Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

"Chesney Christ" wrote in message

A certain Jim H, of uk.rec.audio "fame", writes :

Is it possible that, back then, the DACs were only effective up to a
certain rate, at a lower rate than for the ear?

Nope.

, say the DACS
showed no improvement in sound past 44kHz, your experiment would
always show cd to be optimal. Just a thought.

If you want to understand the limitations of he ear vis-a-vis 44 KHz
sampling, please do some listening with the files you can download from
http://www.pcabx.com/technical/low_pass/index.htm .

AFAIK (Dave P would know more about this than me) the early ADCs
weren't capable of 16 bits of resolution; they clocked in around 14
bits. I always thought this was another good reason why remastered
recordings often sound so much better.

Nahh, the usual reason why remastered recordings sound better is that the
original mastering work was so bad, or had different goals.

In some cases the original mastering work appears to have been non-existent.
In other cases it had the goal of making a top-30 hit that grabs the ears,
while the remastering typically concentrates more on natural sound quality.

Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

No reason your deck cannot outperform a CD (in my book....) if you fettle
it
up a bit. Also, although the more money you *wisely* spend on vinyl gear,
the better the sound you will likely get, but no-one has to spend
megabucks
to beat some CDs. I heard Yello - 'Claro Qui Si' earlier tonight on a
Technics deck with a Shure M97 on B&W 601s through an Audio Innovations*
15wpc valve amp with built in valve Phono stage* (all as per
http://www.apah20.dsl.pipex.com/setup/setup.htm ) for the first time.

It BLEW THE LIVING **** out of any playing of the same CD to date - which
I
have done for years on 8 million different CDPs on loads of different
setups. I am talking about this album just did not sound the same - more
detail, depth, soundstage than I have ever heard before. None of this kit
is
expensive stuff by normal standards!

I have this LP (acquired only today) with me now and my 'tubes' are
warming
up as we speak, if it don't sound as good on my own kit, the gerbil's
gonna
get it!!!

I see Mike has started the ball rolling with some excellent advice about
external phono stages and sorting your cart out.



First off, your deck gets this mention in Vinyl Asylum (which I have
'lifted')
"WRONG: SME series III is an ultra low mass tonearm. From my limited
experience of Technics turntables, I would guess that the S-shaped arm on
the Technics SL1500 is a medium mass arm - ie between 9g and 12g. I used
a
Technics SLQ33, and used it with a Shure V15VxMR for a while (high
compliance cartridge); there was no problem."

Right, that's a £300 cart (I have one) and these VA boys don't fart about
when it comes to their gear. Add to that the fact that Technics do *not*
have an intergalactic rep for producing ****e decks and I would say your
deck is almost certainly perfectly capable of decent vinyl replay. In
fact,
the pic on http://www.geocities.co.jp/HeartLand...677/audio.html shows
it
to be an attractive little number - no frickin' idea what the text says
tho!

Yeah, its a nice deck. I was lucky to buy just before this the little vinyl
resurgence that seems to be happening. I didn't look much like the picture
tho - the platter had a lot of strange looking growths around its edges and
the whole deck looked as if it hadn't been used in decades. Bit o' white
spirit and brasso sorted that.

So, if you've fettled it into good working order we can proceed:

Initially, I would say your AT cart is quite likely to be a bit decent.
At
any rate I would certainly recommend the AT110E (£28) as a good enough
cart
for anyone on a budget (or linear tracking, as it happens) deck. They get
5
stars in any comic you care to name, they are used by both the Queen and
Stavros on decks all over Buck House, Madonna has got two of them and
Bill
Clinton is apparently making enquires about one.....

I'll look into it. I've put off looking for a cart for a long time because
there are no good HiFi shops around here, certainly nowhere you could
listen. With the Technics cart records seemed to have a 'lisp', that went
away with the AT.

I've found out my cart is an AT70. Google turns up near nothing on it, not
one mention of a celebrity owners.

Question is - is it set up right? If you don't have a protractor, you can
download one from www.enjoythemusic.com and print it out for yourself
(make
sure you print it 'full-scale') - it is of the '2 null point' type and is
all you need. It will get alignment and overhang sorted.

Downloaded. Will try tinkering later, when the building site across the
road shuts up.

Next is azimuth - if the cart is squint (and you have no tonearm
adjustment)
you may have to pack one side of the cart with a sliver of paper (between
cart and headshell) to get the needle perfectly upright. Fiddly but
important.

I have always thought of azimuth to mean horizantal rotation, bit from your
contect I'm not so sure, I think you mean rotation about an axis along the
tonearm?

VTA - if you have no adjustment for this, then just don't worry about it
for
the moment.

Tracking Force - if this is not easy to set on your tonearm then get hold
of
a little 'seesaw balance' from a friendly 'hifi' store - they should give
you one for nowt, if you are lucky. Otherwise it's pence. Set the weight
of
your cart to the manufacturer's spec. (ie 1.7-1.8 gm - works every bloody
time!)

There's a weight on the end of the tone arm that can be turned to set the
balance. When I got the decks I set intuitively adjusted it so that the
tonearm is hanging in equilibrium at zero and normally have it at about
1.9, though trial and error.

Now the needle should be about right. I'm assuming it's in good
condition,
otherwise replace it (naturally).

Seems ok on a visual inspection.

Next comes the records. Get 'em feckin' clean - ****e vinyl sounds ****e.
If
nothing else, use a barely damp cloth to scrub 'em up and a bone dry one
(yellow dusters are good) to dry them off. Do this perfectly flat on a
table, forget any daft ideas about sinks and running water. If you can
get a
1:4 IPA to Distilled Water mix, this will be perfect. Use NO OTHER
concoction whatsoever.

To me IPA was always India Pale Ale, and none of these seem correct
http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-
query.asp?String=exact&Acronym=ipa&Find=Find I'm guessing the A is alcohol.
Some of these records look like they could use a clean, I was playing some
early björk stuff the other night and could clearly hear the dirty parts on
the surface.

Some of my newer, clean, records sound very good, although I'd guess they
are likely digitally mixed. The last track of Radiohead live recordings
"true love waits" leaves me too scared to touch the cueing. So far it's the
only track that's sounded notably beter than the cd. Maybe the vinyl is
just causing pleasant distortion, but the even sounds more as if it were
here.

I suppose, in theory at least, a digtally mixed master could sound good on
vinyl, because either it is of a higher sample rate or a better dac, but I
seriously doubt it. Is there a place I can find out how a record was
produced?

Routine, dry wiping can be done with Swiffers ('antistatic dusters) which
cost about a quid a box and will last months, if not years. Tip - do not
mention they are for cleaning records or the shop will be forced to
charge
you £39.99 a box (BADA regulation?).

Right, your cartridge is set up right, the decks working fine and your
records are CLEAN. Now's the time to look at your kit.

You don't say what amp you are using and whether or not you are using an
integral Phono stage. As Mike has already stated - an external PS (pre-
amp)
is very likely to sound better (They usually got their own dinky little
outboard power supplies for a kick-off - it helps no end). If you can run
to
one (£40 for a ProJect Phono Box or better) it probably would be a 'leg
up'
The trick is to see if you can borrow one and try it out. At the end of
the
day I don't think you can beat valves, but they don't come cheap,
infortunately.....

Try this course of action and let us know how you get on.

I'm using an anonomous little black-box preamp, it has the code BT26 on the
front. I think Richer sounds used to sell these for about £20. I suppose it
isn't up to most audiophile standards, but I opened it up once and the
amplifier chips were, IIRC, from a good source.

Thanks for all the advice!

--
Jim

Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

When I talk about analogue/digital here is really in the less specific
context of continuous and discrete data. This is going OT, and maybe I've
got it wrapped around my head the wrong way, so I reserve the right to be
wrong...

For me anything that is discrete may be said to be digital, since it may be
expressed as a number (in any radix, as binary if it helps). Whereas for
anything which is continuous, any value, possibly between extremes, I think
of as analogue. A continuous value is almost certainly an irrational
number, and so can not be expressed numerically without approximation. It
is not to the nearest anything, but it will always contain errors. You can,
however, say the accuracy to which you can measure the analogue thing with
reasonable precision.

When I talk about things being atomic/axiomic I didn't always mean atoms
(although in one case I did) I was mostly referring to the smallest
possible unit of sound for music storage, for cds this is the 32 bits that
are played at any one time. For vinyl it is less clear what the smallest
possible unit is, because for most day to day purposes we consider solid
objects to be continuums, so I suggested vinyl atoms as a side point.

Accuracy and precision are similar ideas, degree of approximation. Very
simply accuracy is 'to the nearest x' whilst precision is the presence of
errors.

Btw, I tend to prefer digital music, this was not a 'vinyl is better',
analogue is perfect thread.

--
Jim H
remember, I reserve the right to be wrong.

Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 20:21:33 +0100, Dave Plowman
wrote:

In article ,
Jim H wrote:
It is - when digital was in its infancy I and many of my colleagues
had an opportunity to play with different sampling rates on a wide
variety of material. And the point where any difference is detectable
is below that of CD - *that's* why it was chosen - although the exact
rate was down to TV video parameters so video recorders could be used.


Is it possible that, back then, the DACs were only effective up to a
certain rate, at a lower rate than for the ear? If, say the DACS showed
no improvement in sound past 44kHz, your experiment would always show
cd to bo optimal. Just a thought.

Err, no. The comparison included switching between the original
(including analogue) signal too.


Ok, I was only pondering.

I suppose I could suggest that MAYBE improvements in speakers in the last
20 years would now allow you to hear the difference ;)

I'm not defending SACD, personally I doubt it is any better than cd, other
than the 5.1, for some music. I agree with what you say, that we are
unlikely to be able to hear past cd quality, but I'm not sure your
experiment really proved this.

--
Jim

Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

In article , Jim H wrote:
Accuracy and precision are similar ideas, degree of approximation. Very
simply accuracy is 'to the nearest x' whilst precision is the presence of
errors.

To put it another way, if I understand you correctly: there's a
tradeoff.

Vinyl has more noise, in the statistical sense: however, it also has
a theoretically higher resolution than CDs. Therefore, the question
of which is "better" depends on three things:

a) What is the maximum resolution of the ear?
b) What's the lowest practical noise-floor of vinyl?
c) How much (or, indeed, *is* it?) higher is the *practical* resolution
of vinyl than CD under typical circumstances?

I can't think of a good way of testing any of these hypotheses.

- Andrew (who thinks the biggest component of the vinyl/CD
perceived-difference is probably psychological)

--
Andrew Walkingshaw |

(O/T) - Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 20:20:10 +0100, Ronnie McKinley mckinley@glenbourne-
antiques.fsnet.co.uk wrote:

In uk.rec.audio "Keith G" wrote:

My favourite vinyl is definitely 30s, 40s, 50s stuff on vinyl produced
probably not later than 1980. (Having said that, I'm gagging for some
Bjork
at a reasonable price!)

I have all of Björk's (official) *solo* work from 'Debut' onwards.
These are all CDs, released (at the time) by/through Elektra and AFAIK
were not released on LP at the time. However, in 2000 'One Little
Indian' (re-)released her full *solo catalogue* on LP. The exception to
that is her last (official) album 'Vespertine' (2001) which AFAIK is
still only currently released/available on CD (and DVD) - (at least it
was at the time I bought my copy of 'Vespertine' then CD copy only, NA
on LP).

Just out of interest, I have an (AFAIK) rare LP called "the best mixes from
the album-debut for all the people who don't buy white-labels" From 1994.
Maybe its more comon than I think but I've never seen it anywhere else
before.

--
Jim

Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

"Andrew Walkingshaw" wrote in message

In article , Jim H wrote:
Accuracy and precision are similar ideas, degree of approximation.
Very simply accuracy is 'to the nearest x' whilst precision is the
presence of errors.

To put it another way, if I understand you correctly: there's a
tradeoff.

Vinyl has more noise, in the statistical sense: however, it also has
a theoretically higher resolution than CDs.

Wrong. If you look at the definition of resolution, having more noise
automatically precludes having more resolution.

Therefore, the question
of which is "better" depends on three things:

a) What is the maximum resolution of the ear?

Irrelevant since the ear almost always operates in relatively noisy
environments.

b) What's the lowest practical noise-floor of vinyl?

A lot less than that of good musical recordings.

c) How much (or, indeed, *is* it?) higher is the *practical*
resolution of vinyl than CD under typical circumstances?

That would be a negative number for reasons stated above.

I can't think of a good way of testing any of these hypotheses.

They've all been tested.

- Andrew (who thinks the biggest component of the vinyl/CD
perceived-difference is probably psychological)

Vinyl preference most likely has psychological, not technical causes.

Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

Yeah, its a nice deck. I was lucky to buy just before this the little
vinyl
resurgence that seems to be happening. I didn't look much like the
picture
tho - the platter had a lot of strange looking growths around its edges
and
the whole deck looked as if it hadn't been used in decades. Bit o' white
spirit and brasso sorted that.

Yes, I'm partial to a drop of that myself - but what did you use to clean
the deck tho?

Nothing. It just seemed cleaner afterwards.


OK, I'd seriously think of getting the AT110E when funds allow then -
www.mantra-audio.co.uk will be your best bet here. Last I heard they were
£28 inc. everything.

Sounds like a bargain. I'll replace the phono stage first though.

[snip]

Next is azimuth - if the cart is squint (and you have no tonearm
adjustment)
you may have to pack one side of the cart with a sliver of paper
(between
cart and headshell) to get the needle perfectly upright. Fiddly but
important.

I have always thought of azimuth to mean horizantal rotation, bit from
your
contect I'm not so sure, I think you mean rotation about an axis along
the
tonearm?


Nope, I'm talking about the perpendicularity of the needle in respect to
the
central, horizontal axis of the cartridge body - which should be correct
if
the cart is properly aligned as per the protractor. What you describe is
(I
think) the Zenith. Ah, blx to it, just go and scrute
http://www.users.nac.net/markowitzgd...n.html#azimuth where all
will
be made crystal (heh heh!) clear...... ;-)

(Incorrect Azimuth can result in channel imbalance and loss of everything
-
detail, image, soundstage, tone, money, hair, limbs.....)


Right. I'll take a look at this later. Building site show no sign of
stopping tho.

OK



Now the needle should be about right. I'm assuming it's in good
condition,
otherwise replace it (naturally).

Seems ok on a visual inspection.


With a microscope? I use a fiddly little number called the Coltrane X50
(or
summat similar).

With one ef those little fold-up lens thingys for examining contact sheets.
It gives resonably decent magnification, although nothing like a microscope
could.


Next comes the records. Get 'em feckin' clean - ****e vinyl sounds
****e.
If
nothing else, use a barely damp cloth to scrub 'em up and a bone dry
one
(yellow dusters are good) to dry them off. Do this perfectly flat on a
table, forget any daft ideas about sinks and running water. If you can
get a
1:4 IPA to Distilled Water mix, this will be perfect. Use NO OTHER
concoction whatsoever.

To me IPA was always India Pale Ale, and none of these seem correct
http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-
query.asp?String=exact&Acronym=ipa&Find=Find I'm guessing the A is
alcohol.


OK, make me spell it out then! - Isopropanolalcohol (??)

Ok. I think I've got some somewhere. I've got plenty of the weaker sort
too.

Some of these records look like they could use a clean, I was playing
some
early björk stuff the other night and could clearly hear the dirty parts
on
the surface.


Bjork? Hah!

(Can't get my stickies on any Bjork for love nor money, atm!)

I mention one of my records somewhere else in this thread. Another
interesting record I have is 'The Eye' from 1984, and a few other mid-
eighties things (before she recorded as björk) click fro review
http://home1.swipnet.se/~w-10797/kukl/sounds3.htm

OK, sounds like it's a little gadget from an accessory manufacturer
called
B-Tech. Whilst possibly very good VFM, you only get what you pay for. Any
'upgrade in the Phono Stage dept. will pay dividends, I'm shure (another
one!)!

:-)

I agree. This'll most likely be the next thing to be replaced. The actual
amplifier bit is a KIA4558P, you can get them for $0.33!!
http://65.103.99.132/acatalog/Mat_El...558P_7897.html

Then again, I find a lot of decent transistor audio equipment use chips
that cost pence, it doesn't really say a great deal abaut their quality.


Thanks for all the advice!


You're very welcome (if any of it is useful) but, if you don't mind me
saying so, you are running on just about the lowest spec. available and
possibly not doing your deck much justice. At this level, I am not
surprised
to see elsewhere that you prefer digital music..... ;-)

Agreed. My current setup is strictly a provisional thing, I got the deck
because it was a bargain, and the rest of the bits to just get music out of
it in the meantime. I'm slowly working it up. I do sometimes get very good
results as it is, for some reson this tends to be at the last tracks of a
side, which is where I'd have guessed the lowest fidelity to be (fewer cm
of vinyl per second)

Do report any perceived improvements back - I would be interested to hear
about them.


Will do.

--
Jim H

Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

In article ,
Jim H wrote:
I suppose I could suggest that MAYBE improvements in speakers in the
last 20 years would now allow you to hear the difference ;)

The original Quad ESL saw the light of day in the '50s. Within its
limitations, I don't think anything can beat it today.

--
*It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

In article ,
Chris Isbell wrote:
IIRC it was to get the whole of Beethoven's 9th symphony on a single
disc or is this an urban myth?

CD was a 74 minute format (not 60 minutes) right from the very start.


Was that because the non-historically informed conductors of earlier
recordings played Beethoven's 9th Symphony more slowly than is
considered 'correct' today? ('Correct' means what we currently believe
Beethoven intended.)

The real reason is that the longest tape available for a U-Matic which
was a semi pro video recorder ideal for recording digital audio, was a 90
minute PAL device running at 50 Hz. Change this same length tape to a 60
Hz system and you get 75 minutes - just long enough to include a line up.

--
*Someday, we'll look back on this, laugh nervously and change the subject

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn