Except that even a marginal analog recording maintains the true sonic signature that digital clearly alters.
Can digital get to vinyl sound and at what price?
- Thread starter ScottK
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Except that even a marginal analog recording maintains the true sonic signature that digital clearly alters.
i can fully enjoy my right brain digital listening, my left brain knowing it's not as real as the best analog, but not being reminded of it by what i'm hearing. it's good enough and then some. zero of the digital signature concept from years ago.
certainly i don't view any source or media the same as a real performance.
but at digital's best it does a very good job of degrees toward realism. and again at it's best also does not add nasties distracting from the music. however analog is more complete, and closer to the realism of a real performance. and analog also is more likely to be preferrable overall to some live performances, while never being the same.
digital offers by degrees less micro dynamics, less organic weight, less bloom in the soundstage, less nuance. but at it's best it also does do all these things admirably. the best digital fully satisfies me, and does not make me think of what it might be, it is the real deal for enjoyment. and mostly i listen to digital, even with lots of quality analog to choose from.
Republicoftexas69
Well-Known Member
In your system.... maybe you need to look into upgrading your digital front end. I find that both of my frontend units to be very enjoyable, non fatiguing and very satisfying.
In any system I hear it in, to varying degrees. I can't afford a Zanden, and even an Audio Note dac would be a financial stretch at this point.
My current vinyl frontend gives me perfectly adequate sound at this point. But finding good records, and cleaning them to a satisfactory level is my biggest issue currently.
Republicoftexas69
Well-Known Member
Rexp, you seem to have an agenda and keep repeating it over and over. Why don’t you just listen to what you think sounds good and quit perseverating over what you don’t like.
From my experience there are many bad sounding recordings out there. I choose not to listen to them. Instead, I listen to the many good to great recordings through a well set up digital system, and am very musically satisfied!
There are lots of people on here with big agendas! Makes me wonder, if their systems sound so good, why don't they spend more time listening to them instead of posting the same stuff on forums.
I had a great day at a friend's place yesterday listening to vinyl whilst playing with speaker position, system setup and room acoustics. Even although I listen to digital myself, you will never hear me put down vinyl.
Same here.
Unfortunately there have been some on this forum who claim I did just that, but obviously they haven't been paying any attention.
Also, naming reasons why I personally will never have vinyl myself is not the same as putting down the medium, which can indeed be terrific.
On the contrary, I have vigorously defended the sound of vinyl against certain types of digiphiles, and have done so many times on this forum.
I think it is important to expose most digital recordings for what they are (to me and many others) absolute garbage. Why do you think this thread exists? Many are dissatisfied!
WBF should be at the forefront of demanding change to improve digital recording so that threads like this become redundant.
Don’t know about you, but I can post AND listen to one of my systems at the same time…There are lots of people on here with big agendas! Makes me wonder, if their systems sound so good, why don't they spend more time listening to them instead of posting the same stuff on forums.
I had a great day at a friend's place yesterday listening to vinyl whilst playing with speaker position, system setup and room acoustics. Even although I listen to digital myself, you will never hear me put down vinyl.
When was the last time you purchased physical media? Seems to me you spend most of your time listening to YouTube...
Sorry this is just a huge overstatement because there are a lot of good modern classical and jazz recordings that are obviously recorded digitally today. Many of these recordings sound superb. I have three turntables with nice cartridges and phonostage and over 1000 LPs but I would never state what you did.
Would those differences be attributable to the medium alone -- or would it also be the recordings & masterings too? I.e. that the recordings / masterings are better adapted to analogue playback...
Could we not master recordings in a way that addresses these issues -- or drawbacks -- of digital playback?
“Most” is a ridiculous exaggeration. Maybe if you’re only listening to synthetic pop music produced by bean counters?
I’m all for more care being taken in the recording process. I easily hear different levels of recording/mastering. Most of what I hear in the genres I listen to sound good to great.
And I’m extremely sensitive/ intolerant of crappy recording quality.
As I’ve been burning in the Taiko Olympus, I’ve been letting Roon Radio stream jazz ( from more classic to avante-garde). I’ve been surprised at how 9/10 of over 100 random/algorithm picked albums have excellent sonics. Some better than others but almost all musically involving. This is the goal as far as I’m concerned.
If everything sounded like crap to me, I’d be looking at flaws in the playback system/room.
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every step is less complete than analog. i've heard it said that in studio hard to tell the difference between a raw digital file and the mic feed, or analog. don't personally buy that myself, but who knows. but then once you somehow process the file or send it somewhere it gets degraded. i cannot say how that works exactly. but i do know what happens if i dub a tape using two solid identical Studer A-820's side by side. no degradation at all. just the very slightest added noise in direct compare. so something added, but nothing lost. that is what is needed from digital. and for whatever reason math conversions are simply not free.
since the digital medium is not as musically complete relative to how an analog medium is complete (my personal viewpoint....not all agree), and digital smears peaks too, hard to connect the dots to see how that gets fixed as it's a result of math applied to an analog/real source. the conversion (from analog to math, then math to analog) comes with a price. yet at it's best these are slight sins of omission, and not much at that. but most listener's spider sense values this difference to a high degree.
i'm assuming that some smart people have tried. and will continue to try. information (inner musical truth) once lost, seems to stay lost. whether the culprit is digital conversion, an acoustically bad room, a noisy/colored signal path, a constipated amplifier or a dull/bright speaker.
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I’m extremely sensitive to and aware of poor recordings. I’m not buying the argument that you’re hearing more. Again, I think you need to look at the entire playback system.
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