Blackness - how quiet does it need to be?

Well, there goes that theory.

I hear an ever so slight hiss or veil (for lack of a better word) on my Kind of Blue CD as well. It's a Columbia/Legacy SBM (Super Bit Mapping) recording.

I've read where Steve Hoffman said that older masters from tape and tube (if they were done that way) don't make the transition to a newly remastered state if done with SS equipment unless certain software is used, correctly. He said it will not sound quite right. Maybe that's it.

All the best,
Nonoise

If I got this right, the equipment is the conduit and the music is the signal. That signal can sound cleaner depending on the equipment. One familiar enough with a recording can discern a lower noise floor using the same signal (music) while comparing different makes of equipment. And a really good piece of equipment can detect the noise floor limits of a so-so recording. It works both ways as it would be difficult to decide if you have a really good recording if your equipment is not up to par with the recording.

Familiarity with your equipment is necessary. Now if you hear a slight hiss with your ear at the speaker (really slight) and not at your listening spot, I wouldn't worry. If your system were to mask the hissing of a poor recording, I would worry. Sound to me like your system is okay.

On Diana Kralls Love Scenes CD I can hear when she comes in and out of the music. She is recorded separately as the noise floor on her voice is messier compared to the rest of the recording. Right before she comes in, the noise floor is comparatively low and when she does come in, you can hear the hiss levels rise along with her voice. When I first heard it, it was quite disconcerting. As she stops singing, the hissing goes away to reveal a quieter background as her backup musicians play on.

That's why I tend to go for better recordings which can really limit what I listen to. That is the price you pay for your endeavors.

All the best,
Nonoise

There's one more thing I'd like to add to this and it's from another thread about believing in magic. It's in the last paragraph before the last line.
http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-122756.html

This lead me to ask if you hear this hiss with all recordings or with just some.
I knew that some recordings have a lot of processing but I never knew that lots of recordings have white noise pumped into them. You could very well be hearing negative artifacts from the recording process as well as the jitter errors mentioned above.

All the best,
Nonoise

I don't think Steve Hoffman was referring to the tape hiss from the original recording. That could be somewhat masked, but not entirely eliminated. What he referred to was the difficulty of taking an original master and getting it sound right on modern equipment.

Here is his view:http://www.tapeop.com/articles/85/steve-hoffman/.

I guess the only alternative is to try the DCC CD version that he made of the Miles Davis 'Kind of Blue' CD.

All the best,
Nonoise

It sounds like we are victims of the times. Not everything is keeping apace and older formatted music is not sounding right, all the time, on modern equipment.

I like Hoffman's story about trying to figure out how to get Hotel California to sound right and it took getting similar vintage JBL speakers to hear how the original engineer mastered it to understand why it was so bass heavy on modern speakers. He had to work backwards with that understanding to do it.

One needs an extensive historical understanding of recording, techniques, playback, equipment and what have you to bridge that gap of old and new in order to preserve the old and enjoy it anew.

All the best,
Nonoise

Whart,
I think your "A. If i have that right..." explains your "D. But having said that...".
You were correct at "A" .
If I understand this.

All the best,
Nonoise

Whart,

I think I see your point: system noise floor is independent of whatever is playing.
And until something is playing, you can't really judge or appreciate it.

Dense, that I am, I still believe that a system such as yours (and I'd like to think mine) with a very low noise floor will reveal the shortcomings (higher noise floor) of a recording rather than mask it.

I think we are both saying the same thing but in different ways or I'm not quite getting it. Oh well, off to work and have a great day.

All the best,
Nonoise