From The Source
Haven’t heard of Mobile Fidelity? Get yourself over there right now and order some of the most AWESOME sounding recordings you’ll have the pleasure of listening to.
Wapsi Square
Slice of supernatural life YA comic PG-13 to R
Latest Medusa Comic
High Fidelity is something you can’t understand until you really try it…
Great Dietzel, too!
Looks like Dietzel finally understands what Monica was geeking out about…
Dietzel may not know tech – but he knows what he likes!
High praise, considering that his hearing range is 2-3 times greater than hers…
Cry clown! Cry and touch my canine heart!
Seduction, thy image is Monica in the first panel…
Sigh. I hate to sound as if i’m being negative for the fun of it or to be a troll …
But the only Mobile Fidelity recordings i ever bought didn’t really sound that much better than conventional ones of the same albums.
And their super-fancy gold CD of Procol Harum live with the Edmonton Symphony must have been mis-mastered, because it didn’t sound nearly as good as the regular vinyl i bought years earlier.
Now, i really loved some of Audio Fidelity’s albums…
But Audio Fidelity doesn’t do as much or any of the Classical/Baroque/Romantic and early 20th century music as Mobile does. 🙂
Yeah – but they’re real big on period instrumentation.
Mobile Fidelity CDs don’t use the dynamic range killing peak levelling you find on most modern digital masters. Their version of Procol Harum Live is WAY better than the regular CD versions.
I didn’t find it so – and both it and the regular CDs were inferior to the vinyl (on my system).
Compression on CDs is mostly restricted to pop/rock, rather than things like classical. And pop/rock has *always* been heavily compressed for the most part – which is how it’s supposed to sound.
(At one time, almost all studios had a standard automotive 6 x 9 speaker in a box to jack in and check their final mix on pop/rock tracks with.)
Yup, no quicker way to reliably ID the geeks in a forum than 1) Electronics, 2) audiophile music, 3) audiophile music electronics.
FEEL the love.
AMEN!
I’ve got some MFSL Ultra CD’s I bought starting at Winter CES in what, 88? And they are good.
But I’m more a Telarc guy myself. You want to torture-test a sound system, stuff in Don Dorsey’s “Bachbusters” and crank it to 11 or 12 – If their woofers can survive the “Toccata & Fugue in Dm” without breaking up and/or going into Low Earth Orbit, it was built right.
And then there’s the Telarc Kunzel “1812 Overture” complete with Cannons… :-O
“Bachbusters” was one of the first CDs i bought.
And every time you play it is a new “original performance”, because it was created entirely in the digital domain…
Frank Zappa’s “Hot Rats” CD (while a lot of Zappa fans criticised his remixes on some tracks) has an incredible soundstage, especially on the opening track, “Peaches en Regalia”. Makes even a factory-standard car stereo sound like an expensive rig.
*shudder*
clowns.
anyone know the timeline in this comic?
is this going on the same time as jin’s run in with her ghost/vision or is this another day?
I love good music, but I admit to knowing little about operas (and many musicals). However, I discovered that Pagliacci is about Canio, a troupe leader, who’s girl has been cheating on him. Naturally he goes berserk.
Oooo…I love operas and musicals! I think they are (sometimes) exceptionally underrated by those who aren’t in the know. 🙂
kinda like this?
Here’s an explanation of Pagliacci by some of our better-known musical figures of the early 1950s…
This story line has been a showcase of M’s face. The joy of getting the tubes. Her expression as she inhaled deeply to fill her bres..er, lungs that is. Bravo, Paul, bravo.
Totally agreed!!! 😀
Oh..I see. THAT’S what those round plastic things I inherited (and the occasional pinkish-translucent) are for.
Why don’t the make’em smaller? They don’t fit in my Marantz CD6003….
Well, they do (- er, did?) The larger ones are generally played at either 33 1/3 RPM or 78 RPM. The smaller ones are usually (but not always) to be played at 45 RPM and contain fewer tracks.
Unless you’re Calvin, of course–then all bets are off.
