Dear @elliottbnewcombjr : In my post the reference to you was only because you posted that analog/LP is " an unbroken ribbon and digital is an assembled chain " and the facts/what I explained says that LP is an assembled chain and worst than the digital medium.
In that post I said that each one of us preferences are non-questionable are out of question.
Against all the facts I explained in that post your preferences, the other gentleman preferences and my preferences are only that " preferences " and can’t change in anyway those facts and the main fact says: digital has quality superiority over LP and was already explained.
That we love the worst medium and even " die for " ( LP ) does not change the facts and only says that that is what we like it because it’s what we are accustom to, it’s our music reference instead that our reference be LIVE MUSIC seated at nearfield position.
Any one of you can have experiences of live music at nearfield position and you will find out that does not exist almost nothing of the LP main characteristics we love as: warm, sweetnees, relaxed and the like and you will learn that real music has a natural brigthness, agressive, extremely powerful and dynamic, not very well defined soundstage and could be even with some harsness.
We have to remember that recording microphones are " seated " at nearfield position and that’s what pick-up, then why we want that warm or sweetness and the like that just does not exist in the reality. Yes we like the " ilusion " .
Some one of you posted: "" analog is nature, what else would people be searching for. """
well I learned that the last link between the ears and brain is an Analog to Digital Converter and I posted from where came that lesson.
What happens with LP vs digital is exactly the same when we discuss tube vs solid state, here what is totally out of reality is the tube technology but for some of us is what we are accustom to and for that reason is what we like even that puts us faraway from the recording when solid state puts us nearer to the recording but this overall subject is for other dedicated thread.
Now, if any one of us LP lovers ( as me. ) fine tune our room/system for digital ( including all the ones that " hate " digital. ) a great side reward is that after the room/system digital fine tunning the LP experiences will be better than ever.
Please don’t say NO just try it and fine tune your room/system till you can listen digital in a " decent " way. That makes a quality paramount differences for the better always and will makes that LP shines as never before ! !
R.
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If you can do a comparison you'll hear the difference between an analog & digital rig. No need to take anybody's word for anything. Iftheclicks & pops don't bother you, you'll get more of everything good sonically. DO NOT take my word for it, listen for yourself. I have both. In terms of digital, I've a Merdian 808. Any 800 series Meridian - go for at least a mark IV (or any later replacements) you can find used will have the lack of harshness (& plenty of resolution) you're after. It still won't have all the resolution & more of a decent analog rig but it''ll be plenty good (interconnect & power cables are important, however). That is an absolute guarantee, but again take my word for none of it. Listen for yourself & all will be more than clear.
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I’ll chime in. The best early CD player which sounded analog-like was a Kyocera 410 from 1984. After that, it took me until 2006 to achieve analog-like sound (sometimes the CD is better, sometimes the LP) and that was the first version of the EAR Acute with NOS pair of 6DJ8s. I’ve since heard some great DACs and CD players which extract what’s on the CD. Historic CDs, especially acoustic 78s that have been remastered correctly are superior sounding and easier to hear than the original 78s and LP reincarnations.
Analog-like is the standard because we hear in the analog realm. To sound analog-like, many posters summon up the sound of an analog source, turntable or R2R. Digital and CDs can sound analog-like or even like an analog source given the proper recording and mastering.
One thing I do to have repeatable, great CD sound is using a Walker Talisman (pair of bonded magnets) to neutralize the CD (and LP) magnetism, especially due to spinning at high speed. It's so quick and easy. I've used the demag. machines but they were not as successful or easy to use as the Talisman.
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geoffkait wrote "
Sorry, not buyin’ it. Digital is a pale facsimile of what it should be. I don’t even have to compare it to analog. Unless you’re extremely motivated and pugnacious you simply can’t extract all of the data on the CD. No way, Jose! And if you don’t do anything at all the best you can expect is about 50% of what’s actually on the CD. And that’s if you’re lucky. Heck, the humble cassette on a Sony Walkman has more life, sweetness and air than a CD ever thought of having. So give me a break! Yes, I know what you’re thinking, “but my CDs sound fabulous!”
Something is wrong with geoffkait. My professional digital recordings and that of my friends rival R2R. Prerecorded cassettes sound like dung compared to my beautifully remastered CDs. I love LPs and I love CDs. As a part-time recording engineer, I have experience with 40 years of recording equipment. 1000s of my CDs (mostly classical, jazz and early pop) are fantastic sounding and musically involving. The mastering engineers took great care in making the CDs or were lucky that the mastertapes used for the LPs were sufficiently good to do a straight transfer.
