Article: Digital Vinyl: Temporal Domain

[Rexp]

All the music that matters, yes. And they don't have to "sound crap", but:

 

- I spent a lot of time and money back in the 80s and 90s duplicating my LP collection in CDs.

- The majority of the CDs sounded similar to the LPs. Actually, they did sound different, but it was always the same difference, so I could blame the differences on my gear rather than something fundamentally wrong. I found I preferred the CD sound, and over time stopped listening to the LPs.

- I have since repurchased some of those CDs as remasters or re-releases. The majority of them do "sound crap" compared to the early versions. Even where they have been redigitised from the original tapes, in many cases the age of the tape is showing and/or the result has been compressed to modern levels.

- It is my belief that, in the majority of cases, a well cared for LP on a good turntable can be digitised to 24/96 then downsampled to 16/44.1 and the result will be so close to the LP as to not matter. If you're really fussy, leave it at 24/96.

 

Agree 16/44 is enough, The Trinity Sessions is one example of a great 16/44 recording.Maybe the A to D converters/process is worse now than in early years?

[esldude]

Agree 16/44 is enough, The Trinity Sessions is one example of a great 16/44 recording.Maybe the A to D converters/process is worse now than in early years?

 

No, I don't think AD converters are worse than the early years. Quite the reverse.

 

I do a little recording of my own. Not hard to get pretty nice recordings. Hard to get commercial companies in the music biz to do simple recordings and not process the crap out of them.

 

That was the magic of the Trinity Sessions. Very simple recording technique with very limited processing of the result. The gear isn't the secret, the secret is keeping it simple and not messing with things too much. You could duplicate such quality for relatively peanuts right now if you will leave well enough alone, get a special performance in a nice sounding place like they did and call it good right there.

 

The Trinity Sessions used the equivalent of one pair of mics into one DAT recorder. No mixing or other processing done.

 

The Trinity Sessions Revisited included many guest musicians in the same location with lots of equipment multi-miked and processed pretty heavily. Not a bad sounding album, but doesn't hold a candle the original simple method. It is mostly the method and not the gear.

[Rexp]

No, I don't think AD converters are worse than the early years. Quite the reverse.

 

I do a little recording of my own. Not hard to get pretty nice recordings. Hard to get commercial companies in the music biz to do simple recordings and not process the crap out of them.

 

That was the magic of the Trinity Sessions. Very simple recording technique with very limited processing of the result. The gear isn't the secret, the secret is keeping it simple and not messing with things too much. You could duplicate such quality for relatively peanuts right now if you will leave well enough alone, get a special performance in a nice sounding place like they did and call it good right there.

 

The Trinity Sessions used the equivalent of one pair of mics into one DAT recorder. No mixing or other processing done.

 

The Trinity Sessions Revisited included many guest musicians in the same location with lots of equipment multi-miked and processed pretty heavily. Not a bad sounding album, but doesn't hold a candle the original simple method. It is mostly the method and not the gear.

 

Trinity was recorded using a customized Nakamichi DMP100, presumably the producer thought DAT wasn't good enough:

Cowboy Junkies ‘Sweet Jane’ |

[Jud]

How many tracks are typical of the big studio consoles these days?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Computer Audiophile

[esldude]

Trinity was recorded using a customized Nakamichi DMP100, presumably the producer thought DAT wasn't good enough:

Cowboy Junkies ‘Sweet Jane’ |

 

Well it has been reported several places it was recorded to DAT. If not it really doesn't change anything about my conclusion. The gear was not the magic. The simple miking and lack of processing was along with someone carefully positioning everything for the recording. It would appear they didn't go with a DAT. Even primitive digital was pretty good, and simple recording was good before digital.

 

To repeat, the take home message from Trinity Sessions is about simple unprocessed recordings with simple microphones.

[esldude]

How many tracks are typical of the big studio consoles these days?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Computer Audiophile

 

None of even small studios are going to have less than 24 tracks.

[esldude]

One of a few studios in a big Nashville studio.

