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

The vinyl revival

I was in my record shop the other day and they had a number of " turntables" and portable record players on display. The displays of LPs and 45s are getting larger and larger every week. Most of the people looking at the kit and the records were young.

What is causing the revival? Well fashion is one thing. Youngster these days are too young remember using turntables. It is all very new to them.

I commented to one of the younger sales assistants that I had ruined a copy of Captain Beefheart's Safe as Milk on a Dansette. She looked at me as if I had just stepped off a space ship from Mars. She had no clue about record players and turntables and was not embarrassed to admit it.

An audiophile would sneer at the kit available and would probably regard the players as toys. There is no facility to adjust tracking weights, vertical tracking angles and spin rates etc. There is nothing to play with to make the records sound better. What are the real toys though?

The audiophile vinyl lover is part of a small group and this group will not drive a revival of analogue music. The growth in LP sales will come from young people who couldn't care less about azimuth adjustments and anti-skate springs and a suspended chassis.  They just want to hear good music in as easy manner as possible. They will want to transcribe their LPs to digital too - heaven forbid, and have a USB stage built in. They will also want their decks to be equipped with an equaliser stage - whatever next? This is the future, however, and vinyl purists will not be able to stop it.

I often wonder why anyone would want to constantly twiddle with adjustments to try and get a perfect sound from an LP when the limiting factor is the LP itself. Perhaps, it is some kind of  "control freakery". If you want to, you can spend tens of thousands of pounds to buy an almost perfect piece of kit that does not sound much or any better than a two hundred pound turntable made of MDF or acrylic plastic. If you have got a couple of grand to spare then good luck to you but lots of young people haven't even got one thousand to spend on a whole system. So this is the £40 solution - http://vinylrecordplayer.co.uk/gpo-stylo-3-speed-stand-alone-vinyl-record-player/

Quite frankly it does not sound too bad and it would not have stopped The Beatles from selling millions of records had it been around at the time. The only problem will be wear and tear on the records but I have still got some LPs and 45s from the 1960s that are playable.

Don't get me wrong I love listening to LPs even though most of my listening is from CD or other digital sources. From a technical point of view CDs and other digital sources give better sound reproduction and they lack the snap, crackle and pop and frequency changes from wow and flutter. A well recorded classical piece on a CD beats an LP any time.

Sometimes, however, I get a bit nostalgic and I put on a record for old time's sake, and I never cease to be amazed that a very small hard rock or diamond which scrapes against a piece of round plastic can make such a good sound. Some of this amazement has rubbed off onto the young; you don't need 24/192 digital nirvana to hear good sound and you do not need a degree in computing. Records are nice and simple so maybe that is what is so appealing.

The modern players are the 1960s and 1970s Dansette equivalent and they will sound good enough to help the revival of the LP and 45 industry. They will also encourage music lovers of all ages to sit around a player together to enjoy some sociability and share their music again, just like we did when we played our first Beach Boys albums and 45s in the good old days.  There was no need for anti-skate springs then and there was no sneering at the equipment.

The Beatles like I've never heard them before

I was in my local hi-fi shop last weekend listening to some speakers costing an awful lot of money. They had ribbon tweeters which can reproduce frequencies above 20khz. They sounded so good that I was tempted to reach for my credit card. I resisted temptation.

I then went to my local record store and bought a couple of CDs. The owner was playing some rather nice jazz and his 1990 vintage speakers sounded just as good as the super expensive ones I had just been listening too. I can't hear frequencies much higher than 13 khz so the ribbon tweeters aren't much use for me. The top note on a violin vibrates at about 4.5 khz and a soprano rarely breaches 1.5khz. I think that I saved myself a lot of money; my 1990s speakers still sound very good and have all the frequency range needed, even for a young blood, so there is no need to change them.

The record shop had just started to sell new vinyl LPs and I thumbed through the selection and to my surprise I had a couple of original versions of the newly released 180gm vinyls on sale.

I was chatting away to the owner about his new LP sales which seem to be doing reasonably well when he said that a customer had 'phoned him about the new Beatles mono LPs on 180gm vinyl.  The customer had said " it was like listening to the Beatles as he had never heard them before". I wonder where the customer had been all his life.

