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With the massive amount of publicity (some would say hype) surrounding the new remastered Beatles CDs I thought it was time to dig out the old ones  and compare them to a couple of the new editions.

I chose Revolver, my wife’s favourite and The White Album, the one that I dislike least.  You will notice below the comparisons of the dynamics of two tracks.

Top two images: Yellow Submarine, Original and Remastered

Bottom two images: Back in the U.S.S.R., original and remastered

Click on an image to open a larger version

As you can see there has been some work done.  From what I’ve read they have talked about limiting to bring things up to date.  From what I can see and what I can hear they have cleaned up the sound , firmed up the bottom end considerably and added a degree of compression that is unfortunately almost essential for any modern release.  Compared to say the last Metallica released this is absolutely sonically fantastic dynamics wise.  Compared to the originals, somehow while they have more presence and more punch they also sound a touch too loud in places. The vocals in Back in the U.S.S.R. just shout.  Pity.

I know I’m biased, as I’m not a Beatles fan, but would I buy these new CDs for pleasure? No.  Will I listen to any again in the next few weeks? Yes. However, as I’ve just learn’t that the new Prefab Sprout album is in the post the answer may now be No.

Why? Because they were playing some choral music that sounded fabulous, excepting a bit of room boom, and I wanted to find out what the music was.

I’m sure I’m not alone in being interested in finding new music.  The trend to music servers or music from laptops or memory sticks is great for the ease of the companies doing the demos, but there is a really strong tendency to hide what is playing.

In the case of the Magico demo the problem was exacerbated by the demo maestro being in the corner furthest from the entrance and the room was absolutely full.

It would have been to intrusive to cross the room in front of the audience so I asked the rest of the staff in the display area of the room.  Maybe too many people had asked, maybe it was a bad day.  Whatever, I left the room feeling irritated and still without the name of the track.

Totally unfair on Magico: had they been running a bad demo or using uninteresting music then I wouldn’t have commented.

So a plea to companies running demos at hi-fi shows: besides good systems, good choice of music and pleasant atmospheres can you please just make it easy for us music fans to find out what you are playing.

More information here

Naim Label information

Next week I’m in Munich for the High End show and by coincidence will be sharing a booth (or to be more exact one of my clients Thorens is sharing a booth) themed Sources of the Future – as it’s vinyl and streaming – with Higoto who are Germany’s streaming experts.

The demos will be of Thoren’s new Tri-Balance turntable, the Logitech Transporter and a Macbook running iTunes with the Amarra software into a Weiss DAC.

Should be very interesting.  It’ll bring out all the digits is digits posts again, especially as Amarra is around $1500.  That means the price of Mac Book Pro , Amarra and DAC will be around £5-6k.  Cheaper than my CD player. But will it deliver as much?

Will it be fabulous hi-fi or fabulous music?

I’ve just moved to the beta of Windows 7 because even in beta it’s more stable that Vista. To give it a fair chance I thought I should start with a clean install. Sorted everything out but bloody iTunes. Haven’t lost the apps for the iPhone but have lost all the music on the hard drive. Not the one I installed Win 7 on – I’m not that stupid yet, but a second drive used for miscellaneous data and iTunes.

Luckily the music is still on my iPhone but getting it back to my HD seems to be very difficult. I’ve done it before but that was when it seemed to be possible to tell the iPod it was a HD. Doesn’t seem possible with the iPhone.

I’m sure someone out there will tell me it’s easy. Hopefully.

If only it were that simple to get a great sound from CA.  The more I experiment the more I realise that CA is absolutely similar to analog audio or indeed any audio when taken seriously.  Every change is audible. Assuming one has a good enough system.

Of course, just because a change is audible doesn’t mean it matters.

The expression bandied about on forums about Computer Audio is bit transparent.  The theory is simple: it’s getting the bits from the Hard Drive out of the computer without them being manipulated/changed in any way.

I’ve tried many music playing apps and they all seem to sound subtly different.  Even different releases of iTunes are reported to sort different.  Life is far to short to bother to try different releases.  As they say, I tried it once and didn’t like it.

For convenience for quick playback I tend to use VLC www.videolan.org.  It seems to play almost everything audio and video and can even stream stuff over  my network.  It works well for Radio Paradise too.

If I want to get serious say when I’m comparing DACs I tend to use Foobar.  It’s not my favourite user experience but it is easily configurable. For use under Win XP it’s possible to use the ASIO add in to bypass the K Mixer (assuming you have a suitable sound card). I use the M-Audio Transit. For Vista the WASAPI add in also bypasses the Windows (Kernel Mixer aka K Mixer) mixer.  With volumes set at 100% one should be achieving bit transparency and the sound should be just that little bit cleaner, less splashy and the space between notes will be greater somehow.

CA still never gets truly close to good CD playback.  Not yet for me anyway.  And it’s not ’cause I haven’t tried hard.

It’s a bit simpler with a Mac (the classic Mac and a DAC route) assuming you remember to set the right bit depth and bit rate in the Midi settings but I can’t say it sounds any better.

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Jonathan Berger, Professor of Music at Stanford University, California has theorised that young people are getting used to the sound of MP3s to the point where they are beginning to prefer the  sound. For the past eight years his students have taken part in an experiment in which they listen to songs in a variety of different forms, including MP3s. “I found not only that MP3s were not thought of as low quality, but over time there was a rise in preference for MP3s” Professor Berger said.

Professor Berger says that the (presumably lower bit rate) digitising process leaves music with a “sizzle” or a metallic sound.

Google let me down when I was searching for the original paper or quote from JB.  Just wonder if he actually said MP3 as most iPods are loaded with AACs?  However, does it matter? At 128kbs both sound pretty rough.

Seems us older music fans should play as  much vinyl as possible.

Using track 7 , The Chain, showed the original as having a slightly ‘sharper’ delivery, more detail perhaps but certainly less music. The main difference was in the low end but this changed the overall presentation. The Maplin just delivered more music but in a controlled and balanced manner.

I then dug out the 500VA transformer I’d tried before – now in an aluminium box and with a ferrite on the output – in common with the original Dacmagic’s supply.  This PS delivered more power to the presentation, more extension apparently  but was slightly slower. It had better separation of instruments, but not really more music.

The more comparisons of power supplies I do with the Dacmagic the more impressed I am of the overall balance of the design.

I will carry on using the Maplin PS.  It is easier to hide away, as it isn’t a walwart, and more importantly it improves the performance making it just that little more balanced and even handed.

The music playback system was a HP2133 netbook running Foobar and ASIO drivers connected by USB2 to a M-Audio Transit sound card which was connected with a  Chord Optichord to the Cambridge.

Sound quality is generally rather good.  Good in a bandwidth limited, obviously live but solid sort of way, but one recording did sound as if it was made of a fluttery cassette.

I played it back from my HP2133 into a M-Audio Transit into my Behringer SRC2496 upsampling to 24/88 all feeding my Naim system.  Maybe a bit OTT but well worth the effort.

Thanks to John Atkinson, editor of Stereophile mag for bring this superb resource to my attention

Highly recommended

To quote quite a few forums posts that I have read over the years I have been playing all sorts of music and it’s like it’s all new stuff.  What an amazing change for so little work.

So now all I have to do is find the time to take the whole system apart, tighten up all the Fraim bolts, redo all the Mains wiring so that I can try Power-Line, give it all the clean and reassemble in perhaops a slightly different order.  After the High End show in Munich perhaps.  More then.

Don’t get caught out like me wondering why the beginning sounded so odd.  Luckily my Funked LP12 with its DC motor and clever power supply can be switched to 45.

The album is truly stunning.  It has been mastered with care, it’s not compressed to hell, and its quiet.  What’s really wonderful though is the music.  It’s true poetry set to to music.  Maybe it’s not the most uplifting album in the world but it’s definitely the best album I’ve bought in the last couple of years.

Worth playing very often and very loud.

The Thorens 25th anniversary triple album is in the same class, but I didn’t have to buy that one, I’m glad to say.  More on that another day.

Having found and downloaded FestivaLink presents Hot Tuna at MerleFest 4/28/06 and Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss both in 24/96 from www.hdtracks.com I started to look around for more Hot Tuna live material. I found www.hottunatunes.com. While the downloads on hotunatunes are only available as mp3 or CD res Flacs there are hundreds to choose from. This could get very expensive.

The Hot Tuna hi-res download Hot Tuna at Merlefest is hi-res of sorts. Looking at its frequency content it looks suspiciously like an upsampled 44.1 or at best 48k DAT recording. Sounds rather good though. My first download for the HT site doesn’t sound as good but the music is just wonderful.  Jefferson Airplane was (is) one of my favourite bands and HT may be currently be running close behind.  These guys may not be the springiest of chickens but they can sure play.  My first paid for download also came with a free older gig recording in 128MP3.  Sounds rather inadequate in comparison but totally worth a listen they are obviously on a roll that night.

The hi-res Raising Sand is quite different from the CD rip.  It definitely sounds as if it has a higher bandwidth: it sounds smoother, more detailed and just more classy but it doesn’t have the punch or the impact of the lower res CD rip.

This by the way is not the way to do something for long-term use.  This is just as a quick test to see if it’s worth experimenting further and if the results are good the tranny will be mounted in a decent case suitably fused. This is not the type of experiment I suggest for anyone outside of a lab.  The mains is dangerous.

The listening results today are different to those at Malcolm’s last evening.  There it was pretty conclusive that the new supply confused the balance and lost some integration. It wasn’t bad at all, just not quite as well balanced as the original supply.  Shows that Cambridge put some time and effort into the whole package.

Today and in my system the results aren’t quite so clear cut.  There are elements of the same as last night but at the same time the system with the experimental tranny has more drive, is a bit more dramatic on the dynamics front and makes my foot tap more.

It’s really very track dependant: a couple of Paul Simon tracks definitely favoured the larger supply, a Springsteen just showed off the slight forwardness the supply delivered and sounded harsh. Another Springsteen – I’m on Fire – worked.

Would I recommend trying a supply if it were available on some try before buy deal – yes – but only if it were a no strings try before buy deal.  I’m sure that with the, very justified, success of the Cambridge DacMagic there will quite a few companies offering upgrade power supplies.

Finally it might be worth noting that the cost of the transformer delivered was around £35 so it might easily be a £100++ power supply if sold online and all neatly packaged.  Quite a investment for a budget DAC even if it’s a great budget DAC.