Audiophile quality download files please

The "Cuba" track by Will D C is probably the best sonically speaking. The Tish Potter recordings were done live in a church with a real pipe organ, so there is a lot more background noise due to the organ mechanics and air pump. Try not to look at whether the media is WAV or MP3, because this knowledge can have a psychological effect on how you hear it - see if you can sort of "double blind" yourself.

I have sorted out the WAV mixes of all the other tracks on the site (I've been meaning to do this for a while) and I am uploading them now. I will let you know when they are up.

I have started with Tish Potter/ All I want and must say that I do prefer the WAV over the MP3. The MP3 sound OK, but seems a bit flat in comparison. The strange thing is that the wav seems to have better bass as well as more treble detail.
Later I will try the other demos. Thanks

Did you see my post earlier about the demos on my website? Have a listen to www.realivestudios.com/demos and let me know what you think.

About silver mains cable, I would agree here, but I have found that using high quality copper and extra thick for the power amp seems to help. Like you say, one must be careful not to get sucked into it too much. My feeling is that when you are happy with the sound, leave alone. Different is not always better and one gets used to a particular balance of a system (up to a point). For me, if a system sounds good with Jazz and Classical, then it is probably on the right track.
Going back to the MP3 argument, I would say that it just not cut it with complex orchestral works, but at a high bit rate can be OK with Jazz and Pop. With increased capacity (both storage and bandwidth), the argument for continued use of MP3 surly must be diminishing. I have experimented with high bit rate (96-24) downloads and found them the be a useful upgrade (even when taken from vinyl). I do like the sound from a well set up deck, but it is time for us to move onto something which is truly better. The best that I heard was from master tapes taken from BBC studios and played direct into a good hi-fi. Not very practical, I think!

That all makes perfect sense, but where I think people go wrong is when they think that a mains cable made of silver "sounds" better than a standard, reasonable quality copper cable, simply because silver has a 5% better electrical conduction than copper. These people do not understand how their perception can trick them (psycho-acoustics, placebo effect etc) and they do not understand the science. Simply put, a mains cable is such a tiny impedance compared to the impedance of a all the other copper cable in the circuit right back to the power station, and the mains transformer inside the equipment it connects to. So although the silver mains cable does have a 5% better conduction, this is only a tiny, tiny fraction of the overall impedance of the circuit.

The ESP amp is not available as a kit, you can buy the bare PCB and then you have to source all the components yourself. so there is quite a bit of work involved.

Yes I agree. The wiring in my studio runs in 3 separate horizontal conduits that are about 2 feet apart. There are separate conduits for mains, digital (SPDIF, USB etc), and analogue, and all the analogue is balance and runs at +4dB professional line level - whereas most hi-fi stuff runs at -10dB and is not balanced.

By dressing, I just mean keeping mains away from interconnects and speaker cables and making sure that things like transformers are not near interconnects either.

not sure about dressing/screening some cables are woven as it helps eliminates crosstalk due electromagnetic capacitance at least thats the theory with modern wired computer networks but im not really a expert as i try to do everything on a mid priced budget and only have a cheap matched 2.1 system at home and spend most of the money on headphones due to living in a flat with neighbours.

Why is everyone here so polarised? In my experience changing cables does make a difference (I do agree, however, that there is a lot of snake oil here), so I would not not spend silly money on them. Mains cables seem to make less difference to me, although I must admit here that I bought a good quality disribution block and made all the mains connectors using good screened cable and quality plugs, sockets etc (cost about £15 per cable plus £110 for the block which includes some suppression and protection). Dressing the cables can make just as much difference, if not more. I presume that a studio engineer would take some care in setting up a studio (ie dressing the cables etc).
Regarding having a sound system that sounds "nice", I would agree that artificial warmth is wrong, but I do not want every fault of a recording thrust in my face. It is here that the requirements for Hi-Fi and Sudio must differ in my opinion.
The old Tannoys of course are very efficient and are one of the few brands to cross from Studio to PA to Hi-Fi, so they must be doing somthing right.
Old Tannoys and the Quad electrostatic were made at a time when manufacturers tried to just make the best that they could and it shows.

thanks for that info DWS ive made a note of it, half is plenty the imbalance is only slight and noticable at high volumes. probably order a kit next week or possibly order the objective 2 amp and look into a slight mod.

I think that might effect the impedance too much. I was thinking of adding a variable resistor rather than a potentiometer in series with the 10k log pot.
Like this..

