The question is primarily for the Guys and girls, who have a quality LP setup(for proper comparison), that have been trying to find a digital source, to compete with the excellent sound of LP's.. By competing, I mean , when you play a digital source, you say, wow, now I can hear the same detail and resolution, recorded spaciousness, naturalness and liquidity, as LP's..
Any dedicated LP lovers, who have reached digital heaven?
what digital components are you using?
Any dedicated LP lovers, who have reached digital heaven?
what digital components are you using?
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No digital source can provide the full turntable experience: the careful physical handling of a large delicate object which must be kept clean, the anticipatory click as the stylus enters the run-in groove, the need to remain in place to remove it from the run-out groove about 20 mins later, the slight surface noise, the compression on peaks, the slight rise in distortion near the end of each side, the poor stereo separation (none at all at LF).
I use LP and CD. They sound different. Each conveys music, which is why I use them.
I use LP and CD. They sound different. Each conveys music, which is why I use them.
Sometimes I miss the Vinyl Ritual but I do not miss vinyls distortion, its lack of channel separation, excessive surface noise, mechanical wear, susceptibility to even small amounts of dust or monophonic bass.
Like marce I hear a lot more detail from a good digital recording than from an LP.
My vinyl set up consists of a Thorens TD126 MkIII, Audio Technica AT1010 arm and Shure M97 or Denon DL110 which I think is reasonable.
I have yet to find a piece of vinyl that comes close to a good (read: untouched by the Loudness Wars) digital recording.
To my ears vinyl is roughly equivalent to low bit-rate mp3s but their respective shortcomings are very different from each other.
Like marce I hear a lot more detail from a good digital recording than from an LP.
My vinyl set up consists of a Thorens TD126 MkIII, Audio Technica AT1010 arm and Shure M97 or Denon DL110 which I think is reasonable.
I have yet to find a piece of vinyl that comes close to a good (read: untouched by the Loudness Wars) digital recording.
To my ears vinyl is roughly equivalent to low bit-rate mp3s but their respective shortcomings are very different from each other.
Yes, all of my digital sources provide musical enjoyment at least equal to vinyl. The added benefit of using a smartphone to cue up thousands of selections from a network drive is not a small advantage for digital. While I still occasionally enjoy the analog experience, my vinyl mostly sits on the shelf.
I do enjoy putting an LP on, the whole experience is both a trip back in time and a pleasant experience, I do find something magical about it... But again most of the time its digital via the music server.
Digital from a server convinced me, easy to use, more detail and less noise. The turntable got used less and less, especially through headphones, i finally sold it on a couple of months ago and got rid of my lp's.
I still have my 1978 vintage Technics turntable and use it occasionally. It and about 500 LP's dating back to the 60's. They almost didn't make the recent 1200 mile move though.
For several years I had the turntable plugged into an E-MU 1820M sound module which had phono inputs. I ripped a bunch of my favorite LP's to hard disk at several bit rates and depths before settling on 24/96. I liked this setup, and a ripped LP at 24/96 or 24/192 was indistinguishable from the record itself. At least a few of us believed that we could hear artifacts at 16/48 or 16/44.1.
Sadly E-MU / Creative decided not to support any of their PCI based products beyond Win XP. The 1820M was their flagship digital system and I had paid about $500 for it. When the old Core II Quad XP machine finally died I sold the E-MU and decided that I would never buy a Creative product again.
I built a chip amp phono stage into the turntable base and plugged that into a 10 year old M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card. That $89 card is on it's 4th computer, a Haswell based Core I5 W7 machine. It plays back my old ripped LP files just as good as the $$$ E-MU/Creative setup did, but I haven't made enough recordings with it to judge the quality. The noise floor may be a bit higher than the outboard E-MU since it lives inside the computer.
I will be setting up a new basement studio with LP and live music recording capability. I have already built a new computer that will be exclusively used for audio. I haven't decided on the audio card / module, but I need more than 2 inputs, and I need MIDI.
It's true that vinyl and digital formats ALL have their shortcomings. ALL can deliver stunning realism under the right conditions. I have heard realistic lifelike audio out of an MP-3 or even a Youtube video, and heard total garbage flow from an "Audiophile Edition" Audio DVD at 24/96, or a DSD.
