No one has proved that the distortion of vinyl manifests as a more realistic portrayal of the musical event. I can hear the difference between the vinyl artifacts and the separate and different improved realism.
You cannot separate these, it is my main point. You hear the distortion, your mind slams shut, and the sound is inferior, end of discussion.
I hear the groove noise, the distortion, the wow, the flutter, the pops, the clicks and I can separate them in my mind from the vastly improved sound of the event that is distinct from those artifacts. You can't - and that's why your position is just as subjective as mine.
I can do this with thermionic valves also. I hear the lack of distortion in my SS playback chain and I also hear the flat, lifeless, and tonally thin presentation. This thin-ness can be heard on the earliest SS records from the late-50's. Sinatra's catalogue demarks the valve>SS transition as clearly as a foot wide line on the wall.
Your subjective value preference is that this distortion and all audible artifacts must be removed - what you fail to recognize is that your preference for this is subjective just as is mine.
I can accept your position, but you cannot accept mine and that is the issue.
There is not a graph that maps with a realible p-value to the things I prefer;
-Harmonic accuracy (not lack of harmonic overtones or thd-different)
-Instrument body and realism
-Vocal realism and body
-3D performance pocket hanging in mid-air before the listening seat
-Soundstage depth, breadth, accuracy to the original venue.
-and so on
There are not graphs to measure these, there is no formula that matches good soundstage. To do that one must design a good system and then tweak it by ear, not by measurement, by making small adjustments by hand that would not be repeatable in any other set up.
I know why you guys disagree with those such as I who use our ears, but I cannot post it without massive TOS violations.
That''s a great way to describe it. Others say hash, listening fatigue, lack of enjoyment, lack of engagement, it all means that listening is less enjoyable than with the vinyl counterpart of a given selection.
This discussion is going mainstream with an MP3-CD-LP comparison and how convenience has made music less engaging over time because of the high end artifacts, the lifeless-ness, the electric blue treble that sounds fake and is not enjoyable.
Some reviewers noticed this back in 1982 when they auditioned the first CD players, but since this artifact cannot be measured because it is beyond the capabilities of measuring equipment, but not the resolution of the human brain-ear interface, they were marginalised and those like you won the public relations battle.
You measure the FR, and it looks good, so you don't know what they are talking about. Those of use who can hear it avoid it at all costs.
\
Thus in addition to being technically flawed, the implementation is flawed for decades after. There was no such period when SS came about ~1960, not for 20+ years...
ergo the CD was and is a mistake.
Digital may finally be getting up to vinyl with the recent DSD and 192/384 FLAC conversions as they sound more like the music than the CD or anything less resolved has to date.
I was a huge fan of CD back in 1983 for the same marketing reasons you repeat, but over time as technology has improved and the average person could rip a vinyl record in HQ and compare, it's just blatantly obvious that most of the tech behind music since 1982 has been a sonic mistake until very recently.
So instead of spending $49.95 to buy the Nth copy of Black Sabbath in the resolution and bit rate of the month, why not just buy an early 1970's pressing, run a few layers of wood glue over it, build your own turntable, and call it a day?
The mere fact that the vinyl is your reference and that apparently 90% of the mastering are failures, that proves that the improved sonics of the CD/digital chain are in fact inferior and not an improvement.
There are a few pieces that I have owned on 8-track, cassette, vinyl import and domestic 4 copies, multiple CD versions import and domestic, and now the HQ rips and next up will be the DSD. I have had enough.
Buy the record used for 99 cents, clean it, and play it through a tube amp. Original was always best, we have not improved upon it.
“Aristoxenus” would mean “The best one among the foreigners”
“Ariston” in Greek is the superlative form of “good” plus something.
“The best among the best”
“so good that it deserves a medal”
(Keep this TT. It's a good one
)George
Miragem3i
You base that conclusion onto assumptions which you trust as facts (plus some faults in understanding bloodfromastone’s post)
I agree.
Do Black Sabbath manage to match the mentality, aesthetics, attitude of Hi End circle lately?
I may furnish a HR digital copy of heavy metal groups records from my collection for $560 (price goes to $760 for ABBA-Best albums)
That’s it. Simple as that
George
I haven't heard the CD versions. Is the horrific pre-echo on all of their vinyl releases because of the pressing or because of the original tape?
