Hi,
How does one compensate for vinyl deficiencies?
Just like you can't compensate for all CD deficiencies_ although lots of people try hard to do so_you can't just compensate for all vinyl recordings with just a few corrective measures IMO.
Assuming a neutral phono playback system you will clearly hear how bad some recordings are made, be that vinyl or CD and you'll also be able to tell that neither is perfect.
However, as stated before, I think that within the context of a decent vinyl playback system and with a good recording one has a fighting chance of coming very close to the very high standards of a master tape.
Unfortunately, those records are far and in between and while some audiophile recordings can be great for showing off what can be done technically in either case, most of the time the actual content is lacking, musically that is.
As for CD, well I can't help but notice the success of SE amplifiers with their rich sound (predominant even order distortion pattern) and then there are, horror of horrors, all those cables and other gizmos that are nothing but low-pass filters.
Sure enough, they also keep out some RFI but deliberately rolling off HF from say, 16KHz downwards just to get rid of annoying HF noise(s) from digital sources is rather telling IMO.
If it were only shrill highs that make CD sound the way it does then it wouldn't be too hard to cure.
So far all I've seen are band-aids that camouflage that particular problem, brushing it under the carpet so to speak.
But the problems with digital are manyfold and just as vinyl it takes some doing to extract the best out of it.
I could live with that if it weren't for the fact that with an appallingly large number of CD based recordings there's just nothing you can do: it left the studio in too bad a shape and no amount of fiddling with it is going to change that.
You certainly have a good point there.
Digital recordings can also be excellent occasionally, some aspects (mostly merely technical ones) certainly show all the promise of easily doing better than what we had hitherto, even from the better analogue recordings.
The odd thing is that most of the time, with digital, these technical achievements seem to rob the music of its soul, turning it into yet another consumable, one that a lot of people seem to have a hard time enjoying.
Having hung around quite a number of recording studios in the days of analogue recording I can assure you that technically it was quite possible to make outstanding recordings, ones that were pretty close to a master tape.
Unfortunately quite a number of those fine recordings were messed up back then as well from a mere technical POV.
Luckily most of the time it wouldn't prevent people from enjoying whatever was left of it.
Nowadays it seems as if the reverse is true: CDs sound so technically polished that you're left wondering where the "music" has gone to.
That's a very sad state of affairs IMO.
So there you have it, I sure did my part of bemoaning the demise of the analogue days, didn't I?
Cheers,
How does one compensate for vinyl deficiencies?
Just like you can't compensate for all CD deficiencies_ although lots of people try hard to do so_you can't just compensate for all vinyl recordings with just a few corrective measures IMO.
Assuming a neutral phono playback system you will clearly hear how bad some recordings are made, be that vinyl or CD and you'll also be able to tell that neither is perfect.
However, as stated before, I think that within the context of a decent vinyl playback system and with a good recording one has a fighting chance of coming very close to the very high standards of a master tape.
Unfortunately, those records are far and in between and while some audiophile recordings can be great for showing off what can be done technically in either case, most of the time the actual content is lacking, musically that is.
As for CD, well I can't help but notice the success of SE amplifiers with their rich sound (predominant even order distortion pattern) and then there are, horror of horrors, all those cables and other gizmos that are nothing but low-pass filters.
Sure enough, they also keep out some RFI but deliberately rolling off HF from say, 16KHz downwards just to get rid of annoying HF noise(s) from digital sources is rather telling IMO.
If it were only shrill highs that make CD sound the way it does then it wouldn't be too hard to cure.
So far all I've seen are band-aids that camouflage that particular problem, brushing it under the carpet so to speak.
But the problems with digital are manyfold and just as vinyl it takes some doing to extract the best out of it.
I could live with that if it weren't for the fact that with an appallingly large number of CD based recordings there's just nothing you can do: it left the studio in too bad a shape and no amount of fiddling with it is going to change that.
You certainly have a good point there.
Digital recordings can also be excellent occasionally, some aspects (mostly merely technical ones) certainly show all the promise of easily doing better than what we had hitherto, even from the better analogue recordings.
The odd thing is that most of the time, with digital, these technical achievements seem to rob the music of its soul, turning it into yet another consumable, one that a lot of people seem to have a hard time enjoying.
Having hung around quite a number of recording studios in the days of analogue recording I can assure you that technically it was quite possible to make outstanding recordings, ones that were pretty close to a master tape.
Unfortunately quite a number of those fine recordings were messed up back then as well from a mere technical POV.
Luckily most of the time it wouldn't prevent people from enjoying whatever was left of it.
Nowadays it seems as if the reverse is true: CDs sound so technically polished that you're left wondering where the "music" has gone to.
That's a very sad state of affairs IMO.
So there you have it, I sure did my part of bemoaning the demise of the analogue days, didn't I?
Cheers,
fdegrove said:Hi,
How does one compensate for vinyl deficiencies?
Just like you can't compensate for all CD deficiencies_ although lots of people try hard to do so_you can't just compensate for all vinyl recordings with just a few corrective measures IMO.
Assuming a neutral phono playback system you will clearly hear how bad some recordings are made, be that vinyl or CD and you'll also be able to tell that neither is perfect.
However, as stated before, I think that within the context of a decent vinyl playback system and with a good recording one has a fighting chance of coming very close to the very high standards of a master tape.
Unfortunately, those records are far and in between and while some audiophile recordings can be great for showing off what can be done technically in either case, most of the time the actual content is lacking, musically that is.
As for CD, well I can't help but notice the success of SE amplifiers with their rich sound (predominant even order distortion pattern) and then there are, horror of horrors, all those cables and other gizmos that are nothing but low-pass filters.
Sure enough, they also keep out some RFI but deliberately rolling off HF from say, 16KHz downwards just to get rid of annoying HF noise(s) from digital sources is rather telling IMO.
If it were only shrill highs that make CD sound the way it does then it wouldn't be too hard to cure.
So far all I've seen are band-aids that camouflage that particular problem, brushing it under the carpet so to speak.
But the problems with digital are manyfold and just as vinyl it takes some doing to extract the best out of it.
I could live with that if it weren't for the fact that with an appallingly large number of CD based recordings there's just nothing you can do: it left the studio in too bad a shape and no amount of fiddling with it is going to change that.
You certainly have a good point there.
Digital recordings can also be excellent occasionally, some aspects (mostly merely technical ones) certainly show all the promise of easily doing better than what we had hitherto, even from the better analogue recordings.
The odd thing is that most of the time, with digital, these technical achievements seem to rob the music of its soul, turning it into yet another consumable, one that a lot of people seem to have a hard time enjoying.
Having hung around quite a number of recording studios in the days of analogue recording I can assure you that technically it was quite possible to make outstanding recordings, ones that were pretty close to a master tape.
Unfortunately quite a number of those fine recordings were messed up back then as well from a mere technical POV.
Luckily most of the time it wouldn't prevent people from enjoying whatever was left of it.
Nowadays it seems as if the reverse is true: CDs sound so technically polished that you're left wondering where the "music" has gone to.
That's a very sad state of affairs IMO.
So there you have it, I sure did my part of bemoaning the demise of the analogue days, didn't I?
Cheers,
I'm not suggesting that everything can be corrected, the point is that there is potential for any component to show a less-than perfectly neutral characteristic. In general, and I'm not talking about premium setups, a turntable is going to show a tendancy to tone down the highest frequencies, simple mechanical limitations.
Tweaks have been around for a lot longer than CD players, Cd has just given them another opportunity for grabbing as few more suckers. Nevertheless, digital can generate an awful lot of noise above the audible range, which could cause interractions in systems that are not designed to deal with such signal energy. This is where better (more advanced) noise shaping can show an advantage - the sort that has been used in the very expensive dCs upsamplers. It's another engineering improvement in the same tradition as the mechanical improvements that have been developed for analogue systems.
Again, it doesn't mean all digital is bad, but that some implementations are better than others. Just like analogue.
As for quality of production, digital processing of data just makes the perversion of the sound all the more easy. Not much we can do about that apart from taking our money elsewhere, and give the recording engineers (or more likely their bosses) the abuse they deserve.
Nothing I like more than a good clean recording from the '60s, when music and recording were at their peak (IMHO).
With the risk of starting to sound like a parrot here I once again must point to the enormous gains in performance one can get from redbook by doing some "simple" mods.
I´m not saying that redbook can equal vinyl, however it seems to me that most people that complains on CD has little experience with really good machines (good and expensive is not analog with eachother here, pun intended).
Discrete feedbackfree class A I/V or buffer stages and a precision clock is a must if one wants to here what CD can do. A decent used Sony or Pioneer can be had for $300-400 or so, and a kit with parts for upgrade to the highest level doesn´t have to cost more than about the same $300-400.
What I base this on is my own experience, my friends experience as well as the findings of Allen Wright/VSE, LC Audio and more.
/Peter
I´m not saying that redbook can equal vinyl, however it seems to me that most people that complains on CD has little experience with really good machines (good and expensive is not analog with eachother here, pun intended).
Discrete feedbackfree class A I/V or buffer stages and a precision clock is a must if one wants to here what CD can do. A decent used Sony or Pioneer can be had for $300-400 or so, and a kit with parts for upgrade to the highest level doesn´t have to cost more than about the same $300-400.
What I base this on is my own experience, my friends experience as well as the findings of Allen Wright/VSE, LC Audio and more.
/Peter
One area where redbook falls seriously short of LP SQ is in imaging, and most of that appears to be a result of the low sampling rate. Tests have shown that intra-aural delay differences as low as 2 microseconds are detectable, yet CD audio is more than ten times short of meeting this standard. OTOH there is no restriction keeping analog LP from meeting this standard. This is a fundamental reason that CDs more or less uniformly suffer from vague lateral imaging and cannot throw an illusion of image depth.
Another problem with CD audio related to sampling rate is the necessity for having brick wall filtering (to avoid even more objectionable aliasing artifacts) which adds a distinctive sonic thumbprint to the sound, coloring the HF and causing it to sound closed in. As far as LP bandwidth capabilities go, in the early '70's CD-4 ("Compatible Discrete 4 Channel") quadraphonic LPs depended on stereo information up to 45khz at significant levels to be cut into the grooves and played back in the home environment, since the two rear channels were discretely modulated to occupy the 20khz-45khz range on the LP.
The third great restriction of redbook is its useable dynamic range. The lowest 40 or so db are sonic garbage due to quantization error. And 3 to 5 bits of top end resolution are sacrificed to provide adequate headroom for most music. What's left is inadequate for anything but background music.
Btw, analog typically allows following musical detail 20-30 db into the background noise, even more when stereo imaging is involved. The random noise is uniformly distributed in space between and around the speakers while the musical information is spatially localized on a good quality system. There is no such saving grace with quantization artifacts which are sonic garbage semicorrelated with the music, thus inherently having a powerful masking tendency.
Another problem with CD audio related to sampling rate is the necessity for having brick wall filtering (to avoid even more objectionable aliasing artifacts) which adds a distinctive sonic thumbprint to the sound, coloring the HF and causing it to sound closed in. As far as LP bandwidth capabilities go, in the early '70's CD-4 ("Compatible Discrete 4 Channel") quadraphonic LPs depended on stereo information up to 45khz at significant levels to be cut into the grooves and played back in the home environment, since the two rear channels were discretely modulated to occupy the 20khz-45khz range on the LP.
The third great restriction of redbook is its useable dynamic range. The lowest 40 or so db are sonic garbage due to quantization error. And 3 to 5 bits of top end resolution are sacrificed to provide adequate headroom for most music. What's left is inadequate for anything but background music.
Btw, analog typically allows following musical detail 20-30 db into the background noise, even more when stereo imaging is involved. The random noise is uniformly distributed in space between and around the speakers while the musical information is spatially localized on a good quality system. There is no such saving grace with quantization artifacts which are sonic garbage semicorrelated with the music, thus inherently having a powerful masking tendency.
I have experienced extremly good imaging in all dimensions with redbook. I wonder what setups you have listened to?
Speaker/room is what limits imaging mostly as long as decent electronics are used. If imaging is poor from a CDP it´s very likely due to plenty jitter. With low jitter and good analog designs CD can give pinpoint imaging with depth layering of many meters behind the speakers.
/Peter
Speaker/room is what limits imaging mostly as long as decent electronics are used. If imaging is poor from a CDP it´s very likely due to plenty jitter. With low jitter and good analog designs CD can give pinpoint imaging with depth layering of many meters behind the speakers.
/Peter
thoriated said:
You're referring to first generation players that used a single DAC and a sample-hold circuit to switch between left and right channels. This technique hasn't been used for about 20 years. Empirical evidence (my own listening) would suggest that imaging is dependant on the recording.
Again, a technique that was last used commercially about 15 years ago. This is exactly the reason why oversampling/upsampling was invented... the image is pushed out to over 300kHz, with a stop-band rejection of 100dB in most cases. No need for any form of brick wall filter, just a 2nd - 5th order low pass. Although there is now a movement for DIYing no-oversampling DACs again, I think they don't use a brick wall filter and rely on the downstream equipment to handle the ultrasonic garbage.
...and had all sorts of tracking problems on less-than perfectly set up systems. Which is probably why it and all the other quadrophonic schemes lived only a short time.
Please read up on another set of techniques that were invented at least 15 years ago, called "dither" and "noise shaping". Dither completely removes quantisation errors and noise shaping can push the available dynamic range well into the noise floor where it counts. Don't believe me? Grab a copy of CoolEdit and try it for yourself. To make it dead easy, try it with 8 bit samples where the effect will be really obvious.
You don't need headroom in a digital system - max scale is a precisely defined value. The value of headroom in a vinyl setup is to cope with pops and crackles - irrelevant to a digital system.
Again, they are removed with modern DSP techniques.
I've used several different amplifiers, speakers, CD/DVD players and at least two different pre amps, and the verdict has been the same in all cases. CD does not approach the imaging capabilities of LP or SACD or DVDA, even with the same equipment. It's not that CD can't 'sound good' or image at all. But in my experience, it always suffers next to the other media I've mentioned here.
Just recently, I've auditioned three different amplifiers: A Crown K2 , a Dynaco Stereo 70 with all polypropylene caps and my homebrew DC coupled all triode OTL amp in my current setup, and CD has uniformly sounded more distorted, imaged more poorly with less layering, was less detailed, less nuanced, less open at the high frequencies and less musically satisfying with all these amps with the same universal CD/DVDA/SACD player, although the differences in quality were most pronounced with my OTL amplifier.
Just recently, I've auditioned three different amplifiers: A Crown K2 , a Dynaco Stereo 70 with all polypropylene caps and my homebrew DC coupled all triode OTL amp in my current setup, and CD has uniformly sounded more distorted, imaged more poorly with less layering, was less detailed, less nuanced, less open at the high frequencies and less musically satisfying with all these amps with the same universal CD/DVDA/SACD player, although the differences in quality were most pronounced with my OTL amplifier.
No, I'm referring to a fundamental limitation of the redbook sampling rate.
No, I'm talking about the sudden truncation of the amplitude response between 20khz and 22.05 khz with redbook.
No, that wouldn't explain the demise of matrixed quadraphonic which did not depend on extended bandwidth two channel stereo. IAC, my point is proven. LP is capable of vastly greater useable bandwidth than the CD apologists care to admit.
Dither can only add about 2.3 bits at best of effective resolution to redbook - an improvment, but hardly a panacea where requantization and digital filtering and mixing losses tends to reduce the 16 bit resolution to 13-14 bits in real world recordings. Noise shaping can help somewhat more, but the hard cold truth is that few know about it and it is hardly used today. Even then it quickly exacts a penalty from redbook that many find unacceptable - a high constant noise level above some frequency but still in the audible band - causing intermodulation products with consumer grade audio gear and even risking tweeter damage with systems where strong HF boost is employed.
Why put such a bandaid on a festering 16 bit/44kS/s sore when the smart money is on 24/96 or 24/192 audio?
