"Since my comparison was made only between the commercial CD release and the artists personal copy of a digital master, there was no analog to judge by."
Ok, I have no doubt that the vinyl would cut it, all other factors aside.
But did the digital master you heard get the "soul" of the music or no?
I'm praying that there is some hope here the answer is "yes".....but maybe I'm doomed. |
Did it get the "soul" of the music? Since my comparison was made only between the commercial CD release and the artists personal copy of a digital master, there was no analog to judge by. Part of why I was listening was because my friend was angry that the manufacturer had "ruined" his CD release. I explained that CD was not capable of what he heard on the master and he was very disappointed. |
"As for your experience with digital being better in some cases, I have yet to have that happen in my system."
I've only a/b tested more pop/rock recordings where I can assert clearly that it has.
I was surprised when it happened though with "Days Of Future Passed" by the Moody Blues, though (see my reviews here).
I would expect many more cases favoring vinyl with large scale symphonic recordings in general, from my experience.
Other than that, well produced CDs work to my satisfaction in general, but I would prefer higher resolution with digital if done well in most all cases.
W |
Albertporter -
"You're missing the point completely" - I'm not sure what point it is since you use a lot of words with just one conclusion that current CD format is not as good as LP. I never said it is, and there is no need to jump at me such unpleasant way. I merely reacted, if you read the tread, to statement that digital will never rival analog. I don't understand logic behind it - that's all. Many of my friends claimed the same at the beginning of digital photography and now all have digital cameras. I am not an angry person - just read my other post but it seems to me that with claimed experience and amount of dollars you "throw" at me you are a little arrogant. It might be better if you will not respond to my posts and I will do the same for you.
|
"However, I have had master digital files played here and also at a friends home and you have no idea what a digital master is capable of. "
Oh yes I do......
Did it get the "soul" of the music? |
Mapman, you posted while I was composing my response.
I agree that digital could be great and said so in my original post. As for your experience with digital being better in some cases, I have yet to have that happen in my system. There have been hundreds of tests on my system over the years, sometimes involving manufacturers and even other reviewers.
However, I have had master digital files played here and also at a friends home and you have no idea what a digital master is capable of.
Source is everything! You cannot fix the problem downstream no matter how good the other equipment is. |
Albertporter - I agree. CD sampling rate of 44kHz is a joke but it has nothing to do with being analog or digital. Imagine fast internet downloads in true 24bits/192kHz (around the corner). Would analog made from this material still be better? You're missing the point completely. Did you read what I wrote or just want to argue for digital? You appear to be a person without much experience that's angry someone would challenge your vision of the perfect sound forever BS they threw at us. As for would 24bits/192kHz be better as a DIGITAL format, theoretically I would think so. There is no guarantee the record companies won't ruin that too, but I hope not. I'm ready to buy if they fix the problem. Sure, there is a lot of used records (won't last forever) but what about new exciting artist/releases available only in digital.
According to RIAA total amount of LPs sold in 2007 was 1 million — a joke. What does that have to do with this topic? When will digital (CD's) get the soul of music? No one said CD's were not a sales success, McDonalds is an even bigger success but that does not mean they are the best quality. I've had a lot of CD players, some retail for more than $20K, there are big differences in quality with the best ones but the player cannot make up for the lack of resolution on current CD format. Of course a really great turntable cannot make up for a crappy LP either. However, taking the best of each hardware and the best of each software, the LP is the winner when it comes to available formats at best quality. |
Mapman - Good question. I don't think they know how to handle it yet. They shot themselfs in the foot keeping high prices and poor recording quality of CDs and sales are down (empty stores). They also loose a lot of money on stuff being illegally copied and are dramatically searching for the new, well copy protected format (SACD, HDCD). Latest, I heard, is CODE pushed by some artist (N. Young, Mellencamp). It is 24bit/96kHz 2 channel recording on DVD media at the price of standard CD. Latest Mellencamp's record was released on CODE (so I heard). |
Albert,
I agree with your assessment that CD format is the limiting factor, not digital itself.
Still, technology details aside, many CDs do sound better to me than their lp equivalents in practice (and vice versa).
