The hdtracks myth

why are you surprised???
old albums recorded in non-digital format are very difficult to make hi-rez except for upsampling the piss out of it!
how else is one going to increase the title list for hi-rez audio???
only new music recorded today can be genuine hi-rez 'cuz they can record it in 24/96, 24/192, 24/384 etc natively. All other material has to be upsampled!

even if it were recorded in digital format it would not be easy to make it a true hi-rez unless someone already recorded it in 20-b or 24-b format at some sample rate. If so, then it's already high enough rez for 24/96, 24/192. once it's in one sample rate it can be converted to other sample rates (not saying anything about the audio quality when upsampling is done! )

this is where the user community's awareness of what is actually happening in the process of creating hi-rez would be vital. most of you guys simply do not understand this!! yeah it's a bit of electrical engineering but it's better that you guys learn this stuff esp. since all of you are rabidly consuming this material like it's the holy grail! Sorry to be so chastising but many on this forum have taken the hi-rez plunge without really understanding what it REALLY is & how it's REALLY created. it's been more of a blind faith more than anything else. So, now many of you are feeling cheated. Of course, the manuf are very, very, very.....very pleased to take your money & laugh all the way to the bank!

bombaywalla schrieb:

this is where the user community's awareness of what is actually happening in the process of creating hi-rez would be vital. most of you guys simply do not understand this!! yeah it's a bit of electrical engineering but it's better that you guys learn this stuff esp. since all of you are rabidly consuming this material like it's the holy grail! Sorry to be so chastising but many on this forum have taken the hi-rez plunge without really understanding what it REALLY is & how it's REALLY created. it's been more of a blind faith more than anything else. So, now many of you are feeling cheated. Of course, the manuf are very, very, very.....very pleased to take your money & laugh all the way to the bank!

I agree. As mentioned earlier. Just be a bit careful before you purchase. As for the pirates among us... hey, enjoy what you downloaded till the better one comes along. (:

Hi Shahrukh, Good point that definitely needs to be highlighted.... again and again.

We all often get too caught up in all the marketing hype, and often the real diffrence between a CD (DDD) release and its Hi Res counter-part is the re-mastering, which is then subjected to increased sampling rates...

However:

old albums recorded in non-digital format are very difficult to make hi-rez except for upsampling the piss out of it! how else is one going to increase the title list for hi-rez audio??? only new music recorded today can be genuine hi-rez 'cuz they can record it in 24/96, 24/192, 24/384 etc natively. All other material has to be upsampled!

IMHO, if the starting point is an ANALOG master, then you can GENUINELY resample the analog master at a higer digital resolution & sampling rate, for increased fidelity.

THAT is NOT a Fraud on the consumer...

Amp_Nut schrieb:

IMHO, if the starting point is an ANALOG master, then you can GENUINELY resample the analog master at a higer digital ..

Thing is, Amp_nut, hdtracks markets these hi rez releases as studio masters.

I remember having acquired Eric Clapton's SLOWHAND some weeks back. The hdtracks release. Was quite dissapointed and blamed it on the resolving qualities of my system, or lack thereof. Only last week did I learn that a lot of audiophiles (with very resolving systems) noticed the same issue and took it up with Chesky himself.

Chesky graciously replied and apologized. Apparently he has no control over the quality of these albums as they are sourced from third parties.

Rather baseless excuse, if you ask me.

To add to ampnut's last post

When we take the original analogue tape such as 1/2" 30 IPS which I believe has huge amounts of info on it and is far more resolving than a cd/dvd, if one were to use native A/D of say 24/192 on that source to try and capture the music in its every detail on that tape, would that not be a high res transfer of the source ?

Manek

for analogue recording..in most cases the best medium is still the LP.of course this brings a different set of problems of playback and acquisition.

Even with SACDs, I remember a huge controversy over Norah jones first album where it was felt that the CD version was better than the SACD. it tuned out that the SACD was basically a DSD converted version of the CD player which only ruined further
Same issue with one of stings Albums as well.

