AV Rant Listener Andrew —

Sent us a link to a very fun story about using a 3D printer to make “records” for an old Fisher Price toy that looked like a little record player, but actually worked by plucking the plastic “teeth”, much like a music box: http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-printing-records-for-a-Fisher-Price-toy-record-/?ALLSTEPS

AV Rant Listener and professional calibrator Ray Coronado —

Posted a link on Twitter to a great interview with THX Instructor and co-creator of the THX Video Systems Calibration Program Michael Chen: http://www.tomparish.com/2014/03/insights-from-jedi-master-michael-chen-master-display-calibrator/

AV Rant Listener Ashley —

was looking for a Set Up Disc that also does 3D setup. Rob suggested Spears & Munsil HD Benchmark 2nd Edition: http://www.spearsandmunsil.com/portfolio/hd-benchmark-2-0/

We’ve been discussing High Res audio and vinyl on the podcast recently.

AV Rant Listener Jonathan had this to say:
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I grew up with vinyl. To Tom’s nostalgia point, I have six large boxes of classical vinyl albums that belonged to my late father that, to my wife’s complete scorn, sit in storage for the day that I’m retired and have the time to transfer them to MP3…. more vinyl than I will even be able to listen to in what remains of my life after I retire. And I’ve already cut the collection down to recordings not available on CD. And helping my father improve his sound system was one of the things we were able to talk about, at least until I made him buy gigantic (and really expensive, circa 1980) Magneplanar speakers that he hated. They were just like these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Magnepan_MG1.jpg

But I hate vinyl. I’m too casual to take care of vinyl. I can’t stand “engaging” myself by turning over vinyl. I’m still upset that Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick album has a completely artificial fadeout in the middle to allow you to turn over the record and that they kept it in the CD. (And the people who argue that that fade is artistic are stupid.) I hate scratches. And the notion of a medium which degrades with every playing really irritates me. (An aside, my Dad also loved reel-to-reel…. Why aren’t people nostalgic about that? This fits in with Tom’s theory – it’s because nobody bought reel-to-reel, so they have nothing to be nostalgic about. But if you want an analog sound, why not reel-to-reel?)

I didn’t even like cassette tapes, which eventually all get eaten by the player and which also fade, particularly when they’ve been “kept” on the floor of your car’s back seat.

What I’m saying is that I would have jumped on the digital revolution even if the things sounded worse. The fact that they don’t is gravy. Permanence, indexing and control (I owned the Sony CD 300 jukebox player, for god’s sake, and actually tried to program it, god help me) would have trumped sound quality. I think of vinyl like I think about a 1966 Mustang. By today’s standards, it’s a crap car. People can love it all they want, in its seatbeltless, airbagless, unaerodynamic, gas-guzzling, lack-of-creature-comfort historical importance. But for God’s sake, don’t try to tell me it’s a better car, no matter how much more care went into its construction and restoration and how careless people are today in car construction.
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AV Rant Listener Efrain —

had a ton to share about High Res audio. He’s kindly included links to several very interesting articles, and they’re definitely worth a look!

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Hey guys!

Like you guys mentioned before and I agree, depending on the recording itself and how it was mastered, you may in fact not be able to hear the difference between the 24bit/96khz, the CD quality version or the compressed mp3 and AAC. So if they take that same “standard def.” master and put it in a 24bit/192khz “bucket” (so to speak), you will not be able to hear it any different. MASTERING IS EVERYTHING!!

