audio-luddite

[audio-luddite]

Speakers Again!

There is a remarkable group of speakers on Craigslist today in our city. In the $1200 dollar range there are some big Technics, JBLs, a Maggie, and an Infinity RS 2.5.

One ad especially caught my attention. It was a pair of Allison Ones.

Not this pair, I was looking for a good Picture.

You never see these out there. From the 1970s era with a "Boston" sound. These guys are three way with six drivers each channel. They could be called quasi-omidirectional. In the wars over speaker theory Omni direction always comes up. The trick here is they must be placed hard against a wall so the wall becomes like an acoustic mirror creating a virtual omni pair for each channel.

Back in my youth these were respected. The designer Roy Allison was out of AR (Acoustic Research) and had a hand in the famous AR-3. Oh, and yes I wanted a pair. Much easier to live with compared to maggies and more conventional high end speakers.

I liked the concept as it was pretty simple. The angle of the two faces is 90 degrees as I recall. You get symmetry on two planes when against the wall. Wall placement has several advantages. It helps in the low Bass by bumping it by around 6 db (wall and floor) It limits multipath reflections a bit. The room fills with sound and there is a significant area of radiator surface with two of everything per side.

All the drivers are flat on the faces so from a central listening position you are 40 to 45 degrees off axis to them which should mess up the highs a bit but they were reputed to have excellent imaging so there is that.

These were one of my influences for design. My invisible speakers are also set hard against the wall. It pleases the wife to not have big ugly boxes in the middle of the room. If I was not a DIY type I would probably buy these.

Hmmm maybe I should build some......

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #cheap audiophile #Allison One Speakers

[audio-luddite]

Head fog clearing.

Further thoughts on Getz / Gilberto.

That album made an impression for sure. Like a heavy meal it takes time to digest.

One word that comes to me is naive. Simple, basic, unpretentious, being how it was recorded. The sound is presented with the same placements the artist stood in the studio or at least it seems so. Drums Left, Solo girl singer hard Right male singer center. Solo guitar (the singer) and sax center. Upright Bass mostly center, but low frequencies are hard to place anyway.

Soft sound as in easy going like it is hot out don't work so hard. Not soft as in lacking clarity or the treble. There is enough of that.

Honest reproduction of what the instruments sounded like. Fingers on the strings, check. Brushes on the cymbals, check. That wet sound you get from Sax sometimes. A piano is there, but not prominent.

I am sure that the ARC amp emphasizes certain sounds in the voices and the sax especially. It is a good match.

My wife and I both love Astrud's singing. Simple laid back as one would sing with friends around the living room. There is a PR story about her being a housewife plucked into the studio, but no her presence was deliberate as everyone thought she was perfect for the song, having heard her join in while singing in the Getz's living room. There is a charming story about her not knowing it was actually going on the album while it was being recorded, and it was a surprise gift to her. Not much pay, but she did become a star.

And to close the story there is a real person identified as the "Girl from Ipanema" who was 17 when the song was written in a bar she walked by daily to wolf whistles. That would not be a good thing in this day and age. But she also became a star.

Those are just some of the story lines behind this album. Impex went to a lot of effort to get the Getz family involved and behind the issue. The liner notes are extensive, detailed, and illuminating. It is not a package to fully appreciate in one sitting.

So as the most expensive album I have ever bought I am satisfied. I expect it will appreciate in value, but I probably have a few $$$$ albums. There is no point in thinking about selling any. That is not why they are kept.

This is one of the milestone Jazz albums full stop. I have three thus if you list my Miles Davis, Jazz at the Pawnshop, and now this one. I have more jazz, but none yet designated as treasure as far as I know.

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #vinyl #turntables #jazz

[audio-luddite]

New Old vinyl.

Getz / Gilberto is spinning. How do you say wow for something so subtle and laid back?

The recording is ancient. 60 years old. I was a kid.

This is the Impex One Step release. It was FN expensive, the most expensive album I ever bought. I have no regrets and I am not rich by any means. We ate left overs for dinner. My copy is # 4404 of 7500. Get yours before you have to pay "collectors" rates.

45 RPM and super vinyl quiet as a mouse.

I am smitten by the sound. It aint spectacular, just very real and almost intimate yet immediate. I have to work on the words. Yes the tape had flaws and drop outs and wow and stuff, but it is easy to forgive all that. What is there is really good.

And consistent with that reviewer guy's experience, my wife really liked it. She remembered her grandmother singing the "Girl" song to her when she was a kid. She really liked Astrud's simple tone of voice and naturalness. It is a wonderful contrast to the amazing technical prowess (and overworking) of today's pop stars.

I cannot help but think of what people who bought the original album in 1964 heard. Most stereos in that era were those all in one consoles that were frankly not that good.

