Static Impulse Problem

[DJBohn]

Also, I have seen in recent years that people (again with the people that I associate with) aren't nearly as concerned about sound quality as they used to. People with a lot younger ears than mine, seem to accept MP3 quality audio as the norm and aren't that much concerned about "true" High Fidelity.

It seems that they are more concerned about how many things that their latest electronic gadget can do, not how many it can do WELL.

GB

I agree with this. Kids now-a-days seem to have more concern with how well their subwoofers can rattle their cars (and neighborhoods) apart, than hearing quality controled sound across the entire spectrum. I think that will change though. Give it some time. Lest we forget, many of us started with trebleless 8-Tracks and accepted them for the time being. But eventually we got tired of listening to the noise. Sooner or later, the present generation hearing demands will evolve toward better sound as well.

Craig,
I finally got back to my Heart static problem. I used the EZ Impulse instead of the EZ Clean (I wanted to get a "tick" count) and adjusted it to your recommended settings. There was not one scratch on this new record, but the program removed 15,281 static discharges! (and that was just side one!) The problem seems to be with my entire home. I walked near my wood exit door & it yanks the hairs on my arm! I walk across the room & reach for the volume on my audio system & a visible arc shoots to my finger. I have not seen a problem like this since I used Negative Ion Generators in my last home to reduce airborn dust. Is their such a thing as a Positive Ion Generator? - I could sure use one! My humidity now is at about 70% and the static problem still exists...

[Craig Maier]

I did not think that significant static buildup problems existed at 70% RH or above. I observe the static problems developing at our home when the indoor levels drop to the 40 % RH or lower range (when it is real cold outside during the winter).

At any rate, did the settings that I recommended fix the problem recording successfully? I am curious. It seemed to do so when I ran the test here. It got rid of them with no artifacts left behind. What was your experience?

[cromag]

I'll just kick in on a few points.

I got my first MP3 player 4 years ago -- a Creative Nomad Jukebox 2. It was about 2/3 the size of a portable CD player, and the controls (buttons and switches) were laid out much like a CD player. It used a proprietary database for .mp3 storage on a 10 Gig hard disc and there are several programs that can be run on the PC to load and manage songs. I still have more than 5 Gigs left. The Lithium Ion battery is replaceable, and I did replace it almost a year ago -- they last about 3 years. It still works great, and I can carry it in a pouch designed for portable CD players. If it does start to go flaky, there is an active community of "after-market" users who have posted instructions on replacing/upgrading the hard disc, etc.

I got a 20 Gig Creative Zen Sleek Photo (geez, you'd think they were charging by the word for these names!) a couple of months ago because a big discounter was clearing them out. It sounds very good, maybe a little better than the Nomad. It's about 2/3 the size of a cassette Walkman, and I can carry it on my belt in a cassette recorder pouch. It uses Microsofts MTB system, which is not nearly as flexible or fast as the Nomad's database, and it also requires me to use Windows Media Player, which I'd rather not do -- so I lose convenience and flexibility in favor of corporate efficiency. The battery is not intended to be replaceable, but there are instrructions on the web, and I'm satisfied I can do it when the time comes -- in about 3 years. The controls are touch-sensitive, and the sensitivy is adjustable, but I find the tactile response of a button or switch more reassuring.

In both cases I swapped out the headphones right away. I use Koss Porta-Pro and the slightly cost-reduced Sporta-Pro headphones. They sound great, but don't entirely block out the sound of cars behind me.

I usually rip .mp3s for these players at the default 128 kbps rate, but I have some that I ripped at 192 kbps. While walking outdoors I don't notice a big difference -- in a quiet room, I do.

And, of course, I can now listen to music that was only released on LPs while I'm walking the dog or taking a hike!

[Geebster]

Yeah, I think that is the way to go... get a model that is about to be replaced in the line and then you can save a BUNDLE.

I've been shopping around both on the net and in stores and finally bit the bullet. I finally ordered a Creative Zen Touch that just recently was taken out of Creative's line. I got such a good deal on it, that even if it isn't perfect, it will be a cheap way to find out if I will like a MP3 player. I couldn't resist because I got it cheaper than what a flash player with only 1 or 2 GB's cost at your local mega mart. It has 40 GB's of storage, so I'll see if I like the darn thing.

GB

[Audyossey]

...They could have also designed them to be in a slim like case that could have been inserted into a playback machine that could only be opened by the machine itself - keeping everyones hands off from the disc itself. No fingerprints, smudges or scratches would have ever been a problem.

RCA used this approach with their analog video disc format and some early recordable CDs were made along those lines. My impression is that, at least in the latter case, it was unpopular with consumers. It would also be more expensive overall—not just the discs, but the players as well. CD changers would have been particularly difficult and expensive to implement.

