As I tried to be clear about, I didn't say it wasn't audible, I just said I hadn't heard it. Lots of people can hear things that I don't hear and I seem to be able to hear things that others can't hear. It's the nature of the beast. To me, absolute phase being correct or reversed is quite audible but a lot of engineers have told me that I'm nuts and that it makes "absolutely" no difference. Oh, and their logical reasoning? That all complex sounds are simply made up of various sine waves and sine waves have no absolute polarity. db On Saturday, December 13, 2014 12:58 PM, Dave Glasser <[log in to unmask]> wrote: It is absolutely audible! Comparing acoustic delay and electrical delay is apples and oranges. The stereo image snaps into better focus when the 1/2 sample delay is corrected. And since it's so easy to do, why not do it? Untitled DocumentDavid Glasser Chief Engineer Airshow 3063 E Sterling Circle #3 Boulder, CO 80301 303-247-9035 [log in to unmask] On Dec 13, 2014, at 10:42 AM, DAVID BURNHAM <[log in to unmask]> wrote: I've never noticed the loss of hi-end when listening to an F1 recording through a non-corrected play-back system in mono, (but that's not saying that it isn't there). If, as Ted points out, the error at 11khz is 90 degrees, doesn't that mean that the lowest cancelled frequency is 22khz? Well beyond the pass-band of 44.1 khz digital systems. That, (as I think Rob pointed out), also represents the length of time it takes for sound to travel a small fraction of an inch. No coincident stereo mike that I know of has the capsules that close together and the distance between your ears and each speaker will always vary by a much larger value than that. db On Saturday, December 13, 2014 10:34 AM, Ted Kendall <[log in to unmask]> wrote: The inter-channel time difference is about 11uS, which translates into 90 degrees at 11kHz, if memory serves. That is enough to cause audible top loss when combined to mono, so should be corrected. The system is, however, coincident when used end-to-end in analogue. What originally threw this into sharp relief was the common practice of using F1s for mobile use and transcoding to 1610 for editing. Audio and Design came up with an interface box which put a delay in the appropriate channel, and neatly solved the problem. Unfortunately, when they introduced a "professional" version of the 701, they put the delay in the wrong channel. The resulting mess can be imagined. To be fair to the F1 system, if you actually treat it as Sony recommended and use sensible video carriers (ie, not slow speed and preferably Beta), it's pretty robust. Lower bandwidth and increased dropout on the recording mediium translate into higher error rates, as they would on any system. We used it in the field for many years with few problems. On 13/12/2014 02:36, Ellis Burman wrote: I agree with Rob about the 1/2 sample error. 1 sample at 44.1K is clearly audible. 1/2 sample, not as much, but still audible. Does F1 work such that there is a 1/2 sample delay upon A/D, and another one, but in the other channel, upon D/A, such that the delay cancels in the analog domain (A-A)? If that is true, then only the digital output has the delay, and analog transfers are correct as-is. Ellis Burman www.audiomechanics.com On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 5:08 AM, Rob Poretti - Cube-Tec < [log in to unmask]> wrote: Hi Mathew, Below is a link to an F1 manual that illustrates the differences between the 14-bit and 16-bit formats: http://www.manualslib.com/manual/466194/Sony-Pcm-F1.html?page=26#manual As you can see, the 16-bit format has one error correction word: "P" - while the 14-bit has tow "P" & "Q" Earlier in the manual, they talk about the fact that a 16 horizontal line burst-error can be accommodated in 16-bit - and 32 H lines in 14-bit. In terms of correcting channel delay - IMHO: yes! (Ask any mastering engineer.) Cheers! _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ _/ Rob Poretti - Sales Engineer - Archiving Cube-Tec North America LLC Vox.905.827.0741 Fax.905.901.9996 Cel.905.510.6785 _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ _/ -----Original Message----- From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Matthew Sohn Sent: December 12, 2014 12:19 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Sony 601-esd pcm audiio processor decoder John, thank you for your detailed answer. My few experiences with F-1 tapes have been nightmarish. Everything is fine, until you hit that one spot where it just won't