry for blatant
advertising :-) boxes. So now with couple clicks on my remote control
I can listen any CD from my music collection instantly. Even on my
music server there is a huge difference between backing up 40g or
200G. So compression is reasonable even on my music server.

Some folks say that loss-less is better than CD because
the ripping software keeps on re-playing the same word over and over until
it
transfers error-free (something that even the best CD player can't do in
real
time.) or times out. That means much fewer read errors. Does this make any
difference? It shouldn't , but some say it does.


This is technically ignorant believe. Ignore it.


Now with invention of portable digital players you can have all you
music collection in a cigarette pack ( I have 32GB of music in my
iPod, neatly classified and I am adding every day). Not only you can
listen to music wherever and whenever you want, but the easy access
makes all the difference in a world. Before that if I wanted to listen
some obscure recording of Samuel Barber, I would have to spend time
searching for it on my CD shelves, then putting it into CD player,
after all not to forget to put it back, etc. etc. All this hassle made
it almost impossible. Now 2 clicks on iPod bring me to Samuel Barber
and the next click brings me to a piece that I want. After listening
no hassle either, just turn iPod off.

I don't know about you but I consider it as a great progress, I listen
much more music now then before. In a way of putting my music in my
iPod I made few discoveries in my collection, like there were two
recordings of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" that I did not even
know that I have. Now they all neatly organized in my iPod with easy
access. Is not it a progress?

Not at all, Lossy compression is a step backward from CD. Loss-less
compression, OTOH, is step forward by allowing you to pack a lot of music
into a relatively small space with no loss of quality. My iPod gas nothing
but ALC ripped music on it and it sounds as good as the D/A in the ipod will
allow it to sound.

I think you are over-obsessed with loss-less. Don't LP's deviate
grossly from master tape with their euphonic distortion, clicks, pops,
etc.? However, high-end audiophiles are more then willing to ignore
them. The same thing with compression. Not all compression schemes are
bad. You have to make your own judgment what works for you and what is
not.

I have . Not all forms of distortion have equal weight. The kind inherent in
LP don't bother me much and I tend to listen through them. But the hash that
accompanies MP3 riding the waveform as it does (when it's audible) drives me
up the wall. It's so easy to use ALC and just eliminate THAT particular
problem completely.

vlad

[Sonnova]

On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:23:47 -0800, Keith Hughes wrote
(in article ):

Sonnova wrote:
On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:07:44 -0800, Keith Hughes wrote
(in article ):


Sorry, I must've come in too late in the thread to see that statement.
That's not something that happens here (IME) - i.e. an LP 'enthusiast'
recording an LP to CD for comparison. Most find reasons why this just
cannot be a valid test. Clearly you've found that it is. And also that
the 'magic' is not in the playback, but further upstream.

Not necessarily. When transferring these LP sides to CD I still used my
turntable, my cartridge, and my phono preamp. But the point here is that
whatever makes this LP sound so damn good is transferrable to another
medium
(digital) with the "magic" intact. . I.E. whatever it is, it's on the
records!

Right, so the LP playback has it, and it can be recorded to, and played
back on, CD. Therefore, your 'magic' is not an artifact of the
storage/playback medium (i.e. CD/LP).

Where in the world did you get the idea that I bekieve it was?

Unless your claim is that the
methods used to physically create the LP adds this 'magic' (a claim that
would require that an electromechanical process - uncorrelated to the
musical performance - somehow creates realism that isn't in the master
recording), then it must be upstream in the record/mix/master process.

Obviously

Hence the futility of comparing different mixes on different formats and
trying to attribute sonic differences to the format.

I never said otherwise. I merely reported a phenomenon. I have never said
that LP was inherently superior as a media to CD.

Keith Hughes

[Steven Sullivan]

Keith Hughes wrote:
Sonnova wrote:
On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:07:44 -0800, Keith Hughes wrote
(in article ):


Sorry, I must've come in too late in the thread to see that statement.
That's not something that happens here (IME) - i.e. an LP 'enthusiast'
recording an LP to CD for comparison. Most find reasons why this just
cannot be a valid test. Clearly you've found that it is. And also that
the 'magic' is not in the playback, but further upstream.

