NDX and DSD and general SQ after 4.3 firmware upgrade

Interesting to hear you say that Phil.

Its become apparent to me that the format and resolution beyond PCM quality of a file is just not really so relevant when compared with the source and how it has been recorded and handled in the first place.

Nice to think that I might not have been barking up the wrong tree.

In a previous incarnation I used to manage a vocal recording studio (this was in the days when the Yamaha OM10 was *THE* mixing desk to be seen with even though it was rather pants in reality) and I bet any of you would be *COMPLETELY* taken aback by the power and detail in just the human voice when it's properly recorded and hasn't been limited and compressed ... it is absolutely breathtaking!

I still find myself listening to the radio and shouting at whoever is being interviewed to go and get a drink because I can hear their mouth making clicking and cracking noises because they're drying up. :-)

What you can do with even 44/16 - given good source material - is scary!

Problem is if you don't gain ride, compress and limit the recordings, although they might sound incredible, they are almost unusable for listening to in a normal environment. :-(

Phil

Can't argue with that!

I've just downloaded Martin Taylor's Change of Heart album after receiving Linn's deal of the day email. 192/24 for £13.50 or 16/44.1 for £7.50. I went for the latter and it sounds bloody brilliant. Clearly it's a great recording in the first place and as I love Martin's guitar playing it's all I need. Clearly the 192 will sound better, but twice the price doesn't make the listening experience twice as good. 

You should have gone for the 192/24 one, imagine what a load of pants 16/44 will sound like when your new toys have arrived. 

I've spent the last 10 years at least trying to get across to people that to get significantly better quality you don't need to be chasing 'better' numbers ... you need better material.

24/192 *DOES* offer the opportunity for better quality - I am never going to argue against that - however a big bucket of vinegar is still only useful for dunking chips in.

Phil

Phil is absolutely right - which is why Linn's pricing policy makes so little sense. The principal value in a recording is its intellectual property, for want of a better phrase. The size of the files is relatively trivial by comparison. So the hi-res version should be a couple of quid more, not nearly twice the price.

+1 I like Phil's analogy! Despite my flippant remark above, my limited experience of hi-res purchases suggests that there is absolutely no guarantee that they will sound great (although they sometimes do). As is the case with CDs. As for pricing, we can only hope that market forces might bring prices to a sensible level.

Maybe (again) a controversial thing to say but for an album that I want to buy to keep for the foreseeable future I'd be happy to pay £15/£17 or so for an album if the mixing / mastering quality of the album justified it...

...what I object to is paying the price of a CD and getting some mushy lifeless P.O.S. like - for example - U2's "Joshua Tree" (yes, I know it's an old example but it has irked me for so many years) which *COULD* have been so very powerful and dynamic yet instead sounds like the drums are being played on my stomach with a couple of sandwich batons as drumsticks and the guitars - well - we have a lovely guy called Mike who does all our cleaning at Naim and he plays the Uke ... I reckon he could run off a far more dynamic rendition of most of the guitar lines on that album!

I challenge *ANYONE* here not to listen to the start of that album and not have a more pounding and insistent version of it running through their head as it builds to what should be a deliciously dynamic drum intro rather than the flat sounding squidgy mess that it is...

Similarly - take 'The Brazilian' on Genesis' 'Invisible Touch' ... that should be a track that smacks you around the side of the head and then carries you off helpless like being caught swimming in the sea in a strong swell and tide only to be deposited gasping on the beach at the end of it ... but does it? Noooooo! It all descends into the musical equivalent of a bucket of wallpaper paste.

(Edited to add : I went to see the Invisible Touch Tour live and The Brazilian was one of my absolute highlights of that - it was exactly as I always felt it should be ... each kettle drum hit pulled me and pushed me and I just wanted to let myself sink into it and by the end of it I just felt like I had done real physical hard work and was drained...)

Conversely take Massive Attack's 'Protection' ... I had that for years and couldn't listen to it ... I hated the sound of it which annoyed the hell out of me because I *LOVE* Massive Attack ... the first time I heard it sound good was on a NaimNet NNP01 and a pair of Allaes after I started here (shhhh ... don't tell anyone but I fried a set of Allaes when I was working late one night and was giving it some beans with "Collected") and Protection IMO just gets better and better as you play it though better systems ... on a poor system it sounds - well - hard to listen to and confused (again IMO) because it was actually mixed by someone who wanted it to sound good and not just be playable on anything mediocre.

(I'll get off my soapbox now...)

Phil

This, this right here. 

For me, it was Clapton's Pilgrim tour, equivalent to your Invisible Touch story. Thanks for sharing, we are definitely on the same page.

