CDs Vs LPs

I have LPs pressed in the early 1950s that play just fine too. One example (Benny Goodman) is 65 years old and still plays fine.

The Library of Congress did an archival study in the mid 1980s that suggested that laminated media like CDs would last decades while amorphous media like LPs and LP stampers would last centuries (all heavily dependent on quality of storage of course). I think I would be bored to death of the cut by then though.

If it doesn't bring you joy...

Ticks and pops can be on the surface of the LP, but far more of them are caused by poorly designed phono equalizers that are unstable, resulting in a tick or pop that isn’t actually on the LP. About 95% of ticks and pops have this origin.

I am sorry, but this is complete BS.

Many people think you just need enough gain and EQ for a phono preamp. They are wrong- there is more to it than that.

I was quite surprised when I discovered this to be the case about 30 years ago. Any engineer knows that you use something called ’stopping resistors’ to stabilize a circuit. Otherwise you can get oscillation. If the circuit is on the verge of oscillation, as you see in nearly all Japanese designs used in receivers and integrated amps from the 1960s-1990s (none of which have stopping resistors whether tube or solid state), ultrasonic defects in the surface can set off short term instabilities in the equalizer, resulting in little ticks. This is not a feedback or passive EQ phenomena, nor is it related to solid state or tube as we have seen a good number of solid state phono preamps that are also free of ticks and pops.
The other problem is overload margin, which can also induce ticks and pops. The reason this shows up is the cartridge is an inductor and the tone arm cable is a capacitance, together forming a tuned resonance which can be active at ultrasonic frequencies in the case of MM cartridges and RF frequencies in the case of LOMC cartridges. The resonant peak can be 30db higher than that of the signal in the case of the latter! If the preamp isn’t alright with that, ticks and pops occur.

Ralph, I don’t want to have this discussion. That’s why in my first post I said:

The CD vs LP debate is about preference, not who’s right or wrong. I hope we can get past that old argument someday. Both formats are capable of very good and very bad sound.

Many do see it as a preference. I see it as an engineering problem and a direct conflict with how the ear hears vs how spec sheets are created.

The ear/brain has certain perceptual rules and that is what the debate around CD/LP and tubes/transistors is all about. If you are engaged with the Emperor’s New Clothes, you will think the spec sheet is real and that is what you want to hear. If you know about human physiology (IOW how the ear/brain system works) then you find the spec sheets troubling because its obvious that they are intended to look good on paper while ignoring how sound is perceived.

Here’s an example: all forms of distortion are perceived by the ear as a tonality. We all know about the ever-loving 2nd harmonic that makes tubes sound rich. But what is less well-known is that the ear uses higher ordered harmonics (5th and above) to gauge sound pressure. This is probably because sine waves are very rare in nature where our hearing was developed. BTW this is very easy to demonstrate with simple test equipment.

The industry likes to see very low THD numbers (looks nice on paper) so we use feedback to get rid of those pesky harmonic distortions. The problem is that feedback makes distortion of its own, and because its entirely higher orders, inharmonic types and IMD associated with the feedback node, we easily perceive it as hardness and brightness even though it might only be 0.005%. This is what I mean by the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Aliasing works the same way- the ear perceives it as harshness and brightness. Because this tonality is caused by distortion, turning down the treble to make it go away doesn’t work. My beef with digital is that this is built into the recording. It is very rare to find a digital recording that lacks this form of coloration.

In the analog world this form of distortion is called ’inharmonic distortion’ because it relates to harmonics surrounding a certain frequency. In a tape machine this can be caused by harmonics of the audio signal interacting with the record oscillator. In a digital system, these inharmonics are centered around the scan frequency, and essentially are an intermodulation. I don’t think most people realize how serious a problem this actually can be; intermodulations may not look like much when its only two frequencies, but when a number of them are involved it gets very complex very quickly! This is why intermodulation distortion is so audible and a recording system that has this as an inherent fault is bound to have controversy around it, so its no surprise that nearly 30 years on, these debates are still common.

OK Ralph, you're right. There's no such thing as a not very well built or poorly set up turntable or cartridge, no damaged vinyl, no dirty records, no off center spindle holes, no poorly recorded LPs.

