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mattmcl 
Forum Newbie 
Joined: April 08 2008 Location: Erie, CO Status: Offline Points: 25 |
 Topic: Any audiophiles here?Posted: July 01 2009 at 09:32 |
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Just wondering if there are any folks here with this obsession. I've started to put my toe into the water and have found myself dragged into the deep end.
Do you agonize over LP or CD? The depth and warmth of the LP can't be denied, but the clean crackle free CD is pretty sweet too. How many times in the past year have you swapped out capacitors in your crossovers? Lacking the funds for commercial equipment, I've started building my own. I'm working on a pair of transmission line speakers, then two monoblocks, a pre amp and DAC, probably in that order. I listen to most stuff digitally as FLAC files. Anyone else out there? |
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Mr ProgFreak
Forum Senior Member 
Joined: November 08 2008 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 5195 |
Posted: July 01 2009 at 10:23 |
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I consider myself to be an audiophile person ... I love to listen to music on good equipment that brings out all the details of the music. The difference between me and typical audiophiles is that I not only embrace digital formats, but also MP3 (at high bitrates). There have been many studies that show that even on very good equipment it's often not possible to tell the original (CD/FLAC) apart from high bitrate MP3.
And to make it even worse, I also use low-cost Logitech 5.1 speakers most of the time ... they sound magnificent at lower volume and/or if you sit in front of the computer in the optimal position. |
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mystic fred
Special Collaborator 
Honorary Collaborator Joined: March 13 2006 Location: Londinium Status: Offline Points: 4252 |
Posted: July 02 2009 at 01:14 |
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i hate being labelled an audiophile
 , i haven't got a £20,000 system with a £5,000+ cartridge - i just enjoy getting the best out of my lovely records, many of these miniature works of art have been painstakingly produced from state-of-the-art recording equipment (even the old 50's records sound amazing) and justify some respect, not played on a tin-can sounding ipod, MP3 or the over-eq'd and compressed cd that sets your teeth on edge!
...that out of the way, my modest mid-range setup has been assembled through many years of auditioning and matching many makes of components, after much testing i can say even a budget system can sound good if set up properly, but investment can produce even better results.
As for the vinyl / cd thing, both have their pros and cons but i prefer the sound of my vinyl records over cd generally, cd's are boringly convenient, but i have come across a few cd's that have been startling - the SACD and DVD-A 5.1 surround sound is very good, and i would recommend the 20 or 24 bit stereo recordings over the standard 16-bit ones, vinyl is still superior over these but i don't mind the odd pop or click, the high quality of sound produced by vinyl will come through, but sometimes i get no background noise at all as i keep my lp's CLEAN - though as John Peel famously said "Surface noise? ..life too has surface noise..".
btw placing the wrong capacitors in your crossovers can cause damage to the speakers...be very careful!
let battle commence....
 Edited by mystic fred - July 02 2009 at 01:23 |
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Mr ProgFreak
Forum Senior Member
Joined: November 08 2008 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 5195 |
Posted: July 02 2009 at 01:23 |
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^ the fact remains though that vinyl has inferior dynamic bandwidth ... I'd say that a digital medium with 14 bit resolution would be a good analogy.
I know that this "battle" can go on endlessly, without any progress. My hope is though that with each generation people will look at the difference between vinyl/analog and CD/MP3/digital with less bias and more emphasis on the actual physical facts. BTW: I'm sure that you hear a difference between vinyl and CD, and that you prefer the sound of vinyl and - by your subjective perception - vinyl has more dynamics than CD, or CD is more "compressed" than vinyl. Well, sometimes our ears play tricks on us ... just have a look at the thread about optical illusions. Eyes, ears ... they supply us with data which is processed by our brain, and that's where things can go terribly wrong as far as accuracy is concerned.  |
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mystic fred
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: March 13 2006 Location: Londinium Status: Offline Points: 4252 |
Posted: July 02 2009 at 01:33 |
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i did do some experiments some time ago using a computer program that measures frequency response, and the cd had a very even bandwidth and was "louder" but the vinyl response was so wide it was difficult to keep within the scale (i printed the results somewhere on this site but it was a long time ago, they are here somewhere!) - sorry but there are no mind tricks, vinyl has much wider frequency response captured in those grooves, but i have had many discussions on the net and it would seem religious conversion woud be easier than getting someone to change from cd and vinyl! by the way - to return to the thread subject of audiophiles, i am not one becausei know a real audiophile would not be seen dead using cd's ...
Edited by mystic fred - July 02 2009 at 02:25 |
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Mr ProgFreak
Forum Senior Member
Joined: November 08 2008 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 5195 |
Posted: July 02 2009 at 01:34 |
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^ I'm not sure what you mean by "wider frequency response" ... are we talking about dynamics or frequencies?
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mystic fred
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: March 13 2006 Location: Londinium Status: Offline Points: 4252 |
Posted: July 02 2009 at 02:20 |
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frequencies - dynamics brings in the arbitrary subject of "loudness", many remastered cd's have enhanced dynamics which trick the ear in thinking it is louder and clearer - sounds great in the car but a bit overwhelming in the living room, unless you want to annoy the neighbours!
on the distortion front, i have listened to distortion-free sound analogue sound for most of my life (except for live gigs!) and my hearing is still pin-sharp, i pass every test at the doctors, though constant exposure to ipod would probably not be a good thing in years to come.... wait and
listening to some recent vinyl albums i suspect they have been recorded digitally and the inherent digital characteristics (pinched, compressed high frequencies) have been transposed onto the vinyl recordings, they just don't sound like those old 60's lp's - for years recording studios have been longing to ditch their expensive unreliable 32 track tape machines and cans of Ampex gold master tape and i guess they may have done it - a sad blow for the analogue fan, but "progress" is inevitable i suppose..
 btw to return to the thread subject of audiophiles, i am not an audiophile because a real audiophile would not be seen dead using cd's..
Edited by mystic fred - July 02 2009 at 02:27 |
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progkidjoel
Prog Reviewer 
Joined: March 02 2009 Location: Australia Status: Offline Points: 19643 |
Posted: July 02 2009 at 02:56 |
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I'm the child of a poor audiohpile
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Mr ProgFreak
Forum Senior Member
Joined: November 08 2008 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 5195 |
Posted: July 02 2009 at 03:05 |
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Well, that's not a something you can blame the CD for. First of all, like you said, you experience this problem with some CDs. It's up to the guy who does the mastering ... if he decides to *reduce* the dynamics (not "enhance", as you put it) in order to increase the level of loudness ... you really can't blame the medium for that.
IMO that's another myth ... if anything, CDs sound "pinched" or "sharp" because they contain more of the original high frequency parts of the signal than the vinyl edition. That's especially true if you compare a properly mastered CD (that is: not copied from vinyl) to a non-mint vinyl pressing. Of course the vinyl sounds warmer and softer ... because the treble parts are mostly gone.
Ok, the old vinyl vs. cd vs. mp3 discussion is probably off topic ... but like I said in the beginning: I consider myself to be an audiophile. I simply go one step further than you ... but I guess the difference between you and me is probably similar to the difference between you and a true audiophile.  |
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: July 02 2009 at 04:43 |
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 Expressing it like that is misleading.
14 bit resolution of vinyl is a measurement based upon the actual dynamic range (ie the amplitude of the signal above the measured noise floor) applied to the Effective Number Of Bits (ENOB) formula for an ideal ADC or DAC:
ENOB = (SINAD-1.76)/6.02 ... where SINAD is SNR+THD
Digital resolution is purely theoretical - a 24-bit DAC cannot achieve 24-bits in reality, the above formula is for calculating how many bits resolution the coder has achieved, not how many it can achieve in theory. 24Bits equates to a noise-floor of -146dB - an impossible figure (this number is thrown around by digitalphiles with wild abandon, but it is not very meaningful in real life) - the sole purpose of the formula is to measure the actual SINAD and then calculate how many bits your 24-bit DAC is actually achieving.
You can only compare ideal with ideal, effective with effective and actual with actual - you cannot compare ideal-digital with effective-analogue - that is misleading.
The 14-bits you quote for vinyl is the Effective number of bits based upon the noise-floor so must be equated to the Effective number of bits a DAC is producing in the same environment. So if the noise-floor is measured at -86dB in the analogue domain then it a DAC will achieve exactly the same (or worse) in the same system and therefore be 14-bits resolution too.
If the theoretical value for a DAC is 24-bits then to compare that with vinyl you have to use the theoretical value for that too, which for vinyl is infinite-bits.
There are other "problems" with this:
In the theoretical digital domain ENOB is limited purely by quantisation noise (which for low-level signals is 100% THD). In the analogue domain this is limited purely by thermal noise (which is SNR).
Therefore it is impossible to have digital signals that are below the noise floor whereas analogue signals can and do exist below the noise-floor. In fact digital signals that approach the theoretical noise-floor by 30dB are significantly distorted to make them unlistenable.
The surface noise of a vinyl is ratiometric to the signal - changing amplitude does not affect the SNR so does not affect the ENOB value - normalise to -6dB and the ENOB remains at 14-bits - this is not true with digital where the quantisation noise is fixed and quantifiable - changing the signal amplitude directly affects the ENOB value - if you normalise to -6dB you automatically reduce your 16-Bit code to 15-bits (and 24-bits to 23 etc.).
So while an analogue system can give a poor looking ENOB figure it is still subjectively better than a digital system with the same ENOB value. If this were not a true statement then 16-bit digital systems would be all we need and no one would bother trying to make 24 or 32 bit systems.
Essentially the noise-floor in an analogue system is external - in a digital system it is internal - the ADC and/or DAC sets the limit below which it is impossible to go. Increasing the number of bits (and the sampling frequency) of a coder is an attempt to remove the effect of this internal noise and therefore approach that of the analogue domain. (As an aside you cannot use the term "bandwidth" for anything other than frequency - amplitude is referred to as dynamic headroom or dynamic range)
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mystic fred
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: March 13 2006 Location: Londinium Status: Offline Points: 4252 |
Posted: July 02 2009 at 05:05 |
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very nicely put Dean!
may i also mention that as digital cd's are basically contructed from "bits" or samples they do not contain the whole musical information, unlike analogue which contains ALL the information, but the gaps in the digital signal is so slight the human ear could not really detect it, and the brain more than fills in the gaps...so it really doesn't matter, but i do play cd's of albums not available on vinyl on a £400 Rega Apollo and the lp's still sound better, many agree with me - just have a look at the prices they are fetching on the net, no one's buying them 'cos they're pretty ...
Edited by mystic fred - July 02 2009 at 09:46 |
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mattmcl
Forum Newbie
Joined: April 08 2008 Location: Erie, CO Status: Offline Points: 25 |
Posted: July 02 2009 at 09:22 |
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Wow Dean, thanks for the schooling. I never understood the science behind what my ears were telling me. It's interesting to note the proliferation of DAC and digital audio on the audiophile sites. The vast majority agree that LPs sound better, but the convenience of a music server with FLAC files for many is worth the tradeoff, and high end DACs are getting very, very good.
Personally, I'll keep what I have on vinyl, but FLACs are "good enough" for me. At a certain level, it's all about tradeoffs. The guy with $500,000 into his system is still making tradeoffs. Loudspeaker and amplifier design is all about tradeoffs as well. There is no "perfect," we just choose which shortcomings are least offensive. |
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Mr ProgFreak
Forum Senior Member
Joined: November 08 2008 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 5195 |
Posted: July 02 2009 at 11:20 |
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Thanks for clarifying that - and I'll remember to use the words bandwidth and range more appropriately. One comment regarding the distortion of digital signals approaching the noise floor: Those signals are also very, very silent. I think that a vinyl pressing would have similar problems? But to cut a long story short: In your opinion, how do the dynamic ranges of vinyl and CD compare? Realistically. |
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: July 02 2009 at 11:44 |
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It depends on how close to the noise floor the signals are before the distortion becomes noticeable.
Assuming an 80dB noisefloor then 30dB above that the digital signal is effectively coded using a 5-bit resolution, which equates to around 3% THD - most of us would complain at 3% distortion on paper, but it is the actual harmonic content determines whether we like it or not (in general even = yes, odd = no) - the reality of valve (or tube) amplifiers is they have poor THD figures with a lot of even harmonics added by the output transformer, but people like them.
With a vinyl signal being 30dB above the noise-floor is still a signal that has the original 0.001% THD of the large amplitude signal and is still 31 times bigger than the noise in terms of voltage (actually it's even bigger than that since the noise is the RMS across the whole audio frequency spectrum) so it has retained its purity and can still be detected by the human ear as being distinct from the noise. (where as the digital signal is part of the noise).
Of course as the signals get even smaller the digital distortion will get bigger (and the effective resolution smaller), while the analogue will remain undistorted.
So in principle the digital dynamic range is not as pure as the analogue one, it is also added onto the inherent system noise of the audio recording and playback systems that is common to both analogue and digital.