There is no practical winner in all cases. Just because a format has a particular capacity does not mean that it is always fully utilized to best effect. That is the case with both digital and analog recording products. There are good and bad products in any format.
Practically, what matters to me is what my copy of Seventh Sojourn or The Planets actually sounds like, not what the format it is encoded on is capable of doing.
The internet along with high bandwidth connections into the average home along with greater capacity storage devices is already starting to change things considerably, I think.
One thing that concerns me though is why should any company provide an audiophile affordable high quality digital sources similar to records when we're willing to shell out
tens of thousands apparently in order to get it? That doesn't make sense to me and does worry me actually quite a bit. |
Albertporter - I agree. CD sampling rate of 44kHz is a joke but it has nothing to do with being analog or digital. Imagine fast internet downloads in true 24bits/192kHz (around the corner). Would analog made from this material still be better?
Some people will always say so because they invested tens of thousand of dollars in the dead format and now are in denial. How great of the format it is if you cannot get most of the records you want and you have to settle for what they throw at you. Sure, there is a lot of used records (won't last forever) but what about new exciting artist/releases available only in digital.
According to RIAA total amount of LPs sold in 2007 was 1 million — a joke.
I bet you'll find people who believe that analog TV was better than HDTV calling HDTV too sharp, too bright and lacking the soul.
As for golden ear music teachers — all that I've ever met had horrible audio systems. |
On the topic of both music and photography, and digital versus analog.
A great LP record (even from a digital master) is capable of delivering more information than a CD, and until digital is available in a format that's closer to the digital master, this will remain true.
The digital (or analog) master tape is not the issue here, the CD format is.
If any of you could hear a master digital tape (or hard drive) and compare that to CD or LP, you would realize how much we've been screwed. The problem with digital is when that great master is "moved" for public distribution.
The fact that we're discussing a 131 year old format in Audiogon forums along side modern digital is an absolute embarrassment to the state of digital delivery.
Moving that master digital signal from one place to another and from one sample rate to another does it so much harm it cannot be repaired. Then to make matters worse, our only choice is an outdated format that's too low a sample rate to replicate what was on the master.
However, when you convert that super high rez digital master to analog at the hard drive, it is a more effective way to preserve content. My comment would not be true if CD was EQUAL resolution as what was used to master THE LP. All this, allowing for the multiple errors in the mechanical process of CD and LP.
This is not something I made up, I know two of the most famous people in the recording business and this is what they say and how I got my info.
I originally said two things, so second, when the discussion about film and digital capture is brought up in music threads there is a huge factor that everyone forgets.
With music, the recording studio is the creator. THEY set the quality of format and then the record companies decide how much quality you are allowed to own.
With digital photography, the photographer is the creator and sets the quality of the format by choosing whatever capture engine (chip and camera) they are willing to pay for. They choose the lens, the processing engine and output quality. Perhaps most important, they can preserve their work in the highest possible bit rate, color, format and with NO compression at all.
Digital photography is limited only by what you are willing to pay and how much work you're willing to put in and every few months the format is improved. REAL improvement with better chips and higher resolution delivered to the end user.
So basically, the difference is that in photography you set the quality limit and in music you have no choice. With an LP you get a more true representation of the music regardless if the master was analog or digital.
With CD, you get a severely downsampled format that's only a shadow of what could be if the format had evolved this last 25 years.
Would you be happy with a computer based on 25 year old technology and zero upgrades? Before you say analog is even older. Remember analog is not a sample of the signal, it is the analog (or complete) signal and it's problems have be open to change and evolution for all 131 years.
Analog has evolved, it's better than it's ever been and although digital has evolved a great deal, it cannot escape the format that's required by law to conform to so it plays in ALL Red Book capable machines.
As for the future, I agree with the digital guys that digital is here to stay and also believe that digital could surpass analog. The problem is, the music business is run by marketing people that don't give a damn about what's the best quality, they want what's easy to package, has the fewest returns, costs the least to ship and offers the highest possible profit.
When you look at Apple, now surpassing even WalMart in music sales with MP3 downloads by the hundreds of millions of dollars, do you really think the guys in the music business care about audiophiles? We represent no market at all.
