Sound reasoning. We’ve already lost the joys of proper sized sleeve artwork and inner sleeve information, plus the physical interaction with the disc and turntable. Now they are taking away the joy of ownership and collecting.
Moreover, the reason they are doing it this way is incredibly tawdry. It is because reliable “income streams” are the foundation of monetization. They can be very quickly turned into bonds or other forms of borrowing. This is exactly what your telecoms or mobile service provider does the second you put your signature on that contract. They want that model in music, in printer supplies and, one day, everything. “You will own nothing and be happy”. Yeah, right!
Interesting challenge. For my part I have no specific awareness of such filtering in amps, nor can I say there isn’t, however in various discussions on this forum about Naim power amps and their use with or without Naim preamps, I gained the impression that Naim preamps do filter ultrasonic frequencies.
They do. At least post the 72. That’s the time aligned filter.
I’d call that signal conditioning and I’m not actually splitting hairs there. There is a LOT of EMI these days and a lot of crud coming from digital elements of sources so it has become a necessity. I would describe it as good practice.
Similarly, someone will raise the RC filter on the input of the power amps. That’s really there to avoid anything being sent to the amp that will make it slew. That’s an especially pernicious type of distortion which kind of kills the signal while the Miller capacitor charges. In essence the amp is powerless to react to the signal. I’ll note here that Naim amps have never been offenders on this front.
I think I was a little sloppy with my answer and wording of “audible spectrum” as the filter I was describing is intended to mitigate RF interference much higher than the 22kHz OP mentioned.
Where the difference becomes large is on cheaper low end DACs like listening via your iPhone or entry level Walkman etc.
It’s a lot simpler for a DAC to reconstruct a hi res data source into analogue than it is for it to do a decent job of a lower resolution data source. High end DACs do a lot of heavy lifting to reconstruct 16/44 data and effectively fill in by inferring information accurately (ish). That closes the gap significantly with hi res sources.
But on a dirt cheap audio player, the difference sounds huge. Not so much that high res sounds better as it is 16/44 sounds worse.
Oddly enough it’s the same with video too. A cheap $70 blue ray player looks pretty good playing a BRD but stick in a DVD and it’s blocky and nearly unwatchable. Which is because after unpacking the data it does very little processing on it. Whereas a top end Pioneer player makes an old DVD look like a slightly smoothed out HD picture.
While video and audio reconstruction share almost nothing in common, the root cause of both issues is the same; lack of additional “work” processing on the source data.
I use Qobuz (it was a gift) and usually see an infinity of unknown artists and covers flow before my eyes but never find something of interest. I am starting to suspect that I have simply heard too much music in my life and am now saturated.
Is there anyone else convinced that good music is not an infinite amount and that we simply can’t have music at our disposal 24/7/365? That audiophilia has created a creepy sort of sonic bulimia?
I certainly don’t believe good music can be is infinite - if nothing else, there are a finite number of combinations of notes possible in any given length of music, and many combinations are discordant (witness a lot of modern “pop” music…).
Thread has briefly spoken about filtering…
I think this IS a significant part of the equation when choosing formats (on respective playback equipment)…
ie most modern cheap stuff,… (DAC wise) as already mentioned, is aided by having hires, as it sounds more akin to good CD format on ‘better kit’…
Of course before the market moved to using ‘built for phone DAC chips’ and SABRE with on chip filtering that favours DSD format…
External filter chips like the PMD100 was what was evolving the sound… (CD as a 16bit format was doing ‘airy’ 20bit sound)
Nowadays I would chose the format I listen to based on DAC being used,…
A nice R2R DAC and 16bit 44khz Pulse Code Modulation is my preference (my whole collection),… but a budget part using a SABRE DAC? I would use DSD and/or an ‘on the fly’ conversion to DSD (eg Onkyo HF Player software on an Android device) to bypass poor quality PCM filters.
16bit 44khz is transparent enough to enjoy (on lovely kit), and I parrot the above comment that ‘good music’>‘good masterings’>best format.
Follow your bliss… (but know thy equipment and ITS’ preferences)
I often think of painting analogies and I think that holds quite well in this context. I see modern art I would describe as visually discordant for the sake of the artist producing something different from what has gone before. On the other hand, is there only a finite number of paintings of vases of flowers that are worth seeing?
The problem for me with new music is the volume of it and sorting the artists who are motivated by their artistic vision (and worth hearing even if not ultimately to your taste) from those who are not. Streaming services haven’t created that problem but they have probably exacerbated it.
It almost certainly won’t be from the same master. A distribution master these days may commonly be 44.1/24 48/24 or 96/24, a several variants may be created for distribution, but typically that may involve down sampling from the mix production master.
I do agree for replay 44.1/24 can be and usually is wonderful. For these days of YouTube distribution, however, 48/24 is more common, simply because of the video / sound formats used
You cant consume a service for nothing, unless you are exploiting somebody. You either pay by subscription/licence or pay by advertising… or if you have to pay by both for a service, change the service.
Yes the web has become a major shopping high street… which for those involved with setting up the early web commerce systems was exactly our intent… it would revolutionise retailing… and I think 30 years later it’s fair to say it has… something I am personally really proud of to have played a part of.
In terms of browsers, if you wish to use private browsing and not be bombarded with tracked advertising such as from Google and Bing… then use
If you use their private browser it is fascinating to see how the most innocuous web sites that are trying to track you… for advertising and targeting.
“If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product”
Seems particularly true in the modern world. That said, I remember (I think) Stephen Fry writing about the BBC decades ago, pointing out that their job was delivering programmes to the audience, whereas the job of commercial TV is to deliver an audience to their advertisers. The latter seems even more true for modern web services.
Yes, but there are notable exceptions… Channel 4 has a legal public service remit, albeit funded by advertisers… I think this is a good model that ensures diversity and not a simple race to the bottom
But I agree about web entertainment services… but slowly regulation is catching up, as they increasingly get treated as a regular commercial entertainment service provider.
There have been some eye watering fines in 2023, and I think we can expect to see more in 2024… HNY
And yet, it is not enough anymore. We often pay for something and become the product. I started to be annoyed at how things were pointing at more than twenty years ago, when I noticed that rented and bought DVDs had advertising before the show. If paying a fair price for any given product was enough, and mutually accepted by both parties, it would be perfectly ok with me. But it’s not so. Not anymore. And these trends - power to the wealthiest - never turn backwards without (real or metaphorical) blood.