IMHO, if the starting point is an ANALOG master, then you can GENUINELY resample the analog master at a higer digital resolution & sampling rate, for increased fidelity. THAT is NOT a Fraud on the consumer...

To add to ampnut's last post When we take the original analogue tape such as 1/2" 30 IPS which I believe has huge amounts of info on it and is far more resolving than a cd/dvd, if one were to use native A/D of say 24/192 on that source to try and capture the music in its every detail on that tape, would that not be a high res transfer of the source ? Manek

Amp_Nut, Manek, I see where you are going with this - the analog master is analog therefore has infinite resolution & can be the basis for hi-rez.
The analog master tapes are hardly hi-rez IMO. even their heydays, you can hear a lot of tape hiss, drop-outs, wow & flutter. I've several CDs that have this & I'm sure that you guys do too.
<<BTW, listening to that tape hiss had its own aura & there was a certain analoginess & beauty to the sound that it not there in modern/today's digital masters. >>
Further, with the many, many years of storage, that magnetic medium is falling short of the hi-rez definition atleast IMO. Magnetic medium does not have an infinite shelf life.
Still further, to create a digital version a lot of digital signal processing has to be done which will affect the overall final sound.
Compare that with natively recording a band in digital in 24/96. 24/192 or 24/384 right at the band's studio session & putting that music onto the recorders HDD. There's your hi-rez - master it & ship it out to the consumer. The digital master can be retained for decades to come without any loss of info (as long as you ensure that you have some sort of RAID system to prevent data loss due to HDD crashes) & can be copied from one HDD to another without any loss.

Bombaywalla

I take your point on old tapes and stuff.
Now take for example a good analogue master source.

The question both ampnut and I are asking is can Analogue source be a hi-rez source ? We think yes.
As a matter of fact there are pro people(read a few articles) who believe that 24/96 also doesn't do justice to a 1/2" analogue tape master running at 30ips when transferred to 24/96 digital. That could be just the love for analogue talking but can't be ruled out totally.

Manek

Manek,
yes, it's possible for a good, well-maintained analog master to be a source for hi-rez. It looks like, tho', that the people creating the hi-rez from such analog masters are not doing a good job! Otherwise so many users would not be complaining! Do these manuf of hi-rez not understand the importance of the hardware involved? Do they not understand what the final sound be? Do they think that "better sound" is merely more digitally processed sound? Somewhere along the line the expectations of the manuf & the user are not matching up.....

The other thing that I'm not fully understanding is why are people running after hi-rez audio when their resp. systems are not optimized for performance? Hi-rez audio brings more bits to the table. More bits bring higher SNR & higher dynamic range. These new found attributes of hi-rez are hearable only if one's system has a low noise floor & the equipment in one's rack is capable of reproducing wide dynamic range music signals with minimal distortion. If one does not have all of this figured out, what is the real point of hi-rez audio. 96dB of dynamic range of 16/44.1 redbook CD should far exceed the capabilities of 90% or more of the 2-ch systems in the field.
Think of the people enjoying vinyl these days.....in the most optimized vinyl rig one cannot have more than 16-bits of dynamic range (redbook CD) yet listening to vinyl (with lower dynamic range) is far more pleasureable than listening to redbook CDs. These folks are in 7th heaven with a rig producing less resolution than a CDP-based rig yet hi-rez audio is being touted as the next holy grail.......
how does one reconcile this?

