ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
"You think we can slap some oak on this thing?"
Nothing wrong with 'his' player!
But his files are all redbook standard quality - nothing new and 'better' there.
Neil is trapped in his own business model.
Poor guy!
MM
There is a tv - and there is a BV
Beosound Stage, Beovision 8-40, Beolit 20, Beosound Explore.
I like the conclusion of the article:
Rather spend some money on a pair of headphones!
How about some B&O Play H2/6/8
Millemissen: But his files are all redbook standard quality - nothing new and 'better' there.
the first 10 Albums of Neil Young (& Crazy Horse) are already available in 192kHz 24 bit. That's beyond the CD quality. As many of albums of other artist are.
The store is dependable on the digital music formats from all major record companies and as with other stores (Qobuz, HDtracks, etc) not all music is encoded in formats above the CD standard.
I find his intentions for the quality of music sincere. So nothing poor about the guy.
The professional Sound Guy has definitely the best ears! It is so easy to get people with a clot in the ear for a stuffed listening test.
Let's get all of our B&O and other High-End stuff to the bin, and get a cheap Stereo set. There is no difference.
"Believe nothing you read and only half of what you see, let your ears tell you the truth."
Carolpa: the first 10 Albums of Neil Young (& Crazy Horse) are already available in 192kHz 24 bit. That's beyond the CD quality. As many of albums of other artist are. I find his intentions for the quality of music sincere. So nothing poor about the guy.
You can pour one liter standard red wine into a 5 liter bottle, if you please.
But you won't get 5 liter premium red wine from that.
There is no high-res in old analog tape-based recordings (maybe even from a second or third generation copy).
You could do the ripping/upconververting from a cheap CD at home - and save the money for a rainy day!
Don't let the 'poor guy' fool you.
leosgonewild:https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-of-kickstarters-most-successful-109496883039.html
Reading the article again, I wonder, what he/David Pogue wanted to test?
1: the Pono player (with it's highres qualities) compared to an iPhone, or
2: if people can hear a difference between 'highres files', that have no origin in a highres recording and depend on an analog tape master, or - worse - on an upconverted 16/44.1 file AND the same files (if they were of the same origin), that are encoded by Apple for their store?
David Pogue is a devoted 'reel to reel-ophile' (for recording as well as for delievering).
He has no sense for (or understanding of) recordings made in 24/96 (or 192) PCM - recordings that are done with proper microphones and not devaluated during mixing and mastering processes afterwards.
If he tries to do 1: he can't get any proper results, because he did not use real highdef material on that device!
If he tries to do 2: he fails, because what he compared wasn't that different - not enough for people to hear a difference.
Scientificly, what he did in that 2: case, was to state, that the participants could not hear a difference with the presented material, and that they in most cases very more pleased from the sound from an iPhone.
These A/B tests does not tell us anything at all about the capacities of the Pono player as a playback device - and they don't tell us anything about the differences of an iTunes file and a real highdef file!
Chris: The professional Sound Guy has definitely the best ears! It is so easy to get people with a clot in the ear for a stuffed listening test. Let's get all of our B&O and other High-End stuff to the bin, and get a cheap Stereo set. There is no difference.
Really? In my experience many musicians and an awful lot of studio engineers have significantly compromised hearing due to constant, long term exposure to high decibel level music. I've been in studios where the sound was excruciatingly bright, but the mixing engineer said, sounds a bit dull to me. One reason a lot of pop/rock albums are mixed overly bright IMO.
I've also done tests where we made CDs for "audiophiles" consisting of whatever track they said was sure to just the track to let them prove they could hear the difference between CD quality and compressed AAC files. First track was their chosen track in CD quality, 2nd track was AAC, then the next 8-10 tracks (depending on the length of their sample track) were assigned randomly. People would claim that their ears were so sensitive that they "would run screaming from the room if someone played a compressed-lossy audio track." Not one of the dozen or so we did this with could tell the difference between their track and a 128 KBS/VBR AAC encoded track. Then what was always amusing was the inevitable round of excuses as to why they couldn't tell the difference. Suddenly a "night and day run screaming" difference became "I always said it was subtle" and such. A few admitted that they obviously couldn't tell and that the encoder was better than they thought, but that was a minority. We got to where we called it the "princess and the pea" syndrome.
