DNA: Music Recording And Playback Format Of The Future?

With traditional independent record stores now closing and malls no longer selling Red Book Compact Discs, will DNA prove to be the “future-proof” music format of the future?

By: Ringo Bones

With traditional independent music stores – ones that sell vinyl LPs and Redbook 16-bit 44.1 KHz sampled compact discs closing and big malls no longer selling Redbook CDs, it seems that it would only be a matter of time that every Generation-Xers music collection could be consigned to the dustbin of history much sooner than expected. Thankfully, to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the release of their most successful album, UK based electronic music group Massive Attack released their Mezzanine album on DNA back in October 2018.

Massive Attack worked with Andrew Melchior at the technology consultancy 3^rd Space Agency – the man who helped Bjӧrk convert her performance of “Stonemilker” into virtual reality for her 2015 MOMA show. According to Melchior: “The advantage with DNA is that our civilization could crash into dust and rebuild itself using entirely different technology, meaning they couldn’t access our computers or disks, since every human carries DNA, we can expect any future civilization to work out how to play back DNA-stored information. Which means the first thing a future civilization would learn about us might be Mezzanine.”

Using the DNA molecule to store vast amounts of digitally encoded information is more than just a science fiction pipe dream that was first popularly presented in the Superman movie franchise Man of Steel. The idea has first been published back in 1964 to 1965 when a Soviet era physicist named Mikhail Neiman published his work on the subject in the journal Radiotekhnika. But the first successful execution of encoding digital data onto a DNA molecule was back in 2012 when Harvard biologist George Church encoded one of his books onto a DNA molecule.

The electronic musicians Massive Attack worked with scientists at TurboBeads, a commercial spin-off from the Swiss science, engineering and mathematics university ETH Zurich, to adopt a technology pioneered by maverick US biotechnologists Craig Venter when he created a synthetic chromosome of a bacteria species in the laboratory with four “watermarks” written in the DNA. Robert Grass, professor at ETH Zurich’s Functional Materials Laboratory and his colleague Reinhard Heckel used similar chemical techniques to translate Mezzanine’s digital audio stream into genetic code. “We store digital information in a sequence of zeroes and ones, but biology stores genetic information using the four building blocks of DNA,” Grass explains. “We compressed Mezzanine’s digital audio then coded it as DNA molecules by converting the binary 0s and 1s into a quaternary code – with adenine representing 00, cytosine representing 01, guanine representing 10 and thymine representing 11. The resulting DNA resembles natural DNA in every way, although it contains no useful genetic information.”

According to Massive Attack band member Robert del Naja: “The storage potential of DNA is huge.” Indeed, one milligram of the DNA molecule could store the complete text of every book in the US Library of Congress and have room to spare. Del Naja also states: “If you think about DNA versus the ridiculous amounts of server farms that have got to be cooled 24/7 all around the world, this looks like a much better solution going forward. It allows us to archive music for hundreds of thousands of years.” Unfortunately as of late no word yet on the newfangled format’s sound quality.

MIT Terminator Network Loudspeaker Cables: A Misadvertized Audio Product That Actually Works?

Despite of the rather “misleading” efficiency graphs in their adverts during the 1990s, does the MIT loudspeaker cables actually a “misadvertized” products that actually does its intended purpose – i.e. improve sound quality?

By: Ringo Bones

A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to rummage upon a used 1990s era MIT Terminator Network loudspeaker cable in a garage sale. Priced at around 20 US dollars a set, it was almost a steal. Even more fortunate, the former owner who is a radiologist used the box of the cable when testing a newly purchased CAT scan for a hospital and noted the values of the capacitors and inductors in the box from the X-Ray results – i.e. the component labels of the capacitors are clearly visible and the inductor’s values are determined by its dimensions and number of turns. I wonder why these products managed to improve the dynamics of solid-state amps by making them perform dynamic swings that has only been previously the domain reserved to classic McIntosh vacuum tube power amplifiers. With the LC filter component values sets its working frequency at around 45 Megahertz, I started to wonder if the working principle of how the MIT loudspeakers improve sound quality is similar to James Henriot’s  Whest Dap 10 Processor – i.e. the elimination of the so-called “analog domain jitter”?   

