WBF Poll: Which Sounds Better, Digital or Analog?

[the sound of Tao]

You've gotta love us audiophiles, we sure know how to crank up an argument. These impassioned debates can just be another opportunity to go on endlessly reaffirming the great divide among us or can we at last view them as a vantage point in the celebration of just how good as music lovers we've actually got it now. Winners, losers, it's all a matter of perspective.

I have clocked up 20 years+ (in past and overlapping at various times) with reel to reel, vinyl and more recently with digital and have ultimately found an emotional connection to the music in each.

Now more than ever we have an extraordinary choice of formats that each can provide pathways for us to access more music and live with compelling and utterly engaging musical experiences every day.

A menu of formats each with their own fantastic characteristic natures, sets of virtues and also imposing their own unique challenges which become further potentials within themselves.

One that battled from its inception to improve beyond its inherent and easy found musicality to deliver better in the ultimate context of its performance while the other that displayed a potential advantage from it's start in terms of contextual performance but has since strove hard over the years to better voice the musical experience.

These days if any of us can't make one or any of these work it probably says as much about the context of our system and our specific listening preferences rather than actually proving any ultimate failure by any path be it either analogue or digital.

Neither pathway has proven to be a dead end as both are clearly very alive and constantly improving and converging on something more like the absolute truth in music at what is an extraordinary rate.

So do we keep on with this great divide or finally just start to recognise and enjoy the great mutual merge towards music.

How much does it really matter which we think best for now beyond it being another single data point in the record of our extraordinary ongoing journey?

Clearly we mostly just know (and hopefully enjoy) our present direction but as experience tells us no-one really much know what lies ahead other than what a potentially amazing and musical road it is very likely to be for all of us. We are lucky and we have much to celebrate.

 

[FrantzM]

You've gotta love us audiophiles, we sure know how to crank up an argument. These impassioned debates can just be another opportunity to go on endlessly reaffirming the great divide among us or can we at last view them as a vantage point in the celebration of just how good as music lovers we've actually got it now. Winners, losers, it's all a matter of perspective.

I have clocked up 20 years+ (in past and overlapping at various times) with reel to reel, vinyl and more recently with digital and have ultimately found an emotional connection to the music in each.

Now more than ever we have an extraordinary choice of formats that each can provide pathways for us to access more music and live with compelling and utterly engaging musical experiences every day.

A menu of formats each with their own fantastic characteristic natures, sets of virtues and also imposing their own unique challenges which become further potentials within themselves.

One that battled from its inception to improve beyond its inherent and easy found musicality to deliver better in the ultimate context of its performance while the other that displayed a potential advantage from it's start in terms of contextual performance but has since strove hard over the years to better voice the musical experience.

These days if any of us can't make one or any of these work it probably says as much about the context of our system and our specific listening preferences rather than actually proving any ultimate failure by any path be it either analogue or digital.

Neither pathway has proven to be a dead end as both are clearly very alive and constantly improving and converging on something more like the absolute truth in music at what is an extraordinary rate.

So do we keep on with this great divide or finally just start to recognise and enjoy the great mutual merge towards music.

How much does it really matter which we think best for now beyond it being another single data point in the record of our extraordinary ongoing journey?

Clearly we mostly just know (and hopefully enjoy) our present direction but as experience tells us no-one really much know what lies ahead other than what a potentially amazing and musical road it is very likely to be for all of us. We are lucky and we have much to celebrate.

I like that post !

 

[mep]

I like that post !

I wish we had a list of labels that only record singers/bands that have real talent and not those who record manufactured 'talent' that can't sing on key if their life depended on it. I'm sick of hearing music where the signers' voices have all been run through auto tune devices because they can't really sing. I would like to further discriminate and have a list of labels that not only record real talent, they don't participate in the loudness wars and actually try and capture great sound on their recordings.

 

[amirm]

Interesting ... should one be concerned, when playing such a disk, with loud spur type noise. I've heard some players "pop" while attempting to play damaged disks.

