Why does vinyl still exist?

[tino]

"The purpose of any discussion is to resolves issues, regardless of whether they are between Governments, Trade Unions and Management or just individualson a message board, so we should not back away from this but try to resolveit because I believe it is fundamental."

 

Ashley, I think you have missed the point here. There is nothing to resolve. You are not going to convince those out there that prefer the sound of vinyl, in the same way I won't convince you that a CD sounds better than a compressed digital file - even though the facts say it does. The question was not "which is technically better". It was "why does vinyl still exist?"

 

And I think it's very clear that the answer to that is simply, vinyl still exists BECAUSE, TO SOME PEOPLE'S EARS, IT SOUNDS BETTER, therefore they keep buying it. Whether this is due to a skilled technician adjusting the original sound so it's more impressive, or because of any of the "figures", it exists because they (including me) like it.

 

(Oh, and also the DJ market of course, but I imagine demand there is as much, if not more, to do with tactile reasons as sound)

 

[tino]

I apologise Peter, but whislt I think I understand some of your latest post, I struggle a little with your English - though I must say you do much better than I would in any other language !!

 

Could you clarify the following please?

 

1. What are you saying is technically better, Vinyl or Digital ??

 

2 Is an oversampling DAC better (lower distortion) than one which does not over-sample ?

 

3 In summary, what did your graphs prove yesterday ?

 

4 You mention the "latest post from djp". Is this something we can read ??

 

Thanks in advance.

Martin

 

[tfarney]

Ash, Tino is right. There is nothing to resolve. If we just get to this:

 

"However, I'm a tube fan. Now that adds something to the sound, taking away any neutrality that was offered before. Therefore I prefer that added something. So, if there are peeps here who like that little something extra added to their final representation, then who am I to say that vinyl isn't the way to go for them or any other audio choice that they care to make for that matter." -- DavidJPetifor.

 

...there would be no animosity, and little to talk about, because it would all be little more than a declaration of preferences. Which might be a good thing. The other side of that, is that this is a computer audiophile forum. People often come here in the early stages of exploring this new wing of the hobby. Do we want them to look around, conclude that setting up a digital music server will be very complex, prohibitively expensive and, in the end, not sound as good as the old record player in the closet? Or do we want them to remember the sound of the old records compared to their CD player, and conclude that we are a bad source of information (probably the better of the two alternatives)?

 

Because that is exactly the idea they would get from reading the threads here about vinyl, analog, jitter, DACs, etc. if we allowed opinions, unsupported by facts, to be presented as facts, unchallenged by those of us who believe in the actual facts.

 

Your obstinate ass,

 

Tim Farney or whatever

 

[tino]

"Because that is exactly the idea they would get from reading the threads here about vinyl, analog, jitter, DACs, etc. if we allowed opinions, unsupported by facts, to be presented as facts, unchallenged by those of us who believe in the actual facts."

 

Or if those newcomers had any common sense they'd simply listen for themselves and come to their own conclusions - perhaps they will agree with the numbers, perhaps they won't. Hopefully they won't be influenced by them, and will chose what they enjoy the most........

 

 

 

[tfarney]

This is ideal, of course, Tino. But I don't know of any shop where you can walk in and compare DACs from $100 to $5,000, Media Monkey to iTunes, PC to Mac, various vinyl rigs to music servers, etc. Digital technology has shattered teh old price/performance assumptions; the global market and web shopping have made many more choices available to us, but they're available from afar. Newcomers can, indeed, listen for themselves, but they can't do it "simply." That's why, I suspect, they come to places like CA instead of just walking into a local store to compare and choose what they like.

 

Tim

 

[tino]

Good point Tim, that is clearly an issue.........

 

[PeterSt]

Funny, but it is just this that is left out of the equation rather explicitly. So :

 

Partly this is about the numbers (for those stupids taking those for granted, not projecting them on the whole chain (Ashley's very legit "amps may struggle over digital") and partly -I'd say more important- this is about the animosity[/b] vinyl has to many.