So basically we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Digital masters are superb and analog masters are superb. Which are better? Probably depends on the engineer and the equipment.
But from EITHER master, what is offered to the public is very limited. A direct conversion from digital to analog at the studio and an LP capable of delivering a good percentage of what was on the tape.
Or, a mixed down, degraded CD with sampling rate that should have been discarded years ago. If CD had been upgraded to match what's on the master tape, I would not be on this forum making these comments.
I hope I live long enough to see REAL PROGRESS with high rez digital. Until then, it's LP for me as the ultimate source (omitting my master analog tapes, but that's another discussion). |
Digital has improved, yes, but only the very highest quality equipment, I would say at a minimum cost of at least $50,000, can even begin to be spoken of in the same conversation, sound-quality wise, as a properly set-up vinyl rig So which $50,000+ CD players have you heard and would recommend as a minimum to purchase? Can you rank the best ones between $50,000 and $250,000? How about in the $250,000 category and up to $1 million? Or are you playing an Edward Lear game of absudity? |
Seems simple enough. Obviously the entertainment industry, broadly speaking, has concentrated most of their research on video, not audio. They make much more money off of film than music. Any audiophile who is concerned with the progress of home theater systems knows this painfully well. The industry has always chosen formats much more suited to video, and audio has lagged far behind. In fact, they just did it again, as anyone who has been following all that mess knows.
Speaking of cameras, the same debate does still exist among professional photographers. Many like the convenience and speed of digital, and will take a digital camera on their first trip to a site and take literally hundreds of pictures, sorting through them later to figure out their perfect shot or shots. They will then take what they call their "real" camera on a subsequent trip to the site, and concentrate on the shot or shots they actually want to sell, and this is the one that is actually printed in your magazines, books, catalogues, brochures, what have you. I have a cousin who does that, and as recently as this summer was saying that that is still how all of the best professional photographers work. In this way, they get the best of both worlds, and save alot of time and precious film. Since digital video is so far ahead of digital audio though, this is much more of a real debate (amongst the pros, I mean). As I said before, very few professional performing musicians will argue that the best digital sound reproduction has surpassed analog. Unfortunately, we aren't the ones making the decisions in the industry. Profit rules - that's the American way. |
Learsfool,
How is it that good digital pictures (better than analog/film many would say) can be had with the latest digital cameras for just a couple of hundred dollars but it still costs 10s of thousands to get digital audio right?
I know they are two different things technically, but economically, something just doesn't seem to add up here to me. |
And the LPs are made from digital master - that's funny... |
Tomcy6 - you are correct, there are a great many different perceptions out there in the audiophile world. My well-trained ears remark was meant to be much more specific to professional performing musicians. And yes, we are unfortunately most definitely a very tiny minority. However, I do not mean to imply that only professionals have or can have trained ears. I am actually trained in ear-training, and have helped many people in this respect. I just wish that alot more folks who call themselves audiophiles would actually use their ears, instead of quoting engineers and reciting specs and numbers. There is way too much love of technology in this hobby, and not nearly enough love for music, which is the reason the hobby exists.
The only other thing I would add is that your comment that most people can't afford a vinyl rig good enough to rival digital is sadly mistaken. It is very much the other way around. Digital has improved, yes, but only the very highest quality equipment, I would say at a minimum cost of at least $50,000, can even begin to be spoken of in the same conversation, sound-quality wise, as a properly set-up vinyl rig costing in the neighborhood of $2500. This will eventually change, of course, as music server technology is further developed (the direction digital is clearly headed in), but the sound quality of that technology is still far behind the best digital can offer. It will be a very long time yet before the sound quality catches up to the technology, and then another very long time before the price becomes affordable for most of us. |
Of course - I was only joking. |
Yes, absolutely.
Assuming the sound produced during playback is not exactly the same as what was played live (ie never 100% perfect).
The original signal was transformed to some extent during recording and playback. What happened to account for the difference? Was the original sound not distorted to some extent?
|
" If it ain't real, it's distorted" - really? I didn't know that. Are you serious? |
If it ain't real, it's distorted.
Choose your poison.....
...and don't introduce too much noise along the way..... |
" LPs are made from digital recording last 20 years - how it can be better than its origin"
One might play signal processing tricks to achieve a certain sound but your right, it can't be better in the sense that information lost cannot be regained.
However, I'm finding that the vinyl LPs that I would have most difficulty parting with are those produced for the most part in the 50s and sixties. There was a lot of attention paid to making good recordings in many cases in those days before, as with most things, economics watered everything down.
However, I would consider transferring say an early 60's vintage RCA Living Stereo or Mercury Living Presence recording to digital CD format even, and I would not expect to loose much if anything.
There is no doubt in my mind that digital can and will surpass older techniques increasingly over time. It already does in many cases when apples/apples comparing two products in each category. There are other cases where the reverse is true, so generalized statements regarding "which is better" is again meaningless to me. They both work well today when done right and also both can sound like crap when done wrong.
My opinion regarding the original question posed is:
It already does in more cases than not. |
Muralmanl - I'm not saying that oversampling is better. It's just a matter of taste. Class D like Icepower modulator is pretty much sigma-delta as much as I can understand Karsten Nielsen doctorate work. |
Kijanki, you just can't compare the sampling circuits of OS CDP's and class D. I have both. Every digital filtered CDP tried in this system failed miserably, including modified state of the art SACD players. All suffered from the same tightening of the stage, truncated decay, and lack of natural sonics. My NOS DAC is frightfully better. All witnesses concurred. One fellow , who witnessed his Modright Sony SACD's pinned by my humble DAC, went right out and bought an AMC CD-77 with variable filtering on the fly. |
Learsfool, lets just say that *you* prefer the distortion created by Lps. I have read in the audiophile press many articles and interviews by people with well trained ears who find listening to digital to be as enjoyable as listening to vinyl. Your personal tastes are absolutely valid but you are speaking for a small minority of a small minority.
In addition, there are many albums that just about everyone agrees sound better in digital than on Lp.
Many people don't have the cash or the time to put together and maintain a sophisticated analog rig that trumps digital at every turn. These people love music and the enjoyment they get from digital is valid too.
The high-end would be dead without digital. The numbers don't lie. We need to attract more people to our passion, not push them away. |
Muralmanl - pretty much everything is changing to oversamling (for better or worse). Analog Devices dropped almost all non-oversampling DACs, Class D amps are the same thing as sigma-delta modulator, SACD is oversampled recording and DDS studios started using for recording is like 4 channel SACD. I got first CD recorded from DDS and sound is beyond believe. |
Mapman - we're not talkin about comparing CD to vinyl. I just reacted to statement that digital will never rival analog. LPs are made from digital recording last 20 years - how it can be better than its origin? I has to go from digital to analog thru the DAC and in addition thru LP, pickup, RIAA preamp. How LP can improve sound of original master tape I don't know. LP is pretty much dead - (about 1 million record total sold last year) and nothing new on the horizon. How anybody can know for certain that LP will never be surpassed by digital? The word "denial" comes to mind. As I said we're not talking about 44kHz CDs. |
"Those of us who have open ears are the ones keeping analog alive"
Assuming we're talking about vinyl specifically, actually I think it is those of use with large existing record collections and those shopping for used vinyl that is keeping the equipment manufacturers alive at least.
It is nice to see a few new pressings in some of the stores these days though. |
I can't stand CD players, save for the few non-oversamplers out there. They sound beautiful and natural. On the other hand, I will never suffer those vinyl anxiety fits ever again. |
I like vinyl and digital.
I would agree that analog is more mature today than digital (its been a round a lot longer). But it also ain't going anywhere new at this point. It is what it is and is ever going to be anything much more. That's jut the reality of things for better or for worse.
I've done specific a/b tests between vinyl and CD releases of the same title (a couple of reviews posted here on Agon as well). I've found subtle differences both ways that might affect preference either way in specific cases.
Each recording had limitations compared to the ideal in that I have never heard a perfect recording. I suppose any limitation short of lifelike can be considered distortion. Noise was not an issue in any case. Signal in all cases far exceeded any noise.
Granted these were pop/rock titles, which are less demanding. I agree that large scale classical works on CD may typically lag behind their vinyl brethren in regards to being completely satisfying.
But I don't associate "soul" with classical music in general. For titles more in the "soul" genre, CDs generally work fine. |
Kijanki, your last couple of posts are simply inaccurate. Analog was not made from some digital master tape, except in the last 20 years or so, and as I said before, some of it is still not. Digital recording technology did not even exist before the very late 70's, and I don't think it was commercially available until 79, though I don't know the exact date. And again, the amount of distortion, in either medium, is not small. And in the digital medium, it occurs at much more musically objectionable frequencies, which cannot be helped, no matter how much better the medium gets. I am not talking numbers here, I am talking in terms of the audible difference to the human auditory system, which is much more sophisticated than any machine yet invented. In respect to it's resolution of harmonic overtones produced by the voice and other acoustic instruments in particular, analog is much closer to the sound of these instruments. Which is why von Karajan later retracted that statement, which was made in the early days of digital when it was hoped that this harmonic distortion problem could be solved. When so-called sound engineers try to "prove" otherwise, you can be sure they are crunching numbers instead of using their ears. Those are the same engineers that maintain that there is no audible difference between two pieces of equipment with the exact same specs. Most audiophiles actually use their ears, and know otherwise. This is getting us into the classic subjectivist vs. objectivist debate. I repeat - no one I know who has ever heard the same recording on the same system has ever preferred the digital to the analog. There are many fine recordings one can use to test this - my brother's favorite is the Reiner/Chicago Symphony recording of the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra. |
Chris - you are probably right. It is impression and not absolute numbers. My Benchmark DAC plays bit games increasing resolution to 24-bit and noise floor to -140dB. Impressions can often be misleading. Sound with small amount of harmonic distortion is "lively" and "dynamic" while absolutely pure sound is clinical and sterile. Having very little exposure to high quality audio I look at it from the practical perspective. Digital Master tape feeding DAC driving my amp has to sound better than the same digital tape feeding DAC that drives micro lathe machine to create LP master then pressing LP then pickup/tonearm, RIAA preamp then my amp. Original master tape has to sound purest because is original and LP is derived from it with a loss of quality. Therefore argument that digital will never rival analog is hard to understand. Not liking CD media with its 44kHz carrier limitation is another story.
Herbert von Karajan said once that digital recording surpasses everything we know so far. |
Kijanki, I've heard many times audiophiles/phonophiles proclaiming that LP has superior dynamics compared to CD. What is the absolute dynamic range of CD? 90dB? LP's have dynamic range of about 50dB (or less). But I think what those audiophiles who claim that LP has better dynamics than CD really mean is that LP has subjectively better dynamic contrasts than CD, especially in the critical midrange. Probably it has to do with the rise time of cartridges, which is "faster" than that of CD. Of course this is just speculation from a non-techie. What do you think?
Chris |
Learsfool - I was just responding to your statement that digital will never rival analog. Music is recorded in digital (recently in DDS) not for convenience but for the sound. Analog is delivered from digital tapes and since extra element in the chain cannot improve sound in fact destroys purity of the original digital information. Studio quality equipment will be available at home in 5 or 10 years but analog will never improve - nobody will design newer standard of the LP - not enough customers. I don't know how you define dynamic range but LP does not even come close to 24 bit digital recording with it's poor S/N.
Again you have to realize that analog reproduction (LP) in not an improvement of the digital master tape it was derived from. As I said analog already lost to digital and it will loose even more when Wide 4 channel DDS will be in every home. In my opinion CDs will eventually disappear replaced by 24bit/192kHz (or better) downloads. You might be even able one day to dial-in sound simulation of the LP player (adding rumble, crosstalk, hiss, bloom, wooly bass, pops, and coloration). |
Kijanki, if you are speaking of new recordings, just about all are digitally recorded in the first place. Almost no one does analog recording anymore - digital is so much cheaper, is far easier to edit, and can be done with much less equipment. However, if you are speaking of re-releases, as I think you were, many "audiophile" re-releases of older recordings made in analog are remastered from the original analog tapes, though there are of course digital ones as well.
