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Vinyl, LPs, Turntables Oh Boy! Listening to analog is joy!


Notes_Norton

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14 hours ago, Wibbles said:

If you are interested in a bit of light reading, there are some articles here on vinyl and CD comparisons and in the differences in the way they are often mastered: https://productionadvice.co.uk/?s=vinyl

here's an intersting comment thread (bottom of page) on the recent remastered reissue of mark hollis's sole solo lp https://www.discogs.com/Mark-Hollis-Mark-Hollis/release/14282355

i'm like wibbles, though, i tend to listen to most music as mp3s through headphones, but love an excuse to crack out the vinyl even though it's more of a special event these days...

Edited by pwalpwal
wobbles --> wibbles
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8 hours ago, craigb said:

How about ripping the new album?  Then you get a digital version that you won't wear out.

I rip all my albums that I want to listen to often, unless I can buy a factory produced copy. That way I have the choice of convenience or sound. I play digital more often, it's convenient, and it saves my LPs. I put the LPs on when I want more serious listening, especially for my favorite sax players and vocalists.

-------------------------------------

Wibbles, I understand what you are saying. There is no way to do a double blind test. The person playing the CD and the LP needs to know.  

BTW, she sat with her back to me, and I didn't say a word, but I admit, we do have a mental connection. However the difference on sax tone is so obvious, no one needs to be cued.

Perhaps the reason why I'm so sensitive to vocals and saxophones is because they are my primary instruments, and I work on the nuances of those tones and have done so all my life (so far).

Or else, some instruments take the digital treatment better than others.

This is not an analog is always better post.

Again it's a matter of which distortion do I want to listen to:
CDs add high frequency harmonics that weren't present in tone of the instrument
LPs add surface noise and suppression of some harmonics

For symphonies I prefer CDs, for serious Jazz and Pop music I like LPs, and for non-serious, chewing-gum for the ears music a good mp3 is fine.

The biggest difference is in the tone of Stan Getz and Paul Desmond. I've heard both these sax players in person and on LP their tone is instantly recognizable. On CD it's still recognizable, but with an added edge that was not present when I heard them live. BTW, we "opened" for the Dave Brubeck Quartet when I was a young man on a Jerry Lewis Telethon. We played during the commercial break and didn't get on TV. Paul Desmond was very kind and encouraging to the young rock and roll sax player. A true gentleman.

But that's besides the point. On CD Stan Getz sounds more like Zoot Sims.

Insights and incites by Notes

 

 

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Although almost on-topic, this is a bit of a side-nerd-journey...

When computers first started having color the most popular was 8-bit (256 colors), then the resolution kept increasing (32-bit being most common now, but 48-bit is available) and, therefore, the number of colors that could be represented became more and more. 

The next limitation was the pathetic resolution of the monitors.  Since they originally adopted the television NTSC standard of 640 x 480 (where 480i, for interlace, or 480p, for progressive, came from), everything looked blocky.  The PAL standard, common in Europe, was 625 lines instead of 480, but not much better.  Side note, both actually produced the same TV image because power frequency needed to be taken into account to produce a correctly managed frame (50 Hz vs. 60 Hz).  For decades, computer users were stuck having to buy stupidly expensive "monitors" because TV's were stuck with the lower resolution.  When TV's finally became "high-def," their resolution started to catch up and pass most monitors (1920 x 1080 for HD TV's versus 1600 x 1200 for monitors).  Now, the bleeding edge for TV's has hit what they call "16k" (with a bunch of stupid names after it like "Quad Ultra High Definition").  This equates to 15,360 horizontal pixels by 8,640 vertical pixels.

Now, while the human eye can purportedly see about 7 million colors, even 24-bit can create over twice that (16,777,215 colors).  There's also a big debate whether humans can really tell the difference between "normal" sized 4k TV's and 8k let alone 16k (i.e., 80" or less - not Samsung's 292" monster)!

Unlike visual information, it seems like we've stopped trying to go beyond human limits with sound.  Obviously, the resolution and sampling rate are what controls just how much of the recorded source makes it into a digital medium.  While there was a push starting all the way back in the 80's to improve the sound (24-bit with 96k or even 192k sampling rates), it seems like we're going backwards.  Now most people (including me) tend to listen to .mp3's that have had areas of the sound removed to  save disk space (but that's gotten soooo much cheaper now...).  I've also observed that most people listen on devices that are nowhere near the "hi-fidelity" gear we used to use.

The part I think is funny is when people say vinyl sounds better.  Sure, it's all subjective (and I think how we heard things when we were young definitely colors what we like now) but, for the past couple of decades, almost all vinyl LP's have been made from the same master that the CD's are created from.  I think the issue is that CD's have both better sound in some areas AND worse in others.  We lose the headroom that vinyl provides, but we gain more frequencies and harmonics that can seem foreign to our ears.

So, what's my conclusion?  I think it's time to up the resolution of digital material AND master them differently so they more accurately represent the original sound.  Just because you can alter the original doesn't mean you should.

Side-note 1 - From my PhD work I know that humans actually CAN process frequencies much higher than the ever-publicized 20k Hz.  Experiments with frequencies up as high as 100k have shown increased learning and memory.  I have some devices capable of working with audio at this level (which came from studies originally used when trying to understand dolphins - lol).  I also know a couple of subjects who were able to play back songs much easier when heard with the higher frequencies included.  I'd love to play around with this area more someday, though I'm not sure how (I'm guessing most audio tools have no way of handling more than the usual range of frequencies - very curious!).

Side-note 2 - Here's an interesting site I just found that also says some of the above: Myths (Vinyl)

*Puts on fire-proof clothing and waits for the inevitable.*  😁

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52 minutes ago, craigb said:

*Puts on fire-proof clothing and waits for the inevitable.*  😁

OK then. :D

52 minutes ago, craigb said:

We lose the headroom that vinyl provides, but ...

Vinyl has a dynamic range of 70 db. CDs have a dynamic range of about 90 db. Or am I misunderstanding what you are saying?

I suspect there is a certain amount of bias confirmation from the vinyl sounds better brigade. That's not to say there aren't examples where it is true. And if all you've got are really shitty master tapes in the first place, ...

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1 hour ago, Wibbles said:

Vinyl has a dynamic range of 70 db. CDs have a dynamic range of about 90 db. Or am I misunderstanding what you are saying?

No, that was just me not verifying correctly but trying to give the vinyl-lovers a nod.  I guess there really isn't anything better than, eh? 😆

 

In my wanderings just now, I stumbled on this quote which is interesting:

"Having actually engineered and mastered CDs (and vinyl) I can assure you there are some errors here. In 16/44, the first two bits are not for error correction, that's entirely separate, and structured depending on the storage medium. There's no 10-15dB of dither, it's more like 3dB, and carefully shaped if done properly. The maximum is not dropped several dB because computers, or anything else, "doesn't like all 1's. What is avoided is full scale clipping, or signals where inter-sample clipping could occur. The adjustment isn't several dB.

Vinyl's dynamic range is dependant on frequency, because vinyl doesn't have a flat maximum output curve. PCM of any flavor has a flat response to FS.

When I cut a master for vinyl and a CD master from the same digital master tape, they sounded pretty much the same except for the noise floor. Yes, vinyl was noisier. By a lot."

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Actually, I believe neither Vinyl or CD is better. They both have different faults.

I've had enough electronics to know specifications are helpful, even necessary but not the holy grail. The proof was in the picture and all the tests and specs were only a ball-park estimate on how they would affect the TV pictures. (I was a field Engineer for a Cable TV equipment manufacturer for a few years in the analog days, trying to see what normal was - and decided normal is overrated).

I would love to see digital audio go up in bit rate. Listening to SACDs convinced me that we haven't gone as far as we need to go with digital. Unfortunately, the general public doesn't want to spend money replacing their music with yet another format. Plus they stream compressed audio, listen to mp3s and don't really care about higher fidelity.

But when I was younger people listened to 45rpm records, cassettes and (ugh) 8 tracks. I remember the first time I heard an 8 track in a friend's car. It was during the psychedelic era when many songs were longer than one track, so it faded out, clicked to the next track and faded back in AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH. How can anybody listen to that and be proud enough to show it off to me!!!!!! It's sacrilege in the nth degree :D

I have a few cassettes, but like mp3s, they were mostly recordings of my LP collection to play in the car. Working on the cruise ships in the late 1980s I did collect a lot of local music from the Caribbean that was only available on cassette tape so I still have them. I have plans to digitize them, but the belt is probably rotted on my cassette player.

As far as specs go, I don't listen to specifications, I listen to tone. But I listen with musician's ears. The general public does not.

I also play wind synthesizer which uses physical modeling synthesis. The tone of say the trumpet, sax, trombone, and other instruments isn't perfect. But it allows me to duplicate a lot of the nuances of these instruments, and to the general public that is more important than the finer points of tone.

I'm having fun with my vinyl because I haven't listened to it in well over a year, probably two or more. And I'm listening to mostly recordings of favorite sax players and vocalists because that's where I appreciate the tonal differences the most.

I've got most of these same recordings on CD either ripped by me or a commercial release.  I've listened to some that aren't significantly different between the two mediums, and some that are drastically different. It's nice to have a turntable again for those that do sound better.

And yes, what sounds better to me, might not sound better to someone else.

Insights and incites by Notes

 

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