Aficionados might have a pair of original AR-3 speakers and maybe a Dynaco Stereo 70 with a AR turntable. What phono pickup I wonder, Pickering, Empire, Shure, and yes GRADO? Very well off may have had McIntosh which was pretty good.

Whatever the system it was not anywhere as good as stuff today. No really I mean it high end ramped up in the 1970s to 1990s.

The Girl from Ipanema is the cut that made it a hit. There is far more there, and the story behind it is worth a movie. I imagine there are many stories behind all the 35 minutes of music we consume. And the producers went to a great effort to produce a document and real book to explain and relate the story. Very charming.

Oh did I mention the sound is crazy good. and yes it is pure analog.

#audiophile #high end audio #vinyl #turntables

[audio-luddite]

More Old Vinyl

I warmed up the steam powered stereo with Apple Music and Billy Joel. We were watching that TV special in a place they let him finish his last song. So with all these songs in my head I decided to let them ride. He has a lot of songs.

After 90 minutes I decided to dust off Bruce Springsteen. Also NY metro as in New Jersey rather than Long Island. ( I have a bit of history in that area) I have a few Springsteen albums. I pulled out "Darkness at the edge of town" and "The River". These I think map his shift from a Jersey Shore party punk to more of an urban version of country music. Soulful and reflective and solid common man stuff.

Oh and full disclosure, I saw mention of these on that annoying Better-Records site. They want $750 USD for one apparently very good copy of the River.

I and thought hey why not. I have those.

I never thought to listen to these "critically" I bought them new soon after their release. I only played them on good equipment and kept them clean. The two albums consist of three disks total.

Darkness was a clean and rather hot record on the first track. The extreme treble was almost too much, not distorted or wrong, just like the knob was turned a bit too far. The rest were more reasonable. No clicks or dirt sound and very good condition for an early 80s disk. There actually was some realistic space which I find surprising in a studio record. The drums and Bass were very good. That record store wanted $400 USD for their copy.

My copy has intensity and drive and all those things. I know that the Boss was looking for a particular sound ( I read his book) and that was tricky as he and SVZ were new to the producer game. Generally they seem to have got it in the end.

The River was more reflective and felt more influenced by old school country and folk like Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie. (I am old remember). There are two disks with one of my favorites "Hungry Heart". My granddaughter likes that song too and sings along with her 7 year old voice. One of the interesting things is I often play this off my Iphone in the car and well it sounds much better than that on the big system, surprise! Overall it has good sound and timbre and even space. But it is not about sonic tricks and that. It is a document on dreams, pain, and loss. Hey if you want a scholarly analysis, that exists just wiki it. I am just one guy in the crowd.

You know this curating of old records is laced with irony. Who spends almost $1100 bucks to buy 2 "good copies" of albums singing about failure, loss, broken dreams, and the working class? It almost feels like betrayal. Hey I know Bruce is wealthy and successful now, but then..... He worked really hard for it.

If a disk is free from damage and dirt let it spin dammit. Clean it if needs be. Listening critically is not what you are supposed to do with this stuff. It is not for audiophiles, but just normal guys. If such has a nice system well rock on. If not just share the feeling.

#high end audio #audioblr #vinyl #turntables #bruce springsteen #the river #darkness at the edge of town

[audio-luddite]

Yes I ordered another expensive LP issue.

This one is full on gourmet high end box ticking limited edition.

It is the Impex Stan Getz / Gilberto onestep album. Double 45 heavy super vinyl. And yes I got it after seeing and watching reviews on You tube. I am not immune.

First in my defense the music is considered important. Jazz geeks like it for Mr Getz's Sax and it is approachable by normal people. At least one authority said it is the one jazz album his wife likes. It includes the famous "Girl from Ipanena" which made the Album a huge hit in 1964.

Now the Hit status had several consequences that are almost too much for an audio geek. This plays with the all analog versus digital versus historical purity game. From what I gather the original is a 3 Track tape master and that was mixed down to another tape or maybe not. As it became a hit they made a lot of copies and the master got rather worn out.

There is a large book included that will describe in painful detail what they did. We will see.

Impex got Bernie Grundman to do the mastering. He is a master of mastering one of the best if not the GOAT. They used an original tape and in the one step process that Impex used they cut a new lacquer for every 500 LPs which means they ran this tape 15 times to get all 7500 LPs done. Pure analog as it can be. Thereby hangs the tale.

The early copies expose tape flaws and dropouts and the limits of analog recording for all to see. Yes this was an old tape. The reviewers of course got the "freshest" runs and I am sure mine is down on the list.

The benefit of this purity is that the sound is more natural and ticks the audiophile boxes. The consensus is this is a must have Jazz album.