Many of those who say that digital surpasses analog in sound quality are those who are listening only superficially, and are too caught up in surface noise (and yes, I include many people that call themselves audiophiles in that group). Those of us who truly listen to music with well-trained ears know better. Digital simply does not have the sheer dynamic range of analog, nor does it recreate the sense of the original recording space nearly as much, in terms of soundstaging, imaging, air, bloom, etc. Also, again because of the different type of distortion and the frequency at which this distortion occurs, it does not resolve instrumental or vocal timbres nearly as well - they don't have the body and breadth and complexity they do in analog. All of these things add up - digital simply does not sound as alive and real as analog does, and so it cannot catch the soul of music in the same way, as the original poster put it.
Is digital reproduction improving as resolution gets better? Yes. Is it more convenient? Yes. I am not arguing that it is "done wrong," as someone suggested. And I am not arguing that it is obviously the way of the future. But that doesn't mean that it is therefore better. It means that it is cheaper, more convenient, and sounds "good enough" for most. Audiophiles are an extremely small percentage of the market, lest anyone forget. Because of the inherent types of distortion, no matter how good it gets in the future, digitally reproduced sound will never rival a good, properly set-up analog rig (I do not argue that it certainly rivals bad or improperly set up rigs). This is easily heard by direct comparison of the same recording on the same system, and you would find very few professional musicians who disagree. Not one person I have ever done this type of demonstration for, professional or otherwise, has ever preferred the digital recording to the analog. It is not a question of having an open mind, Mapman, it is a question of having open ears. Those of us who have open ears are the ones keeping analog alive. |
Shadorne - I recommend American Players Theatre in Spring Green Wisconsin. They play from original text on the hill in the forest (not Burnham Woods though but close).
My friend works for large recording studio. All analog (Apex) recorders were removed. He remembers good all times when they had to rewind (thousands of) tapes constantly (Few times a year each tape) otherwise it was copying itself from turn to turn (layer to layer) - I remember hearing this effect on some older LPs (in silence after loud passage). It was more of the ghost than soul of music. |
Fear not... till Burnham Wood doth come to Dunsinane...
More seriously...if this thread keeps going...how long will it be before the complete works of Shaespeare are typed? |
Learsfool - Perhaps it was asked before, but don't they press some (or most) of the new LPs from digital master tapes? You said that "digital will never rival analog" - digital already won, seems to me. |
" I suggest that everyone keep an open mind on digital and get ready for high-res digital downloads"
Hard to do when someone is convinced the medium is inherently flawed, which it isn't......
Personally, I'm ready to move forward and lay my fond memories of analog systems of the past to rest. In this case, truly the best is yet to come.
I just need a nice sized flat panel monitor so I can easily read about what I'm listening too, just like in the good old days of 33 1/3 lps. Only now, I will learn more as well because I am not limited to the space available with album packaging for content (let's not even talk about CD packaging though, the small size and packaging truly is the pits from a graphics design perspective). |
Analog only lovers are going to have to face the fact that maybe digital will never capture the soul of music for themselves but for many people digital already surpasses the sound quality of vinyl and it will surpass it for most people very soon.
I have read many reviews and threads where dedicated vinyl lovers have found digital players that they enjoy as much as their vinyl gear. This will never happen for Michael Fremer or for some on this forum, but you have to realize that you are a very small but vocal minority.
I have already mentioned a few of times on these threads that according to the RIAA and Nielsen Soundscan, about one million new vinyl albums were sold last year. That is just not a lot of people buying a lot of vinyl.
Digital sound is improving rapidly and the learning curve on how to make digital sound great is about to go parabolic. I suggest that everyone keep an open mind on digital and get ready for high-res digital downloads. |
There is nothing inherently problematic or wrong with digital today, even in the cases of CD and broadband internet. There are increasingly more cases everyday where it is done right rather than wrong at a cost most can afford.
Also, digital processing options add tremendous flexibility regarding the nature of the resulting sound, based on personal preference.
