"What HiFi" - can it be trusted?
 

On Mon, 5 Jan 2004 12:26:25 -0000, "Keith G"
wrote:

(No-one in his right mind though is going to suggest that 'digital' will
ever match the sheer quality of a top notch Hasselblad/Zeiss T* or Leica B&W
bromide print though, despite that in terms of 'hue', if nothing else, it is
immediately a lot less 'accurate' than a colour digital photo from the
outset.....)

Wrong. Unless you restrict yourself to films of less than 100 ASA, the
Canon 1Ds will beat the pants off any Leica. The jury may be out on
the Hassel, since the digiback for that is about 20 grand!

In much the same way, a good SS amp will beat the pants off your
rose-tinted valve amps. A bad recording is not *supposed* to sound
relaxing........................
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

"What HiFi" - can it be trusted?
 

On Mon, 5 Jan 2004 12:22:25 -0000, "Wally"
wrote:

Alex Butcher wrote:

...but do you think you could tell the difference between your old
player connected to your DAC via a digital link, and your mate's
Arcam connected to the same DAC via a digital link?

I think detecting a difference in sound quality in this situation would be
next to impossible.


DACs are known to have an impact on sound. I'm not sure what the
state of the art is now, but the various newish and very cheap
CD-Rom/personal CD players (i.e. probably using new 1-bit DACs) that
I have sound *better* than my 13 year old Aiwa midi (which has a
olde-fashioned 16-bit DAC).

I don't really know which conversion system is supposedly better.

Neither. Multibit is prone to low-level non-linearity, single-bit is
prone to jitter. State of the art converters tend to be hybrids like
the dCS RingDAC, high-oversampling 4 or 5 bit designs.

The DAC is
several years old (1990-ish?),

Yup, that's about right. HFN reviewed it in August 1990, I think I
bought mine/yours early in '91.

while the DVD was bought new about a year
ago. It's interesting to note that the DVD player has a quoted noise figure
of 70dB, compared to the DAC's at around 94dB.

70dB?!! That's *atrocious*!
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

"What HiFi" - can it be trusted?
 

On Mon, 5 Jan 2004 12:22:25 -0000, "Wally"
wrote:

Alex Butcher wrote:

...but do you think you could tell the difference between your old
player connected to your DAC via a digital link, and your mate's
Arcam connected to the same DAC via a digital link?

I think detecting a difference in sound quality in this situation would be
next to impossible.


DACs are known to have an impact on sound. I'm not sure what the
state of the art is now, but the various newish and very cheap
CD-Rom/personal CD players (i.e. probably using new 1-bit DACs) that
I have sound *better* than my 13 year old Aiwa midi (which has a
olde-fashioned 16-bit DAC).

I don't really know which conversion system is supposedly better.

Neither. Multibit is prone to low-level non-linearity, single-bit is
prone to jitter. State of the art converters tend to be hybrids like
the dCS RingDAC, high-oversampling 4 or 5 bit designs.

The DAC is
several years old (1990-ish?),

Yup, that's about right. HFN reviewed it in August 1990, I think I
bought mine/yours early in '91.

while the DVD was bought new about a year
ago. It's interesting to note that the DVD player has a quoted noise figure
of 70dB, compared to the DAC's at around 94dB.

70dB?!! That's *atrocious*!
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

"What HiFi" - can it be trusted?
 

Wrong. Unless you restrict yourself to films of less than 100 ASA, the
Canon 1Ds will beat the pants off any Leica. The jury may be out on
the Hassel, since the digiback for that is about 20 grand!

In much the same way, a good SS amp will beat the pants off your
rose-tinted valve amps. A bad recording is not *supposed* to sound
relaxing........................
--



don't mess with my F2.
I know you have another cam'ra
so don't mess with my F2........ (Appologies to Ms Lasalle)

"What HiFi" - can it be trusted?
 

Wrong. Unless you restrict yourself to films of less than 100 ASA, the
Canon 1Ds will beat the pants off any Leica. The jury may be out on
the Hassel, since the digiback for that is about 20 grand!

In much the same way, a good SS amp will beat the pants off your
rose-tinted valve amps. A bad recording is not *supposed* to sound
relaxing........................
--



don't mess with my F2.
I know you have another cam'ra
so don't mess with my F2........ (Appologies to Ms Lasalle)

"What HiFi" - can it be trusted?
 