At home I have got a near mint condition of  "With The Beatles" in mono from 1963 and in 160 gm vinyl. I have also bought the latest 180 gm version for comparison. They sound almost identical to me. And so they should as the whole idea of the new pressings was to make them sound as close as possible to the original LPs. I fail to see, therefore, how anyone could claim that the new LPs "are like listening to The Beatles like I have never heard them before".

To me it seems as if expectation bias and the power of suggestion are having an influence on the judgement of the listener. This is not to say that the newly re-mastered LPs are not worth buying as they genuinely sound very good. They are really worth buying if your old Beatles mono albums are worn out and need replacement. Just don't play them on a 1960s mono player as you will ruin them forever just like most of us did back then in the days of yore.

hi-fi wishes for 2015

My first hi-fi wish for 2015 will be for a little bit of honesty to creep into the writings of  hi-fi magazines, forums and blogs. As far as I can see the primary object of hi-fi equipment is to reproduce music as faithfully as possible to the original recording. It is not about possession of expensive equipment for its own sake. It is not about a numbers game or worshipping specifications without putting measurements into the context of both the physical and psychological aspects of human hearing.

We have got to the stage where it is increasingly difficult and expensive to make improvements to domestic hi-fi equipment provided that that equipment has been well designed and built. Most of the improvements that can be made are now limited to the recording studio and the production of the master copies - be they digital or analogue.

We are now seeing an increasing number of advertisements in the hi-fi press for HD or "better than CD quality" audio. These adverts are also creeping into the general press. Hi-fi reviewers are already making a big deal out of HD (high definition) audio with its associated 24 bit/ 96 KHz (24/96)  digital files. Soon we shall be treated to music reproduction using 24/192 files and 32/384 files. An ordinary CD only stores music in a 16 bit/ 44.1 KHz file. An ordinary CD , however, can reproduce music with  a wider sound dynamic range than the human ear can safely cope with and it can reproduce frequencies which no human can hear or perceive as music. Why do we need a wider scope?

Extensive scientific listening tests have been performed which demonstrate that no one, so far, in the general population can hear the difference between ordinary CD quality music and HD music when all other parameters are equal. i.e. the equipment and playback volume is the same and the master recordings are the same. Why can the industry not recognise this? If double blind testing were to ascertain that members of the general population could recognise a difference we would be treated to copious full page advertisements showing the test results in the general press as well as the hi-fi press.

In the hi-fi press, reviewers do not want to talk about scientific listening tests. For some reason  reviewers ears seem to be better than for those of the general population. This may be true. Maybe the reviewers can perceive substantial quality differences between CD quality and HD quality music but surely they are obliged to prove their claims with double blind listening tests. If they cannot prove their claims then they should not make them and they should not claim that HD music reproduction is better than CD. Why should young people who are new to the hi-fi hobby be encouraged to spend their hard earnt money on equipment and music files which provide little or no extra benefit?

The hi-fi industry is riddled with exaggerated claims for the performance of expensive cables, equipment racks, fuses!, atomic clocks, power cables etc. The hi-fi magazines, however, are not riddled with double blind listening tests which prove that the very expensive equipment works better than more humble equivalents.

When I was young in the 1960s lots of equipment suffered from mains hum or other interference the use of cheap ferrite rings often sorted out the problem.

I have worked with computers for over 40 years. In the last decade we have seen the increasing use of computer technology to playback music. And of course we have seen increasing pressure within the hi-fi industry for us to buy very expensive and "hi-tech" USB  cables to prevent interference to music reproduction or improve data transmission rates. Well, what is so special about music reproduction? The bit rates for transmission are nothing compared to audio-visual data.  A PC has enough built in redundancy to easily transmit an audio file with full accuracy. An industry standard usb cable is perfectly sufficient provided it is not excessively long. There is no need for a special super duper and super expensive  usb cable. The cabling within the PC itself is all industry standard and there is no need for anything else.

So the theme goes on.

