"the vinyl has been replaced by the CD, largely inferior in quality" - Page 7

Quote:

Originally Posted by HyperDuel 

Not a deal when the whole purpose of vinyl is analog playback.  Have heard of plenty of vinyl rips I'm not impressed with any of it.  Digitizing vinyl completely change the whole sound structure of it, which is something that I don't like.  
 

 

No it does not, that is utterly incorrect and verifiably incorrect, time and frequency and amplitude information is transparently captured. There have been several time-aligned DBT between vinyl and vinyl rips and the result is always that listeners cannot tell them apart, this goes all the way back to Ivor Tiefenbrun in 1984 with the BAS who utterly failed to detect a *nominally* 16 bit Sony PCM-F1 in circuit but has been repeated oft since with better gear, see MatrixHifi's tests and they are vinyl lovers to a man. Perhaps you are allowing magical thinking to cloud your judgment ?
 

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The fact that Jarre - predominantly an electronic musician who takes full advantage of digital mastering and 5.1 releases - is hyping up vinyl is utterly hilarious. One of his best albums, Zoolook was released at the dawn of the CD era in the mid-80s, hyped as being DDD: Digitally recorded, mixed and mastered. He sure jumped on the bandwagon for the 'inferior' format.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick_charles 
 

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Originally Posted by nick_charles 

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Originally Posted by nick_charles 

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Yer out!

se

Did a double blind test before and I could tell the difference most of the time between vinyl and the vinyl rip.  The key word is most because out of five sections I was wrong once, so call it one out of five. It's nice when local audiophiles in my area get together because we do test like this often to prove or disprove many different audiophile things. 

 I don't read everything with whole truth because as we all know in audio you have to trust your ears.  People love the Benchmark DAC yet when I heard the DAC it was so cold sounding to my ears that I don't want to listen to it again.    

Even without a blind test I'm usually very good in telling that's analog or digital.  
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick_charles 

 

No it does not, that is utterly incorrect and verifiably incorrect, time and frequency and amplitude information is transparently captured. There have been several time-aligned DBT between vinyl and vinyl rips and the result is always that listeners cannot tell them apart, this goes all the way back to Ivor Tiefenbrun in 1984 with the BAS who utterly failed to detect a *nominally* 16 bit Sony PCM-F1 in circuit but has been repeated oft since with better gear, see MatrixHifi's tests and they are vinyl lovers to a man. Perhaps you are allowing magical thinking to cloud your judgment ?
 

Sure for 1:

From what I remember the speakers were Maggies, the preamp was from Conrad Johnson, amps were high-end Adcoms, TT was a older VPI with a high output Denon cartridge, and the computer DAC is an Ayre QB-9.  I forgot the speaker wire and RCA interconnects used.  For the vinyl rip a different phono-preamp was used to do the ADC, but I forgot on the details.  

One big factor of the test is that when in the listening room you only see the speakers and noting else.  The speaker wire is long enough that the Adcom amps and the rest of the equipment was in a different room altogether.  Before starting the test my friends and I was looking at 24/96 vinyl rips that one of my friends did and all of us decide to use Kind of Blue because well everyone knows the album inside and out.  The vinyl rip was done on a reissue release with the speed corrected.  

So What? was used because it was the first song on side A and of course my friends and I know the song inside and out.  

You have a netbook on your lap with AIM on so you can tell the person who is in the another room to start playing, change from A to B, or stop (this is to cut down talking and makes things go faster).  You listen to So What? in five sessions with both the vinyl and the vinyl rip playing at the same time.  Each session can take as long as you want.  

The one thing about the test is that my friend who was working with the stuff in the other room will not lie to you on your answers.  

For me each session was about five minutes a piece. Now since you are not in the room with the equipment (remember you are looking at speakers only) the friend in the other room can make A and B anything they want, so there's no way you know that A is always vinyl and B is always the vinyl rip.  You start off listening to A and when you want to go to B AIM the guy on the netbook and few seconds later the source is changed.  Want to change it back tell the guy to go back to A.  When you are finish with the session tell the friend you are done.  

