In article , Don Pearce
wrote:
On Wed, 30 Aug 2006 11:28:24 +0300, "Iain Churches"
wrote:


Have you been to Singapore, Don? Spent some time there in 2001, and
stayed at the Raffles Hotel. You soon get bored with the Singapore
Sling. It was refreshing to find they served an excellent cup of tea:-)

Iain

Yes I was giving a 3G workshop for a week in Singapore. As you say good
tea there too, but nothing like as characterful as India.

Alas, the closest I can get to either is recalling that I like the tea with
fresh pineapple which they served on Moloka'i. :-)

Not sure if it was digital or analog, though...

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

On Wed, 30 Aug 2006 13:47:42 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:

In article , Don Pearce
wrote:
On Wed, 30 Aug 2006 11:28:24 +0300, "Iain Churches"
wrote:


Have you been to Singapore, Don? Spent some time there in 2001, and
stayed at the Raffles Hotel. You soon get bored with the Singapore
Sling. It was refreshing to find they served an excellent cup of tea:-)

Iain

Yes I was giving a 3G workshop for a week in Singapore. As you say good
tea there too, but nothing like as characterful as India.

Alas, the closest I can get to either is recalling that I like the tea with
fresh pineapple which they served on Moloka'i. :-)

Not sure if it was digital or analog, though...

Do you stick out your little finger when you lift the cup? If so,
that's digital.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

Don Pearce wrote:

On Wed, 30 Aug 2006 13:47:42 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:


In article , Don Pearce
wrote:

On Wed, 30 Aug 2006 11:28:24 +0300, "Iain Churches"
wrote:

Have you been to Singapore, Don? Spent some time there in 2001, and
stayed at the Raffles Hotel. You soon get bored with the Singapore
Sling. It was refreshing to find they served an excellent cup of tea:-)

Iain

Yes I was giving a 3G workshop for a week in Singapore. As you say good
tea there too, but nothing like as characterful as India.

Alas, the closest I can get to either is recalling that I like the tea with
fresh pineapple which they served on Moloka'i. :-)

Not sure if it was digital or analog, though...


Do you stick out your little finger when you lift the cup? If so,
that's digital.

Fresh pineapple and loose tea is analogue; tinned and bagged is digital.

--
Eiron

No good deed ever goes unpunished.

Fleetie wrote:
" Keith Githead pommy **** ****head "
Actually, I'm not aware that anyone claimed anything for vinyl other than it generally sounds better than CDs...

** Exactly what I'd expect from a whiney pommy *ASSBAG*.

Anyone with even HALF a brain knows that vinyl BLOWS. Do you have
to have a ****ING *LICENCE* to be that STUPID? Or is it normal in
pommyland?

Only a PIN-HEADED ****ING NINCOMPOOP would say vinyl was better !!!

WHAT a load of ASININE ****ING CRAPOLOGY.

Stop your whiney nostalgic pommy ASSMONGERING and grow up and admit
that CD ****ES on vinyl's MOULDY ****ING *GRAVE* you USELESS waste of
pommy SKIN !!!

(Less for, say, a 'Little Pink Thing' though, where the spindle is *inside* the platter and drives a smaller circunference...!!
;-)

** What the **** has that got to do with anything you ****ING NINNY? Do you
even bother to ****ING READ what I wrote? *CAN* you ****ing read?

If you have tried earth on and earth off, gently feel the cartridge leads up and see if you can induce or stop hum there - the
way the wires are dressed can sometimes cause a hum, as well as other things...

** Utter ****E as I expect from you. Are cartridge leads all you can ever get to
feel up, you pommy ****ing GOATSHAGGER ??? Even a ****ing DEAF *SPACKER* knows
that if a turntable hums that badly it's NOT A ****ING HI-FI TURNTABLE it's a
****ing *KID'S* *TOY*. You CRETINOUS POMMY TOSSFACE.

Now *Please* **** OFF out of this group you ASININE ****ING POMMY *TROLL* !!!



Fun ney. A rare combination of being completely over the top and yet
completely believable. Thank you. Keep it coming.


Scott

Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , Iain Churches
wrote:

wrote in message
ups.com...

Irrelevant. Any mastering can be done without manipulating the signal
other than the mandatory A/D conversion or RIAA equalization curve.

Who said that? Was it you PorkyGeorge, or Don? It is one of the most
sensible phrases of twenty words that I have read on this NG for many a
long day:-)

That is precisely what real mastering is all about, to capture the
performance on the master tape and faithfully transfer it to disc. Any
fool can make it different.

The snag is that although I agree with the above, my agreement includes
your last sentence. :-)

Thus the question, I suspect, is not if manipulation *is* necessary, but if
those making an LP or CD decide they want to do it for some reason.

You can equally argue that manipulations are not necessary to record
onto CD - but in practice they may be applied for reasons which have
nothing to do with CD as a format per se. So there are two distinct
questions here. One relating to what is possible, or necessary. The
other relating to what people making such things actually do in
practice. You have already indicated that what you might do, or
wish to do, may not be what everyone who produces an LP or CD
actually does.



Absolutely they are different issues. unfortunately for we the
audiophile public they are not seperate issues in practice. If an LP
sounds better than it's CD counterpart it doesn't matter to us why. It
simply does. You can't fix a poorly mastered CD no matter how much you
love the medium. IMO we the consumes need to support companies that
make an effort to master their releases with due care be it on CD SACD
DVD-A and/or LP.


Scott

Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:

John Phillips wrote:


No - I made a test of what the medium did in practice in respect of
its ability to encode low level information. From a real CD in a real
player (so it was not actually a measurement of the medium - the
medium could have been better than measured).

That, of course was based on a (possibly incorrect) hypothesis that
the loss of information you experienced was based on some inherent
colouration of the medium due to its low level information carrying
capability.

Well yes and no. I find those who believe that redbook is transparent as
a medium will often offer CD-Rs of Lps as proof.

Well, I do find that some offer this as evidence (as distinct from proof).

It is entirely possible that my CD-Rs have colorations that are not
inherent in the medium.

OK. So this means that when you report hearing a difference, this isn't in
itself reliable as evidence that the CD *format* has "inherent
colourations". Just evidence that the specific CDs, etc, in your comparison
might have imperfections.

It is a modestly reliable indication that burning CD-Rs does not really
prove the medium to be transparent as has been suggested.




OTOH we do have numerous industry pro that do controled comparisons
between redbook and other highe rez media and go on to claim that
redbook is a colored medium.

But should we accept something simply because some "industry pro" asserts
it? Or would it be better to examine the evidence to see if they are right
or not? :-)


If you wish to fund a proper scientific study for peer review
publishing more power to you. Until then we only have various
anecdotes. IMO the various anecdotes suggest the medium is not
completely transparent. IOW inherently colored. Could that conclusion
be wrong? Yeah. Is it a big issue in terms of comparing the two media.
Not in my opinion. I find it interesting that some people would be so
defensive of the medium. I still say the best comparison one can make
is by comparing the Boyk recording of Pictures at an Exhibition on
vinyl and CD. That will tell you something about how each medium
handles a SOTA recording of live acoustic music that is quite
demanding of hifi recording and playback. I found the LP more realistic
than the CD but they were both outstanding.





The rest, I am afraid, provides me no good clue to where else the
"inherent colouration" of a CD may lie.

Fair enough but what does that really mean? It doesn't mean the
colorations I describe are imaginary.

But you still have not actually defined them.


I have desribed them which is all I can do as a layman with an
aesthetic experience. If that does not work for you all apologies but
that is all I or any other layperson can really offer.


Nor given the specific
details of the test that caused you to say the exist.


I have already expressed my concerns regarding that. Until those
concerns are addressed I see no point in jumping into any debate about
the quality of my comparisons.


Until you do, the
argument is in a vacuum since it is not clear what you were referring to.


And the other "arguments" are better how?



Since you accept that what you report hearing as a difference might be
specific to the individual examples/system you used, we still have not
established exactly what you mean in terms of the format.


And other people who report no diference are different how?



So it may indeed be 'imaginary' to claim that the differences you heard
were due to "inherent colourations" of the CD format - but those difference
you heard might have been quite real, nevertheless, since it arose for
other reasons. Your report so far does not give anyone any way to tell one
way or the other. How can we answer your questions if you do not give us
the detailed/information we would need to form a view?


Was I asking questions? I don't think so.




it is a capital error to theorise in advance of your data. :-)


I will keep that in mind should I ever try to do a real scientific
study on the subject.





SOTA is not measured by price.

I agree but some of the magazine reviewers would have you believe it
(see for example the 100,000 USD turntable in this month's HFN).


Just because a magazine happens to find a pricey iece of equioment to be
state of the art does not mean that they based it on the price.

Curiously, the 'review' in question seems to spend far more words arguing
about 'justifying' the price than about anything else, and sneering at
anyone who dares to think it high. Hence this issue did seem to be to the
front of the reviewer's attention.

FWIW the 'substance' sic of the review was also based on his impressions
from having going to the makers and listening in their room, not his own.
Hence it isn't clear how much of his comments were based on, say, the room
acoustic or other factors.


Perhaps it was but lets not forget that we bring our own preconceptions
to the table. I have read many a review of hgh priced equipment that
has been labeled state of the art but over the years I don't see any
compelling evidence that they were due to the high prices.




Must admit the review seemed to me to be more a sort of 'fashion statement'
than a useful review. He was allowed to visit the temple and be in the
presence of such fabulous things....

BTW Iain. Although a review of a turntable it did include the statement.

"But above all else it demonstrated beyond any doubt, beyond political
influence, beyond prejudice, that vinyl is still the supreme recorded
format"

Note the use of "format", and the sweeping assertion of opinion presented
as absolute fact. Also, there was no real context as such for the statement
as the article did no real comparions at all with other media, nor with any
other turntables, etc. Just an assertion injected by the writer to help
fill the review and express his liking.

Statements like this are routine fodder in the UK press. So far as I can
find, none have ever mentioned a question like the deliberate or ignorant
clipping of waveforms recorded onto CD. They persistently conflate the
formats with the ways they are used, and confuse the container for the
contained.

One of the problems, for me, with 'subjective' reviewing is that it seems
to cause the reviewers to lose any interest in trying to understand *why*
things may (or may not!) sound as they do - at least in terms of any
rational or critical consideration. They seem to fall into assuming this is
all 'magic' which is beyond anyone's ability to test or understand. Just
trust their golden ears and all will be well.


I think you make a false dichotomy here. One can chose to not
investigate the underlying physical causes for ones aesthetic
impressions without claiming any paranormal activity.



The sad thing for me about this is that if they focussed on trying to
uncover the real reasons for things then the situation might be improved.


I think that is the job o the makers not the reviewers.



Scott

In article . com,
wrote:

Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , Iain Churches
wrote:


You can equally argue that manipulations are not necessary to record
onto CD - but in practice they may be applied for reasons which have
nothing to do with CD as a format per se. So there are two distinct
questions here. One relating to what is possible, or necessary. The
other relating to what people making such things actually do in
practice. You have already indicated that what you might do, or wish
to do, may not be what everyone who produces an LP or CD actually does.



Absolutely they are different issues. unfortunately for we the
audiophile public they are not seperate issues in practice. If an LP
sounds better than it's CD counterpart it doesn't matter to us why.

It should. The point being that if you know *why* the two may "sound
different" then you may be able to shine a light onto those who make them
"different" as a result of ignorance or idiocy.

This, for me, is one of the key problems with the situation we have had in
(UK at least) audio for decades. The magazines tend to publish subjective
views which show no sign of the writers having even the desire to test or
understand what the real reasons might be for what they talk about. This
then is communicated to readers as being, "all magic and a matter of
opinion". As if it were like the weather, something to observe and comment
upon, but not expect to be able to control or do anything about.

The reality is that LPs, CDs, etc, are all engineered and created. They are
as they are because that is how their makers made them. If there are
'differences' then they are in a position to examine them, deterimine why,
and deal with any problems.

But they won't bother if they can sell what they can make, and the reviews
and feedback show no signs to them that what they are doing should be
changed in some way.

Consider the possibility: If we and the magazine reviews set out to
identify why a CD "sounds different" to the nominally equivalent LP, then
we could use that knowledge to get them to improve what they offer -
perhaps for *both* formats.