A good implementation in the player would find in and fade out when it sees catastrophic data errors that last more than a few samples. Not doing so, causes that pop. The pop is there because one sample all of a sudden, jumps to an unrelated one. If we look at the spectrum of such an abrupt transition in time, in frequency domain, we find that it has infinite energy. Translation: your tweeter just got hit with a burst of energy it normally doesn't see as music can't perform unnatural acts that way. Your amplifier may also not have been tested or designed to be stable at frequencies well above 20 Khz and my oscillate. That will also cook the tweeter and the amp. This is how equipment is damaged .

Mind you, our audio gear can be quite resilient and most of the time survives such situations but you want to avoid it at all costs if you can.

 

[Al M.]

I like that post !

Me too!

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

Me too!

Me three.

 

[garylkoh]

Thanks for the detailed explanation Gary, great info. IMO the SHM CDs (assuming a very good master) sound more dynamic and detailed than many (most?) CDs. As I'm sure you are aware they use higher quality polycarbonate material used for LCD panels.

Yes, the material makes a difference too. Also the flatness of the material. The reflective layer is on the other side - under the printed label. On pressed CDs, the pits and lands are physically pressed onto the surface, so considering the scale you can imagine (grain of rice in a football field?) the accuracy we get.

 

[JackD201]

Me too!

Me four Get the good music wherever you can get it. Just get it to enjoy it.

I can afford Tape which is the best I've heard but since I don't have storage that will keep them safe I've passed on it. I can get quality LPs and digital so I get that. My cousin loves vinyl but lives in a condo and has no storage space for LPs lest he ruin what would look right at home in any architectural magazine so he's purely digital. Even CD storage is now a problem so he's migrating to file based play. Sadly it can't be all about the sound we're ultimately after. There are other considerations, important ones. Settling doesn't mean what you get sucks anyway. It can still be great. There's always a silver lining.

 

[TBone]

A good implementation in the player would find in and fade out when it sees catastrophic data errors that last more than a few samples. Not doing so, causes that pop. The pop is there because one sample all of a sudden, jumps to an unrelated one. If we look at the spectrum of such an abrupt transition in time, in frequency domain, we find that it has infinite energy. Translation: your tweeter just got hit with a burst of energy it normally doesn't see as music can't perform unnatural acts that way. Your amplifier may also not have been tested or designed to be stable at frequencies well above 20 Khz and my oscillate. That will also cook the tweeter and the amp. This is how equipment is damaged .

Mind you, our audio gear can be quite resilient and most of the time survives such situations but you want to avoid it at all costs if you can.

Sadly, I've blown & subsequently had to replace/fix a few expensive tweeters/woofers over time. Thankfully I haven't incurred any damage since I incorporating high current, wide bandwidth, vice gripping, mono DR3s - a decade or so ago.

I'm sick of hearing music where the signers' voices have all been run through auto tune devices because they can't really sing.

Nausea like symptoms are often difficult to describe, but this LP says it all ...

 

[JackD201]

Well, at least you have a really big pic of her from when she was hot.

 

[esldude]

Sadly, I've blown & subsequently had to replace/fix a few expensive tweeters/woofers over time. Thankfully I haven't incurred any damage since I incorporating high current, wide bandwidth, vice gripping, mono DR3s - a decade or so ago.

No wonder you didn't hurt any tweeters. What were those DR3's rated for..........like 30 wpc or something? (snark.....I used to own some for a couple years. Sounded better than those little 25 watters Mark Levinson used to peddle, you know the ML2).

 

[MylesBAstor]

No wonder you didn't hurt any tweeters. What were those DR3's rated for..........like 30 wpc or something? (snark.....I used to own some for a couple years. Sounded better than those little 25 watters Mark Levinson used to peddle, you know the ML2).

http://www.thresholdlovers.com/articles.php?lng=en&pg=648

 

[esldude]

http://www.thresholdlovers.com/articles.php?lng=en&pg=648

Yes, I had the DR3B version. So I guess the VHC's are 45 watters. Unless I mis-remember the DR3B was a 30 watter, at least in Class A operation. I forget if they were more like 150 or 200 watts if you pushed them on over in Class AB. They had some real headroom anyway.

 

[amirm]

Well, at least you have a really big pic of her from when she was hot.

