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

[SoundMann]

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

Oh boy, do I have the perfect digital bridge to sell you!

 

[Lagonda]

Oh boy, do I have the perfect digital bridge to sell you!

To late he bought one already !

 

[bonzo75]

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: .

The bach cello suite is heavy virtuoso when heard live as compared to on a recording where you listen in parts.

That said not all artists do all things well. They disappoint on some - not just pieces, but also performances.

When Barenboim conducted her early performance, he said she was the best cellist after his ex-wife

 

[Argonaut]

The bach cello suite is heavy virtuoso when heard live as compared to on a recording where you listen in parts.

Perhaps I wasn’t clear , in that I had indeed attended her Live performance and for the most part enjoyed her interpretation , certainly closer to Capuçon than Fournier

 

[Kjetil]

Oh boy, do I have the perfect digital bridge to sell you!

What’s a digital bridge?

 

[Mike Lavigne]

What’s a digital bridge?

like this.

 

[Kjetil]

Oh well. Carry on.

 

[Atmasphere]

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.

We used whatever digital source file was provided to us. No need to ask another mastering engineer; we were doing our LP mastering on a Scully lathe with Westerex 3D cutter head and Westerex 1700 series electronics (rebuilt), which I owned for 25 years. So I am speaking from direct experience.

I sold the system a couple of years ago after it was obvious that Appollodisc was not going to rebuild after their factory burned to the ground. They provided 80% of the world supply of lacquers for LP mastering.

The newer digital codices are great!

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.

I outlined just a few of the nonsense items in my first post to this thread! Did you not read it?? Its the one to which you are responding...

The article is not factual; it flies directly in the face of those things that most LP mastering engineers know (if they are paying attention and trying to get the best sound out of the media rather than mastering at the lowest cost). Nor its is supported by reference materials of any good provenance. I outlined just a few of its 'bugs'. There are plenty more. Its not written by someone that has direct knowledge of how LPs work. At best its hearsay.

Please don't try to gaslight me on this, OK? My recommendation to you if you have a problem with anything I've written here is go out and get your hands on an LP mastering system like I did, set it up properly and then master some LPs. A lot of the impressions I had about the LP (some of which are myths like the ones promoted in this terrible article) died an ugly death by this means.

For example one of the things that I heard over and over again was that old saw about noisy lacquers. Never ran into one. The surface of the lacquer isn't important- the groove you cut into it is.

When you set up the cutter head (the cutter stylus is only good for about 10 hours) you set it up to get the quietest groove you can. That's done by working with the cutting angle, tracking pressure, track ball height (something newer cutter heads don't use; governs groove depth) and stylus temperature. If you get the set up right, the groove the system cuts will be so quiet that with the quietest playback electronics available the noise floor will be the electronics, so a good -85dB. The surface noise that knocks it back to -70dB comes from the pressing plant. That's why QRP is doing such remarkable work. Chad Kassam of Acoustic Sounds owns that plant; I've known him since before he founded Acoustic Sounds when he was buying and reselling used LPs. So I talked to him prior to doing any work through his plant, since the project we were doing was a low press (500 copies) and his plant is geared for larger runs.

Now after all this I am not saying the LP is superior to digital. I don't think it is, but not for the reasons usually stated. So I'll state them here: The biggest single weakness of the LP is playback; that's where all the 'distortion of the LP' comes in, not during record. Most people fail to set up their turntable correctly. Those 'studies' about LP distortion are mostly bad science by not providing provenance about the playback equipment- go and look for yourself. We don't know if they got the setup right, if their phono section had RFI problems and so on. The second biggest problem of the LP is phono section preamps, the designers of which don't seem to realize what happens when you put an inductor in parallel with a capacitance (the tonearm cable) and so the phono section can generate ticks and pops due to overload problems that sound for all the world as if they are on the LP surface. I found out about this problem serendipitously 35 years ago. The third biggest problem of the LP is platter pads. Most people don't understand how they affect distortion of the LP in playback; when the LP is tracked by the stylus it can resonate and 'talk back' to the stylus. A proper mat is the same durometer as the vinyl so absorbs vibration and damps it.