Tell me about it. The PeerGynt-suite gets a whole new “happy vibe” when played at 45, let alone 78. It makes one realize where “Gabba-House” came from—>modern kids that didn’t understand that most LPs (except super-singles of course) run on 33 1/3 😛
Bravissimo!
It’s amazing how many people at my company are audiophiles. Several have threatened to sit me down and show me what I’m missing out on. Maybe I’ll have to take them up on it after all.
Oh, and Bruce? I heard the story about recording the cannon for Telarc’s “1812 Overture”…. and you’re saying that with the correct setup, it’ll sound even better? Hmmmmm.
Well, with the wrong setup, you just get general carnage like shredded cones and melted voice-coils, and/or a couple of smoking craters where the amps used to sit… This is precisely why it’s used for Car Stereo “Blast-out” competitions.
That, or you find out the system was seriously under-powered or badly balanced (too much attention to the mid and top end) when it starts breaking up.
I usually stop well before the carnage point, because I’m really sensitive to the distortion a bad system starts throwing out. If you haven’t filled the room with the orchestra by then, with a nice spread sound-stage where you can close your eyes and place every instrument and singer spatially, that’s a FAIL.
I recall hearing an account by a Mercury sound engineer about recording the cannon fire for the original 1950-era recording of the “1812 Overture” using real cannon. The cannon shots were recorded separately (outdoors) and dubbed into the studio recording of the orchestra.
The recording team ruined several good microphones because they didn’t realize what the overpressure of a real cannon shot would do, even with the mike BEHIND the cannon. Once they had enough baffles around the mikes to keep them intact, they still had to crank WAY back on the recorder’s sensitivity to avoid overloading it and getting a horribly distorted “BWAMF” instead of good crisp BANG.
That seems odd, given that it was already well known what fully-charged blank rifle and pistol cartridges could do to mikes from experience in movie-making.
On a related subject – my favourite comedy set in the world of music, “Get Crazy” (featuring Malcolm McDowell as rock titan Reggie Wanker, Lou Reed as Auden, a Dylan parody and Lee Ving as Piggy, a scathing caricature of Iggy Pop) has a sequence that always makes me wince – one of the backup singers in “Nada”‘s all-grrl band blows a huge bubblegum bubble and pops it directly into the mike.
I always have an image of a soundman, headphones askew, coming down onto the stage and shooting her right there…
And speaking of soundmen and mikes, courtesy of Dannjy Thompson, compeer at Fairport Convention’s Cropredy Festival, 1990:
Q: How many soundmen does it take to change a mike?
A: Two! Two! Two!
Poor pre-production prohibits post performance.
AKA, some things can’t be fixed. I bet nobody thought to equate the science that makes guns go boom with the SAME science that makes cannon go boom. It’s a little scary to think about how much those mics would have set them back monitarily. (Aside: I work with that kind of equipment at school. It’s always a gutwrencher to see “Estimated cost of replacement: $67,800.00” for just a camera, tripod, and mic kit.)
Since I’ve already cited Calvin, I might as well do another.
I do recall a radio station that, without notice, changed format from classical to pop/rock. Then they were surprised when a major advertiser, a sound system store, dropped them.
When they contacted the store, the owner explained that pop/rock doesn’t sound noticeably different on a cheap system–and most users don’t have the bucks for an expensive system. Classical music listeners, though, tend to have both the bucks and can notice (or claim to notice) the difference in quality.
I guess you are talking ‘difference in tonality or tune’ , but…
Surely the ‘heavy, fast, singing’ in pop/rock would be the thing that people noticed??
I know quite a bit of pop has a slow tempo, but I thought most classical was quite slow??
do tell, is there classical that has a similar tempo to katy perry, or Black eye peas??
Even when my ears were at their peak, I couldn’t hear the difference. Now … I prefer CDs; there is a smaller noise-to-signal ratio.
I have to say, I love the top she’s been drawn in the last couple of days.
I have a lot of old vinyl. Much of it has been gathered from many sources, and is not in the best of shape. That said, there is a mellowness about analog sound that can’t be replicated by digital counterparts – at least to my ears.