Realistically - they are to all intents and purposes the same. The actual dynamic range is limited more by the listening environment - you use a PC, I can no longer use headphones, others listen in a car - none of us are in -146dB environments. (I've been in an anechoic chamber and it's one of the most unsettling environments I know of - especially when it's pitch dark)
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Mr ProgFreak
Forum Senior Member
Joined: November 08 2008 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 5195 |
Posted: July 02 2009 at 12:25 |
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Well, I'm not so sure about that. Even if that is the case, I've yet to hear this distortion. And I listen to many classical recordings on CD, which have some *very* silent parts. If the distortion happens like you describe, I'd say that those parts are still well above those 30dB distance from the noise floor. While I certainly agree that this distortion is not acceptable to a true audiophile (any degradation of the signal is not acceptable) ... but I have to ask: What difference does it make if it only happens for parts of the signal that we cannot hear?
It doesn't really matter whether I use my hi-fi system or the PC ... in terms of volume the limiting factor are my neighbours. But about those -146dB of >16bit digital audio: Even if we cannot use that - it would eliminate the distortion effects you mentioned, wouldn't it? |
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: July 02 2009 at 13:29 |
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That's kind of the point: all these numbers that people throw around to show how good a system is are ideal numbers created under unrealistic conditions and do not bear any resemblence to reality. The values are based upon single tones - music is a complex waveform that is naturally rich in harmonics so adding to those is not going to distract from your listenning pleasure unless it is extreme and harsh (eg clipping or excessive crossover distortion) - in my hyperthetical example the quiet passages are "only" 50dB below peak - but that is actually quite a lot (it is a power ration of 100,000:1) when most music has a range of no more than 20dB (100:1) and typically 10dB (10:1). If you distort a single piano tone by 3% it will still sound like a very accpetable piano - it won't sound like a Steinway or a Bosendorfer anymore but it will still sound like piano and not an electric organ. I arbitarily chose 50dB (ie 30dB above a 80dB noisefloor) because it made the maths easier for me.
If you set your hi-fi to acceptable listening level to appease your neighbours for the peaks then the -50dB quiet passages would be approaching the threshold of human hearing.
Yes, higher resolutions reduce the distortion effects and IMO that is the only reason for going for high bit-resolutions - to effectively give a higher resolution to the smaller signals - in the above example a 24-bit signal would be 19-bits resolution at -50dB.
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Jim Garten
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin & Razor Guru Joined: February 02 2004 Location: South England Status: Offline Points: 14693 |
Posted: July 03 2009 at 02:01 |
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I love these threads where I can't understand a bloody word
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Jon Lord 1941 - 2012 |
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Dominic
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 02 2008 Location: Liberation Land Status: Offline Points: 651 |
Posted: July 03 2009 at 02:15 |
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I got a great sound card for my pc about a year ago; that along with my fav winamp sound enhancement plugins.... i can hardly stand to listen to music in my truck anymore.
My precious 24 bit copies of PFM's Storia Un di Minuto and Per Un Amico Gold.... you can hear them breathing for goodness sake.
I suppose i sound like a typical audiophile diva here, but i dl MP3's (320 kbps) and purchase CD's quite frequently, and i can always tell the difference  Of course, i've had many people tell me that they can't hear the difference between mp3 (even high bit rate) and lossless quality. Perhaps i'm taking crazy pills or something.  Edited by Dominic - July 03 2009 at 02:29 |
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mattmcl
Forum Newbie
Joined: April 08 2008 Location: Erie, CO Status: Offline Points: 25 |
Posted: July 03 2009 at 11:43 |
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No, I can hear it every time. I've gone to re-ripping most of my stuff in FLAC for home listening. Hell, I can tell the difference between CD and FLAC too, but only if the CD is played on a real audio CD player and not the computer. Probably because the DAC in the CD player is superior to the one in my sound card.
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Mr ProgFreak
Forum Senior Member
Joined: November 08 2008 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 5195 |
Posted: July 03 2009 at 14:54 |
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http://www.geocities.com/altbinariessoundsmusicclassical/mp3test.html
I'm never getting tired of posting links to this test ... I think that it's very difficult to conduct a truly objective test on this. So far I've heard many people say that they can hear those differences, but frankly I don't believe any of them. Please don't be offended by that ... I have my own ears, I think they're in quite good shape and I'm a skilled listener, and I can't hear a difference between CD and properly ripped mp3s. Neither could the guys that did the c't test. My own experience, combined with the test, far outweigh your statements - from my perspective of course. BTW: I think it's entirely possible that an expensive CD player can sound better than FLACs played on a computer. It doesn't necessarily mean that the expensive player is "more audiophile" though. Often those expensive players included filters and "upsampling" circuitry that enhances the signal (makes it more "smooth"). Be that as it may, such enhancements are not part of the original audiophile philosophy, which is to preserve the original signal as accurately as possible. |
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Any audiophiles here?
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mystic fred wrote: