As with many others who are into music playback, I was thoroughly fascinated by the stereo imaging and sound staging capabilities of my hifi system when I first embarked onto my audio journey. I would seat myself in the sweet spot for hours and be on the constant lookout for placement of singers/instruments and the inner details available in the CD recordings (nowadays my favourite listening position seems to be on the long couch located on the left plane of my louspeakers). I love the organic texture and body of vocals and tone richness (timbre) of natural instruments and these qualities meant everything to me then, until a hifi buddy pointed out that there are actually far more important aspects in our enjoyment of music, ie. the pace, rhythm and timing (PRaT). As I am very much into female vocals (till todate), he asked me to listen to track 3 (Babes in the Wood) and track 8 (Adam at the Window) of Mary Black's Babes in the Wood CD with 2 different CD players and true enough, one of the CD player played these tracks better than the other – music has more tempo and made more sense to me. I never look back since although nowadays I seek the middle path between 'flat-earth' and some 'pretty sounding' qualities. I must clarify that PRaT is not all about playing music furiously fast and the rhythmic flow to slow music rendered them equally intoxicating. I owned an extremely fast sounding dedicated CD transport in Enlightened Audio Designs T-1000 in the past and coupled with Theta Progeny-A DAC plus its external anti-jitter and external power supply, what I experienced were first rate clarity, superbly fast transients and great dynamics but sadly no PRaT to speak of that I later sold them off.
Extracted from elsewhere:
Naim/Linn were the original 'flat earthers' since 1970s, an audio community more concerned with notes than with noise, emotion rather than location. Their systems could play in time, maintaining the fundamental structure of the musical performance whilst actually holding a tune. Rather than needing to know exactly where the musicians were standing on the stage they were more concerned with experiencing the passion that drove them to get up there in the first place. That spirit lives on amongst 'flat earthers' who have no need to justify their systems using tired 'hifi' criteria when in fact their rigs actually groove, connecting on a truly emotional level, offering both vibe and drama—words that real people might actually use to describe real music. This is where it all began...
Why 'flat earth'? The term was originally used in a somewhat derogatory manner by some in the UK hifi press when the Linn/Naim axis that had dominated the industry during the 1970s and 1980s gradually began to loose momentum. It is used by those who like pretty sounding hifi that usually can't hold a tune or play in time. Things now have moved on to the stage where 'flat earthers' are rather proud of the term! How can they take offence? Their hifi actually plays music!
Naim and Linn both sold their hifi using the concept that the actual portrayal of music was the most important factor – this brought forth the concept of the 'tune demo'. The idea is that in any A/B demo of two components, one usually allows the listener to 'sing the tune in their head' far easier than the other. This component is the better one, regardless as to how pretty the other may sound – i.e. musical content over presentation! Now 30 over years on it is hard to believe how radical this approach was, but bear in mind that hifi was then still being sold almost entirely on specifications. It is still sadly very often the case that an expensive high end audio system actually holds a tune far worse than a basic transistor radio!
The other key concept that both companies firmly believed in was 'front-end first' i.e. that the source component is by far the most important element in any audio system. If the information is not there at the start it can not be brought back later, no matter how good the amplifier or speakers are. Garbage in, garbage out. With any budget the majority of cash should be sunk into the source components, it is absolutely amazing to hear what quite affordable amplifiers and speakers are capable of when fronted with a real heavyweight source. This is in their opinion unquestionably the correct approach to selecting a audio system that is enjoyable to listen to in the long term.
Far too much audio equipment sounds unnaturally pretty: Hifi systems that produce 'smooth' or 'liquid' hi-hats and cymbals are inherently wrong. Hifi systems that produce 'soft' snares are equally wrong. A cymbal is in effect a bit of sheet metal formed into a slightly conical profile that is repeatedly hit with a wooden stick... sweet, smooth, delicate... yeah right. A snare drum is a metal or wood cylinder with a taut tuned skin on the two flat ends, with a series of tensioned metal springs on the underside, picture this construction in your mind, now hit it hard with a wooden stick. Did you get a soft sound? Audio systems with great gobs of bass may at first seem impressive, but try following the actual tune the bassist is playing, or hearing how the bass line grooves in with the drums. Slow fat bass is wrong bass.
