Why CDs May Actually Sound Better Than Vinyl

[bonzo75]

I don't actually. I hear the distortions in analog and they completely take me out of the experience. Don't need the graphs. I am a victim of my mind always searching for distortions. An occupational hazard of my last corporate job. In the occasions when analog doesn't have these distortions, I enjoy it tremendously as I do with other platforms bringing music that I love to my ear.

So you are trusting your subjective ear? Btw, which set ups on analog did you hear distortions with, any particular TTs, arms, carts, etc? Or any recordings you carry about for demo?

 

[amirm]

Edit- wrong pict, please share what cartridge is your reference on this beauty?

david

It is a custom job hand assembled by virgins on a tropical island. No self-respecting vinyl spinner would use an off-the-shelf contridge!

 

[amirm]

So you are trusting your subjective ear?

Yes but only on Tuesdays. Monday is a no-no for example.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Dear Ron,

To be honest I don't hear drastic differences between the top digital contenders, of course some are better in some areas than the others but the nature of digital is what it is and there's no masking it. It's one of the conversations we had with bonzo when he visited. My own digital front end is about 13 years old and I don't feel at all compelled to change. But if I was starting today, along with the dCS I'll look at CEC and Weiss again as well as Meitner, Nagra and Neodio, you won't make mistake buying any of them. I didn't mention Lampi only because I have no direct experience with it.

Edit- Forgot about Zanden, it should be on the list.

david

Thank you, David!

 

[amirm]

The explanation for your graph & your statement that "You can clearly see the superiority of digital." which you subsequently withdrew has nothing to do with whether I can hear an ant fart at 20 paces or not.

 

[Fiddle Faddle]

I don't actually. I hear the distortions in analog and they completely take me out of the experience. Don't need the graphs.

Talk about hypocrasy. When others continually state they hear artefacts in the digital domain, you demand a million graphs and a million ABX tests.

 

[NorthStar]

If what you wanted to say was that you could hear distortions in analog then maybe a graph with music as the test signal showing those distortions in analog Vs CD may have supported your claim?

Third video, but the two first ones are also "revelator".

...And we've all seen this one before:

 

[LL21]

Dear Ron,

To be honest I don't hear drastic differences between the top digital contenders, of course some are better in some areas than the others but the nature of digital is what it is and there's no masking it. It's one of the conversations we had with bonzo when he visited. My own digital front end is about 13 years old and I don't feel at all compelled to change. But if I was starting today, along with the dCS I'll look at CEC and Weiss again as well as Meitner, Nagra and Neodio, you won't make a mistake buying any of them. I didn't mention Lampi only because I have no direct experience with it.

Edit- Forgot about Zanden, it should be on the list.

david

Glad to see my fav digital made your list! I keep my own counsel any way, but its always nice to see some of my favorite names make someone else's list too...particularly yours!

 

[NorthStar]

If the sound quality of your music is important in your life don't watch this:

...Or you can still watch it. :b

 

[microstrip]

Glad to see my fav digital made your list! I keep my own counsel any way, but its always nice to see some of my favorite names make someone else's list too...particularly yours!

LLoyd,

I was patiently waiting your post - if you would not show until tomorrow I would have commented on David's edit!

 

[fas42]

Some instrumental or vocal timbres are more challenging for digital than others. The worst performance of digital in my view is not even on solo violin tones, but on tenor and baritone saxophone, which also produce harmonically very rich and complex sounds. While analog has no problem with those timbres, almost all digital that I have heard, including mine, fails on saxophone -- quite badly, in fact. On my Berkeley Alpha 2 DAC, which while not being SOTA is quite highly regarded, these timbres are thin and harmonically emasculated. On other DACs the same sax recordings are not quite as thin sounding, but still harmonically poor.

There is one exception, the dCS Rossini, which was extraordinarily convincing on tenor and baritone saxophone timbres (I haven't heard saxophone on the dCS Vivaldi). The Berkeley Reference DAC was the only other DAC that came relatively close, but in my view did not quite make it in comparison. So digital CAN do it (even on Redbook CD!) when correctly implemented, but most digital cannot.

This problem must have to do with the complexity of the timbral spectrum of instruments. On other timbres my DAC does not sound thin and harmonically poor at all. I find, for example, the gutsy sounds of trombone and bass tuba very convincing through my DAC on my system.

