CDs Vs LPs

@ scorpio1951109  tics and pops are caused by improper record care.  That's the problem with records.....they need to be kept clean over the years.  I have a '77 copy of 'Aja' I bought brand new...it still is tic and pop free.  Used to have a collection of around 1200 records I sold in 1986 when CD were becoming the 'thing'.  Now, I wish I had never done it.  All my records were in mint condition.  I did keep a few, 'Aja' being one of them.  I prefer records over CD.  But I have some records that sound not so good, as well as some CDs.  Just my 2 cents anyway.....

Niether. I want everything as digital files at least 352.8PCM or DSD 256 and 5.1 multichannel or I'm going to watch TV instead. This comment isn't meant to be entirely humorous.

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.

Kosst
Not quite sure why you are so stuck on this but as an,old fart here I can you this.
NOBODY I know would ever differentiate a CD length by tacking on terms like lp or ep. Not saying somebody somewhere does not do so just have never heard it used myself.

Now in the vinyl world it is VERY common to use the terms lp, ep and single to differentiate between the different durations of the vinyl, I hope we all understand those differences!

To my ears a CD is a CD no matter what its duration.

Just my opinion......

In my experience, there is no such thing as a "long play album." This terminology is being confused with the correct "long playing record." An "album" is usually considered the volume of work that is recorded on the record or CD.

After the large diameter, high speed 78rpm records came the 45rpm - a smaller diameter record that was typically one song on each side. Then technology allowed us to play recordings at 33rpm on a record of much larger diameter with good fidelity. Those vinyl discs became known as "Long Playing" records (or "LP’s") because you could get (typically) five or six songs on each side.

Ralph, 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.

Quick interrupt. What’s really required is a trade off study using criteria and weights assigned to each criterion. Then you add up the scores for each criterion times it’s weight and the one that has the highest grand total wins. There’s really no other way to do it, it gets way too subjective and loosely goosey. Pick your own criteria or decide on a list. Let’s say Resolution, Dynamic Range, tonality, frequency extension, bass performance and transparency for starters. Weight them any way you want to.

Kosst
Completely agree which actually was my point in that it is a generation thing.
As I said old fart born in 1960.
But still we never referred to those new fangled spangly shiny discs in any other term bar CD no matter what the duration.
And I believe that stems from having attached the labels of lp,ep and single to vinyl and pyscology would not allow us to change our thought process.

Tapes I grew up with too but still we just called them tapes, even when I had a complete album or more on each side of a c-120.

Also I grew up in England, maybe the whole culture was slightly different as well.

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.

Poor analogy, I think.

And you are making up terminology that you think you heard used in a certain way when you were little...when the rest of us were already grownups.  You cannot reach back into history and say something is wrong because it has been morphed into a different use or meaning by your (younger) generation.  LP's and Long Playing Records  are terms that came about in the 50's and 60's to describe vinyl disc products.  You can use the terms anyway you want. But calling a tape or digital disc recording an LP is just silly.

@atmasphere    You have mentioned twice or more on this thread that the quality of the phono stage has an impact on the audibility of vinyl surface noise.

Exactly!  I recently upgraded from a 25 year old Aragon 47k phono stage to a Luxman E-250.  I am amazed out how less prominent the surface ticks and pops are.  Even when they do occur they are less obtrusive to the music. The Luxman is still very airy at the top end and dynamic especially the dynamic ebb and flow of music.  I have been rediscovering the virtues of my older vinyl as the new phono stage and the micro ridge stylus that rides deep in the grooves has been ameliorating the vinyl nasties.  

I appreciate your chiming in on this as it has helped me to understand why the Luxman is so forgiving in the surface noise arena.

I give up, kosst. You are riding some different wavelength I don't understand.

@dynaquest4

I'm glad it's not just me.😧

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.

Great input @atmasphere . Just curious if you think all the EQ curves various high end manufacturers use (eg: RIAA, Decca, Columbia etc) are accurate taking into account vinyl pressings from the 40's and 50's through to the present day? That seems like a pandora's box to me.

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

@atmasphere What I meant is, there doesn’t seem to be a exact consensus on what the EQ curves should be for older recordings in particular. As I understand it that is because the Labels themselves changed the recording process over time. Sorry if the question is off-topic.

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 got back into vinyl about ten years ago. I’ve had a few Arc phono stages and finally ended up with an Asthetix Rhea Signature, going into an Aesthetix Calypso Signature.  There are many better preamps, but my budget won’t allow and I’m satisfied with my setup.  I have a Koetsu Urushi Black and a Dynavector DRT XV-s1, as my carts and am using Verastarrr Silvrstream phono interconnects.  My CD player is a Theta Miles.  I like the sound of vinyl, specially when I first start the lp.  I hear a sound that envelopes me, that I do not hear with CDs. I have been doing an A/B comparison, playing the same title of a cd and lp, cuing each at the same time.  I go back and forth to compare the sound.  Maybe it’s my hearing going away, but it’s getting harder for me to diffienturate between the two.  Most lps have an ambience, that a cd can’t provide.  I’ve said this before-wish I had a good RTR with some prerecorded tapes.  That’s the best sound I’ve ever heard.

