9624 -vs- Vinyl
Posted by: Mr Underhill on 27 July 2008
....and for those of you who cannot wait the answer is VINYL, but ...
I can drag out any number of albums that sound bad, either due the way they have been treated, not by me, or cut, or mastered. I am not a VINYL junkie, that is I DON'T automatically believe vinyl is best.
When CD first arrived I found the main difference between it and my turntable was that I could do other things when a CD was on, with an album I found myself just listening to the music.
After many attempts I found a CD player that I really did like about seven years ago.
When Naim bought out their DVD5. In some areas I prefered the DVD5 to my CDP as a CD spinner. I auditioned a Benchmark DAC1 - which worked brilliantly with the DVD5, NOT something that I found all disc spinners will do; the DAC1 is a sensitive SOB, responding to the transport, the digital cable and mains cables.
I then found that the spdif output from the DVD5 was lobotomised, which did eat away at me so I bought a second hand Meridian 596 DVD player for a very resonable price - which DOES output 9624. Now I needed to get the HiDef soundtracks off my DVDAs and burn them to DVD-V. Having achieved this I could now do a comparison between the HiDef files and my albums.
The soundtracks were, where neccessary, re-sampled to 9624 and then converted to DVD using Lplex to produce an ISO file, and Brasero to burn it.
This will not be a like for like comparison, as the different formats will have been mastered in different ways. When SACD first arrived and Dark Side of the Moon was made available I was surprised at the way in which reviewers would hail the clarity of the spoken sections as evidence of the resolving power of the medium, rather than, perhaps, the way the new format had been mastered.
The Gear
LP: Linn LP12 + Naim Geddon > Naim ARO > Dynavector DV20
9624: Meridian 596 > Benchmark DAC1
Spine: EAR 864 > EAR 534 > Art Skibo
Transport -vs- PC
Meridian use a DVD transport as a DVD Transport, they do not try to turn it into a CD Transport. Data is read into buffered memory using their FIFO methodologies and then fed out via the spdif. In effect the file is being handled in memory - as it would be in a PC.
Listening
I use my daughters, aged 14 & 17, as my control. They have NO interest in HiFi. They listen to music reduced to MP3 via headphones. So I asked them a simple question - which do you prefer.
For this write up I decided to use Fleetwood Mac Rumours as the example, an album I have enjoyed for far too many years and know very well.
In order to try and be fair I played the tracks LP - DVD - DVD - LP. I did not touch the pre-amp, other than to vary the source; this will have been to the advantage of the DVD as the volume was slightly higher. Although my girls could not see which was being played the LP was obvious.
The Result
Q: Which did you prefer?
A: First/Second (whichever was the LP).
Q: Why
A: Sounds better.
Well, thankyou for that edification! I agreed. What I did notice was that the vocals where more forward with the LP - but also the music just bounced along, like to be more technical but I'd just end up sounding like a wine critic!
What I liked about the HiDef tracks is the dynamic range, lack of noise, impact and detail. As I said to a friend of mine - all the 'HiFi' things, which is damning with faint praise. There is no doubt in my mind that these tracks beat CD into pulp and throw it out the nearest exit.
Download -vs- Rip
Got to say that not all 9624 files are born equal. The DVDA sourced tracks seem to be consistently hi quality. There are a number of files I have sourced from the internet that have not been to the same standard, they give a partial view on what can be achieved; whether this is due to the source material or their handling of it is a matter of conjecture.
Some Reflections
Although vinyl is prefered by the three of us I am very impressed by the HiRes material.
In due course I will be interested to hear what they sound like when taking the transport completely out of the equation - I suspect not that much due to the way Meridian handle the files.
I have been listening to these HiRes discs pretty solidly for the past fortnight - and will always get HiRes when it is available. In fact I am buying DVDAs like they are going out of fashion, which, of course, they are!
I can drag out any number of albums that sound bad, either due the way they have been treated, not by me, or cut, or mastered. I am not a VINYL junkie, that is I DON'T automatically believe vinyl is best.
When CD first arrived I found the main difference between it and my turntable was that I could do other things when a CD was on, with an album I found myself just listening to the music.
After many attempts I found a CD player that I really did like about seven years ago.
When Naim bought out their DVD5. In some areas I prefered the DVD5 to my CDP as a CD spinner. I auditioned a Benchmark DAC1 - which worked brilliantly with the DVD5, NOT something that I found all disc spinners will do; the DAC1 is a sensitive SOB, responding to the transport, the digital cable and mains cables.
I then found that the spdif output from the DVD5 was lobotomised, which did eat away at me so I bought a second hand Meridian 596 DVD player for a very resonable price - which DOES output 9624. Now I needed to get the HiDef soundtracks off my DVDAs and burn them to DVD-V. Having achieved this I could now do a comparison between the HiDef files and my albums.
The soundtracks were, where neccessary, re-sampled to 9624 and then converted to DVD using Lplex to produce an ISO file, and Brasero to burn it.
This will not be a like for like comparison, as the different formats will have been mastered in different ways. When SACD first arrived and Dark Side of the Moon was made available I was surprised at the way in which reviewers would hail the clarity of the spoken sections as evidence of the resolving power of the medium, rather than, perhaps, the way the new format had been mastered.
The Gear
LP: Linn LP12 + Naim Geddon > Naim ARO > Dynavector DV20
9624: Meridian 596 > Benchmark DAC1
Spine: EAR 864 > EAR 534 > Art Skibo
Transport -vs- PC
Meridian use a DVD transport as a DVD Transport, they do not try to turn it into a CD Transport. Data is read into buffered memory using their FIFO methodologies and then fed out via the spdif. In effect the file is being handled in memory - as it would be in a PC.
Listening
I use my daughters, aged 14 & 17, as my control. They have NO interest in HiFi. They listen to music reduced to MP3 via headphones. So I asked them a simple question - which do you prefer.
For this write up I decided to use Fleetwood Mac Rumours as the example, an album I have enjoyed for far too many years and know very well.
In order to try and be fair I played the tracks LP - DVD - DVD - LP. I did not touch the pre-amp, other than to vary the source; this will have been to the advantage of the DVD as the volume was slightly higher. Although my girls could not see which was being played the LP was obvious.
The Result
Q: Which did you prefer?
A: First/Second (whichever was the LP).
Q: Why
A: Sounds better.
Well, thankyou for that edification! I agreed. What I did notice was that the vocals where more forward with the LP - but also the music just bounced along, like to be more technical but I'd just end up sounding like a wine critic!
What I liked about the HiDef tracks is the dynamic range, lack of noise, impact and detail. As I said to a friend of mine - all the 'HiFi' things, which is damning with faint praise. There is no doubt in my mind that these tracks beat CD into pulp and throw it out the nearest exit.
Download -vs- Rip
Got to say that not all 9624 files are born equal. The DVDA sourced tracks seem to be consistently hi quality. There are a number of files I have sourced from the internet that have not been to the same standard, they give a partial view on what can be achieved; whether this is due to the source material or their handling of it is a matter of conjecture.
Some Reflections
Although vinyl is prefered by the three of us I am very impressed by the HiRes material.
In due course I will be interested to hear what they sound like when taking the transport completely out of the equation - I suspect not that much due to the way Meridian handle the files.
I have been listening to these HiRes discs pretty solidly for the past fortnight - and will always get HiRes when it is available. In fact I am buying DVDAs like they are going out of fashion, which, of course, they are!