C Crane CC Pocket - in my pocket!

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nanZor

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Bored with external amps - no need really.

Let's forget this even happened. There's enough oomph in the Crane's to take most any 32 - 64 ohm headphones high enough without distortion that you'll be satisfied unless you've got the need break down walls, or have some really unique cans.

All that extra wiring, rf noise, and general stacking hassle of an external amp is just not worth the effort in this application.

That being said, I put it all back in the box, attached my Sennheiser HD280's, and was back in business hearing my weak to medium power stations - and sounding *better* without the amp - truth be told.

I'm back to that transparency - where the only colorization comes from the headphone's own frequency response curves and so forth. Plenty of "mid-fi" cans to choose from.
 
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nanZor

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The irony of the Pocket's great audio

I'll try to keep this from being a rant - but there is a reason that shortly after getting my CCrane Pocket (and Skywave and 2E desktop) that I can only listen to non-commercial stations, like colleges and LPFM.

The clarity and transparency of the whole Pocket's chain quickly reveals how badly processed the analog component of commercial stations are in the loudness wars. Oh wait - isn't that over? Yes, just change the name - all will be forgotten - right!

I *HEAR* these kinds of tricks with the Pocket:

1) Using your webstream processor for fm analog. Instant studio inside a steel-drum!

2) Make all your audio processors "go to eleven" so that they hit the limiters so hard that you are putting out SQUARE WAVES.

3) Oh yes, lets sprinkle some additional "composite clipping" to the mix.

4) Over-deviating into your "hd-radio" iboc sidebands are you?

Anybody who uses Orbans, Wheatstone, Omnia 3FMT's, etc professionally knows what I'm talking about.

You might have been able to get away with that on older analog tuners / amps and blamed them for being too old. Or blame newer stuff with quality issues on overseas componentry and such.

Or blame it on users with "bad earbuds". Or bright can's like Grados, or the venerable Sony MDR-7506.

The point being is that the CCrane's with the SiLabs chips help me expose that lie, and reveal the "first mile" problem beginning at the studio. Garbage-in-garbage-out.

This isn't just a geezer-audiophile thing. We should be ashamed. I know that If I put out that kind of signal as an amateur, I'd be in a heap of trouble sooner or later.

But thanks to CCrane and SiLabs, my listening content to non-commercial stations has saved my sanity. Maybe. :)
 
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nanZor

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My last word on the compression subject

First - my apologies to RR members and staff - this isn't supposed to be *my* thread, nor is it supposed to be a pseudo-blog. Anyone can jump in at any time! bharvey, where are you? :)

I'm all about "fixing the problem and not the blame". I *want* to listen to commercial radio, AND the necessary advertisements once again. Do this backwards, people get defensive, and the problem gets worse. So no shaming in this thread. I just want stuff fixed, and WE CAN.

Essentially, due to the more modern CCrane's incorporating the SiLabs chips, along with other manufacturers, a sea-change in fm tuner performance has been here for a few years now, which causes us to re-visit the decades old problem of broadcast audio.

Robert Orban and Frank Foti wrote this article nearly 20 years ago - I'm sure most broadcasters have read it - but the LAST LINE is more important today than ever, when it talks about using a consumer-grade radio to listen to your output:

Audio Mastering - Radio Processing

In other words, we aren't in the GE Superadio III era anymore.

It all boils down to this: modern radios such as CCrane's, in the *pocket radio* class, not to mention vehicles using SiLabs chips, LISTENER FATIGUE can occur in a matter of minutes, not hours when your audio processing is over-the-top to compete with one another.

That simply means I'm not listening to your content, and more importantly, your advertisers - not because I'm an aging audiophile - it just means I'm using modern consumer-grade equipment that exposes these *competetive audio processing* flaws in broadcast compression / limiting technology.

Solution: just back it down guys. Let the processors do their thing like they are supposed to, and maybe run at 10 instead of ELEVEN. :)

Ok, I'm done. The Pocket made me do it!
 
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bharvey2

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Hertzian, funny you should mention over processing. My wife and I recently went on a road trip with our two adult sons (mid-twenties) They provided the transportation and the "entertainment", what I suppose would be considered modern pop music. We operated the back seat. Every song, regardless of the artist, seemed to have been produced by the same mixing engineer. All used the same effects, and everything seemed way over-compressed, no doubt to increase perceived volume. Shortly thereafter, I ran across a YouTube video of someone affirming all of the issues (and more) that I had noticed. It seems to be a widespread problem.
 

flythunderbird

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All used the same effects, and everything seemed way over-compressed, no doubt to increase perceived volume. Shortly thereafter, I ran across a YouTube video of someone affirming all of the issues (and more) that I had noticed. It seems to be a widespread problem.

It's good to see that I'm not the only one who's noticed this. :) There was an article in one of the audio magazines sometime back about how the recording industry started using heavy audio compression in the 1990s to boost overall track volume, ostensibly to make music more punchy and sell more albums - but the end result was a noticeable reduction in the fidelity of the music. The article included waveforms of songs recorded before and after to prove the use of heavy compression bordering on clipping. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if broadcasters are doing the same thing.

Anyway, the CC Pocket sounds like it is well worth checking out! I am very happy with the performance of my CCRadio 2E Enhanced, so I may be adding another radio to the collection. :D
 

nanZor

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It's an age-old problem but I understand the commercial concerns strangely enough.

Audiophiles are not your market demographic. Let them listen to KUSC classical, NPR etc if they want that.

But these days, using loudness as your hook commercially is anti-productive with the technological sea-change in comsumer radios using quality dsp chips due to rapid listener fatigue. Much like oiling yourself up at the beach, and doing a bunch of reps with weights trying to attract a mate with your pythons. :) Millenials don't fall for that.

Broadcasters could blow off the issue before - and I dig it - someone has to pay the bills so you gotta' be competetive.

At the end of the day, if you put commercials on my local LPFM station - KHUG 97.5 (rhythm and blues at night, generic cool stuff daytime), the quality of that transmission means that I would GLADLY listen to advertisers and buy their products. This dude cares for his transmission quality as much as his genre. It's called SOUL. Hard to find these days. Impossible to buy or compete for. Although there are no commercials allowed on his station, if someday a mattress-ad appeared, I'd buy it!

Hi-Fi through the 1 inch speaker on the Pocket? Yeah, no. But on quality earbuds / headphones - heck yeah!
 

Boombox

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I used to work in the radio broadcast industry, and we dealt with music produced by the record companies. When I started working there CD's were just beginning to become the norm for radio broadcast.

When CD's first came out, they were processed a bit less overall than the LP's they replaced, mainly because LP's had to be compressed to press better when mass produced, and also because CD's vast dynamic range compared to an LP was one of its selling points.

As the 1990's wore on, more and more CD sourced material began to be compressed until by the late 90's - early 2000's it was literally slammed. You would look at the waveform on your audio editor and see a solid block of waveform, whereas in the early 1990's there would be peaks and valleys. Some rock CDs were so slammed that they even made the music a wide mono.

Why they did it? It was one of those audio trends, perhaps. And loud CDs will get noticed by music directors. I'm making a guess here, but there was a definite change that occurred during the late 1990's to where on some rock (and even country) CD singles you could *literally hear the compressor pump*.

Fast forward to the MP3 era -- you not only get the same slammed compression, but some MP3s add their grainy, squirrely quality to the slammed content, and if you're on headphones it can be a chore to listen. And many stations used MP3's up until about 5-10 years ago, when they began to change to WAV files.

The nature of computerized pop, urban, and even computerized country music lends itself even more towards processing. It's just the way modern music is evolving.

I don't fault the radios. Even GE Superadios had reasonably tight AGC. Most decent radios do. I notice that my G2, which has a SiLabs DSP chip, has tighter than normal AGC on AM, and I don't use it much on AM for that and other reasons. It's great on SW. I can't tell how tight the AGC is on FM. I never have gotten listeners fatigue on FM on my G2 because of it.

My Sangean PR-D5 has a SiLabs DSP chip and the AGC on the MW side is actually very moderate -- even more moderate than my GE Superadios, and FM sounds great through the speakers (I haven't listened to FM through headphones on my PRD5, though). Even so, it sounds clean enough.

As for radio *stations* processing their music -- the stations themselves have been maxing the audio since Top 40 AM radio in the 1960's.
 

nanZor

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Source material is a problem no matter how nicely processed your station is. If it is already brick-walled, hyper compressed etc, I feel sorry for the studio engineer trying to cope with that.

I cringed when I hear my AAA station try to play Pink Floyd's "Arnold Layne" through their punchy processing. Destroyed, but I can just imagine the CE coming in asking what the !??!?! is going on and the dj running for cover.

