What's really going on with the newest printers anyways?

[mikling]

In the past 5 to 6 years, we've seen some new printers and wondered what's really new with them.
On the surface, the output on first impressions pretty much look the same as the prior model. We've seen droplet size increase and not decrease with the new Canon machines like the Pro-100. Heck we were little robots quoting droplet size as the determinant of potential image quality before but look what happens when we see this aspect? On the Epson front, after several years, the big thing is the darker Black. ..and did anyone comment on the matching LK and LLK? That also needs to be altered right? . Did anyone check that one? Whoopee! suddenly the printer world is on fire. Oh, btw the print speeds did not significantly increase either. F=MA and always will remain that way.
Then I was printing an image on the Pro-1 at the Fine Art setting and it was taking forever on a once top end machine still relevant. Then I played around with all the Prosumer Epsons looked at the printing characteristics at the raw level to get a feel on what they were doing.
I am coming to speculative conclusion because it is possibly out of my league to prove it. Printer manufacturers have overstated the amount of colors they can truly print. Canon is going the direction of fixing the situation and Epson is diverting the attention to new colors.
Last week after driving pretty much nearly 14 hours continuously in either storm conditions in crowded roads on raining on deserted or non lit roads, I was both exhausted and my physical body had given up. So I rested for a couple of days. During this time, I took the time to listen to my record collection again. I had just completed another modification to my RIAA preamp. This is a DIY preamp that I had built in 2000 using the best technology I could put my hands on( High speed ICs using Jung Didden Super Regulators). Last year I purchased an already built circuit from Ebay primarily for the circuit board itself and this could be a platform to experiment on. Shocked I was to hear how good this Ebay bargain sounded. To bring this back to the point.....images are intrinsically analog and so is sound.
With sound there are actually a lot of qualities that give it a certain quality and I am noticing a similar effect on printers. What exactly are the qualities is hard to put your finger or describe. Now I am an engineer and we are trained to be objective. However, let me tell you,something. Things that should not make a difference do. Integrated circuits even when applied properly DO sound different. They might measure the same or better but not necessarily sound so. You can quote distortion figures GBW product, slew rates etc. and say it shouldn't. Cables/ wires do make a difference. My wife who is ambivalent to these things picked it up immediately...cables. Yes, I was on the other side of a skeptic but time and time again I ate my words.
OK, so what is going on. Epson is taking the road to impress with darker blacks and trying to delineate the darks shadows. This like in sound is attempting to extend the bandwidth or frequency extremes. Canon with the Pro-1 and 1000 is attempting to do something else. It appears that they are focusing on how the color is perceived and how well it transitions dynamically. In sound one aspect is smoothness, depth, soundstaging, and dynamics. That is one reason why some reviewers glow over the Pro-1000 and some are so so. It depends on what you see and what you are looking for. In sound, you can extend the low frequencies with a subwoofer, that gives you the low sounds but if that does not integrate well with the rest, it won't sound right. For many, that is all they want the low sound, the integration does not matter. A well integrated sound lacking the ultra low frequencies can sound better than an improperly integrated subwoofer. to me Again, points of view.
From a technical standpoint, Epson in theory has no chance against the printhead that the Pro-1000 puts in the ring when it comes to integration or smoothness. If they can control the nozzles to the point of remapping, Epson cannot compete based on combinational and permutation theory. So they push the color extremes or bandwidth or say that darker is better. Not necessarily so Epson. The competition between these two machines P800 and Pro-1000 is being fought with two thoughts of what actually counts. Nobody so far has defined exactly what is different between the P800 and 3880 at the hardware level...Interesting no? There is something very different as to how the image is sent to the printer BTW.
From an analog standpoint, I think the Canon does a better job with the Pro-1, the P800 shifts the focus of the audience with the darker black but like a subwoofer, what about integration, smooth midrange and airy non fatiguing highs. Canon does smooth color transitions. Like distortion meters and gamut volumes and L values. it does not reveal what actually is happening dynamically as color is an image with changing colors.
These are my subjective thoughts. I'd love to see how the internal print engines on all these machines are functioning. That would be an eye opener. Oh....one aspect to consider is that Canon has a LOT of capability in fabricating very powerful microprocessors for imaging. I think they are now throwing this into their printers in a more serious fashion.
I am back to loving my vinyl collection dating back to 1970. You'd be shocked how well these sound on a good analog system...especially given the tech back then.
Remember this is my subjective comment on what's happening from a certain context. I could be wrong but my LPs never sounded better and are better than my digital files through my DACs. But you heard digital is superior.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I could agree with most of your comments and statements, it is a kind of discussion similar to the Nikon/Canon disputes which camera yields 'better' colors for portrait, landscape etc. There are personal preferences and biases, and most of those parameters are not measurable for the purpose of a direct comparison. You are commenting on smoothness, I don't think that is that much related to the hardware of the printhead but more to the driver, the print engine in front of it, a black box with some secret formulas for these effects, and here Canon and Epson differ with their printers as much as Canon and Nikon etc with their cameras. You could run most Epson printers with a RIP, bypassing the genuine driver, but the RIPs bring their own little secrets with their software. And there are additional effects by the inks and papers you are using, it could very well be that they don't have the same design goals , smoothness, gloss etc . Epson inks may not look so good on Canon papers as Canon inks - and vice versa so we won't even think about the chance for better or worse printouts on 3rd party papers with 3rd party inks.....The sound of vinyls has its charme, including the analogue stuff around it, but opposite to that I would not really like to go back to use color printers from last millenium.

