Nope
It isn't an absolute. It is why I believe to be. That was and is my point.
Why CDs May Actually Sound Better Than Vinyl
- Thread starter Steve Williams
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Nope
It isn't an absolute. It is why I believe to be. That was and is my point.
Hi Peter, for me this happened before the ddk visit. If it took such expensive TT set up, I would have been discouraged. But Marty's Goldmund studio is available pretty cheap, and at Munich the Thomas Schick idler was trouncing the scarlatti on every note in the same room. Sure, I had heard techdas many times and been impressed, but now I know I don't need to necessarily spend so much
Seems we are arguing about the same thing then but honestly I am not hearing anyone espousing vinyl as the absolute truth but I am certainly hearing people saying that digital is the absolute truth. All roads lead to Rome but they all get us there
Digital *is* the absolute truth. The world at large would not have adopted it if it were not so. Case closed. Again!
What if I visit David's house and I don't change? What if I bring a dozen other people who visit and don't change. What then?
No amir you Know it better then anyone else , digital is cheap thats why its a succes its easy to market plus it is quite good
, digital is cheap thats why its a succes its easy to market plus it is quite good
Digital *is* the absolute truth. The world at large would not have adopted it if it were not so. Case closed. Again!
Steve
The notion of "Absolute Superiority" of digital in subjective terms may have been stated somewhere in the thread and escaped me. That would be an opinion with no way to go about it except to label is as that "opinion". It is truism that on subjective ground there is no such thing as absolute. Preferences are what they are and I said earlier no debate.
On objective grounds... another story: There is such a thing as "Superior" within the terms of references of those particular metrics.
I agree with that Frantz
Having said that if it "were case closed"please explain why there is such a resurgence in vinyl world wide. Tell me why there are members here and listeners everywhere that would never own anything digital or if they do they continue to prefer vinyl. The way I see it is that "superior within the terms of those particular metrics" does not tell me why so many people still prefer vinyl
Objective metrics do not seem to make a case for Vinyl nor would they make the case for mp3. They would however make the case for many attributes of R2R as compared to vinyl. Same for CD vs Vinyl. As for the metrics we are alluding to. There is perhaps just one in which Vinyl surpass CD; perhaps bandwidth I don't know for sure.
The resurgence can speculated upon and it could be a flash in the pan. Time will tell. Given sufficient interest there could be some studies that would show the correlation of some metrics to Vinyl, it could be something else not related to sound.. Again, speculations. I have no objective metrics to back this up
Amir, I hesitate to answer your hypothetical questions. I will say this, though:
First, you would need an invitation. And second, proper behavior dictates that guests don't invite guests. no emojis.
Really
Have you seen the thread here at WBF started and maintained by Johnny Vinyl regarding all of the turntable manufacturers in the world and growing steadily. Not only is it not a flash in the pan it has been around for 7 decades and getting stronger I am not justifying my involvement because as i said I like both, it's just that I like vinyl better as do so many others world wide in spite of the de facto proclamation about digital's superiority
From a 2014 workshop at AES to teach the lost of art of LP mastering to the new generation:
"MIXING AND MASTERING TIPS
FOR VINYL
Disc mastering engineers prefer to receive
masters from clients as clearly identified
“Side A” and “Side B” content, with a cue
sheet that indicates the track start times,
and where the finishing spiral should start.
Excessive sibilance on recordings turns
out to be a major killer for vinyl mastering.
It causes a lot of distortion because the
amount of high-frequency energy is greater
than the replay mechanism can handle (the
stylus finds it hard to track such high velocity
motion). It’s also because the RIAA
recording curve boosts the HF energy on
recording, exacerbating the problem. In
cases of excessive high-frequency content
the mastering engineer would normally
have to reduce the cutting level in order to
avoid the problem, which reduces the overall
dynamic range of the resulting record.
“Please de-ess your masters,” the engineers
on the panel pleaded. A natural and smooth
high end can be cut very satisfactorily, but
“rougher and harder” high-end content can
be very hard to make sound good on LPs.
This suggests there is an art to mixing for
good-sounding vinyl, whereas a CD will
take almost whatever you throw at it,
provided you don’t clip."
And
"Somewhat counter-intuitively, at least
from a first glance, it turns out that masters
without peak limiting are actually easier to
cut in the space available than those with
peak limiting. The average level over the
duration of a side tends to dictate the
space taken up, whereas occasional
peaks can generally be accommodated. For
this reason peak limited masters may
have to be cut a few dB lower than their
unlimited counterparts in order to fit
within the same space, which makes
the background noise worse."
Bottom line, CD is an effortless format for good or bad (sans clipping). LP requires special mastering and per above, forces one to not use too much limiting/compression. The preference in the delivered music is in that, not any goodness as a format. Or some devil in digital which we can't identify, measure, or prove. If the distortions in LP don't bother you, and mastering is better, then you are golden by going that route.
"MIXING AND MASTERING TIPS
FOR VINYL
Disc mastering engineers prefer to receive
masters from clients as clearly identified
“Side A” and “Side B” content, with a cue
sheet that indicates the track start times,
and where the finishing spiral should start.
Excessive sibilance on recordings turns
out to be a major killer for vinyl mastering.
It causes a lot of distortion because the
amount of high-frequency energy is greater
than the replay mechanism can handle (the
stylus finds it hard to track such high velocity
motion). It’s also because the RIAA
recording curve boosts the HF energy on
recording, exacerbating the problem. In
cases of excessive high-frequency content
the mastering engineer would normally
have to reduce the cutting level in order to
avoid the problem, which reduces the overall
dynamic range of the resulting record.
