Great article on "Analogue Warmth"

[Gregadd]

A historical note is in order here about Ethans tests.

As far as my memory serves, the big advocates of analog on this forum, including at the time MEP, Micro, Mike L and others did not participate in his tests. Those that did participate included Tim, myself, Amir, and I am sorry a few others.

I do not recall you taking part in those tests, if you did, then I applaud that. Actions speak louder than words every time.

These tests were in some ways akin to blind testing, and the analog is superior only crowd did not participate because this is a test and they do not believe in testing themselves because _(insert dozens of reasons why here)__.


Now, I agree that analog has a nice sound, and my arguments about the sound are the distortions it creates come across better using two channel stereo, and it is those distortions/enhancements or whatever you want to call them, call them processing artifacts if you want, that change the recorded information in a way that many find more interesting.

It is not a bad thing, but if my goal was to record the most pure tone over a period of time and be able to play it back with the least distortions, then digital available to us consumers would win flat out and there is no one here able to disprove that.

Again, IMO, two channel stereo is a somewhat sterile process and artificial as well, and analog processing helps get past those things that many folks don't like in the pure stereo process.

Initially, what digital in the form of CD did was allow folks with less than world class systems to hear clean bass and we all know that clean bass equates to a cleaner midrange in most cases and so this was digitals first appeal, a less expensive source producing more of the low end of the music, and at first, excruciating highs that were way too hotly recorded and released by business men to fill their catalogs due to original master tapes for recording onto LP having enhanced highs for the LP process signal to noise ratio.

I have proven to myself if I record from my preamp phono output to 24/96 digital and then play it back (it remains 24/96 in and out no up or down sampling) it preserves all the analog processes that I hear from the LP. Digital can do that, because its process distortions are not as audible as analogs.

I also like to choose the sound of SET as well, and I also sometimes use my tone controls and sometimes my image enhancement and dynamic range enhancement processors as well, because, ultimately, its the sound I want to hear that matters, and if, and this is really IMO the biggest issue, if the recording is dynamic and detailed, then it sounds great in any format and playback device, even the table top radio.

I did not submit an answer. In part because someone had already published a correct response. I doubt I would have participated for reasons I have already stated.

 

[Blizzard]

I hope so. They still have a lot to improve. And you are promising us lots of good thinks for 2020.


I disagree. Current top vinyl playing systems and tube amps are significantly better than those from ten (or even five) years ago.

Maybe if you are talking $200-300k vinyl and tubes. And the improvements are very small.

Vinyl and tubes will never completely die just because of the coolness factor. People still buy precision automatic watches, even though cheap digital watches can keep better time.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

I stick on a pristine modern DDD recording of some music.. sounds amazing , then I stick on 60's recording of ella and Louis , hiss ,mic distortion , rolled off treble , limited bass and all .. and I feel closer to the music and the performers with the "compromised" recording...dunno why...

That's exactly how I feel. For me, I think the "tactical" component of vinyl plays a significant part in that. I feel more connected with the music somehow. You get some of that when playing CD/SACD physical discs, although to a much lesser degree. And while the tactical experience has nothing to do with sound quality, it's something that, to me, still enhances the overall musical enjoyment.

Having said that, I still listen to a lot of digital and am very glad that we have it available to us, but it's just not the same. I guess I'm an anti-audiophile as quality of sound alone is not why I listen to music....I want to connect with the art of music first and foremost.

 

[esldude]

I am pretty satisfied with where I'm at, and I consider that a very good thing. But that's not the point here at all. One man's clarity and detail may be another man's too bright; one's "timbral density" may be another's colored midrange, but if you read these forums with any objectivity at all, it becomes clear that there are characteristic qualities of digital and analog that don't require reaching to the pinnacle of the state of the art, much less having it in your home, to decide what you prefer. I respect your experience with gear, I just don't respect this particular argument. Mep used to make it all the time, and while you do it with much more tact and dignity, it's still a get out of jail free card. I don't have a SOTA system of any kind, but I've heard real, live, acoustic instruments, a lot, in every listening room I've ever had, so if an "original event" is a reference, I could dismiss pretty much everyone's opinion here based on the same logic. I don't, because it's faulty logic.

Tim

You still don't get it do you Tim. You have not heard SOTA musicians in a SOTA hall, so your live music listening experience doesn't equal those of other people. Leaving you once again in no position to comment.

Do I need to add TIC.

 

[DaveyF]

Even the latest and greatest studio emulation software and hardware isn't that great, let alone stuff from years ago.

