Digitizing vinyl and listening to hi-rez. An interesting article on 192/24.

[Dmitry]

http://www.trustmeimascientist.com/2013/02/04/the-science-of-sample-rates-when-higher-is-better-and-when-it-isnt/

Interesting and non-partisan article that focuses on hi-rez, namely 192kHz. Apparently the scientists are not impressed. I've been toying with the idea of digitizing some of my records, and won't futz around with the 192kHz/24bit. It doesn't seem to make an iota of difference over 96, or 88kHz.

[Scott Dolan]

...or 48, or 44.1...

My ears are as unimpressed as the scientists. Mr. Alfredson sums it up nicely in my signature. 

Edited January 23, 2016 by Scott Dolan

[Jay]

[Scott Dolan]

Not a can of worms at all. It's simply science vs. faith. 

[Jim Alfredson]

That's a great article.

I think the move to HD audio is a good thing if only because it is a move away from the loudness wars. I posted this over at FB but I'll re-iterate here. Attached is a screenshot from WaveLab 8.5 (a professional audio mastering program) of a track from a 2015 HighNote Records release. I really enjoyed it when I listened in my car but listening here at home in my studio on my really good monitor speakers, I kept hearing annoying distortion. So I loaded it into WaveLabe and here's the result:

What you see (and what I'm hearing) is the effects of brickwall limiting which is chopping off the peaks of the waveforms. This is exactly what distortion effects like overdrive pedals do. They rectify the waveform, changing it's shape by lopping off the tops. This is the result of lazy or careless mastering.

So what does this have to do with HD audio? Well, the above screenshot is from a CD. The nice thing about HD audio is that companies are eschewing the kind of one-size-fits-all loudness maximizing mastering that's done to CDs in favor of more open and transparent mastering on these HD tracks. So that's welcome. And that's the real benefit of the HD stuff, not necessarily the increased sample rate.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

There's nothing stopping the music suppliers from supplying compressed audio files in HD audio to the end user. If the compression is on the "master", it'll be there no matter how many bits it's chopped into.

[Jim Alfredson]

33 minutes ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

There's nothing stopping the music suppliers from supplying compressed audio files in HD audio to the end user.

True but in general the move towards HD has made producers / labels / engineers less likely to over-compress everything.

[Scott Dolan]

Doesn't the demise of terrestrial radio also play a huge role in that, Jim? Songs are no longer competing with each other on radio like they once were. And not much at all...

[Dmitry]

http://www.amazon.com/TASCAM-DR-05-Portable-Digital-Recorder/dp/B004OU2IQG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453822584&sr=8-1&keywords=tascam+recorder

I'm thinking of purchasing this Tascam DR-05 digital recorder for vinyl ripping. It has a line-in jack, so I can plug it into the second output of my preamp. It records up to 96/24. It has a usb out and records on the microSD card, so I can transfer the contents into my laptop. My question is , how would I playback these files via my hifi? Do I have to burn them on cd, which would negate the 96/24 resolution...or an upload into my iPod Nano is possible?

So I'm old school...

[Scott Dolan]

What inputs do you have on your amp? They make a usb to toslink adapter. 

[Dmitry]

12 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

What inputs do you have on your amp? They make a usb to toslink adapter. 

The preamp only has conventional rca inputs.

I'm thinking ideally I would have these audio files in a type of a box with rca outputs, and a hand-held controller, like a tablet, laptop or my phone, from which, sitting in my listening chair, I could select the songs to be played, and which would have the access to the library contained in the said box, with cover art, track lists, personnel, etc. Does such thing exist? Also, how would I transfer these music files to the said box from my laptop, on which I would do the track processing/splicing/cover art, etc.?

Newb..I know.

[AllenLowe]

I will say only as a musician who records more and more, 24/96 is essential and a significant improvement over 24/48 and an other-worldly improvement over 16/44.  Haven't really tested 192; truth is if I could I would go to 8 track 1/2 inch tape or full inch. It still sounds the best, even when it only goes to 12-15k.

Edited January 28, 2016 by AllenLowe

[Scott Dolan]

7 hours ago, Dmitry said:

The preamp only has conventional rca inputs.

I'm thinking ideally I would have these audio files in a type of a box with rca outputs, and a hand-held controller, like a tablet, laptop or my phone, from which, sitting in my listening chair, I could select the songs to be played, and which would have the access to the library contained in the said box, with cover art, track lists, personnel, etc. Does such thing exist? Also, how would I transfer these music files to the said box from my laptop, on which I would do the track processing/splicing/cover art, etc.?

Newb..I know.

Well, I use iTunes for all of those things. You can download album art from places like albumart.org (or just do a Google search, there are a lot of places to find artwork), though the rest of the information would have to be manually entered as far as I know. As for getting it to your stereo, you can grab an Apple TV and just stream it from your iTunes library as long as you have a Wi-Fi router in your home. Or if you're using a laptop you can always just get a usb to RCA cable and connect it directly to the preamp. 

[ybinter]

On 28-1-2016 at 10:03 AM, Dmitry said:

The preamp only has conventional rca inputs.

