Music is one of the great pleasures of life. Perhaps, like me, you like music sounding at its best.
Unless you listen only to live performance in concert hall or studio, you are listening to music
as recorded and sound
as reproduced.
At its best, it should sound like the original experience of “being
there” but rarely does, unless you take positive steps to overcome the
many factors which degrade the original quality of sound and blunt its
emotional impact. All sound is not of equal quality. Nor is all wine.
What is “Sound Quality”?
As well as the technical attributes sound – the full frequency range
of the instruments faithfully captured and reproduced, rhythm and
timing, ultimately, sound quality is the delivery of musical
coherence, and emotional communication of the artist’s performance. Get
it right and the music will draw you in, wanting to listen, even to
music you thought you didn’t like. Get it wrong and you feel the
performance is dragging, your attention wanders, it fails to excite. The
song composition and the notes are more or less the same in either case
but the experience is quite different.
Here is a blogger who believes something called “music” exists
independent of the quality of sound. He “doesn’t care about” formats or
the issues that affect sound quality.
The worth of something can not be judged by whether someone else
cares about it or not. “Care” is a feeling, and feelings are not facts.
There are no “facts” in a sensory matter like sound quality. Sound
quality is subjective (“sounds better to me”). The best you can hope for
is an informed opinion, based on active listening comparison that tells
you which sounds better (to you). If you don’t compare you can
not know. If you don’t want to know, that’s entirely up to you.
Formats, catalogue numbers, record labels and matrix codes of records
made in the ’50s and ’60s identify which pressings are closest to the
source, offering highest fidelity to the original recording and the most
satisfying listening experience. Though there are exceptions, the first
mastering of the original pressing is generally the benchmark, your
best bet, though this may come at a price.
As an example, I recently A:B sound-checked a 1958 US promo mono of
Kind of Blue ($400) against the 1st British Fontana mono issue($50) and
2nd British CBS mono issue ($35). The Britsh re-mastered by Philips and
CBS from copy tape, just a few years apart, sound not even close. Both
the British were inferior to the US promo (so much for jingoism) and
inexplicably, the first UK Fontana was the lesser of the
three. Experience is the only currency, not explanation, because you
don’t have to know why.
People interested in improving their listening experience are not
train spotters or stamp collectors. They are music lovers in search of
the authentic music experience, being in the room with the musicians,
eliminating the artefacts of sound reproduction, to get it straight into
the vein. You can’t shortcut the equipment and the format issues,
bypass them, and go straight to the music. The music is delivered
through equipment , even if you don’t “care” about it.
Here’s how I think of it:
While
it is possible to exist in only one circle, the goal is the best music
delivered at the highest quality. If you want to enjoy life in the
green, you have to develop some knowledge about both in order to improve
your experience. This is the zen moment –
your experience is not a fixed thing, it can be improved. Both music choices and hifi choices are equally important, one without the other is a reduced experience, life in the blue.
The effect of the original engineer on sound quality
The
best quality of recorded sound is no accident. It starts with the
recording engineer, who is as important as the musicians
themselves. Engineers decided the make, model, number and positioning
of microphones, managed the recording process itself, and finally
transferred the recorded music from tape to a master acetate via
a cutting lathe. The engineer needed to have empathy with the style of
music being recorded if they were to make the right artistic decisions.
Legendary engineers like Rudy Van Gelder, Tom Dowd, Richard Bock, Fred
Plaut, and Roy DuNann assured the quality of sound etched into the
groove. Their name on the credits tells you you can expect an exciting
listening experience.
The importance of analogue information and components
Historically, the recording technology of modern jazz was valves and
tapes. Every component and process was analogue : physical continuous
signal, which is one of the main reasons for its retention
of life-like “quality”.
The introduction of first transistors and then solid state circuitry,
and finally end-to-end digital music production resulted in reduction
in sound quality. Analogue continuous signal was turned into digitally
sampled and managed “information”. This information became massively
over-processed, through complex circuit boards, complex arrays of
components, and the presence of controls, to exploit the ability to
control and channel sound. Not to say that one day digital sound quality
may overtake analogue, but in my experience that day has not yet come.
