[dirkswanepoel]

There is guy called dr. Robert
 

 

[marone]

I don't get it. Even if the vinyl copy is better than CD/SACD recording, wouldn't it be lost in converting to FLAC ?

I have seen recently that converting vinyl to 24/96 flac has become popular.

FLAC rips of vinyl sound better than the CD or CD rip.

CD measured a specific set a qualities and improved upon those.

CD did NOT measure many other sonic qualities.

Tonal completeness, soundstage, instrument body, instrument accuracy, vocal accuracy, 3-dimensionality of the instrument pushing out from its location rather than a flat cut out as exists on CD, and so on.

Those who rip vinyl can listen past the background and groove noise and can hear the better and more realistic sonic representation. If the vinyl is properly cleaned and the playback chain is of sufficient quality the sound is far superior to digital in any form.

Original vinyl mastered from the original anaolgue tapes back when the sessions were recorded in the case of original pressings or early pressings have the earliest copy of the music.

Thus the tape sounded better than it ever would, and the early pressings on stampers early on before the stamper wore out retain the most information of any subsequent remasters.

Most of my downloads are WAV or FLAC vinyl rips and the sound superior to all but the DSD versions and then not always inferior. Many new HD downloads are heavily compressed for the iTunes generation and this ruins the sound. Thus many take original vinyl LP, rip it and listen to that instead of the recent and heavily processed and altered remasters.

Digital mastering has never been up to the level of analogue, even if you discard the loudness wars and compression of recent remasters.

35 years and many still make the excuse that the remaster is faulty when someone claims the vinyl is superior. If this issue has lasted for 35 years then it is logical to conclude the flaw is in digital sound itself. This issue did not occur when the transition from valves to solid state was made around 1960.

 

[castleofargh]

add several kind of a few % distortions from mechanical movements(vertical and sideways)+ all the noise from those movements and friction, jitter so huge it's changing the tones, kill crosstalk to almost mono, roll off the trebles and voila!!!! you get the sound of most vinyls.
 
the problem lies with people thinking that perfect sound reproduction will lead to more pleasure. if that was true, nobody would ever go to a live performance.  so when they like something better, they conclude wrongly that it has to be the superior one. but vinyl isn't superior to CD in any way, at best it shows that when stereo separation is too clean it doesn't sound natural(headphone listeners feel that the most). so for older albums where it wasn't a problem because we didn't have to bother about that yet, sometimes it's not so fun to listen to the CD version.
also having those stupid CDs with DR below 5 on modern records doesn't help showing the superiority of the support :'(.
and vinyls aren't safe from brickwalling because they are the support of the true audiophile, they avoid loudness war because the support isn't good enough to master with so little DR.
so its one superiority in effect comes from how bad a support it is...
 
 
 
to answer the OP, making something you like into flac is a safe way(as long as you keep backups) to keep your albums forever without any loss of quality over time. when a vinyl can suffer with time and numerous uses.
also it's sooooooo much more convenient to use a digital media.

 

[marone]

add several kind of a few % distortions from mechanical movements(vertical and sideways)+ all the noise from those movements and friction, jitter so huge it's changing the tones, kill crosstalk to almost mono, roll off the trebles and voila!!!! you get the sound of most vinyls.

I am listening to FLAC vinyl rips as I write this. The treble is more realistic and accurate, there is no jitter it is called wow and fluter - and this is minimal because the system is high end, and anti-skating and other adjustments were performed to maximise sonic quality. There are few pops and clicks because the vinyl has been cleaned properly, and groove noise is minimal and my mind can filter this out and hear the more realistic sound. There is little crosstalk and the soundstange is wide and deep and far from mono.

You obsess and lock into those artifacts which I doubt you have actually heard on a high end system. What you cannot hear, what you don't care about, are tonal completeness, vocal accuracy, instrumental timbre, instrument body, dimensional, and the fatigue free and realistic treble.

You are the type of person who heard those artifacts in 1978 and devised the CD Red Book standard to address them.
You are not the type of person who heard the qualities I listed and thus they did not devise a system to reproduce them.

I am of a generation that listened to AM Radio.

Before you mock and scoff again, listening to AM Radio often required listening past background noise and lightning static spikes, to hear the far away station late at night that played those hard to find obscure songs.Since people who grew up with AM Radio could psychologically filter out in their mind unwanted noise, they also can filter out in their mind the wow, flutter, clicks, pops, groove noise and such.

I can filter out in my mind the artifacts and hear the sound of real wood hitting real brass on a vinyl rip of cymbals, compared to the pshshhh of a CD of the same track.

You cannot filter these out in your mind, and you obsess over minutiae.

Sadly it was someone like you who devised the digital standard.

My suggestion is to ignore the mockery of those like you, and for lurkers to listen for themselves. If they don't like it, then go back to digital and I will buy your vinyl for nothing.

 

[castleofargh]

well I seem to make a lot of friends those days. I don't think what I said is incorrect. or that it was a mockery.
you're ok with rips of vinyls to digital so my guess is that you have a specific problem with 16/44? as I can't hear a difference between hires and 16/44, I guess there is no need to develop that part as we're not gonna find a common ground over there.
 
so back to vinyls. I happen to have been raised on vinyls, not that it's gonna change any facts. and I have some of my best memories and very much the foundations of my musical tastes from listening on the set up at my parent's house, or the even better setup and gigantic room at my grand parent's. I learned to love Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, Pink Floyd, Mahler, Chopin... that way.
but my first experience with CD was "money for nothing" and the clean background just hit me in the face. it was so obvious and made any detail of the music so clear and easy to grasp, I needed to have that. after some times I did and never looked back. and the more time I spent listening to CDs, the less I could appreciate vinyls.
so while I agree with you that we can filter out things and adapt, in my case, background noise was one of those things that once heard can never be unheard(and you're right a second time, I am obsessed with noises and hissing in general in audio). I'm sure if I was to spend a month listening only to vinyls I would get used to it again, and I don't mind listening to a vinyls once in a while at someone's home. but I cannot force my mind into thinking that CD isn't superior.
 
I didn't say it was wrong to rip vinyls into flac, I have nothing against people saving what they like on a new format. I'm sure we can find digital recordings from wax cylinders and piano rolls. and some day those rips might be the only remainings of great musicians. so I really have no problem at all with that. all I argued about is to not mistake the great music for its medium, and things we like for audio quality. when you take a pic of a pretty scenery with a blurry smartphone the scenery is still pretty, but the smartphone wasn't the best media to use. for me what's wrong with CDs is that we use them for mostly crap music and ruined masters, but the media is just fine and when the master is great, the CD is enough to get it all with great precision. I can't say the same of vinyls.

 

[marone]

well I seem to make a lot of friends those days. I don't think what I said is incorrect. or that it was a mockery.
you're ok with rips of vinyls to digital so my guess is that you have a specific problem with 16/44? as I can't hear a difference between hires and 16/44,

Can't hear the difference between 16/44 red book and hi-res?

That is a very obvious difference.

The issue is more subtle and far more complicated than 16/44 is flawed.

Basically anything that is put into ANY digital processor or mixer, gets degraded.

I have FLAC rips that are straight from a hi-end turntable, they sound great.
I have FLAC rips that are straight from a hi-end turntable that then had processing to remove pops and clicks and make the volume levels match and they have all of the issues of 16/44.

It's the processing and mixing. Source and mixdown must be analogue, pre-1979 (with some exceptions 1979-1989). 1-bit 5.6448MHZ DSD originally sounds good but it still has a flatness that vinyl never had.

Any remasters? Flawed and usually run through processing that flattens images as well as compresses up the sound. Not so bad with The Clash, horrible with Pink Floyd. These new remasters are for people listening on an iPhone as background music.

At this point I am convinced that anything post-1979 is flawed and thus I intend to buy up pre-1979 vinyl and play it on my own high end DIY turntable.

The best pressings are white label promo copies, pre-1979. These were done first run on the stamper after the mixdown, for release to radio stations and reviewers and as such they have the best sound of that recording. Any remaster done today is on a 40 year old tape that has degraded, or even worse a digital copy of a safety master.

But a copy of that on the original vinyl was physically created back then from the young tape and thus sounds better.

1-bit 5.6448MHZ DSD is promising but this requires yet AGAIN another digital remaster of that same tape for the 5th or so time, when just buying the original vinyl would sound as good or better.

Nearly everyone reading this has never heard good analog on the radio or at home, thus they don't know what they are missing.

 

[Shredder11]

Can't hear the difference between 16/44 red book and hi-res?

That is a very obvious difference.

The issue is more subtle and far more complicated than 16/44 is flawed.

Basically anything that is put into ANY digital processor or mixer, gets degraded.

I have FLAC rips that are straight from a hi-end turntable, they sound great.
I have FLAC rips that are straight from a hi-end turntable that then had processing to remove pops and clicks and make the volume levels match and they have all of the issues of 16/44.

