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06-12-2011

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Romy the Cat

Boston, MA
Posts 10,182
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #:	1
Post ID:	16451
Reply to:	16451

It is all about hard surface.

I think 11 years after High-Resolution formats hit wide public it is possible to make some generalizations. I can not comment on SACD. I do not use it and consider it being an fraudulent crap. I do not do DVD-A as I do not like it and consider it garbage. I play 2X and 4X raw PCM files. I do not insist that my 24 bit playback is as perfect as it might be but I think it does very well to serve my need and let me to understand the level at which 24-bit PCM able to operate.

So, what I observe is that my High-Resolution format still quite behind compare to what a good LP playback can do with a properly pressed record. With all misery of LP playing and with all objective limitations of LP recordings the Sound from LP is much more involving and much more discrimination to what it plays. I think the reason is that hard surface contact that hyper-hygienic audio of nowadays do not care so much.

The caT

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche

06-13-2011

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guy sergeant
United Kingdom
Posts 260
Joined on 08-03-2004

Post #:	2
Post ID:	16454
Reply to:	16451

Magnetic tape

Where does that leave the potential of magnetic tape for delivering good sound? There is physical contact but it is fairly constant in nature.

06-13-2011

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Romy the Cat

Boston, MA
Posts 10,182
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #:	3
Post ID:	16455
Reply to:	16454

There are no potentials in magnetic tape.

guy sergeant wrote:
Where does that leave the potential of magnetic tape for delivering good sound? There is physical contact but it is fairly constant in nature.

I do not consider magnetic tape as “available source” anymore. Tape can produce very good result but no one record anything on tape anymore and the existing tapes are practically not obtainable. Whatever is obtainable ether garbage already or just recordings that are all know for years and years and available on LP. I gave too much credit to various Morons who sell master-tape dubs. In 7/8 of all case you pay $200-$300 per dub and get quality of sound from this dub that is truly laughable. So, if you are not an industry person who had managed to steal in 70s a bunch of the tapes from your radio station, TV station, sound check booth, mastering room or wherever then you have no access to good magnetic tape sources today.

The Cat

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche

06-13-2011

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Jorge
Austin TX
Posts 141
Joined on 10-17-2010

Post #:	4
Post ID:	16456
Reply to:	16455

Tape Project

I have tried a lot of tape recorders and different tapes of different quality, thanks to a few close friends. There is the Tape Project tapes which quality is always very good, and although the selection of music is very good they have a limited catalog with different things for different tastes in music, their classical tapes are very few. They are expensive, but almost at the same price you get any of the so called "Master-dubs". There are other manufacturers in Germany of excelent tapes, but again, the music is a selection of great things and very limited classical. Then of course the Ebay stuff some of which have very, very good quality, but you have to know what you are looking for. There is a great selection of classical but they are 4 track with dolby, so you need to reset your machine head for them.
But when you get a good tape, all other sources pale by comparison....
About Master dubs, well the quality varies between the sources and even within one source, you can get a couple of wonderful tapes and then one that seems to be copied from an Lp. How can you tell? Maybe it was just a bad recording day at the studio in the 70s or some smart guy trying to sell you an Lp copy as a Master dub...

I think the best thing would be to buy music directly form the orchestras like this link:

http://www.bso.org/bso/shop/productCategories.jsp?id=bcat13360032

I have a wet dream that all symphonic halls will offer the recordings of last weeks concerts over the net, in different formats, high res 2 channel of course would be the selected one, then maybe you can connect to "La Scala" and try their stuff, lets say they hired this idiot engineer so although the performances are great, the recoding quality is not that good, but if you go to the London Symphony, the recordings are great! or say the Best recordings, believe it or not come from the Utah state simphony... Whatever, It would be wonderful to have that acces and to be able to download all the music that is bieng played once and never again, be able to select the best performances and store them in your Hard drive...
The technology is already there, and I a sure at least a very faithful small market. The idea is there as in the BSO link provided, there should be some more I am not aware since I am just gathering stuff to build my High res computer, but it sounds like the future of the music market.

06-13-2011

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Romy the Cat

Boston, MA
Posts 10,182
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #:	5
Post ID:	16459
Reply to:	16456

No tape anymore.....