This guy has a record store and is a SERIOUS collector and dealer. His response is pretty typical. Oh for what its worth I think he has a full McIntosh system.

This guy is also the person who went and talked to MOFI in their shop when the story broke about their analog impurity.

Full disclosure I ordered the album from a Canadian Vendor who was not jacked the price up past the US exchange rate. Still expensive though.

The Digital guys say the original should have been put on DSD where the speed could be adjusted using the tape carrier frequency and tape dropouts could have been patched. And they could have done as many runs as they wanted without further wearing out the precious tape. All good points. I expect that something like that may appear in the future.

For me I respect the effort that went into this issue. I did not have the album and I like Jazz. It is like the Pawn shop album a must have for sound. I figure it is probably going to hold value if I tire of it. This is a lot cheaper than buying electronics.

Oh one more editorial thing. Impex takes great pride in analog purity, but maybe they wink now and then. They also have an extensive catalog of Jennifer Warnes including Famous Blue Raincoat. FBR was an original Digital recording. They talk about using the original analog "mix down" tapes. So not first generation is it.

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #vinyl #Impex Records #vinyl records #Stan Getz. #Youtube

[audio-luddite]

Better Records.

They are a business. These are the people who I said annoy me. To be fair I am adding a link so that you may find them and judge for yourself.

Why do they annoy me? Well they are enthusiastic and I am sure they care as there is a lot of work behind this business. But as I have said many many times the sound YOU like may not be the sound I like.

In one of their explanatory bits they say an LP they liked on their old system was not as good on their new system. I could not find anything about what their current system was. It makes a difference. They have a term "tubey magic" that often determines better from good. I suspect that they have a very good tube based system.

There is nothing wrong with tube systems, (Hell that's what I am running now!) but they can and usually do mask detail to varying degrees. They add "space" and texture and many lovely features that are not on the recording. This is fact. I experienced this first hand over 5 decades in this game. At least one record grading company uses all high end solid state equipment for this very reason. They want to hear what is there warts and all.

As we are talking about LPs the turntable is important, but critical is the phonograph pick up. (Cartridge). What brand and type is it? Is it moving coil or moving iron or moving magnet? What type of stylus does it have? Is it properly loaded? What preamp stage is used? Each of these things make an important difference to the sound.

So their reference system is important. If you have a system similar to that their results are more valid for you. High end systems all sound different.

I spend most of my time with Classical and Jazz type music. I have a fair bit of Rock and Popular too, but so much of that is deliberately mixed for car radios and now earbuds. That is not optimal for big speakers and serious systems. Even a good copy may not sound good.

This is why I like re-issued and re-mastered LPs. The business is targeting good sound now as that is the LP customer base today. My audiophile copy of that Gino Vanelli track on the A&M sampler is different than the original good condition LP we have in apparent compression. The Fancy copy has far less or even no compression compared to the original. That is on the master used and no searching for better copies of the original will remove that.

I am sure the good copies they have are actually really good under specific conditions. What I am saying is you may buy a really good copy from them and not be satisfied. They do have a money back policy, so I believe in their integrity.

Hey my pet cats can be really annoying too.

#vinyl albums #better records #audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #cheap audiophile #vinyl #tubes vs transistors #turntables

[audio-luddite]

Follow up to CS&N album.

Some people just gotta hate things. I was looking around for anyone else who found this album and what they thought. Sharing?

Several comments were nasty and not about the album per se, but about American versus European pressing plants. Specifically that the plant where this album was done was not as good. Pressings made in USA were better. Hey my copy is a good pressing. What is the basis of their opinion? They heard someone say that they heard someone say?

I also tripped over that site that sells original LP copies and claims those are ALL far better than reissues. They annoy me.

Apparently as the original CS&N albums date to 1969 there have been a few reissues and remasters and many pressings. The cover of mine lists several different issues and copyright dates of those so is aware of the history of these documents. This was done with the original analog tapes converted to digital (presumably DSD) and the person who did the conversion is listed. I figure that indicates a level of seriousness. My copy is by one of the really good mastering engineers, Bernie Grundman. He knows what he is doing.

If I had to buy the 4 albums with these songs it would cost about $120 bucks at current used prices. I saved money too.

If you are trying to shop for a particular LP as a collector it is good to check sources and all that. If you buy one and like it, you should not stop liking it anymore if someone said so. I was just trying to see if anyone had a similar experience.

I was just connecting some very old dots.

If in checking after the fact you find all sorts of negativity that really casts doubt the quality and authority of the internet. (What a surprise!!) Would I have bought it had I seen this stuff? The places I was looking should know better. I thought they were serious.

I really understand that online is a swamp of nonsense and lies with only a few bright spots. I enjoy my hobby, my goal is the music presented as well as it deserves.