CD changers that used magazines (primarily for cars) were never really popular and they're pretty rare today. I think the market has spoken on this one.

As for two sided CDs, it would have been nice if the single-side format had accommodated 90 minutes of music, but that would have been asking a lot of the technology of the time. As it was, the reject rates were very high in the beginning and manufacturers shied away from 74-minute releases for a while. Nevertheless it wasn't all that long before 80-minute commercial releases began to appear.

You also have to look at the costs of producing CDs. For new recordings much, if not most, of the cost is in performance rights and music licensing. These fees are assessed on a per-song basis. Add more songs and the price of CDs would have skyrocketed. (Most performers settle for a payment for the recording session; otherwise, they can end up owing the company money.) The longer length was a boon for "classical" issues, however, since 74 minutes might represent only one work.

(Performance rights for music, by the way, also figure into the cost of DVDs. There are quite a few movies that haven't made it to DVD because those fees would have made the release too expensive. In some cases, different music has been substituted for that in the original movie.)

By and large, all the error correction built into the format really takes care of any sort of normal use. You almost have to have a scratch that runs "in the groove," as opposed to across it, to make digital discs unplayable. Even children get more usable life out of CDs than was the case with records. I've had CDs and DVDs that had unplayable areas right out of the shrink wrap but, with one exception, I've never had one that became unplayable over time, and even that plays on the newest equipment I have. I resorted to a cleaning, "repairing" machine on that one without any effect.

If casual purchasers want to toss CDs around like frisbees and litter their cars with unjacketed CDs, then I don't think they have any reason to bitch when they become unplayable.

HB

[Audyossey]

dbx Forever

...I have always wondered if dbx encoded LP's would have become the new standard for high quality sound, had CD's never come onto the consumer marketplace. We'll never know.

Used to wonder that myself. I'm quite sure the answer is "no." To begin with a "standard for high quality sound" has always defined a niche market. In the long run it would have been more of a cottage industry kind of thing where audiophiles were paying through the nose for stuff that the most people were buying on the cheap. CDs did represent a new standard for audio, but what sold them to the mass market was convenience, not quality. You couldn't take records jogging or in the car and they deteriorated quickly under normal use.

Second, dbx never had much success with them. As I recall there were two efforts made to create and market them. dbx was off my radar when the first push came, perhaps in the 70s. The second, more aggressive effort, was in the early 80s. It was an uphill battle for them and I doubt they had the resources to ever be successful in a mass market. dbx would have had to become a standard feature on preamps, amplifiers, and store-bought consoles, and it would have been a feature that only confused most consumers. Perhaps if they had added some sort of signpost to the records that would have automatically switched in the decoder, they'd have licked part of the problem, but the larger issue would have been to convince record companies to produce recordings to mass market. It's unlikely they could have done so without greater evidence of success. It would have been a dual-inventory thing similar to what stereo records were for a few years, and the companies and retailers hated that.

HB

[Craig Maier]

Rick and I were discussing a major short sightedness of the developers of the CD - - - reserving a thousand bytes in the header to identify the album, artist, and track names. Had they done that, it would be some much easier for us software developers to deal with playlists across multiple hardware platforms. Certainly, the reduction in storage requirement for the CD would not have been an issue. I guess it could even be added in today as part of a new standard, but I doubt that anyone in that industry wants to invest any more money in CD technology - - - unfortunate, but probably true. We hope that it ultimately does not mean that we will all have to get used to MP3 sound quality as the only option. It has all the bells and whistles, but its sound is compromised, IMHO.

[Geebster]

Rick and I were discussing a major short sightedness of the developers of the CD - - - reserving a thousand bytes in the header to identify the album, artist, and track names. Had they done that, it would be some much easier for us software developers to deal with playlists across multiple hardware platforms. Certainly, the reduction in storage requirement for the CD would not have been an issue. I guess it could even be added in today as part of a new standard, but I doubt that anyone in that industry wants to invest any more money in CD technology - - - unfortunate, but probably true. We hope that it ultimately does not mean that we will all have to get used to MP3 sound quality as the only option. It has all the bells and whistles, but its sound is compromised, IMHO.

Yep, it seems like every audio format we have ever had was compromised to some degree. It seems like every idea that I think that makes sense is never implemented or if it is, the general public turn up their noses on the advancements.

Remember the ill-fated Elcassete? My audio dealer at the time got a couple of them in and I was pretty impressed. Boy, they sure didn't last long. I'm glad I never got one.

GB

[Geebster]

I'll just kick in on a few points.

I got my first MP3 player 4 years ago -- a Creative Nomad Jukebox 2. If it does start to go flaky, there is an active community of "after-market" users who have posted instructions on replacing/upgrading the hard disc, etc.