This thread is not about tape but rather about my feeling that High-Resolution is not “there” yet. It is unquestionable that tape is able to get great sonic result but how obtainable the tapes are? Moreover how obtainable the tapes of the recordings that you want? I would say not obtainable at all. I would like to play what I want and do not make the format providers to dictate my preferences. I do not participate in what Tape Project does. I do not care the music they press. In addition they insist that using their taps I need to kiss them in ass and to express adoration to their products. With this attitude they can only fuck themselves- I have no interest neither in those people nor to the crap do they sell as “music”. I dealt with a few Master Dub providers. They have high sense of self-worth but in my estimation very sub-acceptable results. BTW, the guy that you gave me another day was the worst and his Master Dub was ridicules.

The point that I am trying to make is that as we progress in your interest in music we come across to performances that we would like to get. With CD, LP, 78s, CACD, even with high-resolution formats we have a park of performances that might become available to up. With tape we unfortunately do not have it. At least I never was able to get access to divert tape material. Find for me good master of Bruckner 1 or Bruckner 8 on tape? Good luck to find it…

Nope, I do not feel that tape as a format still available. Sure it you have a few thousands tapes collection then it is a different story. I am sure those people exist, but I am not one of them.

The Cat

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche

06-13-2011

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Jorge
Austin TX
Posts 141
Joined on 10-17-2010

Post #:	6
Post ID:	16460
Reply to:	16459

Pity

Sorry for that, the first tapes were pretty good and I got excited, some of the latter ones, well.
I do not consider it a live format, but I want to have a few good tapes mostly as reference of playback.

About digital I am happy to say that direct comparisons in my system with the Tape ( in a not so good Machine) were very good but did not completely smoke my Forsell-EAD cd player combo, which speaks pretty highly of it. I have already bought a couple of boards of the Douma DDDAC with the paralleled TDA1543 chips, but have not recieved them yet. They have very good reviews from those guys with horns in Germany. (Reinhard)
It is not High res of course.

A friend is putting an very good digital system with the PM2 and an out of this world computer, I am waiting to see how that goes in order to follow!

06-13-2011

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Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,671
Joined on 10-12-2006

Post #:	7
Post ID:	16462
Reply to:	16460

Unobtainium

I tried for a few years - many years ago - to put together a tape-based system. The prices kept going up on equipment and recorded tape, and program kept getting more scarce, until the "secondary market" kicked in. These were the "Bait and Switch" folks, the wannabees and the Hapless Seekers still imagining that they were going to stumble across some "undiscovered" trove for cheap, or at least - they imagined - they could count on the high-priced stuff.

All this to say, analog tape works GREAT if one owns great equipment and knows exactly what one is doing. By this I mean, you might actually record your own program, today. Unfortunately, the best of the old Master Tapes and real 1st gen. dubs of the many historical Great Performances are Long Gone, afaik. The last time I heard a real 1st dub of a live recording of a classic jazz set, all the hair on my body stood on end. I wish I could do something about it.

Best regards,
Paul S

06-14-2011

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scooter
Posts 161
Joined on 07-17-2008

Post #:	8
Post ID:	16464
Reply to:	16462

Deterioration over time

I had some experience with tape in a professional environment in the early 90s.

What initially struck me was sound quality of a few newly made good recordings. However, a significant % of tapes IME over time suffered clear sound quality deterioration and, not entirely unrelated, visible physical deterioration. Some tapes were not worth restoring (e.g. stuck together) and some were likely unrestorable.

Of course all storage forms suffer deterioration overtime even without use and I suspect CD-Rs and spinning HD platters are the most vulnerable. But cheap RAID and offsite options render this a non-issue for anyone who cares. Records are a different story obviously but then again maybe not. . .

06-14-2011

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joaco

The Pacific Coast in Chile
Posts 30
Joined on 12-18-2010

Post #:	9
Post ID:	16467
Reply to:	16451

I wish im wrong

Romy the Cat wrote:
I think 11 years after High-Resolution formats hit wide public it is possible to make some generalizations. I can not comment on SACD. I do not use it and consider it being an fraudulent crap. I do not do DVD-A as I do not like it and consider it garbage. I play 2X and 4X raw PCM files. I do not insist that my 24 bit playback is as perfect as it might be but I think it does very well to serve my need and let me to understand the level at which 24-bit PCM able to operate.

So, what I observe is that my High-Resolution format still quite behind compare to what a good LP playback can do with a properly pressed record. With all misery of LP playing and with all objective limitations of LP recordings the Sound from LP is much more involving and much more discrimination to what it plays. I think the reason is that hard surface contact that hyper-hygienic audio of nowadays do not care so much.