Speaking of Britney Spears... Imagine you are a Vice President at Microsoft. You arrive in your office, log into your PC and the first email you read has a revealing picture of Britney Spears like this:

You look at the "To" line and you see your boss, Senior VP of all of Windows is also there together with you. You look back down at the picture and it says, "I think I just died and went to heaven!"

You then look at the From line, and it is a guy a few levels below you. As I am pondering what is going on, another email arrives from the same employee, sheepishly apologizing to all of us!

To this day, I don't know how he managed to put all of our email addresses there instead of his buddies. I can just imagine the embarrassment he must have felt after he hit send. And how fast he came back from heaven.

Truth to be told, I did not erase the message for the next hour.

 

[TBone]

Yes, the material makes a difference too. Also the flatness of the material. The reflective layer is on the other side - under the printed label. On pressed CDs, the pits and lands are physically pressed onto the surface, so considering the scale you can imagine (grain of rice in a football field?) the accuracy we get.

What about 74 vs 80 min versions? The 74's always work, too many 80's become coasters(*). I've yet to find a 80 CD-RW which works with my current Sony.

Read the DL. Very comprehensive article, thanks again, I'll certainly be referencing it soon ...

(*)Any Memorex, ~ 10% failure rate. The $3 "music" CDRs, required by most non-professional recorders, 100% success. They also sound good.

I was researching cdr/dyes when I came across ...

"I transfer old reel-to-reel audio tapes for clients to digital. Finding the “best” CD-R medium has been difficult. It needs to last 100 years and have a low bit error rate. Who make the best? First, any CD-R will last longer if stored correctly. In general, if you are comfortable, the disk will e also. Avoid high temps, humidity and light. Recommended Storage conditions are as follows : Temperature Range: 5C to 30C Absolute Humidity: 1 to 20 grams/cubic meter Relative Humidity: 8% to 50% *dew should be avoided For archiving: Discs should be stored vertically in a protective case. (A standard jewel case is adequate. In jewel cases, the disc is suspended by the center hole and isolates the written area [read side] from contacting any surface, It also offers some protection against rapid temperature changes). The most likely cause of damage to R discs from direct sunlight is by heat buildup in the disc affecting the dye. Much of the ultraviolet range of sunlight can be filtered (or absorbed) by glass—e.g., the glass of a window. However, the lower light frequency (infrared) range will pass through a window and generate heat in the disc. Numerous CD vendors have noted that the thin protective lacquer coating can deteriorate from contact with certain solvents in markers. To eliminate the risk, water-based markers are recommended for CD labeling. As a solvent, alcohol is generally less damaging than xylene and toluene, which are common in aromatic solvent-based markers. According to anecdotal reports, alcohol-based markers can be used to label CDs without causing performance problems. However, there are no explicit lab test results to show what effect solvents in markers have on different CDs or DVDs, particularly over the long term. There are 16 factories around the world that make CD-Rs. Only one is still in operation in Japan. Great price and great performance don’t go together. The cheaper disks should not be used for archive. How are the disks made? The first step in producing a CD-R disc is to create the polycarbonate plastic substrate using an injection molding process. The dye layer is applied using spin coating and the reflective layer by means of cold planar magnetron sputtering. The lacquer overcoat is then applied by another spin coating procedure followed by ultraviolet curing. Additional durability or printable layers are typically applied using screen printing methods. With over 1,000 brands and models of CD-Rs, it’s impossible to fine the best one. The rating would probably change on a daily basis. That’s the problem with all the reviews I have seen. Writing to a disk does not mean it will last for a long time. I’d suggest that a review written a few years ago is worthless since the manufacturer could have changed the formulation. Having someone saying they got the disks on sale and they burned successfully is not a review and certainly means nothing as far as longevity. Gold Disk The longest projected life is 300 years from MAM-A, a subsidiary of Computer Support Italcard (CSI) of Milan Italy from their plant in Colorado Springs, CO. The MAM GOLD discs uses Mitsui Chemical’s patented dye and has a characteristic gold color. The recording layer of a CD-R disc is composed of one of cyanine, phthalocyanine or azo dye. Some even use a gold layer. Information is written to a CD-R disc by means of a laser to heat and alter the dye sufficient to create a pattern of marks and thereby mimic the pits of a molded CD. So how do you determine if the disk was recorded properly. One way is to use the verification routine that comes with the burning software. It will compare the just-written disk to the original file. You could then play the disk on another player to make sure the disk is compatible with more than one player. The manufacturers claim 75 years (cyanine dye, used in “green” discs), 100 years (phthalocyanine dye, used in “gold” discs), or even 200 years (“advanced” phthalocyanine dye, used in “platinum” discs) once the disc has been written. The shelf life of an unrecorded disc has been estimated at between 5 and 10 years. There is no standard agreed-upon way to test discs for lifetime viability. Accelerated aging tests have been done, but they may not provide a meaningful analogue to real-world aging. Brands most often recommended: Matsui, Kodak, Taiyo Yuden, and TDK. Sometimes Pioneer and Ricoh. It appears that HP, Philips, Sony, Yamaha, and Fuji use these manufacturers for most of their disks. (Kodak no longer manufactures media.) Brands that are often trashed: Maxell, Verbatim, Memorex, Ritek, Hotan, Princo, Gigastorage, Lead Data, Fornet, CMC Magnetics. Many “no-name” bulk CD-Rs are one of these brands. Sometimes company names change. For example, in June 2003 Mitsui Advanced Media was purchased from Mitsui Chemicals by Computer Support Italcard (CSI) of Italy to form MAM-A, Inc. Thanks to http://www.osta.org/osta/index.htm http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq07.html#S7-4-1 http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4.html ".

