"If it was shown that many of your vinyl recordings had actually originated from 16 bit (i.e. 'CD') masters, or had been digitized at the pressing plant anyway, how would you justify your belief in vinyl?"
You didn't read my post carefully. I have around 3000 vinyls and more turntables than I know including one of my prized possessions, an Empire 698 with a Shure V15 type V MR all in mint condition. It's rare that I listen to more than one or two vinyls a year.
"... but stumbled onto something akin to magic. Their miraculous process can even transform a digital recording, removing the evil digits and replacing them with genuine analogue waveforms which are much more lifelike."
So you are saying that the vinyl phonograph recording/playback process creates distortion that improves the sound of recroded music as evidenced by it improving digital recordings. Interesting point of view.....only I don't buy it. 🙂 If I want to distort electrical waveforms, there are much cheaper, easier, more controllable and predictable ways to do it. 🙂
Why vinyl phonograph records, moving coil cartridges, vacuum tube amplifiers, zero feedback amplifiers, and highly directional loudspeakers sound better to some audiophiles than their far more technologically advanced replacements is a matter for interesting and endless debate.
Sorry soundminded, it was this bit that I homed in on:
"...phongraph records cannot be beat. Certainly not by CDs."
Honestly, I was just being facetious about the magical properties of LPs. Personally, what I find fascinating about the disciples of vinyl, tube amps etc. is their total lack of self-awareness when it comes to the psychological influences of hearing what they expect to hear. As soon as a meme catches on such as vinyl being a superior, magical format to 'digital', it can even influence an arch sceptic like me. I find myself thinking 'Surely all these intelligent people can't be wrong'?
And the 'analogue' vs. 'digital' debate gets muddied by conflating several issues at the same time. There's another thread going, about the difference between vinyl and CD mastering, with the meme that CD is always mastered for 'loudness wars', while the vinyl master is much purer, as befits the connoisseurs' market. And there's a general theme that digital equipment is mass produced, made of plastic, and sold cheap, while vinyl turntables are hand crafted from solid slabs of purest bollonium.
These confused arguments are then simplified into "vinyl is better than CD".
You do not have to reduce bass and treble as the better to best systems did not have that problem at all.
The blend is lower than 400 Hz. You'll also need to add group delay to smear the square wave response and if you're trying to mimic analog tape you'll also need to wobble the phase of L vs R to simulate the tape 'wandering' through the guides. You also need to introduce 'once around' speed variations (wow) to simulate the hole eccentricity of the disc and a bit of faster speed variation (flutter) to enhance the 'realism'. Random tiny dropouts for the high end to simulate dust in the tape transport is needed too.
Self delusion is grand.
If LPs didn't exist and somebody announced today that they had a way to record sound by recording a mechanical analog onto a disc as a 'squiggle' so that you intentionally added two more transitions of electrical to mechanical and back to electrical, you'd be laughed at. Same story for the CRT.
LP was the best available at the time - now gone by.
BUT, I TRULY am glad you folks have LPs available to enjoy if it makes you happy.
G²
G,
I wouldn't be so sure sure who's delusional as that reeks of a totally unfounded opinion of those who may have vast experience in the recording industry, both digital and analog, and still favor LPs. The time is at hand when this will probably change, but it's not a done deal yet.
Best Regards,
TerryO
I wouldn't be so sure sure who's delusional as that reeks of a totally unfounded opinion of those who may have vast experience in the recording industry, both digital and analog, and still favor LPs. The time is at hand when this will probably change, but it's not a done deal yet.
Best Regards,
TerryO
Most of the arguments for digital in this thread make good, legitimate technical claims.
But tell me; do the superior S/N ratio, channel separation, lack of wow and flutter, steadier time base, ease of use, etc. of digital actually sound better than good tape or great vinyl playback? Do the technical advantages of digital really matter?
But tell me; do the superior S/N ratio, channel separation, lack of wow and flutter, steadier time base, ease of use, etc. of digital actually sound better than good tape or great vinyl playback? Do the technical advantages of digital really matter?
I'd ask the question differently: which will allow the most accurate replication of the microphone signals? If the engineers don't do a good job in getting a mike signal that will "sound good," then one can do better (as suggested) with "massaging" the signal in the digital domain to fake decent sound. More flexible, too, which is important since sound engineers seem to have unlimited ways to screw things up.
Might there be a market for a box incorporating an electromechanical transducer that modulates the stylus and cartridge of your choice, thus allowing you to experience at least part of the vinyl magic without the fuss of playing the disc itself? It could be a self-contained box with line level, or USB/SPDIF input, that attaches to your plinth so that the tonearm is part of the system as well. Some of the limitations of vinyl would still hold such as needing to compress extreme transients, and blend the bass to mono. This could be done with PC software, but the deluxe model could be sold with an elegant control unit (incorporating a round moving coil meter of course. And vacuum tubes maybe).
I'm only partly joking!
I'm only partly joking!
Why do the moderators even let these theads start, they never go anywhere, no information is exchanged, signal to noise ratio very very low.
