In the studio, digital audio was a significant improvement in both sound quality and flexibility over analog tape. For home listening, CDs were a significant improvement in both sound quality and flexibility over LPs and tape.
The only audible improvement to CD sound came with oversampling. That restored the last sliver of response at the top end that had been filtered off before. Not a huge improvement, but audible to some people.
Audible transparency is all you need. There are lots of formats capable of transparency... lossy files all the way up. If you had ever done any controlled listening tests (blind, level matched, direct A/B switched) you would know exactly where the line of transparency is. Without doing a proper listening test, you are only guessing and being guided by your bias.
I would agree that vast majority or random listeners would have a hard time distinguishing various formats/files. Given that such file came from the same origin and was treated with same care.
But I have made specific reference to first decade of CD format. And it’s shortcomings. It was in response to claims that CD was always superior. Even engineers who did A/B comparisons in early years of CD format notice those differences. But yeah, they all agreed that it was nice to not deal with pops, clicks and surface noise. And as you pointed out, there might be something nostalgic about vinyl as even some of them can’t really explain why they prefer vinyl reproduction for their own personal use and joy.
CDs were superior to LPs in just about all specs from the very beginning. Playback of CDs is what was improved in the mid 1980s, not the format itself. Early on, the last bit of high frequency information that had been rolled off by NOS filtering was restored making redbook CD playback audibly perfect. It's important to note that the rolloff on the high end applied in LP cutting was even stronger than the one found in NOS DACs. CD sound was superior to LPs from the very beginning. I know. I was there. I saw the whole industry change almost overnight.
Whenever I complete a mix, the last step is to bounce it down to 16/44.1 and compare that to the original mix. In a few decades of work, I've never found a single audible difference.
I'd suggest that if you want to know how sound reproduction works, it would be best to look to the Audio Engineering Society, or to speak with professionals like Gregorio. I wouldn't recommend getting your information from youtube videos produced by high end audio dealers and manufacturers. They aren't selling fidelity. They are selling products. They have a vested interest in skewing things in their own favor.
Was digital really so great before a quality converters as the one from Wadia entered the game? I would argue otherwise. In fact, many engineers sensed that CD format arrived 10years premature and it took at least a decade to make it somewhat listenable.
Yes! Some early CDs I recall that were equally stupendous to that particular Dire Straits´ release were Rush Moving Pictures, Don Henley’s Building the Perfect Beast, and stuff from Boston and Steely Dan to name a few. Not sure how any of this is related to the topic of colored sound from DACs or amps, which is quite silly.
Same with the 1983 BT Dark Side of the Moon CD, among many, many others. That poster must have selective hearing and cherry picking you tube posts in attempt to make his case.
I was around when digital audio production was introduced in one of the premier studios in Australia. The engineers, well staff in general, were very impressed how the CD sounded identical to the master tape under double blind tests.
Also, the introduction of CD was a huge gamble for Sony and Phillips as no labels wanted anything to do with it. LP records were already on the decline and it seemed compact cassettes were the future of the consumer market. In fact, CD wouldn't have happened if Sony and Phillips did not own their own production facilities. Given the huge gamble, the Boards of both companies set some strict conditions, one of which was the CD had to be an improvement in fidelity over current products (ie LPs and cassettes) at the proof of concept stage. To that end they commissioned an independent panel of experts to conduct listening tests and they concluded there was no so sound difference between the CD and flat transfer copy of the master tape.
I remember going to hi fi shows back then and the crowd being wowed by the sound of CD, compared to the turntables and cassette decks.
In the studio, digital audio was a significant improvement in both sound quality and flexibility over analog tape. For home listening, CDs were a significant improvement in both sound quality and flexibility over LPs and tape. We live in a golden age for fidelity and technology keeps making sound mixing and playback both audibly perfect and more and more convenient.
The only audible improvement to CD sound came with oversampling in the mid 1980s. That restored the last sliver of response at the top end that had been filtered off before. Not a huge improvement, but audible to some people.
Audible transparency is all you need. There are lots of formats capable of transparency... lossy files all the way up to files with massive amounts of data. They all exceed human ears' ability to hear, so they all sound the same to humans. If you had ever done any controlled listening tests (blind, level matched, direct A/B switched) you would know exactly where the line of transparency lies. Without doing a proper listening test, you are only guessing and being guided by your bias.
I don't think you're aware of how things work in production. Every post house has a single set of tape machines in their machine room. Their purpose is to transfer old masters to digital so they can bring them into the digital mixing suites to work with them. Maintaining analog production equipment in spec is labor intensive and costly. Last time I checked, there was only one studio in Los Angeles that had a fully analog recording and mixing stage. It's a novelty. That isn't the sort of equipment that is generally used.
The engineers you mention are wonderful talents. But they are pretty much retired. They worked in a different age. If you are interested in learning how production sound is done today, you're in luck. Gregorio is a professional sound engineer with some impressive credits. He has also taught the subject. If you listen to what he says, you will certainly learn something.
