"How can we ever truly know if we are hearing exactly what is on the recording?"

[the sound of Tao]

I’ve been quietly set back on this one as this is the kind of topic that unfortunately unleashes my more elongated abstract moments lol. The struggles of assessing (and benchmarking) in design with aspects of art and technology, science and craft is daily business for me so if I go off on a tangent here it is just me selfishly exploring (for my own work purposes) and developing concepts for educational theory when assessing design.

But trying to keep on point to the op here I feel it may serve the discussion (hopefully) if we started by making some simple definitions and break this down into some clear structural boundaries.

If I may be permitted to steal (apply) some design concept ideas of viewing things separately in terms of both the objective and the subjective, that is the context of a thing and the experience of that thing (or spirit). So in the topic of how much can we know we are hearing of the recording I would believe we would need to break this down into that primary dualism. That is objectively what has been recorded (and then how much of that we are hearing) and then subjectively what we are perceiving of the performance of music in terms of relaying it’s true musical spirit.

For me objectively what we are hearing can be defined in simple and whole terms as a sense of realness and subjectively what we are perceiving more in the terms of its sense of rightness. Perhaps it need be no more complex than this as subjectivity ultimately rules in music listening. If this were engineering I’d be leaning far more on the objective.

Realness for me is in the sonic, rightness is in the musicality. These are two different things... though they can equally be very much enmeshed. Just an idea.

 

[morricab]

Mike, of course you have a loss upon conversion, and that holds for analog conversion as much as for the digital conversion that you described.

The more interesting question is what would happen if you record from the same microphone feed
a) to analog tape and from there make a vinyl pressing, and then play the LP on one of your turntables
b) to a high quality ADC and play back the digital recording on your MSB Select II DAC
Which of these chains then would retain more information? That would be interesting to find out.

A missing link in your story is also the quality of the DAC used at the time. Obviously you cannot aurally judge the quality of an ADC output without playing back the result through a DAC. I don't know how recent the event was, but if the DAC used was not your MSB Select II, you have a problem right there.

More interesting is from mic to amp to record cutter...I recorded my voice this way once and it was amazing...

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Mike, of course you have a loss upon conversion, and that holds for analog conversion as much as for the digital conversion that you described.

The more interesting question is what would happen if you record from the same microphone feed
a) to analog tape and from there make a vinyl pressing, and then play the LP on one of your turntables
b) to a high quality ADC and play back the digital recording on your MSB Select II DAC
Which of these chains then would retain more information? That would be interesting to find out.

A missing link in your story is also the quality of the DAC used at the time. Obviously you cannot aurally judge the quality of an ADC output without playing back the result through a DAC. I don't know how recent the event was, but if the DAC used was not your MSB Select II, you have a problem right there.

Al,

your points are valid and those are variables. the 2 ADC's were the Pacific Microsonics Model 2, and the Digital Audio Denmark AX24 (not chopped liver), i can't recall how we played back the files for monitoring, might have been through those units. it was not played back with my dac at the time; the Playback Designs MPS-5.

as far as analog recording; i've done dozens (maybe a hundred) tape to tape dubs with my Studers, and never been able to tell the difference one tape to another, other than occasionally a very slight increase in the noise floor. no loss of musical nuance.

i've heard (and own) lots of great digital transfers from tape......awesome transfers. 24/352 transfers, 4xdsd transfers, none even approach a tape transfer from a tape done right. i have 1000 (one thousand) or so 2xdsd and 4xdsd vinyl rips that i listen to often. none are eye to eye with the actual vinyl. yes; the chain used to rip those are variables.

with Reference Recordings there are a number of titles with both analog and digital masters from the same mic feed. i have compared them and the analog captures more musical nuance.

that is quite a few data points for my opinion to be formed reasonably.

digital is great. i'm as invested in digital and listen to it as enthusiastically and as often as anyone. but analog can capture more musical nuance. it's just the way it is.

 

[bonzo75]

More interesting is from mic to amp to record cutter...I recorded my voice this way once and it was amazing...

Your voice was amazing? So you do like hearing the sound of your own voice

 

[Bobvin]

digital is great. i'm as invested in digital and listen to it as enthusiastically and as often as anyone. but analog can capture more musical nuance. it's just the way it is.

Digital is still a conversion of energy to mathematical representation, then reconversion. At the risk of being metaphysical, analog captures energy using fundamental laws of nature, in the case of vinyl stores it physically in the grooves, and releases it again when the stylus traces the grooves. (Ok, that sounds weird as the energy isn't stored like a battery, but I can’t seem to find the vocabulary.) As such, its a direct function... if the microphone captures the nuances, however subtle, they’re likely there in the grooves. Better cartridge and stylus design seems to be able to recover more and more of what is stored there.

