Have you discovered a digital source, that satisfies you, as much as your Turntable?

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That's l like saying photographs of a farm tractor says something about farming.

That's a bad analogy. A better one would be:

Mr. LP builds a tractor that requires all of his skill and physical abilities to construct. Mr. Digital takes a quick look at Mr. LP's tractor. He's not impressed. But, without breaking a sweat he builds a perfect copy that does the exact same farm work and feels the exact same way to drive.

What does that say about Mr. Digital's skill and physical abilities?

So you are suggesting that the "quality" of an LP is defined by distortion...

I guess. Until someone disproves it.
 
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Have you discovered a digital source, that satisfies you, as much as your Turntable?

One thing CD lovers claim is the silence of their system, say 100 dB; which is muck because the top 15 bits depth is used for overhead. My LP source is quiet. And livelier, more dynamic than digital.

I think we should aim for coloring, and specifically the coloring related to music.
Digital imho does not reproduce as well, although some artifacts (such as some TDA1543 implementations) do sound rather 'natural', i.e. with a vibrancy, that fits certain music; other music lives well with e.g. a TDA1541. etc etc. What we talk about then is the sound the DAC or I/V adds to the bits.

And then again it is the mixing we listen to, having a higher impact on sound than the bits. Some mixers like to reduce dynamics (sounds good on headphones or MP3) while only a few marter technicians restrain from foibling and fooling around...

Why I stopped using Spotify is the even more compressed nature of their tracks (they seem to code them that way) and the lack of highs. No fun.

But alas my LP's - do have two heaps, one well mixed, the other one with a cheap sound. So really that is no reference either.

OK: at the end, I must admit I have both LPs and CDs that have a fantastic sound (20-40%?) the rest is on a falling slope.

So as to the question of the OP:
 
That's a bad analogy. A better one would be:

Mr. LP builds a tractor that requires all of his skill and physical abilities to construct. Mr. Digital takes a quick look at Mr. LP's tractor. He's not impressed. But, without breaking a sweat he builds a perfect copy that does the exact same farm work and feels the exact same way to drive.

What does that say about Mr. Digital's skill and physical abilities?

But that is not what you wrote. Let me paraphrase your previous post:

Since "playing a recording of vinyl playback trough a digital source sound exactly like the actual vinyl playback, it suggests that the colouring from vinyl playback enhances the perceived "quality" of the sound."

There is a bunch of logic missing between the digital playback and the suggestion...
 
It says that whatever qualities are present in vinyl playback are accurately conveyed by digital reproduction. This means as a minimum that digital reproduction is at least not inferior to vinyl in terms of sound reproduction.

The converse test (taking a digital source and reproducing it via cutting and playing an LP) would be interesting. I suspect that it would be fairly easy to distinguish the difference between digital and digital-cut-play. Even if some prefer the latter, this would confirm that vinyl is inferior to digital for sound reproduction.


Mastering quality is irrelevant to the innate quality of the medium. The question is simply this: which is better at reproducing a pair of music voltage signals, vinyl or digital?

Taking a digital source and cutting/playing an LP is a problem. The LF information found on an LP is mixed to mono to reduce mistracking. No such mixing has to take place on the CD.

By design, the LP is inferior because it is not an accurate reproduction of the input signal. For much music, you will not notice as they are mixed in the same manner, but for others you will.
 
But that is not what you wrote. Let me paraphrase your previous post:

Since "playing a recording of vinyl playback trough a digital source sound exactly like the actual vinyl playback, it suggests that the colouring from vinyl playback enhances the perceived "quality" of the sound."

There is a bunch of logic missing between the digital playback and the suggestion...

Maybe I should add: "Mr. LP's tractors are not perfect. The handling is a little funny, and the paint job is a bit off. But some of the farmers don't seem to mind that. They see the faults as being charming. Mr. Digital can build a close to perfect tractor, but the farmers dislike it. "It's sterile!", they say. Poor Mr. Digital..."
 
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Pressing bits down into a disk makes them more docile to repeat their song.

If you squeeze the bits into a needle electromagnetic movement with 100% feedback you actually transfer the 'quintessence' of their materiality.