Have I bought crap albums? Yes. Fortunately only a few. I have 600 or so good ones.

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #cheap audiophile #vinyl #turntables #tubes vs transistors #vinyl records

[audio-luddite]

Crosby Stills & Nash.

Part of the soundtrack of my youth. I have been looking out for records missing from my collection. I had no CSN or CSN&Y. We had to pick up the grandkid after her dance class. We stopped at this mega-mall close by and there is a real live record shop in it.

So I had to go in and I did! Just flipping through the records like the old days. I had nothing in mind. The Zen of record shopping. Oh what is this? A double LP of CS&N hits. No Neal Young just the trio. European pressing by Rhino who are the guys doing good reissues of old stuff. Ok its mine!

First and most important this is important music. It was era defining heartfelt and both simple and complex. Three guys who could sing and harmonize. Apparently they sang into one mike for the harmony just like they would in their real world living room. Oh and they wrote good songs. Strike that GREAT songs.

I never bought these albums before as It was always someone else's dorm room. I just skipped the guys playing John Denver. I said it was my youth dint I?

This a Greatest Hits compilation from 4 CSN albums and it has the good ones. It is a Rhino issue of Atlantic label and was mastered by Bernie Grundman. Pressed in Yurp. The vinyl is quiet. The sound is clear. The vocals sound like real people. Some songs there is just a Guitar. Some a full band.

Aside from the music there is a documental aspect. Many of the "stars" of the era lived on the same road and hung out. Mama Cass Elliot is the person who got these people together. If you are too young to know that name then look her up. Others on the street were Joanie Mitchel, Judy Collins, and Peter Tork (the TV guy). Oh just look it up.

Is this an audiophile album? I just don't care. It is a good album. It is clean and clear. Some of the sound is a bit canned if that makes sense. Hey pre-digital is this. I am hearing the decisions that the recording engineer and the artists made. The mix is simple. Recorded in a studio, no real space. You can hear fingers on the guitar strings if that turns you on.

I am glad I found this one. Now I do not have to buy those 4 albums.

#vinyl #high end audio #audioblr #audiophile #turntables #phase linear 8000a #cheap audiophile

[audio-luddite]

Speakers.

Oh where to start! I have built all my "main" speakers since I was very young. My carpentry skills are acceptable now but my basic sonic design is pretty damn good. Over this educational experience I have learned quite a lot.

First thing is if you know what you are doing you can build speakers for a fraction of commercial products. 10 to 1 is not unreasonable. Of course the knowing what you are doing is the tricky bit.

Second thing is if you hook up a powerful enough amplifier sound will come out and it can be fine even with a less that fine speaker. It takes a serious problem to make a significant difference. That is why so many speakers sound fine.

Third if you go online looking for kits and advice and parts you will encounter a great deal of noise and confusion.

After this it is all chaos.

There are speakers built with every imaginable method, and philosophy and design theory. This is where the compromises start. A given product will tout their particular method or concept as the best or most perfect at the same time as being the exact opposite of some other theory making the same claims.

Large panel planar speakers can have amazing presence but suffer severe phase cancellation, mechanical compression, and diffraction effects. Box speakers may be phase aligned and tuned to an extreme degree, but totally miss "something".

A speaker may have an impedance curve that looks like a roller coaster ride and may be great with one type of amplifier or damage or just sound bad with another.

Then you have to live with them. I saw an ad for a huge speaker taller than a man that looks like a grandfather clock on steroids. Not in my house people. Ugly does not begin to describe it. I also cannot countenance having 1950s era horn speakers that were supposed to hide behind a motion picture screen. Big Grey, industrial and yes ugly. I do not have a man-cave or back yard shed, few people do, its gotta be in my living room.

And yet with all the complexities there are hundreds of choices in the market for consumer products and you can buy everything you need to make your own. Most will work well enough to satisfy 90% of the people 90% of the time.

It gets bad if you are an audiophile or want to be. Then you get upgrade fever and have to try something new. Oh this looks good. Oh that gets good reviews. If you change something you will hear new things and call them an improvement. On and on it goes. Forever.

So I build my own. I called my last set invisible. They are not really invisible, but certainly stealth. A lot of people do not see them when they first come into the room. At least one hi-fi nut I know asked me where the sound is coming from. He was used to big boxes out in the middle of the room. The sound was just at and beyond the wall, my fireplace actually.

Are there compromises? Yes. For years I avoided vented Bass Reflex speakers. They work by resonating at tuned frequencies so very low notes need to excite that resonance so the first wave is kinda lost. They are not as fast or immediate but only in the Bass. The advantage is that you get effectively a larger woofer in a given space.