Not necessarily. When transferring these LP sides to CD I still used my
turntable, my cartridge, and my phono preamp. But the point here is that
whatever makes this LP sound so damn good is transferrable to another medium
(digital) with the "magic" intact. . I.E. whatever it is, it's on the
records!

Right, so the LP playback has it, and it can be recorded to, and played
back on, CD. Therefore, your 'magic' is not an artifact of the
storage/playback medium (i.e. CD/LP). Unless your claim is that the
methods used to physically create the LP adds this 'magic' (a claim that
would require that an electromechanical process - uncorrelated to the
musical performance - somehow creates realism that isn't in the master
recording), then it must be upstream in the record/mix/master process.

And/or added during playback. If LP production and playback adds something
in the audible range, there's no reason digital can't capture it from the
output.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason

[Steven Sullivan]

Doug McDonald wrote:
Steven Sullivan wrote:
Doug McDonald wrote:
Sonnova wrote:

But in this case it IS. Like I said in another post, this LP sounds better
than any of the more than 2000 CDs I own. I would just like to know why.
Instead of discussing it, we sit here arguing back and forth over who said
what to who.


Well, once both are digital, they are forever, so we have forever to
try to find WHY the LP sounds better (to you).

The first this to try is to actually COMPARE them digitally. Load them
into some sort of audio program, carefully select out identical,
as as can be told by eye looking at waveforms, sections, and compare
the Fourier transform amplitude. Is the frequency response different?

Next is to write a computer program that time-aligns then by computing
the cross-correlation every 1/20 second or so to measure the
time-slippage and then resample the LP one so it lines up, in
the high frequencies, with the other one. Then you see how the
frequency response in both amplitude and phase differs across the
whole piece.

Then you correct the phase of the LP one. Finally you
subtract the two files, now that they are time-aligned at all frequencies,
and see what sort of distortion differences they show.

Doug McDonald

ahh.. Audio Diffmaker!

http://www.libinst.com/Audio%20DiffMaker.htm

I suspect LP (or LP-on-CDR) vs CD waveforms will be too grossly different for
Diffmaker to really work well

Ah, no. It actually sys it is not suitable for LP use.

Then you mean...'yes', don't you?

LPs suffer from timing slippage and also frequency dependent phase problems.
The procedure I describe corrects for those.

THere's usually also 'grossly' different EQ at play.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason

[Steven Sullivan]

Sonnova wrote:
On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:26:25 -0800, Steven Sullivan wrote
And there is rock that does the same. But either way, Arny used the word
'most'. Most classical music does not consist of a series of pppp ffff
transitions, right?

No, but that's where the MP3 artifacts are particularly noticeable.

Not really.

Again, have you actually discussed this with people who develop
mp3s?


WHy don't you go hang out on www.hydrogenaudio.org
for a week, ask a few pertinent question of the MP3 codec *developers*
and *testers* that frequent the place -- the people who actually
'know' mp3 inside and out -- and thus educate yourself?

I know what I hear and I can hear MP3 compression artifacts often, especially
on decent headphones. Therefore I don't use it. All the music on my iPOD is
ALC and I see no reason and have no motivation to try MP3 merely because it's
the "popular" thing to do.

People often think they 'know what they hear' by such methods.

Time and again, they're wrong.

I'd bet good money thyat I could make mp3s of symphonic music that
you'd be unable to tell from source.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason

[vlad]

On Nov 25, 7:52 pm, Sonnova wrote:
On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:28:11 -0800, vlad wrote
(in article ):


No, I was chiding you for your PC comment about elitism. As someone else
pointed out, this group is about elitism. That's why its called
rec.audio.HIGH-END. I see nothing wrong with being elitists. All the great
movers and shakers of history were elitists.


I wonder if it is in a charter of the group. Do moderators agree
with you?