I'm being very polite and offering you a clue. If you are just here to argue with people who know more than you do, I don't have time for that.
I am not here to argue per se. Honestly, it is kind of exhausting to follow different points everyone is trying to make and examples used to support their argument. My response is strictly an answer your suggestions that $200 vinyl rig is all you really need and there are (it should be) no benefits to invest in quality turntable that addressed issues that are culprit of poor/cheap turntables made for hipsters who just got into vinyl bc they think that it’s cool. Nor will I argue or try to convince someone to invest small fortune in order to enjoy vinyl at very high level. Since personally, I feel there’s number of quality products that can provide excellent quality in more realistic price range. As you know and pointed this out, vinyl is a format with many flaws. And to minimize those inherited problems, manufacturers go to great lengths. Some do it better than others, clearly. Some, offer boutique like experience with price tag of a decent car. That’s their prerogative. Others, like Rega, offer turntables for all budget. And I won’t generalize but Rega does offer a pretty good bang for your buck.
Aside from hardware (not getting into tonearms/carts or phono gain stage) there’s pressing quality and mastering in itself. To get truly outstanding results with vinyl playback, near perfection needs to happen at all stages. So, yeah, with that being said, it’s not a format I would recommend for just anyone. You also mentioned maintenance involved with record collection. True. And that’s another reason I would not suggest getting into vinyl for anyone who didn’t dive deep into basics on how it works and what it takes.
For me personally, it’s not just about those certain nuances that make vinyl record listening enjoyable. It’s not even about an amazing art work and photography work from recording sessions or the stories behind it. Simply speaking, with limited option of flipping through Tidal or Qobuz library or your own play lists, you actually need to give your entire attention to record you pull out of the sleeve and listen. More often than not, listen to an entire record. And I feel that it’s a quality that is often lost with comfy streaming services.
As to those “dinosaur engineers I mentioned, well. They’re far from retirement. Most, own their mastering studios/labels. Most are extremely busy trying to push overwhelming amount of work out the door. I could be wrong but 8 of Kevin’s recent remastering works is on Amazon’s top 10 list. I didn’t really looked into it but I am guessing it has to be related with latest, extremely successful work done for Blue Note. On top of all that, he’s starting his own recording label that won’t have a single resistor in audio chain. From tube mics (I think he personally owns 14 of those) to heavily modified tube Macintosh amps used for cutting rig. The only other place like this exists in England and maybe Germany.
And I am pretty sure that product coming out from that facility will be quite amazing. Regardless of what others might think about their “old school” approach or gear used to accomplished that.
This poster is not cherry picking anything.
And I will be happy to give you an opportunity for A/B test. Vinyl vs CD. Given that my digital rig is far more expensive than vinyl rig, I still feel confident that you might have an issue giving a win to CD. Not talking about technical aspects but music reproduction enjoyment.
Pretty sure Sony was not using $100 CD players for those so called independent panels. And like I have said. First decade (more or less) were not CDs finest hour. Change took turn with introduction of high quality AD/DA converters like Wadia. Not sure if Wadia was the first of its kind by it sure made many feel that CD has much more to offer. Since digital technology is marching forward in pretty rapid pace, I expect it to get quite amazing within next 5 years or so.
Sure is. Won’t hear me complaining about that. Lol
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And that’s why there’s more to it than keeping it in digital domain or purist analog transfer. It’s mostly in hands of those who know how to get the best out of the performance and can use their skills to give us an exceptional music.
Records are way more expensive to manufacturer, I think? But what’s interesting is many of the old CDs have stopped playing. There is a phenomenon of digital rot. This is noted especially with the CDs that were made in the 1980s but also any “non-Red Book” CD format. Formats in such non-Red Book would be DualDisk where one side of the disk was a MP4 video and the other side music. Such “novelties” present a new issue to CD longevity.
But interestingly vinyl presents as a whole many more “issues”. With warping, scratching, wearing down of the grooves. Really the issues are almost endless. The types of warps are maybe a science in themselves? Or of course the skipping and skipping-repeat issue, maybe the most troublesome? Interesting that the introduction of many devices helps reduce problems. A record washer will dramatically decrease the pops. One test that is fascinating is to play the beginning of a record, then clean it, especially if it’s never been cleaned before, then put it back on to find a 3/4th or more reduction of surface noise. The noise you thought was the vinyl was in fact the dirt in the vinyl. Often it can even be close to a 90% reduction of noise. At times of course it can make zero perceivable change.
This now brings me to the quality of table. In the 1980s it truly was possible to make those thrift store table purchases. $45 could in fact result in a Shure V15 cartridge model/audiophile turntable. But that was 30 years ago. It seems those moments of luck now are lost in history. And what incredible moments they were! Today the biggest difference in cheap turntables is how the arm tracks. In fact many cheaper turntables will replay way way more surface noise. Crazy as it may sound, the better turntables actually place the needle way farther down in the vinyl groove, bypassing the noise.