You're arguing only semantics. Uncompressed recordings require 15-25 db headroom above the average musical level, regardless of the media. To claim CD has '96 db' vs '60db' of LP when one is the maximum possible dynamic range allowing distortion approaching 100% and the other ignores available headroom and is limited to a few percent distortion is only bogus specsmanship that should have been discarded with the 'perfect sound forever' hype of the '80's salesjockeys.
Actually, only slightly decorrelated. Plus, once the detail is lost, no amount of DSP trickery can restore it.
Turntables 'tone down the highest frequencies.'
'Dither completely removes quantisation errors and noise shaping can push the available dynamic range well into the noise floor where it counts.'
'You don't need headroom in a digital system...'
Hmmm...with statements like these flying about, I think I'll bow out while the getting is good.
Grey
'Dither completely removes quantisation errors and noise shaping can push the available dynamic range well into the noise floor where it counts.'
'You don't need headroom in a digital system...'
Hmmm...with statements like these flying about, I think I'll bow out while the getting is good.
Grey
This is becoming an analogue vs didgital thread. IMO hearing is believing. To hear what the LP can do please send some time listening to some good direct cut LPs on a good playback system from Sheffield and M&K or if you listen to pop music try some 12" singles from the '80s for ... then report back on how "compressed" ..........or " how sonically challenged" they sound
If the difference of such low magnitude are detectable, does that not work out to less than 1mm in the positioning of your speakers?
I've always thought that the reason that vinyl imaging (for close miked recordings anyway) sounded so much better was because of the (general) 25-30dB limit on channel separation. For others (like the Pawnshop recorings and Clark Terry at the Village Gate) the imaging seems to work pretty well whether redbook, LP or SACD (I've never heard DVDA).
Of course, they sound different... but no-one's arguing that...
ger56, try listening to your LPs through a '90s NAD and your CDs through a Pass A3 - quite similar...
Hi,
The more phase coherent the speakers are the better they should image.
Some multi-way speakers I know that can image beyond belief take me about an hour to set up correctly.
If not painstakingly positioned they just refuse to do their magical thing.
I don't think that can be generalised.
Many people seem convinced stereo separation on a vinyl record is intrinsically limited to say, 30dB.
This is basically untrue even though some lesser recording are made this way.
A limiting factor as far as separation goes is often the cartridge itself.
Aren't those analogue recordings to begin with?
Cheers,
The more phase coherent the speakers are the better they should image.
Some multi-way speakers I know that can image beyond belief take me about an hour to set up correctly.
If not painstakingly positioned they just refuse to do their magical thing.
I don't think that can be generalised.
Many people seem convinced stereo separation on a vinyl record is intrinsically limited to say, 30dB.
This is basically untrue even though some lesser recording are made this way.
A limiting factor as far as separation goes is often the cartridge itself.
Aren't those analogue recordings to begin with?
Cheers,
Sorry Frank,
I was (sort of) trying to pose a couple of questions in my post and it didn't come out quite right.
I pretty much like all mediums for varying reasons - but mostly for the toe-tapping. CDs are great for here at work, as the PC doesn't have an 'LP-drive' or an 'SACD-drive'. But I like them also as there's lots of stuff available in that format. The SACDs sound pretty good by comparison, but some of the CDs get close (hence my moniker). I still like the LPs I've got and prefer them over subsequent LP releases - but that may be due to the balance being altered on the CD(?) - even though most of those are pop/rock from the 70s and 80s.
I was (sort of) trying to pose a couple of questions in my post and it didn't come out quite right.
I believe so, and I think they were both recorded live with just a pair of mikes (except I think that Pawnshop may have had a couple of extras on the percussion). That's probably why they translate fairly well across all media IMO.
I pretty much like all mediums for varying reasons - but mostly for the toe-tapping. CDs are great for here at work, as the PC doesn't have an 'LP-drive' or an 'SACD-drive'. But I like them also as there's lots of stuff available in that format. The SACDs sound pretty good by comparison, but some of the CDs get close (hence my moniker). I still like the LPs I've got and prefer them over subsequent LP releases - but that may be due to the balance being altered on the CD(?) - even though most of those are pop/rock from the 70s and 80s.
