Anyone notice that the HK distorts at high volume slightly? Im not talking about the rattle/buzz. I fixed that. I mean distortion.

 

>>Anyone notice that the HK distorts at high volume slightly? Im not talking about the rattle/buzz. I fixed that. I mean distortion.
Depending on my level of hearing loss (I really do have this from working for years in a cannery)
I have played every stereo I have owned to the point of distortion. It's not pleasant nor something you want to do.
You might adjust the settings on your HK to compensate. Sometimes the recording is at fault- did you burn the CD yourself? Distortion even with HK is a fact of life. That's why people spend thousands on a custom audio system-
to have "Less" distortion at high volumes.

 

>>Anyone notice that the HK distorts at high volume slightly? Im not talking about the rattle/buzz. I fixed that. I mean distortion.

how did you fic the rattle? i'd love to know.

 

BMW put "quiet tape" on the door. Basically it is a felt like tape that lines the door to stop vibrations. And yes it does it mostly with burned CDs.

 

2 things...

One, are these MP3s you've downloaded, coverted to .WAV and burnt to disk? At what rate? I only download 200+ and leave the 192 and less. MP3s in general don't have the best quality at lower levels after being converted to a wav file. Even some of my 256 MP3 files I've converted to .WAV can sound grainular.

Secondly, the HK system is not the holy grail. Turn it up too loud and you'll get distortion. The amp is actually pretty junky from what I've seen/heard. All amps succumb to distortion at high levels, and this one is not unlike them.

R

 

>>2 things...
>>
>>One, are these MP3s you've downloaded, coverted to .WAV and burnt to disk? At what rate? I only download 200+ and leave the 192 and less. MP3s in general don't have the best quality at lower levels after being converted to a wav file. Even some of my 256 MP3 files I've converted to .WAV can sound grainular.
>>
>>Secondly, the HK system is not the holy grail. Turn it up too loud and you'll get distortion. The amp is actually pretty junky from what I've seen/heard. All amps succumb to distortion at high levels, and this one is not unlike them.
>>
>>R


They are MP3s that I got off the iTunes music store then burned straight to disc from the program...

 

I can hear distortions (no not door rattles or buzzes and I started many threads on thoses here on the MCO back when I first got my MCS late Feb) even at moderate levels...depends upon the CD and the type of sound the system is trying to produce. Most CDs I cant hear any distortions at all. My Bobby McFerrin CD does it all the time. My KD Lang CD on two songs. I have a Classical CD it does it on, but most of my other classical CDs it doesn't. I think it has to do with the DSP and all the converting from digital to analog and back. Starts out as digital on the CD then to analog signal to the processor back into digital for DSP processing and then back to analog for the speakers to reproduce. This is a guess. The other guess is that the front lower speakers just don't wanna produce certain complex sounds without resonating.

 

how do you get mp3's that high quality? Almost all of them are 128. Even ones i transfered from store cd's to computer are 128 although i think i had the option when installing the cd software to make it higher.

 

Those should be AAC, not MP3. AAC is modern, but MP3 dates to the origin of DVD.

Why are you involving WAVs at all? CDs encoded as AIFF, a non-proprietory, non-lossy audio codec. MP3 is lossy, you lose data when you encode an MP3 file (how much depends on the bit rate). It is assumed that you won't miss the lost data...

 

Of course it does...any stereo will,of course some may play louder before it happens...even the very high end amps will start clipping sooner or later or the speakers wont be up to the job...either way,sonic distortion starts long before you hear it,ushually anywhere over half volume most people start to notice it.The good news is most people can get to a loud clean sounding volume level with just a few upgrades in equipment.

 

What I find really cool about the HK system, is it doesn't really let the volumn level get to the point of distortion in many cases. I can blare my HK at extreme volumns and still get nice sound. It's not like the stereos of the 80's where you can over amp the speakers and the stereos internal components.

 

>>What I find really cool about the HK system, is it doesn't really let the volumn level get to the point of distortion in many cases. I can blare my HK at extreme volumns and still get nice sound. It's not like the stereos of the 80's where you can over amp the speakers and the stereos internal components.

Yeah thats true....

 

Something I have noticed with my aftermarket radio/CD player is that with the different settings: Radio vs CD player and also with the differenct CD recordings- each mode and each CD has different volumes at which distortion occurs.
If the radio signal is very clean then high volume and low distortion is possible. If the CD recording is very high quality then the volume can be high with minimal distortion. So with the better systems at least some recordings and sources are still fairly good.

 

So Ants, I don't know what that guy was saying with regards to AIFF and stuff. But what rate does the Itunes MP3s come as? I've found that 192 or lower sound staticy and tend to distort, whereas 200+ works MUCH better.

When you go to download music from like Kazaa or Morpheus or WinMX or whatever, just set your preferences to list by kbs (or whatever it's actually called ). Then scroll thru and only download those with really high rates.

And to respond to why are we converting MP3 to WAV....well, my headunit is not an MP3 player, it plays CDS...aka...WAV files. And I find that newsgroups which typically get WAV posts (unlike file sharing networks which use primarily MP3s) don't have ANYTHING I want to download.

R