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  1. #1

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    A friend of mine recently told me about how vinyl is far superior to cd in terms of sound quality. I was very skeptical at first but after reading quite a bit on the subject, it seems that a lot of people prefer vinyl to cd (or digital music in general), and that there even is a scientific explanation for this.

    What is your opinion on that subject ?

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  3. #2

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    I'm not interested in the hype, I'm just interested in blind, well controlled tests between the two.

    Theoritically it is easy to understand that there is a granularity in a bunch of zeros and ones as compared to the continuous nature of analogue. But is it enough to have an overall negative result when digital is compared to vinyl? Like I said, blind comparisons is what I'd like to hear and observe.

    People seem to expond on the virtues of the vinyl format and ignore the drawbacks like the pop and crackle of imperfect vinyl, the decrease in fidelity as the needle wears away the vinyl over time, the intolerance of dynamic range with the vinyl format, and more...?.
    Last edited by fep; 12-28-2013 at 01:59 AM.

  4. #3

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    Fairly easily answered. I've worked with recording for almost 40 years, recorded a couple dozen record albums on vinyl LPs, and worked with CDs and digital formats in the last 20 years or so.

    The main thing vinyl does is gently roll off the highest frequencies. As as result the midrange frequencies are a bit more prominent, giving the overall sound a slightly fuller quality. I could never stand the pops and crackles from vinyl records and found out the only way you can start to get rid of them is by using a thousand dollar-plus turntable and phono cartridge setup, professionally aligned.

    When you listen to a well recorded CD, the pops and crackles are of course gone, and the signal to noise ratio and dynamic range are much better. And if the digital recorder is properly set up, it would be hard to tell the difference between a well recorded LP and a properly recorded CD of the same performance. It does seem that 44 kHz, 16 bit recording is an electronic compromise that was made at the time the CD was originated, and it was easy to set up the CD to play at those specifications. Now, with better computers and higher rates of digital recording - 24 bit and 96 kHz - it is not hard to get a good recording. That assumes the engineer knows how to properly mic the artists, and that the mastering people don't kill the dynamics or do weird equalization to the CD.

    Peter Aczel of the magazine "The Audio Critic" has dealt a lot with the technical details of digital and vinyl and he doesn't think digital recording is inherently less quality than vinyl. He has actually done carefully controlled double blind studies on different types of sound recording, and found that with careful recording there is little difference between well done digital and vinyl. Bill Schnee, who owns a well known recording studio in Hollywood, has done a series of recordings that are at 24 bits and 192 kHz sampling rate. The sound is incredible, and Schnee is looking to issue these recordings as computer files that can be played on a computer into a high quality speaker system.

    I think a lot of the "vinyl superiority" is due to nostalgia. There are some things about vinyl that smooth out the sound and, to a casual listener who wants to be convinced that vinyl is better, that is how they will hear it.
    Last edited by robertm2000; 12-28-2013 at 02:35 AM.

  5. #4

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    We got our teenage daughter a record player and a few vinyl albums for Christmas. She has only ever known mp3 downloads, and maybe one or two CDs. It was wonderful to watch her go bananas about this record thing! The album cover - it was a Taylor Swift album - really blew her away when she opened it up to reveal lots of info inside. Just the objects themselves are fascinating for her. And then there is the ritual of taking the album out of its sleeve, placing on the turntable, bringing the arm over, and hearing that oh-so-evocative drop of the needle into the groove. Fantastic. She absolutely loves it.

    You won't see her bothering with scientific analyses of which is better, digital or analogue. She'll be too busy digging her music

  6. #5

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    44Khz 16 bit is barely a compromise. It theoretically covers the entire frequency spectrum of human hearing. Granted, that is "theoretical", however, the truth is that the vast majority of people couldn't even hear that range. It also covers a dynamic range of about 98 db, and human hearing has a range around 140 db. However, it is quite debatable how useful it would be to have devices with that dynamic range. Would you want to be straining to hear the quietest whisper possible, only to instantly hear a TNT explosion the next second? Conversely, vinyl records have initial dynamic range around 70 db, quickly deteriorating to 50-65 db. Also vinyl dynamic range varies with frequency, but it is constant for digital. Also, playing the CD does not diminish the recording like it does with vinyl.

    In the early days of CD recording, engineers would simply take what they did for vinyl and put it on CD. That did sound like crap, because they were used to compromises for vinyl. The high-end frequencies were boosted because vinyl will lose high-end quickly with wear. Also, it was very compressed because vinyl doesn't have anywhere near the dynamic range of CD. The result was brassy/hissy annoying recordings with no life. Things have improved a lot since then, but ultimately the 'quality' of a CD recording is a product of the skill of the people making it.

