Pacific Audio Fest 2022 (PAF 2022) - Concluding observations and thoughts... (MoFi One-Step DSD controversy, and a few videos!)

Well, the first PAF 2022 is now in the record books (see Day 1 and Day 2 for context). I honestly hope that the organizers, companies showing off their goods, and attendees all had a great time. I regret not getting the RMAF2019 T-shirt so made sure to grab one this time around and will wear it with pride among fellow audiophiles. ;-)

As I was driving home to Vancouver, BC, I was thinking about audio shows in general and also specifically about the PAF... What was seen, the experience of these shows as an audiophile, stuff like that.

After having attended a few of these shows now, I personally think they're worthwhile as hobbyists. I'm tempted to use the word "pilgrimage" but of course as a "more objective" guy, this word would denote excessive reverence I think!

No, it's more of an opportunity to socialize for an audiophile hobby that tends to be much more of an individual affair. Guys sitting in their favourite chair after work, glued to the sweet-spot, imagining a sonic scenery, as in the PAF booklet above "Close your eyes... You are there..." I think shows like the PAF give us an actual physical nexus (plenty of virtual forums these days, right?) to mingle with other passionate hobbyists of all flavours; a "tribe" of many "clans". As I've suggested over the years, even if we might have heated arguments online, I think to meet in person over a nice meal and a beverage of choice will settle nerves and more likely than not promote friendships.

2022 as a start-up year I suspect is a tough one for any audio show. We are still in the pandemic and every week I hear of family members and friends testing positive. While thankfully the strains are not as virulent as previous waves, and with decent vaccination rates, no doubt many in the older age demographic or with health concerns probably would not be keen to get out and hang with others in small hotel rooms. It'll be interesting to hear of turnout numbers if PAF publishes the data; hopefully encouraging for future shows.

In this post, let's talk about a few items I thought about on that drive home...

I. About the PAF itself:

While the hotel itself is older and smaller than the rather grand Gaylord Rockies in Denver for RMAF, I thought it was good for the more intimate, smaller show like this. No large crowds, there wasn't a lineup in the hotel hallways. Yeah, the front desk seemed a little understaffed and the elevators were slow, but I thought things went quite smoothly as a show goer.

Signage and the itinerary book were well done by the crew. $20/day and $30/multiday is a good price IMO and the $12/day parking (conference discounted) is great! The staff were floating around and courteous, easily identified in their shirts. Really nice work.

The online web presence was fine and I had no issues with signing up and getting my confirmation E-mail of attendance. Use of the yellow/red wrist elastic was nice and easy for attendees. Industry and staff had name tags to help identify them and made them easier to spot.

II. About the seminar sessions:

Let's spend some time on this one as I often don't hear much discussion about these over the years.

The venue in the Maxi's Lounge on the 14th floor was comfortable and indeed "intimate". However I don't know if it was intentional, but I didn't see any projectors for a visual presentation. The seminars were literally the presenters talking into a microphone. I attended 4 of the seminars and I think some visual aids would have been nice.

For example, the session with Andrew Jones on loudspeaker design was just screaming for some pictures! When he was discussing the gated measurement technique, explaining direct vs. reflected sounds, crossovers and phase change, or even just a discussion on the importance of frequency response and whether "time coherent" hardware designs made a difference, I suspect many in the audience would have benefitted from such visuals. There's definitely a kick-ass presentation to be had there from a respected and experienced name among audiophiles!

My favourite session was the one with audio engineers Jim Anderson and Ulrike Schwarz moderated by Michael Fremer. It's nice I think for audiophiles to interact with those on the production side to appreciate the work that goes into albums, the decisions made, the "culture" from which the music we love arise from. Perfectionistic audiophiles (should) share much in common with those who seek to achieve high quality audio engineering in the end product. If you've talked to folks in audio engineering, you'll know that discussions about switch mode vs. linear power supplies, esoteric power cables, audiophile fuses, network ethernet switches will not go far. Seriously audiophiles, these folks make a living off the sound they achieve. If magic interconnects, and a few feet of power cables really made a remarkable difference and "opened up the recording", they would have happily incorporated the magic already! There would be way more discussions of audiophile cable brands within pro audio.

Anyhow, the fun part about this talk was the juxtaposition of the engineers and Fremer's viewpoints and of course advocacy of vinyl. Nobody said vinyl doesn't sound good, but it's very clear that the audio engineers believe:

1. Vinyl cannot replicate the actual sound of the hi-res digital master. (Inevitably adds its own coloring to the audio.) 

2. No such thing as analogue-to-analogue copy without significant losses. A major reason of course for production work to center around the "lossless" nature of digital.

