"Do Vinyl Records Actually Sound Better Than CDs? We Take A Closer Look" in Slashgear

[bonzo75]

Weilerstein is great live, never heard her recordings of Shosty.

 

[bonzo75]

Best recording of Weilerstein

 

[the sound of Tao]

Weilerstein is great live, never heard her recordings of Shosty.

Genuine pity it isn’t also an analogue… but her performance is still absolutely fantastic in the Shosta cello 1… for analogue listeners obviously go to Rostropovich (after all Shostakovich did write it for him) with Ormandy/Philadelphia.

But also very big love for Heinrich Schiff/Maxim Shostakovich/SOBR and also for Daniel Muller-Schott/Kreizberg/SOBR… won’t say which of these last 2 are digital for fear that you will incriminate me.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Best recording of Weilerstein

Not that I’m jealous

 

[tima]

Oh and not everyone sees Karajan as the go to conductor… in fact some of his ardent fans should know he was big promoter or the transition to the digital era and please note not all analogue recordings are fantastic or worth listening to…

Try Shostakovich's pal Yevgeny Mravinsky for Tchaikovsky 4,5 and 6 -- he's an emotional rocket. Note the red Stereo.
One might say (though not true) that Mravinsky was the model for Kleiber.


DG/Analogphonic LP43092

It's not news that van Karajan was Sony's ambassador for the CD. Rumor has it that it was van Karajan who lobbied for and got the CD to hold ~74 minutes of music because that is what was needed to contain Furtwangler's Beethoven 9th Symphony.



Sony President Norio Ohga publicly demonstrating the compact disc to HvK.

Likewise it's not news that quite a few classica recordings are meh.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Try Shostakovich's pal Yevgeny Mravinsky for Tchaikovsky 4,5 and 6 -- he's an emotional rocket. Note the red Stereo.
One might say (though not true) that Mravinsky was the model for Kleiber.

View attachment 132990
DG/Analogphonic LP43092

It's not news that van Karajan was Sony's ambassador for the CD. Rumor has it that it was van Karajan who lobbied for and got the CD to hold ~74 minutes of music because that is what was needed to contain Furtwangler's Beethoven 9th Symphony.

View attachment 132988

Sony President Norio Ohga publicly demonstrating the compact disc to HvK.

Likewise it's not news that quite a few classica recordings are meh.

Mravinsky is a brilliant Tchaikovsky conductor… really treads that intense edge… always a benchmark in this for me as well

 

[hopkins]

I was curious to ask the classical music aficionados here who don't do digital how they deal with the fact that some labels have gone exclusively digital (ex: I believe Deutsche Gramophon has) - or issue vinyl in very limited quantities. Aren't there times when you wish you could listen to those contemporary recordings on you system?

I believe that for classical music, CD sales are still significantly higher than vinyl.

Quote from a recent article relating to the UK market:

"Although sales of vinyl overall are amazing,’ confirms Long [Steve Long of Signum Records], ‘we’ve been underwhelmed with the figures for classical music, which only amount to about two per cent of the UK classical market compared with 34 per cent for CDs and 55 per cent for streaming"

 

[wil]

No, just a coincidence..

?? Why would the recording tech have anything to do with the artistic content of the music?

 

[bonzo75]

Try Shostakovich's pal Yevgeny Mravinsky for Tchaikovsky 4,5 and 6 -- he's an emotional rocket. Note the red Stereo.
One might say (though not true) that Mravinsky was the model for Kleiber.

View attachment 132990
DG/Analogphonic LP43092

The red stereo is more relevant for the Tulips that were made from late 50s to early 60s. This is a 70s, when DG quality had lowered and also it is an analogphonic reissue. That said, it might be good on the recording.

I have this https://www.discogs.com/release/678...tra-At-the-Vienna-Festiaval-Live-Recordings-f

Great performance.

 

[Rexp]

?? Why would the recording tech have anything to do with the artistic content of the music?

I don't think it's a coincidence that some artists, like Bowie, struggled to maintain the high quality music they produced during the analog days. Playing around with digital recorders that didn't sound good would not get the creative juices flowing.

 

[hopkins]

I don't think it's a coincidence that some artists, like Bowie, struggled to maintain the high quality music they produced during the analog days. Playing around with digital recorders that didn't sound good would not get the creative juices flowing.

Right. Is there any evidence for this or are you just projecting your own issues with digital?

 

[Atmasphere]

Facts are facts. Hard to dispute what is stated in the article.

