‘Binaural’ simply means ‘relating to two ears’, and it’s only an accident of history that we don’t use the word instead of ‘stereo’ (which actually means ‘solid’).

As it is, binaural recordings are basically recordings made specifically for listening to on headphones rather than loudspeakers.

There’s one very important difference between headphones and speakers: the left earpiece of a pair of headphones is only audible to the left ear, whereas the left loudspeaker of a conventional stereo pair is audible to both ears, with a slight time delay and loudness difference between them. Good, convincing stereo sound is possible in both cases but for optimal results the recording must have been made, or mastered, specifically for one of the other.

The basic concept of binaural is simplicity itself: to capture the sounds that should be heard by the left ear, put a microphone where the left ear would be in the performing/recording space, then do the same for the right ear. With a few nips and tucks (baffles, or a dummy head, between the microphones), that’s how binaural recordings have always been made. It’s an obvious idea and it was first used as far back as 1881, just about the time when the concept of sound recording was dreamed up and only five years after the first electrical transmission of a sound signal (the first telephone was demonstrated experimentally in 1876).

In fact the inspiration for this first stereo sound experiment appears to have been the stereoscope, the then-popular trick of printing side-by-side photographs taken with cameras separated like two eyes. This binaural transmission was demonstrated by inventor Clement Ader, who used pairs of microphones in front of the stage of the Paris Opera, sending signals to left and right earpieces of listeners elsewhere in the city. Note ‘pairs’, plural: this was in the days of single-point-to-single-point telephone, before multicasting. In fact the electronic amplifier hadn’t yet been invented, so a telephone circuit consisted of a battery, a carbon microphone, an electromagnetic earpiece, and a lot of wire. Having a telephone was a very exclusive luxury at that time: having two (left and right) made the whole thing effectively a millionaire’s plaything, but it proved the point. There’s no evidence that anyone tried, or even thought of trying, to record these signals for posterity.

Not surprisingly, binaural didn’t catch on at once. The telephone remains to this day resolutely mono, and recordings were invariably mono for many decades. There were, however, some early experiments with binaural radio transmission. In the 1920s, a few American radio stations set up crude but effective systems with each microphone feeding a separate AM transmitter, each tuned to different frequencies. The listener at home needed two receivers, one tuned to each radio frequency, with one earpiece fed from each. Loudspeakers were in their infancy at this time and most people still used earpieces, so the concept of headphone stereo was an easy one to grasp.

The most famous name in stereo history is certainly that of Alan Dower Blumlein, the man who is credited with ‘inventing stereo’. In fact his original patent on the subject, rather blandly titled ‘Improvements in and relating to Sound-transmission, Sound-recording and Sound-reproducing Systems’, acknowledges as a well-known fact the possibility of conveying a stereo soundstage using what we now call binaural techniques. Rather confusingly, he uses ‘binaural’ in the way we now use ‘stereo’, that is, meaning any two-channel system that gives an impression of lateral sound placement. But the actual invention he describes is loudspeaker stereo, the system most often used ever since and which replaced true binaural as the default two-channel system. Ironically, his original method of obtaining loudspeaker stereo was to process the two channels of a binaural microphone system, and indeed one can convert between binaural (headphone) and loudspeaker stereo with a suitable signal processing chain.

Although Blumlein showed conclusively that the correct way to record stereo for loudspeaker replay was using either ‘coincident’ (realistically, very close) directional microphones or head-spaced microphones with suitable signal processing, plenty of engineers over the years have used other techniques that are more or less closely related to binaural.

Recordings made deliberately for binaural usually use omnidirection microphones, which pick up sound equally from any direction, though obviously if these are mounted in a dummy head their spatial response is modified a bit.

The frustrating thing for the lover of binaural – which, once heard in full flow, is a very addictive thing – is that it’s usually impossible to know in advance which recordings were made with suitable microphone techniques. Practically no LPs or CDs give information on microphone placement, unless they happen to include a session photograph of sufficient clarity, and even knowing the name of the recording engineer or producer doesn’t help because most recording folks have plenty of different tricks to choose from depending on recording venue, how many musicians are in the recording, and what mood they’re in as they set up for the session.

Just occasionally, recordings are actively trumpeted as binaural – recordings and, perhaps more often, radio broadcasts. The most consistent advocated of binaural on the airwaves has been American broadcaster John Sunier, who from 1985 until 1998 hosted a programme called ‘Audiophile Audition’ on national public radio. A web-based magazine grew out of the programme and continues to fly the flag for binaural, though its remit is very much wider than that. Another website, The Binaural Source,  features more information and even some demos, though as they are all MP3 their quality is somewhat limited.

The BBC has also broadcast binaural material, rather inconsistently. Broadcasters are generally reluctant to use any stereo technique other than straight ‘intensity stereo’ (i.e. Blumlein coincident-pair, or panpot stereo) because so many people listen in mono and straight downmixing of binaural can give some rather odd ‘comb filter’ effects, but Radio 4 has an honourable history of binaural drama, going back certainly to the 1970s when some Sherlock Holmes-based dramas were put out in binaural. A noted recent success was the drama ‘The Dark House’, which was broadcast in 2007, and the technique continues to be used for special projects.

Most of the above assumes simple microphone techniques, basically a pair of microphones, one per channel. But what about the recordings – the vast majority from the last 40 years – which have been made with numerous microphones either recorded to multitrack and mixed subsequently or mixed down ‘live’? It would be perfectly possible to mix these for binaural listening but it’s practically never done. Conventional ‘panpot’ stereo mixing gives perfect Blumlein-style stereo which is not particularly well suited to headphone listening. Yes another reason to hate multimic recordings?

When all’s said and done, it can be perfectly pleasant, and often surprisingly convincing, to listen to Blumlein stereo on headphones, and indeed binaural recordings on loudspeakers. The real thrill comes when one hears a well-made binaural recording over good headphones: now that’s imaging!

Since its launch in October 2001, the Apple iPod has been responsible for a revolution in the way we enjoy music – and that’s not hyperbole. Where our portable music was once limited by how many CDs, cassettes or MiniDiscs we could carry around with, the iPod’s huge amount of built-in storage meant that you could walk around with thousands of songs in your pocket.
Maybe even your entire music collection.

Today’s iPods offer up to 160GB of storage, which Apple claims is enough for 40,000 songs in 128kbps AAC format. And the fact that space is so cheap (the 160GB iPod classic currently costs a reasonable £193) means that, should you want to load an iPod with higher quality digital music, you can still fit a huge amount of audiophile grade songs on a relatively affordable device.

So why not rip your music collection as large, high quality files and fill your iPod with a huge library of great-sounding music? We’ve put together a guide to getting the best sound out of your iPod, so read on for all you need to know.

The first thing you need to consider is which type of iPod you’ll be using. Apple’s current range starts with the tiny iPod shuffle (from £46), which certainly isn’t aimed at the audiophile crowd: with just 2GB or 4GB of storage space available, it lacks the sort of capacity you need for large music files – you can cram in about 1,000 128kbps AAC tracks, but only a relative handful of AIFF, WAV or Apple Lossless files (more on these later). There’s also no LCD display, which makes picking out your favourite tunes tricky. It’s ideal for joggers, perhaps, but not much use for the discerning music aficionado on the move.

Next in the range is the iPod nano (from £118), Apple’s pocket-friendly, video camera equipped mini model. While it features a very crisp screen for browsing your collection and playlists, its 8GB and 16GB capacities may still prove a touch restrictive for the audiophile listener.

Then there’s the iPod touch (from £153), available in 8GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities. The crisp 3.5-inch touchscreen with its CoverFlow interface is great for browsing through your record collection at the flick of a finger, and the larger capacity models have enough space for a decent number of lossless or uncompressed music files. And while not necessarily related to music listening, the touch’s ability to run software from the iTunes App Store means you can use it for a huge host of other purposes.

So the touch is a fine choice, but it’s the iPod classic (£193) that’s the best fit for audiophiles. While it lacks the touchscreen and app capabilities of the iPod touch, it has one thing the touch can’t deliver: a cavernous 160GB hard disk drive. That’s a huge amount of room, even if your music collection is ripped solely as AIFF, Apple Lossless or WAV files.

Finally we should mention the iPhone, which features an iPod function and, essentially, works just like an iPod touch. It comes in 16GB and 32GB capacities.

Easy wins – simple ways to improve your iPod’s audio performance

When it comes to improving the sound quality you get from your iPod, there are a number of simple (but not necessarily cheap) ways to get started.

Firstly (and we think this is a real no brainer): invest in a better set of headphones. The cheap, plasticky headphones bundled with iPods lack the dynamics and imaging to do lossless music justice, so a pair of high quality in-ear or on-ear ‘phones is a must.

Even an affordable pair of earbuds will offer a noticeable boost in sound quality over the standard Apple in-ear headphones, but going further and hooking up a premium pair of “ear goggles”, such as Bowers & Wilkins’ own P5 will offer a listening experience fit to impress even the most discerning pair of ears.

If you’re listening at home, a similar rule applies to your hi-fi. If you have a good quality hi-fi system already set up in your living room (and the fact that you’re reading this suggests you most likely have), you can either connect the iPod to it via a standard stereo audio cable or splash out on a standalone docking station. The latter usually connects to your hi-fi’s stereo phono inputs, but some hi-fi makers fit their amplifiers with proprietary digital inputs for their own (optional) iPod docks – this way, your amp is fed a pure digital signal direct from the iPod and that should mean higher quality sound.

Alternatively, if you’re looking to dock your iPod to an all-in-one solution, there are a wide range of speaker dock models available. The majority of the cheaper models, while handy for casual listening, lack the power and precision to really impress. However, in recent years we’ve seen the emergence of a number of top class speaker docks aimed at the more demanding music fan. These models, including the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin boast powerful drivers, subwoofers and compact but capable amplifiers, allowing them to deliver sound that’s nuanced, textured and also powerful enough to fill a room.

The compact nature of speaker docks means that they can struggle to provide the clear stereo imaging you might expect from a “proper” hi-fi, but that’s a trade-off it could be worth making for the sake of simplicity and user-friendliness – and even the pricier speaker docks should work out significantly cheaper than a good quality hi-fi consisting of separates.

Finally, one straightforward way to ensure superior sound quality is to rip your CDs into iTunes in a different format to the highly compressed likes of MP3 and AAC. iTunes offers three options if you decide to go down this route: AIFF; Apple Lossless; and WAV. There are a few differences between the three, but all offer sound quality that is essentially indistinguishable from the original CD source.

Those codecs, and how to use them

AIFF

Audio Interchange File Format was co-developed by Apple, and stores audio data in an uncompressed state. It uses a lot of data (around 10MB per minute of music), but isn’t at all lossy – i.e. none of the original audio data is lost in the importing process.

Apple Lossless

Apple Lossless is a compressed but lossless MP4 format. Apple claims it requires around half the storage space of an equivalent uncompressed file, making it ideal for iPods with less storage – the nano or touch, for example.

WAV

Short for WaveForm Audio File Format, WAV is an uncompressed format fairly similar to AIFF, although it was developed by Apple’s great rival Microsoft. Like AIFF, the files it produces are theoretically indistinguishable from the original CD. The only real advantage WAV holds over AIFF is that it’s compatible with more products (outside of iPods, with which both work perfectly).

