Let's Talk Digital

Music as represented in 1's and 0's. Discuss anything pertaining to D hardware - CD, DVD, SACD, DAC, etc.

Postby JackD201 » Mon May 30, 2005 8:32 pm

Articles? Naah, listening experience yes. Clean, clear, uncoloured no sound signiture of its own. Warm regordings sound warm, recordings done obsessive compulsively sound OC as well :lol: What I liked most about them was how they play noise. Yup N-O-I-S-E. Distortion from guitar amps are typically what I find the most painful experience when listening to digital. With the Meitners they sound like the amps distorting not like the channel strip distorting. That is a HUGE difference. If I could afford them I'd go for them too. The Burmesters share a lot of traits and i would consider in the same league as bugsy said quite aptly change in flavor lang, mas may konting lambing siya at the same time may konting dagdag sipa and by konti I really mean konti. Germany has a lot of kick ass gear too bad they rarely get any press states side. Besides matagal nang patay si Hitler kaya siguro puwede na natin patawarin. :lol:

As far as 5.1, I have misgivings because in my experience in sound editing, sound design and mixing for TV and Film I'm all too aware of the limitations. Yes 2 -channels can never give you discreet surround sound and that is why I said "illusion of surround sound". If I were to have my cake and eat it too I wouldnt go for 5 speakers of different performance characteristics and a pain in the butt to integrate sub designed for movies not music. I'd go with two pairs of full range ( and I mean 20hz and below )speakers playing music recorded on four channels with 4 cardiods in a opposing XX pattern in a good hall so we can screw the sub ditch the center and have rears that can give us the long wavelength reflections as well.

Well we can all dream can't we?
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Postby SoFtCliPpEr » Mon May 30, 2005 9:26 pm

LOL Jack!! All boils down to matters of personal choices in the end huh? :) BTW anything they say below 20hz is inaudible to most human beings. However the twisted sound engineers of Star Wars and some other nut in the music industry have encoded the software material to be manifested in these sound regions.

For instance if your subwoofer ain't THX certified one can never realise the truth of what goes on at 15hz hehehe. Thus your 20 hz cutoff goes into play howbeit if we are talking strictly of stereo listening. Now if you are watching a DVD movie of Troy then hearing the sound would definitely be best appreciated in a multi-channel setup.

But how now do you deal with DVD-A/SACD/DVD movies,concerts/DTS CD software on your stereo setup? With all these ultra software encoded in surround? Hehe, here is where the problem arises. The results of listening to a multi-channel encoded software into a basic stereo setup can be most discouraging indeed hehehe. There are subs like Velodyne which allows you to switch from "audio to video". This is however a lot of baloney since the important thing is the low frequency crossover's performance.

We may be allergic to that boomy sound (often misunderstood) or depreciation of our mid frequency sound where our ears are most sensitive..but how would it be like if our disco's were all playing on stereo? I used to enjoy hearing someone walk from one channel to another while listening to Dark Side Of The Moon..but know what, I upped the level of enjoyment coz somebody is walking behind me as well. Think about it?

The thing is to determine what your cup of tea is..meaning your software of choice. Since were talking Digital here we assume it could be cd or dvd. Thus we can narrow down the issue by simply declaring that for cd..stereo set up is right and I fully agree and for dvd movies/ dvd-a/sacd / dts cd etc. Multi-Channel is correct. As to how either will sound or perform .. I can leave it all up to you folks.
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Postby JackD201 » Tue May 31, 2005 12:06 am

We may not be able to hear it but we sure as heck can FEEL it and that is a big part of the experience. How do I get surround satisfaction from my stereo set-up? I don't. I have a separate home theater with Sony DVD/SACD to a proceed AVP2 and levinson and proceed amps running maggies up front and energy dipoles and subs doin' the rest. :D After all why compromise right? I have some DTS and SACD multichannel discs and I play them in the blue room but for the most part I listen in the big room for stereo as most of my software is either cds or vinyl. Besides my wife commandeered the blue room and now I can't really get much time in there because I think she's addicted to reality TV :lol:
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Postby SoFtCliPpEr » Tue May 31, 2005 1:11 am

All's well and End's well !
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Postby SoFtCliPpEr » Tue May 31, 2005 8:46 am

Image The One of it's kind Fosgate FAP VI Vacuum-Tube Multi-Channel Processor.

Let's hear more of surround sound from no less than the legend himself Mr.Jim Fosgate. Here are highlights of an interview by Stereophile's Steve Guttenberg.


Jim Fosgate: Of (Surround) Sound Mind

Steve Guttenberg, December, 2004


Jim Fosgate fits the category of Classic American Inventor to a T. This softspoken, quietly intense man has earned 18 patents and founded three successful electronics companies. In the late 1970s, he pulled out of the car audio business to follow his quadraphonic bliss, and designed the Fosgate Tate 101, arguably the finest quad decoder of the era. He also created the best-selling matrix surround processor of all time, Dolby's Pro Logic II, and in 2003 won an Emmy for the Development of Surround Sound for Television. He now serves as a senior executive consultant for Fosgate Audionics, a division of the Rockford Corporation.

Image Jim Fosgate

Steve Guttenberg: Let's see...you grew up in Indianapolis, where your dad owned a TV repair shop.

Jim Fosgate: Yes, my father was an experimenter, and he got into TV early on. He built our first television from parts, along with an antenna that could receive signals from Chicago and Cincinnati. We had the first TV set in Indianapolis, and I worked in his shop and did repairs.

Guttenberg: So you were probably just a little kid when you started building gear.

Fosgate: I started playing around with electronics when I was seven or eight. I didn't know what I was doing then, but when I was 12 I put a radio on my bicycle.

Guttenberg: A tube radio?

Fosgate: It was quite a hoot—I used a 2V storage battery with a step-up high-voltage power supply, a big tube radio, a long whip antenna, and I fastened a speaker to the center of the handlebars. It was very cool. I got a lot of funny looks for that one. When I bought my first car, a 1946 or '47 Chevy, I built a bass-reflex speaker in the rear deck. Later, I installed an open-reel tape system in my '63 Chevy.

Guttenberg: Your collection of vintage audio gear is the biggest and best I've ever seen. When did you start lugging this stuff home?

Fosgate: In the mid-'70s, a friend of mine took me around to garage sales and swap meets. You could pick up tube gear for next to nothing, and since I was afraid tubes were going away, I bought a lot of stuff. I couldn't have imagined the tube resurgence that took off later in the decade.

Guttenberg: Do you ever hook up any of the pieces?

Fosgate: Sure, for fun. And when I'm designing tube gear, it's nice to listen to these old units; they represent the history of audio. I've restored some of them, but now that I have so many I can't keep up.

Guttenberg: When did you get into surround sound?

Fosgate: I was the president of my car-audio company, Fosgate Electronics, and in 1977 I decided to move into multichannel home audio—it was way too early for surround in the car. That's just now starting to take off, so you could say I was 27 years too early. I had been an avid quad listener for quite a few years.


Guttenberg: Except that, by the late '70s, quad was a lost cause.

Fosgate: But it was something I believed in, and I knew I could do a good job with it, but it was an uphill battle. When I started working on the Fosgate Tate 101 surround decoder, the audio retailers didn't want it and the magazines weren't interested. It took a long time to break through.

Guttenberg: I'd say—but you have to admit, the confusion over LP surround formats was more than partially responsible for the public's rejection of quad.

Fosgate: There were four formats—Columbia had SQ, Sansui had QS, Electro Voice had EV-4, JVC had CD-4—but they weren't compatible. Quadraphiles needed a separate decoder for each format. They all had their problems. With CD-4, it was hard to find a phono cartridge that tracked well enough not to break up. The open-reel recordings were really good, and they had discrete separation, but the vast majority of material was only available on matrixed LPs. When quad died, we had no choice but to make our processor work with stereo recordings.

Guttenberg: Matrix? We're not referring to Keanu Reeves' Matrix, are we?

Fosgate: Matrix refers to the circuit topography: two channels go in and are mixed to provide five outputs. As you can imagine, you don't get something for nothing—you start out with high separation between the input stereo channels, but you wind up with very poor separation between the output channels, and have to employ some means of increasing channel separation.

Guttenberg: Your very first matrix decoder, the Fosgate Tate 101, is still sought after by quaddies.

Fosgate: When we took it to [the Consumer Electronics Show] in Las Vegas in 1979, we didn't get a single order. Boy, were we bummed. Quad was in big trouble by then, but later that year we did a demonstration at Jerry's Audio in Phoenix with a Kloss video projector—and that clicked. We used video at the next CES, and our room was always full. By that time quad had such a negative connotation we came up with a new term, "surround sound," to describe our sound.

Guttenberg: Were you familiar with David Hafler's DynaQuad box?

Fosgate: Yes, but at its best, it didn't have precise imaging or localization—its separation was poor. You see, it's a passive system. You can't do a lot with that approach; without active steering logic, you're limited, but I thought it sounded better than stereo.

Guttenberg: Let's jump ahead to your latest achievement, the Dolby Pro Logic II matrix surround processor. How does it work?

Fosgate: PLII analyzes the signal content and generates anti-phase signals, which are applied to the matrix to cancel the crosstalk between the other channels. I designed it to work with movies and normal stereo recordings. It produces a very natural effect.

Guttenberg: Nowadays, I assume you do all of your design work on a computer.

Fosgate: No, not at all. I'm an empirical, seat-of-the-pants type of engineer—I fiddle around with something, listen, and go from there. In the beginning you have no clue, but you learn how to listen—listen to the accuracy of the soundstage, how wide and deep—while also listening for artifacts and anomalies that are mixed in with the sound.

Guttenberg: What sort of artifacts?

Fosgate: Intermodulation distortion, pumping and breathing, wobbles and plops.

Guttenberg: Huh?

Fosgate: We had all sort of names for the artifacts. You have to become a very, very critical listener, so much so it became difficult to listen for pleasure to my early surround decoders. You learn what the ear tolerates and what it doesn't like. You keep coming up with circuitry that takes all of that into account. It's a psychoacoustic phenomenon—you're trying to fool the ear into accepting that you're listening to five separate channels. For years, I felt like I was trying to defy the laws of physics.

Guttenberg: Gee, how did you maintain concentration over the months while you were working out the details of PLII?

Fosgate: Sometimes when I hit a snag, I'd dart off and work on my tube phono preamp to let my mind rest. Over the years, I've probably built something like 120 phono-preamp circuits. Breaking away from surround design and building something was therapeutic for me.

Guttenberg: How so?

Fosgate: I believe our subconscious mind works out most of the details, and we may even tap into something else in the universe and the design comes through us. I designed the core elements of PLII over a nine-month period, and most of the breakthroughs would come when I'd wake up in the middle of the night—and then I'd work the details. It drove my wife crazy. Norma said my brain was generating so much energy she couldn't sleep in the same room with me!

Image

Guttenberg: Jim, this is getting a little weird...
Fosgate: My working method is a little unusual. The first thing I do with any design is program the circuit into my brain and emotional system. Mind you, I don't actually build prototypes or put any of this down on paper—at this point I'm working through the details of the circuit in my head. I had to finally force myself to build the first Dolby Pro Logic II prototype. I guess I was afraid that it wouldn't work, or that the whole thing was just a head trip.

Guttenberg: I've heard the first prototype was an all-tube design.

Fosgate: Yes, I built it with tubes because I love tubes, and possibly because it took longer to do it that way. It was a huge breadboard with 24 tubes and three power transformers! The circuit went through three major revisions, but the first one worked beautifully, and I immediately knew it was a lot better than any other matrix processor. I brought Norma in to listen—she has an ear for surround—and she thought it was a great improvement, too.

Image

Guttenberg: Where did you go from there?

Fosgate: I worked on it for another six weeks and built a solid-state version for my car. I drove to the winter CES in Las Vegas, and played it for Roger Dressler of Dolby. After a 30-minute demo, he turned and said, "This constitutes a breakthrough, doesn't it, Jim?" That's exactly what I wanted to hear.

Guttenberg: Whew, what a relief!

Fosgate: A few months later, Roger came out here to Heber, and we performed a few tests together. We encoded the five channels from a Dolby Digital DVD down to two channels and ran that stereo signal through the PLII. That way, we could compare the sound of original discrete five-channel mix to the PLII's matrixed five channels. And at first we thought the switching system wasn't working—the sound hardly changed when we hit the switch. After pulling cables and checking out everything, we realized, by God, it is working! The A/B'd sound was that close!

Guttenberg: So you presented Dolby with that all-tube, all-analog PLII prototype. How did they transform your idea into a usable digital form?

Fosgate: Actually, I built a solid-state breadboard patterned after the tube version, substituting operational amplifiers for the tubes. Dolby's computers crunched numbers around the clock for three months on the circuit, and they needed several more months to write digital code before we could audition the result.

Guttenberg: That's pretty amazing, since you cooked up the whole thing in your head—and never touched a computer.

Fosgate: Right. My wife was pretty surprised when she saw [that] the first PLII patent ran 200 pages. She had some empathy for what I'd been mulling over for so many years. When Dolby finally sent the digital version for me to audition, I compared it to my tube analog processor. I couldn't tell any difference, soundstage-wise. Roger headed up a listening panel at Dolby and, with their input, we further optimized the circuit.

Guttenberg: How did the refinement process play out?

Fosgate: I could make a change in Utah, fax it to them in the evening, they would rewrite the code, and send the new code to me over the computer. I'd burn a new EPROM and listen to the change—all within 24 hours. It took 40dB of negative feedback in the steering logic to optimize the channel separation.

Guttenberg: Uh-oh, feedback—that's going to rankle some Stereophile readers.

Fosgate: In this case we're not talking feedback around the audio signals, only the steering logic that controls the channel separation. Other matrix decoders, including all my earlier stuff, were "open-loop," feedback-free versions, but they all have serious limitations. The feedback logic circuit in PLII provides faster and more accurate logic action than an open-loop approach. It's able to track the signals in real time, even when the loudest signal is constantly changing directions. I have a very good audio memory, and I can remember what something sounds like from one day to the next, or even from one month to the next, although for the last few tweaks I used A/B comparisons to nail the final version down.


Image WOW that collection would be hard to beat!

Guttenberg: I guess this is a good time to ask: What, exactly, is the difference between the original Pro Logic and Pro Logic II?

Fosgate: They both have their roots in quad and SQ matrix-style encoding/decoding. The original Pro Logic had mono "band-limited" surrounds, PLII has "full-bandwidth" stereo surrounds. Since original Pro Logic was a film-oriented system, Dolby had to make sure the center/dialog channel was rock-solid. So they weighted the steering toward the center front channel, which shrank stage width on stereo recordings. When Pro Logic came out, it was a marvel of performance and stability.

Guttenberg: PLII can work its magic on LPs and CDs?

Fosgate: Yes. Please understand that PLII doesn't affect the stereo soundstage, other than to display the in-phase part of the program over the three front channels—the out-of-phase or randomly phased signals are sent to the rear. When switching between stereo and PLII, you'll see that the stereo soundstage stays intact but has greater depth and width. Sometimes you're not even aware of the extra speakers, until you turn them off and the soundstage collapses back to stereo.

Guttenberg: It's more than a little ironic—your invention has made you a wealthy man, but you created this home-theater processor with music in mind. Literally.

Fosgate: I do most of my surround work listening to stereo music—movies no more than 2% or 3% of the time. During my 25 years of work on these circuits, I can say with all honesty that most of the listening was done using vinyl program material. I couldn't see why a circuit couldn't work equally well with music or home theater. I consider Dolby the experts on movies, and they're quite satisfied with the way PLII sounds with movies.

Guttenberg: PLII comes in two flavors, Music and Movie. What's the difference?

Fosgate: In the digital implementation, the logic is the same for both modes, but the movie mode adds some time delay to the rear channels for a more frontal presentation. Of course, you can listen to movies in Music mode, which is the way I listen to DVDs. I recommend trying it both ways to see which one sounds better to you.

Guttenberg: Can PLII break on through to the two-channel faithful?

Fosgate: In real life, we're used to hearing in a 360º sphere from all around us. Stereo is unnatural in that it is coming only from the front speakers. With my triamped, all-tube system, stereo sounds very, very good—it's what great stereo is all about—but when I switch from stereo to multichannel, there's no comparison. It's not that one is so aware of the back channels, but PLII makes the front soundstage wider and deeper. Some of my guests aren't aware of the rear speakers' contributions until I turn them off.

Guttenberg: But audiophiles associate multichannel with a mid-fi mindset. They have a hard time accepting that multichannel can be built to the same standards as the best two-channel gear.

Fosgate: That's true, and if I had to decide between a great two-channel audio system and a frumpy home-theater thing, well, sure, I'd go with the stereo. I know a lot of Stereophile readers think stereo is perfect, but I'd hope they can be open-minded and listen to what we can generate with a no-compromise, all-tube surround processor like my Fosgate Audionics FAP-V1. If you can take all the things we've learned about building a great system and carry that into surround, it's no contest. That's exactly why I designed the FAP-V1 for music lovers—but it can also play movies.

Guttenberg: You [along with Peter Schreiber and Dolby] won an Emmy in 2003 for the Development of Surround Sound for Television. After all these years of keeping the faith, the Foz finally gets his due. Congratulations!

Fosgate: Yeah, that was a big surprise. When they first contacted me by e-mail, I didn't realize they wanted to give me an award, so I didn't respond. When they finally called me on the phone, I understood and snapped to. It was a wonderful honor. I was humbled.

Guttenberg: What are you working on now?

Fosgate: I'm just playing with my tube gear and tweaking my phono system and amps. I don't think they're destined to become Fosgate products because they're too specialized—the phono preamp would be better suited to an outside manufacturer.

Guttenberg: I'm guessing you're open to offers.

Fosgate: I'd like to see it out there in the world so I could share the sound with other audiophiles, so sure—I'd be interested.

http://stereophile.com/interviews/1204f ... ndex1.html

Hehe wait till we touch on DTS coming soon folks!
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Postby SoFtCliPpEr » Tue May 31, 2005 9:54 am

upsy daisy!
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Postby detubo » Tue May 31, 2005 12:07 pm

Hey Mr. Soft Clipper, we are beginning work on the Nov Hifi Show 2005. details of the event are posted on the "Nov Hifi Show 2005" thread. I'm hoping we can have you on board to display some of the best multi-channel digital set up during the show. call me if you have any questions.

tonyboy
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Postby rtsyrtsy » Tue May 31, 2005 2:45 pm

detubo wrote:Hey Mr. Soft Clipper, we are beginning work on the Nov Hifi Show 2005. details of the event are posted on the "Nov Hifi Show 2005" thread. I'm hoping we can have you on board to display some of the best multi-channel digital set up during the show. call me if you have any questions.


Now this would be totally interesting...
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Postby JackD201 » Tue May 31, 2005 4:45 pm

Yeah man, I'd love to see 4 LS3/5as set in a quad configuration.

Ano SC? Are you ready to DEMONSTRATE the superiority of true digital surround sound?

UPSY DAISY! :D
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Postby SoFtCliPpEr » Wed Jun 01, 2005 10:06 am

detubo wrote:Hey Mr. Soft Clipper, we are beginning work on the Nov Hifi Show 2005. details of the event are posted on the "Nov Hifi Show 2005" thread. I'm hoping we can have you on board to display some of the best multi-channel digital set up during the show. call me if you have any questions.

tonyboy


I would propose to perhaps lend you some gears simple as they may be I feel you can make a good show of it :)

November-December peak season for me hehe with 10 kids!.. gimme a ring 09154038385

SC
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Postby SoFtCliPpEr » Wed Jun 01, 2005 10:08 am

JackD201 wrote:Yeah man, I'd love to see 4 LS3/5as set in a quad configuration.

Ano SC? Are you ready to DEMONSTRATE the superiority of true digital surround sound?

UPSY DAISY! :D


Hehe nope the LS won't be the right stuff for multi-channel .. but since you've been a very informative sourse of data around here you can borrow a pair to demo :).
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Re: Let's Talk Digital

Postby Quiel » Mon Oct 22, 2012 1:29 pm

Upping this thread with a question on available options in transitioning from DVDs to HDisks for movie storage/playback. Am getting tired of stalled DVD playback :( :@ :sweat:

Anyone tried these products (or comments on them)?

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Free-shipping-AC3-DTS-5-1-Audio-Gear-Digital-Sound-Decoder-SPDIF-PS3-HD-Audio-Rush/108859_506908146.html

http://www.lunashops.com/goods.php?id=1346

Encoding/Ripping of DVDs should retain ac-3 and/or DTS data. For my specific needs, discrete analog output is also a reqt so I can reuse my existing monoblock amps and speakers.

Or are there simpler solutions available?
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Re: Let's Talk Digital

Postby JackD201 » Mon Oct 22, 2012 2:14 pm

Once upon a tim Onkyo had a stand alone AC-3 processor
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Re: Let's Talk Digital

Postby Quiel » Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:05 am

JackD201 wrote:Once upon a tim Onkyo had a stand alone AC-3 processor


will try to find it.

will do test-rip and hopefully my FREE converters can actually keep Ac3/DTS.
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Re: Let's Talk Digital

Postby Octaver » Tue Feb 26, 2013 2:29 pm

Quiel wrote:Upping this thread with a question on available options in transitioning from DVDs to HDisks for movie storage/playback. Am getting tired of stalled DVD playback :( :@ :sweat:

Anyone tried these products (or comments on them)?

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Free-shipping-AC3-DTS-5-1-Audio-Gear-Digital-Sound-Decoder-SPDIF-PS3-HD-Audio-Rush/108859_506908146.html

http://www.lunashops.com/goods.php?id=1346

Encoding/Ripping of DVDs should retain ac-3 and/or DTS data. For my specific needs, discrete analog output is also a reqt so I can reuse my existing monoblock amps and speakers.

Or are there simpler solutions available?


Get a media tank player and just download HD movies with MKV format. Ripping your old DVD's can degrade the format instead of getting better playback. MKV files are higher bitrate than regular DVD's. Now a days it seems the blu ray's seems obsolete :lol: :lol: 4K TV is the next display.......downloads is the next generation media player :swear:
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