Just shows that one can use the IQ bell curve for anything.
Vinyl sounds better (shots fired)
I was bored today on a support job so I made a meme. This isn’t a hard or serious conviction of mine, but I am interested in getting reactions 😁
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With computer server you could use parametric equalizer to improve sound in the room and to buy downloads at about 1/2 price of vinyl. Perhaps eliminating TT and Phono Preamp allows to get better amp or speakers? CDP has to stay anyway since vinyl selection is limited. |
Plastic CDs definitely do lose information over time. Streaming is probably closer to lasting "forever", but do the digital tapes that are the source of streamed music not also lose information over time? I don't know the answer. I do know that a properly stored (controlled temperature and humidity) and well cared for LP does last virtually forever. |
On Friday, while moving a piece of furniture that a younger me would have had no trouble with, I tweaked my old back worse than I ever have beforehand. This meant I spent the majority of the weekend flat on my back, with the fewest interruptions possible. After listening to a couple of hours of music via streaming with absolutely zero emotional impact, I shakily got to my feet and started playing vinyl. THERE was the impact I was searching for! I have long wanted streaming (or CDs for that matter) to give me the same satisfaction my relatively meager analog front end does, but it took this little scenario to make me realize I was willing to endure literal pain in my search for emotional connection to music. I spent the rest of the weekend in a state of (approx) 20 minutes at a time euphoria. Luckily my wife was quite the trooper and was willing to be my personal D.J. when she got home. She's a pip! |
Actually, it shows that one can use a bell curve without data. |
@dogberry Analog guys dump on digital on WBF all the time. It happens , but your point is spot on regardless |
I think that sampling can miss some subtle cords, tones, and rhythms because you’re pixelating a sound wave. They can approximate a wave, but you can’t quite match it. I’m not saying that digital can’t sound good. Yes, the mix is different which matters. But personally, pure analog on a quality turntable with good accompanying components just feels richer in a side by side comparison. In full candor, most of my vinyl is pre 1980 because recordings were mostly all analog. I lothe feel. Post 1980, I have CDs or high res downloads |
It’s a personal preference in my experience. I started with 45s (how old am I), then LPs, reel-to-reel, 8-track, cassettes, CDs and now I mostly stream. Still have a couple of cases of my favorite albums. My wife will get rid of them when I’m gone. Gave away my turntable. It was just collecting dust. I have friends that say they prefer the warmth and detail of vinyl. I don’t argue. Whatever floats your boat in this hobby. Streaming and CDs of my favorite albums from 50 years ago sound better than ever to me now on my best system in my listening room. I find a good box set as enjoyable as a gatefold album nowadays and I don’t need them for cleaning out sticks and seeds anymore. Streaming and edibles in 2025. |
I purchase vinyl so I have something tangible to sell during my retirement years to supplement my fixed income Try doing that with a high res digital download of your favorite album. i have a great analog front end to enjoy
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That's not how digital audio works. As proven by the Nyquist and Fourier theorems, digital audio produces a continuous wave, just as with the LP. The Fourier Theorem itself explains how both the squiggly groove on an LP and digital audio work. |
I laughed. Funny how? Why is this so F%#$&ing funny? Funny cartoons, funny topic, just funny. @hilde45, vinyl is the go to on the main and 2nd rigs. Qobuz is used in the car and on the rig when I don't have something. |
I admit, my TT gets the most use when I have company and they notice my collection of LP's and my rather slick looking Thorens. Otherwise I mostly stream. There IS something to be said about vinyl being superior sounding vs digital,but streaming 24/96 seems more articulate if not as natural sounding. |
for the record: (sorry)
so what was the question? If vinyl sounds better? Or who vinyl is for?
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well cared for LP will last virtually forever. LPs lasting as long as our lifespans IS forever, and as long as needed. After all we can’t take them with us. So for the rest of us believe lewm, for if records last for 50 years they will probably last another 50… and another…...
