aw far as tracy chapman, i was looking into buying her debut album but its very pricey and was all recorded digitally, i have a very nice digital rig, and a very very nice analog setup now.. but since its a digital recording on vinyl wondering if itll be any better than my digital file
The character of analog and digital
Having just obtained some high quality analogue components, I want make some comments on the character of both analog and digital.
First of all it’s very difficult to speak of analog in general. Records vary widely (indeed wildly) in sonic character and quality. Digital recordings are much more uniform. When you play a digital file you more or less know what your getting. Of course some sound better than others, but there is a consistency of character. With records, it’s the Wild West. Variation in SQ and character are rampant.
Therefore it becomes very difficult to make generalizations on which categorically sounds better.
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“Digital is absolutely capable of delivering natural, captivating and exquisite sound quality if one has assembled a proper set up.” It’s no surprise to see millercarbon putting down digital. Nothing will change his mind! Now that he’s back, just enjoy the freshly cooked up stories on Vinyl triumph over Digital in his mid-fi system 🍿 As @noske pointed out, the discussion here is about feature of the media or the many issues related to the recording and engineering of that recording. A well recorded piece of music properly transferred to physical media or streaming platform should sound great as long as your system is properly setup to re-produce that recording. |
Well, the vinylphiles better hang on to their lps from back in the day, because due to tape storage issues most reissues have to go through a digital phase, as the MoFi mess shows. So enjoy using those expensive analog rigs to extract digital files from slabs of fossil fuel, and keep getting all teary eyed Pavlovian responses when you hear the needle drop, and let’s all move on |
Many times it’s the quality of the digital dac , and corresponding ,Ethernet hub, like a uptone ether regen , at decent cost ,or the much Much better still synergistic research that’s 3 x as much ,you need very good quality usb cable I spent $1500 on a final touch audio Sinope ,but anythjng over $500 is respectable ,the most musical usb under $800 the Final touch audio Callisto ,which I have in my 2nd system. from Lampizator also worth every $dollar Ethernet cables at least decent quality ,minimum at least $200 on the input on the end point is what counts most around $1k for a Ethernet cables as the adage goes hav3 no weak link in the chain. |
@millercarbon +1 Happy to see you back. I have missed your input. |
Oppo long gone. The digital was modern high end and brought by a guy certain it would put my vinyl to shame. Instead it was his wife that released a sigh of unexpected pleasure practically the instant the stylus touched down. The two reactions I would pay money to have recorded, that one and the other guys wife who when her husband wasn’t looking whispered to me, "I could listen to this all night!" In a tone of amazement, because her audiophile husband having only CD she never even imagined music on a high end system could sound like, you know, music. |
@heretobuy -- Over the years I've had more stick shift cars than automatics. Right now I enjoy the hell out of my six speed manual Mazda Miata. It has the best gearbox I've ever had. Better than the ones in any of my BMWs. Certainly better than the manual trannies in my Mercedes Benzes or the Brit cars I've driven. Or the manual tranny Peugeot I rented in France. I gotta say, though, that it's still a dead heat for me between analog and digital. The game is over for me. They both win, |
@millercarbon I looked at your system. We’re talking serious level analog source. And that was compared to a CD played on the modified OPPO DVD player? Or was there another digital source that’s a bit closer to the level of your analog that you used for the comparison? Just curious. As to the character of analog and digital, in my system it’s mostly about different sound between the analog and streaming that I enjoy, although I do have few MoFi and Analog Productions albums that I prefer to streaming but those are exceptions. The two types of media have their pros and cons that have been discussed and described at length on these forums. |
To wit - grabbed a legitimate CD of Aqualung last week, and it is painful to listen to. Compared to the worn out vinyl I have from about 1971, the comparison is interesting. Ian Anderson provides a short discussion, and his voice is just perfect. So, this is not a fault of the hardware or the software, but that of the dolts who are pushing the buttons. |
The question is, and has been answered here and elsewhere ad nauseum, is what is being discussed a feature of the media or the many issues related to the recording and engineering of that recording. Judging by many comparisons between vinyl and CD, I have little faith in the skills of the geeks with hats who have an ejucaton in marketing or advertising and who pretend that they know some stuff about the fine art of producing quality music in the digital domain. In the USA there still exists capital punishment. Doesn’t work. |