The mainstream hifi press seems to be in a very sorry state at present, lacking any real direction, consistency or continuity, and giving the impression that advertising revenue is the sole driving force. The ideologies and products portrayed within the glossy pages are for the best part questionable and often laughable. The qualities that seem to hold the most appeal to reviewers seem to have little or nothing to do with the accurate reproduction of music. Bland systems to play bland AOR music on would appear to be the order of the day."
Happy New Year 2010!
It has been a long while since I last posted an article to my blog. I have just realised there are some questions posed which I have yet to respond to. My humble apology and I shall revert shortly! My hectic work commitment has been rather unkind to my blogging activities but perhaps the main reason could be that I am running short of topics to cover until I ventured into digital music playback with computer hard disk couple of days ago. As for the platform, I settled for the user-friendly iTunes from Apple Inc.
I first experienced iTunes at a wedding reception in Concorde Hotel, KL that I attended recently. I found the love ballads by Nat King Cole played through a notebook computer and some professional audio gears during the function admirable enough in the sense they sound extremely clear, detailed and spacious. So, after further online reading, I decided to give it a trial myself since I already owned most of the gears needed (save for some additional storage space in an external hard disk) including an USB-equipped DAC. iTunes ver 9.0.2, a freeware from Apple Inc., could be downloaded from: http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
The audio format of the latest iTunes is actually Apple lossless M4A and not the lossy compression of AAC which I had initially mistaken for. This error of my part has prompted Justblair to point out that other lossless compression files actually sound way ahead of AAC as per his comment below.
My USB-equipped Musical Fidelity V-DAC is part of my bedroom/study system comprising of a Sansui CDX-310 cdp, a TA2024 T-amp and a pair of Pioneer pure-malt loudspeakers. Cables used are anything fancy but freebies. I would rate my V-DAC only as decent, just-a-touch better than the internal DAC of my Sansui cdp but quite inferior to that of my Roksan Caspian m-series 1 cdp. This could perhaps be caused by the inadequate wall-wart PSU powering the V-DAC or the less-than-desired optical link I have been using all these while. At its price point, I seriously doubt the award-winning Cambridge audio DAC-Magic is any better than the V-DAC, though. I have not carried out a comprehensive comparison to confirm my hunch. It is not my duty to do so as I am merely a music lover, not a reviewer!
Listening to my computer hard disk in my bedroom/study system, I found that I am hearing more details, air and stereo separations than the CDs played through my Sansui cdp plus V-DAC though optical link. The soundscape of music is much bigger and the presentation more forward. I even found the bass definitions of the former to be better defined and more powerful. My verdict is I love it that I picked up a made-in-Japan 500 GB Buffalo external hard disk to explore further (it could be relegated for data backup duties if I were to dislike iTunes after extensive trials). The irony is that it is even dearer than a 1.0 TB Buffalo external hard disk which comes equipped with an external power supply. Huh!
I did not plug my computer plus V-DAC into my main system, hence no comparison nor comment is possible. My take is that for iTunes to sound better than CDs playback in my main system, I would be required to procure an external DAC capable of at least the same sonic quality as the internal DAC of my Caspian cdp. This, I am not prepared to. I am also not willing to give up all my CDs picked up throughout the 19 years' period, as yet. Perhaps later but then there would be back-up requirement so that I do not lose all my music! I would instead prefer to explore new music with my computer hard disk instead of buying new CDs every now and then. A 60-minutes CD would take up approximately 1.0 GB of storage space plus the picture of the album, hence my new external hardisk should be able to accommodate give-and-take 450 CDs, allowing for 10% empty space. Wow, I would be getting so much more music with so few possessions!
Addendum on 20.01.2010:More hours of listening to music with the computer hard disk further reinforced my initial impression as reported above. The most apparent improvement over playback of original CDs music were ripped from are improved clarity and larger scale of soundscape. The organic feel and liquidity to midrange is non-existent, though. I opine that music played through computer hard disk sound more digital than through a CD player proper. Dare I believe that playing music from the computer hard disk through my V-DAC is better than a competent enough CD player? I honestly do not think so for I would require a better (read more expensive) DAC. See a review of Weiss Minerva DAC here: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/weiss-engineering-minerva-firewire-dac-review
I also observed that the playback of music from computer hard disk connected to an external DAC with the USB connection zapped the resources of my computer (a Dell Vostro 1520 Notebook with Intel Duo Core T6670 chip @ 2.2 GHz processing speed, 4.0 GB RAM, 320GB HDD and using Windows 7 in 32 bit environment) substantially.
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