Continuing with CDs?

The turn in this thread is making me count my blessings that I spent nearly every cent I earned beyond rent and food on eight thousand CDs (and a thousand-odd download-only 320kbps albums) I listened to and enjoyed, instead of on gear to listen to music I wouldn't have owned and would've apparently found fatiguing to hear.

re Jim Austin as an editor at Science: "I joined Science magazine in 2001 as an editor for their online careers publication Science's Next Wave." i.e. not involved in peer review or research publication for the journal itself.

if mqa sounds good to tsf in a way that CDs don't, then that's alright with me, i think. i'd certainly like to try mqa but don't want to buy expensive hardware and subscribe to tidal. i feel i've definitely had 'digital fatigue' or whatever in the past, but i don't listen to too much music in one sitting nowadays. i'll probably go with qobuz if i ever get into streaming, which i won't

You can find great DACs for around $100 even less open box on eBay, this is great DAC and headphone amp, size of a USB drive

https://www.crutchfield.com/S-VouKSq7e7uW/p_703DGNFLYB/AudioQuest-DragonFly-Black-v1-5.html?XVINQ=GLX&awkw=199634283625&awat=pla&awnw=g&awcr=102161537545&awdv=m&awug=9019659&gclid=Cj0KCQiAmKiQBhClARIsAKtSj-k8urTDbsw3TgJePKm1u3oExTd39oU12E2LgZy_8QQCpoJwHQrZQxcaAu0TEALw_wcB

oh yeah i have tried really fancy DACs and have a pretty mid-fi one right now. sort of in the same camp as michael jones in having tried a lot of the audiophile abracadabra. have built a lot of gear too. i just don't feel like paying $$$ for one that supports MQA (and it seems there's like two versions of MQA support?) also the idea of a DAC for MQA that you can't DIY rubs me the wrong way too.

imo DACs all sound pretty similar to my ears so I'm pretty happy with a mid-fi unit that I know will outresolve my ears.

FWIW, Audio Science Review have done tests on a bunch of thumb-drive DAC/hp-amps, and found that a £10 Apple USB-C -> minijack dongle was right up there in terms of performance. 113dB SINAD, very flat FR - it just couldn't drive high impedance headphones very well (I'm sure the USB sticks are better in this regard). But amazing what a few quid gets you on the DAC side these days.

oh man Audio Science Review is a real rabbit hole

it's interesting and I like trying to objectively measure things and seeing a $5000 one get smoked by a $150 one off amazon. I have a Schitt Modi 3+ that he reviewed well (especially notable after his semi-feud w/Schitt prior)

I do find the commenters there fairly psychotic especially when they are so adamant that, say, actually listening to equipment sounds with your ears is less objective than quibbling over .001 percent differences in reading of metrics well outside the realm of human hearing

but was very helpful in shopping for a DAC and I've been happy w/the $100 one I got

recently Darko.Audio said he not going to review DACs anymore because he thinks there's just not enough difference in them anymore to bother and reposted a list of around 15 that he likes and said they are all good

yeah there's this strand of thought for all audio equipment to just be a 'wire with gain' that's especially prevalent with the Audio Science Review crowd. let me have my distortions, damnit!

oh yeah and the dreaded "ESS hump" those guys are obsessed with lol

I love reading about this stuff, but like to remind myself that for the first two-thirds of my life I happily loved music that I listened to on A. a factory-installed car stereo cassette player B. a Sanyo boom box or C. the headphones that came packed in with my $50 CD Walkman

> I love reading about this stuff

here's a good intro, also available in video format if you prefer watching to reading:

https://wiki.xiph.org/Videos/Digital_Show_and_Tell

actually it might be preferable to watch the 20 min video instead because it's possible to listen to the examples

thanks! also goes to show how near-impossible it was pre-Internet age to gain an understanding of this stuff

Decided to move away from Sonos a few months ago & got addicted to ASR while rebuilding a system with a bit of flexibility. There's a lot of knowledge there though I think i just liked watching engineers getting furious. But really it saved me some money, & a lot of brainspace wasted on purchasing decisions - between the reviews and the arguments it was very reassuring about what's almost certainly good enough (in my case pi streamer/schiit modi/cheap power amp - and this thread persuaded me to add a DVD player as a cd transport for the DAC because why not).