 

https://www.blackbirdstudio.com/studio-a

 

Or one of their other 8 studios

 

https://www.blackbirdstudio.com/studio-d

[Jud]

Well it has been reported several places it was recorded to DAT. If not it really doesn't change anything about my conclusion. The gear was not the magic. The simple miking and lack of processing was along with someone carefully positioning everything for the recording. It would appear they didn't go with a DAT. Even primitive digital was pretty good, and simple recording was good before digital.

 

To repeat, the take home message from Trinity Sessions is about simple unprocessed recordings with simple microphones.

 

 

More complex workflows also have something to tell us about fidelity. Mark Knopfler's recent recordings, generally acknowledged to be of good sound quality, have at least frequently if not perhaps exclusively used a system of bouncing back and forth between digital and various analog consoles to get a desired sound. So whatever digital recording is being used in that process (I'm thinking they do it at 24/96 resolution, but I could easily be wrong about that) is pretty transparent.

[Jud]

One of a few studios in a big Nashville studio.

 

https://www.blackbirdstudio.com/studio-a

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neve_8078

 

 

That's an analog console, which they run into a 48 or 96 track digital system. The digital system they use is advertised as permitting "up to 256 audio tracks with a single card system or up to 768 audio tracks with three cards. Mix up to 192 ins and outs. Get the power to run volumes more plug-ins."

 

 

 

Where I was headed is that as you add tracks, the resolution you can get per track with the computing power available has eventually got to be reduced. I don't know where the cutoff for 24/96 versus 24/44.1 or 16/44.1 is these days, let alone keeping things in DSD as much as possible as Channel and Blue Coast do, or DXD as 2L does.

[james45974]

"The first cartridge with integrated RF shielding, the Clearaudio Goldfinger Statement MC phono cartridge is designed to play on the world's finest analog systems and reproduce the music on the greatest recordings ever made with unstinting clarity, liveliness, dynamics, realism, and responsiveness. Featuring 12 perfectly matched and symmetrical magnets – an unprecedented achievement – surrounding its coils. The Product of the Year Award-winning Goldfinger Statement allows systems to reach the long-unattainable dynamic range of 100dB." https://www.musicdirect.com/store/clearaudio-goldfinger-statement-mc-cartridge

 

Honest question, is vinyl capable of 100db dynamic range? Wouldn't the inherent noise of vinyl limit it's dynamic range?

 

Looking at the economics, at the price for the Goldfinger Statement, about $15,000, taking the typical 1000hr stylus life suggested by Ortofon, and averaging a 45 minute LP length, you would have to pay the meter approximately $11.25 every time you played an LP, a pretty expensive calculation no matter how you look at it.

[Jud]

Honest question, is vinyl capable of 100db dynamic range? Wouldn't the inherent noise of vinyl limit it's dynamic range?

 

Looking at the economics, at the price for the Goldfinger Statement, about $15,000, taking the typical 1000hr stylus life suggested by Ortofon, and averaging a 45 minute LP length, you would have to pay the meter approximately $11.25 every time you played an LP, a pretty expensive calculation no matter how you look at it.

 

I've read the ideal theoretical capability is 120dB, and allowing for various practical limitations, in an extraordinarily good situation around 80dB can be attained.

 

 

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[mkrzych]

I enjoy listening to vinyl because some (perhaps a lot, unfortunately) of the mastering was better than you can get with CDs or downloads these days. (I'm speaking of my old original vinyl and times I've repurchased in the newer formats.) You may not be able to make a silk purse from a sow's ear, but the music companies prove over and over that the opposite is quite possible.

 

 

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That's exactly the point Jud. I've purchased recently TT, because even nowadays more vinyl records have better mastering than CD for the same album. To top it off, many high resolution downloads are just fake - not generalizing, but many. Another reason for vinyl record is that some albums are available only on vinyl and even got CD release it was in early years of digital where the sound quality was far away from what that medium is capable now - including all the technology advance in D/A conversion.

[mkrzych]

By the way: None of what's been said should obscure the fact that while CD is capable of greater dynamic range than vinyl, CDs are all too often actually produced with a squashed dynamic range. No hocus pocus is necessary to explain this, only production decisions.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Computer Audiophile

 

Amen, bro!

