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vinyl versus digital redux

Has anyone compared the sound of vinyl with the sound of digital converted from a vinyl intermediary ?

I am referring to 'rips' of vinyl made with high end, high quality vinyl playback systems, with
conversion to high resolution digital.
I find it nearly impossible to distinguish the two results.
The digital rip of a vinyl record sounds identical...or very nearly so...to direct playback of the vinyl.

If one has 'experienced' the foregoing, one might question why digital made without the intermediary of vinyl sounds so different from vinyl.   A detective story ?

We are talking about vinyl made by ADC (analog to digital conversion) of an amplified microphone signal and re-conversion to analog for output to the record cutting lathe, or from analog tape recording of an amplified microphone signal, and then....as above...via ADCl and back to analog for output to the cutting lathe.

Of course vinyl can be and is 'cut' (pressings made from 'stamper' copies the 'master' cut in lacquer) without digital intermediary.  Such practice is apparently uncommon, and ?? identified as such by the 'label' (production)

Has anyone compared vinyl and high resolution digital (downloads) albums offered by the same 'label' of the same performance ?  Granted, digital versus vinyl difference should diminish with higher digital resolution.   Sound waves are sine waves....air waves do not 'travel' in digital bits.    A digital signal cannot be more than an approximation of a sine wave, but a closer approximation as potential digital resolution (equating to bit depth times sampling frequency) increases.

If vinyl and digital well made from vinyl intermediary sound almost identical, and If vinyl and digital not made via vinyl intermediary sound quite different, what is the source of this difference ? 

Could it reside....I'll skip the sound processing stages (including RIAA equalization)...in the electro-mechanical process imparting the signal to the vinyl groove ?

Is there analogy with speaker cone material and the need for a degree of self-damping ?
Were self-damping not to some extent desirable, would not all speaker cones, from tweeter to sub-woofer, be made of materials where stiffness to weight ratio was of sole importance ?

Thanks for any comments.
seventies

Showing 2 responses by melm

melm
1,057 posts
 
I have many red-book cd duplicates of my vinyl records. I like to think that my vinyl set-up is pretty good (TNT, all tube phono pre). Generally the digitals can sound as good as the vinyls, but without the usual vinyl artifacts of noise and inner groove distortion. Occasionally the vinyls sound better where sufficient care seems not to have been made in the digital mastering. Given the variations in analog pressings, the digital often has better SQ. It took me some years and some $$ to come to this conclusion. Also, I don’t think it requires better than red-book digital to do as well as vinyl as LPs, generally, do not exceed red-book specs.

IMO the reason that some believe that the digital cannot be as good as the vinyl is that they have expensive vinyl set-ups and think that by buying a DAC with the right chip they are doing justice to digital. Fact is, you have to spend a good bit of cash and take considerable care to know how well digital can do. A bit is not a bit is not a bit.

In digital I think of the bit delivery system, that is what comes before the DAC, as the digital turntable and cartridge. As with analog, it needs to be done well for if it is lost there it can never be recovered. All bits are not equal. I think of the DAC as the phono pre which can only do as well as what its input is. As with a pre, simply putting out an analog signal does not necessarily make for a great pre.
melm
1,057 posts
 
@rossb,

I agree with your first point.  I take it as a given that subjecting a signal to yet another process, especially in the home environment, would necessarily degrade it tp some extent.  It may sound superficially unchanged, but in the low level and spatial details that we, audiophiles, crave it will change IMO.

I do disagree with your second point.  HW of VPI measures the success of his TTs by how close their sound comes to master tapes.  Any difference has to be called distortion, whether by having the tape altered so that it is ready for the cutting process, or by all the cutting plating and duplication implicit in the disk production process.  

Consider the difference between an analog master tape and the first disk to come out of production (and they deteriorate as production continues) played on an excellent set-up.  Consider also the difference between that master tape and a digital copy made by the best available professional ADC equipment and played back on an excellent set-up.  I's only a surmise but I suspect the digital copy would be "virtually" indistinguishable from the original.  The vinyl would be fairly easy to distinguish; I'm not saying which would be "better."

I have a pretty good analog set-up and am building a good digital one.  Lots of learning here, especially about what comes before the DAC.  I like them both though it is hard to argue with the ease of dealing with the digital.  I just press an icon on my phone to hear anything in my digital collection.  It may be strange, compared to what I have written, but I tend to judge changes in my digital set-up to my analog sound.--specially spatial things.  Of course, some digital sounds DIGITAL.  And some analog sounds lousy.  But some digital stereo sounds as good as anything.  At the moment I am thinking of new Shostakovich/Nelsons recordings.  But some old old, originally analog, recordings (RCA, Decca for ex.) sound just great and no worse than the original disks that I have--some really better.

So at the moment I do not prefer one medium over the other (convenience notwithstanding).  Just my $.02.
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