Category Archives: Hifi

Tempted to bang on the walls to alert your noisy neighbour to your plight?

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Don’t.

Firstly and as many Londoners might naturally feel, there is of course the very practical consideration that fighting back in this way tends only to inflame an already delicate situation. Secondly, here in the UK at least, in your malice you might be creating an actionable private nuisance yourself!

Sound strange? Maybe, but look what happened when this kind of case was brought to court, many moons ago…

The case of Christie v Davey, 1893, 1 Ch 316

Seems that Christie here was a music teacher, who gave lessons in her house. Mr Davey, living in the semi-attached property next door, didn’t much like the noise. It seems he complained directly to Mrs Christie more than once. I’ve just found online a letter purporting to be penned from Mr Davey to Mrs Christie:

“During this week we have been much disturbed by what I at first thought were the howlings of your dog, and, knowing from experience that this sort of thing could not be helped, I put up with the annoyance. But, the noise recurring at a comparatively early hour this morning, I find I have been quite mistaken, and that it is the frantic effort of someone trying to sing with piano accompaniment, and during the day we are treated by way of variety of dreadful scrapings on the violin, with accompaniments. If the accompaniments are intended to drown the vocal shrieks or teased catgut vibrations, I can assure you it is a failure, for they do not. I am at last compelled to complain, for I cannot carry on my profession (the defendant was an engraver) with this constant thump, thump, scrap, scrap, and shriek, shriek, constantly in my ears. It may be a pleasure or source of profit to you, but to me and mine it is a confounded nuisance and pecuniary loss, and, if allowed to continue, it must most seriously affect our health and comfort. We cannot use the back part of our house without feeling great inconvenience through this constant playing, sometimes up to midnight and even beyond. Allow me to remind you of one fact, which must most surely have escaped you–that these houses are semi-detached, so that you yourself may see how annoying it must be to your unfortunate next door neighbour. If it is not discontinued, I shall be compelled to take very serious notice of it. It may be fine sport to you, but it is almost death to yours truly.”

Evidently the letter (which is also referenced and indeed quoted here) didn’t have much effect, and so it seems that Mr Davey took to making noise in retaliation whenever he heard anything from Mrs Christie.  Mr Davey’s noise in turn distracted Mrs Christie’s music lessons, and so Mrs Christie took Mr Davey to court to get him to stop.  According to records I’ve found cited many times online, it would seem that the court ruled in favour of Mrs Christie and granted an injunction against Mr Davey.

Surprised?

When I first heard this story, it was told as Mr Davey having brought the case to court, to get Mrs Christie to stop her teaching activities, and that the court turned the tables on him.  This would have been a much bigger surprise than what I’ve found to have been documented.

Given the presented evidence of his ongoing sufferings, if this case came to court now I might still ordinarily hope for a ruling in favour of Mr Davey. But on reflection, I think there’s an principle at work here:  one cannot justify the creation of a new nuisance, especially out of malice, in order to fix or protest against another.

A lot of water has passed under a lot of bridges since this case originally came to court in 1893.  I’m intrigued to see what others might think of this case in light of our present-day exposure to noise, and whether attitudes have changed about such confrontation.  I wonder if there are any more recent rulings that might counter this one?

HMV: End of an era?

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The news that HMV is calling for administrators is hardly a surprise. As with Comet and Jessops, the question in my mind is “What took so long?”

It’s a cruel irony that I’ve seen some significant improvements to their London Oxford Street and Piccadilly stores in the last few months, especially in vinyl stocks. But that doesn’t really offset the issues I’ve been having with them lately. For incidence – none of the stores seem to have put much effort into being places that anyone would want to spend time in. The constant drone of over-loud pap-Muzak pervaded the entire experience, often distracting from what I wanted to buy. The vinyl sections up until a year ago were badly kept, with old bent/warped stock that was in a perpetual state of disordered chaos. This got better in the last few months at the Piccadilly store, but still wasn’t great.