There must be something wrong with geoffkait. Compressed Rock CDs do sound bad, but so did many of the LPs and cassettes made from bad mastering. |
fleschler,
Totally agree with your last sentence. Just listen to some of the Rock/Pop groups of the mid seventies. Compression was in (over) abundance back then. Many recording companies were too busy trying to make those recordings sound good over your car speaker. |
mr_m1 Exactly true. Engineering for car speakers, not audiophiles (sometimes known as music lovers). |
Will digital ever sound like analog.... no. why.... because it's not analog. |
mr_m
fleschler, Totally agree with your last sentence. Just listen to some of the Rock/Pop groups of the mid seventies. Compression was in (over) abundance back then. Many recording companies were too busy trying to make those recordings sound good over your car speaker. >>>>>Huh? Compression is a relatively recent phenomenon, the truly egregious compression started in the late 90s and is so bad today that you can see many new recordings and re-issues are “flat-lined” Dynamic Range wise, as shown on the dynamic range database. Also, car speakers have very little to do with why records and CDs are compressed. The mid seventies was actually a period of high dynamic range, as were the eighties and most of the nineties. |
Dear @john1 : I never take or took the word of other to make my statements, always are first hand experiences.
The link I posted was only as an example of an analog/LP lover that knows digital is just great !. Got it?
R. |
Dear @fleschler : """ we hear in the analog-realm.... ", yes that's what we/I think till I read/learned that we have an ADC next highligths about but you can read the whole article there: """
the ear. This small organ has quite a few surprises in store for us. We' see that it's literally crammed with equalisers and dynamic compressors, including a multi‑band one. It even includes an extremely efficient filter bank, as well as a highly sophisticated analogue‑to‑digital converter. The Inner Ear: Multi‑band Compression, Pitch Tracking & ADCThere are two kinds of hair cells. The outer hair cells are the actual receptors. When the tectorial membrane moves, so does the hair on the the outer cells. This movement is then encoded into electrical digital signals and goes to the brain through the cochlear nerve. With the hair cells, we come to the end of the audio path inside the ear. Hair cells are neurons, and the purpose of the outer hair cells is to convert the mechanical vibrations that come from their cilia into nerve signals. Such signals are binary (all or nothing), and seem to be completely decorrelated from the analogue signals to which they correspond. In other words, they're digital signals, and the inner hair cells are analogue‑to‑digital converters. """ Btw, @tzh21y , yes and agree with your post. Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS, R. |
I hated digital when I owned bad dacs (for me they were all bad ,too digital, harsh, piercing highs even when they were not piercing they were like craking chalk on a board even subtly like that sometines etc)…. I owned someday a NOS dac with a minimalistic design and that was game over for me... This incredible dac was too low cost for being mass convincing... (starting point systems dac)The sound was anything but not digital...Organic and natural...Viva digital life... |
Wow the record side is over already ! I haven’t finished reading the album. That’s analog for ya.
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The most critical part of digital playback is ANALOG - the laser reading the data part. AND it’s the part that messes everything up. Ironic, ain’t it? And you can never recover. Boo boo! 😩
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I agree that since 1995, compression is one of the three greatest causes of bad/poor quality recorded music. However, in the 1970s-1980s, pop/rock was often compressed on the finished product. I have plenty of examples where the Pink Island British pressings are fantastic and the U.S. pressings were crappy sounding. How about the Beatles U.S. versus British pressings. My British pressings sound really dynamic, tonally rich and listenable. My Capitol pressings often are compressed, bright, hashy and noisy. Not very fun to listen to. I had at least 100 classical music cassettes from that period and they sounded dynamically compressed and generally awful sounding compared to the LPs (and not just U.S. but from Philips and DGG). CDs, once I could play them better in the mid-2000s, obliterated the same recordings on cassette. |
There are two parts to getting analog sound from digital. It's not hard. Even I did it.
First is the source. The second is a DAC into the Amp (So many good Dac's out there now). I agree a DAC need not cost a much as a car new or used. As others have wisely said, wait until next week. These days DACs are falling out of trees.
Many folks crave analog sound. A good DAC can deliver that.
I get a lot of music from high res files from Qobuz. That matters. Depth is depth.
I now use a Lumen T2 with a built-in DAC that goes to my tube set up. I also use an ungraded power supply with the Lumin. It doesn't sound at all "digital" nor would I put up with that. I'm a warm sound set up type.
A friend and I listened to John Coltrane's "Theme For Ernie" (SoulTrane Album) and "Blue rondo a la turk" (end drum roll is so system telling) first on his fine vinyl only system in his sanctified listening room and then on my set up (PLuna HP/KT120's..tweaked pre amp tubes…quality connects…yah dah yah dah yah dah) and Mr Vinyl only was astounded. As was the guy over last night who we finally had to say good night to again and again before he got the hint. He did sample King Sunny Adé, and that was nice to hear again.
To answer your question with out battling over vinyl verses digital: In a nut shell, analog sound from digital is here (in the beginning it sure wasn't)....your set up...room..cabling...all will affect your system's sound. Duh. Simply great files washed in a great DAC is stunning as is a great pressing on a great (read $$$) vinyl set up.
All this passion here is great. I read for a long time before daring to jump in. The overwhelming advice time and time again is if you like something then that's great. Duh again. Additionally gleaned is that so much is system/room dependent that results vary.
I suspect at heart there are a lot of nameless, faceless tinkerers in this august forum. Everyone is proud of their babies. And they are all beautiful.
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I am not trying to rain on anybody’s parade but the problem with the “DAC makes everything better” theory is that, as I recently opined, the problems are primarily in the laser-read process and caused by not only seismic vibration but mechanical and acoustic vibration’s effects on the CD AND the inherent vibration of the disc itself PLUS the scattered background laser light gets into the photodetector where it’s mistaken for real reflected signal. These problems have existed in CD players ever since they were a gleam in some engineer’s eye. 👁 Once these problems occur there’s no going back, the corrupted data gets transmitted to the DAC, errors and all.
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Is this laser-reading problem something that has been studied and corroborated? Is this a problem if the data is read from a hard drive or flash drive? im no electronic engineer but can't they make the laser processor more specific and less sensitive to avoid the misreads? |
Dear @fleschler : I own all the UK and Capitol Beatles LPs and you are rigth where the Capitol are not listenable.
@geoffkait even if what you said is true with today DACs the souns is really good and this is what we are talking about.
R. |
Dear @jaferd and friends:Other advantage for digital and disadvantage for LP is that as everything in digital ( celphones, computers, audio, etc. ) " almost every day " are new advances in the overall digital technology and seems that that digital trend is endless.
In the other side LP has not that kind of development, as a fact the LP " technology " is steady for many years now: just stop it, there are nothing really new on cartridges, TTs, tonearms or the LP it self. Only tiny tiny refiniments that at the end is more of the same. Has no future as true up-grades/up-dates like digital.
For years the best recordings came from D2D recordings ( Sheffield Labs or M&K. ) or those " one side only " Clarity Recordings and Stereophile ones or the DMM by Stockfish or the vintage MoFi UHQR or even the digital LPs from the late 70's early 80's like Telarc or Delos or Denon PCM that 70%-80% of them performs really good and not easy to detect are digital recordings and when digital was just in the begining.
I own several titles of all those kind of recordings that are in a different league that any other LPs.
The last D2D samples I bought came from Acoustic Sounds and are nothing special the old ones named were a lot better recordings.
Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.
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jaferd OP
Is this laser-reading problem something that has been studied and corroborated? Is this a problem if the data is read from a hard drive or flash drive? im no electronic engineer but can’t they make the laser processor more specific and less sensitive to avoid the misreads? >>>>The laser-reading problem has been discussed before but usually in regards to tracking and the servo tracking mechanism, which apparently stalls out and becomes ineffective under duress, which is IMHO almost all the time since the CD flutters and vibrates during play for a variety of reasons. I don’t think much has been done with regards to scattered background with the exception of the Green Pen. I have a product that absorbs infrared (invisible) scattered light, which is the only such product extant. Vibration has obviously been studied more, e.g., vibration isolation and damping discs, etc. |
I think you can get really nice sound from both vinyl and digital sources, so yes, it certainly is worth pursuing the best sound you can afford/get from digital. There are many recordings that I have on LP that sound better than the digital version, but, I suspect that has more to do with the mastering and deterioration of the original analogue tape masters than it has to do with inherent differences in the recording medium. I say this because there are also many digital remasters that I have that DO sound very good. I also have many digital remasters that sound substantially better than my vinyl original releases, probably because the re-mastering was superior to the original mastering for vinyl production (1970's DG classical recordings usually sound better in the digital versions).
Given that very little of current classical recordings ever come out on vinyl (same with current jazz), and given that most current popular recordings are originally done digitally even if they are also issued on vinyl, and given that a vast catalog of older recordings is available digitally and easier to find in that form than the analogue originals (in good shape anyway), it makes sense to actually make good digital playback a priority.
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For a truly vinyl sound, run the signal through tubes and a old DBX set to compress for recording. TeeHee Then record it with a tic and pop emulator. LOL? |
I enjoy both digital and vinyl playback of my music. No reason why one can't enjoy both. |