Regareds, alan 

Mike, DSD 64 has  approx 24dB LESS dynamic range that what is possible with 24 bit PCM. The dynamic range of DSD is approx that of HDCD that is 20 bit in PCM terms. I do wonder with DSD whether we are simply hearing the benefits, or not, of different encoding and reconstruction filter responses... and shows up the differences and limitations with analogue to digital conversion...

To Phil's point, any DSD recording that has been converted to PCM for mixing and then back to DSD at mastering time really should not be touched even with a very long barge pole... such conversions are lossy and therefore inexact. A single transcode would be bad enough, but a double transcode would be silly.

DSD from a reputable recording source and label will retain DSD throughout, and specialist equipment can work in DSD, but such equipment is not cheap. However I suspect the number of true DSD recordings is relatively few. Luckily the London Symphony Orchestra  have quite a good catalogue of pure DSD recordings.

Finally having wonderful performances captured and replayed well is sublime. Listening to a beautiful performance let down by a poor recording feels like a crime and a wasted opportunity .

Simon

It looks like I stand to be corrected - having looked at Wikipeadia I have to agree

However my Musicscope shows something different - I will dig deeper into that after this weekend

The point I was making when I made the comment about dynamic range was regarding the apparent low volume of DSD compared to PCM,  my post said DSD doesn't have a superior dynamic range over PCM which was another posters assumption & that I believed PCM can/does carry dynamic range compression whereas DSD cannot.

As to what sounds best I am not getting into, nothing can be measured,   & like beauty, music is in the EAR of the beholder.  However I think that generally with DSD as a niche area,  the people who use it tend to be focused & more serious about producing a high quality end product.  That might well be why we hear something better/different with the "new toy"   

Mike, I think your last paragraph sums things up nicely.. and I agree.

Simon

As usual some very sage words from Phil. Often I find Phils replies cut through the crap and 'tell it like it is' in a clear and understandable manner that's not tinted by rumour and hearsay.

I'll include Coldplay in my list if they ever start making music...

The only thing I ever liked about Coldplay was Chris Martin's wife and now that they are 'consciously uncoupled', well...

Phil

Isn't she from the same stable as Peter Belt though?

*chortle*!!!

Yes ... but she acted normal in Iron Man.

Now ... sensible head on again as I'm at work.

Phil

Thanks Steve - I'll always try to 'cut through the crap' wherever and whenever I can ...

I know that often my hands are tied in so far as what I can tell people on here and I know that can be annoying but hopefully anyone that has met me either here at the factory or at a show or dealer event will understand that I'm as passionate about all this as anyone on here ...

Phil

And Rush. A lot of their stuff sounds worse at high resolutions.

Hi Harry -

I think my music collection is getting split between home and car.  I still enjoy highly compressed rock, pop and metal while driving, but at home, it's mostly jazz, folk and well-recorded modern music (indie, prog, electronic). Didn't plan it this way - it has just sort of happened naturally over time. The more resolving the home setup gets, the less I use it for poorly-recorded music.

Add most of Springsteen's studio albums to the list. IMO, his best sounding albums are live.

ATB.

Hook

Hi Hook. Haven't seen you much lately. Glad to see you're still out there.

I used to listen the most in the car but a Sonos and now the Muso have tipped the balance to office listening. I wish I could afford to take the time off to listen more in the lounge, but I don't do so bad.

I can only enjoy the full flavour and complex content of Test For Echo, Vapour Trails, Snakes And Arrows and Clockwork Angels out of the lounge. And they can sound bloody amazing (even VT) but not on a "good" system. 

I obtained 24bit versions of VT and S&A and tried them in the lounge. They sounded even worse, with the clipping and compression so audible that the music went even lower down into the noise. Still sound good on the Muso though.

So, I updated the NDX to 4.3 and have downloaded  some DSD and it sounds really good. Not fully understanding the implementation of DoP is it providing the same quality of genuine DSD processing or is the NDX just the carrier/converter? Would it be best to feed a separate pure DSD DAC That could process all the way to double DSD for example. Assume same would be true from a computer/DAC set up.

I'm also curious if Simon has compared the 4.3 update (NDX only) to the NDX/Hugo and if so what were the findings during the beta test period.

M

His later albums I would agree, but not his earlier work. For me The Ghost Of Tom Joad being the line in the sand.

Mackb3, DoP is pure DSD. It simply borrows a file sample  structure from the PCM world for convienience and splits the DSD bit stream into chunks and then slots these chunks  into the PCM sample bit data words for reliable transport.

Yes I feed my Hugo DoP from my NDX, and it sounds wonderful. The 4.3 does sound marginally better than the other betas bar one which sounded the same to me.

Simon

Thanks Simon.