Good-sounding vinyl records, made before 1975…
Many modern vinyl pressings sound no better than CDs, because, in
most respects, that is what they are: a digital file pressed onto vinyl.
Unfortunately, they generally sound worse. Original Blue Note,
Prestige, Impulse! Riverside and Contemporary ’50s and ’60s vintage
vinyl pressings are for the most part great musical experiences. In
between the two are several decades of variable quality reissues.
Things went badly wrong some time around the mid-seventies. The oil
price rise of 1973 sent up the cost of vinyl, which was then being used
to press millions of records. Economies in manufacturing, such as impure
recycled vinyl, excessively reduced vinyl thickness, excessive numbers
pressed before changing stampers, and insufficiently quality control,
undid much of the good recording engineering. However the gradual
introduction of transistors to replace valves, and finally the arrival
of solid state circuitry, finally destroyed sound quality.
In addition,
the necessary engineering skills largely disappeared, some brands of
tapes degraded with age. Reissues of ’50s and ’60’s recordings by
the ’70s and ’80s became mainly inferior-sounding pressings.
The arrival of the CD and with it, the transfer of recordings to
digital formats, largely finished off vinyl as a viable means of music
distribution. The Sony Walkman didn’t require it, now we have the
download and streaming to portable phones. Commercially-speaking,
convenience and infinite choice have won over sound quality. Few
know what they had lost, most will never know. For the music consumer,
it looked like the “march of progress”. From the sound quality point of
view, it was the reverse.
The lure of infinite choice is handmaiden to novelty and ever shorter
attention-span. Ask what is lost when no-one can cope with reading a
book, even a chapter is too long, perhaps even a paragraph, some find a
sentence challenging, why can’t it be fitted into a few words… a
headline, or 140 character limits of a tweet. . Thinking shrinks if you
let it. So does the ability to listen and appreciate, to navigate
uncharted waters.
The importance of the modern Hi Fi
Extracting accurately the musical information written in the vinyl
groove requires good equipment. Other than as a figure of speech, Hi Fi
can not sound good – only music can do that. This is another Zen
moment. The best Hi Fi “merely” faithfully replays what was recorded. It
becomes invisible. The more invisible it becomes, the more easily you
can focus on the music content and not artefacts of reproduction.
This pretty innacurate article in The Economist magazine (inaccuracy is their specialty) debates whether vinyl sounds
warmer than CD :
It is not “warm” or “cold”, or clinical.
The medium should be invisible, delivering what was recorded, as it
sounded with the musicians in the room. If you need warmth, turn up the
heating.
Primary importance of the turntable.
One component makes more difference to sound quality than all the
others put together: the turntable. It is the source of the signal.
Equipment further down the processing chain, amplifiers and speakers,
can only work with the information they are given.
Retrieving a signal engraved in the groove wall of a revolving
plastic disc requires absolute rotational steadfastness of the
turntable, physical sensitivity to one thousandth the thickness of a
human hair captured by the tiny cartidge stylus and its coils, and
amplifying this microscopically small signal to become moving air. Any
weakness at source will go on to be magnified by amplifiers and
speakers, magnifying noise with signal instead of just signal alone.
With a spinning vinyl disc, there are many physical forces to be
managed – the constantly varying drag of the stylus in the groove
against the rotation of platter, the isolation of components from
vibrations in their immediate environment, tiny variations in the
stability of electrical supply to the motor, acoustic feedback from the
speakers through the floor supporting the staging supporting the
turntable, the list is a long one.
Sadly, cheap components do not manage the forces that degrade sound, and can not deliver the highest quality sound.
I want the best and I can’t afford it!
No-one starts with the best. It’s a journey, there are many stops
along the way, and its up to you where you are happy to step off.
Arriving at high quality sound producing system
After the turntable and its tonearm and cartridge, you will need a
combination of quality amplifiers and speakers, linked by high quality
cables, mounted on vibration-free supports, all supplied with very clean
power. After much experimentation, I am pretty well convinced of the
benefit of valve-based phono amp and pre-amplification, combined with a
solid state main power amplifier. However this is a big subject, for
another time and place.
Building your own knowledge of what sounds good (to you)
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, sound in the ear of the
listener: the only test for “good sound quality” is the subjective test
of your ears. If it sounds good to you, it is. There are however some
obvious sources of bad sound quality, for example where compression has
been applied to make music overall louder, where excessive emphasis has
been given to the bass (possibly to make it sound better on poor
equipment, or just engineer’s preference), the restriction of upper
frequencies sometimes applied to reduce tape hiss, and inappropriate
application or omission of reverb.
If you get past these hurdles, you are in with a chance.
Whilst listener’s first point of comparison is often depth of the bass
floor, more bass is quick to pick up, too often what they are hearing
is booming uncontrolled bass. I’m thinking here of the acoustic upright
bass, which has fingering and percussive quality. When bass is
controlled, taut, dry, more musical, good things happen in other parts
of the register.
The late ’60s/ early’70s saw the switch to the electric amplified
bass guitar, mainly the Fender bass, sliding down the strings, dropping
bombs because with amplification you can. Similar things happened in the
switch from acoustic piano to the electronic keyboard and
synthesiser. Acoustic instruments and revealing hi-fi are a natural
partnership but that is just my opinion, you are welcome to differ.
Auditioning hi-fi equipment
Beyond the bass/treble issues, presentation, imaging, clarity, all
the noise business, the main thing you should consider is your
emotional response to the music. Given an A and a B, which do you enjoy
more? Did one seem slower, the other more to tap your feet? Forget the
why, get the what.
Some music-lovers become lost at this point because they have not yet
learned to trust their ears. They want someone else to tell them which
is better, seek the comfort of authority. They seek scientific
evidence, electrical test charts, consult expert reviews, put their
trust in dealers, or hope that buying expensive equipment and big-name
brands will guarantee them quality.
As well as all the paid-for sources of information, and dealer
advice, one source of hopefully “independent advice” is in enthusiasts
forums. But not in Hi Fi. Unfortunately these tend to be plagued with
trolls, who spread fear of ridicule aimed at would-be improvement
effort, especially fear some “charlatan” might be making money out of
you. Most online forums are haunted by
trolls experts such as these –
HiFi forum trolls never have any experiences to share, because they
have never tried these things for themselves, because they “know” they
don’t work. Their idea of a great day is typing “
You are wrong because you are stupid” insults.
The only way to know what difference anything makes is to try
it. Then you are entitled to an opinion, bearing in mind what works for
you may not work for someone else and vice versa. Even then, if you
apply a tweak to an insensitive or unbalanced system it may not sound
any better, indeed it may perversely sound worse by revealing a
weakness elsewhere.
Nothing is certain.
Until such time as you know everything,
uncertainty is probably as good as it gets ( LJC)
Assume nothing, be open to try anything, let your ears be your
guide. Everything is a variable, which can make things better or worse,
or make no discernible difference. Value your experience – it is a
trustworthy friend. Learn to ignore your worst enemy – your
expectations. Have fun. Trust your ears. That simple, and that
difficult.
Your Hi Fi journey starts here
Here is my suggested plan. You probably already have a “hi-fi” but be
prepared to say good bye to older equipment if they can not take you to
the level where you want to go, or only at exhorbitant cost. It was for
that reason I abandoned my Linn LP12. There are some excellent vintage
components, lucky if you have those, otherwise, replace.
Build the best component separates system you can sensibly afford, in particular, the best turntable. I chose a new
Avid turntable, retained my
Linn
main power amplifier (a workhorse that basically does as its told, like
the Linn 242 speakers), but replaced the Linn pre-amplifier with a
vastly better custom-built
World Design
valve pre-amp, fitted with 1960s vintage “new- old stock” Telefunken
ECC82 valves. The idea that it is better to have “matching components
from the same vendor” may sound logical but in practice is not true.
I made my choice, there are many other good specialist hifi
manufacturers, and I have no experience on which to give advice, other
than to ignore luxury consumer brands of hifi, like Bang & Olufson.
Start somewhere, audition if you wish, but start. If I was starting
again, and I am not, I would probably build amplification around
Audio Note.
It all starts with the source: the turntable (with separate power
supply unit) then tonearm and cartridge, followed by a separate phono
amplifier, pre-amplifier and power amplifier – not an integrated
amplifier (and preferably all valve-based). Finally consider
the speakers, often thought of as the most important but actually the
least important. Buy the best components you can, then forget about
upgrading them for long time. You are almost certainly not hearing a
fraction of what your chosen equipment is capable of – yet.
Then start to unlock the potential of your system. Upgrading to a
better an interconnecting cable can make more difference to sound
quality than upgrading to a “better” amplifier. You must improve the
infrastructure – power supply, component interconnects, cables, system
supports. Component sellers can’t afford to supply the highest quality
cables and still remain competitively priced, so they give just a
starter.
Your objective is to extract and maintain a pure signal, free from
processing artefacts, non-music information noise, and external
distortion. Your enemies are impurities in power-supply, electrical
resistance of connections, floor and airborne vibration, electromagnetic
pollution, and quirks in room-acoustics, and probably more. Each
of these interfere with the tiny music signal as it makes its way from
the vinyl/stylus point of contact, through several stages of
amplification, to its final speaker diaphram destination, in the
process, magnified 100,000 -fold. Eliminating each interfering factor
lifts a veil, and brings you one step closer to your goal of “musicians
in the room”
Where to start with Infrastructure?
Though all infrastructure is important, probably the most important
is your electricity supply. Household mains electricity is “dirty” – and
dirt flows through your system alongside the music signal unless you
take steps to “clean” it. Delivering stable clean power will enable your
components to work with only the music signal and not accomanying
noise.
Tip!: I experienced the most profound change in musicality somewhat late in the day by having a
dedicated domestic electricity spur
for the hifi diverted from the main domestic consumer unit, connected
to audio-optimised wall sockets, and then passing power to components
via a
balanced mains unit (these electricity supply modifications made the most significant of all improvements I have heard)
All power leads and equipment interconnects supplied require
ugrading, which should be cables made with multiple wires woven and
screened to reject airborne signal-pollution (radio and
wifi frequences) and connections which offer the least electrical
resistance.
Finally, eliminate vibration through system racking, individual
components support, points of floor-contact. Most critical is
sorbothane-based support of the turntable and its power supply.
What changes in the sound?
Each improvement enables changes throughout the system, which is a
complex set of interlocking dependencies. Everything part in the system
needs time to adjust to other changes. 200 to 500 hours is not unusual.
Some changes make things briefly worse until finally the corner is
turned. Faith may be tested, but when everything is in place, the music
will fall into place.
Rhythm and timing will make music come alive and fresh, proper
control of bass will render it “musical” instead of boom and stop
suffocating the upper registers. Artistic intent becomes immediately
recognisable, emotion is palpable, communication between musicians laid
bare, artists technique revealed in individual notes not smeared or
blurred. The soundstage will become firm, forward, and expansive beyond
the speakers. You will have arrived at physical presence of Musicians in
the Room.
You will rediscover the qualities of music previously dismissed. You
have a new record collection awaiting rediscovery. It is a journey worth
making. Or maybe you are still grappling with the
CD or Vinyl frontier..?
We
hope the vinyl records we buy will be perfect, but the sad reality is
that with the passage of fifty years, passing through the hands of many
owners, vinyl has often been handled carelessly, and played on equipment
that raised the risk of damage with each play. Probably as many as
80-90% of records sold in the Fifties and Sixties have been filtered out
by dealers as unsaleable today. Of the remaining 10-20% in acceptable
condiition, many are still less than perfect.
