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High resolution digital is dead. The best DAC's killed it.

Something that came as a surprise to me is how good DAC's have gotten over the past 5-10 years.

Before then, there was a consistent, marked improvement going from Redbook (44.1/16) to 96/24 or higher.

The modern DAC, the best of them, no longer do this. The Redbook playback is so good high resolution is almost not needed. Anyone else notice this?
erik_squires
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
This just in! From Clark Johnsen, author of the book on Absolute Polarity, The Wood Effect.

From Clark’s Diary over on Positive Feedback from some time in cyberspace,


Masked by random combination with other distortions in the music reproduction chain, an unsuspected major contributor has lain hidden: Aural sensitivity to "phase inversion", the Wood effect.

Musical instruments normally create compression waves in their attack transients. Electronics, however, often invert that natural, positive polarity to negative, unnatural rarefaction as emitted from loudspeakers, thus diminishing physical and aesthetic impact. The term Absolute Polarity uniquely describes the correct arrival to the ear of acoustic wavefronts from loudspeakers, with respect to actual musical instruments.

Wrong polarity, when isolated, is obvious to almost everyone. Its present neglect results primarily from habitual disregard for linear phase response in loudspeakers, due largely to the erroneous auditory theory of Helmholtz.



fleschler
2,046 posts
 
So many recordings were made or mastered in reverse polarity.  Here's an excellent expose of polarity issues pertaining to both equipment and recordings.  https://iamyuanwu.wordpress.com/audio/audio-direction-ltd-adl/adl-absolute-polarity/

Equipment is often in reverse polarity, with speakers being a major culprit, both reversed or drivers in and out of polarity to each other.

Even two sides of an LP could be different (1 side correct, 1 side wrong).  
fleschler
2,046 posts
 
Polarity of a few recordings

Some Correctly phased recordings:

Rickie Lee Jones           Pop Pop
Julia Fordham                 Swept
Enya                               Watermark
Bela Fleck                       UFO TOFU
Three Blind Mice CD’s
Reference recordings CD’s
Sheffield Lab CD’s
Mercury Living Presence CD’s produced by Sir Dennis Drake
East Wind Silver CD’s ( not the gold discs)

Some inverted CD’s

Mary Black                   No Frontiers
Babes in the Woods
Terri Garrison               Only Love ( Waterlily/Vandersteen recording)
Fourplay                       Fourplay
Ray Lynch                     Deep Breakfast ( interesting that a fully synthesized recording can exhibit polarity differences)
Sarah K                         Gypsy Alley
Closer than They Appear
Harry Connick, Jr           25
Julia Fordham               Porcelain
Mary Chapin Carpenter Come on, Come on
Enya                               Enya
Shepard Moon
Radka Toneff                 Fairytales
Ella Fitzgerald                Clap Hands here Comes Charlie
Holly Cole Trio               Temptation (voice and bass are inverted, piano is correct)
Don’t Smoke in Bed ( see note above)
East wind Gold CD’s


Note that Mercury Living Presence are in correct Polarity as opposed to the prior list which stated the opposite.  Within labels, polarity on CDs change.  Ella Fitzgerald's Clab Hand here Comes Charlie is in correct polarity on the gold DCC disc by Steve Hoffman.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Of course Mercury Living Presence classical CDs were produced by entirely different people than whoever produced the pop stuff. So the jury is still out on those Golden Age classical CDs from the 90s as to their Polarity. The jury is still out on the RCA Living Stereo CDs from the same time period, which frankly don’t sound that great to me. As to their Absolute Polarity, who the hell knows? As for Deutsche Grammophon I would believe that entire label is OOP. By the way when I refer to Absolute Polarity I’m referring to the case where the recording is 180 degrees from the correct Absolute Polarity. 
fleschler
2,046 posts
 
The 3 box set of 180 RCA Living Stereo CDs were remastered and sound fantastic overall.  On the level of the Mercury CDs.  Also, the Heifetz/Piatagorsky set sounds amazing.  Also the Friedman, Browning and Dorfmann sets are very fine listening.  The Friedman/Previn Franck/Debussy CD beats the already fine Japanese CD from a decade ago.  There are some very fine remasterings being done.  I can wholeheartedly recommend the Decca mono box and the Recital box.  
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