 

Earlier I referred to those annual "vinyl days" over here in Holland, and what I perceive from that is hundreds of people (watching them closely for a whole day long) working on a hobby which is vinyl and good turn tables by itself. Like model railroading could be such a hobby, despite you and me don't like it over computer simulation of the same.

 

Many, if not most of us, recall more younger days of turning over the LP at too few beautifully shining light on that black surface, looking at the individual tracks knowing what will kind of happen (because you can see where the volume gets louder etc.). Putting the arm at the beginning, or just not. Waking up at a dzzick dzzick dzzick dzzick.

Washing them with alcohol and the smell of that alone. Making them fresh and new and you bet you could hear it.

 

This is not a matter of the once per 3 posts "if you like that, fine, but know you are listening to crap". It is just not, because there is more to it.

Btw, I never recall something like putting in CDs except for cold clicks of the tray, of course opposed to getting out an LP from its cover.

 

Besides this kind of animosity, it is more easy to let sound vinyl good in general (!) than digital can. This is not much different from a good performing digital system with CDPlayer, and hopping over to PC playback. Chances are near 100% that you'll be very disappointed at first, just because it is more difficult to get it right. It doesn't mean, however, that it is not better in the end (or base :-).

 

We can lit candles we want during CD playback, litting them at vinyl playback is better. There's just more romance for those who ever did it.

 

It is obvious that these things can not be captured in figures.

It is good that people express things like this, because it just *is* a reason.

It would be nice if it even can be covered with other figures, which I tried.

 

If I have an XXHighEnd user who out of the blue declares that the latest version now comes so damn close to vinyl playback (the expression supported with the outlay of one of the best turntables existing) I'm not sure what to do with that, except for being disappointed a bit because I thought this was long behind us.

But I listen !

... and next I can reason out why this is : this person uses an OS DAC and now I believe him.

 

Please get me right. This is not about OS DACs or whatever ... it is about the technical explanation of something that can be shoveled under the carpet and dedicated to someone's ears or further equipment chain, followed by a "you fool !". To me there's always an explanation (maybe hard to find) for everything, and this includes people "stating" that vinyl is better - as long as the person seems to be serious about this hobby.

 

I think that those using the distortion figures from vinyl in order to state that digital is better must be very careful whether they're actually right.

Throw in a tube amp at listening to both sides, and then what do you have ?

Use a too slow amp for digital, and vinyl just *will* be better.

Use a too slow amp for an NOS DAC, and OS *will* be better.

 

This is far far more complicated than we are ready to admit. It requires miles of more context, and I mean the context of today. Tomorrow may change that.

 

[PeterSt]

I try with english, although, well ... sorry !

 

1. What are you saying is technically better, Vinyl or Digital ??

 

Digital and 16/44.1 is more than sufficient. But, non oversampling only.

 

2 Is an oversampling DAC better (lower distortion) than one which does not over-sample ?

 

So, yes. The problem is though, that distortion figures as measured by the official means, don't take the kind of (super) distortion into account I talk about.

 

Even more difficult (or implicitly misleading) it becomes, when you'd know that "square sound" creates aliasing, while "sine sound" does not. Again because of the means of measuring (all laid down in standards) this goes unnoticed. But it just is so.

If you put up a sine, record it back digitally (loopback) and look at the FFT, there will be a sine hence one spike of the whatever frequency the tone is set to.

Put up a square, and the FFT will show one big mess of harmonic distortion, which really is distortion because you will be looking at aliases only. Note that the (Nyquist) mirror is not only at 22050 (for 44100) but also at 0. Thus, there are mirrors from mirrors from mirrors, and while it is so that an individual mirror will die out after x reflexes, there are frequency points they add up (coincidentally 30 mirrors join at the same point).

 

I have proven that a 19Kxx (I forgot what it was exactly) square tone has such a coincidental meet of mirrors at 20Hz, and the exact same amplitute (= SPL) will come from it. So, have a 19KHz tone and it creates sub-low of the same SPL. Not nice ...