Yet they work remarkably well. If there is a big drum you hear a BIG drum. The initial thwack may be attenuated, but the rumble is definitely there.

Many reviewers quote anechoic response or test for it. Useless and misleading. You do not live in an anechoic room. Even outside in the middle of a field is only quasi anechoic. Your home not even close. The size of the room and how you place your speakers has a fundamental impact of frequency response and performance. At specific places in any room there are nodes and dead spots. There are bright spots from reflections off walls. Is there a standard living room for tests? Nope.

And for all this most speakers work fine. Oh you may wish for more bass or something. Party animals like it loud and thumping. Ok to each their own. That kind of audience needs different speakers than I do.

There is no best or perfect speaker. I like mine.

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #cheap audiophile #speakers #home built speakers

[audio-luddite]

Battle Lines.

Many conflicts occur from misunderstandings. Those lead to opinions and different opinions lead to taking sides. Criticism of what I think is criticism of me. Wanna fight? I just watched an interesting You Tube video on digital recording. (see below) They talk about sample rates and bit depth and well stuff which engineers deal with in audio. Interesting they relate bit depth directly to tape noise.

The consumer or audiophile listener has to take a side right? I mean I have said many times I prefer my analog source of LPs to Streaming and CDs. The fight between digital and analog is very similar to the solid state versus glass conflict. You wanna fight?

But recently I have gone on about how I have some really good CDs. There are true audiophile CDs even with the limits of 16 bit and 44 khz.

My CD player is good, but not high end. It costs less than my current phono pickup. But good can be pretty good.

I am beginning to lean on the idea that it is the recording and processing of the disc (either shiny clear, or big black type) that is the big difference. A poorly done recording and a ham fisted mastering will make a poor playback no matter how fancy and expensive your music spinner is. Or for that matter if it is digital or analog.

And there is a direct parallel between how a digital signal can go bad and how a solid state or tube amplifier can sound good or bad. Clipping is a word used when a signal exceeds the capacity of a medium to portray it. In a power amplifier tubes are always praised for how they clip. Overdrive them and they keep pretty calm and if you are a guitar player they make nice distortion sounds. A solid state amplifier reacts dangerously with nasty harmonics and even gobs of DC to blow speakers. Personally in audio I think if you are clipping an amp you have got something seriously wrong.

I get frustrated when people go on and on about how tubes clip nicely or better. Why clip anything at all? It can explain why a relatively small tube amplifier, say 60 Watt, can sound as good as a much bigger solid state one of 240 Watts. But generally clipping is something to be avoided. Don't do it!

In digital recording if you clip a signal it generates harmonic artifacts that sound very bad. So much of poor CD sound can be from bad recording or conversion from analog to digital at the front end of the process. Done right it sounds fine.

The debate about bit depth is also a distraction. A CD has much more Dynamic Range than an LP, but an LP is adequate for almost all music. Sound effects maybe not.

In one of my discussions with the Tube Guru he used the analogy of hearing a bee buzzing on the other side of the garden then it gets hit by a lightning bolt. That is about the DR that a CD is capable of. Need that much?

The real application is in the recording and studio mixing phase where more bits give you lower noise so layering tracks will not lose everything into hiss. Higher bit rates are to facilitate analog input filters of easier slope to prevent frequencies above the Nyquist limit from getting in. That is a problem at the front end.

I like reasoned factual discussion. You can still like this or that, but lets not fight. There still is no best, just preferences. Enjoy the sounds.

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #cheap audiophile #tubes vs transistors #telarc digital #digital versus vinyl #Youtube

[audio-luddite]

Going back in time.

It started simply enough.

I fired up Itunes to warm up the system. For Shits and Giggles I picked "best of the 80s" list. Two thing interesting happened. My wife and I got into a game of "what group is this?" Also we kept listening for about 3 hours. Forget the warm up this was the show.

The 80s had a definite sound. Lots of Synthesizers and fixed beat tempos. Heavy equalization and some annoying stuff. Itunes has several "remastered" copies, which I think means they got fresh copies with less or even no compression. The sound was very commercial. Many songs were just stupid if you listened to the lyrics. There were lots of one hit wonders, but also some multi-hit groups too.

This was just one song after another. I was amazed that given a very few notes I would recognize the song and even know some lyrics. It makes me wonder what the hell music really is. Why remember stuff like that when I have trouble remembering so many other things. Being Old sucks. Well I suppose it is better than the alternative.

The next day we repeated it with the 70s. My wife said that the 70s had much better music. Certainly it reflects our youth so take that for what it is worth. The sound is more instrumental and organic. The tempo is set by a human drummer and Bass player not a click track. Lots of Fleetwood Mac, Cat Stevens, and Elton John. Some later Beatles sneaked in there too. Many old memories. I do prefer it.