 

[microstrip]

honestly i think more modern pro audio guys might get more surprised by what analog can capture, that their digital references don't really get. this is more in degrees of nuance than anything absolute.

i recall my in-room session with Winston Ma when i had 2 Pro Audio guys and we were recording a direct-to-disc pressing off my Rockport TT for a digital release. according to what they said, they had not previously been exposed to really high end vinyl, and were surprised their ADC's could not fully capture the nuance of the vinyl playback. the implications of such for using digital to record music with are profound.

this is just an anecdote, and it could have been so much shining me on to make me feel good, but it seemed they were genuinely surprised. when i hear comments like 'same as the mic feed' as far as digital, i roll my eyes. not that analog is perfect, or any medium gets everything. until you hear what's missing, you never knew to listen for it.

Can we know how long did it happen and what was the digital equipment being used? We know that in the top high-end we can ruin a system just changing a signal cable for an inadequate, but also excellent one, IMHO such tests carried once in an occasional listening test have very limited value. People have preferred to listen to the direct feed of microphones going through a tape loop to the direct feed. What can we conclude from it?

I think that your system would be a great laboratory to study the matters related to digital and analog, but you would find that for the next five years your five hours enjoyable listening time would become hard working time. And in order to have any value these experiments would need to be realized in pair with a network of at less five similar installations to cross independent data.

I have very mixed feelings on this subject. I appreciate both and can't find winners on any side. And IMHO not all the pro-guys are equal, some younger people have a few tricks to teach to the older generation.

 

[Bobvin]

I think that your system would be a great laboratory to study the matters related to digital and analog, but you would find that for the next five years your five hours enjoyable listening time would become hard working time. And in order to have any value these experiments would need to be realized in pair with a network of at less five similar installations to cross independent data.

If we can get a grant to perform this study, I volunteer to have the recreation of Mike’s system at my place, for one of the five!

 

[Gregadd]

With so many conversions happening in the recording playback chain it is unlikely we can remain faitful to the original. That assumes it was our goal in the first instance. Digital allows moreconversions.

 

[andromedaaudio]

This Zanden piece is quite interesting .

https://6moons.com/industryfeatures/zanden/zanden.html


I once attended a show in holland organized by the zanden / magico dsitributor .
System was a highend turntable from germany( forgot the name / coralstone koetsu) and magico V 3 speakers amps zanden 3000 / 9600.
When we did a comparison of the zanden digi stack against the turntable ( hugh masekela coal train ) i couldnt hear that much difference to be honest.

 

[Atmasphere]

@Atmasphere

Very interesting and makes total sense to understand the recording vs. the event. Can you comment further - in another thread if you have the time - on the capabilities of vinyl if optimized versus digital in 2020 based on your experience?

Thanks!

I don't know if it needs a seperate thread as so much is hinted at here. So here goes:

The lacquer can be so quiet that it rivals Redbook with ease- to play it back, the playback electronics no matter how quiet are the noise floor. Surface noise is an artifact of pressing plants not the lacquer! Obviously the LP is much lower noise than reel to reel, and has wider dynamic range as a result. I know people don't like to hear this, but that is the way it is. Of course if care is not taken in the process, it all goes to hell in an handbasket.

Distortion is also lower than advertised! Most of that has to do with playback- how well set up the pickup actually is. This is particularly true of MM cartridges which can ring at audio frequencies. They have to be loaded correctly (already covered in other threads on this site).

Bandwidth is wider than most people think too. Its no worries recording a 40KHz tone at reference level and playing it back on any moderately nice 'table. I use an old Technics SL1200 with Grado Gold to see if the groove I just cut will play on a 'normal' record player. It, and the cheap MM preamp in my Tascam mixer, have no troubles playing back at 40KHz. My cutter electronics are EQed to flat above about 42KHz to prevent damage to the cutter head but obviously it can go higher. In the bass the lower limit is the mechanical resonance of the pickup. The cutter easily goes that low.

So wider bandwidth than seen with conventional digital. Not sure how helpful that is since there isn't any information up there (other than harmonics), but IME wide bandwidth is better than not wide bandwidth

Recent advances (since the above is true of any cutter made by 1970, and any playback made since about 1975) dept.: QRP, Chad Kassem's record plant, has techniques used to prevent vibration during the cooling of vinyl on their pressing machines. This results in noise floors very similar to the lacquer itself! I think it very safe to say that state of the art pressings easily have a -85dB noise floor. We did a project through QRP several years ago; when we got the pressings back, when the stylus went into the groove we were like 'is this thing on?' and then the music burst out of the speakers. Their noise floors are frequently described by their master tapes.

 

[NorthStar]

Your voice was amazing? So you do like hearing the sound of your own voice

He has a nice voice, some people have beautiful voices...they could be great singers.
/// Luciano Pavarotti Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI

 

[microstrip]

If we can get a grant to perform this study, I volunteer to have the recreation of Mike’s system at my place, for one of the five!

The main idea of a network would be to have very different systems ... My "similar" referred to the overall sound quality, not to duplication.

 

[Bobvin]

The main idea of a network would be to have very different systems ... My "similar" referred to the overall sound quality, not to duplication.

Well then, we need a backup copy of Mike's system!

 

[Kingsrule]

Al,

digital is great. i'm as invested in digital and listen to it as enthusiastically and as often as anyone. but analog can capture more musical nuance. it's just the way it is.

