You should reach out to Fred Ainsley @LampiNA from Lampizator North America.
He is a top bloke and delivers outstanding service.
Can digital get to vinyl sound and at what price?
- Thread starter ScottK
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He is a top bloke and delivers outstanding service.
Think about this for a minute, the world has gone digital for a reason; primarily because digital signals/bitstreams do not degrade over distance compare to analog signals. If accuracy was better maintained in the analog domain than in the digital domain today’s world would be a very different one.
Now you have me curious, can you please point me to, or provide a link, to these “decades of knowledge and research on the matter”. I like to review these scientific studies for myself.
No, it should not. For example, people consider that vinyl is technically inferior to tape, but a tape copy of vinyl is not transparent.
The process of interaction of artifacts (every system has them) is complex, non commutative and can't be addressed in such simple but primitive reasoning.
If you want to rely on sound engineers and professionals, the answer would be very simple - digital wins for sound quality .
There is no gap at all. We are addressing different media, that need different approaches of recording and playback in stereo. And listeners who own high-end systems who have a preference.
Both can be obtained by expertly used distortion and noise. How do you thing amplifier designers do it?
It is obvious that digital is a superior storage medium, but problems occur when the digital file is converted to analog... Analog playback is not perfect either, but there are specific issues with digital.
Nice to know. I consider ranking a source of misunderstanding in this hobby, not a method of investigation.
But surely I should rank more agressively according to my current preference to avoid storing too much gear ...
Always happy to post my opinions. And I am happy that you are happy, but we disagree on these matters. Unfortunately the usual belligerent posts flying around kill any possibility of a deabte.
I have been a music lover for many years. I have listened to music on a variety of formats. I have also heard some of the best digital equipment, including servers such as Taiko SGM, Wadax Reference Server, Aurander W20SE and 30SE, Pink Faun 2.16, Antipodes Oladra, Innuos Statement, and other companies. I have also listened to DACs such as MSB Select 2, Wadex Reference, DCS Vivaldi stack, Lampizator Horizon, Aries Cerat Kassandra Signature MKII, and many others.
When I compared the digital sources to the turntable sources on each of those systems, I preferred the sound of vinyl. This was true even when the turntable source was less expensive than the digital source.
I know that vinyl isn't the most convenient format. It's bulky, it's fragile, and it can be expensive. But to me, the sound of vinyl is simply unbeatable. It has a warm, rich, and full-bodied sound that I find much more enjoyable than any digital source I have heard.
The digital format can sound great, especially with high-quality equipment. But for me, there's just something about the sound of vinyl that I can't get enough of. It's a sound that's more alive and engaging.
When I compared the digital sources to the turntable sources on each of those systems, I preferred the sound of vinyl. This was true even when the turntable source was less expensive than the digital source.
I know that vinyl isn't the most convenient format. It's bulky, it's fragile, and it can be expensive. But to me, the sound of vinyl is simply unbeatable. It has a warm, rich, and full-bodied sound that I find much more enjoyable than any digital source I have heard.
The digital format can sound great, especially with high-quality equipment. But for me, there's just something about the sound of vinyl that I can't get enough of. It's a sound that's more alive and engaging.
Nice to know that analog is converted from electrical to mechanical/magnetic (tape recording) , back to electrical from magnetic (tape reading) converted to mechanical (vinyl cutting and duplicating) converted from mechanical to electrical (cartridge) without any "specific" issues.
IMO problems occur in general in this hobby because we do not know how to control the whole chain, not a specific part of it. Many times people change DACs when they should change or tune other parts of the system. But the DAC always becomes the guilty item with "specific issues".
So true!
I would have blamed my Yggdrasil DAC for "digitally" harsh highs had I not known better from hearing it in another system. Turns out, the main true problem was my acoustically nasty ceiling, which revealed itself as such upon a hand clapping test, emitting an ugly metallic "zing" in response. Once I got ASC ceiling diffusers, the problem was drastically mitigated (and further so with non-absorbing cloth covering the rest of the ceiling, courtesy of Mike Lavigne's idea). What if I had not treated my ceiling but bought a hyper-expensive DAC instead? I would have still had to contend with harsh "digital" highs from the ceiling. Another issue was my Pass B1 buffered zero-gain preamp. Once I exchanged that for an active high-quality preamp, harshness in highs became reduced further. And so on...
Certainly, my current (LIM) iteration of the DAC has even better highs than the original (OG or Analog 2) version of the DAC, but that comparatively subtle difference would have been inaudible without all the other, acoustic and electronic, improvements to my system.
I would also dare to say that the less flat frequency response in the highs of much of vinyl challenges room problem less. Of course then some will prefer vinyl in their rooms if these are acoustically less than optimal.
Thanks for the link. I was just thinking the other day about a LiDAR based disk pickup system. Hopefully someone will steal my idea and market one, at a reasonable price.
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These posts show, I believe, that you mistake your subjective preference for objective reality.
These posts also show, I think, that you do not acknowledge the several, but equally valid, objectives of high-end audio.
Seeking "accuracy" is on its own a valid objective (goal) of this hobby. Seeking "naturalness" on its own is a valid objective of this hobby.
Arguing about which objective is valid or not valid, or more valid or less valid, is pointless, as there is no principled basis upon which to adjudicate that one objective is more valid than another objective.
As usual, failure to understand and to acknowledge these alternative and equally valid objectives accounts for much of the consternation and talking past each other we read every day here.
You and Soundmann simply are arguing about different subjectively chosen objectives.
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But isn't this because that once the signal is digitized, the distance becomes largely irrelevant? It doesn't matter how far the destination point is from the origination point because the digital stream is re-converted only at the destination point. (This reminds me of the statistic about how much safer flying is than driving, because once you're up in the air adding distance doesn't materially increase risk because "conversions" from life to death occur on takeoff or landing.)
1) I'm sure this is correct, but it has nothing to do with sound quality.
2) Perhaps without realizing it explicitly you are adopting the hobby goal of "accuracy." That is a subjective preference.
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Fatally flawed article.
It still argues the old canard of discontinuous "stair step" digital and "missing information", showing complete lack of understanding how digital actually works (it would be worthwhile trying to actually understand the Shannon-Nyquist theorem for bandwidth-limited signals).
Here is a video that effectively refutes the "stair step" idea, with clear evidence on oscilloscope and such:
No worry at all. Just needs to have careful system matching, but this is unusual. I run my equipment at 47K input impedance, so should be no problem, but some SS equipment will have input impedances a lot lower. I am also a bit unusual as I don't use shielded interconnects, and run everything balanced differential so noise is not a problem. Therefore, all my interconnects have very low capacitance. Some high end interconnects have rather high capacitance though.
This is at the heart of my question. If I go High-end extreme on my DAC will I get better than my vinyl or just different or "better" digital. As I have stated they are very close now. Ultimately what makes the most difference in both is the quality of the recording. That dominates any differences between formats.
Just because some yayhoo parrots the official lies of digital doesn't mean its true (its not)!
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