Actually its easy to dispute because it contains a lot of misinformation that has become rote in the digital world.
Examples:

For starters, sound engineers have to pan bass frequencies to the center (reducing them), otherwise the needle could experience tracking errors. Treble has to be managed, and high frequencies must be de-essed to prevent sibilance from causing distortion. Low-frequency music can't have too many high amplitude (loud) sections, or the needle with bounce and skip out of the groove.

This statement from the article is false. The author should have said these things are done to reduce the cost of mastering. I found that if you spent enough time with the project you didn't have to do any of this, even in the face of out of phase bass.

To make vinyl mixes sound their best, they require a special RIAA equalizing curve. This curve can be reversed with a turntable preamp, but the process does result in data being lost, and mastering already makes the recording less faithful from the get-go.

Emphasis added- this bit is false. The RIAA pre-emphasis and de-emphasis does not result in lost 'data'.

CDs, by way of comparison, don't have to make virtually any compromises,

FWIW, LPs have bandwidth past 40KHz, CDs do not. They can also have timing issues (mostly a playback problem) depending on the quality of the timing circuits (clock) used. So this statement is not exactly false, its one of those 'depends' things...

Vinyl has a narrower dynamic range compared to CDs

This one is really misleading!! This is because LPs generally are not meant to be played in cars while the digital release usually is. So if the producer of the project is conscientious, he would have sent the digtial master to the LP mastering house with no DSP other than normalization, while the digital master will have compression. This is why a good LP release can have greater dynamic range than the digital release; its not a media thing so much as an industry thing.

CDs can reach up to 96 dB of range, while vinyl records are stuck at about 70 dB.

This statement is false. The signal to noise ratio of an LP is based mostly on how quiet the pressing plant is. QRP in Salinas, KS, decided to damp their pressing equipment so it would not shake and vibrate (due to steam pressure) while the pressing was cooling. By our measurements this resulted in a solid 10dB improvement in signal to noise; and that's being conservative. Projects we did through them were so quiet the noise floor was the playback electronics, not the surface noise.

If you're going to attack the LP as a medium, at least the attacks should be based on fact rather than some made-up stuff easily debunked.

More:

Then there is "pre-echo," where sounds from a separate section of the vinyl get picked up before they play, particularly during a quiet section of a song.

In a nutshell, this is actually a tape thing, not an LP thing. Really thinking whomever wrote this stuff didn't know what they were talking about...

We mentioned earlier that bass frequencies are reduced on vinyl, but the problem goes deeper than that (pun, again, intended). The issue with bass is not just that it can lead to needle skips, but that too much of it can "steal" from other frequencies; it takes up a of ton physical space in the groove, and it has to rob that limited real estate from, you guessed it, the higher frequencies.


Aside from tracking errors, the way bass can make the needle bounce out of the groove may cause other parts of the songs to literally vanish. Most of this never happens since, as we mentioned, the bass is centered. But that just means aspects of the music could get lost in mastering before it reaches your ears, even when reversing the RIAA curve.


Because of this, people who originally listened to a song on a vinyl record will sometimes hear a new level and depth of bass on CD. However, there are adjustments to make bass more present in vinyl. You can reposition your speakers, get a preamp, change cartridges and platters, or increase the needle tracking weight. Otherwise, just use CDs; the bass is 100% there already.

Complete nonsense. I have to imagine the playback system they used was awful?? Bass isn't reduced on LPs, they are not mastered with 'reduced bass'. You don't get tracking errors if your arm and cartridge are set up properly; None. At. All.

High frequencies are another tricky subject when committing a mix to vinyl. We all learned in science class that lower frequencies, like bass, have long, stretched-out wavelengths. High frequencies like treble feature tighter, bunched-up peaks needed to produce the timbre of something like a high hat. As you can imagine, these grooves become incredibly tiny and fine on a vinyl record, making it very difficult for a needle to navigate through them at speed — or, in some cases, physically too small for a needle to fit into them at all.


The needle will then miss those pieces of the music entirely, and, in some cases, create distortion ewhen gliding over the peaks. Not only would you be missing those minuscule details in a song, distortion could be ruining the rest of the mix. These peaks are so problematic, in fact, that they can cause the machine cutting the lacquer to overheat, warping the vinyl and potentially creating distortion for all records made from the master stamper.

Again, pure nonsense! LPs have bandwidth past 40KHz as I mentioned earlier. We could cut 30KHz tones in the inner grooves with our Westerex 3D cutter and they would play back fine on an old Technics SL1200 with Grado Gold cartridge (we used this machine to know if we were cutting playable grooves). So none of what I quoted here was real. Just made up nonsense.

Do you want me to go on?? This article is a bad place to look if you want to know about LP recording and playback.