I have been experimenting with live music digital recording since the 80's and tape back to the 60's. Percussion is one of the hardest things to get right, and one of the places to find flaws in digital recordings. Listen to cymbals for realism.....MP-3's don't get them right very often, especially in the presence of other sound.
For several years I had the turntable plugged into an E-MU 1820M sound module which had phono inputs. I ripped a bunch of my favorite LP's to hard disk at several bit rates and depths before settling on 24/96. I liked this setup, and a ripped LP at 24/96 or 24/192 was indistinguishable from the record itself. At least a few of us believed that we could hear artifacts at 16/48 or 16/44.1.
Sadly E-MU / Creative decided not to support any of their PCI based products beyond Win XP. The 1820M was their flagship digital system and I had paid about $500 for it. When the old Core II Quad XP machine finally died I sold the E-MU and decided that I would never buy a Creative product again.
I built a chip amp phono stage into the turntable base and plugged that into a 10 year old M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card. That $89 card is on it's 4th computer, a Haswell based Core I5 W7 machine. It plays back my old ripped LP files just as good as the $$$ E-MU/Creative setup did, but I haven't made enough recordings with it to judge the quality. The noise floor may be a bit higher than the outboard E-MU since it lives inside the computer.
I will be setting up a new basement studio with LP and live music recording capability. I have already built a new computer that will be exclusively used for audio. I haven't decided on the audio card / module, but I need more than 2 inputs, and I need MIDI.
It's true that vinyl and digital formats ALL have their shortcomings. ALL can deliver stunning realism under the right conditions. I have heard realistic lifelike audio out of an MP-3 or even a Youtube video, and heard total garbage flow from an "Audiophile Edition" Audio DVD at 24/96, or a DSD.
I have been experimenting with live music digital recording since the 80's and tape back to the 60's. Percussion is one of the hardest things to get right, and one of the places to find flaws in digital recordings. Listen to cymbals for realism.....MP-3's don't get them right very often, especially in the presence of other sound.
Hi,
I have a very nice turntable and a very nice CD player.
The turntable cost about 4 times the cost of the CD player.
(Nowadays used good CD players are seriously dirt cheap.)
Both work very well with good recordings, and there is the rub.
My CD player betters Vinyl on all good recordings.
Squeeze - The Singles - LP over the CD any day.
Why ? The pernicious fact CD's are often compressed
are are simply bad masterings, nothing to do with CD.
e.g. I've heard Clash CD's that are abhorrent compared
to vinyl, (bad mastering), and Sex Pistols CD's that
sound great, (good mastering), better than the vinyl.
rgds, sreten.
FWIW my CD player is a Cambridge Audio CD4SE.
Trinity Sessions - Cowboy Junkies : the CD version
utterly slaughters any vinyl playback. Its a simple
live recording to 2 track with a high quality mic.
Production values aren't great because there aren't
any. Vinyl just makes it worse, it is not better.
Remember the Master is either tape or digital.
Digital is much better than tape, by a long way.
Vinyl adds nothing to the party.
I have a very nice turntable and a very nice CD player.
The turntable cost about 4 times the cost of the CD player.
(Nowadays used good CD players are seriously dirt cheap.)
Both work very well with good recordings, and there is the rub.
My CD player betters Vinyl on all good recordings.
Squeeze - The Singles - LP over the CD any day.
Why ? The pernicious fact CD's are often compressed
are are simply bad masterings, nothing to do with CD.
e.g. I've heard Clash CD's that are abhorrent compared
to vinyl, (bad mastering), and Sex Pistols CD's that
sound great, (good mastering), better than the vinyl.
rgds, sreten.
FWIW my CD player is a Cambridge Audio CD4SE.
Trinity Sessions - Cowboy Junkies : the CD version
utterly slaughters any vinyl playback. Its a simple
live recording to 2 track with a high quality mic.
Production values aren't great because there aren't
any. Vinyl just makes it worse, it is not better.
Remember the Master is either tape or digital.
Digital is much better than tape, by a long way.
Vinyl adds nothing to the party.
