Can digital get to vinyl sound and at what price?

hopkins said:

I am not sure this has been mentioned before, but one of the attractions of vinyl, over digital, is the much greater availability of recordings from the 1950s and 1960s in mono.

A couple examples that I recently came across

- Sonny Rollins - Way out West. There is only one CD version - from Japan - in Mono: https://www.discogs.com/master/174528-Sonny-Rollins-Way-Out-West
- Duke Ellington - Back to Back. There are no CD versions in mono.

There are obviously many more examples.

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must be awesome. Luckily, my wetware made a copy of an in-person performance. As longs as my memory holds, that is.

PYP said:

@Audiofile and, as mentioned, the nuances matter. What the audience heard, is not what a vinyl lover can hear at home.

From the blog piece:

"First of all, no one outside a mastering studio will ever hear the quality of the lacquer. In the process of vinyl production (when pressing >10000 copies of an album), the lacquer is first converted to an intermediate negative copy, from which a ‘father’ is copied, from which various ‘mothers’ are copied, from which stampers are then made that are used in the actual pressing of the vinyl (which is also a copying process). This means there are four mechanical copies between the lacquer and the vinyl record you have at home, and with every copy some details get lost and noise is added.

Second, it is extremely rare for a vinyl record to be cut directly from the microphone feed."

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Another reason why digital is superior as it's not dependent on the quality of any physical media

Audiofile said:

Another reason why digital is superior as it's not dependent on the quality of any physical media

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are you Audiogod in another guise

bonzo75 said:

are you Auidogod in another guise

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What's Audiogod?

Audiofile said:

Another reason why digital is superior as it's not dependent on the quality of any physical media

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I didn't mean to hit like above. CDs are physical digital media.

facten said:

I didn't mean to hit like above. CDs are physical digital media.

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Plastic , Kind of plastiky sounding , unnatural lol

andromedaaudio said:

Plastic , Kind of plastiky sounding , unnatural lol

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That's your take. Doesn't sound anything like that either via my Neodio Origine S2 in my main system, nor via the Modwright Elysee DACand Sim Audio 260 dt I no my second system

facten said:

I didn't mean to hit like above. CDs are physical digital media.

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But it can also be media less with steaming and local files

Audiofile said:

But it can also be media less with steaming and local files

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You're not telling me something I don't know

andromedaaudio said:

Plastic , Kind of plastiky sounding , unnatural lol

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Are you saying that polyvinyl chloride is superior sounding to a clear polycarbonate plastic substrate, a reflective metallic layer, and a clear protective coating of acrylic plastic! Please be specific

andromedaaudio said:

Plastic , Kind of plastiky sounding , unnatural lol

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Hehe. Vinyl is also plastic.

How many records do people have around here anyways ?
Even if you're a serious collector I assume 3000-5000 records are about the average max amount.
It's still very limited compared to the millions of albums available on streaming

Audiohertz2 said:

I do agree if you cant hear it why bother

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The smiley doesn’t hide the obnoxiousness of this post. (Or implicit ignorance)

wil said:

The smiley doesn’t hide the obnoxiousness of this post. (Or implicit ignorance)

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Maybe both ...

Audiofile said:

How many records do people have around here anyways ?
Even if you're a serious collector I assume 3000-5000 records are about the average max amount.
It's still very limited compared to the millions of albums available on streaming

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For some, that doesn’t matter. Quality trumps quantity. It’s just like a system’s bass presentation where quality is often preferred to quantity.

Of course it can, with certain digital playback methods compared to certain vinyl playback methods!

But, back in ancient history, when I had the disposable income, I felt SACD was as good as vinyl. Then I started cleaning my records as well as I could, and now I play CD or SACD only when I don't have a particular recording on vinyl.

PeterA said:

For some, that doesn’t matter. Quality trumps quantity. It’s just like a system’s bass presentation where quality is often preferred to quantity.

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You can have both with digital
It's not that's it's trash compared to vinyl
Also I like a huge variety of music , I get bored pretty quickly .
Playing a million different songs from different genres with just a click of a button is invaluable

Audiofile said:

You can have both with digital
It's not that's it's trash compared to vinyl
Also I like a huge variety of music , I get bored pretty quickly .
Playing a million different songs from different genres with just a click of a button is invaluable

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That is fine. No one is criticizing your preference. I was responding to what seemed like your criticism of those who listen to vinyl because their selection is not as broad as those who stream. I grant you that the selection may not be as broad, but for some, my point is that it doesn’t matter.

PYP said:

Here is an interesting take from a manufacturer of digital equipment for both pro and audiophile markets (March 2022):

https://www.grimmaudio.com/blogs/vinyl-versus-digital/ worth reading the entire piece by Eelco Grimm and only takes a few minutes. Here is a teaser (added emphasis):

"The Dutch online magazine Alpha Audio did an unusual live stream on Sunday Feb 27th. In collaboration with Artone Studio in Haarlem, a live recording was made of singer songwriter Tim Knol, running both a completely analog (vinyl!) recording chain and a completely digital recording chain in parallel. ...

"Their verdict was that the analog chain sounded more similar to the original sound (the direct microphone lines) than the digital chain.

I can imagine that this was true, so the conclusion can be that this digital chain was not as transparent as the analog chain. That means there is still room for improvement in the digital path – work to do for us. But at the same time there is a need for some nuances." [NOTE: the nuances are indeed important to the conclusion.]

The "us" above refers to Grimm Audio. For me, the moral of the story is to keep an open mind if you want to design and manufacturer great audio equipment.

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I posted the video of that recording session here a while back. Although vinyl was the clear winner I don't think the digital recording was done very well, being ADC>Pro Tools. More of an example of how not to do digital recording. Grimm is working on a new ADC, that should be interesting since he has said existing ADC's are flawed.

quote from the quote above...

I can imagine that this was true, so the conclusion can be that this digital chain was not as transparent as the analog chain. That means there is still room for improvement in the digital path – work to do for us. But at the same time there is a need for some nuances."

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You don't find this claim made about 'room for improvement' very often but, imo, it is one worth making. If stereo on long play records started roughly in 1957 and CDs became widely available around 1982, one interpretation says the LP has a 25 year head start on CDs/digital. Streaming became popular in the later 2000s (Spotify was 2010).

I don't know if there is a settled format for 'digital' broadly speaking. I don't know if CD playback technology has reached its zenith -- there are many fewer players on the market today, so maybe there is little new investment in CD transport technology. There appears to be a continuous stream, heh, of DACs coming out along with the same for what I call Streamer Boxes and there is no horizon for those.

There is some but little new technology for implementing turntables; they are still (almost all) string, idler, and direct drive. The LP is a long finished format although we've seen the rise of thicker vinyl which doesn't really add much if it isn't detracting.

So I expect continual churn in the streaming/digital world as little appears settled. You can argue otherwise if you know the future.

I see the primary argument made today for streaming is "access to all the new music'. The second most common argument is "I can keep my ass in my chair and click around the clock" (convenience.) Streaming today as a front-end strikes me as largely an IT exercise. (How many of you streamers are in IT?)

I think the topic of this thread remains an open question -- maybe digital will surpass vinyl in 20 years or possibly less -- if you want to stay on the ride, that's fine by me. Stream on. And if you do, chill a bit and accept your choice -- too much anxiety goes into defending it, when there is no need. If someone says vinyl or tape is superior, so what, stay calm and embrace your choice if you have confidence in it.

In my world, which is mostly classical music, there are so many fine performances on vinyl that I will not hear them all in my lifetime. An orchestral symphony recorded in say, 1970, that I have not heard is new music to me. Imo, the majority of "new music" is garbage without provenance but occasionally something stands out. I just don't want to waste my time clicking through mediocrity to find it. I have no interest to participate in the technology churn of streaming, trying to achieve a sound as good as what I have -- why spend the money if I'm already there. And I like owning the physical LP media. I still have maybe 1200 or so CDs and do not play them, but keep them maybe for the day I can no longer mount a cartridge. I don't know if there will be any decent players or transports then.