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Lies about vinyl vs digital


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8 minutes ago, mav52 said:

 

But it really depends on which master it really is.  Was it the original or the re-mastered master or the re-mastered re-mastered that is pleasing. So many of these CD' and downloads have been re-engineered to sound, "better" to some or worst than the original . Its a crap shoot sometimes on knowing which copy you really have.

 

For most *current* releases to both vinyl & CD, it is the same master used for both.

 

I already explained the primary difference above.

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On ‎7‎/‎4‎/‎2018 at 1:41 PM, Nordkapp said:

Vinyl is not user friendly nor convenient. Therefore, I'm out and always have been. That stuff is for my parents. But, great topic of discussion. 

 

I might be an idiot. No I know I'm an idiot :) but I really like the inconvenience of vinyl. With digital sources it's too much a press play and forget. So when I listen to my ripped CDs (don't have a streaming service) I tend to go and do other things. Read Facebook troll on 9GAG etc. Because with vinyl I have to stay focused I tend to enjoy the music more.

A LP is normally 20 minutes per side. I like that. Because it gives you the opportunity to get some coffee, cognac, beer water etc. With digital playback you don't have that. What sounds better is not interesting to me. Since I enjoy vinyl more I spend more money on it. 

[br]

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15 minutes ago, mordante said:

 

I might be an idiot. No I know I'm an idiot but I really like the inconvenience of vinyl. With digital sources it's too much a press play and forget. So when I listen to my ripped CDs (don't have a streaming service) I tend to go and do other things. Read Facebook troll on 9GAG etc. Because with vinyl I have to stay focused I tend to enjoy the music more.

A LP is normally 20 minutes per side. I like that. Because it gives you the opportunity to get some coffee, cognac, beer water etc. With digital playback you don't have that. What sounds better is not interesting to me. Since I enjoy vinyl more I spend more money on it. 

So what you are sayin,  digital for lazy people while vinyl is for people with a little more time on their hands.   ?

The Truth Is Out There

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3 hours ago, The_K-Man said:

 

 Because what is sent to vinyl omits the 'final step':  Brickwall limiter and make-up gain.  Those musical peaks omitted from the CD are left in for vinyl.

 

Besides that, the masters for both CD/digital and the record are identical.

Would 16/44 classical recordings from the 1980's have been brickwall limited?

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1 hour ago, Rexp said:

Would 16/44 classical recordings from the 1980's have been brickwall limited?

 

In general no  - not from the 80s 90s or beyond - in general , might be exceptions.  That does not imply there are no bad sounding classical CDs, be it the master, the hall, the recording philosophy, etc...

 

v

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46 minutes ago, vmartell22 said:

 

In general no  - not from the 80s 90s or beyond - in general , might be exceptions.  That does not imply there are no bad sounding classical CDs, be it the master, the hall, the recording philosophy, etc...

 

v

 

Read my reply to Rexp.  And NO: the earlier the CD release, of any music style or genre, the less likely it was brickwall limited, not more.  

 

(sigh... so many misconceptions to sweep up around here!  I'ma have to let my boy Monte loose up in here pretty soon!)

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15 hours ago, The_K-Man said:

 

But I have experienced the opposite: mastering that has sucked the joy of a song I might have enjoyed even more if they had not compressed or brickwall limited the sh- out of it.

Sure, but putting mastering #1, ahead of composition? I cannot agree with that.

 

Mastering is far down the list of what I need to enjoy my favourite music. As a kid, I listened to music on AM, through a cheap transistor radio, and loved it. I don't need fidelity to enjoy music. Hi-fi is great, but it's a frill.

Main System: QNAP TS-451+ NAS > Silent Angel Bonn N8 > Sonore opticalModule Deluxe v2 > Corning SMF with Finisar FTLF1318P3BTL SFPs > Uptone EtherREGEN > exaSound PlayPoint and e32 Mk-II DAC > Meitner MTR-101 Plus monoblocks > Bamberg S5-MTM sealed standmount speakers. 

Crown XLi 1500 powering  AV123 Rocket UFW10 stereo subwoofers

Upgraded power on all switches, renderer and DAC. 

 

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21 minutes ago, audiobomber said:

Sure, but putting mastering #1, ahead of composition? I cannot agree with that.

 

Mastering is far down the list of what I need to enjoy my favourite music. As a kid, I listened to music on AM, through a cheap transistor radio, and loved it. I don't need fidelity to enjoy music. Hi-fi is great, but it's a frill.

