[Headphonefred]

Hey guys, title says it all, i hear that record players etc have superior sound to digital players eg ipod or stereo system. Is this true, and why? Comments much appreciated

 

[Head Injury]

No, it isn't true.
 
Analog and digital are two ways to store audio. Everything you hear is the result of an analog electrical signal run through a speaker or headphone driver. By definition, the distinction is that analog mediums store audio smoothly, in a near infinite number of steps (the groove of a vinyl record, for example, looks like a wave). Digital stores it in discreet steps (ones and zeroes at a certain rate, not infinite).
 
Analog storage is flawed because the medium is easily changed. You can warp a vinyl record, dust will cause noise, and over time the medium will be worn down with use. Even at its best vinyl is limited by physics and will have a lower signal-to-noise ratio than digital (among other problems, usually corrected by the mastering process). The problem with digital is that you have to convert its discreet steps into the ~infinite steps of an electrical signal. That's actually easier than it sounds, because all sound can be expressed as a complex series of sine waves. So you only need an approximation, then you can just connect the dots. Even a very basic DAC will convert a digital signal to analog with better accuracy than (perhaps even the best) analog systems.
 
Where the analog > digital thing comes from is two things:

1. Nostalgia and the love of tangibility
2. Mastering, since many old vinyl records have better mastering than modern CDs. This is not because of some inherent disadvantage of digital

 
Lossy digital files can sound worse, because you're throwing away data. Lossless files can be used to capture the sound of a record and it will theoretically sound exactly the same. So in a sense digital is "perfect".

 

[TMRaven]

Yes, mastering is a good part of why people consider vinyls to have better sound quality than their CD counterparts.  Often times vinyl masterings of a particular album will have 4-6db more of dynamic range than other variants.

 

[LFF]

 
Quote:

Where the analog > digital thing comes from is two things:

1. Nostalgia and the love of tangibility
2. Mastering, since many old vinyl records have better mastering than modern CDs. This is not because of some inherent disadvantage of digital

This is the major key for something to sound good! MASTERING!
 
The reason most vinyl sounds better is because vinyl has a threshold as to how loud a signal can be so mastering is usually very conservative in the dynamic area. However, there are some vinyl records which have been mastered using brickwalled digital tapes/CD's like "Californication".
 
All things being equal, a regular CD can sound just as good as vinyl if mastered correctly. Mastering guru Steve Hoffman once said that he sync'd up three masters...the master tape, the master vinyl lacquer and the master CD. He said that listening very closely, under ideal conditions, there was no difference between the master tape and the master vinyl lacquer. The only difference between the master tape and the CD was a slight loss of ambiance.
 
Considering the inherent playback problems of vinyl, all things being equal, I'll take a slight loss of ambiance any day of the week over clicks, pops, warps and vinyl gremlins.
 

 

[PurpleAngel]

Quote:

Hey guys, title says it all, i hear that record players etc have superior sound to digital players eg ipod or stereo system. Is this true, and why? Comments much appreciated

Audio music starts off as analog (wave) audio, vinyl is an analog (wave) recording, we hear in analog (wave).
Digital (zero & ones) is a cheaper and more reliable way of storing music, then analog.
I'm guessing recording studio have very expensive ADCs (Analog to Digital Converters) for storing audio in a digital format.
As the audio we listen to is stored in a digital format, we need a DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) to hear the audio because we hear humans hear in analog.
Every time the audio is converted from analog to digital to analog, it going to lose some of the sound quality.
Like a copy of a copy of a copy.
Now if you have a sound studio with ADCs and DACs worth thousands of dollars, you are only going to lose a very very small amount of quality in the audio.
Your digital home audio player or portable audio player uses a DAC that costs maybe a dollar or two.
In the past, audio was recorded on the analog (wave) tape, records are/were analog copies of a analog signal, your record player does not need to use a DAC for converting.
I'm not an audio engineer and I'm sure there are factors that I have missed, but it might help answer in some way your question.
 
 
 

 

[IPodPJ]

Quote:

 

This is the major key for something to sound good! MASTERING!
 
The reason most vinyl sounds better is because vinyl has a threshold as to how loud a signal can be so mastering is usually very conservative in the dynamic area. However, there are some vinyl records which have been mastered using brickwalled digital tapes/CD's like "Californication".
 
All things being equal, a regular CD can sound just as good as vinyl if mastered correctly. Mastering guru Steve Hoffman once said that he sync'd up three masters...the master tape, the master vinyl lacquer and the master CD. He said that listening very closely, under ideal conditions, there was no difference between the master tape and the master vinyl lacquer. The only difference between the master tape and the CD was a slight loss of ambiance.
 
Considering the inherent playback problems of vinyl, all things being equal, I'll take a slight loss of ambiance any day of the week over clicks, pops, warps and vinyl gremlins.
 

Here, here!  When CDs first came out they sounded awful because the DACs and filters used were horrible.  It was a new technology so digital didn't live up to the hype in the ears of those who knew what superior reproduction was supposed to sound like.  But that was 30 years ago and digital has come a LONG way.  With a good digital source and DAC there is no need to deal with the pops and clicks, but people still stand by their love of vinyl and there's nothing wrong with that if it makes them happy.  I could never deal with it though.
 

 

[EthanWiner]

Quote:

all sound can be expressed as a complex series of sine waves. So you only need an approximation, then you can just connect the dots.

 
Exactly. If the goal is high fidelity - and I think it should be - modern competent digital beats vinyl (and analog tape) in every way one could possibly assess fidelity. I'll add a bit to why some people like the sound of vinyl records:
 
The background noise and crackles of vinyl are different on the left and right channels. Since these noises are loud enough to be audible, they artificially enhance the width of the recording. If you add stereo noise to a mono music source, the result sounds wider than the original mono source.
 