To make the most of these improved codecs, it’s imperative when importing your CDs into iTunes you take a few steps beforehand to ensure the music is ripped at the highest possible quality. Open up the iTunes preferences window and select “Import Settings”. After choosing your preferred format, tick the “Use error correction when reading Audio CDs” box: this makes importing take a little longer, but also means you won’t get any glitches (caused by scratches on CDs) affecting the imported files. You should also open the “Playback” tab and uncheck the “sound enhancer” and “Sound Check” boxes, as these alter your music from the original files to “widen” the stereo effect and normalise the volume respectively – things that music purists would do well to avoid.

What about FLAC?

You may remember our recent blog about FLAC (aka the Free Lossless Audio Codec), which can come in superb high quality 24-bit form – actually closer to the studio master than 16-bit CD. 24-bit FLAC is the highest quality format in which we offer music downloads to our Society of Sound members, but sadly older iPods are not able to play back 24-bit files, and no iPods can play 24-bit files with a sampling rate of over 48k.

In order to play these files on your iPod you’ll need to convert them to Apple Lossless using an outside program such as Max for Mac OS X or dBpoweramp for Windows, then importing them into iTunes. Using this won’t lose you too much discernible audio quality, and will allow you to play your FLAC files on your iPod, but we’re still hoping for a ‘proper’ 24-bit capable iPod before too long.

What about music that’s already been ripped/downloaded?

If you’ve already got a substantial digital music collection stored on a hard disk or computer, importing this into iTunes is easy – provided the music is in an iTunes-friendly format (iTunes won’t, for instance, play Windows Media Audio music files).

All you need to do is transfer the files on to your Mac or PC, then copy and paste (or drag) them into the iTunes library window. This should copy them across, with tags and track names intact.

All of this may seem like a lot of effort, but as any audiophile will tell you, the differences are in the details, and the more little improvements you make to the way you listen to your iPod and the music stored on it, the more enjoyable your listening experience.

If you have any other tips for getting the best out of your iPod, please let us know below.

Simply put, the answer is great sound. Spielberg knew that sharks were silent, stealthy killers: it took John Williams’ powerfully affecting score to heighten the terror of each attack. George Lucas was just as profoundly aware of the need for great sound: he needed it to hide the flaws in his 1970s-vintage special effects. Once the thundering engines of a Star Destroyer have screamed over your head, you’ll pay less attention to the fact that, quite obviously, it’s all being done with models. And then there’s Saving Private Ryan, that paragon of surround sound savagery, as realistic a multichannel masterpiece as any in movie history: here, the sonic intent was to both convince and terrify, and did it ever work.

So great sound counts. In fact, according to Randy Thom, one of Hollywood’s most acclaimed sound designers, it counts so much that “If you look closely at and listen to a dozen or so movies you consider to be great, you’ll realise how important sound is in many if not most of them”. Or to put it another way, while watching a great movie in stereo through bandwidth-limited television speakers has little impact on your ability to understand dialogue or follow the plot, it’s still a long way short of the complete entertainment experience the director originally intended you to have.

All the more reason to buy a Blu-ray player and an appropriate multichannel amplifier, receiver or processor: the combination of these two (or three) components, used in harness with a good-quality surround speaker system, will get you closer than ever to the original sound of the master audio tracks created by the world’s best sound designers.

Older disc formats such as DVD are comparatively careless with the precious cargo they bear: in essence, when we talk about data compression for DVD sound, what we really mean is data ‘reduction’, because elements of the original source audio are permanently discarded during the disc-encoding process. With Blu-ray’s uncompressed and lossless audio technologies, that doesn’t happen, so the end result can be sonically identical to the original.

Identical? Really? Unbelievably, the answer is yes. For any film, sounds are first recorded and engineered as uncompressed 24-bit/48kHz PCM audio (far better than CD quality, which is 16-bit/44.1kHz PCM): this is then mixed in the studio to create an original master. After that, the finished soundtrack is usually heavily compressed to create final versions of the movie for distribution on film or, subsequently, for domestic use. This is very similar to the way MP3 works on a CD-quality piece of music: indeed, Dolby Digital, the most commonly used compression system found on DVD discs, stores audio at transfer rates very similar to a good MP3 file (384 to 448kbps, or kilobits per second).

This compromise is enforced by the technical difficulties involved in cramming surround sound on to a film reel, on to a limited-capacity data disc or, most recently, on to a DVD. DVD can only offer between 4.7 and 9.4GB of storage space for the completed movie presentation, and its video is packaged using less-efficient MPEG2 compression, which requires more space per second of video information than newer, more efficient systems. That, plus the need to accommodate numerous extra features and, in discs destined for the European market, additional soundtrack options in other languages, has meant that on many DVD releases, audio has frequently come a poor third to its two space-hungry rivals.

But Blu-ray has up to 50GB of storage capacity and often uses newer and much more efficient video compression systems compared to DVD, so there’s no need
to cram in data to fit the space available. In fact, there’s so much space on a 50GB disc that it can even accommodate a studio-quality 7.1 channel 24-bit/48kHz PCM soundtrack, if needed: the only inhibiting factors are the duration of the film, the extent of the extras included and the willingness of each studio to make the effort. As a guide, two hours of 7.1 channel, uncompressed 24/48 PCM audio would need 8.3GB of space, or less than 20 percent of the space on a 50GB Blu-ray.

That said, not all Blu-ray discs afford dual-layer 50GB capacity: many films are released as single-layer 25GB discs. Even here, it¹s possible to fit multiple channels of uncompressed PCM audio onto a 25GB disc ­ but at the same time, to do so obviously takes up a relatively larger proportion of the available capacity.

So, to create room for extras, soundtrack options and video, most studios have adopted one of two approaches. Some have preferred to down-convert the 24-bit PCM original into a 16-bit/48kHz version. This still sounds very good, because even down-converted, uncompressed PCM will deliver more dynamic range and detail than a Dolby Digital soundtrack. Two hours of 16/48 7.1-channel PCM occupies 5.5GB of disc space ­ a useful capacity saving.

However, rather than opting for a lower-quality version of PCM, an alternative is to use a ‘lossless’ packaging system, either DTS-HD Master Audio or Dolby TrueHD. These work rather like zip files in home computing: they repackage the 24-bit/48kHz PCM master (or whichever quality of master is available) into less space, rather than down-converting it. All that’s required is some way of ‘unzipping’ the data file to recover the original PCM audio, which can be done inside your Blu-ray player, or, depending on the type and quality of kit you own, inside most new surround amplifiers, receivers and processors.

Using this lossless approach, a 24/48 7.1-channel PCM soundtrack packaged using Dolby TrueHD requires 4.2GB of space, meaning it occupies about half the disc space of the same soundtrack stored as uncompressed data. Clearly, that makes lossless packaging attractive for studios releasing single-layer 25GB Blu-ray discs, and even on dual-layer 50GB discs, it’s frequently used for films with long running times.

Whichever type of lossless packaging system is used, the salient point is this: the sounds you eventually hear will be bit-for-bit identical to the original studio master, and should also sound better than a down-converted 16-bit/48kHz PCM alternative.

Which lossless system sounds best? It’s frequently asked, but it’s also fundamentally irrelevant. For starters, very few discs are encoded with both forms of lossless audio, (because studios have no vested interest in doing so), so any direct comparisons between the two systems are very difficult to carry out. But just as importantly, each form of encoding system uses variable bit rates and different data algorithms, so while DTS-HD Master Audio has a nominally superior maximum audio bitrate (24.5Mbps, as against 18Mbps for Dolby TrueHD) in practice the two technologies are far harder to separate.

Whatever the theory, the key point is this: with Blu-ray, film soundtracks can sound far more dynamic and spacious than their DVD equivalents. In fact, your favourite films can sound as good as the original studio masters, which is a giant leap forward in quality for home cinema. All you need is the appropriate electronics and loudspeaker to make the most of them.

HIGH-DEFINITION AUDIO FORMATS

Uncompressed:

PCM
Pulse-code modulation, sometimes referred to as Linear PCM or LPCM, is broadly used on CD, in computer audio and on Blu-ray. In the latter context, bit depths of 16, 20 and 24-bits are used, with the latter quality, sampled at 48kHz, being the most commonly employed ‘master’ standard in film production. Every Blu-ray player must support PCM as standard, although not every disc includes a standard PCM soundtrack for the reasons outlined above. In essence, its disadvantage is solely that it demands considerable space on a disc.

Lossless:

Dolby TrueHD

One of the two key lossless audio formats (referred to as ‘codecs’) on Blu-ray. It’s an optional rather than mandatory part of the audio specification for Blu-ray, but is widely supported just the same. Supports bit-depth of up to 24 bits and  sampling rates up to 96kHz at up to eight channels (arranged as 7.1, typically), with higher sampling rates (192kHz) available for soundtracks with fewer channels of audio. The maximum encoded bit-rate is 18Mbps, although in practice most discs use much less than that.

DTS-HD Master Audio
The other key lossless audio codec on Blu-ray. It’s also optional, but it’s more widely supported (so far) than Dolby TrueHD. Supports bit-depth of up to 24 bits and sampling rates up to 96kHz for up to eight channels (arranged as 7.1, typically), with higher sampling rates (192kHz) available for soundtracks with fewer channels of audio. The maximum encoded bit-rate is 24.5Mbps, although in practice most discs use much less than that.

Lossy:

Dolby Digital Plus

Rarely used on Blu-ray, this compressed audio system offers significantly better quality than standard Dolby Digital, with the potential for data rates as high as 6Mbps, although typical usages are much lower that that (around 1.5Mbps, maximum). Up to 7.1 channels of discrete audio can be included, at up to 24-bits, although more frequently 16-bit audio is used.

DTS-HD High resolution
Another relative rarity on Blu-ray, DTS-HD HR is broadly similar to Dolby Digital Plus in that it supports up to 6Mbps datastreams, up to 7.1 channels of audio and up to 24-bit data.

TOP FIVE AUDIO SCENES ON FILM:

The Dark Knight

Sound Designer Richard King won the Academy Award for Sound Editing in 2009
for his work on Chris Nolan’s second Batman film ­ hear it on Blu-ray, and you’ll immediately understand why. Presented in Dolby TrueHD, this is a masterful demonstration of deft effects placement intermixed with formidable dynamics. As with all the best soundtracks, it’s not afraid to use silence as a dramatic counterpoint to volume, either.

Saving Private Ryan

Still one of the most celebrated surround soundtracks in film history, Gary Rydstrom’s Academy Award-winning masterpiece is as intense as modern home
cinema sound gets. Deftly intermixing furious power with astonishing attention to period detail, the DTS-HD Master Audio presentation is thrilling and terrifying in equal measure.

Sherlock Holmes

Chris Munro’s work on the DTS-HD Master Audio presentation to Holmes disproves the myth that all the best home cinema experiences rely on action sequences to deliver thrills: while it¹s blessed with considerable dynamics, the soundtrack here works just as well at modest volumes and with apparently quieter, more subtle effects: it¹s especially effective at wrapping surround information around you.

Up

Want a home cinema thrill your kids can enjoy, too? Try this: its DTS-HD MasterAudio soundtrack features 6.1 audio for additional rear-speaker spaciousness, and this adds considerable extra scale to the film¹s grander scenes. There’s all the low-frequency thunder you could want, too ­especially during the film’s standout thunderstorm sequence!

Avatar

Yes, the film that everyone went to see at the cinema is now the film that everyone¹s going to buy on Blu-ray, but with good reason: this THX-mastered disc features not a single extra, allowing almost all its 50GB capacity to be given over to delivering the best-possible sound and vision. It¹s a purist approach, but one that delivers outstanding results in DTS-HD Master Audio.