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I think anyone who was around in the late 1980s ought to remember how blown away we were by CD's when they came out. Studios were not yet churning out catalogue (though god knows we wanted them to: "Can you imagine how good ... would sound on CD?!"), and most of the available CD's were very high quality. After all, producers had been recording to digital for a decade or more, they knew how to use the medium effectively, and they understood that dynamic range was the audible selling point that LP could not touch (the other selling point being longevity, because everybody had a fave album rendered unlistenable by a scratch or excessive wear).
So, in short, in the late '80s the answer was "ANY digital front-end that I can connect to my system will sound better and be more satisfying than LP." And it was a good answer. I still listen to both, though I don't pretend that either playback system that I own is quite where I want it to be, but that's why I hang out here at OCDAudio. Realistically, good digital outperforms good analogue every time. The problem is that mainstream pop is horribly produced, and most of it is only or primarily available on digital formats.
When people laud FM radio, how many realize that everything they listen to on commercial FM is digital, and before that it was all on "carts" -- basically 8-track tape cartridge. If you don't remember 8-track, you are truly blessed.
So, in short, in the late '80s the answer was "ANY digital front-end that I can connect to my system will sound better and be more satisfying than LP." And it was a good answer. I still listen to both, though I don't pretend that either playback system that I own is quite where I want it to be, but that's why I hang out here at OCDAudio. Realistically, good digital outperforms good analogue every time. The problem is that mainstream pop is horribly produced, and most of it is only or primarily available on digital formats.
When people laud FM radio, how many realize that everything they listen to on commercial FM is digital, and before that it was all on "carts" -- basically 8-track tape cartridge. If you don't remember 8-track, you are truly blessed.
When I emigrated my vinyl collection and Rega Planar 3 didn't come with me but my CDs did. I haven't looked back and especially don't miss the distortion which fluff build-up around the stylus caused nearer to the end a side of an LP. I have though had to develop my own D/A as by and large the commercial ones suck for listening satisfaction.
@marce - probably not so much your hearing but your D/A sounds defective, adding false detail as most do.
@marce - probably not so much your hearing but your D/A sounds defective, adding false detail as most do.
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I used to have fine vinyl equipment, but it died in my move before last. I still have hundreds of vinyl albums that I will rip to disk, when I again have decent capability. I miss the music, not the ritual or the surface noise.
My short answer is "absolutely." My long answer is... well, longer:
I grew up listening to vinyl, because it was the best sound available at the time; but I don't miss it much at all. There were not only certain albums, but indeed whole categories of music (orchestral, organ, solo piano etc) that I never really got around to back then, because I couldn't stand the way they sounded on LPs. I couldn't get past all the cartridge mistracking, surface noise, inner groove garbage, wow & flutter, on & on, to where I could even begin to enjoy the music. Admittedly my turntable/ cartridge wasn't bleeding edge, but it wasn't crap either; and I took great care with my records. Actually, that whole pre-play ritual is probably the thing I miss most, but I digress.
When CDs arrived, I was like a kid in a candy store. I went on a binge, buying & borrowing tons of classical recordings and thoroughly enjoying them. For the first time, I could not only actually hear what was going on, but it sounded pretty damned amazing to me!
As the years passed, my vinyl hardware fell into disrepair, and the software went to the closet, most of the titles having been replaced by CDs. Of course I've never seriously considered selling my LPs, there's just too much nostalgia attached - hell, I can almost remember the day I bought each one of them! But do I miss the way they sound? Nope. As for digital, the sound-quality problems I've personally encountered have had to do almost exclusively with either (re)mastering screwups (which are legion of course), or inadequate bitrate/depth - neither of which is inherently the fault of the medium.
About a year ago an old friend just up and _gave_ me a _really_ nice turntable & cartridge. (And no, I'm not gonna brand-drop, there's no end to that road.) After some minor repairs & setup, it was running like new. It occurred to me that the rest of my audio setup had improved significantly in the years since a turntable was last connected. With this recent resurgence of interest in vinyl, I was curious to see if maybe I could now hear something on my old records that I'd previously missed, so I hooked up this rig to see what all the fuss was about.
