Why I prefer vinyl
The assertion is very simple and has nothing to do with the "experience" of playing a lp but everything to do with sound quality. Cd's are much better at noise and dynamics but not in definition, detail and clarity. The delicacy that a really good combination of cartridge, tonearm and phono amp can produce is far superior to cd's. The sound stage has depth and spacial positioning of sounds that are produced as a thin wall by cd's.
The assertion is very simple and has nothing to do with the "experience" of playing a lp but everything to do with sound quality. Cd's are much better at noise and dynamics but not in definition, detail and clarity. The delicacy that a really good combination of cartridge, tonearm and phono amp can produce is far superior to cd's. The sound stage has depth and spacial positioning of sounds that are produced as a thin wall by cd's.
A thought and question
In brooding over the subject of vinyl vs cd, I found myself wondering about the need for a single stylus to address the full frequency range of sound and the general abandonment of this approach for a single loudspeaker driver to address full frequency range of sound. Mostly loudspeakers are multi-driver affairs so that each speaker can be restricted to the range over which it performs best. Indeed each speaker may have its own amplification as in the case of bi and tri-amplification.
So, unlikely as it may seem, does anyone know of a similar attempt to filter out sounds to two or more styli?
This seems very complicated to arrange but if there is a justification for speakers then perhaps so for styli and cartridge. In a bi-styli system it would seem to need two disk/stylus/cartridge systems, one for the lower frequencies and another for the rest perhaps feeding into a bi-amplification system? Of course the disks themselves would have to be restricted to the frequency range of the chosen stylus/cartridge, so two disks for bi-styli systems.
Obviously I was having a nightmare .... but if for speakers, why not stylus/cartidge?
In brooding over the subject of vinyl vs cd, I found myself wondering about the need for a single stylus to address the full frequency range of sound and the general abandonment of this approach for a single loudspeaker driver to address full frequency range of sound. Mostly loudspeakers are multi-driver affairs so that each speaker can be restricted to the range over which it performs best. Indeed each speaker may have its own amplification as in the case of bi and tri-amplification.
So, unlikely as it may seem, does anyone know of a similar attempt to filter out sounds to two or more styli?
This seems very complicated to arrange but if there is a justification for speakers then perhaps so for styli and cartridge. In a bi-styli system it would seem to need two disk/stylus/cartridge systems, one for the lower frequencies and another for the rest perhaps feeding into a bi-amplification system? Of course the disks themselves would have to be restricted to the frequency range of the chosen stylus/cartridge, so two disks for bi-styli systems.
Obviously I was having a nightmare .... but if for speakers, why not stylus/cartidge?
Why do you ask?
Music reproduction in a stereophonic setup with two seperated channels is based on the ability of the brain to percept something that isn´t real (aka false).
It works because our brain is able to use various clues for the internal representation in a more or less convincing manner.
A lot of processes are involved, some variables depend on the quality of the reproduction chain and some depend on the things the listener has learned.
Especially the perception of depth in the reproduction depends on learned abilities; as said before, that was already known in the beginning of stereophonic reproduction.
I ask because I could not ascertain whether he was claiming that vinyl was 'more accurate' or produced a 'more pleasing illusion'. If the latter then it is support for the OP.
Fatigue
Hi,
no, not with this thread but with listening. I believe that it is accepted that the more processing that the brain has to perform in order to interpret an environment the more fatigued the listener becomes.
So, has anyone discerned increased fatigue with extensive listening of cds or LPs?
Hi,
no, not with this thread but with listening. I believe that it is accepted that the more processing that the brain has to perform in order to interpret an environment the more fatigued the listener becomes.
So, has anyone discerned increased fatigue with extensive listening of cds or LPs?
Since this thread began I have done a lot of analysis. The answer came from a very unlikely source. Classic FM has a TV version of it's FM station. Classic have a near analogue sound as the customers are often driving home in cars and need something like LP in the car. It sounds very much like a bad version of a Revox being used as a compressor. They use the cheapest versions of classical music they can. Now the sad bit. They understand their market better than the BBC. It is joked BBC radio 3 is off 75% of the time ( that's about right ). When the MP3 type system it seems rather daft to pretend to have a 70 dB dynamic range ( a figure pulled from the air, hiss of a microphone perhaps ).
The Classic FM TV feed sounds rather nice if not being a hi fi snob. My Panasonic box seems to have very good digital workings. Now the punchline. I can hear the recording in near real time against the tuner. As good as it is the sound is not the same. As the data rate is miniscule I doubt it can be extra compression ( no idea ).
To my mind CD is worse than a hardrive as a concept of how to do the job. My ears tell me most CD transprorts are worse than my PVR hard drive. Linn came to this understanding many years ago.