I'm thinking ideally I would have these audio files in a type of a box with rca outputs, and a hand-held controller, like a tablet, laptop or my phone, from which, sitting in my listening chair, I could select the songs to be played, and which would have the access to the library contained in the said box, with cover art, track lists, personnel, etc. Does such thing exist? Also, how would I transfer these music files to the said box from my laptop, on which I would do the track processing/splicing/cover art, etc.?

Newb..I know.

I think you could use the Olive One (http://www.myoliveone.com/)

[ArtSalt]

There's also DSD with sample rates of 2.8MHz. One sampling rate format too far methinks?

Slightly off topic: I've been engaged in encoding my CD collection to FLAC these last nine months and from my subjective listening, CD's converted to FLAC sound much better than the original CDs. You know how sometimes you can get that glassy brittleness when playing a CD, that all goes as there must be distortion from the laser reading or in the physical playing of the CD. Once it's read twice and stored, you've got an ideal digital file from the CD.

I've not come across any academic articles on the above phenonmena, but I assume the digital hifi heads on here are aware of it?

From my perspective, as a consumer, I have no doubt that digital music formats have now made the necessary jump up from the first generation MP3's to surpass CD and vinyl. The war is over, if you want it!

[Scott Dolan]

If your lossless files sound better than the CDs they were ripped from, there was a problem in your CD playback chain. 

[ArtSalt]

I'm not so sure, but the FLAC files should at least be the same as the CD, should it not?

[Scott Dolan]

Exactly the same. The bits are just cataloged differently making the file size smaller. Neither will sound better than the other. That's simply not possible. Unless there is a problem in the playback chain for one or the other, they will sound identical. 

[sidewinder]

Maybe the difference is in the way the D to A converters handle the file format? Information wise there should be no difference.

[mjzee]

5 hours ago, ArtSalt said:

I've been engaged in encoding my CD collection to FLAC these last nine months

I've been doing something similar, only encoding them to Apple Lossless.  This accomplishes two extra things: the files play on an iPod, and I can stream them throughout the house using AirPlay.

[Scott Dolan]

1 hour ago, sidewinder said:

Maybe the difference is in the way the D to A converters handle the file format? Information wise there should be no difference.

The DAC can be different, but the way they convert digital to analog will be no different regardless of file type. I would assume that either Art was running his CDs through a different DAC than the one he uses for digital file playback, or simply convinced,himself that he hears a difference. But, the information in and out is exactly the same. One cannot sound better than the other using the same playback chain. 

1 hour ago, mjzee said:

I've been doing something similar, only encoding them to Apple Lossless.  This accomplishes two extra things: the files play on an iPod, and I can stream them throughout the house using AirPlay.

Yep, it's a wonderful thing. I've been in this camp for several years now. No more going to the other end of the house to search for a CD. I have my entire catalog right there on my iPad screen. 

[Eric]

22 hours ago, mjzee said:

I've been doing something similar, only encoding them to Apple Lossless.  This accomplishes two extra things: the files play on an iPod, and I can stream them throughout the house using AirPlay.

 

21 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

Yep, it's a wonderful thing. I've been in this camp for several years now. No more going to the other end of the house to search for a CD. I have my entire catalog right there on my iPad screen. 

Same thing here, set up in six different rooms of the house.  You can play the same music multiple rooms at once (i.e. "rock the house" mode) and/or everyone can you do own thing in their own room, simultaneously.  The little-known, little-hyped Apple Airport Express makes all this work seamlessly.

http://goo.gl/PywSK3

[mjzee]

1 hour ago, Eric said:

Same thing here, set up in six different rooms of the house.  You can play the same music multiple rooms at once (i.e. "rock the house" mode) and/or everyone can you do own thing in their own room, simultaneously.  The little-known, little-hyped Apple Airport Express makes all this work seamlessly.

http://goo.gl/PywSK3

Also Apple TV (I have some of both).  The Apple TV offers one additional advantage: you can stream the audio of YouTube videos to connected speakers.  Another current advantage: Apple is selling the older Apple TV model (3rd Generation) for $69, cheaper than the Airport Express (currently $99).

[Eric]

1 hour ago, mjzee said:

Also Apple TV (I have some of both).  The Apple TV offers one additional advantage: you can stream the audio of YouTube videos to connected speakers.  Another current advantage: Apple is selling the older Apple TV model (3rd Generation) for $69, cheaper than the Airport Express (currently $99).

Excellent points.  I forgot, I have a couple of those too 

Another bonus with Apple TV ... if connected to a TV, you get a nice display of the cover art on your screen.  Note the actual resolution is better than appears in the photo.

[Scott Dolan]

Yeah, I love having the album cover on my tv screen. Though I still don't understand flipping it every 30 seconds, but no big deal. My wife and I recently bought a 3rd gen Apple TV for our master bedroom, almost strictly due to how cheap they're going for. I was surprised that the 4th gen doesn't have an optical input. But, I guess everything if going either USB or HDMI these days. 

BTW, Eric. Did you feel much of the earthquake Saturday morning? There were folks in certain parts of Jeff City that felt it, but my wife and I didn't.