Many of my CDs sound like they were recorded in a room with too much sound obsorbing material. Oh, you can hear musical notes but you can't hear their natural decay, there's no ambience. You'd be surprise that with boosting EQ at the higher frequencies, you also boost any ambience captured and all of a sudden a cimbal sounds like a cimbal and not a tin can buried somewhere in the background. But just using EQ can make the sound bright, so EQ is not always the answer.
I want to hear the natural decay of a musical note. It just seems, to me at least, ambience is lost and musical notes tend to come to an abrupt end. You ever sing in a hallway or bath room and think, wow that sounded good. Then go outside sing the same toone and damn, realize you'll never earn a living singing. Well, that's the best way i can describe the difference I think i'm hearing between the 30 year old vinyle I have and its newly purchased CD duplicate, tics and pops aside.
There's not enough ambience to give the music life. Sound is not just direct, from instrument to ear, what you hear comes from many directions and at different amptitudes and varying decays. The ambience of a theatre is what makes it a great theater. I'd like the CD to capture that theater experience when recorded that way and not lost through some compression scheme.
Anyways, today, I hoped that someone who actually owned an NA7004 could describe their experience. Did it meet their expectations or not and how?
We get these sort of claims again and again everywhere. If people are really hearing this, then their systems are really screwed up and not of a standard for modern digital media. That could be, as I surveyed what was on offer in the Best Buy Magnolia section on Monday at Eagan Minnesota. I went through both rooms and every system was totally worthless. Just plain awful. So I think may be the front end of modern digital media are too hot for most systems.
The fact is that for most music for CD does not need compression unless the producer uses it. CD is loss less, and will NOT degrade the ambiance in the original recording. There is no information thrown away, as it is in codecs like mp3, which I agree does degrade the ambient envelope and often severely.
CD has a dynamic range of 93 db, in practice with over sampling it is probably at least 10 db better than that.
LP on the other hand has a dynamic range in the 60 to 70 db range and for most sources requires around a 2/1 dynamic range compression to cut the disc.
SACD and BD have a dynamic range beyond the capability of current analog microphones. The absolute maximal theoretical dynamic range required for any music is 144 db, and most advanced digital media can achieve that with headroom. Analog microphones can not get there and never will, the best current digital microphones can achieve 140 db, and Neumann expect to push the envelope to 144 db shortly.
Right now I'm listening to a 1964 recording of Elgar's symphonic study Falstaff, with the Halle orchestra under the baton of "Glorious John," as Vaughn Williams called him. Now I have that LP, but I'm listening to the CD. The LP is quite incapable of rendering that recording with the dynamic, realism and low distortion of the CD. I can be certain the CD is the same as listening to the original master tape. The LP is short of that by a wide margin.
So where do all these claims like yours come from.
Two weeks ago we had an AES meeting at MPR studios, that was very interesting. Engineers were there from Sennheiser_ Neumann, including an experienced senior engineer from England. It was an interesting presentation on their new range of digital microphones.
This topic you are discussing came up. The overwhelming consensus was that most current domestic and even a lot of studio equipment is not yet adequate for the digital era.
These new microphones convert to digital right at the output of the capsule. An new AES standard has been developed to cope with this. The current AES/EBU of which the domestic version is SPDIF has been deemed inadequate. The new AES 42 standard is now released, but with few early adopters.
AES 42 envisages only 2 conversions. Analog to digital right after the microphone, and digital to analog right in the speaker, with EVERTTHING in the digital domain from microphone capsule to the speakers, with passive crossovers not allowed for. The process will require DSP crossovers and switching class D amps for every pass band in the speaker.
If we are to overcome your perceptions, it seems this is what is required. To get the results required with current approaches is too costly and cumbersome.
This will require a huge change in both professional and domestic practice. So don't bank on this system being your last.
At last I can see the sun starting to set on those awful receivers.
In the next generation most audio equipment in use will seem like the 78 era does to us now. The potential for greatly improved performance is right round the corner now.