Between this thread and getting back in with my hardcore audiophile pal from post-grad days (and his ridiculous £50k system), a dormant part of my brain has been nudged and now I have Luxman “suckface” amps and SME tone arms in my IG feed.

I even had a Hi-Fi shop dream last night. There was a DAC the size of an office photocopier (with little portholes where you could seen ribbons of thick cable) - the Finesse Model Three, only £6500. “My Apple dongle is functionality identical”. “I agree,” said the shop manager. QED. Case closed.

This thread periodically makes me think I should go down the server/DAC route but my laptop/phone/Chromecast is so efficient I always go for the path of least action. But...

just bought one of these lovely little DACs (right before the price went up apparently) https://www.schiit.com/products/modi-1
have been reticent to buy one, but this will allow me to run my tv, pc, and cd player into one input on my input-light vintage receiver.

i'm looking at R2R DACs as a result of this thread. so much distortion but apparently the warmth is out of this world!

ah, i see upper missipp has the same one
xp

The DAC of my dreams is a French R2R DAC. It’s only 4250 euros. I forget if that includes shipping.

But love tube amps so I would.

The other “wire with gain” Apple DAC is in the Airport Express later models (looks like a white AppleTV), of course one can stream to it losslessly at 44/16.

https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/airport-express-audio-quality-2014.htm

I've been wanting something for streaming audio that doesn't require me to turn on my TV. The most appealing thing I've seen is the Cambridge CXN, which has a little screen of its own and lists for $1099, or slightly less than the total cost of my whole system. I think it was Darko who said it was also a good DAC and so I said "hey, two in one!" (I don't really have any problem with my Onkyo receiver's DAC, except that there's a switch that clicks every time it recognizes a different source so that I always miss the first two seconds of audio from a CD.)

Those Airports work flawlessly with a good network connection. They also do optical out if you want to put it to a “better” DAC. Trapped in the iOS / macOS ecosystem but that’s true for me anyway.

I have two Cambridge Audio receiver/amps and been very happy (the only reason I've had two is because the first one got fried when my house got struck by lightning)

it's a shame that apple stopped providing optical outs with their products circa what, 2015, 2016?

I hung on to my older Apple TV for that reason.

when my house got struck by lightning

!!!

Typing that above inspired me to reinstate my Airport Express as an output for my music server Mac Mini, I had foolishly thought the Mini's output was comparable, but I was WRONG. Even without the expensive DAC the analogue output has a rock steady, deep bottom end which adds a whole level!

Thus Sang Freud at 5:48 15 Feb 22

when my house got struck by lightning

!!!


yeah was crazy! heard a huge crack then saw crazy sparks fly off the side of of the house, had hit a copper pipe going into the house so outside of some scorch marks there wasn't much damage, but had some dead electronics

I've got 8 CD orders on discogs this week so I'm pretty happy with the cd revival so far

I want rid of them all tbh. Totally happy with ripping to flac and scanning the booklets in case I ever want to read the liner notes

i tried to order a CD copy of 11:11 by come on discogs recently and 2 different sellers couldn't find it and refunded me. i am taking a break after all that action.

CAD, I might have a copy of 11:11. I can check for you this weekend.

oh wow, thanks! if you can track it down and are interested in moving it let's talk. my ilxmail should work.

Having said it's all going well some cunt has put a seller hasn't responded on me just now when my shipping clearly says I post on Saturdays. Pending fuck you

Can I just cancel it so I don't get a negative? I literally put I post on Saturdays in my shipping policies

Nyquist states that every waveform under 22050 Hz can be 100% fully and perfectly represented by samples taken at 44100 Hz. So if there is any quality whatsoever to some audio that cannot be represented by a CD, then it's over 22050 Hz. I've had my own hearing tested, and one ear gets to 20 khz, while the other is slightly lower, due to tinnitus. If you can hear over 22050 Hz, I really want to see a pic of the medically-administered hearing test you've taken. Or yr cat collar.