 

[TBone]

No wonder you didn't hurt any tweeters. What were those DR3's rated for..........like 30 wpc or something? (snark.....I used to own some for a couple years. Sounded better than those little 25 watters Mark Levinson used to peddle, you know the ML2).

Actually, these mono DR3 are easily the best, most powerful sounding amps I've had in my system, by a country mile. My prior excellent SIM W5 also worked without blowing anything, nor a modded ATI which I really enjoyed. They were in the 150 to 195 wpc range IIRC. The DR3's are rated at 100wpc when in mono, much current.

edit: when I first got 'em, they sounded like two donkey's in heat. Took me +2 yrs of audiophile fiddling to finally get 'em to fit.

 

[TBone]

Well, at least you have a really big pic of her from when she was hot.

hehehe, perhaps that takes away some of the sting from having to invest $15 on this .... "Original Sound" Recording Made By Zomba Recording Corporation.

Order your needledrops today ...
(big sigh)

 

[esldude]

Actually, these mono DR3 are easily the best, most powerful sounding amps I've had in my system, by a country mile. My prior excellent SIM W5 also worked without blowing anything, nor a modded ATI which I really enjoyed. They were in the 150 to 195 wpc range IIRC. The DR3's are rated at 100wpc when in mono, much current.

edit: when I first got 'em, they sounded like two donkey's in heat. Took me +2 yrs of audiophile fiddling to finally get 'em to fit.

Oh, I know they are powerful. That why I mentioned I owned some. Their rating vs what they can do simply doesn't match up at all.

As I recall they were cap-coupled at the input, and changing that plus a related resistor or two was a considerable help. Probably much more if you have spent 2 years getting it to suit your needs I am guessing.

 

[JackD201]

Speaking of Britney Spears... Imagine you are a Vice President at Microsoft. You arrive in your office, log into your PC and the first email you read has a revealing picture of Britney Spears like this:

You look at the "To" line and you see your boss, Senior VP of all of Windows is also there together with you. You look back down at the picture and it says, "I think I just died and went to heaven!"

You then look at the From line, and it is a guy a few levels below you. As I am pondering what is going on, another email arrives from the same employee, sheepishly apologizing to all of us!

To this day, I don't know how he managed to put all of our email addresses there instead of his buddies. I can just imagine the embarrassment he must have felt after he hit send. And how fast he came back from heaven.

Truth to be told, I did not erase the message for the next hour.

Apparently you saved the attachment too

 

[PeterA]

Analog tastes better: