Can digital get to vinyl sound and at what price?

[PeterA]

I have listened to these digital Systems:
dCS Scarllati
dCS Vivaldi
Weiss Medus
CEC TL0 3.0
Vitus Anagram DAC
Audio Note DAC 5 ($63k) NOS DAC
TAD D600 ($50k)

You can visit David in Utah and listen to high performance Analog system , it may change your idea

The best digital I’ve heard anywhere was also in Utah. it was a physical CD not streaming. This is the basis of my earlier comment about system context. In this particular case the same system played both digital and vinyl very well. I don’t know why some people say the system has to be optimized for one or the other. The vinyl did sound better though.

 

[PeterA]

David was active here , his ID was @ddk

David has Big Horn system (siemens bionor) and Lamm ML3 amplifier , David has these sources:
- Techdas AF1
- Thorens Reference
- Microseiki 8000
- American Sound 2000
- CEC TL0 3.0/Weiss Medus

Also the EMT927 and two AS2000s with Neumann cartridge.

 

[microstrip]

Extremist statements like this give vinyl enthusiasts a bad name.

Statements like these help no one, and certainly not the case for vinyl.

Yes, unfortunately the discussion is now lead by fundamentalists and extremists - no serious argumentation is possible any more.

It become a ridiculous debate.

 

[Republicoftexas69]

A proper $1K DAC can blow away a 1 million dollars vinyl rig.
The funny and ironic thing is the better the turntable the closer it sounds to digital .

Irony is completely lost here, are you a refugee from Agon or ASR?

 

[Lee]

View attachment 113826View attachment 113827
How can anyone claim vinyl is better than digital is beyond me.
Science and facts prove it's a lot worseView attachment 113825

By selectively looking at metrics where digital excels, you miss the problems of digital which include:

1. Imperfect ADC and DAC.

2. Jitter.

3. Zero-Crossing Distortion.

4. Pre and Post Ringing.

 

[andromedaaudio]

May be some magic mushrooms / a bottle of whiskey , Wodka makes it interesting again.
Kinda like being " suspended in disbelief"

 

[Lee]

They completely botched it from the get-go, and the fact is, none of the digital design theories were thought to be capable of true high fidelity.

They should have done at least 24/88.2 but still a great achievement.

 

[Lee]

May be some magic mushrooms / a bottle of whiskey , Wodka makes it interesting again.
Kinda like being " suspended in disbelief"

Or suspended in wine.

 

[Al M.]

Irony is completely lost here, are you a refugee from Agon or ASR?

Looks like it

 

[dcathro]

Yes, unfortunately the discussion is now lead by fundamentalists and extremists - no serious argumentation is possible any more.

It become a ridiculous debate.

This thread has just become a place for childish mud slinging. It's embarrassing!!!!

 

[Joe Whip]

Splat.

 

[microstrip]

The best digital I’ve heard anywhere was also in Utah. it was a physical CD not streaming. This is the basis of my earlier comment about system context. In this particular case the same system played both digital and vinyl very well.

Thanks for telling us of this important detail.

I don’t know why some people say the system has to be optimized for one or the other. The vinyl did sound better though.

I have explained it several times with detail. Sound engineers have explained. It would have been nice if you disagreed with proper explanations when the arguments were presented, but you prefer to show your ignorance.

Just an individual opinion - as you, I own the Lamm ML3 and LL1. One reason I am trying to sell them is that I find that they sound really great with vinyl, but are not my current preference with digital and I listen mainly to digital.

BTW, I say that a system optimized with vinyl will not sound optimal with digital. Some what different from your sentence.

 

[Al M.]

BTW, I say that a system optimized with vinyl will not sound optimal with digital.

Agreed. And vice versa. One of the many reasons why I stick to a single source in my system is that I don't want to get into a rabbit hole on this.

 

[Rexp]

This thread has just become a place for childish mud slinging. It's embarrassing!!!!