Everything in vinyl land is just as good as it can be. Every playback of every LP is indistinguishable from live musicians playing in the room. I don't know what got into me that I forgot all that for a minute. Thanks for correcting my thinking.

Yeah, and no poorly built CD players, no damaged CDs, no dirty CDs, none that simply won't play, none that are poorly recorded??
The problem here is conflating the media in general with individual results, notwithstanding the fact that nothing in this world is perfect, not digital and not analog.

But if we are going to have this discussion, its helpful to work with facts. When someone posts LPs specs that might have been true in 1962, its not the same as saying that's how it is now. I've had people do that to me- claiming that there have been no improvements in cartridge or tone arm tech since the early 60s- then expecting me to take that hand waving for real!

So here are a few facts.
CD/digital noise floor is usually limited to the room in which the recording was made and the electronics chain used.
LP noise floor is variable from about -60 to the same above. The LP mastering system has arguably more headroom than any other operation in audio.

The results of either are highly variable and depend largely on the producer and the care taken by the recording and mastering personnel.

Distortion amounts are not vastly different, but the nature of the distortion is. LP distortion is less audible because its mostly harmonic as opposed to inharmonic. IOW aliasing is highly audible in small amounts where harmonic distortion is not. The LP is at a disadvantage due to poor setup resulting a large amount of distortion.

Bandwidth of digital is variable due to scanning rate and the need for record side filters. Sometimes exceeds 20KHz. LP is *usually* bandwidth limited to about 50KHz in record but can go much higher.

Ticks and pops can be on the surface of the LP, but far more of them are caused by poorly designed phono equalizers that are unstable, resulting in a tick or pop that isn't actually on the LP. About 95% of ticks and pops have this origin. Otherwise, the LP is fragile and should be treated with care.  CDs don't have ticks and pops, but can have dropouts and can get 'stuck'. The surface is fragile and should be treated with care. Music can be streamed, but bandwidth can cause the music to stop, and provenience issues can cause your music to simply not be on the cloud where you left it. (For this reason I prefer disk storage with ample backup)

Analog storage is a pain in the ass. Digital storage usually is easy, until it isn't and then its enough to make you cry if you lost your entire disk or the like.
In a nutshell, LP is usually more pleasing while digital can have a bit less noise, individual results depending on a wide range of variables on both sides.

You need to add "to me" or "to vinyl afficianados" to make this statement correct. To anyone with a decent system, digital no longer has to sound bright.

The best digital system I've heard to date is the StahlTech, which sounded smoother and more detailed than MSB, dCS, Modwright modified Oppo; the latter three being some of the best I've heard.
The designer of that system was in my room at RMAF; we were playing his system with a server as a source. The cut was from Massive Attack on Mezzanine, something we both liked. I mentioned that I had that on LP and he was interested in hearing it. After only 5 seconds he turned to me and said 'Digital has such a long way to go'. It is my opinion that his pragmatism in this regard is why his DAC is one of the very best. It had better be- it retailed for $37,000.00.

So I'm going to flip this one around- the better your system, the easier it is to hear digital problems compared to LP; Mike heard it in only 5 seconds.

Cheaper systems tend to have so much higher ordered harmonic distortion that its difficult to tell if a CD is brighter than LP or not- and likely the owner has done something to tone down that brightness caused by distortion brought on be inferior gear.

No amount of money spend on beefy turntables and complex tonearms will produce the dynamic range of which the LP is incapable.

??

Signal to Noise Ratio: LP 50db, CD 90db
Frequency Response: LP 20-20kHz, CD 20-22kHz (a tie)
Total Harmonic Distortion: LP 1-2%, CD 0.003%
Stereo separation: LP 25db, CD 90db

This bit is inaccurate. So much depends on the actual recording!!
First- most CDs **including classical and jazz** are compressed, for the simple reason that they might be played in a car.