At first it was great fun; The sideways-sleeve removal (balancing between thumb-crease & fingertips, just like riding a bike!), the careful cleaning, the thump! of the stylus on the lead-in groove - all that stuff is undeniable, man. I get that, completely. And even the sound was impressive - way better than anything I remember hearing from the older hardware years ago. Then I started doing A-B comparisons between vinyl & CD versions of the same title... Uh-oh. Sure, some of the badly-remastered ones were a pretty close game; but for the most part, to my ears, the CDs pretty much ran the table, sorry. (For the pun, that is.)
Anyway - I'm finally old & cranky enough to say that I love digital sound, and I'm done feeling guilty about it. I have it - and specifically the much-maligned plain old Red-Book CD format - to thank for dramatically broadening my awareness and appreciation of music in all its myriad, wondrous, life-affirming varieties. Because at the end of the day, that is what it's all about.
But that's the thing, isn't it? Right now, any vinyl lovers who've bothered to read this far are thinking, "Of COURSE that's what it's all about, you moron! Don't you think we know that?!" Obviously there are plenty of people out there whose feelings about vinyl vs digital are the _exact opposite_ of mine, and just as fervent if not more so; and I don't understand why they feel this way, but they can't all be crazy, right? (Well, except for that Fremer guy, heh.) And I'm not a complete tin-ear when it comes to this stuff either; I've been into audio pretty deep for a lot of years now. So what's going on here?
Everyone obviously hears the same sound a little differently. The only conclusion I've been able to reach after all these years is that certain people are more sensitive to certain types of sonic imperfections in music reproduction, and more impervious to others, and vice versa, and never the twain shall meet. Can't we all just get along? If my theory is correct, probably not, on this topic at least. 😱/ Oh well - at least it keeps the web forums busy...
So, anyone else think this? As we listen, we just get bugged by different things?
-- Jim
No, not all on carts. I worked in FM before and after the introduction of the CD. A lot of our content was on LP and R2R tape. The only thing I remember being on cart was the commercials. And radio carts were not nearly as bad as 8 track.
Most of the recordings i had from the early 1980's or before sound bad no matter what format i play them on, lean tinny sound with blaring mid range doesn't do much for me. This was supposedly due to most people having poor quality music center based record players which could not track LF worth a dam. Also back then they thought bass was where the army lived.
Things got better as the 80's rolled on, CD masters had real dynamic bass by the end of the decade and by the early 90s massive improvement had taken place. This was in no small part down to the switch from vinyl to digital.
I got nostalgic like many and kept on collecting lp's convincing myself that i just needed a better system, a really good cartridge etc to make them sound good. A fools errand for the most part. The few really decent sounding lp's i had did sound stunning but the rest actually sounded worse. Seriously in need of tone controls i no longer have.
The last straw was buying recent lp's which came packaged with a CD version. I ripped the CD's to FLAC files using EAC for an accurate copy and played them back at the same time as the vinyl version, being able to switch instantly between them showed the limitations of vinyl compared to digital. That and having to hunt through boxes of records all over the house convinced me they had to go.
Things got better as the 80's rolled on, CD masters had real dynamic bass by the end of the decade and by the early 90s massive improvement had taken place. This was in no small part down to the switch from vinyl to digital.
I got nostalgic like many and kept on collecting lp's convincing myself that i just needed a better system, a really good cartridge etc to make them sound good. A fools errand for the most part. The few really decent sounding lp's i had did sound stunning but the rest actually sounded worse. Seriously in need of tone controls i no longer have.
The last straw was buying recent lp's which came packaged with a CD version. I ripped the CD's to FLAC files using EAC for an accurate copy and played them back at the same time as the vinyl version, being able to switch instantly between them showed the limitations of vinyl compared to digital. That and having to hunt through boxes of records all over the house convinced me they had to go.
The relative humidity in my home is 25% in our very cold and dry Canadian winters and static electricity is a huge problem. With the forced air central heating blowing very fine dust all over the place, it's impossible to keep records clean. By just removing a record from the sleeve causes a static crackle. I even experimented with an anti-static bar, the type used on high speed machinery.
I'm getting a nice collection of CD's from the local charity shop for 50 cents a pop, they have hundreds of 'em. I'm running out of storage room.
Try antistatic record sleeves that don't build up charge, they really help.
Nitty Gritty Inner Record Sleeves-Audio Advisor
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