The goal of each session is to pick which one is the vinyl.  When the session is finish use AIM to tell your friend your answer.  For session one I believed that A was vinyl because to my ears B was missing the richness of the piano to my ears (Bill Evans piano playing wasn't quite there on B).  You will not know the answer until you are finish with the five sessions.  Session two I got wrong where I choose A (the vinyl was actually B).  Sessions three-five I got right.  

After the five sessions I got out of the room with the speakers and talk to my friends who were waiting to do the test and I look at my scores:  four right and one wrong at session two.  

It's not a perfect way of doing this type of test, but I was good enough that I was able to tell which one is the vinyl and which one is the vinyl rip. 

Later when some of my friends were doing the test one guy only got one right, and two got all five right.  

Trust your ears.

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Sounds pretty flat and the voice does not sound real at all.

Musiland Monitor 02 US > DH Labs White Lightning RCAs > Marantz 2230 receiver > Grado RS-1i

At this time I have a very good vinyl rig that I have no reason to upgrade the DAC at this time.  If I get the album of where that song is from I will say 100% for sure that it will sound a lot better in analog.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry 

 

 

1) we're in the science forum, please let us know about the test procedure and on what gear...I hope it wasn't on the Musiland 02US coz its OP275 opamps sound horrid.

 

2) when you listen to the FLAC sample I posted in the previous page, does it have "digital" written all over it to your ears? on what gear/media player/headphones?

Explain the procedure you used to level match the two sources and to what degree you matched them.

se

I didn't do the procedure to level match the sources since none of my equipment was mine.  When I was at the house and the source was being changed I didn't hear no level mismatch at all.  When people arrived at the house everything was setup to do the listening sessions.  The only thing that I can think of is a slight volume adjustment on Windows thru the Ayre and I guess using a sound meter to make sure the db level is the same for both sources.  I don't know if this is true but this is the only thing that I can think of right now.

I said in my last post that it is not a perfect test.  I was invited to be a "test dummy" if you know what I mean.    

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Eddy 

 

Explain the procedure you used to level match the two sources and to what degree you matched them.

 

se

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by HyperDuel 

I didn't do the procedure to level match the sources since none of my equipment was mine.  When I was at the house and the source was being changed I didn't hear no level mismatch at all.  When people arrived at the house everything was setup to do the listening sessions.  The only thing that I can think of is a slight volume adjustment on Windows thru the Ayre and I guess using a sound meter to make sure the db level is the same for both sources.  I don't know if this is true but this is the only thing that I can think of right now.

 

I said in my last post that it is not a perfect test.  I was invited to be a "test dummy" if you know what I mean.    

Small differences in level often aren't perceived as a difference in level. Instead, they're typically perceived as a difference in sound quality, with the slightly higher level being perceived as being higher quality. This phenomenon is well known and has been exploited by huckster audio salesmen for quite a long time to influence people's purchases (i.e. to get them to buy the more expensive model or the one they make the most commission on).

And using a sound meter isn't nearly sufficient to level match to within 0.1dB. That needs to be done at the electrical level with a reasonably accurate volt meter.

se

I already said it is not a perfect test.  I do not know how everything was perfect level wise, and my guess with the meter, well it is a guess.  Remember there was one guy at the sessions who was able to get it right once.  Even without doing blind-testing I can still tell a difference between digital and analog.  

Trust your ears. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Eddy 

 

 

Small differences in level often aren't perceived as a difference in level. Instead, they're typically perceived as a difference in sound quality, with the slightly higher level being perceived as being higher quality. This phenomenon is well known and has been exploited by huckster audio salesmen for quite a long time to influence people's purchases (i.e. to get them to buy the more expensive model or the one they make the most commission on).

 

And using a sound meter isn't nearly sufficient to level match to within 0.1dB. That needs to be done at the electrical level with a reasonably accurate volt meter.

 

se

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by HyperDuel 

Even without doing blind-testing I can still tell a difference between digital and analog.  

 

But without blind testing, that means nothing (at least not in the Science forum). People also claim to hear a difference when they put photographs of themselves in their freezers.

se

But I already did a blind test and 4/5 times I could tell that's vinyl playing.  I did this with an open opinion and I was shock that I was able to tell the difference.  Specs doesn't mean everything, trust your ears. 

I'm done with this thread.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Eddy 

 

But without blind testing, that means nothing (at least not in the Science forum). People also claim to hear a difference when they put photographs of themselves in their freezers.

 

se