Of course, this presumes we can establish that they *do* sound different,
and identify plausible reasons which can be tested. And to consider that
this may be case-by-case, not a sweeping praise of one format and damnation
of the other. Simply expressing subjective opinions in 'wine tasting' terms
may not help. Indeed, my feeling is that it has impeded both CD/LP
production and equipment for some years now.


It simply does.

Not so. If they differ, there will be a reason. You just have to be
prepared to try and find it, not leave it as a mystery. :-)

You can't fix a poorly mastered CD no matter how much you love the
medium.

Well, that would depend on what way it was "poorly mastered". However if it
is poor, and people can be specific, you can then use this understanding to
apply pressure on the company involved to do better in future.


IMO we the consumes need to support companies that make an
effort to master their releases with due care be it on CD SACD DVD-A
and/or LP.

I would agree. But that process isn't help by blanket and unspecific
praise/complaints on the level of general assertions about the "inherent"
properties of the formats. It can be done by more specific understanding,
based on understanding the engineering of them, and how specific instances
fall short of what is possible.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

In article . com,
wrote:

Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:


It is entirely possible that my CD-Rs have colorations that are not
inherent in the medium.

OK. So this means that when you report hearing a difference, this
isn't in itself reliable as evidence that the CD *format* has
"inherent colourations". Just evidence that the specific CDs, etc, in
your comparison might have imperfections.

It is a modestly reliable indication that burning CD-Rs does not really
prove the medium to be transparent as has been suggested.

I have not used the term "transparent". I think someone else introduced
that. :-)

However I diagree with what you say. If you want to test if the *medium*
has any "inherent colourations" your initial phrase for this then the
test requirements for the results to be reliable and relevant as evidence
are different to if you wanted to simply see if a specific recorder and
discs were producing "coloured" results.

Alas, a problem here is that you still have not either given the full
details of the tests you keep referring to, nor defined the term "inherent
colourations" in a way that would allow us to clearly define a suitable
test.

However as reported, the problem with your claim is that your obbservation
that a (some?) CDR copies could easily have come from an imperfection in
the specific system you used. Hence the results remain useless as a basis
for claiming they show "inherent colourations" - particularly as other
comparions show no sight of them.

Your test results at present are unassessable. Hence they have no
determinable reliability at all, I'm afraid.



OTOH we do have numerous industry pro that do controled comparisons
between redbook and other highe rez media and go on to claim that
redbook is a colored medium.

But should we accept something simply because some "industry pro"
asserts it? Or would it be better to examine the evidence to see if
they are right or not? :-)


If you wish to fund a proper scientific study for peer review publishing
more power to you. Until then we only have various anecdotes. IMO the
various anecdotes suggest the medium is not completely transparent. IOW
inherently colored. Could that conclusion be wrong? Yeah.

Indeed. :-) But we could form a better view if we knew the details of the
test you report. We could then at least assess what reliability and scope
the results might have. As I have said previously, the problem is not that
what you say is "anecdote". It is that you have still not given any of the
details anyone else would need to be able to decide what, if anything, your
assertions might mean.

The problem is nothing to do with "funding".

Nor about "peer review publishing" if you mean in an academic journal.

But it is about you providing the detail so that your "peers" (i.e. the
rest of us who you are talking to) can assess the basis you have for your
assertions for themselves.


Is it a big
issue in terms of comparing the two media. Not in my opinion. I find it
interesting that some people would be so defensive of the medium. I
still say the best comparison one can make is by comparing the Boyk
recording of Pictures at an Exhibition on vinyl and CD. That will tell
you something about how each medium handles a SOTA recording of live
acoustic music that is quite demanding of hifi recording and playback. I
found the LP more realistic than the CD but they were both outstanding.

That is fine as it indicates that both formats can deliver good results.
But that isn't the same as making absolute assertions about CD having
"inherent colourations", etc.





The rest, I am afraid, provides me no good clue to where else the
"inherent colouration" of a CD may lie.

Fair enough but what does that really mean? It doesn't mean the
colorations I describe are imaginary.

But you still have not actually defined them.


I have desribed them which is all I can do as a layman with an aesthetic
experience. If that does not work for you all apologies but that is all
I or any other layperson can really offer.

No, it is not. There is more you can do, both for us, and to help you to
express your own views. That is to give the details of the tests you did
that lead you to your views. We can then decide for ourselves.


Nor given the specific details of the test that caused you to say the
exist.


I have already expressed my concerns regarding that. Until those
concerns are addressed I see no point in jumping into any debate about
the quality of my comparisons.

Can you say which parts of my response to that you were unhappy with?



One of the problems, for me, with 'subjective' reviewing is that it
seems to cause the reviewers to lose any interest in trying to
understand *why* things may (or may not!) sound as they do - at least
in terms of any rational or critical consideration. They seem to fall
into assuming this is all 'magic' which is beyond anyone's ability to
test or understand. Just trust their golden ears and all will be well.


I think you make a false dichotomy here. One can chose to not
investigate the underlying physical causes for ones aesthetic
impressions without claiming any paranormal activity.

One can. :-) Alas, the UK press often behaves otherwise.



The sad thing for me about this is that if they focussed on trying to
uncover the real reasons for things then the situation might be
improved.


I think that is the job o the makers not the reviewers.

Who will understandably address what the *reviewers* say in their magazine
comments. They will focus their attention on trying to deal with matters
which come up repeatedly in the magazines. To do otherwise may have a
negative impact on their image and sales, I'm afraid.

Conversely, they may tend to neglect or not worry about areas which pass
un-noticed in the magazines.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

On 2006-08-29, wrote:

John Phillips wrote:
Well I never used the word "transparent". I am simply trying to get
to an understanding of what you mean by inherent colourations of the
CD.

Well it is either one or he other is it not? If it aint trnasparent it
is colored.

I will continue to work with your definition of coloured but my
observation is that it is often used in ways that imply it isn't simply
"not transparent". Unfortunately much of this sort of vocabulary is
not well standardized.

What do you think? Is it transparent or is it inherently colored. It is
an either/or proposition.

Is CD transparent? In an absolute sense no, just like any other medium
known today: LP, SACD, DVD-A, .... Just as a glass window is not
transparent because it will reflect about 20% of the light falling on it.

In an absolute sense I believe that there are only two inherent
non-transparencies in CD as a medium:

- the Shannon-Nyquist limit on the upper frequency that can be
carried (i.e. 22.05 kHz for the 44.1 ksamples/s); and

- the noise floor (either from quantization error or - much more usually -
from dither at about -93.3 dBFS in a 16-bit system). This being a
soft limit as the human ear is very good at extracting signals some
10 dB or more below the noise. And in any case the dither is usually
shaped to minimize its audibility.

Within those limits the transparency is "sufficient for purpose".

- The small amount of current evidence that humans may be able
to percieve frequencies above 22 kHz is controversial.

- In the concert hall, musical dynamic range rarely reaches 60 dB and is
often much less. If you have ever worked in an audio anechoic chamber
(I have) then you get more dynamic range than that and it feels
exceedingly strange (in fact, unpleasant). Fortunately the real
world is not like that.

No-one has (as far as I know) yet provided even a credible hypothesis
for other issues with transparency, never mind any evidence.

--
John Phillips

On 31 Aug 2006 09:28:43 GMT, John Phillips
wrote:

No-one has (as far as I know) yet provided even a credible hypothesis
for other issues with transparency, never mind any evidence.

The question of transparency of the CD goes in another direction too.
That would be how accurately you can get back what you record on it.
From that point of view it has to be said that it can be entirely
transparent. If you use a programme like Exact Audio Copy it will tell
you how many errors it has found, and how it has dealt with them. All
my CDs return zero errors, so they are transparent.

So is the question really nothing to do with CDs, but one of how
transparent 16/44.1 coding is? I suspect this to be the case, even
though it hasn't been posed that way.

If your measure of transparency is how close to the original signal
the output of such a system is, then the answer is again, very
transparent. Indeed it is far more transparent than any analogue means
of recording.

A good way to measure transparency would be to make multiple passes
through the recording chain to see what gets nasty. Given a CD you can
make copy after copy, through hundreds of generations if you wish,
without a single change in the sound that is produced at the far end.
You can't do that with analogue tape or vinyl - in a very few
generations the thing will have degenerated to unusability. Now THAT
is non-transparent. If you want a glass analogy, imagine stacking many
sheets together and finding how many it takes to render the view
invisible, with the analogue glass, it is a very small stack. For the
digital glass, you can just go on stacking.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com