That's called bandwidth, not resolution.
The simple analogy I like to use is x and y axis resolution
Yes, I know it is not technically accurate but I like it just the same.
Why CDs May Actually Sound Better Than Vinyl
- Thread starter Steve Williams
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The simple analogy I like to use is x and y axis resolution
Yes, I know it is not technically accurate but I like it just the same.
Tape should always win. Notwithstanding the unavoidable extra noises inherent in vinyl (even if they can measure quite low), there is never any getting around the progressive loss of fidelity as the speed of the stylus reduces over the width of the record. Yes, even my humble Rondo Bronze is capable of hiding this shortcoming incredibly well, as obviously are more expensive cartridges but they can't defy physics. Incidentally, the Ortofon A95 purposely has a hump in HF response so it is an each way bet - a slight lift on the outer grooves means less of an HF loss on the inner ones.
I do however feel that all the 4-sided, 45 RPM classical releases from Classic Records and ORG would give tape a very decent run for it's money. It still won't quite match it but I feel these titles come exceptionally close. At the other end of the scale you've got an LP like the recently released Decca Bartok Concerto for Orchestra that allegedly has the entire work on one side. That is something like 39 minutes!! (it is so crazy I even have trouble believing it but I've seen this reported from multiple sources. I might buy it just for a laugh!!).
I always think it funny when vinyl is discussed, people always talk about limiting sides to 20 minutes and keeping away from the inner grooves as if the product will be a terrible compromise if those rules are broken. I don't think these people are classical fans! Disregarding my Living Stereos (where their frugality with program length was actually a sonic bonus), I've hardly got any LPs where the side is less than the low to mid 20s with most of them in the high 20s to early 30s! And those original Mercury Living Presence RF pressings and even the later M series ones....they cut them so close to the label the music was almost encoded on the paper!
I think the brain does this a LOT. Most fascinating experiment with vision/visual:
- Take a beautiful pencil sketched portrait done by a professional, perhaps even a famous artist (Da Vinci, etc)
- Try to copy it just looking it (right side up)...for people like me, i see a human face and my eye/hand/brain do a terrible job copying the portrait
- Try to copy it looking at the portrait UPSIDE DOWN...i was SHOCKED at how well my copy came out.
The upside down portrait was unrecognizeable to me when studying parts of the portrait. As such, i was able to 'shut off' my brain's ability to automatically 'fill in' what i was looking at and cause me to start drawing stick figures (circles for heads and eyes with lines for eyebrows, nose and mouth, etc.). i did the entire portrait (badly but WAY better than before) in about 30 minutes where the prior 30 minutes of the class was just a series of crumpled up pieces of paper.
I have often thought i do similar things when listening. Fill-in when in reality it does not sound right until i can compare with a better reference.
Well, they are hard to drive, but when paired with the appropriate amplifiers, the Mini II is quite transparent and revealing of what it is fed. I imagine that differences between various digital sources can be easily heard. And if there is glare or typical digital colorations, they have no where to hide. I experienced this very thing with Al M. recently while auditioning three DACS at Goodwin's High End through a very revealing system of Spectral electronics and Magico Q1 speakers. That system was an excellent tool for evaluations.
... "typical" digital colorations?
Yes, though I don't know enough about the technology to describe their source. Jitter, harshness and glare are what I have usually associated with digital when I have heard it in systems which do not cover up these flaws....until my recent experiences with the dCS Vivaldi, Rossini, and on quad DSD only, the NADAC. These did not exhibit the same colorations or distortions to me when I heard them through very revealing systems recently.
Analog also has typical colorations - speed stability, lack of vibration control, artificial warmth, higher noise floor, etc. I just think they are different. There are examples of both format source gears that minimize these distortions and rise above their respective crowds. But this is only in my limited, and specific experience. So in that sense, I mean "typical" to me and what I have heard.
Engineers and designers keep trying to improve equipment in both formats, though analog is much more mature and some argue that the best turntables were designed thirty years ago. Digital is certainly improving, and what I find really interesting is that redbook CD, in some specific cases, has sounded as good or better to me than some of the highest resolution digital files.
Peter....Are the trio of DACS that you referred to in your Goodwins demo Vivaldi, Rossini and the NADAC ? If so, would you rate the Vivaldi ahead on points ? I am curious as to whether you have any 'ears on' experience of the Lampizator DACS ?
Are you certain this "glare" is inherited within these players, or the software?
Again, I can example (and have done repeatedly) "digital-glare" -or- "beautifully extended and delicate highs" ... simply by choosing specific software.
The same goes for LP/Turntables.
Harlequin, in the one session at Goodwins with the Q1/Spectral, I heard the Rossini, the Berkeley Ref DAC, and a Spectral CDP. The Vivaldi was during a different demo with the Magico S7 in a different room at Goodwins. The Vivaldi was extremely impressive, but it was also in a great room, in an excellent system which was very well set up. I spend more time with the demo of the three DACS and preferred the Rossini to the other two. It is hard to identify specifically how the Rossini was different from the Vivaldi, but both systems exhibited what I hear from really good analog systems, namely, extreme amounts of resolution with absolutely no sense of fatigue or what I describe as digital harshness/glare. And this was from redbook CD.
In a completely different system, I have heard the NADAC, a Lampizator (I think it was the 7?), an MSB, a Playback Designs and others I can no longer remember. In that system, I have always preferred the analog, so after a bit of digital, we usually switch to LP and I don't recall specifics about those various DACs except to say that the NADAC sounded better than the rest but only when it was playing native quad DSD. Those sessions were almost all with files as I recall, not physical CDs.
I own, but never use, an old Thule CDP, my good friends own Berkeley Alph DACs, one heavily modified. I have heard perhaps twenty good DACs over the years, but I am much more focused on analog for various reasons, so my experience with digital is relatively, and admittedly limited. I have heard good things about the Trinity, but not heard it myself. I am not in the market for digital as I own little to no software.
However, I have been listening more to DACs lately, along with my good friends Al M. and MadFloyd, and I have been very impressed by the latest dCS gear.
Yes, I am sure you can do such demonstrations, as can I. I agree that much is dependent on the recording/software. However, regarding the specific question about "glare": All I can say is that we played the same CDs on three DACS in a row, and one DAC exhibited much more resolution without any sense of glare or digital harshness, and absolutely no listening fatigue. This was the clearest example of hardware differences, because we switched the same software during the same listening session to different DACs.
I have also heard the same CDs in different DAC/transport sessions and they all sound different with various levels of glare. This also supports the case for the differences being in the hardware. And then with the same DAC and different recordings, the levels of glare change also. But, I go back to my observation that all digital and all analog is colored in some way. Both hardware and software.
It is great when one can find examples which minimize these distortions and colorations. It is becoming easier as time goes on and technology improves both on the recording and equipment sides.
So, "certain" is a difficult concept. I'm just describing my personal impressions. They are biased, unscientific, unmeasureable, and purely subjective. But I have heard the sound of specific CDs (software) sound different in various DACs, with different levels of glare. Based on this very limited exposure, I would say that it was more related to the players than it was to the digital software/recording itself.
That's called bandwidth, not resolution
Oops! Yes, I meant bandwidth.
Here is where I got it from.
http://www.mixonline.com/news/profiles/bob-ludwig/373415
Yes, this was an example of one system working correctly, and the others exhibiting flaws. "Digital glare or harshness" is a fault, just like poor speed stability for analogue TT - it's taken a long time for makers of audio gear to get things sorted well enough that just plugging the components together and switching on produces competent sound - buy samples of the latter gear, or work hard on tweaking what you have now ... those are the options ...
Of course, sound improving via "nice" distortions is main analog medium advantage.
If consider sound quality as maximally unchanged analog source, there digital systems (include medium) ahead of LP and tape.