Me too, but the vinyl doesn’t get played because it’s a hassle to do it justice. That “warmth” is just low-order distortions, which are okay if you expect it.
CD’s are a better way to deliver the audio to the consumer nice and clean IF the recording and mastering is done with the proper care to getting a clean signal recorded.
If you don’t get the performance into the mikes clean (with proper selection and placement) and keep it pure through the mixing desk and the recording chain, it really doesn’t matter whether it’s being saved on digital or analog, reel-to-reel, straight to a record mastering lathe or a CD Burner… You’ll still have garbage.
The bad rap CDs got in the early days was mostly down to the fact that the early CDs were often as not badly engineered – many were made from EQed masters intended for making LPs.
Dietzel knows excellent sound when he hear it.
Monica must also, to have put together her sound system.
Mind you I am not an Opera fan, but Great sounding music is Great sounding music, no matter the style.
Ha, M’s “I know right!” has me giggling, as I’ve often said that when tweaking my friends equalizers to give their so-called “perfect setup” that little bit of extra oompf. That being said, I enjoy all types of music, but I feel this has caused me to stick to mainstream more than anything else. It’s kinda like I’ve skated on every genre but i’ve never broken the ice…
I have to admit I had to look up “Pagliacci. YouTube to the rescue. (I am more of a Baroque and electronic-music guy)
I can imagine how a system with an exellent sound-stage, and some muscle left for the peaks, will sound blaring this out.
Dynamic-rich stuff like that, is killed dead on the spot by the reckless compression that’s often used to cram 75 minutes on a CD…
Wait, what? o_O;
Unless you’ve got a data CD with MP3 files on it the only compression you’ll find on audio CDs is dynamic range compression (which does nothing at all for the amount of space used on the CD), not lossy compression algorithms used to make sound files smaller – and you can put up to 80 minutes on a bog standard audio CD anyway…
np: The Black Dog – Tunnels OV Set (Autechre Remix) (Final Collected Vexations)
I satand in awe of Your geekiness and i stand corrected.
“Dynamic-rich stuff like that, is killed dead on the spot by the reckless dynamic range compression”
Better…
my mate is a reel hifi geek – he can actually tell the difference between two DA converters!! :O
To get any good music out of any medium, CDs included, you will need to spend upwards of £3000 on a component system, and then about as much on a pair of speakers!!!
not for the faint- hearted…
Clown. Do not want.
Nah..is sad clown..not scary..
Is homicidal clown. That’s scary.
after watching poltergist and IT – ALL clowns are scarey – even sad ones
specially the sad ones. they’re the ones who sucker you into comming close to them…
I would normally agree with you, Ann, but Jay-Em is right. Sad clowns aren’t as creepy….just sad.
This sad clown KILLS PEOPLE.
Despite what some of what i’ve said might sound like, i wish i could build myself a home system (with tubes at least for the finals) that could almost be classified as a WMD.
I want something that will rattle the windows and shake the walls when running right there in the straightest part of the characteristic curve…
And i want speakers that could stand the gaff if i cranked that same system up to 12 – forget about eleven…
I just reminded myself – one of my favourite xkcd strips…
…and discussion thereof…
Omighod. Read the reviews…
And this page – note that the price posted is apparently Amazon’s actual retail price.
And i thought that people who buy Monster Cable products were getting shafted.
At this sort of prices, it’d better kiss you after ward and sing you a lullabye, too…
Those have to be the absolute BEST reviews for a product! $9999 for a 1.5m ethernet cable! Or get the refurbished for $999.99! lol And shipping is a mere $4.50…
So this came out on what? April the first?
The cable is real. The prices posted for the Denon are from Amazon – associated vendors “offering” them; Amazon itself apparently doesn’t carry them any more.
The cable was priced at $499.95 when it was available.
Now, the price shown for the second cable is apparently the actual price…
Oddy, the page has changed and now they are offering a different cable for a mere $8,450.00. What is it about them, or the cables shown before, which could possibly be worth that much?
and here’s an interesting site about computer music and sound in general.
