Article: "Spin Me Round: Why Vinyl is Better Than Digital"
Article: "Spin Me Round: Why Vinyl is Better Than Digital"
I am sharing this for those with an interest. I no longer have vinyl, but I find the issues involved in the debates to be interesting. This piece raises interesting issues and relates them to philosophy, which I know is not everyone's bag. So, you've been warned. I think the philosophical ideas here are pretty well explained -- this is not a journal article. I'm not advocating these ideas, and am not staked in the issues -- so I won't be debating things here. But it's fodder for anyone with an interest, I think. So, discuss away!
Timbre is only an illusion...A color... A taste...
Accurate for the ears has no meaning save illusory....Accurate in bits is the truth...Or in electro units...
I feel stupid discussing with you....😊 Sorry....
There is a good thing tough for me, i know i have the tendency to be arrogant sometimes....I am not perfect at all.... But with you i feel that you beat me.... This is the good news.... The bad news is that it did not change my character.... 😊
By the way these elusive microdynanics is always part of the interaction of the musician with his instrument, it is a variation in time of the sound hues, a concept in acoustic...But no for some it is in invented word....
Microdynamics is in the flowing sounding timbre playing and very audible even if it is subtle , but this is erased in any bad embedded audio system being it analog or digital...
The term specifically used by the poster was "micro dynamic nuance". That is a made up term. Micro and macro dynamics within the recording process are not a made up terms and even though "micro" is the nomenclature used, the processes are fairly "macro" at least in terms of what I would consider layman thinking.
Someone who "claims" to know the recording process intimately would know that this property is pretty much exclusively a factor of performance and mixing and mastering, from the time the note is played, to the final master, vinyl, analog tape, or digital is made. i.e. it is almost all a factor of the specific recording you are playing, and has little to do with the medium. However, like always, there is the potential for digital to have more dynamic range, so technically there is more latitude to play with dynamics.
No point me retyping all of this, but i copied a critical section below so people can understand that this is not about the playback or recording medium, but is pretty much all the recording itself.
How can a mastering engineer improve the micro-dynamics of a song?
If the micro-dynamics are out of control, the mastering
engineer can use compression to get the instruments to gel together more
smoothly, and to avoid excessive volume variation.
If
the micro-dynamics of the song are too squashed from the mix, the
mastering engineer can use expansion to bring out volume variation
within a measure.
If the transients of the drums aren't getting enough attention, the mastering engineer can compress with a slower attack.
If
the transients of the drums are too excessive, the mastering engineer
can tame them by using a compressor with very fast attack and release
times.
A mastering engineer can bring out the
groove and shape of each measure by balancing a compressor just right,
to have the level of the mix subtly bounce and sway around the rhythm of
the drums.
It never occur to your mind that frogman is first a musician and for a musician the microdynamic he speak about first, is not the properties added or substracted in the studio but the REAL acoustic and musical phenomena linked to the act of playing, a resonant synchronisation between the gesture/body and the body of the instrument....
Not only you demonstrate that you dont know what timbre is or his importance but you reduce any sound living experience to bits and electro units...
Nothing else to say....
I will go out before you accuse me of lying like the other fellow who dare to enter and discuss .....
Just what, exactly, is so controversial about the use of the term “micro dynamic nuance”? I doubt very much that I am the first person to ever use that term. However, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I am the first to use this “made up” term. Let’s see:
“Micro dynamic nuance”. I think we can agree that the term “micro dynamics” is a term commonly used in audiophile parlance. The notion, if not the actual term, is commonly used by musicians. So, within the realm of the micro dynamics in a performance, or how a piece of gear or format is able to convey micro dynamics there can be “nuance”. No? The term describes the very fine gradations of micro dynamics present or not. The perfectly gradated crescendo made by a string section playing Mahler, or the extremely fine gradations of volume in a beautifully executed phrase by a solo flute for example. The difference between pppp and ppp; or ff and fff. So, again, just what is so controversial, or offensive, about the use of term “micro dynamic nuance”? Oh, wait, I get it, “recording engineers don’t use the term”. Well, I could simply say, “I rest my case”, but I will expound.