The Opera of the Future group is an MIT Media Lab Research Group led by Society of Sound Fellow Tod Machover. It explores concepts and techniques to help advance the future of musical composition, performance, learning, and expression. Through the design of new interfaces for both professional virtuosi and amateur music-lovers, the development of new techniques for interpreting and mapping expressive gesture, and the application of these technologies to innovative compositions and experiences, the group seeks to enhance music as a performance art, and to develop its transformative power as counterpoint to our everyday lives. The scope of our research includes musical instrument design, concepts for new performance spaces, interactive touring and permanent installations, and “music toys.” It ranges from extensions of traditional forms to radical departures, such as the Brain Opera, Toy Symphony and Death and the Powers.

Ambisonics is one of its current research projects, and here Ben Bloomberg explains a concept that could very well be the future of surround sound….

Ambisonics

Anyone who has gone through the process of designing a home theater understands the difficulties associated with locating speakers. Unless the theater is designed and built from the ground up, it is seldom possible to put speakers in perfectly ideal positions. Ambisonic encoding provides an abstraction layer, which allows one to place speakers independently of sound. It is an elegant method of representing audio such that the locations of ‘virtual sources’ are represented in the most accurate way given any possible speaker configuration.

At Opera of the Future, we strive to create spectacular next generation live performance systems that are realistically usable in harsh environments such as touring productions. Systems must be flexible enough to fit into any venue, ranging from small offices to concert halls, and extremely simple to setup and configure. Using Ambisonic encoding, it is possible to arrive at a venue, place surround sound speakers wherever it is most convenient and have a fantastic, consistent surround sound field.

Although Ambisonic encoding is a well-known technique for reproducing pre-recorded content, it is not often used as live tool because latency associated with encoding and decoding is too great. For our latest production, Death and the Powers, we have developed an AppleCoreAudio AudioUnit DSP engine, which is capable of processing 128 channels of ambisonics at a staggering 32 samples of delay. This allows us to take ambisonics to new heights in live entertainment and sound reinforcement.

Existing theatrical surround sound processors cost upwards of $120,000. This system can run on hardware ranging from a small FPGA-based 8-channel system ($60) to a 128 channel MacPro based system ($5,000). It can be automated using industry standard OSC and uses any CoreAudio compatible audio interface for audio I/O.

How does it work?

Ambisonic encoding uses 3rd order spherical harmonics to represent virtual sources with 16 directional coordinates that function equivalently to X, Y and Z coordinates. Using a 16 axes, instead of 3, to specify the location of a virtual source allows greater “perceived resolution” in the surround sound field. Thus adding more speakers can produce a more detailed result rather than a ‘blurrier’ field.

Bowers & Wilkins to the Rescue!

We have been developing ambisonic systems at Opera of the Future for 3 years now. Until the present, we were unable to find a speaker that was small enough and sufficiently detailed to justify use in large quantities for testing in our lab and studios. It should be mentioned that we spend our days using our 800D and 805s speakers in the studio for production work, so we were extremely picky when it came to finding a speaker that would work well for our large-scale ambisonic tests.

Just when production for Death and the Powers was beginning to reach its peak, Bowers & Wilkins introduced us to the M-1, a four inch speaker with a one inch aluminum nautilus tweeter. Needless to say, it seemed like the perfect speaker for us to use. In a flurry of emails and phone calls, we managed to obtain 24(!) of them for some testing and experimentation.

The results could not be more positive. After some time testing and tweaking decoder weightings and crossover points, we found that paired with two of our 800Dʼs and an ASW-855 subwoofer, the system sounds incredible!

The first debut of the system was during the open house for the grand opening of our new building, but it has since been the centerpiece of many demos, including one for Gustavo Dudamel, conductor of the LA Philharmonic.

The System

The DSP rig consists of a MacPro loaded with AULab and MOTU Digital Performer running in real-time mode (a fantastic resource) and a MADI-based Solid State Logic 128 Channel PCI- express card. The system clock is generated on board a separate SSL AlphaLink SX and sent over MADI fibre-optic cable to the computer. The DSP runs at 96Khz and the converters are 24-bit.

The M-1s are spaced evenly at 15 degree increments with two 800Ds in front at 30 degrees and an ASW-855 Subwoofer in the rear. The M-1s have a 1st order high pass filter at 140Hz and the subwoofer is crossed over at 100Hz and 180 degrees out of phase. The 800Ds run full range.

System Specs:

MacPro 8-core 2.26Ghz w/6GB RAM SSL MadiXtreme128 SSL Alpha-link MADI SX MOTU Digital Performer 7.1

Apple AULab 2.1 (19) B&W M1 Speakers (2) B&W 800D Speakers (1) B&W ASW-855 Subwoofer (2) Rotel 1512 Amplifier (2) Rotel 1091 Amplifier.

Whatʼs next?

The M-1s will play an important role in Death and the Powers as part of a 128 channel surround-sound system! Stay tuned for more information on the design and implementation of that system.

Ben Bloomberg is an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has been obsessed with audio since age 9. Currently he designs surround sound infrastructure for live entertainment at the Media Lab. His systems have been featured internationally in productions such as the world premier of Tod Machover’s Skellig, and more recently, Death and the Powers at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Death and the Powers will premier for the public at the Salle Garnier Opera House in Monaco on September 24, 2010, and then tour to the United States in the spring of 2011. For more information on the production, visit http://powers.media.mit.edu.

Headphones are one of the most personal items in anyone’s hi-fi. They generate some of the most intense, passionate and, sometimes, vitriolic fervour you’re likely to hear. We love speakers, obviously, but they lack a critical sensory link – touch. Speakers can look good and sound great but you don’t have to fit them to your body. Which is why a pair of headphones is often selected, partially at least, in the same way that you might choose a pair of shoes or, possibly more aptly, a hat.

Of course, comfort is not the only important aspect of buying a pair of headphones. Many people will not even class it as a deal breaker stating, for example, that sound quality is the most important factor. However, your individuality comes into play here too. Talking to Stuart Nevill, the engineer behind the new Bowers & Wilkins P5 headphones, how each headphone sounds depends on you, “You can’t really say exactly what any headphone will sound like because people have different shaped heads, different sized ears, some have hair, some wear glasses. It’s a bit like loudspeaker performance, the room type affects it. For every listener, each person’s brain is used to adapting to how the ear sounds like in free space. It’s not used to being enclosed, it perceives that sound differently.”

Headphones also affect us in drastically different, psychological, ways. Some people wear them to look good – as a sort of fashion accessory, others revel in a retro design adopted via some headphones which make you look like a Cyberman from Dr Who. Some hi-fi enthusiasts won’t blink about spending £10,000 on a new turntable but £500 for a pair of new headphones? Well, that’s a different matter. Headphones can even cause family strife. Triggering accusations of the user “cutting themselves off” from the rest of the household.

They might be quirky and they might trigger emotions but, when it comes down to it, headphones also offer a unique perspective on sound. There is, in fact, nothing quite like them.

Bowers & Wilkins’ Nevill agrees, “When I was younger and couldn’t afford a decent set of speakers and amplifier, the best sound I could get was out of headphones. In fact, they are a good entry point if you’re looking for audiophile music on a budget. Also, they have an innate portability and you can play them at any time of the day without annoying people. Big speakers are great but, in urban situations, for example, when the neighbours are close by, it’s not often that you have the ability to play a pair of 800s, say, at full blast.”

Aaron Kovics, an administrator on the highly respected, web-based, headphone-centric forum Head-Fi, was effusive, “For portability, a small pair of mobile headphones or custom-made IEMs (see below) are excellent for taking a walk in the park. I wouldn’t be bringing my large home-based headphones or a pair of electrostatics with its amp, for example! Portable headphones allow you to carry high quality sound with you, as long as you have a good player and a good amplifier. At home, I have the full-size headphones which give you more of a visceral feel, you can get some air moving on the diaphragm to give you that bass slam, a big sound stage and a sound that’s pretty close to speakers.”

Owner of the US-based jazz label, Chesky Records, David Chesky, has a slightly different take on why he felt headphones are special, “Because they make me so relaxed. I get so relaxed wearing headphones I fall asleep a lot! They close out the world and I get so immersed in the music like I can’t do with speakers. It isolates you, disconnects you from the world and there’s nothing to distract you from the music.”

Yet such lyrical waxing is done from a point of personal choice and there are many alternatives when choosing which is the right headphone for you. The core option is the type of technology the headphone utilises to produce its music in the first place. There are many varieties to choose from, all with their own pros and cons.

The most numerous and the most popular headphone type is the dynamic – sometimes referred to as the moving coil – headphone which works by producing an alternating magnetic field that reacts against a static magnetic field, causing the coil and attached diaphragm to move the air. Benefits of this form of technology are the production of meaty bass and a very musical, overall sound. They are not particularly known for their refined upper frequency response, however.

Electrostatic headphones are, however. But their problem is a lack of deep bass output. They normally consist of a thin, electrically charged diaphragm suspended between two perforated metal plates and require their own amplifier, “A good electrostatic and amp will give you incredible detail but also a wider, more true speaker-like head-stage: a soundstage on your head,” said Kovics. “So, you’ll hear the sound from just behind your ears to the tip of your nose with layers as you go outwards from your ears that you can peel away.”

Another technology type, which is making a big come-back, is the orthodynamic. Originally made in the eighties, they competed with electrostatics. In construction, they feature a kind of Mylar strip of the sort that you would see in a electrostatic but with the addition of tiny coils that act as capacitors. Instead of using scattered grids in the manner of an electrostatic design, the Orthodynamic uses magnets with opposing charges.

“There are a couple of companies making them and many people are now buying them, said Kovics, “There are pros and cons, however. They are extremely musical because of the magnets. However, they need a huge amount of power – you need around two volts per channel. Special amps are made for them. The upper frequencies are brilliant, the soundstage is excellent but they are heavy because they have magnets and they are expensive. At the moment, users of the new orthodynamic headphones are very happy with them and prefer them to everything else out there.”

Moving onto mobile technology, one of the most esoteric and aurally rewarding technologies out there is the IEM (In-Ear Monitor) headphone, an in-ear technology also described as Canalphones. Top quality IEM companies ask you to visit your local audiologist and ask them to take a mould of your inner-ear canal. The company then takes that to produce an in-ear headphone that will fit your ears and your ears alone. It also means that the IEM will be a perfect fit. In fact, you’ve seen these things in action on the TV as most top singing stars or bands use them so that they can hear themselves playing or singing. Offering superb upper frequency performance they do lack any real bass output because they cannot move the required air.

IEMs arrive in two flavours: balanced armatures, which many audiophiles swear by, and dynamic drivers which also have their followers, such as Bowers & Wilkins’ Nevill, “Balanced armatures are fancy hearing aids – they use modern hearing aid technology – they’re extremely expensive for what they are and, besides the lack of bass, because they’re based on levers, they have quite a lot of resonances in them. That’s why you see up to, say, 6-way balanced armature headphones. That’s not because you’ll get the advantage of six different drivers doing things well it’s because you need that many drivers to pump the bass. You can’t use the bass armatures for high-end frequencies because the have too many resonances. Some people say that balanced armatures sound exciting and lifelike. But that tends to mean that there’s a few resonances in there. In my opinion, they don’t sound any better than well designed dynamic drivers.  In the meantime, there’s a lot you can do to change the sound on dynamic drivers.”

