Cd - Vinyl Sound Difference

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I ask on a similar forum an advise in order to buy an equalizer to get about the same sound from a cd and a vinyl record as cd seems have less low midrandge and no space in the bass ; i do not mean no bass but you do not feel it is an instrument compare to vinyl .
I axnted to change my equalizer with a memory equalizer like behringer 8024 inorder to change the set up form cd to record .

A gentleman told me to get an ART preamp to set up the bass harmonic on cd !!!

Any comment

ger56
 
Basic differences:
1. Bass on vinyl is always mixed down to mono.
2. Frequency response of vinyl is curtailed at higher end of spectrum as there are physical limits to the speed with which the stylus can move without jumping out of the groove.
3. May be a certain amount of infra-bass noise (wow) coming from slight warps in the record - hence why a lot of older amps have a bass cutoff switch.

There are a lot of other issues, but these are the main ones that will be relevant to equalisation.

Apologies in advance as this is sure to turn into an interminable CD vs. vinyl debate...

Arnie
 
As i understand it you will not be able to get the same sound from these two sources, analog and digital one, with help of an equalizer.

A fundamental difference is, the analog source has more information about the waveform at lower level, the information about the waveform decrease with falling level for the digital medium. What means, compared to the original signal, distortion increases with volume going down for the digital medium in opposite to the analog medium.
 
till said:
As i understand it you will not be able to get the same sound from these two sources, analog and digital one, with help of an equalizer.

A fundamental difference is, the analog source has more information about the waveform at lower level, the information about the waveform decrease with falling level for the digital medium. What means, compared to the original signal, distortion increases with volume going down for the digital medium in opposite to the analog medium.


Here we go :rolleyes:

This is so wrong... low level signals from ANY source are going to be swamped by noise. Doesn't matter if it's analogue or digital. The only difference is going to be exactly how much noise is present. A clean 16 bit digital setup is going to have over 96dB range between max scale and the smallest signal that can be replayed. Contrast with vinyl where you're never going to get much better than 80dB before noise takes over.

What is your definition of "sound quality"? Both vinyl and CD have their own distinctive limitations, and the only way you'll get them to sound the same is to go to the lowest common denominator in each parameter you'd be testing... hardly the point of hi-fi!

If I were you, I'd concentrate on getting the best replay equipment you can afford (turntables by their nature are highly mechanical so spending money on the best engineering you can afford will bring huge gains) and accepting that they will sound "different".

HTH,

Arnie
 
You adress only the noise as source of distortion for the signal. What about the information avaiable about the signal? A low level signal on digital medium is only very few bits information depht. What does the better SNR help, if my all i know about my signal has 6 Bits resolution?
 
Arnie ...

if i want them to sound the same it isbecause i feel vinyl is better .
I am french and live in france when i collect jazz record and i always bought us pressing wich where much better than french pressing even if it was hard to find and more expensive .
Now we can't stop the progress , we live with internet and cd's and emule and so on ....
I just try to get the best of my new cd's wich can be recording from the 60's or 70's .
In thsi forum i found a lot of things about the behringer 8024 and I was wondering if i could just play with to get a better from the cd ...

But i can leave with the cd sound , do not worry it is just for the music !

best regards

gerard
 
Music is what it's all about!
If accuracy is not the goal then sure, you can process the CD sound however you like to get it as close to vinyl as possible. There are all sorts of euphonic distortions, frequency manipulations etc. that could be used. Maybe a vintage valve-based preamp would soften up the sound to your liking.

As for the bit depth, it doesn't really matter if you've only got 6 bits to describe a sound that is 60dB down as the LSB is still going to have a higher amplitude resolution than an analogue medium can offer, and digital systems use all sorts of tricks like gaussian dither to make those 6 bits give 8 bits of resolution. The key here is that the uncertainty about the exact level being reproduced is higher when there is more noise present, masking any "stepping" in the waveform (think of the waveform having added "fuzz").
 
CD to sound like Vinyl ?

Essentially, you won't be able to do it, unless you are working at a higher sampling rate (60 kHz min), which means you would have to upsample your CD first. Then, you can give the IMPRESSION of an old vinyl recording by rolling off the high and Lowest frequencies and THEN mixing in some crackle and pop sounds. There is some evidence that the these "discontinuities" trick our ear into believing that there is more information about the sound available than there actually is. BTW, Till is correct, we CAN hear information BELOW the residual noise level. This has been known for some time.