 

Why this apparently unrelated story ?

... because an OS DAC is just not able to produce these false "harmonics" to begin with. If no squares are output, no harmonics will emerge from that, and no Nyquist is involved. Careful, because this is partly only -> look at the 3000Hz picture, and you'll see that at that frequency the square is kind of preserved.

 

On a sidenote : the complete story is more complicated, because where I talk about setting up an e.g. 10KHz square wave tone which won't exist in real life really, the nature of digital itself incurs for the same, but now in a negative fashion. Thus, the 22050 Hz sine (!!) tone is a pure square just because there is not more resolution to break it down into a sine, no matter how much you'd want it. Now things flip over :

 

We feed the system with a pure sine at 22050 Hz, and what comes out ? a pure square. That is, with an NOS DAC it does. How much is the distortion ? let's say a 100 % again. But worse, because the harmonics of that square play a role too; a. they should not be there at all and b. they are mirrored back into the audible spectrum.

 

At this time you can already see that it is so much apples and oranges, and so many parameters are involved, that this can't be kept within one page of outlay.

But what it comes down to, is that while the OS DAC cannot preserve squarish sound (which is about dynamics) and has therefore already less distortion once you start looking at the output (always being sines), or look at the input and use sines only (official measurement), the NOS DAC presersves the squares and dynamics as they are, but immediately needs an anti aliasing filter when those squares are indeed fed to it.

 

Now feed the NOS DAC with sines (official measurement) and start looking at the ouput (no matter it is the same as the input) and what do you see ? harmonic distortion because the higher the frequency the higher the squares from digital preveil, up to 22050 which is an exact square.

 

This latter effect can be softened by upsampling, and you could say that the negative effects are half when the sample rate is doubled. In this case the pure square will be at 44100, and at 22050 the square from before (2 steps) now has 4 steps and is a little more sine like. It radiates half the harmonics from before.

 

Double the frequency again, and again the negative implications halve.

 

Do this 64 times and no harmonic distortion will be there anymore because all has become too much of a sine.

Sadly, the intended square sound of a well resined violin stick bearing so many complex harmonics, has become a sine as well.

 

3 In summary, what did your graphs prove yesterday ?

 

The above. :-)

No real squares will be on the CD, unless it is a recoding of a synthesizer and it was recorded without oversampling (same principle applies !). But, transients act exactly the same, and when you would look at the digital file in a graphical representation, you would see complete 90% angled amplitute rises for over tens of thousands of times per track over a quarter of the total voltage range. Letting alone that this can't be nature and one of the causes is a too low sample rate to tilt the slope a bit, it is just a fact that it is offered to the DAC just like that, and just like you see it on the most square picture.

Further principles don't change, and the OS DAC will perform the flattening again from the picture with the sine.

 

After all this, you now may understand better why a good "following" system is much tougher to let sound good. Those super steep transients are feed to the whole of the system, and theoretically a loudspeaker driver will be torn because of it. But luckily many things can't follow (your preamp ahead) and the end result ... well ... depends. Fill that in for yourself, because it can go in all directions (up to distortion of the loudspeaker, because everything ahead of it just *could* follow).

 

But is NOS worse because of the net results without caution ?

Or is vinyl better because of the net results without NEEDING caution ?

 

Vinyl physically cannot have the dynamics, and if it could during the production process the needle would break afterwards.

 

Does this make vinyl worse than NOS ?

YES.

 

Does this make vinyl worse ?

ehh ... NO. Not when compared to an oversampling DAC which destroys just everything to begin with.

 

As does vinyl itself.

 

As does NOT magnetic tape.

 

Peter

 

 

PS: with "djp" I referred to the post from today from DevidJPettifor

 

[John]

Thank you PeterSt for those last 2 posts. This kind of cogent presentation, finally advances the argument I feel. I am quite happy with my Cambridge 840 CDP but I still listen to vinyl 10 times more. I will try to get to listen to a good system with a low jitter source and a NOS DAC just to see if it finally peels back that last layer for me. Again, thanks for the time and effort in posting these. - John.

