Thanks Steve. Its the venue echos that give it an alive feel. I value your opinion and have read that your CD Player mods back in the day were nothing short of spectacular. Mike
Pieces of music that digital can't get right
Ok I have a litmus test for digital when ever I have the rare option of upgrading my digital front end. Its tough on digital. Brutally tortuous and unforgiving. Digital proponents have a difficult time accepting these sonic tests.
1. Ok here is the first one. On the opening of America's "Ventura Highway" the opening dueling guitars are ambient and bounce off each channel very pleasantly in the analog domain. In the digital domain the channels are totally separate and too clean and sterile lifeless sounding. They are not talking to each other It was like this with ny Marantz 8005 but the SA-10 gets halfway there.
2. In the opening of "I Feel Fine" by the Beatles the electric guitar sounds alive with ambiance and decay. The Digital is clean and lifeless.
Ok am I right with these observation?. I have a pretty good SACD player in SA-10. Its no slouch. Do the mega expensive super smart and accurate DACs get my two above mentioned passages right? Or are we hearing colored vinyl artifacts. Well if we are I like the record better!
1. Ok here is the first one. On the opening of America's "Ventura Highway" the opening dueling guitars are ambient and bounce off each channel very pleasantly in the analog domain. In the digital domain the channels are totally separate and too clean and sterile lifeless sounding. They are not talking to each other It was like this with ny Marantz 8005 but the SA-10 gets halfway there.
2. In the opening of "I Feel Fine" by the Beatles the electric guitar sounds alive with ambiance and decay. The Digital is clean and lifeless.
Ok am I right with these observation?. I have a pretty good SACD player in SA-10. Its no slouch. Do the mega expensive super smart and accurate DACs get my two above mentioned passages right? Or are we hearing colored vinyl artifacts. Well if we are I like the record better!
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- 38 posts total
I played both pieces on my digital playback system: "Ventura Highway" (Mac Mini streaming Amazon music 256K MP3 -> WireWorld Platinum USB cable -> Off-Ramp 6 XMOS USB converter -> Empirical Audio Reference S/PDIF BNC cable -> Overdrive SX DAC) A rhythm guitar is centered and front with two lead guitars playing the same riff on the left and right, also front. The left lead guitar seems to be leading the right one slightly. Not sure if it is a dub of the same guitar with a slight delay or two separate guitar players. All three guitars seem to be acoustic, probably with pickups. May be amplified with solid-state amps. Vocalist is slightly back with little or no echo applied in the mix. Drum-set and bass is centered and slightly back, but appears smeared. Bass is a bit muddy. I don’t hear any venue echo at all. I sense significant compression in the mix causing everything to be loud and the guitars to be in-your-face. The clarity is good for the guitars, but the compression causes things to be not 3D. Fairly live and rich sounding for the guitars if you lower the volume, but the drums and bass are not good. I don’t find it "clean and sterile" at all. The biggest issue is the Drum-set and Bass and the compression IMO. "I Feel Fine" (Mac Mini playing local re-mastered 24/44.1 track using Linn Kinsky/Minimserver/BubbleUPnP -> in-wall Ethernet cable -> Modded Router powered by LPS - WireWorld Platinum 0.5m Ethernet cable -> EMO EN-70e isolator -> WireWorld Platinum 2.0m Ethernet cable -> Overdrive SX DAC Ethernet interface) The electric guitar (probably a solid-body Les-Paul) is front right. It is definitely amplified with a tube amp. The drum-set is left and pushed back about 8 feet. Vocalists are centered and pushed back even more, with a little echo applied in the mix. The vocalists are a bit tightly clustered in the back-middle so it’s hard to tell if they are all singing into the same mic or not. It would be nicer if they had been spread out more. Nice attack, sustain and decay, although the dynamics are not quite what you would hear in a modern recording. Definitely not lifeless. Hard to hear the venue echoes, but there are some that help you locate performers. Very little compression I think. Good 3-D rendering with decent focus and imaging. Good separation with nice blackness between the three performers. Guitar is quite live sounding. I find it fun to listen to. Both of these are recorded at high levels, which is unusual for recordings from this era. I prefer the sound of the Beatles track, even though is it older. The compression makes Ventura Highway not live IMO, although it sounds fairly live if you are not in the sweet-spot. I will say that the Ethernet has a slight advantage over the USB, but eventually I will get a device like this that solves the USB problems and brings them on-par: https://sotm-usa.com/collections/sotm-ultra/products/copy-of-tx-usbultra-regenerator-1 I think the problem is your digital electronics and digital sources. There is nothing boring or clinical about either of these tracks. Steve N. Empirical Audio |
After listening to the " Ventura Highway" track again, I decided that the bass flabiness may be due to USB, but the lack of depth and splashiness of the close cymbols is probably compression The cymbols in the back are actually okay. The vocalist is actually fairly narrow and 3-D, although not very deep. Steve N. Empirical Audio |
I have just downloaded the 24/96 file of Igor Levit called Life. It is the equivalent of two CDs and I am stunned by the quallity of it and if this is a recording that digital can't get right I will eat my Stax phones. The recording places you up close and personal to the piano and it is a trully sumptuous recording. It does benefit with a bit of wellie on the volume control but you will be awed by the volume and dynamics of the piano. The second track is the very famous chaconne of Bach's violin partita in D Minor but not by Busoni as we are usually given but the reworking by Johannes Brahms and to make things worse this is for the left hand alone. I was so shocked by it that I played it three times in a row and it is 15 minutes long , this guy defies logic with a superhuman technique and a piano tone to die for. It is the best piano recording I have heard. |
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