    I have a degree in electrical engineering and I strongly believe that CD's are far superior for reproducing sound accurately, actually getting quite close to the limits of human hearing. I believe that some people prefer vinyl for a simple reason: They're used to it. It was ingrained in our culture. Vinyl has been around a long time. If you're favorite childhood/teenage memories are based on listening to records on a turntable, there is probably no force in the world that can convince you that anything else could be superior. Even in a blind listening test, they may choose vinyl because their ear would identify the vinyl sound and their brain would say 'I like that' based on life experience.

    Finally, superior technology coupled with record company insanity has actually made a lot of music (particularly pop/rock) a lot worse. The problem is often referred to as the "Loudness War". Record companies are compressing the s##t out of recordings in an effort to create 'loud' recordings (as if that's desirable for some reason?), and thereby killing any musical dynamics. Sadly, this has nothing to do with analog v digital but is simply a product of bad decisions.

    Some good reading:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...ital_recording
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

  7. #6

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    I'm sorry to have missed this thread...however brief.

    Thumbs up to you Rob!

    The theories, the blind studies, the debates ad nauseam. Any vinyl listener knows to trust their own ears. Digital does not, has not, captured the realism nor dynamic playback of vinyl.

    Offering "snap, crackle, and pop" as a critique against vinyl can only suggest one thing. You've surely not experienced a simple Record Doctor, much less a VPI 16.5, and certainly not a Clearaudio Matrix: http://www.needledoctor.com/Clearaud...Record-Cleaner

    the snap, crackle, and pop critique, to a vinyl listener, can only suggest a lack of familiarity...or ignorance.

  8. #7

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    IM (limited) experience, a lot of music that was originally mastered for vinyl sounds great, perhaps better, on vinyl.

    But take a high quality digital recording, like those Manfred Eicher has been capturing the last 10 years ago on ECM, and it'll stand against anything...check out a CD like Tomasz Stank o's "Suspended Night." My goodness...If you want to talk realism, there it is.

  9. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
    IM (limited) experience, a lot of music that was originally mastered for vinyl sounds great, perhaps better, on vinyl.

    But take a high quality digital recording, like those Manfred Eicher has been capturing the last 10 years ago on ECM, and it'll stand against anything...check out a CD like Tomasz Stank o's "Suspended Night." My goodness...If you want to talk realism, there it is.
    I've been a fan of Eicher since decades ago Keith Jarrett began using him almost exclusively. However, until one has acquired experience through the "realism" of vinyl, they've not developed a reference for "realism", as it pertains to the subject and playback of recorded music.

    How many digital transfers of Kind Of Blue, the all time best seller, have there been? Too many to count. And still, the best digital CD's cannot touch even the original Columbia version of that recording even played back through a Garrard turntable, much less more sophisticated vinyl ensembles. Again, there is no debate to an experienced audiophile. Our systems have gone through more changes than even digital has since its introduction in 1979...but the standard of vinyl has not been eclipsed...still.






  10. #9

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    Nice setup.

    I hope to experience your realism one day. Till then, my reality will have to suffice.

  11. #10

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    Another point sort of on a side track. Rupert Neve, the doyen of British recording and recording equipment, did some recordings and found a very slight but noticeable difference between different recordings of the same music. He found out that something in the mic preamp circuitry was producing a parasitic oscillation of around 50+ kHz. It was not audible, and didn't register anywhere but on an oscilloscope. But Rupert Neve did blind playback tests with other engineers and they were able to pin down the recordings made with the oscillating circuitry over 90 per cent of the time. Neve is convinced that recording equipment must be of much wider range than human hearing to even get close to reproducing the live listening experience, and that factors that aren't necessarily audible can produce effects that are audible.

    Another experience - when I was in graduate school I recorded college recitals and community orchestra concerts as a side project for extra bucks. Close to the big state university in our city was a tiny audiophile equipment store whose proprietor had about $50,000 of tube hi fi stuff set up. He let me bring in some of the orchestral recordings I had made. Three orchestras, four different auditoria, four recorders - two cassette recorders, two reel to reel - and four different stereo condenser mic pairs. The dealer kept harping about the nasty low midrange frequency bump that all the recordings seemed to have. I asked him if maybe his room, a rather small showroom, was contributing the bump. "Absolutely not! Every one of my components has a flat frequency response!" Did he measure the response in that room? "No! I am working from the manufacturer's charts!"