Of course, there are also much more simplified earphones such as the basic buds you might find bundled with a new MP3 player, for example, to the rather more expensive variants which you push directly into your ear, utilising replacement tips to obtain a ‘best fit’.

Associated with the above technologies is the relatively new enhancement: noise cancellation and, as in the case of the Bowers & Wilkins P5, noise isolation. In the majority of cases, a good noise isolation model, with a closed back and sealed earpads, will do the job, in a noisy environment, basically blocking outside ambient noise from entering the ear. It’s only when you get on a plane that noise isolation starts to fall over because of the very low frequencies produced. Noise cancelling is the only way to get around that: in fact the latter is around 10-15db better on a plane when compared to noise isolation.

There are two types of noise isolation: feed-forward and feed-back, “Those that use feed-back tend to have a microphone inside the ear cup that measures the sound that’s leaking into the ear cup and puts an anti-phase sound into the signal,” explained Nevill. However, that signal mixes with the music and degrades its quality. “The other option is feed-forward where microphones are placed outside the ear cup. The sound is measured on the outside and the transfer function is measured. That is, what the frequency response of the sound is after it has gone into the ear cup. Then an anti-phase signal is applied. There is no real sound degradation with feed-forward because you’re mixing the anti-phase signal afterwards. That’s why feed-back noise cancellation can sound artificial – because it’s been around a processing loop,” added Nevill.

The sheer breadth of headphone-related technologies is wide, weird and wonderful. We haven’t even had the time to mention those technologies that never made the grade. And that’s the fascinating thing about headphones, they are the embodiment of innovation and a reflection of great ideas, bad ideas and ideas that make you wonder about the sanity of the inventor. Whatever type of headphones you choose – and we’ll bet that it will ultimately depend on the type of music you enjoy – you will probably form a personal attachment with them. They’re like hi-fi’s equivalent of a big teddy bear.

IN THE STUDIO

Headphones may be useful for the home and as a mobile medium but they can be critical in the studio when music is being created, monitored, mastered and remastered. Andrew Thompson, mastering engineer for the company, Sound Performance, based in London, uses a pair of hard wearing, dynamic, closed-backed headphones for use in the studio, to give a balance of sound quality and noise isolation, “And also comfort,” he adds.

Currently, Thompson is working on a range of reissues for the quality reissue record label, BGO. Sound quality, on these projects is critical but standard monitor speakers are not enough, “Headphones are useful for detail work such as listening out for subtle clicks and noise during sound restoration which, perhaps, might pass you by if you are sat in front of the monitors. Such detail spotting can even depend on the angle your head is turned. In front of speakers you can often miss certain frequencies by turning your head a fraction. It’s a bit like colour blindness, where, for those people who have it, certain colours blend with other colours. Listening to the monitor speakers, certain details are lost – especially, if you’re not in the right position. Or, rather, the details are not noticeable enough.”

That said, for the overall image, it’s still best to listen to the main monitor speakers. As in many aspects of life, a balance is best and a combination of the two: headphones and speakers, form the best blend. But headphones allow you, with a good level of volume, to isolate certain frequencies.

David Chesky agreed, “For the record label, if we are editing we use a pair of electrostatic headphones to focus on specific details. If we’re in session then we’ll use a pair of dynamic headphones that we’ve been using for a long time for musicality reasons.”

TESTING TIMES

Over the years, there have been plenty of test discs created for use with hi-fi systems. Such test discs play varying types of tones, noise patterns or music tracks with specific instructions on what to listen out for and how you tweak your hi-fi if you hear the wrong sort of noises. Widely available, they enable accuracy during the initial hi-fi set-up all the way through to monitoring your hi-fi for continued, efficient operation and can apply to just about every element within your system. Up until now, however, there hasn’t (at least, we don’t believe there has ever been) a test disc specifically created for use with headphones.

Now, David’s respected audiophile jazz record label, Chesky Records, has produced such a disc that can be downloaded as a 44.1Khz  ($12) or 96Khz/24-bit FLAC ($18), called Open Your Ears. Both are currently on sale for $6 and $9 respectively, if you get in quick.

Tests include midrange tonality, transparency, visceral impact, spatial depth, bass and more. “I thought it would be a cool idea,” added Chesky, “it wasn’t planned, it was very much a spur of the moment. It took a few months to correct. First, it was a case of getting the ideas and how to test the headphones, what songs to include and so on. At least, now, you have a reference point so that, if you want to go out and buy a pair of headphones then you have a guide. You can test any type of headphones too.”

Don’t forget, although Chesky is offering a test disc, there are no absolutes in headphone technology, “Everyone looks for different things when buying a set of headphones,” agreed Chesky. “It’s an art-form. Buying headphones is like appreciating a painting, everyone gets something different from them. But at least were trying to define the parameters.”

KIDS, EH?

When the Apple iPod first hit the streets, it was the height of chic to be seen wearing the associated white ear-buds. That is, until everyone realised that they didn’t produce the best quality sound. Now, of course, the streets are full of young people wearing varying mobile head-ware. Is this the result of a search for better quality music from the generation brought up on poor quality MP3s?

Bowers & Wilkins’ Stuart Nevill has his doubts and attributes the change to practical concerns, “Some people really don’t like to put things into their ears. They also drag on your ears. Also, bigger headphones give you a bigger sound but sound quality alone isn’t the only reason why people do it. Comfort is involved too. The most significant movement in the world of headphones of late has been cans that are treated like a fashion accessory and arrive in a million different designs – even though they don’t sound that hot.”

Head-Fi’s Aaron Kovics essentially agrees but also believes that the perceived change is rather more complicated, “ There’s only five or 10% of the population who want audiophile-like headphones and that’s the five or 10% of the people that I’m mixed up with but if you really look at people as a whole? I talk to them about my headphone equipment and they just have a blank stare on their faces. They have no idea what I’m talking about. So when you ask, is there a change? There really isn’t one. It’s an active niche.”

So, in effect most people couldn’t care less – whether they be younger or, for that matter, older. And then there’s the hi-fi enthusiasts who will always look for an improved sound. The same people who search out high quality vinyl or who download high-resolution music files. The good news is that those youngsters spotted wearing better quality headphones are, in fact, the new generation of enthusiasts!

THE FUTURE

The future of headphones is a moot point. Many believe that what we have will remain and just get better: more refined, better components and tweaked designs. Others see the development of innovative techniques such as Magnetostriction or bonephones which rely on bone conduction. Then there’s Sony’s Tokyo research lab which has discovered a method of connecting headphones to portable music and video players by feeding an audio signal straight through the listener’s body. The new system uses the human body as a capacitor. The idea is for the body to store a tiny electrostatic charge. Then the music player sends a signal to a conductive cloth pad – such as a wrist band – and this slightly charges the wearer’s body. A pair of conductive ear pads in the headphones pick-up the signal and rapidly converts it back into sound.

Then there’s Nintendo who want to combine advanced in-earphones with a new mind-controlled game that uses brainwaves to control characters. You press a single button on the slim remote and your brain does the rest.

Bowers & Wilkins’ Stuart Nevill even suggested an advanced surround sound system utilising clever phased arrays using wave field synthesis or, “A wireless system that would have no effect on sound quality, 3D goggles to have a GUI in front of your eyes, incorporating a brain wave selection system.” Farfetched? NTT Docomo, a Japanese mobile company, has taken the first step in such a device. Demonstrating eye-controlled earphones, the technology features electrodes embedded into the headphones that use the charge between your retina and cornea to initiate a command. Look to the right and then left will trigger a request to play the track. While right and right again will skip a track. You can imagine the funny looks you’d get on the train with that one.

Contacts:

Chesky Records – www.chesky.com

Sound Performance – www.soundperformance.co.uk

Head-Fi – www.head-fi.org

Headphone test disc: www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=browse_music&type=label&id=158),

Vinyl was supposed to be finished. As a mass medium, that much was true. However, like any mature industry which has experienced an initial, gold rush grabbing, pile ‘em high-sell ‘em cheap frenzy, what remains are specialists that serve the niche. Take the UK as an example and look at everything from clothing to bicycles, from handbags to pottery. Once a mass market is bled dry, the money men either change the product (from vinyl to CD to downloads) or they change the territory to lower production costs (UK to China) or they go up market (Bags to Burberry). Often, the shock of an industry collapse: the media headlines, the job losses and the industrial change in direction dominates public awareness, leading to a perception that that industry is no more. Such was vinyl. The dramatic format change in the early ‘80s from vinyl to CD caused a shock that many music fans have yet to recover from. Just about all populist media references to vinyl are made in the past tense. However, that is far from the truth.

Tim Livingston, Sales Director for US-based Sundazed (www.sundazed.com) referred to his company figures, “Sales are going up at a steady pace every year for the past five years or so and a lot of younger people are getting in to vinyl now. The audiophiles are part of the market but younger kids, 18-25, are really into collecting vinyl now.”

German vinyl specialists, Speakers Corner (www.speakerscorner.de), also declared that, from its inception, it has never reported a growth in turnover of less than 10% compared to the previous year.

“…2008 was the best year ever for us,” reported company boss, Kai Seemann, “more than 20% above 2007 which was the best year up till then.”

Despite the current financial crisis, which has slowed sales somewhat, “2010 will be close to 2008 and then we will have the increases in turnover we are used to again. This is not because of new customers or new markets (although we note a new, considerable interest in South America) but the existing customer base is willing to spend. I believe in a constant growth of customers who are disappointed by the digital offerings and want to buy a high resolution, physical product,” Seemann added.

It seems, however, that, as a vinyl label, you don’t need to be already established with a loyal client base to survive in today’s market. Even in these harsh financial times, there are still plenty of people starting vinyl-based companies. Take the newly launched Music On Vinyl (www.musiconvinyl.com), based in Holland. According to the head of its UK office, Mike Gething, “[Vinyl] is a viable business. It’s a niche market but it’s a deep niche. There are people who grew up with vinyl and people who are becoming converted to vinyl which means that it’s a niche market that will continue for a long time.”

Vinyl reissues cover many categories. Major labels, such as EMI and Universal, and mid-sized independents, such as Ninja Tune and Warp, still produce new and contemporary vinyl of new releases as well as reissues of older works plus 12” and 7” singles.

Independent specialist companies tend to focus and specialise on reissues of classic or long forgotten albums and they do so while promoting an ‘audiophile’ standard.

The term ‘audiophile vinyl’ has, historically, encapsulated a somewhat negative and elitist image. Some music fans are even afraid to be associated with the term for fear that they will instantly turn into a serious, chin stroking academic.

In fact, a piece of audiophile vinyl is more a badge of quality, a Rolls-Royce of records, a class of product that gives you both value for money and, most importantly, a gateway to some of the most enjoyable music you have ever heard. So, what is audiophile vinyl?

The term is, actually, rather nebulous as audiophile or high quality vinyl encompasses many factors. Current reissues will cater for one, some or all of these supposed audiophilic prerequisites.

To begin, audiophile vinyl pressings tend to appear on thicker than normal vinyl, referred to by their weight: 180gm, 200gm, etc. The benefits of thicker vinyl are somewhat contentious. The theory is that you have the ability to cut a deeper groove into the vinyl that affords the possibilities of a greater dynamic range. However, many enthusiasts declare that there’s no audible difference. More, some users who own turntables with a built-in clamp (that sits on top of the record spindle and secures the record to the deck) prefer thinner vinyl. They say that the clamp couples the thinner, more pliable vinyl to their deck more successfully, improving sound quality that way. Whatever the truth, heavier vinyl does lessen the chances of warping and offers a psychological effect of better value for money.