[james45974]

I've read the ideal theoretical capability is 120dB, and allowing for various practical limitations, in an extraordinarily good situation around 80dB can be attained.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Computer Audiophile

 

Thanks for the response!

[esldude]

I've read the ideal theoretical capability is 120dB, and allowing for various practical limitations, in an extraordinarily good situation around 80dB can be attained.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Computer Audiophile

 

This theoretical 120 db is for the electronics involving the cartridge, and phono preamp electrically. And it is a theoretical max. It does not involve signal being traced in a groove of a piece of spinning vinyl.

 

If you look at various Stereophile measures of various phono pre-amps, very good ones typically have SNRs of 75 db or so. I seem to recall some that some are near 90 db or so with A-weighting. Again however this is a measure of the electrical performance. The cartridge tip being dragged thru real vinyl is going to fall short of that.

 

Also I was a bit sloppy in comments earlier mixing SNR and Dynamic Range concepts. They are similar though not identical parameters. It doesn't change my conclusion that the Goldfinger cartridge achieves neither 100 db of dynamic range nor SNR. Rather something like 65 db in either case according to their own graph.

[svart-hvitt]

DYNAMIC RANGE OF LP DISCS

 

According to Jim Lesurf, a retired physics professor at St. Andrews, an LP made from diamond...would have a dynamic range potential of ca. 110dB:

 

https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/iandm/part12/page2.html

 

In case you don't have diamond at hand, DR will be significantly below 110dB.

[Rexp]

That's exactly the point Jud. I've purchased recently TT, because even nowadays more vinyl records have better mastering than CD for the same album. To top it off, many high resolution downloads are just fake - not generalizing, but many. Another reason for vinyl record is that some albums are available only on vinyl and even got CD release it was in early years of digital where the sound quality was far away from what that medium is capable now - including all the technology advance in D/A conversion.

This is the truth of the matter. I was going through the Frank Sinatra albums on Tidal last night and found them all vastly inferior to the vinyl versions. Until the record companies stop putting out this garbage, Audiophiles need an analog source.

[mkrzych]

I've read the ideal theoretical capability is 120dB, and allowing for various practical limitations, in an extraordinarily good situation around 80dB can be attained.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Computer Audiophile

 

In a very good and lucky situation, but that's not all about dynamic range that mean everything. Vinyl records have surface noise, ticks, statics all sorts of artefacts, but the sound is more pleasant to the ear despite that fact. I am not saying that CD cannot sound very good - take a look at the AudioWave/Yoshida Blue Note reissues - they sound almost as good in that term than vinyl records or even better.

[Rhys]

I wanted to say that I like thoughtful reflections on listening preference. Particularly not draped in effusive comments and Frasier Crane-like pretentiousness. The use of examples is intriguing, too. Thank you.

 

What I might offer for your consideration(s) is that you start with a definition or two. Such as Temporal Domain.

Temporality is, to my knowledge, described as the ratios of, or relative intervals between events. The temporal domain carries no information about frequency or sequence.

 

That said, each of the domains- frequency, sequential, and temporal do overlap with the information about the time domain contained within their two counterpart component domains.

 

Next- imparting to the reproduction characteristics that cannot exist if they were not (authentically) available during production is a question here.

A perspective change might be useful from the micro-tech to the recording industry. The producers of the music product have very different agendas than the musicians. What you (we) get is a compromised, not optimized result.

Multiple mic-ing, 28 (or more) tracks, mixing boards, "pressing" or quantizing create a scale of complexity that is beyond the human span of control.

 

The recording industry is trying to 'train' our ears to producers interests. As Apple battles for its larger distribution access agenda, for example.

 

Live group musicians and their audiences have a very different 'training' than studio and over-dub musicians. Blending 28 events are limited to a very narrow subset of the domain attributions to give producers some control over their branding. Regardless if you like Phil Spector's, to name just one, signature sound or not.

 

Blending different performances of isolated individuals simply won't have authenticity to time or phase coherency. Let alone the "self-organization" and complexity between instruments and performers in a collective event. Even to the coupling of the environment of the "event".