Interesting observations. It is indeed the complexity of the spectrum that's the problem, and something that does require the overall integrity of the playback to be of a high order. Personally, I don't have problems with saxophones, because of my approach with refining the sound quality - it's as "fat" and enveloping as the real thing - about a year ago I was in a music store, and happened to end up being next to a chap who was trying out the real thing; and I thought, yep, that's it; that's what a saxophone should sound like, !

If anyone is interested, I could record the playback of something with strong saxophone over my current system, and put it up, even as a WAV file, for people to listen to, and evaluate ...

 

[fas42]

Menuhin developed bow arm issues relatively early in life. His early recordings portray a magnificent bow arm but at some stage it became quite poorly controlled, especially on the down-bow change. That gave it the "sawing away" character which in my opinion is actually a very good laymans description for what is happening. It did not help that his left hand technique was sometimes inconsistent and his vibrato in later days actually could accentuate the bow arm issues he had (because it became a bit narrow and "soupy" which tends to do a lesser job of hiding other technical sins).

Thanks for clarifying that, I appreciate it!

 

[microstrip]

Paragraph 1 .. Yes.
Paragraph 2 .. No. portraying the "timbre" of instrument is the acurate reproduction of the harmonics they create, there is no magic to it. Keep all the harmonics intact and with no distortion and you will likely recreat the timbre. If you are distorting it you will not recreate the original. The end result might however be pleasing and even more so than the real thing.

IMHO portraying the timbre is also reproducing as much as possible the radiation pattern of the instrument, that is given by the very low level information of the reflections in the recording captured by the microphones or recreated by the sound engineers. It is why comparisons of simple mic feeds have limited value in our arguments.

I have hesitated for a while to venture this:

There is an Audiophile aesthetics. A way that we judge things that is not very remove from what the real thing sounds like, an objective that is very removed from an objective reality whatever our tastes and differences in auditory apparatus. This is very difficult to put in words but let's try and hope that I don't fall too hard on my face .
Let's take the notion of reproducing instruments: I have already discussed about the piano .. Digital wins to my ears hands down... But the violin. the supposed big producer of harmonics... To my ears a very strident instrument to quote Ambrose Bierce: “an instrument which tries to tickle human ears by the friction of a horse’s tail on the entrails of a cat.” In real life that is as accurate as can be... I will however read over and over than the sweet sound of violin .. Digital would tend to do an excellent job on violin since it will get all the Harmonics up to 22.05 KHz as clearly as possible but truly most of us may end up not liking the end results. For those who have tried to listen to a microphone feed of a violin .. they may tell you that this is a far cry from what they hear on most records, especially on Vinyl. Not that someone cannot elicit heavenly sound from a violin.. Oh Boy! some can but Violin on records and violins in real life are different sounding and violin on Vinyl (notice I din;t say analog) is quite far from the strident and potent version of the real thing.

Again, you can not separate the instruments from the recording and its reproduction. IMHO piano sonatas with violin are just the typical recordings where analog wins.

Let's take the notion of imaging in a concert hall. If we look at the orchestra in a concert hall, we can make a mental effort to put things into some position in space. In my experience , in most concert halls, isn't what we hear a big gob of sound with no clear Left, Right front back and /or depth.. Yes we hear some sounds left and right but overall.. Symphonic music seems to me to be a vast mono affair in` real life ain'it? On records .. Depth, precise "information" of layered things ... An art form in itself...You bet. Reproduction of the real event? I have my doubts.

When you are in a real performance you keep your eyes open and the visual information adds the perception of the orchestra layout. Your brains "learns" and after sometime your are able to decode much better the sound coming from the orchestra. Sound engineers manipulate the recording to recreate the feeling you have in the real performance, enhancing many aspects to overcome the absence of visual stimulus.

And no, a symphonic orchestra in a good hall is not at all a vast mono affair!!!