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
My gosh, this topic always makes for a brilliant debate! Does go to explain why Apple never have upped from 256 even though the rumours started way back in 2010 that they would release hi res files.
Doesn't surprise me about the iPhone though - What Hi-Fi claim every year that it is the best sounding smart device for audio listening.
Jeff: Chris: The professional Sound Guy has definitely the best ears! It is so easy to get people with a clot in the ear for a stuffed listening test. Let's get all of our B&O and other High-End stuff to the bin, and get a cheap Stereo set. There is no difference. Really? In my experience many musicians and an awful lot of studio engineers have significantly compromised hearing due to constant, long term exposure to high decibel level music. I've been in studios where the sound was excruciatingly bright, but the mixing engineer said, sounds a bit dull to me. One reason a lot of pop/rock albums are mixed overly bright IMO. I've also done tests where we made CDs for "audiophiles" consisting of whatever track they said was sure to just the track to let them prove they could hear the difference between CD quality and compressed AAC files. First track was their chosen track in CD quality, 2nd track was AAC, then the next 8-10 tracks (depending on the length of their sample track) were assigned randomly. People would claim that their ears were so sensitive that they "would run screaming from the room if someone played a compressed-lossy audio track." Not one of the dozen or so we did this with could tell the difference between their track and a 128 KBS/VBR AAC encoded track. Then what was always amusing was the inevitable round of excuses as to why they couldn't tell the difference. Suddenly a "night and day run screaming" difference became "I always said it was subtle" and such. A few admitted that they obviously couldn't tell and that the encoder was better than they thought, but that was a minority. We got to where we called it the "princess and the pea" syndrome.
They did this test on Radio 4 some time ago and the sound engineer who engineered the hi-res copy could not tell the difference. Good enough test for me!! However if someone wants a high res file, they are welcome to have them. Any improvement in recording quality can only trickle down one would hope.
Peter
I think the people in this video aren't exactly musicians or audiophiles. Two very different types, but I think the "mice" where picked with an agenda...
Too long to list....
However the biggest problem is:
there are very few real highdef audiofiles available.
well done to the Crazy Horse as he did try and we would be no where if we didn't try......
we tend to forget there is more to design than designing.
bayerische: I think the people in this video aren't exactly musicians or audiophiles. Two very different types, but I think the "mice" where picked with an agenda...
Well, in my experience picking "audiophiles" pretty much assures that you will have a bunch of people who have no idea how to listen well. For example, almost uniformly they would pick tracks of music that were fairly complex, because they have no technical understanding of how lossy encoders work. Their naive approach was that lots of complexity would trip up the encoder, whereas the truth is the more complex the more things the encoder can use to hide the effects of encoding.
I was able to beat all of the people we tested, using a musical selection of extreme simplicity, solo acapella female vocal. And even then I couldn't tell the difference until we hit very low encoding rates. Way below what Apple and Amazon distribute music at. And no, I do not think I have "golden ears," just that I know the best selection to show weakness in an encoder.
I've seen this same ignorance trip up "audiophiles" in other controlled listening tests, where they picked the hardware to be compared. Picking, say, for an amplifier test a speaker they liked but that was designed by someone who understood the concept of input impedance on amplifiers and had designed a well thought out speaker that was an easy to drive design. I've seen smarter people able to pass an amp test by selecting a truly robust, high current amp to compare against a cheaper one and then choosing an Apogee speaker that had a brutally punishing impedance curve that dropped to half an ohm at one part of the curve. And even then it was not a slam dunk, there were measurable frequency response anomalies induced by the interaction of the inexpensive amps smaller power supplies and such but even most of them were hard to impossible to hear, depending on what music was selected.