It suddenly occurs to me - suppose analog preference is simply an aversion to the digital sound, and nothing more? Going on and on about how analog is superior this way and that way would merely be a mirror image of your aversion to digital recording. I think there’s a real distinction to be made here. There are things about digital that displease some people, and when this kind of person is introduced to analog never having having heard it seriously it’s a revelation to them. I tend to prefer the digital sound, but I have no aversion to the analog sound so there's nothing to keep me from enjoying my LPs when I listen to him. Second thing that just occurred to me: One comparison you could make to preferring analog to digital is preferring driving with a stick to driving with an automatic transmission. Automatic is easier and more convenient, but you might find driving standard shift is more enjoyable to you. |
And yet digital can be all of that. If the listeners were not engage or interested in listening to the CDs, could simply reflect the digital hardware not up to the task. Fortunately I haven’t experienced this let down with digital sourced audio components if there’re up to snuff. Both analog and digital are subject to the same range/spectrum of poor to sublime. Either is dependent on quality of the recordings and quality of the respective hardware. I’d take a deeper examination of what is being utilized and seek to improve. Digital is absolutely capable of delivering natural, captivating and exquisite sound quality if one has assembled a proper set up. Charles
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'Vinyl captures much more of the original event'? The only ones who capture anything from the 'original event' are the producer, engineers, etc. The recording sounds how they want it to sound. No reason why good digital shouldn't be as good as good analog when it comes to capturing 'original events'. |
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I tend to agree with Mark Baker of Origin Live and his three pillars of sound quality: dynamics, tonality, and clarity. Even these three however can be broken down extensively. Dynamics for example can refer to the greatest range soft to loud, or the speed and magnitude of transient attacks, and so on. Tonality can mean anything from frequency response to timbre to the way some things can sound woody, or open, or closed in. Even clarity can mean many things. Most would probably say a simple sine wave has a lot more clarity than a complex chord. So it is easy for people to hear things differently. There certainly are people who hear primarily tone. They talk and talk about neutrality, frequency response, that kind of thing, with nary a comment having to do with subtle microdynamics or inner detail. Most of what distinguishes digital is its bland uniformity. This is the flip side of saying it has more consistency of character. So does McDonald’s. Vinyl on the other hand, analog in general, somehow captures much more of the original event than digital ever has, or probably ever will. How else explain what we all know, that records pressed 75 years ago sound so unbelievably good? When a bunch of audiophiles were here last year and I played them a whole side of Sinatra-Basie a couple said it was the best they ever heard. The other one that got that same comment was Belafonte at Carnegie Hall. When we changed to digital we lost half the room. True story. They all sat listening to vinyl for a good 90 minutes. Five minutes of CD was more than most of them could take. You don’t want to hear what happened when we played the same Tracey Chapman track for one woman on CD and then vinyl. At least, not if you were expecting her to prefer the CD. Don’t expect to change any minds. Like I said, people listen for different attributes. Audiophiles love to justify music appreciation in technical terms. What I have seen, over and over again, digital just ain’t all that.
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Nice! @zufan |
Ok. Just for fun. I compared the vinyl copy of the remastered audiophile Revolver, with the streamed exact same streamed version… 16/44mhz, the vinyl wins by a nose. But the new 2022 version 24/96 bests both… not by a huge amount, but noticeably. The streamed version has a hint of greater resolution… but of the same overall character and warmth. The important thing is… on my system. Which, on average, has equal performance from vinyl and digital.
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@ghdprentice Maybe your LP12 is a limiting factor. |
Interesting comment. I want to agree. But as I review my experience… I don’t know.
My analog and digital (CD, file playing, and streaming) sound the same (not by accident). So, typically I stream, and sometimes play albums. I have 2,000 vinyl albums, many audiophile recording, and very well kept albums from the 50’s through present. There is a lot of variation. The late 50’s / early 60’s vinyl really stand out as jaw droppingly good. They seem to trump digital. But when I listen to a well recorded album digitally… it is really good. For instance, I was listening to a streamed version of the HR Beatles Revolver (2022?) album this morning and I just could not believe how stunning the voices of Paul and George… well the whole album… I have the whole audiophile Beatles vinyl collection from about 15 years ago. I guess I’ll have to listen to it to verify the digital sounded better.
I guess, my thoughts are, when analog has really great masters and reproduction, maybe it occasionally peaks a bit higher… but generally not. Whenever I have done head to head great recordings, I have come up with a draw… although I always want the analog to sound better. |