A "analog" or LP rig is much more expensive when it exceeds CD. In other words, a 1K CD player will sound better than a 1K record player. It requires an outlay of at least 3K for the record player to exceed the CD.

As you know, there are many who pay that much for a cartridge; with that kind of cash outlay, they should sound better than CD.

There are some wild cards in the deck; they are the CD's that sound better than LP's. CD's are variable, as are records, but in general records "played on expensive rigs" sound better than CD's, while records played on cheap rigs don't sound as good as CD's.

"Vinylites" or "analogers", are evangelical in their zeal to spread the word about those black discs; they will tell you that a record played on a cheap record player will sound better than CD; it just ain't so.

If you got the dough, you can make it go; if not..... This is a case of run with the big dogs or stay at home.

CD is fundamentally flawed from a standpoint of being incapable of faithfully reproducing the original analog content without the staircase effect and artifacts. No amount of money spent on transports and DACs will ever change the fact that it uses substandard 44kHz sampling.

This "ragged edge" theory has been around for years and disproved a number of times.  In any case, it is just an opinion and should be stated as such in your post.

Also, while some may find the sound reproduction of analog more pleasing (for whatever reason) digital CD recordings are, and were designed to be, far superior to standard LP recordings in every way that matters.  And, in my opinion, they are.  No amount of money spend on beefy turntables and complex tonearms will produce the dynamic range of which the LP is incapable.

sleepwalker65

CD is fundamentally flawed from a standpoint of being incapable of faithfully reproducing the original analog content without the staircase effect and artifacts.

While this seems intuitively sensible, it’s been proven completely wrong, unless you want to reject science and math.

For those who have any lingering doubts, this excellent video will put the matter to rest. See it for yourself.

dynaquest4

... digital CD recordings are, and were designed to be, far superior to standard LP recordings in every way that matters

That may be true, especially if you think extended HF response doesn't matter.

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

The problem with this claim is that the CD's potential for greater dynamic range (compared to LP) is rarely needed or utilized. In fact, the opposite is the case. As a consequence of the loudness wars, a CD is typically more compressed than its LP counterpart.

In fact, the opposite is the case. As a consequence of the loudness wars, a CD is typically more compressed than its LP counterpart.

Most Jazz and all Classical have never joined the loudness wars. 

phomchick

Most Jazz and all Classical have never joined the loudness wars.

You are either joking, or perhaps have just become accustomed to compression. And that's the problem with compression - many listeners come to expect that it represents how music is supposed to sound.

You are either joking, or perhaps have just become accustomed to compression

I am not joking. Check out any recording from SF Symphony Media, or AIX records, or Chesky Records, or ECM, or BIS, and I could go on and on and on. Almost no classical music recordings not mastered for vinyl are compressed.

I like modern classical recordings on digital media.  I do think they tend to be well recorded and mastered and have a dynamic range that is decent, compared to recordings done in the past and offered on vinyl.  But, that is not to say that they are not compressed. 

Compression is used for practical reasons, particularly with orchestral music.  There would be almost no system that could really handle the full dynamic range and most people would not like listening at whisper quiet levels for most of the music in order to have the peaks not be at an overwhelmingly high level.  I have a few CDs that were mastered without compression; they have warning labels all over the case and the CD because of the possibly damaging peaks if one played the soft parts at normal levels.  Of course, anything without compression would be unlistenable in a car, so that would be taken into account when mastering a classical CD.

@dynaquest4 and @cleeds you are glossing over the fundamental issue with going digital: it does not capture the infinite range of undulations. Rather, the process quantizes the input program material at the sampling frequency, and then stores it as a sequence of discrete samples.

What you are mistakenly thinking of, is the reverse process, taking that stored sequence of samples and generating a facsimile of the original analog program material, doing bit-sum averaging to compensate for dropouts. 

Perhaps this is the missing information you needed to see why digital is inherently flawed. 

sleepwalker: Assuming your post is scientifically accurate, I'd opine that you are addressing facets of the recording process that are well beyond the ability of the human ear to detect.  Therefore, to me, irrelevant. 

The video that @cleeds referred to is heavily slanted toward trusting that the conversion back to analog fills in the missing pieces with a perfectly synthesized replacement. The human ear is not capable of discretely differentiating the bonafide program material from artificial. Put another way, not capable of seeing the forrest for the trees.

As as a person who can’t put on the blinders and “un-see” what I know, I cannot accept that 16 bit depth with 44kHz sampling even approaches the principle of high fidelity sound reproduction (ie: don’t alter the program material).

That is not to say that there isn’t a purpose for CD in my life. It’s just a distant third choice, because of the nature of what it is, to vinyl and analog tape done properly. Sadly, after you learn that there is no Santa Claus, the ritual of gifting becomes as hollow as the sound of 16/44 digital.

sleepwalker65

The video that @cleeds referred to is heavily slanted toward trusting that the conversion back to analog fills in the missing pieces with a perfectly synthesized replacement.

Actually, the video is not slanted at all. It scientifically and visually demonstrates that your claim of the CD’s "fundamentally flawed ... staircase effect and artifacts" is mistaken, no matter how intuitively reasonable your claim might appear to be.

As as a person who can’t put on the blinders and “un-see” what I know ...

What you think you "know" is mistaken. Don’t get me wrong - I have my issues with the compact disc. But claims of the "staircase effect" have been shown to be false. The reason this is important is that if you seek to get the most from CD - and many of us do - it’s important to know what it gets right, and what it gets wrong. And claims of the "staircase effect" are just nonsense, as shown in the video.

@cleeds the fact is that while the data is still represented as a staircase, (lollipop diagram if you prefer), the nature of sampling means that some information is left out during digitizing and then on playback, it is artificially synthesized. That is the indisputable flaw in the process. No matter what quantization resolution and what sampling rate, you cannot escape this fundamental. 

As is usually the case, I am in 100% agreement with the post by Larryi. As an illustration of his point about dynamic compression of classical recordings, I’ll mention that I have had occasion to examine the waveforms of a couple of classical orchestral recordings that I believe have been engineered with no compression. Namely the Telarc recording of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, Robert Shaw conducting the Atlanta Symphony, and the Sheffield Labs recording of excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet, Erich Leinsdorf conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic. I have done this on a computer, using a professional audio editing program.

In each case I observed a dynamic range (the difference in volume between the loudest notes and the softest notes) of approximately 55 db, which I consider to be an amazing "tour de force." Correspondingly, when I listen to those recordings at my preferred volume settings, with average SPLs somewhere in the 70s at my 12 foot listening distance, the softest notes are in the vicinity of 50 db or so, with the loudest notes reaching close to 105 db at my listening position. Also correspondingly, a dynamic range of 55 db means that the amplifier must supply approximately 316,000 times as much power to reproduce the loudest notes as to reproduce the softest notes. (And 316,000 is not a typo).

I believe it is safe to say that many and probably the majority of audio systems, including the majority of systems used by serious audiophiles such as those who are members here, would not be capable of handling such recordings at volume levels that are high enough to satisfy many listeners. With the most common limiting factor perhaps being the maximum volume capability of the speakers. And perhaps in some cases, and at some times, the ambient noise level in the room.


On another subject:

Sleepwalker65 10-4-2018

@dynaquest4 and @cleeds you are glossing over the fundamental issue with going digital: it does not capture the infinite range of undulations. Rather, the process quantizes the input program material at the sampling frequency, and then stores it as a sequence of discrete samples.


What you are mistakenly thinking of, is the reverse process, taking that stored sequence of samples and generating a facsimile of the original analog program material, doing bit-sum averaging to compensate for dropouts.


Perhaps this is the missing information you needed to see why digital is inherently flawed.


Sleepwalker65 10-5-2018

@cleeds the fact is that while the data is still represented as a staircase, (lollipop diagram if you prefer), the nature of sampling means that some information is left out during digitizing and then on playback, it is artificially synthesized. That is the indisputable flaw in the process. No matter what quantization resolution and what sampling rate, you cannot escape this fundamental.

First, I’m not sure how familiar you may be with the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem. There is no "bit-sum averaging" involved in the process. And if by that you meant "interpolation" that is not involved either. And the reference to playback being "artificially synthesized" is a misconception. What is involved is low pass filtering, in the recording process at the input to the A/D converter, to prevent "aliasing," and in the reproduction process to reconstruct the analog signal. And the 16 bit quantization that is used in CDs can, if well implemented, provide a dynamic range of approximately 96 db (actually slightly more than that), which can be further enhanced by "dithering." And theoretically/potentially, at least in the case of an infinitely long series of samples, the 44.1 kHz sample rate can support a bandwidth of 22.05 kHz, without any "averaging" or "interpolation" or "artificial synthesizing" or information being "left out."

If you believe that the LP medium is inherently superior to the CD medium I suggest that instead of focusing on (and misapplying) theory you consider the potential side effects of the two filters that I mentioned, and probably more importantly on the engineering of the recordings, and perhaps most importantly on the quality of the circuit designs that are used in the specific equipment that is used for both recording and playback.