Second, I put that first quote up there for a reason. LPs are capable of much wider dynamic range and noise floor than presented here.  And the typical LP bandwidth extends to 40KHz in both record and playback, even though microphones, tape and digital don't. Our cutter head (Westerex 3D) was made in 1960 and our cutter electronics are bandwidth limited to 42KHz. We don't have any problems recording at 40KHz and playing back on a Technics SL1200 (an older one) with a Grado gold, through an H/K 430 receiver!  IOW the bandwidth thing is a myth, plain and simple- the bandwidth has been there in record since the 1950s and in playback since the 1970s (cartridges lagged well behind the capabilities of the cutters).

Regarding noise and dynamic range: when a lacquer is cut, if the mastering engineer did his setup homework, the lacquer is so quiet that when you play it back, the noise floor is that of the electronics, not the media. Quite literally the you wonder if the darn thing is on, then music blasts out of nowhere. This implies a noise floor in the neighborhood of -90db or better. The surface noise comes in during the pressing process, but at least one pressing plant, QRP (owned by Acoustic Sounds) has done something about that, by damping their pressing machines so they don't shake and vibrate during the pressing process. This results in a good 25 db improvement in the noise floor. Modern LPs can do quite a bit better than -55db!

The actual distortion is another misnomer. How was that measured? In all likelihood that number was taken from a website or older document in which the homework was not done. For example, if a high output cartridge was used, what sort of loading was applied? If a MM cartridge is used and it was not loaded, the distortion is quite a bit higher! That's not so much a problem with the media as it is the reproducer, and if you want to point an an analog problem:

The largest negative for vinyl is the equipment choice and setup. IF one has the skills, or a really good tech person to chose the right cart/arm combo, then set it up. At this point I would say almost no one has a person really skilled to do it. Most are half way guessing and klutzing to 'good enough'.

-then this is actually the biggest problem, although I disagree with the 'almost no one has a person really skilled to do it' bit, as I don't seem to have any troubles setting up an arm and yet no worries getting it to perform; I don't see myself as any arm setup expert...

IOW the distortion is not so much in the *media* as it is in the **playback**. This is quite the opposite of digital, where the distortion (aliasing; the digital industry does not like to call it by its name, but make no mistake, aliasing is distortion, known in the analog world as 'inharmonic distortion', which is a special form of IMD, which means its really audible) is built into the recording, brick wall filter notwithstanding. This is why digital still sounds bright, even when used with a super high end DAC. When the distortion is in playback as on the LP, it becomes solvable and one way to reduce it is to simply use a low output moving coil cartridge, since their distortion (caused by ringing) is so much lower. Or just get the MM cartridge loaded right...

But as I pointed out earlier, if digital was really bringing home the bacon, there wouldn't be any LPs being made. But there are- and pressing plants are 6 months backlogged. Maybe the next round of digital will be better, and the LP will finally go away. I'd love that- I have over 6000 titles and its a pain in the rear to store it and move it.

RIAA, Decca, Columbia

As I understand it that is because the Labels themselves changed the recording process over time.

In the case of the RIAA curve, to change that the label would have to dig into the pre-emphasis networks in their LP mastering electronics. That's non-trivial since they are trimmed to match the cutter head in use.
However a label isn't doing well to deviate from the RIAA curve since most of their customer base won't have access to equipment that has their curve- in a nutshell, its a non-starter.

The older EQ curves- Decca, Columbia and so on won't be changing, since they've not been in use since the early or mid 1950s.

^^ I'm sure its not a problem but the older stuff that needs those extra curves are probably 78s.

I’m quite sure I’ve never heard a vinyl record broadcast on radio. I like tape.
Having grown up in an era where vinyl basically didn’t exist, terms like LP, EP, and Single most certainly persisted completely independent of the recording medium. I’ve bought plenty of LP, EP’s, and singles on tape and CD. Those are the ONLY ways I’ve ever bought hardcopy music. I don’t think anybody 40 years old or younger associates LP, EP, or Single with the diameter of a piece of plastic. Calling anything that comes on a disk of vinyl an LP strikes me as having the same logic as calling my HP printer/scanner/copier a Xerox machine. It’s an antiquated misuse of terminology that dates the user to a generation born before about 1970.