Glossing over dynamic range issues, of course, but no grateful dead records have 24 bits of dynamic range.

No recorded music has more than 13 bits of DR, moreover no one is pressing uncompressed music to any digital format because if they did people couldn't listen to it without risking hearing/equipment damage anyway
they used to put warnings on the cover of early CDs that came close to full recording DR, 80+ dB is a lot

16 bits is overkill but reasonably so, 24 bits is nonsense, it's wasting space storing noise

Haha if we didn't like wasting space storing noise we'd be on one of the streaming threads!

(NB this is just a cheap zing that made me smile, I've absolutely no idea about any of the science stuff and I assume you're all 100% right even when you disagree with each other. I don't have the hearing or the discernment to worry too much about the sound quality, never have had. I am continuing with CDs because I like physical formats and I like record shopping; record shopping for vinyl these days is boring and expensive, while record shopping for CDs is unpredictable and mostly cheap.)

I don't think anyone here is disputing sampling theory or dynamic range requirements for playback or limits of the human auditory system. (24-bit is sensible for mixing/mastering, and 32-bit floating point for DSP/EQ/FX/etc, but anything like that for playback is like filling your bookshelves with special expanded editions of novels with 200 blank pages at the back; plus you can easily get 100dB+ SNR for CD, from a hi-res source, in the areas where the ear is most sensitive, with dither/noise-shaping - that's been absolutely standard for years).

I think the argument some have been making is that the necessarily abrupt low-pass filtering required to retain 0-20k, but avoid any aliasing above the Nyquist limit, is *possibly* deleterious to sound quality. And maybe that's one of the reasons some people seem to have a strong subjective preference for SACD or hi-res PCM. I'm very sceptical, but there we are.

Tim OTM

the necessarily abrupt low-pass filtering required to retain 0-20k

this doesn't happen because ADC is done at higher sampling rates where the LPF isn't abrupt at all and DACs are oversampling

it's a non-issue, it's like climate change "sceptics" talking about sunspots or whatever, it doesn't matter how many times it's debunked, they'll keep on believing it or latch onto the next tripe

filling your bookshelves with special expanded editions of novels with 200 blank pages at the back

This could give Tim ideas.

record shopping for vinyl these days is boring and expensive, while record shopping for CDs is unpredictable and mostly cheap.

ding ding ding, give this man an OTM

I've been going to the library and checking out CDs lately, it's a fun way to check stuff out I wouldn't necessarily buy. but I feel like if I have the CD sitting up by my stereo I end up engaging with it more than if I just streamed something once then forgot about it forever

I'm kind of boggled that there are people commenting on this thread who can still hear up to 20 kHz. My understanding was always that even if you don't abuse your ears, your frequency sensitivity inevitably drops off after childhood. I *did* abuse my ears and I'm probably lucky I can still hear up to 13 kHz. But my wife, who didn't spend decades listening to headphones at high volume, or attend any Sonic Youth shows, is nevertheless down to 16 kHz. I guess there must be some kind of genetic "golden ears" bounty at play if your cochlear frequency range doesn't naturally decline in adulthood?

In my late 30s I went to see an audiologist because I was being troubled by these odd distortion artefacts in my left ear. They found no cause ("something to do with your wiring")... aside from a -4dB dip around 4-5kHz, I was pretty flat (vs normal profile) out to the high teens. The left-side distortion eventually went away, but now it manifests itself as a higher-pitched clipping in the right ear. Somewhat psychological... the more relaxed I am, the less likely it's triggered. Anyway, I'm 53 now and I can hear nothing above 13.5k.

I'm kind of boggled that there are people commenting on this thread who can still hear up to 20 kHz.

This is probably a wise and well-informed comment, but I'm equally boggled that there are people who know what kHz are and know how many they can hear.

Apart from the last poster above, I would be surprised if 2% of my acquaintances had a clue about it.

But it sounds like entire married couples are in the know on these matters!

I just generate test tones in Audacity and see if I can hear them. (There are also YouTube videos for this sort of thing, but the compression on YT probably knocks the top end out anyway).

Of course it could just be that I don’t own any headphones or speakers that can play these very high tones. My kids seem to be able to hear them fine though!