Just what on earth does the fact that recording engineers don’t use the term prove or have to do with anything? I have worked with some recording engineers who are absolutely clueless when it comes to some of the aspects of sound that astute audiophiles, never mind musicians, concern themselves with. This should come as no surprise to anyone when one considers the sonic quality of many recordings. Obviously, there are and have been many great engineers. However, as in any endeavor there are also many marginally capable ones and some who are absolutely terrible. Just as in the world of the audiophile there are engineers who are simply gear heads and don’t have a grasp of.....here it comes.....the “nuances” of a musical performance. They may have “intimate knowledge of the recording process”, but they do so only in the technical sense. I can’t begin to describe how many times I have told a recording engineer: “please, try putting the mic here instead you’ll get a better sound from me” and been proven correct. Of course, often one only gets a dirty look or even told to mind one’s own business. It IS my business. Just two weeks before the COVID lock down, I was at a recording session with a twenty five piece orchestra at one of the sadly few remaining studios in NYC that can accommodate an ensemble of that size. I could clearly hear that my mic was breaking up during loud passages. I kept trying to point this out to the engineer and got the “mind your own business” attitude. I gave up. Not my dime. Guess what phone call I got the next day asking me to go back in for some retakes? To those who often question why musicians don’t have better playback equipment at home, you would be shocked at what some recording engineers consider to be SOTA playback equipment. Please note that I said “some”. As I said there are many very fine engineers.
Now, and this is why I don’t like to relate these discussions to my professional experiences. The fact is that the level of nuance (there’s that pesky term again) that most musicians concern themselves with in the sound of musical instruments and ancillary gear when choosing their personal instruments is much more subtle and varied than most of what gets discussed among audiophiles and by some of the engineers that I have had experience with. This, when discussing the various sound characteristics of sound equipment. Then there is the issue of nuance (sorry) in performance: phrasing, pitch, timbre, ensemble (playing with others) to name a few; all which, for a good musician, have to be even more nuanced (☺️) for there to be a credible performance.
It is true that a player (or singer) does not always have a clear sense of he actually sounds like in the room due to the proximity of the instrument to that musician’s ears. Again, so what? This assertion mistakenly assumes that this type of comparison is made only when considering one’s own sound. This is nonsense. In the realm of acoustic music such as chamber and orchestral “Classical” music and acoustic Jazz, musicians are often obsessive about having trusted colleagues describe what they hear in each others’ sound while performing and while recording.
Once again it is shown that dependence on “evidence” is pure folly. Sound familiar? There is no sonic difference between cables, right? Ignore what your ears tell you and show me the “evidence” that there is. Right.
I discuss 4 days, none of my arguments were answered at all...
Timbre concept was dimiss being an euphonic "taste" or a subjective superficial color on top of the "accurate" objective "sound".
For example : no microphone choices is perfect, it is a trade-off and the possible locations are numerous...
Then no recording process could be a PERFECT timbre musical dynamic reproduction....( i will not count for a loss the mixing works but there is a loss also there)
Then a musician or an audiophile will evaluate positively his instrumental timbre experience with his chosen format, ONLY in the optimal acoustical conditions of his listening room... His experience is not a reproduction but an always more or less successful recreation of a timbre experience and dynamics, phrase, from a chosen format in a SPECIFIC acoustical listening room and specific hi-fi system with his specific right embeddings dimensions or the lack of........
My point is the installation of the electrical, mechanical and acoustical treatment and controls are more important to the recreation of the live event for an audiophile in his listening room than the choice of the digital format recording under ONLY the pretext of his mathematical " accurate" translation from the microphones to the speakers... Accurate in bits does not equal automatically accurate for the ears in a concrete room...More than that any audio system work optimally ONLY if its mechanical and electrical embeddings and the acoustical dimension are well under control....
The reason why i argued with him was his judgement about all turntable owners to be deluded by their illusory "taste" or only ignorant, all that by virtue of a very well known theorem that assure us that the translation from the analog microphone to the digital format and his retranslation to the speakers are "accurate" mathematically( a reverse microphone) All that forgetting about the right conditions necessary to live or recreate the musical concrete timbre experience...
A dynamical timbre living event in the acoustical space in his own timing dimension resemble more to a cell than to a mass of bits, even accurate....
Music need sound but is not only sound, it is an embodied sound...A conscious historical event ( said Ernest Ansermet mathematician and one of the greatest maestro writer of the most important book about music in the last century, by the way, i read it try this 1000 pages book 😊). Is Ansermet lying? 😁
My point was that musical timbre dynamic of a playing musician CANNOT be totally perfectly recorded...Then no format can reproduce PURELY the original... But it seems to many people that perhaps analog format is more robust than digital with this lost of information at the recording moment by microphone choices and locations...I dont know that for sure...You are in a better place than me to know that frogman....
My main point is controlling the mechanical and electrical and acoustical dimensions of the audio system are more important for me than the format even if it is a digital one...This i know for sure....
No speakers can beat the room, no microphones can perfectly digest an instrument, no audio system can work great without being rightfully embedded in these 3 dimensions where it work.....
A lived event can be recreated more or less perfectly not perfectly reproduced....I use the term recreatebecause there ia always something that will be added and substracted from the live original event...Our best hope are then a relative recreation not a perfect reproduction ....
Frogman, for all your experience you still don't get this recording and playback process. I am glad you complained about microphone position. Few recording engineers are overly familiar with effective live ensemble recording. They know what they were taught but can't visually the sound field and make bad decisions.
However it's all moot. The only thing you can record is what reaches the microphone. All else is periphery and deflection. If you want to accurately capture what reaches that microphone analog does not do that and has not need as good at doing that for 2+ decades.
When you accept that digital can record and playback vinyl without being able to tell the two apart you have to accept that vinyl is no more colorations or a transfer function of you will no different from the many used day in and day out in the recording industry. You may play an instrument but you seem oblivious to what happens after the sound reaches the microphone.
The only thing you can record is what reaches the microphone. All else is periphery and deflection.
In a LIVE theather when someone listen to a violin what he hears cannot be exactly reproduced PRECISELY because each chosen different TYPES of microphones, the list is here,
All types of microphone will register a different perspective, a different sounding timbre dynamic, not only because also the sound will be different in different theater or studio acoustic, but because the locations of the one or many mic will give a different experience....
Timbre dynamic emerging from a specific room and embodied in a musician gesture CANNOT be perfectly recorded....mic choices are always trade-off.... simple....
What you call" periphery and deflection" participate of the essential dynamic of the timbre flowing toward the mic chosen in a positive and sometimes negative way.... Recording in a church is not recording in a studio or in a room ...These acoustic choices participate to the goal...
Then analog or digital format being equal, the only question is how can i recreate a musical event in my room ?
The analog format or the digital format being equivalent mathematically speaking, it is the ACOUSTIC controls in the listener room like the acoustical control in the player studio that are the essential factor...
Not the choice of a format at all....Save the fact i dont contest that some prefer analog....
Then denigrating turntable lover for their choice has no sense at all....
Man, you’re a piece of work. First you accuse me of lying and now I am oblivious. First, could you please rewrite your last paragraph, I have no idea what it is you are trying to say; except for the last sentence and I don’t think this is for lack of understanding on my part.
Look it’s quite simple for me. I have been making a living playing music at a high level for 45 years and part of being successful at this is learning to trust one’s ears. I know what my ears tell me. I trust my ears and they tell me that ON BALANCE, well implemented analog gets closer to the sound of real than does digital. Not always by a lot, but enough for it to matter to me based on my sonic and musical priorities. You seem to want to fall back on the technical and/or theoretical aspects of it all. The sound of music and its playback is much more fluid and elusive than that for a variety of reasons; not the least of which is the human element. You obviously have different sonic priorities than I do. I’m cool with that. Can you say the same? Or, do you feel better thinking that I am clueless and that I am lying about all this?
From my first post here:
The most interesting question for me is why it is that some are so hellbent on trying to convince me that I don’t hear what I do hear.
No one is trying to convince you that you are not hearing what you are claiming to hear. They are telling you it has nothing to do with vinyl, that vinyl absolutely does not have superior signal recreation capability, that what you hear is purely the particular recording and personal preference. That digital is more capable of whatever nuance you may claim which should be self evident given you can record vinyl on digital and play it back and not be able to distinguish the two.
I am also saying your claim that recording engineers think analog/vinyl is more "real" on average is made up.
The most interesting question for me is why it is that some are so hellbent on trying to convince me that I don’t hear what I do hear.
Scientism is the superstition or fetichism of the reality of material object absolutely outside of consciousness...
Someone posess by that materialist metaphysic cannot understand qualitative essential dimensions of experience otherwise than negating them or reducing them to "subjective" nothingness...
Music is only bits for them....
Tomorrow A. I. will play piano better they said...
Then when you used your own ears experience you commit for the scientism the sin of deluding yourself....
Who can forgive you?
Goethe corrected Newton about his corpuscular metaphysical theory of colors but the lesson was never learned... Goethe succeed in describing colors phenomena and grounding his theory in the first physiologycal explanation of the experience...
But Goethe is a bit hard to chew for most....
Ansermet is the Goethe of music..... 😊
My best to you....
«Musical nuances are not made of bits, like the colors are not made by the Newton corpuscules» Anonymus Smith
« Do you dare to say that 2 equivalent mathematical objects can anyway differ ?» In real life yes.....
« I am sure now that you dont know the Fourier analysis translation of these 2 objects....» 😁
Folks can talk all they want but which has better sound quality. To me that's not really the important difference. The difference between digital and vinyl is a lot more like the difference between using central heat to warm your home and lighting a fire in the fireplace. It's largely aesthetic.
I never argued except for personal convenience for a supposedly absolute superiority of the analog or digital format....
I argued against the dogmatic affirmation by the power of numbers of absolute digital superiority.... Precisely because the human ears experience decide first.....
I use digital myself but understand those who chose analog....No conditions of the experience are the same....
audio2design, you continue to accuse me of making things up. I don’t make things up. My patience with your arrogance runs thin. Yours is precisely the attitude that I come across on the part of many engineers who rely on theory because they don’t have particularly good ears (at best) and even worse, considering their profession, do not have good sensibilities when it comes to music and performance.
mahgister puts it well:
**** I argued against the dogmatic affirmation by the power of numbers of absolute digital superiority.... Precisely because the human ears experience decide first.....****
Exactly.
Now, you should spend a little less energy on trying to be right (you are not) and a little more on reading what others have written more carefully.
**** I am also saying your claim that recording engineers think analog/vinyl is more "real" on average is made up ****
Nowhere did I write anything of the sort. Quite the opposite:
**** I could also point out and expound on the fact that recording engineers and musicians are often at odds as to what sounds closer to real (one reason so many recordings sound subpar) ****
He does not have the culture and deep philosophical understanding necessary to even pose the problem...
He think that measured "accuracy" always rules over ears accuracy, without being conscious of the implicit epistemological fallacy : a circle of measured numbers without human interpreters means nothing....
He essentially accuse you of lying, he accuse even a mathematician, who wrote in simple terms for general public about his own experience between digital and analog without condemning the turntable, to be unable to understand Nyquist theorem... Which is a ridiculous accusation against any mathematician...
He accuse me of ignorance in audio but that is relatively true then i will not object, but it is certainly also his case in many aspects of audio unbeknownst to him....
I dont know why i was arguing with him, except i miss my job, counselling students and discussing about their readings...Mathematics included .... 😊 i remember that i argued with him the first time because i dont like condemnation of ignorance about all turntable lovers...
All his posts demonstrate that he does not have a clue about the modelling timbre concept ( he call this euphonic subjective then unreal colors 😄) and microphones then what could we say ?.... If myself ignorant in acoustic can spot these holes, his knowledge is not what he think it is........
Anyway....
I will not ask you which is your musical instrument by discretion but 😋i guess it is piano....
To me its like a porn DVD as opposed to the real thing. Digital plays music for you; vinyl immerses you in the musical experience. Digital will give you a 3 d sonic hologram if its set up right but vinyl brings you into that hologram (if its set up right). Its really not close.
Universe was created and is maintain by a sound .... Even the prime numbers series is a sound pattern, in music conscious ears rules equations not the reverse....
Then i cannot contest your experience even if i am happy with my digital implementation....
«At the end acoustic is consciousness itself»-Anonymus Smith
My own experience is that audio S.Q. is proportional to the rightfully embeddings controls and treatment in the mechanical, electrical, amd acoustical dimensions way more than solely the choice of an electronic
component....
On the other hand with an ordinary system not rightfully acoustically embedded, i think analog is more robust and able to give a more truthful experience of timbre than digital in the same quality level system and conditions... But for superior system and very good embeddings i dont
think so.... But here it is also my limited opinion...
Dear Mahgister, we all know it is a pain to set up analog. I am not able to get all the vta , sra etc. right. Listing again and again to small changes makes me start to hate analog :-). All I do is roughtly to get the setup work o.k.. But still at the end I always prefer analog over the years - mainly in terms of tiring free listening. Although I had several equipments which played in serveral rooms during the years.
You are saying that analog is more robust, if the system is not acoustically embebbded good enough, which in my case has been always true. For example the place for my speaker has always been the place where the speakers have to be placed from a visial point of view.Additional I assume that most people like me do not have the skills to set up a system perfectly and let the system work with the room and not against. Because of this would one not expect more people prefer analog? And why you believe an analog system is more robust.
I trust my ears and they tell me that ON BALANCE, well implemented analog gets closer to the sound of real than does digital. Not always by a lot, but enough for it to matter to me based on my sonic and musical priorities
Summarizes my feeling what I believe too. And this although digital has so many advantages. All that all I come up is that it does not help to compare single parameters. In this respect digital wins always hands down. But there might be at least one criteria which lets down the superity of digital. But fortunate for the industry it effect less people. Whatever they might be, still has been overlooked in their performance or they are still unknown. All I can express are some words which I used to explain why I still prefer analog over digital, words which I did use in earlier posts. But whatever describing words be they "ambience" or "drirectness" I come up with the digital community will tell me immediately that digital is also better in this respect now by a large margin. I am lost for (describing) words. :-)
@audio2design, to my knowledge you can not remove distortion with digital processing. You can adjust frequency response and timing (delay) and you can remove some noise. You are quite correct. You have to optimize the rooms acoustics for your speakers, bass acoustics being most important or you will waste hundreds of watts trying to correct it and possibly pin your subs against their bump stops. Aside from getting you to perfectly flat response and all your speakers time and phase aligned the single most important benefit of processing is in making the in room response of the main speakers perfectly identical. The result in imaging is thrilling. No two speakers are identical and no two positions are acoustically identical. You can easily have 5 dB variations at some frequencies between even the most expensive speakers and I have measured Wilson's and Avalons. Most people do not realize this because they have never measured their systems. They think they can "tune" it by ear? Not possible. Your system can not image at it's best without digital processing. People just stubbornly think they can. They can't audio2 design, you keep saying I need active loudspeakers. First of all I do not think there are any internally active line source ESLs at this time. My ESLs are one way. No crossover. My processor handles everything including the crossover, check out my system page. The graphs are there. What is the difference between doing this outboard or doing it inboard? My processor does all the measurements with a calibrated mic and automatically generates filters.
Well than you are pretty well off. If you point the ESL to your ears like sanders recommends with his speakers than you do not have much room influence abouve 100 HZ at all especially for esl line source speakers. Probably that is what you doing anyway. In this case when it comes to timing and correct phase you are already ahead of all speakers which use passive crossovers. Whatever the speaker manufacturer comes up with they start from a loosing point and can at best only accomplished what your no crossover speaker does from the start.
I am aware of the differeneces which between left and right speaker could accour. Of course I never experienced what it would meand to have exact same speakers. But Is it really benefitical to add a AD/DA additional calculation only to squeezed out the latest bits and pieces of the speakers? I wonder.Additional some authors said that our ears get used to the room the speakers are in and to correct what the brain already corrects may not be without disadvantages. mean above 100 Hz.
But I would like to hear such a solution - for sure :-)
Yesterday I again put one of the worst record on my turntable. I do not talk about K-Tel records and the like with their lowest possible HiFi sound. Again I cannot get really in touch with this record. Sometimes it seems to work, a kind of, but most of the time I am detached. There is something really wrong with the recording. The bits and pieces are somehow unconnectet. All sounds rather artifical. Most worse is the piano. This is not a piano. This is something. A space instrument. The sax is o.k. Now before you hit me :-) I will mention in defence the record is only a "nice price" pressing. But I have other "nice price" pressing which are very good.The record is often used even as a reference recording by some. I really wonder why. It is Joe Jackson body and soul.On the back it is listet that it is a digital recording. Now I know that today digital records are much better, but still, for me the recording shows that digital at the start was inferior to good all tape recording. I wonder why such a format could take of. Well we all have lustet for something new. I remember selling all my vinyl at that time.
