[Roy G. Biv]

Some randomly grabbed songs and their waveform...
...All are from linear source material. Now...how much better will they all sound with some compression added to the soup?
CJ

Thanks for posting that. I've only been using Roon for about a year but I have started paying attention to the waveform display at the bottom. More often than not, when I ask myself why the current song sounds so bad, the waveform looks like what you posted for Adele.

Ughh...It would be awesome if the industry would get away from the loudness wars and limit dynamic compression.

 

[Jason Stoddard]

Hey all, it's that time again!

SchiitrMeet December
Let's Just Chill

Yes, that's right. Let's just relax, have some food, and listen to whatever we want. We'll bring some food and drink (not dinner, don't get too excited), and we'll have all the new gear there for a listen. That's it!

What, no blind listening? Well, if you want to, we can easily set up blind listening of Magni 3+ and Heresy (and Magni 3 and Vali) as pre-amps, and have a listen through speakers, but we don't have the switching setup to do blind headphone listening. If you want to do that, we can do that. We can level match and everything. Or we can do it next month with headphones too. Your choice.

I hope to see you there!

The Schiitr
22508 Market Street
Newhall, CA 91321

Thursday, December 12
6PM-10PM

All the best,
Jason

 

[Balthazar B]

Hey all, it's that time again!

SchiitrMeet December
Let's Just Chill

Yes, that's right. Let's just relax, have some food, and listen to whatever we want. We'll bring some food and drink (not dinner, don't get too excited), and we'll have all the new gear there for a listen. That's it!

What, no blind listening? Well, if you want to, we can easily set up blind listening of Magni 3+ and Heresy (and Magni 3 and Vali) as pre-amps, and have a listen through speakers, but we don't have the switching setup to do blind headphone listening. If you want to do that, we can do that. We can level match and everything. Or we can do it next month with headphones too. Your choice.

I hope to see you there!

The Schiitr
22508 Market Street
Newhall, CA 91321

Thursday, December 12
6PM-10PM

All the best,
Jason

@Jason Stoddard, your company is the only reason in the universe that I would ever want to live within driving distance of Newhall.

 

[Bazile]

Oh dear.

OK, since SOL was brought up, let's talk about the perfect complement for it. Apparently these just fly off the shelves and it's impossible to keep them in stock.

For 4800 dollars I will indeed shun Mook.

 

[Derrick Swart]

Amazing internet radio station I listen to is Radio Paradise. https://radioparadise.com/player. You can play different stream qualities all the way up to Flac.
You can choose four different Channels ( Main, Mellow, Rock, and Electic.). Its is funded by donations. They were out of Paradise Calif. until the fires. Fantastic playlist imho.

thanks for the tip. Great name!
i like this one:
https://fm4.orf.at/player/live
Discovered many artists here:
Moderat, Editors, Cristine and the Queens, Christian Löffler, Agnes Obel, etc

 

[bcowen]

Wow you received some very good tubes to try in the BH Crack, I am impressed. I own those tubes, some other power tubes I would also recommend are the Tung Sol 5998 and RCA 6as7G.
I always found the driver tube caused a bigger change in SQ and the Brimar 12au7 is quite good as are Mullard 12AU7's. Some time ago though, a friend sent me an adapter and an RCA 6sn7 from 1943 and I tend to use that type of tube more in my BHC but that is just a personal preference. Here is a listing that shows some of my work in the first 6 or 7 photos.

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1...mAhVRPK0KHTgmAZIQsAR6BAgJEAE&biw=1600&bih=797

I am not sure @bcowen has used many of those power tubes but he certainly knows the 12AU7's better than me. I will be using 6sn7's and 6080 equivalents in a current four amp build and the end result should sound similar to the Crack if all goes well.

I've never had an OTL amp, so haven't ever hoarded collected the 6080/6AS7 types that are frequently used. Still have a decent stash of 12AU7 types though. Mullards are good, but on the warmish side so partner best with a neutral or slightly aggressive amp. The French CIFTE's (Mazda) sit on the other side of the fence and go well with an amp that is on the too-warmish side. Have quite a few 7316's, but of course all mine are the short plate versions and everyone says the long plate versions are way much better. Heavy sigh. But in revenge, I have some super secret 12AU7 variants that I won't post publicly or @Ripper2860 will hound me incessantly to send to him.

 

[FLTWS]

I've never had an OTL amp, so haven't ever hoarded collected the 6080/6AS7 types that are frequently used. Still have a decent stash of 12AU7 types though. Mullards are good, but on the warmish side so partner best with a neutral or slightly aggressive amp. The French CIFTE's (Mazda) sit on the other side of the fence and go well with an amp that is on the too-warmish side. Have quite a few 7316's, but of course all mine are the short plate versions and everyone says the long plate versions are way much better. Heavy sigh. But in revenge, I have some super secret 12AU7 variants that I won't post publicly or @Ripper2860 will hound me incessantly to send to him.

I have a pair of the Cifte's and your assessment is spot on.

 

[bcowen]

For 4800 dollars I will indeed shun Mook.

I use a weight called the "Brass Tacks" that is simply a heavy piece of solid brass with a big hole in the middle to go around the spindle and some compliant discs on the bottom. LP's sound better with it than without it. IIRC I paid like $60 for it and scoffed at that amount when I bought it, but considered the improvement worth the expenditure. For $4800, the Mook better do more to make me happy than just improve the sound of my LP's.

 

[tincanear]

For 4800 dollars I will indeed shun Mook.

FYI, 'mook' is defined by merriam-webster as a "foolish, insignificant, or contemptible person"

For $4800, IMHO, a better buy would be a Yggdrasil, Freya+, and two Aegirs.

 

[tincanear]

I use a weight called the "Brass Tacks" that is simply a heavy piece of solid brass with a big hole in the middle to go around the spindle and some compliant discs on the bottom. LP's sound better with it than without it. IIRC I paid like $60 for it and scoffed at that amount when I bought it, but considered the improvement worth the expenditure. For $4800, the Mook better do more to make me happy than just improve the sound of my LP's.

hopefully the "Brass Tacks" and other record clamps have been rotational-mass-balanced about the spindle and designed to ensure consistent and accurate centering with each use. otherwise, the off-center rotational mass will contribute to infrasonic noise, frequency of ~1/2 Hz for LP's.

 

[Timster]

Duntech Sovereigns

Now they were (are still) a fantastic speaker. First heard them driven by some Krell gear back in the mid-80s. Never forget Jennifer Warnes (Joan of Arc from Famous Blue Raincoat) standing in the room with me.
Still use that track to this day as one of my go to test pieces.

 

[Timster]

Some randomly grabbed songs and their waveform...

From 1974...a Linda Ronstadt...


1984...Lionel Richie...


From 2011...Adele...


From 2012....'LMAO'...


All are from linear source material. Now...how much better will they all sound with some compression added to the soup?

CJ

Yup, that's why a lot of recent music sounds so bad. No emotional swings. eg. "quiet" piano and vocal intro, at the same level as the whole band when they join in. Constant barrage of flat sound.
I don't understand it all, especially when a vinyl release of the same material doesn't have the same problem.... you can't master that hot on vinyl, but even then the dynamic swing is there on vinyl, and not on digital.
How do artists (most, not all) go along with this?

 

[Rowethren]

Yup, that's why a lot of recent music sounds so bad. No emotional swings. eg. "quiet" piano and vocal intro, at the same level as the whole band when they join in. Constant barrage of flat sound.
I don't understand it all, especially when a vinyl release of the same material doesn't have the same problem.... you can't master that hot on vinyl, but even then the dynamic swing is there on vinyl, and not on digital.
How do artists (most, not all) go along with this?

"It's all about the money money money..."

Just a guess lol.

 

[johnjen]

For $4800 it better make coffee, hot cocco, hot water, and steamed rice, or sumpt'n…
Oh, wait, scratch the coffee thing, this thread has that covered already… hahahahahahaha

The record clamp I use(d) was like $39 back in the day and weighs next to nothing.
I have always wondered, if the suspension in those turntables with one, were ever adjusted to compensate for the added mass that a record weight made.
Of course this consideration is the entry to a rabbit hole of unimaginable dimensions…

I always sought to achieve true pistonic action when I was fussing with my LP12's suspension settings when there was a change to the turntables setup of any magnitude.

JJ

 

[FLTWS]

My last TT back in the Pleistocene Epoch was the S.O.T.A. with vacuum platter. I never found any spindle weight that could beat its ability to pull records flat even when warped severely and probably put less drag / stress on the motor than an expensive paperweight.

My take on real dynamic range; Most popular genres are designed to be listened to in cars and with earbuds used outdoors. Changing ambient noise levels play hell at the bottom of the loudness scale so one is constantly twiddling the volume control to get the sound to the desired level per the listener as sound levels vary from soft to loud. Compressing keeps the sound at a more constant level minimizing the twiddling. Add in the fact that popular music in general, to my ears, generally stays at a pretty constant dynamic level whether that's pounding heavy metal or a solo folk singer. Compressing that relatively steady level really makes a mess of things.

I suspect the many "cookie cutter" singer celebrities of recent decades have contracts that specified they were to just stand there and sing and focus on their moves for the music videos and leave the engineering to the engineers. I do believe there were many rock oriented groups, especially in earlier decades, with enough clout as performers to have a lot of say in what the end product sounded like and that did care about what the public would hear. Some were notorious for repeated takes to get things right to their way of hearing it.

But I could be wrong on all counts so...