Often, heavy weight vinyl is advertised in conjunction with the term ‘Virgin Vinyl’. This refers to vinyl that has not been used before and recycled. The audible benefits result in a much quieter playing surface.

Another major aspect of audiophile vinyl – arguably the most critical element – is the source. The better the source (that is, the original medium that the artist recorded upon), the better the chance of a great sounding LP. The preferred source is the analogue master tape: it offers no sonic limits and can produce stunning aural results. Other ‘lesser’ sources can still produce startling results, however, including acetate (for those pre-tape era recordings), vinyl-to-vinyl dubbing (often utilised for ultra-rare albums and private pressing reissues), even cassette tape (listen to some of the Vinyl-On-Demand box sets for proof, www.vinyl-on-demand.com) and even – dare to say it – digital (most modern recordings).

The mastering itself is another critical variable. Of course, any mastering engineer can make any form of recording shine and, on the flip side, he can absolutely ruin it. However, for an audiophile recording, one that arrives with a gamut of top-of-the-line specifications, the fine line between success and failure is that much more critical. It’s no surprise, therefore, to find that many audiophile record labels take a lot longer to produce their records than a standard LP as more care and attention is required. The audiophile genre is also the only recording sector where the top mastering engineers themselves become minor celebrities, featuring their own, largely online-based, fan clubs.

Finally, the process of cutting the record grooves to maximise sound quality is just as essential,  “Back in the heyday of vinyl, the ‘50s and ‘60s, vinyl cutting was very much an art,” explained Bob Irwin, founder and owner of the US-based audiophile outfit, Sundazed – whose audiophile releases include Bob Dylan and The Byrds. “There were people who cut records magnificently and there were people who didn’t. This is why there are collectors who will chase after original pressings such as Columbia 1As or Blue Note Deep Grooves. They are chased because of the superior sonics. Not because different master tapes where used, they probably used the same tapes, but a more experienced engineer tended to take more care and utilise more skill for that first pressing. Someone who regarded the cutting of the laqueur as an art form.”

Some companies have even attempted to push the technology further with varying degrees of success. Mobile Fidelity (mofi.com), for example, produces ‘Half Speed’ vinyl. This is a sub-genre of the audiophile standard. It refers to the album’s master tape which is physically played back and then recorded to vinyl at half the normal speed,  “This solves many inherent ‘tape playback’ problems,” commented Abbey Road, half speed expert, Miles Showell, “At half speed, the signal is cleaner as it passes through the system, especially for brass instruments. Also, it is not apt to cause any kind of power supply or slew rate distortion.”

Which gives you a glimpse into the complexity of creating a top quality audiophile record.

The ‘Half Speed’ followers are not the only splinter group in the audiophile market. Other successful technological improvements have been implemented by Classic Records (www.classicrecords.com) in the USA via its Clarity vinyl editions. Changes that make up this standard include alterations in the recipe of the vinyl itself, how it is pressed and modifications in the groove guard shape (the thick lip on the outside of the record). It also includes the implementation of a completely clear vinyl that the music arrives within. The milky-blue tone represents the total absence of Carbon Black, the substance that makes all vinyl black in colour. Carbon Black features metallic, magnetic impurities. It’s this magnetism – small though the reading may be – that can produce harmful effects on a sensitive turntable cartridge. It is noticeable, for example, how much more focused a ‘Clarity’ disc is during play when compared to a standard black version which sounds almost diffuse on the edges of the soundstage, in comparison.

One of the problems of the audiophile vinyl sector has been the comparative lack of variety and scope in the catalogue. This is not the problem of the independent but the outright miserly behaviour of the major labels who often refuse to grant a license for use on swathes of their precious archive. The independents are nothing if not persistent and ingenious, however, chipping away at this stubborn, culturally stultifying, behaviour.

Music On Vinyl, for example, has just managed to secure a deal with Sony/BMG, “Sony will reissue certain titles but, where they don’t, we now have the option to bring those titles into our catalogue. This means that, before the end of this year, we will have released around 20 titles from the Sony back catalogue. During 2010, in addition, we would hope to add a few independent labels to our roster to enable us to release a total of 50-100 records.”

Another advantage with this particular company is that it also owns its own vinyl pressing plant (the ex-Sony plant, based in Holland, in fact). Hence, the increasing catalogue, says Gething, will always remain ‘active’, far in the future because, “we can print little and often”. Unlike other companies who only press single, limited quantities and then delist them which only frustrates collectors.

Another new UK vinyl outfit, Three Black Feathers (www.threeblackfeathers.co.uk), which will start its existence by releasing a range of classic British folk albums from the likes of Martin Carthy and The Watersons, features heavyweight vinyl, remastered at Abbey Road by two of the engineers who recently worked on the recent Beatles box set remasters, featuring newly written liner notes. Each have been mastered with quality in mind so that some single albums, packed with music, have now been expanded and released as a double album to reduce the amount of tracks per side to just three. The reason being that, the fewer grooves on a vinyl side, the better the quality of the music therein: another audiophile trait.

The new Nic Jones’ English folk reissue, Penguin Eggs, illustrates the extra effort. Label owner, Chris Heard, had to approach the British Library to access the masters. The album is currently viewed as an artefact and is stored ‘for the nation’.

“We had to get permission to get the masters from the library. In fact,” added Heard, “we were not allowed to take them ourselves. They were sent, by taxi, by the head of the label, directly to Abbey Road. When the album was remastered, we even used the same console that Pink Floyd used to record Dark Side Of The Moon.”

The future of vinyl is especially healthy and, bizarrely, threatens to see out the CD and become the last physical format available for sale. As Heard himself states, because of the digital culture and downloads, “…people want something tangible, something that they can touch and feel. Never underestimate the hunter/gatherer urge in any male. A bloke needs something to collect. It’s something innate in us all and I don’t think that it will ever go away. It’s also a lifestyle choice: you either go the minimal route and store your MP3s in a digital space or, in this multimedia age, you can buy a heavy record that’s been pressed with care and love and you have all the sleeve notes, done to a high standard and with passion.”

Similarly, Sundazed’s Bob Irwin is extremely upbeat about the future, “I’m very optimistic about it – and I’ll take on anyone who isn’t!” whilst UK label, Pure Pleasure’s MD, Tony Hickmott, continues to believe that vinyl is the receptacle of the very soul of music, “As Ray Charles once said ‘The CD, it don’t got no balls’”

ALL OVER THE WORLD

One of the most remarkable features of the current vinyl market is the formation of a loose world confederation, almost a global cottage industry. Small, dedicated companies working on a small scale, each tending to find its own sub-niche of quality product. Here’s just a small selection of the companies involved.

The UK, of course, features a range of specialists including blues and jazz from Pure Pleasure (www.purepleasurerecords.com), heavy rock from Devil’s Jukebox (www.lamf.biz) and 80s classics from Vinyl180 (www.vinyl180.com)

Germany provides hard rock from SPV (www.spv.de). Spain can offer a selection of very rare Krautrock releases via Wah Wah (www.wah-wahsupersonic.com) or rare world folk – including British folk – via Guerssen (www.guerssen.com). The USA is chock-a-block with labels including Audio Fidelity (www.audiofidelity.net)  offering classics from a range of genres including rock, psychedelia and singer-songwriters. Italy provides classic 60s releases and exotica via Vinyl Lovers (www.abraxasrecords.com) while Russia’s Lillith can offer everything from 80s new wave, 70s prog rock and 60s classic rock. There are even respected, audiophile, labels in the likes of Greece (Missing Vinyl; www.veamusic.com) and Japan (Venus). There are many more that I’ve missed.

A tip for the future? The Chinese market is currently packed to the gills with dozens of specialist HiFi companies, 99% of which you and I have never heard of, offering niche products such as valve pre-amps and turntables of professional design and construction. Watch and wait for the Chinese and other Asian territories to break out in a rash of reissue record labels.

SPECIAL EDITIONS – FOR ALL

One of the joys of vinyl is the special, limited edition. That category often presented within a box set format containing multiple slabs of vinyl plus plenty of extra goodies. Newly released examples including Paul McCartney’s 4LP Good Evening New York, REM’s 4LP Live At The Olympia and Tom Waits’ 7LP collection, Orphans.

One of the experts in this field is the UK’s own Vinyl Factory (www.vinylfactory.co.uk) which focuses on new, chart-friendly, records. The company releases them as luxurious vinyl box sets, emphasising both design and artwork for an average £50 price point. They’ve already released Primal Scream’s latest album, Beautiful Future and the Damon Albarn, Monkey project.

Bidder dismissed the notion that luxurious vinyl is aimed at the 40+ market and that teenagers are ignorant of vinyl, “The common perception is that young people don’t buy music but only download free tracks,” said Vinyl Factory’s Sean Bidder. “That’s not true. Young people don’t bother buying anything on CD. If they’re going to buy anything it’ll be on vinyl where they want a certain amount of care and detail to the record.

“For us as a company, we are engaging with music that is viewed as ‘popular’ in its broadest context. We also plan to publish box sets which may be viewed as more cult or marginal in their appeal.”

Look out for a special edition 12” single from Massive Attack, Air’s Love 2 and a special edition box set featuring Massive Attack, to come next February.

ON RETAIL

It’s all very well banging on about vinyl and how good it sounds but, with the collapse of the record trade on the High St, where on earth do you buy it from? Top of the list is Diverse Vinyl (www.diversevinyl.com), an online retailer that still runs its own High St. record shop. Despite the recession, business is relatively good, “When that limited edition comes out that the collector needs for their collection, they’re finding the money for it. Our sales are index linked to the amount of releases that come out. As soon as product arrives, then people are right onto the phones,” said MD Paul Hawkins.

Despite a dip in sales, this year, due to a quiet Summer of releases, the company has reported excellent sales previous to that, up 20% over the previous two years, up dramatically from the 5% for the earlier two years. “I would put that down to some impressive reissue campaigns. For example AC/DC put their entire back catalogue out and the Travelling Wilburys box set did really well for us.”

Online business has been, on the whole, a good thing, “Yes, it has robbed us of a lot of shop trade but then it’s given us lots of international mail order trade, in return. We’ve gained more than we’ve lost. In fact, 90% of our revenue comes through mail order channels.”

One startling fact revealed by Hawkins is the current stock of world-wide, new releases and the choice and variety now on offer, “There’s more choice in the vinyl market now then there was in the mid-80s, when everyone was beginning to say that vinyl was on the way out.”

He does reserve his ire for the major labels, however, who, he feels, haven’t helped to create this now bountiful market, “It’s taken an age for the big guys – Universal, EMI and the like – to see the potential of vinyl. And how stupid because they’ve been in it from the start. They react so quickly to trends in the market but they take their eye off what they’ve already got.”

Thanks goodness for the independents, then. Yet, even Diverse Vinyl is getting in on the act with its own vinyl imprint. Two of its most recent releases include Idelwild’s Post Electric Blues and The Duke And The King’s Nothing Gold Can Stay.

Also look out for other retailers such as Stamford Audio (www.stamfordaudio.co.uk) and Classic LPs (www.classiclps.co.uk)

Coming to the Beatles stereo box set with a fresh pair of ears, or at least ears, that have rarely encountered the original mixes on a revealing system is quite an experience.

