Despite of being introduced to very good sounding audio equipment and the tunes to go with it at the tender age of nine, for good or bad, it’s a journey that won’t end within a foreseeable future.
By: Vanessa Uy
Of all the “lunatic fringe” hobbies available to the relatively- peaceful-industrial-suburb-dweller since the end of World War II, high-end audio is probably one of the most misunderstood. This hobby has always been plagued by an image problem of being a very expensive and elitist pursuit, populated by music snobs who are easily offended by the opinions of anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their views. Here in the Philippines, most people can’t buy at whim audio equipment whose price tags is the same as an effective military junta. Plus the supposedly “great” music scene that’s not to our tastes, pirated software of dubious quality of those musicians not to our tastes is a very good reason to go into do-it-yourself hi-fi. So the odds are stacked against us.
The good news is luck is on my side. I have a good, make that great, “audiophile mentor.” I learned from my “audiophile mentor” how to “MacGyver” my sound system from leftover components of the “U.S. Military-Industrial-Complex stationed here and they say “e-wastes” are bad. There is also the “garage sale” route in acquiring equipment and tweaking which my mentor attributes to the hours of watching “MacGyver” during the 1980’s.
Sometimes my mentor and I are fortunate enough to be able to visit “hi-fi” shows staged in neighboring Singapore or Hong Kong. This shows always bought us a sense of validation when we found out the hi-fi systems we assembled ourselves have a sound quality comparable to C.D. player, amplifier, speaker set-up worth U.S.$5,000 to U.S.$10,000. This just shows how skill and artistry can reward you. Since hi-fi is an evolving technological hobby despite “old technology” workhorses like vacuum tube amps and vinyl LPs which still manage to sound more organic than CDs, it’s best to be updated by really good hi-fi publications like Stereophile and Hi- Fi World. Looks like I’m hooked into this “noble pursuit” for life.
Sad to say that this isn’t currently possible with the mass- market audio in heavy commercial rotation on TV and the papers. Specialty Hi - Fi shops are a good bet. If your in- the- know of audio equipment, garage sales are a good source of bargains.
In my actual use a good audio system provides a deeper insight on what the musician is trying to convey. Your CDs doesn’t have to be of “audiophile persuasion”. Even contemporary rock and pop releases like Avril Lavigne or My Chemical Romance played on a good audio system can provide the illusion that they’re just a few paces in front of you. So if you have the extra cash with the skills in case of D.I.Y.ing, go take the audiophile plunge. It’s a lot cheaper and way more rewarding than you think.
Showing posts with label Audiophile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Audiophile. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Remembering Elcaset
Here’s to Elcaset, to further remind us that new doesn’t necessarily mean better.
By: Vanessa Uy
Since I’ve found a Sony EL5 model stereo Elcaset deck and a bunch of Elcaset blank tapes in a garage sale, it started my own “road to Damascus” experience. Upon seeing the goods (the EL5 deck plus 4 user-recorded tapes and 6 unused Elcaset tapes) almost giveaway price that’s equivalent to US$5.50 in our local currency, my lips just flapped “I want one.” Yep, that’s less than half the price of a Full-Priced CD and I know that the items in question are worth way more than that during the product’s heyday in 1976. Also, I’ve been longing to find out first hand the pros and cons about Elcaset which I’ve only read about in old hi-fi magazines.
The EL5 Elcaset deck is one over-engineered (the kind of engineering I like) monster. Out of curiosity, I weighed it on our kitchen scale with a 12kg capacity. It went off the scale. Maybe this deck weighs 13kg. Yes that’s over 12kilograms of brushed aluminum fascia that made it look like a prop from a Sean Connery - era Bond movie and the diecast tape transport with it’s jumbo ferrite tape heads. The sample I bought may had been tweaked and upgraded by the previous owner since the solid state electronics that comprise the input and output amplifiers had been replaced by 12AX7A vacuum tubes. After visually checking the “soundness” of the upgrades, I replaced the tubes that came with the Elcaset deck with the spares for my guitar amplifier for safety reasons and for the “old” tubes to be tested later for faults. My spare tubes are Sovtek 12AX7A with Cyrillic (Russian) markings reputed for their excellent sound quality and reliability. They’re also relatively inexpensive as vacuum tube prices go these days.
