Hi-Fi News Feature Index

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Hi-Fi News Feature Index

Below is an index of the feature articles I’ve written for Hi-Fi News since my debut in the May 2000 issue. Some magazine journalists have an encyclopaedic recollection of what articles appeared when; I don’t, even when the articles were my own, so I will certainly find this useful. I hope you do also, to which end I will eventually attach a few lines of comment about each piece, either to jog your memory or perhaps inspire you to hunt it down.

2000

Vol 45

May

Lossy Compression, part 1

An investigation of the performance of eight lossy audio compression systems: ATRAC, Dolby Digital (AC-3), DTS, ePAC, MPEG Layer-2 (MP2), MPEG Layer-3 (MP3), MS Audio (WMA) and TAC. This first instalment comprises a general introduction plus measurements of spectral and temporal errors introduced by the codecs

June

Lossy Compression, part 2

In this second instalment the performance of all eight codecs is assessed under blind listening conditions across a range of data rates from 128kb/s upwards

July

How Much Power?

Although it is well known that music signals require an amplifier to deliver much higher output power short-term than long-term, original assessments of the ‘power envelope’ by NAD were rather crude. Here the opportunity is taken to assess source material directly by ripping CD tracks to hard disk and analysing them over time intervals from 2 to 4096 milliseconds

August

Trifield: A Missed Opportunity?

Michael Gerzon’s work on Optimum Reproduction Matrices, whereby any number of source channels can be reproduced over a greater number of loudspeakers, has been largely ignored commercially despite the benefits to image stability and listening fatigue. Trifield processing – the proprietary name for the Gerzon method of reproducing two-channel signals over three loudspeakers – is a natural for inclusion in multichannel processors but only Meridian has championed it

September

The How and Why of Supertweeters

A look at various factors relating to ultrasonic supertweeters including evidence for the audibility of ultrasonic frequencies, analysis of the phase distortion introduced by the additional crossover, estimation of off-axis beaming effects and a consideration of atmospheric absorption

October

AAC: Life Beyond MP3

A close look at Advanced Audio Coding, the lossy compression system developed to supersede MP3, against which it is compared using the same objective and subjective tests deployed in the May and June issues

November

Can We Hear Loudspeaker Phase?

The audibility or otherwise of loudspeaker phase distortion is a controversy that has rumbled on since the 1970s. Yet very few of the attempts to establish whether loudspeaker phase distortion is audible on music programme have been of the definitive type originally suggested by Dan Shanefield: “…an experiment that directly compares a phase-coherent loudspeaker with an incoherent one, keeping everything else identical, and playing music.” This first instalment describes the historical background and the bare bones of my own Shanefield experiment using B&W N-803s

December

Yes, We Can Hear Loudspeaker Phase!

In this follow-up to the November piece, the digital filtering methodology is explained in more detail and the results of the listening test – phase-corrected versus non-phase-corrected N-803 – described. If you read this piece, please do me the favour of ignoring entirely the paragraph on page 79 beginning “So far as their effect on phase is concerned…” since, I regret to say, it is utter bull. Brain on vacation that day.

2001

Vol 46

January

The Ups and Downs of Sampling Rate Conversion, part 1

February

The Ups and Downs of Sampling Rate Conversion, part 2

March

Room Acoustics with Attitude

April

Speakers of the Future?

May

Into Thin Air…

July

The Coolest Cables

August

Digital Power

October

The Ultrasonic Sound Barrier

November

SACD versus DVD-A: The Technical Issues

December

The Weighting Game

2002

Vol 47

January

Ringing Enforcement

March

Upsampling Upheaval, part 1

April

Upsampling Upheaval, part 2

May

Noises Off

June

Multi-channel from One Speaker

July

Bad Vibes

August

More Bad Vibes

September

Opening the Window

October

Ground Control

November

Upsampling Again

December

Time: The Final Frontier

2003

Vol 48

February

New Directions

April

Constant Curvature

May

The Lynx Effect, part 1

June

The Lynx Effect, part 2

July

Phase Contrast

August

Jitter Revisited

September

Squaring up to Arm Geometry, part 1

November

DRC Is Set to Boom

December

Polar Exploration

2004

Vol 49

February

Trial and Error

March

Uncertain Symmetry

May

A Matter of Time

June

Interview: Peter Craven

July

You Rang?

August

Re-Record… Not Fade Away

October

Bias Assessment

November

Switch Boards

December

Straight Line to Nowhere?

2005

Vol 50

February

The Dither Habit

March

Weighting Up

May

Lossless Leader

June

DSPerate Times

July

Phase Change

August

Mic Mechanics

September

Low Life

October

Double Take

November

Spectral Lines

December

The First Watt

2006

Vol 51

January

Sonic Shakedown

February

Current Affairs

April

Digital Dangers

May

Singing Along

June

Singing Along, part 2

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