Just curious, since I will be shortly a Creative owner.... Is that the forum on www.anythingbutipod.com?

GB

[Dan McDonald]

I guess my son is a little different.

He started out with mp3s with the little headphones. One day his headphones had broken and he asked if he could listen to some CDs on my computer, with my headphones. I let him do that. I had (still have) some Sennheisers. He was completely shocked by the quality. After that, he bought some Sennheisers for himself, but remarked that the quality wasn't as good, so he then invested in a nice mp3 player that plays wavs, wma and various other formats. He's had that one for 3 years now and just loves it. Most of the music in his player is in wav format.

It's sort of funny to see him walking around with big headphones on his head, but he doesn't much care what it looks like, he appreciates the sound quality. I think his musical training must have made a difference - he's been playing cello for 10 years now.

Dan

[DougMac]

The Little Whipper Snappers

That does bring up a related question. If this generation is starting with lossy formats, what will they have later on, when their hearing starts to fade?
Dan

First of all, a series of events as well as a basic personality trait has prevented me from signing up with Rhapsody yet, although I still intend to.

Now I have a question for all the old farts. When you were in your teens and twenties, were you listening to music on a medium and with equipment that approaches your current setup?

I was a teenager in the '60's and the typical equipment I used to listen to music couldn't hold a candle to today's typical MP3 player. I still grew up with an appreciation for music and a desire to improve my listening environment. I feel that about the same percentage of the new generation will grow up to appreciate good sounding systems as came out of my generation.

MP3 isn't the only way to create a lossy listening environment. My first car had an AM radio feeding a single 6x9 speaker. I'd venture to say that was a pretty lossy system. Back then, TV sound was sent from the network to local stations by land line; it wasn't multiplexed into the video signal. That limited TV audio to basically telephone quality. Compare that to a PBS digital broadcast delivered by satellite. Listen to the credit music for Nova over a good home theatre setup. Also, dig out your old walkman and pop in a cassette. Now listen to the same album on an MP3 player, even at 128 bitrate.

BTW, decent cans makes all the difference in the world. I use AKC headphones with my Zen. They're not quite up to my Grados, but they sound pretty darn good and are hinged to fold up to a tiny package.

I was about to point out that the quality of music is a completely different discussion, then I remembered that I still have a Herman's Hermits LP or two from back in the days.

Doug

[Dan McDonald]

Doug - I'd agree with you about music quality - we listen on whatever we can afford and are willing to buy. For most teens, a good sound system is out of the question, and an mp3 player is relatively inexpensive.

What I worry about is the use of headphones played very loud. As I understand it, the frequencies you lose in hearing damage (not hearing lost associated with aging) are typically the frequencies that receive the greatest use, so, for example, if you're in a factory with a very low frequency but loud sound, the damage will be most likely in the low frequencies.

My point was that, if you're listening too loudly with music that is compressed into a fairly narrow range, that's what you're going to damage.

I'm not saying that they need to go out and spend a lot of money on a stereo or various kinds of equipment, but as in the post just below, you should have seen my son's face just light up when he heard music that actually sounded good through headphones - the same music he had heard many many times before.

[Craig Maier]

Quoting DougMac:

"When you were in your teens and twenties, were you listening to music on a medium and with equipment that approaches your current setup?"

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I am probably the odd duck here, but my answer would have to be "yes" I did. In my teens, I constructed my own speaker system consisting of JBL drivers and crossovers (3 way). I used pro grade drivers intended for sound re-inforcement applications. The mid range drivers alone weigh about 50 pounds each. We still use those speakers today and they still sound great. All that we have done is re-coned the 15 inch woofers and added an 18 inch JBL sub-woofer.

I used home designed and constructed vacuum tube power amplifiers and preamplifiers made with the finest components (which I no longer use - - - but they still work). (My old homebrew 75 Watt / Channel power amplifier weighs about 75 pounds - - - a real boat anchor!) I also owned a Magnecord 15 ips, 1/2 track / 1/4 track tape deck (selectable). I believe that it was the model 1028 - a 50 pound portable. I purchased commercial tapes whenever I could and did a lot of live recording with pro grade microphones (Telefunken U-47's, etc).

So, the sound quality that I enjoyed as a kid exceeded by far what a set of earbuds connected to an MP3 player could ever hope to recreate musically.

[Geebster]

What I worry about is the use of headphones played very loud. As I understand it, the frequencies you lose in hearing damage (not hearing lost associated with aging) are typically the frequencies that receive the greatest use, so, for example, if you're in a factory with a very low frequency but loud sound, the damage will be most likely in the low frequencies.