 

[BEEMB]

 

Peter,

 

Excellent reading and thanks for the time you've taken to post all of that. I'll not pretend to understand everything that you have written but your knowledge is certainly not something that anybody here would question.

 

Matt.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

"Farney, or whatever your name is,

You're now being an obstinant ass, usually found only in the worst places of AA.

I suggest you get past the idea that data indicate sound quality, always the bugaboo of immature audiophiles and/or folks with junk systems, or stop bothering people. And buy a good turntable and phono pre and try it for yourself.

Pikhoved."

 

Kristian - Consider this your last post here on Computer Audiophile. You and anyone coming from your IP address have now been banned from the site.

 

Note: I only repeated Kristian's comments here to keep my response closely associated with his words. Plus, I know Tim likely considered the source of these comments and laughed it off as another sophomoric forum user with nothing to add to the conversation.

 

 

[BEEMB]

 

Could this thread be closed...?!

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi BEEMB - I'll give everyone one last chance say a final word or two before closing this one up. I have faith the CA readers will agree to disagree and go on to another topic with an optimistic attitude. Wow, my glass is really full today :~)

 

[BEEMB]

 

Chris,

 

Sorry, it was a joke knowing that there'll be further posts. I guess I should have said "finished" ...

 

[audiozorro]

“Vinyl still exists BECAUSE, TO SOME PEOPLE'S EARS, IT SOUNDS BETTER, therefore they keep buying it. Whether this is due to a skilled technician adjusting the original sound so it's more impressive, or because of any of the "figures", it exists because they (including me) like it.”

 

I like tino’s clear and direct answer to the question asked of this thread. Of course I may be biased but I also like one of my earlier posts.

 

[“Unfortunately, the original post was not an honest question, but a bait or troll to get people into a debate of vinyl vs. digital. I happen to enjoy both vinyl and digital. My vinyl playback system happens to sound better than my digital playback system. On the other hand, my digital playback system is much more convenient than my vinyl playback system.

 

I think anyone following the CA recommendations for audiophile computer music servers will have an excellent front end for music playback. If your analog front end sounds better than the CA Recommended Music Server, good. If not, who cares except maybe for you and why should you care what anybody thinks, just enjoy the music. I am definitely enjoying the hell out of my “Audiophile Reference Music Server For A Song” along with many other recommendations I’ve picked up here.

 

One thing about digital and computer audio, the best is yet to come.”]

 

I am very happy that we are closing this thread and moving on to better things.

 

 

[wots]

All music is analog (A small exception being computer generated music).

 

All transducers are analog (Microphones and loudspeakers).

 

The conversion from analog to digital and then from digital to analog is avoided in an 'all analog' audio playback system. Distortion generated by converting the music waveforms into digital 1's and 0's and then converting back to a music waveform is avoided in an 'all analog' system.

 

Only an old-fashioned all analog audio system is pure.

 

 

 

[PeterSt]

If only this thread could have been closed before this post of mine (delete it if you like Chris).

 

I think this was the best post in the thread. And so obvious ...

Fun is, many things can be said as a response to this. BUT WE JUST SHOULD NOT.

 

Welcome wots !

 

 

[lapaix]

As one who has thousands of LPs and an excellent vinyl playback system, the answer to the question, "Why does vinyl still exist?" is obvious: because well-recorded vinyl sounds great on a good playback system. Only a handful of my CDs duplicate those in my vinyl collection, and they do not sound as good as their vinyl counterparts, both in my opinion and in the opinions of serious musicians who have listened to comparisons. Perhaps current SACDs and high resolution digital files are as good as vinyl; to my ear they are not better, only different. Of course is it a matter of taste, chacun au son goût, and I am by no means an expert. One thing that is completely unclear to me is why an A/D conversion of vinyl to 24/192 would sound better than the LP. I would think that any distortion that the distortion introduced by the mechanical process of making the LP would be replicated in the digital version. Also, I would think that Shannon's Law would guarantee loss of information in the A/D process. Going from the original analog master tape straight to digital might be a different story since the errors in cutting an LP might be greater than those introduced by the A/D conversion.