The caT

Hi Romy .
I think Hi RES is another totally different experience aimed to differents results from the very beginning of the recording process . I do not think that hi-res in the future will be doings things that one can compare hand to hand with good LP . I wish Im wrong . But I do think that the problem lie behind the way the players decode hires or 16 bits cd , so before the limitation of the format I think the real problem is in the hardware .

06-16-2011

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steverino
Posts 367
Joined on 05-23-2009

Post #:	10
Post ID:	16478
Reply to:	16451

Higher and higher

Romy,

As you have noted elsewhere, SACD was originally a multibit high sample rate format. I believe Sony went to one bit for "security" reasons to prevent copying. I didn't think the one bit idea originated with Meitner but came from Sony execs. I think it's hard to rule out digital encoding until someone combines 4-10MHz sampling rates with 4 bit or more encoding. I agree that any of the current formats are not as good in musical terms as the LP. I've heard them in the recording studio and they still sound digital. If the ultra high sampling multibit doesn't sound better than analog I think we will have to wait for the development of very sophisticated audio wave form processing software which can take a digital encoding and reconstruct how it should sound. That will take some artificial intelligence likely since the contextual factors would be staggeringly complex. In the meantime let's be glad that some very fine lps were made and we have the gear to play them adequately.

06-16-2011

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Romy the Cat

Boston, MA
Posts 10,182
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #:	11
Post ID:	16479
Reply to:	16478

The biggest problem is that digital can’t edit.

steverino wrote:
Romy,

I thought it was you or maybe I read it elsewhere. SACD was originally a multibit high sample rate format. I believe Sony went to one bit for "security" reasons to prevent copying. I think it's hard to rule out digital encoding until someone combines 4-10MHz sampling rates with 4 bit or more encoding. I agree that any of the current formats are not as good in musical terms as the LP. I've heard them in the recording studio and they still sound digital. If the ultra high sampling multibit doesn't sound better than analog I think we will have to wait for the development of very sophisticated audio wave form processing software which can take a digital encoding and reconstruct how it should sound. That will take some artificial intelligence likely since the contextual factors would be staggeringly complex. In the meantime let's be glad that some very fine lps were made and we have the gear to play them adequately.

Yes, the way how SACD was originally invented it was 4-bit and it was a truly spectacular format. Sony, converted it in inadequate 1-bit, I do not know what was the reason but for what SACD is 1-bit just physically can’t handle it – it fundamentally wrong format. Still, my feeling is that better formats or better technologies will not bring better sound. The main worsening of Sound by digital technology does not come from limitation of formats but from a corruption of recording culture. In past the tape or a disk was tangible analog evidence all manipulation that took place with it were done by analog means.

Today the masters are digital DSP processing is not considered a problem. The sad truth is that digital is not editable by nature and any DSP processing after a file was recorded terminally destroys the file. You can cut and slice tape 33256 times and it will not destroy sound as much as 0.1db attenuation at digital level. You see: digital fundamentally can’t not edit, can you believe that this will be embraced the industry? No one understands that digital is not editable… Digital is like direct-to-disk cut. It was recorded and it is, no further manipulation with data possible. Do you fell this discipline will even be employed?

The Cat

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche

06-17-2011

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steverino
Posts 367
Joined on 05-23-2009

Post #:	12
Post ID:	16480
Reply to:	16479

Great point

Romy,

You make an excellent point about digital processing at least in its current form. I think that it will take a quantum advance in waveform reconstruction and modeling techniques to effectively increase the fidelity of digital audio processing rather than impair it. Decades away at the earliest. Bless the LP! This whole digital audio experience has been extremely disappointing from what seemed initially so promising. Digital video has been far more successful than its audio counterpart.

06-17-2011

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joaco

The Pacific Coast in Chile
Posts 30
Joined on 12-18-2010

Post #:	13
Post ID:	16481
Reply to:	16479

Digitalized Vinyl

Romy the Cat wrote:

The main worsening of Sound by digital technology does not come from limitation of formats but from a corruption of recording culture. In past the tape or a disk was tangible analog evidence all manipulation that took place with it were done by analog means....
The Cat

I totally agree , if you digitalize an LP on a DAT or even on a file , it keeps some very interesting attributes of the LP recording when playing it thorough your DAC . I think theres even less digital manipulation doing this that in the whole process of mastering a cd . ...

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