Faith-Based Electronics (IMO Addendum)

[David Schwab]

Well, you WERE talking about what I like.... reread your post if you don't believe me, but I digress.

Sorry, nope. You said:

Actually, with the Flex-Able example if you compare the vinyl and CD to the sound of an actual guitar amp and reverb unit, the vinyl sounds a lot closer. The problem isn't that the CD is too accurate or that the vinyl is softening the sound - it simply sounds more realistic. It sounds more like I have a guitar amp sitting in front of me and less like a recording thereof.

So even though you did not hear his amp when it was recorded, and you haven't heard the master tapes in the studio it was recorded, you are making the leap of faith that what you are hearing on the vinyl sounds closer to the real thing.

What you should have said was you like the way the guitar sounds on vinyl better. That I'll buy. I like the tone of CDs better, and that's a personal preference.

Technically, there is no way the vinyl is more accurate to the original.

In my first post I also noted that Zappa managed to avoid these problems completely with his CD adventures. Amazingly, his records and CDs sound almost identical, besides the obvious giveaways like the pop & crackle and flutter of the vinyl. So, I haven't been arguing vinyl's superiority... just that certain things are being overlooked in today's market. When I got a vinyl copy of Joe's Garage I expected the flange on Watermelon in Easter Hay to be far more lush as I would have expected based on other vinyl pieces I'd acquired around the same time, and was astounded to find they were more or less identical.

Well that might lead us to believe then that Zappa took more time with the mastering, and that the Vai stuff wasn't done well, or that it was EQd for one medium and not the other.

[David Schwab]

Maybe the thread's chi got polluted by bad vibes, I don't know.

I've seen new-agers proclaim that Einstein was a mystic, and his famous equation identifying matter with energy actually proves that "Everything is vibrations, man!" That's maybe a little too faith-based for me, though.

Well everything is vibrating.

[Joe Gwinn]

Well everything is vibrating.

Even the vacuum: Zero-point energy - Wikipedia

[rjb]

I was once invited to a Sunday morning meeting of The Baltimore Ethical Society.
My take on the experience was that some people like to go to church on Sunday- and others like to go to debating club.
This thread reminds me of that meeting.

-rb

[kg]

Technically, there is no way the vinyl is more accurate to the original.

i think we need to define "original" if we are to have any meaningful discussion.

thus far in this thread, "original" has meant "signal on the master tape."

however what if it means "sound as heard while standing in the room with the performer?"

i have heard objectively horrendous (frequency response, thd/imd, etc) sound systems, employing analog sources (many of them half a century old), playing through single ended tube amps, driving horn loaded speaker systems that made my hairs stand on end because of the detail, particularly in the very low amplitude passages. the dynamic range of digital should trounce that of analog, yet it is precisely in the peaks and valleys where i feel it falls short.

the same is true in the photographic realm. digital has arguably higher fidelity, yet captures LESS of the vibe, impression, emotion of actually standing there and witnessing a scene. oddly enough it is my opinion that digital falls apart at the extremes (highlights and shadows). just look at the number of digital photographers seeking to destroy the "accuracy" of their work by editing in the digital realm.

in the world of art sometimes you have to walk away from what you think is your destination in order to get to where you really want to be.

imo of course.

[Mike Sulzer]

however what if it means "sound as heard while standing in the room with the performer?"

A life time of hearing and seeing works of art cleverly created by making use of technical limitations in what would be just a reproduction system makes it hard to judge what can be done when these limitations are removed. You have to go to some of the simplest situations that are most free of "artistic modification". For example, suppose you record a small chamber group with a single pair of mics in a very good small hall. IMO, the system with very high technical quality beats the lesser one, other things equal.

On the other hand, some performers are the creation of the recording and editing process. Change anything in the system and you might never achieve just that again, but you ought, with sufficient effort, to do better with a technically better system if you are willing to learn many new tricks.

[Mike Sulzer]

Even the vacuum: Zero-point energy - Wikipedia

So the laws that describe the behavior on a very small level of quantized quantities in the physical world have a sort of dithering. Is it then any surprize, then, that when we coarsely quantize a signal, its details are better preserved by the use of dithering?

[Possum]

Einstein WAS a mystic ;-) The theory of relativity came to him literally in a dream, not kidding. He once made a statement that in the future if we don't blow ourselves up, future religions will most be like what Bhuddism is now (tho its not a religion). He was a pretty awake individual.

Beano tone, get a vintage JTM45 with a vintage speaker cab and speakers, steal that one in the BettsToler video which is perfect. Get a Les Paul, vintage preferably, with real PAF's. In person you'll get a noticeably brighter sound that the recording has; they also used a plate reverb you can hear in there too. Amp dimed and mic was put way out front, Clapton said 40 feet away, probably a bit of exaggeration. Clapton liked to roll his tone knob back alot too and only used the bridge mostly, you can hear various iterations of that in the album. One guy I know who is friends with someone who was at the sessions, claimed a Vox was used. All the guys on YouTube trying to get that tone use too much distortion, and amps are way too harsh. The GEC KT66 is a piece of heaven, a friend sent me a sound sample of a pair of those in a plexi I think it was then the Chinese reissues, a huge difference, just made me sad that no one can really copy those things.....

