Analog invites you to turn up the volume


I've been listening to a lot of streaming digital lately and really enjoying it. The sound is nice, music selection is outstanding and sure can't beat the convenience. It has almost overtaken my listening sessions but last night I decided to fire up the turntable. I noticed myself turning the volume up and just rocking out at the level I thought was most satisfying. I was kind of startled to see how high I'd set the volume and when I checked the Db meter, it was 5 to 8 Db louder than when I listen to digital. I asked myself why I don't listen to digital at the same volume and I really couldn't come up with an answer because I certainly can. I just don't care to. 

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I think what @ghdprentice is driving at--and I agree-- is that what you are noticing is not universally true for everyone who has both digital and analog front ends. I, for example, do not find myself generally playing one louder than the other. I do find that each piece of music has a volume where it sounds best, and that seems to vary by engineering/ mastering rather than genre or media. 

You apparently have a system where one front end has characteristics causing the best sound to be at a higher volume than the other. I would not read into that anything inherent in the media. If you are wondering whether this suggests one front end is ultimately giving you better performance than the other, well, I think the simple answer is to ask which one you enjoy more when played at its ideal volume.  You might also consider which of these volume levels more closely matches a live performance. My guess is the louder one.

Think I tend to do the same thing. Crank up vinyl, not so much when streaming. 

At times streaming does have more detail, more of everything. But it can almost sound fake, at times compressed, of course fatiguing. 

Vinyl is like a warm blanket, you just get settled in, and enjoy. Will crank it up till the cartridge starts to pick up my speakers.  yeah, I need a better isolation for my TT.

There is another big difference, with vinyl, I sit, listen to the entire album. When streaming, it's a playlist, a station, or some mix. bitrates are all over the place, volume is never constant, soundstage, detail, dynamics are all over the place. Every song has it's own "flavor" it makes it much harder to stay in the pocket, disappear into the music. It's not as engaging or intimate. Think that is the reason, why vinyl wins. 

I don't know why people are so resistant to accepting that vinyl has always been much more emotionally involving.  Digital sounds very nice, and then you walk out of the room. You might not even be consciously aware of it. People make all kinds of excuses for the difference in listening habits.  It's likely due to digital chopping the music into bits, then reconstituting it, with jitter, pre and post echo, phase shift, etc.  There's a reason why vinyl records command so much higher prices than cds or even sacds. Sorry folks.

 

I made the same observation that vinyl sounded more natural and was more emotionally involving in most systems leading up to around 2010 (since 1982 when the CD was released). But the advance of DACs and streamers and ancillary equipment has been huge and now only true when component choices make each leg sound the way they do. They could (with different component choices) sound the opposite.

While certainly the equipment can introduce differences in sound, especially phono cartridges, there is also the issue of mastering. With streaming the provenance is usually unknown, while with vinyl it is usually possible to determine the  mastering chain.  The digital medium itself certainly has a wider dynamic range than vinyl, however this is not always reflected in the music if compression was used in mastering. I have done synchronized A/B level matched comparisons of vinyl vs streamed tracks. Sometimes they are quite different (in that case I usually but not always prefer the vinyl)....sometimes they are virtually indistinguishable. I put most of this down to the mastering.