Even finding CD’s was a chore, at Christmas time in the Westfield Stratford branch I was unable to find anything from the shopping-list of well-known artists we had compiled, except for Susan Boyle’s latest. The cheaply-published and packaged best-of’s offered for remaining artists on the list were hardly good gifts and often didn’t actually contain the ‘best’ of said artists’ output. DVD’s and BluRays were easier to find once I could navigate the crowds, but again I only had a 50% hit-rate. The eye-watering queues at the tills also didn’t help, especially for what should have been quick lunchtime purchases!

For me and my household, despite (always) being on a budget, price doesn’t have to rule the spending decision. Part of the fun of building our music and movie collection has been the voyage of discovery, and the sense of a good shopping experience. If the in-store experience is bad or even just merely indifferent, then that infringes on my perceived quality of the product. If the store doesn’t care about its contents, then why should I, unless I really know something they don’t? Certainly in that case I won’t order online from the same store – likely I won’t order anywhere at all until I find a store that does have it, and cares about it. In short – we tend to buy what we are looking for, or discover on the way – not always the cheapest, and rarely online.

An interesting angle on this was found when I took on the project to upgrade my grandparents’ tape collection to CD. Their collection has a surprising number of quality albums from the 80′s and 90′s, none of which I was able to find on CD in the high-street, HMV included. Given the amount of work involved in converting a number of old tapes to CD, restoring them to “like-new” quality levels associated with CD on the way so that the transition is an improvement as much as a necessity, it is usually far easier and more cost-effective to replace with store-bought new copies. The artists get more royalties, the stores get more sales, and I save myself hundreds of pounds in time, software and electricity doing the conversions myself – that’s a win-win situation! This ‘shopping-list’ style of shopping lends itself best to online retailers now – but even online only about 75% of the content is available, and I’d rather support high-street stores where I can actually physically browse, interact with staff, etc etc. In other areas of life I’ve had fabulous conversations with staff and patrons, even leading to increased sales (“hey, you’re looking for Curved Air, right? i just found some over here!”) and offers of real work. That won’t happen if I buy my music on Amazon!

Another negative experience, and one that pervades all the ‘big’ electronics/media stores I’ve encountered recently, is that there’s no real try-before-you-buy facility, especially on things like headphones and media players. Where such facilities are offered, staff tend to be rushed and pushy, and the range of equipment available for real-world comparison is usually much smaller than that available for sale in-store. Where kit is available for demonstration it’s broken, or priced at such a premium level that I couldn’t afford it even if it were the right thing – many “Beats” or “Bose” headphones for example are easily outperformed by (sometimes significantly) cheaper competition, but with no way to test this there’s no way for the consumer to sort the genuine star-players from the dross.

Seems to me that a lesson being missed here, and one that seems to be in common with Comet, Jessops and HMV, is that there’s a level of basic sales service, and customer experience, that is being missed. Sure, the economic situation isn’t helping. Sure, online sales are taking their toll. But the stores I choose to frequent for such things, especially music, are those like Sister Ray and Music and Video Exchange in Soho, where passion, care and above all, content, are king.

If HMV passes, that leaves small independents a niche. If they (and we as consumers) can exploit that, it could be a very good thing for the music industry as a whole. If they don’t, then physical music purchases will likely become a niche, and consumer electronics will likely follow behind, beyond what the marketeers can tell us all we should be buying next. Sad times. I enjoyed the variety and excitement in these markets in the 80′s and 90′s, and I’ll miss them now they’re all but gone.

More thoughts on our Dual 505-2 with Denon DL-160

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A few months ago I think I wrote here that I was struggling with vinyl sibilance and inner-groove distortion with our Dual 505-2, then fitted with its original MM Ortofon cartridge and DN-165E stylus. A partial solution was found with the upgrade to the significantly better Denon DL-160 MC cartridge.

We’ve moved house and played a lot of the black stuff since then, and some of it has been found to sound rather tired after a heavy life with previous owners. The result was that for some of our older discs, the inner-groove distortion and vocal sibilance caused by previous wear was getting me down.

Last night and this morning before work I spent some time with the deck in its new home, with the aim to get things set up as well as is possible.

Step 1: Align the cartridge

The first step in this journey was to find a suitable downloadable protractor to check that the cartridge was properly aligned – it’s so easy to get this wrong and somewhere in the move I’d lost my previous unit. So, off I went to Google and found this printable example, which printed exactly to the right scale on our printer the very first time.

I followed the instructions on the template, only after cutting the bottom strip (with the alignment markings) off so as to prevent the paper scuffing the arm and stylus.

The result was immediately obvious – much more detail, a little less distortion in the inner groove of older records like our copy of Marillion’s “Misplaced Childhood”. The soundstage is a little wider and set further around the speakers, both in front and behind. Centred vocals and instruments are really marked as dead-centre now.

Step 2: Check tracking weight and antiskate

Rather dangerously, this was done by ear, on the basis that I’m listening for increases or decreases in distortion in known tricky passages.  Queen’s “You Take My Breath Away” from their “Day At the Races” album was chosen for this – our first-run copy has significant problems on the left channel with sibilants blatantly distorting.

It turned out that I had to track much heavier than the Denon’s recommended 1.5g – actually I had to double that to 3g in order to take some control of the distortion. With other discs this rewards me with more detail and deeper soundstage, with better perceived stability.  My best guess at this point is that the cartridge is either a little stiff for this rig, or that the weight calibration of the tonearm has crept out of tolerance.

As for the anti-skate, the best overall sound (least background noise and lowest distortion on tricky discs) was found to be with 2.5g set in the Spherical range according to the dial on the deck – this gives a much more consistent sound across all discs tried so far.

Step 3 – Experiment with running with or without the sub-chassis suspension

Our new abode has victorian wooden floorboards on flexible joists, which happen to excite a resonance in the spring-suspended sub-chassis of this deck, particularly noticeable when someone walks across the room, or puts the washing machine on.

It turns out that turning the transport screws fully-anticlockwise to bolt the sub-chassis down cures this problem, and I’ve yet to hear any adverse affects of doing so except perhaps a very slight increase in the perception of motor rumble when listening at high volume levels on headphones. I don’t listen like that very often, so I think we can live with that.

Results

I’ve listened this evening to Jean-Michel Jarre’s “Oxygene” and Enya’s “Watermark” LP’s and am enjoying new levels of soundstaging and detail retrieval. Maybe once I’ve done some study this evening I’ll let loose with some more challenging material to see what happens. The signs are good, with hopefully little further damaging to our aging collection.

 

Samson S-Monitor test

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I’ve been building a cabling solution to make a basic IEM (in-ear monitor) system for work, and have had the opportunity to do some critical listening of our chosen headphone amplifier, the discontinued Samson S-Monitor.

It’s a simple device: feed it power from its wall-wart PSU, then feed it a stereo signal to its ‘mix’ input via the unbalanced stereo 6.5mm jack on the back. It can also receive a dynamic microphone input on balanced XLR. Each input has its own level control, which feeds a fixed-level amplifier which can power its two headphone outputs, both on conventional 6.5mm unbalanced jack sockets. I’d prefer for one of these to be a 3.5mm socket so that earbud/canal earphones can be used without an adaptor.

For the experiment I’ve plugged the unit into my EMU 0202 USB, fed from a Linux laptop providing audio from ripped CD’s, upsampled in real-time to 176.4KHz 24-bit.

Compared with the headphone output of my usual hifi amplifier, a NAD 3020B, all headphones have sounded smoother and more controlled when fed by the Samson, with less grain and what feels like a more linear, more dynamic sound at all playback levels.

Used with Sennheiser HD25SP’s, their sound becomes brighter, with wider soundstaging and less of a sense of being ‘closed in’ to my own head.

With Shure SE110 canal earphones, their sound is both brighter in the treble range, with more bass being allowed through and more dynamic range, especially on percussive instruments.