Bombaywalla,

To comment on your points :
Yes people are making bad material out of analogue masters and a few are making good stuff with the same.
Let's face it, its expensive to make good stuff out of good analogue masters, as good digital also doesn't come cheap either. For eg. I have a few living presence stuff converted from old analogue masters on cd/sacd. I love it on cd layer. But the same stuff on sacd layer is in the original three channel format. That is even better and gives a glimpse into what those original masters would have sounded like.
Yes, a lot of stuff is not too good and doesn't meet expectations. Analogue masters have their fan following in the warmth and glow that they bring to the music and if done well with good digital hi-rez its "magic". Cd format is definitely not the format to do good analogue masters justice. Sacd, dvd-a,hdd based 24/96 and above definitely do some justice.
To give you an example why maybe expectations don't match manufacturing quality :
Mitsubishi in the 80's when analogue reel to reel was being phased out of studios, made a reel to reel digital system using the same tapes and the system was 32bit/96khz(back in the 80's!). Why did they do that ? Its because this is what simulated the quality of the analogue masters at the time.
I doubt that this was success full against the DAT and other stuff with cd's coming in. Definitely sony and philips were successful in selling a format which was under par(redbook) with the good analogue stuff available at the time. Studio equipment obviously had to fit into the environment accordingly. So why anyone use a 32/96 reel to reel in a studio when on could use a more compact and convenient 16/48 dat and make a cd from it ?

Those 32/96 reel masters would have been something but would be subject to the same environmental degradation of tape degredation.

High rez is the talk of the town today, what mitsubishi predicted way back in the 80's ! Probably an idea way before its time ?

And with the talk of high rez comes talk of equipment supporting high rez and its dynamic range and freq response.
You are right, very very few have the right gear to support true high rez in terms of dynamic range, freq response, snr,etc.
But from the little that I have heard the instrument timbers are closer to what they should be.

Software always led the audio game and equipment followed and I guess the same will happen for high rez in due time.

Which leaves us to a question, our hearing.
Will our ears be up to it ? What will be the point where we see diminishing returns vis a vis resolution ?

Manek

Anyone up for a analogue vs digital AXB?

Pristine recordings played on a top end analogue system vs the same recording digitized in in hi rez played on a top end digital system.

The findings would be interesting. Also, it would be the perfect excuse to catch up. Been a long time.

Interesting....

I am in, if we can find someone with a analogue and digital rig of equal stature.

Manek

There is one in Mumbai.."Prem" from Hifivision
EMT 938 TT on a Rethm Amp/Speaker rig
it was compared to an Esotering X-03 CDP. the EMT was so superior that the owner sold his CDP and got rid of all his CDs

if you do get a chance do drop in to his place..I have heard his esoteric setup and it was fantastic with Vocals/Light Rock and Hindi. (the owner dosnt listen to, or care for Western Classical and Heavy rock so not optimised for it)

We even have Bhagwan's dCS rig. If he is willing, of course.

Shahrukh schrieb:

We even have Bhagwan's dCS rig. If he is willing, of course.

you need to have BOTH analog & digital rigs under the same roof when you do this ABX. Audio memories are very short - if you do this ABX over a few days, it'll be totally meaningless!
you need to hear one rig, get up & move over to the other rig & hear the other version of the same track within minutes of each other.
Atleast this is the way I think it should be done.....

Agree bombaywalla................

that is exactly why its going to me difficult :-)

bombaywalla schrieb:

Shahrukh schrieb: We even have Bhagwan's dCS rig. If he is willing, of course. you need to have BOTH analog & digital rigs under the same roof when you do this ABX. Audio memories are very short - if you do this ABX over a few days, it'll be totally meaningless! you need to hear one rig, get up & move over to the other rig & hear the other version of the same track within minutes of each other. Atleast this is the way I think it should be done.....

Agree. Something will have to be carried somewhere!

Sharukh

Actually I have been a part of this a few times at a couple of shows earlier in mumbai and the TT won out by a margin on those two or three albums.

I remember hotel california, a fleetwoord mac album and louis armstrong sings ellington. TT won out clearly.
And then i heard the LP of suite espanola at the show and i bought the xrcd cd. The TT won out again but this time not by a long shot.

I remember for a fact that my records sounded far better than the CD's I have of them. The magic is so lost on cd sometimes. I remember recording a tape of a few classical records that i had and comparing them to cd's(many years ago). The tapes won out too on everything apart from the hiss. But that was with cd's in the 90's.