Totally disagree on analogue source....when was the last time u went to a live musical event?? Analogue at your level delivers great Hi-Fi, the only source choice most of us had when we began our journey in this endeavor which became the reference for our systems. The nuance u are referring to isn't real. Neither is air, space and dimension. It almost becomes theatrical in its presentation compared to real.
Go out and listen to as much live music as u can. I did. I spent the last 6 months going to as many musical events as I could. Amplified, unamplified, jazz, solo piano, rock, opera, full orchestra, etc. Everything I could get to, many times 3 or 4 preformances a week.
The most real source is digital , reproduced by the best gear. ...it's really the way it is.

 

[Atmasphere]

Can we not have this be another analog/digital thread? Because that will go no-where and is really beside the point of this thread.

I play a variety of musical instruments, master CDs and LPs, play in bands and orchestras and I go to shows. Does that make me more more qualified to assess which is better? Maybe- but sooner or later there will be someone that comes along that has heard more shows than me, somehow disqualifying my personal experience.

That's not about what is real, its about who has to be right. Which is different from real.

 

[andromedaaudio]

Sounds like a very right idea .

 

[PeterA]

as far as analog recording; i've done dozens (maybe a hundred) tape to tape dubs with my Studers, and never been able to tell the difference one tape to another, other than occasionally a very slight increase in the noise floor. no loss of musical nuance.

.....

with Reference Recordings there are a number of titles with both analog and digital masters from the same mic feed. i have compared them and the analog captures more musical nuance.

Mike, could you describe what you mean by "musical nuance"? If it is something on the recording and then is able to be reproduced and not some artificial artifact somehow added to the listening experience, then I think this is very on topic as we are discussing whether or not we ever know if we are hearing what is on the recording.

 

[Bobvin]

Totally disagree on analogue source....when was the last time u went to a live musical event?? Analogue at your level delivers great Hi-Fi, the only source choice most of us had when we began our journey in this endeavor which became the reference for our systems. The nuance u are referring to isn't real. Neither is air, space and dimension. It almost becomes theatrical in its presentation compared to real.
Go out and listen to as much live music as u can. I did. I spent the last 6 months going to as many musical events as I could. Amplified, unamplified, jazz, solo piano, rock, opera, full orchestra, etc. Everything I could get to, many times 3 or 4 preformances a week.
The most real source is digital , reproduced by the best gear. ...it's really the way it is.

Not really into the digital/analog debate, but you make one hell of a statement after describing listening to live music. The most real source is digital? The musicians weren't playing calculators, they were playing musical instruments. And nuance isn't real? Maybe you're just throwing flames, 'cause you really aren't making any sense.

 

[microstrip]

I don't know if it needs a seperate thread as so much is hinted at here. So here goes:

The lacquer can be so quiet that it rivals Redbook with ease- to play it back, the playback electronics no matter how quiet are the noise floor. Surface noise is an artifact of pressing plants not the lacquer! Obviously the LP is much lower noise than reel to reel, and has wider dynamic range as a result. I know people don't like to hear this, but that is the way it is. Of course if care is not taken in the process, it all goes to hell in an handbasket.

Distortion is also lower than advertised! Most of that has to do with playback- how well set up the pickup actually is. This is particularly true of MM cartridges which can ring at audio frequencies. They have to be loaded correctly (already covered in other threads on this site).

Bandwidth is wider than most people think too. Its no worries recording a 40KHz tone at reference level and playing it back on any moderately nice 'table. I use an old Technics SL1200 with Grado Gold to see if the groove I just cut will play on a 'normal' record player. It, and the cheap MM preamp in my Tascam mixer, have no troubles playing back at 40KHz. My cutter electronics are EQed to flat above about 42KHz to prevent damage to the cutter head but obviously it can go higher. In the bass the lower limit is the mechanical resonance of the pickup. The cutter easily goes that low.

So wider bandwidth than seen with conventional digital. Not sure how helpful that is since there isn't any information up there (other than harmonics), but IME wide bandwidth is better than not wide bandwidth

Recent advances (since the above is true of any cutter made by 1970, and any playback made since about 1975) dept.: QRP, Chad Kassem's record plant, has techniques used to prevent vibration during the cooling of vinyl on their pressing machines. This results in noise floors very similar to the lacquer itself! I think it very safe to say that state of the art pressings easily have a -85dB noise floor. We did a project through QRP several years ago; when we got the pressings back, when the stylus went into the groove we were like 'is this thing on?' and then the music burst out of the speakers. Their noise floors are frequently described by their master tapes.

Ralph,

It is great to read your opinions, it would be great to have some links to factual data and real measurements on it. Surely optimal vinyl per se can have better signal to noise ratio than tape - that is an intrinsically noisy media - but unfortunately it is of no real practical use.

Redbook is not any more the digital format to debate since long , 96/24 seems to be the more often used audiophile standard, even preferred by a few. IMHO CD's are not "current digital" anymore, but yes, they can sound great.

 

[thedudeabides]

Your voice was amazing? So you do like hearing the sound of your own voice

One of the best / funniest posts I've ever read.