LPs are common on the radio even now, and have been since their inception. IOW, you’ve heard vinyl on the radio.
I deal with the less than 40 crowd quite a bit since I’m involved in the local music scene in the Twin Cities. In this town, your band hasn’t arrived if it hasn’t got an album on LP, and that is what they are called, interchangeable with ’vinyl’. This could be a local thing, but if so its local to Denver, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Tucson as well. An EP on vinyl is often referred to as ’ten inch" or 12 inch". I have heard the term ’EP’ refer to CDs, but usually both acronyms are found together in such cases- EP CD, which means that its not extended, its in fact shorter than a regular CD :)

It is possible that vinyl does not sound good to some people, just as some people will not listen to digital in any form, even Lps that have digital anywhere in their lineage. We all hear differently.

@tomcy6 The human ear obeys certain rules that are common with all humans, for example how we perceive how loud something is. When people tell me they don’t like vinyl, they often trot out the issue of ticks and pops which drives them crazy. I don’t doubt that’s the case- it would bother me too! But vinyl is not produced with ticks and pops; in fact the producer of the vinyl project has to sign off on the test pressing, and that is to insure that there aren’t any ticks and pops on the LP stamper or finished product.
But ’ticks and pops’ is a persistent complaint, and it turns out there is an excellent reason why. If the designer of the phono preamp isn’t taking all the parameters into account in his circuit design, the ticks and pops will be there, and that’s not something that is because ’We all hear differently’; this is a phenomena that is easy to demonstrate, and its been an epidemic for the last 50 years. IOW the simple fact is that the vast majority of phono sections exacerbate ticks and pops, and this includes nearly all phono sections included in solid state amps and receivers made overseas since the advent of solid state, plus most made in this country.

So we have probably two generations of people that grew up thinking ticks and pops are a problem of the media when its far more complicated than that. I discovered this serendipitously in the mid 1980s (a Toshiba preamp an employee owned demonstrated this to me in spades), when I was still working on our preamp concepts. This discovery allowed me to design stable phono sections that don’t add ticks and pops.

I don't know what you have to spend to make vinyl sound good, but I've yet to hear it.

I'm sure this statement is true. I've mentioned some things that you have to do to make vinyl sound good, and they are not price-dependent. Based on your description I don't know how that turntable you mentioned could have worked.

Turntables, like anything else, work because of engineering. Some are well engineered and some are not, just like anything else. Its not a price thing so much as its a thing where its engineered properly or not, just like anything else. I'm repeating myself simply to make the point. Carrying a made up story that a media is somehow deficient when the real reason is that the setup you played was terrible won't help you. 
The same is true of phono preamp sections. Some exacerbate ticks and pops due to poor overload margin, RFI susceptibility and outright circuit instability. This has nothing to do with cost and everything to do with how well the circuit is designed. Designing a phono circuit is more than just getting enough gain and the right EQ- you have to take into account how the inductance of the cartridge behaves in the system, and frankly, many designers don't, so there are both cheap and expensive phono sections that have poor performance. A sign that you have a better phono section is that you get less ticks and pops.

Regardless of the technical reason, it's a failing of the technology and it's expensive to eliminate.

@kosst_amojan IME this statement is false, unless you bought your digital gear at Goodwill.

People call the LP that out of tradition. Its easier to type too :)  Really, real people don't call CDs LPs. Just ask anyone.

Also, I agree with Ralph that the tick and pops are indicative of album condition and tonearm tracking, not the medium.

@minorl You may have missed my point- just checking; while the above is true, most ticks and pops are actually the result of poor RFI and overload margins of phono preamps. IOW I am saying that you can change out the phono preamp and thus rid yourself of a lot of ticks and pops.
The reasons why this is so are pretty technical- I can go into it if you like.

I can't do the hiss and pops. I can't deal with a radio station that has low level static or very high hiss like the university station near me.

These are not problems of the format, they are problems of the setup. If you don't like those things, you can simply do a set up so they don't happen.

My opinion: The CD format will always kick the LP's ass when it comes to having the capability of providing better fidelity, greater dynamic range, clear channel separation, no surface noise, little mechanical (drive) noise and playing a media that last a really long time (as compared to records).

