Mingus Ah Um

[AnotherJohnson]

Last year as I was experimenting with ARC, Levinson, McIntosh, Wilson, etc, I mentioned that I used this recording on vinyl and on CD as a good recording to evaluate changes.

I noticed it tonight when QoBuz suggested Mingus in a list of “similar artists.”

I found this particular Mingus recording (Mingus plays bass instead of piano here), and I noticed it was High Resolution. It turned out to be 24/192.

This is the first streamed 24/192 recording that has measured up to expectations in the weeks that I’ve been actively streaming Amazon and QoBuz files.

I am very familiar with both the CD and vinyl versions. They are both outstanding. This 24/192 file is excellent too.

[AnotherJohnson]

The streamed 24/192 version of this album on QoBuz is really stunning.

Now that I’ve got the Node on Ethernet, the AQ Diamond coax connection to the Levinson DAC, and the Thunderbird XLR to the REF 6 SE, etc …

Well, suffice it to say that if you like Mingus, there’s a lot to like about this version of Mingus Ah Um.

[admin]

Will have to check this out. Placed on my playlist...

[AnotherJohnson]

The 24/192 stream has unedited versions of the original cuts (several of the originals were shortened), and it also has bonus cuts.

Fables of Faubus is still without vocals due to Columbia’s decision to avoid verbal controversy.

In the lyrics, I think Faubus deserves the disdain … Rockefeller and Eisenhower did not. They were working against Faubus and the Democrats who were blocking integration.

[AnotherJohnson]

Mingus, Mingah, Mingum is a play on the Latin if Mingus were Latin.

[admin]

Took a little while to get around to listening to this as I was away for much of January on vacation. Very nice album. Good album to just sit back and night an relax to some nice jazz.

I did have a little scare. On track #2, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," in the right channel there is what appears to be artifact noise (or at least not an instrument that I could identify). I got scared that my speaker was going bad. Had to confirm on a separate system that it was the album and not my speaker. All is good!

[AnotherJohnson]

The first cut on Herbie Hancock’s Inventions and Dimensions album (titled Succotash) is another that might make you wonder. The left channel has a scraping percussive sound that makes you think that maybe the vinyl is damaged, until you figure it out.

[admin]

Do you think that is the sound in the 2nd track? Again, this was right channel specifically. It does sound like a "scraping" sound.

[AnotherJohnson]

Do you think that is the sound in the 2nd track? Again, this was right channel specifically. It does sound like a "scraping" sound.

I’ll listen to it tonight and see.

[AnotherJohnson]

In the right of track two I am hearing a fair amount of subtle reed noise from the tenor sax. I am hearing some in the left too, but of the alto sax.

I’m not sure how they miked this in 1959. I did not find it annoying. It seemed like an artifact of the miking to me.

On Succotash:

The scraping sound in the percussion section on “Succotash” is Osvaldo “Chihuahua” Martinez on guiro, a gourd-like instrument.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... wood-guiro

[AnotherJohnson]

FWIW, since you’re using Amazon Ultra HD to stream it, I did too. Aside from what sounds to me to be reed noise as opposed to bell music, I did not hear anything else that I would deem puzzling.

Later I streamed it again on the ND8006 with the Sennheiser HD800S through the SA-KI Ruby headphone jack.

It just reinforced my impression of tenor sax reed noise on the right, and less (but present) alto sax reed noise on the left.

[admin]

Interesting. Perhaps this is a negative of a very revealing system,... you start to hear "too much!"

[AnotherJohnson]

I don’t think you can hear too much. If it’s there and you don’t hear it, that’s distortion.

I’ve never had such clarity. I thought the High Definition moniker that WZJ chose was hype … but it’s not.

[AnotherJohnson]

On this idea of a system presenting “too much,” another album where I was startled (with my CJ systems and the Revel F228Bes) is Ron Affif’s Solotude.

I listened to this over many years as a reference to evaluate amps and speakers so I was very familiar with it.

One night after making some changes, out of the mix there arose an odd artifact that sounded like guitar bridge noise that I’d never noticed. It was present on more than one track. I called my friend who had done the transfer of the master tape to the CD. He said it was due to the way the guitar had been miked for the recording.

As my system has evolved to be more and more revealing, it sounds less and less out of place. It sounds more and more like part of the performance.

These kinds of sounds might be missed if you were more than several feet away from the instrument during the live performance, but they are sounds that the performer would have been aware of. There are many examples like this, but the Affif and Hancock examples stand out in my memory.

[AnotherJohnson]

Another example is on the Jack Wilkins Nashville Jazz Workshop DVD. Tony Dungy’s bass was miked with a bridge mike, and there are percussive sounds in his play that you would not hear if you weren’t very close to him during the performance.

These sounds, like in the other examples, are definitely present in the recording, and are distinct enough to notice even in a mediocre DVD sound system.

My feeling is that if it’s on the recording, but you don’t hear it, then your playback system is not presenting all of the information on the recording. I view this as a defect. Any time your system is indiscriminately not passing part of the recording on to the listener, there is room for improvement in your system. The idea that the system is more musical when this happens is wishful thinking. Of course YMMV.

[Wildcat]

I just queued up "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" on my desktop system (uses KEF LS50s), and it sounds like a wet reed to me. Sort of a buzzing/rasping when the sax plays? Yeah...we had a lot of that as ten year olds, trying to learn the sax. (That was us, a roomful of kids slap-tonguing our way through a rudimentary instruction book!)

Speaking of percussive sounds, I never realized that the extra loud "clicking" on Stray Cats recordings wasn't Slim Jim Phantom doing something on his drum kit. It was Lee Rocker slapping the "doghouse" bass. (Listen to his one-minute solo track "Bottom's Up" from his album Bulletproof.)

[AnotherJohnson]

Regarding the 24/192 Mingus Ah Um file, something strange is in play.

Qobuz and Amazon both have the nominally same version.

BluOS plays nicely with both Qobuz and Amazon.

So if I stream from the node to the MDA200, I can play either the Qobuz or the Amazon file.

It is very strange to me that they would sound different.

But they do. I think the Amazon sourced version has slightly better bass and a smoother midrange in my system. I’m nit picking of course. Maybe there is something else going on that I’m no accounting for, like changes in sound as gear warms up.

Even so, this suggests to me another example of a part of streaming over which you have no control.

[AnotherJohnson]

I dunno. They’re different, but I’m not clear on choosing one over the other. Maybe it’s the state of warm up.

[AnotherJohnson]

The Qobuz Roon Nucleus Rossini path for this file is very clearly better. I can’t play the Amazon file via this path.

There’s so much in the digital world over which you have no control. You really have to just go with the flow, or choose another source.