It is rather fun time traveling.

There is so much music out there.

Streaming has a place I guess. Most of this stuff I do not ever want in my physical collection.

I have to say I never heard most of this stuff on a high end system. Much was just on the radio or at friends places. My old college system was bumping up against high end. The limiting parts were the speakers. Pretty good here and there though.

You know thinking of that old system all of it has moved on. The last surviving part was my Sony Turntable. I bet all the bits are still used wherever they are.

60% of my collection is classical music like Beethoven and Mozart and Bach. Some of the recordings are exceptional, but most are just good sonically. I have them for repertoire rather than test records.

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #cheap audiophile

[audio-luddite]

I warmed up the system on Itunes.

Gotta build the steam pressure before serious work. Shakira has a new album out. It is all in Spanish. I studied Spanish in High School so long long ago in a galaxy far far away. I catch the occasional word. She just got a divorce so the music is happy dancing and break up stuff.

Next up I dusted off that Mofi Emmylou Harris disk. I applied a generous amount of groove washer which seems to have helped the residual ticks and pops. I like all types of music (well not gansta RAP) so country is easy. So many categories and slots. Hey people is just art go easy. I respect this album for the music and for the basic quality of the recording and detailed sounds of instruments. Brian Ahern is a very good producer and engineer.

The apparent issue with that background singer from earlier spins is gone. That is curious, I cannot explain it so I will not try.

Clear vocals. Great instrumentals.

One thing about this album is it was created by a community of people who knew and liked each other. Willie Nelson does a great duet in "One Paper Kid" he was a friend. His Stardust album was released the same year as Quarter Moon and was recorded in the home Emmylou shared with Brian Ahern using Ahern's mobile recording truck.

Next up Loreena Mkinnett "Mask and Mirror". A highly spiritual album. Her music explores myriad influences of ancient European cultures. The instrumentation is eclectic with really rich textures. Just the things I love.

She uses a poem by W.B. Yeats for a lyric and performs a Shakespearean soliloquy. Pulls influences from all over. The Album has an insert with notes about what inspired each track as well as lyrics and performer's details. That alone is reason enough to go to vinyl LPs. Impossible with streaming that is. If you go to her web site you can get a look too. But I like tangible things.

The recording quality is excellent. Enough said.

I shut it down for a rest for both me and the hardware.

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #vinyl #cheap audiophile #phase linear 8000a #audio technica #audio research preamp #AT7V

[audio-luddite]

Listening to tunes.

Right now I have that (not inexpensive ) Super Tramp "Breakfast" album. You know the Audiophile version A&M Canada made. It sounds really damn good. I gave it a good clean. Actually I bought a jug of "Groove Washer" which is made by the heirs of the original Disc Washer product. They claim to use the original formula. Not the made in China, not sure what it is, stuff. The bottle is big enough for 4 life times I think. It works good.

I spun up the LP with no real warm up. And it had some rough edges in the high treble. Even after a couple tracks it is getting better. Gotta work that entropy out you know. Get them electrons lined up and dancing.

I have spent maybe too much $$ on LPs recently. And some of the deliveries get dinged at the border by FEDEX. Free Shipping my ass.

The weather is cool and wet today. Perfect for sitting on the couch and using the system. Everything but the phono cartridge and the speakers is 30 or 40 years old. I would put it up against any system I have ever heard, or can hear in this city.

Yes we are still using the Tube Amp. It is lovely sounding. Over the last few days I have been thinking about and discussing why it sounds as it does. Usually Tube versus Transistors discussions fall into fights. One side against the other. Screw that, I like both sides for what they bring to the party.

Back when photography was all film some people swore by different brands and types of film. AGFA, FUJI, Kodak and others I cannot think of right now. (yes I am old). The reason they did was for the subtle differences the formulas gave to the resulting prints. Was one perfect or correct? No perfection then or now. But some films and print paper made really fine images. And that was the point!

Everybody seems to need to stick a war banner in some heap of truth. Tubes versus solid state is only one. Digital versus analog is big. Oh and you get magic speaker cables and interconnects. It all plays to a particular audience.

One thing the Tube Guru said to me in our dialog is that Audio Research had to keep faithful to the "tube sound" their customer base expects. They could but will not make a more perfect amplifier. Still they make things of excellent quality and have for many decades. Think about that against the ideal of continually improving. If you approach perfection the voice goes away.

I can testify that over 50 odd years of listening to stereos my system has got better, but the state of the art has not. It is a soft mushy set of goals with each team making their own rules.

Oh this track is amazing. A piano showing why it's a percussion instrument. Last track, hmmm inner groove distortion what's that? Aint any here.

Still have the AT 7V in the phaser TT. You want depth? That sax just strode up from the back to front.