Millemissen: However the biggest problem is: there are very few real highdef audiofiles available. MM
You are right about that. And most of the ones who are "highend audiophiles" are whackjobs!
Millemissen: I like the conclusion of the article: Rather spend some money on a pair of headphones! How about some B&O Play H2/6/8 MM
Which is a funny conclusion, as 2000 euro headphones connected to an iPhone sound the same as the 50 euro ones!
Jeff:Well, in my experience picking "audiophiles" pretty much assures that you will have a bunch of people who have no idea how to listen well.
Agreed, however the average Joe is just as lame at this. As someone trained on two instruments, and played one of them since I was 11, makes up to 23 years practice on and off makes me quite well understanding of how most instruments, and let alone music should sound.
It's simple enough, technically high sample rates are capable of capturing a greater bandwidth and more bits reduce the noise floor.
The problems are, what are humans actually capable of hearing/distinguishing? But also, in the normal recording process, what is the recording chain capable of capturing?
Most producers use vintage mics for recording vocals, most of which add some degree of "warmth" and show off the vocal recording well, but they all will tend to have bandwidths well below that of even CD frequency response, let alone "high definition" recordings. That being the case, just what exaclty is being captured in during the recording of even specific, "high def", recording sessions.
As another example, any electronic workstation type keyboard typically found in a studio can be DI'd into the desk, avoiding the mic limitation, but, most S+S workstations have their internal samples recorded as 16 bit 44.1KHz, so where does the extra detail come from? etc.
And so it goes on.
High bit rates and and larger sample sizes, mean less detail loss and less artifacts introduced during digital signal processing, mixing and mastering. Once (properly) dithered down to 16 bit the challenge is on for someone to reliably and repeatedly tell the difference under scientifically controlled conditions.
Ban boring signatures!
bayerische: Jeff:Well, in my experience picking "audiophiles" pretty much assures that you will have a bunch of people who have no idea how to listen well. Agreed, however the average Joe is just as lame at this. As someone trained on two instruments, and played one of them since I was 11, makes up to 23 years practice on and off makes me quite well understanding of how most instruments, and let alone music should sound.
Uh...yeah, I hear ya...
Perhaps, perhaps not. We got into this whole philosophical issue too back in the day, in that you may know what a live instrument sounds like, but that perception is totally not anchored in much of a way to what the recording sounds like. That is, you have no way of telling what the instrument, in the environment in question at the recording end sounded like, nor what it sounded like coming out of the monitor speakers after having been processed by the mic and recording electronics. It's just as possible, when comparing say two recordings, you might pick the one that sounds like you think is right, and that one sounds different from the original master recording. I played violin for over a decade, pretty seriously too, and my wife plays piano and harp. I get exposed to a Steinway baby grand and a full concert harp fairly regularly in my own home. On chamber music and such I was as lost as the others at telling the difference, because the encoders do a very, very good job of deciding what pieces of information are not hearable and sacrificing them to lower bit rate. Only by realizing what the encoders do and how, was I able to choose a good piece to truly wring out the device and show up weakness and then not reliably until lower bit rates.
Not trying to insult you, but I've heard the same claims, not every audiophile we played with was just a passive consumer, there are musician audiophiles out there.
Puncher points out good issues, and if you do get a "highdef" recording, you have no idea if it was remixed. Only if you start with a high def recording and downsample it correctly can you really hope to tell. If you, say, take this recording and then this high def version, you have no idea what has been done to the recording. This came out in spades when Sony was pushing SACD, spectral plots of the recordings indicated there was a whole lot more going on than just increased sampling rate, the recordings had been remixed. So, people were buying expensive players and new discs in order to get what essentially was a better EQ'd recording.
Jeff, I'm not getting insulted.
I barely tried to point out that an audiophile (I will call myself that reluctantly) who listens to a fair deal of live music (Jazz mostly) Play music myself, have excellent music reproduction at home (Beolab 5's), have a better outset to determine good sound on a basis that it actually may be a good quality recording. However a studio environment sounds much different than live. Mostly due to all imperfections that a music hall, be it big or small will have.