Main problem of digital system is digital restoring filters and non-linear distortions. It can "improve" sound too.
Totally agree, although I would also consider noise to be another main problem as well (though I guess noise is effectively a product of non-linear distortions). Noise in the analogue domain is benign, but in the digital domain it is particularly insidious. It might not seem like a problem given it is usually at incredibly low levels that in themselves are inaudible, but even noise at those levels has a profound and destructive effect on the sonic integrity of the actual music program material in the digital domain. This to me is one of the main pitfalls of the 16 bit CD format - possibly even more so than the effects of the low sampling rate and associated filtering problems. One can noise-shape all they like as well, but all that does is change the sonic presentation depending on how the noise is shaped. I suppose that can occasionally "improve" the sound in some cases too - I have experienced some instances where 16 bit noise shaping, though completely lacking in sonic transparency, can change the sound sufficiently to make it subjectively better with a bad recording. Though if you have a good recording to begin with, adding noise in the digital domain will always have a far more destructive effect than it ever does in the analogue domain.
But certainly if I had to give two main reasons why CD is always in my view inferior to any analogue, it would be because of digital filtering and digital noise having far more destructive effects than filtering (if used) and noise does in an analogue domain. It is the exact same reason I consider the best digital to be superior to most analogue technology - because the filtering is extremely benign as is a 24 bit noise floor.
I think the article does not tell us anything new. I think it is a typically non-introspective exposition of the view that since CD measures better than vinyl then ipso facto CD sounds better than vinyl, and that if vinyl people choose to delude themselves into thinking otherwise, because they like nostalgia and the feel of LPs, they are simply wrong.
Especially on classical and jazz, in a contest of CD playback against great analog the latter, at least wth very good masterings/pressings, will almost always win -- including against my own current CD playback chain.
Yet honestly, until you have heard a regular 16/44 CD, especially of hard to reproduce instruments on digital (violin, sax) on a dCS Rossini *) through a superb playback chain you don't even remotely know how good the CD medium is. You just don't.
I didn't either. Until I heard it. My jaw dropped. And at this point I am not ready to say that great analog is better than CD playback on the dCS Rossini. I'd have to hear direct comparisons. It was that good. Peter A., who only listens to analog at home and was with me at the dCS Rossini session, agrees that the playback was outstanding and showed all the virtues of great analog playback (except presence and soundstaging, but that was an issue wth the set-up in that room; I have great presence and soundstaging with my own digital).
As for digital filtering, these days CD is usually upsampled to higher sampling rates (that includes the dCS gear and my own DAC), and the filtering from there is the same as for hi-rez digital. My DAC upsamples to 176.4 kHz, the dCS samplng rate is higher. Something like 'brickwall' filtering doesn't apply.
I have no reasons to doubt your own comparisons and findings regarding bit depth and sampling rate, which I find fascinating. But these apply to the more 'regular' CD playback that we both have; the CD playback on the dCS Rossini is simply in another league. No comparison.
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*) or dCS Vivaldi or, although I remain skeptical until I have heard it, perhaps an equivalent from another manufacturer
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Agreed, Ron.
CD has never had convincing advocates in terms of actual sound quality. And we have had imperfect 'Perfect Sound Forever' for three decades. As I suggested in my previous post, things finally may be changing at the upper level of digital playback.
Comparing of different record implementations is hard deal:
1. Almost "invisible" level difference 1…2 dB can «improve» sound perception.
2. Phono correction filter can improve too.
3. Different sound compression that may need/used by technical or other reasons.
etc.
There many variables, that can change sound.
We can’t compare DSD vs. PCM by technical reasons. Comparing digital and analog systems more difficult.
Filtering (upsampling) implementations can «colour» sound.
Brickwall can be applied in software - offline or inline preparing digital stuff (significantly simpler than in hardware).
I agree. Looking for identical sound is foolish. Looking for convincing sound, compared with the reference of unamplified live music, is a better approach. I will gladly concede that this is not without its own limitations and pitfalls.
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