On the one hand you hear a lot more of the energy and detail that went into the recordings; on the other a lot of them are distinctly short on actual stereo. And we’re not just talking about the first four. But you can’t really judge a forty-year-old body of work by contemporary standards, and as Allan Rouse from Abbey Road Studios, pointed out when we spoke to him, “George Martin wasn’t really thinking in stereo until the last two albums – Abbey Road and Let it Be.”

Allan co-ordinated the re-mastering project at Abbey Road Studios, a process that took four years to complete and which has resulted in the 13 albums that the Beatles released in the UK being reissued in stereo, and the first ten of these albums being reissued in mono as a very handsome box set. The latter is a delight for those of with a nostalgia for vinyl, each album comes in a miniature LP sleeve which contains an appropriately sized inner sleeve with polythene liner for the disc – it’s no surprise to find that the monos were made in Japan. This box set is very much aimed at the audiophile market.

Abbey Road: Home of the Beatles

Speaking to Allan Rouse, we wanted to know what they had used in the form of analogue masters for this project. “We have them all here because this is where they were made. The only problem we had was that we were going to use the original mix tapes that were created in the sixties; because that was what this project was all about. But about ten years ago we did a lot of remixing that commenced with Yellow Submarine because United Artists were re-releasing the film and they wanted surround sound. So for that project we ended up actually remixing Beatles material for the first time since the sixties. That lead us to the Anthology, Let it Be Naked and then Love. So there was all these remixes out there, but the original masters had never been re-mastered, up until this point, and it was definitely time for them to be released in a better state than perhaps they might have been before.”

You have to wonder whether, with all the scare stories about tape disintegrating over time, what sort of state the Beatles’ original mixes were in. Allan’s team “transferred the tapes into the computer one album at a time (using a Prism ADA-8XR A/D converter at 24-bit/192kHz). We did this primarily so that we could clean the tape heads between each title but next to nothing came off. EMI 811 tape was just perfect, the same applies to the four and eight tracks, they are all in remarkable condition for their age!”

When Mono ruled the world

Listening to the stereo mix of the first album, Please Please Me – which was made in 1963 – you can hear that there is still an awful lot of energy on the tape. It’s a very ‘dual mono’ affair with everything in the left or right channel, but it’s still less congested than the mono version. However, the latter does have a slightly more natural sound, which is probably because there was no limiting or compression applied to the mono re-masters – something that was done because these albums have a relatively limited commercial lifespan, and are intended for the people who grew up with mono versions of the vinyl albums.

It’s easy to forget how big mono once was but Allan explained: “In the sixties a three-hour session was booked to remix four tracks of which two and a half hours were spent mixing the monos and 30 minutes on the stereos. Which gives you an indication of the relative importance of the stereos.

It wasn’t till beyond Sgt. Pepper that they started to think about the stereo in a much more serious way. The last two albums, Abbey Road and Let It Be, were only mixed in stereo.”

By the second album, released only seven months after the first in November 1963, you get John Lennon’s vocals placed centrally on the track Money, albeit with little in the way of stereo depth. Probably because “Please Please Me and With The Beatles, aren’t strictly stereo, they were recorded on two track tape, and all George used that for was as a multitrack with the band on one track and the vocals on the other,” Allan told us. “Even when he came to mixing the four track for the next two albums, A Hard Day’s Night and Beatles For Sale, the same principle was used vocals on one side band on the other.”

Comparing the latest stereo version of Please Please Me with the first CD release (1987) the immediate difference is that it’s no longer in regular mono but two-track mono as Allan describes. This makes for a bigger soundstage in the context of a similar tonal balance but not necessarily such an appealing presentation. A more straightforward comparison is the latest mono version: this sounds significantly cleaner with more fine detail – things like Ringo’s snare have more subtlety to them. It also seems slightly quieter but this is because there is less distortion.

The loudness issue

We asked Allan whether he was under any instruction to make the remasters sound louder as has been the case with re-releases of other classic albums from the sixties and seventies – Led Zeppelin’s Mothership comes to mind. “There wasn’t any pressure to make them louder. In fact there was no pressure from anyone telling us what to do, which is nice. As far as making things sound louder is concerned, modern music can cope with it because it is made with a modern approach and the artist is seeking a limited sound.

“But when you start drifting into remastering music from 20, 30, 40 years ago, doing the same thing restricts the amount of dynamics the songs have. We entered into this project agreeing to limit, but we were going to be very cautious about how much we did it, and in the end with the stereo mixes the limiting is in most cases very subtle. The level has been raised but the important thing is that it hasn’t chopped off anything at the top that’s of any great relevance.”

More detail on display

Listening to the latest print of Sgt. Pepper’s against the 22 year old remastering, the difference is not small. For a start a significant amount of reverb has been added to the midband, which makes the soundstage deeper and wider. The bass has also been boosted quite substantially, and this not only brings out Paul’s often remarkably inventive bass playing, but adds a warmth to the sound that is totally missing from the earlier version. It would suggest that while the 1987 remaster aimed for a similar tonal balance to the original LPs, albeit not with a great deal of success, the new cut has more bass than your average sixties LP, but comes closer to the original in other respects.

The go-to Beatles guy

We asked Allan how he managed to get this high profile job: “I’m the person who’s been doing it for the last twenty years. I started off working on film scores at Abbey Road but got the job of making safety copies of every Beatles tape. At that time they’d never been backed up – this was about 19 years ago. Not just the albums, but every reel of tape.

“Midway through that process, George Martin was making a programme about the making of Sgt. Pepper and needed to go over the tapes again, and needed some help. So I did that, and at the end of the process he said I’ll probably be seeing you again, but he didn’t elaborate. He came back to do the Beatles at the BBC and I spent six months remastering that. And then this was followed by another stint where we worked together for a year on the Anthology series. By then I was becoming the person people turned to when they needed some Beatles work done and for the last 12 years I’ve done nothing else.”

The remastering team

Allan chose Steve Rooke to remaster the stereos and Sean Hicks for the monos (using Bowers & Wilkins 801D loudspeakers as monitors), but they weren’t alone. “Normally a mastering engineer works on his own, but in this instance I put a recording engineer in with each mastering engineer. The recording engineers were Paul Hicks and Guy Massey – Guy did the stereos and Paul did the monos. Guy was the assistant on Yellow Submarine and Paul helped on the Anthology, and I continued to use them so by the time we got to the remastering they’d done a number of Beatles projects with me. Guy’s last job was to remix the music for the Help DVD, Paul was responsible for engineering Love.” So clearly a well-qualified team, the only obvious omission from the credits is that of George Martin (retired), who had done such an excellent job on earlier remix projects!

Past comparisons

The Anthology series makes an interesting comparison with the Remasters, and on the whole can sound better, less compressed and more natural. But this is because the tracks were remixed rather than remastered. Original Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick sat down with George Martin and the multitrack originals to thoroughly overhaul them, which made a notable difference.

I asked Allan how much involvement the record company and representatives of the band had in this latest process. “Because it was nearly 30 albums when you consider the monos and the stereos, you couldn’t involve them in any great way other than the way we would do normally which is to do the job in the hope that they trust us. The first job that we ever did the Yellow Submarine movie, and we did playbacks because it was in surround. Nobody had surround at home, so Paul, George and Ringo came in and listened to it. Over the 10 or 12 years we’ve built up a trust with Neil Aspinall (the late head of Apple Corps). So this time we made CDs and sent them out to the band, Apple Corps and EMI at the end of the project.”

Listening to the beautiful While My Guitar Gently Weeps you can hear why they probably liked and clearly approved what they heard; it has a warmth and weight to it that makes for a tremendously rich sound. It might not be a purist sound and it certainly isn’t what you get with most late sixties albums, but it’s both revealing and expansive.

I asked Allan whether any particular albums were more difficult to remaster than the rest. “Things did progressively get slightly more difficult from a mastering perspective from the first to last album. Revolver was slightly difficult primarily because it was the first change of engineer, Norman Smith did the first six and then Geoff Emerick took over on Revolver. The band’s style was changing, and Geoff played a part in that by bringing a fresh approach to the process. There is a big change again for Sgt. Pepper because Geoff had gained the band’s trust so he had more freedom to do new stuff in the studio. After Sgt. Pepper Ken Scott came in to do the engineering but Geoff was still involved. He did a tiny bit of The White Album and worked with Phil McDonald on Abbey Road, Let it Be was done by Glynn Johns.”

Making your choices

Listening to the remasters back to back you notice the changes in their sound that relate to the way they were recorded. After the upbeat excitement of Please Please Me, With The Beatles and Hard Day’s Night, Beatles for Sale has a more relaxed feel that is largely to do with the nature of the songs, and which results in a more sophisticated and ‘produced’ feel to the sound thanks to the introduction of double tracked vocals.

Help! offers a wider stereo spread and places the vocal clearly in the centre with some depth provided by reverb, the bass also gets stronger on tracks like Ticket to Ride. Rubber Soul introduces a bit more in the way of dynamics and a distinct kick in the bass line of Drive My Car. Norwegian Wood on the other hand has a bit more treble air and vocal transparency. Revolver is quite similar despite the change of original engineer, which is a testament to the skills of the Abbey Road team.

Sgt. Pepper has had the bass ramped up and it’s easy to hear the effects used on voices and instruments thanks to the richer tonality, a sound that continues through Magical Mystery Tour and into The Beatles (The White Album) which also sounds very beefy. There is a clear increase in transparency of vocals on Abbey Road and plenty of image scale something that is if anything improved upon on Let It Be which has a bit more precision to it thanks presumably to improvements in the studio at the time, but made all the more obvious by the latest remaster.

Along with the 13 core albums, all of which feature a mini documentary, the stereo box set contains Yellow Submarine the original film score and Past Masters a two disc collection of the band’s single releases – 32 songs in all. Which one does Allan think sounds the best? “For me personally, by the virtue of when it was recorded, that would be Abbey Road, but The White Album is an extremely good recording as well.”

Vinyl lovers will be pleased to hear that the same remasters will be used to produce both stereo and mono versions of all the Beatles albums in these CD box sets for release in 2010.

High resolution downloads are changing the way we enjoy music, opening up possibilities undreamed of back in digital’s early days…

It’s hard to understate the impact that Compact Disc made, upon its introduction back in 1982. At the time, the music world was very different, with vinyl regarded as the only serious way to play music. Found everywhere from broadcast studios to the local youth club, LPs were the world’s favourite music format. Still, at over thirty years old, black plastic was knocking on and sales were on the wane, down 40% from its 1975 high watermark. The scene was set for the brave new world of digital audio…

What music lovers needed now was a small, convenient, high quality music carrier, and CD was it. Hailed as a miracle of modernity, it fused two technologies – a digital audio coding system developed by Sony, and a laser optical disc storage system developed by Philips.

Legend has it that Sony had wanted the new ‘Digital Audio Disc’ to be 12 inches wide, just like an LP, as they were worried that album artwork wouldn’t look good on Philips’ proposed 5″ disc.  Philips had wanted cardboard sleeves, just like LPs, but Sony insisted on a plastic ‘jewel case’ to give the product a more tangible feel. So when CD finally emerged, it was full of compromises limited by the technology and what the big companies thought the public wanted.

SOUND AFFECTS

Given that the average early eighties turntable could scarcely spin at the right speed, the new digital disc was a revelation. Sonically CD was was streets ahead of most people’s vinyl experience – and had the added benefit of being immune from surface noise, static crackle and disc wear too. There were some golden eared hi-fi hacks around who didn’t like its sound, describing it as a little stark and two dimensional. But by and large, CD was a quantum leap forward…

Despite Philips’ famous description of it as giving “pure, perfect sound forever”, people soon started noticing problems however. Compared to analogue, early 16-bit digital could sound spiky and hard, giving cymbals and female vocals a coldness that just didn’t seem right. Lab measurements showed that whilst CD’s 16-bit digital system gave very low distortion on the loudest parts of the music, it distorted heavily on the quieter bits – the exact opposite to how analogue LP behaved. Worse still, the digital system was prone to distorting most in the upper midband and treble, just where the ear is most sensitive…

This was down to the way digital audio encodes the analogue musical waveform, and it applies to every format that uses the Pulse Code Modulation digital system, such as CD, MP3, AAC and FLAC. With PCM, the two basic factors that determine the sound quality are bit depth (which determines the quality with which the analogue signal is digitised), and the sampling frequency (which is the number of times per second that the analogue signal is digitised). CD is a 16bit, 44.1kHz system, giving a frequency response of 5-22,000Hz and 96dB dynamic range.

To understand this more clearly, it’s helpful to imagine taking a digital photo of a squiggly line. The more megapixels the camera that you use has, the higher resolution the snapshot will be and the smoother the squiggle will look. This is the visual equivalent of bit depth. Then try and imagine photographing that squiggle thousands of times a second.

The more snapshots you take per second, the more accurately you can track the way the line moves, kind of like seeing a flicker-free TV picture on a top television. Liken this to the sampling frequency, and you can see how the musical waveform (squiggly line) is captured digitally.

So the more bits you use, the more natural the music sounds, and the faster the samples, the wider the frequency range. CD’s 16/44.1 digital system was state of the art in 1982, but it didn’t take long for it to get past its sell-by date.

Malcolm Hawksford, Professor of Psychoacoustics at Essex University, reckons that, “CD’s digital specification was almost good enough for audiophile music reproduction. It was near the limit, but in my view probably a bit marginal. Ideally, at least 20-bit resolution at 60 kHz sampling frequency would have been better”.

BIT BETTER

Compact Disc became a technological time trap for audiophiles. Its almost-good-enough digital specification put the development of digital in suspended animation, locking us in to an outdated nineteen eighties way of digitising music. No surprise then that in recent years, many hi-fi purists have been turning back to vinyl which – being analogue – offers almost infinite levels of resolution. “Analogue audio systems are limited not by digital bits, but atoms,” argues Hi-Fi World magazine’s Paul Rigby. “Where LP record playback fails is in the mechanical tolerances of the playback equipment, such as bearing friction and so on, rather than the resolution of the format itself. With digital though, it can only be so good and no better.

Happily, DVD-Audio and Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) arrived at the end of the nineties to save the day, offering far superior sound to CD. With the former offering true 24bit resolution, it came over as punchy and powerful with tremendous detail, plus a wonderfully smooth low distortion sound right across the audio band.

“I have seen some really good recordings over the last decade where 16-bit was just not enough to hold all the information,” says B&W digital research engineer Albert Yong., “and given the opportunity to then listen to those recordings in 24-bits, they just blew the 16bit version out of the water”.

Although 24-bit DVD-A sounded superb, it never got off the ground commercially. It was expensive, you needed a special type of DVD player and most importantly of all, retailers simply didn’t want to sell it. With DVD video discs making the stores a mint (at the time), there was no reason to devote shelf space to less commercial audiophile music releases. DVD-Audo’s life was over just a couple of years after its inception, and no one missed it except a select bunch of audiophiles who’d heard 24-bit digital and couldn’t go back. But, whilst the disc went the way of the Dodo, its coding system would live on…

Just as DVD-A’s sun was setting, so digital file downloads began making great inroads into the music marketplace. The MP3 format was no great shakes sonically but it was only the first wave; it might have sounded bad, but it ushered in a new way of obtaining music that no longer had any limits. Whereas CD was frozen in time and space, committed to its dated 16-bit, 44.1kHz flavour, internet distributed music could arrive in a way that suits the artist, label and listener.

Enter Free Lossless Audio Codec in 2001 – which was an altogether more intelligent way of encoding music. Rather than the compressed system that MP3 used  which reduces file sizes by about 80% by cutting out most of the music you can’t hear (and some that you can), FLAC used a clever ‘lossless’ packing system that doesn’t remove any music at all, and saves about 30% to 50% of space. “It’s a problem-free system,” says Professor Hawksford, “if the arithmetic is performed correctly and the compressed files are not corrupted then there are no errors in the reconstructed output.”

Whilst we’ve seen a number of lossless systems, from Apple Lossless (ALAC) to Windows Media Audio Lossless (WMA Lossless), the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) has emerged triumphant for music-loving hi-fi buffs. The spirtual successor to MP3, it’s an open-source system that’s not tied to any one manufacturer, which explains it success. Better still, it comes in more than one resolution. Whilst you can encode your CDs to FLAC keeping their 16-bit, 44.1kHz resolution, FLAC can also come in 24-bit form too. “The system is so flexible that it can take anything from 4 to 32 bits and sample rates up to 655350Hz in 1 Hz steps – it can certainly replace 24/96 DVD-Audio”, says Albert Yong.

BETTER THAN CD

Compared to the mastertape, CD gives a decent but unsophisticated facsimile. Its 16/44.1 specification boasts a dynamic range of around 96dB, which is ample for most music work. The trouble is though, the quieter the signal is, the more the system distorts using the PCM digital system, which effectively sucks out the atmosphere – all the subtle ambient details – of a piece of music. In a direct A-B comparison with the mastertape, “16-bit sounds slightly vague,” says Paul Rigby, “like a primitive digital camera it simply loses the subtlety and fine detail; it’s less easy to live with than hi res digital”.

By comparison, Portico Quartet’s ‘November’ via 24bit FLAC showcases the superior dynamics of the hi res file. A supremely atmospheric track, permeated with gently ringing kettle drums right through, it’s a far more engaging and arresting experience. “Most people tend to think wider dynamic range simply means a louder, punchier sound”, says Paul Rigby, “but in a sense it’s closer to the reverse. Basically, it means all those quiet subtle sounds are far better resolved; there’s a far greater sense of space and atmosphere, and the contrast between a gentle tap of cymbal and a smash of a snare drum is more faithfully rendered. The music just sounds more organic, and less like hi-fi”.

Theoretically, 24-bit digital has a resolution of 144dB, which is more than enough (130dB is the threshold of pain for the human ear), but the problem is, as Professor Hawksford notes, of actually finding studios capable of recording at anywhere near this resolution. “Not many recordings fully exploit the capabilities of CD, let alone higher resolution formats”, he notes…

Bowers &Wilkin’s Albert Yong agrees that we’re a good way away from achieving true 24-bit masters, but still we can do much better than old fashioned 16-bit, and people can easily hear the difference.

“We have seen some extremely good recordings lately, when the entire recording chain is done right. We can potentially get up to around 20 to 22 bits at the moment, and they do sound a lot better. The difference is in the detail. Sounds generally are more open, and there is an extra level to airyness to the music. Voice and instruments sounds closer to live, and more dynamic as well”.

THE MECHANICS

Like any other music file, you can either ‘rip’ FLAC copies of your existing CDs, or download load them from music sites such as Society of Sound. We’ve structured our site to make downloading FLAC a breeze. After you’ve logged in, you will be taken to the ‘Your Music’ section and you’ll see a menu of everything available. It’s then simply a case of choosing an album and downloading the format you want.  On Windows PCs, you can right-click on the link to save it to your desktop; with Macs, when you click on the download link it will go direct to the Downloads folder. Then you can simply copy-and-paste the file to where you want to keep it. We suggest having a folder labelled ‘FLAC24′ or suchlike, so you know where your hi-res music has gone.

If you’re looking to build up a FLAC library of your existing CD collection, then a good starting point for ripping is Exact Audio CopydBpowerAMP . which is a freely downloadable application for Windows, commonly thought to be one of the best sounding and most bug-free. Another much loved Windows FLAC tool is Mac Users can try running this via crossoverMac or downloading MacFlac .

Once you’ve downloaded your FLAC music, or ripped it from CD using the aforementioned applications, you’ll need to play it. Currently, neither Microsoft’s Windows Media Player or Apple’s iTunes support FLAC without modifications.

If you wish to import FLAC files to iTunes on MacOS we recommend you try a program known as Max for MacOS X 10, which can convert and rip PCM files and import them to your iTunes library.  For more information please see here.

Both have their own equivalent (WMA Lossless and Apple Lossless) but these are tied to the operating system providers, whereas FLAC is of course a free, open source system like MP3. So for Windows-based systems, we recommend you download Winamp which is a highly flexible media player that also supports burning 16-bit formats to CD.  There are other media players you may wish to try such as SongbirdMedia Monkey and Foobar2000 generally agreed to be the best sounding on the Windows platform. When you start up your music player, it should automatically search for all your digital music and add it to the library. SongBird will even go online and look for the artwork too, just like iTunes or WMP. which is a slick player for both Windows and Mac, with a nice clean interface. There are many other FLAC players, with

Through their bundled music players, both Microsoft and Apple have chosen to support certain file formats (WMA and AAC respectively). Whilst these players offer some flexibility (they both play MP3, for example), they’re both committed to their own Lossless formats. so FLAC is excluded. However, there are now ‘bolt on’ FLAC players for iTunes emerging. Fluke is freeware that works as ‘plug in’ for iTunes (Mac platform), but it is buggy and so can’t be universally recommended yet. The forthcoming version Amarra Mini by Sonic Studio is a more sophisticated system that piggybacks on to iTunes, replacing much of its audio code with a superior sounding and more flexible system. It is expensive though at $395 US, and only works on Mac OS, so most users will choose to stay with a freely download separate player like SongBird.

It’s easy to burn 16-bit FLAC files on to a CD-R for playback in a conventional hi-fi or car CD player.  Winamp is a free player which also supports burning FLAC16 files to CD.  If you wish to use a proper CD authoring software, then Roxio RecordNow MusicLab 10 (Windows, $29.99) or Roxio Toast Titanium (Mac. $99.95) are worth considering because the standard Windows or Mac music players won’t handle FLAC, either 16 or 24-bit.

However, burning 24-bit FLAC is a more involved process, not helped by the fact that some popular software will appear to burn it to disc but actually down-samples it to 16-bit.

Once you’ve got your 24-bit FLAC files and FLAC player; now it’s time to get the music out to your ears. There are several ways of doing this:

• The simplest is to take an analogue line output from your computer soundcard. This is likely to have a 3.5mm mini-jack plug; we recommend a high quality bespoke cable such as Chord’s iChord for around £30. Although it will give a decent sound, particularly if you have a good quality soundcard, it is not ideal because computers are electrically ‘noisy’ environments, and it is best if at all possible to pipe out the digital signal away from the PC or Mac.
• A good external soundcard like M-Audio’s Transit will always be a better sounding solution. This is a full 24/96 capable card, powered by USB. This provides a high quality S/PDIF optical digital output. It has an electrical coaxial digital output too, but it is always preferable to use the optical to eliminate computer-borne electrical noise. Run a good quality optical lead into a modern DAC such as a Cambridge Audio DAC Magic and you have a proper, high quality 24-bit FLAC playout system, that will give superior sound to almost any CD player. It’s important to note here that Windows users should download the latest ASIO drivers; these provide a ‘source direct’ function, ensuring the digital datastream goes direct from the FLAC software player to the USB digital output. Some of the latest DACs, like the Cambridge DAC Magic, also have USB inputs that can be driven directly from computers, but it’s always preferable to isolate the electrically noisy computer from the hi-fi by using an optical digital link.
• Wireless streaming is the third, and for many the preferred option. Logitech’s Squeezebox Touch ,£259,  is one of the most inexpensive and convenient ways of getting full 24-bit FLAC replay at up to 96kHz sampling rate. It comes with bespoke playback software that lets your computer control it via your home wireless network, giving an iTunes-style user interface. Generally, these work very well and are an excellent way of giving multiform functionality. Although it has built-in line level analogue outputs which are ideal for use in a second system, again audiophiles should use its digital output into a hi-fi DAC, such as the aforementioned Cambridge Audio DAC Magic.