My LP collection goes right back to my first buy in 1966. Some of the records have been played on every good, bad and ugly turntable l have ever owned. I was taught well, they were handled and stored correctly so are still in good shape. Most sound better than repressed albums from the last few years. LPs in the 60s and early 70s were predominantly pressed on the minimum standard of the day….heavy 180g vinyl. The limiting factor on digital or vinyl remastered from original tapes calls into question, have those tapes deteriorated over 60 years? No matter how much digital tinkering is done, if there is audio loss over this time no manor of wizardry can put back the missing info. A good original quality pressing will always be better and more accurate than a digital copy transferred from old oxidised master tapes. It stands to reason, tapes degrade over time more than any other recording medium. The BBC (before digital recordings) realised this and actually re-recorded some of their library archival tapes again onto new stock tapes to prevent further degradation. So talking of historical recordings only, digital music may have no clicks and plops….play longer…..have no tactile nostalgia, have no monetary value, but are from the start limited to the actual quality of the original source. LPs from those early days are in all probability the best it gets. It’s just logical!
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and also
Oh that is so silly………… Your diagram. l wondered if l had wondered onto the wrong site…a shopping site.
l thought your diagram was a cheese grater viewed sideways…you know, the side that carves long strips…it looked so cheesy !
Proof in the theory that statistics can prove just about anything depending on how you look at them.
oh by the way…. I have nothing against streaming or digital…..l also love most cheeses, but some varieties better than others.
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@mylogic just to clarify, I listen to 80% vinyl. I am not anti-vinyl. I just don't want to convert anyone. (the opposite, I want people to switch to streaming and sell me their vinyl collection) |
Ditto
l’m about the same…predominently vinyl now. Tried both routes… 30+ years ago l started going down the CD ‘hands on’ music approach. I just can’t get my stuff by streaming only. Much prefer going to my library and seeing what jumps out at me. Only after l radically changed my system and heard a giant leap in quality did my vinyl collection break through again. A 2nd record player was recently added with MC and a new pre amp phono stage nailed it. Both mediums are there…just depends on what l fancy and which version l own….LP or CD, or when on both it’s normally the LP that wins.
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@thecarpathian when was it not. Look at all the tariff and CA tax threads, it's bursting at the seams with love |
@larsman +1
I may even add CDs, and --gasp-- cassettes! |
@grislybutter Fav of mine is the Yes from the 'hipsters/movies' box.... Obviously delusional.....not to be tempted to own Anything dragging miniscule rocks in plastic grooves that aren't even straight.... (Pardon me while I light this blunt with my flint kit...) I remember one crazed day a bunch of us louts took a shotgun and some decrepit LP's into the hills and had our way with them.... Don't cry, the content would have rated a W (Worthless)....hadn't seen a sleeve in years.... The skid marks from the pellets gave them more interest then they'd ever had before. |
@asvjerry mine too! |
Digital recording has a hard ceiling and a hard floor. Meaning, when your recording level is all '1s' anything a ove that is clipped, totally. Anything below all '0s' doesn't exist. Analog had 3-6dB headroom above 0dB and at least 10dB below the noise floor. Recording and mastering engineers had to re.earn a careers full of technique to go digital. Similarly, low level information, ambiance, string sounds, the difference between a Stradivarius and other violins, a Strat vs. a Les Paul, has fewer bits with which to be described, thus less detail is captured. Note this is y-axis data, and has nothing to with sample rate and Nyquist Theory - that's all x-axis. Digital has this limited operating 'space' to which the recordings must be confined. Analog is much more forgiving in that regard. To get a digital recording space that is greater than analog requires enlarging both bit depth and sample rate. 24-bit and 96KHz sampling accomplish that, but that was not technically oe economically feasible for a mass market product when the 16-bit, 44.1Khz sample rate CD was developed. The final piece of the puzzle is the DAC. Analogous to the role of the phono cart, it is the transducer between the digital and analog domains, just as the phono cart is the transducer between mechanical and analog domains. And while there's are lots of ways to convert all the bits successfully, reconstructing them into an analog signal absent distortion artifacts require a 'reconstruction filter'. It is in the execution of that where a DAC adds the vast majority of its audible signature. |