It's the processing and mixing. Source and mixdown must be analogue, pre-1979 (with some exceptions 1979-1989). 1-bit 5.6448MHZ DSD originally sounds good but it still has a flatness that vinyl never had.

Any remasters? Flawed and usually run through processing that flattens images as well as compresses up the sound. Not so bad with The Clash, horrible with Pink Floyd. These new remasters are for people listening on an iPhone as background music.

At this point I am convinced that anything post-1979 is flawed and thus I intend to buy up pre-1979 vinyl and play it on my own high end DIY turntable.

The best pressings are white label promo copies, pre-1979. These were done first run on the stamper after the mixdown, for release to radio stations and reviewers and as such they have the best sound of that recording. Any remaster done today is on a 40 year old tape that has degraded, or even worse a digital copy of a safety master.

But a copy of that on the original vinyl was physically created back then from the young tape and thus sounds better.

1-bit 5.6448MHZ DSD is promising but this requires yet AGAIN another digital remaster of that same tape for the 5th or so time, when just buying the original vinyl would sound as good or better.

Nearly everyone reading this has never heard good analog on the radio or at home, thus they don't know what they are missing.

 
 
After reading marone's posts in this thread I utterly agree with all the points you raised, so much that there is no point in me repeating it all; just scroll back and read marone's posts.  I'm 44 years old and have heard many playback and recording systems over the years, and I was also around in the 1970s and 80s when AM radio, reel to reel 2 inch tape, vinyl and more were in use.  I have also been in decent local recording studios and heard high quality tape based systems, and the experience of those sessions is deeply ingrained in my soul;  the dynamic realism blows you away!  Like many others I was also seduced by the arrival of CD in the 80s, but even back then I was not entirely convinced and the albums I bought on CD, I did not get into and enjoy in the same way I did with vinyl or tape.  To me CD can sound harsh, hard, brittle, fatiguing, flat, unrealistic and after an hour or less, it makes my ears sore and hiss a little.  However I can listen to vinyl for say eight hours straight with no break, and have no sore or hissing ears.  In recent years I have built up a collection of CD, Super Audio CD, DVD-Audio, Blu-Ray Audio, vinyl, tape and other online HD and DSD / DXD / DFFdownloads.  I quite like SACD but many of those are flawed or sound cold and sometimes thin, although they can sound very detailed.  So if I were to rank the various main formats, I would say reel to reel tape is best, followed by vinyl and then SACD. 

 

[castleofargh]

 the CD exceeds the capabilities of the vinyl in fidelity on almost all specs, crosstalk, distortions, frequency response, jitter/wow/flutter, noise floor, maximum dynamic that can be used for the music. and those specs are not a little bit better, they show massively higher fidelity. if it sounds like crap it's because the music recorded on it is crap. not because CD is failing at anything.
I'm the first to lament about the stupid mastering decisions that are done everyday on CDs, loudness war, autotune... those stuff are overused and ruin the music. TBH I personally have very little records from after the 90s, so I believe I know what you guys are talking about.  but digital formats have nothing to do with that. blame the idiots who decided that there was a need for 3 different masters for each album, 1 for highres, one for CD and one for vinyls(well vinyl needs a special treatment else they would just have the needle jump in the air all the time on a really dynamic music). and then punch the guy who decides to brickwall the CD version in the face with a shovel. I'll hold him for you.
but don't go blaming digital audio. that's just based on no rational reasons, digital audio has superior fidelity. that's a fact. if the audio industry decides to drive only in reverse in a sport car, it's not the fault of the car is it?
you guys are shooting the messenger. people ruin the music, not digital formats.
 
 
sacd is such a joke. pretending to be analog when it's the same pulse modulating tech that you get in delta sigma DACs. pretending that it's something different when 99% of SACDs were made from PCM records and mastered in PCM. the one and only thing different on SACDs is that it's yet another master to fool people into thinking that the support sounds different. because if they were to always press CDs and SACDs with the same masters, many people would realize that there is little interest in paying more for the SACD. they're clever those industry guys, swindlers and liars, but clever.

 

[jologskyblues]

I can't stand those clicks and pops from vinyl rips. I always mistakenly think something is wrong with my USB DAC's WASAPI playback when I hear those.
 
Besides, I don't want to deal with generational loss. Straight analog or digital to digital all the way.

 

[lickemstic]

Hi,
 
It's been a few years since you asked but for anyone who finds this, I figure this might be a valid point.
 
The truth about digital anything is that it is an image.  When you use audio as an example, it's much easier to demonstrate the futility of digital "imaging".  The bottom line being that when you digitally record sound, you are creating an image of sound.  Right there you can already get the idea.
 
