Why no interest in reel to reel if you're looking for the ultimate sound?

It was a fine attempt @cd318, but alas, you attempted a discussion about religion, and that never goes well. Are high-res digital recordings more accurate than tape? ... of course, but good luck within a given crowd of having that discussion.

There will be the holy grail discussions of tape being the epitome of ultimate analog playback, with great vinyl only a bit behind, though exceptionally few will have heard the exact same recording played on tape and vinyl  (they don't sound the same, close, but not the same, most likely due to lack of channel separation in vinyl, but could be due to RIAA inaccuracies in specific setups, or cartridge matching, or ...)

Most audiophiles are older as well and have become accustomed to the sound of vinyl. The younger generation loves the "cool" factor of vinyl, but does not seem as drawn to the sonic characteristics.


On solid state amplifiers and tube amplifiers, though, that is a much different discussion, at least if the SS amp is designed with typical SS design goals, and the tube amp is designed with more traditional tube design goals. The tube amplifier has higher distortion, but some of those distortion products are typically not offensive, but we don't listen to amplifiers, we listen to speakers, which normally have far higher distortion than the amplifier. Are you certain, at the system level, that the solid state amplifier in combination with the speaker is the lowest distortion? ... and we have not even gotten into potential impacts on frequency response and how that impacts the typical audiophile in the typical room.

cd318952 posts05-19-2020 11:04amrauliruegas, orpheus10,

Interesting exchanges going on there. Ultimately I think you’re both right!

Digital is measurably better than analogue by any known yardstick, and ss amps distort way less than tube ones.

Yet for all its superiority digital has failed to win the hearts of audiophiles worldwide. For whatever reason it has not been able to establish itself as a perfected version of analogue. Certainly not with audiophiles.

WAV is no higher resolution than FLAC, Apple Lossless, or any other truly lossless format.

BTW, I use WAV which is the highest resolution and no longer available for HD down-loads.

You can speak with authority on your setup for recording and ADC, and on your DAC and how that sounds. If you recorded a tape of a tape, there would be detectable differences as well.

Since I down-load my reel to hardrive for playback, I think I can speak to the difference between the two with authority.

No offence, rrcpa, but you don't seem to understand thermodynamics or sampling theory.

When you record on tape, something is lost. Tape is neither infinite bandwidth nor infinite signal to noise, and even speed and level is not consistent, hence something is always "lost".  Your statement, -- "there is some period of time when you are NOT sampling. This information is lost forever."-- , only shows your lack of understanding of how analog sampling in a system limited by bandwidth works. If the system is bandwidth limited, say 50KHz, far beyond anything ever shown to be detectable ever, and where most tape has no response either, then sampling at 192KHz will capture everything within the limits of the signal to noise and dynamic range of the A/D system. You can attempt to debate it, but unless you have an advanced math degree, it would probably be pointless.  Redbook CD is sufficient to capture all the information up to 20KHz, again within the limits of it's SNR and dynamic range.

Want to talk about a format where things are lost? ... let's talk vinyl. RIAA equalization and de-equalization coupled with potential for imperfect cartridge loading, tracking error, etc. throws away level information, and the limited channel seperation throws away a ton of data w.r.t. what should have been coming out of each channel.   A significant majority of that "resurgent" vinyl was digital at some point of the process. Very little vinyl is pure analog.


Measurements can tell us about accuracy, they can't tell us what you will like. Claiming that tape or vinyl is more "accurate" isn't supportable at the device level. Vinyl may modify the signal (and it most certainly does) in a way that is pleasant to a lot of audiophiles and there is certainly a resurgence in vinyl buying, but most of that is played are far from audiophile systems for nostalgia and cool factor.

Music (sound) is analog and by changing that signal to digital something is lost. Something is lost once again when you change it back to analog so your ears can understand it. This is part and parcel of Newton's 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. It is known as Entropy. It is immutable.

Additionally, when you sample a analog signal, by definition, there is some period of time when you are NOT sampling. This information is lost forever. Yes, if the sampling rate is high enough - and in Redbook CDs it is not even close - you don't tend to notice these losses as obvious. The loss seems to be realized as a loss of "presence" or depth of soundstage or perhaps a certain "air", This is why vinyl has seen such a resurgence; it stays in the analog domain. Bench measurements have been shown over and over to be a distraction in audio. All that matters is your ears.

Nice post @rauliruegas

My guess, off the top of my head, is that they found company.

I hope they never get educated.

geoffkait22,562 posts06-09-2020 6:33pm

My guess off the top of my head is you’re in luck. 🤗

Most people don’t feel the need to broadcast their short attention spans nor their need to be coddled only with opinions or facts they like.

geoffkait22,562 posts06-10-2020 10:52am

I got as far as, “I honestly believe...”

orpheus10, your ears tell you what you like, and I honestly believe no one really questions that. Where the tensions rise, is when audiophiles assume that because they "like" something, that it must be more accurate, or more like "live music" or what they think live music should sound like. They will go so far as to make up technical claims, about things they have almost no knowledge about, then defend those claims with passion and vitriol.

Tube vs. solid state amplifiers in an interesting paradigm. Very few audiophiles understand the complex relationship between amplifier transfer function with real speakers, how that impacts the performance of real speakers, what the overall result will be, the impacts of typically somewhat poor and rarely well tuned room acoustics on the overall system response, and then how equal loudness contours play into that overall system response at the typical levels most people will listen at.

When people tell me they have speaker X and they much prefer tube amplifiers, then say "SS amps are crappy, the measurements don’t mean anything", I just smile and nod. The difference between me and them is they don’t have any clue of the "why" of why they prefer tube amplifiers in their setup, hence they slag SS amps and measurements, while I have a pretty good idea of the "why", and hence don’t slag measurements, because I know the right measurement, i.e. a room response graph at their typical listening volume, coupled with system level, speakers included distortion measurements, perhaps with some system level, speakers included transient measurements (including decay) would show exactly why they prefer the tube amplifier. This is why Bob Carver was able to modify a somewhat low cost amplifier to be sonically indistinguishable from an expensive amplifier. He matched the transfer functions of the two amplifiers with the real speaker loads.

It is science and engineering and Audio Research that crafts the sound YOU like, just like Pass crafts their amps to behave a certain way. It's not guess work. They tune the exact presentation with listener reviews, but it is engineering that guides that process.


Besides it's fun to talk tech and trigger geoffkait. He really hates it when he is not the smartest person in the room and he can't get away with his usual mumbo-jumbo about scattered light and pet audio rocks. I think that is why is so angry all the time.

That would explain the smell Geoffkait ...

Amazing the words that come out of the mouth of someone who hasn't done a ground up amplifier design .... oh well, to each his own.    https://www.stereophile.com/content/carver-challenge

Carver supposedly replicated a tube amplifier using a solid state amplifier. If you believe that one I’ve got some swamp land to sell you. At least get the story straight.

Then again, maybe we should take with a grain of salt someone who believes this, as opposed to putting it down to more likely, nothing, or bad soldering.

Plus, I had once upon a time picked up the differences between ½" of steel lead from a capacitor to a crossover as opposed to ½" of copper lead.

Hello fuses, my old friend.
Geoff has come to talk to you again.
Because an electron softly creeping
Induced a field while he was sleeping.
And the direction, that was planted in his brain
Still remains
Outside the bounds of science

 

With his Walkman he walked alone
Through narrow hallways he calls home
Neath the halo of the directional camp
He dreams of cables but he has no amp
And his eyes were stabbed by scattered laser light
That CD wasn’t right
It was outside the bounds of science

 

And in the audio forums there he saw
Ten thousand “philes”, maybe more
“Philes” posting without considering
That $15 for a $3 spring is price gouging
“Philies” buying things, without even a care
Because no one dared
To question the bounds of science

 

Robert said, ah you do not know
Geoffkait’s posts, like a cancer grow
Read his words that fail to teach you
Collected thoughts designed to mislead you
Because his words, like a teleportation tweak fail
Or magic pebbles that are on sale
Are outside the bounds of science

Vinyl  /   High Quality Analog Tape  / High-Res digital

Which of these sounds least like the other two?

Vinyl.  High-Res digital and high quality analog tape sound similar. Vinyl does not sound like analog tape.

Since this topic was brought up in a thread that had nothing to do with CDs, perhaps the author of this post, @geoffkait  can tell us how a low cost CD player, in a car, travelling on the roads of Detroit (notorious for bad roads), can play, without skips, drop-outs, and other irregularities one would expect if the data could not be corrected by the error correction and had to be interpolated?  Even the most highly sound isolated car has vibration far beyond the home environment, not to mention the sound levels reaching the mechanism?  I wonder if anyone else could weigh in on the miraculous technology that allowed such wonder in the early 90s?

geoffkait23,308 posts06-18-2020 10:40amWithout a whole lotta tweaking CDs can’t really compete with much. The three basic necessities are mechanical isolation - isolate the player, isolate everything! - stiffening and damping of the disc Itself and first and foremost: elimination of the scattered background laser light. Then you’d have a fighting chance. As fate would have it I sell the only comprehensive solution to the scattered light problem and have The Mystery Tweak for problem no. 2 but can’t reveal it; otherwise it wouldn’t be a mystery, would it? Even cassettes have a great many variables, it’s never easy!