to my ears digital audio does not sound natural? something is wrong!
lf Digital audio is man made how can I expect the brain to recognize it as natural sounding?
lf I re-encode digital audio with the earths natural frequencies will the brain now recognize it as a natural source allowing the digital audio to harmonize with my brain creating an entirely new listening experience?
This might sound crazy however it sounds perfectly logical to me so i went to the park at 3am to record the frequencies of nature using the built in mic on my cheap mp3 player in wav 16/44 and uploaded the wav file to my pc and while the file from the park was playing on my windows media player i made a simple copy of a commercial digital album flac 16/44 on my desktop and here are the results using the same audio source.
***Total system*** well obviously,, What he is saying is in general any turn table will whip any ss cd player,, That I agree, Vinyl is superior over ss digital. But a nice tube digital source with Mundorf silver caps, will give the best phono a run for its money. + with a cd, no snaps./crackles and pops , which can interfer with the exp,,+ I can get nearly any cd, on the cheap, 80% of my calssical collection is not on vinyl. .
You guys just need a better digital front end system
Agree there are only 3 digital sources I consider worthy of approaching a great phono source. Cayin CD17 mark1 or 2 modified. jadis's digital and PL's digital, all 3 will match the best in vinyl sound. ss cd sources i can not stand. Has to have tube technology, and caps changed to Mundorf Silvers. Sparkoslab Descrete opamps etc.
We listen to total systems not just the front ends. It’s all about the total system. The end sound always depends on the complete system and room with this whole digital vs analog thing elevated beyond where it should be. Care, effort and skill must be used when building a system around digital or vinyl. One system is not necessarily optimized for both types of front ends.
Original LP's from the early days, say 50s to late 60's sound best, at least to me. There is no comparison to digital, or streaming for that matter. Somethings missing with anything digital, jmo and my ears...happy listening.
I have a TOTL modern CD player and I'm always going back to my vinyl rig after a while. Like some people prefer tubes to solid state. Less accurate but easier on the ear.
Here's my experience with digital. CD transport to a good dac sounds better than the streamer. It's not that the streamer sounds bad it's just that the vinyl sounds the most natural and detailed even with the pops and dust. My system started as digital and now I've acquired vinyl as well. Streaming with roon to an innuos steamer is still very good. Not the same league as vinyl. Not yet. That's my take.
@cd318 I Really do think that Classical shouldn’t be judged, in audio terms, for the reasons that both of us cite, in the same manner as other genres, excepting jazz and other acoustic instrument favoring genres such as World Music. I find that most of the pop music I grew up with sounds worse on a high end system. Take a typical Phil Spector produced girl group song. These were recorded and mixed with the expectation that the typical listener would be enjoying this on an AM radio, in a car or elsewhere. Even played on a KMart Special as a 45 single back in the day I remember feeling they didn’t move as much as on a $5 Japanese transistor radio. Replayed back on a 5 figure system they just sound silly to me, the aural equivalent of watching kids wear their parent’s clothing. I prefer them on a $39 Bluetooth speaker. Now, in the early sixties the head of Columbia Records got the bright idea to mix their Classical as if everyone would be listening on those same AM radios. See if you can an original lp of Bernstein/NYP Mahler 7 to illustrate this, and compare with any CD remix. The original lp sounds like the Orchestra has been crammed into a telephone booth
'With vinyl, with its decreased dynamic range, it can sound as if the music is more naturally frame. With digital, it can sound as if there is wasted space. Think of the way DVD players can crop the images on large flat screen TVs, particularly on older content. Like hey, I paid for a 65 inch screen, why is the image being shown at less than 50? Listening to pop music on vinyl is more like watching an old movie on a cathode Ray TV. Even though the the music and the reproduction have limits, the limitations are complimentary, so they seem to work together to some people.'
Interesting post, you've obviously given it some thought.
You know there is a school of thought in audio that suggests that some systems with increased resolution can unkindly expose recording faults and limitations at the expense of the music whilst less resolving systems might be more benevolent.
Sometimes a gentle dip at certain frequencies is also mentioned.
