Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Dedicated Source Components › On the superiority of vinyl
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

On the superiority of vinyl - Page 2

post #16 of 836
12/25/06 at 1:04pm
Superiority and preference are very different things.

CD is superior in pretty much every measurable real world parameter, noise, dynamic range, linearity, THD and so on. CD can have a real world dynamic range of 96db across the whole spectrum, find me any LP that can do that once let alone on the 10th play.

A preference for LP sound is a different matter but talking about LP superiority in real world measurable terms i.e what you can put on YOUR platter or is unrealistic.

Find me a SNR of 100+ db or a whole spectrum dynamic range of 96Db on a commercially available TT/LP combination. Find me speed variations of 0.0002% on any commercially available TT.

Preferring Vinyl sound is one thing but it isnt for technical superiority.
Reply

Head-Fi's Best Sellers

post #17 of 836
12/25/06 at 2:25pm
A well recorded/produced/mastered CD can sound superb, if you listen to >90% of today's CD's they all sound rather "trashy", rather compressed lacking good dynamics due to the gain being increased to make the music sound louder.

I guess it depends on how much care is put into the recording/production of the CD's, high end LP setups (they sound excellent to my ears!) cost an arm and a leg (make that a pair of each), you don't need to spend a fortune for a high end CD setup.

Top notch analog tape vs CD on the otherhand...
Reply
post #18 of 836
12/25/06 at 2:34pm
I'll tell you this. A good needle and Pre amp can go a LONG way. My buddy has the same set-up as me, but with a $20 no name needle and a recoton pre amp...and it sounds like absolute ****. I mean, it's painful to listen to. It's has no dynamic sound to it at all. It sounds like a HORRIBLE recording on a tape recorder stuck up to the radio speaker. And the hum from the pre amp is horrible....I'm thinking about buying him a preamp and needle just because nobody should be subject to that quality....
Reply
post #19 of 836
12/25/06 at 3:32pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hciman77 View Post
Superiority and preference are very different things.

CD is superior in pretty much every measurable real world parameter, noise, dynamic range, linearity, THD and so on. CD can have a real world dynamic range of 96db across the whole spectrum, find me any LP that can do that once let alone on the 10th play.

A preference for LP sound is a different matter but talking about LP superiority in real world measurable terms i.e what you can put on YOUR platter or is unrealistic.

Find me a SNR of 100+ db or a whole spectrum dynamic range of 96Db on a commercially available TT/LP combination. Find me speed variations of 0.0002% on any commercially available TT.

Preferring Vinyl sound is one thing but it isnt for technical superiority.
Amen.

I'll take a properly recorded/mastered CD over vinyl anyday. The "properly" can be an issue, but plenty examples of stellar CDs are available.
Reply
post #20 of 836
12/25/06 at 5:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by drarthurwells View Post
I think Meyvn's point of sampling is an important one. Digital CDs use about 1/20 of the information of analog - the digital waveform is a small sample of the original material whereas the analog waveform is relatively whole.

After the digital information is made analog again, your 1/20th analogy is blown out of the water

The analog waveforms on vinyl aslo have far more distortion and fade over time. Vinyl keeps it in the "all analog domain", but that far from makes it the purer audio technology.
Reply
post #21 of 836
12/25/06 at 8:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by drarthurwells View Post
I think Meyvn's point of sampling is an important one.
It is not important. It is wrong.

Quote:
Originally Posted by drarthurwells View Post
Digital CDs use about 1/20 of the information of analog - the digital waveform is a small sample of the original material whereas the analog waveform is relatively whole.
Wrong again.

Quote:
Originally Posted by drarthurwells View Post
The brain tries to convert the small sample of digital information to the full analog information, and is generally able to fairly well create the illusion of the analog but it is actually incomplete.
The brain has nothing to do with converting the digital samples. That job belongs to the reconstruction fiter (or whatever) in the dac.


Regards,

L.
Reply
post #22 of 836
12/25/06 at 11:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by drarthurwells View Post
Digital CDs use about 1/20 of the information of analog - the digital waveform is a small sample of the original material whereas the analog waveform is relatively whole.
What?! Where do you get those kinds of numbers anyway? Analog recording has lots of limitations, you're basically saying that it has unlimited bandwidth? No it doesn't. A good comparison would be digital television versus analog. Analog doesn't have unlimited resolution
Reply
post #23 of 836
12/25/06 at 11:47pm
DJs still use records
Reply
post #24 of 836
12/25/06 at 11:48pm
like someone said, what really matters is a properly recorded/mastered CD....

with so many CDs today the mastering is crap, just because you can have 96dB of dynamic range does not mean it is used.

the introduction of CDs should have been a blessing for all the reasons listed earlier, but unfortunately it allowed for music to be cut hotter.

there's only so far you can push vinyl.... if you cut it really hot to limit the length of each side of an LP.... you can reduce it to about 10 minutes of play time per side. you can't sell 20 minute long albums at $15.... people just don't want to pay that much for so little music.

motown was probably the first label to push how hot you can cut vinyl to its limits and they were quite successful with radio airplay because of it.

if digital wasn't available you'd never have the problems caused by the loudness wars.....

to re-iterate, CDs can sound great if they are properly mastered and recorded
Reply
post #25 of 836
12/26/06 at 3:38am
Just curious... Is there a way to tell how well a vinyl album was prepared for the vinyl format? In other words, space between grooves, inner groove compensation, etc.? I'm sure this is more of a concern now than it was when vinyl was the most popular format.