Dear audio2design, no how can I say. I did not mean the likes like K-Tel or others. They are not worthy to be mention at all. I wanted them to be not mentioned, therefore I mentioned them. Thus this makes it more clear :-)
Read yesterday an artical where a professional HiRes suporter argues against MQA. Even within the digital domain there is a cut and thrust between people. The same goes on within the analoge community. There is no proof on either side. Best to enjoy what one likes in whatever format it comes.
It is unquestionable that MQA alters the sound, and that includes in the audio band. It forces a filter type on the DAC chain that many find unnatural, but music dependent could be beneficial (to some).
They start with the ignorant notion that "pre-ringing" is bad. If you know what "pre-ringing" is, you will know what this is not a sound theory, and that square waves don't happen in audio. Then they make the bold almost univeral claim that audio is impacted by a ton of 20KHz bessel filters are stacked in a series. Well maybe that was a bit common 30+ years ago, but not recently, and even then that really was not true. So they claim their filter recreates the leading edge of transients. Only problem is, once the information is gone, it is gone. Unless you know exactly the signal chain that arrived at that signal, you can't reverse it. How do you know intentional equalization versus unintentional band limiting? And at the end of it all, the engineers working on the recording are equalizing anyway for the end result.
Dear audio2design, unfortunately I do not understand the theory as deep as you. And my knowledge of the english language does not help in this respect:-) So I could not follow in detail about the "pre-ringing". I thought it does or did exist. And I thought it is bad, as it does not occur in natural. But again what additional I can extract from your very profound answer is my idea that digital music by many in the industry is too much understood as belonging to a computer domain as you wrote:
Unless you know exactly the signal chain that arrived at that signal, you can’t reverse it.
It is so easy to do manipulation, 0s and 1s are exactly build for this, but so hard to understand what this implies. Therefore like in the analog domain there are so many differnent ideas what is best. So many people who defend one idea against the others. Well I keep talking now the same thing over and over :-)
@wuwulf , To answer your question, going in and out a digital at 24/192 is invisible. But, after my music starts out in the digital domain on my computers hard drive. So, there is only one step for half my collection. All modern music with few exceptions is recorded and processed digitally. Then the question becomes does music that is recorded digitally but provided analog in PVC still sound as good as music that remains digitized until the very end of the chain. I personally think that is a silly argument to have. The difference in imaging when I bypass the processor is obvious to everybody. The difference in going back and forth between analog and 24/192 is not noticeable by anyone. I would think that answers your question. It is unfortunate that more audiophile will not share in this experience. They are just digital phobic and anything I can say about the subject apparently means nothing. Their loss. Another interesting subject is that because I know what the sound of a perfectly flat system is I can listen to other systems and know right away where they are off. I know of only one system that was close. In most cases they will be too bright with boosted mid bass and no real low end below 100 Hz.
@cd318, It was not a matter of superior sound by expense. The vast market was unwilling to spend the extra money on SACD and DVDA. Now we have Blu Ray audio. As you suggest, I will take the music in what ever format it is available in. I do have my preferences, high-res digital first, vinyl second and CAD last. With music before 1985 I try to get final.
As I have said on other posts here, a big part of music, especially classical music, is dynamics. A composer writes markings in the score to play a passage either loud or soft or in between in varying degrees. The dynamics are a very important part of written music. This is not a big issue in rock or jazz, since most tunes are played with the same level of dynamics.
In a classical piano or symphonic recording, however, dynamics are VERY important. Remember that the Italian word "piano" stands for "forte piano con piano et forte"...rough translation "loud and soft, with soft and loud." A piano teacher I knew in college (I took many music classes) once told me that there are 15 different ways to hit a piano key, producing different levels of loudness and softness.
I don't see how the process of cutting a recording onto a vinyl disk can capture the whole range of dynamics from the original master the way that digital can. If I am wrong about this, please tell me how.
... a big part of music, especially
classical music, is dynamics. A composer writes markings in the score
to play a passage either loud or soft or in between in varying degrees.
The dynamics are a very important part of written music.
That's very true, but it's only half of it. There are dynamics that may not be part of the score itself, such as the "attack" of a note as a bow glances across a string, or the sharp leading edge of a horn note. That's a large part of what separates the great players from the merely technically competent ones.
This is not a
big issue in rock or jazz, since most tunes are played with the same
level of dynamics.
Not so. In particular, the best rock takes advantage of huge dynamics, e.g. Pink Floyd, Dire Straits. Give a listen to Paul Simon's Graceland on a big system. And rock typically relies on amplified instruments, so you can have the range between that and the gentlest guitar and soft vocals.
I don't see how the process of cutting a recording
onto a vinyl disk can capture the whole range of dynamics from the
original master the way that digital can. If I am wrong about this,
please tell me how.
A properly made LP can have explosive dynamics. While digital has a wider potential dynamic range, the music almost never requires it.
So, you can make a digital recording of what comes out of the phono stage, and then play that recording through the same system. If the ear can’t tell the difference then it would seem that the digital format can accurately capture and reproduce the sounds produced upstream of the phono out. Is that true?
If that is true, then the digital capture can be compared to the digital master used to make the vinyl in the first place. Now you can make a filter to put in downstream of your digital source. Someone must have tried this already? With any success?
We can make digital relatively on par with some analog system....The truth is there is no perfect conditions to conclude the debate...
The true microdynamic of timbre playing by a pianist to be perceived by the listener in the theater and in his room alike need more than the choice of a turntable or of a dac...
There is NO perfect recording of the timbre event by a microphone to begin with....What is lacking must be recreated by compensation in the acoustic conditions of the listener room...
There exist a partial recreation, a partial translation, in the listener room of the acoustic conditions where the instrument were imperfectly recorded... This is the fundamental factor, with a dac or with a turntable...
How my actual system and room, whatever digital or analog, will let me perceive at the best possible level the timbre of the instrument playing ?
Most dont seems to understand that, in the turntable camp or in the dac boat....
There is no reproduction in the act of recording ONLY a translation with a loss.... The recreation in your room is not the original lived event with a digital files or with a vinyl but only a translation.....
The microphone choices and locations are the limitation imposed, not the analog recording method or the digital recording method....The microphone is like a speaker in reverse function.....
The recording microphones impose a trade-off....This imposition of limitation by the type chosen and his locations is ABSOLUTE for analog or vinyl.....The source of the recording are not the musician playing in the theater it is the recording microphone itself....
bluemoodriver40 posts01-22-2021 1:22pmSo,
you can make a digital recording of what comes out of the phono stage,
and then play that recording through the same system. If the ear can’t
tell the difference then it would seem that the digital format can
accurately capture and reproduce the sounds produced upstream of the
phono out. Is that true?
If that is true, then the digital
capture can be compared to the digital master used to make the vinyl in
the first place. Now you can make a filter to put in downstream of your
digital source. Someone must have tried this already? With any success?
It is true.
There are a bunch of functions that would need to be incorporate including mixing channels to increase crosstalk, adding noise that has to also include the compression/decompression from RIA, etc. Lots of people have played with this,
If you want the full analog chain equivalent there are plug-ins that simulate specific tape machines.
My response to digital lovers is if you walk out on your front porch on a Sunday morning and you hear the birds chirping the wind blowing through the trees with the leaves rustling that sound that you're hearing is analog your ears are analog they're not digital
Correct audio2design. Bad analogy dutchydog. Call a fax machine. Listen and you will hear the sound of computers talking. That is what digital sounds like.
Excellent post Mahgister. Recording engineers, musicians and vocalists choose mics like we choose phono cartridges.
You dont read my posts anymore remember?
My point is that CHOOSING a mic type and the LOCATION for recording an instrument timbre is a trade off then no recording is a perfect reproduction only a TRADE-OFF ...
Then if we want to stay with facts no recording mic reproduce perfectly a timbre only partially and differently in relation between his particular type and all his possible locations....Nevermind them if you choose a dac or a vinyl format.... The situation is the SAME....It is a RECREATION from the start....Then all the argument about mathematical superiority of the digital is beside the essential point....
By the way choosing mic and location is an art based science.... Some sound engineers EARS are famous, most are not....
Is your vocation to be the Sancho Panza behind Quixote digital war against turntable and tweeakers the essential fact of your audio life?