For those who are too young or too hateful to remember, Elcaset was designed at the beginning of the 1970’s by an engineering team working for Sony as a possible replacement for Philips compact cassette. Or maybe, just to cash in on the cassette’s popularity at the time. Back in 1963, Philips originally intended the compact cassette as a recording media for speech/dictation. The compact cassette was never intended as a high quality music recording media. But this didn’t stop anyone and their dogs from adapting cassettes for music use. But as time went on, Elcaset proved to be a marketing disaster. Not in the same league as the miserable failure of US President George W. Bush’s administration, but quite close. To me, all the recording media formats that failed commercially through the years show quite an alarming pattern. They have been brilliant, even excellent solutions to a technological problem, but are simply ill - conceived for commercial success. They are quite good but the buying public simply didn’t want them yet. The “yet” part was never been and is never was good for the consumer electronic business.
Not necessarily apparent but quite plausible is that the Japanese Home Base of Sony has a blindness born from insularity (Does this mean that living in an island is bad for you?). They overlook the rising global demand for prerecorded tapes. That was in the 1970’s by the way, the decade that bought us those extremely cool bands like Kiss, Cheap Trick, and The Sex Pistols to name just a few. How they overlooked this is beyond me. And by the way, audiophiles since time immemorial always wanted “reference” samples to find out how their do-it-yourself recordings compare to major label offerings thus the raison d’être of prerecorded tapes. Elcaset was offered only as a high- quality- recording medium. In comparison, an almost similar American tape-based medium that’s invented much earlier-the 8 track- managed to exist for much longer because of the availability of prerecorded 8 track tapes. This was also the obvious cause of Digital- Audio- Tape’s (DAT) ignominious demise at the start of the 21st Century despite being a de rigueur format for digital studio recording since 1983. The music industry was much powerful then and very fearful of the concepts of copyright infringement, home recording and music piracy. The music pirates got their revenge though by hijacking an infrastructure that was primarily the sole domain of American and European particle physicists in the 1980’s called “file sharing.” It didn’t take forever for the pirates to become tech savvy enough to utilize the MP3 file compression format that gave birth to “Napster” and other music file sharing sites that bought us the current internet music download culture that’s devoid of both copyright laws and sound quality.
Back in 1976, Elcaset’s specifications can only be described as incredible for a product intended for domestic use. Its tape was designed to run at 3 ¾ inches per second- twice that of cassette’s standard speed. Elcaset’s tape width is 6.3 mm which was the same width as a “standard quarter track open- reel tape” (the domestic kind). As the physics goes in the tape recording universe, running more (thicker) tape at a higher speed past the head gave Elcaset an unfair advantage over their cassette tape contemporaries. The magnetic strength of the signals recorded on an Elcasete is probably more than 10 times stronger than the same signals recorded on cassette. Recently, I’ve experimented on this by way of running my Technics cassette tape deck at twice its standard speed. I could record signals at +10dB on the VU meters without distortion compared to 0dB to +3dB while using the cassette’s standard speed. Therefore, the faster the tape moves- the more signal or louder you can record which was good if you want your music to be much louder than the tape “hiss” or noise. The only disadvantage of this “upgrade” is that cassette players that run twice its 1 7/8 inches per second standard speed are as common as hen’s teeth.
In my hands on experience, Elcasets are very user friendly with a smooth and quiet running. For a product marketed during the time where The Sex Pistols were still tied to their day jobs, the ergonomics (that’s Greek for the working switches and buttons) are excellent. This has always been Sony’s forté. As I evaluated the sound quality of my tube upgraded EL5, it avoided the dull and muddy sound of cassette decks marketed during the mid 1970’s. Connected to my sound system set-up optimized for a Linn Sondek turntable, I inserted one of the Elcaset tapes, which was recorded with songs probably from LP records by the previous owner. The first track on one of the tapes was “Lady D’Arbanville by Cat Sevens (He latter became a Muslim, goes by the name of Yusuf Islam and declared a fatwah on Salman “Satanic Verses” Rushdie). This late 1960’s recording is known for it’s deep and loose sounding bass. The EL5 displayed a trait that surprised this audio greenhorn. I didn’t know that HDCD like bass quality existed back then on a domestic gear no less. This is 1inch two track master tape kind of bass. And that hard to define imaging out of the speakers sound quality that made my quality DIY dynamic speakers sound like their electrostatic speakers that cost as much as a Honda Jazz. Compared to the 8 track I borrowed from an audiobuddy of mine, the EL5 Elcaset deck has a clearer tonally brighter sound with much better soundstage. Compared to the Sondek with a speed regulator, the Elcaset was less focused especially on flute recordings. Noting the lack of focus anomaly of the EL5 deck, I’ve replaced the belts/capstan or anything that might had worn out after all these years. The belts and capstans in use in the EL5 are still available in our local Sony Service Center because all of Sony’s cassette decks supposedly use the same parts. Compared to my Pioneer CD DVD Audio SACD player was slightly less focused when compared to CD even though it has this tonal warmth that’s very attractive. I have recently acquired a SACD copy of Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” album and I immediately fell in love with it even the tape hiss between the songs believe it or not. A note of warning though, the tape hiss on the SACD version of “Kind of Blue” is not the same as that found on standard 16 Bit CD even super bit mapped ones. I call the hiss found on the CD versions of “Kind of Blue” Ugly Betty. The same hiss that lives in Elcaset reminds me of the much gorgeous sounding tape hiss found on the open reel master tape of “Kind of Blue.” Is it insanity when one loves tape hiss? This is where an analog medium like Elcaset has better sound quality than the standard 16 Bit CD.
