Jump to content

Graphic Equaliser


mightysaints
 Share

Recommended Posts

Sorry but didn't know where else to post this question.

I have dug out my old HIFI separates and my old records. The sound is great, still beats digital. One problem I have got is the Sony Graphic Equaliser i dug out. I can't remember how to intergrate it into the system.

The amp is an old Nakamichi 530 Reciever, an old Linn Sondeck record deck and a set of AR 91 speakers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Christ, you have a Linn Sondek..? Why on earth do you want to compromise the sound with a graphic equaliser..? The rest of your equipment is perfectly adequate. But if you must incorporate the equaliser, it'll be added between the amp and speakers.

 

But please, as a fellow audiophile, don't do it. You'll only end up taking it out of the chain after the first side of vinyl.

 

BTW, the old Linn Sondek, if in decent condition is worth £250-300 all on its own, so take care of it. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Christ, you have a Linn Sondek..? Why on earth do you want to compromise the sound with a graphic equaliser..? The rest of your equipment is perfectly adequate. But if you must incorporate the equaliser, it'll be added between the amp and speakers.

 

But please, as a fellow audiophile, don't do it. You'll only end up taking it out of the chain after the first side of vinyl.

 

BTW, the old Linn Sondek, if in decent condition is worth £250-300 all on its own, so take care of it. ;)

Thanks

The deck is in great condition but i will replace the belt and give it a bit of oil, got the wife out of the house the other day, stuck on Dark Side of the Moon and can't believe how good it sounded. My 5.1 is OK for the movies but going back to my old records has been a breath of fresh air. The Nakamichi is a reciever but for some reason the auto tracking analogue radio will not work (Dust i exspect) but i have hooked a DAB unit to it. I may try and get hold of an old NAD 3020 and change it for the Nakamichi as that was my 1st amp.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How are the lid hinges..? Finally got around to replacing mine the other month [£20 eBay], after a few years of propping the lid while changing records. While I was waiting for the new ones, I repaired the old ones, and tbh, they're stronger than the original design replacements. At least I have some superb spares. :D

 

Did think about selling the old kit. Couldn't do it in the end:

 

http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=703

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How are the lid hinges..? Finally got around to replacing mine the other month [£20 eBay], after a few years of propping the lid while changing records. While I was waiting for the new ones, I repaired the old ones, and tbh, they're stronger than the original design replacements. At least I have some superb spares. :D

 

Did think about selling the old kit. Couldn't do it in the end:

 

http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=703

Their fine as the deck has had little use, The only other thing i will get is some decent speaker wire. The kids saw it up and running and think its all so old and at least won't touch any of it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To all you audiophiles out there... get this!

 

http://www.elusivedisc.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AP-CDSL

 

At the bargain price of $25, it MUST be a good investment.

 

This post graciously acknowledges the help of the following website http://www.ilikejam.org/blog/audio/audiophile.html

 

;)

 

Seriously though, to you people who still have vinyl players...

 

Is it a nostalgia thing, or because (as is technically true, albeit a somewhat flawed theory) that vinyl cuttings are truer recordings than digital formats?

 

Or is it something else?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To all you audiophiles out there... get this!

 

http://www.elusivedisc.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AP-CDSL

 

At the bargain price of $25, it MUST be a good investment.

 

This post graciously acknowledges the help of the following website http://www.ilikejam.org/blog/audio/audiophile.html

 

;)

 

Seriously though, to you people who still have vinyl players...

 

Is it a nostalgia thing, or because (as is technically true, albeit a somewhat flawed theory) that vinyl cuttings are truer recordings than digital formats?

 

Or is it something else?

 

I reckon it might well be something else.

 

I know of record collectors who wax lyrical about removing the vinyl from it's sleeve, poring over it's surface and checking for scratches. Placing it on the deck and wiping gently with an impregnated cloth while it turns. Then placing the tonearm onto the disc and enjoying the sounds. meanwhile reading the album sleeve and smelling the age old cardboard that it's made from.

 

It's almost a sexual experience from what they say!

 

Go to an allnighter up North and the DJ has cameras placed strategically behind him to ensure that he's playing not only vinyl but genuine copies and not re-issues or boots!

 

It's most definitely a vinyl thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, it's a little more than that.

 

When CDs first came out, the buying public were told that their vinyl records were obsolete overnight. So overwhelmingly was this message pill taken that semi-serious technology programmes like Tomorrow's World would wax lyrical over a CD's huge advantages. They were: 1. Perfect sound. 2. High resistance to damage. 3. Continue to play despite huge gouges being taken out of them, let alone little scratches. 4. No clicks or pops 5. They last forever.

 

Well let's look at those advantages.

 

1. Perfect sound - Although methods have changed since the first efforts, music tracks are digitally recorded using a sampling rate. In the early years, this resulted in a CD type sound, that although dynamic, was considered edgy and lean, when compared to analogue records. It's interesting to hear vinyl records that have been pressed using a digital recording. They sound every bit as dynamic, although they tend not to be so edgy. Digital recording is always sampling the frequencies of sound/music at any given point. A digital signal must be converted to analogue before it gets to a loudspeaker. Analogue recordings reproduce the original in its entirety, and are read by analogue equipment and then passed to the loudspeaker. So which one is really perfect..?

