That is fine
And visa versa
I deleted it as not helpful, just before you reacted.
Why, oh why, does vinyl continue to blow away digital?
- Thread starter godofwealth
- Start date
When you mix chemicals, they many times react. The oils on your hands can react with the vinyl. There are also all the oils and chemicals we may touch that are still there. Like food fats and oils.
Lots of people grab a record by the edge,.touching all the outer song grooves, and pull it from the sleeve. They can hold it sloppily by the grooves into the center. Their finger prints leave contamination that react with the vinyl.
There is also the dirt and grime that seem to get into paper sleeves and grinds on the vinyl for years.
Yes, I have found some old classical that sounds good. I have a few really good jazz albums too. Ray Charlas for one. But most all of the popular records like Dylan, Cat Stevens, Beatles. Most all of those are damaged from use. Its the rare owner that actually understood phonatical care in handling vinyl to preserve it
I didn't mention inappropriate chemicals used to clean them. Lots of that going around.
A gem of a record found in a used shop is just that. A Gem. And by that, I mean rare and valuable. Many non classical are crap.
And, that old saying, you can't look at it to tell is very true. I bought 2 x Verve of Oscar Peterson that looked pristine. Cleaning helped a lot, but they were still damaged from a bad stylus. I got lucky they accepted a return.
I thought the comments about digital masters turned into vinyl by Tima 827 interesting. The lathe is not going to embed the individual taps of a digital signal. Not like a DAC might expose them in reconstruction. The lathe is going to smooth it over. Not sure about the high order harmonics either?? Do they make it through the lathe. If both of those are eliminated in the cutting, then most all the issues people have with digitally mastered have been eliminated, so it would not be accurate to say a digitally mastered album is still listening to digital.
Thought's?????
Thought's?????
Perfect. My exact feelings said in a more articulate manner. And no it is not a debate but WBF's version of "tribal" warfare / behavior which, unfortunately, is so common and prevalent in today's world.
Yes. You, I and others have made this observation and it does appear to be the case but why? Is it "cultural tribalism", as I posted obove, or something else I (we) simply cannot understand?
That's why I have participated in this thread but it does appear to be a waste of time.
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Ah, most of us are participating because we get a lot of productivity for this time
There is tribal warfare / behavior so common and prevalent in today’s world, but this discussion on WBF is not that. There’s a lot of hyperbole around today also.
godofwealth is not delusional. He simply made an observation and has a preference like everyone else here.
Lol. And It took 44 pages.
Just for your info ,threads which mention analog versus digital or vice versa you can just skip in the future.
Endless discussion without outcome
You are right. Need to recognize that fact. Tried to find common ground. Won't make that mistake again.
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According to many vinylphiles, digital loses information. Thus, once marked with that dark, ghostly, ominous stormcloud of 0s and 1s, that allegedly gone information can never be retrieved, no matter how smooth and continuous those beloved grooves are. There is no cure and no remedy, it's all doomed.
No tribal warfare or behavior in this post by Mike in the other vinyl digital thread. And his observations are quite clear about vinyl versus digital here. “ Digital is evolving” is a great summary and I think accurate statement.
MikeL: “yes. but......"destroys" is too harsh a word. more like less musical essence and realism with every digital process applied. it misses stuff. but hearing the best possible digital much less is missing. just less of good things. digital is evolving.
yes, somewhat. a bit of noise, but you can hear around that noise because unlike digital with analog the limits are very soft and variable. there is also a touch of vinyl character added; but it's variable based on the recording/mastering process and is mostly slight
at digital's best it's likely slightly more like tape as far as character. it can be clean like tape.....at the very top of digital. the best digital finishes notes and has weight like vinyl, just lesser by degrees. but vinyl has a higher ceiling for those magical moments, and goes there quite a bit with the best pressings. the best digital has taken big steps forward in realism, but not where the best vinyl is.
you can use dsp to add vinyl character, but then you throw away some realism in the process.
why would you want that? you would need to subtract upper frequency weight and tonal density. subtract top end purity.
direct to disc can be somewhat clean like digital and tape. a bit of that type of sound in some direct to disc pressings. but d-t-d has that really high ceiling for realism higher than digital.“
The debate over "missing information" in digital aside:
The assumption here is that vinyl does not suffer as much from missing information as is alleged for digital. Yet vinyl suffers from the introduction of a variety of errors that cause information to be missing compared to the original. See post #631 by RCancelas, where he lists all the ways errors get introduced in the process of producing and playing back vinyl (and in his view exceed the errors of the digital process by quite a margin):
There is no common ground here.
You have the SET camp.
LP camp .
Digital gang.
Horn community.
Solid state camp.
Tube amp tribe
No system gang
Etc etc
Each stands firm and doesnt give an inch .
Its been like this for as long as i can remember
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OTOH there are plenty of people who embrace them all. that are not 'anti'. i will admit the default human condition is to be 'anti' it takes effort to be open and let loose of dogma. to crawl out of your silo and look around a bit.
i'm only 'anti' against 'anti'.
yes...i'm guity of being over-dramatic. but it's more true than not.
This discussion reminds me of The Quest For Perfect Sound, the article I love by Edward Rothstein of The New Republic (December 30, 1985) explaining the passion for high-end audio. In the article there is a quote that analog seeks to approximate perfection, but digital perfects an approximation.
This thread was never going to be about a purely reasoned open debate, the title was not untypically melodramatic and click baity in nature and then answering the trumpets all the tired old battle horse perspectives came marching out to once again lock horns. That said it’s been great to see a surfacing recognition and acknowledgement that things have fundamentally changed and things are better with regards to digital and that has been a big improver and even vinyl has continued to get better.
If you analyse the title it better reflects the situation 20 years ago rather than the state of play today. For plenty of us in the middle the differences are there but just not as extreme or black and white or melodramatic as the title makes out.
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I was asking for digital releases? The Fred Odman album is great example of good on vinyl but poor on digital.
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