Once you get those things right in the paragraph above, you find that most LPs are free of ticks and pops and very low distortion. I'm very used to playing entire sides that are perfectly quiet. When an LP project is cut, the pressing plant will send a 'test pressing' back to the producer, on which he has to sign off prior to the pressing plant going ahead with the LP run. So if the producer is conscientious, there will be no ticks or pops because there are none on the stamper.

Despite all this, I still think digital is a little better if its done right (again, most of its problems are in playback). Its main advantage is its a lot easier to set up and you can often plug and play, something impossible with LPs.

So I don't object to someone being critical of the LP, but it sucks when they are uninformed and promoting myth. If you're going to be critical, at least have the facts on hand!!

 

[wil]

We used whatever digital source file was provided to us. No need to ask another mastering engineer; we were doing our LP mastering on a Scully lathe with Westerex 3D cutter head and Westerex 1700 series electronics (rebuilt), which I owned for 25 years. So I am speaking from direct experience.

I sold the system a couple of years ago after it was obvious that Appollodisc was not going to rebuild after their factory burned to the ground. They provided 80% of the world supply of lacquers for LP mastering.

The newer digital codices are great!

I outlined just a few of the nonsense items in my first post to this thread! Did you not read it?? Its the one to which you are responding...

The article is not factual; it flies directly in the face of those things that most LP mastering engineers know (if they are paying attention and trying to get the best sound out of the media rather than mastering at the lowest cost). Nor its is supported by reference materials of any good provenance. I outlined just a few of its 'bugs'. There are plenty more. Its not written by someone that has direct knowledge of how LPs work. At best its hearsay.

Please don't try to gaslight me on this, OK? My recommendation to you if you have a problem with anything I've written here is go out and get your hands on an LP mastering system like I did, set it up properly and then master some LPs. A lot of the impressions I had about the LP (some of which are myths like the ones promoted in this terrible article) died an ugly death by this means.

For example one of the things that I heard over and over again was that old saw about noisy lacquers. Never ran into one. The surface of the lacquer isn't important- the groove you cut into it is.

When you set up the cutter head (the cutter stylus is only good for about 10 hours) you set it up to get the quietest groove you can. That's done by working with the cutting angle, tracking pressure, track ball height (something newer cutter heads don't use; governs groove depth) and stylus temperature. If you get the set up right, the groove the system cuts will be so quiet that with the quietest playback electronics available the noise floor will be the electronics, so a good -85dB. The surface noise that knocks it back to -70dB comes from the pressing plant. That's why QRP is doing such remarkable work. Chad Kassam of Acoustic Sounds owns that plant; I've known him since before he founded Acoustic Sounds when he was buying and reselling used LPs. So I talked to him prior to doing any work through his plant, since the project we were doing was a low press (500 copies) and his plant is geared for larger runs.

Now after all this I am not saying the LP is superior to digital. I don't think it is, but not for the reasons usually stated. So I'll state them here: The biggest single weakness of the LP is playback; that's where all the 'distortion of the LP' comes in, not during record. Most people fail to set up their turntable correctly. Those 'studies' about LP distortion are mostly bad science by not providing provenance about the playback equipment- go and look for yourself. We don't know if they got the setup right, if their phono section had RFI problems and so on. The second biggest problem of the LP is phono section preamps, the designers of which don't seem to realize what happens when you put an inductor in parallel with a capacitance (the tonearm cable) and so the phono section can generate ticks and pops due to overload problems that sound for all the world as if they are on the LP surface. I found out about this problem serendipitously 35 years ago. The third biggest problem of the LP is platter pads. Most people don't understand how they affect distortion of the LP in playback; when the LP is tracked by the stylus it can resonate and 'talk back' to the stylus. A proper mat is the same durometer as the vinyl so absorbs vibration and damps it.

Once you get those things right in the paragraph above, you find that most LPs are free of ticks and pops and very low distortion. I'm very used to playing entire sides that are perfectly quiet. When an LP project is cut, the pressing plant will send a 'test pressing' back to the producer, on which he has to sign off prior to the pressing plant going ahead with the LP run. So if the producer is conscientious, there will be no ticks or pops because there are none on the stamper.

Despite all this, I still think digital is a little better if its done right (again, most of its problems are in playback). Its main advantage is its a lot easier to set up and you can often plug and play, something impossible with LPs.

So I don't object to someone being critical of the LP, but it sucks when they are uninformed and promoting myth. If you're going to be critical, at least have the facts on hand!!

