Well in the last few days I downloaded some 24/192 jazz from HDtracks, both recordings from the 60s and 70s and I have to say I have never heard piano so entirely free from glare. And it does seem from some other 24 bit recordings with lower sampling rates that it is the 24 bits which makes all the difference. This is at odds with earlier theories, e.g. Bob Stuart's , that the sampling rate was more important.

Sorry, I can't accept this. Lower bits is exactly equivalent to lower signal/noise ratio in analogue recording, 36dB down means on a decent tape deck that you only have about 35dB dynamic range of tape to play with, but no-one's complaining about this! I've listened to CD classical test pieces at 0db, then attenuated -60dB on a separate track, and all the key elements of the sound are still there, with good ambience recovery. If you tried this trick with tape you would be deafened by the tape hiss!!

That notorious thin CD sound is all about faulty playback, the Achilles Heel of the medium, a type of disortion typically hard to eradicate; but once you experience the absence of it you wonder what all the fuss about vinyl vs. digital is about ...

Frank

Edited by user 29 December 2011 04:22:20(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

At CES a couple of years ago Andy Jones from TAD was playing some tape project reels and some high res recordings from Bill Schnee.

My wife and I thought the high res recordings were much better then the tape (which surprised me)

They were 24/192 recordings.

Best sound of the show.

Me too hope to place an order around spring time if I can save up enough for one, this year has been wretched & hope 2012 is better for all!

Edited by user 29 December 2011 16:07:13(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

This would be straightforward to do if you used a program like Audacity to create your own attenuated version of a sutable track, and then burn to a CD. I cheated , and used a Denon test CD which had these tracks added: 0, -20, -40, -60dB versions of the same piece. Now, that last one is incredibly quiet: on a previous incarnation of my system I used a CD player with digital volume control directly driving the amp, and this at max. volume setting I could just hear with my ear up against the tweeter cone -- I was able to hear the CD player's (25 year old) DAC nonlinearity clearly, but the texture of the sound still came through cleanly.

With my current setup the DAC is much better, but the volume gain is not much better, still have to stick my hear against the speaker drivers, use them like a giant single headphone to hear the the track; but the sound is all there, a bit of noise in the background, like tape hiss coming through. The key thing is that the integrity of the music is all there, even at that dramatically reduced volume ...

Frank

I wish that we could not draw the lines as we often do with the Vinyl v CD debate it almost always just results in an entrenched view. I was very surprised recently to get to hear a good condition and fully working original Sony and Philips CD machine the very first produced when CD was launched . I was really surprised at how good they sounded compared with my memory of them .When they first launched they were met in many circles with howls of derision and statements that they were sterile sounding , caused actual harm and could never produce real music . Well they could both most likely be bettered by any 300-400 GBP current model but the sound produced by the Sony was not as bad as I recall at the time as I dismissed the Sony and viewed the Philips as the better sounding option . I would strongly disagree with this now and say that in fact the Sony was and is an altogether more musical and believable player .

Does this mean I was deaf when they first came out does this mean the critics of that time were wrong , well probably not because all they had to listen to was a fairly limited number of discs available at that time and the Music companies were learning about producing the discs as well as the players. I played some favourite and current recordings which I know to sound very good on equiment capable of reproducing waht is on the disc and this gave both the early players the best chance of showing themselves in the best light. What I did notice was that the Sony more ruthlessly exposed a poor CD transfer for what it was a poor transfer this does not make the player bad just doing its job properly in reproducing exactly what is on the disc and not adding to it.

I am confident and sure that it is very possible to produce high quality music with CD in its original red book form and I currently own 5000 + and rising to prove that I am prepared to back my judgement with my own cash. High Res downloads are somehting I want to get in to and I have recently bought a couple but am in the early stages of getting a newtwork media player and setting this up so to date I have not heard any recordings in the higher quality . One thing however does convince me that CD for me at least is the way to go and that is a quick look through my current collection and I discover that only 500 are currently avilable on vinyl and less than 100 on High Res download. Given that there is literally only one choice if you like the wide range of music types that I do.

I have a vinyl set up it is good but not the best by any means (Logic DM101 Turntable , Rega RB300, Grado S1 in to Mission Cyrus 2 with PSX ) but it is good enough to enjoy the collection I currently have but I have not bought any new vinyl in over 12 years and doubt that I will ever buy any again. I know that the sound can be superb and I have heard some really top end systems but the cost of getting the best is not small even the above if bought new would represent a pretty good investment .

So for me it is not about the medium it is about the music and if CD ceases to have the wide variety of releases that I lok for and it switched to Hi Res downloads then I will switch with it my only reservation to this is if MP3 or the like gets the nod then I think I will stop collecting music as I refuse to listen seriously to anything that is compressed so much and gives such a universal poor quality replay.

Frank,


You are talking about a different thing to the OP (aka I knew there was something not quite right ). Your test is moving the whole 16bit depth signal down in analogue level, Barry is talking about the resolution of low level signals in a regular recording. If you have Audacity try bit crushing the signal of something like strings and listen to what the lowering of resolution (or bit depth) does.

Of course there is some masking of the lower level signals and your ears know what they want to hear etc

Sorry, I am talking about about the "resolution of low level signals in a regular recording". Whether the low level signal we're talking about was originally a high level signal, or is the low level elements of a normal recording, makes absolutely no difference to the concept of testing whether the detail has been captured or not. Think of it as an exotic, "modern" classical piece which has the "gimmick" of placing the microphones a mile away from the performance: THE recording, performance, is the sound of an orchestra that far distant; obviously, low level signals in a normal recording.

If by bit crushing in Audacity you mean that you listen to to the final version at normal volume levels by pumping up the level enormously, of course it won't sound brilliant. But guess what an exactly corresponding volume boost will do for an equally soft sound on master tape: it will sound like total crap; like the worst short wave radio you've ever heard, if you can still make out what's there ...

Frank

This is what Bob Stuart said a few years ago in a Stereophile interview:

"More bits would be helpful. Back in the late 1980s, we did a lot of work on noiseshapers. And we made A/D converters that could be used for making CDs—a lot of the Stereophile discs, for example, used the Meridian 518 or 618 noiseshaping processors, and a lot of recordings from people like Tony Faulkner—they'd start with 20-bit and then use our processor. So you can get more than 16 bits' effective dynamic range on a disc. But to play that back, you have to have a player that doesn't do stupid things, and 99.999% of players will truncate a signal. Our players won't. So if you've got a beautifully made recording, you can actually get more than 16-bit anyway. But you can't get more than 44.1kHz. "

An interesting experiment would be to take that "optimum" 24 bit version, convert it to 16 bit CD quality, and then convert the latter back again up to 24 bit: obviously the software to do the conversion needs to be top notch. Finally do some blind AB comparisons between the two 24 bit versions, the original and that which has gone through two format conversions. This was done on another forum, and no clear conclusion were drawn -- implying that minimal information of musical significance was lost ...

Frank