What is wrong with digital reproduction?

[Skywave-Rider]

It is that each succeeding generation of audio technology has as it's context all the preceding generations of audio technology and proportionately less of natural sound.

Thanks --- crystal.

[Rusnzha]

Originally posted by Ducatista47
My JoLida CD player has analog tube output and I love it. What tubes are you using?

I'm using the Tung-Sol 5687s that it came with. I've read about the effects of using different brands of tubes and will check this out when my money situation improves.

[Ducatista47]

It is that each succeeding generation of audio technology has as it's context all the preceding generations of audio technology and proportionately less of natural sound.

Oh my yes. The only reason I think I have a leg to stand on when it comes to comparing with natural sound is my occasional forays to the local university music department's unamplified acoustic recitals. If it were not for that opportunity I would have to hang out in off campus housing to catch jam sessions.

"Who is that old fart and what is he doing here? Did he bring the beer?"

Edit: The local Park District nature center has acoustic jams, unamplified, in the A-frame every other Sunday afternoon. It is a very intimate setting. Everyone is within fifteen or twenty feet of the performers. A lot of really talented people show up, mostly older folks who have been playing all their lives. In addition to guitar, banjo, dulcimer, fiddle, percussion and the like, last week there was a lady playing stand up bass and singing. Check your local park district calendar!

Clark

[Ducatista47]

I'm using the Tung-Sol 5687s that it came with. I've read about the effects of using different brands of tubes and will check this out when my money situation improves.

I chose Tung-Sol 12AX7's to replace the cheap Chinese tubes that came with it. I had quite a choice at the local audio shop (lucky me). An informal survey of my tube head friends matched Tung-Sol with what I required. I was looking for the most neutral. They were far from the highest cost option.

Clark

[speakerdave]

Oh my yes. The only reason I think I have a leg to stand on when it comes to comparing with natural sound is my occasional forays to the local university music department's unamplified acoustic recitals. If it were not for that opportunity I would have to hang out in off campus housing to catch jam sessions.

"Who is that old fart and what is he doing here? Did he bring the beer?"

Clark

And the issue is not what a good engineer can create. It's a question of what the market will support.

I have a friend who agonized over his selection of components at Pacific Stereo in the '70's; the system still sounds semi-decent at low volume even with Quadraflex speakers (Pacific Stereo's house brand--he never did get around to upgrading), and he still has the components, but they are sitting unused somewhere. The last time we were there he was playing an iPod over an iPod base of some kind. After a couple of hints I finally just asked them to turn it off (and pissed off the more polite half of my household).

[Ducatista47]

Otherwise the difference between a LP and my self produced CD is very small, I even do not care - and can not describe it. (When I try to compare a LP with the commercial "digital remastered" version it is often impossible because there is a remix involved.)
I own a SACD version of an analog produced recording, "A Love Supreme" by John Coltrane. When I listen to it I am completely satisfied. (I do not know the LP version.)
But despite of all these imperfection I would not like to have a real drumset, piano or saxophone in my living room! Although I like very much a saxophone in a great audience.

I have some great remasters, but many are compressed to hell in the current fashion. Inferior to the original. Buyer beware! I have a nice pressing of the Coltrane set on LP. I wish you lived across the street so we could compare.

And when all is perfected it is time to look at the front end: Correct miking which is not done alone with DECCA tree, panpotting and some digital reveberation. (I do not talk about electronic music).

I mentioned VTL recordings in another thread. I would recommend one in particular but it is difficult to find and expensive. I would hold it up as an example of ultra realistic (and satisfying) analog recording. Like I said elsewhere, the room it takes you to is not the best room, but you are really in that room. Here is a link to an SACD of it, of all things. It is the vinyl and redbook CD that are hard to get.
http://www.fone.it/shop/schede/SACD046.pdf

You may find this excerpt interesting:


1992
About this recording
The heart and soul of any recorded sound must surely be the acoustical properties of the room or hall itself, and the microphones being used within that acoustic.
I designed the acoustics of the VTL studio in Chino, California, for ‘purist’
recording-techniques only, with all the music being played ‘live’ and captured straight on to 2 stereo tracks...

Measuring 40 ft x 30 ft with a cathedral-peak ceiling of 16 ft height, the entire acoustic treatment is finished in Oregon Oak and Douglas Fir timbers with continuous Helmholtz tuned resonance absorbing slots.
The floor is rubber over high-density particle board over concrete with a resultant reverberation time of approximately 11⁄2 seconds, providing a totally neutral and resonance-free acoustic.
Every single piece of equipment in the (entirely tube, entirely analogue) recording chain is of my design and is built in our factory in Chino. Somewhat unusually, this includes the microphones themselves.
The MANLEY `GOLD REFERENCE’ STEREO CONDENSER microphone is
the centre-piece and the single microphone used for this recording.
No other additional microphones were used at all. It is of the so-called `large capsule’ variety, having a diameter of 11/4 inches with 3-micron gold-deposition mylar diaphragms.
The stereo version has one fixed capsule and one rotatable capsule with the `pick-up pattern’ being continuously variable...
my most often-used choice being that of `figure of 8’ in the classic Blumlein
coincident crossed-pair mode. For our own recordings we use custom-versions of the `REFERENCE GOLD’ microphone, in that the entire vacuum tube amplification is built into the microphone body, (8 triodes in the stereo
microphone!), and no transformer coupling or external amplification is used at all.

The microphone is connected via VTL `Quad’ double screened cable right into a unity-gain mixer for level-setting and metering. The mixer is based around the MANLEY REFERENCE preamplifier and can mix up to 10 microphones into 2 busses.
Mixing of microphones is achieved by each input having its own dedicated grid, and not by the usual “pot and buildout resistor” method as found in every console in use in the recording industry. No equalization of any kind is employed, (although we do have MANLEY PULTECS and SHELF-PARAMETRIC Equalizers on hand to patch in if needed, say, with electronic based instruments that could arise on a rock or pop session). The patch-bay itself is comprised of audiophile-quality 4mm silver-plated
banana-plugs, and not of the commonly used `tip-ring-sleeve’ post-office style jack plugs. All fixed wiring in the patch-bay and control-room is VTL “White wire” 3 x pure copper and 2 x silver cores in teflon.

The 1⁄2 inch 2-track Studer C37 analogue tape deck has been fully updated by us mechanically and contains only our Manley pure tube circuitry. At 15 ips this machine is flat from 20 HZ to 20 KHZ ±.2 dB. Hours and hours and hours of listening decided us to make the CD releases from the analogue master-tapes (transferred through our MANLEY 20-bit Analogue/Digital converter) in preference to using simultaneously-recorded digital masters we’d made at the sessions, also directly recorded through our converter to both DASH and DAT storage media.
These recordings sound pretty darn good, but without the naturally rich and faithfully sonorous accuracy of analogue recording at its best.

AGFA type 468 tape was used at 200 nano-Webers, but run somewhat on the `hot’ side, (+5dB), without any kind of noise-reduction.
Again, we chose to accept a small amount of tape hiss, in preference to the sterility and inherent phase-shift distortion produced by (solid-state) noise-reduction.

We would welcome any comments (favorable or otherwise!) you might like to make on the sound of our records...

David Manley

A Manley Gold Reference mike is currently $8000 US. I knew tape noise reduction systems had their problems, but I did not know that phase shift was one of them.

Very thoughtful, Peter. Thank you.
Clark

[Hoerninger]

I wish you lived across the street so we could compare.

I'll go through all that reading, very interesting topic. Thank you.
_________
Peter

[Ian Mackenzie]

I think Clark's point is only relevent to those with audiophile taste.

I mean the bulk of digital music sold is down loaded by 18-30 year old's and played on an Ipod.

The more classy the playback system the more frustrated the user become's with the recording production values and any aspects of the D/A process that are not optimum.

When I had the Lavy Dac it was painful to listen to many of my recently purchased CD.s.

I think a lot has happened to the way CD are engineered today that are not produced on mainstream labels. At the other extreme the audiophile labels are excellent but not always the stuff you want to listen to.

A Blue Note label disk of a Jazz recording made at the Blue Note Club NY City is very close to what I rcall hearing when I visited NY in Sept last year.

In the larger more elaborate recording facilities there is an emphasis on Analgue processing and mixing being available for those who prefer it.

That flavour of recording has more attitude and no doubt suits certain genres.

Ian

[readswift]

WHOOAAH!!



many ppl goin to have issue because of this little guy

[boputnam]

Hi, Clark...

You re-visit an "age old" argument, but with a refreshing take on it. I agree with much of what Dave posted here....

Here's a question that I do not think is as off topic as it might seem at first.

What is our hearing context? Of the people fifty years old and under today, what portion of their hearing experience is unamplified live music?

What proportion of the population has sung a song all the way through in the past year, besides Happy Birthday.

Of all the songs you know, if any, is there one that you learned from a person and not a record?

Even in church PA's are very common and even choirs are for some reason using PA's and when the congregation is singing sometimes even then the sound is dominated by the pastor singing into a mike.

I've been to a collaborative performance of two a capella singing groups (womens's voices) in which one of the the leaders angrily insisted that the SR be turned up until it absolutely blasted the audience, and it sounded to me like 35% distortion.

I think the commonality no longer have a non-amplified, non-electronic, non-media-based frame of reference for evaluating sound quality.

Dave, one of my mentors in SR challenges my ambivalence (slightly negative...) about digital consoles. To me, their functionality and feature set just do not make-up for the lack of the analogue sound. Even with all the winkie plugins emulating fabulous and often irreplaceable vintage outboard gear, they do not sound as wonderful as analogue. He challenges that maybe digital sounds too "whatever" because we have spent our entire life in the analogue realm - it is what we know. Digital nowadays is actually a more pure reproduction, but it is not familiar. It is an interesting argument.

On the church issue - ugh! So, true. A few weekends back while chasing JGB Band around the midwest, I spent a couple days with my sister - she and her husband are some sort of leaders, and direct and perform in the music program at their church. The church is pondering a $90,000 upgrade to their system. "Everything sucks". So, I spent the better part of a day there tweaking their sucky stuff, and using Smaart did the best I could in EQ'ing their 4 different zones, put them back on conventional "it doubles as a hammer" ball mics and presto-chango, they've had the best string of services musically they can remember. Their gain structure was totally wrong, they did not understand their gear and all their "corrections" were sapping system power. Ugly. Worst of the experience is, the pastor insists on using a podium mic and sings - his mic is set for speaking and you can imagine the imbalance when he sings. No concept of what is going on. Besides all that, IMO, they need almost nothing. The voices carry wonderfully thought the sanctuary and save for a little support for the acoustic guitars, they should do better things with their $90k. (Rant nearly done). Churches are the single largest spenders in pro audio these days. Every single one of them are tackling sound finding it attracts and retains the newer parishoners. Weird....

[Mr. Widget]

Churches are the single largest spenders in pro audio these days. Every single one of them are tackling sound finding it attracts and retains the newer parishoners. Weird....

I was recently involved in designing and putting in an audio system for a "Meditation Center." Translation, new age California church alternative.

The problem with these places is a total lack of understanding of how sound systems operate. Someone needs to develop a system that is idiot proof. Sort of a, god forbid, Bose "Lifestyle" plug and play sound reinforcement system. Hey Harman! Are you listening?


Widget

[Fred Sanford]

I recently had a similar experience- a local tiny church near here had a first-glance decent system (Mackie board, QSC power), but it sounded awful. A little digging around during their down-time, and a lot came out- blown woofer, mix of OK/crappy mics, bad connections, bad gain structure, stupid labelling, sources forced to mono within a matrix before the board (when there were stereo inputs available on the board), etc. etc. etc.

I re-wired and re-labelled, we're about 90% done. I called the contractor that sold them their video system & matrix, and after asking the owner two questions about his installation that he couldn't answer, he said, "Um...who ARE you? You're not from around here." I sent him a resume' and will be calling to follow up soon- his company has the contract for an AV system in the local resort/water park. Hmmmm...

But, yeah, big market in worship systems, and some manufacturers are really paying attention finally- that's another avenue I'm pursuing for employment. Housing market is absolutely tanked here, residential systems just aren't happening.

je

[boputnam]

Someone needs to develop a system that is idiot proof.

Don't stop with churches!

All the BE's (band engineers) I work around lament the same. We must be pretty versatile systems engineers / techs to quickly decipher what has been done "to" the install by all the various pesky fingers that have had unknowledgeable access since the system installed, and what we can do in the time allowed to throw off a good show. Typically, we load-in 4- to 6-hrs before downbeat. That is mostly rehearsal time, during which we are staging the band, mic'ing the stage and then we steal time to dig through the system to try and understand. Cabling is crossed, crossovers are set horribly wrong, subs are way out of balance and then there's the "trivial" bit of tuning the system to the room. Lots of times the HE's (house engineers) save / copy my settings, but invariably, when we return six-months later, it's "let's start again...", except that more of their stuff has failed in the interim... Bad news.

[Ducatista47]

Hi, Clark...

To me, their functionality and feature set just do not make-up for the lack of the analogue sound. Even with all the winkie plugins emulating fabulous and often irreplaceable vintage outboard gear, they do not sound as wonderful as analogue.

And hi to you, Bo. Nice of you to be kind about my untimely resurrection of what many consider a dead horse topic. Pardon my selectively bolding your paragraph, but in reference to my original diffuse rant, what is it you find more satisfying about analogue (I'll bow to the proper and correct European spelling)? Is it simply better? More accurate? Closer to live sound? More pleasing to hear?

I am thinking against a background of your admonition to bring a system to absolute neutral and live with it for a while before rejecting the new sound. I think getting used to real, live sound before judging a reproduction system is a must.

Clark

[Ian Mackenzie]

I always equate Yanky houses of worship with the Blues Brothers.

The Poms on the other hand take things a bit more seriously with real recordings of (real chiors) at well known chapels in Cambridge.

I think they take their Hifi dare I say a tad more seriously but that is another story