All this was learned from a trajectory of thrift store turntables to better audiophile purchases.
Still people forget that dance music was one of the last genres to make it over to CD. In fact even today many dance records are not made into CD. All the single songs and 12 inch remix albums were a vinyl “only” experience (almost 100%) into the 2000s. I’m not going to reiterate how the bass is different on those dance (vinyl) records, at risk of continuing the responses to the opposite. But the folks in the 12” community all feel this way. Maybe preference, maybe expectation bias, but I don’t think so?
Are we off-topic? I don’t think so, as the introduction of warmth is one way of trying to “color” the DAC or amp.......to somehow change the digital signal?
This poster is not cherry picking anything.
And I will be happy to give you an opportunity for A/B test. Vinyl vs CD. Given that my digital rig is far more expensive than vinyl rig, I still feel confident that you might have an issue giving a win to CD. Not talking about technical aspects but music reproduction enjoyment.
Pretty sure Sony was not using $100 CD players for those so called independent panels. And like I have said. First decade (more or less) were not CDs finest hour. Change took turn with introduction of high quality AD/DA converters like Wadia. Not sure if Wadia was the first of its kind by it sure made many feel that CD has much more to offer. Since digital technology is marching forward in pretty rapid pace, I expect it to get quite amazing within next 5 years or so.
No need to do that, I already have a top notch analogue and digital front ends. Most of my CDs and other digital media sound better than vinyl (but then I only collect CDs that have been mastered with some care). I am always sus with people that say they have both media and then claim one always sounds better than the other. I'm sure I could convince a novice that one format sounds better than the other simply by choosing which albums to play.
For me, and many others like me, the differences in mastering/production have a far higher influence on the sound than if it is a record, CD, SACD or other digital media. I know when I compare the best produced of the two, even with some of my direct to disk Sheffields, the digital medial always comes out ahead as the metrics say it should. Back in the day I used come across the occasional pre-recorded cassette which sounded better than the vinyl version simply because the record was poorly mastered.
As for early CD players, they were ahead of record players even at that early point. Most people heard it that way and most hi fi publications back then saw CD as a significant advance in sound quality. What you seem to forget is that in the early days CD players were very expensive and so too were CDs. Not may people had them. I was amongst the first in my peer group to purchase a CD player in 1985, a Pioneer Elite which was superior in sound quality to my Linn TT (by then most CD players had oversampling DACs with better filters). And while those early CDs were a mixed bag, some reflected the poor transfers, high generation or inappropriate masters etc due to rushing titles out, some of them are the best sounding digital versions, free from the loudness wars and are quite valuable on the used market.
Then there is the issue that many of these early CDs had pre-emphasis (mainly those mastered/produced in Japan) which often did not place the de-emphasis tag in the appropriate sub-code or TOC, meaning the CD player does not de-emphasise them. I have quite a few of them which sounded a bit thin and tinny but turned out to be a revelation once I de-emphasised the file myself.
Records are way more expensive to manufacturer, I think? But what’s interesting is many of the old CDs have stopped playing. There is a phenomenon of digital rot. This is noted especially with the CDs that were made in the 1980s but also any “non-Red Book” CD format. Formats in such non-Red Book would be DualDisk where one side of the disk was a MP4 video and the other side music. Such “novelties” present a new issue to CD longevity.
Oh this chestnut. I literally have thousands of CDs, many dating back to the early 1980s, and have never come across disc rot. I know there was one manufacturer that had a bad batch which developed rot but other than that it is as rare as hens teeth.
I also have just as many, if not more, records. I take good care of them but I still get the occasional mould and disc warping and they do wear. It may be subtle and not noticeable until you compare it with a pristine, rarely played same record.
Btw, that was one of the good points of the laser TT I once had. You could play almost anything on it. Fine scratches and crackles would disappear as the light read deep into the grooves. The bad point was that any speck of dust affected it. I spent more time cleaning records than listening to them.
I have $60,000 in CDs, if you would like to visit be happy to show you a handful of personally found bad discs. Not one manufacturer, read the link I put. You’ve been lucky. If you have thousands, I could bet your in for a surprise!
Oh this chestnut. I literally have thousands of CDs, many dating back to the early 1980s, and have never come across disc rot. I know there was one manufacturer that had a bad batch which developed rot but other than that it is as rare as hens teeth.
I also have just as many, if not more, records. I take good care of them but I still get the occasional mould and disc warping and they do wear. It may be subtle and not noticeable until you compare it with a pristine, rarely played same record.
Btw, that was one of the good points of the laser TT I once had. You could play almost anything on it. Fine scratches and crackles would disappear as the light read deep into the grooves. The bad point was that any speck of dust affected it. I spent more time cleaning records than listening to them.
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