Also, I'll add the (obvious) observation that vinyl won't sound more accurate than a CD if the album was digitally recorded. Albums recorded in analog can sound their best when played back on analog equipment without conversion.
Reply
post #26 of 836
12/26/06 at 4:07am
Just for the record (no pun intended), Vinyl has all sorts of my love. I think it sounds warm lush and I would use it exclusivley if possible. The soft top end, the warm firey sounding crackle, and watching the mechanism produce audio in front of your eyes, all bring joy to me.


But I don't confuse that with being more accurate or being higher-fidelity. You really have to keep your albums in very pristine condition and spend good amounts of money on a vinyl setup, then tweak the mechanism perfectly just to push what CD's are able to technically achieve.

However I don't have the money or space and it's far easier to get a good digital collection together.
Reply
post #27 of 836
12/26/06 at 11:36am
My biggest issue with the compact disc sound is with its sterile or sanitized quality.It could be argued that of the thousands of CDs I own that every single one was mastered incorrectly but none of my vinyl sounds sanitized.How does the poem end? All the King's horses and all the King's men,couldn't put Humpty together again.
Reply
post #28 of 836
12/26/06 at 1:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ssportclay View Post
My biggest issue with the compact disc sound is with its sterile or sanitized quality.It could be argued that of the thousands of CDs I own that every single one was mastered incorrectly but none of my vinyl sounds sanitized.How does the poem end? All the King's horses and all the King's men,couldn't put Humpty together again.
The difference in vinyl sound vs CD sound probably has less to do with quantization than other factors.

In a Spanish test listeners were asked to listen (blind) to CD and LP versions of the same piece. The listeners preferred the LP (for whatever reason lets not digress) .

However when a CD copy of the LP was made, none of the listeners could distinguish between the CD copy and the LP. The CD recording was transparent enough to make the two audibly indistinguishable and render any signal loss undetectable. If quantization had a effect in and of itself then you would imagine that this effect would be noticeable.

Similarly Ivor Tiefenbrun (Linn) famously was unable to tell the difference between an analog signal and the same analog signal having gone through primitive SONY PCM-1 A/D and D/A stages. This makes me think that differences are unilkely to be due to quantization. Similarly in blind testing it is pretty hard to distinguish between 16 bit and 15 bit resolution.


You dont even need the full 16 bits most of the time. (http://64.66.184.67/technical/bits44/index.htm)

If quantization was the issue then the 16 bit version ought to always sound much much better i.e 2 ^15 = 32768 and 2^16 = 65536. In fact any music program with a full spectrum dynamic range signal of say 75db can easily be captured by a 15 bit digital system with room to spare.
Reply
post #29 of 836
12/26/06 at 2:32pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hciman77 View Post
The difference in vinyl sound vs CD sound probably has less to do with quantization than other factors.

In a Spanish test listeners were asked to listen (blind) to CD and LP versions of the same piece. The listeners preferred the LP (for whatever reason lets not digress) .

However when a CD copy of the LP was made, none of the listeners could distinguish between the CD copy and the LP. The CD recording was transparent enough to make the two audibly indistinguishable and render any signal loss undetectable. If quantization had a effect in and of itself then you would imagine that this effect would be noticeable.

Similarly Ivor Tiefenbrun (Linn) famously was unable to tell the difference between an analog signal and the same analog signal having gone through primitive SONY PCM-1 A/D and D/A stages. This makes me think that differences are unilkely to be due to quantization.

Similarly in blind testing it is pretty hard to distinguish between 16 bit and 15 bit resolution.
(http://64.66.184.67/technical/bits44/index.htm)

If quantization was a big problem then the 16 bit version ought to always sound much much better i.e 2 ^15 = 32768 and 2^16 = 65536. Any music program with a full spectrum dynamic range signal of say 75db can easily be captured by a 15 bit digital system.
What other factors would be responsible for the superiority of vinyl besides the signal damage of digital convertion which seems to be responsible for the annoying sanitized audio I am experiencing with CDs ? BTW,changing players doesn't help it,only switching to vinyl removes it in my system.
Reply
post #30 of 836
12/26/06 at 3:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ssportclay View Post
What other factors would be responsible for the superiority of vinyl besides the signal damage of digital convertion which seems to be responsible for the annoying sanitized audio I am experiencing with CDs ? BTW,changing players doesn't help it,only switching to vinyl removes it in my system.
It isnt superior in technical terms it has a massive treble roll-off and a dynamic range in the upper freqencies at about 20 - 30db, you just prefer it and that is fine it isnt my place to tell you what to like, but, it's not the same thing as technically superior. Perhaps what you do not like about CD is the accuracy
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Dedicated Source Components

Head-Fi's Best Sellers

Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Dedicated Source Components › On the superiority of vinyl