  

When Stereophile reviewer Jonathan Scull quoted Matthew Bond of TARA’s white paper on the difference between Musical Interface Technology’s products versus TARA’s from an August 1998 review of TARA Labs The One interconnect, loudspeaker cable and digital datalink. Most readers are familiar with cables that use network boxes in-line with the signal – i.e. MIT (Musical Interface Technology) Fadel Audio Art and Transparent Cable come to mind. According to Matthew Bond’s own view regarding these   issues: 

“These boxes contain low-pass filter networks that filter radio frequencies (RF) from the audio cables. These should not be confused with TARA’s Isolated Shield Matrix. The differences in both function and effectiveness are extreme.”

“A filter network removes RF from the audio signal by filtering out or rolling off all high-frequency energy above a certain range. This generally affects the upper end of the musical spectrum. Furthermore, these filter networks are directly in the signal path. When the signal is interrupted and fed through these low-pass filter networks, the cable’s electrical characteristics are changed to make a modified cable interface with limited and unnatural filter characteristics. The high-frequency bandwidth is reduced. The audio band is affected also, as it is subjected by the filter network to rippling, and slower rise time (in the case of the fourth-order Bessel low-pass filter). Furthermore, in a filter network RF modulation has not been addressed properly because of the heterodyning effect still occurs in the audio band. Additionally, the amplitude of the extremely high-frequency harmonics of the music are filtered off, along with the RF distortion, by generic capacitors and inductors in the network. The effects of a filter network are therefore subtractive and ultimately color the original signal. The Isolated Shield Matrix does not filter RF it grounds it outside of the signal path. It transfers RF and EMI energy from the cable without filtering the signal, thereby allowing ore high-frequency information to be passed through unaltered.”

The problem is unofficially known as “analog domain jitter” and even though Whest Audio founder James Henriot doesn’t understand the disease but thinks he’s found a cure while promoting his Whest Dap. 10 Processor featured in the July 2005 issue of Stereophile. Could Musical Interface Technologies MIT network cables manage to improve the sound by the same principle of eliminating “analog domain jitter”?

The Whest dap.10 works entirely in the analog domain above 30,000 Hz, far above the range of human hearing. It is also well above the 20,000 Hz limit at which your DAC’s filters curtail CD sound. According to James Henriot, frequencies you can’t hear affect the ones that you can hear. Other audio designers since the 1990s have stated the same thing and so have musicians talking about their instruments. Musical Fidelity founder Antony Michaelson who is also an accomplished musician who plays the piano and clarinet in a classical setting also stated that things occurring above the audible range have an effect on the sounds that you can hear.

According to James Henriot:“All amplifier circuits produce a set of harmonics related to the incoming signal. The output of a CD player is no different. Often referred to as “ghost images” in a Fast-Fourier Transform display result, the time shift causes minor ripples above 30,000 Hz. We think that these ripples have a profound negative impact on CD reproduction, possibly by beat interaction, which dribbles its way down into the audible frequency range. All electronic circuits – especially sold state ones – may have a way of knocking harmonics out of sync, resulting in a less musical and more electronic sound. Does this mean that building a musical sounding solid-state amplifier is akin to building a concert grand piano with all those string compensators?

Does Power Supply Electrolytic Capacitors Have a Finite Lifespan?

They may last forever in so-called “textbook conditions”, but do capacitors used in real-world situations really have a finite lifespan?

By: Ringo Bones

The topic of capacitor mortality entered the conversation radar of my audiobuddies late last year when Sunfire founder Bob Carver voiced his concern after many of his Tracking Downconverter / PWM power supply equipped power amps “flooded” the online second hand market. And given a majority of these are from the mid to late 1990s and on average are 20 years old – or a bit older, Carver cautions the potential buyer to first service and / or troubleshoot these amps, especially check the power supply capacitors since given the pulse-width-modulation type power supply nature of these amps, the main electrolytic capacitors have a theoretically much shorter lifespan than power amps using conventional linear power supplies. Another power amp that’s very popular in the online second-hand market is the Musical Fidelity A1, which requires a careful main power supply capacitor examination since it runs hot at 50 to 65 degrees Celsius and the inside where the capacitor lies could get much hotter.

