Slashdot Mirror
Aural Heaven -- iPod And Analog
Ant writes This Wired News article says there is aural magic in the combination of the very old with the very new: iPod through an old radio or tube-driven amplifier gives it a special warmth and atmosphere. '50-year-old Takeyuki Ishii insists the antique equipment creates an atmosphere that has been forgotten. The softer tones ease listeners and make them feel warm and relaxed.'"
Why the heck is he using an FM transmitter to connect the iPod to his nice tube equipment. Its one thing to use nice tube amplifiers to get a warm analog sound from a digital source (even order harmonic distortion and all that jazz), but why limit the frequency responce to FM's 50-15,000 Hz?! Good sources (such as the iPod) and good output equipment (which would presumably be hooked up to quality tube amplifiers) would benefit greatly from a full 20-20,000 KHz frequency responce!!
Although I am a fan of the iPod (and Apple Computer) there is nothing new here: Some years ago (about 16) I spent a couple of days at Stevie Wonders studio (Wonderland) and was stunned to see a couple of CD players that had been custom built to have tubes hooked up to them. It was explained to me that this "new fangled CD technology" sounded too "crisp" and that playing the signal back through tubes warmed things up considerably. I never would have been able to tell the difference until they hooked them up to some seriously high end speakers and lo and behold, you really could tell a difference. Unfortunately I do not remember who build these CD players, but I seem to recall a $20k price tag.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Actually, plasma is the best driver, and that was used in commercial speakers back in the 1970s (I'm talking about Hill's Plasmatronic tweeters which use a DC glow discharge, not the crappier RF corona discharge designs you find more often). Take a look at the second set of response graphs on this guy's page for performance of slightly modified ones. With new technologies (MHCD instead of simple cathodes), even better is possible, with full range drivers not as unreasonable as might have seemed back then. Unfortunately Hill used helum plasma, so a helium tank was necessary. I'm working on DIY air plasma drivers, and the MHCD method makes a lot of difference. The only real problem is efficiency, as thermal relaxation is non-linear and that becomes a problem unless most of the power is bias rather than audio frequency modulation.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
I think it should be possible to do the same change to the sound through a digital filter before converting it to analog. Or is there anything I'm missing?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
ESPECIALLY better than any compressed audio format. Just because you listen to everything through a crappy system instead of good studio monitors doesn't mean there isn't a difference.
Indeed. Aopen even went so far as to make a P4 motherboard with a tube in the circuit for the onboard audio. Crazy...
In general with audio, "warm" means stronger low frequencies in the sound and "bright" means stronger highs.
/.) that digital amps tend to reproduce even harmonics and acoustic (tube) tends to reproduce odd harmonics.
I've read somewhere (probably on
Can anyone confirm or deny this?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Sound with even harmonic distortion is said to sound warm, that is 2f,4f,6f etc.
Sound with odd harmonic distortion sounds harsh to our ears, that is 3f,5f,7f etc.
Valves usually produce even harmonic distortion, transistors usually produce odd harmonic distortion.
Cheers
John
Perhaps the story should have been when Apple released Apple Lossless Encoder. That's the recent iPod news that makes the iPod better for audiophiles.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
..more particularly, it's the spectrum of the distortion. Tube amps usually display quite large amounts of added 2nd harmonic, which is euphonic, or 'warming' and musically concordant. However tube amps usually show far, far less odd harmonics than solid-state amps, and have a distortion spectrum that rarely extends beyond the 5th/6th harmonic at all. In contrast, solid state amps, esp. those with high negative feedback, can produce harmonics a lot further out, even though the total summed is less than the tube amp, the result has a different sound and many people can tell the two apart on this basis. BTW it is *not* due to simple differences in signal:noise ratio and the like. It appears the ear/brain hearing mechanism has a FFT component - check how the ear works, and look closely at what the cilia do. The bottom line really is that there's a *lot* the ear/brain hearing mechanism does that bald figures like 'hearing response' and 'THD' are inadequate to describe.
Further to getting that sound quality (based around colouration and distortion characteristics, guitar players choose speakers that colour the sound and depending on the music or the nature of guitar tone they seek will choose a speaker that breaks up earlier. The whole guitar rig is chosen with the intent of a desirable sound. You're not after a hi-fi reproduction of what comes from the amp. It's not pretty.
I choose different tubes for my guitar amp depending on the EQ and break up characteristics that I want. A change in tubes changes my sound. An EL-34 has a different sound than a 6CA7 or a 6550 or a 6L6. One step further, there's a variance between the manufacturers of the "same" tube. Many guitar players (some referred to as "cork sniffers") seek out NOS (New Old Stock) tubes for the specific sounds they are after.
Through the guitar, effects, amp and speaker cabinet combination, I seek a desirable tone. Each element a piece that impacts my sound in a way that is desirable to me. Once I have that, I depend on the PA system (solid state) for an accurate reproduction of that tone
And yes, audiophiles do quite a bit of blind testing. Or at least scientist audiophiles do.
If you can really tell the difference in a double blind test, you could probably win a million dollars from the Randi Foundation. Their mission is partly to debunk unscientific claims, which I'm pretty sure includes (for them) being able to distinguish sound differences from different "power supplies, power cords, interconnect cables, and speaker cables". One interesting take on 'sound improvement' is here. An interesting followup directly related to supposed cable differences is here.)
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the interconnects that come with most consumer-grade components are crap. I replaced the interconnects that came with my CD player (Denon DCD-620) with a $15 set and could actually hear the difference. I then tried with a (rich!) friend's $100 interconnects and didn't notice a difference.
I think that interconnect performance is an asymptotic curve, and it rises pretty steeply at the low end.
Just junk food for thought...