Dear friends: In this special audio topic: digital/analog is extremely impossible to have a fully in agree whole opinion.
Each of us are different and with diffrent audio history experiences, our room/audio systems overall reflects whom we are.
" having digital in the chain doesn’t appear to adversely affect the sound of vinyl.
The reason for our vinyl preference must lie elsewhere. "
yes and is just individual in each one of us and of what we are accustom too for all each one ofe us audio experiences and live MUSIC experiences.
As some of you and from some years now my main target with home MUSIC reproduction is just enjot the MUSIC in digital or vinyl/analog format. The my system fine tunning times already passed and today I'm not in a worry any more if the recording is digoital or analog: I enjoy both kind of media developed distortions.
Yes my room/system already fine tunned with a extreme low ( elsewhere ) distortion levels and very high resolution with a main approach to stay nearer to the playback original media LP/CD.
Btw, @atmasphere, in this thread and in the whole Agos forum the treads and post normally are in reference to what each one of us listen in our system during playback and not separates: recording/playback. At least when I talk/post about vinyl this intrinsecal implicate: playback , same for digital.
In response to @russbutton’s somewhat crotchety negative points about vinyl records, here are a few positives that come to mind:
I can listen to vinyl records all night without fatigue
There’s a vinyl club at my local pub
We have great independent record shops in my region
It’s one activity I share with my kids
We always know what buy each other for Christmas and birthdays
I enjoy the physicality and paraphernalia of records
Vinyl records more often than not sound better than the equivalent digital formats
The truth is I need both vinyl and streaming. There’s a lot of good stuff in my local digital library. Also, streaming is excellent for exploring new music or checking out albums I don’t necessarily want to buy. But ultimately when comes to serious critical listening, vinyl wins hands down.
@russbuttonWe're not even on the same page. Put analog aside, , your contention that having a digital setup beyond your $500 DAC and a PC is a waste of money puts your listening satisfaction level and what mine is in two very different places. I'm not telling you that you should change from what value is for you, just stop being preachy to anyone who sees/hears it differently
Atmasphere wrote: "the distortion comes in during playback; hardly any of that is actually on the LP. "
You mean, in a good produced and mastered LP, right? The ideal LP? I have a lot of distortion in my 1900 LP collection due to poor recordings and mastering.
The competition is getting closer, but I still favor my vinyl compared to streaming.
@facten It's not that vinyl can't sound wonderful or that people shouldn't enjoy it. I've sent the last half century enjoying vinyl. I'm just saying that it is only marginally better than vinyl, and definitely not in all ways. Vinyl is:
- vastly more expensive for the same level of quality
- noisy
- subject to wear and dirt
- inconvenient
- new recordings are not issued in vinyl
@rdmorgan048I am so sorry, audigon, this powerful almighty flawless system does not let me respond. I jumped through hoops all morning and still, it prevents from new messages or replying to messages :(
@russbutton What I'll say is that the value you put on your listening experience differs from mine. Enjoy what suits you, but save the preaching as to what others should be satisfied with
My discussion is really centered on value. The PC/DAC combo Iʻm talking about is something generic. DAC has come a long ways and you get very good reproduction with modestly priced units. The differences between a decent $500 DAC and your $5000 wonder are not $4500 worth, unless youʻve got $4500 and nothing else to do with it.
Streamers are just miniPC boards running someoneʻs custom front end on top of Linux. None of those mega-buck streamers are running their own custom O/S. Bits is bits, but thatʻs a completely different discussion.
The point here is that for well under $1000, a PC/DAC combo can be very, very good. You can easily drop $10,000 on a turntable/tonearm/cartridge/phono preamp combo and youʻre still having to deal with all of inherent imperfections of vinyl. Vinyl is NOT a good value.
And letʻs not forget that the majority of newly issued recordings are offered in vinyl, which is a signifcant downside.
~
It’s simple, when I have time to enjoy a drink and a puff, I listen to my vinyl. When I’m getting ready for my son’s hockey game or having some people over, I stream. Both are great and completely different. I’m glad I have both at my disposal!
@russbutton"That modest PC/DAC combo I spoke about is actually quite good and illustrates the unfair advantages that digital has over vinyl"
It doesn’t illustrate anything about the sound quality differences of one versus the other, it simply conveniently makes a statement about the cost that you are comfortable with for your source. No harm with that everybody needs to makes the choice they are comfortable with, but beyond that the point doesn’t support anything regarding sound
Vynil introduces a level of distortion that is pleasing to the ears of many, whereas other people prefer otherwise.
@squared80Actually vinyl has extremely low distortion- much lower than any of the 'tests' show. The reason is because of how much feedback is used in the mastering process. My Westerex 3d system using the 1700 series electronics employed 30dB of feedback between the cutter head and the mastering amplifiers, which had a fair amount of feedback of their own, nested within the 30dB feedback loop.
If you've read any papers by Bruno Putzeys then you know the significance of that fact.
IOW the distortion comes in during playback; hardly any of that is actually on the LP. That distortion is highly variable depending on the playback equipment (starting with the platter pad, and uncontrolled variable in all the 'tests' and 'studies' I've seen) and its setup. All the so-called 'studies' over the last 50 years ignore this simple fact. As LP playback equipment gets better and the more care is taken to setup, the playback distortion goes down.
My point here is the use of 'Vinyl' in your post above renders the statement false since that isn't where the distortion is coming from.
Except for the pops and clicks and getting up every 20 minutes.
LOL! I have been a dedicated digital person for years, although I have my vinyl collection from the '70's. When I tried out a preamp with a phono preamp built in (VAC Renaissance V), I figured that I would check out my vinyl. Now during the '70's, I had a good turntable (a Thorens) and cartridge, and cleaned my albums each use with a DiscWasher, so that they were well cared for. Honestly, I found the vinyl to be a PITA. There were crackles and pops and surface noise. I had to get up every 20 minutes. I then had to figure out what side I would play next. Now, admittedly, my current turntable is on the lower end of the scale, but I found that digital sounded at least as good, was significantly more convenient, no extraneous noise, and Roon would curate new music without me having to get up. So for me, vinyl is not worth the hassle, and a good digital solution is the way to go.
Kind of lame since it's totally subjective. Vynil introduces a level of distortion that is pleasing to the ears of many, whereas other people prefer otherwise. Shots fired? Ok. That's like saying country music is better than rap. It's just preference, nothing more.
Be careful of playback systems that cost six figures. On youtube, there is a report of a double-blind listening test where audiophiles heard a phono preamp, cartridge, and a turntable costing $500,000 and a preamp, cartridge, and turntable costing $78. 40% of them thought the $78 system sounded better and had to be the $500,000 system.
Be skeptical of cables costing $20,000.
There is a SET using 833A triodes selling for $480,000 which can be built wit some better parts from less than $2000 in parts purchased retail.
Just because the price is undreamed of does not mean it will sound better to you.
"High quality reproduction from vinyl is vastly more expensive than digital." A TRUE Urban Legend that is 1. bulls**t 2. A great excuse for not trying vinyl some "audiophiles" tell themselves...
That’s a bizarre comparison you’re suggesting there. Surely a more meaningful comparison would involve turntables and streamers of equal cost, whether at budget or high end.
You’re conflating the comparison of vinyl versus streaming with the entirely different argument of whether it’s worth spending more on hifi in general. That issue is worthy of a thread of its own.
There are things I like about each better than the other.
High quality reproduction from vinyl is vastly more expensive than digital. Not an issue for those of you with more money than you know what to do with, but certainly an issue for many. Itʻs not hard to drop $10,000 and more on a table, cartridge, mods, cabling, separate phono preamp, etc. Of course youʻre going to claim massive benefits on your $10,000 vinyl rig over a $300 PC playing back through a competent $300 DAC.
In careful listening, I find that a good vinyl setup does sound more "organic" (for want of a better word) than digital. I have a number of good recordings in both media and do hear the differences, but they arenʻt worth the many thousands of dollars it takes to get there.
Sʻmatter of fact, Iʻm selling off my jazz vinyl collection right now with ads on US Audiomart and Craigslist. Most of the hard bop is gone, but I still have a good amount of Latin jazz, big band, West Coast jazz and vocals. $10 each including shipping. Sold about half the records so far.
Itʻs just so very much easier to play digital and at my age of 73, I donʻt want to be one of those guys with a gigantic pile of stuff to wade through. Done with it. Got some good records though if anyone wants some recommendations.
@mambacfaVinyl is not a "true" analogue" to the extent that this connotes superiority. A vinyl record goes through a number of subtractive steps before it gets to the end consumer and, consequently, is a long way from the "true" sound of the master tape. To use your own words, it is an approximation of it.
It can sound good, especially if the multitrack - if there is one - and the two track master were also analogue, but either way, it is not more inherently accurate than digital.
Speaking as the owner of high end vinyl, cd and streaming playback systems, so not biased either way.
I would like to throw Direct Metal Mastering (DMM) into the discussion. Harsher or more accurate than cutting lacquers? Was wondering as I was listening to a John Hiatt album last night (Bring the Family) that was cut with DMM (actually, I was streaming it so the DMM is irrelevant, but I was still thinking about it).
I agree with you in as far as that vinyl usually sounds better than digital formats or at least I prefer it.
However, it’s not true that digital is an approximation. It can exactly reproduce the original waveform of the music on reconstruction. In any case, having digital in the chain doesn’t appear to adversely affect the sound of vinyl.
The reason for our vinyl preference must lie elsewhere.
Vinyl is a true analogue, not a digital approximation. "Vinyl sounds better than digital" is an indisputable fact, because it is true sound, not a computer-generated facsimile.
@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.
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.
@dgdWhat 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@ghdprenticeActually 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.
Yes, a labor of love. Maybe it’s my age. They say frustration tolerance shortens as you age and returns to that like a child. I find myself now only tolerating the vinyl ritual when I cannot find a recorded performance on my streaming service.
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.
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