doctorcilantro Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 When I put on my tube tuner I am always amazed at how warm and clear the sound is....it's also a mono signal going to the amp. I'd ascribe your experience to that idea mentioned, that your simply enjoying the sound of the mp3's. Sometimes when I apply noise reduction to a wav file on the computer, all the hiss and analog tape hum disappears and the music still sounds fine, in fact it sounds really great. But when I mute the noise reduction I notice, along with the artifacts, the top end sparkle and nuance returns. With headphones sometimes that analog chatter is really apparent whereas on the loudspeakers it just seems to blend in a kind of soncially healthy way. Once I get to my new apt. I'll have to try some testing with various formats. Right now I am using FLAC and MAC (.ape). PS Max you must type fast, I wouldn't have the patience to type these massive posts; it's impressive. DC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piranha Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 How's your Sherwood integrated doing? Did you get all the kinks ironed out? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NOSValves Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 DC, Good to see you posting again ! Hope you been staying off that ship Are you headed down to Florida soon ? Craig Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorcilantro Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 Yes, thanks for asking, I sent it to a good kink ironing specialist in Michigan! It's hooked up to the PC and sounding nice. I have been eyeing tube power amps lately, and eventually will sell it with a matching tuner. Some pics http://www.catuccio.net/web/audiogear.html Florida bound nest week with a truck full of stereo eqp. I couldn't bear to ship it with the movers....better drive careful. DC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorcilantro Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 Max, I meant to say more on the idea that there is maybe some similarity to listening to mono and mp3. Not literally but the idea of something missing may sound like something better, more refined, or focused. It is very interesting though, your report, since MP3 converts the data into a lossless audio codec whereas the lossless codecs are compressed copies of the original audio. I have quite a few cd's that aren't produced so well, nor mastered very efficiently, that I have ripped to my PC to my archive. If you were to apply noise reduction you would hear a major major difference; everything becomes quieter, refined, and more focused, and you wouldn't neccessarily complain about it. But when switiching between having the reduction on/off, it just feels like something is missing, like the ambience has been sucked out of the recording; although I truly doubt someone hearing the remaster would say "There's no ambience". It's there, just not as much as the original. It's a fine line between preservation and optimization when archiving these old LP's. LP's seem to be easier, get rid of the massive clicks and have a little crackle if it's there. Tapes that have some hiss and hum seem to respond well to noise reduction, maybe your getting a blacker background with the MP3. I don't understand what actually gets taken out, but I thought it was what the algorithm deems unimportant so maybe what's getting removed is causing that "refining & focusing" effect. DC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Griffinator Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 ---------------- On 10/5/2004 7:50:07 PM DrWho wrote: I've got some better recording equipment available to my disposal so I will try recording the output of upsampled music and comparing that to the original waveform as well. ---------------- Totally not going to work. Every step in your chain will alter the waveform in some fashion, no matter how subtly. An examination of the waveforms will reflect these alterations. I believe I can definitively answer the question "why does MP3 on DVD at 24/192 sound better than CD at 16/44.1?" Simple. A $70 DVD player has really, really cheap DACs. Really, really cheap DAC's sound terrible at 16/44.1 or even 24/48. Why? Because it's SO close to the audible spectrum, that all the noise generated by poor quality converters is clearly audible in the higher frequency spectrum. All the quantization errors are audible in the noise floor at 16 bits (-96dB) as well, since the effective SNR of the player is @ 100dB. Here's the rub.... At 192Khz, even this pi$$ poor converter is perfectly capable of pushing all its noise outside of the range of human hearing, and at 24 bits the quantization noise produced (-138 to -144dB) is pushed below the SNR, or the effective noise floor, of the player (as mentioned, @ 100dB) This is the biggest reason why the recording industry manufacturers were pushing 24/96 and 24/192 formats - they could make cheaper A/D and D/A converters that performed just as well as a really high-quality (and priced accordingly) 24/48 converter. I've read a mountain of whitepapers that prove mathematically that the benefits of 24/96 and 24/192 are completely inaudible, and another mountain of A/B/X double blind testing (different sample rates on the same converters, to prevent converter coloration from affecting the test) that supports the notion further. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NOSValves Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 ---------------- On 10/6/2004 10:38:20 PM doctorcilantro wrote: Yes, thanks for asking, I sent it to a good kink ironing specialist in Michigan! It's hooked up to the PC and sounding nice. I have been eyeing tube power amps lately, and eventually will sell it with a matching tuner. Some pics http://www.catuccio.net/web/audiogear.html Florida bound nest week with a truck full of stereo eqp. I couldn't bear to ship it with the movers....better drive careful. DC ---------------- Nice website !! Craig Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piranha Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 ---------------- On 10/6/2004 10:38:20 PM doctorcilantro wrote: Yes, thanks for asking, I sent it to a good kink ironing specialist in Michigan! It's hooked up to the PC and sounding nice. I have been eyeing tube power amps lately, and eventually will sell it with a matching tuner. Some pics http://www.catuccio.net/web/audiogear.html Florida bound nest week with a truck full of stereo eqp. I couldn't bear to ship it with the movers....better drive careful. DC---------------- I am glad to hear that your cruise ship finally made a stop at the right port of call. What was the name of that ship again? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxg Posted October 7, 2004 Author Share Posted October 7, 2004 "At 192Khz, even this pi$$ poor converter is perfectly capable of pushing all its noise outside of the range of human hearing, and at 24 bits the quantization noise produced (-138 to -144dB) is pushed below the SNR, or the effective noise floor, of the player (as mentioned, @ 100dB)" Griff, That is the best and most credible explanation as to what is going on I have seen to date - thanks!! At least it shows I may not be imagining this effect, nor merely pandering to my distorted tastes. Well pleased with that one! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gerbache Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 In practice, interpolation will result in a slightly different signal than a non-interpolated one. As to whether it's a better signal than the original, that's up to the listener to decide, but it will be slightly different, depending on the method of interpolation. With any PCM encoding of a signal, there's a set amount of noise caused by the number of bits of quantization. As you increase the number of bits, this level of noise gets lower and lower, until, especially with these newer 24-bit ADCs, the amount of noise added from the quantization is below the noise floor of the analog components backing it up. In other words, the quantizer isn't adding any appreciable noise on its own. Now, as I mentioned, the number of bits basically sets the amount of noise present. The sampling frequency will basically set the frequency at which that noise appears, because the actual value of the noise will be different at each sampling point. When we use these really high speed, 96 kHz or 192 kHz ADCs, the frequency of the noise is largely pushed out to the realm of 40+ kHz, which is inaudible to humans, so as was pointed out, we don't notice it anymore. The biggest benefit of this is that any ADC (and consequently, DAC) that performs at this rate is going to have very little noise present at any frequency that matters to us. By upsampling, we're attempting to change the signal so that we can take advantage of these benefits. It's entirely possible, depending on the manner in which the upsampling takes place, that it could cause an audible benefit that you don't get with a non-upsampled signal, even though the input signal is the same. With a lot of these new ADCs, the limiting factor in things like frequency range and SNR is in the analog electronics around them, so it's not quite as important to have a super ACD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxg Posted October 8, 2004 Author Share Posted October 8, 2004 ---------------- On 10/7/2004 8:18:15 AM mdeneen wrote: Max, It appears that the phenomenon you are describing is that your CD player is not as good sounding as your $70 DVD player. You have two streams you are comparing: A= Standard CD---->Perform MP3 data removal---->Store on DVD at higher sample rate--->Playback on $70 thing B=Standard CD---->Plackback on CD player. Not quite correct - all playback is on the same machine (the $70 DVD player). One could argue that this is in fact obviously an inferior CD player and that this is therefore slanting the results. The only thing is, that whilst it is obviously not a high end player - it has proved preferable as a standard Cd source over my Marantz CD6000 from day one - as ususal much to my surprise. What MP3 encoder is being used? What is the reference CD player? What happens when you simply play the CD through both players? Which sounds better? As above there is only one machine - I am trying to keep the variables under control. I have no idea what MP3 encoding system is being used (are there more than one?) but the software in use is Microsoft's Media player 10 at 256 kb/s. Since each MP3 decoder removes differing pieces of the original information, you should try other decoders to see if the results are always the same. They shouldn't be. Academically this is interesting. I would have expected any ripper ripping an MP3 at a given rate would produce the same result - isnt MP3 standard? The thing is that my main aim right now is to rip 450 CD's to the hard disk and then to DVD's. The MS ripper is doing what I regard as a great job on this and so I will finish the process before I start to play. Since each CD player is different, you should run the tests using a different (better?) CD player. Or player with an upsampling DAC. There is a new Pioneer all in one player coming out (actually it is out in the US - the 578 I think). I plan to grab one of those as it supports MP3 on DVD to compare to my current unit. If it is on a par sonically (or even - dare I hope - better) then I'll buy it and gain SACD and DVDa to boot. One explanation for the effect is that you are simply preprocessing the original signal into a more pleasing one through the MP3 encoder. Most of these remove a lot of high frequency information which is often poorly recorded on CD anyway. Same effect as filtering or bending an analog signal into the shape you want to hear. 'Digital tone controls." I suspect if you change encoders the results will change. mdeneen ---------------- Mark, you are pondering the reasons for the observations much as I am. Even having standardized as much as possible there are too many variables. That a better CD player will beat everything I have (bar vinyl for classical) I have no doubt, but it is not really the point. As I have said in many different ways on this thread and others using the $70 DVD player provides: a/ Largely acceptable sound on standard CD's. b/ Less acceptable sound on MP3 written to CD. c/ More acceptabe sound on MP3 written to DVD. Gerbache, Yup - that is the direction my thoughts are heading. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powdermnky007 Posted October 8, 2004 Share Posted October 8, 2004 Try using cdex for a comparison it's an opensource cd ripper. Got LOTS of quality options! Use the Lame encoder (you can use like 15 different encoders here, but lame is the best for speed/quality) mpeg 1 with max bitrate 320.. (unless you want to keep it at the same for apples to apples comparison) put the quality to 0 (very high quality) and check on the fly mp3 encoding. i would think leave output sample rate at 44100 since that's what the cd is at.. no sence letting computer up sample (besides i've had that give me a weird sound) it can be had here. http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/ I would think this should beat media player. Since I think their empahsis would be more on speed than optimum performance, so the user doesn't get tired of waiting. Naturally, this is what I think, based on prior use of other microsoft products. I think its definetly worth a shot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxg Posted October 8, 2004 Author Share Posted October 8, 2004 Not sure about these options for rippers that are slower. Remember I have some 450 CD's to rip (although I might cut that down a little - I must have been drinking when I bought some of these!). Basically - without having much to compare to - this MS player/ripper has quite blown my socks off - right now I am listening via the Stax from the standard output on the PC - pretty good (and rather loud - hope the baby doesnt wake up - I will never hear her!) Whatever else I am gonna try has got to be quick - and why not with a 2.5 GHz Pentium 4 under the hood and 512 MB of breathing room. Right now - whilst writing on here and listening to ...er....well Barbara actually - I'm ripping good ole Jethro...beggars the mind dont it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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