For a laugh, I also tried the earbuds bundled with my iPhone, which took on a much better top-end than when used with the iPhone or the hifi, but became over-warm in low-mids. That said, they did have better control of low bass notes, and seemed to play an octave lower than I’m used to.

All in, i’m surprised at how good this cheap little device sounds! I’ve yet to make it distort before either my eardrums or the headphone drivers give out – which suggests a good amount of headroom and good current delivery.

The only downside seems to be that it’s more sensitive to mobile phone interference than i’d like – If the headphone cable runs against a phone in a pocket, some interference gets through. I couldn’t make it pick up interference when holding an phone to the power cable or the audio input cables.

My advice? Buy one while you can.

NAD 3020 where it should be: In our rack!

NAD 3020B: Keeper or Clunker?

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Been a while since I last posted on anything audio-related – I’m taking that as a good sign because I know I’ve been enjoying a *lot* of music lately.

NAD 3020 where it should be: In our rack!
Our NAD 3020B in use. (Please forgive the poor photo!)

Many an audiophile posting online has an extremely polarised attitude towards the humble NAD 3020 series of integrated amplifiers, which seem to be very much a “love ‘em or hate ‘em” box. I always thought I was in the “love ‘em” camp, but until I inherited a 3020B from my father at the end of last year I never quite knew why. It’s not been the easiest of journeys, so please bear with me as I try to explain what I’ve found and what was going on at the time I found it.

If there’s any one lesson to glean from this experience, it’s that getting hifi sounding good is as much about the interaction of components working together as it is about finding of well-engineered components and slinging them together according to a spec-sheet.  These are also differences that I feel can make or break a system over the long term, but may not be immediately identifiable in typical demonstration arrangements that most stores can offer.

When inheriting our current system, my intention had been to replace my existing components one-by-one so I could check how the sound was changing at each stage on the way. I first swapped the speakers, as mentioned in another post. I then started repairing and using the record deck – plenty of other posts on that particular subject. With that now mostly bedded-in, i’ve come to the final part – using the 3020B.

Build quality

As a whole the unit feels well manufactured. Years of dust needed cleaning out of the phono contacts before connecting anything, but the speaker output binding posts are firm and accept 4mm banana plugs without modification – this amplifier was made in the generation(s) before the EU got their teeth into manufacturing regulations in the mid-90′s.

The source-select buttons are known on this series to be of slightly cheap construction, resulting in the plastic caps flying across the room when a new source is selected. Also, the source input sockets are somewhat loose.  This might be a result of their PCB flexing slightly when connections are made, or it might just be that the dimensions tolerance of the sockets themselves isn’t quite right. Again, this is a common flaw with amplifiers of this series, perhaps even of this generation.

The switches operate silently so far as the audio path is concerned, and the Bass, Treble, Balance and Volume pots/knobs also operate silently – rather impressive for such an old unit, especially if it’s ever been exposed to cigarette smoke, pets, small children and life’s little accidents as I know this one has.

Overall this unit is in better physical condition than I could have asked for – some surface grime aside, it’s basically unmarked except for the small hole drilled into it side where an intruder-alarm used to have a line threaded through it as a crime-prevention method. It’ll be an extremely rare find on Ebay that turns out in such good condition.

Sound quality – Take 1

Used with the Tannoy Mercury M20 loudspeakers it had been paired with in its previous home, the first impressions were that it is far warmer in tone than the 302 I was comparing it to, even with all tone controls at neutral and the loudness control off. Bass has more depth, stereo imaging is wider and deeper, but treble felt like a veil had been placed over the speakers.

Some experimentation with the Soft Clipping circuit showed no audible difference whether it was switched “in” or “out”.  I prefer to be safe rather than sorry, so I’ve left it “in” for now.