Vinyl is not my reference, in general, but that for many old recordings, the vinyl was sometimes the best made. The reference should be a good master. But, today, many of those masters are either destroyed or missing.
Point is you're equating a change in culture and commercial wants to a change in technology. The changes that led to people mostly listening to music on their phones today is an issue, and it's not a digital format thing, but a greater symptom of convenience being exceptionally important, and quality of leisure time (which is more or less required for good mental health) generally being unimportant.
If every CD were of MSFL quality, it would all be fine. There's not real demand for that, though. You're not hearing the added sampling rate, or DSD v. PCM, but the care that went into the recording and mixing. Likewise, you're not hearing faults of the CD format, but the result of most people not caring for fidelity, but caring when they can't make it sound loud enough.
It went from a mic to an amp & ADC, then likely a DSD to PCM conversion, then was mixed as PCM, made a master as PCM. New music as in from new artists in 2014 is tough to find (well, given that I don't like catchy pop, most rap, or the generic folky singer-songwriter sound, as those are everywhere), but I have a lot where the vinyls available are not that old, and are just another conversion from mostly digital chains. It also tends not to be that cheap.
Old recordings should be minimally processed for pre-echo detection and cancellation that may have come in to the tapes as they were stored, and otherwise mastered as close to the originals as a possible, or even using originals, if they can be found. They should be remastered, if necessary, because not doing so could mean permanent loss as analog tapes age, and more of them get lost. Remasters that make the old albums sound like modern recordings are a bad thing.
I could try a turntable setup, but it would yet another project taking quite a long time, and even thrift stores generally sell records for more than $1, now that the stuff is popular again. I have a mess of decades-old tubes, so I might try getting some transformers and make an amp or two with them one day.
My parents were just beginning to date around that time.
The original This Was wasn't lifeless or undynamic, though muddled, congested, or smeary at times. In many places over the album, the sounds get all smeared together. Combined with half the music being near the same notes much of the time, and British accent, it's hard to tell what's going on with the guitar, and Anderson's voice maybe 5% of the time, for me. I have the early CD and 2000-era Chrysalis remaster. The first CD version has PRaT for miles, and probably could have been done much better than it was at the time. The remaster sounds a bit too clean, to me, and doesn't grab me the same way, but it is far more clear and detailed.
Starting after Aqualung, the initial CDs and Chrysalis remasters (I'm not rich enough to get the limited MSFLs for sale
) are generally very good, IMO.
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Makes more sense - I've had a similar experience with albums, music that made major impact in my earlier years, Doors recordings are a good example, for me ... and I've found it's a 3 stage process: you have a memory of the "sound" from listening to radio, and somewhat grungy vinyl playback - that's what you're chasing, the feeling you got from the messed-up aural soup you normally heard; then, you put on the CD, and you get a shock - it doesn't sound right at all, you can hear how the sound was put together, assembled, in such a way to create the stew you were listening to back then. Worse still, the underlying sounds are on the edge of being listenable to, in themselves they don't don't sound very nice when you focus on them - the CD is a dud!! you say,The original This Was wasn't lifeless or undynamic, though muddled, congested, or smeary at times. In many places over the album, the sounds get all smeared together. Combined with half the music being near the same notes much of the time, and British accent, it's hard to tell what's going on with the guitar, and Anderson's voice maybe 5% of the time, for me. I have the early CD and 2000-era Chrysalis remaster. The first CD version has PRaT for miles, and probably could have been done much better than it was at the time. The remaster sounds a bit too clean, to me, and doesn't grab me the same way, but it is far more clear and detailed.
Starting after Aqualung, the initial CDs and Chrysalis remasters (I'm not rich enough to get the limited MSFLs for sale
. But I move to the third stage, which is lifting the quality of reproduction by the playback system, so that those underlying "tracks" do come together, become subjectively very clean. And then the CD properly works as a listening experience; no, it's not the sound you heard back then, it would entail a lot more fiddling to deliberately dirty up the sound in a "nice" way, , to precisely match how it came across in earlier times - but could be done if you really wanted to - rather, it's become a "different", but satisfying experience to hear clean reproduction, of the original material. Like hearing a different mastering by the sound engineer, so to speak ...