On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 09:26:38 +0000 (GMT), Jim Lesurf
wrote:

1) In most cases with decent amplifiers, the THD level stays well below
0.1% from below clipping until the signal vanishes into the noise. This can
be the case for both class-A and AB designs. (So far as I know, no-one uses
class B for audio, and has not done so for many years.)

To support what our wise old sage ;-) has written. I attempted to
measure the distortion of my class AB power amplifier many years ago -
looking for (from memory) fifth harmonic, which is indicative of
crossover distortion, at very low signal levels. The distortion
reading was extremely low and a higher reading was obtained when
connecting the oscillator/attenuator directly to the distortion meter,
probably because of the buffering provided by the amplifier.

From my experience, crossover distortion is only a problem if the
amplifier is poorly designed or faulty.

If you want to see real distortion, try measuring your speakers. Even
better, try them with a tone burst test.


--
Chris Isbell
Southampton
UK

"What HiFi" - can it be trusted?
 

On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 09:26:38 +0000 (GMT), Jim Lesurf
wrote:

1) In most cases with decent amplifiers, the THD level stays well below
0.1% from below clipping until the signal vanishes into the noise. This can
be the case for both class-A and AB designs. (So far as I know, no-one uses
class B for audio, and has not done so for many years.)

To support what our wise old sage ;-) has written. I attempted to
measure the distortion of my class AB power amplifier many years ago -
looking for (from memory) fifth harmonic, which is indicative of
crossover distortion, at very low signal levels. The distortion
reading was extremely low and a higher reading was obtained when
connecting the oscillator/attenuator directly to the distortion meter,
probably because of the buffering provided by the amplifier.

From my experience, crossover distortion is only a problem if the
amplifier is poorly designed or faulty.

If you want to see real distortion, try measuring your speakers. Even
better, try them with a tone burst test.


--
Chris Isbell
Southampton
UK

"What HiFi" - can it be trusted?
 

a good SS amp will beat the pants off your
rose-tinted valve amps.

Is there anything in life that isn't a 'competition'?

Let's see - "The first round draw has now been announced, and the good SS amp
is at home to the rose-tinted valve amp" Hang on a sec - that's sport, I'm on
the wrong newsgroup.

=== Andy Evans ===
Visit our Website:- http://www.artsandmedia.com
Audio, music and health pages and interesting links.

"What HiFi" - can it be trusted?
 

a good SS amp will beat the pants off your
rose-tinted valve amps.

Is there anything in life that isn't a 'competition'?

Let's see - "The first round draw has now been announced, and the good SS amp
is at home to the rose-tinted valve amp" Hang on a sec - that's sport, I'm on
the wrong newsgroup.

=== Andy Evans ===
Visit our Website:- http://www.artsandmedia.com
Audio, music and health pages and interesting links.

"What HiFi" - can it be trusted?
 

"Stewart Pinkerton" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 5 Jan 2004 12:26:25 -0000, "Keith G"
wrote:

(No-one in his right mind though is going to suggest that 'digital' will
ever match the sheer quality of a top notch Hasselblad/Zeiss T* or Leica
B&W
bromide print though, despite that in terms of 'hue', if nothing else, it
is
immediately a lot less 'accurate' than a colour digital photo from the
outset.....)

Wrong. Unless you restrict yourself to films of less than 100 ASA, the
Canon 1Ds will beat the pants off any Leica. The jury may be out on
the Hassel, since the digiback for that is about 20 grand!

In much the same way, a good SS amp will beat the pants off your
rose-tinted valve amps. A bad recording is not *supposed* to sound
relaxing........................



*Tooooo* easy! :-)

Anyway, forget all that (totally wrong anyway) and see what I've done
*since* I posted the above:

This:

http://www.apah69.dsl.pipex.com/keit...riaacard01.jpg

became this:

http://www.apah69.dsl.pipex.com/keit...riaacard02.jpg

and got plugged in thus:

http://www.apah69.dsl.pipex.com/keit...riaacard03.jpg

where it worked first time - the card being powered by the PC and one deck
(not in the picture) is being played on another computer (because it's got
the speakers on it (also not in the picture or same room come to that!).....

.....and is now on it's way to becoming my 'RIAA input PC Card' when I suss
out a connector to the soundcard and rig up a pair of phonos on a spare slot
on the computer for the inputs.

(How's them apples for an old fart who don't have a 'techie' bone in his
body????)

:-)

And, Nick, so far there's no 'noise' whatsoever - don't know about when I
start to stuff it in the box. I'm hoping I'll be able to screen it, if
necessary......