There is in our recordings be it vinyl or CD a lot of editing goin'on and we get used to it. It becomes our reality and perception of reality is shaped by certain experiences. I understand that many of us go to concert and Vinyl is our references in that regard and I can understand that too but ... How far a CD is from LP.. Often very different.. Aesthtics preferences? How really far are some CDs from it? How far are for example the CDs from the Mercury, RCA, Harmonia Mundi, Lyrita and Decca to take these examples are from their vinyl counterparts? ... If some effort to remove the biases is applied? Of course there is the issue of reproduction chain. It is difficult to pinpoint what is what, what contribute to the final sound but ... I think this needs to be put in perspective when discussing CD vs LP. The objective superiority of Cd can only be debated with subjective intonations... We wil wait a life time for someone to come with anything objective aside fromthe famed 50 KHz bandwidth obliterated roundly by 192 Khz with its 96 KHz bandwidth but this i not CD Redbook so ... If that is Vinyl you prefer fine .. And to your ears it is subjectively superior , Fine. We can live with that calling its reproduction superior as an absolute is not backed-up by anything objective. OTOH ....

Curious that you present a brand that has excellent CD recordings, but that most of the times the LP reproduction is really much better than the CD - Harmonia Mundi. And their best CDs were sourced from analog tapes ...

And yes, the objective superiority of CD can only be debated with subjective intonations - CD was objectively superior since the day one in the the early 80's, when all the CD players were objectively superior and most of them sounded horrible.

 

[NorthStar]

I agree with Michael; CDs sounded horrific @ the beginning. And I have that CD of Avalon by Roxy Music, and it's awful, I even have the HDCD one...and my vinyl copies are much better than both those CDs. And it's pretty much the rule from 1983 to approximately 1996. ...Then some CDs started to improve slightly sound wise. ...I said some...like maybe 10 to 15%.
Then by the year 2000 about 15 to 20%. And by 2005 some CDs were almost sounding as good as some vinyls. Today there are some excellent sounding CDs surpassing some vinyls.
It all depends...like from that video earlier...mentioning the recording mastering, the mics used, the recording machines used, the quality of the transfers on the quality on the music mediums.
They are different and they sound different too. Both have qualities and both have flaws. The ones that sound better are the ones that were recorded better and engineered better using the better recording audio gear including the mics and by the better recording engineers of the better record labels in the better recording studios.

So, everything recorded equally, which is not, cannot fully define an absolute. Some videos I like, like the one that says Fact, but I don't take it @ face value because it's only a fragmentation.

One thing is for sure though; vinyl does smell better than CD. ...And it's way more sexy.

 

[fas42]

I agree with Michael; CDs sounded horrific @ the beginning. And I have that CD of Avalon by Roxy Music, and it's awful, I even have the HDCD one...and my vinyl copies are much better than both those CDs. And it's pretty much the rule from 1983 to approximately 1996. ...

Bob, good choice to "pick on" Roxy Music - I have a standard quality compilation of tracks, the greatest hits thing - and this is a CD to separate the men from the boys. As in, the tracks can sound like shockers on a less than fully competent setup - interestingly, the Avalon tracks are less of a problem, I find - the earliest material catches out normal systems very badly, one of hardest things is to get the vocals to present as being 'natural', amongst all the engineered instrumental content.

 

[ddk]

It is a custom job hand assembled by virgins on a tropical island. No self-respecting vinyl spinner would use an off-the-shelf contridge!

You have a KOSETSU!

 

[amirm]

Talk about hypocrasy. When others continually state they hear artefacts in the digital domain, you demand a million graphs and a million ABX tests.

Caught with my pants down.... Again!

If I told you I went out and caught a 5 pound salmon would you demand a picture to show proof that I actually did that? How about if I said I caught an 80 pound one? I suspect you want proof and hence the reason this happy guy had his picture taken in that regard:

No different here. Given the limitation of the LP as a format and invariable changes it makes to what comes into it (from creation to playback), I don't think hardly anyone doubts when I tell them I hear artifacts.

But say that you hear artifacts in digital when the measurement performance shows distortions well below threshold of audibility, and theoretical performance that matches that, then the claims of hearing problems in it become like that 80 pound salmon. You need to provide proof and then some. And the first step in that is saving you from yourself by taking away obvious areas of bias in a proper listening test. And some semblance of an accepted science, math or frankly anything real that you can point to back your observations. Mere "I hear it" doesn't carry such weight.

Net, net, I get away with saying something that is easily plausible. But you can't when your statement is not. Life is not always built on fairness . The moment you hitch a ride with this ancient format inherently being better, the standards of proof become different.

But good one .

 

[amirm]

You have a KOETSU!

Honto ni??? Ano... virgin doko desu ka?

 

[ddk]

Honto ni??? Ano... virgin doko desu ka?

!

did you autocorrect it?

 

[amirm]

!

did you autocorrect it?

iie.