I will have to watch that video again. As I recall from watching it years ago, he’s grotesquely sure of himself and I think most of what he says is basically right if you want to be looking at things 2 dimensionally. But when a deeper look is considered, he comes of like it’s just basic Nyquist and nothing else.
Yep, but we constantly see that some people seem to think that the Fourier transform of a signal that is repeating for an infinite amount of time is the same as the Fourier transform of a signal that starts and stops at finite times, so they don’t realize they are inappropriately understanding sampling theory.
A classic audiophile response is to buy the gear someone else used as reference gear for testing just to find out out if it is reference enough? I bought the Koss 950 electrostatic headphone system (a headphone and amp combo). And listened to that setup through my Gungnir multibit DAC that I'm very familiar with and know is able to demonstrate audible differences between CD and high-res recordings of the same recording. I listen to the Koss 950 and don't hear the differences I expect to hear. Those differences are not there. The Koss 950 system is not capable of resolving those differences. Then I try an affordable (less than the cost of the Koss 950) system of the Cavalli Tube Hybrid amp and Sennheiser HD650 and I can begin to hear the differences I expect to hear between CD and high-res with recordings I'm familiar with. Then I try my better Cavalli headphone amps like the Liquid Platinum and Liquid Fire with my Audeze headphones (LCD-2 and LCD-x) and I'm even better able to hear the differences I expect. All while using the same Schiit Gungnir Multibit DAC as the source. The inconvenient truth is that the quality of the gear matters when using gear as reference when doing CD vs. high-res listening tests. You need to use gear that is capable of resolving the differences. And the Koss 950 electrostatic system just isn't. It isn't. I own it. It isn't. I wish it was because it would be a great deal as a reference system. But it isn't. It isn't even close. It's just a glorified mid-fi system that people who only listen to measurement gear can declare as reference. On the other end of the spectrum I have a PonoPlayer. And the $300 PonoPlayer combined with at $100 headphone (BrainWavz HM5 headphones with an under $50 balanced cable) does let me begin to hear the differences I expect to hear between CD and high-res. And that system costs less than the Koss 950 plus the external Schiit Gungnir DAC I've been using for the other comparisons. So a $300 portable player plue $100 headphones and $50 cable is better able to let me hear the differences between CD and high-res than a $1000 Koss 950 (headphone and energizer) plus $1300 Schiit Gungnir multibit DAC. Sometimes the better reference gear is not about the cost. It's about being able to recognize subjectively what is better even if it measures worse. I'd have much more respect for Monty and his listening tests if he actually used gear capable of resolving the differences between CD and high-res. He's just too ignorant about the subjective side of audio to ever discover the gear that would be much better reference gear for his tests.
And is ignorant of what he is doing. So many things he says that are wrong or show ignorance. He doesn't even understand ABX testing statistics. He claims you need 10 out of 10 or 15 out of 15 right to prove you can hear a difference. That's not how the statistics of ABX testing works. He's so ignorant of the statistical methods, yet relies on those statistical theories to prove his point. So ignorant. And at that point I stop considering his bloviating about audio to be anything worth taking up my time.
Usually poop-show... A CDP is just a digital transport with a DAC in a box. Most play or stream Redbook audio anyway. So again, an optical digital transport with a built-in DAC. Thats all it is, no magic. Basically quality will depend on the DAC inside. Simple as that. Few CDP's today have great digital audio converters so thats its limitation. And since CD sales are so miserably low these days, few manufacturers make or sell stellar CDPs these days. SACD ups the ante and DAC input for streaming, yada yada. I kept my old Arcam CDP (I sadly ever use it these days) which has a very good DAC onboard. Still my dedicated DAC sounds better when the CDP is used as a transport because, for the most part, modern DAC's are better. But I Do like the sound of the RING DACs which are very smooth and musical. I did manage to get an old late 80's Denon CDP with dual linear converters working, for fun. It sounded like I had a burlap sack over my speakers with the treble turned up to 11. Come a long way since the 1980s!
The math of Fourier transforms and the discrete Fourier transform and the discrete-time Fourier transform and the LaPlace transform is beyond easy accessibility for this English major. I know we use an FFT to describe the sound wave because it's easy, if an over simplification. But what I don't know is what the practical difference is for the reconstructed sound wave within the bandwidth limit.
It's also trivial with today's processing power to work with DSP that is accurate to 20 bits on consumer devices. We don't need to reach infinity for Fourier to be useful to us. We only need it as accurate as the signal we're working with.
I have read on many occasions that it's less about the DAC chip and more about the power supply, output stage, etc. I would like to find a DAC that combines the performance of my two CD players. The resolution of my Oppo with the smoothness of my Rega. With all the DACs out there, that must be possible. Rather than make many lateral moves, I am kicking around the idea of simply buying a Holo Spring DAC. On paper at least, should be a substantial upgrade.
True. An internal DAC is a system of converters and output stage. And data buffer from the transport! Years back there were many Great CDP's. Merdian's were fantastic! The Arcam FMJ's. The Mark Levinson's! They all had great PSUs and output stages. I had the Holo Spring-2 KTE for a bit, I didnt like it. The Detail wasn't there. A Denafrips Ares-2 I also had was better. I hear the Spring KTE-3 is better. But the Denafrips are really very good. A Pontus would likly be very satisfying. I went with a Terminator but their "house sound" is refined and rich sounding/analog like.
OP here. I have one update concerning my CDs good music. For many days, I listen to some CDs with my "new" Rega Apollo-R, some are great sounding, some other CD are just soso, and I admit that some (too many) CDs are not musical at all, so the CD player transmits what is engraved on the CD. Above all, my other CD players can transmit that also.
The person is irrelevant. Don't get hung up on him. Just look at what happens on the computer. He takes a Hi-Res recording and downsamples it to CD quality, reverses the polarity of one and then adds them together. It would be like taking a positive 100 in hi res, then downsampling the 100 to CD quality and then making one negative and adding them together. If you get a 0 then they are the same. If you get anything else there is a difference. In his tests there actually is a difference. But the difference is in the inaudible range, so theoretically you shouldn't hear it. But there's also inter modulation or whatever it's called where sound waves interact with other like ripples in water, so it is possible the inaudible waveforms captured in hi-res, but not CD, do influence audible waveforms. I also wonder if those waveform comparison capture everything. Who knows... A bigger difference is likely due to the filters used in hi-res (and DSD) vs CD. And some do prefer CD over hi-res. Some say the Border Patrol DAC which is limited to CD quality sounds better than hi-res and gets you closer to what people love about vinyl. It's all opinion and personal taste. What's "better" for one person isn't necessarily "better" for another. The implementation and gear makes a difference. The same can be said about Monty. Someone might not care for his presentation, but look past that, and look at the math. And realize math is only part of the picture. The implementation beyond the source bits makes a difference. And that brings us back on topic. CDs do sound great with the right gear.
Intermodulation and ultrasonic interferences in the audible spectrum are a problem, they mostly worsen the sound and don't add something better... so in that regard the 22khz cutoff of CDS can be seen as a good thing...
My 1st CDP (1983 NAD) produced sonics that were clearly better than my vinyl setup...no more pops, clicks, rumble or background noises! My 2nd CDP (1988 Philips CD880) took my stereo sonic presentation up 10 levels!! Breathtaking holographic soundstaging, realism in vocal/instrumental/piano/string timbres and tonality, and a live, I-Am-There listening experience!! With speaker-component-room changes and overall system improvements these past 35 years, that Philips CD880 currently produces even greater jaw dropping Musical Listening Sessions!!! Ted
Interesting. I thought the Holo DACs were the DACs to own. I guess it depends on user preferences and the system the DAC is in. An R2R ladder DAC is at the top of my list, though I am also curious about Chord and Benchmark.
While that may be true, I am considering the CD playback system as integral to being able to tell if a CD sounds good or not. How were we able to tell that early CD's had the potential to sound great, on those early few (or more) generations of CD players?
The Ares II wasn't really good enough either. I would't have bought one. I borrowed these and others. I bought a Terminator. Very happy with it. Eventually I'll try a Terminator II or Plus. Maybe something else. Im going to listen to a PS Audio Directstream DAC in a week or two a friend just bought. I was going to try a Halo May KTE but the Spring2 KTE turned me off. Im Sure the May and Spring 3's are better but the Spring2 KTE was not to my liking. I don't want to bash them since newer models have been released. Besides the ESS Pro there isn't much to choose from. Hand made R-2Rs are expensive done right. Chip Programed is cheaper. DSD and everything upsampled is what's newest.
The “voiced” gear will do that. Sounds great with some stuff, horrible elsewhere. The Rega Apollo-R is one of those voiced sources. Why they don’t publish measurements.
The aspects of reproduction that hi res (24/192 and DSD) consistently does better than 16/44.1, that hardly gets discussed, on YT and here at SHF, are those things that have to do with reproducing things that have to do with spatial cues. Things like: soundstage (size, depth, layering), image specificity within the soundstage, ambience of the acoustic space where the recording was made. As I've stated quite a few times here on these types of threads, I actually did take part in a double blind listening session about 6 years ago, where I was able to pick out hi res files over CD quality, at a rate substantially higher than chance. And the way I did this, was to pay specific attributes of reproduction that I mentioned above. The gear was very high end (Magico, Pass Labs, dCS, etc), in a well treated room. Only one person knew which file was being played, who was not in the same room as the listeners. The majority of the music that was being played was music that was recorded such that: all the musicians were playing in the same acoustic space, at the same time, where the recording engineer made good efforts to capture as much of the spatial cues that existed as possible, and where hardly anything was done to the recording after the fact in a studio. I am referring to mostly classical, and some acoustic jazz. 16/44.1 consistently foreshortened the soundstage, made the musicians seem like cardboard cutouts instead of 3d, made it harder to 'hear the walls' of the space, and caused less layering in the soundstage. Once you hear it, it can't be unheard. We did listen to some pop and rock recordings, and it was much, much harder to hear the differences, since there are hardly any natural spatial cues on the recordings.
That's what I'm dying to know. In the video he does a diff between the two files. Is he diffing the bits or the waveform? If the bits, then the comparison is valid. If the waveform, does the waveform capture "soundstage, ambience of the acoustic space where the recording was made" and so on? I always wonder how much the waveform shows, but then I watch Monty's video and he clearly shows that the representation in graphics is not the same thing as the audio that is captured and reproduced.
I can even believe your personal experience, but after years and years, we still don't have a proof of this in the form of strictly conducted and verified blind tests with clear, definitive and undisputable results.