I am fairly certain what has been put forward here is unlikely to be the most significant reason people like vinyl.
Here is my best guess. Vinyl is 100 % certain to be rejected if even the simplest error is allowed in mastering ( not to say some don't get through ). This means it is very hands on and not easy. Cutting levels can never be as generous as CD. Only an expert will get the job. If Brian Eno made every CD I doubt we would have any debate. CD would be more accurate and LP just fun. What this thread shows is vinyl is a work of love whilst CD is a product. CD is the worst digital source I know of ( often edgy ). My friends Krell CD player is what people imagined they were buying when they bought theirs.
I have built my system to attempt to have good digital sound. It has worked very well. LP is still favourite for complex reasons. The system has been made digital first and LP adapted to suit. No way would I go backwards to what I had. Digital almost as likable as LP. 78's are out of this world good. I wasn't even looking for that. Curing digital has cured everything. Loudspeakers are very guilty of spoiling hi fi. I would say that's nearly all of them.
The Classic FM TV feed sounds rather nice if not being a hi fi snob. My Panasonic box seems to have very good digital workings. Now the punchline. I can hear the recording in near real time against the tuner. As good as it is the sound is not the same. As the data rate is miniscule I doubt it can be extra compression ( no idea ).
To my mind CD is worse than a hardrive as a concept of how to do the job. My ears tell me most CD transprorts are worse than my PVR hard drive. Linn came to this understanding many years ago.
I am fairly certain what has been put forward here is unlikely to be the most significant reason people like vinyl.
Here is my best guess. Vinyl is 100 % certain to be rejected if even the simplest error is allowed in mastering ( not to say some don't get through ). This means it is very hands on and not easy. Cutting levels can never be as generous as CD. Only an expert will get the job. If Brian Eno made every CD I doubt we would have any debate. CD would be more accurate and LP just fun. What this thread shows is vinyl is a work of love whilst CD is a product. CD is the worst digital source I know of ( often edgy ). My friends Krell CD player is what people imagined they were buying when they bought theirs.
I have built my system to attempt to have good digital sound. It has worked very well. LP is still favourite for complex reasons. The system has been made digital first and LP adapted to suit. No way would I go backwards to what I had. Digital almost as likable as LP. 78's are out of this world good. I wasn't even looking for that. Curing digital has cured everything. Loudspeakers are very guilty of spoiling hi fi. I would say that's nearly all of them.
Vinyl Preference
If you read the posting, you will not find the word "ambiance" in it. Ambiance, false or otherwise, is a subjective concept and doesn't apply to a music reproduction system, but the terms definition, detail and accuracy do.
.
If you read the posting, you will not find the word "ambiance" in it. Ambiance, false or otherwise, is a subjective concept and doesn't apply to a music reproduction system, but the terms definition, detail and accuracy do.
.
I Don't know how you would ever synchronize a system like this, but different styli do handle frequencies differently. I think the same effect could be had through an eq, with much less effort since both styli are running through the same groove, even if they are on different records. Unless the companies start creating 6 or 8 track records, and cartridges.
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Sadly definition, detail and accuracy are all areas where Vinyl is clearly inferior to digital. Effects that give additional ambience are, as has been shown rife.
Note that enjoyment of and preference for vinyl are entirely subjective and if someone gets enhanced enjoyment from records no argument there. Claiming higher accuracy is however wrong.
Do you think a $15 DVD player is more "accurate" than a well built analog system? I think subjectivity is more important to enjoyment than what a spectrum analyzer tells me is correct. I know it doesn't make me an audiophile, but I find it wrong when someone dismisses an opinion based on theory alone. I have listened to just about every format there is and MP3s sound awful to me, even the so called lossless ones. FLAC files are better, but still not CD quality, and CD is far from perfect, as is vinyl.
Yes I do
Actually it does make you an audiophile!
I am not dismissing your preference, but the fact that digital is more accurate in not theory, its measurable. Doesn't stop any of us enjoying our records.
In my opinion accuracy is subjective. I might be incorrect but I doubt any record company is producing albums with "reference systems" in mind. The majority of people only listen to music on their phones, or their car stereo, we are a small segment of their business.
Well if you look at accuracy as dynamic range, noise floor, frequency response and distortion to name but a few then its purely objective and measurable. If you want to know if something is transparent enough as to be undetectable in the signal path then you can DBLT it, an example being whether an A/D D/A chain can be detected in an analog feed.
The hypothesis here is whether the out of phase distortions (which are measurable and have been presented here) give a subjectively pleasing ambiance. The distortions are there, are real and are certainly NOT accurate, however nice they sound.