Another interesting experiment was to assess any audible differences between using the “Normal” (Low and High-pass-filtered) and “Lab” (Unfiltered) power amplifier inputs.  Theoretically the “Normal” input should be used, to filter out frequencies below 20Hz and above 20KHz, enabling the amplifier to use all its power in the audible frequency range and to run without interference.  The “Lab” input sounds better to my ear – soundstaging feels more solid, and the tonal balance a little more accurate throughout the entire frequency range. (See the first comment on this post for more about the correct selection of “Normal” vs “Lab” input).

Even having worked out which signal path to use, and to avoid the “Loudness” button, the amplifier was still not producing an overall sound I thought I could live with.  I therefore started to do some tweaking to work out where the “problem” was, if only to understand what was going on.

Experimenting with Pre/Power amp combinations

Both the 302 and 3020 have pre-out and power-in socket sets, allowing either to be used as the power amp for the other’s pre-amp section. First of all I wanted to see if the older 3020′s pre-amp section was the cause of the slightly muted treble. Some re-plugging later, I had both CD and LP feeding the 3020 pre-amp section, which in turn was wired to feed the power-amp of the 302. This combination had narrower imaging, slightly leaner bass, and still the soft treble that felt like it was hiding something.

Next I swapped the amp sections round, with the 302 pre-amp now feeding the much older power-amp section of the 3020, and everything seemed better. The soundstage was locked tight between the speakers for centred instruments and vocals, but there was much freer reign for anything panned between and even outside the speakers to be given space to do their thing. Either amplifier seemed equally capable of playing ‘depth’ information in recordings that have it, and so this was the way I left the units set up for some weeks while I got settled with the record deck and its cartridge.

Listening to the Tannoy’s through the 302 (using both its pre and power sections) I thought the sound was nicely tonally balanced, but always felt like I was listening through an imaginary window that the box placed on the musical world being painted in front of me. Conversely, the 302-pre and 3020-power combo gave slightly more extreme bass and treble presence, and effectively took away that windowed effect while fixing the veiled treble of the older amplifier used on its own.

System changes – a second chance?

Having settled on using the 302 pre-amp and the 3020B power-amplifier, a couple of things changed. First off, I found the new complexity of the system somewhat frustrating, but were willing to live with it if that’s what was going to give us the best overall sound. Then came the other major shift in our listening; I upgraded the phono cartridge to a Denon DL-160 MC (High output), seeking more accuracy of sibilants and better soundstaging. This much I got, but then many recordings were now too bright. Whether this was a result of longer-than-optimal running times on some discs, or perhaps due to an active mastering decision, I’ll likely never know.

Phono stages

With the new cartridge in place, switching between 302 and 3020 phono stages showed the differences between them were surprisingly subtle, but the older stage won out. It seems to reveal more midrange detail than the newer design, particularly with female vocals.  There’s also a lot more information being played from the background of mixes, better rendering things like room ambience and reverb tails. It also has better overall dynamics, and the soundstaging is a little deeper and wider.

This surprised me, since on paper the older design looks like it should perform worse than the new one. For one thing the signal-to-noise ratio quoted by the manufacturer is slightly higher in the older design, and I would expect its component tolerances to have drifted enough with age and use by now to have a significant negative effect, likely leading to loss of high-frequency detail and increased noise.

Just one side-note on the 3020 phono stage – it has two modes, one for MM (Moving Magnet) cartridges and the other for MC (Moving Coil) cartridges. MM carts typically have higher output levels than their MC siblings, but our MC is a “high output” model, compatible with conventional MM stages. Having tried the unit in both modes, neither sounds different than the other, even when the setting is “wrong” for the kind of cartridge in use. The phono stage shows ample headroom – I did experiment with using the MM cartridge with the extra amplification of MC mode and could hear absolutely no evidence of added distortion, even with discs mastered with very high recording levels. Further, using the MC mode with its extra gain ought to bring more measurable background noise into the mix, but I’ve yet to hear this in practise.