Also mastering today isn't what it used to be. I remember the "Robyn" case of mastering. She's a Swedish musician. Mastering of one of her albums was based upon how it will sound in a car. Doing a half-a$$ed mastering work is certainly a cheaper solution to doing a proper one. Most "CD's" today have a bandwidth graph border lining the dynamic range throughout the recording. This will mean in reality a very low dynamic range.
Like so much today, be it a new song, a new artist will have its 15 minutes of fame, so not really a huge point making a recording/mastering masterpiece. I listen to a lot of 50-ties and 60-ties jazz, and some of these 50 year old recordings sound better than the crap comes out today. And no, I'm not talking about the music.
Ultimately if we have a messed up recording/mastering it won't matter much is it in a 320kbps or 24bit/192 high-end music files. What may be better is "perception" of something sounding better, just as the un-godlike invention of "loudness" does.
This is really a great comment, especially about how the old tapes are recorded years ago.
bayerische: Jeff, I'm not getting insulted. I barely tried to point out that an audiophile (I will call myself that reluctantly) who listens to a fair deal of live music (Jazz mostly) Play music myself, have excellent music reproduction at home (Beolab 5's), have a better outset to determine good sound on a basis that it actually may be a good quality recording. However a studio environment sounds much different than live. Mostly due to all imperfections that a music hall, be it big or small will have. Also mastering today isn't what it used to be. I remember the "Robyn" case of mastering. She's a Swedish musician. Mastering of one of her albums was based upon how it will sound in a car. Doing a half-a$ed mastering work is certainly a cheaper solution to doing a proper one. Most "CD's" today have a bandwidth graph border lining the dynamic range throughout the recording. This will mean in reality a very low dynamic range. Like so much today, be it a new song, a new artist will have its 15 minutes of fame, so not really a huge point making a recording/mastering masterpiece. I listen to a lot of 50-ties and 60-ties jazz, and some of these 50 year old recordings sound better than the crap comes out today. And no, I'm not talking about the music. Ultimately if we have a messed up recording/mastering it won't matter much is it in a 320kbps or 24bit/192 high-end music files. What may be better is "perception" of something sounding better, just as the un-godlike invention of "loudness" does.
Also mastering today isn't what it used to be. I remember the "Robyn" case of mastering. She's a Swedish musician. Mastering of one of her albums was based upon how it will sound in a car. Doing a half-a$ed mastering work is certainly a cheaper solution to doing a proper one. Most "CD's" today have a bandwidth graph border lining the dynamic range throughout the recording. This will mean in reality a very low dynamic range.
You of course raise very relevant points, especially about popular music today, and even in times past. I know in the past groups like Steely Dan and The Alan Parsons Project were very serious about the quality of their recordings, other groups less so. And over here most studios have, or did have, a mono speaker called an Auratone, nick named "Horror-tone." It was a single, roughly 5 -6 inch whizzer coned driver in a box, used to see how the mix would sound on most low end car radios and boom boxes. Of course, today, with the prevalence of high end car systems, both aftermarket and from the car makers, that's not as applicable but I'm still betting low end systems predominate in the real world. Also, from what I've heard on the road, most "kids" car systems are anything but "high end" unless you consider massive, overboosted bass high end!
The person who seems to put the most information on how to train listeners online is Sean Olive at Harman, he even has an application that you can use to train yourself.
http://seanolive.blogspot.com/
Quite a good read, he's done a lot of pioneering work in critical listening tests.
One of the things that always kind of amused me was when "audiophiles" bought ultra high end pressings of Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue, either on vinyl (where it made some sense) or special gold CDs. I love the album, it is rightly considered a high point of Davis' legacy, but well recorded it isn't! Lots of gain riding, distortion, etc. but somehow I can listen around any flaws and just revel in the music. Compare that with a digital recording I have of Mal Waldron, You And The Night And The Music (sadly out of print, if you find a used CD snap it up if you like jazz trios!), which is about as good a recording as I've ever heard. Depth, imagine, detail, all stunning.
