Design w Sound

PC オーディオ fan - Japan

July 4, 2009, 1:41 am |

Teruhisa Onda (照久御田) and I become very good friend. We share audio philosophy through emails and blog. In last few months our blog and email was down. However Mr. Onda still working very hard towards better quality of computer playback.

The publication he is currently working with - AudioBasic releases a new magazine especially target on PC Audio. This “PC オーディオ fan” is far by the greatest documents/magazines about computer audio playback in history. Congratulation Teruhisa san! You are pioneer. The magazine includes a CD-Rom which contains 24/96 high resolution music wav files. The recording was made in Studio K’s with DPA4090, 4006 microphones. I think, even if you cannot read Japanese, you may still want to get a copy. (Drop me a message if you want to have one, I may form a group buy if there is significant demand.) If there is possible to have a translate version in Chinese will be very helpful for local chinese.

I am also surprised to see Takahito Miura in an interview. He is a master now with latest digital audio technologies. It is my great honor to be friend with Mr. Miura san and Mr. Onda san. I look forward for my next trip to Japan and meet with them in person.

This magazine has proven that computer audio has reached high end audio circle. More solid audio theories is needed to avoid confusion. Let’s work hard.

A copy of the above few page mentioning AJP-III, DWS Blog and Weiss DAC2 can be found here

Please also visit Onda san Audio Blog

AJP-III available in Thailand

July 3, 2009, 9:31 pm |

We are happy to announce Thailand HiFi Company - discovery hifi becomes AJP-III LE new dealers. We look forward to provide more good sounding music for audiophile in Thailand. And I look forward to meet them soon too.

ATC-SCM100ASL

July 3, 2009, 7:21 pm |

We have added ATC-SCM100ASL as our main monitor around April 2009. They are large size and very heavy monitor. I still remember the first day when we replaced our previous Manley ML-10, the ATC was sounded so horrible that we wanted to throw it out from the window. We have stopped our mastering session for a week also. After 3 months of burn-in, fortunately the sound is becoming better and better. The ATC-SCM100ASL is good for work. It is easily shown all problems of different recordings. It can handles large range of SPL (from low to very high SPL). I am surprised how good they sound from high resolution digital audio and classical music, but they are not for most of today hyper-compressed pop tunes.

The Manley ML10 is a legendary loudspeaker. Al Schmitt mixes all Diana Krall albums with it, and Doug Sax (TML)was the inventor/designer of this Tannoy (coaxial horn tweeter+10″ woofer) / Manley Carbinet hybrid. My head still keep having Doug Sax comments on “Don’t sell these speaker!!” Since we don’t master with more than 1 pair of monitor, we set it up on another corner in the mastering room, connected with the Sony PCM-9000 Master Recorder (XRCD recorder), and the latest MetricHalo ULN-8 (SonicStudio 305). As you can see from the photo, we have a Primacoustic - Recoil Stabilizer under the ML10. It works very well, especially with not so ideal supporting platform (e.g. shelf)

BTW, if anyone knows where I can get the Sony “MSD-1200″ - MO Disc for the PCM-9000 Master Recorder, please let me know. We want to get some blank disc.

Telarc/Concord/Fantasy SACDs US$5

July 3, 2009, 6:42 pm |

We are find ways to update all the blogs. There are so many new & exciting things to share with you all.

Last week got the chance to order some Telarc SACD with a great price at US$5/each. Plus buy 9 get 1 SACD free.

I don’t know if this sales will be back. But it is worth to check out the site:

http://www.concordmusicgroup.com/

Good luck to music purchase! We all need music, good sound everyone.

iTunes 8.1.1.10 PC Problem

May 24, 2009, 3:52 pm |

On our previous article “CAS 5 - CD Ripping”, we have proven that iTunes is a good audio file player. Personally, it is the best GUI program and more importantly, the playback output is bit transparent for CD ripping and playback. However, recently we heard more Weiss user reports that the iTunes doesn’t sound good for high resolution file, and Daniel also shared some measurements with us. This is an update article about our findings on iTunes version 8.1.1.10

We test iTunes version 8.1.1.10 on both PC & MAC.

When you use iTunes (PC & MAC). The first thing you should do is uncheck those DSP processing like Crossfade, Sound Enhancer, Sound Check etc. These are under the Preference setting.

itunes-eq

Turn OFF the Equalizer (uncheck the on box), even all the settings are 0dB but ON, your music playback quality will be highly affected. on MAC iTunes ( Under top menu bar - “Windows Tab” apple key + option key + 2) / PC iTunes (Under top menu bar - “View”)

We did some loop test. What is a loop test? We playback the file from iTunes and capture the output back to computer to compare. Since digital is binary number, if the playback output and record input is transparent, the I/O loop should carry the bit transparent identical data. For more details regarding the loop test, please read our CAS 5 - CD Ripping article.

iTunes MAC with our Audiophile Jazz Prologue III various resolution formats.

Mac iTunes => 16/44.1 & 24/96 & 24/192 => Weiss AFI1 => PC Lynx => Wavelab

We lined up the captured file in sync with the original file. Flip the priority (L&R) on one file and playback both file together. If they carry identical data, their waveform will cancel out each other, and the result is no output level down to 24bit limit (-144dBFS).

In ALL resolution, the Wavelab captured file is bit identical with the source file. The result proves Mac iTunes 8.1.1.10 is bit transparent on playback.

PC iTunes 8.1.1.10

We did the same thing with PC iTunes

PC iTunes => 16/44.1 & 24/96 & 24/192 => Weiss AFI1 => PC Lynx => Wavelab

The PC iTunes playback CD resolution file (16bit/44.1kHz) perfectly, our CAS 5 - CD Ripping article is still remain valid. However playback 24bit/96kHz & 24bit/192kHz files are not bit transparent to the source file. This is a shocking bad thing!

More testings:

We did another tests by using SARACON to convert one of our 24bit/96kHz file to 24bit/44.1kHz file. We playback this 24bit/44.1kHz by PC iTunes and recapture with Wavelab. The test result shown there is a truncation on -96.33dBFS (@16bit).

Conclusion:

ITunes PC & MAC Version 8.1.1.10 provides different results.

Mac iTunes 8.1.1.10 produces bit transparent results on all our tests: 16/44.1 & 24/96 & 24/192

PC iTunes 8.1.1.10 produces bit transparent result on CD format (16bit/44.1kHz). The digital data higher than 16bit (20bit-24bit) or sampling rate (96kHz & 192kHz) are changed by PC iTunes playback engine.

If you are using PC iTunes, playback CD is absolutely fine. For high resolution file format, you will need to find another program at the moment. I am quite sure this is a bug and Apple should fix it in future update.

The following test is using Wavelab as playback and record engine on 24bit/192kHz with bit transparent result.

AJP III - Update/ New Free Sample

May 24, 2009, 2:49 pm |

New Updates for 30IPS records.

(1) We added 3 new worldwide dealers:

Marson Audio(www.marson-audio.com) for Spain and Portugal.

Raindrop Audio for Singapore (www.raindropaudio.com) and Midland HiFi Studio for UK

For our full worldwide dealer list, please visit here

(2) We are partnership with HiFiTrack.com (www.hifitrack.com) to provide highres file downloading services. The format is uncompressed WAV on 24bit/96kHz. Digital edition of booklets/cover are provided with the full album purchase with HK$180. You can also purchase each song with HK$20. This provides an alternative solution for people who like the downloading purchase.

(3) NEW Free Samples! We added “My One and Only Love” to our free sample list for audiophiles who support our web blog and high resolution music file format. Again we are providing full resolution samples on 16bit/44.1kHz, 24bit/96kHz and 24bit/192kHz! You may find some surprises later today about these samples. Check out at our download free sample page.

AJP-III - Marson Audio

May 24, 2009, 2:16 pm |

Marson Audio is one famous highend audio distributor in España (Spain). The director Israel David Martinez is a classical composer and conductor. As you can see on its website, from music selection, to blog photos, product range, you can sense the superior taste on music and sound.

We sent 2 samplers to Israel earlier and Marson Audio wrote a review for Audiophile Jazz Prologue III. This is our first Spanish review. Marson also imports AJP-III into Spain and Portugal areas. We look forward to further work together with Marson Audio. Their product range is very focus and refine.