First of all I, personally, don't like Apple. They are running
their business as a religious cult. I am software professional and in
my practice I do work on Windows, Mac and Linux machines. I don't want
to wake up one day and find out that Apple abandoned AAC and replaced
it with another proprietary codec.

That's ridiculous. First of all, a computer is a tool. You use the one that
fits your "hand" the best. Apple doesn't run their company as a cult, they
run it as a business. The fact that many Mac users are unusually fond of
their computers (and linux users too) is because if it's minority "underdog"
status. Besides if you use an iPod you almost have to have iTunes installed,

Yes, I am forced to use iTunes. That is because iPod does not talk
to WinAmp. iTunes is a dreadful application with inconsistent GUI and
unrelayble ripper. It does not tolerate anyhting running on a computer
when ripping CD's. It creates skips even in your beloved ACC tracks if
it is not alone on the computer. Another thing: last Friday I tried to
move my music library to another hard drive. Simple file copy did not
work. iTunes did not recognize it. Keep in mind I know how to change
library's directory in iTunes. Move had to be done by iTunes. iTunes
lost half of the library (18G of data) in this move. I spent the rest
of the day restoring library from backups in a new location. Apple
deserved its "minority" status with applications like this.

even on a Windows box and ALC is built into iTunes. All you have to do is go
into the app's prefs and select it as your default compression method.


Don't patronize me. I know how to pick proper compression.


Fine. Elitism is not a dirty word.

It is in my dictionary.


He failed to distinguish between MP3(320kbps), AAC and original CD of the
same piece.

I don't doubt it. It's far easier to do with headphones than with speakers.
But since I only listen to my iPod via headphones, to use a loss-less scheme
was my choice.

If you want to waste hard disk space, it is you choice, indeed.


We did use symphonic and chamber classical pieces for

comparison. I understand that this argument is of "even my wife heard
the difference" type but for my purposes it worked fine.

So returning back to your original question, I picked MP3(320)
because it takes half space in comparison with AAC, and to my ears it
sounds the same as AAC on my main high-end system. If for the next
Valentine's day I will get 160G iPod form my wife, I may return to
this issue. But now, I already have 40G of music in my 80G-iPod and it
is less then half of my collection of CD.

. . .

I am putting my collection on a music server. I also routed three audio
systems in my house to this server using SONOS (sorry for blatant
advertising :-) boxes. So now with couple clicks on my remote control
I can listen any CD from my music collection instantly. Even on my
music server there is a huge difference between backing up 40g or
200G. So compression is reasonable even on my music server.


. . .

I think you are over-obsessed with loss-less. Don't LP's deviate
grossly from master tape with their euphonic distortion, clicks, pops,
etc.? However, high-end audiophiles are more then willing to ignore
them. The same thing with compression. Not all compression schemes are
bad. You have to make your own judgment what works for you and what is
not.

I have . Not all forms of distortion have equal weight. The kind inherent in
LP don't bother me much and I tend to listen through them. But the hash that
accompanies MP3 riding the waveform as it does (when it's audible) drives me
up the wall. It's so easy to use ALC and just eliminate THAT particular
problem completely.


What compression level do you mean when comparing MP3 to ALC?

You are talking about MP3 like it is an absolute evil. Just learn
a little bit about it.

MP3 at 64kbps has easily observable artifacts. At 320kbps you will
not be able to distinguish it from original CD. Just for your
reference - ALC reduces CD to 53% of original size. MP3 at 320kbps
reduces file size to 23% of original. Because of your prejudice you
are wasting your hard drive space.

vlad

[Rob Tweed]

On 25 Nov 2007 21:28:11 GMT, vlad wrote:

But my goal is not Ipod. I consider it as a secondary device. I am
putting my collection on a music server. I also routed three audio
systems in my house to this server using SONOS (sorry for blatant
advertising :-) boxes. So now with couple clicks on my remote control
I can listen any CD from my music collection instantly. Even on my
music server there is a huge difference between backing up 40g or
200G. So compression is reasonable even on my music server.


