Beatles LPs and broken promises

I broke a promise that I made to myself about not buying the newly re-mastered Beatles mono LPs . I bought a couple to see what all the furore was about on impulse without listening to my rational brain. Well I am not going to indulge anymore.

I have been listening to LPs for years and I have always been annoyed by any sort of wow and flutter, static hiss, groove noise and crackles.

I recently bought a copy of King Crimson's " In the Court of the  Crimson King" in 200 gm virgin vinyl. When I first played it, it sounded perfect. However, it did not sound any better than the CD version.

I have played the record 3 times now and already static crackle and dust clicks are affecting the quiet parts of the album. This accumulation of static and dust cannot be prevented.

The same thing is happening to the couple of The Beatles mono re-masters that I have bought. If I keep playing them they will end up sounding like my  1963 copy of "With The Beatles" which has got plenty of static noise in between the tracks even though it is not damaged or worn out. I will end up thinking why did I bother buying the new records. New vinyl should only really be played on special occasions - you are better off digitising the records to 16/44.1 Wav or Flac music files which reproduce the vinyl sound exactly the same, or buying the CD if it has been mastered at a good quality which the new Beatles CD re-masters have been and so has the King Crimson. With a CD you benefit from an album which is free of surface noise, wow and flutter and crackle - genuine hi-fi.

Radio 4 on my Hi-Fi turntable with RFI

I once lived very near the Crystal Palace transmitter in London, way back in the 1970s, and I  heard lots of Radio Frequency Interference (RFI). It was not in the form of frame-buzz but I actually heard Radio 4 loud and clear.

Just imagine my horror when, intermittently, I heard Dan Archer from " The Archers" - an every day story of country folk -  prattling along to the softer parts of a progressive rock album. It took performance art to a new absurd and surreal level. I never really indentified where the problem lay or cured it. I guessed that the mains-cabling was acting as an antenna and that my turntable cartridge was acting as a rectifier.  I moved house and that eliminated the problem.

 

I have never experienced any problem with RFI since then. The house is now full of wireless equipment and portable ‘phones etc. but “The Archers” no longer spoil the music. I thought that modern technology had banished RFI intrusion forever but it seems that some people still suffer from it.

Quite often there is a simple solution. Making sure all your connexions are tight. Using screened interconnects, mains cables and speaker cables can also work. Usually the process of elimination can identify where the problem is. Even moving your cables around can work. None of this need expensive. There is no need to spend a fortune on expensive cables which have never been proven to work better than standard quality cables at much lower prices.

RFI can sometimes be alleviated by the use of cheap ferrite rings.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Movable-Offset-UF50B-Diameter-Ferrite/dp/B007Q94DMO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426250880&sr=8-1&keywords=ferrite+rings#customerReviews



 

 

 

Hi-Fi Nous - There is a difference between believing something to be true and knowing something to be true

The BBC broadcasts its classical music station Radio3 on FM and many audiophile enthusiasts believe that Radio 3 broadcasts sound better than "CD quality". These enthusiasts believe that they are listening to a fully analogue audio signal.

Well they are not; ever since the 1970s the BBC has built a digital circuit in the transmission chain to improve the propagation of the audio signal through landlines on their way to the transmitter.

As far as practicality is concerned Radio 3 listeners are listening to a digital radio signal which is broadcast using an analogue carrier wave.

Starting from 1972 The BBC used PCM digital circuits to convert their analogue music signals at a 13 bit/32khz sampling rate. This effectively meant that that Radio 3 audio had a theoretical dynamic range of 78 decibels and an upper frequency limit of 16khz for the music. The frequency limit was further restricted to 15khz because of a bandwidth restriction associated with Frequency Modulated radio broadcasting.

Since the 1980s, The BBC has been using 14 bit/32khz Nicam digital processors.

The Radio 3 FM broadcasts of classical music can sound wonderful and at a bit rate of around 720 kbps they sound just as good to my ears as a CD transcribing around 1400 kbps. The BBC has recently started internet  broadcasts of Radio 3 using a 320 kbps AAC codec and this sounds wonderful too.

If you still want to believe that you are listening to a wonderful analogue hi-fi experience when you tune in to R3 FM then think again. There is a difference between believing something to be true and knowing it to be true.

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/BBC/PCMandNICAM/History.html