Bubo Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 (edited) Attended the show Friday for 8 hours. These are really just my impressions since a show like this is anything but a controlled environment. Friday, the first day the show was well attended, but still plenty of seating in the rooms on the second to fourth floors where there were lots and lots of vendors most sharing room, ex an amp company with a speaker company with a cable company etc. We started in the basement and worked our way up, so only saw half of the ground floor and half of one of the upper floors * We moved at a pretty good pace and were only able to see or hear about 40% or less of the rooms. * We did not see any radical new technology that is going to change everything like the intro of the CD. * The DAC makers are coming to terms with the fact that they are making a data-com device and a decoder so the implementations are now at least aware of what the questions are. Some of the more expensive ones were sporting larger LCD displays. I like knobs, dials, lights, meters, bouncing bar graphs etc........so if they just added large knobs on the units they would really have something. Lampizator from Poland was there with his tube DAC. * Analog is definitely hot, lots of vinyl, in addition there was one re-builder demoing his rebuilt TASCAM aka Teak Industrial reel to reel decks that sounded pretty darn good. He states that there are now 7 companies selling new tape (France) copied from analog masters ( probably copied digitally at really high sampling and bit depth to what ever they store the masters on) . The Tascams mfg til 2002 look and sound great. Plus lights, meters, knobs, switches and reels spinning.........United Home Audio Wash DC area is the tape deck guy. If you have a spare $7K laying around for his basic unit it may be worth pulling the trigger, I think he has something. * EMO aka Emotiva had a large trade show like space with nice displays and layout, from a trade show perspective the best that I saw. They were demoing their new surround Processor with some recent movie clips in a mini theater I think using their powered line of monitors (Adam look alikes) that lack the punch for a theater....... Their new surround processor, from a glance, has a pretty good layout and is assembled in the US in Nashville. They are marking it as upgradable, a lot of the new stuff the boards.... loads of SMT ASICs and Processors, they probably have to be field swappable..... the connectors and ribbon cables are a good idea in this respect. * Tons of tube gear, again given the controlled and totally uncontrolled nature of the show it's hard to say how anything sounds exactly unless there is obviously something wrong. All of the tube topologies were there, so if you have your fav tube amp design, there were plenty of choices. If you were really interested in dropping some coin, bring you content and make an appointment with someone who knows they are there to sell gear and return either before or after the show starts. * Can you drop $250,000 on Bauhaus Design sterile looking system with almost no: lights, knobs, dials, buttons, bar graphs, or meters that may or may not sound better than a $20K system........almost certainly. * Either because of hearing loss or Psycho Acoustics, a lot of the demos were too loud. The reel to reel guy got it right as did a few others. * Classic Audio Loudspeakers Brighton MI., had nice large JBL Harstfiled reproductions with his field coil speakers plus his own 4 way all wood speakers on demo with lots of tube stuff and outboard power supplies. My bias is towards big speakers, classic proven design even better. His stuff at 2 watts will take your head off. Also very accommodating if you have your own music, my impression is this guy sells lots of gear, deservedly so. This was one of the larger shared spaces in the basement. Very open........... very accommodating. This guy and his co exhibitors are Pros and business people. * Legacy out of Springfiled IL had a large room on the Ground Floor, their large towers that they had going are definitely a winner, if I understood correctly the speakers are matched with an EQ and an amp package that is approx $40K. If you had the coin you would be very happy. * Volti of Maine, soon to be Volti of Nashville area also on the ground floor had their large speakers at approx $20K a pair running, another definitely horn-loaded-winner, not short on wooden looks either. I'm guessing they will take your head off at 2W. * The Ear Gear room ground floor worth a visit, the Orthodynamics are red hot apparently, the guy that mods the Japanese Orthos has his own all new product at $1500 that compared to everything else in the space may be the winner for sound and weight. The Shciit TOTL sp and Woo amps he was demoing with were both very impressive, if I had to take one it would be the Woo. Worth a listen. My two cents: If I were writing the checks..... I would probably take home the Volti's ( perhaps a reinforcement of my decision to buy La Scalas 35 years ago) I thought they sounded very very smooth and clean good relative price performance. In the amps dept, now that I've heard the venerable Mac MC 30s, something less than 50W for simplicity, not sure I could name a new vendor without lots more listens. Any good turntable, I believe declining marginal returns set in quickly with TTs, definitely a reel to reel too many lights and moving parts to be ignored, DACs any competent design between $500 and $1000 is probably sufficient the chip guys may have hit a competence plateau..... though Lampizator says not all of the big 5 chip sets work well...... pops clicks etc like anything digital error handling, clocking and recovery and failures sort out the men from the boys. Cables, for me 10GA is plenty of copper or other metals. For me: Main system: Horn loaded speakers, TT, reel to reel, DAC, 10GA copper cables. 