I agree that it's measureable, and does exist, but I don't hold the belief that it's something that was designed to be analyzed. I think it's awesome when I hear a finger touch a guitar string, or a hand slide up a fretboard, but I don't believe those nuances were left in the mix on purpose. I also don't think many people would notice them if they did hear them. Plus I'm still of the opinion that vinyl , and digital are different beasts, and should be respected for what they are. I still enjoy both, and I don't understand why you would want to impart the flaws of one upon the other.
Claiming inferior or superior accuracy is both wrong, unless a common metric is used.
Which one is similar to a female dog, a female cat or a male dog? (Not understanding the question is not understanding the issue).
If the metric is THD, it is obvious. But there's no convention to accept THD (especially partial to the complete chain) as a one-and-only metric for accuracy.
Measuring it with full range audio would be pretty difficult as well. Testing a single sine wave through the speakers would even depend on room acoustics. Would be nearly impossible to reproduce the results in every setting.
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I wanted mostly to correct two false impressions in this debate.
1/ Arm LF resonance is an addition to LP sound not found when CD. Simply not true. The LP cut is adjusted using a pick up arm and the engineers ears. The LF balance is compared to the master tape. Very offten the tape has more bass as cutting full bass is not usually possible ( regardless of any bias in thinking CD has more bass ). UK and USA cuts differ to suit taste. If you remove LF resonace from LP reproduction you have something different to the sound of the stamper. The slight problems is we don't all have SME 12 inch arms so exact LF point and Q will vary. Maybe that's why I like SME 12 inch so much, it's the sound the engineer heard. That started long before I went to a cutting session. The 12 inch does not sound better because it has less tracking error. 75% of the time it doesn't 100 % of the time it sounds better. This would be down to one thing. SME 9 inch is made as light as possible to suit Shure who marketed it. The 12 inch could not be light, this helps. Although not a total cure the 9 inch can be mass loaded to sound more like the 12 inch. You are matching the LF resonance to what the engineer heard. Before you say it, the pick up needs to be right. As a rule of thumb 8 Cu is often about right. As Ortofon show 8 Cu and state of the art tracking is possible. If you add synthetic LF in the exact style of a pick up arm to your CD sound it will be wrong. I won't go into false ambience as I never heard it during cutting. Less ambience on the cut? Yes. Very much so, but not spoiling it. When cut at 78 it can be nearly identical.
2/ Some think arm geometry and quirks make for a more exciting sound. No they don't. They make for a much less good sound. What people might mean is given cheaper CD or cheaper turntables the latter is easier to live with. Paralell tracking arms of good quality sound wonderful. They sound more like the master tape. Analogue master tapes would blow most people away. It's like your speakers solved all of their problems. Your amplifier will sound like it has 10 times the power you know it has. I would say a NAD 3020 and master tape verses best home hi fi and the Krell, the NAD 3020 will be better by a big margin. Some reading this will know exactly what I mean ( 2% ? ). The solid images will be remarkable. I suspect KEF LS50 would be OK to use.
I have two very large books from the AES that chart the history of cutting from the earlier days. In 1926 people had taken non electrical cutting as far as they could. Most of the problems were well known. Alan Blumlein solved a few. What many would not know is a Blumlein lathe could cut LP's. It would need a LP feed screw and micro-groove cutting stylus. At a guess it would give 35 Hz to 14 kHz. If pressed on vinyl that would be preserved. Half the range lost when the old 78 material. The sound possibly better than typical LP allowing for suitable music used. The Blumlein EQ's slightly nicer in some ways. Even in the 1970's the sound of cutting was improving. That's 40 years of adjusting ( 100 years if being a bit more historical ). 1938 was a high quality point in some ways. Direct cut and possibly nearing 20 kHz if vinyl pressed. Alas I don't think that can be shown. Late 1940's FFRR 78 when vinyl tested were good for 32 kHz. FFRR LP exist. That's not to say the engineer used the full range. I made an EQ box for a Mr Brown of Decca, he was the source of this imformation. Also he worked at Parlophone. If asking I had a set of capacitors and resistors that could be dialed like a combination lock. We could make many EQ's named and some guessed. The box was passive for the 25 to 100 uS ( and others ) and active for the ones like 3180/318. Exact EQ is important.
What we have here is cooking. We could say salt the only thing we need to know. If chili it can be meat, non meat, salt, herbs, and something some would not guess. Age of the meat. Even cocca might be used. It is easy to give a recipe. Get one thing wrong and suddendly it's food, but not chili. Give me the very best of the things needed and like CD I won't make a good chili. The difference is I don't try to sell it to Mexico.
Digital has never been a problem. The primitive BBC system of circa 1972 sounds mostly fine. MP3 can sound very good and the 10 bit Nicam was OK. For some reason CD is bad cooking.