Maybe, it’s the tube upgrades, maybe it’s the Elcaset. Next time, I’ll borrow one of my audiobuddies two-channel tube based mike pre-amp and a pair of US$1,000 condenser microphones to record my own cello performances. I wonder how does Elcaset sound when recording live performances compared to my Ampex open-reel tape recorder. And by the way, the Sylvania 12AX7A that came with the EL5 deck are still functional after I tested them on an experimental circuit lay out. They just didn’t sound as good as the Sovtek ones.
By: Vanessa Uy
Since I’ve found a Sony EL5 model stereo Elcaset deck and a bunch of Elcaset blank tapes in a garage sale, it started my own “road to Damascus” experience. Upon seeing the goods (the EL5 deck plus 4 user-recorded tapes and 6 unused Elcaset tapes) almost giveaway price that’s equivalent to US$5.50 in our local currency, my lips just flapped “I want one.” Yep, that’s less than half the price of a Full-Priced CD and I know that the items in question are worth way more than that during the product’s heyday in 1976. Also, I’ve been longing to find out first hand the pros and cons about Elcaset which I’ve only read about in old hi-fi magazines.
The EL5 Elcaset deck is one over-engineered (the kind of engineering I like) monster. Out of curiosity, I weighed it on our kitchen scale with a 12kg capacity. It went off the scale. Maybe this deck weighs 13kg. Yes that’s over 12kilograms of brushed aluminum fascia that made it look like a prop from a Sean Connery - era Bond movie and the diecast tape transport with it’s jumbo ferrite tape heads. The sample I bought may had been tweaked and upgraded by the previous owner since the solid state electronics that comprise the input and output amplifiers had been replaced by 12AX7A vacuum tubes. After visually checking the “soundness” of the upgrades, I replaced the tubes that came with the Elcaset deck with the spares for my guitar amplifier for safety reasons and for the “old” tubes to be tested later for faults. My spare tubes are Sovtek 12AX7A with Cyrillic (Russian) markings reputed for their excellent sound quality and reliability. They’re also relatively inexpensive as vacuum tube prices go these days.
For those who are too young or too hateful to remember, Elcaset was designed at the beginning of the 1970’s by an engineering team working for Sony as a possible replacement for Philips compact cassette. Or maybe, just to cash in on the cassette’s popularity at the time. Back in 1963, Philips originally intended the compact cassette as a recording media for speech/dictation. The compact cassette was never intended as a high quality music recording media. But this didn’t stop anyone and their dogs from adapting cassettes for music use. But as time went on, Elcaset proved to be a marketing disaster. Not in the same league as the miserable failure of US President George W. Bush’s administration, but quite close. To me, all the recording media formats that failed commercially through the years show quite an alarming pattern. They have been brilliant, even excellent solutions to a technological problem, but are simply ill - conceived for commercial success. They are quite good but the buying public simply didn’t want them yet. The “yet” part was never been and is never was good for the consumer electronic business.