    One of the sets of mics I had used was a pair of rented Neumann U-67s. The owner had installed a JFET tube preamp in each one, taking out the tube preamp. He was convinced that he had improved the sound. I hears some problems with the high end response. Upon testing by a recording studio owner in town who ultimately bought the mics, they were found to have a response peak at 11,000 Hertz, then the response nosedived at close to 20 db per octave. Needless to say , the mics had fabulous bass response - and a poor high end. When I asked him about it, the owner said, "Are you sure you aren't just thinking you're hearing that?" He was a Grammy-nominated classical-music recording engineer!

    The whole point here is that there are so many factors affecting how one hears recordings, that it's not very useful to try to compare different recordings of music in any meaningful way. It's all pretty much subjective. I'll be glad to listen to you say, "I think thus-and-so about a certain recording and here's why." But don't try to tell me your ears, training, perception, and equipment are the be-all and end-all of audio testing. And don't try to tell me that a wall of your equipment is better than anything I have. When someone says, "I know what I like," that's about as far as you can go.
    Last edited by robertm2000; 01-21-2014 at 05:17 PM.

  12. #11

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    For those with the coin to spare, a laser turntable will read the grooves in a vinyl record and play back any type of record, LP, 45 or 78, without pops, clicks or rumble. They were developed in the late 1970s to be the next generation in playback until all the record companies jumped on the CD bandwagon. Consequently economics of scale has never kicked in to drop the price. Although they have gained enough traction in the audiophile market that the price has dropped about 50% in the last 8 years.

    With the exception of synthesizers, music is an analog phenomenon. So converting audio vibrations to ones and zeros is better in what way? I've had the opportunity to do blindfold comparison tests of CD versus LP. I prefer the LP. Like most, I've succumbed to the convenience of CDs but I don't think they are necessarily better. After all, there's an entire generation of people who think mp3s are superior to CDs.

    I've seen HD digital photographs of Da Vinci paintings. I've seen Da Vinci paintings up close and in person. There is NO comparison!

    Regards,
    Jerome

  13. #12

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    http://www.premierguitar.com/article...guitar-romance

    Interesting article by Jol Dantzig that addresses both guitars and recording.

  14. #13

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    It's all about magnets. The process that uses the most magnets wins. Electric motors, tape recorder heads, microphones, speakers, guitar pickups, phonograph cartridges, anti-gravity boots...

    Last edited by cosmic gumbo; 01-21-2014 at 07:09 PM.

  15. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by robertm2000
    The whole point here is that there are so many factors affecting how one hears recordings, that it's not very useful to try to compare different recordings of music in any meaningful way. It's all pretty much subjective. I'll be glad to listen to you say, "I think thus-and-so about a certain recording and here's why." But don't try to tell me your ears, training, perception, and equipment are the be-all and end-all of audio testing. And don't try to tell me that a wall of your equipment is better than anything I have. When someone says, "I know what I like," that's about as far as you can go.
    One can appreciate the technical expertise of someone whose studied a subject for years with a passion.

    Folks, this ain't rocket science. The only measurements that are useful in determining what gear sounds best to your ears is the measurements of your room.

    You have the dynamics of a room at play, each room with its own unique acoustical properties. Once you've tamed your room with acoustic treatments, and even if you haven't, one becomes accustomed to music in their room. Experiment with the position of your speakers in your room. Set a chair the appropriate distance from your speakers. Voila - instant sweet spot, which will vary in width dependent upon the distance between your speakers and the size of your room. The depth and width of your soundstage will also vary dependent upon room size and equipment. What won't vary as much is the dynamics of the music. That becomes immediately apparent.

    Experiment with every preamp, amp, tube, solid state, you can comfortably afford. The dynamics of vinyl playback on even the most modest equipment is so easily heard, over digital, that measurements aren't necessary to decipher if equipment A delivers more realism than equipment B.

    The proof is in the music, not in measurements, imho.
    Last edited by 2bornot2bop; 01-22-2014 at 02:58 PM.

  16. #15

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    I'm only selling my recording on eight track cassette in glorious mono.

  17. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by GuyBoden
    I'm only selling my recording on eight track cassette in glorious mono.
    Distribution may be a problem for you as weekend black market flea market sells at the drive in, which sold more 8 tracks than Tower Records, are a thing of the past.

  18. #17

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    Play a vinyl record, and record the playback from speakers, with just an average quolity pair of microphones, on to a CD. I bet, in double blind test, nobody could tell which is what.