Analog sounds great too when done right but the medium is inherently limited as a whole compared to digital which is why its future is limited and digital's is not. |
Both digital and analog have distortion. Neither will truly compare with live music. That said, there is a big difference between the distortion caused by analog, and that caused by digital. To grossly summarize it, there is actually more distortion in analog, as digital fans are fond of pointing out. However, the distortion is almost entirely at quite low frequencies. The distortion in digital, though much less, is still MUCH more musically objectionable, as it takes place at higher frequencies, and is much more audible all of the time. As some have said, advances have been made in the quality of digital reproduction; however, this fundamental distortion of the frequencies that are the most used in music cannot be helped, and that is why despite the advances in resolution, etc., digital will never really rival analog. Close, maybe, but definitely no cigar. |
I did not think older CD players got the sould of music, but they are doing better lately. I think Simaudio Andromeda does (maybe not as good as TT), and some others I am sure depending on system. It also depends on what musical characteristics you like (insturments sound somewhat real, somewhat real dynamics, etc).
To me the soul of music depends a little on my mood too. Sometimes I am in the mood, other times no.
Thanks
Bill |
Tbg, I see you have a very resolving system. I am not anti-digital, as I just recently bought 180 cd's, and I feel the damage that digital did to music was mostly done in the past. The only Halcyonic isolator I could find costs $7,500(their headquarters is less than 20 miles from me.). I could imagine that the Halcyonic lowers the noise floor. My Lessloss pc's lowered the noise floor, but I still have reservations about digital. Do you hear a background to digital that isn't natural? Also, do you feel as relaxed after listening to digital as you do after listening to analog(We used to do muscle testing that showed that digital weakened your muscles.)? Shadorne, I will go into my live versus recorded sessions with an open mind, but will revisit what you said after they are over. |
Analog tapes have a from of distortion/compression that is very pleasing - many pros still prefer it. Perhaps the close miked approach to music recording means that analog tape is the optimum medium for taking the sting or harshness out of the music. |
Mmakshak, I think the difference between the finest vinyl and digital has closed greatly in the last five years with better dacs and teflon output caps as well as going to read until right hard drives as a digital source. Finally, I have found the finest of isolation, Halcyonics, drives both to their highest levels yet.
I still suspect that neither will ever equal quality reel to reel tapes at close to the originals.
I also believe that neither digital nor vinyl will closely approach live with the speakers and the amplifiers being the major reason for this failure.
With every improvement I have made to pursue realism, I still hear a difference between vinyl and digital. Vinyl now has virtually no surface noise, thanks largely to the Halcyonics and the use of the Walker Audio Prelude four step cleaner. The bass has location and no boom or overhang. Digital has much the same character thanks to no errors in reading the digital information and the clarity of teflon caps. Having the dac well isolated on the Halcyonics also makes a major improvement.
Finally, my new H-Cat amp is like no other I have heard and make both live, but that is another thread. |
I just recently got my analog(Linn Sondek, Ekos, nude Archiv, Lingo, Mana table, Lehmann Black Cube SE) going. It seems to me that if you listen deeply, digital has an end, or something, to the sound(dither?), and analog doesn't. With analog, all you have is the instrument sound, and nothing else. Now, I have heard digital recordings of analog where it seems there is no difference(from Alex of APL), but I no longer have access to these. I will be going to BAAS's session this month where we will compare live versus recorded(both analog and digital). Cookie, who owns her own recording studio and is hosting this session, claims that you have to record to 3 1/2 inch analog tape to get proper sound. I don't know if I've stated this before, but I have the following theory: With analog, you have the iron(?) particles lining up(or changing)due to music. And with digital, you have the recording mechanism imposing(you fit into my one's and zero's-or else..) itself on the music. Maybe that's the difference? |
Wadia 581se seems good to me. |
That would be something to see, Guidocorona! It would have to be all silver, with pebbles placed at appropriate locations. |
Makk, I hope to see before long an audiophile-grade version of the Rife machine offered by Machina Dynamica. |
Mapmann, I start my morning with the "What's Going On" cd(issued 2003). Remember, that was recorded in analog originally. I do think that people recognize there is something too clinical with digital. Guidocorona, the AMA is a political organization, and is dedicated to protecting MD's interests(Although, I read something recently about the AMA selling those interests to the insurance companies.). Actually, the head of the AMA tried to buy the original Rife Machine. Has anyone heard the HRx system from Reference Recordings(as mentioned in the recent issue of Absolute Sound)? |