The 3020B on its own – Take 2

I decided to give the amplifier a second chance to fly solo, with vinyl as the primary source. Soundstaging now sounds wonderful with well-mastered discs in good condition – Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” and Eric Clapton’s “Slowhand” show a lot of their natural recording ambiences.  Newer, more synthetic recordings like Enya’s “Watermark” or Jean Michel Jarre’s “Revolutions” sound as modern as their source material and production values should present, with the end result sounding always convincing and really very human. Every instrument and voice has its own space in the mix, with no particular instrument or frequency range standing out above any other.

Poorer or duller discs can easily be improved with an adjustment via the tone controls. The effect of the tone controls is subtle but effective – I don’t feel like either circuit (Bass or Treble) impedes any other aspect of the sound passing through it other than whatever I’m telling it to do. Most bass-light recordings are usually too heavy in the treble, so a slight treble reduction usually brings things back into perspective. The inverse tends to be true if a recording is bass-heavy – usually a slight treble boost evens things out.

Turning to digital sources, playback again felt like it was lacking some treble at first, and the soundstage was somewhat vague. For most TV and DVD content we watch this isn’t a bad thing, and easily fixed with a slight adjustment to the treble control.

With playback of CD or downloaded content from our EMU 0202USB, it seemed that while bass and mid-range were coming through with much more timbre than I’ve been used to, and a much more even tonal balance, the high-frequency content was being reduced slightly, and felt slightly hazy, if such a term can apply to audio.

Having noted a slight increase in treble response over the few weeks the system lived in this new state, I’d have been happy to leave it there, concluding that either the increased usage had brought some components and connections back within tolerance, or (more likely) my subconscious processing of what I’m hearing was adjusting to the new system.

But then I made a discovery:  I could change the settings to run the DAC at a much-increased sample rate of 176.4KHz and 24-bit, with internal volume processing being done in the computer at 32 bits. This had the overall effect of giving slightly more audible treble, but more importantly it gave a lot more definition and control to the treble content.

I’ll likely write separately about this transition, but it really does take the digital playback to a level that competes with the best of what our vinyl source can give us. Listening to Royksopp’s “Senior” album for example, bass frequencies go into (and possibly below) sub-bass territory and the system keeps up, resolving the basslines with good speed – at no time does any bass note feel like it’s stopping later than it should. Synthesised kick drums tend to have very short attack times, and these are resolved wonderfully, the tonality of each kick drum making even different synths identifiable.  This is something I’ve never experienced before.

Remastered recordings I’ve complained about before (Al Stewart’s “Year of the Cat” and Genesis’ “Trick of the Tail”) are still a little too treble-heavy for my tastes, but have huge amounts of spacial and vocal definition, and are finally on a par with the original vinyl releases of the same albums.

Conclusion?

Based on some very practical testing, done by ear and confirmed with others who were unaware of the tweaking going on behind the scenes except for the cartridge upgrade, I have concluded that my 3020B is very much “a keeper”. Its warm tonal balance is generally flattering and does not interfere with the finer details of dynamics, soundstaging and definition. It is certainly able to show up any flaws of the recordings and source devices it’s amplifying. I think it fair to surmise that it does a good job with entry-level devices as they come out out of the box, but it does a truly great job when fed with higher-end devices, whatever form they would take.

MP3 compression ABX test…

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A friend pointed me at this interesting ABX test website that compares MP3 audio compressed at 320Kbps with MP3 audio compressed at 128Kbps.  Comparing A vs B and hearing discernable differences is one thing – but can you blindly hear a track and correctly identify it as A or B?

In the A vs B test, I could hear a difference between the two clips in each test, but there was very little in it.  It would seem that MP3 compression technologies have improved a lot since I last used them with any seriousness.

As for the “blind” test, it turns out that despite today’s tiredness, my use of Sennheiser HD25′s on a standard laptop headphone output, my hearing isn’t so shot after all!

Try the test for yourself here at mp3ornot.com!