[rjb]

Please pardon the intrusion

Sorry for the intrusion, guys.

But, getting back to the op, would anyone like to share a humorous example of "faith-based electronics" you have witnessed or imagined?
Some examples would include David S's tone-enhancing wood knobs, soundguru's amplifier exorcisms, and Joe G's sentient circuits.

Although I, through my own extensive work & research, independently developed the term "faith-based electronics", I have subsequently discovered "prior art".
Some damn artist beat me to it.

Interview with Elliott Malkin - we make money not art
Elliott Malkin: Tisch School of the Arts at NYU

Mr. Malkin is also exploring religion again in the installation "Crucifixi NG." It is a cross Mr. Malkin made out of a circuit board, which broadcasts the Lord's Prayer. He didn't build a receiver and the signal is inaudible to the human ear, but the body can't help but act as an antenna.
"It's this very literal anointing of space," he said. He created a fictional organization, the Faith-Based Electronics Group, to make more such objects.

Smile. Please.
-rb

[salvarsan]

Is it then any surprize, then, that when we coarsely quantize a signal, its details are better preserved by the use of dithering?

Whatever.
Injecting a quantifiable bias to lift an interesting signal out of the noise is relatively commonplace.
I'm sure you can think of examples besides dithering.

Analytical chemistry "spiking", for instance.

Re: Zero Point Energy (non-vacuo) -- The phrase "sufferin' like a Hessian" comes to mind.

[David Schwab]

i think we need to define "original" if we are to have any meaningful discussion.

thus far in this thread, "original" has meant "signal on the master tape."

however what if it means "sound as heard while standing in the room with the performer?"

Oh come on now. This is borderline trolling! As heard on the master tape. That's the only thing that was recorded/heard. And you don't know what processing was done on the track. No one just records an amp and goes with it. Look at SRV. On some recordings he had TEN amps sprawled out all over the studio, in stairwells, bathrooms, etc. Then they would mix and match those amps to get what you hear on the record.

And you don't even know that what you hear is an amp in the room. What about Led Zeppelin's Black Dog? No amp was used at all! That was Jimmy page plugging his guitar right into the board:

We put my Les Paul through a direct box, and from there into a mic channel. We used the mic amp of the mixing board to get distortion. Then we ran it through two Urei 1176 Universal compressors in series. Then each line was triple-tracked. Curiously, I was listening to that track when we were reviewing the tapes and the guitars almost sound like an analog synthesizer.

So what your stereo system/playback medium is supposed to be reproducing is what's on the master tape. If the playback medium does not match the master tape, it's inaccurate.

[David Schwab]

Einstein WAS a mystic ;-) The theory of relativity came to him literally in a dream, not kidding.

Actually, that was him riding on a particle of light that was moving in a wave. He was trying to figure out if light was a wave or particle.

[salvarsan]

Ps: Thank you for the band name suggestion, but I still think Faith-Based Electronics has a nicer "ring" than Blisteringly Hot Sphinctritude.

Get serious.

Faith-Based Electronics could only be Christian rock group.

...but(t) Blisteringly Hot Sphinctritude is a death-metal asshole group.

[rjb]

Get serious.

I'm not sure that's possible.

...but(t) Blisteringly Hot Sphinctritude is a death-metal asshole group.

How would you spell that with the umlauts?

-rb

[Possum]

That's interesting about Black Dog, I didn't know that one. OK, back to "faith based" oatmeal. Well, it exists in pickup making and amp making thats for sure. I try to eliminate as much of it as I can in my own work. Take the myth of "mismatched coils." Its supposed to bring this heavenly clarity to a humbucker, well in truth it doesn't do much of anything that I could hear. I did a bucker that has a huge mismatch in coils yet its just as quiet as identical coils and there is no real gain in clarity. Faith in electronics is best debunked by actually doing experiments to see what is real and what is not, things that seem ridiculous can be real, things that are thought law are BS. Sprague paper in oil "bee" tone caps is another one. Go look what crap caps pulled from dead equipment is selling for to chumps on Ebay. Alot of them aren't even paper in oil and if you email the seller wanting to know what the actual physical capacitance measurement of the thing is you get the big blow off...."I don't have time to measure every cap I sell, etc. etc...." I traded a guy for a bunch of 600V NOS Bees and last year I compared them to Russian stuff, Vitamin Q, Cornell Dubilier greenies, and a couple other oddball ones I've collected, all the same tight range of capacitance measured on the Extech. Without any reservations a Jensen copper foil paper in oil cap blew them all away, the NOS Sprague sounded tame and flat in comparison. There is so much faith based stuff that no one seems to question out there, its a good idea to look at basic things you take for granted, and NOT take them for granted until you prove or disprove it to yourself......Amen, hallelujah, sodom gomorrah and pass the beans please....