More fact/experience/knowledge based postings like the ones above from Ralph rather than the mythological, narrowly experienced AGENDA based postings on the so called digital/analog debate would be a good thing on this forum, imho.

 

[the sound of Tao]

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: .

and that’s right, there’s always going to be plenty of latitude in how we perceive the quality of an individual music performance because we obviously ultimately make it through our own lens filtering it through our own expectations about how a piece of music should sound. It’s why there is rarely one absolute best in a specific piece of the classical repertoire let alone performers being seen universally as best in class. Heifetz has been criticised for being too virtuosic at times and even though I’m a giant fan of Heifetz and great as he was I get that his approach doesn’t always come off as the ideal in every piece every time. Thankfully musicians spend often whole lives exploring their art trying to get it right for themselves.

I like the idea that we are working with living lists when it comes to viewing what’s great in music because views change through time and we can have quite different takes on what is best at different times in history as well. I figure the musician’s journey isn’t exactly an easy one when your up against the best in recorded history all the time let alone the judgements of us the punters in the audience.

 

[Rexp]

We used whatever digital source file was provided to us. No need to ask another mastering engineer; we were doing our LP mastering on a Scully lathe with Westerex 3D cutter head and Westerex 1700 series electronics (rebuilt), which I owned for 25 years. So I am speaking from direct experience.

I sold the system a couple of years ago after it was obvious that Appollodisc was not going to rebuild after their factory burned to the ground. They provided 80% of the world supply of lacquers for LP mastering.

The newer digital codices are great!

I outlined just a few of the nonsense items in my first post to this thread! Did you not read it?? Its the one to which you are responding...

The article is not factual; it flies directly in the face of those things that most LP mastering engineers know (if they are paying attention and trying to get the best sound out of the media rather than mastering at the lowest cost). Nor its is supported by reference materials of any good provenance. I outlined just a few of its 'bugs'. There are plenty more. Its not written by someone that has direct knowledge of how LPs work. At best its hearsay.

Please don't try to gaslight me on this, OK? My recommendation to you if you have a problem with anything I've written here is go out and get your hands on an LP mastering system like I did, set it up properly and then master some LPs. A lot of the impressions I had about the LP (some of which are myths like the ones promoted in this terrible article) died an ugly death by this means.

For example one of the things that I heard over and over again was that old saw about noisy lacquers. Never ran into one. The surface of the lacquer isn't important- the groove you cut into it is.

When you set up the cutter head (the cutter stylus is only good for about 10 hours) you set it up to get the quietest groove you can. That's done by working with the cutting angle, tracking pressure, track ball height (something newer cutter heads don't use; governs groove depth) and stylus temperature. If you get the set up right, the groove the system cuts will be so quiet that with the quietest playback electronics available the noise floor will be the electronics, so a good -85dB. The surface noise that knocks it back to -70dB comes from the pressing plant. That's why QRP is doing such remarkable work. Chad Kassam of Acoustic Sounds owns that plant; I've known him since before he founded Acoustic Sounds when he was buying and reselling used LPs. So I talked to him prior to doing any work through his plant, since the project we were doing was a low press (500 copies) and his plant is geared for larger runs.

Now after all this I am not saying the LP is superior to digital. I don't think it is, but not for the reasons usually stated. So I'll state them here: The biggest single weakness of the LP is playback; that's where all the 'distortion of the LP' comes in, not during record. Most people fail to set up their turntable correctly. Those 'studies' about LP distortion are mostly bad science by not providing provenance about the playback equipment- go and look for yourself. We don't know if they got the setup right, if their phono section had RFI problems and so on. The second biggest problem of the LP is phono section preamps, the designers of which don't seem to realize what happens when you put an inductor in parallel with a capacitance (the tonearm cable) and so the phono section can generate ticks and pops due to overload problems that sound for all the world as if they are on the LP surface. I found out about this problem serendipitously 35 years ago. The third biggest problem of the LP is platter pads. Most people don't understand how they affect distortion of the LP in playback; when the LP is tracked by the stylus it can resonate and 'talk back' to the stylus. A proper mat is the same durometer as the vinyl so absorbs vibration and damps it.