You can also check our recent 24-bit blog post to see how fellow audiophiles listen to 24-bit FLAC

THE EDGE

There’s an old maxim in the hi-fi industry, borrowed from the early days of the computer pioneers – “garbage in, garbage out”. Any speaker can only be as good as the system driving it, and any system is limited by the quality of the original source material. That’s why B&W, as a manufacturer of premium, leading edge loudspeakers, takes FLAC very seriously. In 24-bit form it’s the modern day incarnation of digital’s finest hour, DVD-Audio, but even better because it’s almost inflnitely upgradeable and future-proof. Professior Hawksford gives it the nod. “FLAC has a place in the future for high quality audio. It is good for transporting files on the Internet as it typically halves download time. It is unlikely that for lossless compression there will be significant improvements”, Hawksford believes.

The ease with which it can be delivered to a computer means that anyone who’s capable of sending their friend a digital photo can now download and play high resolution FLAC files, and the benefits are clear for all to hear.

“FLAC is as good as it can get for now. I think what it brings is not limited to quality of audio, but the added convenience as well”, says B&W’s Albert Yong. The only drawback is the sheer scarcity of quality recorded music in 24-bit FLAC format, and that’s where B&W’s Society of Sound comes in.

Meticulous attention to detail across the whole recording process with the latest high resolution digital recording systems, makes for music of unalloyed purity. That’s why we’re so keen for you to experience 24-bit for yourself; once you’ve got the habit you’ll never look back.

Download Portico Quartet’s ‘November’ as a 24-bit FLAC file and hear the difference.

DIGITAL TIMELINE

1841     Augustin-Louis Cauchy first proposed sampling theory.

1928     Harry Nyquist presents sampling theory to the American Institute of    Electrical Engineers

1937     Reeves proposed pulse code wave modulation (PCM) as a way of storing audio1948     John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain’s bipolar junction transistor, which made compact digital circuitry a reality.1958     C.H. Townes and A.L. Shawlow invented the laser.

1960    I.S. Reed and G. Solomon’s work on error correction codes gave us the technology that would be directly applied to Compact Disc twenty two years later

1967     Japan’s NHK Technical Research Institute publicly demonstrates a digital audio recorder running 12bit resolution and a 30kHz sampling rate.

1969      Physicist Klaas Compaan uses a glass disc to store black and white holographic images using frequency modulation at Philips Laboratories.

1977     Sony, Mitsubishi and Hitachi demonstrate digital audio discs

1980     Sony signs up to Philips ‘Red Book’ laser disc; Compact Disc is born.

1982     Sony and Philips launch first commercial CD players.

1987     Sony launches Digital Audio Tape (DAT) with 16bit, 48kHz digital PCM system.

1994     MP3 (MPEG 1 Audio Layer 3) finalised. A compressed, lossy 16/44.1 format using approximately 20% of the space of a WAV file, it ushers in online music  distribution.

1999     Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) launched, offering high resolution digital sound using the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) system, with effective 20-bit resolution.

2000     DVD-Audio is launched from the DVD-Forum; offering up to     24bit, 96kHz resolution from a DVD.

2001     Josh Coulson finalises Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) v1.0.

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At the head of the table, and chairing the meeting was Martyn Ware, a sound pioneer and member of Heaven 17 and the Human League, who also has an impressive collection of production credits including the massive-selling Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’Arby
Steve Levine is well known in the music industry for producing hit albums for the likes of Culture Club and Westworld. But he was also the engineer on early Clash recordings, and has presented an excellent BBC Radio 2 show on the art of record production.
KK has produced music from the likes of Tim Booth and Natalie Imbruglia, and worked on film scores by such big names as Society of Sound Fellow James Newton Howard’s soundtrack for Collateral. He’s also recorded an album of children’s music with Sophie Barker of Zero 7 – which is much loved by parents and toddlers.

Simon Gogerly is a renowned mix engineer, who has worked on a number of Hip-Hop and R&B remixes for artists such as Missy Elliot, Busta Rhymes, Lil’ Kim, Rakim, Mase, Jamiroquai and Simply Red. He also won a Grammy at the 2006 Grammy Awards for his work on U2′s album “How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb”.

Jim Irvin is the former singer with the band Furniture, and is now a songwriter signed to Warner Chappell. He’s also a journalist, and is a regular contributor to Mojo and Word magazines.

Steve Sasse is Head of A&R at Atlantic Records, and is therefore involved heavily in the partnering of musicians with producers. He has worked with Paolo Nutini, James Blunt, Leftfield, Razorlight and the Propellerheads.

What is a producer?

The role of the record producer equates closely to that of a film director – albeit with original connotations of actually producing the finished product, records. It is their job to get the best out of the musicians/actors and make the creative vision these people have into something that the rest of us can enjoy.

Steve Levine explains how it works: “When a songwriter or a band say ‘how can we make it like this?’ You’re then trying to interpret their wish, their dream or aspiration”.

It also appears as though the relationship between artists and producers have changed in recent years, and whereas once an artist had no concept of a production and was simply given a producer, so there’s much more of a two-way relationship, especially as many emerging artists have already laid down tracks at home using Pro Tools and even Garage Band.

KK claims that the producer maybe isn’t the magical figure he once was: “The studio is not this big mystery that it used to be. And there isn’t this kind of dogma and mystique surrounding how to record anymore.

Steve Sasse of Atlantic Records agrees, and says that when a band has already had some experience of recording, and has developed their own ‘sound’ he tries to encourage them to keep that sound with their debut ‘professional’ recordings, and find a producer who facilitates that. “James Blunt has an affinity to that kind of west coast American tradition,” he said. “And found a producer in Tom Rothrock that gave him that sound and you know, whether you like him or loath him, I think he has sort of achieved what he wanted to.”

It’s almost as though producers are doing their own A&R, and getting involved with new artists early on and taking that completed sound to the record label. Surely that can only be a good thing for the quality of the music we have to look forward to, but what about that other important matter: sound quality.

Sound quality in the modern age

Compression is an important, and controversial topic in modern music production, especially as far as people concerned about sound quality is concerned: how much influence does a producer have on the sound quality of modern music.

With recent debates over the boosted loudness of albums by Metallica and Lily Allen, mastering engineer Simon Gogerly was obviously well placed to discuss how mastering a record effects the quality of the sound the listener gets out of a hi-fi at the other end of the process!

The loudness wars seem to be affecting more and more artists, with Gogerly explaining how an increasing number of artists are coming back to him saying how they love the mix, but it isn’t as loud as some CDs they have, for example.

“Because things are getting mastered so hot and compressed and limited so much, people are expecting to hear that when you are mixing their stuff as well. So it is colouring how you can mix something. I mean I personally am not such a big fan because you know it kind of, the reduction of the dynamic range of the track is just squashing out a lot of the space, that it’s nice to have in a track.”
This arms race towards loudness, as KK called it, seems to be taking priority over sound quality in a lot of modern masters, and seems to be a sticking point for the recording industry, when it comes to making great sounding releases. Steven Sasse explained how the record companies felt about it, and why it was prevalent: “It is a fear thing I think,” he says. “A band or a label or manager does not want their track to come on the radio and sound quieter than the track that was just on before it.”
However, while compression is a by-word for bad sound nowadays, Steve Levine pointed out to us that it was actually originally a very useful tool for producers, and some of the world’s finest music benefited from compression, including Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound and the Motown sound.
“Berry Gordy would specifically listen to his mixes in his office,” Steve explained. “He would have them cut on to an acetate and he would play them through a transistor radio to hear how they would sound on a radio and would then use mastering compressors in those days to make sure that they sounded as powerful as they would on radio. That is one of the big differences between certain CD reissues and your recollection of them in the vinyl world, they actually sound different because the engineers and producers who originally cut the records had a totally different approach, primarily because they could not get the level on the physical vinyl disk of the day.”

But today things are different, and the loudness war is resulting in albums where every track is produced like a radio friendly single, and it can be very fatiguing.

The latest Metallica album was a good case in point, and sparked off lots of debate, especially as the version available for download in the video game Guitar Hero was less compressed and therefore sounded better than the CD release!

And it’s not only heavy metal acts who strive for loudness, as Steve Levine explains, “One good example is Snow Patrol. I cannot listen to two tracks in a row from them. It is so loud and so in your face that my ears get fatigued by the time the first verse is coming of the next song. It is just too much.”

But it’s not all bad news, as artists such as Mercury Music Prize winning Elbow made a conscious effort not to use these kind of mastering techniques, and it resulted in a top quality album that also sounds great on a quality hi-fi system.

As the band itself say, if you want to hear it louder, then turn your system up a bit. We couldn’t agree more.

Continuing on our mission as sound evangelists we invited a group of journalists to a Sound Tasting at Abbey Road Studios. The aim was to give them an insight into how a speaker engineer (in this case, B&W Senior Development Engineer Dr John Dibb), goes about listening to music and in doing so let them see what they might be missing. It proved an enlightening morning and I asked John to do a guest blog on the event.

Take it away John..

“For a long time it has seemed to me that fewer and fewer people actually take time to appreciate music. Over the years I must have demonstrated good sound to scores of friends and acquaintances, and in most cases they have gone out and bought decent equipment and now enjoy just sitting and listening. It may be a lack of quality in recordings and playback media, or a combination of these with changing lifestyles, but it seems such a pity that so many may be missing out on so much.

I was pleased, therefore, when colleagues invited me to take part in a press event that might help to reverse this trend.

Gourmet evenings and wine tastings are very popular – so why not a Sound Tasting session at the famous Abbey Road Studios, aimed at educating journalists, and hopefully, through them, the general public, in understanding the lost art of listening.

Following a tour of the studios, a general introduction outlining our concerns and what we see as the way forward, one of Abbey Road’s recording engineers demonstrated the creativity and engineering which goes into a typical multitrack recording.

My part in the event was to try to impress on them the value of simple rules which they could follow to get the most out of playback equipment, particularly placing speakers and the listener away from walls and especially corners. I then tried to impress on them how important it is to be relaxed and to remove as many distractions as possible, including the normally primary sense of vision – i.e. close your eyes. This was followed by some of the core criterion that you need to understand in order to appreciate really good sound.

I was pleased that most of the group appeared to reap benefits from this and continued to listen with closed eyes to their own recordings. Much like appreciating the finer characteristics of a good wine, appreciating quality in recordings often needs some guidance. We achieved this by selecting some of the more important attributes, such as stereo image, dynamics, ambiance, timing and demonstrated that with suitable musical excerpts. I’ve attached the document and tracks we used here in case anyone might be interested.

I think the basic aim of the event was achieved. And on a personal level I felt the same satisfaction I felt as a teenage speaker designer, and still do as a professional, when someone really gets how important sound is and how getting the illusion closer to reality is such a magical thing.”

If you’re interested you can download some more detailed instructions on how to optimise your auditory experience here.