Not necessarily apparent but quite plausible is that the Japanese Home Base of Sony has a blindness born from insularity (Does this mean that living in an island is bad for you?). They overlook the rising global demand for prerecorded tapes. That was in the 1970’s by the way, the decade that bought us those extremely cool bands like Kiss, Cheap Trick, and The Sex Pistols to name just a few. How they overlooked this is beyond me. And by the way, audiophiles since time immemorial always wanted “reference” samples to find out how their do-it-yourself recordings compare to major label offerings thus the raison d’être of prerecorded tapes. Elcaset was offered only as a high- quality- recording medium. In comparison, an almost similar American tape-based medium that’s invented much earlier-the 8 track- managed to exist for much longer because of the availability of prerecorded 8 track tapes. This was also the obvious cause of Digital- Audio- Tape’s (DAT) ignominious demise at the start of the 21st Century despite being a de rigueur format for digital studio recording since 1983. The music industry was much powerful then and very fearful of the concepts of copyright infringement, home recording and music piracy. The music pirates got their revenge though by hijacking an infrastructure that was primarily the sole domain of American and European particle physicists in the 1980’s called “file sharing.” It didn’t take forever for the pirates to become tech savvy enough to utilize the MP3 file compression format that gave birth to “Napster” and other music file sharing sites that bought us the current internet music download culture that’s devoid of both copyright laws and sound quality.
Back in 1976, Elcaset’s specifications can only be described as incredible for a product intended for domestic use. Its tape was designed to run at 3 ¾ inches per second- twice that of cassette’s standard speed. Elcaset’s tape width is 6.3 mm which was the same width as a “standard quarter track open- reel tape” (the domestic kind). As the physics goes in the tape recording universe, running more (thicker) tape at a higher speed past the head gave Elcaset an unfair advantage over their cassette tape contemporaries. The magnetic strength of the signals recorded on an Elcasete is probably more than 10 times stronger than the same signals recorded on cassette. Recently, I’ve experimented on this by way of running my Technics cassette tape deck at twice its standard speed. I could record signals at +10dB on the VU meters without distortion compared to 0dB to +3dB while using the cassette’s standard speed. Therefore, the faster the tape moves- the more signal or louder you can record which was good if you want your music to be much louder than the tape “hiss” or noise. The only disadvantage of this “upgrade” is that cassette players that run twice its 1 7/8 inches per second standard speed are as common as hen’s teeth.
In my hands on experience, Elcasets are very user friendly with a smooth and quiet running. For a product marketed during the time where The Sex Pistols were still tied to their day jobs, the ergonomics (that’s Greek for the working switches and buttons) are excellent. This has always been Sony’s forté. As I evaluated the sound quality of my tube upgraded EL5, it avoided the dull and muddy sound of cassette decks marketed during the mid 1970’s. Connected to my sound system set-up optimized for a Linn Sondek turntable, I inserted one of the Elcaset tapes, which was recorded with songs probably from LP records by the previous owner. The first track on one of the tapes was “Lady D’Arbanville by Cat Sevens (He latter became a Muslim, goes by the name of Yusuf Islam and declared a fatwah on Salman “Satanic Verses” Rushdie). This late 1960’s recording is known for it’s deep and loose sounding bass. The EL5 displayed a trait that surprised this audio greenhorn. I didn’t know that HDCD like bass quality existed back then on a domestic gear no less. This is 1inch two track master tape kind of bass. And that hard to define imaging out of the speakers sound quality that made my quality DIY dynamic speakers sound like their electrostatic speakers that cost as much as a Honda Jazz. Compared to the 8 track I borrowed from an audiobuddy of mine, the EL5 Elcaset deck has a clearer tonally brighter sound with much better soundstage. Compared to the Sondek with a speed regulator, the Elcaset was less focused especially on flute recordings. Noting the lack of focus anomaly of the EL5 deck, I’ve replaced the belts/capstan or anything that might had worn out after all these years. The belts and capstans in use in the EL5 are still available in our local Sony Service Center because all of Sony’s cassette decks supposedly use the same parts. Compared to my Pioneer CD DVD Audio SACD player was slightly less focused when compared to CD even though it has this tonal warmth that’s very attractive. I have recently acquired a SACD copy of Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” album and I immediately fell in love with it even the tape hiss between the songs believe it or not. A note of warning though, the tape hiss on the SACD version of “Kind of Blue” is not the same as that found on standard 16 Bit CD even super bit mapped ones. I call the hiss found on the CD versions of “Kind of Blue” Ugly Betty. The same hiss that lives in Elcaset reminds me of the much gorgeous sounding tape hiss found on the open reel master tape of “Kind of Blue.” Is it insanity when one loves tape hiss? This is where an analog medium like Elcaset has better sound quality than the standard 16 Bit CD.