The Library of Congress did a study of recorded media about 30 years ago and came back with some interesting results. Any laminated media like tape and CD will fail in years or decades, where non-laminated media like LPs and the stampers to make them can last over a century if properly stored (I have LPs that play fine that were made over 60 years ago). As far as fidelity goes, the LP has bandwidth to about 40KHz and has since the early 1960s (The Westerex 3D cutterhead and electronics were bandwidth limited at 42KHz and had to be for a good reason; cartridges of that era didn't have that bandwidth, but they do now and have for several decades). Dynamic range is the purview of mastering, not the media, and since CDs are expected to be played in cars, the LP typically has a greater dynamic range.  When we are mastering an LP, we usually have to be clear with the producer of the project that we need the master file, not the one made for CD mastering for this very reason.
I've found that surface noise has as much to do with the phono preamp often moreso than it does the LP surface itself. I think I explained that in my prior post. If not I can as many here know go into it in some depth :)

I do think digital will overcome its current limitations, but IME it won't be done with CD- it will be some sort of memory. Right now the Cloud seems risky to me- I know too many people that have lost their music to the cloud, due to security and in particular where the software suspected the music of not being the right providence.

Do you think that you are hearing aliasing or the phase shift introduced by the brick wall filters, which are there in an attempt to prevent aliasing?

I know it was audible in the old days. I've not run a test recently to tell if its still a thing.
How I did it years ago to prove that I was not making it up to the pro-digital guys is I recorded a 20-20KHz sweep tone from an *analog* sweep generator, set to a slow sweep. The playback contained what is known in the analog world as 'birdies', chirp tones that were present along with the actual sweep tone. They are interactions with the scan frequency- IOW, aliasing. But in any other world, they are distortion, also known as 'inharmonic distortion' since they are based on the scan frequency and an interaction with the fundamental tone, and IME a special case of IMD.
So very easy to hear as brightness, since the ear converts all forms of distortion into some sort of tonality.

A bit of the aliasing is built into the recordings, so no matter how good your playback is, some recordings will have more than others. I think the pro audio ADC I used simply was not that good, but it was a long time ago and certainly made the point, since it was also a popular unit.

I discovered serendipitously, about 35 years ago that the phono section played a huge role in how many ticks and pops you get with LPs.

Since I am a designer as a result I'm used to not getting ticks and pops. To avoid wear, I use a Triplanar arm. It never mistracks so I'm not encountering wear.

Surface noise otherwise really isn't much of an issue for me- I only use a dust brush and don't feel the need to otherwise clean LPs- I've not used my LP cleaner in decades. I listen to the music, which exists in 3D; surface artifacts exist in the speaker, so I have no problem listening past them.
I don't mind digital these days at all but much depends on quality. In the old days when my hearing was more intact, I ascertained the quality of the playback by how long it took to give me a headache. A good player was 2 minutes and bad one was 30 seconds. About the late 90s I heard the first DAC (Appogee) that didn't give me a headache. These days getting a headache is a rare thing; the last time it happened was 3 years ago at RMAF. Anyway, the better systems are pretty convincing  but oddly, price isn't the variable- whether the stuff works right or not is. So digital can be really cheap or really expensive, but if it works I'm fine with it. To this end I regard it as bad news that Oppo is out of the game.

My biggest objection to digital is the distortion in the highs which in the digital world is known as aliasing. The ear converts it to a sort of brightness. These days its not nearly the problem it was years ago so I can listen to digital without much complaint. But when I play the LPs for my girlfriend, she hears the improvement right away (extra detail for some reason) and she hears the same things I do, so I think digital still has a way to go. Her daughter, who is 30, can't listen to digital at all; she says it makes her jittery and annoyed. She's not particularly pleasant to be around in that state, so when she comes over we have to have the stereo either off or on LP only.

I like the streaming aspect of digital- find what you want and just play it. But I don't like the ads, the subscriptions and the feeling that it isn't permanent. Not that LPs are permanent, but I have some made 55 years ago that still sound great, with no wear or ticks and pops. Maybe its a comfort thing...