Let's have some honesty, let's have an admission that some of the extravagant claims made hi-fi experts could be the result of hubris, confirmation bias, a change of volume, placebo effect or auditory illusion. With all this mixed in with "the king's new clothes effect". Only scientific testing can ascertain the truth so let's  have more double blind testing with peer reviewed results. Let reviewers publish the truth and be damned - some hope but I remain an optimist. I also remain a realist and I only trust my own ears.

Atomic Clocks and HiFi

The other day I read an article in a Hi-Fi magazine about using an atomic clock to improve the performance of a very expensive combined  CD player and DAC costing £7,000. The rubidium based atomic clock costs around £5,000 and is supposedly accurate to 1 second in 1000 years.

The performance improvement was subjectively described as stunning. But, hold on a second where were the performance measurements? There were none. There were no peer reviewed double blind  tests which measured the performance of the CD player with or without the connexion of the atomic clock. No double blind and peer reviewed listening tests where performed either. We had to take the word of the reviewer that using an atomic clock provided a stunning improvement to the performance of a Hi-Fi system.

Let us look a little bit deeper into his claims. Most Hi-Fi enthusiasts agree that you cannot improve upon the performance of the original master recording according to the principle of Garbage In then Garbage Out or GIGO. Most enthusiasts agree that a Hi-Fi system can only be as good as the best performing unit of the system.

The reviewer claimed that there was a dramatic improvement to the sound stage of a 1959 Classical Music recording when the atomic clock was added to the system. This statement implies that a 1959 recording could perform with the timing accuracy of an atomic clock. This is is nonsense; in the 1950s all recordings were made using analogue tape recorders or were recorded direct to vinyl. Whichever method was used the analogue recording machines of the time produced significant timing errors which were both measurable and in some cases audible as wow and flutter.

An atomic clock cannot improve upon the performance of the original tape recorder. In this described case all it can really do is improve the standard of a deficient CD player. Even if it could improve the performance of the CD player to a level beyond that of a 1959 tape recorder then it would make no difference to the overall sound.  According to the laws of physics the music coming out of the speakers can perform no better than the performance of the original master recording - GIGO.

If an atomic clock could substantially improve the performance of the CD player then it implies that the player is somehow deficient. The reviewer should be more careful of his words. The original player was already equipped with a very fine quality non-atomic clock which is capable of reducing timing errors or "jitter" to an inaudible level.
 
Perhaps the reviewer's perceived stunning performance improvement could be attributed to "confirmation bias" or even hubris rather than the atomic clock. Extraordinary claims should be verified by double blind ABX listening tests to eliminate subjective impressions which do not have a firm foundation in reality.

Atomic clocks have their uses in the recording and mastering studio and can be used to reduce the accumulative and detrimental effects of jitter when recording from multiple sources. For domestic playback they are simply not needed. Some Hi-Fi enthusiasts are simply unable or unwilling to accept this reality.

An atomic clock looks mighty fine and would be a wonderful talking point. If you truly believe that it can improve the sound of a CD player without scientific proof then who am I to criticise you.

Hi-Fi magazines produce reams of test results for amplifiers, DACs, speakers, turntables and ordinary CD players to help consumers make a buying judgement. They are, however, very reluctant to produce test results for exotic and expensive accessories such as cables, powers supplies and Hi-Fi stands etc. It maybe worth asking yourself the question: why? What is wrong with a little bit of science and some objectivity to prove whether the accessories work or not ?

My advice to young and perhaps impecunious Hi-Fi enthusiasts would be to audition any piece of expensive equipment and honestly ask yourself if it does really improve performance. It  is best to obtain proof by looking at the measurements and seeing the results of peer reviewed double blind listening tests. If the data is not available then you will have to perform the listening tests yourself. You could then easily be deceived by "confirmation bias" or the suggestion of Hi-Fi sales men and internet sales sites. It is easy to waste money  if you are not prepared to be objective.

Beatles Mono LPs - "With The Beatles"

Mostly I play music from a digital source but I could not resist buying a copy of the latest LP re-master of "With The Beatles". I already have a 1963 mono version of the LP which is in excellent condition and I played one after the other.

The new re-master sounded remarkably "quiet" and I could hear almost no surface noise at the volume which I use but between two of the tracks I could hear some crackling but this did not affect the music.