Cheers

RB
 
Speaking pragmatically, it is very common for CD reissues to have been remastered with a different EQ setting to suit 'modern sensibilities'. As stated, this EQ curve often has less low midrange and more mid treble, and can be extreme. It is more common in older CD's, when manufacturers were attempting to ensure that consumers could tell the difference in sound.

Setting aside issues of sound quality, an EQ is one way to deal with bright sounding CD's. You purists out there will be interested to know that virtually all recordings are EQ'd during mastering. I don't have a problem with using a high quality digital equalizer to correct what was essentially a marketing decision aimed at consumers with cheap stereos.

GB
 
Obviously you can never get the vinyl sound from PCM. There are several reasons for this.

The closest you can come will be using a very stable clock in the CDP becasue jitter is what have given Cd´s most of it´s bad rep. The analog stage is very important in a digital source as well... more so than the line stage in a pre amp for instance.

I believe SACD with a low jitter source would be the closest to analog sound with current options. Soon we will have ultra high resolution PCM though, but it will take some time before any serious number of records is available, as with SACD/DVD-A.

It will only be a matter of time before we have a digital medium that is really transparent. I will shoot anyone that says vinyl is better at that time ;).

/Peter
 
Pan said:
Obviously you can never get the vinyl sound from PCM. There are several reasons for this.

The closest you can come will be using a very stable clock in the CDP becasue jitter is what have given Cd´s most of it´s bad rep. The analog stage is very important in a digital source as well... more so than the line stage in a pre amp for instance.

Don't forget that LPs have their own for of jitter, wow and flutter, that are orders of magnitude higher than digital clock jitter.

DVD-A can already support 24 bit audio (higher resolution than is practically possible without supercooling the electronics).

You're right about the analogue filtering, this is the make-or-break part of digital systems.
 
Despite what was posted, bass on vinyl is/was not always summed to mono. Nor is the top end as limited as he seems to think. Etc. Sad to see such nonsense being put forth as truth. Clearly, we have here a True Believer in digital.
Oh well.
The differences in sound between CDs and vinyl can't be boiled down to something as simple as filtering or whether you use tubes or solid state electronics. Both reproduction media have inherent distortion mechanisms, but different ones. There is no way to make one sound like the other on a repeatable basis. A CD with an unbearable top end can sometimes be dealt with by rolling off the high frequencies; sometimes the upper midrange. However, that's not really a satisfactory solution, and it still won't sound like analog--just less annoying digital.
If the recording you want to listen to is available in an analog version, then try to get a copy. If it's available only as a CD, then I'm afraid you'll have to live with it. Sad, but there it is.
Jazz--like classical--is particularly good for demonstrating sound quality (or lack of it). All of the classics were recorded long before the advent of digital. Miles Davis, John Coltrane, et. al. were recorded on analog tape. Some dates sounded better than others, but at least they did not share the added burden of being digitalized. I've got some original recordings, some reissues, some audiophile reissues, and some CDs. It's nearly a complete sweep for the analog versions. I can only think of a few cases where I actually prefer the CD; usually for factors other than the sound quality. One example is Miles Davis' Dig, where the LP had a truly obnoxious amount of reverb added. The CD reissue cut back on the reverb, much to my relief. In that case I prefer the CD, but that's the exception rather than the rule.
The caveat here is that a bad recording will sound like a bad recording regardless of whether it's analog or digital on playback. Unfortunately a good recording (meaning the master) can still be rendered worthless by a bad transfer into either medium.
The jury is still out as to whether SACD/DVD-A will be what Red Book digital was touted to be twenty years ago, but the early signs are promising. There's still no guarantee that either technology will be a success in the market place. CDs were an advance only in the realm of convenience and that still seems to be the single most important factor other than price. I have no problem with convenience, but I want sound quality as well. If I must put up with inconvenience in order to have better sound, then I will do so. Perhaps the newer formats will deliver on the rash promises made for the supposed superiority of CD sound, in addition to being convenient.

Grey
 
Just my 2 cents you each medium will have it's own unique signature. difficult to make one sound exactly like the other. For example I've heard SS amps made to sound like tubes and tubes amp to sound like SS but IMO they all never sound right. So if you want the vinyl sound best bet go all vinyl. :)
Btw LP does ultrasonics very well indeed, as I recall Sheffield LPs have been measured to go to 50Khz or so...
 
diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
Hi,

The differences in sound between CDs and vinyl can't be boiled down to something as simple as filtering or whether you use tubes or solid state electronics. Both reproduction media have inherent distortion mechanisms, but different ones.