“Please de-ess your masters,” the engineers
on the panel pleaded. A natural and smooth
high end can be cut very satisfactorily, but
“rougher and harder” high-end content can
be very hard to make sound good on LPs.
This suggests there is an art to mixing for
good-sounding vinyl, whereas a CD will
take almost whatever you throw at it,
provided you don’t clip."
And
"Somewhat counter-intuitively, at least
from a first glance, it turns out that masters
without peak limiting are actually easier to
cut in the space available than those with
peak limiting. The average level over the
duration of a side tends to dictate the
space taken up, whereas occasional
peaks can generally be accommodated. For
this reason peak limited masters may
have to be cut a few dB lower than their
unlimited counterparts in order to fit
within the same space, which makes
the background noise worse."
Bottom line, CD is an effortless format for good or bad (sans clipping). LP requires special mastering and per above, forces one to not use too much limiting/compression. The preference in the delivered music is in that, not any goodness as a format. Or some devil in digital which we can't identify, measure, or prove. If the distortions in LP don't bother you, and mastering is better, then you are golden by going that route.
Is it possible that vinyl's 'stereotypical' fullness is an artifact that helps make up for the fact that most if not all stereo systems lack the power to deliver true, live-scale music in a room?
is it possible in trying to determine the better format, we miss the fact that the entire eco-system of music reproduction in the home is incredibly flawed, and that in the end with such (currently) insurmountable issues in our systems, perhaps a few artifacts actually DO help us get back to par?
is it possible in trying to determine the better format, we miss the fact that the entire eco-system of music reproduction in the home is incredibly flawed, and that in the end with such (currently) insurmountable issues in our systems, perhaps a few artifacts actually DO help us get back to par?
As Peter stated, all this is very nice but who cares when all of us who listen to vinyl say the same thing over and over and over. This does nothing to explain why so many people still prefer vinyl
Certainly that could be a factor. Steve says his digital system gave him ear fatigue -- a point which I had never heard him say or anyone who visited him over the many years he did not have LP but we digress. Digital has a rectangular performance in that from it can reproduce with authority from near DC/0hz to 22 Khz. It does what it is told to do. Nothing is rolled off in that ruler flat response. So if you have a bright system to start, and you feed it recording that was mixed in a room that was not, it reasons why you may like an analog medium that can't reproduce that. Ditto for bass where your room may have modes that exaggerate when fed ruthlessly by CD's low frequency transparency. A system then that has exaggerated mid-frequencies would sound good and better. It would make up for directivity error which exists in many speakers in mid-frequencies.
I remember listening to Bob Stuart give a talk about his modified Philips player to an audience of LP lovers back in 1983 or so. After he gave his talk, someone raised his hand and asked him why he likes digital. His answer was, "it has solidity that I can't get in analog. A piano finally sounds like it should." That is what I hear in digital. My ears don't focus on artifacts as whatever is wrong is clearly in the recording. I don't get that with analog, LP or tape. My ears constantly tune to artifacts that are there, whether they are hiss, pops, glitches or something more sophisticated. Lack of convenience also severely curtails matching music to my mood. The convenience of digital is very important to me as a music lover.
See, it's good to talk - understanding accruesJohn
Seldom do I find myself agreeing with you. Since it is you and I.. then we must use modifiers.. "mostly", "up to a point"..etc.
Our internal model is likely the same..however we claim we hear differently, research shows that it is not always the case . ( Don't ask me to cite these, I forgot
OK, I won't go through it point by point as it would take the thread too far off-topic but I think where differences between people come into play are due to:
- in audio playback we are dealing an illusion & judging the "realism" of that illusion isn't a binary choice - shades of "realism" come into play. Let's take TV as an example - my previous TV which wasn't HD was a perfectly acceptable picture - the illusion was fine. My next TV, a HD one, immediately showed what I was missing in the previous picture, the level of realism was just much better. I've no doubt a 4K or whatever TV would show the flaws in this picture but I haven't compared it.
- a in the above example, what we perceive with these illusions, depends on what level of realism we have been exposed to. I'm not saying this in any sort of exclusive way but a big part of my assessing a person's listening experience is to try to ascertain where they are in this - what they have been exposed to sound-wise. I know in my own experience that looking back at my own experiences, even from 5 years ago, I have been exposed to higher levels of "realism" in playback & so the question is - am I hearing things differently to what I heard 5 years ago? Difficult to answer - my expectations from playback has changed - I now have a higher plateau because I've already heard it
- just to answer your last point - the McGurk effect is not something that changes (for most people) when they know the illusion. Also listen to the Deutsch octave illusion - even though you know the illusion, it will not change the illusion
Thanks, Amirm. In truth, i am actually saying that ALL reproduction systems (that I have ever heard) are flawed. I have yet to hear even the mighty Arrakis or Genesis, or XLF or Thor Sub, etc play back a kickdrum or a piano, let alone orchestra were i would close my eyes and mistake it for the real thing.
As such, when trying to take a flawed system and get it back to 'something' akin to what we hear in life, i think it is probably not unfair (and who knows...may even be 'right') to allow some inherent flaws elsewhere in the system to try to overcompensate for the lack of other elements in the playback system.
Does this make a system a bit of a messy 'dog's dinner'? Sure does...but that's also part of the art and science of building a system from scratch to 'reproduce' musical recordings back into your listening room. it also explains why some great-measuring components paired with other great measuring components sometimes dont satisfy in the end. It may be because the individual measurements of that one component can literally never take into account all of the other ancillary components (each with their own failings, measurements) and how they will add up together to make up for some shortcomings and overcompensating for others...
...the one thing i HAVE found is true in great systems (to my ears) is that they are BALANCED in their flaws and strengths...
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