30-50 watt tube amp with SS or surround processor front end. Edited April 25, 2015 by Bubo 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bubo Posted April 26, 2015 Author Share Posted April 26, 2015 A few thoughts on the tech. Class D is gaining acceptance with the manufacturers of "high end" gear. If the Reel to Reel guys are successfully transferring the masters to Reel at it's highest speed setting, tape may be the highest resolution sound available outside of the Mastering Room. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Audio Flynn Posted May 10, 2015 Share Posted May 10, 2015 Nice update. I attended two years ago when I was sick and still had a good time with ears a bit plugged. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted May 11, 2015 Share Posted May 11, 2015 One thing that was interesting for me to note was how many people were using music servers and controlling their content from the side / back of the room. I've never been a fan of seeing someone's backside as they lean over to make an adjustment or change things out. The highlight for me was the jazz concert Friday afternoon. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted May 11, 2015 Share Posted May 11, 2015 I just wanted to add that I think Class D is the way to go from an audiophile perspective. I just wish today's designers wouldn't get stuck in the efficiency, small, light, and low cost mindset. Give me Class D with some big iron and heavy solid knobs with analog meters... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Travis In Austin Posted May 23, 2015 Moderators Share Posted May 23, 2015 One thing that was interesting for me to note was how many people were using music servers and controlling their content from the side / back of the room. I've never been a fan of seeing someone's backside as they lean over to make an adjustment or change things out. The highlight for me was the jazz concert Friday afternoon. Dr. Who, what did you think of the R2R they had there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Travis In Austin Posted May 23, 2015 Moderators Share Posted May 23, 2015 If the Reel to Reel guys are successfully transferring the masters to Reel at it's highest speed setting, tape may be the highest resolution sound available outside of the Mastering Room. They are, and it is. At least the Tape Project tapes are that way. But 2 Track @ 15 Ips, not 30, you lose low end on most modern decks at 30 Ips while you can still achieve 20khz on the high end. With earlier decks there was a compromise, they would record at 15 Ips to get low end but sacrifice high end, and the opposite with 30 ips. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bubo Posted May 23, 2015 Author Share Posted May 23, 2015 One thing that was interesting for me to note was how many people were using music servers and controlling their content from the side / back of the room. I've never been a fan of seeing someone's backside as they lean over to make an adjustment or change things out. The highlight for me was the jazz concert Friday afternoon. Given that Audio is a male dominated industry, I totally agree with you...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schu Posted May 24, 2015 Share Posted May 24, 2015 I just wanted to add that I think Class D is the way to Go.Give me Class D with analog meters... Yes!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 One thing that was interesting for me to note was how many people were using music servers and controlling their content from the side / back of the room. I've never been a fan of seeing someone's backside as they lean over to make an adjustment or change things out. The highlight for me was the jazz concert Friday afternoon. Dr. Who, what did you think of the R2R they had there. I have nothing against R2R, but none of the music I enjoy is distributed that way.... I also feel like every R2R system imparts this "wooden warmth" sound for lack of a better description that totally benefits some genres of music, but it doesn't make my favorite bands sound better. I've also realized that I've grown up in a digital era and so I'm much less bothered from digital artifacts than someone who has spent years upon years hearing non-digital media. I feel like the analog versus digital debates have made the digital proponents feel like their media is perfect, and thus there doesn't seem to be as much emphasis in improving digital. Maybe part of the problem is that the problems of the digital world are all analog in nature and people tend to be good at analog or good at digital, but rarely do find engineers that excel at both. They're just two totally different ways of thinking about the world. Anyways, the one thing I noticed about the R2R at the show this year was that I could hear the mechanics of the R2R itself. I'm sure it's always been there in the past, but this time I noticed that it was part of the sonic environment, and I actually found that distracting....especially one room where the reel wasn't perfectly flat and so you could hear the tape periodically rubbing against it. You still can't beat the sound of tape head saturation on a dynamic drum recording. There's this extra hash in the digital world that you don't get on tape... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris A Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 There's this extra hash in the digital world that you don't get on tape... Yes - it's called clipping, and it's typically the mastering engineers that put it there. Try running your favorite digital drum tracks through a clip-fixer, and listen again. I've found that virtually all recordings that have drum transients have limiting applied. Once you fix those clipped peaks, the "hashing" disappears. Audacity has a good utility for that purpose, as well as the other typical mastering packages. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quiet_Hollow Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 (edited) Yes - it's called clipping, and it's typically the mastering engineers that put it there. Try running your favorite digital drum tracks through a clip-fixer, and listen again. Where drum sets are concerned (a nearly infinite amount of HF content), the sampling rate of the original recording gear also plays a very large part in resulting sound. It's gotta be waaay up there, otherwise with out any other type of filtering, they end up recording like what Mike is talking about. However, it's not like we as listeners can change that, once things go to press. Edited May 26, 2015 by Quiet_Hollow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris A Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 (edited) Actually, What I've found is that, 30 years after the problems appeared and 25 years after they were effectively addressed by the hardware, almost all recordings have the band 10-20 kHz attenuated at least 15 dB/octave in that band, sometimes as bad as 40 dB/octave. The problem, of course, was anti-aliasing filter implementation of the earliest digital recorders and especially the players. Nowadays, there are much, much better A-A filters being used that effectively eliminate the aliasing problems, unless, of course, the mastering types crush the loudness of the tracks to the max (like was discussed in another recent thread here-- the name "Radiohead" coming to mind). In each case, there is a fix that is easily implemented. Try it. The real difference that I hear with "high res" digital tracks is the quality of the decays, with the higher rez tracks (24/96, 24/192, and the higher rez delta-sigma format) sounding much more "solid" on decays. Notice that I didn't say anything having to do with noise floor errors - because that isn't the audible difference. It's apparently the size of the steps (step size, a function of both bit depth and sample frequency) that seem to be the most audible--but not on the attacks, rather only on decays. I don't hear a dime's with of difference on the cymbal crashes. But note that I'm talking about restored music tracks that have been repaired from artifacts produced deliberately by mastering engineers (...on the whole). Chris Edited May 26, 2015 by Chris A Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jwc Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 Who here got to hear the Maggie setup. Seems to me the Maggie 3.7i, Exasound DAC, and PassLab amps setup got the most attention. The Absolute sound gave them like 6 awards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 There's this extra hash in the digital world that you don't get on tape... Yes - it's called clipping, and it's typically the mastering engineers that put it there. Try running your favorite digital drum tracks through a clip-fixer, and listen again. I've found that virtually all recordings that have drum transients have limiting applied. Once you fix those clipped peaks, the "hashing" disappears. Audacity has a good utility for that purpose, as well as the other typical mastering packages. Well the recordings I've done myself certainly don't have clipping anywhere in the signal path....and most certainly not in the digital domain. The extra hash I'm referring to has nothing to do with clipping. I will also add that the old phrase "garbage in, garbage out" has always rung true these last 23 years of mixing (my how time flies). I went through the "fix the source" phase many many years ago and realized that it was impossible to achieve what can only be done by actually remastering from the original tracks themselves. Honestly, I'd rather hear the bad master than a mangled bad master....even though I might agree that the mangled bad master sounds better.