I read that Digital Playback is plagued by RFI and once you put a digital recording on vinyl, RFI is no longer a problem.
Can digital get to vinyl sound and at what price?
- Thread starter ScottK
- Start date
I have had the opportunity to cut digital files to lacquer and indeed it can be a positive experience. In this case the objectivist will generally say " it's fine, you like distortion that's all" or similar. Usually in a dismissive tone
If we borrow a page from the amplifier design playbook we see that it has been accepted for a while that lowest distortion isn't necessarily best without first considering what the distortion profile looks like, and does it conform to what the ear prefers ( this preference being considered a 'fact' of the hearing mechanism ).
Is it possible a similar scenario plays in the digital transfered to analog conversation? Just a thought.
That's mostly a streaming / computer audio problem, much less one of physical CD playback. I am enjoying the latter in my system; I leave streaming to laptop and headphones.
Digital delay has been used since the '70's, but didn't become universally used until the late '80's!
Hmm ... I wonder why so many people here insist on recording their systems with analog sources and why so many people like vinyl rips on YouTube? Surely we should be able to tell wether the source is analog or digital...
I wonder too.
It makes no logical sense.
Once it's gone through a digital process it's digital.
Yet if the virtues of analog can be transmitted through a digital medium like YouTube, then there is nothing wrong with the digital medium per se, is there?
But if that is the case, wouldn't that mean that those "virtues" compared to a digital source (which thus nothing is wrong with, being digital just like YouTube) are just colorations that are transmitted faithfully by the digital YouTube medium?
(Nothing against vinyl, just playing devil's advocate here.)
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Good quality vinyl rips are listenable regardless of YouTubes low resolution stream.
Mother Earth offers high resolution vinyl streaming, but they tend to play the same short list of selections repeatedly.
As a long term fan of (peak) analogue as the ultimate source for sound when digital might ever catch up and the apex might change (if ever) is really crystal ball gazing let alone trying to work out what the cost of all this could be.
I do think however it’s notable that server based systems seem to be completely on the rise in focus on the high end of digital playback.
Really great sound can now be attained off the various properly setup high end digital delivery formats (at their best) even if they have yet to hit to the ultimate standard of best examples of peak analogue. Who knows if that might ever happen? Taiko has upcoming the promise of 200 to 300+% improvements in their upcoming Olympus and Olympus IO so where these might actually take peak digital who knows. I do have a lot of respect for Taiko and would very happily hop in the queue to trial it all out and find out for myself if it was within my reach.
But in terms of digital audio the big improver for me over the last five years has been streaming, it’s only been in the last two years that I’ve got my system to a level where the compromise of streaming files is no longer any hurdle to deeply engaging musical enjoyment.
As my system here has improved I now find streaming no stumbling block to completely satisfyingly great musical connection.
My setup now is in a position where the quality of streaming is right up very close to listening to high res files direct off my server’s hard drive… this is only likely in my experience in the better setup server systems and more often again found in the very best quality digital setups beyond mine. Aiding my setup is that I’ve spent over 10 years optimising my system for server based digital. It’s been a long slog but I have managed to get it to a level where that compromise is no longer a real issue for me.
The guys with less experience in digital and for those with less optimised digital systems (and less optimised file based server setups) seem to be the only ones who seem to still struggle to get good to great quality outcomes using both streamed music as well as music played direct off hard drives.
At the very top end digital the best setups for file and streaming are more commonly these days reporting little or next to no difference between music direct off file and via the best streaming services… I think it was Steve Williams (from memory and I apologise if I read this wrong) who posted a few months back that he found it very hard to notice (Steve may have even said almost indiscernible) the difference between streaming and off file direct. Steve would have among the best of digital setups available along with so many here in the Taiko and Wadax threads. I’d never imagined there’d be so many guys committed at that level. You never really see any of them complaining about the quality of music in streaming.
In really good digital file based systems today there’s regularly greater differences in the various mastering of files accessed rather than whether a music file is sourced hard drive direct or via a top end setup stream.
I do think however it’s notable that server based systems seem to be completely on the rise in focus on the high end of digital playback.
Really great sound can now be attained off the various properly setup high end digital delivery formats (at their best) even if they have yet to hit to the ultimate standard of best examples of peak analogue. Who knows if that might ever happen? Taiko has upcoming the promise of 200 to 300+% improvements in their upcoming Olympus and Olympus IO so where these might actually take peak digital who knows. I do have a lot of respect for Taiko and would very happily hop in the queue to trial it all out and find out for myself if it was within my reach.
But in terms of digital audio the big improver for me over the last five years has been streaming, it’s only been in the last two years that I’ve got my system to a level where the compromise of streaming files is no longer any hurdle to deeply engaging musical enjoyment.
As my system here has improved I now find streaming no stumbling block to completely satisfyingly great musical connection.
My setup now is in a position where the quality of streaming is right up very close to listening to high res files direct off my server’s hard drive… this is only likely in my experience in the better setup server systems and more often again found in the very best quality digital setups beyond mine. Aiding my setup is that I’ve spent over 10 years optimising my system for server based digital. It’s been a long slog but I have managed to get it to a level where that compromise is no longer a real issue for me.
The guys with less experience in digital and for those with less optimised digital systems (and less optimised file based server setups) seem to be the only ones who seem to still struggle to get good to great quality outcomes using both streamed music as well as music played direct off hard drives.
At the very top end digital the best setups for file and streaming are more commonly these days reporting little or next to no difference between music direct off file and via the best streaming services… I think it was Steve Williams (from memory and I apologise if I read this wrong) who posted a few months back that he found it very hard to notice (Steve may have even said almost indiscernible) the difference between streaming and off file direct. Steve would have among the best of digital setups available along with so many here in the Taiko and Wadax threads. I’d never imagined there’d be so many guys committed at that level. You never really see any of them complaining about the quality of music in streaming.
In really good digital file based systems today there’s regularly greater differences in the various mastering of files accessed rather than whether a music file is sourced hard drive direct or via a top end setup stream.
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ok you see, digital recordings are purposely modified with additional processing so all playback devices have the same sound. They do this by limiting and soft clipping. This is why the mix changes and you can tell.
Now with something converted into a digital transport format, you record it as the source mix and the transport format decodes it in the same way it receives it.
So, for instance, if I use audiodante, which is one of the widely used digital transport formats, record it and play it back through the dante network, it will be the same as sending it over to the destination device.
But if you took that file and burned it to a CD it would be low and weak sounding because its not mastered for that digital format
Glad that the users of ultra-high end digital systems are finally getting good results.
For a long time, they just came across as a bunch of nut jobs, if you ask me, reporting things like a Qobuz European subscription sounding better than a US subscription! If I had a dollar for every preposterous claim these people have been making I'd be a millionaire...
Thankfully, it does not take, IMO, a Taiko/Wadax type of solution to hear subtle differences in masterings and to get equally good results from files and streaming.
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Nut jobs? Nice… I was talking about really well sorted server based digital systems and up to an including the high-end where the best systems found little to next to no difference in the outcome going stream or file direct.
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Yes, and I was talking about the same thing.
I am sorry to say, but the idea that you have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to hear subtle differences in masterings is simply ridiculous. People have been comparing different versions of digital releases for years.
Check this more recent, well written, example:
The Best Version Of… Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On
Nearly 50 years ago, Marvin Gaye released What’s Going On, an album that was not only an undeniable artistic leap forward for Gaye, but also a revolutionary statement of political agency and artistic freedom (especially for a Motown artist). Like Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, Miles Davis’s Bitches...
audiophilestyle.com
As for files versus streaming (or streaming versus streaming), there have been some outlandish claims over the years - so you may find it insulting to use the term "nut job", I find it just as humourous as some of those claims.
Vis a vis streaming services, the key point is not the difference in sound quality with files of the same album version, but the fact that in many cases the best album version are NOT available on those services.
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Where did I say you had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars… you are reading something that is just not there.
My digital gear is by Taiko standards super modest… but it’s well setup after 10 years of working away at it… I wrote all that out in my initial post and reaffirmed it in response to your last post… you guys seriously just go overboard.
Well, if I misinterpreted, my bad, but you certainly made it sound like it was an exclusive club.
If you misunderstood? I never understand how melodramatic stuff gets. I was clear and implicit and when you challenged I quite thoughtfully and without any angst reaffirmed… and I don’t sling off at people with different perspectives and call them nut jobs over and over again. Happy to move on
Ok, you can move along without giving me lessons in morality. Saying people "come across as nut jobs" because of some of these claims is not that far-fetched and you can take it with some humour instead of getting on your high horse.
Maybe you need to take a step back. Who is being melodramatic here?
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Concerning streaming services, and unrelated to your (Sound of Tao) post, the elephant in the room is the amount of "crap" that is available on these services. Why? Simply because all of these services play a numbers game, claiming that they offer tens of millions of releases. What they in fact do is offer multiple versions of the same album, but from a large number of dodgy labels. There is absolutely no quality control - neither in terms of sound quality, nor in terms of the metadata. They basically issue anything that the labels will provide.
Qobuz, which markets itself towards audiophiles and claims to have a curated catalog, is no different from any other.
"High resolution" on these services is a joke. 99% of the time it is just Redbook up-sampled.
Obviously, there is a lot to like as well - I would not have both a Qobuz and Spotify subscription otherwise.
Qobuz, which markets itself towards audiophiles and claims to have a curated catalog, is no different from any other.
"High resolution" on these services is a joke. 99% of the time it is just Redbook up-sampled.
Obviously, there is a lot to like as well - I would not have both a Qobuz and Spotify subscription otherwise.
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