[hakunamakaka]

Vinyl as a format isn't leaving us. Huge amount of music was mastered on it and even now lots of stuff is being released. Popularity is actually growing, while CD's are declining and were surpassed last year by such and old format. Lot's of stuff is non existing in digital domain as well. The ones that coexist can easily be poorly ripped.

 

[bigshot]

Streaming is the new format of choice. CDs are joining LPs as an obsolete format. Lately I've been trying to figure out a way for streaming to work conveniently in my life. Haven't quite worked out all the bugs yet, but it's looking promising. I might start a thread on that sometime.

 

[hakunamakaka]

Streaming is convenient, but music library to my preferences is awful. Tried all of them, nothing comes close. Stuck with spotify only because their app works flawlessly. This is maybe 20% of my total listening experience...Don't like watermarks of streaming services. No idea how spotify manages to sound worse with their bitrate 320kbps than good 128 rip on soundcloud or youtube.

Good LP simply bests digital in my setup, I only use it when I'm lazy or listening to long sets

 

[bigshot]

LPs are inferior to digital in just about every metric.

Currently, I have Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited. Amazon has the deepest catalog of any streaming service... 75 million songs. If you can't find something to play from that selection, you aren't looking very hard. I'm going to make a decision about which one to keep in the Spring. I'm leaning towards Apple because it interfaces with my media server perfectly. But Amazon works best with my Alexa devices. Being able to walk into a room and just speak the name of the music you want to hear and have it start playing is incredible. It allows me to listen to more music... much more than having to go through the ritual of playing an LP.

I just ordered a set of battery powered bluetooth speakers. Those will make it even easier, because my music won't be tethered to a power plug any more.

 

[hakunamakaka]

Lots of amazing stuff being released through labels which simply avoid streaming platform no matter what format they choose. You won't find anything by shimmering moods, limited amount of luaka bop. Modern artist like killa dancing pika pika, knowing it's just not there....If you go to older era it gets worse.
amazon in all regards is not better than spotify. I would miss on so much good music sticking to these streaming platforms..youtube beats any of them by far. Only disadvantage can be quality and tracks removed by copyright

 

[jeremymayf]

The argument you’re quoting isn’t really an argument, it’s marketing nonsense long since discredited and only wheeled out these days by those suffering from marketing induced placebo who haven’t actually done a controlled DBT for themselves.

Lol, kinda figured as much. Thanks to all who responded, it was worth hearing an up to date perspective on the matter.

About 20 years ago I fell into an Hd600 hole and pretty much been there ever since. A while back a friend at work expressed interest in better sounding headphone gear. Gently guiding him along has waked me from a Rip Van Winkle-like slumber. His latest endeavor (poor broke person) is an R2R dac about which I could say very little. My understanding was the technology around DACs was pretty mature even back in my heyday. Researching this subject is what originally landed me at this thread.

Along the way I stumbled upon a DAC-Amp combo that seems relevant to the original topic: the RME-ADI-2. If I understand correctly, this device allows one to process/equalize the audio signal prior to the DAC rendering the digital information into an analogue signal....is this correct? Is this preferable to equalizing/filtering the old fashioned analogue way? I realize this is neither coloring your DAC or AMP but rather coloring the audio signal itself and then rendering it via a (hopefully) accurate DAC and AMP. If coloring is the objective, wouldn't this be the method by which to go about it?

 

[bigshot]

Yes, digital EQ is preferable to analogue EQ. But having EQ on the DAC is only preferable if the DAC is your only source. In a home system, you would want to connect everything to a receiver using digital and have the EQ performed in the receiver. That way the correction would be applied to all your sources.

 

[IDrinkLava]

Vinyl as a format isn't leaving us. Huge amount of music was mastered on it and even now lots of stuff is being released. Popularity is actually growing, while CD's are declining and were surpassed last year by such and old format. Lot's of stuff is non existing in digital domain as well. The ones that coexist can easily be poorly ripped.

You do know that all modern vinyls are just the digital masters with some low-cut filters applied so they playback correctly on a turntable, right?

 

[bigshot]

I think a lot of the appeal of vinyl is the ritual of carefully taking out the disk, cleaning it, carefully lowering the needle into the groove... It's designed to make people who love repetitive rituals happy. Like a toy to keep OCD busy. It has nothing to do with sound.

That said, there are some old titles that never made it to CD. LPs were in production for over three decades. There's a lot of ephemeral music in there for people who like to do thrift shopping for dollar a disk rarities. I did that for a while until my house was stuffed with records. Now I can't move because my friends have told me they will never help me move my record and book collection again.

 

[danadam]

No idea how spotify manages to sound worse with their bitrate 320kbps than good 128 rip on soundcloud or youtube.

Any specific examples?

 

[hakunamakaka]

You do know that all modern vinyls are just the digital masters with some low-cut filters applied so they playback correctly on a turntable, right?

I know, what is your point here ? Good mastering is a skill no matter which format it is. Music today is mainly mastered on the go or even done through auto-mastering software to cut costs. This usually ends in unexciting and compressed sound. The amount of released music is huge, but the quality is lagging behind

Yello - Great mission(1983), Martin Denny - Exotica(1957), Eden Ahbez Full moon(1960) just a few examples how good old music can sound no matter it's age and old tech. Many things to learn for modern releases. unfortunately good mastering engineers are becoming very expensive and rarity in music business.

I did that for a while until my house was stuffed with records. Now I can't move because my friends have told me they will never help me move my record and book collection again.

You surely don't appreciate your record collection. When you invest your time, dig and look for stuff you will know what you are buying and it will hold value for you. If streaming services fully satisfies you, no need to bother.
I collect records not because of the ritual, but because of music selection there. Plus I adore the sound of my turntable setup with certain music, especially related to acoustic instruments/human voices. When music fits the coloring of TT setup I buy LP even if there is cheaper digital version available. It just sounds way better to my ears.
With modern electronic/hip hop music.. I mainly stick in digital domain

 

[hakunamakaka]

Any specific examples?

From modern rap of Kendricks. Every streaming service that I tried has it's on flavor on how they reproduce sound

Kendrick Lamar - Backseat freestyle (spotify/soundcloud)

 

[danadam]

Kendrick Lamar - Backseat freestyle (spotify/soundcloud)

Hm... ok, I captured Spotify client's digital output for this song: Kendrick Lamar / good kid, m.A.A.d city / 03. Backseat Freestyle
I used youtube-dl to download an mp3 from soundcloud:

After trimming and aligning the loudness was:

Loudness
-13.9 LUFS, spotify_capture_normalization_on.wav
-10.3 LUFS, soundcloud.mp3.wav

After reducing the soundcloud file volume by 3.6 dB I can't say I can hear any obvious differences. 20 seconds snippets in attachments.

(EDIT: just FYI, I just noticed that I used different type fade-in/fade-out for the files)

 

[avgonzalez77]

Anyone have any experience using the EQ in Roon? Recommended over adding something like a Schiit Loki?

 

[bfreedma]

Anyone have any experience using the EQ in Roon? Recommended over adding something like a Schiit Loki?

Roon has a multiband parametric EQ - far more control and flexibility than analog EQ like the Loki.

Roon also has EQ presets for most Audeze headphones if you happen to own those.