Yes imagine if someone criticised this thread for childish behaviour while at the same time posting laughing emojis at someone's comment. Now that would be really embarrassing.

 

[SoundMann]

If you read first about scientific fact then you will realize your opinion has no relation to scientific fact.

You missed the part about it being peer reviewed.

 

[Republicoftexas69]

Extremist statements like this give vinyl enthusiasts a bad name.

Statements like these help no one, and certainly not the case for vinyl.

Completely agree. I enjoy both formats and really do not give much thought to the FE or sonic comparisons other than this particular musical piece sounds wonderful, I have that album I will give it a spin. To say if a person doesn't have a vinyl rig the no not what they speak is extremely biased. Or conversely if they do not have digital.

 

[SoundMann]

A proper $1K DAC can blow away a 1 million dollars vinyl rig.
The funny and ironic thing is the better the turntable the closer it sounds to digital .

Keep dreaming!

 

[Rensselaer]

Is it soooo confusing?

Not really... Regardless of preference or degree of similarity or identity, participants do seem to acknowlege that digital does not sound like vinyl.
.







(No doubt there will be exceptions but we don't see much discussion on how to get vinyl to sound like digital.)

Yet there remains for a few a need to convince others that one format is the 'right' format or the 'best' format or something (a purchase?) needs to be validated or defended. Granted audiophiles love to bait and argue, but really ... who cares? Vinyl does not soud like digital. Digital does not sound like vinyl.



I agree - do what you believe in doing. And I will add that it also depends somewhat on resources. I choose not to do both because I can't afford to do both really well. I also have no interest in continuing to replicate performances in different formats. I don't listen to modern pop and thus far, after having chosen a format a few years back, don't find myself missing something not available to me. There's plenty of music available to me that I have not heard. Those are my choices - you may have different choices and that's fine. If you want to try to get one format to sound like another format -- that's fine too.

I agree completely with you Tima, and would like to add something to consider, that we are comparing apples and oranges.

The pure analogue recording and playback process to/from vinyl is very low tech. Forgetting about cylinders and 78's that established/formed the process used, if we just look at commercially available long-play (33RPM) vinyl records the technology has been pretty much the same since 1930, when RCA Victor released the first examples, and the best-sounding examples of pure-analogue records made today are made in pretty much the exact same way as then.

Digitally-processed music, whether on CD, MPV, hard drive or stream, uses much higher (newer) technology than analogue recordings and that technology is constantly improving. Digitally-processed music sounds unique and is loved by many. It sounds different to pure-analogue because it is different.

A primitive analogue recording to magnetic tape, or direct to disc, is capturing the actual sound waves (all of them) from the musicians/singers in real time, then playing it back by reversing the process and amplifying the output.

The more technical digital process (beyond my ability to convey fully, but generally) is a conversion of the most dominant sound waves (those that would not be heard because of louder waves are by algorithm cut to save on processing and storage) into a series of measurements of the sound waves, and it is those measurements which are then recorded as on/off codes (bitstream) or groups (eg. 20-bit bytes) that must be decoded and converted back into the frequencies segments that were recorded (not those cut) and played back as an interpretation of those original sound waves. Sort of like trying to put Humpty-Dumpty together again. Consider the difference of sound between SET and Push Pull amplification. Push Pull divides the signal and then recombines it in order to achieve greater power, but in the process looses something in comparison to SET.

IMHO, the process involved in converting analogue to digital and then back to an analogue rendition will always give a character to the sound that is discernible by many (usually those who prefer pure analogue) and will never sound the same a pure analogue.

 

[SoundMann]

IMHO, the process involved in converting analogue to digital and then back to an analogue rendition will always give a character to the sound that will not sound the same a pure analogue, ever.

And therein lies the rub.

 

[christoph]

Irony is completely lost here, are you a refugee from Agon or ASR?

There is always the "ignore" function to simplify matters here