track..I applied the skew method. twist the knob left or right until the lights look good, remember where you started, and do it again for real. When it works, it sounds great, when it doesn't... Ugh.. -Matt Sohn On Thursday, December 11, 2014 10:10 PM, John Gledhill <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Tom - o The tape are recorded in the 14 bit mode with TOSHIBA DX-900. They actually have FM tracks of the same material o I am capturing both the FM and PCM To David Glasser o I understand re the sample rate. o live performance recordings - 6 hours per tape I have the 14 bit recovery working well with the EP tapes and have a solid right green on (or flashing) MOST of the time. I just wanted to know the significance of the LEDs I actually record a new tape through the coax in from a CD player to the 601-esd (16 bit) , and then played the tape back and captured through spdif to compare the waveforms. I think the the 601 saturates slightly before 0x7ffff (around 0x7fef) but the lower values were a bit for bit match. To Rob Poretti o I agree re the 14 bit versus the 16 bit - if the 601-esd does not like the VCR then more error correction will win. o However, from watching the screen it is no 1 party bit versus two parity bits. I think all of the stuff on the right hand side of the screen is error correction data. Each line has 3 word pairs and a huge pile of ECC . Roughly 3 * 15.75 minus the time lost during the vertical will give you the 44.056 This is also confirmed by the fact I can pop up the on-screen diiplay from the VCR and mot hear any errors,. Like a CD the ECC is spread over tape space = time to work around dropouts Is it important to correct for a 1/2 sample offset. Is this not the same as moving one speaker in a stereo pair 3mm further back. Slightly interesting aside. While doing my experimenting for this I tried feeding the video from a vcr through a time base corrector to clean it up before going to the 601-esd. Video looked much more stable on the screen but the 601-esd did not like this arrangement and the tracking bar stayed on the left. Perhaps it was the digital re-sampling in the TBC that cause this result. Anyways - I am getting very clean audio back from the ep tapes and wanted to know about the lights. I might guess that the guy who designed the LSI to do the decoding put the logic outputs there for his own diagnostic purposes and a bright marketing guy said "we have left oer LEDs - lets use em" with no one really writing down what they meant. On 12/11/2014 7:44 PM, Tom Fine wrote: Hi John: My experience is that NO F1 decoder works well with 16-bit recordings made at EP speed. I also think that later VHS machines with auto-tracking may not align best for F1 recovery because they were designed to also take into account VHS-HIFI signal. A professional-quality VHS deck, even a late-era VHS-HIFI deck, will have a tracking control, but the consumer models lost the tracking control shortly after VHS-HIFI was developed. I'm curious, what sort of material are you working with and how many tapes? -- Tom Fine ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Gledhill" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2014 4:45 PM Subject: [ARSCLIST] Sony 601-esd pcm audiio processor decoder I am recovering sony F1 type audio (PCM and ECC in the video image) from some VHS tapes (ep speed 6 hr per tape) - it was actually recorded with a Toshiba version. I have the manual for the Sony 601-esd and I think is says the boobie lights (Red, FlashRed, FlashGreen, FlashGreen, SteadyGreen) is a logical procession from poor signal to good signal. Additionally there is a tracking indicator (bar graph moving to the right) I can see from the schematic the LED's are driven from the decoding logic (didn't really need a schematic for that one). However, I an not find out at which point errors are still being corrected (apparently a few red flashes are fine) and at what point I can not count on the data. I am recovering through the spdif -> PC. I am hoping there there is a audio archivists list with somebody who used these 30 years ago and thought to ask Sony exactly what was being measured with the lights. P.S. I found the Sony 601-esd encoder/decoder is not a good match with most later model VCR's and ep tapes. (the data on the back of a VCR switch disappeared years ago). -- John Gledhill BIT WORKS Inc. 905 881 2733 [log in to unmask] -- John Gledhill BIT WORKS Inc. 905 881 2733 [log in to unmask] --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com