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 Yes - it's called clipping, and it's typically the mastering engineers that put it there. Try running your favorite digital drum tracks through a clip-fixer, and listen again. Where drum sets are concerned (a nearly infinite amount of HF content), the sampling rate of the original recording gear also plays a very large part in resulting sound. It's gotta be waaay up there, otherwise with out any other type of filtering, they end up recording like what Mike is talking about. However, it's not like we as listeners can change that, once things go to press. All the modern Sigma-Delta converters these days are sampling around 3MHz'ish...that's gonna be well above the aliasing frequency of your drums and trumpet, or other crazy high frequency extension instrument. It seems to be the quality of the power supplies and down-sampling that affects the resultant in-band "hash"....Changing the sample rate of your ADC is really just changing the down-sampling ratio, so theoretically they should all sound identical (but they don't). Another thing to keep in mind is that a quantized signal is inherently non-linear and time-variant, so the methods of measuring noise and using sine-waves for measurements isn't consistent with the assumptions of linear time-invariant systems. All that to say, you can find interesting artifacts here and there that don't show up in your classic distortion measurements. You gotta be a bit more creative about how one goes about quantifying the performance of a digtial system - and really one of the best ways is just a ton of (controlled) listening. I'm constantly amazed by some of the guys in the industry that can tell you what the sample rate is by simply listening to material they know really well. The interesting thing is it needs to be the right source material and they gotta be in a familiar environment. Not all source material is going to reveal the difference between pieces of gear. For example, if I have a very narrow 1kHz notch in my system, but my musical content never has 1kHz in it, then I'm never going to notice that notch. It's all about finding the source material that stimulates the artifact. That's why you gotta take a lot of the ABX testing with a grain of salt.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris A Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 I'm constantly amazed by some of the guys in the industry that can tell you what the sample rate is by simply listening to material they know really well. The interesting thing is it needs to be the right source material and they gotta be in a familiar environment. That's interesting--every instance that I've seen (or experienced personally) indicates that the only thing that has been audible are the differences on the decays, and that is by a very small percentage (less than 10%) of the "audiophile" and/or professional audience--listening for hours or even days to the same setups. I think that there is a lot of hangover from the analog days when there really were differences, both very large ones and very small ones, in the produced output. Nowadays I believe that the differences are just plainly overrated--sort of like the guys that deny ABX testing validity--it's because if the differences actually become so small (i.e., statistically insignificant), that the esoteric discussions on those particular subjects will simply dry up. Clearly, if you spend the same amount of time on improving room acoustics, the loudspeakers themselves, or simply remastering the music that 100% of the people here listen to (i.e., commercially bought music), you'll get disproportionately greater returns on investment. Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 sort of like the guys that deny ABX testing validity ABX testing only proves the positive, or basically that a difference was heard with statistical significance. "Failing" an ABX test does not prove the negative. It does not prove that no difference exists. The logical arguments are subtle, but the ramifications are huge. It's not hard to set up ABX tests where everyone fails despite there being clearly audible differences between the devices. It's really not a very controlled test once you start identifying all the variables at play... That said, I'm certainly going to spend more time addressing items that pass ABX testing more frequently, but I've been finding that the "esoteric discussions" have way more merit than the heartless engineer types want to give them credit for. Sure, they might have a horrible understanding of science and describe everything in ways that make engineers cringe, but you can't deny they're having an emotional response to something they don't like. The fun part for me is trying to quantify those fanciful descriptions in quantitative sciencey terms so we can actually improve that emotional experience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris A Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 (edited) Maybe something that is actually useful and pertinent to the subject: http://www.libinst.com/Audio%20DiffMaker.htm Whenever I write something on this forum (or any other forum for that matter), I do make an effort to make what I write useful and as informative as I can. Mike, I'm not familiar with the type of "engineers" that you describe: perhaps other dysfunctions that engineers have exhibited on forums. Can you be more specific? For me personally (just as an example), emphasis on things that cost a lot and return little is something that as an engineer, I've practiced avoiding, and for a long time now, even when I was 10 when I started my audio career, too. Chris Edited May 27, 2015 by Chris A Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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