Maybe, it’s the tube upgrades, maybe it’s the Elcaset. Next time, I’ll borrow one of my audiobuddies two-channel tube based mike pre-amp and a pair of US$1,000 condenser microphones to record my own cello performances. I wonder how does Elcaset sound when recording live performances compared to my Ampex open-reel tape recorder. And by the way, the Sylvania 12AX7A that came with the EL5 deck are still functional after I tested them on an experimental circuit lay out. They just didn’t sound as good as the Sovtek ones.
Perfect Sound Forever?
Electronics giants Sony and Philips introduced the compact disc or C.D. to an unsuspecting consumer electronic market back in 1983 to supposedly replace the vinyl LP with claims of “perfect sound forever.” Does this claim still hold true in 2007, or is this just a triumph of marketing?
By: Vanessa Uy
Perfect sound? As like a bunch of musicians playing in front of me or with me…Well? As a bunch, we audiophiles are no fools. This is evident on why we are always mindful of our “investment” after parting with our hard-earned cash. Even though I’m still a novice in this hobby, my experiences so far, both good and bad haven’t yet disappointed me. As the last three years of being seriously involved in hi-fi, I’ve taken it upon myself to become an audio tourist of sorts. Visiting various camps and schools-of-thought of varying degrees of disparity and of hospitality always interests me. The vinyl LP community was a fascinating revelation since I only own seven LPs. The major bulk of the music software I own are the 500+ CDs and MP3 downloads. In the audiophile universe, LP lovers are extremely influential. I’ve tweaked and set up my CD player to sound as close to a US$1,000 LP turntable as possible to achieve “investment satisfaction” i.e. musicality. Today (to audiophiles it’s synonymous to the phrase: from1989 onwards), we judge a CD player’s performance by how it mimics vinyl LP’s musicality. Isn’t this the most ironic of anachronisms?
Since the release of CD in 1983, experienced audiophiles armed with their golden ears have always doubted on CD’s claims of “the perfect sound” after an extended audition. At the risk of sounding “philosophical”, CD’s shortcomings can be blamed on how Sony and Philips, the two corporate giants who developed CD. To me it’s because first and foremost these corporations are run, by: bureaucrats, as opposed to musicians, who are by- and- large artists. In my experience bureaucrats doesn’t acknowledge that a problem exists unless there is already a solution- at- hand. So that is why during the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s, Sony and Philips made a concerted effort to explore the shortcomings of the digital “code” that runs CD or any other digital audio processing system then in existence since these are more or less the same. The race is on to better the “perfect” sound.
Toward the end of the 1980’s, audio engineers discovered the root cause of CD’s shortcomings namely jitter. Audio engineers who worked the development of digital audio processing at the end of the 1970’s thought that the effects of jitter cannot be heard by the human ear, so this phenomenon is only of academic interest. Anomalies that then were discovered that affected CD sound quality can only be objectively analyzed by expensive (new ones start at US$1,000) and “specialized” (they don’t play DVDs or make your stereo sound better) equipment like jitter analyzers and harmonic distortion meters. But this does not mean that we can’t hear these problems on a good audio system. Using one’s own pair of ears, a CD player with high levels of jitter manifests itself when a recorded snare drum doesn’t sound quite right. I’ve done this using LP and CD versions of Eric Clapton albums. If the drum/percussion parts sound as if they don’t have the right impact or rhythm or “groove”, then jitter is to blame. The often quoted almost zero percent harmonic distortion of CD only holds true for audio signals near the maximum level allowable i.e. loudest part of the music. I’ve heard this mostly on classical piano recordings. When the music piece are filled with parts that indicate “piano” (small p) on the sheet music or “play this note at 40 decibels sound pressure level" (as loud as someone speaking in a normal voice 50 meters away from you), these notes invariably end up sounding glassy on CD. Compared to Glenn Gould playing Bach on my old CBS LP. The near silent notes, even though almost swamped by LP surface noise, still sound natural compared to CD.
