I assure you dynamic compression and dynamic unliniarity in speaker is by no means a low cost issue, it's just as prominent in good high-End designs. When you work in a cross field of electrical and mechanical interfacing these issues are firm and well documented. Here vinyl playback clearly holds an edge over digital despite it"s clearly an inferior source. The culprit is that we don't reall fully understand the mechanisms in all the media transfers from source till airmotion hits the human hearing. Too complex to disqualify a source as being inferior when listening dreams it the best.
I have never seen a shred of evidence to support this assertion, indeed I've seen convincing demonstrations of the opposite. Say you take your favourite vinyl record, record the output of your phono preamp digitally (a "needle drop") and play it back through your system. You will not be able to tell the digital playback apart from the direct output of the phono preamp, even at 44.1kHz and 16 bits.
This was the result when the experiment was first tried in the 80s with the Sony PCM-F1, and digital has got at least an order of magnitude better since.
Many vinyl records do indeed sound better than many digital recordings, but this has more to do with the skill and taste of the people who made the recordings than the limitations of the medium.
Being old enough to have progressed through most of the advances in vinyl playback equipment and heard the massive differences in sound quality between the decades, I do wonder how many people have ever heard a really good analogue vinyl system? THE major influence on sound quality is the turntable, and most people didn't believe this back before CD and even after, so weren't likely to spend the big money to get one. Perhaps that's not the case with forum members, dunno.
Anyway FWIW, when I had got a great sounding Linn vinyl system together, I gave CD a try with borrowed very well reviewed CD players in the 80's and couldn't believe how ropey/boring/undynamic they all sounded so gave CD a miss for another 10yrs then tried again, this time purchasing equipment rather than borrowing, and was disappointed again until I got an offboard DAC, and then it just about matched vinyl with the added benefits of lower noise, but I would still say vinyl can sound better but it's difficult to be sure when studios' engineers mess around with all their fancy gizmos so much.
PS
I can remember tests done back in the day where moving coil pickups had a response out to 50kHz!
Anyway FWIW, when I had got a great sounding Linn vinyl system together, I gave CD a try with borrowed very well reviewed CD players in the 80's and couldn't believe how ropey/boring/undynamic they all sounded so gave CD a miss for another 10yrs then tried again, this time purchasing equipment rather than borrowing, and was disappointed again until I got an offboard DAC, and then it just about matched vinyl with the added benefits of lower noise, but I would still say vinyl can sound better but it's difficult to be sure when studios' engineers mess around with all their fancy gizmos so much.
PS
I can remember tests done back in the day where moving coil pickups had a response out to 50kHz!
The original article explains why I find CD and LP versions similar when the master compression level is the same. The US Army removed my high frequency hearing at ROTC camp 1969. I am about 10 db down at 14 khz in one ear, worse in the other. So the superiority of the LP high frequency s/n level as detected by Ms Thamb is totally lost on me, unfortunately. I miss those days before , I heard all sorts of high fidelity live music in high school band and all -district orchestra.
But the intention of recording engineers to compress CD as much as possible to punch through the traffic noise in the car and sell more CD's, is vile to me. LP was an inherent car free format and LP's prior to the nineties were in many cases better engineered for more S/N level and less compression. Even I can hear that.
I've got one post 2000 LP, Abbey Road Beatles, and I have to say EMI has done a good job getting rid of the gravel Capitol always had on their LP's. Capitol's master plating plant must have been in the Mojave desert with open windows with fans blowing in. I always prefered Colombia, RCA after Dynagroove, and the Gold Standard, Mercury under engineer C.R. Fine.
But the intention of recording engineers to compress CD as much as possible to punch through the traffic noise in the car and sell more CD's, is vile to me. LP was an inherent car free format and LP's prior to the nineties were in many cases better engineered for more S/N level and less compression. Even I can hear that.
I've got one post 2000 LP, Abbey Road Beatles, and I have to say EMI has done a good job getting rid of the gravel Capitol always had on their LP's. Capitol's master plating plant must have been in the Mojave desert with open windows with fans blowing in. I always prefered Colombia, RCA after Dynagroove, and the Gold Standard, Mercury under engineer C.R. Fine.
Here is a report of that actual test.
Apparently digital technology was/is pretty good, even in the early 80's.
Look at the CD player used in the comparison....
...it was a stock Sony 777es player. Some of you may be familiar with how Sony used to configure their CD players, with several low quality op amps in the output path.
It was Allen Wright who, bypassed the op amps with a single buffering output device which revealed the dynamics of these otherwise great CD/SACD players.
The other thing that Allen Wright did was to add a great, low jitter clock with its own, very stiff and well filtered power supply, which took the "digitalness" out of the CD player.