 

Macbook Pro â?' Digital (Weiss DAC2, or EMM labs CDSA), or Vinyl (Verdier Platine- SME V - Benz Micro Ebony LP - Einstein phone stage) â?' Viola Cadenza Preamp â?' Viola Symphony Amp â?' Piega C40s

 

 

[markr]

Whatever pleases you, tickles me plumb to death...... (no offense intended)......

 

THe horse that once lived at this thread has now been rendered to glue and dog food. Not goin' there.....

-markr

 

[TomS]

In my mind the answer to this question can´t be it sounds better or worse compared with digital formats. It depends on the digital resolution. I never heard a CD sounding as good as the same recording on vinyl. But in the meantime I heard some HD files, 96k and 192k, that sound really 'vinyl like' or better because there is no distortion and no noise.

A completely other thing I like with vinyl are the handling and the cover art. The virtual download is not really aesthetic.

 

Tom

 

[baxtus]

I have finally managed to read through this forum and very amusing it was.

 

One thing I do not believe anyone has mentioned, was that a great deal of vinyl was pressed "off-centre" which of course meant there were pitch problems with the music. It would not matter how good your turntable was, if the record spun eccentrically, there would be a pitch problem.

 

I will never forget being introduced to Leonard Cohen via his "Recent Songs" album a long time ago. Loved it from the first but I always thought that he could not sing in tune and wished he had tuned his guitar. Imagine my shock when I bought the CD and found that not only could Leonard sing in tune but his guitar also was in tune.

 

I was so lucky to see Leonard Cohen live a month or so ago and can confirm that he can indeed sing in tune!

 

)

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Baxtus - Oh so true. I love the little story to go along with your comment!

 

[Blu]

The following spectrograms show the analysis of a portion of a track from the Supertramp album "Crime of the Century".

 

http://www.channld.com/vinylanalysis1.html

 

One spectrogram shows that the CD copy (16/44.1 digital) cuts off frequency information at 22.5 kHz, while the 24/192 digital copy has frequency information up to 96 kHz. The vinyl copy has frequency information up to at least 96 kHz and maybe even above.

 

So like MP3's, with CD (16/44.1 digital) you are losing information.

Blu

 

[DavidJPettifor]

Blu wrote:

16/44.1 recordings cutoff at 22.5 kHz so you lose information

The following spectrograms show the analysis of a portion of a track from the Supertramp album "Crime of the Century".

 

http://www.channld.com/vinylanalysis1.html

 

One spectrogram shows that the CD copy (16/44.1 digital) cuts off frequency information at 22.5 kHz, while the 24/192 digital copy has frequency information up to 96 kHz. The vinyl copy has frequency information up to at least 96 kHz and maybe even above.

 

So like MP3's, with CD (16/44.1 digital) you are losing information.

 

Hmm...

 

With regards the above comment, I'd refer those reading this to a post made recently in another thread here on CA;

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Pure-Vinyl#comment-14307

 

--

djp

 

 

 

[jcbrum]

Quote Blu, " The vinyl copy has frequency information up to at least 96 kHz and maybe even above." endquote.

 

OR, ... Maybe it's spurious artifacts and distortion created by the antique recording equipment ???? which is spoiling the audible parts of the performance .... ??

 

Also, there is no parallel between MP3, and CD, and vinyl. It is merely misleading to try and draw one. The point of MP3 is DELIBERATE loss of information to reduce size, in the largely successful result that the sound quality is not reduced by an unacceptable amount.

 

Don't lose sight of the fact that RIAA equalization on records, is deliberate heavy frequency distortion, introduced simply to make records cheaper and smaller. The sound that you hear from vinyl is an artificial re-creation by the tone filters and booster amps in the 'phono stage'. It is not much like the information actually on the record. Information loss and distortion in this case is accidental (and inevitable), not deliberate.

 

Regards, JCBrum.