But to drive this home, I'll try to work with the argument between digital folk: think of two people standing in a room arguing about reality of sunlight reproduction with bulbs as an example.   One guy is pointing to the old school, incandescent light bulb and talking about an enclosed actual fire in a filament, heat coming off the bulb in general, the brightness of it at 80 watts, the other guy is trying to convince him that the fluorescent eco-bulbs are "better" because of this or that and most of all they last longer and may give off the same amount of light although it might not feel the same brightness at 80 watts due to its softer "format" of light.
 
here's a completely disconnected article I found about old school light bulbs.
http://www.earth911.com/eco-tech/the-phase-out-of-incandescent-light-bulbs-what-you-need-to-know/
 
Much like people arguing intelligence between a pc and a mac, in the end if they're of identical hardware they're the same thing but for different people.  (like identical Hummer trucks but one is civilian and the other is military.
 
 
In any case, neither light formats are the actual Sun.
 
 
This argument becomes truly redundant when the 3rd guy comes with a candle which burns at 80 watts.  (he's the analog guy, by the way) and everyone just tells him how idiotically inefficient he is before he can make his point that the sun is burning flame. 
Again, the true argument would be lost in waves of intelligence politics or preference for ease of use.
 
For most who avoid such poor debates, true sound is high grade analog wax (or magnetic tape) because you are taking frequencies and sending them directly into a format which requires friction to recall.  Either dragging the frequencies across a tape head or literally scraping the sound out of a vinyl record is the air, blood, and rock & roll of true sound reproduction.
 
The rest is photos.
We went with digital because "it's more economic and efficient" which translates into: we prefer the access to more despite quality.  Face it, we crap where we eat to save a buck.  Now go get yourself a record player and we'll talk about tube amps vs. solid state in next class 
 
Can I get an Amen?

 

[jiiteepee]

  I don't get it. Even if the vinyl copy is better than CD/SACD recording, wouldn't it be lost in converting to FLAC ?
 
I have seen recently that converting vinyl to 24/96 flac has become popular.

 
To get it, you should have start by asking the basics regarding vinyl 'ripping' (recording) and audio file formats.
 
Basically, why using FLAC instead of original recording format (WAV)? just because of FLAC makes the file sizes much smaller without losing anything (= lossless).

 

[Redcarmoose]

Of the three bands I have the most examples, they are Pink Floyd DSOTM, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Of those recording I have multiple files. Spending years and years listening to the files I have some ideas.


At times every piece of music is mastered slightly different, depending on when, by who and what format.


To make this simple I will pick just one album, Led Zeppelin 4. I have it with the early 1990s ( George Marino) box set. I have the new Jimmy Page HD remaster and a recording made from the Classic Records 45rpm remaster that came out between the 1990s box set and our new 2014 Jimmy Page remaster. Finally there is the first CD of Zep4 made by Joe Sidore.

So for an album like that you end up with a bunch of choices. Amazingly America is known for having really good first pressing of the vinyl too. Because by the time 4 came out Zep was popular and there is a lot of those around.

In ending I just look at the rip made from the 45 as having the most bass. The Marino CD the thinnest and the Sidore in the middle. Jimmy's new one is entertaining and clear but rudely different even though Stairway to Heaven sounds nice.

Glad to have choices. The vinyl warmth gets recorded into FLAC which is just a form of euphoric distortion.

 

[PleasantSounds]

  Hi,
 
It's been a few years since you asked but for anyone who finds this, I figure this might be a valid point.
 
The truth about digital anything is that it is an image.  When you use audio as an example, it's much easier to demonstrate the futility of digital "imaging".  The bottom line being that when you digitally record sound, you are creating an image of sound.  Right there you can already get the idea.
 
But to drive this home, I'll try to work with the argument between digital folk: think of two people standing in a room arguing about reality of sunlight reproduction with bulbs as an example.   One guy is pointing to the old school, incandescent light bulb and talking about an enclosed actual fire in a filament, heat coming off the bulb in general, the brightness of it at 80 watts, the other guy is trying to convince him that the fluorescent eco-bulbs are "better" because of this or that and most of all they last longer and may give off the same amount of light although it might not feel the same brightness at 80 watts due to its softer "format" of light.
 
here's a completely disconnected article I found about old school light bulbs.
http://www.earth911.com/eco-tech/the-phase-out-of-incandescent-light-bulbs-what-you-need-to-know/
 
Much like people arguing intelligence between a pc and a mac, in the end if they're of identical hardware they're the same thing but for different people.  (like identical Hummer trucks but one is civilian and the other is military.
 