 

[Roy Sletcher]

Wow Mike! I won't ask you if you like music.

Although I can only speak for myself, it is my perception that we end-users are quite happy to let the manufacturers slug it out amongst themselves. After all we are sufficiently educated to know it is really a public relations exercise to convince a gullible public that their brand is the best and greatest. Juicing the results is all part of the game.

I Am not an engineer, but as a man of science, I can state their methodology, and the veracity of their claims, would not stand up to intense scrutiny. My perspective is that providing we, the end-user, can continue to refill at good quality levels and economically they won't mean a lot to me as I have no intention of being on the "bleeding" edge of the technology. Simply put I cannot afford it.

One of the byproducts of their research is that we, the end-user benefits from the theory of marginal gains. Briefly stated it means that continued small improvements in all aspects of performance/workflow/activities etc will cumulatively create a significant overall improvement in our objectives. Imitators and the rapid devaluation of current technology means in a year of two we can adopt the advantages at more modest cost. Plus avoiding the adage warning what can befall early adopters of new technology.

I have been keeping records of my standard image printouts since 2006 when I was profiling with Qimage's product called PROFILE PRISM. Over the interim I have changed printers, ink-sets, papers, and profilers. Each time the gain in quality etc was small, almost imperceptible. However, if you look at the resulting printouts over 3 to 5 year spans the improvements are amazing. What I am printing now on a budget Canon Pro 100 is light years ahead of my prints from 10 years ago, plus my operating costs are far lower.

A lot of the benefits mentioned in the above paragraph have been due to the information learned from the good folks on this site. Thank you to all the constant technical contributors. I would like to mention your names, but may inadvertently omit somebody. I am sure you know who you are, and a sincere thank you for sharing your knowledge.

There are those who know, know they know, and are willing and able to help others. They are the most knowledgeable.

As always, sorry for the long post. I don't do brevity.

rs

 

[The Hat]

Jesus Mike after that long post I reckon you could part the Friggin Atlantic.

Or were you just making Music...