Ok now for some serious Jazz. Miles Davis. This recording is almost as old as I am. The LP is new of course. Where did this idea of limited dynamic range come from. That Trumpet is powerful. I like that the mix does not try to park everyone in the centre. One Sax is hard left the other centre right. The drum kit is to the right. Piano centre left. I suspect the reverb is added. Oh I just checked the studio was a converted church and had excellent room sound. So apologies to the engineer, its real.

Just grooving.

I am going to stop writing now.

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #cheap audiophile #tubes vs transistors #audio technica #phase linear 8000a #vinyl

[audio-luddite]

Pure Digital versus Pure Analog

From where I sit they can both be pretty good.

Right now I have a TELARC CD spinning. It is pure FN digital. Recorded in 1980 in Atlanta Georgia on a Sound Stream digital tape system. (16 bit 50 kHz! oh dear not CD rebook) The insert says no compression, no limiting, no equalization. How much more pure do you want?

It is my Carmina Burana disc. Chorus and Orchestra doing big music. I hear nothing wrong with it. The treble is way past what my old ears can detect. The Bass is seismic. And yes the ARC Cl60 is on duty so the drums have great texture and I cannot explain how great a chorus of human voices sound.

It would only be better if I understood Latin and Old German from the 12 Century. Then the songs about bad luck, lost love, and not getting the girl while getting drunk would be so in tune with the 20th century experience. (that was my century). I imagine the 21st century aint that different.

The sound is splayed across my wall. Some feels outside the angle of the speakers, but most is stretched clearly between the geometry of their location. It has height which is weird but it is an amazing illusion.

I got no complaints. Well maybe too many mikes so the mix was tricky. The venue space is "complicated".

I think from outside adhering to the dogma of pure this or pure that puts a frame of reference that people will use to throw cold water on the experience of great art. Wow that drum was HUGE.

I will be following this with a pure analog recording. I got lots of those. Where infinite resolution and purity of an analog signal falls down is limiting and equalization. We shall see. They are different.

Analog actually has infinite resolution you know. If the recording is simple you get intimacy. If it is not well other stuff.

Next up Jazz.

Ok a different purity. Organic? Forgive me in that I have had enough wine to not be a legal motor vehicle operator. But I get a real nice feeling with this one. Jazz at the Pawn shop. From the age before digital. Nagra IV tape decks with a simple mix and just let run. There is no info on mastering or equalization but it is acknowledged as a good one.

The space is good. And yes there is clinking of glasses and silverware. Really cool and natural details. Good? Yes! The music is fine and for purists the performance is not up to New York or Chicago, but damn this is Sweden people!

That vibraphone is spooky.

If I had access to 96kHz DSD I could say bits slay, but I don't. My analog front end is much better than my CD player, but hey to each their own. Oh and I have each.

The main thing is the music.

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #cheap audiophile #turntables #audio technica #Telarc Digital

[audio-luddite]

The Truth the Whole Truth

But nothing is the truth.

I have been meditating on the eternal dichotomy of tubes versus transistors. In my opinion the big difference is in power amplifiers.

Small signal devices as in preamplifiers in class A operation are not so different in either glass or solid state. But in power amplifiers the difference is significant and is the cause behind the wars between the tribes.

First up is for high quality devices the differences are small. And neither is best. Though I do lean towards solid state for being more accurate.

So I meditate on nanoseconds and feedback. No device is free from distortion. That is just another way of saying they are not perfect. An excellent method to reduce distortion is feedback, or if you like to stand on your head feed forward.

The idea is simple. Compare what you get at the output to the input. If there is a difference other than magnitude subtract it (negative feedback) or add the inverse by way of a perfect small signal amplifier. (feed forward see that THX patent or the old QUAD amp) Either way is a correction signal. Fix the error.

Some people fret over the idea that if you correct an input that passes through the same imperfect device it is never right. Some people will claim that making a device with no correction signal is an obvious choice. It only has to be perfect.

All of my power amps have negative feedback. All told I have 4 of those. 3 are solid state and 1 is tube. Just in terms of wire and the speed of light it takes about a bit over a nanosecond for the correction signal to get from the output to the input. A nanosecond is a billionth of a second. That inverts to a frequency of gigahertz. None of my amps go to gigahertz so that gap would get lost no? It is effectively no delay at all.

A tube amp is special though. All production tube amps have output transformers. Small signal class A devices do not need output transformers so they are not that different. Power Tubes are high voltage and speakers are low voltage (except for electrostatics) so you need an impedance matching device, a transformer. And 99 times out of 100 the correction signal is pulled off the secondary winding which is many feet of wire and loops of magnetic flux away from the power tube. As magnetic flux is involved and all sorts of black magic and differential equations you also get phase issues as well as other things which makes the feedback a bit weird and always off a bit. Oh the test instruments show things as better, but not quite right to human ears.