On having two LP copies of Dark Side of the Moon

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I’ve inherited two copies of DSOM, and am completely torn between them. On the one hand, I have what appears to be a first-run (or certainly close to it!) copy, which has clearly been played to death on older, heavier and less-than-perfectly set up decks than ours. It’s also picked up more than its fair share of scratches through the years. Our new cartridge has just done a wonderful job making this old disc sing, but it’s clear that the detail has now pretty much been scraped out of the grooves.

Despite the crackles and occasional scrapes, this older copy sounds somehow more direct and open than the CD copies I’ve encountered, revealing little details during instrumental sections that I’ve not heard before. Bass is crisp and taught – and there’s an impression of the mix being polished to perfection, of being finished somehow. All the sibilance and crackling distortion on vocals and guitars is gone. Keyboards are clearly well integrated with the mix – adding texture, rhythm and depth, but without taking space used by the guitars. Cymbals are crisp without being overdone. Toms, snare and kick are a little softer in timbre than I would perhaps like. Another evident fault is that the treble in the left side is somewhat reduced in level compared with the right.

And so onto the newer copy, about which all I know is that it’s a Dutch pressing that somehow found its way to a Bristol (UK) record store to be purchased as a replacement for the older and more tired copy. Using “Money” as the reference track, this disc sounds more detailed than the original, but the bass is somewhat lighter, and less detailed in timbre. The soundstage is certainly helped by the fact that treble levels are more balanced between left and right channels. Percussion is certainly tighter, and the mix holds together better in the instrumental section of the track.

The problem is that the extra detail and the subdued bass combine to form a presentation that really does not sound as polished as the earlier pressing. It’s actually quite fatiguing to listen to. More like the CD presentation actually, but not in a good way.

Moving on briefly to “Us and Them”, the newer copy is much tighter both in terms of soundstaging and pitch stability – but it lacks the low-frequency weight and timbre that make the song so intimate in its early stages.

So in conclusion the newer disc is certainly more “hifi”, so is worth keeping for that. But musically I feel that the older copy conveys more of the message – and so it’ll remain in our collection as a great example of how technical superiority doesn’t always help convey the musical message more effectively.

First impressions of Denon DL-160 fitted to Dual 505-2

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Our much-anticipated Denon DL-160 MC cartridge was delivered this week, and I finally found a moment to get it installed in place of the ULM65/DL-165e the deck was originally supplied with.  Having confirmed everything was lined up, we’ve had a quick listen to the results:

  • The first note played with the new cartridge told me that the new cartridge is really giving a very different presentation to the original.
  • Much better handling of sibilants, especially appreciated in rock/pop recordings.
  • Wider and deeper soundstage.
  • More detail exposed.
  • More attack on percussion instruments.
  • Much-reduced surface noise – including pops and ticks.
  • Slightly reduced “bloom” around 130-200Hz, compared with the Dual ULM65/DN165e combination the deck was originally supplied with.
  • Lower, cleaner bass below 120Hz.
  • Massive increase in playback quality of extremely worn/damaged LP’s.

In my wife’s words: “Everything just seems to sound like it should”.  And I have to agree.  The vinyl warmth, dynamics and musicality are much in evidence, but with a consistency and tonal accuracy more commonly associated with digital playback.

I think it fair to say that the purchase was a resounding success – the cartridge clearly is working very well in our setup, better in fact than many who know our deck might think it worth spending money to achieve.  More detailed findings to follow…

Dual 505-2: Taming vinyl sibilance

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I’ve been really happy with our record deck since we inherited it a few months ago, but one common problem has been playing back 70′s and 80′s pop/rock LP’s that have been, shall we say, well loved.  I had an idea while last re-aligning the cartridge/stylus that part of the treble reproduction issue I’ve been experiencing with these discs was that the cartridge was slightly vertically offset in comparison to the vertical alignment of the groove – almost as if the cartridge mounting is somehow twisted slightly on the arm.