If wanting the best possible sound for no money I would suggest. Lenco 75. Hadcock 228. Denon DL110. Treat the Denon as 1 mV and have a gain of about 200 to 300 if you want to hear the giant killer that it is. The cheaper Naim CD players are not bad.
As Clerk Maxwell could have said, just maths makes someone just a machine. He infered impossible things using maths. He seemed to have what many do not, vision.
1/ Arm LF resonance is an addition to LP sound not found when CD. Simply not true. The LP cut is adjusted using a pick up arm and the engineers ears. The LF balance is compared to the master tape. Very offten the tape has more bass as cutting full bass is not usually possible ( regardless of any bias in thinking CD has more bass ). UK and USA cuts differ to suit taste. If you remove LF resonace from LP reproduction you have something different to the sound of the stamper. The slight problems is we don't all have SME 12 inch arms so exact LF point and Q will vary. Maybe that's why I like SME 12 inch so much, it's the sound the engineer heard. That started long before I went to a cutting session. The 12 inch does not sound better because it has less tracking error. 75% of the time it doesn't 100 % of the time it sounds better. This would be down to one thing. SME 9 inch is made as light as possible to suit Shure who marketed it. The 12 inch could not be light, this helps. Although not a total cure the 9 inch can be mass loaded to sound more like the 12 inch. You are matching the LF resonance to what the engineer heard. Before you say it, the pick up needs to be right. As a rule of thumb 8 Cu is often about right. As Ortofon show 8 Cu and state of the art tracking is possible. If you add synthetic LF in the exact style of a pick up arm to your CD sound it will be wrong. I won't go into false ambience as I never heard it during cutting. Less ambience on the cut? Yes. Very much so, but not spoiling it. When cut at 78 it can be nearly identical.
2/ Some think arm geometry and quirks make for a more exciting sound. No they don't. They make for a much less good sound. What people might mean is given cheaper CD or cheaper turntables the latter is easier to live with. Paralell tracking arms of good quality sound wonderful. They sound more like the master tape. Analogue master tapes would blow most people away. It's like your speakers solved all of their problems. Your amplifier will sound like it has 10 times the power you know it has. I would say a NAD 3020 and master tape verses best home hi fi and the Krell, the NAD 3020 will be better by a big margin. Some reading this will know exactly what I mean ( 2% ? ). The solid images will be remarkable. I suspect KEF LS50 would be OK to use.
I have two very large books from the AES that chart the history of cutting from the earlier days. In 1926 people had taken non electrical cutting as far as they could. Most of the problems were well known. Alan Blumlein solved a few. What many would not know is a Blumlein lathe could cut LP's. It would need a LP feed screw and micro-groove cutting stylus. At a guess it would give 35 Hz to 14 kHz. If pressed on vinyl that would be preserved. Half the range lost when the old 78 material. The sound possibly better than typical LP allowing for suitable music used. The Blumlein EQ's slightly nicer in some ways. Even in the 1970's the sound of cutting was improving. That's 40 years of adjusting ( 100 years if being a bit more historical ). 1938 was a high quality point in some ways. Direct cut and possibly nearing 20 kHz if vinyl pressed. Alas I don't think that can be shown. Late 1940's FFRR 78 when vinyl tested were good for 32 kHz. FFRR LP exist. That's not to say the engineer used the full range. I made an EQ box for a Mr Brown of Decca, he was the source of this imformation. Also he worked at Parlophone. If asking I had a set of capacitors and resistors that could be dialed like a combination lock. We could make many EQ's named and some guessed. The box was passive for the 25 to 100 uS ( and others ) and active for the ones like 3180/318. Exact EQ is important.
What we have here is cooking. We could say salt the only thing we need to know. If chili it can be meat, non meat, salt, herbs, and something some would not guess. Age of the meat. Even cocca might be used. It is easy to give a recipe. Get one thing wrong and suddendly it's food, but not chili. Give me the very best of the things needed and like CD I won't make a good chili. The difference is I don't try to sell it to Mexico.
Digital has never been a problem. The primitive BBC system of circa 1972 sounds mostly fine. MP3 can sound very good and the 10 bit Nicam was OK. For some reason CD is bad cooking.
If wanting the best possible sound for no money I would suggest. Lenco 75. Hadcock 228. Denon DL110. Treat the Denon as 1 mV and have a gain of about 200 to 300 if you want to hear the giant killer that it is. The cheaper Naim CD players are not bad.
As Clerk Maxwell could have said, just maths makes someone just a machine. He infered impossible things using maths. He seemed to have what many do not, vision.
Thanks
Hi Nigel,
thanks for that very informative piece of information. I might just take you up on your suggestion re equipment.
George
Hi Nigel,
thanks for that very informative piece of information. I might just take you up on your suggestion re equipment.
George
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