That’s why during the early 1990’s, CD sound quality was “improved” by Sony’s Super Bit Mapping. A digital processing scheme that alleviates the distortion of the low- level signals i.e. quiet parts of the music. Generally this made CD sound less “hard” and “glassy.” Other techniques introduced around this time to improve the “perfect sound” of CD were Pacific Microsonic Incorporated of California’s HDCD. This process makes CD sound as if it has more bandwidth .The 44.1kHz.sampling rate specification of CD means it can’t record sounds whose frequencies are above 22.05kHz. HDCD also has lesser distortion on low level signals (fault of CD’s16 bit data width that makes it unable to reliably record sounds below 40 dB. S.P.L.). Philips also developed their own signal processing technique like dither and noise shaping to make “16bit CDs” sound smoother and more ”analog.” The latest generation of CD players, are designed to have an inherently low measured jitter for better sound.
In my own experience, I swear that these techniques used to improve the sound of standard 16bit CDs does work. I'm fortunate enough to acquire music CDs in both standard (these are likely released during the 1980’s) and “improved” versions whether SBM or HDCD versions (usually mid to late 1990’s re-issues). HDCD have a smoother sound and more realistic bass compared to their standard CD counterparts while SBM versions are more widely available despite of HDCD’s more analog and LP like sound quality. The good thing is that all of them makes CDs sound more focused, more “rhythmically correct” and louder than their unimproved counterparts. The bad thing is they require serious money to acquire.
If I can make a wish, the consumer electronic powers-that-be should improve digital audio by using a specification that is vastly superior to the standard CD’s 16 bit 44.1 kHz. sampling rate like DVD audio’s 24 bit 96 kHz. sampling. What good does it do if I can hear sounds up to 80 kHz. and not enjoy the pleasure of having this ability? What about SACD? Why don’t the consumer electronic powers-that-be use their massive marketing campaign like they did on 16 bit CDs back in 1983? Are these companies too busy being involved with the United States’ Department of Defense on their “War on Terror”?
Even today majority of the public don’t know that better than CD sound quality exists, or that there are still people who enjoy listening to their vinyl LPs on a daily basis. Since high- resolution digital audio was released to the market back in 1998, the consumer electronic powers-that be should have exerted more effort in marketing it because in the end, they would be giving their customers the privilege of what is technologically possible. In short most of us don’t live in a recording studio or are close to musicians that we really like.
Downloadable music and recording your own CDs on your personal computer may be de rigueur to a majority of today’s music loving teens. I’ve experienced first hand the sound quality of these “clones” and I can safely say I’d rather go to fishing. The Music Industry are bemoaning about the incidents of on-line music piracy for almost ten years now. Could this incident be avoided in the first place by campaigning on “good sound quality” or releasing “good to excellent quality reasonably priced music software” to the public and making these widely available? As I witnessed on the ease of “burning” or “cloning” music CDs on your PC, maybe Sony and Philips should change their slogan on CD from “Perfect Sound Forever.” To “Consistent Sound Forever.”
By: Vanessa Uy
Perfect sound? As like a bunch of musicians playing in front of me or with me…Well? As a bunch, we audiophiles are no fools. This is evident on why we are always mindful of our “investment” after parting with our hard-earned cash. Even though I’m still a novice in this hobby, my experiences so far, both good and bad haven’t yet disappointed me. As the last three years of being seriously involved in hi-fi, I’ve taken it upon myself to become an audio tourist of sorts. Visiting various camps and schools-of-thought of varying degrees of disparity and of hospitality always interests me. The vinyl LP community was a fascinating revelation since I only own seven LPs. The major bulk of the music software I own are the 500+ CDs and MP3 downloads. In the audiophile universe, LP lovers are extremely influential. I’ve tweaked and set up my CD player to sound as close to a US$1,000 LP turntable as possible to achieve “investment satisfaction” i.e. musicality. Today (to audiophiles it’s synonymous to the phrase: from1989 onwards), we judge a CD player’s performance by how it mimics vinyl LP’s musicality. Isn’t this the most ironic of anachronisms?
Since the release of CD in 1983, experienced audiophiles armed with their golden ears have always doubted on CD’s claims of “the perfect sound” after an extended audition. At the risk of sounding “philosophical”, CD’s shortcomings can be blamed on how Sony and Philips, the two corporate giants who developed CD. To me it’s because first and foremost these corporations are run, by: bureaucrats, as opposed to musicians, who are by- and- large artists. In my experience bureaucrats doesn’t acknowledge that a problem exists unless there is already a solution- at- hand. So that is why during the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s, Sony and Philips made a concerted effort to explore the shortcomings of the digital “code” that runs CD or any other digital audio processing system then in existence since these are more or less the same. The race is on to better the “perfect” sound.
