I'm a believer! Lp's really do sound better! (1 Viewer)

[RobertR]

Quote:

As I said, this is a mastering difference. There has never been ANY demonstrated proper double blind listening test done between SACD, Redbook CD, and DVD-A where the ONLY difference was the recording format.

 

[Chu Gai]

Which of course is not to say that many transcriptions of what once appeared on vinyl were done with a lack of understanding of how to properly transfer the same to digital media.
To think that both formats require the same techniques and approaches is quite foolish, but then there are many 'successful and highly respected' individuals in the recording field who have taken their knowledge of recording good vinyl and then made crappy digital. For example, let's look at Billy Joel's release of Nylon Curtain which is available on vinyl as well as CD. The vinyl version of this was made with well established procedures for eliminating the losses inherent in vinyl such as high equalization. It is said that the CD of the same was created using exactly the same procedures. An unsighted comparison generally results in a preference for the vinyl. However, to state that this is proof positive of the superiority of vinyl is an erroneous statement. As one digs a little deeper, one eventually comes to understand what happened.
To fault digital in this manner is in essence a way of excusing poor recording techniques. And quite frankly, what recording engineer, esteemed or not, wants to have the light of truth properly focussed on their lack of understanding of digital recording techniques? To go back to school as it were and be told by some young upstart that this is the way you do things now sits poorly. Instead, we blame the messenger - digital.
So what do we have now? SACD, DVDA, and who knows what else, touting things like greater bits, upsampling DACS, etc. with new releases of your favorites that now surprisingly just might sound better than those CD's. However, as RobertR and others have pointed out, careful comparisons between the formats using good recordings have resulted in failed attempts at distinguishing one from another. Hence, we must, as curious humans with a need for deeper understanding, dig a bit deeper. What we'll find is that the recording techinques are indeed better. That which was successful for vinyl is no longer applied ad-hoc to digital. Basically what has happened is that the companies have come to realize that they've f*cked up many CD's. They also realize that they need a new cash cow as CD players have entered the commodity market and they're dirt cheap. So we invent a new cow, remaster everything the right way (or so we/they hope), not tell anyone that a bunch of recording engineers made mistakes (oops!), and point to the new medium that now sells for 10, 20, 50x what the old medium was. Now we can once again afford to pay royalties to half-assed grammy award child molesters. Life is good. I tell you my friends, life is good.
I do though see merit in some of what Mattias has said. Perhaps not for the reasons he may think.
Until we see things for what they are and start putting the blame squarely where it belongs, we'll be left arguing amongst ourselves. That puts 'them' in control and 'them' has succeeded in an age old maxim - divide and conquer. Maybe it's divide and obfuscate.
'Scuse me now. I've got to make some coffee with my Penta water. Good stuff

 

[Mattias_ka]

The glaring omission in your TAS anecdote is any mention of the double blind methodology. TAS is part of the subjectivist gang that has no use for such methodology, so I very much doubt they used it at ALL, let alone correctly (one must always critically analyze the methodology when these comparisons are done). If the A/B comparisons were done "open" (ie they KNEW what they were listening to), it doesn't surprise me at all that they "heard" differences based on expectations. After all, these are the same people who "hear" differences based on green ink pens, mystical blocks of wood, and devices that "demagnetize" CDs (even though CDs are made of nonmagnetic materials) in the absence of ANY rational basis for those differences (other than what originates in their minds).

Well, it was NOT the magazine that did the test. It's was some of the best producers and mastering people that did it. So you are wrong there.
As I said before, the format are NOT intresting. Why can't you answer me? I did ask you if you always buy PAL DVD's because they have 20% more resolution (on specs paper).
Chu Gai, Well, as I said before, a format specs are not intresting if it's never used. Like the difference between CD's dynamic range, 96 dB and SACD that are more like 140 dB. If one only look at the specs one could think SACD would be much more dynamic, and in some way they are. BUT that's because they mastered the SACD to sound better.
And that one reason why vinyl can many times sound better than the CD version, they where mastered better.
It's what we do EVERY DAY on this forum, talk about different releases and what release is best. Same about CD vs LP vs SACD vs DVD-A.
So I think we should lose this "what format has the best specs" because than we should stop talking about Ntsc DVD because they have worse specs than Pal DVD's.