I'm no MD, but I can pass on what my ear doctor told me.... Most people that suffer some sort of non-age related hearing disorder is due to what he calls repetitive frequency hearing damage. That is, if you are subjected to a certain range of frequencies over a long period of time, the ear isn't as sensitive to that range of frequencies. Sometimes, like in my situation, you get phantom sounds where you hear these sounds all of the time, even when the actual noise is not present.... It's what most Doctors call tinnitus.

Even though my earphone/headset was never set loudly, the constant bombardment my ears took during my DJ years caused me to have tinnitus.

Probably the systems I had as a youth were slightly better than what I now use... probably in part due to my hearing disorder. Why spend thousands of dollars on frequencies that you can only hear with difficulty.

I had quite a few nice systems in my younger years, but the one I seem to remember most was powered by a soundcraftsmen amp/preamp/eq duo which fed a pair of Altec Lansing "voice of the theatre" speakers. Wow were those Altec's effecient. I could blow the roof off the place with those things if I wanted. My neighbors, were thankful, that I wasn't inclined to do that!!!!!!

GB

[Audyossey]

...When you were in your teens and twenties, were you listening to music on a medium and with equipment that approaches your current setup?

I was an Army brat and we were living in Taiwan when I entered my thirteenth year. I had a friend or two whose families were into HiFi and had component systems with separate preamps, amps, tuners, home-brew speaker systems, and good turntables or Garrard changers. So I got a taste of what a good system could do for music even though I had to be content with my little Webcor changer that I won playing bingo at the officers club.

By around the time stereo records came in we were living in Sacramento, California. I wanted to be ready for the day I could own my own stereo system and I didn't want to spend money on monophonic records that I would want to replace down the road, so I bought a ceramic stereo cartridge for the Webcor. It wouldn't fit in the arm, so I wrote Webcor and they sent me a new arm for free! I still have the box the arm came in.

At first I wired the cartridge for mono. But it wasn't long before I dug out my old Montgomery Ward 78 RPM changer and made it into the second channel of my "system." There was also an 8-inch speaker that was in the house when we moved in. It was in an open "enclosure" of the type used in the 40s to house PA speakers in public spaces. Since it wasn't enclosed, it didn't sound much different from the 4-inch speakers in the Webcor and Monty Ward players, but I had it hooked in there somehow.

Things began in earnest when I found the money to buy a Knight Kit amplifier, a pair of 8-inch coax speakers, and enclosure kits for them. It was still the Webcor that was playing the records, but I had fairly full-range stereo sound emanating from the corners of my bedroom. We were in Cupertino CA by then. A little later I added a Dynakit FM tuner and I began saving money for a Dual 1007[?] turntable-changer. That was the last Dual to automatically sense the size of a record after it dropped to the turntable using rollers on either side of the cartridge. Consumer Reports said the turntable was better than the Garrards and the arm just slightly inferior. However, I never got that Dual.

I was without a system during my first year at the University of Washington. By my sophomore year I had a side job, so I shipped the speakers to the dorms and carried the amplifier and tuner in my luggage. That was one hefty suitcase. When we arrived at the Greyhound station in Seattle, the baggage handlers pulled that suitcase out of the bus and, taking note of the weight, took turns dropping it two or three feet to the ground.

By then Dual had come out with the 1009 with a yet better turntable with a superior dynamically balanced arm. I walked a couple of miles to Standard Records and Hi-Fi and brought it home on the bus. Besides being the best record player I ever owned, it was fun to amuse my friends by playing records with the turntable tilted to an 80-degree angle.

That was it for a long time. As school ended and I entered my 20s, a more powerful Heathkit amp replaced the Knight Kit. But it wasn't until after Vietnam and my arrival in Boston that new amplifiers and AR speakers allowed me to achieve my original goals.

These days my music listening comes and goes in long spurts. I rarely buy CDs anymore and a number of the new ones have yet to be played. When I do listen, it's most likely to be in the car. The system includes a Dual 1019 turntable (the 1009 was stolen), Pioneer receiver, an early Sony CD changer, a broken Technics cassette deck with dbx decoding circuitry* that's still usable for records, an AR subwoofer, Boston Acoustics front channel speakers, and Advent wide-range rears. In spite of the mix of brands, the system has a well-balanced sound. A 12-inch subwoofer is a 12-inch sub and the amplified AR was cheap. The 10-inch Boston Acoustics pretty much define the character of the sound. The Advents were left over from a previous installation and are more than good at adding ambience. Together they can make a mighty and musical roar and they get a thorough workout on DVDs and occasional FM broadcasts. There's also a Dell computer digitally connected to the system which I use for DVDs and sometimes CDs.

HB
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*I also own a Nackamichi rackmount dbx and Dolby decoder, but it's in the attic. I really ought to bring it down and install it in place of the broken cassette deck.