yes you are right, voltage is analogue.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
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yes you are right, voltage is analogue.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
I have two DACs one uses a mobile phone charger (SMPS) the other has two built in linear power supplies, one for digital side, one for the analogue. I can't differentiate between themQuote:
Originally Posted by Jimbo
Is my system not resolving enough? Well, I use very good speaker in a large room with good acoustics and the room is passively treated. I can't 'know' but I suspect that's not the problem.
Am I not discerning enough? Maybe.
Of course you can't extrapolate one person's experience with two DACs to everyone's experience with all DACs.
I would say that IME of listening to systems using very fancy and expensive DACs which were not, overall, delivering sound quality that was as good as I get at home, that if someone is looking to improve their system the DAC is not the place I would start. I'd put it bottom of the component list in terms of importance.
Yeah individual listening experience definitely will determine what you think a DAC is contributing to the system. Of course some folk think they may hear a massive difference between DACs where as others perceive the difference as minor or none at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macca
I agree that DACs would definitely be at the bottom of my component list in terms of importance when trying to improve the Sound Quality of your system.
All things being equal,
for a digital based system I’d focus on the Dac myself?
opinions vary!
But an expensive DAC won't salvage rubbish speakers in a bad acoustic. Whereas a cheap DAC will sound fantastic with good speakers in a good acoustic.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
I had a listen to a system with a Chord DAVE which is about 11K and Chord amps which were also very expensive. But the loudspeakers were not very good so the sound was not very good
If all that budget had been devoted to the speakers instead of the DAC there's no question that it would have been an order of magnitude better.
Likewise another system with full DCS stack - hundreds of thousands just for the digital front end. It was unlistenable. Ripping distortion in the top end.
Nothing to do with the DCS or the speakers, there was some other issue going on, but the mega money DAC/reclocker/power supplies couldn't salvage it.
I always like to go speaker first unless I'm very attached to an amp. Those are the 2 'must get rights'
Hear ya,
Few shows I’ve been to and I’m like, Is that it?
The DCS room at the Bristol show a couple of years was a major wtf.
All about it being a system and having good synergy.
The bottleneck will always make other gear, no matter how good, drag the final product down I reckon.
From the mix of components in a box to the way it all hangs together.
Including the room I reckon.
not looked into room treatment myself, though stuck a table with a big Yukka palnt behind one of my speakers and had to give the other one a bit more toe-in to get it balanced again.
Paraphrasing Dad’s Army… that too is on zee list.
need to add tho,
with a resolving system and setup, anything that is “better’ should show off what it can do, all things being equal.
you’d like to think so anyway?
I think I agree with you Grant - work back from the speakers. So important to find the right speakers that are the right size for your room and work with its. Also it is critical the tonality and resolution you want is achievable from the speakers. I think working backwards everything else is a notch down until you get to source and then unless you have something really crap on the front end it should sound great.
`Obviously it is far easier to do this with digital rather than analogue where it is generally much more expensive and labour intensive. I can see why digital has so many attractions.:)
It is always so difficult to try and get a decent sound in your room if you don't get the right speakers and then you try and adjust everything else to compensate. You certainly will never do this with a DAC or a turntable!
I could never understand why dCS gear costs as much as it does. Maybe it's the cost of sculpting the ridiculously thick front panel. :scratch:Quote:
Originally Posted by Macca
This is the complete opposite of Linn's mantra "Source first", and "Garbage in - garbage out". But then I didn’t believe anything Linn said, or the sycophantic reviewers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimbo
Haha yes I remember Linn and their mantra but I thought it was fundamentally wrong, but of course they made they made their name from the source end!Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
The market is there I suppose. I don't like the look personally. It's over-styled.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
'Source first' does make some sense with vinyl or tape where you need some serious mechanical engineering to get optimal results. But it makes no sense with digital sources.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
Interesting how some DAC manufacturers have gone overboard to set the look of their DACS apart from the boring Chinese black boxes.
I suppose it gets them noticed but there is no accounting for taste. I also don't like DACs that look like a scientific piece of equipment with rows and rows of buttons and little lights but there again I am a minimalist.:)
Ok had an afternoon listening to tunes via the DAC but now on the vinyl - what a relief!