 

[Atmasphere]

Ugh! I was just reading some of the other nonsense in that article.
Climate change: if you are streaming music, your library is online in the cloud and so its servers cannot be turned off. Something has to power those servers and it could well be a coal fired power plant. So coal or uranium is being mined in part to keep your music playing. Doesn't sound all that good for climate change to me: if my LP collection is turned off (which it is all the time) its just sits there on the shelf, immune to power outages.

They should have at least talked to an LP mastering engineer before spouting all that crap. Junk article; IMO bad for anybody to read for any reason.

 

[Carlos269]

Ralph, why don’t we ask @m

Actually its easy to dispute because it contains a lot of misinformation that has become rote in the digital world.
Examples:

This statement from the article is false. The author should have said these things are done to reduce the cost of mastering. I found that if you spent enough time with the project you didn't have to do any of this, even in the face of out of phase bass.

Emphasis added- this bit is false. The RIAA pre-emphasis and de-emphasis does not result in lost 'data'.

FWIW, LPs have bandwidth past 40KHz, CDs do not. They can also have timing issues (mostly a playback problem) depending on the quality of the timing circuits (clock) used. So this statement is not exactly false, its one of those 'depends' things...

​

This one is really misleading!! This is because LPs generally are not meant to be played in cars while the digital release usually is. So if the producer of the project is conscientious, he would have sent the digtial master to the LP mastering house with no DSP other than normalization, while the digital master will have compression. This is why a good LP release can have greater dynamic range than the digital release; its not a media thing so much as an industry thing.

This statement is false. The signal to noise ratio of an LP is based mostly on how quiet the pressing plant is. QRP in Salinas, KS, decided to damp their pressing equipment so it would not shake and vibrate (due to steam pressure) while the pressing was cooling. By our measurements this resulted in a solid 10dB improvement in signal to noise; and that's being conservative. Projects we did through them were so quiet the noise floor was the playback electronics, not the surface noise.

If you're going to attack the LP as a medium, at least the attacks should be based on fact rather than some made-up stuff easily debunked.

More:

In a nutshell, this is actually a tape thing, not an LP thing. Really thinking whomever wrote this stuff didn't know what they were talking about...

Complete nonsense. I have to imagine the playback system they used was awful?? Bass isn't reduced on LPs, they are not mastered with 'reduced bass'. You don't get tracking errors if your arm and cartridge are set up properly; None. At. All.

Again, pure nonsense! LPs have bandwidth past 40KHz as I mentioned earlier. We could cut 30KHz tones in the inner grooves with our Westerex 3D cutter and they would play back fine on an old Technics SL1200 with Grado Gold cartridge (we used this machine to know if we were cutting playable grooves). So none of what I quoted here was real. Just made up nonsense.

Do you want me to go on?? This article is a bad place to look if you want to know about LP recording and playback

Ralph, why don’t we ask Mastering Engineer Dave McNair @Mcsnare how much of the article is true and valid in actual practice.

How much experience do you personally have with the latest DSD256+ recording and mastering in the studio? Things have changed since the AVID and Protools PCM days.

 

[Carlos269]

Ugh! I was just reading some of the other nonsense in that article.
Climate change: if you are streaming music, your library is online in the cloud and so its servers cannot be turned off. Something has to power those servers and it could well be a coal fired power plant. So coal or uranium is being mined in part to keep your music playing. Doesn't sound all that good for climate change to me: if my LP collection is turned off (which it is all the time) its just sits there on the shelf, immune to power outages.

They should have at least talked to an LP mastering engineer before spouting all that crap. Junk article; IMO bad for anybody to read for any reason.

I’m not sure what nonsense you are referring to. The article is not only factual, but it can be supported by other reference material readily available.

 

[hopkins]

I’m not sure what nonsense you are referring to. The article is not only factual, but it can be supported by other reference material readily available.

Wasn't it clear from both of Atmosphere's posts? You claim to have extensive experience in mastering, so I would expect a more elaborate, point by point, response rather than just referring to "other material".

 

[Kjetil]

All forms of digital have a great deal more distortion and nonlinearities than is inherent in a good vinyl pressing.

No.

 

[SoundMann]

No.

So what you are saying is we should just ignore the well known, easily measured facts that have been true since the dawn of digital audio because you don't agree?

 

[Kjetil]

No. It can be easily shown that vinyl playback has audible distortion while modern digital has not.

That said I like vinyl playback. No doubt about that.

 

[Argonaut]

Best recording of Weilerstein

For my part I find her , at times , to be striving a little too hard for that virtuoso performance .
I had mixed considerations hearing her Bach Cello Suite, Wigmore Hall , FYI a YouTube of her 2021 performance: .