I've often thought that an excessive focus on things like bit depth when most recordings are so poorly done was a mistaken focus, however if you're selling things it's easier to upconvert and push HD files than it is to actually have any influence on how the music business actually masters things.
I can easily see the reasons for using 24 bits or more in the recording process, it offers much more latitude and makes mistakes in gain and such less of an issue, with 16 bit recording you really need to watch and not overdrive the AD converters. Unlike the good ol'days of analog tape, it's not a gradual rise in distortion and noise when you go above 0 dB, it truncates the digital signal and that makes for all sorts of nastiness, turning music into square waves is never good sounding. I still think that 16/44.1 is more than adequate for just about any real music though, and AAC 256KBS/VBR that Apple, say, distributes seems sonically transparent.
THen again, as B&Os issues show, trying to move equipment and such in a stagnant, and mature, consumer electronics environment presents challenges. If a manufacturer can boost business by selling tunes and the equipment to play them I completely understand the impetus to do so. I just wish the High Def recordings were really High Def and not the game playing that goes on too often.
And I see you have Lab 5s! I'm envious! But I'm happy with my Lab 9s for the room I have. I think too many people in the "high end" community underrate B&Os offerings.
Jeff: I think too many people in the "high end" community underrate B&Os offerings.
I think too many people in the "high end" community underrate B&Os offerings.
Amen.
I was surfing the net last night and ran across a series of youtube videos of Munich High End (a convention, I don't know if it is the official name)... I think if anyone goes on youtube and searches for Munich High End, you'll end up with a list of videos.
My point is this. That community is weighing considerations that are very different from B&O. I don't want a room which is dominated by ugly speakers, centered by cinder block amplifiers, and thick cable snakes all over the place. I want a product that does things very well, and looks good doing it, and then disappears when it is off.
A gross generalization: One would think the majority of people at the convention (who likely consider themselves audiophiles) in the videos, scoff at B&O, and I'm okay with that. The value system there is a different one from our beloved Danish brand.
Back in my "high end" days, including when I worked at a dealer, the typical audionerd response to B&O was to call it "Bang and Awful-sound." Later, when introduction to controlled listening tests, and some other experiences, disabused me of a lot of my high end BS beliefs, I stopped playing with gear swapping and such and just settled down. I liked my setup before the B&O, but it was anything but easy to use. I found moving to B&O, with the BS9000, a "liberating" experience. I just stopped worrying about the trivia and just enjoyed having a stable, beautiful system that sounded amazingly good and concentrated on music not hardware. Often, instead of obsessively listening to one CD, then getting up, I'd load up 6 and hit random and just enjoy what came up, which is why things like Genius, and the new Mood Wheel on the Moment, appeal to me now.
When I started looking at B&Os designs, present and older, I realized that they were leading the pack on things that I came to understand were important to audio all the way back in the 70s. B&O has paid attention to a speakers power response into the room for a whole lot longer than most audio companies. You still see ignorance about this when someone looks at a current speakers response, usually the single on axis freq response, and wonders about it while ignoring the fact that it's the power response into the room that is more important, and that can lead to an on axis response that is not completely flat, but that doesn't matter.
I've often wanted to get some of my audiophile buddies who kind of disparage B&O into a listening session with some high end equipment out in view but B&O Lab 5s behind a transparent curtain. Similar to the guys who hooked up a high end amp and a low end Japanese integrated to speakers at a show with a big A/B switch. People would wax poetic about how wonderful, liquid and such the high end amp sounded, and how harsh and grainy the Japanese amp sounded, but the switch wasn't connected to anything and all they were listening to was the cheap Japanese amp.
Plus, I'd love to read a review of a B&O product that didn't hem and haw about how expensive it is. Compared to a lot of the high end B&O is an absolute bargain.