Yes - the first 'half-decent' bit of kit I bought was a Garrard SP25 (Mk.II). It was all I could afford at the time, but knew I needed something better on which to play my 'valuable' vinyl records.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macca
Some of those SP25 series of turntables were difficult to get a high quality level of sound from. I had a few including the Garrard SP25 IV. Lots of plastic involved and lacking in adjustability.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
A move away from the crystal pickup to a Shure MM was a big step up. The only mod I did on my Mk.II was to remove the the arm return link.
The Garrard lasted a year before I acquired a Collaro 2010 (a sort of poor man's Garrard 301), removed the indifferent arm and replaced it with an SME and a Shure M55E.
Ah the Shure M55e - great cartridge. I had some Garrard Turntables in the early 1980s but by then they had gone very plasticky and light years away from 301 and 401. I went back in time and bought a 301 - what beast by comparison. Agricultural build quality and lovely engineering as we all know. Used that with a Decca Blue as recommended by the great Glenn Croft.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
Nice to see you've returned back to the dark side!
I only play with DACs mate, the serious music listening is all on the TT.:)Quote:
Originally Posted by Wakefield Turntables
I've been thinking about buying a good vintage DAC to see if it's more musical than the modern ones. Will report back when I have one.
I did buy a PT DaCapo a few years ago and it sounded beautiful but it had dodgy caps and didn't last long so I had to send it back.
Good idea Lawrence, would be interesting to hear how different older DACs stack up against modern products. I found the DAC in my CD player sounded better than a few modern DACs and it is 30 years old!Quote:
Originally Posted by Lawrence001
Get hold of a Philips CD100 or CD101 player, then you will hear how poor early DACs were.
My Monarchy Audio M22B still sounds wonderful to me.
Haha Barry I had a CD101 and I know how bad it was. Like listening to breaking glass!Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
not a nick lowe fan then ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimbo
Wasn't it Hazel O'Connor?:)Quote:
Originally Posted by struth
Think she was in the film breaking glass but it was a different breaking glass I think. Might have been the Bowie one
AH yes...think your right:doh:Quote:
Originally Posted by struth
nick lowe never played 'i love the sound of breaking glass' live apparently as he said id sounded really shit without a studio adding stuff etc..Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimbo
was a fan of him back in day. very talented and wrote stuff for a few big stars
MythQuote:
Originally Posted by Jimbo
I actually have a CD 54 from 1983 it's sweet as a nut
How did CD ever catch on if the early players sounded so bad? And according to some the early CDs were all bad transfers too. Got loads of them, they are in fact superior to later remasters. Another myth.
CD sounding bad was almost exclusively a UK thing - all those Naim people with their 15 watt amps and dreadful speakers - their systems couldn't cope with a source that was flat out to 20Khz and actually had some dynamic range.
I keep challenging peiople to get an early CD player and try for themselves but of course no-one ever does
Actually I got a CD104 when you said that. The mid range stood out as being particularly vivid but it seemed to be rolled off at both ends. Could have been aging caps? I sold it anyway as I was just starting my streaming journey then.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macca
"Breaking Glass" was an album released by Hazel O'Connor, containing the songs she sang in the film of the same name in which she also starred.
I ought to add that, IMO, it's an excellental album - especially the poignant and heartfelt track 'Will you?'.
Don't get me wrong I don't think the CD54 is comparable to today's state of the art. It's not much worse but it is noticeably 'Not as good'.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lawrence001
But it doesn't sound 'bad'. It doesn't sound harsh, or hard, it doesn't have a top end 'like breaking glass'. That's all myth.
My user experience with CD back in late 80s was not good, as a result I didn't get a CD player until 1996. I now know it was not the CD player that had the problem, it was a combination of poor loudspeakers and amplifiers that were not designed for a 2 volt input, and which did not have enough power to cope with the higher dynamic range.
If the amp is constantly clipping, it's not going to sound good. It's going to sound grey, mushy, compressed, harsh, hard etc - i.e all those things some people still attribute as the characteristics of early CD players.
And if the crappy two way speaker has a big midrange hump (Linn Kan) what's that going to sound like with a flat signal run through it, and not the big midrange droop from your MM cartridge and turntable?
Bad. Shreeky, shouty, fatiguing.
