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

[Wibbles]

8 hours ago, Notes_Norton said:

 There is no way to do a double blind test.

I demand your testing be carried out under laboratory conditions. 

[craigb]

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."

[craigb]

8 hours ago, Notes_Norton said:

There is no way to do a double blind test.

Of course there is!

*Goes to find a pointy stick...*

?

[Notes_Norton]

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