  19. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by GuyBoden
    I'm only selling my recording on eight track cassette in glorious mono.
    Ummm....what's an eight track.

  20. #19

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    Quote Originally Posted by tribeo

    I have a degree in electrical engineering and I strongly believe that CD's are far superior for reproducing sound accurately, actually getting quite close to the limits of human hearing.
    I also have a degree EE. I agree that a recording stored in some digital format could definitily theoretically sound better than vinyl (but I am not sure if the standard 16bit 44,1 kHz format does). And I agree about the limits of human hearing.

    But I think it could be a question about better sounding imperfections.
    A good example is a solid state guitar amp might theoritically give an output signal that resembles the input signal better, with less imprefections (distortion), while a valve amp generates a signal that resembles the input signal less, but sounds better because its distortion is harmonic and that sounds better to human ears.

    When we do a blind test on CD vs. Vinyl, what we are comparing is:
    Vinyl mastering process -> vinyl storage format -> turntable pickup cartrage -> phono amplifier
    vs.
    CD mastering process -> cd storage format -> a DAC (digital to analogue converter)
    (assuming the same audio amplifier and loudspeakers are used. There could be more components, such as cables, turntable/CD speed stability etc.)

    Let's say you do a blind test with a 400 USD consumer hifi system (with cd player and turntable).
    It could be that the imperfection (or character) of the turntable pickup and phono amp sound better in a system in that price group, compared to the imperfections of the CD signal path.
    It could also be that the imperfections, in the vinyl signal path, sound better when combined with the imperfections in the amplifier and the loudspeakers (in that price range).

    And what happens if we repeat the blind test with much more expensive audio equipment, and let's say that we use a higher quality digital format than 16bit 44,1 kHz.
    The signal paths are closer to perfect but are still imperfect (what sounds better?). Would the vinyl still sound better, or is the main difference we would hear caused by the two different mastering processes.

    ---

    Personally I think very much of the differnce in the sound character of Vinyl vs. CD comes already in the mastering process (which uses different equipment with different imperfections/character).
    I also think that there are certain common mastering practises in the music industry that affects this difference (like the loudness war, that has already been mentioned).

    If you are a mastering engineer (or maybe a mastering engineer's boss), and you know that 80% of the music consumers will use earbuds, and 97% will be listening to the music in equipment that costs less than 300 USD. (I am just guessing these numbers). Wouldn't that affect the sound character you aim for in the mastering process.
    Maybe the same recording is also released on vinyl (or SACD) and then I guess the mastering engineer (and its boss) will take into account those who will buy that, will use equipment with a rather different distribution of price classes.
    Last edited by orri; 01-23-2014 at 10:37 AM.

  21. #20

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    People don't overthink it, don't get lost in detail, ...

    CD can hold everything a vinyl could, and much, much more.
    Vinyl could hold only a fraction of what CD is capable, and even that not perfectly. It's that simple.
    Cables, amps, convereters, ..., they have nothing to do with it.

    I described the test above. I even made it favourable for vinyl. It could be even simpler, transfer an LP from phono, or line out to a CD.

    Double blind test is - you don't know what is playing, you're not even told when the switch occured. All components are the same except LP is played from the turntable (prferably the best there is), CD from a CD player (just any would do).
    Even if some could spot the switch occured (highly unlikely, but possible), there's no way to obtain significant statistical result that would prove a listener could guess what is LP and what is transfer.

    Re: Audiophiles
    Audiophilia is cool, up to a point. When it leap into esoteria, it's laughable as much as it is sad.

  22. #21

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    Double blind test is when the tester and the one being tested don't know which is vinyl or CD.

  23. #22

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vladan
    People don't overthink it, don't get lost in detail, ...

    CD can hold everything a vinyl could, and much, much more.
    Vinyl could hold only a fraction of what CD is capable, and even that not perfectly. It's that simple.
    Cables, amps, convereters, ..., they have nothing to do with it.

    I described the test above. I even made it favourable for vinyl. It could be even simpler, transfer an LP from phono, or line out to a CD.

    Double blind test is - you don't know what is playing, you're not even told when the switch occured. All components are the same except LP is played from the turntable (prferably the best there is), CD from a CD player (just any would do).
    Even if some could spot the switch occured (highly unlikely, but possible), there's no way to obtain significant statistical result that would prove a listener could guess what is LP and what is transfer.