So you know where i am camping right now :-)

I am sure bombaywalla has a few records and cd's that overlap and he can give us his view since he has both rigs.

manek.

Manek schrieb:

I am sure bombaywalla has a few records and cd's that overlap and he can give us his view since he has both rigs. manek.

Thanks for roping me into this LP vs. CD, Manek!
yes, correct I do have a few LPs & CDs that overlap -
* all the Dire Straits albums on LP & CD - the details are there on the CD & they compare favourably with the LP with the Brothers in Arms CD being the best of the lot. On some of the tracks on "Golden Heart" there is some fatigue in some of the tracks like in the "Man's Too Strong" - when he hits all 6 strings hard in the chorus, I want to turn down the volume (which is a bad sign - too much distortion probably - and my system is relatively low distortion I feel).
* Simply Red - Picture Book LP & Simply Red Greatest Hits CD mastered by Bernie Grundman. Here the overlapping track is "Money's too Tight (to Mention)". What is blatantly different between LP & CD is the drum-beat timing during the 1st 30 seconds of the track. The distinct drum beats (that I hear on the LP) are mushed together on the CD & the pace of these drum beats is also faster on the CD.
* Supertramp all albums on LP & Supertramp Greatest Hits CD. here my reference track is "From Now On" - LP is way better than CD & even my brother (who's heard it on my system) agreed. All other CD tracks that are common amongst the various Supertramp albums do not compare SQ-wise.
* Several Steely Dan LPs & Steely Dan "Gold" CD - here too the LP wins
* Pink Floyd DSOTM LP & CD - this is the absolute worst comparison. The CD was made by some monkey & that too a very dumb one!


* I do have 1 "anomaly" (if you want to call it that) where the CD is better than the LP (gasp!!) - a Stan Ricker Mobile Fidelity LP of Poco "Legend" vs. Poco Greatest Hits CD. The LP version is soooooooo heavy on the bass that it calls un-due attention to itself & totally ruins the balance. I paid a premium for that LP (given that it was a M-F) & was totally underwhelmed when I heard it. I asked about this on Audiogon & several other users empathized & informed me that many M-F LPs were total crap incl this particular one. So, it looks like I got jipped!

overall the LP has been winning even tho' I think that my CDP is no slouch esp. after a GNSC modification.

What about a 200 gm LP as against its own 24/96 or 24/192 needle drop?

Would like to add that I have come across many senior audiophiles on Audiogon who have both SOTA Analogue and SOTA digital rigs in the same system. I am yet to read anyone ever claim that his digital is better or on par with his analogue rig. It has never happened yet at least I have never found such a comment. The day that happens I would feel happy that digital has arrived. Rather there are threads on Agon like "When is digital going to get the soul of music ?" or "Which CDP does Vinyl lovers use?". Vinyl is still the reference, it is well known to many/most of us, but it is fun to debate hence we do .

Great Post B'walla

I have managed to get a Vinyl rig going. Nothing SOTA.. It is an Old Lenco L75 -replinthed. Also managed to snag a new Custom SS/Brass Bearing and Titanium idler wheel and changed them (yup got mu hands dirty).

My tonearm is an old used LINN Akito (a Thomas Schick on the way) with a nagaoka MP30 cart. and Virens Phono stage.

It makes Musik ..that too at 40% cost of my Digital rig. DSOTM, Brothers in arms , both sound better (although some detail is missing...phono needs to be tweaked)

By biggest learning is that Bass from an LP is Better than from a CD a kind of limit less/bottomless bass !

My main objective of getting a Vinyl rig was for Hindi music and they are Sublime in them (70s and 80s LPs Beat the Pants + Undies of any CD recording)

1 year back i would not have been caught dead with an LP..today am a convert.

