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In Reply to: RE: Let me expand .... posted by 13th Duke of Wymbourne on May 29, 2014 at 15:18:08
Some people like distortion and noise. Sometimes this is a personal taste and sometimes it is a band-aid that covers up symptoms of problems elsewhere in a recording or the playback system. This issue seldom surfaces, but sometimes when it does it can be severe, as appears to be the case here where measurements and listening diverge drastically.
IMO a subjective listening evaluation of a DAC is not complete until some kind of bypass tests have been used to compare the output of the DAC with original analog input that was used to generate the digital input to the DAC. This is the most direct and obvious way to tell if a DAC is simultaneously accurate and musical. Doing this test requires a high quality analog source and a high quality analog to digital converter, preferably several analog source recordings (or live microphone feeds) and several analog to digital converters. This is not the type of test that a typical audiophile or audiophile-reviewer would do, but it would be "bread and butter" for a mastering engineer as part of his equipment selection and set up.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Follow Ups:
there's a helluva lotta shitty sounding recordings mastered by engineers. What's that tell you?
"there's a helluva lotta shitty sounding recordings mastered by engineers. What's that tell you?"
There are three answers that come to mind. :-)
1. There are a lot of shitty mastering engineers
2. There are a lot of recordings that were so bad that there was nothing that could be done with them. (Mastering engineers use the phrase, "polishing a turd".)
3. There are a lot of producers and musicians who haven't a clue what constitutes good sound and they pay the engineers to produce what they want to hear, for example, "loud". (One could say that engineers who accommodate their customers have "sold out", but their phrases are "keeping my studio open" and "feeding my children".)
The real problem IMO is the customers who buy the shitty recordings. I learned very early to purchase recordings made by certain labels and certain engineers and avoid recordings made by other labels even I liked the music and the artist. If a recording was made by "Lewis Layton" or "Bob Fine" there was an extremely good chance it would be sonically excellent.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
the equipment used in many/most studios that measures great and sounds terrible. Some of the worst sounding spkrs./amps I've heard have been in mixing rooms at recording studios.
While I think the best mastering engineers (Greg Calbi/Doug Sax/ Bernie Grundman etc.)employ much better sounding gear, for every mastering engineer/studio that does there are 50 that use rotten sounding spkrs./amps chosen because the engineers are sure that stuff that measures flat results in "accurate" sound.
A well known engineer I was considering hiring to record my band's 2nd cd charges cartage fees to bring his own "audiophile" spkrs./amps to whatever studio you're using simply because his experience has shown that most of 'em have good measuring/bad sounding equipment.
I agree with everything you said..........in addition to the above.
there are 50 that use rotten sounding spkrs./amps chosen because the engineers are sure that stuff that measures flat results in "accurate" sound.
those with AJinFLA's mentality that you cannot hear thousands of op amps in the recording chain? :)
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