Could it also be that albums such as Cat Stevens' Tea for the Tillerman originally cut for vinyl might get exposed unless transferred with great care to digital?
I used to feel that those early Cat Stevens solo albums were recorded a little raw, verging on tape saturation. There also seemed to be plenty of tape hiss audible on the LPs, though I thought it was worth it for the enhanced intimacy it brought to the vocals.
Another problem here is that it's difficult to compare like with like as the LP and CD mastering transfers can themselves sound different.
I would totally agree with your views regarding Classical. Very few turntables in my experience have managed to give a good account of themselves with all the various demands of classical music, especially those difficult vocal works.
I think I could sense my turntable having palpitations as I turned up the volume on my Maria Callas LP. The cartridge wasn't too pleased either.
To borrow one of Frank's observations: "A lot of recordings are drenched in reverb." There's a hall-like ambience created for the listener. Not real, but part of the art of production.
I both like digital and analog , to appreciate both, I have analog and digital. For easy listening I play sacd , cd . For serious listening I prefer analog,
For me digital it can be natural with the right gear and system set up, I heard this cocktail streamer very natural sounding Tsakadiris tube integrated and audiovector speakers were used, But vynil is vynil....
Buried in all of Guitar Sam hysteria on this and other threads re digital v. analog is the notion that to some people, digital, no matter how well done, strikes some people as inherently “wrong”. The counter possibility is also true, that vinyl (My experience with Reel to Reel is limited) sounds inherently wrong to others. I am sure that this notion has been done to death here and elsewhere, so I will add just one side glance at the discussion. I firmly am in the digital camp; I remember becoming increasingly frustrated with the limitations of vinyl in the early eighties and to me digital was a godsend. I dabbled in vinyl a few years ago but it just wound up reconfirming my impressions and I made a nice sum selling off my analog rig. My slant on this is that perhaps it is genre specific? I listen primarily to Classical. Digital eliminated the surface noise, pitch instability that warped vinyl provided, expanded the dynamic range, and in general allowed to me to hear so much more low level information that I was previously missing, even on budget equipment. I mean, entire passages, such as the chamber like episodes on a work like Mahler Nine, were now audible and deepened my appreciation significantly. I thought that friends that complained it was cold and sterile were nuts. I then listened to an early CD transfer of a pop album that I knew well, Cat Stevens Tea For The Tiller man, in the late nineties and for the first time I thought perhaps I understood; on my nice fancy system this seemed to sound smaller, less warm than my aural memory of 25 years earlier listening on my parents KMart Special system. And as my systems became more revealing with time I began to hear some faults with early digital transfers of favorite Classical albums. Flash forward another 10 years. I have spent several thousand dollars on analog trying to recover some magic. And I finally had to conclude that all the Classical, even the early digital albums, sounded better than the lp equivalents , even when I had shelled out 30 bucks for a 200 gram vinyl. And I preferred pop albums on CD, but here the gap was smaller. Setting aside prog rock, Sgt. Pepper, Pink Floyd and the like, most Classic Rock of Pop that I listened to as a teenager feature electric guitars, electric bass, drums, maybe some keyboard. Compared to Classical or Jazz, the dynamic range is quite limited. With vinyl, with its decreased dynamic range, it can sound as if the music is more naturally frame. With digital, it can sound as if there is wasted space. Think of the way DVD players can crop the images on large flat screen TVs, particularly on older content. Like hey, I paid for a 65 inch screen, why is the image being shown at less than 50? Listening to pop music on vinyl is more like watching an old movie on a cathode Ray TV. Even though the the music and the reproduction have limits, the limitations are complimentary, so they seem to work together to some people.
440 tuning is just right for me. Even being a little flat is fine too. Just as long as all is in tune to each other. Maybe your brain just doesn’t like music.
Sam here again and i'm not talking about the difference between digital and vinyl and it doesn't matter if your listening to an mp3 player or a $25000 turntable with the finest vintage tubes the sound i'm talking about can not be achieved with man made equipment? 99% of music is recorded on musical instuments tuned to standard 440hz this frequency is out of tune with the brain and by replacing 440hz with a frequency that is in tune with the brain the music is now in harmony with the brain creating a new listening experience that you hear and feel.
It's not only dependent on the equipment playing back the recording, but it's dependent on the quality of the recording itself. As more and more recordings are being produced in home recording studios, the quality of recordings is generally suffering. To make a good recording, it takes a combination of technical expertise, artistic skill, and an understanding of the genre of music and what is most suitable for that genre/style.
I find we all hear different and to me digital audio isn’t for me. But I understand that for many it is and that shouldn’t be argued. I’d prefer it was. It would make things easier.
I use these examples: Florescent lightening doesn’t bother me but for others it does. Even with the digital ballasts many people still see light flicker. I don’t.
DLP projectors don’t bother me either like they do for some people.
LED lighting I don’t like, I just see blue and I find it too directional. But many people love it.
Digital audio for me is like fluorescent lighting is for other people. Sorry to the digital crowd but that’s how it affects me. We all experience our hearing and visual senses differently and that is ok to acknowledge that.
I think the prejudice against digital is driven by boomers and the people they influence who have great nostalgia of their LPs and tube equipment. Absolutely that stuff was great and a lot of fun to meddle with, and much of it sounds fantastic. I use as my main system the Exogal Comet/Ion system and either stream or play lossless files of a MacBook Pro, and the sound is amazing. The small footprint, simplicity, and convenience of the digital format is very agreeable to me. But I also have a vintage secondary system on which I run my turntable that I enjoy greatly. I believe I am getting the best of two worlds, but digital is superior to me.
I have digital and analog front ends, they both sound great to me "depending" on how good the recording was made. The only difference to me is that on the digital front system with certain recordings after a while I get tired. It's like pass certain time My brain cannot take it anymore.
With my analog system, it doesn't matter how bad the recording is I can take it, but I'm not enjoying it as it should be.
Around 1985 my house full of audio geeks set up a live vs. digitally processed test using a Nakamichi ADC (tweaked Sony PCM-F1) in the signal path, an ABX comparator, and a rotating listening panel. The speakers were Maggie MG-3 Ribbon dipoles, and the amp a Tandberg low-TIM Matti Ottala design. Results were that running the live feed (acoustic guitar trio w/ cello & violin) through the ADC/DAC process did no audible harm to the live signal. The live performers were in another room, miked with a Nak Tri-Mic setup, and were local professional musicians. From this we concluded that in theory and practice, 16/44.1kHz sampling was good enough for live-to-2 track mastering of a high quality music signal...at least one as simple as a chamber ensemble. But we all heard lots wrong with commercial CDs of the day. From this we believed the fault lay with how multi-tracked analog recordings were being digitally mastered and mass produced as CDs...not the digital process itself. The fact is CDs did get better over time. Our reference for "analog" were live-to-2 track tapes of classical concerts, not LPs (far, far, inferior, even with a SOTA Sapphire and Dynavector Ruby Karat).
Sam here again and i believe i figured it out digital audio is transfered in the virtual realm and vinyl is cut in the analog realm and the earth frequencies are being encoded onto the vinyl as it's being cut which is why new vinyl cut from the digital master is void of the earth frequencies and does not sound like 1st press vinyl which is why when i encode digital audio with earth frequencies it sounds as good or better than 1st press vinyl.
garbage in=garbage out. Source, equipment......confirmation bias......dont get me wrong, I love vinyl, it does not always sound good. and to get vinyl to sound amazing is very very expensive. My cartridge is $900 and it is not even a very expensive cartridge, tone arms can go $10-$15,000, and you still need a turntable to put that stuff on.
"It deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."
Wonder if our brains fill in missing sensory information based on our experiences perception......
A riddle that always has me foxed is why some people think digital recordings cut to LP and played back don't sound 'digital'.
It seems to me that if inherently digits 'digitise' a recording then that will be faithfully reproduced by the LP. Or does the LP magically add 'undigital' artifacts to the sound that can somehow negative the 'digital' sound and make it 'nice' again? This is beginning to seem like hogwash.
Separately, if music is recorded at a high enough sampling rate and bit count then the crude graphical zig-zag of a lo-quality digital recording will transform to the beautiful curves of analog and it should no longer be possible to hear any 'digital' artifact. All digital is not inherently bad; only poorly implemented digital (which admittedly is a lot of it)
My Allo USBridge signature streamer, fead by Ethernet and an ENO RFI filter, into the Lyngdorf TDAI 3400 sounds incredibly life-like, natural and involving. The £4000 turntable and phono stage plays second fiddle to it.
Sam here and i had to look up who kenjit is? still not quit sure.i'm not trying to get new age as i have never been new age.l believe that the music we listen to even on top notch systems somehow falls short and if i find the right formula there can be a supernatural experience between the listener and the music. based on the two audio samples from my post i believe i proved that frequencies can have a pronounced effect on the sound of music.when i use the term natural what i really mean is a supernatural connection to the music something man made equipment can't produce.l believe there is an answer and i believe it is a very simple answer i simply have to uncover it.
It's common knowledge that as you move up the audio food chain, digital audio sounds better. Trying to make a statement about all digital audio systems based only on a single sample of a relatively (by high-end audiophile standards) low price/performance component is meaningless.
The OP too general a term "natural" is not an absolute, but a subjective judgement. For instance, as one moves up the digital audio food chain, there will come a point where some will say it sounds "natural" while others would disagree. Also, how would I know if we injected some "tube magic" into the digital audio chain whether it would satisfy the OP "natural" requirement?
if not, i would say well implemented digital streaming today can sound very close to good analog, but like anything else, there is a learning curve leading to smart choices to be made
I understand where you are coming from I remember when CDs first came out. I didn't like them. I much preferred cassettes. I honestly still do now CDs sound so much more clear and no static but it's just not as good. Everytime I put in a cassette or listen to an album of old they just sound right. Digital sound clear and high quality it just doesn't sound right lol. I can't pinpoint anything as being wrong its just missing something. I don't see the point in today's digital HiFi as you have to spend so much just to get to where a record was. That doesn't mean I don't listen to it because I mostly listen to streaming on my phone lol it's just to easy and fast lmao. Anyways I do get where you are coming from.
It can be natural. Get the right front end and learn first hand. Try a Innuos server paired with Ideon MasterTime 3R Blackstar reclocker/filter and the new Mojo Audio Evo dac. This digital front end will change your mind after just one song.
Again, broad brush dismissing of digital is simply incorrect and out of step with today’s reality. It can be very, very good. Yes, as good or better than many analog front ends.
Pair the above digital front end with the right remaining system components and be prepared to forget about digital vs analog. It simply becomes irrelevant.
Don’t have this kind of budget? Ok, you still have many great NOS R2R dacs out there that are affordable. With care, learning, and effort choose the right associated components and one can achieve beautiful, natural tone and texture with digital.
You can’t get away from the fact that all digital throws away most of the timing info - our brains need 2 nanoseconds, so Red book loses 80%. This is because scientist had no idea how hearing worked until long after the standards were made. Digital is convenient, not natural. I get by with my $1800 Ayre DAC, but the most natural sounding ones are much more expensive. DCS makes the best.
Yup this is why every quality recording is made using cheap MP3 players. it saves tons of money and as we all know the hardware used to record and the methods and techniques used to record make no difference. As if the earth sounds in question are just simple and easily captured and reproduced. Well in the end we get what we pay for. To even use words like cheap and expect pristine and accurate results is ambitious.
What is your digital setup , low budget digital will not cut it also everything else in the chain needs to be at least respectable or it’s just a dream . I find R2R Multibit dacs like the AD 1865 K sound much more natural then these new Single bit Sabre dac chips Not as natural sounding .I bought a Hand built Mojo Audio Dac.Loaded with top quality, the competition will be hard to match Their latest Evo dacs are superb and just got a rave review 45 day Audio , money back guarantee ,and modular to be upgraded as technology advances.
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