 

2. High resistance to damage - No argument here; CDs are indeed highly user friendly, when compared to LPs. You can throw them around the room, cover them in finger prints or jam, pour olive oil over them, and once you've thoroughly cleaned them off, they'll play the same as usual. They're a lazy consumer's dream. The fear of moments when you left a young relative alone for 5 minutes, only to come back and find your prized LPs out of their sleeves and being rolled across the carpet, are long gone. You can do it to CDs and get away with it. The thought of that happening to an LP makes me shudder. However, I did once pick a very old deranged copy of Beatles' Sergeant Pepper out of a skip, and after cleaning it, played it and found it to be in super condition. The sleeve could have been better [it had been rained on for several days, I believe]. I gave the album to a mate, as I had a copy already. And as for CDs being really resistant to damage, there is a catch..!

 

3. Continue to play... - Well the simple answer is they do, and they don't, just like vinyl records. Only vinyl records have a tendency to keep playing more often than CDs do. There comes a point where a CD has had enough, and it comes surprisingly early. I once had two CD copies of the same album. One I bought, and it was in perfect condition, and one I found, and it was not. It had little scratches all over it. Nothing huge, but the shine had gone. Like a light plastic scourer had been taken to it. I cleaned it, and then put it in my CD player. The error correction went into overdrive as the buffering of the player ran out, and the songs became a series of IFs and BUTs, intersperced with huge silences. By contrast, my copy sounded great. So I got out some Solvol Autosol, and started to clean away the scratches [don't do this at home unless you're prepared to junk the CD afterwards], and see if I could help the poor thing along. Eventually, I'd cleaned enough of the gouges away to get my CD player to play the CD through. But it sounded really digital and edgy. This gave me an idea. See next.

 

4. No Clicks or Pops - I'd had two identical old demo CD singles from my Comet management days, and they were both very finely scratched. I'd since used them as little coasters in my study..! I cleaned them, and then played them both. They played through fine. Then I polished one [using Solvol again] upto a high shine. In fact, practically to perfect. I then played them both again. The polished one sounded superb, and the merely cleaned, evenly scratched one sounded dull, lifeless and CD like, i.e. edgy and lean. So CDs DO succumb to damage after all, even the lightest stuff.

 

5. They last forever - Well they don't. The early CDs didn't, going opaque, and sometimes even changing colour. Basically, if that coating is anything less than absolutely clear, the sound will degrade dramatically, and ultimately stop altogether. The issue with CDs is said to be resolved. We wait and see. But I wouldn't bank on them lasting as long as the average LP. Oh, by the way, they do warp too. And then they definitely won't play.

 

In summary, nobody doubts the easy sonic attributes of CD and DVD. But let's not forget their limitations either. They are very convenient and small, and it is relatively cheap and easy to get reasonably good sound out of them. Although you still have to pay huge money to get the very best digital sound can offer. LP vinyl records are inconvenient and big, and hard to look after. And it's bloody hard and expensive to get the best out of analogue sound. But if you try very, very hard, and design equipment that really does faithfully extract the information out of that tiny groove, you can get it to surpass anything that digital sound and equipment can do.

 

Here's a last thought. And it might make you think.. I never realised. We're all amazed, when we are shown in detail, how a DVD/CD player's laser tracked the pits and flats of a CD or DVD, and how they can be focused to see through to another layer. That's great stuff. But think about analogue records for a moment and how they are tracked. There's a tiny groove being closely followed by a shaped diamond. That diamond is mounted on a tiny metal bar, which disappears inside a cartridge, which is bolted [or clipped] to a headshell in a pickup arm of around 9 inches long, which waggles up and down, but is retained at its far end. The information from the groove is turned into an electrical signal by the equipment I've just roughly described and sent to the pre-amp. But that's not important. Just imagine a straight 3 inch deep trough as the groove. Now imagine one of those old wooden telegraph poles we no longer see. They're pretty bloody tall. Now imagine that telegraph pole is shaped, at one end, to fit the groove, and is anchored so that one end is tethered while the other end tracks the 3 inch trough. Now it has to do this totally faithfully, and not jump about in the sllghtest, while the trough slips by underneath it. Pretty amazing yes..? This is what a pickup arm allows to happen when playing a record. But the telegraph pole in the 3 inch groove isn't the pickup arm tracking the record groove. It isn't even the cartridge on the end of the pickup arm. It isn't even the metal bar [cantilever] that sticks out of the cartridge. It isn't even the diamond that is cemented to the end of the metal bar. It's actually the tiny shaped tip of the diamond that is the telegraph pole and the rest of the pickup arm is all extra. And all of it is helping that tiny diamond tip to stay in the groove to extract the tiny amounts of information. Not bad for ancient technology, wouldn't you say..?