Line In
--------------¬
|
_|_
| | New 10K log
| |<--
|_ | |
|____|
|
|
_|_
| | Original 10K log
| |<--------------------
|_ |
|
|
---------------|------------------

If you do this to both channel, this will enable you to reduce the volume of each channel by half, which should be enough for balance triming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCZ-AJQOiDg

the funny thing about nwavguy he got banned from head-fi for criticizing a commercial headphone amp that had such a huge v/a surge which switching on it made expensive drivers pretty blow to there limits. theres a vid on utube of the amp doing it to some quite expensive drivers.

i think i understand add another pot between line in and ground after the first pot as a pull up/down resistor. tnx. my right ear can be a bit random

It would be better to add another 10k pot in series with the volume control, but put it inside the case - so it is adjustable (in case your hearng changes) and out of the way, maybe even make it a pcb mounted trimmer. R2L and R3L are part of a balanced attenuator, so need to be the same value.

Thanks for the links, I had a look and he does seem to know his stuff.

Talking of Burr Brown, the headphone amp on the ESP site specifies an NE5532 opamp, but I used the OPA2134, as it is better and I have lots of them. The NE5532 is perfectly ok, especially as it's not having to work very hard, so its up to you which you use.

thanks DWS ill look into the esp 113 project im wondering if i can put in potentiometers (R2L,R3L) on the input stage for a set and forget balance control. im also a fan of this guy

http://nwavguy.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/o2-headphone-amp.html

kits availible from here (with burr brown opamp upgrade options)

http://www.jdslabs.com/storecat.php?fetchcat=4

Forgot to mention. The guy that runs that ESP site really knows his stuff, he is a musician/sound engineer/electronics engineer like me, and he has written a lot of technical documents on the site which are well worth reading. Lots of GOOD information about audio gear, without all the unscientific rubbish and subjectivism you find in audio magazines.

Great, I'm glad you like them, and that's a good price.

There is a suitable power supply for the headphone amp here..

http://sound.westhost.com/project05a.htm

You only need the +/- 15V sections, all the circuitry along the top for the "Aux" output can be omitted.
If you don't fancy building one, it's still a useful reference so that you know what you are looking for if you choose to buy one ready made.
With a top quality headphone amp, you will notice an improvement in the transient response - which in real terms means the high frequencies are cleaner. So "ess" and "tee" sounds in vocals, and plucked strings will sound more natural. The low frequencies should be about the same - but could have better damping ie less resonance. With some headphone amps you might get extra features like "cross-coupling", which basically feeds a small amount of delayed signal from one channel to the other, and simulates the process that happens in nature between your ears in open air, but as these headphones are open, that happens anyway - acoustically.

Toroidal transformers are not necessary for a headphone amp, and have a slightly higher noise coupling anyway due to an increased capacitance between the primary and secondary windings - which means if you have a noisy mains supply, then more of it will get through to the DC rails, so will need better filtering. My headphone amps use a standard +/- 15V ac encapsulated, pcb mounted transformer like this one..

http://www.rapidonline.com/Electrical-Power/Encapsulated-PCB-Transformer-230v-2-3va-0-15v-0-15v-88-5008

hi DWS managed to get the hd650 from a dealer in brighton for 265 i must im a bit blown away although the 535's are good and similar in sound these sound so much fuller and have the sparkle in the treble department the 535's lack and this is straight out of a cowon j3 and no amp so it can only get better. i spent a good number of years doing electronic assembly so thanks for the link although the science eludes me. not sure about power supply when i was doing pa amps they used toroidal transformers with big caps.

If you are into electronic/DIY or know someone who is, then the circuit for the one I use is here...http://sound.westhost.com/project113.htm
Don't lets it's simplicity fool you - it is an extremely good performance amp. This website also supplies bare PCBs for these. You will also need good quality +/-15V power supply which might need to be purpose built. If you want to have a go, I could sketch the circuit for mine for you.

Here is a thought that might help a few people, as to why hi-fi enthusiasts and musicians/sound-engineers will never understand each other..

Firstly, hi-fi enthusiasts rarely listen to music in a specially designed room. Just sticking acoustic foam on the walls doesn't count - this will attenuate frequencies down to 1kHz at best, but will not touch the lows. For that you need tuned bass traps, plus a properly designed room - ie non-parallel walls and ceiling, and room dimensions that control/spread out standing waves etc. Plus, the room needs to be properly isolated from the outside world to stop noise coming in, unless the room is in the middle of a field with no trains, undergrounds, roads, airports nearby. As most hi-fi enthusiasts don't go this trouble, then they are usually listening in a room that is seriously degrading the sound, particularly in the low frequencies. In my experience, there can be variations of around 20dB between different frequencies in an average listening room. And that is not a small amount! Every 6dB is a doubling of power, so 20dB is more than eight times the power. A typical example in a well damped 4m x 3m listening room using a pink noise test, or swept sine test, might show a 10dB dip at 40Hz, and a 10dB peak at 80Hz. This is purely the effect of the room dimensions.

