Does Audiophile Stuff Sound Better?

Speaker-maker Jim Salk is a very reasonable and practical guy, and he has a very interesting post about How the Brain Influences What We Hear. It's a reminder that we don't really hear with our ears, we hear with our brain.

Video: Object of the Week

Buffling Off to Shuffalo

Quote of the day:
“Silly is you in a natural state, and serious is something you have to do until you can get silly again.”
--Mike Myers

I’ve noted before that Merrie and I listen to music every morning. These days we’re sticking mostly to fairly mellow stuff. We need the calming, what with the tornado of a German Shepherd puppy surrounding us so much of the time.

I’ve listened to classical music for most of my life. We had just a few classical records when I was growing up, but they were played a great deal. My father loved Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and his Symphony No. 6, so I practically know those works by heart.

I began playing classical records on the radio when I was in college, first on the campus station (“Welcome to Classical Showcase...”), and then on three public stations in Baltimore, Birmingham and San Diego.

What is this, my resume?

Anyway, we usually play classical music in the mornings. I’ve put most of our CDs on our iMac, and I’ve gotten to like putting them on “shuffle” and listening for hours. It’s like having our own radio station.

There are often some strange juxtapositions, especially since individual cuts from CDs are shuffled. That means there will be a movement from a Schubert string quartet followed by an aria from Puccini’s “La Boheme,” followed by something by John Adams.

I know I will now get hate mail from musicians and classical purists, who emit an odd combination of sobbing and retching when they think of anyone listening to single movements out of the context of the larger work.

But I find it illuminating. We often discover buried treasures in the form of music deep inside an album we haven’t listened to much.

Or it might be a work we have heard a lot, but hearing a piece of it out of context gives it a whole new meaning.

It’s kind of like sitting down, putting on just one song and listening attentively to it. Who knows what we might discover?

Device of the Year Three

Quote of the day:
"I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once."
--John Coltrane, when asked to describe his style.

My third device of the year for 2007 will take some explaining.

When CDs came around in the 1980s, the common wisdom became that all CD players sounded the same. This was based on the change in technology more than it was on actual listening.

With LPs, small variations in turntable speed, tonearm/cartridge design and setup, the condition of the record surface and many other physical factors all have an obvious effect on the sound.

Because CDs were digital--essentially a surface with ones and zeros on it--none of the LPs’ physical problems came into play. So the assumption quickly became that all players sounded the same.

That’s true as long as the signal is digital. Just like any properly-operating computer hard drive will accurately store and retrieve data, any properly-operating CD player will put out an accurate digital signal.

But CD players do not stop with the digital signal. They also convert it to analog. This is where differences come into play. Analog is a more-tricky business than digital. Just like humans are more tricky than machines.

The engineering of any active analog circuit always involves decisions that affect the signal passing through it. There are two such active circuits just before the analog output from any CD player--the circuit that converts the digital signal and the circuit that amplifies the signal so that it can drive your amplifier.

The design of these two circuits affects the sound of a CD player. Well-designed high-quality circuits make a difference.

This is not just an audiophile thing. The difference in sound is quite obvious and pronounced to most people. The thing is, most people haven’t heard such well-designed high-quality circuits.

Manufacturers of CD players are very aware that most everyone thinks all players sound the same. So, to keep costs down, they put in the very cheapest converter and amplifier circuits they can--on one small chip. Not surprisingly, players designed this way sound pretty much the same.

Earlier this year Merrie and I bought a separate digital-analog converter (DAC) and plugged the CD player’s digital output into it. We also hooked up a computer’s digital output.

It’s interesting that there was so much in the music that we hadn’t heard before. It sounds live and real.

LPs are Back

Quote of the day:
“When we got into office, the thing that surprised me the most was that things were as bad as we'd been saying they were.”
--John F. Kennedy

I am an audiophile. I don’t have the singular focus bordering on obsession of most audiophiles, but I am sensitive to acoustics and sound, and I love music.

Merrie and I listen a lot to LPs. Our collection is not huge, but it goes back to my days in radio and before. We also listen a lot to CDs, and we have a fair number of them, too.

Among audiophiles, there’s an ongoing conversation about whether LPs sound better than CDs or vice versa. Most non-audiophiles dismiss this, saying CDs obviously sound better and they don’t have scratches. And they’re smaller and easier.

Most audiophiles get a little snooty when told this, and will think to themselves, “Well, your records wouldn’t be scratched if you took better care of them.” Some invest lots of cash (we’re talking $10,000+) in elaborate turntable setups and heavy-vinyl deep pressings. It can be a serious business.

The truth is that most record albums released since the 1950s can sound pretty darn good on a reasonably-priced, properly set up turntable. It’s amazing, in fact, to put on a record made fifty years ago and hear it come alive. Even if it’s slightly scratched.

I am fascinated that LPs have become fashionable again. Over the last several years, more and more musicians are releasing their music on LP as well as CD.

LPs were kept alive by live DJs and musicians, who used them for scratching and sampling. But it’s gone way beyond that now.

Look at the success of record sellers on the web, and at stores like Amoeba in L.A. and the Bay Area. Here in San Diego, there are several small record stores that seem to be thriving.

Listening to an LP can be more well-rounded than listening to a CD. You have to go to the shelf, peruse, pull the album out, look at the front and back, pull the inner sleeve out, put the record on the turntable and put the arm on the record. Then, 20 minutes later, you have to get up and turn the record over.

The 20-minute thing can be annoying if I’m trying to do something else while listening. Yet because it’s a more-involving process, I often find I’m paying closer attention to the music. It’s usually not just background.

Also, since so many of our records are from the 50s, 60s and 70s, there is a sense of connection to history. Maybe it’s just nostalgia. I remember first getting the record, or where I was when I first heard it, or listening to it with friends.

And the music is still so good. In fact, most of the time, it’s better.

Analog in a Digital World

Quote of the day:
“People need difficulties; they are necessary for health.”
--Carl Jung

If we live in a digital world, we are aliens.

We are not digital. My favorite illustration is hearing. When I see debates about the quality of digital versus analog music sources, I never see any mention that our ears are analog.

Sound waves--variations in air pressure--cause the eardrum to vibrate, which causes the small bones behind it to vibrate. Those vibrations are converted back to electrical signals in the brain.

So, unless you want to plug the digital output of your CD player or computer directly into you brain, those digital signals must be converted to analog before you can hear them. And as a massage therapist once said, there’s the rub.

It’s not possible to say definitively that analog (records) sounds better or worse than digital (CDs or computer), because there is so much variety in recording, encoding and playback across all formats.

Some digital formats (such as mp3) ARE compromised because of low sampling rates or signal compression. Sampling rates are reduced and signals are compressed in order to save disc space and speed up download times.

Virtually everyone with normal hearing can detect degradation from analog or uncompressed digital formats to reduced, compressed formats.

The way basic CDs and lossless, uncompressed computer formats are encoded is just fine, as long as there is good source material and there is a well-designed digital-to-analog converter on the listening end.

Most CD players have a conversion circuit that comprises about half a silicon chip, which determines how the unit sounds. That allows record fanatics with good systems to correctly claim that records sound better than CDs.

On the other hand, with a well-designed digital-to-analog converter, a well-recorded CD will sound as good or better than a high-end turntable, arm, cartridge and phono preamp.