The Dual 505-2 has no azimuth adjustment to speak of, but the cartridge is held in with a pair of bolts, and so the azimuth could easily be corrected by inserting a washer or some other small object to act as a shim.   I didn’t have any washers to hand that were less than 1mm thick (way too thick for this project), so for the sake of experimentation I’ve experimented with a piece of copper tape retrieved from a no-longer-working hard drive enclosure.  It’s less than 0.25mm thick, and easy to cut and fold to the right height.

To get a rough measurement of what was required, I chose an older duplicate disc and set it playing, and observed the end of the cartridge right above the needle riding the groove.  I estimated that the left side of the cartridge (as it faced me) was about 0.5mm too high compared with the level of the LP spinning underneath it, so I cut a small piece of the copper, folded it to get the approximate thickness required and cut a bolt-hole through it, before inserting it between the cartridge and its mount.

After doing up the bolts and re-checking the overall alignment, I started the same disc playing and listened.  Much of the treble harshness had gone, and vocal sibilant distortion was down around 50% – much more listenable for some of the older discs in our collection.  What’s more, newer/cleaner discs are sounding much more dynamic, and their overall soundstage much more focussed – much more digital, one might say.  Bryan Ferry’s “Boys and Girls” was a particularly problematic recording, but was much improved in this evening’s round of listening tests. The same improvement was noted on playing a slightly ratty copy of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” LP.  We’re closer to hearing the music, and further away from hearing the equipment playing it.  That’s a good thing in my book.

Next on my list is to trim the copper shim to make the installation invisible, but it certainly proved my little theory and proves a nice illustration for anyone else wanting to try the same thing.

Thoughts on BBC Radio 3 Internet Radio now with HD Sound option

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Screenshot of Radio 3 HD Sound playing in Chrome

I wrote a while ago about some special events that the BBC were planning to use as opportunities to run trials on broadcasting “HD Sound” streams over the Internet, as a higher-quality alternative to the standard version most people access on from the iPlayer.

Here’s where I get to make a confession:  I never did get around to doing any critical listening of the improved sound streams!  So, a few months have passed and two key things have happened.  Firstly, the “standard” stream has been upgraded to 192Kbps AAC from the previous standard of 128Kbps – good news for everyone listening to the standard stream, and technically this is arguably already a big improvement over the concurrent FM, DAB, Freeview and Satellite/Cable streams.  The second big development is that the “HD Sound” stream is now available full-time on the Radio 3 home page by clicking on this link on the top right-hand-side of the Radio 3 banner:

On the BBC Radio 3 site, the bottom half is what you see until you roll over it with the mouse, when it turns into the bottom half

It’s worth pointing out that common wisdom indicates the difference between the standard 192Kbps stream and the “HD Sound” 320Kbps stream will tend to only be audible on top-notch equipment in ideal conditions.  I’ve done some quick listening tests between the  two streams on a MacBook Pro 13″ laptop using it’s built-in speakers – hardly the worlds best audio playback system.

I was surprised to hear a real difference between the two streams through the laptop speakers.  I was even more surprised when my wife was able to hear a difference between the two in a blind A-B test, and correctly attributed the poorer-sounding source as the lower-quality stream.

Both are great quality, revealing lots of dynamics in music and both sounding tonally very natural, so far as the laptop speakers allow us to hear.  But the difference between the two streams is subtle, yet significant.  Spoken word sounds a little clearer on the 320Kbps version, with sibilants (C’s, S’s, F’s, Ph’s) and the breathiness of the human voice sounding more natural, yet being less distracting at the same time.  With music, the 320Kbps version gives better tonality, in particular revealing more harmonic overtones of the recorded instrument or ensemble.

This bodes well for further listening tests on better audio equipment – an experiment we might find time to carry out tomorrow.

In the meantime, I must publicly say a big “well done, chaps” to the BBC staff involved – this is clearly a very audible step in the right direction and backs up a rumoured drive to increase the technical quality of all BBC output, in spite of the cynicism that has surrounded the transition from analogue to digital TV, and is presently surrounding the pained transition from FM to DAB, which may or may not yet be successful.