I still plan to retain my digital rig..there are some music one will never get on an LP. also most of the new LPs are pretty forgettable so i will stick to cds with them again..but for the 60s-70s and maybe 80s its LPs - Rock, Jazz and Singers

thanks Arj. I owed a reply to Manek & the rest of you but I must say that it is misplaced in Shahrukh's HD tracks myth thread. We might be digressing into another discussion! this *might* be OK w/ Shahrukh *if* none of us have anything more to say about the HD tracks myth....

1 year back i would not have been caught dead with an LP..today am a convert.

wow! from nay-sayer to full convert!!
nice to see that perseverence prevailed given the conditions in India, in general.
yup, if you adjust the tonearm height (VTA) & the stylus rake angle correctly you can get some very nice & tight bass from an LP. it's always surprising to note since it was RIAA adjusted way back when before being cut onto the LP...

bombaywalla schrieb:

thanks Arj. I owed a reply to Manek & the rest of you but I must say that it is misplaced in Shahrukh's HD tracks myth thread. We might be digressing into another discussion! this *might* be OK w/ Shahrukh *if* none of us have anything more to say about the ...

Oh please continue. No issues at all

You are welcome bombaywalla :-)
Btw, there are such stark differences sometimes that one need not hear a cd side by side to know lp was better.

Some examples which are from memory we both may relate to where LP on my 80-90's rig still sounded better as I remember:
1) Best of jimmy smith on verve
2) Oscar peterson night train
3) Paul desmond with strings
4) Malher 2nd sym lpo klaus tennstedt, emi
5) Planets by hoslt lpo, sir adrian boult
6) Stardust lionel hampton(mono record far better than stereo)
7) Oscar peterson, motions and emotions

And the list goes on....cd's of the mentioned today still sound lifeless and drab and dull comparatively.

Manek

Manek, yes there are many such examples of LPs sounding far superior mostly because the CD had been engineered badly. At this stage when we want to compare a very good Vinyl setup to a very good digital setup, we should also make sure that the software is also very good on both the mediums and then see how much of a difference still remains between them. Something like a Jennifer Warnes or some top quality Western classical recording. Even Jazz at the pawnshop XRCD should be a nice place to start with if someone has a well pressed LP of it. Basically software should be at its best IMO for an interesting comparison.

Abhi

why should cd not be engineered well in general ? With all the fancy electronics and digital consoles etc ?

The albums I mentioned earlier was just run of mill issues of lp's. Nothing audiophile about it. Same with cd's.

Manek

There are good CDs, no doubt. Jazz in a pawnshop i am sure would be better on a CD.
Native DSD recordings also am sure would be far better on a CD than the LPs ..

Shahrukh schrieb:

Anyone up for a analogue vs digital AXB? Pristine recordings played on a top end analogue system vs the same recording digitized in in hi rez played on a top end digital system. The findings would be interesting. Also, it would be the perfect excuse to catch up. Been a long time.

shahrukh,
here is a great article for you to read on ABX:
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue56/abx.htm

it's a contrarian view, just FYI. maybe there are some points in there for general discussion???

Manek schrieb:

Abhi why should cd not be engineered well in general ? With all the fancy electronics and digital consoles etc ? The albums I mentioned earlier was just run of mill issues of lp's. Nothing audiophile about it. Same with cd's. Manek

Manek, I think the problem is when the master is analogue, making an LP out of it is relatively straightforward compared to the process of making a CD which will involve conversion to digital and mastering it again for CD.

There are good CDs, no doubt. Jazz in a pawnshop i am sure would be better on a CD. Native DSD recordings also am sure would be far better on a CD than the LPs ..

Not so easy Arj. The superiority of LP is at such a fundamental level of music reproduction that some things may just remain the forte of analogue playback forever.

