MP3 players

I have both "Into the Labyrinth" and "Planet Drum". They're good percussion discs, but sound "processed/mixed", and are. Look, I know full well that 2 inch reel tape is not 2 channel tape, but I guess I need to look that article up. They were likely referring to archiving pre "mixed down" 16 or 24 channel master tapes, obviously. The point was that they didn't feel that any digital format was sufficient for archiving. That will probably change in the next year or two, though; who knows? Anyway, I'm not as uninformed as you might think. And Gateway does a few things wrong, I didn't mean to pronounce them as "almighty".

Carl_eber, I got a neat e-mail today from Bob Ludwig. I wrote him the other day and asked a couple of questions and he got back to me. He says he is doing a lot more digital now, mostly at 88.2/24. He said he owns a 1" 2 track using Tim da Paravinci tube set-up on a Mike Spitz ATR services 1" deck. He has deck #3, and Pink Floyd own machines #1 and #2. Tim created a special curve for 15ips that measures as flat as any machine he has ever seen from 8hz to 28000hz. He calls it his analog-digital machine because it sounds so analog but has bass that goes to DC like digital can. I thought you might find this interesting. He says if he gets a chance he will e-mail me a pic of the machine.

Yes, that is interesting. Also interesting that you might know Mr. Ludwig personally. I've not found the article yet, but if I remember correctly, it was a mastering engineer on the west coast (I forget who, but I'll certainly post this word for word when I find it) who said something to the effect of: "when we can get a digital machine to do 24 bit/400 kHz, it'll be more likely that we'll archive to a digital format". I think that idea has an underlying meaning, concerning analog-to-digital converters that could perform such conversion in a linear PCM (or similar) format. It might be a while before that occurs, from what I can tell. I could be wrong.

I have a huge collection of mp3's. Lots of really great stuff, ex. (Atomic Rooster. in hearing of) that I couldn't stand not listning to on something more than computer speakers. I started thinking all music has some sort of compression on it, mp3's included of course. So what I came up with was this. I purchased a dbx 3bx off ebay (the unit was like new $202.00) I hooked it to my soundcard line out (non-amplified). Then ran that into my Mcintosh 754 power amp. From there strait to a pair of Paradigm 7 se's. I used MIT termanator2 cables throughout. This really produces a good sound for me. You're right some mp3's are encoded better than others, but people are starting to make them pretty good now for the most part. There is so many software players win-amp being one, that have lots of controls I find no need for a pre-amp at all. The thing is , the dbx really improves the high and low end of mp3's and makes them much better to listen to.

If you think it sounds the same, Great. That's what it's all about what you think. Take some time and listen to a respectable tuner for a while, your ears will thank you. Radio is free and legal to record.