[markjia]

Some of thoses graphs are quite confusing...

In the 44.1 KHz graphs (especially the 21500 and 20000 Hz samples), there appears to be an additional harmonic. How is this possible?

 

[JaZZ]

markjia,

the curves just represent the linking of the sampling points. You have to imagine that there will be a low-pass filtering afterwards, which is smoothing the bucklings and curious curve angles vitally, so the result of the crippledness will only be an amplitude modulation. The latter is not to be seen in common D/A converters because of their abrupt anti-aliasing filters causing excessive ringing, which takes effect down to the audible frequency range! Spline filters without the ringing effect such as Wadia's leave the amplitude modulation intact.

JaZZ

 

[carlo]

hey jodo,

damn, a&m provided a great post to a lot of your questions originally directed at me... so, i'll leave that as is.

pops and crackles are either due to dust/dirt, static, or a messed up groove (remember the vibration of the stylus/coil assembly is the signal that gets amplified). basically, cleaning and taking care of your lps eliminates most of that.

markjia,

speaking for myself, when i say i prefer vinyl i'm talking about true AAA transfer, and yes there are modern bands who still do it. however, most of the music i listen to was recorded in the days of analog, and while i enjoy early pressings, in some cases the modern rereleases off the master surpass them (of course groove wear is a factor in that).

a digital source on vinyl is almost always very, very audible - the flat soundstage and god awful decay of instruments on those eps/lps make the vinyl worthless imo. even limited editions of digitally sourced vinyl is crap to my eyes as a collector.

as dvw said, vinyl is by no means perfect, but to some people it's well worth the relatively small amount of time required (i probably spend half as much time polishing cds and caring for them to ensure no scratches). incidentally, i do not hate digital, through decent equipment a good recording is sonically impressive. and of course, good music is good music, no matter what the format (or for that matter, the playback equipment).

best,
carlo.

 

[Anders]

There are also great differences between digital recordings. Some CDs sound good to me. I also think that one can improve one's CDs by treating them with the Auric Illuminator. Is is not a dramatic difference, but they become somewhat smoother and more spacious. It doesn't change what is on the CD, but can improve playback. Hardly dare to say that this is my experience. You guys who haven't tried it, please do not argue!
There is also a difference between what is on the CD and what is recorded on the master using professional 20 or 24 bit recorders with high sampling rates. Hopefully, some of this can be reissued on the new digital formats (SACD or whatever it will be).

 

[Clubkill]

One thing that should be clarified is that LP's do not necessarily have the sound that is closer to the original just because they are analog.

Both CD's and vinyl distort the recorded sound. It is an unavoidable occurance. It is just that they distort the sound in different ways. I am reading a book that is discussing how to 'clean-up' a vinyl recording that has been captured digitally. Beyond the little clicks and pops that you easily hear, there can be as many as 1000 distorions PER SECOND. Vinyl is not perfectly smooth, and nobody listens to their records in a clean room, so these distorions are inevitable. Also, anytime the recording process involves moving parts, there will be some inevitable distortion in the sound due to simple laws of physics etc.

CD's have the type of distorion that has be discussed earlier in the thread. Because the types of distortion are different, both have their own sound. I think that a lot of people like the analog sound beacuse it cames off as more natural, and its errors more excuseable. The digital distortion may be harsher, and its distortion may not be as excuseable, or even beneficial to the sound.

Demo a nice record player and decide for yourself what kind of music you like to listen to on what type of media. Certainly a CD that is copied and remastered from an LP will not be as good as the original, but anything that has been released recently will most likely be digitally recorded anyway, so getting it on vinyl would not have the same benefits.

I hope that helps.

 

[jodokast]

2 words: thank you.

Thanks guys.

 

[fredpb]

Everyone has commented very well on the differences. I will just add a bit.

LP's have better freq response.
Lp's have their own distortions, but the sampling of the digital process chops up the music and creates their own distortion.
LP's are like CD's, some good, some bad.

Digital is not always bad. CD and digital are a GREAT format. But it is the mastering and creating of the cd that butchers the sound.
I have good digital Telarc classical LP's and Telarc classical CD's of the exact same performances. I can create, with my own system, a much better sounding CD than the prerecorded CD. This is with a little Pioneer CD recorder deck! So CD is a good medium, but it is the implementation of the recordings on CD that is terrible.

As soon as the mixing starts, the sound goes downhill. Even with analog.

And there is the reproduction equipment. Many variables.
But a cruddy cd will sound cruddy on any system. So will a cruddy lp.

And the reality is, vinyl is available, but can be expensive or a gamble to buy. I have bought hundreds of albums on ebay. Most good. A few lemons. But at $3 a record, that's better than $17 a classical cd! LP's and their reproduction systems take a lot of work to maintain. CD's don't.

I like them all.

They all have their place, as hobbies. Don't just think LP will make great sound. It takes work.

 

[Poddy]

Cds are a great format. And with technology SACD and DVDA could produce better recordings than that reproduced by a vinyl. Dont think that just because something is on a record it will sound better than a cd. Obviously some good quality audiophile grade recordings will be. But over time the quality will degrade where as a cd wont. The problem with cd is that during the mastering process record lables kill the available bandwith by forcing engineers to compress the songs to margins of 3db!! Which is pathetic for the dynamicness of incredible music. The reaosn they do this is to make more $. They need songs to be within similar volume levels so they sound good on radio (predominantly in cars) as such they can sell records. So the recording is compressed twice. Once at the mastering stage. And then again at the radio station. Over compression is killing the cds available quality.

 

[dvw]

Hi Clubkill;

Can you tell me the title of the book you're reading on "cleaning up" vinyl on CD?

I'm very interested. I'm doing a lot of transfer from vinyl to CD (I have over 1500 LP).

 

[dave-the-rave]

To quote Neil Young on digital music: "You can fool the ear, but not the heart." Amen.

 

[Beagle]

Quote:

Originally posted by blueocp The best way for me to explain to people the difference between analog and digital is thinking about a function, say sin(x). The way analog makes this signal is by drawing it on a rectangular coordinate axis. Digital however, is like a table with values. With the graph(analog signal), you can find a y for any type of x within the boundaries you choose, say 1.9635 there will be a y value given. However, if you were to use the table(digital signal) to find the value of y at x=1.9635, you had better hope the intervals between each x value is at most 0.0005. So as the intervals approach nil, the table(digital signal) becomes less and less accurate as opposed to the graph, which will always be accurate assuming it is drawn right. I HOPE that helps somewhat.

Or here's another analogy. With analog it's like someone picking up an article and reading it to you. With digital it's like cutting all the words out of the article and picking them up and reading them one at a time, as fast as you can keep up.

 

[Clubkill]

hey dvw, sorry it toook awhile, I was off the forums for a bit.

It is really more technical and less of a practical guide, but you can look at it for your own info anyway:

Applications of Digital Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics
edited by: mark Kahrs and Karlheinz Brandenburg
Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998
ISBN: 0-7923-8130-0

The chapter called: Digital Audio Restoration is the one I referred to.

Like I said, it is pretty theoretical, and is not a usefull step by step guide guide, but go for it if you are interested in the subject.

 

[dvw]

Thanks clubkill