Well put, Grey...

Indeed, the main problem af analogue playback using vinyl as a medium is a mechanical one.
It's not hard to imagine all kinds of resonances adding themselves to the sonic picture much in the same way loudspeaker cabinets and room acoustics get excited....Only on a much smaller power scale.
Nonetheless it will definetely colour the sound. Even the most expensive vinyl spinning playback systems aren't devoid of these artefacts.

However, much like the Johnson noise of a tube, this noise doesn't get in the way of the music provided its level's not too high and nothing really stand out as a peaky resonance.

Much to my dismay, analogue was replaced way too soon.
Or rather, the industry needed an impulse so badly that analogue was put aside despite all the potential that was and still is left untouched.
I often wonder what would have happened if all viny, or at least much more of it, would have been cut, produced, recorded, whatever, to the best possible standards of the early Eighties....
Let's face it, there's at least just as much vinyl records out there that messed up in one way or another.
Still.......

Time and again I can't help but notice how some CDs and CDPs just don't sound right: PRAT is off, too bright in a most annoying way, just plain boring.
Despite all the intrinsic "dynamic range" an awful lot of these digital recordings manage to sound uninspiringly flat, dull, like musical dishwater...
Not to mention imaging.

I'm sure quite a few of us have part of our albums on both vinyl and CD. Tell me, how often is the CD version really better in all respects?
Hardly ever IME.
In fact quite a few of my fav rock albums absolutely suck in their CD version whereas they rock bigtime on vinyl. What went wrong in the process?

No, you'll never be able to make a CD sound like an LP...Not unless you forever want to fiddle with EQ, noise filters, whatever gizmo you throw at it, that is...And then some.

Surely things will get "better".
After over twenty years of digital one would certainly hope so, but what's taking them so long?
The consumer too easily pleased?
Maybe it all doesn't really matter to the market anyway.

In the meantime I'm still buying four times as much vinyl as I'm buying CDs.
Funny, uh?

Cheers, ;)
 
Pan said:
It will only be a matter of time before we have a digital medium that is really transparent. I will shoot anyone that says vinyl is better at that time ;).

/Peter

dont promise what you cant deliver :D :D chances are there will enough who will offer you that suggestion.

BTW said:
Just my 2 cents you each medium will have it's own unique signature.

My head agrees with this argument my heart says "we are victims of this madness only becasue we have chosen to forever try to acheive what has not been done so far". Just becasue somone says you cant make LPs sound like CDs or vice versa doesnt mean we stop trying.

Actually I know one sure fire way to make LPs and CDs sound the same. Convert them to MP3! :D
 
fdegrove said:
...Surely things will get "better".
After over twenty years of digital one would certainly hope so, but what's taking them so long?
The consumer too easily pleased?
Maybe it all doesn't really matter to the market anyway.
...


And maybe it is just that the majority have become "addicted" (for want of a better word) to the digital sound, regardless of whether it can be argued to be good or bad, or right or wrong.

I think that CDs were introduced in a typical media fashion: they needed something sensational(ist) to sell. Sensational meant way too soon.

I have often thought, as an aside, that many of us prefer LPs to CDs because of the ambient sounds in the background, where digital is unearthly silent. It's just unnatural, somehow, that something can be so "empty". It's not the only reason, but perhaps it is a major one.
 
GRollins said:
Despite what was posted, bass on vinyl is/was not always summed to mono. Nor is the top end as limited as he seems to think. Etc. Sad to see such nonsense being put forth as truth. Clearly, we have here a True Believer in digital.
Oh well.

Not at all. I've spent many joyful hours listening to analog systems as well as digital. People complain about shrill treble from digital sources - these are usually people with systems that have been built up based around analogue setups, which will compensate for vinyl deficiencies. And critics of vinyl are used to systems that are tuned for digital sources.
I've heard analogue systems where the background noise is vanishingly low and the imaging is crystal clear. The difference is that to achieve this level of performance seems to take a turntable of very high quality engineering i.e. expensive. But it is possible.
With digital, costs can be cut to the bone in mechanical properties, but the major quality differentiators seem to belong to the filtering and DSP parts of the system - 9th order noise shaping is very processor intensive therefore expensive, but as is the way of these things, becoming cheaper all the time.
The problem is not in digital per se, but in the implementation details. See how long it took vinyl to reach the performance it has achieved now. After all, you can't say "Steamboat Willie" (sp.?) compares to "Shrek", at least not technically...
 
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