For a home-based, hard-disk-based music server, personally I'd go for
a lossless format, particularly when a 500Gb USB hard drive costs a
mere 60 UK pounds. I use iTunes and ALC. I suspect if Apple tried to
replace ALC at some point in the future they'd have a rebellion on
their hands so I'd suggest it's a pretty unlikely scenario.

The advantage of a lossless codec is at least you know that what
you're playing back is bit-wise identical to the source. If I
continue to improve my playback hardware, there's at least the
potential that I'll be progressively hearing closer to the original
with each upgrade, unhindered by any potential losses introduced by my
storage medium (well I can live in hope can't i? ;-).

As to back-up, what I do is to use a utility that will allow
incremental backup. I have a second hard-drive, identical to the one
that's in daily use, and I use something called Second Copy
(www.secondcopy.com) which I've found to be very simple to set up and
quick and simple to use. With a utility like this, each time you back
up, you'll only be copying anything that's new rather than the whole
drive every time. So within a few minutes I can have an identical and
up to date standby copy of my iTunes library.

By the way, although I use a Mac Mini + iTunes for playback, I back up
the hard drive using a PC because I didn't manage to find an
equivalent to Second Copy for the Mac. However, that's probably
because I'm not that au fait with what's available for the Mac, and
maybe there's something just as good out there. Anyway, one advantage
of USB hard-drives: you can move them freely about between computers
and use whatever's the most readily available tool for the job.

I'd guess with a proprietary music server your choices become somewhat
more limited. Personally I like the freedom of choice that rolling
you own using PCs or Macs gives you.

One last thought - wouldn't it be nice if they added an SP/DIF
Mini-TosLink output to the iPod for playback via your favourite DAC?
That really could turn it into a true high-end piece of kit.

---

Rob Tweed
Company: M/Gateway Developments Ltd
Registered in England: No 3220901
Registered Office: 58 Francis Road,Ashford, Kent TN23 7UR

Web-site: http://www.mgateway.com

[bob]

On Nov 25, 10:52 pm, Sonnova wrote:

No, I was chiding you for your PC comment about elitism. As someone else
pointed out, this group is about elitism. That's why its called
rec.audio.HIGH-END.

No, this group is not about elitism. There are people who would like
it to be, but they are, thankfully, in the minority. This group is
about high-quality sound reproduction, with "high quality" broadly
defined. Elitist know-nothings and knowledgeable commoners are equally
welcome here.

bob

[Keith Hughes]

Sonnova wrote:
On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:23:47 -0800, Keith Hughes wrote
(in article ):

Sonnova wrote:
On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:07:44 -0800, Keith Hughes wrote
(in article ):

Sorry, I must've come in too late in the thread to see that statement.
That's not something that happens here (IME) - i.e. an LP 'enthusiast'
recording an LP to CD for comparison. Most find reasons why this just
cannot be a valid test. Clearly you've found that it is. And also that
the 'magic' is not in the playback, but further upstream.
Not necessarily. When transferring these LP sides to CD I still used my
turntable, my cartridge, and my phono preamp. But the point here is that
whatever makes this LP sound so damn good is transferrable to another
medium
(digital) with the "magic" intact. . I.E. whatever it is, it's on the
records!
Right, so the LP playback has it, and it can be recorded to, and played
back on, CD. Therefore, your 'magic' is not an artifact of the
storage/playback medium (i.e. CD/LP).

Where in the world did you get the idea that I bekieve it was?

Well, gee, I don't know, maybe it was directly above where you replied
"not necessarily" to my statement that "...the 'magic' is not in the
playback, but further upstream."??

Keith Hughes

[Sonnova]

On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 19:49:23 -0800, Codifus wrote
(in article ):

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Sonnova" wrote in message



The LP sounds incredible, the CD sounds mediocre.


LPs go tic-tic-tic and rumble, rumble, rumble. I've never been to a live
concert that had inner groove distortion. Have you?