Jeff: You of course raise very relevant points, especially about popular music today, and even in times past. I know in the past groups like Steely Dan and The Alan Parsons Project were very serious about the quality of their record And over here most studios have, or did have, a mono speaker called an Auratone, nick named "Horror-tone." It was a single, roughly 5 -6 inch whizzer coned driver in a box, used to see how the mix would sound on most low end car radios and boom boxes.
You of course raise very relevant points, especially about popular music today, and even in times past. I know in the past groups like Steely Dan and The Alan Parsons Project were very serious about the quality of their record And over here most studios have, or did have, a mono speaker called an Auratone, nick named "Horror-tone." It was a single, roughly 5 -6 inch whizzer coned driver in a box, used to see how the mix would sound on most low end car radios and boom boxes.
That must be global! Back in my broadcasting days, I must've seen 3 or 4 OB sound vans that had an Auratone speaker installed. Invariably, a couple of letters on the badge had been smudged out, leaving "uraton" - which means "grooveless" in Finnish
I have a couple of CDs I really like, that I think would not get any better in hi-def, but for completely different reasons:-
Dire Straits: Love Over Gold (1982)
This is ADD and you can hear it. I'm not sure if it is Dolby S or dbx pumping or just plain tape hiss following the producer's faders, but on the extremely silent passages on Telegraph Road and Private Investigations the noise floor lives with the instruments coming and going. And it all just sounds sublime.
Tears for Fears: Seeds of Love (1989)
This, on the other hand, sounds like it was made from the beginning to use the full headroom of CD to the bit. Wonderfully clean and clear, and I can't understand how it could be improved by remastering even if all the original tracks were available in higher def.
Without direct experience, I think I could still consider giving high-def a chance with piano music and perhaps acoustic string instruments. I love hearing them live, but I very quickly get tired with listening to recorded piano unless the music itself is particularly captivating.
--mika
Hey Tournedos, WOW Tears for Fears BRILLIANT TIMELESS! Woman in chains still does it for me. Amazing video to it also!
dbx that brings back nice memories. My Technics cassette decks had dbx. Incredible, you could set the record level to 10 so that the meters were stuck on red and still, zero distortion. Bizarre system. It was implemented very well in Technics cassette decks. Quality machines at the time :)
Argh!!! The Auratones have invaded the world apparently!
As for reproduction, piano is about the most difficult thing to truly reproduce or even to record well. It's an interesting combination of having a lot of high frequency content in the percussive attack of the hammer striking the strings, and deep bass response from the large soundboard. I've never heard it even close to well done that well unless it's on a speaker that has true deep bass capability.
But like I said about the Miles Davis album, somehow if the music is good enough you can overlook the recording issues, though it's even more enjoyable if the recording is good.
Back when I first met my wife, she had the usual musician's stereo, aka gawd awful. Most music majors I know seem to listen completely differently than audiophiles, they listen to the performance, not how the system is reproducing the sound. With a few exceptions most musicians I've known have horrible systems. I remember an interview with John Lee Hooker, they noted that he had identical Kenwood mass market rack systems in each of his houses/apartments. He said, yeah, they got a good tone, I like them! And we all know rack systems are not going to be known for much in the way of fidelity.
I rebuilt a pair of rack system, "tower" 3 way speakers for a friend once. Tiniest magnet on a 12 inch woofer I've ever seen, most tweeters have bigger magnets. Absolutely no sealing on the cabinet, leaked like a sieve, and the only crossover was a single, cheap, small electrolytic capacitor on the mid and on the tweeter. They ran full range from wherever the cap high pass filtered them on up. She liked them though.
Jeff: Argh!!! The Auratones have invaded the world apparently!
You can even get modern day "reimaginings"!
Puncher: Jeff: Argh!!! The Auratones have invaded the world apparently! You can even get modern day "reimaginings"!
Yikes! Kind of like The Terminator, keeps coming back and back and back...
But, I suppose they have a valid purpose for certain kind of "music" (note the quotes). Much as we might wish it wasn't true.