3. Since ProTools matured with high resolution, they moved on from analogue (tape) to record, mix, and master albums. In 2002, ProTools | HD was released and I believe it was Jim Anderson who said that from this point on, all his work switched over and there was no looking back to analogue.

4. DSD recording (which some audiophiles somehow believe as the "Holy Grail" of digital) can be fine if you just want to archive something. But impossible to effectively edit, change levels, or add processing still these days. They used DXD (24/352.8) for the album Clique! and are happy to dither/resample/convert to other PCM or DSD variants as needed. 

5. Recognition that loudness-war mastering is no way for a good audio engineer to "build a career" even if for now, ultra-loud and compressed albums might be what certain people expect. This is good to hear and I do hope that in the days ahead, the discipline might change for the better in this regard. Engineers might be able to look back at their work as a portfolio with pride.

Nice to hear no-nonsense talk! While Fremer's general line of questioning and jokes about digital being "perfect sound" provided an invitation towards a certain idealistic stance on analogue and vinyl, it was good that the engineers presented well reasoned answers to remain digital for highest quality audio. 

Fremer dropped the joke about catching the "worst strain of COVID" - "COVID-MQA". I think this was the only mention of MQA by name that I heard at the show.

I also went to the talk by Qobuz "Chief Evangelist" David Solomon titled "All About Streaming". Well, I don't think the digital streaming neophytes got any clear direction about streaming other than a discussion about signing up for a service like Qobuz after that one! Clearly, there needs to be a Streaming 101 talk that hits on the basics about computer audio, networks, and discussions about how to get something going at home! (I wrote on this a few years back - Part I, Part II - initially in response to a RMAF talk online with tons of misinformation.)

A few names like Audirvana software was hinted at as a good alternative to Roon (which some people did not catch). There was no mention of devices like ubiquitous Raspberry Pi on the hardware side. Again, this talk could have been much clearer and I suspect the flow more defined if there was an actual slide presentation to keep things on track, helping newcomers understand broadly the wide range of options. Even if the talk is defined as Qobuz-centric (rather than "All About Streaming"), a deeper, concrete discussion on this would have been way more useful. 

What I see is the problem here is that Solomon has an agenda. He wants to impress upon us just how impressive lossless is vs. high-bitrate MP3 (it isn't for the most part). Then he feels he needs to impress upon us that hi-res sounds much better (it isn't, depending on source recording). And then he needs to of course indicate Qobuz is the best which I would not dispute other than to say, please bring it to Canada. Yeah, I think a simple, straightforward, honest talk about computer audio in a "HOW-TO" fashion will be helpful for many who are not tech-savvy or even likely to go online for their information.

Finally, there's this at times bizarre presentation from Dr. David Robinson - Editor-In-Chief of Positive Feedback Online:

While it's titled "Past, Present and Future Audio Trends", all I heard was a focus on the past and hesitancy about the future! It's good that he's interested in multichannel, however he seemed a bit vague about discussions on specific stuff like Atmos. The topic suggests at least a detailed discussion on the past like previous audio formats but I didn't hear much of that either; would have been interesting to trace the evolution from wax cylinders all the way to modern hi-res digital. And then there's his odd fixation about DSD256 ("Quad DSD") as being some kind of magical bitrate/format, even at one point suggesting results of an A/B listening test (volume controlled to 0.1dB) where people listening to DSD256 preferring it to the actual master!? (Even if this is so, is subjective preference necessarily better quality or higher fidelity? Who would these listeners be? What DAC was used? How was DSD processed, with which modulator and settings for example?)

What's going on here? This is the level of understanding and discussion from an Editor-In-Chief? This is how audiophiles are being "educated" by the press? No wonder as a hobby there's so much misunderstanding and snake oil!

I did a quick search and found Robinson's recent post on a "hot-rodded Apple TV 4K" with stuff about Furutech CAT8 ethernet cable, claims that this mod ($2500) with a linear power supply somehow resulted in "Absolutely the most amazing video playback that I've ever seen in our home theater/surround room!", improving "from 720p to 4K", even "dramatically", even from YouTube. Remember, we're talking about an AppleTV 4K (around US$200 for the larger 64GB option) with digital HDMI output!

So what kind of doctorate does this guy have!?

Bottom line: I think there's much educational potential here for audiophiles. I suspect that commercial interests would not like an open discussion about not needing to spend big money on expensive cables, tweaks, DACs, or sinking $$$ into streamers and computers these days that are otherwise bitperfect. As an audio show however, I hope there's an ability to recognize that to be honest with consumers and showgoers, they need to make sure to allow discussions that are free of obvious bias. It's fine to make sales in the marketplace and within each of the rooms, but maybe allow the seminars to be independent of the commercialism and let invited speakers try to be as neutral and objective as possible. Otherwise there's a real tendency to end up cultivating strange beliefs in a stagnant echo chamber.