Thoriated,
it would be interesting to hear exactly what digital sources you have been using. What you describe is exactly what I have been hearing with stock CDPs in the sub $500-$1000 range or so.
I would guess you have never heard a player like those I mention in my earlier posts.. ? I think maybe you would be surprised if you learned just how much a slow opamp circuit around a DAC degrades the decent redbook format. The same goes for instable crystals/gross jitter levels... but even more so.
/Peter
it would be interesting to hear exactly what digital sources you have been using. What you describe is exactly what I have been hearing with stock CDPs in the sub $500-$1000 range or so.
I would guess you have never heard a player like those I mention in my earlier posts.. ? I think maybe you would be surprised if you learned just how much a slow opamp circuit around a DAC degrades the decent redbook format. The same goes for instable crystals/gross jitter levels... but even more so.
/Peter
Pan said:
Peter,
I think you've hit the nail on the head... people seem to think that all digital setups sound the same. It's not till you've heard what can be done that you realise how many of the perceived limitations are to do with implementation rather than technical limitations. I wonder if any of the CD-haters have ever had the pleasure of listening to a setup that includes a dcs upsampler?
So what if you can only squeeze a couple of extra bits of dynamic range - you're starting with 96dB, which is more than vinyl could ever possibly achieve. And adding dither is going to do, what, drag the noise floor up to -93dB. Still way more than vinyl.
Especially galling are the pseudo-technical explanations for why LPs are just so much better than anything CD can deliver. Utter tosh. The fact that LP may sound nicer precisely because of it's multitude of distortion mechanisms isn't even considered.
I'm perfectly happy to say that I've really enjoyed some superb LPs, I've also enjoyed some superb CD pressings. 90% of the quality is in the recording i.e. the performance, and skills of the sound engineers.
I'm sure some of the same arguments went on when DVD was replacing (analogue) laserdisc...
"90% of the quality is in the recording i.e. the performance, and skills of the sound engineers."
Exactly. The recording acoustics (real or not) and microphones of choice is extremly important along with the performers and sound technician. The speaker/room is the biggest problem in the other end of the chain.
I have a modded SCD-XB940 and even though SACD is better, CD´s sound wonderful as well. I know people that have compared modded 940 to SCD-1 and the 940 was a clear winner. This shows how important analog implementiation and clock jitter is in these machines.
David W Robinson (PFO) compared a VSE (Allen Wright) modded Sony SACD to the top notch Meitner and was really surprised to hear that the modded player was at similar level as the Meitner.
When modding these machines you really need a precision clock to reduce jitter levels IMO. Also it´s not enough to tweak the stock boards analog stages and power supplys, you need to bypasss them alltogether, which is both better and cheaper.
I know some guys in US putting in opamps and black gates for thousands of dollars in bad designs... what a joke when there is cheaper and better to just substitute the crap for the real thing.
For those on a budget, I´d recommend a new clock and opamp mods. AD8065 and LM6172 seems to be the opamps to go with due to the very good performance, especially low settling time.
/Peter
Exactly. The recording acoustics (real or not) and microphones of choice is extremly important along with the performers and sound technician. The speaker/room is the biggest problem in the other end of the chain.
I have a modded SCD-XB940 and even though SACD is better, CD´s sound wonderful as well. I know people that have compared modded 940 to SCD-1 and the 940 was a clear winner. This shows how important analog implementiation and clock jitter is in these machines.
David W Robinson (PFO) compared a VSE (Allen Wright) modded Sony SACD to the top notch Meitner and was really surprised to hear that the modded player was at similar level as the Meitner.
When modding these machines you really need a precision clock to reduce jitter levels IMO. Also it´s not enough to tweak the stock boards analog stages and power supplys, you need to bypasss them alltogether, which is both better and cheaper
.I know some guys in US putting in opamps and black gates for thousands of dollars in bad designs... what a joke when there is cheaper and better to just substitute the crap for the real thing.
For those on a budget, I´d recommend a new clock and opamp mods. AD8065 and LM6172 seems to be the opamps to go with due to the very good performance, especially low settling time.
/Peter
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