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Last time I checked the internet is quite freedom of speech, feel free to upload a youtube video or write a wordpress entry with your "real" views.
I'm sure you have at least a decade in audio and may feel like helping young guys or novices with your altruism.
So they don't take "the incorrect path" and you save them a lot of time and anxiety, if that is your viewpoint.
Just an idea.
Not sure if you can link to a video from diyaudio criticizing diyaudio, but I'm assuming it would be harmless and light humour.
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Frank . With both MP3 and Vinyl I hear a fuzzy distortion which is either a dirty stylus or lack of samples. Either is OK if not for hours on end. CD usually has the burning sensation as if UV light. In photography we have a UV filter. CD has that need. I thinking timing errors are mixed in so not just cut the treble. Nothing is worse than dull and harsh. Violin with wrong vibrato does this to an extent. That seems a reasonable simile. The filter is also an integrator so is highly important. I guess all filtering changes the integration ? An op amp that runs out of bandwidth perhaps does the other thing and elongates a records scratch. Vinyl for that alone needs bandwidth. Passive EQ of 75 uS done as soon as possible helps.
“Aristoxenus” would mean “The best one among the foreigners”
“Ariston” in Greek is the superlative form of “good” plus something.
“The best among the best”
“so good that it deserves a medal”
(Keep this TT. It's a good one
George
At one time I owned an Ariston TV. No medal
Edit: Thanks Jacco, Joachim: Aristona....
Jan
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As far as I can see, we're still arguing measurement vs. sound quality, with two still defined camps.
And no-one has budged a millimetre, nor is likely to. Just rehashing the old arguments and "arguments".
I see old Wayne is still pushing the argument that analog sounds better than digital, at least in most cases. I beg to differ. I currently own 3 CD players, a cheap'n'cheerful old Philips 721 (cca. 1996), a not at all cheap Yamaha CDX 993 (cca. 2002) and a newer NAD C 565 BEE (2013). In addition, I also own an outboard DAC based on the 8 Philips 1543 DACs in parallel, no oversamplib, no digital bric wall filters, etc.
The old Philips, despite its sueprmarkt parice, will outplay many a newer CD player costing two, or even three times its price, despite its simpleton technology, which explains why it sold like hot cup cakes in its day. But that nowithstanding, it is still a cheap unit and has some limitations it cannot overcome. Like having no SPDIF output.
The Yamaha is serious machine, with two separate trafos, DISCRETE output buffers and output amps, 4 6,800 uF caps in the main PSU, internal bracing, etc. Both SPDIF and TOSlink outputs, it can be enhanced with the outside DAC to good effect. So, it can be reasonably taken as two possible complete machines.
The NAD is a thoroughly modern machine, with Wolferson chips and output section based on Burr-Brown's 2134 FET op amps.
Play ANY CD, good or bad, on each one of them and you will get four possible renditions of it.
Play ANY LP. good or bad, on four different PHONO RIAA stages and you will get four renditions of it. Trust me on this, I have phono stages by Harman/Kardon, H/K Citation, Luxman, Marantz, Sansui, Philips and Toshiba RIAA stages. Each one has its pros and cons, just like the differnet CD players.
This means to me that it is well neigh impossible to invoke any general rule if in each and every case one obtains different results, even if the differences are very small.
You can say that in YOUR system, with ITS OWN characteristics, one or the other will sound better. Change a detail, and it's back to square one. By the same token, what you consider to be a better sound source, while true at your home, may well change if a better CD player is pressed into service instead of your current one, or if a different RIAA stage is used.
Instead of rubbing Frank's nose all the time, do pause and consider what you get in each technology beside the wanted signal. Frank's insistence on our brains being an equal, and perhaps more than just equal, partner in the replay chain is far removed from being nonsense or rambling. We the older folk here have grown up with analog sound, and have in the past taken great care and undertaken significant cost to improve our replay with better RIAA stages, either stand alone or as a part of another device (preamp or integrated amp) that, like it or not, we have become used, or ear trained, to use it as the yardstick accordig to which everything else is measured - but that doesn't mean we're right all of the time.