The 2014 version and the 1963 version sounded remarkably similar, to my ears anyway, for frequency response etc. The 1963 version sounded distinctly louder, perhaps it was mastered louder to cover up for the deficiencies of early sixties record players which suffered from amplifier hum, mains hum, rumble  and wow and flutter. All of these problems have largely been eliminated by modern kit.

The AM radios of the day also suffered from fading and sometimes a soft recording would fade away completely to become almost inaudible. This problem still exists if you tune in to a distant AM radio station.

The older record also showed some signs of (pleasant) harmonic distortion  because it had been played so often. Had the 1963 record not been played at all it would probably have sounded exactly the same as 2014 version, apart from the difference in volume.

Remember that repeated playing of the newly re-mastered version will still wear out the groove - even though newer MM cartridges use tracking weights which are a lot lighter than the ceramic cartridges that we used in the sixties.

Both records had been very well pressed and were made from "virgin" vinyl but the 1963 record is 160 gms as opposed to 180 gms in weight; not that that makes much difference.

Many of the reviews of the new re-master, on forums and in magazines, have gone overboard with hyperbole and superlatives. Of course the record has been mastered and pressed perfectly; but it only sounded substantially better than the original would have done, in the sixties, because I was playing it on better equipment.

When I first played a new Beatles record, in 1963, it sounded almost as good as today but from then on it was downhill as the equipment damaged the record or your friends returned it scratched after borrowing it. The record also had to survive many parties.

What you are now getting is a record which has been perfectly mastered and produced and the packaging is almost a replica of the original. The inner sleeve does not  have an advert for "Emitex" printed on it but the outer sleeve is almost exactly the same.

To obtain an original record with the same playback quality will cost you a lot of money even if anyone is prepared to sell it to you. I doubt that a mint copy of the newly re-mastered version will command a similar price to the original in 50 years time.

http://www.cnet.com/news/youve-never-heard-the-beatles-sound-like-this-before/

The sound of the 2014 LP will not take you back to the sixties because you have to play it on modern equipment to avoid damaging it.

It is almost impossible to do a like for like comparison and most commentators fail to recognise this hence all the superlatives and hyperbole.  If you replay the mono record through one speaker you will get some idea of what it was like to hear music from a single source but the mains hum, rumble and wow and flutter will be missing. You can just as easily hear scratches and crackle now as you could have done in the sixties if you do not take considerable care of your LP.

If you are a fan of The Beatles and can only bear to play analogue sourced music then I recommend this new re-mastered LP of "With The Beatles"; but please be aware that you will not be taken back to sixties "sonic heaven".

 

The Beatles - Mono Vinyl

Ninety nine percent of the time I play music from a CD or a Computer but I could not resist buying the latest LP copy of Rubber Soul re-mastered in mono. The album comes shrink wrapped and the outer sleeve looks exactly like the original.

I felt none of the anticipation of opening a Fab Four LP that I felt as a fourteen year old in 1965. I did not have to scrimp and save to be able to afford to buy it and I have got enough money in my back pocket to afford the rest of the set. In 1965 most people could not afford to buy an LP on a whim - even grown ups. The fact that you had to save to get a record made it sound all the better - way back then.

The new LP felt a little heavier than its 1965 cousin. The groove on the record is the same gauge as a Stereo record; 1960s mono LP  had a wider groove. Nowadays you need to use a needle with a 0.7 mil tip radius to avoid damaging the record or to prevent the stylus from skipping out of the groove.

I opened the record carefully. 

The new LP  looked as if it was pressed with care and there were no scratches on the surface and I did not feel the need to wash the record. The spindle hole was also correctly aligned. However, I got a bit of a surprise as a cat hair had somehow got onto side two; at first I thought it was a scratch. The cat hair had been floating around the room and of course static electricity had attracted it. Need I say more.

I carefully cued up the record after giving it a clean with a carbon brush. The run in was very quiet and at the volume I use I could hear no surface noise.

The only differences to the sound quality, as far as the record was concerned,  were the improved treble and bass compared to 1965. The cymbals and triangles were reproduced more clearly. The higher notes of the guitars and sitars were also more piercing. The bass notes sounded more musical rather than thumping out.