Manek schrieb:

Abhi why should cd not be engineered well in general ? With all the fancy electronics and digital consoles etc ? The albums I mentioned earlier was just run of mill issues of lp's. Nothing audiophile about it. Same with cd's. Manek

That's -t-h-e- whole thing, na, Manek dikra!!!
when CDs were intro'd in the early to mid 1980s they were intro'd w/ much fanfare & the promise of "perfect" sound forever (data retention for 10s of years on a CD).
The issue, as Abhi alluded to, is the technique to create a CD from analog masters or from digital masters. There is much digital signal processing that goes into making a good CD (one has to consider noise of the entire signal processing chain which creeps up as you proceed from start to finish, dynamic range, peak signal vs. average signal, length of the pit burnt into the CD material to name a few) and the music industry folks were no electrical engineers with sound understanding of these DSP prinicples. In fact, I'm willing to bet that early CDs were generated with only 16-b of music so that when it came time to burn the CD, there was actually less than 16-b of music; the rest eaten up by noise during the DSP activities. It's only much later that we see Sony's Super Bit Mapping (which was 20-b processing), HDCD, XRCD (which is 24-b processing) come into the picture when it dawned on the music industry that CD SQ was not living up to the intial promise.

So, all that "fancy electronics" & "digital consoles" were actually hurting the overall sound 'cuz the monkeys doing the processing were highly inept!

it is only recently that CD SQ is hitting its stride - maybe a little too late given that computer audio is on the heavy upswing.

Just a side note that popped in my head after seeing Abhi's comment:

The superiority of LP is at such a fundamental level of music reproduction that some things may just remain the forte of analogue playback forever

you know hi-rez is actually simulating analog! hi-rez is sampling the music @ higher & higher sampling rates which is trending towards analog (because analog can be considerd to have infinite sampling rate frequency. if you had infinite sampling rate frequency each successive sample would be right next to the previous sample with zero Hz frequency distance. that's exactly what analog is - a continuous waveform with zero quantization! )

In the end, we are human beings & we listen in analog. I wonder is this whole thing will go full circle & end up in analog anyway???? then the man holding onto his LPs will be king!

To illustrate what Bombaywalla mentioned about the complexity of CD manufacturing, why are "Made in Japan" CD so far superior to any of its couter part in any other country (in most cases) ? I think it is simply because the guys who are doing it in the Japan are not mokeys. In the end their CD sounds a lot more like analogue.

actually the Old Japanese pressings are good..I am nt so sure aboutthe new ones. I feel they are "Cooked" a bit too much.
I got a couple of SHM CDs of Carpenters/Abba. the older US press is better ..these ones sound as though they have been caramelised.

Bombay walla

Am glad we are now on the same page :-)

Manek

bombaywalla schrieb:

... you know hi-rez is actually simulating analog! hi-rez is sampling the music @ higher & higher sampling rates which is trending towards analog...

Yeah, that's what the hi rez promise is, isn't it. "The sound of analogue, without the fuss of analogue". But miles to go...

In the end, we are human beings & we listen in analog. I wonder is this whole thing will go full circle & end up in analog anyway???? then the man holding onto his LPs will be king!

You know what, that seems to be the only solution for the music industry at large. Market the superiority of analogue over digital and use that as the weapon against piracy. Actually they're trying very hard, but it is a tough battle.

Shahrukh schrieb:

bombaywalla schrieb: ... you know hi-rez is actually simulating analog! hi-rez is sampling the music @ higher & higher sampling rates which is trending towards analog... Yeah, that's what the hi rez promise is, isn't it. "The sound of analogue, without the fuss of analogue". But miles to go... In the end, we are human beings & we listen in analog. I wonder is this whole thing will go full circle & end up in analog anyway???? then the man holding onto his LPs will be king! You know what, that seems to be the only solution for the music industry at large. Market the superiority of analogue over digital and use that as the weapon against piracy. Actually they're trying very hard, but it is a tough battle.

talking about vinyl revival - I just received my latest copy of the Economist on Saturday. I was quickly leafing thru the magazine noting the interesting articles to read & whoa! what is it I see????
I vignette on vinyl!!
this mini article talked about the vinyl revival & gave some statistics!
I scanned it so you guys should be able to print it out & read it:

An interesting read

http://www.minidisc.org/dat_archiving.html

Manek