The best example I can give about this is this article from Computer Audiophile where they compare many different versions of Beck’s new album “Morning Phase” and found there were different digital masters of the same album being sold and that one of the MP3 versions of the album was the better one including the HDTracks master. The article includes analysis of each version of the album to confirm: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/569-and-winner-%85/

But I find that there is a lot to be gained from High Resolution Audio for us to enjoy if done properly, I always compare this to home theater as it is somewhat easier to relate to. Going back to the DVD days, Dolby Digital content, after it was decoded, held PCM audio at 16bits @ 48 khz with a maximum bitrate of 640 kbps, and most releases played at 384kbps bitrate. That’s merely above what an mp3 does in terms of bitrate. DTS on DVDs was also PCM 16bit @ 48khz, but had a maximum bitrate of 1.5 Mbps (a little higher than CD Audio standard of 1.411 Mbps) and most DVDs had a bitrate of 768 kbps. SUPERBIT DVDs that had DTS sound did have 1.5Mbps DTS soundtracks. This is why DTS was better in general, and why Tom would get mad if the sound on the DVD was not DTS. LOL!! I would get mad too!!….Both were LPCM tracks at 48khz, but one had a higher bitrate than the other which allowed for more information to go through and help it sound better.

Now going up to Blu-Ray, with Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD-MA…both, after being decoded, are LPCM audio now at 24bit at either 48khz, or 96khz (usually concerts) up to 7.1 channels and 192khz for up 5.1. Bitrate can be as high as 28 Mbps at times for Blu-Ray soundtracks… a much bigger bitrate “pipe”.. And both sound awesome! Much better than DVD movies! To many its unquestionable. I can easily remember what a big difference was watching something like say, The Matrix or Star Wars on DVD vs the Blu-Ray! Much more dynamic and clear and enveloping! There is no denying the superiority of audio of movies on Blu-Ray vs audio of the same movie on DVD.

I would also like to add that AIX Records’ Dr. Mark Waldrep, when interviewed in his first appearance in Home Theater Geeks (here: http://twit.tv/show/home-theater-geeks/9), in the first 10 minutes or so, he talks about High Resolution audio as audio that was recorded and mastered at a resolution that is at or beyond the limits of the human hearing system. For him that starts with 24bit/88.2 khz and higher. One thing that makes sense to me is that music recorded in analog tape and other analog mediums is not high resolution audio, mainly because they don’t have the dynamic range, frequency response, etc as 24/96 and above can do. So a digital transfer of an analog tape to 24bit/192khz for example and mastered to sound it’s best, might give you all of what was present in the original analog tape, and may sound better than the CD, but not to the same level as if the recording was made natively in 24bit/192khz. Going back to Blu-Ray movie audio, the soundtrack on old movies is optimized for that extra resolution so they can make the most of it and it is notable, but as awesome as it sounds, the audio on newly produced movies recorded digitally in high resolution is more clear…

Here are some links of articles written by Mark Waldrep, discussing this in a little more depth:

Part1 here: http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=2636

Part2 here: http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=2641

Here is another post about what is not considered to be true High Resolution Audio: http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=2644

This one is about what is High Res Audio: http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=2648

Also, here are some articles from Audiostream regarding HD audio and provenance and why it is important to prevent more confusion and help people be better informed: http://www.audiostream.com/content/musical-provenance-tracking-tracks-mark-waldrep

And another one here: http://www.audiostream.com/content/what-hd-download-and-does-it-matter

With all this said, the people behind Pono say that the music in their Pono store will all be remastered to take advantage this new higher resolution available and that they will give the customer the best they can get. If the best possible is 16bit/44.1khz, then that’s what it will be. If there is a new remaster done in 24bit/192khz, then that’s what will be available. I hope Pono does become a success, not for the sake of the Pono player, although I hope it does becomes successful, but for the sake of making better sounding music available to a wider audience.

I hope this helps in proving the point that indeed there is a potential for music to sound better in the high res medium, but labels need to take advantage of the extra data bandwidth given by these not so new technologies (High Res Audio movement started with DVD-A and SACD more than 10years back) for it to show.

Take care guys!

PS..

For people who want to try High Res audio, there is a free sampler available from HDTracks here: http://www.hdtracks.com/free-highres-sample/

And you can download a number of high res files at different resolutions from 2L here: http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html