Why CDs Sound Better Than Vinyl - Rock Edition
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)
Only a few reasons why but the major issues are, signal to noise ratio, dynamic range, frequency response, pops and ticks. Very easy to record lets say the cannon shots from the 1812 Overture onto CD. It can handle the dynamic range with no problem. Doing the same onto vinyl not so. The excursion required due to deep bass plus loudness means you are limited to not only how much music you can fit on a record but your playback stylus had better be pretty much top notch to handle the movement. Playback on CD easy peasy.
I have been the owner of both vinyl and CD over the years so experience on my part is why I say this plus the posted facts. You can't get around the laws of physics. If you prefer vinyl then please by all means buy it but playback , with all things being equal with the same master, will always sound better with CD. Your opinion may vary but then this is the internet hmmmmmm.
Pure subjective opinion, nothing else. That's fine, as long as we know. This is the Internet, after all.
"Sounds better"
The basic reason is that vinyl is easier to tweak to a subjectively satisfying level, even though technically it's performing not as well. And, digital when it's slightly off-balance, not quite 'right', sounds much worse subjectively.
It's the difference between a decent height hill, with gentle slopes leading to the top, vs. a tall mountain peak, with very steep inclines leading to the narrow summit ...
It's the difference between a decent height hill, with gentle slopes leading to the top, vs. a tall mountain peak, with very steep inclines leading to the narrow summit ...
I prefer to listen to what the recording engineer intended me to hear NOT added distortions. If listening to vinyl involves filtering those out in my mind then it's not "better". To each their own.
Pure subjective opinion, nothing else. ... This is the Internet, after all.
Wow! What is happening here?! Pano complaining about a subjective opinion?
Pure subjective opinion, nothing else. That's fine, as long as we know. This is the Internet, after all.
Yes , caught the Irony too huh ...
Been there done that , if you have bad analog then you have bad analog , my digititis friends say i have bad digital after hearing the analog vs digital ..
Frankly speaking i favor none , i have all formats at my disposal and even those biased as you towards digital have said they prefer the sound of analog after being exposed to it again , they just not going back , no software ..
Hi Guys
A few quick thoughts on the less discussed side of it or how it looks to me anyway.
If one starts from the premise of making a faithful reproducer as opposed to a loudspeaker used for amplification of an instrument (where the loudspeakers behavior is part of the “sound”), one is immediately struck by a number of problems. The first and foremost might be that we don’t have a way to measure very much that ties directly to what we hear subjectively.
Our hearing system detects from two points in space and based on what we have already learned from a life time of hearing through the system with no other reference, our brain composes what to us is a single continuous sound field is 3d for us to experience.
In that process, our ears “seek” the information and reject problems without our knowledge as it’s automatic. If you measure a loudspeaker is a room and look at the response at the listening position, one would say it’s awful, UN-listenable, yet it’s our ability to hear past the cancellation notches and room frequency response and lets us enjoy whatever we are playing.
If one measures the response or pressure that reaches inside your ear, you find that the shape of your outer ear AND the obstruction of your head both do weird things to what you measure and from an engineering eye, none of it looks good.
On the other hand, we have NO other reference and can’t because our ears are the only thing we know. As a result, all the goofy source position related notches and phase shifts are not problems at all but they are how we can judge spatial location.
The “automatic sifting process” is so powerful, it makes evaluation of a loudspeaker more difficult because it (your brain / ears as a system) seeks information and rejects noise, UN-correlated sound etc.
When using the cocktail party effect (listening in on a conversation across the room in a noise place) we only hear the snips of words and we understand, we do not hear much about the noise. It is the same listening to loudspeakers, we seek the good and are to a degree unaware of the bad.
The best way I found to evaluate how faithful a loudspeaker was subjectively , is to make a generation loss recording with a good measurement microphone. You take a decent MI grade digital recorder (24/96 or better is best) and some music of your choice and record it on one channel.
You play that music through the loud speaker at the desired volume and record the signal from the microphone out in front a meter or two away . You repeat that by playing the mic recording back through the loudspeaker and re-record it. After each generation, one quickly builds a horrifying caricature of the loudspeaker under test. Each and every area where it isn’t faithful, is exaggerated each generation.
At work they did this on a big forklift and or a tower so the loudspeaker would be in a close reflection free zone. It also turned out with good headphones, just listening to the loudspeaker through a measurement microphone could reveal many of the colorations which stood out like sore thumbs only a generation or two later. It was rare to have any commercial loudspeakers that were listenable after two generations, some sounded colored just listening through headphones live. If you do this in a room, the room effects are picked up and they also get successively worse (would comment that a measurement mic picks up more room stuff than you hear because it is an omni mic while your ears have some forward directivity.