The sound stage presented by both the CD100 and CD101 was as flat as a board, with no depth whatsoever. Whether this was a fault of the disc, or of the player, I don't know. All I will say is that I was able to put on a disc and cue up an LP of the same title, and switch between the two in real time. The difference was shocking.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macca
It wasn't until the advent of the CD104, which to my ears was a player I could live with - and did for a few years (actually it was the CD104B).
This could be attributed to mastering, or some other quirk of LP reproduction. It's been suggested that uncorrelated noise, which LP has a ton of, gives a sense of 'air and space'.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
Too many variables to definitely attribute that to some aspect of the CD player. Even just failing to level match when switching between sources could cause that impression.
Yes - many of the amplifiers of the time did not have a dedicated 'CD' input. People plugged the players into the 'Aux' socket which had a typical sensitivity of 100mV.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macca
It could well be that the comparison I made was done using an inappropriate input on my preamp (a Quad 44 at the time). I did get the correct input card later; certainly by the time I bought the 104B.
So it could well be that, in retrospect, I did not give the early Philips players a fair hearing; but in my defence the need for an amplifier input with high overload capability was not then common knowledge.
The first LP to have been digitally recorded was Ry Cooder's "Bop Till You Drop". I have it and the soundstage is flat - with the performers popping up like the flags on an old-fashioned cash register, or the ducks in shooting gallery. Tonally it's fine, but the soundstaging is flat.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macca
Heard that said before but I don't have the album, not that keen on Ry Cooder. If I come across it I'll pick it up and see if I hear the same thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
Ofc a lot of stuff happens in production and post production so that effect isn't necessarily anything to do with it being an early digital recording - although I'm not saying it isn't.
I have this album too and 100% agree. Buy Paris Texas on vinyl and it will blow your mind.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
its a good soundtrack; good film tooQuote:
Originally Posted by Jimbo
Would love to see it again but its been sometime since its been round on the telly.?Quote:
Originally Posted by struth
Having thought about it some more I can't see any reason why the soundstaging 'issues' on 'Bop Til You Drop' can have anything to do with it being a digital recording.
Wikipedia has this to say
Cooder and his excellent band, which includes the rhythm section of Tim Drummond and Jim Keltner along with guitarist David Lindley, understand the material and are more than capable of laying down a decent groove, but something must have gotten lost in translation from what was played to what came across on the recording. There's a thinness to the tracks that undermines the performances, which according to Cooder is due to the digital recording.[8]
So seems to be Cooder himself who first put the idea out there - although the reviewer seems to think the problem is that it sounds 'thin' rather than anything to do with soundstage.
I can think of a few analogue recordings which might be described the same way. But this is a production choice and therefore intrinsically part of the art.
There's no reason why it would sound thin due to digital recording either. Although it's possible that with the tech being fairly new they didn't use it right I suppose.
With digital recording the one thing you don't want to do is exceed 0db and clip it - so with early digital recordings (and transfers done from tape to digital for the first CDs) there was a tendency to overcompensate for this by keeping levels low in mastering. (Now we have the opposite issue where they ram it all the way up, even into clipping aka 'The Loudness Wars)
The solution with these 'thin' CDs is just to turn it up a lot more on playback - assuming the playback system is capable of this - which many are not even to this day.
I think it was the first album to be digitally recorded and they were getting to grips with the technology and didnt get it quite right. I have the album on vinyl and it sounds not only thin and washed out but very processed. The fact it comes across like this on vinyl means something was definitely amiss as I have hundreds of albums on vinyl taken from digital masters but they don't sound digital unlike their counterparts on CD!Quote:
Originally Posted by Macca
As does mine. I always wondered if it was deliberately made to sound unlike analogue productions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimbo
I am a big fan of Ry Cooder and there were some decent tracks on this album but unfortunately I find it unlistenable on vinyl. Maybe it came off better on digital?Quote:
Originally Posted by walpurgis
I have it on vinyl, sadly not played very often, in fact not listened to it for years , once I’ve found which box its in I’ll give it a spin.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimbo
Your system will reveal all very clearly. I am sure you will wonder where or the guts went too in the recording?:)Quote:
Originally Posted by rmcin626
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimbo
According to Wikipedia 'The album was the first digitally recorded major-label album in popular music', not the first digital recording ever made or released.
I doubt the engineers had no experience at all with the equipment but agree they could still have been getting to grips with it.