The power amplifier’s overall layout and operational temperature plays a very important part on the “mortality” of its main power supply filter capacitors since the leakage current of insulators and consequently all capacitor types, increases with temperature due to Arrhenius’s Law. The power dissipated in a capacitor subject to alternating current stress or ripple is a product of effective series resistance and RMS current. The effective series resistance and impedance of capacitors are both dependent on which frequency they operate and hence must be ascertained at the relevant frequencies. Assuming sinusoidal waveforms – as in a typical linear power supply – RMS current can be easily determined. With other waveforms – as in those Bob Carver power amplifier designs equipped with Tracking Downconverter / pulse width modulation type power supplies, the only accurate method requires the use of the Fourier analysis of the capacitor voltage waveform to determine the frequency components and hence permit calculation of the current for each harmonic involved. For those preferring to avoid the complications of Fourier analysis, a workable rule-of-thumb is to check the temperature rise of the capacitor case. If less than 5 degrees Celsius above the ambient temperature of inside the power amp’s casing of say 55 degrees Celsius maximum, leave well alone; if greater (as in hotter) – investigate immediately.

The normal failure mode of aluminum electrolytic capacitors is gradual parametric degradation after years of operation. But I’ve noticed to cool running power amp designs whose insides are only 3 to 5 degrees Celsius higher than the ambient room temperature, the main power supply electrolytic filter capacitors seem to measure within its parameters after 25 years of regular operation –i.e. 4 to 5 hours a day being played; Whereas for other capacitor types, normal failure mode is by short circuit. This parametric degradation results from the finite volume of electrolyte and the consumption of available oxygen.

The leakage current of normal capacitor operation consumes minute quantities of oxygen from the electrolyte, releasing a corresponding amount of hydrogen which is either reabsorbed in the electrolyte or escapes to the atmosphere. Excess quantities of gas result if: 1) the said capacitor is subjected to DC voltages way beyond its rated capacity. 2) The capacitor used in power supply filtering is subjected to alternating current for several minutes perhaps due to a short circuited rectifier diode and the power supply fuse not blowing. 3) The DC bias is externally reversed by circuit action and / or alternatively internal reverse DC bias due to excessive ripple or discharge currents. 4) Series or parallel connected capacitor banks not having suitable voltage or current sharing provisions.

When considering capacitor failures, it is essential to remember that all electrolytic capacitors comprise of two polarized capacitors back-to-back connected in series. This is implicit in the construction methods, both for polar and non-polar devices, which differ only in effective working voltage of the two capacitors. So if that Rubycon Black Gate electrolytic capacitor you installed in your power amp back in 1988 sill makes your low-power solid state design sound as if it is a single-ended triode tube amp, then it consider yourself lucky and keep it in place.  

Can Graphene Semiconductors Make Future Solid State Audio Power Amps Sound Like Vacuum Tube Amps?

Given that electrons can travel more than 100 times faster in graphene than in copper, will the upcoming graphene based semiconductors make solid state amps sound like vacuum tube amps? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Though they’ve been identified as far back as 1947 as being 207 times stronger than steel and make electrons travel 100 times faster through them than through copper wires, the carbon allotrope graphene was only manufactured / synthesized in significant amounts back in the 1970s by Manchester University physicists Prof. Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novoselov which made them the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Physics Prize. But more recently, various methods to manufacture graphene in higher volumes and far lower costs than before have recently made them economically viable enough for semiconductor applications. Given faster electron flow / electron mobility and high tensile strength, could upcoming graphene semiconductors someday make solid state hi-fi amplifiers sound like their famed vacuum tube counterparts? 

During the 1990s many research articles were written about why hi-fi solid state power amplifiers sound different from their thermionic vacuum tube counterparts. But during the latter half of the 1990s, solid state integrated amplifiers that used “high electron mobility” semiconductors – i.e. solid state devices that used indium antimonide that are "blocked out" to protect the secret of their designs whose electron flow is up to 50 times that of copper wire and or power transistors enclosed in nonmagnetic packaging like TO-3 packaged 2N3055 NPN transistors in brass as opposed to the bog standard magnetic stainless steel. Even though these amps tend to be overpriced – average price between 3,000 to 5,000 US dollars each were their equivalent circuit counterparts using bog standard output devices tent to sell on average one-tenth of their price. Many audio engineers and hi-fi enthusiasts have wondered whether the difference in sound / timbre of solid state power amps and vacuum tube power amps is largely due to the speed of electrons travel through their output devices. 

