XXHighEnd

Hi folks.

My hot pick:

Manger  - Musik von einem anderen Stern

This is the best reference CD, a real nice sampler (international pieces), I came across.

Suberb quality recordings.
All main genres are covered.
One mic recordings.
Drums, percussion, bass, ochestra, folk, voice ...... ( and real church bells!)

This CD shouldn't be missing in any collection

Cheers
\Klaus

Hi Klaus, All,

What I intend with this board, is pointing out absolute references which everybody can check with him/herself. Altough currently unprepared, I'll try to give an example (Bert, don't laugh) :

There's a CD "Lise & Gertrud - Live På Nalen", Track #2, "Life on Mars";

There are two major parts within this track; the first part the one woman is singing, and the second part the other.
Now, the first woman spits all over the place, say, right into your face.

When you have things kind of wrong, you will not hear the spitting at all, even if I tell you it's there.

This gives me a kind of opportunity to tell how XXHighEnd got to its current stage, but *also* how the Orphean/BD15 got improved (like I tell in general here (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=5.0));

This is one of the tracks Bert and me ran a zillion more times than I liked, just because there's a contra bass (or what it is) which can go wrong and can go right during playback, and it was an important "measuring device" mainly for Bert.
Then I came up with the native Vista Engine (#3), and the woman suddenly started spitting, something we didn't notice a zillion++ times. But, this spitting was so loud, it was disgusting. Really. So from that time on, I really couldn't listen to that track anymore.

In the end this brought the rejection of Engine#3, because it was overdoing things. Well, in that consistent situation back then.

At one day, I sat sown unprepaired at Bert's place, and he ran the track once again. He did not have Engine#3 (never had), and within 0.3 secs I heard the spitting; Bert drove himself to squeeze out the spitting without the Vista Engine ... (and in the end created the MKII Orphean (/BD15) of it).

The big fun is, that now the #3 Engine isn't overdoing things that much anymore, just because the Orphean got better.

So this is how we did it and still do it, and that is what this board is for : Pointing out this spitting, is a very easy thing, and ready for absolute measurement at the same time. Don't you have the spitting ? then you are in for improvement somewhere. XX can do it (today with #1 and #2 just the same). If you have it ? compare it with the player you're used to. Is it not there ? then it's less.

So note that "spitting" is far from the only thing to measure, hence it can never be a single "thing"; all must come together. Example : the spitting will reveil when the highest frequencies are uplevelled (think in xover terms). But if the result is hissing cymbals ... then it's wrong all together.
#3 could do it on its own (and too much of it), but at the same time it created the crazy dynamics as known from Bert's forum. Each smash on a drum would make you scared. It is a nice feature, but a wrong one. It unveils detail you never heard before in your life, but it's wrong.
At that time, we couldn't think of what was wrong, except for that it was. Today we know it was the Orphean which was ready for improvement, and in the very end currently I don't know the status of #3 for that matter, because I had to give up temporarily on the complex matter of integrating the engine with the functionality of the player. It took me 4 months, and XX had to be launched ...

So again, this board is for pointing out mainly the anomalies. One could say something like : I know this woman, and she has a crackle in her voice, and I don't hear it. Can you hear it ? ... and then work it out.

The other way around can happen just the same : after an upgrade of XX, someone says : I now hear bells which I never heard before in this track, do you hear it too ?

Or I could say : Please listen to track x, you now hear a brush there which in the old version was inaudible. However, I think the bass is kind of booming, listen to track y please.

All 'n all it is about improvement, which is my personal objective.
And yours, I'm sure.

Peter


PS: I imagine to post pieces of tracks to share. Whether it's allowed or not, I don't care. I'll be responsible.
No complete tracks, and no pieces which can be glued together to reform the original track.