    Re: Audiophiles
    Audiophilia is cool, up to a point. When it leap into esoteria, it's laughable as much as it is sad.
    In the range of a few thousand dollars for a system (nothing like 2bop-or-not's above, which looks like $50K to me) you can really acccomplish great things with vinyl. In cheap systems, probably CD will sound better. Super high end systems...I don't know...I have no experience there and much of it likely comes to taste. But in the 'reasonably affordable' world of say a $3K to $10K system (including speakers, stands, etc) you can usually do better with vinyl than CD, the key components being the phono pre-amp, the needle (AKA phono cartridge) and the speakers.

    But it's not an either/or. I have about 300 vinyl and about 300 cd albums. Most of my cd albums I also have in 320K mp3 format. I listen to all three formats. The vinyl sounds clearly better. It is very hard for me to accurately distinguish between the CD and 320K mp3 records, but the vinyl sounds clearly better. No contest. I do have a very high-quality phono-preamp, turntable and needle so that helps, but the're not in the world of esoterica.

    All that said, the biggest factor for quality stereo listening is proper speaker placement. That trumps mega-bucks gear every single time. Lots of space to the side walls, and lots of space to the rear walls...those are the key. When I was in the market for a new home, my starting point was potential speaker placement (for a 2.0 system, i.e. two speakers without subwoofer - old school). True story. I found a place with a 18' x 20' room. Not absolutely perfect proportions, but pretty darn good.

    It's really not sad at all. I get great pleasure from my stereo and having vinyl capability allows me to purchase excellent jazz recordings for very little money, as well as buying albums that simply are not available on CD (or if they are, they are extremely expensive due to collector status, etc). Also, collecting jazz vinyl is MUCH cheaper than collecting guitars (my jazz vinyl habit only costs me about $20/month) and takes up less storage room!

    Finally, though this is an intangible, listening to vinyl makes you really listen to the music. Somehow, all the work required to actually start the turntable, place the needle down, unmute the amplifier, etc, forces you to sit there for approximately 17 minutes and really get into the music. With CD or MP3, I'm always getting up to grab something from the fridge, or some other stupid thing, since they are so convenient to pause or whatever.
    Last edited by coolvinny; 01-23-2014 at 12:33 PM.

  24. #23

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    I agree with orri, there are too many variables in the recording and mastering process to be able to make proper comparisons.

    Aren't the speakers the most important link in the chain followed by the room you're listening in? If someone is willing to have great speakers in a properly set up room (large, treated, no parrallel walls), then maybe the difference between a CD and vinyl is a factor. Short of that, you're just not dealing with the weakest link. CD vs. vinyl is just not a big enough factor to worry about.

    Also, arent' the vast majority of recordings being converted to digital somewhere in the recording chain? Whether it be a computer DAW, or a digital delay on the guitar, or a digital reverb etc.? Once you've gone digital and then back to analogue then the analogue at best can only be as accurate as the digital signal that was previously processed.

    It's possible that some just like the way vinyl creation/playback colors the sound. That's subjective and is hard to argue. But in that case we are not talking about accuracy.

    Edit: I posted simultaneously with coolvinny, he made some of the points I'm trying to make.
    Last edited by fep; 01-23-2014 at 12:55 PM.

  25. #24

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    This is fun to mess around with;

    http://www.kvraudio.com/product/riaa_by_vacuumsound


    In a DAW you can apply the RIAA eq curve which roughly goes from -20db on the low end to +20db on the high end. Try using a noisy source like a cassette recording. Apply some light compression, then apply the RIAA curve in reverse, +20db on the low end to -20db on the high end. You wind up with the rolled off high frequencies that is characteristic of vinyl recordings.

    http://www.smartdevicesinc.com/Galo-fig1.gif

  26. #25

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    Quote Originally Posted by coolvinny
    It is very hard for me to accurately distinguish between the CD and 320K mp3 records, but the vinyl sounds clearly better.
    I recently did a comparison. I could hear clear difference (not much, but well distinguishable) between lossless and 320k mp3, trying with both ~80 USD headphones and ~160 USD headphones.
    And the lossless sounded better (in both headphones), it sounded more open, clear, and natural. (it was kind of the same type of difference as between lossless and 128k mp3, simply just a smaller amount of difference)
    I used the first track from The Wall (pink floyd) to do that test.

    But a few years ago I also did a test with the same 80 USD headphones, and another pair of more expensive headphone and a 256k mp3 sounded the same as 320k mp3 (and lossless). (don't remember which track I used)

    I guess it depends on the track.
    If the track is much compressed (compressed as in compressor, not digital compression), it probably matters less how much digital compression is used.