Electrons and electromagnetic waves propagate in vacuum at a maximum speed of 299, 792, 458 meters per second – usually rounded to 3-million meters per second or more famously known as 186,000 miles per second or 670-million miles per hour. A 12-gauge copper wire carrying a 10-ampere DC current, the speed of the electrons traveling through it is about 80 centimeters per hour – or about 0.0002 meters per second. A current traveling through a silicon-based semiconductor is about the same. While a velocity of an electron by the time it reaches the anode after being accelerated by the anode’s field is truly mind boggling by comparison. For example a vacuum tube with a fairly typical anode voltage of 450-volt DC, the electrons will hit the anode at approximately 12-million meters per second or 28 million miles per hour.  

Remember those “overpriced” integrated amplifiers that use exotic high electron mobility solid state devices that sound like vacuum tube power amps? The average electron mobility rating of the active output devices that these amp use are 50 times that of typical silicon based output devices. Is electron mobility / electron speed the secret to better subjective sound quality? Well, electron flow in a typical indium antimonide semiconductor is around 0.01 meters per second and on graphene based semiconductors is 0.02 meters per second – quite a lot faster than a silicon semiconductor’s 0.0002 meters per second. Will high electron mobility spell improved subjective sound quality for upcoming graphene based solid state high fidelity audio amplifiers?

Are Physical Digital Formats Better Than Digital Downloads?

From a sound quality perspective – are digitally downloaded music stored in solid state memory sounds inferior in comparison to their physical digital counterparts? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Ever since legal digital music downloads became a commercially viable reality that benefited both artists and record labels, it has been touted by environmentally concerned individuals as a “green” way of selling music around the world because this means that there are no shipping of CDs and other physical formats around the world that produce significant amounts of carbon dioxide emissions. Musical distribution carbon footprint would be limited to the power used by servers and PCs or other devices used to download the music and this could be much lower if those devices are powered by renewably-generated electricity. From an electronic engineering perspective, digital music stored in solid state memory has “supposedly” eliminated the problems of digital jitter in comparison to 120-centimeter CD or DVD discs played in a transport. But why is it that an increasing number of audiophiles have noticed that downloaded music, more often than not, sounded inferior in comparison to its physical counterparts?

Ever since the popularity of universal players that are able to play any 12-centimeter disc – whether it be 16-bit CDs, DVD-video, DVD-audio and Super Audio CDs – and digitally downloaded music via a USB slot, many budget conscious audiophiles, including me, had noticed that digitally downloaded music, even high resolution ones that are in FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) format tend to sound inferior to their physical format. In my own experience, using a 150 US dollar Oppo universal player, physical Redbook 16-bit 44.1-KHz sampled CDs tend to sound better than their downloaded 24-bit 192-KHz FLAC encoded counterparts. The most common recordings that are usually available in both that can be compared side-by-side using a universal player are Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue album and Martin Taylor’s Spirit of Django album. 

To my ears, it seems as if the downloaded versions sounds as if it has the sound quality of a typical 100 US dollar CD player while the physical versions sounds as if it has the sound quality of a typical 500 US dollar CD player. And to Stereophile magazine leaders, most downloaded music played on universal players priced between 150 to 500 US dollars via its USB slot has a digital sound that Stereophile contributor Michael Fremer used to describe back in the 1990s as “everything gets flattened out – including dynamics. Given that solid state storage devices supposedly doesn’t have the digital jitter inherent in CD / DVD / SACD drives, why is it that digitally downloaded music – even hi-rez ones – sound inferior to their physical counterparts?  By the way, digitally downloaded music only started to sound as good as of better than their physical formats only after I’ve burned them into their requisite 12-centimeter recordable CD or DVD discs using a PC with Windows Media Player that can handle FLAC encoded music data.  

Amazing Synchronicities In Hi-Fi and AV?

Some of the other hi-fi and audio-video enthusiasts out there had been doing this for more than 20 years, but have you ever noticed the growing number of “amazing synchronicities”?

