Funny how streaming/digital still chases that analog benchmark.
Anyone seen this?: Seems experienced listeners can tell when they are hearing a 13 bit digital stream or the straight through analogue path: http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/abx_testing2.htm |
Using digital, I can use DSP to pervert what the musician intended and produce a frequency response like you get from vinyl. I can set up a number of different DSP profiles for each track to replicate the way the sound worsens as the needle heads towards the hole. I can add a sample of surface noise. I can add random pops and clicks. I can make all lower frequency sound mono instead of stereo. I can make these pops and rumbles a little more annoying each time I play the same album. I can sequence the music so that after 20 minutes I have to get up and fiddle about a bit. If I want to give Qobuz £20 per album I can, even if I only listen to one of the tracks once. I could pay large insurance premiums to cover the cost of losing my vinyl in a fire or theft. But I’d rather not. |
Of course a digital stream is a replica of the original master. The musicians record to digital or a master is, there is a mix, and the mix is streamed. And then some want to use a vinyl storage medium. So the mix needs to be cut, with a machine cutting a replica of the signal. Then the replica cut has to be turned into a metal replica of the replica cut. Then the metal replica has to be replicated into many replica stampers. Then the replica stampers - getting older and worse every stamp - produce a replica vinyl. Then your needle vibrates in an approximation of this latest replica of the replica of the replica of the replica of the original sounds. But wait! where has all the bass gone? Oh, it’s not there! It has to be replicated in the phono stages. I love it when old folks say digital is not the “real music” when they spend years and £10000s arsing about changing their sound with different belts, arms, platters, cartridges, phono stages, buying multiple copies to get a better pressing, etc. You can’t have it both ways. Digital advocates are more honest, perhaps. Vinyl advocates should just admit it - they are chasing the memory of sound they grew up with, and their ageing ears prefer it because back then technical limitations meant the compromises favoured a range of frequencies which are the only ones these guys can still hear anyway. It’s why mid-range crooners and instruments are so popular with vinyl audiophiles. |
The opposite is also true. Vinyl analogue is working really hard to achieve what a quality digital stream finds easy. By spending the thick end of £50,000 on hardware and another £50,000 on records, plus a load of fiddling, you might get close to a Qobuz stream’s absence of surface noise, lack of rumble, lack of wow/flutter, stereo in low frequencies, zero pops and crackles, dynamic range, consistency in source quality, diversity of source music, and fidelity to the sound as recorded. Keep saving, spending and trying, vinyl lovers - you may overcome those challenges in the end. Not sure where I read the story, but apparently Michael Jackson had a two day long strop when he was told he couldn’t have a bass-heavy track positioned last in the running order of Thriller. The design limitations of cutting vinyl simply wouldn’t allow it. It had to be track 1. My how times have changed. The desired running order now wouldn’t be an issue at all. Maybe Thriller should be reissued without the loudness war changes and in the artist’s desired running order. ...except that those who want a plastic copy of this will have to listen to a toned-down version designed by the cutting engineer. |
Re: “clueless 17 year olds”... My 18 year old has his own music studio with some great kit - some beautiful monitors his grandfather made the cabinets for out of cherry; some 9x2 line arrays so his band can hear themselves well; two subs to fill things out; Mac mini server; nice DAC, room treatment, DSP profile to correct what the treatment can’t; and from what I hear through the walls a taste for all the genres and generations of music I’ve heard of and far far more. He writes, plays and records his own music of broadcast quality. He’s off to a music academy in September. He’s interested in vinyl like he is interested in 35mm film cameras, clocks with pendulums, telephones with dials, paper maps, stick shift cars, encyclopaedias, lending libraries, department stores, V8 engines, coal fired power stations, police officers on horses, the postal service, and trains. It doesn’t matter how often I say “but a V8 has soul”. He will say “a Tesla is faster, cheaper, greener, smoother, quieter, smarter, safer, more considerate, and exciting.” We are both right. To his credit he doesn’t say I’m wrong. Some of us could learn a lot from our teenagers. |
Indeed, Audio2. Where bit depth is 16 bit, that’s 65,536 amplitude values in every sample. If you were to try and get the same number of amplitude values in a vinyl groove you would fail, because the molecules are too large. Divide the depth of the groove by 65,536 and the result is smaller than a vinyl molecule. A pure diamond LP, perfectly cut, might just enable 16 bit in theory. Vinyl can be cut to an equivalent of about 10 or 12 bit. Which is one reason the noise floor is higher for vinyl. |