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The composer Philippe Manoury (1991) observed that “One of the most striking paradoxes concerning timbre is that when we knew less about it, it didn’t pose much of a problem. »
"The composer Philippe Manoury (1991) observed that "One of the most striking paradoxes concerning timbre is that when we knew less about it, it didn't pose much of a problem. "
Boy did he nail it!!! Timbre and tone are most important elements of music. Attack and dynamics should also be included. The good news, for the marketers, is most people lack the ability, exposure, or desire to understand the true fundamentals of music. But there are plenty of audiophiles who pretend they know. Of course the easy way to tell this is when they throw in all the silly explanations of what music sounds like and the graphs, charts, etc... Another dead giveaway is it sounds better across the board. Most things in music have trade offs.
as said before I’m a vinyl lover, but I came across mastering recordings from Barry Diament (Soundkeeper Recordings) that got me thinking. He’s a well-known recording engineer who has long hated loundness settings, had one breakdown and then came up with a pretty simple recording technique: just 2 microphones. And no loudness manipulations, no overdubbing, more or less nothing that we are so used to with modern mastering.
Although his recordings have an average dynamic range of 15-17 dB, some parts or songs are rather quiet. Only when the music demands it does it get louder. Something we are no longer used to. The way in which the musicians are presented reminds me more of analog recordings. Very precise located, communicative and the musicians pretty much the right size. On the other hand, if you look at traditional recordings like Diana Krall’s, they also have their own advantages, her voice is more present, but also a touch perhaps too big, perhaps too direct; The piano is massive, but also a little bit too big. It’s more of an in-your-face recording. A beautiful recording, maybe in its own way. And Diana Krall recordings are very good, but when you listen you are always aware that it is a recording, no matter how fantastic, but still a recording and not music.
Recording of Barry Diamneds are much better in this respect. It may lack the euphonoic of mechanical scanning that we all love when we listen to vinyl, but so far, and this is important for me, I haven’t been able to notice the typical digital fatigue that always comes to me when listening to digital, sooner or later, even with such good recordings as form Diana Krall. Also said before when I listen to Soundkeeper Recordings I don’t have the impression that, as usual with Digital, the players were recorded in space. Instead I have the impression they play in one room at the same time.
Maybe digital is still not the problem, only that the ease of manipulation which is used in excess by the recording engineers. The advantage of using digital as perhaps more advanced analog technology has been given up for the many digital possibilities which, according to official belief, can be used as often and as often as you want without loss.
So the consumer never had a chance to hear if digital is as good or even better than vinyl.
Here are two statements from other people:
Be sure to turn the volume up a bit as there is no compression so quiet sounds can be buried
.
All guitars (acoustic, electric, pedal steel and mandolin) emit an inherent sheen, like 180 gram vinyl. This is really an audiophile recording.
I downloaded the "Americas" recording, there all qualities are visible, only as a small critic the piano alone is perhaps too restrained for my taste. But the recording gets quite loud, when required, when the drummer hits it, the sound becomes wonderfully loud and real.The other recording I own is "Wind of Change" , just a great recording. Maybe I’ll get the "Confluence". I only bought 16bit so far.
But how many minimal microphone usage and manipulation-free recordings are there today? How many nondigital digital recordings. In this form I would, still cautiously, see it as an real alternative to vinyl. Both are fatigue-free, only with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Sure there are others, but overall there are too few Barry Diaments ...
I hope for the ones like Mr. "Timbre" that it is an worthy, an intelligent comment I made, because I have not used the word "timbre". It is not meant to be offensive, just a little joking remark :-)
Placebo effect is integral part of ALL perceptions...
That does not means that the perception is unreal or only deceptive... Save for simplistic mind interpretations....
That means that what you think about some phenomenon participate to the exprerience of this phenomenon in a constitutive and creative way for the good and/or for the worst....
Man perceive the themperature of a room being "warm" or "cold", but the thermodynamic behind thermometer numbers is only a scale of numbers about billions of atoms WITHOUT these qualities...
The quality are "projected"/interpreted, onto/into "disordered molecules" sensation by consciousness and by the body organization which because of his finite limitation is POLARIZED between these 2 opposites qualities which are only reflecting the boundaries of the human organization itself....
Man lives in the cosmos like in himself and he lives in himself like in the cosmos.... This is the the basic polarity and participation ....But being unconscious of his freedom and of his participation to the world, man spontaneously externalize this polarity of his being into an external duality....An habit..... Only meditation reintegrate man in himself and in the cosmos...
Then perceiving a difference between vinyl and digital is not an illusion nor a reality, it is different experiences motivated by personal histories....It is an illusion which could be a reality, or a reality which could be an illusion....It is an interpretation after an act of translation....
The price and the cost to pay for meaning is freedom .....
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