LMS with HI-end Streamer+Dac

[slartibartfast]

I love this forum for how an initial query morphs into a related but completely different, very interesting discussion. Especially when allot of us have lived through the history. I have really enjoyed reading the various perspectives on the technology. I appreciate the time that all of you have taken for your very detailed (and long) reflections.

In reading, I am realizing that much of my disappointment of the highly anticipated "perfect" CD format was due to a greedy effort to rush older music onto the format to generate more sales. I used the example of Clapton's 461 Ocean Blvd. Probably still one of my favorites of his. I had it on Vinyl when I bought it on CD. I was so disappointed. I think I now have a "remastered" CD which sounds a bit better. But now that I am thinking about it, I think I still have the vinyl copy, I'll have to look for it and pull it out.

Jim

Even though many complained about early CDs I wouldn't be surprised if they now prefer them to a lot of the compressed remasters we seem to be stuck with now via Tidal and Qobuz. Good luck trying to find a decent sounding version of many Genesis albums after the latest remix/master 🤣

[mooblie]

I think many bands (often "prog rockers" of the '70s) pushed the analogue recording/mastering/distribution technology of the day to its limit - and beyond - and you can hear that in somewhat congested vinyl LPs of that era.

In an attempt to rectify this - partially anyway - some respected engineers and producers have gone back the the original individual tracks of the recordings (pre-eq/compression/mixing, etc.,, if they still exist) to "have another go" with modern digital technology.

SOME of those results are spectacular, both retaining the original performance AND having much higher technical quality.

This is, of course, much more than just re-mastering of finished mixes that has gone so very wrong in the recent loudness wars.

For example, seek out Steve Wilson's remixing of Yes albums, and of course, Giles Martin doing something similar to The Beatles.

[RobbH]

Even though many complained about early CDs I wouldn't be surprised if they now prefer them to a lot of the compressed remasters we seem to be stuck with now via Tidal and Qobuz. Good luck trying to find a decent sounding version of many Genesis albums after the latest remix/master 🤣

I recently saw someone waxing fondly nostalgic about the widely condemned, initial (1987) release of the Beatles' albums on CD, compared to the later remasterings and more recent remixes.

[sgmlaw]

I love this forum for how an initial query morphs into a related but completely different, very interesting discussion. Especially when allot of us have lived through the history. I have really enjoyed reading the various perspectives on the technology. I appreciate the time that all of you have taken for your very detailed (and long) reflections.

In reading, I am realizing that much of my disappointment of the highly anticipated "perfect" CD format was due to a greedy effort to rush older music onto the format to generate more sales. I used the example of Clapton's 461 Ocean Blvd. Probably still one of my favorites of his. I had it on Vinyl when I bought it on CD. I was so disappointed. I think I now have a "remastered" CD which sounds a bit better. But now that I am thinking about it, I think I still have the vinyl copy, I'll have to look for it and pull it out.

Jim

I think it was more than that, as hinted in some of the earlier posts.

Some of the earliest Redbook releases were not so good. But many in retrospect actually are quite listenable and stand the test of time. Most of it, as has already been pointed out, depended on the quality and skill of the master engineering. Some of what was going on was also related to the evolution of mastering technologies occurring throughout the 1970s. And some of the early master recordings from the 1950s and into the early 1960s, produced through tubed consoles and on tape, are still the foundations for some of the best sounding media in my collection.

My earlier point was more technical in nature, in that the CD format at its introduction, and early home consumer digital playback systems of that era, being newly introduced technologies, were still plagued with some technical issues and flaws that were eventually overcome in the following years. “Teething pains” so to speak. And that the early marketing hype to push that infant technology and format exceeded what then, in it’s early iteration, was capable of. Some of the hype was frankly over the top, especially looking back and seeing where improvements and advancement have occurred. And not just in the digital realm. The earliest digital players were so focused and heavily cost loaded into the new digital sections, that they did not necessarily invest heavily in the analog stages that are just as essential to truly high quality audio playback. There was not a wide range of models beginning on day one. That came a few years later, and really accelerated once manufacturers started differentiating model tiers to price points (e.g., Sony’s early ES line). Then once it trickled down into the smaller market of “higher end” makers, many things started to come into better focus, literally in some respects. But that was not the case in 1979.

And I was using that earlier experience comparative to the over the top hype initially surrounding MQA in recent years.

The two most important determinants of an audio system’s ability and function are its media and its loudspeakers. I still stand by my earlier point that it is the quality of the original recording that matters most to the final media result, regardless of format. And no amount of higher order digital processing to 96, 192 or even higher sampling rates, is going to recover a fundamentally flawed original recording. And that many selections being sold today as ‘high res’ (and at high res prices) are based on poor original masters, and sound no better, and perhaps in some cases worse, than an earlier format of that recording (haze and lack of resolution can be a good thing there).

That same rush to repackage old music in new forms has been going on since the dawn of recorded audio. I saw it with some vinyl, I saw it with the earliest CDs, and I continue to see it today even with 192khz + offerings. The producers can get slipshod in their rush to get reissues to market. Imagine putting an old, worn acetate master on a high resolution format and then actually offering it for sale as “high resolution”. I’ve even seen a few instances of that, and complained long and loud to get a refund when it was discovered.

And unfortunately, sometimes those sloppy early efforts can remain on the market for quite a while before they finally get remastered and reproduced in more compatible quality for the format. We are still seeing that in the 192+ media era. With the decline of media ownership, I do have concerns that the pace of remastering of the older catalogs is not going to be as swift as in eras past. And while the newest artists and recordings can be made, processed and mastered under the current SOTA, avoiding those concerns altogether, those music genres are not necessarily my cup of tea. And an old, more obscure Jim Reeves or Chet Atkins selection from 1960 may do no better in digital than a haphazard early 1990s reissue attempt for a very long time. Perhaps never, and that’s what we’re stuck with. And that is what we will play through our $500 and $50,000 audio systems, for better or for worse. Which is why if I encounter great condition RCA vinyl pressings of those recordings, I snap them right up. Sometimes, they do sound much better.

That is also why I placed the suggestion that a great Redbook pressing, helped along with a little upsampling to sidestep inherent filter issues, can still stand very tall in today’s high resolution forest. Whether that CD version was pressed in 1979 or 2019 may be immaterial to that quest.

And not to get too hung up on having the latest and greatest digital format, and especially not too early on in that format’s life cycle. It is often competing against a fully mature and perfected earlier format that is still quite competitive. That advice applies today, and it also applied in 1979.

There is a lot of truth to the term “the bleeding edge”.