 
In any case, neither light formats are the actual Sun.
 
 
This argument becomes truly redundant when the 3rd guy comes with a candle which burns at 80 watts.  (he's the analog guy, by the way) and everyone just tells him how idiotically inefficient he is before he can make his point that the sun is burning flame. 
Again, the true argument would be lost in waves of intelligence politics or preference for ease of use.
 
For most who avoid such poor debates, true sound is high grade analog wax (or magnetic tape) because you are taking frequencies and sending them directly into a format which requires friction to recall.  Either dragging the frequencies across a tape head or literally scraping the sound out of a vinyl record is the air, blood, and rock & roll of true sound reproduction.
 
The rest is photos.
We went with digital because "it's more economic and efficient" which translates into: we prefer the access to more despite quality.  Face it, we crap where we eat to save a buck.  Now go get yourself a record player and we'll talk about tube amps vs. solid state in next class 
 
Can I get an Amen?

 
 
[size=small]I was going to ignore this religious rant, as it’s impossible to argue with someone’s beliefs. But for the sake of those who have no experience comparing both media types themselves and may be tempted by the recurring vinyl superiority claims by the analog reproduction evangelists, here’s a few things to consider:[/size]
 
 

• Both digital and analog media types are just ways of representing the sound. Neither of them captures the actual sound and then magically releases it at a press of a button. They both use some ways of re-generating the original sound, and both use (usually) electromagnetic transducers to produce mechanical sound waves. Claiming that analog is superior because it carries the sound itself while digital deals just with an image is a nonsense.
  
• [size=11pt] [size=11pt]The often used analogies to digital photography are irrelevant. The reason that we have both eyes and ears is because they are so different. Sound is carried over mechanical waves, while light is of electro-magnetic nature. That alone should be sufficient to question the merit of these comparisons, but there is an even more compelling aspect: the lack of time domain in the images. Add the time aspect to images and we get a movie – a much better analogy, because of the fact how it is interpreted by our brains. Flick the 24 static frames per second and what we see is a continuous movement. Our brain somehow fills the gaps between the images. Similar thing happens in the sound domain: we don’t hear the ‘staircase’ sounds, but our brains fill the gaps there and interpret the stairs as a noise. A very, very low level of noise.[/size]
  [/size]
• [size=11pt] [size=11pt]The purpose of lightbulbs, eco-lights and candles is not simulating the sun, which is a massive thermonuclear explosion in progress (not just some lame flame), and personally I’m rather glad that there are some other ways of generating low energy narrow band electromagnetic radiation which our eyes require to work. What that has to do with hi-fi audio I don’t know, but I can go for the candle guy being analog metaphor.[/size]
  [/size]
• [size=11pt] [size=11pt]We went with digital because as a technology it is vastly superior to a stone needle scratching a vinyl plate, which nota bene is barely capable of handling the hi-fi stereo signal. That’s why in vinyl the bass frequencies must be distributed equally between left and right channels and the whole frequency range is tilted towards highs by 40 dB, requiring a phono stage to correct that. Magnetic tapes have their own issues too: magnetic particle instabilities, mechanical deformations, binder degradation, print-through effect, and more.[/size]
  [/size]
• [size=11pt] [size=11pt]The real issue here is not the technology itself, but the social changes it has enabled, which paradoxically are the very reason that so many are now seduced by the old ways. The iphone/earbud society does not require total absence of noise, and high dynamic range is detrimental to their way of enjoying the sound. The problem is that this is the image of a volume customer that the music is produced for.[/size]
  [/size]
• [size=11pt] [size=11pt]I have a feeling that many of those analog evangelists are just trying to justify their own investment decisions, vigorously defending an obsolete technology using irrelevant analogies and unmeasurable impressions, because that is difficult to refute.  [/size]
  [/size]
• [size=11pt] [size=11pt]Digital systems also benefit from careful selection of components and some skilful tuning. If all you do is plug the boxes together and press play, chances are you may be disappointed with the outcome. That’s often fuelling the enthusiasm of analog evangelists too.  But as with everything else, some effort to understand what you’re dealing with goes a long way.[/size]
  [/size]

 
[size=small] [/size]
 
[size=small]Amen.[/size]

 

[Pootis]

Vinyl is **** and HRA is pointless. You are completely delusional if you believe otherwise.

 

[verde57]

Every time I listen to  these vinyl 24bit rips I'm amazed at how bad they sound. 
Anyone mentioned here about the clear audible distortion in the high freq range?