The audience questions in these sessions were very good and on-point. I think also the presenters should have given time to deeper discussions based on these comments.

III. About MQA

Actually there was really nothing here at the show about MQA. Maybe because Qobuz was a major sponsor. There were a number of booths using TIDAL as the streaming platform and some DACs can decode it of course.

It looks like basically just a checkbox item these days and there was obviously no excitement about it. Didn't see anyone asking about it or any salesperson bring it up as a feature of their device nor even visible logos. Dave Solomon mentioned that TIDAL has this "master" format and could "white glove" remasters in his talk, but didn't even use the three letters. I think MQA's done (with multiple reasons to let it die).

IV. Controversies and the Grapevine - "MoFi-Gate"

Being among audiophiles and engaging with some of the discussions provided an interesting opportunity to listen to and explore the controversies currently out there.

The "talk of the town" over the weekend appeared to be "MoFi-Gate". Here's a video if you (like myself before the show) have no idea what this is about:

Apparently the MoFi "Ultradisc One-Step" LPs have now been revealed (direct link) to have gone through a digital DSD256 intermediate from the master tapes, which the LP copies are being subsequently reproduced since 2015 (likely before 2010).

From my perspective, DSD256 is a better technology with greater fidelity retention than any analogue format out there. As such, to make an LP from DSD256 digitized from an original master tape would be completely transparent and would absolutely make sense. And for the vinyl audiophiles to not be able to detect a problem for years as in the video, is the expected outcome to this kind of clean mastering chain.

I guess the issue really is whether the LP buyer feels he/she was being lied to about the provenance of the vinyl product. What I hear when I watch that video is a man who's a collector, also perhaps making claims when selling to collectors, upset that maybe knowing this information affects the monetary value of the collection and its uniqueness going forward. There's clearly a special emotional attachment towards that ideal of a pure analogue chain - not just for the sound quality itself. I appreciate his passion, even if I think what MoFi did resulted in a better product for the thousands of copies they end up selling!

I think digital audiophiles would love to get their hands on these DSD256 intermediate masters MoFi made before they got transferred to vinyl! Now that would be awesome fidelity for many of these classics!

Clearly, MoFi has a PR issue currently which they should resolve.

To end this summary post of sorts, let's show videos! ;-)

Speaking of "one step" LPs, while I was visiting the Parasound / Dr. Feickert / KEF room, Michael Fremer came in with Malachi Lui to show off some music. This first video is playback of a lacquer of Hank Mobley's "Remember" (from Soul Station, 1960) in 45rpm:

Even though I'm not much of a vinyl guy, I've got to admit that was impressive sounding, clearly better than typical LP. As close to the master tapes as one can get spinning an analogue disc I think.

Thanks to Michael Fremer for bringing this rare opportunity for us to listen! [Michael/Malachi, if you're reading this and think I should remove the videos, let me know. You just walked in at a providential time when I was sitting up front and had the "cameras rolling".]

And here's Malachi Lui introducing a selection from a Spiritualized album ("Shine A Light" from Lazer Guided Melodies, 1992):

Guys, I know that on Analog Planet, Malachi got quite a bit of flak for his reviews (perhaps not unjustified given the kind of attitude/language used at times). But just listening to his introduction here, I think we can appreciate that he's got passion for the music; something I hope we all recognize in our own journeys as music lovers, maybe especially when we were younger men. Whether we enjoy the genres or artists, music appreciation is always subjective, so let's make sure we see it from that perspective, acknowledging evolution in tastes and culture over time. I think it would be very good - actually essential - to have younger members in this hobby. The demographic remains vastly older males at the show as you can see in the images above (most of the ladies seem like wives or girlfriends with their dude) although it's very nice to see some younger listeners especially in the headphone area.

Regardless of whether we may be more objective or subjective leaning, I think there's room to be inclusive (so long as we all try our best to stick to facts and avoid snake oil, right?). Good luck to Michael Fremer and Malachi Lui with the upcoming Tracking Angle site.

By the way, we see Andrew Jones briefly, sitting to the right of me in the video above taking in the demo.

Finally, a quick video from the High End by OZ / United Home Audio room with reel-to-reel playback:

Apologies that the sound pick-up isn't the greatest on the camera at this volume, but that sounded amazing in the room that day. (Music is Rolling Stones "Moonlight Mile" from Sticky Fingers.)

As you can see, this too is part of the "audio fest" experience. One gets to see interesting gear, hear some interesting music, and meet some interesting people - non virtually...

Wishing all the best to the Pacific Audio Fest organizers and much success in the years to come.