$ony Quality

[PC-Engine]

Why? Because of their price? Can you hear up to 50Khz? Isn't that Bionic Woman range?

The highest octaves within the bandwidth of human hearing and beyond are produced by a new ring dome treble unit that maintains efficient high frequency output to 56KHz and above. Though only bats can hear frequencies this high, the design effort is not wasted. By moving the upper frequency limit beyond audibility, our engineers have also pushed distortion elements into the inaudible region and are able to maintain exact transient performance within the audible range.

BTW I mentioned the price because highend speakers are priced in the tens of thousands of dollars.

 

[Lazy8s]

maskrider:

Multi-channel is gimmicks

No. Sound in the real world is produced from all directions. Listening to an orchestra in an auditorium or concert hall is far more fulfilling than hearing it from stereo, due in no small part to being surrounded by the sound more fully.

 

[maskrider]

maskrider:

Multi-channel is gimmicks

No. Sound in the real world is produced from all directions. Listening to an orchestra in an auditorium or concert hall is far more fulfilling than hearing it from stereo, due in no small part to being surrounded by the sound more fully.

The sound field produced by a good stereo system with adequately mastered sources are already very 3 dimentional, only cheapo or inadequate systems need multi-channel to reproduce the effect.

Multi-channel re-mastered sources/current multi-channel masters are more like sound effect showcase than true to live reproduction at the moment.

 

[Ty]

The highest octaves within the bandwidth of human hearing and beyond are produced by a new ring dome treble unit that maintains efficient high frequency output to 56KHz and above. Though only bats can hear frequencies this high, the design effort is not wasted. By moving the upper frequency limit beyond audibility, our engineers have also pushed distortion elements into the inaudible region and are able to maintain exact transient performance within the audible range.

Err, isn't it really a function of the crossover to pass along those frequencies in the first place? In other words, hook up a crossover that outputs a signal in that range and just about ANY driver is going put out something. Afaik, most crossovers don't bother because humans can't hear that high. Now this isn't to take anything away from their tweeter dome unit (Who makes it btw?) and it's supposed ability to accurately reproduce those frequencies but frankly, imo, it's still a waste.

Have you actually tested these speakers yourself?

BTW I mentioned the price because highend speakers are priced in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Heh, I think most of us probably have an idea of what high-end audio costs. It's not that different than most extreme hobbies. Let me know when you buy a RS1 hooked up to a Stax using some liquid nitrogen cooled cables and silver serpent interconnects.

 

[PC-Engine]

A crossover is just a band pass filter, nothing more. If your driver can't produce a certain frequency range within +/- 3 db, then it doesn't matter what the crossover is doing. Crossovers don't reduce distortion. If a driver can't handle a certain frequency range, it will start to distort therefore if a tweeter can't handle frequencies higher than say 22.5 KHz, it will start to distort. Amps usually go all the way up to 100KHz so the tweeter is still being fed the high frequency information even though you can't hear it.


The purpose of these speakers that can go up to 50+KHz is for DVD Audio, it's the next generation audio format.

Let me know when you buy a RS1 hooked up to a Stax using some liquid nitrogen cooled cables and silver serpent interconnects.

Even if I win a lottery, I'd still probably won't go with some products because some of them are way overated and overpriced.

 

[Phil]

LOL um yeah right. One AA alkaline isn't going to last for 24+ hrs under continuous use. Keep dreaming man. Just remember that shocks lower your battery life. My MP3 player doesn't need antishock protection

Hum, so does mine PC-Engine. What's this anyway? Not everything you don't know is unexistant, get a grip will you. With 1 AA Alkaline battery, I can listen to 60 hours of continues music. If I play an MD with 160/192 comparable bitrates, I can listen to 70 hours.

I never said there was a difference. That was the whole point

Son, it's so evident you never heard recordings using latest ATRAC compression. ATRAC improved over time - since it's dead in America, it's quite possible players overthere never went over ATRAC 3.5. I already backed up my point about newest ATRAC being better than 320 kbps mp3s. You're simply in denial or have no idea if you still want to argue this point.

Never heard of it just like 99% of consumers on the planet. If it's great the majority of people would know about it.

You mean 99% of Americans, which would be quite logical if you assume that MD is dead overthere.

Um I don't buy extra flash memory. They're called FLASH for a reason

BTW those 80 tracks are they MP3s? or low quality ATRACs? IIRC a MD can only hold 75 minutes worth of 320kbps MP3 quality ATRAC musc.

lower quality ATRACS, equivilant to 160/192 kbps mp3 if I stand correct (I don't use them). Using normal compressed ATRACS, you can store 80 minutes of stereo music, or double using one channel.

I don't listen to MP3s from a portable CD player, that's what the watch sized solid state device is for. A CDR holds 700MB of data. That's about 65 songs at 320kbps

ATRAC has a bitrate of about 292kbps. That means you could store more with better quality in ATRAC 4.5. Mp3 would have an edge though if the tracks have long breaks inbetween, as ATRAC will fill them.

For my needs and the majority of other people on this planet, MP3s make more sense.

It's pretty pointless to argue which format is better, as both offer different advantages. I stand firm on my point that ATRAC (4.5+) has the superiour sound quality.

 

[PC-Engine]

ATRAC has a bitrate of about 292kbps. That means you could store more with better quality in ATRAC 4.5. Mp3 would have an edge though if the tracks have long breaks inbetween, as ATRAC will fill them.

Hehe, but how do I play the ATRACs on my CD/DVD player?

Hum, so does mine PC-Engine. What's this anyway? Not everything you don't know is unexistant, get a grip will you. With 1 AA Alkaline battery, I can listen to 60 hours of continues music. If I play an MD with 160/192 comparable bitrates, I can listen to 70 hours.

I'm just going by what I've read on the net and looking at specs
BTW I'm sure you'll come up with an incredibly believable story about why you were listening to 70 hours of music nonstop

May I please have the model number?

It's pretty pointless to argue which format is better, as both offer different advantages. I stand firm on my point that ATRAC (4.5+) has the superiour sound quality.

Fair enough, but like I mentioned before some people prefer vinyl over CDs. Which sounds better? Too me MDs sound the same as 320kbps MP3s when listening to MY music. I wonder if my MP3s would sound even better if I encoded them with psychoacoustics disabled

 

[Phil]

I'm just going by what I've read on the net and looking at specs
BTW I'm sure you'll come up with an incredibly believable story about why you were listening to 70 hours of music nonstop

May I please have the model number?

Hehe, to be quite honest, I use the rechargeable battery and with that I can listen to roughly 38 hours of music. Battery life can either shorten or grow depending on use, but it's definately over 40 hours with 1 AA battery.

The model is the Sony MZ-E909:

The manual can be found online here:
http://www.minidisc.org/manuals/sony/sony_mze909.pdf

Fair enough, but like I mentioned before some people prefer vinyl over CDs. Which sounds better? Too me MDs sound the same as 320kbps MP3s when listening to MY music. I wonder if my MP3s would sound even better if I encoded them with psychoacoustics disabled

If you disable psychoacoustics, then you're probably best leaving it uncompressed in the first place.

 

[PC-Engine]

If you disable psychoacoustics, then you're probably best leaving it uncompressed in the first place

Hehe I just tried it right now. It sounds a tiny bit better with regard to fullness and guess what? The file size hardly changed at 9.7MB 8)

The WAV was 43MB

 

[Phil]

Just out of curiousity, how did you notice the change in quality?

Did you,

a.) encode it to mp3, burned it on a cd, then listened it as a mp3 through your HiFi - or
b.) encode it to mp3, convert it back to WAV and then listened it on your HiFi

also, what programs did you use? I would think that psychoacoustics would take away quite a bit, but perhaps ATRAC's and mp3's methods are slightly different...

 

[V3]

Have you guys try the Yamaha VQF (I think that's what it is) ?

I heard its supposedly better than MP3 at lower bit rate or something along that line. But I think the tech just died, anyone know what's wrong with it, beside the obvious ?

 

[Ty]

A crossover is just a band pass filter, nothing more. If your driver can't produce a certain frequency range within +/- 3 db, then it doesn't matter what the crossover is doing. Crossovers don't reduce distortion. If a driver can't handle a certain frequency range, it will start to distort therefore if a tweeter can't handle frequencies higher than say 22.5 KHz, it will start to distort. Amps usually go all the way up to 100KHz so the tweeter is still being fed the high frequency information even though you can't hear it.

Right. But your last sentence has me a bit confused. The tweeter is being fed whatever the crossover decides to pass onto it, not everything (from zero up to 100Khz in your AMP example). Other portions are being fed to the Woofer or other drivers. Or do you mean that crossovers don't clamp the upper frequency range fed to tweeters?

The other question I had though, is who makes their Tweeter? Many, many companies actually rely on drivers made from outside sources, such as scanspeak, vifa, audax, etc. So it wouldn't surprise me at all if Mission Audio uses drivers from outside sources as well. That's the mistake many people make, thinking that the drivers are actually manufactured by the speaker designers themselves.

Even if I win a lottery, I'd still probably won't go with some products because some of them are way overated and overpriced.

I hear you on that. I'm not 100% sold on high-end cables making a difference yet even though I will be making my own high end cables. Just something to keep me busy I guess.

 

[PC-Engine]

a.) encode it to mp3, burned it on a cd, then listened it as a mp3 through your HiFi - or
b.) encode it to mp3, convert it back to WAV and then listened it on your HiFi

also, what programs did you use? I would think that psychoacoustics would take away quite a bit, but perhaps ATRAC's and mp3's methods are slightly different...

I first converted the CDA to WAV because WinLAME doesn't take CDA files. Then I used WinLAME to convert the WAV to MP3s then burned them on CD. In the encoder settings I disabled psychoacoustics (temperal masking), disabled all pass filters, and set it to only use ATH (Absolute Threshold of Hearing), constant bitrate, maximum quality (Q0). I played the original CD, then the MP3 with temperal masking on, then with it off. The two MP3 versions were on the same CDR.

Right. But your last sentence has me a bit confused. The tweeter is being fed whatever the crossover decides to pass onto it, not everything (from zero up to 100Khz in your AMP example). Other portions are being fed to the Woofer or other drivers. Or do you mean that crossovers don't clamp the upper frequency range fed to tweeters?

I meant there's no cap at the upper end like all speakers.

The other question I had though, is who makes their Tweeter? Many, many companies actually rely on drivers made from outside sources, such as scanspeak, vifa, audax, etc. So it wouldn't surprise me at all if Mission Audio uses drivers from outside sources as well. That's the mistake many people make, thinking that the drivers are actually manufactured by the speaker designers themselves.

To be honest I haven't researched that info so I don't know :?

 

[PC-Engine]

Have you guys try the Yamaha VQF (I think that's what it is) ?

I heard its supposedly better than MP3 at lower bit rate or something along that line. But I think the tech just died, anyone know what's wrong with it, beside the obvious ?

The sound quality of a VQF file is not better nor worse than a MP3 file, it is just different. Look at the pictures and you will understand what it means: when you encode music in mp3, the encoding process introduces some little compression artefacts. Instead of this, when you encode music in vqf, little details are lost and the sound is softened. So a 96Kbps VQF file seems to be more limpid than a 128Kbps MP3, but it is also less detailled. Two others problems of VQF are spatialisation (sound is far compared to the original) and pre-echo.
It is obvious than 96Kbps is superior than 96Kbps MP3, but it is not perfect nor really better than a 128Kbps MP3. But at very low bitrate (less than 25 kpbs) the VQF becomes really better than MP3. In fact, VQF would have been wonderful at 112 or 128 Kbps.

 

[maskrider]

I hear you on that. I'm not 100% sold on high-end cables making a difference yet even though I will be making my own high end cables. Just something to keep me busy I guess.

Cables make a difference, no matter high-end or not, adequate quality cables are indeed very necessary as they will not deterioate so much comparing to casual ones.

But at the end of the day, it is the electronics at the signal outputs that determines how much cables will influence your system. I had been very active with high-end cables some years before, tried many brands and models. Still have a couple of them in their boxes, waiting for me to use them when I save eough money to buy a good quality pre-amp.

 

[marconelly!]

The first is psychoacoustic modeling which is the exact same method ATRAC uses.

MP3 does not use the same compression algorithm as ATRAC. Both algorithms are based on psychoacoustic principles, but beyond that, their actual compression algorithms are not the same at all. Just as Windows media audio does not use the same algorithm as neither of them, and sounds audibly better at the same bitrate (file size) than MP3.

 

[PC-Engine]

The first is psychoacoustic modeling which is the exact same method ATRAC uses.

MP3 does not use the same compression algorithm as ATRAC. Both algorithms are based on psychoacoustic principles, but beyond that, their actual compression algorithms are not the same at all. Just as Windows media audio does not use the same algorithm as neither of them, and sounds audibly better at the same bitrate (file size) than MP3.

Ok I should've said principle instead of method...sue me

 

[randycat99]

The highest octaves within the bandwidth of human hearing and beyond are produced by a new ring dome treble unit that maintains efficient high frequency output to 56KHz and above. Though only bats can hear frequencies this high, the design effort is not wasted. By moving the upper frequency limit beyond audibility, our engineers have also pushed distortion elements into the inaudible region and are able to maintain exact transient performance within the audible range.

BTW I mentioned the price because highend speakers are priced in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Damn am I late to the party!

This statement is utterly bogus. Distortion elements are present throughout the frequency range in varying degrees regardless of whatever the top end is. Perhaps they have excised the distortion elements due to terminal frequency break-up modes, but that is only one kind of distortion that can happen. Arguably this feat has already been done with "lesser" metal-dome tweeters that break-up at 22-25 kHz. Furthermore, transient performance is not necessarily determined by the ultimate upper frequency range achieved (though it is one prerequisite), but the fundamental resonance of the tweeter mechanical system (which assuredly does not correspond to the max freq. rating). Typically that resonance occurs at 1.5 to 2.5 kHz and is one reason why high-pass crossover filters are a necessity for these applications. Ironically, most if not all speaker drivers are simply incapable of true transient accuracy by virtue that the region where they are "transient" is invariably below the audible range they will have useable output and thus be used at. With current technology, the best you really can do is to enable even response in the intended frequency range free from (more like minimizing) break-up and various other nonlinear distortions within that range. That goes a good ways toward the subjective impression of good transient response, but is completely aside from "real" transient response in the time domain.

With regard to LP's vs. SACD, CD, etc., there remains much debate over the topic, but I assure you, dynamic range is not a disputable claim in the list of favorable qualities. The technical limit of dynamic range on an LP is 75-80 dB (and that is on equipment and a sample disc that no "mere mortal" would ever possibly have access to). More typical values for a mass-market vinyl album could be as bad as 60 dB or below easily. The technical limit for CD is 93-96 dB (considerably better than the "all-out best" LP, and this is available on even the most mediocre of digital playback equipment). The technical limit for SACD is about 110 dB and that drops considerably for signals increasing in frequency above 20 kHz. More paramount to any matter of format, is the particular program material. That is, you would be hard pressed (no pun intended) to find any consumer retail program material that breaks 60 dB of dynamic range these days. With the hyper-compressed, loudness craze in current popular music, you would be lucky to see 20 dB of dynamic range (and 45 dB would be considered "reference master grade material" for rock and pop kind of music). So brag all you want about formats, but the reality remains that the type of program material out there right now just isn't taxing the formats in the least. If you are range limited in the program material itself, the technical limit of the medium is completely irrelevant.

 

[Ty]

Cables make a difference, no matter high-end or not, adequate quality cables are indeed very necessary as they will not deterioate so much comparing to casual ones.

Well I suppose it depends on what you consider 'casual' but one can easily get cables that won't deteriorate without going to the esoteric brands such as Kimber, Transparent, Tara Labs, or the much more esoteric such as Elrods ($1500 for Mk III Signature Power Cords!!).

But at the end of the day, it is the electronics at the signal outputs that determines how much cables will influence your system. I had been very active with high-end cables some years before, tried many brands and models. Still have a couple of them in their boxes, waiting for me to use them when I save eough money to buy a good quality pre-amp.

I'm enough of an Audiophile that I know about 'high-end' cables. Yet as I mentioned previously, I'm still quite skeptical about the claims made by the aforementioned Esoteric cable brands. I'm no RF engineer but I doubt problems such as 'skin effect' truly matter for the typical lengths of cable runs in a Home Audio setup. Personally I'd have to audition them in a controlled DBT before I would believe them.

 

[PC-Engine]

This statement is utterly bogus. Distortion elements are present throughout the frequency range in varying degrees regardless of whatever the top end is.

Maybe you're not understanding what they're saying. They're talking specifically about the tweeter and the reason for its flat response all the way up to 50kHz. They're not talking about distortion in midrange and woofer drivers.

Perhaps they have excised the distortion elements due to terminal frequency break-up modes, but that is only one kind of distortion that can happen.

Less distortion is better regardless of what kind of distortion it is.

Arguably this feat has already been done with "lesser" metal-dome tweeters that break-up at 22-25 kHz.

For example? What about SACD or DVD Audio? Sure for regular CDs it's enough.

Furthermore, transient performance is not necessarily determined by the ultimate upper frequency range achieved (though it is one prerequisite), but the fundamental resonance of the tweeter mechanical system (which assuredly does not correspond to the max freq. rating).

If the driver is being distorted then it's transient performance will also be compromised. Why in the world would they design a tweeter mechanism that fundamentally distorts at 20kHz then turn around and claim up to 50kHz +/- 3db for the purpose of reducing distortion?

Typically that resonance occurs at 1.5 to 2.5 kHz and is one reason why high-pass crossover filters are a necessity for these applications.

That's what a crossover does. Why else would speakers need them?

Ironically, most if not all speaker drivers are simply incapable of true transient accuracy by virtue that the region where they are "transient" is invariably below the audible range they will have useable output and thus be used at.

For example?

With current technology, the best you really can do is to enable even response in the intended frequency range free from (more like minimizing) break-up and various other nonlinear distortions within that range. That goes a good ways toward the subjective impression of good transient response, but is completely aside from "real" transient response in the time domain.

By extending the frequency capability of the tweeter up to 50kHz, you get less audible distortion from the tweeter itself. Same principle why a midrange will distort if fed a high frequency signal.

With regard to LP's vs. SACD, CD, etc., there remains much debate over the topic, but I assure you, dynamic range is not a disputable claim in the list of favorable qualities. The technical limit of dynamic range on an LP is 75-80 dB (and that is on equipment and a sample disc that no "mere mortal" would ever possibly have access to). More typical values for a mass-market vinyl album could be as bad as 60 dB or below easily. The technical limit for CD is 93-96 dB (considerably better than the "all-out best" LP, and this is available on even the most mediocre of digital playback equipment). The technical limit for SACD is about 110 dB and that drops considerably for signals increasing in frequency above 20 kHz. More paramount to any matter of format, is the particular program material. That is, you would be hard pressed (no pun intended) to find any consumer retail program material that breaks 60 dB of dynamic range these days. With the hyper-compressed, loudness craze in current popular music, you would be lucky to see 20 dB of dynamic range (and 45 dB would be considered "reference master grade material" for rock and pop kind of music). So brag all you want about formats, but the reality remains that the type of program material out there right now just isn't taxing the formats in the least. If you are range limited in the program material itself, the technical limit of the medium is completely irrelevant.

Well if people can hear a difference in dynamic range then a comparison is completely relevant.