I can hear the effect. My high end tube amp masks tiny little details my brute of a transistor amp is quite happy to reveal. BUT the tube amp paints lovely colors over the signal. I do mean lovely, rich, and very attractive textures. It is a shame they are not real, but I like them. That in the end is the difference. I know they are not real. I know those tiny sounds are there under the nice colors.

That is why the transistor amp is more accurate. The tube amp is prettier sounding. If both were perfect they would sound exactly the same.

I have the advantage of not adhering to either side of the hostile argument. I have both. Also when I put the black Franken-Amp back in service as the weather warms up it saves the tubes in the glass beast. Rather than one or two years service I should get double whatever is due.

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #tubes vs transistors #cheap audiophile

[audio-luddite]

Curiosity overwhelms me.

These rabbit holes get annoying. I was trying to trace back the history of home Audio. It is not that old. In 1947 an English engineer published a design for a "quality" amplifier. Back then it was all DIY hobby stuff.

This design is called the Williamson Amplifier.

Apparently the tribal drums claim this was the first high quality amplifier for home audio use. It is the father of the industry. I have to limit myself on the technical stuff as I know only enough to be dangerous. If you want more here is the Wiki-thing.

There are two things I note. The first is 1947! The first manufactured for affordable home use amplifiers were less than 10 years later in the 1950s.

The second is Williamson fretted incessantly about the output transformer. It had to meet almost impossible specifications to be "ideal". Practical transformers were compromised to varying degrees. Nothing was perfect. Oh that sounds familiar.

Many of the classic brands of tube amps were based on this and modifications for mass production. Some fiddled to avoid patents and such. Dynaco, Harman Kardon, McIntosh, all come from this seed. Brand new vacuum tube products look back as well.

The main thing is the 1950s are considered a golden age by many glass loving audiophiles. They are worshiping a thing that was just invented only a few years before. Its not unlike going back to biplanes.

Now the punchline. My ARC Classic 60 owes a lot to this 1947 idea. The output tubes are wired as triodes with 100 Ohm resistors. They are biased less than full Class A but more than standard AB. Some bits are replaced by FETs and there is lots of regulation, but the heart of the beast sure looks similar.

It warms my Luddite heart.

Over that same time computers went from filling rooms with puny computing power to fitting in your pocket with the ability to deliver virtual reality. Biplanes went to supersonic darts.

#audiophile #high end audio #tubes vs transistors #Amplifiers #tube amplifiers

[audio-luddite]

A few hours of music.

I warmed up the beast with a 70 minute CD of Santana. I really like the tunes, but.... I have a few Santana CDs and some have duplicate songs. That is common. But several of the tracks have replaced the singer with someone else in an otherwise identical performance.

That means they just replaced the vocal track. I cannot think of any artistic reason to do that. So maybe commercial? One track has Tina Turner singing. The other has Michelle Branch. Same instrumental tracks. The younger singer is to attract new listeners?

No matter, it happened years ago. And I was just warming up the thing for a set of LPs. The Main event accompanied by my Wife and the two cats splayed about the room.

So First up was "Cheek to Cheek" with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. I love this for the music, and as a document. Gaga proved to have real Jazz chops and was more than a pop tart.

That followed closely with "Duets II" also TB and many others.

I do not recall when I last played these. They sounded different. It could have been before the ARC amp came in, or with the other phono pickup. I suspect it was the amplifier as the differences were in the textures that the Classic 60 paints on the sound. The voices sounded so nice and fully developed. Tiny details were lost, but the textures were gorgeous.

This album is interesting as it was the first collaboration with Gaga where apparently she had to get a bit drunk to sing as she was so star struck. She is Italian-American and TB was an Icon for that community. It also has the very last song Amy Winehouse recorded before her death.

One cut on the Duets album with Faith Hill was particularly interesting. Her consonants were different, softer, more feminine. Before I could hear a snap in the Ks and Ts in the lyric. This was one of the "I can hear her lips parting" tracks with the Franken-Amp and yes that was now masked.

So after 6 LP sides of TB I went to another "American Songbook" album with Linda Ronstadt. That girl could sing anything and do it well. The album was "Lush Life". That one is now 40 years old. It sounds excellent. I really enjoyed it. Again sounded quite different since my last listen. I think this was before the ARC arrived as the LP was in the basement shelf.

Lots of Jazz and "traditional" songs by top tier musicians.

This really is the point is it not?

#audiophile #high end audio #vinyl #LPs #Tony Bennett #Lady Gaga #Linda Ronstadt #Tony Bennett Duets