Blackness - how quiet does it need to be?

Vance (Vhiner), thanks for your comment. This has indeed been an excellent discussion.

08-09-12: Nick_sr
Is the noise floor system dependent? or is it directly the sum of the noise floor of the individual components?

Nick, yes, there is a good deal of system dependency involved.

With respect to the analog parts of the signal path, the audible significance that ultimately results from noise that is generated, introduced, or picked up at any point in the signal path will vary depending on the relation between the signal as it exists at that point and that noise, especially the ratio of their amplitudes. Which in turn will depend on the gains, sensitivities, and output levels of other components in the signal path.

With respect to digital parts of the signal path, many variables and interactions that are relevant to noise sensitivity and its ultimate effects on jitter come into play between the transport or other source component, the component in which D/A conversion is performed, and the cable connecting them. Obviously the jitter rejection characteristics of the DAC are one. Also, the risetime and falltime of the output signal from the transport, which are parameters that are usually unspecified, will significantly affect the consequences resulting from noise that is present at the interface between the transport and DAC. Impedance mismatches between the two components and the interconnect cable will inevitably be present to at least some small degree, and might affect the consequences of noise at that interface, if the mismatches result in distortion of critical parts of the waveform. Also, noise that may be introduced by ground loop effects will be affected by the interaction of various technical characteristics of both components.

Best regards,
-- Al

I don't think Steve Hoffman was referring to the tape hiss from the original recording. That could be somewhat masked, but not entirely eliminated. What he referred to was the difficulty of taking an original master and getting it sound right on modern equipment.

Here is his view:http://www.tapeop.com/articles/85/steve-hoffman/.

I guess the only alternative is to try the DCC CD version that he made of the Miles Davis 'Kind of Blue' CD.

All the best,
Nonoise

Many recordings were made with pre-emphasis to greatly reduce tape noise in playback. CDP or DAC has processor for it (de-emphasis) and every CD has bit switching it on or off in CDP or DAC. Today almost all recordings are digital and pre-emphasis is never used. Because of that many CDPs or DACs don't even have de-emphasis. None of Lavry DACs, for instance, has de-empasis but my Benchmark DAC1 does. If your CDP or DAC doesn't have de-emphasis and you listen to one of few recordings with pre-emphasis it will sound noisy. I'm not sure if tapes were recorded with pre-empasis (10db increase between 3kHz-10kHz) before invention of CD. Some people tested rippers and found that EAC does not correct for pre-emphasis (leaves recording intact) while Itunes does apply correction. Also some MP3 compressors like for instance LAME have de-emphasis option.

It sounds like we are victims of the times. Not everything is keeping apace and older formatted music is not sounding right, all the time, on modern equipment.

I like Hoffman's story about trying to figure out how to get Hotel California to sound right and it took getting similar vintage JBL speakers to hear how the original engineer mastered it to understand why it was so bass heavy on modern speakers. He had to work backwards with that understanding to do it.

One needs an extensive historical understanding of recording, techniques, playback, equipment and what have you to bridge that gap of old and new in order to preserve the old and enjoy it anew.

All the best,
Nonoise

great thread guys!. something i've often wondered about myself but never asked about. a very interesting read!