Toward the end of the 1980’s, audio engineers discovered the root cause of CD’s shortcomings namely jitter. Audio engineers who worked the development of digital audio processing at the end of the 1970’s thought that the effects of jitter cannot be heard by the human ear, so this phenomenon is only of academic interest. Anomalies that then were discovered that affected CD sound quality can only be objectively analyzed by expensive (new ones start at US$1,000) and “specialized” (they don’t play DVDs or make your stereo sound better) equipment like jitter analyzers and harmonic distortion meters. But this does not mean that we can’t hear these problems on a good audio system. Using one’s own pair of ears, a CD player with high levels of jitter manifests itself when a recorded snare drum doesn’t sound quite right. I’ve done this using LP and CD versions of Eric Clapton albums. If the drum/percussion parts sound as if they don’t have the right impact or rhythm or “groove”, then jitter is to blame. The often quoted almost zero percent harmonic distortion of CD only holds true for audio signals near the maximum level allowable i.e. loudest part of the music. I’ve heard this mostly on classical piano recordings. When the music piece are filled with parts that indicate “piano” (small p) on the sheet music or “play this note at 40 decibels sound pressure level" (as loud as someone speaking in a normal voice 50 meters away from you), these notes invariably end up sounding glassy on CD. Compared to Glenn Gould playing Bach on my old CBS LP. The near silent notes, even though almost swamped by LP surface noise, still sound natural compared to CD.
That’s why during the early 1990’s, CD sound quality was “improved” by Sony’s Super Bit Mapping. A digital processing scheme that alleviates the distortion of the low- level signals i.e. quiet parts of the music. Generally this made CD sound less “hard” and “glassy.” Other techniques introduced around this time to improve the “perfect sound” of CD were Pacific Microsonic Incorporated of California’s HDCD. This process makes CD sound as if it has more bandwidth .The 44.1kHz.sampling rate specification of CD means it can’t record sounds whose frequencies are above 22.05kHz. HDCD also has lesser distortion on low level signals (fault of CD’s16 bit data width that makes it unable to reliably record sounds below 40 dB. S.P.L.). Philips also developed their own signal processing technique like dither and noise shaping to make “16bit CDs” sound smoother and more ”analog.” The latest generation of CD players, are designed to have an inherently low measured jitter for better sound.
In my own experience, I swear that these techniques used to improve the sound of standard 16bit CDs does work. I'm fortunate enough to acquire music CDs in both standard (these are likely released during the 1980’s) and “improved” versions whether SBM or HDCD versions (usually mid to late 1990’s re-issues). HDCD have a smoother sound and more realistic bass compared to their standard CD counterparts while SBM versions are more widely available despite of HDCD’s more analog and LP like sound quality. The good thing is that all of them makes CDs sound more focused, more “rhythmically correct” and louder than their unimproved counterparts. The bad thing is they require serious money to acquire.
If I can make a wish, the consumer electronic powers-that-be should improve digital audio by using a specification that is vastly superior to the standard CD’s 16 bit 44.1 kHz. sampling rate like DVD audio’s 24 bit 96 kHz. sampling. What good does it do if I can hear sounds up to 80 kHz. and not enjoy the pleasure of having this ability? What about SACD? Why don’t the consumer electronic powers-that-be use their massive marketing campaign like they did on 16 bit CDs back in 1983? Are these companies too busy being involved with the United States’ Department of Defense on their “War on Terror”?
Even today majority of the public don’t know that better than CD sound quality exists, or that there are still people who enjoy listening to their vinyl LPs on a daily basis. Since high- resolution digital audio was released to the market back in 1998, the consumer electronic powers-that be should have exerted more effort in marketing it because in the end, they would be giving their customers the privilege of what is technologically possible. In short most of us don’t live in a recording studio or are close to musicians that we really like.
Downloadable music and recording your own CDs on your personal computer may be de rigueur to a majority of today’s music loving teens. I’ve experienced first hand the sound quality of these “clones” and I can safely say I’d rather go to fishing. The Music Industry are bemoaning about the incidents of on-line music piracy for almost ten years now. Could this incident be avoided in the first place by campaigning on “good sound quality” or releasing “good to excellent quality reasonably priced music software” to the public and making these widely available? As I witnessed on the ease of “burning” or “cloning” music CDs on your PC, maybe Sony and Philips should change their slogan on CD from “Perfect Sound Forever.” To “Consistent Sound Forever.”
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