To protect the expensive record cutting heads, the limiters used by mastering engineers compress the very highest frequencies more than the rest of the audio band. This adds a glassy sheen to the music, though the end result is less dynamic range than digital, not more.
 
So in all cases the quality of vinyl is worse than digital. But some people like these effects, and many confuse the degradation with higher fidelity.
 
--Ethan

 

[kiteki]

 
These are very good posts.
 
I'll just interject, in theory vinyl has higher fidelity than 16/44.1 CD quality, though I'd like to think 24/48 blu-ray audio quality really has 'surpassed' vinyl.
 

 

[Head Injury]

Quote:

These are very good posts.
 
I'll just interject, in theory vinyl has higher fidelity than 16/44.1 CD quality, though I'd like to think 24/48 blu-ray audio quality really has 'surpassed' vinyl.

In theory, vinyl can record higher frequencies than 44.1 kHz. In reality, we can't hear those frequencies, a typical microphone doesn't pick up anything meaningful above those frequencies, and instruments don't make much sound above those frequencies. Also in reality, the grooves must be very precise to record those frequencies. You won't get "high fidelity" for very long because the needle is going to wear the fine details out.
 
Vinyl has a lower dynamic range than 16 bit digital audio. I think it's usually around ~80 dB, which is about 13 bits.

 

[JRG1990]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Head Injury /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
Vinyl has a lower dynamic range than 16 bit digital audio. I think it's usually around ~80 dB, which is about 13 bits.

It's depends on the record it's normally somewhere between 50 - 70db.
 

 

[kiteki]

Quote:

In theory, vinyl can record higher frequencies than 44.1 kHz. In reality, we can't hear those frequencies, a typical microphone doesn't pick up anything meaningful above those frequencies, and instruments don't make much sound above those frequencies. Also in reality, the grooves must be very precise to record those frequencies. You won't get "high fidelity" for very long because the needle is going to wear the fine details out.
 
Vinyl has a lower dynamic range than 16 bit digital audio. I think it's usually around ~80 dB, which is about 13 bits.

 
24/192 is closer to the original analog waveform.
 

 

[Head Injury]

Quote:

24/192 is closer to the original analog waveform.
 

Could you tell me

1. The source of this?
2. What the axes represent?
3. What is being measured, the digital or analog waveform?
4. With what equipment?

 

 

[mikeaj]

In the above graph, note that there are straight lines connecting the dots (samples presumably), visible on the 16/44.1.  That's not how the D/A would actually work.

 

[kiteki]

Quote:

 
Could you tell me

1. The source of this?
2. What the axes represent?
3. What is being measured, the digital or analog waveform?
4. With what equipment?

 

I drew it in mspaint. =]
 
Here is the link - http://www.cicsmemoryplayer.com/index.php?n=CMP.02Upsampling

 
Quote:

In the above graph, note that there are straight lines connecting the dots (samples presumably), visible on the 16/44.1.  That's not how the D/A would actually work.

I think the lines will still be straight, if the D/A doesn't alter them.
 
 
Edit:  I'm trying to understand why non-oversampling D/A's are supposed to sound more 'analog' or 'vinyl'...
 

 

[khaos974]

Quote:

Quote:

 
Could you tell me

1. The source of this?
2. What the axes represent?
3. What is being measured, the digital or analog waveform?
4. With what equipment?

I drew it in mspaint. =]
 
Here is the link - http://www.cicsmemoryplayer.com/index.php?n=CMP.02Upsampling

 
Quote:

In the above graph, note that there are straight lines connecting the dots (samples presumably), visible on the 16/44.1.  That's not how the D/A would actually work.

I think the lines will still be straight, if the D/A doesn't alter them.

That's a faulty representation, for one thing, the low pass filter at the end of the D/A conversion doesn't allow those straight lines, the the analog electrical signal at the output will actually be nice curves and not some jagged mess.
 


Quote:

Audio music starts off as analog (wave) audio, vinyl is an analog (wave) recording, we hear in analog (wave).
Digital (zero & ones) is a cheaper and more reliable way of storing music, then analog.
I'm guessing recording studio have very expensive ADCs (Analog to Digital Converters) for storing audio in a digital format.
As the audio we listen to is stored in a digital format, we need a DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) to hear the audio because we hear humans hear in analog.
Every time the audio is converted from analog to digital to analog, it going to lose some of the sound quality.
Like a copy of a copy of a copy.
Now if you have a sound studio with ADCs and DACs worth thousands of dollars, you are only going to lose a very very small amount of quality in the audio.
Your digital home audio player or portable audio player uses a DAC that costs maybe a dollar or two.
In the past, audio was recorded on the analog (wave) tape, records are/were analog copies of a analog signal, your record player does not need to use a DAC for converting.
I'm not an audio engineer and I'm sure there are factors that I have missed, but it might help answer in some way your question.

You assert that analog copy is perfect, that's quite far from the truth:
- the signal is tortured through the phono stage when the huge RIAA equalization is applied
- to make the vinyl master, you actually need to carve a disk with a diamond cutting head, a far from lossless/perfect process, softer details are lost in the cutting process, from an engineering pov, SNR is much lower for LPs than for CDs.
- left and right are never totally separated, crosstalk is abysmal on LPs
- not to mention all the playback issues related to the differences between the center and the exterior of the disk, the stylus erasing details at each playback
- mono bass instead of stereo bass...