How much do you need to spend to get digital to rival analog?

@atdavid

Serious question for everyone. How do you reconcile claiming that vinyl is technically better ... not euphonically better, but technically better, when the vast majority of recordings made in the last 2 decades have been recorded on digital? Even where the original is analog, many remasters have been remastered via digitization? At some level, Vinyl is just another "DAC" for many records.

Digital recording is non-destructive and far easier to use. That said, there are still a select group of studios and artists that still record using reel-to-reels.

Reel-to-reels have a soft clipping nature, as it reaches 0. Those analog recordings keep part of their characteristic sound, even if they're converted to digital and processed digitally. This is why some mixing and mastering engineers will transfer their mixes/masters to reel-to-reel, before - or as - their final format.

@mikelavigne 

From your linked article:

It was painfully obvious that sub-order harmonic distortion and noises were getting in. It was the result of high-frequency things creating distortion components that were not harmonically related to the lower frequencies.

This is why you're never going to be fully satisfied with your standard digital recordings. DSD at least does a better job of moving more of the offending distortion to higher frequencies, and covering up or filtering some of this distortion. When that distortion is removed, digital can be made to surpass all analog.

@mikelavigne 

ask Andreas about 2xdsd verses 4xdsd. not relevant to this discussion. i have plenty of 4sdsd files where i have 2xdsd too. meh. i like and appreciate the difference but it’s not profound.

ADC for some was a Modified Korg. others i think were a Merging Technology NADAC. i did not do the needle drops myself, but it was the same tt/arm cartridge i had and same front end electronics.

are there better adc’s? i would assume there are. enough difference to matter? not likely.

the digital <-> analog delta i experience is not marginal

Was the vinyl used even your own copies? You don't mention cables, so I would gather that they and the power conditioners were different, as well.

😂

This would be the same as someone dismissing you, saying that their Technics record player or reel-to-reel is comparable to yours, and the difference is too little to matter.

It is clear what side of the argument you fall on, and that you have no real intent to discover otherwise, or the fallaciousness of your argument. Oh well, enjoy the music!

@atdavid

You only answered a very small portion of the question I asked and effectively ignored the most significant part of it.

No offense mikelavigne...

Vs.

Serious question for everyone.

Blame yourself or bug @mikelavigne if your question wasn’t answered.

As well, are you implying it would be impossible to build an analog limiter that soft-clips like magnetic tape and put that in the circuit before the A/D? (not that that would have been needed in the last 20 ish years with 24 bit A/D with 20+ bits effective for studio equipment)

Analog consoles already soft clip. They won’t add the saturation of reel-to-reel. You are incorrect about the lack of need with 24 bit gear. There are many professional recording engineers that push the levels, and digitally clip the signal during recording. Even worshipped mastering engineer, Steve Hoffman, is guilty of digital clipping in his masters.

Anyone claiming that digital is worse than analog because of "real world dynamics" is misguided. These individuals likely enjoy the saturation of "tape" and the compression added, vs. the higher audible digital distortion from higher signal levels, during dynamic passages. With the right processing, that is no longer an issue with digital. The manufacturers just haven’t figured it out, no matter how much their gear costs ", and that is where we are now."

@mikelavigne 

i have 600-700 2xdsd needle drop files, and the associated Lp pressings to those needle drops. the 2xdsd files sound great. listen to them often when i’m not in the mood to change sides.

but......when i compare directly; game, set, match to the original vinyl. every time.

i don’t do waveforms. i can't reach my 'zen' state with them. :-)

i have dubbed many of my tapes, and my dubs are indistinguishable from my originals. i can tell you that a digital file copy of those dubs would not be......indistinguishable that is. but that is a Studer A-820 dubbing to another A-820.

as far as RTR tape deck references, a Revox would not be quite up to the task as a reference for what tape can do. solid tape playback deck though for sure.

Andreas Koch is a smart guy. has been to my room and stayed with me back in the day. had the first Playback Designs MPS-5, the first Playback Designs product. was my digital reference for 9 years.

Which ADC and cables were used?

Wait a minute, you're going to argue against the Revox, but you didn't use quad DSD? Talk about a red herring!

Also, a waveform would clearly prove your theory, or that the sources were not properly level matched, or that it is unfounded.

@mikelavigne

please cite examples so we can all listen and comment. or come over to my room, bring your files and dac, and we can both listen and see where it goes.

or is this just more theory?

I’m going to put the onus back on you.

Please record your analog material to digital - without clipping - so you’re using the same master as source material. Level match the two sources, and record the output from your system. Compare the waveforms. If you so choose, you can share the results here.

Others have already done similar, in a listening capacity.

"My initial impression of the Pinot ADC was that Andreas had accomplished a spectacular achievement: a sub-$10K Quad DSD stereo analog-to-digital converter with easy-to-use software for simple stereo transfers from analog to DSD (in .DFF format). And it sounded brilliant! Show conditions at AXPONA 2016, of course, but even allowing for that, the Pinot was clearly something very special, working in tandem with the rest of the Playback Designs Sonoma stack.

In fact, Andreas not only gave us quick A/B comparisons of analog source (turntable and Brian Tucker’s Revox RTR) vs. Quad DSD output…all of which were very impressive…but he also did a single blind test just before the end of the show. Several of us who were very experienced, acute listeners, were invited into the Playback Designs room. Andreas did switching back and forth between an analog source and the output of the Pinot Quad DSD feed. We were given several opportunities to guess which was which.

The three of us who were invited to do so guessed wrong. We thought that the Quad DSD feed was actually the analog source! One therefore wonders: Does the Pinot’s Quad DSD sound better than the analog source?!"

"Since the Pinot ADC was only going to be there for the afternoon, we did a temporary connection to one of our LP systems so that we could do some sample Quad DSD transfers of needle drops that we would do. We used the exceptional KRONOS Pro Turntable for this task. Its output was cabled with Kubala-Sosna Elation! unbalanced cables to our standard reference, the Audionet PAM G2 Phono Amp with EPX Power Supply. That output went to the Audionet PRE G2 reference preamp, which passed the output via its balanced monitor outs to the balanced inputs of the Pinot ADC. Andreas’ notebook computer with his Sonoma Recorder software, a very compact, easy-to-use recording system, was also connected to the Pinot. This allowed us to do several needle drops and listen to them, while the notebook recorded those drops to DSD .DFF format.

Those transfers turned out incredibly well. A quick listen to the results, before the Pinot had to be packed up again, indicated that the Quad DSD transfers were indistinguishable from the KRONOS playback that Andreas and I had just heard. One was the opening track from Dream with Dean on Analogue Products QRP 200 gram vinyl; then we did a sample track from the brilliant reissue of the Decca Espana with Atualfo Argenta (incredible album and transfer!), and finally three tracks from the excellent recent reissue of the MPS LP How I Really Play by Oscar Peterson. Really breathtaking, believe me."

"The Pinot Quad DSD ADC arrived very recently, and I haven’t had sufficient opportunity to give it extended trials. Nevertheless, my listening sessions at AXPONA 2016 with the Pinot, as well as the brief time that I worked with Andreas to do some needle drop transfers to Quad DSD in late May, using his Sonoma Recorder software, show that the Pinot is a superb analog-to-digital converter. The results with the Sonoma Recorder app were mind-blowingly good, and reasonably easy to do, giving the real feel of LPs/tapes in Quad DSD mode. Close your eyes, and you might as well have the RTR in the same room…"

https://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/impressions-playback-designs-merlot-quad-dsd-dac-syrah...