Agreed, but what makes you think that it is getting better. I would say that some of the greatest recording that we now have are from an era that is before the onset of digital...
when the chain was pure analog. Including the then utilization of all tube electronics. Many here are seemingly of the opinion that digital will ultimately lead us to the sound of 'real' instruments
in a 'live' space. That may or may not be the case, but IMHO right now the electronics that I want to listen to, and not just at home but in the studio as well, are tubed based; or have some tubes in the
circuit.YMMV.

 

[esldude]

Vinyl and tubes will never completely die just because of the coolness factor. People still buy precision automatic watches, even though cheap digital watches can keep better time.

A very apt comparison. One difference is the in between market. One where people are buying and using accurate digital watches that look and function to the user like mechanical automatic chronographs of old. Something like the market you hope to create I suppose.

 

[Blizzard]

Agreed, but what makes you think that it is getting better. I would say that some of the greatest recording that we now have are from an era that is before the onset of digital...
when the chain was pure analog. Including the then utilization of all tube electronics. Many here are seemingly of the opinion that digital will ultimately lead us to the sound of 'real' instruments
in a 'live' space. That may or may not be the case, but IMHO right now the electronics that I want to listen to, and not just at home but in the studio as well, are tubed based; or have some tubes in the
circuit.YMMV.

I agree some of the best sounding stuff is from the 60's. But it's nowhere at the level of the latest quad DSD stuff.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I am pretty satisfied with where I'm at, and I consider that a very good thing. But that's not the point here at all. One man's clarity and detail may be another man's too bright; one's "timbral density" may be another's colored midrange, but if you read these forums with any objectivity at all, it becomes clear that there are characteristic qualities of digital and analog that don't require reaching to the pinnacle of the state of the art, much less having it in your home, to decide what you prefer. I respect your experience with gear, I just don't respect this particular argument. Mep used to make it all the time, and while you do it with much more tact and dignity, it's still a get out of jail free card. I don't have a SOTA system of any kind, but I've heard real, live, acoustic instruments, a lot, in every listening room I've ever had, so if an "original event" is a reference, I could dismiss pretty much everyone's opinion here based on the same logic. I don't, because it's faulty logic.

Tim

fair enough and I did not intend to be patronizing if that is how you took it.

another way to put it is that good ole redbook as we know it is still a fine way to hear music considering the cost/benefit/ease of use. with a little effort (and I assume you do what you can to optimize things) it sounds pretty good. but as we try to make it better and better some of the weakest aspects of it get exposed as not musical. at those 'points of departure' to another level of redbook performance we do look back and wonder how we did not recognize those 'issues/nasties/'characterisitcs' as non-musical at the time. well......that is always how it is with distortion.....we don't see it clearly until it gets removed. i realize my use of the word 'distortion' will cause consternation since it infers some sort of measurement. but I'm not intending for that meaning. only that distortion is something 'non-musical' that when removed the performance is better.

i guess we might never agree on that unless we could listen to a before and after together. no worries.....we don't have to agree.

one driver for me is living with analog every day for decades makes me pursue that degree of musical involvement in my digital since there is so much great digital and it's so easy to listen to.

 

[DaveyF]

You still don't get it do you Tim. You have not heard SOTA musicians in a SOTA hall, so your live music listening experience doesn't equal those of other people. Leaving you once again in no position to comment.

Do I need to add TIC.

I don't think you get it! Why would hearing SOTA musicians in a SOTA hall have anything to do with the fact that Tim hears musicians in a local set up....and with real instruments. Which, BTW he may be playing on one of them!! The sound of a real
instrument is the sound of the real instrument...maybe it will not sound as great as the 'best' of something ( whatever that is) played by the 'best' player....BUT remember it is still the sound of the real 'live' instrument that Tim is hearing. That alone, IMHO,
is superior to any of the sounds that we are able to 'reproduce' in our homes.

 

[Gregadd]

I don't buy this either so go ahead and stone me for this too . My workhorse DAC remains my 15 year old DAC. Maybe folks in the last few years have figured out how to add colorations to digital in the high-end but the performance of digital has been superb for many years if the goal is transparency to what we hear.

Let us aply some deductive reasoning, If digital has been superb for many years that would imply it was not always superb. It has been around more than "many years." In order to be "superb" now it must have improved over the original version..

 

[esldude]

Agreed, but what makes you think that it is getting better. I would say that some of the greatest recording that we now have are from an era that is before the onset of digital...
when the chain was pure analog. Including the then utilization of all tube electronics. Many here are seemingly of the opinion that digital will ultimately lead us to the sound of 'real' instruments
in a 'live' space. That may or may not be the case, but IMHO right now the electronics that I want to listen to, and not just at home but in the studio as well, are tubed based; or have some tubes in the
circuit.YMMV.