Entrenched views from horizon to horizon
pityingly
james
Entrenched views from horizon to horizon
pityingly
james
The answer is yes, but the powerful psychological effects of what we expect to hear, the beauty and weight of the turntable, the ceremony of placing the disc on the platter and lowering the arm in anticipation of the life-affirming thump, hiss and crackle all mean that we can't possibly make that judgement objectively.
(And we can't even do a blind test because of the aforementioned hiss and crackle!)
I meant in playback, of course. Recording/production is another thing.
Are you sure? Why?
discliamer: 99% of my music collection is in digital format
I don't understand what you'd like to read. Technical measurements? Experiences of the actual people who used to cut vinyl? It's all here.
Did you know that strong stereo bass in vinyl recordings has to be mixed to mono to prevent the needle from skipping? I didn't, before this thread started. And that leads onto the perfect valid question as to *why* some people think that that arbitrary limitation should actually improve the sound! I find it genuinely fascinating.
actually ADC and DAC in line with a SOTA vinyl set up would allow a bypass test that could be done A/B/X - are there any "audiophile grade" auto tonearm mechanisms out there?
the expectation is that even "lo rez" RedBook CD 16 bit 44.1K would be transparent for music - maybe a few percent of preteen girls could hear the CD brickwall if test tones above 20KHz were used
it requires an appeal to "vitalism" to expect current SOTA 24/192 ADC+DAC to have audible effect
the expectation is that even "lo rez" RedBook CD 16 bit 44.1K would be transparent for music - maybe a few percent of preteen girls could hear the CD brickwall if test tones above 20KHz were used
it requires an appeal to "vitalism" to expect current SOTA 24/192 ADC+DAC to have audible effect
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Because we're not judging what *sounds* better, but instead judging which total experience pleases us best, or better fits our prejudices.
So did I. Let the user tailor the sound to whatever he wants, and have the flexibility to change depending on source material. Super tone controls, as it were.
I've been playing with DAW plugins and am amazed/appalled by what you can do to the sound. There's even a vinyl simulator plugin, which works not too differently than CopperTop's joke.
Asked a different way. Have you ever been fooled by an LP recording? I had a room mate go answer the phone when listening to the CD Glenn Miller In The Digital Mood track Pennsylvania 6-5000 (very realistic telephone ring). I saw him reach for it when he said " it's not the phone, is it?". Not once in 40 plus years of playing with audio have I been 'tricked' by an LP and I had access to some rather high end gear. I always thought the goal was so sound 'real'. The best analog tape and disc gear can be very pleasing but it will never convince you - unless you 'want' to be convinced - that it's 'real.
We got SO used to the shortcomings of the analog medium that their absence seems 'wrong'. I don't dispute that more samples and bits could be an improvement but as a 'medium for the masses' the CD can be pretty impressive. It's too bad it isn't always impressive but the potential is there with the right guys behind the scenes.
G²
You're obviously not interested in doing a legitimate test, as you have previously arrived at the answer. You need to use decent playback and source material to actually have a level playing field, which you evidently feel is not needed.
Best Regards,
TerryO
Hi Mike,
I agree that digital has great potential, which only in the the last few years has seen much use. The problem has been that, aside from SACD, DVD-A, or even the Redbook compatible HDK2 mastering technique, very few advances have been made toward decent sound. I think that our Club's latest blind test shows that some of the better conversion processors are up to snuff and are transparent enough that only the physical media stands in the way of bettering Vinyl. Having said that, I actually believe that the HI-Rez music server will be the instrument that will finally eclipse Vinyl. Then the final Analog Bastion will be R2R analog tape like "The Tape Project" offerings.
BTW: Are you coming to the Vancouver Fest this summer?
Best Regards,
Terry
I don't want to get too involved in this thread, but I do want to say that imo the implication of "hiss and crackle" being a comfortable listen, or ignored because of the "ceremony", is a stretch at the very least.
I recently digitized some (OK... lots) of my old vinyl and was pleasantly surprised how quiet it could be. I hadn't played my turntable in several years, and it's nowhere close to being a high-end unit; it's a 25-year old Fisher with a Shure RXT-6 cartridge upgrade.
I recently digitized some (OK... lots) of my old vinyl and was pleasantly surprised how quiet it could be. I hadn't played my turntable in several years, and it's nowhere close to being a high-end unit; it's a 25-year old Fisher with a Shure RXT-6 cartridge upgrade.
If you have problems with thump, hiss, and crackle then your analog source needs work. As far as psychology and ceremony go, I and everyone I know would prefer it all to be simpler. For example when we discovered that the Technics SP-10MkII and MkIII out-performed the most expensive audiophile belt-drives we couldn't switch them out fast enough because of the ease of use. Furthermore, if there existed a digital system that we felt was superior to analog then we would dump vinyl and tape in a heartbeat. I fell for that BS in the early eighties and got rid of my records (for a very nice piece of money, by the way). I now cringe when I think of all of those great and rare blues records that I owned that were never released on cd or if they were, sounded awful.
John
Reminds me, i dumped quite a few CD's in the late '80s, early '90s, mostly new ones.
Took me quite some time to adjust to the re-formed market.
Took me quite some time to adjust to the re-formed market.
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