 

[mikling]

What we are forgetting is that the world is analog. To reproduce analog is expensive and requires much precise components. Back then to get this was expensive..very expensive. Is a digital image better than film negative? Digital brings a fairly high level of precision for a low cost and that is what the world wants.
What I am getting at is that I think Epson printers are actually internally printing with lower bit precision than Canon's top machines today. The resolution of a gradient is a bit coarser, whereas Canon is possibly producing the same gradient with more real different colors. It looks that way, it would be hard to determine if that is really so. Possibly one reason we don't see Canon RIPs. ( How do we know what Epson RIPs actually do...there's another secret) Has it ever been disclosed? Is there a language protocol that talks to the outside driver in a RIP thereby the printer is actually still controlled by this interface. I really do not see Epson releasing or allowing a RIP to talk directly to each individual nozzle....and whether or not that is possible.

This is similar to the first generation CD players. You sent them 16 bit words in the music but their internal processing was only good for 14 bits or less. Their internal DACs were a horror show but they claimed perfect music. I think a lot of this stuff has been happening with printers as well....I really think so.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I was talking to a programmer of an Epson RIP quite some time ago, he told me that Epson is providing technical details for the printhead control to some of these RIP companies, under strict legal restrictions. But it's not the aim of RIP software to let the user address individual nozzles. It may very well be that Canon either does not provide such data to 3rd parties, or those are less interested due to different market opportunities to develop such software for Canons. The real world may be analogue, but methods of perception and reproduction are not pure analogue, there are only a limited number of rods and cones as light sensitive elements in the eye, neurons firing or not firing, etc all that neural stuff is not plain analogue, but at the end the brain creates the impression of an analogue and continous world, and there is film grain etc. There had been some milestones in printer development, after the original generation of models like the deskjets - getting down to smaller droplet sizes like 1 to 1.5pl for desktop printers, getting to the Claria and Lucia inks or Ultrachrome, and what we get today are further improvements on this technical base - more nozzles, more inks for a wider gamut etc

 

[jtoolman]

To the real world uneducated n the Intricacy of what actually takes place internally I describe analogand digital as the difference between a child's Slide and a stair well. Smooth and infinitely continual and the stairs. Same thing but bumby as hell! Both get yoiyoiu From one point to the other just one will hunt your back end a lot less!
Analog watch and digital. The digital watch visual display minimal resolution is ONE full second increments. Analog watch is continuous.
I know. I am oversimplifying it all but.......

 

[mikling]

Good analogy Jose. To someone used to riding in an old truck, the stairs might feel fine. To someone used to a luxury auto, only the slide will do. Remember those gamut surfaces are only mathematical representations. It does not describe the actual bumpiness or granularity due to real tonal resolution. which will depend on the nozzle count and size, actual control of nozzles and mechanical transport of both media and head carriage and what the onboard microprocessor can actually do.
Few people have really heard what vinyl can really do. If you try and purchase the required equipment commercially , even a Pro-1000 would be considered inexpensive. The only way I could have approached that goal was to DIY with the help of fanatics. In the old days before the internet, one would look forward to the monthly issue of the Audio Amateur. Don't take the amateur word literally as the build quality far surpassed what could be offered commercially because of costs. When I retire I will get back into it. here's a sample of an alternate hobby. https://linearaudio.net/

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I don't think there is so much difference between an analog watch or a digital watch, the 'analog' watch actually is a angular counter of the oszillations of the balance wheel, that's mechanical, and the digital watch is counting the mechanical oszillations of the quartz crystal, the actual display is electronic - in most cases - so it's all a matter of perception, of a perception of continuity. Just watch a movie - at 24 or 30 fps - it's a discrete process technically but perceived as continuous - perception is all there is, and mostly a mix of discrete and continuous processes combined. Vinyl and linear audio hardware alltogether was and is a great technology for sound reproduction, there is no doubt about that.

 

[mikling]

Also a reminder that even if you don't possess the ultimate you can eventually get it if you are patient enough. I do it all the time for cameras, printers and autos....and I know many of us do this on this board. Now if I could only wait around for Lucia!

http://www.tonepublications.com/blog/what-youve-got-isnt-rubbish/