With headphones, you hear a mono signal and without the head / ear shape angle related alterations you hear normally, it sounds like it's in your head and the warts are much more audible.
From a transducer side, when you look at the bandwidth, dynamic range and time behavior one is asking for, the radiation resistance curve's effect on required displacement, the radiation shape vs frequency and it's effect on room behavior and localization and one has a real can of worms and a set of silverware in front of them.
Best,
Tom Danley
A few quick thoughts on the less discussed side of it or how it looks to me anyway.
If one starts from the premise of making a faithful reproducer as opposed to a loudspeaker used for amplification of an instrument (where the loudspeakers behavior is part of the “sound”), one is immediately struck by a number of problems. The first and foremost might be that we don’t have a way to measure very much that ties directly to what we hear subjectively.
Our hearing system detects from two points in space and based on what we have already learned from a life time of hearing through the system with no other reference, our brain composes what to us is a single continuous sound field is 3d for us to experience.
In that process, our ears “seek” the information and reject problems without our knowledge as it’s automatic. If you measure a loudspeaker is a room and look at the response at the listening position, one would say it’s awful, UN-listenable, yet it’s our ability to hear past the cancellation notches and room frequency response and lets us enjoy whatever we are playing.
If one measures the response or pressure that reaches inside your ear, you find that the shape of your outer ear AND the obstruction of your head both do weird things to what you measure and from an engineering eye, none of it looks good.
On the other hand, we have NO other reference and can’t because our ears are the only thing we know. As a result, all the goofy source position related notches and phase shifts are not problems at all but they are how we can judge spatial location.
The “automatic sifting process” is so powerful, it makes evaluation of a loudspeaker more difficult because it (your brain / ears as a system) seeks information and rejects noise, UN-correlated sound etc.
When using the cocktail party effect (listening in on a conversation across the room in a noise place) we only hear the snips of words and we understand, we do not hear much about the noise. It is the same listening to loudspeakers, we seek the good and are to a degree unaware of the bad.
The best way I found to evaluate how faithful a loudspeaker was subjectively , is to make a generation loss recording with a good measurement microphone. You take a decent MI grade digital recorder (24/96 or better is best) and some music of your choice and record it on one channel.
You play that music through the loud speaker at the desired volume and record the signal from the microphone out in front a meter or two away . You repeat that by playing the mic recording back through the loudspeaker and re-record it. After each generation, one quickly builds a horrifying caricature of the loudspeaker under test. Each and every area where it isn’t faithful, is exaggerated each generation.
At work they did this on a big forklift and or a tower so the loudspeaker would be in a close reflection free zone. It also turned out with good headphones, just listening to the loudspeaker through a measurement microphone could reveal many of the colorations which stood out like sore thumbs only a generation or two later. It was rare to have any commercial loudspeakers that were listenable after two generations, some sounded colored just listening through headphones live. If you do this in a room, the room effects are picked up and they also get successively worse (would comment that a measurement mic picks up more room stuff than you hear because it is an omni mic while your ears have some forward directivity.
With headphones, you hear a mono signal and without the head / ear shape angle related alterations you hear normally, it sounds like it's in your head and the warts are much more audible.
From a transducer side, when you look at the bandwidth, dynamic range and time behavior one is asking for, the radiation resistance curve's effect on required displacement, the radiation shape vs frequency and it's effect on room behavior and localization and one has a real can of worms and a set of silverware in front of them.
Best,
Tom Danley
Interesting points.
Regarding the test noted above (which has interesting parallels in other areas), wouldn't you first have to ensure that the generational changes are not a "horrifying caricature" of limitations in the microphone and recording instrument (rather than the speakers)?
A head with two ears and a brain is not a measurement microphone. It's important to know that, as Tom obviously does. I go back and forth between an omni and a cardioid mic when measuring indoors. On-axis, free-field they well be the same, but not in a small room.
We should ask SY and Jan Didden about this. They were playing with the Smyth Headphone Realizer last week and each tried the calibration for the ears of the other guy. Their conclusion? "You have bad ears!" That's got to be about as close as we'll ever get to hearing thru someone else's ears.
We should ask SY and Jan Didden about this. They were playing with the Smyth Headphone Realizer last week and each tried the calibration for the ears of the other guy. Their conclusion? "You have bad ears!" That's got to be about as close as we'll ever get to hearing thru someone else's ears.
And the flip side is also true, there are very expensive microphones which can have rather poor response, generally due to wanting a specific polar pattern other than omni.
Although there are some recordings that are fairly accurate as to what acoustically transpired in the room, the vast majority of pop music is not recorded using microphones or techniques designed for that goal.
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