Just one detail. There is really no such thing as a perfectly silent music hall, people breathe around us, they sneeze, whisper, shuffle and so forth that in the end, all this becomes a part of our musical experience. On LPs we gat surface noise, possibly LP, stylus or both wear and tear, which might possible simulate the concert hall noise; on CD, we usually have none of that, and it's not really far fetched to say our brain is missing that, not to even jump into the minefield of production, which was, overll and in my view, better then than it is today, despite availability of much better electronics available today.
And no-one has budged a millimetre, nor is likely to. Just rehashing the old arguments and "arguments".
I see old Wayne is still pushing the argument that analog sounds better than digital, at least in most cases. I beg to differ. I currently own 3 CD players, a cheap'n'cheerful old Philips 721 (cca. 1996), a not at all cheap Yamaha CDX 993 (cca. 2002) and a newer NAD C 565 BEE (2013). In addition, I also own an outboard DAC based on the 8 Philips 1543 DACs in parallel, no oversamplib, no digital bric wall filters, etc.
The old Philips, despite its sueprmarkt parice, will outplay many a newer CD player costing two, or even three times its price, despite its simpleton technology, which explains why it sold like hot cup cakes in its day. But that nowithstanding, it is still a cheap unit and has some limitations it cannot overcome. Like having no SPDIF output.
The Yamaha is serious machine, with two separate trafos, DISCRETE output buffers and output amps, 4 6,800 uF caps in the main PSU, internal bracing, etc. Both SPDIF and TOSlink outputs, it can be enhanced with the outside DAC to good effect. So, it can be reasonably taken as two possible complete machines.
The NAD is a thoroughly modern machine, with Wolferson chips and output section based on Burr-Brown's 2134 FET op amps.
Play ANY CD, good or bad, on each one of them and you will get four possible renditions of it.
Play ANY LP. good or bad, on four different PHONO RIAA stages and you will get four renditions of it. Trust me on this, I have phono stages by Harman/Kardon, H/K Citation, Luxman, Marantz, Sansui, Philips and Toshiba RIAA stages. Each one has its pros and cons, just like the differnet CD players.
This means to me that it is well neigh impossible to invoke any general rule if in each and every case one obtains different results, even if the differences are very small.
You can say that in YOUR system, with ITS OWN characteristics, one or the other will sound better. Change a detail, and it's back to square one. By the same token, what you consider to be a better sound source, while true at your home, may well change if a better CD player is pressed into service instead of your current one, or if a different RIAA stage is used.
Instead of rubbing Frank's nose all the time, do pause and consider what you get in each technology beside the wanted signal. Frank's insistence on our brains being an equal, and perhaps more than just equal, partner in the replay chain is far removed from being nonsense or rambling. We the older folk here have grown up with analog sound, and have in the past taken great care and undertaken significant cost to improve our replay with better RIAA stages, either stand alone or as a part of another device (preamp or integrated amp) that, like it or not, we have become used, or ear trained, to use it as the yardstick accordig to which everything else is measured - but that doesn't mean we're right all of the time.
Just one detail. There is really no such thing as a perfectly silent music hall, people breathe around us, they sneeze, whisper, shuffle and so forth that in the end, all this becomes a part of our musical experience. On LPs we gat surface noise, possibly LP, stylus or both wear and tear, which might possible simulate the concert hall noise; on CD, we usually have none of that, and it's not really far fetched to say our brain is missing that, not to even jump into the minefield of production, which was, overll and in my view, better then than it is today, despite availability of much better electronics available today.
Again, this to me says faulty playback - live, acoustic sound has intensity, a cut-through quality, has tremendous punch and pizazz; and this is what CD should deliver. Agreed, when digital is not 100% you often get the combination of "dull and harsh", and you're saying a disturbing uncomfortableness as well - which is the giveaway that there are problems. But that's only because something is wrong in the playback, and needs to be fixed.
I'm having a little tussle with our Yamaha musical keyboard at the moment - this is digital replay, of samples in memory - and focusing on getting competent sound from that. And ... if there is too much electrical interference about, the tone of the machine dies badly, it develops a dead, unsatisfying quality, loses life and sparkle - you just want to turn it off. But I've been here many times before - just sort out the interference issues, and the sound springs back to life again ...
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