When I listen to an LP, especially now that most of my musical sources
are digital, the 1st thing I get blown away by is the wow and flutter.
How in the world did we, as a human race, accept these waywardly speed
variations? It was like the performance was recorded on a cruise ship
Then there's the noise floor. Being used to CD now the surface noise of
the needle running over the record is more apparent to me than it ever
used to be. Of course there's all those tics and pops as well.

As I listen, though,I get more involved with the performance and tend to
forget/cast aside/ignore, all those vinyl foibles and enjoy the
performance. This is the human factor in the way we listen to music. If
the rumble keeps bothering you, are you really enjoying the music, or
are you continually analysing it?

CD

Well, I tend not to listen to the records in my collection which are too
noisy or, which have an inordinate amount of audible cutter rumble. The one
defect in LPs that I cannot take is warp-wow. Nothing will have me removing
an LP from the turntable faster. Surface noise, the occasional tic and pop,
those, I can ignore along with the tape-hiss from the master tape (with
older, pre- Dolby-A recordings).

[Steven Sullivan]

vlad wrote:

Yes, I am forced to use iTunes. That is because iPod does not talk
to WinAmp. iTunes is a dreadful application with inconsistent GUI and
unrelayble ripper. It does not tolerate anyhting running on a computer
when ripping CD's.

FWIW, you certainly can rip CDs, and lossy encode them, with software other than itunes, and
then load them onto your ipod. I rip with EAC, encode with LAME, and drag and drop the
resulting mp3s into itunes to load them into my ipod.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason

[Sonnova]

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:40:17 -0800, Steven Sullivan wrote
(in article ):

Sonnova wrote:
On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:26:25 -0800, Steven Sullivan wrote
And there is rock that does the same. But either way, Arny used the word
'most'. Most classical music does not consist of a series of pppp ffff
transitions, right?

No, but that's where the MP3 artifacts are particularly noticeable.

Not really.

Again, have you actually discussed this with people who develop
mp3s?


WHy don't you go hang out on www.hydrogenaudio.org
for a week, ask a few pertinent question of the MP3 codec *developers*
and *testers* that frequent the place -- the people who actually
'know' mp3 inside and out -- and thus educate yourself?

I know what I hear and I can hear MP3 compression artifacts often,
especially
on decent headphones. Therefore I don't use it. All the music on my iPOD is
ALC and I see no reason and have no motivation to try MP3 merely because
it's
the "popular" thing to do.

People often think they 'know what they hear' by such methods.

Time and again, they're wrong.

I'd bet good money thyat I could make mp3s of symphonic music that
you'd be unable to tell from source.

Why is this so important to you? I've chosen loss-less compression for my
iPod and most of the time I listen to uncompressed audio via PCM or DSD or
LP. Let's talk about some other topic.

[Sonnova]

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:48:54 -0800, bob wrote
(in article ):

On Nov 25, 10:52 pm, Sonnova wrote:

No, I was chiding you for your PC comment about elitism. As someone else
pointed out, this group is about elitism. That's why its called
rec.audio.HIGH-END.

No, this group is not about elitism. There are people who would like
it to be, but they are, thankfully, in the minority. This group is
about high-quality sound reproduction, with "high quality" broadly
defined. Elitist know-nothings and knowledgeable commoners are equally
welcome here.

bob

You misunderstand. The concept of High-End audio is what is elitist, not the
people talking about it.

[Sonnova]

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:47:09 -0800, Rob Tweed wrote
(in article ):

On 25 Nov 2007 21:28:11 GMT, vlad wrote:

But my goal is not Ipod. I consider it as a secondary device. I am
putting my collection on a music server. I also routed three audio
systems in my house to this server using SONOS (sorry for blatant
advertising :-) boxes. So now with couple clicks on my remote control
I can listen any CD from my music collection instantly. Even on my
music server there is a huge difference between backing up 40g or
200G. So compression is reasonable even on my music server.


For a home-based, hard-disk-based music server, personally I'd go for
a lossless format, particularly when a 500Gb USB hard drive costs a
mere 60 UK pounds. I use iTunes and ALC. I suspect if Apple tried to
replace ALC at some point in the future they'd have a rebellion on
their hands so I'd suggest it's a pretty unlikely scenario.