 

Then there is the final mixing. Which is a marketing decision for the psycho-acoustic characteristic of the markets' producers expect to reach. Once it was phonograph, AM radio, or FM radio. Ear buds are very different than large rooms with no square corners. Many events that would have unfolded are sheared off. If you found something...its not my intent to marginalize it. It just isn't authentic- from the performance(s).

Last- a byproduct of my career, with some legacy collected media, one can use a LiDAR that creates a 3d map of vinyl. You don't have to destructively drag a diamond through the lacquered vinyl media. Even if everything was equal, which it is not, determinism is an assumption better left to Newtonian antiquity. Uncertainty (scientific) yields only more artifacts- not fewer.

[mansr]

Temporality is, to my knowledge, described as the ratios of, or relative intervals between events. The temporal domain carries no information about frequency or sequence.

 

Time and frequency domains are equivalent through the Fourier transform.

[Rhys]

Not sure what your point is.

 

Fourier Transforms take a time-based pattern, measures every possible cycle, and returns the overall "cycle recipe" (the amplitude, offset, & rotation speed for every cycle that was found). This an alternate representation, characterized by sine and cosines. The Fourier Transform shows any waveform can be re-written as the sum of sinusoidal functions.

 

Equivalence is something else. Perhaps you're are collapsing the convolution theorem into this?

[mansr]

Not sure what your point is.

 

Fourier Transforms take a time-based pattern, measures every possible cycle, and returns the overall "cycle recipe" (the amplitude, offset, & rotation speed for every cycle that was found). This an alternate representation, characterized by sine and cosines. The Fourier Transform shows any waveform can be re-written as the sum of sinusoidal functions.

 

Equivalence is something else. Perhaps you're are collapsing the convolution theorem into this?

My point is that you are wrong.

[Jud]

My point is that you are wrong.

 

Not sure whether I should "Like" this, but I did LOL.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Computer Audiophile

[Jud]

I wanted to say that I like thoughtful reflections on listening preference. Particularly not draped in effusive comments and Frasier Crane-like pretentiousness. The use of examples is intriguing, too. Thank you.

 

What I might offer for your consideration(s) is that you start with a definition or two. Such as Temporal Domain.

Temporality is, to my knowledge, described as the ratios of, or relative intervals between events. The temporal domain carries no information about frequency or sequence.

 

That said, each of the domains- frequency, sequential, and temporal do overlap with the information about the time domain contained within their two counterpart component domains.

 

Next- imparting to the reproduction characteristics that cannot exist if they were not (authentically) available during production is a question here.

A perspective change might be useful from the micro-tech to the recording industry. The producers of the music product have very different agendas than the musicians. What you (we) get is a compromised, not optimized result.

Multiple mic-ing, 28 (or more) tracks, mixing boards, "pressing" or quantizing create a scale of complexity that is beyond the human span of control.

 

The recording industry is trying to 'train' our ears to producers interests. As Apple battles for its larger distribution access agenda, for example.

 

Live group musicians and their audiences have a very different 'training' than studio and over-dub musicians. Blending 28 events are limited to a very narrow subset of the domain attributions to give producers some control over their branding. Regardless if you like Phil Spector's, to name just one, signature sound or not.

 

Blending different performances of isolated individuals simply won't have authenticity to time or phase coherency. Let alone the "self-organization" and complexity between instruments and performers in a collective event. Even to the coupling of the environment of the "event".

 

Then there is the final mixing. Which is a marketing decision for the psycho-acoustic characteristic of the markets' producers expect to reach. Once it was phonograph, AM radio, or FM radio. Ear buds are very different than large rooms with no square corners. Many events that would have unfolded are sheared off. If you found something...its not my intent to marginalize it. It just isn't authentic- from the performance(s).

Last- a byproduct of my career, with some legacy collected media, one can use a LiDAR that creates a 3d map of vinyl. You don't have to destructively drag a diamond through the lacquered vinyl media. Even if everything was equal, which it is not, determinism is an assumption better left to Newtonian antiquity. Uncertainty (scientific) yields only more artifacts- not fewer.

 

There was a turntable that used a laser, but IIRC the surface noise was a problem.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Computer Audiophile

[Rhys]

My point is that you are wrong.

Ok. About what?