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What is behind a "warm" or "vinyl"sound?

I found an interesting article in The Saturday Toronto Star's entertainment section on the resurgence of vinyl.

What I found most interesting in this article was a description of why people describe vinyl as "warm". Peter J Moore, the famous producer/mastering engineer of the legendary one microphone recording of the Cowboy Junkies' Trinity Sessions recording says it all comes down to the fact that humans do not like square waves - ie. when you go from super quiet to super loud at no time at all. He gives the example that if someone was to slap two pieces of wood together right beside your ear would be about the only time one would feel a square wave - and that would make you jump right out of your skin! He says digital, particularly MP3s reproduce square waves like crazy, which triggers fear which also produces fatigue. He says if those same two pieces of wood were slapped together across the room, the square wave would be rounded off by the time the sound reached our ears. Turntables cannot reproduce square waves due to through time it takes for sound to get though the length of wire and the magnet that the wire is wrapped around in the cartridge. By the time the signal gets through that the sharpness, he ugliness, has been rounded and that, he says, is what people are talking about when they describe vinyl as "warm" sounding. Interesting!

I find there are a bunch of digital manufacturers, like Lumin, that are striving for a vinyl sound. I wonder if they are somehow rounding off the square waves in the digital signal to do so? If this is the case, "perfect" reproduction may NOT actually be beneficial to the sound...at least for someone who really wants a vinyl sound experience. Better may not actually be better when it comes to digital sound reproduction!
camb

Showing 8 responses by audioengr

audioengr
3,282 posts
 
"that does not explain why digital into tube amps produce 'warm'. Any thoughts on this?"

Most tube amps sound warm because their response rolls-off lower in frequency than SS amps. Most tube amps also have rather primitive power supplies for the plate voltages, not including fast-acting regulators or fast decoupling caps. These slower reacting power systems do not provide the power needed for high-frequency transients, so it softens the sound.

There are exceptions however. I have modded some tube equipment to fix these deficiencies and the top end softness disappears. They sound a lot more like SS, but with better midrange. The best of both worlds. Bass is always a problem with tube amps however. Its virtually impossible to get the really low impedance output required to control the bass of most speakers.

The mass of the needle assembly on a tonearm will also ultimately limit the reaction time and therefore the high-frequency dynamics. Even if the cartridge measures well beyond 20kHz using a steady-state waveform, it will fail to reproduce accurately a HF dynamic waveform, thus sounding softer.

Solid-state digital can also produce the dimensionality and smoothness of vinyl, but is requires several things:

1) very low jitter in the digital signal
2) lack of digital filtering in the DAC or minimize the effect
3) very linear I/V conversion in the DAC
4) excellent fast-reacting low-noise power supplies in the DAC

With 1-4, digital can actually beat vinyl. Makes sense because the physical limits of the cartridge are eliminated.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
"in fact digital can round the square wave more than a cartridge in some cases"

This has to be some piss-poor digital design....

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
"Digital does something to the sound of massed violins, a real acid test for sound reproduction, that can make them sound harsher and grittier than vinyl does."

This is true for the vast majority of digital equipment, but not all. With very low jitter and noise, it can sound smooth and silky, just like analog.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
"Can your reclocking device deliver massed strings as cleanly and grain-free as the best CD players out there? Or good vinyl?"

The Synchro-Mesh can depending on the DAC, particularly if you add the Dynamo power supply and my own BNC-BNC coax cable with RCA adapters. This trifecta is world-class. SM resamples to 24/96.

dCS is good stuff for sure. I heard Vivaldi stacks in rooms on either side of me at RMAF last year. I prefer my Overdrive to it however.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
"It's almost like carrying frequency in radio transmission only it's carried internally through the digital processors to be decoded at the end just like in radio receiver. "

Not a good analogy. RF is always a modulated carrier frequency. Digital is encoded, not a modulated carrier. Most RF is really analog. Digital is discrete states and levels, not handled like analog.

Steve N. EE since 1976
Empirical Audio
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Most of the SQ issues associated with digital have to do with poor digital filtering in the DAC, (whether in the CD player or other separate DAC), jitter and the sample-rate. For accurate dynamic playback at high-frequency 44.1kHz is insufficient. 88.2kHz and 96 kHz are sufficient. Poor digital filtering abounds unfortunately.

Even 44.1 can sound wonderful however, depending on how much HF information is in the track.

Steve N
Empirical Audio
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
"Most RF is really analog
Why most?"

Because things like Bluetooth, which are RF are simply digital, not modulated

"Digital is discrete states and levels
It's not what Al said or even books."

Of course not, but discrete levels is how it is detected and treated. All electrical phenomena are analog.

"Before it forms "square wave" there's a process and certainly components that build it step by step so nothing is discrete for sure."

The serial signals are discrete and detected as such and the parallel digital words that are saved in registers are discrete. These discrete words are presented to the D/A circuit at discrete time intervals. Only then can the D/A output an analog waveform, which still needs filtering to resemble the original analog waveform.

The square-wave that we are talking about here is an analog waveform and treated as such by the analog circuits that follow. There is no switching and no discrete states as there is prior to the D/A conversion.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
"The funny thing is that analog CDs, I.e. AAD, sound much more organic, open and correct than later ADD and DDD CDs."

This is primarily due to the mediocre DSP software that abounds. There is some good software out there though, such as Sonic Studio. Unfortunately not every recording studio uses it.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
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