Regards,
-- Al

P.S: Regarding the mention of 96 db and 55 db in my previous post, to be sure it’s clear I should add that those numbers refer to two different things. The mention of 55 db refers to the dynamic range of the music (meaning the difference in volume between the loudest notes and the softest notes), on a couple of recordings having extraordinarily wide dynamic range. The mention of 96 db refers (approximately) to the dynamic range of the medium, which must be far greater than the dynamic range of the music, so that the information that is present within each note can be captured.

Regards,
-- Al

sleepwalker65"What you are mistakenly thinking of, is the reverse process, taking that stored sequence of samples and generating a facsimile of the original analog program material, doing bit-sum averaging to compensate for dropouts.'

You are confused, disoriented or misinformed provided that what is under discussion hear is as I believe it to be which is the Compact Disk Audio Standard as defined by the "Red Book" protocol as promulgated by Sony/Phillips there is no "bit sum averaging." There should be no "dropouts" unless of course there is a substantial failure, defect or fault in the playback system because the CD audio standard relies on Cross-Interleaved Reed-Solomon Coding by using 24 8 bit words and encoding them in a RS code with parity check symbols.

@sleepwalker65 said:

the fact is that while the data is still represented as a staircase, (lollipop diagram if you prefer), the nature of sampling means that some information is left out during digitizing and then on playback, it is artificially synthesized. That is the indisputable flaw in the process. No matter what quantization resolution and what sampling rate, you cannot escape this fundamental.

This is a oft repeated and persistent argument against digital audio, but it is a myth. It stems from a lack of understanding of sound, Fourier transforms, and the Nyquist-Shannon theorem.

People who argue that a discrete sampling protocol can never record and reconstruct continuous audio do not fully understand the nature of sound. Sounds are made up of waves. Sound waves are just sine wave compressions and rarefactions of various frequencies at various amplitudes. Granted, in a musical performance, there are a lot of frequencies and amplitudes, but they are just a lot of sine waves. If you apply a Fourier transform to an audio recording, you can decompose all of that noise into a collection of sine waves that have equations to describe their behavior. Because sine waves have mathematically regular behavior, once you know the frequency and the amplitude, you know everything you need. There isn’t any "information left out during the digitizing."

Since humans aren’t bats or dogs, we are only interested in waves we can hear, and for the absolute best of us, that spans the range from 20Hz to 20,000Hz. For most of us middle-agers and above, a more likely range is 20Hz to 12,000Hz. Nyquist-Shannon says that a filter can be constructed to accurately reconstruct a waveform from a stream of discrete samples if the sampling rate is 2 times the desired highest frequency. This isn’t magic, it is math. And it is why the CD Redbook standard of 16/44.1 is all that is really needed. Every rigorous listening test I have ever seen has shown that for the vast majority of listeners, even trained and professional listeners, it is very very difficult to tell the difference between a 16/44.1 recording and a 24/96 or 24/192 one.

Fourier analysis has been around since 1822, the Nyquist theorem was formulated in 1933, and Shannon’s extension was published in 1948. So these aren’t new ideas. Until the advent of the digital computer, applying these ideas to audio wasn’t practical. But since 1982, it has been practical, and over the last 36 years the technology has been refined.

If people prefer the sound of vinyl LPs to CDs, that’s fine. But they should stop justifying their preference by perpetrating myths.

To all who believe that CD sacrifices none of the original program material, I ask this: if it was not recorded in 100% entirety, how can you be 100% certain that the program is PERFECTLY reproduced? Here’s the issue: what comes out cannot be superior to the data it was based on.

The data that’s on the CD is not being 100% retrieved during playback. Not by a long shot. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. No biggie, as long as you’re not too picky. 😀 The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry.

@elizabeth no need to get all pious and judgemental just because I’m peeling the onion. Try objectivity. It’s more mature than getting personal. Now, please explain to me how program material that was captured in samples can be guaranteed to be PERFECTLY reproduced. 

Phomchick:

"This is a oft repeated and persistent argument against digital audio, but it is a myth. It stems from a lack of understanding of sound........."

A well written and understandable post about a subject few really comprehend.  Thanks for the voice of reason!

@geoffkait said:

The data that’s on the CD is not being 100% retrieved during playback. Not by a long shot. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news

It would be refreshing if, just once, you would back up your assertions with some corroborating evidence.

As @clearthink pointed out:

There should be no "dropouts" unless of course there is a substantial failure, defect or fault in the playback system because the CD audio standard relies on Cross-Interleaved Reed-Solomon Coding by using 24 8 bit words and encoding them in a RS code with parity check symbols.

And as I pointed out, the Nyquist Shannon algorithm ensures that nothing is lost in the digitization and conversion to analog process. There is NOTHING lost in a well recorded and mastered CD compared to an LP. In fact, given the vastly superior dynamic range of a CD compared to an LP, and the perfect reproduction of the data stream from a CD compared to the distorted output of an LP cartridge, a CD is clearly capable of vastly better reproduction.

Garbage in = garbage out.