You bet they would have a rebellion on their hands.

The advantage of a lossless codec is at least you know that what
you're playing back is bit-wise identical to the source. If I
continue to improve my playback hardware, there's at least the
potential that I'll be progressively hearing closer to the original
with each upgrade, unhindered by any potential losses introduced by my
storage medium (well I can live in hope can't i? ;-).

As to back-up, what I do is to use a utility that will allow
incremental backup. I have a second hard-drive, identical to the one
that's in daily use, and I use something called Second Copy
(www.secondcopy.com) which I've found to be very simple to set up and
quick and simple to use. With a utility like this, each time you back
up, you'll only be copying anything that's new rather than the whole
drive every time. So within a few minutes I can have an identical and
up to date standby copy of my iTunes library.

By the way, although I use a Mac Mini + iTunes for playback, I back up
the hard drive using a PC because I didn't manage to find an
equivalent to Second Copy for the Mac. However, that's probably
because I'm not that au fait with what's available for the Mac, and
maybe there's something just as good out there. Anyway, one advantage
of USB hard-drives: you can move them freely about between computers
and use whatever's the most readily available tool for the job.

Have you tried SuperDuper?

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDup...scription.html

I'd guess with a proprietary music server your choices become somewhat
more limited. Personally I like the freedom of choice that rolling
you own using PCs or Macs gives you.

One last thought - wouldn't it be nice if they added an SP/DIF
Mini-TosLink output to the iPod for playback via your favourite DAC?

YES! You can get one added to your iPod by MSB (apparently it uses some
un-assigned pins in the iPod's docking connector). Unfortunately, you have to
buy their iLink digital dock for US$2,000 (includes modification of one
iPod) but the thing outputs TOSLINK optical "RCA" co-axial or AES/EBU via
XLR.

http://www.msbtech.com/products/iLink.php

But I'm with you. I think Apple ought to provide that automatically. How hard
could it be?

That really could turn it into a true high-end piece of kit.

Yep!

---

Rob Tweed
Company: M/Gateway Developments Ltd
Registered in England: No 3220901
Registered Office: 58 Francis Road,Ashford, Kent TN23 7UR

Web-site: http://www.mgateway.com

[Sonnova]

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:49:47 -0800, Keith Hughes wrote
(in article ):

Sonnova wrote:
On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:23:47 -0800, Keith Hughes wrote
(in article ):

Sonnova wrote:
On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:07:44 -0800, Keith Hughes wrote
(in article ):

Sorry, I must've come in too late in the thread to see that statement.
That's not something that happens here (IME) - i.e. an LP 'enthusiast'
recording an LP to CD for comparison. Most find reasons why this just
cannot be a valid test. Clearly you've found that it is. And also that
the 'magic' is not in the playback, but further upstream.
Not necessarily. When transferring these LP sides to CD I still used my
turntable, my cartridge, and my phono preamp. But the point here is that
whatever makes this LP sound so damn good is transferrable to another
medium
(digital) with the "magic" intact. . I.E. whatever it is, it's on the
records!
Right, so the LP playback has it, and it can be recorded to, and played
back on, CD. Therefore, your 'magic' is not an artifact of the
storage/playback medium (i.e. CD/LP).

Where in the world did you get the idea that I bekieve it was?

Well, gee, I don't know, maybe it was directly above where you replied
"not necessarily" to my statement that "...the 'magic' is not in the
playback, but further upstream."??

Keith Hughes

Perhaps I misundertood you. If so, I apologize.

[Arny Krueger]

"Steven Sullivan" wrote in message


Ipod quality reproduction is mostly dependent on the
files you play on it. Its DAC and output stages are
quite good. SO to speak of 'Ipod quality reproduction'
shows not elitism, but ignorance of how well Ipods have
performed in bench tests.

IME the performance of the transducers are, as usual the biggest sound
quality problem with the iPod.