While part of the story you are also ignoring another big part of it. Many of these pre-digital analog recordings that are rightly cherished were also recorded very simply with very little processing. Because processing wasn't readily available nor were machines to record 48 tracks at once. That is one of the travesties of modern recording. Digital allows excellent fidelity, but nearly all the time we lose more than we gained because it also allowed layers and layers of processing of the recording.

 

[Blizzard]

A very apt comparison. One difference is the in between market. One where people are buying and using accurate digital watches that look and function to the user like mechanical automatic chronographs of old. Something like the market you hope to create I suppose.

It would be cool to be able to project a hologram of the gear you are emulating.

 

[DaveyF]

I agree some of the best sounding stuff is from the 60's. But it's nowhere at the level of the latest quad DSD stuff.

That is in your not so humble opinion, LOL.

IMHO, the sound of the best stuff from the 60's and even the 50's is leaps and bounds ahead of the latest quad DSD stuff or any digital that I have heard on great systems with great digital gear!
I really do think you may want to go and listen to a great analog set up, whether that be vinyl or tape and then get back to us with your ( hopefully at that point) humble opinion. Until then, I submit that
everything else from you is 'supposition'.

 

[esldude]

I don't think you get it! Why would hearing SOTA musicians in a SOTA hall have anything to do with the fact that Tim hears musicians in a local set up....and with real instruments. Which, BTW he may be playing on one of them!! The sound of a real
instrument is the sound of the real instrument...maybe it will not sound as great as the 'best' of something ( whatever that is) played by the 'best' player....BUT remember it is still the sound of the real 'live' instrument that Tim is hearing. That alone, IMHO,
is superior to any of the sounds that we are able to 'reproduce' in our homes.

So you missed my TIC (tongue in cheek).

You did trip over another of my pet peeves. The one about the musician knowing what his record should sound like. One of the things that became immediately clear like a blow to the head when I started doing some recordings. The musician or small group of musicians have no idea what they sound like to a listener 15 feet away. They are sitting there on the instruments and hear things in a way no one as an audience member would hear. Nor can they know what they sound like a few feet away.

That is not to say musicians have no useful input into what is going on. Just that one of the community pieces of wisdom that a musician can be an arbiter on how he really sounds is actually not at all true. What he can be is an arbiter as to what sound conveys the music the way he/she wants. That may or may not be accurate in terms of recorded fidelity.

 

[esldude]

It would be cool to be able to project a hologram of the gear you are emulating.

You simply need the entire holodeck experience from Star Trek.

 

[DaveyF]

While part of the story you are also ignoring another big part of it. Many of these pre-digital analog recordings that are rightly cherished were also recorded very simply with very little processing. Because processing wasn't readily available nor were machines to record 48 tracks at once. That is one of the travesties of modern recording. Digital allows excellent fidelity, but nearly all the time we lose more than we gained because it also allowed layers and layers of processing of the recording.

Which would seem to be adding to my point! Unless we are arguing that the sound of the 'real' is not what we are after, instead a homogenized version that conveniently fits into our paradigm of 'artificial' sound, but one that measure perfectly. At least to the measuring tools that we currently have on hand and that we believe measure all possible parameters, so that they are infallible.

 

[Blizzard]

That is in your not so humble opinion, LOL.

IMHO, the sound of the best stuff from the 60's and even the 50's is leaps and bounds ahead of the latest quad DSD stuff or any digital that I have heard on great systems with great digital gear!
I really do think you may want to go and listen to a great analog set up, whether that be vinyl or tape and then get back to us with your ( hopefully at that point) humble opinion. Until then, I submit that
everything else from you is 'supposition'.

That would be because you prefer the colorations. Checkout the Yarlung Records quad DSD stuff as they record with tape.

http://www.yarlungrecords.com

 

[esldude]

Let us aply some deductive reasoning, If digital has been superb for many years that would imply it was not always superb. It has been around more than "many years." In order to be "superb" now it must have improved over the original version..

One would hope such sophomoric deductive reasoning would have been self edited by deciding not to post it.

 

[DaveyF]

That would be because you prefer the colorations.
http://www.yarlungrecords.com

Or, you do...

 

[esldude]

Which would seem to be adding to my point! Unless we are arguing that the sound of the 'real' is not what we are after, instead a homogenized version that conveniently fits into our paradigm of 'artificial' sound, but one that measure perfectly. snip..........

Bingo, I don't think the majority of the listening public nor the majority of the audiophile community is actually after the "real" sound. They are after a more real than real sound. Which is perfectly okay as long as we recognize that is what is going on. There also are advantages to a closer than real approach vs real. Much like cameras on TV can give you perspective either so close or so different than what is possible in real life it brings something of additional value. In audio however, the approach has run off the rails and too much processing gets in the way of both reality and pleasing results.