…and, in the “Fun” section of the above site, a checklist for pre-generating audiophile arguments, thus saving time and aggravation for everybody.
All of the articles linked down the left side of the “Fun” page are well worth reading; and all of the straight articles on the main part of the site look pretty good, too.
Somewhere I still have a half-speed-mastered copy of Boston’s first album.
These days most of the time when I tell that to people they say, “Huh?”
I think I’ve played it all of twice. Once was to transfer it to metal cassette with Dolby C, which is the best I could do at the time. This is the copy I play most of the time. (Not often any more.)
Someday I’ll finish re-building my Dynaco Mark IIIs and the PAMs and… well, we’ll see.
Okay – a tube radio for Monica.
nice, ‘cept i noticed the dimensions are a little small… 🙂
What does it say about me, that I find the most alluring part of the comic the drawing of the turntable, but I won’t play records on the college radio station because I’m scared of the turntable?
Well, one should be extremely careful with antiques.. 😛
That’s my issue with analogue, it’s perishable. Given distance and time, analogue deteriorates into noise. Digital is more resilient.
To a point. LP’s will last longer than most other media as an archival medium. They only detiriorate when used repeatedly.
One thing I’ve noticed about people who are audiophiles, it really seems to impair their ordinary enjoyment of music on anything other than a $300000000 system.
It’s easy to make that emotional response. I know, I used to think that way, as well.
BUT… it’s surprisingly easy to get very high-quality equipment used, comparatively cheaply, in excellent shape. By going to three different stores within an hour’s bus ride from my house, I could put together a quite nice system indeed for less than two grand, or a nice stereo system for less than $400. Not audiophile-level, perhaps, but you’ll see what all the fuss is about 🙂
Take Vaseline, smear it on glasses that you’re wearing, and appreciate the Mona Lisa. Now take ’em off, and look once more. That’s the difference between a cheap system and a nice one… all the rest is the lovely pursuit of the point of diminishing returns… a chase you don’t have to make, but a nice system will repay you and indeed will make you a chauvinist.
Why assume I don’t have a nice home system or that is even the issue?
My favorite recording of Pagliacci has probably the worst sound fidelity of any commercially made, studio recording of the opera. But that’s because it’s over 100 years old…
My favorite 1812 overture is Morton Gould’s 1958 (?) Living Stereo LP, likely never to be issued on CD. I feel for ya.
I’ve always wanted to buy a DC converter just so I could hook up my car stereo and its speakers. For some reason car audio has always sounded better to me than regular home stereo.
That’s because a Car System can draw straight from the car storage battery and has the potential to produce much higher peak power. And you can easily add several Stiffening Capacitors between the power supply and amplifiers to get even better performance.
Home Systems that aren’t in the Megabuck category are constrained by the “oomph” of the power supply section feeding the power amp output tubes – You might get two or three cycles of full rated power, but then the capacitors in the power supply section are drained (and the diodes heat up, etc.) and the output falls off fast.
And a Car System at home on a simple DC Converter would likely sound even worse than a home system. They don’t really make DC Power Supplies with enough output to handle that.
You really need a large DC Converter set as a float-charger, a Deep Cycle wet battery or two (100AH Minimum), some seriously large power cables, and one to several 1-Farad capacitors at the car amp power input.
Or better yet, an Optima Spiracell Yellow-top battery, their internal resistance is so low they can easily provide the 1000A plus peaks your amplifier needs without capacitors.
Alas, super fidelity in music recording/playback is rather lost, when you have tinnitis. No matter how sweet the sound, it will always have that high-pitched tone riding atop it in my ears.
On the plus side, it means I’m just as happy with an inexpensive stereo and MP3 playback, as I would be with a top-of-the-line audio system and ultra high fidelity recordings.
Man bursts into tears. Says “But doctor…I am Pagliacci.”
Good joke. Everybody laugh.
Roll on snare drum.
Curtains.
I don’t understand how vacuum tubes make music better. How does old tech trump new? :/
In short, tubes can channel more power than transistors, albeit for a shorter time. This gives them a larger range during their lifespan.