The voices did not really sound much different as they fall into the middle frequency range and 1965 equipment was able to reproduce the middle range very well.

The record has been re-mastered very well and gives sound reproduction as good as it can get. There is pamphlet inside the sleeve which describes that the record has been re-mastered with modern equipment in mind and that 1960s "Hi-Fi" equipment was limited compared to today. FM and AM radio was equally as limited. The original records were produced with this in mind.

So how good is the sound and how much has it improved? Well, I have one Beatles mono LP from the 1960s which has survived rather well and it stands up very well in comparison to the modern vinyl - there is a little bit more surface noise and a couple of pops but no scratches, and the frequency response across the bass, mid and treble is similar to my ears. The modern record still had a couple of popping noises in between tracks. These popping noises would be audible in the very quiet sections of a classical record.

The main reason why the 1960s mono albums and the modern  ones sound better is because of the improvements to turntables, amplifiers and speakers.

Back in the days of yore turntables suffered from rumble and wow and flutter. A modern deck hardly suffers from this unless it is really,really cheap. Valve amplifiers usually had a noticeable hum and distorted the music even at moderate amplitude. The ceramic cartridges had a much more limited frequency response and this is why the treble was less apparent.

The cartridge and stylus combination  quickly wore out records which were played by teenagers over and over again. The damaged records sounded scratchy.

I lived in West Wales and our street was very quiet so any fault on a record was readily apparent. Today we live in a much more noisy environment so the surface noise from an LP is much less audible. This makes a big difference to sound quality. My living room in the outskirts of south London is relatively quiet at around 32 decibels. But that is only when there are no cars passing in the street. The noise level in 1965 in West Wales was way below this and any surface noise from an LP would have been audible at moderate amplitude and even using the best equipment for the time. This made little difference to a pop record but for a classical record it did.

If you read the audiophile forums, you will get the impression from many commentators that the new Beatles mono vinyl you will get to a new level of sonic heaven. This is not so. The new records are very good but how good? Most of the commentators do not compare any of their records or equipment to a standard. There is no objectivity. I always remain sceptical about any opinion on a forum or in a Hi-Fi magazine.

Some commentators claim that there is a " night and day" difference between the modern sound and that of the 1960s. This is an outrageous claim as it would mean that the music would be unrecognisable in its 60s form. Yes, the sound reproduction in 1965 was not as good today but it was good enough for The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys etc. to sell millions of record.

Some commentators have made reference to the "inky black silence" between the tracks of the new Beatles mono vinyl. I can see where they are coming from with the analogy, as the new records are very quiet, but for a person with normal  hearing there is no such as silence. I once stayed in farmhouse in the heart of rural France and it was very quiet there. So quiet that my wife and I found it a little bit disconcerting at night until we got used to it - you could hear an owl from miles away!

You can also read commentary from audiophile gurus that on the new vinyl you can hear a mouse running across Ringo's foot or such like  - but of course you cannot hear it on the CD equivalent. This sort of commentary is rubbish.

Inevitably you have to make the comparison between the LP and the CD. I tried not to do this when I played the new Rubber Soul LP for the first time. When I asked my wife what she thought, she insisted that I also played a digital version. She thought that the LP sounded "more primitive" but better.  After an hour or so of playing Beatles music I asked her again. She replied that she had forgotten what the LP sounded like and was no longer prepared to make a judgement. This explains it all.

If you are a fan of The Beatles and really like the sound reproduction from an LP then I can recommend that you buy these albums; you will hear a sound quality much better than before without having to pay an arm and a leg for a mint condition original.  However, do not expect to to be taken to a new level of sonic heaven as some of the commentators suggest. 

If you want a flavour of the 1960s sound then play this You Tube all the way through:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pweo6v2W0Pk

The new vinyl will not take you back to the1960s. To do this, I suggest playing the records through a low powered single active speaker. To me the music sounds better but only because it reminds me of the past. If I want to listen to 1960s music with high sound quality then I choose a modern HiFi and a CD every time - be it mono or stereo.