What differences should I be hearing as my new system breaks in?

Jepatey, I do have a number of earlier Pink Floyd albums on Harvest. I’m giving Obscured by Clouds a listen right now. I unfortunately might have given my brother the original Harvest Dark Side of the Moon when I thought I was upgrading to the original Mobile Fidelity version back then. Next time I’m up on Long Island visiting I’ll have to rummage through his stuff. It’s probably long gone though.

By coincidence I just happened to receive the new Music Direct Summer 2019 catalog in the mail a few minutes ago. I’ll take a look through it to see what Pink Floyd material they have in it. Their asking prices for vinyl records are always appalling though. I purchased most of my 1960’s and 70’s rock albums for $4 when they first came out. Since these companies use their old masters to press new vinyl their cost can’t be more than a few pennies per copy.

Mike

Skyscraper:

 Thus far some records or CD’s sound very different form what I’ve been used to listening to over the years. ...

 Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon on Mobile Fidelity sounded like a muddy mess and super crackly to boot, although an almost brand new pressing. ...

Paul Desmond’s alto sax practically jumped out of the speakers on the Brubeck’s Take Five album, which had previously left me non-plussed, but now was quite enjoyable. ...

Okay so here's the thing, or my view on it anyway: what you are shooting for is not a system that sounds any way in particular, but a system that sounds like nothing at all. The perfect system has no sound of its own. It disappears. If perfect it would literally disappear. But we will settle for when you turn the lights off and the music on then all you have is the music.

When that is the case then yes sorry to say but you will sometimes find yourself playing recordings that used to sound great and ought to sound great but instead sound like crap. There's a lot that goes into this and its not an easy thing to understand so let me try and explain.

DSOTM, I have four or five copies (just of the LP). One original issue from about 1972, two MoFi reissues, one remastered reissue. I pulled the virtually brand new and supposedly audiophile reissue out recently. Even though I hadn't played DSOTM in years it was immediately obvious this version was crap. Absolute crap. Congealed, smothered, obnoxiously hard edged flat yet grainy crap. Could only stand a few minutes. Pulled out the others to compare. The original was much more open, detailed and dynamic. The MoFi (both of them) were close to the original, with just a hair of presence smoothed off, enough that a lot would probably prefer it as more quiet if they never heard them side by side.

In this case it would seem the crap reissue was ruined in mastering, while MoFi probably just did better mastering and took more care in the pressing, yet even with all of that still didn't quite match the original. 

Listen to all of these however and then put on the Brubeck. Which is a whole different story. Both have some pretty fine sax, but the Brubeck is far more viscerally present and there in the room. In fact the difference is much more than that. Its more like when playing that recording the whole room is different. Your room is the same. But the room you hear is different. As your system gets better you will better appreciate what I'm talking about. But listen, you should be able to get some sense of it even now.

This is the goal and the better your system gets the bigger the difference you will hear between recordings, and even between different pressings of the same recording. 

A friend listening to Terry Evans Putting it Down one time said he thought one track sounded better than another. We looked and sure enough, that one track had been recorded live to two-track. The others were mixdowns. So even that small a difference can be heard- when your system is good enough to reveal that small a difference.

The usual metaphor is one of looking through a lot of panes of glass. The amp is one pane of glass, speakers another, and it turns out there's a lot of em, everything from the power cords right down to the individual diodes and caps is a pane of glass. Some panes are thick, some thin, some clear, some colored, some flat, some curved and distorted, some cracked, chipped, smoked, etched, clean, dirty, on and on.

The goal with upgrades is pull out the etched glass replace it with clear. Only thing, turns out there is no clear glass. Even if it is, guess what? Its still glass! What you want is no glass, not even air- no such thing.

Right now you got a much cleaner window than you had before. Looking out, some scenes look dramatically better. Others, like your DSOTM, you can't understand why they look worse. Because they were ugly to begin with. You just didn't know it, looking at it through your beer goggles, as it were. Now though when you do find a really good pressing- magic. Gonna sound better than you ever imagined.

That's the way it is. Sometimes your system getting better will make some recordings sound worse. Oh well. Other recordings though.... buried treasure. 

skyscraper,

DSD material, under that name, is sold as downloads. However, DSD material on the purchased disc is SACD. Somewhere on each SACD you will see written DSD. The idea of DSD predates current widely-accepted music file download era so it came "packaged" on the disc (SACD) which provided a few more "advantages" (no copying). Since then, DSD files proliferated while SACDs continued existing. In general, SACD players play SACDs and some of them, including yours, will play DSD files via digital input (yours will NOT do it via front panel USB).

There is a couple of consumer-level disc players that will play DSD files from a disc that is not SACD but those are relatively rare and probably not what you will be looking for. For them, you could burn a data disc (not SACD) with DSD files and they would play.

It does get confusing but, in short, you have a set up to do, more or less, all that there is. Records, CDs, SACDs, digital files of many kinds. You are good to go, it seems.

Millercarbon, Thanks for your clear and cogent explanation about what I may be hearing or experiencing with various recordings played on my new equipment. I’ve honestly been a bit confused about what I’ve been hearing when playing some records or CD’s; whether it’s’ the system still burning in, the recordings themselves, speaker placement or anything else impacting the sound. Curiously on a couple of recordings no sound did seemed to emanate from the speakers at all. Usually, at least a couple of the instruments or voices can be localized as coming from one or other of the speakers, the other between the speakers somewhere. The other day I noticed one instrument playing off to the right of the speaker on the right side. What’s next, sound coming from above and below?.

By and large I’ve been very pleased, but somewhat baffled by the experience. A few recordings sound the same as ever, many more much clearer and well defined, some simply great. I was listening to Coltrane’s Live at Newport (redbook) CD the other night. It was wonderful, particularly his soloing being captured in such a vivid and well defined.manner, like uncovering buried treasure as you said. Also like you said I’m likely now being able to hear the difference between recordings much more clearly than ever before. That makes sense and explains a lot. I guess without thinking about it, I was anticipating all recordings to sound equally better. Thanks.

Glupson, you are correct it does get confusing. If I understand you correctly an SACD does have DSD content and will play on an SACD player. Otherwise if I wanted to play a downloaded DSD file, I could somehow on my CD/SACD player via digital input, whatever that might entail. Since I don’t ever plan to download music, that should not be an issue anyway, unless CD’s go the way of the dodo and I’m stuck doing that.

I have way too much fun buying CD’s and records anyway. I was excited today, for example, to find Volume 2 of Miles Davis’ "Live at the Blackhawk" on Amazon Music, having owned Volume 1 for many years. It’s way too much fun to get CD’s in the mail, or find second-hand records occasionally, to want to download instead. Let the kids do that. I still go to real bookstores too and I happily threw my cell phone in the garbage when I retired. So much for the electronic age, although these internet forums can be informative and fun. Thanks for the explanation Glupson. I'm glad to have learned something.

Mike

The biggest reason a system has to break in for 90 days is because that is the standard limit for getting a refund on a credit card.  See online Skeptic Magazine's, "Audiofoolery".   TeeHee  But seriously, your mind's placebo filter will learn to ignore the parts you don't like and help you concentrate on what you do like.