@grislybutter ....*L* Since clarity 'round here counts.... Which 'mine' is yours? ;) -hipster movies, with or without... As for attending louts....anyone wanting to attend the next 'shoot-up'.... Vaguely related note, bid and won 'bout a dozen transcription discs of varied conditions, 'white rust'..... old musical bits, the 'in-show' commercials per the labels. Bought for the *Grins* of it..... ...turn one to on/dim/off....changes disc every time you use it.... |
I recently read that almost every vinyl record since the early 1970s has been cut on a lathe that utilized a digital delay line for the source material. This allowed for the lathe to “anticipate” transients to facilitate widening the groove spacing accordingly. If true, and I’m not an expert here, that would mean that vinyl is actually from a digital source. That being said, the actual act of converting to a physical, analog copy in vinyl might be the filter you enjoy if you prefer vinyl. I welcome more insight on this. |
The sound of vinyl vs digital depends upon the original mastering and the payback equipment. Good recording engineering played back on good equipment sounds wonderful regardless. I have heard vinyl albums such as some 1960s DG offerings that have a more fatiguing treble shrill than some 1970s digital masters when the technology was in its infancy. I find current streaming digital equivalent or better than vinyl. No clicks, no pops, no ritual (retrieve, clean, play, change sides every 30 minutes), less equipment maintenance (no bearing, arm, and cartridge alignment maintenance, and no demagnetizing, cleaning, and neurosis over stylus and cantilever damage). |
Good points @jsalerno277 although TBH the "ritual" stuff you mention are part of what I LOVE about vinyl, and I suspect the same is true of the majority of analog fans out there. It's not for everybody, but for those of us that enjoy it, it is not a "chore" at all, it's a labor of love. |
@hifiguy42 +1 The relationship to music is different with vinyl. Ever since I got back into it, I learned a lot about each album, musician and discovered bands I would have never come across via streaming. |
@dgd What you read was false. What you are talking about is a ’preview head’ which was used on tape machines. Its output was digitized and then used as data to drive the cutter speed (driving a motor that drives the worm screws which advance the cutter head), allowing for variable groove width. Meanwhile, the actual analog tape heads were sending the analog signal to the cutter head. We used a similar system in our mastering setup, but since finding a preview head setup is pretty hard these days, we made a device using an Arduino and then played the project into it, creating a ’groove width file’. That was then synchronized with the project when we actually did the mastering. We did this because our Scully lathe was an older one with manual operation and didn’t have variable groove width built in. @russ69 @ghdprentice Actually with many systems ticks and pops are caused by the phono section. The mechanism is if the phono section does not have good high frequency overload characteristics, ultrasonic or RF noise can overload it briefly, causing a tick or pop. The way this happens is due to the fact that a cartridge has an inductance and the tonearm cable has capacitance. When you put the two in parallel an electrical resonance is formed in the same manner that FM stations are tuned in on a radio. With high output cartridges the inductance is higher so the resonance is just at the upper end of the audio spectrum or barely ultrasonic. The peak can be as much as 20dB. If the cartridge is a LOMC type, the peak is in the RF range up to about 5MHz and can be as much as 30dB higher than the actual signal. Many designers simply don’t take this into account despite what happens when you parallel capacitance with inductance is taught in Electronics 101 in the first week. So there’s a raft of phono sections with this problem going back 60 years. A lot of audiophiles grew up with this problem not knowing this! If this problem is taken care of in the phono preamp design you experience quite a lot less ticks and pops (I’m very used to playing entire LP sides with no ticks or pops at all, despite minimal LP cleaning- I just use a dust brush). If the cartridge is of the LOMC variety, you don’t have to mess with ’cartridge loading’ resistors either since how they actually work is to detune that resonance, which helps out phono sections that have this design flaw. But if the phono section has RFI and overload immunity you’ll find the resistors have no effect- its literally plug and play. |
@atmasphere Thank you for clarifying this for me, and possibly others who have heard this. What you describe is completely logical, and the author of the information I read must have misinterpreted the "digital" part of the process to mean the final source material instead of the preview head. Makes much more sense in that way. |
@atmasphere sweet, very educational, thank you! |