 

[Chu Gai]

Well sure Mattias. One of the points though is that the recording engineers don't get it right for digital media because they're treating it like vinyl. Let's put the blame where it belongs shall we?

 

[RobertR]

the format are NOT intresting.

I disagree. Have I heard great sounding LPs? Yes. Have I heard bad sounding CDs? Yes. Have I heard the reverse? YES. Give me a well mastered CD (don't bother to try to tell me there's no such thing) over a well mastered LP ANY day.

 

[Tom Grooms]

Give me a well mastered CD (don't bother to try to tell me there's no such thing) over a well mastered LP ANY day.

Spoken from a man that hasn't heard or doesn't own a decent turntable.

 

[RobertR]

Spoken from a man that hasn't heard or doesn't own a decent turntable

Wrong. I used to own a Thorens turntable (I was "into" LP for 12 years), AND I've gone to the CES High End audio show for seven straight years (which has displayed plenty of "decent turntables").

 

[Tom Grooms]

I was only kidding. but I did say "decent" turntable.
Sometimes I just don't get it. I guess I want everyone to hear what I hear. If they did, they would appreciate vinyl a lot more. All my non audiophile friends love the sound of vinyl "in my listening room".

 

[RobertR]

I guess I want everyone to hear what I hear.

I wish vinylphiles would simply say "I like the sound of LPs" and leave it at that. In other words, simply state a preference, instead of making declarative statements like "LP is better, and that's a FACT". No, it's their OPINION.

 

[Chu Gai]

Hell Tom, I've got decent turntable too, a transctriptor. Now maybe I'm a lucky SOB because it doesn't skip when I walk around but I'm curious. If I was to post that I'd bought a $500 CD player and whenever I walked across the floor it skipped wouldn't people tell me that there was something wrong with it? Maybe return it? I recently read where someone posted that they'd gotten a $500 Music Hall that skips whenever they walk around. What I don't get is why people rave over his recent acquisition and suggest that he now needs to investigate isolation type devices? Back in the day when vinyl ruled, it wasn't all that hard to get turntables that didn't skip when you walked around. Mind you now, I mean walk not jump.

 

[Robert AG]

The LP sounds great! The only problem is that it is an electro-mechanical medium, and as such cannot help but introduce some degree of coloration. I have been involved in professional sound for 30+ years as a recording engineer, electronics engineer and now working in feature films, mixing, editing and recording soundtrack music. I have heard all the systems out there. Magnetic tape is colored. LPs are colored. Digital is not. It is as simple as that.

I love the way LPs sound, and how magnetic tape (15ips studio quality, no cassette) sounds. My entire studio is powered by vacuum tube amplifiers, using active tri-amping.

I just wish the LP people would just, as stated before, display their preference for the sound of LPs and leave it at that. I like LPs too, but I know that they are not aboslutely accurate to the original source - they have euphonic colorations.

 

[Scott_N]

Chu

Your table probably is a nonsuspended design which isn't sensitive to vibration like suspended designs. My Nottingham Horizon is nonsuspended and I can walk by it or even tap the rack it sits on without causing it to skip. Vinyl isn't for everybody just like tubes aren't for everybody but i'm glad they both are for me! These debates about what is accurate or isn't seem funny to me because i've heard systems pushing the $100k mark and none of them sound like live music which is still the standard to judge accuracy IMO.

 

[RobertR]

i've heard systems pushing the $100k mark and none of them sound like live music which is still the standard to judge accuracy IMO.