By: Ringo Bones 

About 20 or so years ago when serious hi-fi enthusiasts who are “mere mortals” can finally afford DVD players that can seamlessly hook-up into their hi-fi rigs. They began experimenting on what they’ve found out on the internet that if you start Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album at just the right moment while watching The Wizard of Oz, amazing synchronicities occur between what’s on the screen and what’s heard in the lyrics and music. I and countless others who have tried it during the past 20 years swear that it works. Since then, this specific hi-fi phenomenon has since been dubbed “Amazing Synchronicities” and has ever since fostered various websites and discussion posts on the internet since the 21^st Century began. When it comes to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album and The Wizard of Oz – “who knows witch is which….” Indeed. But did you know that there are other “startling coincidences” and “amazing synchronicities” that every hi-fi and AV enthusiasts can test out on their own systems? 

Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and Blade Runner also eerily synchs up like a music video. And also at the end of Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey where a 22-minute sequence titled “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” eerily synchs up with Pink Floyd’s Echoes, which is also 22-minutes long. Although Kubrick’s original score in “Jupiter” is already as good as it is. My stumbled upon favorite on You Tube was a video reenactment of the September 16, 2007 Nisour Square Massacre – that notorious Blackwater Security Consulting’s unwarranted shooting of unarmed Iraqi civilians where Tori Amos’ Precious Things (track number 5 of her Little Earthquakes album) eerily syncs in with the carnage - although this piece has been since taken out from You Tube. Maybe the maker didn't pay Tori Amos royalties and got a cease and desist order. And I bet every hi-fi enthusiasts the world over had tried probably almost anything since 1995 after discovering their first “amazing synchronicities” between Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album and The Wizard of Oz movie. 

Is Your Audio System Cat-Friendly?

While early high fidelity audio systems got notoriety for “scaring away the horses” – is your current audio set-up cat-friendly?

By: Ringo Bones 

Maybe we should blame cellist David Teie for this given that his Kickstarter funded research into feline-centric / species-appropriate music that recently got scientific verification by a recent independent study conducted by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and published in Applied Animal Behavior. Also, Teie’s Music for Cats compositions recently got scores of positive testimonials by early purchasers who tested Teie’s cat music recordings on their own cats noting that it actually had a relaxing effect on their own pets. 

Cello player David Teie comes from a long line of musicians, composers and professional instrumentalists. Since 2014, he has been the conductor and music director of Washington D.C.’s premier chamber orchestra – the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra – and currently serves on the faculty at the University of Maryland’s School of Music. Teie’s career has spanned performing as a soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra under Russian maestro Mstislav Rostropovich. And also as the acting principal cellist of the San Francisco Symphony where Teie performed as cellist on Metallica’s 1999 album S&M. His research has been published in the Royal Society Biology Letters and in Evolution of Emotional Communication. His invention of species-specific music was described by the New York Times as the number one idea of 2009. 

According to cellist David Teie, cats were our first choice because they’re widely kept as pets which allowed us to easily share music with them. Given that cats can hear audio frequencies way above the human hearing frequency limit of 20,000-Hz, can cats even appreciate those upper octaves of Teie’s music given that most entry-level audio systems have trouble playing at significant volume – never mind proper phase linearity – of audio signals above 20,000-Hz? 

With the relatively wide availability and relative affordability of audio components and recordings capable of producing cleanly audio signals above 20,000-Hz – i.e. 24-Bit 192-KHz sampled PCM DVD Audio files and Super Audio CD recordings that can produce notes above 100,000-Hz and some moving coil cartridges like the Dynavector 17D2MkII Karat Diamond whose shorter 1.7-mm diamond cantilever allow it to have a high-frequency extension above 100,000-Hz and diamond coated tweeters that can cleanly play 100,000 Hz or higher audio frequencies – then it is now relatively easy to upgrade your audio system that can produce sounds that even cats, dogs and even bats can clearly hear. 

Maybe it was due to the fact that he hanged out with Metallica for a relatively long time during rehearsals in comparison to us mere fans back in 1999 or whether he is already a Metallica fan back when bassist Cliff Burton was still alive that got me wondering how much Metallica was an influence to cellist David Teie upon hearing of Cozmo’s Air – one of the tracks of his Music for Cats – that it reminded me of the ambient into of Metallica’s Damage, Inc. – the last track on the Master of Puppets album. Well, at least Teie managed to make his “cat music” also interesting to hear for us human music lovers which will probably give Pet Sounds a whole new meaning to audiophiles around the world.