Once you get those things right in the paragraph above, you find that most LPs are free of ticks and pops and very low distortion. I'm very used to playing entire sides that are perfectly quiet. When an LP project is cut, the pressing plant will send a 'test pressing' back to the producer, on which he has to sign off prior to the pressing plant going ahead with the LP run. So if the producer is conscientious, there will be no ticks or pops because there are none on the stamper.

Despite all this, I still think digital is a little better if its done right (again, most of its problems are in playback). Its main advantage is its a lot easier to set up and you can often plug and play, something impossible with LPs.

So I don't object to someone being critical of the LP, but it sucks when they are uninformed and promoting myth. If you're going to be critical, at least have the facts on hand!!

What hardware/media do you use for digital playback?

 

[thedudeabides]

The premise, that CD somehow destroyed artistic talent and expression, is preposterous.

The anti digital crowd has made many claims (cloqued under the guise of facts versus personal opinion) that are obviously tribal in nature and manifests itself in many forms. But I suppose it could be healthy for them to provide an outlet for their anger and frustration.

 

[thedudeabides]

Anyway you still cannot find a single new artist equal or better than Coltrane or Evans.

May I state the obvious proven numerous times over the course of musical history. It may likely take several decades, if not more, for the public / critics to recognize and appreciate the creativity, artistry, and genius of any current (or recently deceased) performer or composer.

 

[Argonaut]

I figure the musician’s journey isn’t exactly an easy one when your up against the best in recorded history all the time let alone the judgements of us the punters in the audience.

Just So , The lens and prism with which we appraise the musician's performance and interpretation of this body of work in particular.

 

[thedudeabides]

Hi Ron,

I saw part of your post where you stated that "you regret starting this thread". Given the never ending posts / threads on the A v D issue and the inherent repetiveness and toxicity that results from this discussion, why did you start this thread?

 

[PeterA]

The anti digital crowd has made many claims (cloqued under the guise of facts versus personal opinion) that are obviously tribal in nature and manifests itself in many forms. But I suppose it could be healthy for them to provide an outlet for their anger and frustration.

I do not think the “anti-Digital crowd” is as monolithic as you seem to be implying. Sometimes is simply a slight preference for one format over another. And I think it’s more individual than “tribal”. Likely the same for those who prefer digital for whatever reason.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

The anti digital crowd has made many claims (cloqued under the guise of facts versus personal opinion) that are obviously tribal in nature and manifests itself in many forms. But I suppose it could be healthy for them to provide an outlet for their anger and frustration.

I do not think the “anti-Digital crowd” is as monolithic as you seem to be implying. Sometimes is simply a slight preference for one format over another. And I think it’s more individual than “tribal”. Likely the same for those who prefer digital for whatever reason.

not sure i would characterize any group as 'anti-digital'. at least not as i see things go here. it's more that there is a preferred recording, performance, and artist era that is given high level recognition by a certain subset of people. and outsized significance (from the outside looking in) might be given to optimizing and paying attention to those recordings in system development. which leads to perceptions of being 'anti' when it's more they are 'pro' what they like and de-emphasize other recordings and formats. but not really denigrating those recordings as bad. just not what they want to focus on. then there are people who align with that but also take their digital very seriously.

and not everyone seeing those recordings as 'above' takes things beyond that in the same way. lots of different voices and perspectives involved. and a little bit of hobby politics rears it's head too. a little bit.

maybe if i was more educated about classical music and performance nuance, i would be less of a generalist about music, and less focused on all formats or my own 'thing'. each of our own approach to the hobby is dependent on many variables.

 

[treitz3]

Each of our own approach to the hobby is dependent on many variables.

So true. So very true.

Tom

 

[treitz3]

The last two posts were removed. Gentlemen, let's not get into a late night spat.

Please respond (as gentlemen) and contribute to the discussion, instead of degrading it and the forum. Thanks.

Tom

 

[tima]

I do not think the “anti-Digital crowd” is as monolithic as you seem to be implying. Sometimes is simply a slight preference for one format over another. And I think it’s more individual than “tribal”. Likely the same for those who prefer digital for whatever reason.

Yes. I did CDs for several years, still have two players and a large collection of discs. I don't do digital because I can afford to do but one format very well; digital technology continues in flux and I have no interest in continual change. And I have a lot of classical LPs. It's that simple for me.