Successful live vs. recorded comparisons (ie people couldn’t tell the live performance from the recording) were accomplished decades ago, and repeated in more recent years by John Dunlavy. The key factor that made them successful was the careful use of recording and playback techniques to ensure that there was a proper replication of the listening environment (the recording was a tape). It should be noted that these successes were acheived with NO attention paid to the typical High End minutiae such as cables, wires, “warm sounding” amps, "high res digital formats", “vibration damping”, etc., and it’s unfortunate that more attention isn’t paid to the importance of microphone placement and selection, careful mastering, etc. by the people obsessed with the “other stuff”. The differences people focus on so much (such as this: http://www.referenceaudiomods.com/Me...roduct_Count=2 ) are SWAMPED by the recording and the interaction of the speakers with the room.

 

[Tom Grooms]

So is it wrong to assume these test were done with a colored media (ie Magnetic tape or LP)

 

[Robert P. Jones]

Whether a TT skips when you walk around is much more a facet of its surroundings than itself. Any properly balanced TT will skip like crazy in the wrong environment.

DJs in discos who don't want to take any chances on this, would mount their TTs on pillars to the floor BELOW the dance floor. This of course was back when TTs were used for actually playing dance music rather than for scratching, which is all they use them for in rap music.

The best way to get a TT to not skip - or pick up bass notes and feed back - is to support it on springs that hang from above. Not ONTO springs that are below the TT, as was very common in the middle grade players and changers of the era.

Above from the ceiling, or from its own stand.

Mr Bob

 

[RobertR]

So is it wrong to assume these test were done with a colored media (ie Magnetic tape or LP)

It's wrong to assume they used LP (they used tape). Actually, there was one aspect in which they failed: tape hiss could be heard during quiet passages. Noise is an inevitable, inescapable weakness of LP and older analog tape (it still amazes me how some people are so willing to put up with record noise). Modern digital, of course, has no such weakness, and the Dunlavy live vs. recorded demos used digital recording. That says it ALL to me.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Noise is an inevitable, inescapable weakness of LP and older analog tape

Tape hiss can be minimized these days, but not eliminated. That is another area where hirez has an advantage.

And remember we are at the front of the wave of hirez. DSD converters and editors will only get better.

 

[Robert AG]

You don't need "Hi Rez" to have inaudible noise. Plain vanilla 16 bit does it quite well. Keep in mind that the dyanmic range of 24 bit audio is -144db below full scale. This level cannot be achieved on the planet Earth because of electron noise at room temperature. You would have to have everything (including the musicians, who make noise) frozen in liquid nitrogen to near absolute zero degrees Kelvin in order to approach this low of a noise level.

True 20 bit resolution is about as good as it gets with real world converters, mixers and microphones. ANY active electronic stage of electronics, even a single op-amp is going to generate more than a -144db noise level just by itself.

I made a demonstration CD that used the first track of Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" where I segmented the piece into untouched 16 bit sections, 12 bit reduced and dithered sections, and 8 bit reduced and dithered sections. Nobody could reliably tell the 16 bit from the 12 bit sections, and some had trouble telling when the 8 bit sections were playing. So much for Hi Rez and golder ears.

 

[RobertR]

Tape hiss can be minimized these days, but not eliminated.

16 bit digital is capable of a 96 dB S/N ratio. A VERY quiet house has a noise floor of 30 dB. Therefore, one would have to play music above a deafening 126 dB to get above the noise floor. I don't know of anyone who does this with music. Do you?

 

[Philip Hamm]

RobertR,

Great points about S/N ratio, and why I personally don't really pay much attention to it. That's also why I find the LP noise floor unoffending. At the volumes I listen to music at, the noise floor or LP is not bad.

Heck, I make CDs of my LPs because to me LPs sound fine to me and I'm way too cheap to buy a new CD when I could burn a CD of the LP music for about $2 (including CD-R, jewel box, and inkjet printed label).