Weird notion for rockers: I'd rather hear Motorhead's Ace-Of-Spades (rip Lemmy & Eddie), coming through KUSC's transmitters than my local rock station. Or the Ramones - whatever. Maybe broaden Jim Sveda's horizons musically. :)

Know what I mean - we've crossed a technological threshold with the SiLabs chips, and the old competetive rules just don't apply any more.
 
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nanZor

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Whats on the other side of your CCrane dsp chip

FM and AM too - a quick trip through studio analog processors and to today's DSP based studio gear. Might be memory-lane time for some:

Processing History by J Somich 1

The point being that DSP in the studio has met DSP not only in the vehicle, but even in lowly little pocket radios - and what used to work before is just listener fatigue now.

But all of this is not new material really. NPR made a nice video about 10 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

I'm not losing sleep over it. I have plenty of non-commercial stations to make the Pocket very happy.
 
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Boombox

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Source material is a problem no matter how nicely processed your station is. If it is already brick-walled, hyper compressed etc, I feel sorry for the studio engineer trying to cope with that.
.

Actually, highly compressed music wasn't that much a bother from a broadcast standpoint, at least for a music supplier middleman as my employer was. You didn't have to worry about transient peaks pushing the meters into the red. Just had to make sure the overall levels were set wherever they needed to be. Made life a bit easier. Before the CD's were super compressed we had to ride the meters more -- and sometimes that was a chore.

As for the rest of your comment, I agree, the DSP chip has changed radio receivers significantly. You get a lot of radio for a bit less money overall. My G2 is capable of tuning the 66-72 Mhz OIRT FM channels (if I were rich enough to travel to Russia and Eastern Europe). All just by using that particular chip. No extra coils, or other extraneous circuitry necessary.

It pulls as much SW off its whip than some of my other radios do on a 30 ft wire. Amazing.
 

nanZor

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Well, with today's storage capabilities, there is really no need for source material to be stored in a compressed format. Run lossless - plenty of storage to accomodate that.

Heh, but just converting an mp3 to lossless doesn't make it so. :)

I'll go out on a limb here using setting up an Omnia 3FMT processor for example. The SiLab chips in CCranes, vehicles, etc are so fast at keeping up with the waveforms, that they reveal things that the ordinary analog receivers would just smooth away.

I'd love for a studio engineer to purchase a modern CCrane like the 2E, grab a few different studio cans, and listen intently.

Aside from the station's own "secret sauce", I'll bet that cranking up the PHAT, which would have sufficed for analog radios, makes them unstable notes, and not sounding phat on the dsp driven radios. When that is cranked too far, it makes my brain wobble into liquid, instead of funky phatness.

Likewise on the high end just trying to grab that last 1db with "composite clipping". On a dsp driven radio, that 1db is no longer "distortion free", but is actually heard as high end artifacts.

In both cases, I'd bet the station could get away with cranking both back just a little without spilling their sauce and making it more appealing to modern vehicle radios, and of course our portable dsp driven fm / multiband receivers.

I'm still amazed. My 9v transistor radio back in the 60's listening to KHJ, and KBBQ as a kid before and after the format change from rock to country never got such love.

In order to keep it, I was instructed to take Steppenwolf out of the house, but if I ever heard Aretha Franklin (rip) I had to run home as fast as I could so my Mom could hear it. Guess that's why I know all the lyrics by heart to this day....

Anyway - I'm just amazed that something like the Pocket being just a stupid little radio, evokes such emotion about it from me today.
 
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Boombox

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Part of it is because it's the same size as the pocket radios of the 1960's and 70's and it works so much better. I have a Radio Shack Pocket Radio (SiLabs chip, mono on FM but very good sound on both bands through headphones) and it's miles better in performance than pocket radios were in the past (although from what I've read about Channel Masters, I understand they were/are terrific radios).
 

nanZor

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Extremely low-level mute on music not Pocket specific - heard on 2E as well.

Similar to the tests done during the recent KUSC transmitter failure (fixed great btw), and playing with the SiLabs chip muting, I heard it again on that station, but I now have a great test-track for anyone playing with silabs chips:

Just play over the air: "Adagio for strings" by Samuel Barber. At times, I think it would be hard for a station engineer to even detect if they were modulating. :) But the chip thinks it is unmodulated, and mutes.

Not a super big deal, but when one is brain-deep into headphones on the far side of the moon, you notice.

Note that a few trance DJ's like Tiesto, Armin van Buuren and others do pretty good trance-version of it, but um, there's no low level muting going on there if heard over the radio. Having that trance groove go with a performance usually reserved for the saddest of occasions is intriguingly happy / creepy at the same time.
 
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