Neil Young on digital audio: You're doing it wrong

From the article:

He really needs to stop sounding as if they just invented hi-res audio. I don't think it's doing him any service.

 

He didn't invent it, but he is doing a lot of good for high resolution audio and is helping bringing it to the public's attention. This is the first portable player made especially for high resolution music which can be plugged in to a Hi-Fi or a good speaker system as well as when you're on the go. I don't know anyone else in the public eye that has such a great passion for high resolution audio. He is also not just promoting his own music in high resolution but music by a wide range of artists. Long may he continue.

 

That is because properly storing digital media requires a deliberate effort including backups and if it is long term archival storage make sure back up is compatible with current systems. With analog you can literally leave stuff in a box and put it in the closet until you die and your estate throws it in the trash.

 

There was a study done ( no idea where I read it now ) and they found that listeners actually preferred several percent of certain types of harmonic distortion added to a signal, as opposed to hearing the signal distortion free.

Look at the sound of a guitar.

 

Exactly. Guitarists prefer tube amps.

 

Sorry, Astell and Kern beat them to it. Their AK100 was out last year.

 

I'm surprised other DAPs are not discussed more in this and other Pono threads. There's also HiFiMAN, iBasso, Fiio, HiSoundAudio, and probably others I'm forgetting. The Pono price point puts it in direct competition with the Fiio X5. But the Pono won't play DSD. The Fiio also seems to have more storage flexibility than the Pono. I think where Pono can potentially outshine the others is with the user interface. If the Pono has a good interface, it will beat the pants off of all the others (regardless of price). Poor user interface is the number one complaint of the users of non-Apple DAPs.

 

Count me in as a naysayer too.

Neil is an old man, like many of us.

Sure...there are some Youngsters < pun intended, who listen and respect him...but really...if someone like Jack White or some Hipster dude with a contemporary young band were to embrace...that might, just might get more youth into it. But I doubt it will catch on to a large degree.

 

Hmmmm....maybe. I mean, I'm not quite a youngster but at 35, I'm younger than Jack and respect him and Neil equally but differently. I think for Neil to care at his age, carries more weight to me. Plus, Neil and I share the same birthday so I'm sure his word is good.

I see what you are saying though, they should get some other younger artists to help get behind it. Maybe, Janelle Monae....wait, even the most of the youngsters don't know her.

 

Interesting. I watched a bit of recent stand-up by Marc Maron where he's talking about Jack White owning an arsenal of McIntosh gear. Maron allegedly went out and bought a McIntosh amp based on White's demo.

 

What, like maybe Pono Beats?

 

No, but at least in his promo-movies there are also students and artists that appeal to teenage-kids.

Qobuz is also trying to add popular current titles to its catalog ...

But the other audiophile sites (including HDTracks) are mainly releasing back catalogue-titles.

"Current Music" from HDTracks is mainly major-label artists (this week Shakira and Enrique Iglesias). Sorry but this is not the demographic for high-res.
That's really the iTunes/Beats Audio demographic.

Younger people that really care about music listen mainly to indie labels, because major labels are completely out of touch with current music.

 

The HiFiman unit just took a pasting in a recent review in HiFi World, Astell and Kern have released the AK120 now (and I think their interface is good) but price is their factor at £1000 a unit.

Have to say I'm less than bothered by the Pono. I do wonder where it would've come without Neil Young onboard and the first edition spec isn't maybe quite worth the brouhaha. Time will tell.

 

Pono will sell whatever the label gives them a la HD Tracks, etc.

 

We've yet to see the Pono Music store up and running, so that would be pure speculation, but I hope they give out more technical info about the music they put out than HDtracks do. I just think quality control might be tighter with the Pono Music store as they have expressed (well, Neil has) a lot of passion for music to be heard as it should be (studio master quality). Download the 24/96 version of Nevermind by Nirvana on HDtracks. It sounds awful and got a lot of bad reviews on here and in general. It was compressed to death! I just can't see Pono Music releasing music that sounds as bad as that. The older 16/44.1 CD version from 1991 sounds better. If the audio is going to be as good as they keep saying it's going to be, they can't release music sounding like that.

 

They've already stated that for most releases, they're getting whatever the label gives them. The in-house ones they do are different, but they're essentially just selling whatever the labels have.

 

I think expectations should be similar to when labels were releasing SACDs and DVD-A. You wouldn't base sound quality on whether the disc was sitting on a shelf at Tower Records vs Virgin Megastore vs Best Buy?

 

Yes and no. Read these two 150-page reports:

http://www.oscars.org/science-technology/council/projects/digitaldilemma/index.html

http://www.oscars.org/science-technology/council/projects/digitaldilemma2/index.html

Here's the upshot: the major studios and record labels are terrified that digital copies and backups will fall apart over time faster than analogue versions (film and magnetic recording). I have personally played back 60-year-old magnetic recordings that sound OK. I own 20-year-old DATs that barely play, and I own 10-year-old drives that no longer function. And I've seen 5-year-old LTOs fail (on two very expensive occasions). This is a very, very complicated problem without any easy solutions.

 

Give me some examples of CDs cut from such a tape. To my knowledge, I've never heard of a tape capturing the RIAA curve in the mastering room; the curve was applied right before the cutting lathe. At least, that was the way it was done in the 20 or so sessions I supervised in the late 1970s. If they had to make a 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) lacquer, they just ran the tape again or cut two discs simultaneously and used notes to kick in presets for the EQ and compression settings needed.

Digital recordings were used many times for LPs released in the 1970s and 1980s, and it's fair to say it was controversial even then. I don't think it's fair to say that it was all bad, and I can see good arguments made either way. I think if the essential recording was good and the mastering was good, the end result could be OK. But there were also some pretty nasty 14-bit converters in that era. I've listened to some of my own digital recordings made on a PCM-F1 from the 1980s, and what I thought was pretty good then is not-so-good now.

 

He should put 'em on MFSL cassette. A to A all the way, baby!

 

My only worry is that Neil Young's own output over the years generally aren't sonic marvels so what's his idea of 'good' sound?

JG

 

QFT. Any digital storage solution requires a migration path. You don't just stick the media in a drawer - it will go bad with time just like any analog storage.

Eventually cloud storage will become cheap enough that you can upload your TBs of music and just let the company worry about all that. We're already there, really, except for the cheap enough part.

I have files from the late 1980s that are digitally identical today to what they were then. The files have migrated across probably ten physical storage media since then.

Tape is a good long term storage medium but you are on crack if you think it competes with digital, given a proper digital migration strategy. One will experience inexorable decay, one will experience no decay whatsoever. Both require an infrastructure built around them to optimize their efficacy.

 

Ok, well you certainly would know better than me. My original assertion was that finishing a digital recording in LP didn't add anything except for possibly euphonic distortion. And I've heard plenty of record company anecdotes about early CDs being sourced from lacquer cutting masters. I just assumed (and we all know what happens...) that the EQ was baked into the tape, not applied on the fly. Makes way more sense to have it applied as the cutting is taking place. Thank you. I learned something today.

 

That was my first experience with digital too! A Sony Betamax mated with that very converter. It really felt like the dawn of a new era at the time. As did DAT a bit later. Nice and quiet and digital...

Yet, a properly maintained Studer A820 1/2 inch was infinitely superior then and will still kick the crap sonic-wise out of pretty much any digital format even in 2014.

Digital is still very much a "work in progress" when it comes to audio and visual concerns for most discerning professionals...

 

Interesting links, thanks for posting. The physical objects on which digital copies are stored will fall apart over time faster than analogue media, not much doubt about that. It's a big problem for studios, labels, archives, libraries, etc., but for an individual looking to maintain a personal collection, the challenge is easily met, because copies to new hard drives are easily made. So for what most of us here are concerned about, digital really is preferable.