It is very easy with a needle and magnet to then bring back that vibration into an AC signal.

To bring 0 and 1 with delta/sigma microscopic transistors directly to a musical AC signal is asking for the impossible.

Further, the multiple op-amps colors the sound with filters and such, which really lacks in my non-feedback top end tube phono (Bugle boys are singing in there 🙂.

Being redundant, the ladder gates of the tda1541 is the only dac which gives an easy distinction of voices, and sounds best in single chip going to high feedback active i/v matched high speed BJT in class B, class AB output ,regulated PS.
 
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These tests show that bit mangling has far more potential to degrade sound quality than the miniscule differences in system activity from one software player to another, because an average listener can hear the most commonplace bit mangling, whereas experienced listeners cannot hear the effects of "noise patterns" caused by dramatically different system loads, much less very subtle differences caused by different players..
I see. That bit of subjective testing aces my subjective testing - because you were at one lot of it happening, but not at the other lot ...

I agree, very logical thinking ... 🙂
 
As a side note, this is the sort of material I use for seeing what my progress is - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krF8bU43GRw. I have a budget CD of greatest hits of theirs, and I tried it again last night - makes it trivially easy to pick differences .. the goal is to be able to run this at high volume, with subjectively complete clarity, all the elements and soundstaging within can be discerned, and there is no sense of any distortion, 🙂.
 
Frank;

Did you listen to these:

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/ever...l-experimental-search-test-2.html#post4298626

As of this posting the files appear to have only 2 views. I know that I downloaded them. Listening to the two tracks small differences are only audible when low level mixed in track is peaking. This is with only -30dB attenuation of the mixed in track.
I did actually. Like you, I could only detect the other signal when the primary was at very low level.

In the above thread the bit mangling is intense, yet the audible difference is small, very small.

Only way to verify bit perfect playback is with soundcard with digital I/O that lets you capture same data that the DAC receives.

Ears alone will never suffice in confirming bit perfect playback.

I've gotten bit perfect playback from Windows MP, Audacity, Cool Edit, JRiver Media, Foobar, and other software as well.

Confirming interference from computer, display, and power supplies and relative levels is easy. Ears work well for this in conjunction with measured output from DAC.

If I where you I would cancel my internet service and save the money until I could purchase a soundcard that has mic preamp, and digital I/O that supports loopback.
It's all about the brain - it locks into the primary message, which is obviously the loud musical event, and switches off what is irrelevant. Same principle as when listening to someone playing an acoustic guitar in your home, and a loud car goes past at some stage - while those really "bad bits" of noise are happening the quality of the guitar playing doesn't degrade, your hearing is quite capable of ignoring the nuisance sound, because it doesn't correlate in any shape or form to the music. If it did correlate to some degree then you might start feeling annoyed, because it was getting "harder" to filter out what you wanted to hear.

Edit: Yes, the thought of getting gear to "prove" things has appealed, but it would be the old story - the results would have to be 10 times, 100 times "better" than they actually needed to be, to have any impact - a rusted on nut needs a lot of work ... 😉
 
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You'll be fixing it forever.

Mr. LP's tractors are not perfect. The handling is a little funny, and the paint job is a bit off. But some of the farmers don't seem to mind that. They see the faults as being irrelevant. Mr. Digital can build a close to perfect tractor. It utilizes power steering technology, and consists of fully active 8 cylinders. The compression ration is 4 times higher. But the farmers dislike it for unknown or unrelated reason. "We seem to gather less crop in previous harvest!", they say. Poor Mr. Digital...
 
It's certainly interesting to see how many objectivists assess the functioning of the various parts of their system - if one element has a brilliant set of numbers, from one set of technical tests, then it is now 'transparent' - no 'ifs' or 'buts' about it, it is now effectively perfect. Therefore, if the sound coming out is 'wrong' then something else must be at fault - typically one then starts flogging the speakers, fiendishly unpleasant things they are - but, if a great deal of effort has gone into making them "good", and they are convinced that they are good enough - then, it must be the recordings !! Horrible, evil, monsters in the recording studio assemble putrid collections of bad taste and incompetence - I know my system is above that - it will show me that which is truly worthy ... 😉

Rather a purile post!
 
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