Edited by St Landrew
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some interesting and very valid points from a man who knows his stuff.

 

But I think I should argue/discuss the case for digital media a bit more...

 

I agree that vinyl is, in theory, an exact replication of the original. However, this system is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. For example, you could have a perfectly cut vinyl, but if your needle is a bit knackered or you haven't kept the vinyl very well then you are causing distortions to the signal.

 

With CD, the only distortions come during the quantisation process and after that the only colouration comes from your amplifer/loudspeakers/headphones etc (the same as with playing vinyl). The whole process has sophisticated error correction to ensure that the data, from the engineers image file to the CD played on home systems, is the same.

 

With a 44.1 kHz sampling frequency that gives a Nyquist frequency of over 22 kHz (surely adequate given that the average CD buying human can only hear up to about 16 kHz), and a 16bit quantisation depth (giving 65,536 'levels' - again, surely enough given that the human ear can only notice changes of around 1dB), the quality of the reproduction, while not technically perfect, is very close to it.

 

I hope all the added punctuation still makes that legible.

 

 

To address another point... testing a CD's performance after being beaten half to death, scratched by an angry pack of tigers and then burned is all well and good, but I'm sure it would come out with flying colours when compared to the shattered melting remains of an LP.

 

I agree that the life of the CD is often overestimated. As with vinyl you have to keep it carefully to ensure it'll last a long time, but its still much less susceptible to damage.

 

They're also a lot easier and cheaper to make (can of worms there I feel)

 

But I do agree with pretty much all of what you say, particularly your summary.

 

A lot of people make the mistake of buying products from Bose, whose whole company is essentially a joke in the audio world. They simply use equalisation to make their speakers sound nice and use very cheap and crude parts. So yes, it makes some things sound nice, but imagine the dreadful feeling you'll have when you suddenly realise that in fact you could have downloaded the EQ sheets from the net and bought a simple equaliser (back on topic, YES!) for the same result.

 

And you wouldn't be paying £300 a month to some Germans.

 

Ultimately I think it's a bit like owning a vintage car...

The workmanship is incredible, a technology from when things were made to last and when quality was more important than quantity. But it takes effort (and money) to keep them maintained and working at an acceptable level.

 

Whereas with CD (or modern cars...) you can buy a standard version, it'll work perfectly well but perhaps loses some of the 'magic'.

 

 

 

Now I hope that makes some vague sense, and I know I've probably contradicted myself a few times. But hey, it's early.

 

 

 

Oh yeah... another, more technically minded, point...

CD subcode is amazing and very useful! A part of my job (albeit not a large one) is making compilation CDs for record companies from a load of old material they have. And believe me, the CD subcode is a fantastic invention! As are track numbers... This job must be a nightmare to do from vinyl pressings!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This guy - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eiDDJ-I47rA - isn't helping your cause...

 

But I can see from your posts that you aren't stupid like this bloke!

 

Hmm, I don't know. He's having a hard time describing what it is about analogue that he likes over digitally reproduced sound, but he gets there. And I also think he is right when he suggests the general buying public don't really care about sound quality; only that it is sufficient. Whereas, the performer is a little bit more discerning. That may be true, but I'll always remember an interview done by a respected hi-fi magazine of many years ago, with of all bands, The Hollies.

Now you have to appreciate, that the said Hi-fi magazine was bit holier than thou when it came to talking about musical reproduction and recording. So it was a bit of a shock when lead singer Allan Clarke said basically, I couldn't give a toss. There are always exceptions.

 

I suppose, like the confused performer on Youtube, I have enjoyed analogue over digital reproduction whenever there has been a decent comparison. Most people haven't the remotest idea of what is locked up at the bottom of a record groove, or in a CD track, because most equipment sold is sonically terrible. It somehow passes itself off as hi-fi, but has little to do with the term. The Bose speaker example is a fine one. However, in little informal tests that I've done, using my equipment [see my link in post 4 of this thread], where the listener has no idea what is going on, I've had comments like, your CD sounds better than my CD, where I've compared my squeaky clean vinyl record to their squeaky clean CD.

 

But you can't play LPs in the car or walking down the high street. And despite tape reaching some amazing heights in sound quality in the audio cassette, was only really solid hi-fi when it was reel-to-reel. Digital is just bloody convenient and good enough most of the time. And now that I've had tinnitus for the last 5 years, the difference between analogue and digital is barely audible. I can no longer be bothered to take the trouble. So my record collection is slowly, but surely being recorded to my computer, and then copied to another [no sudden HDD failures for me, ta]. I use the best equipment and techniques I can, and it's surprising how the quality level keeps up. Another thing is that, years ago, there was always a slight fight between my listening to the quality of the sound, and the tunes. With digital, I no longer do that. It isn't going to get a jot better or worse, and therefore the music is what I'm listening to. So perhaps I have something to thank Tomorrow's World for after all. ;)

Edited by St Landrew
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

View Terms of service (Terms of Use) and Privacy Policy (Privacy Policy) and Forum Guidelines ({Guidelines})