[Arny Krueger]

"Sonnova" wrote in message


No, I was chiding you for your PC comment about elitism.

The failure of logic here is presuming that just because people who are
obsessed with being politically correct apply that political correctness to
elitism, then everybody who disagrees with unfair elitist comments is
obsessed with being politically correct.

What I see is a lot of posturing along the lines of saying that people who
aren't high end audiophiles don't care about sonics.

In fact there has been a lot of consciousness raising about sound quality
among the masses. My friends who design car systems hear from their
management, that their dealers saythat a car with a bad sound system
causes just as many dire customer complaints as a car with a bad engine or
transmission.

As someone else pointed out, this group is about elitism.

Only in the minds of elitists.

That's why its called rec.audio.HIGH-END.

High end is a marketing term. The phase has been around a lot longer than
high end audio. The phrase is commonly applied to many more areas than just
audio. High end products are simply products whose pricing, capacity,
performance, and/or features are among the most, as opposed to being among
the least or just average. Admittedly, some high end equipment is
advertised and sold based on snob appeal, but this is not necessarily so.
For example, a coal mine might buy a high end dump truck because they need
its great capacity to operate efficiently.

I see nothing wrong with being elitists.

Being an elitest is not necessarily a moral fault. However, it can be
self-defeating.

On the other hand, being an elitist is just not me being me.

All the great movers and shakers of history were elitists.

In what universe? In the US we had many movers and shakers who were not
elitists. Abraham Lincoln and Jimmy Carter come immediately to mind.

[Arny Krueger]

"Sonnova" wrote in message

On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:15:22 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article
) :

Unh, just as we misinterpreted your claim that more
turntables are being sold, when in fact you mistakenly
dropped out the qualifier that it was brands and models
that you were talking about. I'm not sure I even buy
that, because in the day when the LP was all we had,
everybody and their brother were making turntables.

I SAID high-end turntables.

Well, very many of these turntables were high end, for those days.

Of course there were more
different brands of direct-drive junk and record
changers, but that's not what I'm talking about (as I
have already pointed out).

There was a time when certain better-made record changers were properly
considered to be high end because of the great inconvenience (listenus
interruptus) that they helped music lovers avoid. For example, the
Fisher-Lincoln record changer was considered to be high end in its day. So
was the Garrard Model 88, in its day.

[willbill]

willbill wrote:

Arny Krueger wrote:

"willbill" wrote in message


Steven Sullivan wrote:

Doug McDonald wrote:

The SACD has great merit because it is multichannel.

It isn't necessarily so . And it's not the only
multichannel-capable format.

for audio only, besides SACD and DVD-A, what else
is there for decent multichannel sound?

(not that DVD-A is decent!)

Blu Ray and HDCD whose sound tracks are typically recorded in Dolby
TrueHD.

i'm not aware that any "mostly hi-end audio" disks that
have yet been released on either of the new hi def
formats, namely Blu-Ray and HD-DVD

even something useful like a 4+ hour disk of truly
laid back hi-quality multichannel background music

correct me if i'm wrong

so for the moment, for hi-end multichannel SACD is it

guess i answered my own question:

while doing some web googling on the 3rd gen
Toshiba HD-DVD players, i discovered that it's
starting to happen:

http://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-Bach-...6137873&sr=1-1
Uncommon Bach - Music Experience in 3-Dimensional Sound Reality TM [HD DVD DTSHD Surround Music Disc]
has some user reviews

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...671378-2829517
Uncommon Mozart - Music Experience in 3-Dimensional Sound Reality [HD DVD]

http://www.amazon.com/Spatial-Dynami...671378-2829517
Spatial Dynamics - Music Experience in 3-Dimensional Sound Reality [HD DVD]

The Way To Paradise - Music Experience in 3-Dimensional Sound Reality [HD DVD]
Jazz Standards - Music Experience in 3-Dimensional Sound Reality [HD DVD]
Space or Dream of Life - Music Experience in 3-Dimensional Sound Reality [HD DVD]

i have no idea (yet) of how they compare to a good SACD

bill