I am in the camp that digital and analog each have their virtues, but the recording process is the greatest determinant of how a recorded piece of music will sound, not the medium. But the medium is affected by the quality of the hardware, or to the extent that it is upgraded.
Retsel
...it was a stock Sony 777es player. Some of you may be familiar with how Sony used to configure their CD players, with several low quality op amps in the output path.
It was Allen Wright who, bypassed the op amps with a single buffering output device which revealed the dynamics of these otherwise great CD/SACD players.
The other thing that Allen Wright did was to add a great, low jitter clock with its own, very stiff and well filtered power supply, which took the "digitalness" out of the CD player.
I am in the camp that digital and analog each have their virtues, but the recording process is the greatest determinant of how a recorded piece of music will sound, not the medium. But the medium is affected by the quality of the hardware, or to the extent that it is upgraded.
Retsel
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The Bottom line is, what the consumers ultimately get is what is important and, relevant
Being mainly into classic rock and having a very good (NAD) CD player...... ..
While the CD of a classic title generally does a good job...., there are always certain things that sounds harsh or not quite like it should be..
Also, many vinyl/analog to digital transfers/remasters have altered frequency responses and dynamic ranges... not to mention augmented bass.
Of course, tiles that were never released in vinyl have nothing to compare it to. Having said that...I have some CDs that I like very much that fall into the above category but, they are few and far between .
As far as a digital master transferred to vinyl......what is the point other than to cash in on the vinyl resurgence band wagon .
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What you are doing is comparing formats and not technology. If you compared an early consumer analogue format with the first digital consumer format (Phonograph-CD) it would give you a more honest picture as to where the technology battle is going to end.
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Digital formats are a pain, especially the HD lossless ones. Apple devices (and iTunes) won't play FLAC, while most others won't play Apple Lossless. There is no single lossless format that works with every device you now own or may buy in the future.
On the flip side, you can get players that work with every format, but you have to look outside the usual commercial mass market offerings.
On the flip side, you can get players that work with every format, but you have to look outside the usual commercial mass market offerings.
I do not care about where it may be going to end some time in the future,
All I care about is what sounds good to me now......anything else would not make sense..
BTW doesn't format reflect the technology used?
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I do not care about where it may be going to end some time in the future,
All I care about is what sounds good to me now......anything else would not make sense..
BTW doesn't format reflect the technology used?
A disc with a reflective layer (CD) or a disc with a groove (read scratch) from beginning to end (vinyl), no state of the art technology there. Formats are cost driven and so only use the cheapest technology.
PCM digital recordings pressed to vinyl were available sometime before they were available for Compact Disk playback. I enjoyed such vinyl playback while detesting the early CD releases of the very same recordings. The difference was so shocking that I just knew my new CD player must be defective. Sadly, I was wrong about that.
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Both were SOTA at some time in the past.
No longer, for the most part, but I saw no one claim otherwise.
I view this as propaganda. It certainly doesn't appear to be credible economic theory. Formats are profit driven... for inventors, manufacturers, sellers, and end users.
My 2 cents worth--I have been lucky enough to own really good analog and really good digital (mostly digital--for obvious reasons) systems. Currently it is from flac files on a HD to a USB/SPDIF converter fed to the digital inputs of a DEQX and then to a 5 channels of amplification, 1000 for the SW, 600 for the rest. I no longer have any analog devices/inputs.
Current system blows away in terms of raw fidelity any analog system I have used, a few of which were quite expensive---say 30K USD.
Now here is the mystifying part--none of the better digital systems capture my interest in the same way. Believe me its not becaause of HT, gaming, or a short attention span, all of which have been implicated as causes for listener boredom/dissatisfaction, nor is it the crap recordings, I don't play those.
But would I go back? No way, been there, tried that--picked up a good phono preamp a ways back and after a weeks worth opf listening sent it back. I guess you mightsay I am stuck in the middle--the much lower noise, etc associated with dig has made it impossible to use vinyl yet I have lost something very important in the process.
Now I twiddle with speakers but am guessing will never reach the same level of enjoyment as with SOTA analog.
Cheers,
John
Current system blows away in terms of raw fidelity any analog system I have used, a few of which were quite expensive---say 30K USD.
Now here is the mystifying part--none of the better digital systems capture my interest in the same way. Believe me its not becaause of HT, gaming, or a short attention span, all of which have been implicated as causes for listener boredom/dissatisfaction, nor is it the crap recordings, I don't play those.
But would I go back? No way, been there, tried that--picked up a good phono preamp a ways back and after a weeks worth opf listening sent it back. I guess you mightsay I am stuck in the middle--the much lower noise, etc associated with dig has made it impossible to use vinyl yet I have lost something very important in the process.
Now I twiddle with speakers but am guessing will never reach the same level of enjoyment as with SOTA analog.
Cheers,
John
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