Now, your average hi-fi salesperson, might convince you that you need some new shiny box to solve your problems - but the problem is in the design of the room, not your audio gear. And don't bother trying to tune out the frequency disparaties with a graphic eq, because that will only work for one listener position. You only have to move away from that position by a few inches to complete change the response characteristic (particularly the high freq response - ie the wavelength of a 10kHz tone is 34mm - so if you move 15mm you have completely inverted the 10kHz tone - that is less than 1 inch!). There is a saying: you can't solve a time domain problem with a frequency domain solution!

Taking all this into consideration, the average hi-fi enthusiast is listening in an imperfect room, and the hi-fi salesman says "You need this shiny box, or that shiny box", so he tries them, and some boxes improve things, and some don't - it all depends on exactly where the room problems lie, and what effect the "new shiny boxes" have on those particular frequencies. He is constantly confused, and the hi-fi salesman gets richer.

In contrast to that. A sound engineer or musician, listening in a properly designed room, will not have all these room node problems, and will be getting a playback result that very closely matches what he heard live when he was recording it - end of story! The audio gear is doing the job it was designed to do, and the sound is consistent and accurate regardless of the listening position in the room (within reason) - no tweaking necessary!

Now, when someone who HASN'T spent the last 30 years of their life recording quality live music, and then listening to the results of that recording in a properly designed studio, tries to tell ME that I don't know what I am listening to in an attempt to reinforce their own delusions, then I am understandably annoyed.

no i never tweak, i just like listening lifes to short and money limited. the amp is something ill have to look into i have a slight hearing imbalance so really need a amp with some sort of balance even if it just a potentiometer inside the case.

Hi C Spark. Glad I could help. If you are looking for accuracy then you will love the HD600 or 650 - so if you know what real instruments sound like live, and you want to experience that from a good recording, then go for it. But if you are one of these hi-fi nuts who is constantly tweeking, fiddling with tone controls, "listening" to different cables, and trying to second-guess the producer who made the music, then maybe not. I wonder how many people on here do that? - I mean, fiddle with tone controls on every track they listen to. That is probably a good way to tell the difference between the two types of people - the "tweakers" and the real listeners. My sound system is calibrated for accuracy and has no tone controls - nothing to fiddle with. And the amp isn't on show, so I can't boast to my friends about how shiny it is. It just does it's job extremely well, without any psychological tricks, and doesn't cost a lot of money.

Regarding the headphone amp, if you are into the technical stuff, then the one I can recommend uses a class A/B push-pull transistor output stage, which basically means it runs in class A mode when in low power, and gradually enters class B mode as the power increases. The output devices are TIP41 and TIP42 (I think - from memory) which are TO22 package medium power transistors. These are driven by an OPA2134. This is a Burr Brown audio opamp, and considered the best audio opamp ever made.

Correction - I just looked it up, the output transistors are BD139 and BD140.

And while I am on a rant..

"I've had a pair of Sennheiser 650s for some time. Ok as far as headphones go but no match for a system with speakers since they cannot reproduce the dynamics the same as a system"

You don't recognise accuracy when you hear it, because you expect your sound system to "sweeten" everything first. A sound system has to deal with the acoustics of the room - ie low and high frequency reflections, low frequency standing waves and surfaces causing comb filtering effects, the high frequency attenuation caused by the air between the speakers and your ears, the low frequency attenuation caused by the fact the low frequencies radiate spherically, whereas high frequencies are directional, meaning an uneven power distribution across the audio spectrum. End result is a seriously messed up frequency response - even in the best sound sytems. A good pair of headphones suffer from none of these problems.

"cannot repoduce the dynamics" - this sounds like marketing - ie unscientific nonsense. Do you know what dynamics are? In short, the difference between the loudest sound and the quietest sound. In a listening room, you will only hear the full dynamic range if the room is completely quiet - ie soundproofed from the outside world. I my studio, the only sound I can hear (even with everything switched on) is the blood pumping around my own head. Unless you experience that, then you are not experiencing the full dynamic range. Again, headphones do not require a soundproof listening room, and therefore have a far greater dynamic range than any sound system.