 

Yes, even on a pocket transistor, or its modern equivalent: the tinny smart phone speaker, a dynamic, well-mastered song will sound far better than something over-compressed and peak-limited to the point of clipping, sounding like a dial tone backed up by a vacuum cleaner.

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@gmgraves revealed the truth behind the LIE of vinyl noise that even I bought into without thought -- the noise floor of vinyl isn't a floor in the digital sense, it just the level of spurious noise.

 

If a digital recording peaks out, it sounds awful. We've all heard it. I have yet to hear my LPs peak out...a crashing crescendo, screaming vocalist, etc., is very loud but no evidence of bumping into a ceiling is present -- obviously you need an amp with enough muscle to follow your speakers through these peaks, but we're talking about the source here. Some of my CDs obviously peak-limited, some are obviously compressed / processed to be loud. Soft sound following by loud sounds is an indispensable component of enjoyable hi-fi -- that's preaching top the choir I suspect, but why are my LPs good at this while my digital sucks at it?

 

Okay guys, help me out. What CDs or digital albums feature powerful dynamics / transients?

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41 minutes ago, GUTB said:

@gmgraves revealed the truth behind the LIE of vinyl noise that even I bought into without thought -- the noise floor of vinyl isn't a floor in the digital sense, it just the level of spurious noise.

 

If a digital recording peaks out, it sounds awful. We've all heard it. I have yet to hear my LPs peak out...a crashing crescendo, screaming vocalist, etc., is very loud but no evidence of bumping into a ceiling is present -- obviously you need an amp with enough muscle to follow your speakers through these peaks, but we're talking about the source here. Some of my CDs obviously peak-limited, some are obviously compressed / processed to be loud. Soft sound following by loud sounds is an indispensable component of enjoyable hi-fi -- that's preaching top the choir I suspect, but why are my LPs good at this while my digital sucks at it?

 

Okay guys, help me out. What CDs or digital albums feature powerful dynamics / transients?

You asked. 

 

 

1200x630bb.jpg

 

 

 

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12 minutes ago, GUTB said:

@gmgraves revealed the truth behind the LIE of vinyl noise that even I bought into without thought -- the noise floor of vinyl isn't a floor in the digital sense, it just the level of spurious noise.

 

If a digital recording peaks out, it sounds awful. We've all heard it. I have yet to hear my LPs peak out...a crashing crescendo, screaming vocalist, etc., is very loud but no evidence of bumping into a ceiling is present -- obviously you need an amp with enough muscle to follow your speakers through these peaks, but we're talking about the source here. Some of my CDs obviously peak-limited, some are obviously compressed / processed to be loud. Soft sound following by loud sounds is an indispensable component of enjoyable hi-fi -- that's preaching top the choir I suspect, but why are my LPs good at this while my digital sucks at it?

First of all, a professional analog tape recorder running at 15 (or even 30) IPS (inches per second) and properly biased and EQ'd for the tape formulation being used, should be good for +3 dB of over-modulation based on 200 nW of fluxivity as 0Vu. That means that when recording, letting the meter go over Zero a bit (and even occasionally, instantaneously "hitting the pin") shouldn't be audible on playback. However, having said that, it doesn't go for vinyl disc mastering! As I said in another post, cutting a lacquer master for an LP is not trivial. You don't dare over-modulate as you risk cutting through the groove wall into the adjacent groove. Doing this will render the LP unplayable. Most lathes have a groove-width control that uses a "preview" head on the disc mastering source tape machine to look ahead at the music that's coming "next" to either lower the number of grooves/inch or mm (wider spaces between grooves for high volume passages) or raise the number of grooves/inch or mm (narrower spaces between grooves for softer passages), but the system cannot handle wildly over-modulated passages without harming either the master or the cutting head. To prevent this, the playback on the cutting master tape is set so that the maximum record level found on the source tape, and not the standard Zero Vu is the maximum level that can be safely cut. This insures that that the lacquer is successfully mastered. You want as few clinkers as possible as the blank lacquer discs are expensive because their reject rate at the factory is north of 50%. Also mastering engineer might also reject some percentage of a blank disc shipment as not meeting his standards. So, if you ever hear over-modulation distortion on an LP it came off the source master tape, and was not the result of faulty lacquer cutting. 

12 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

Okay guys, help me out. What CDs or digital albums feature powerful dynamics / transients?

None really. Some Telarcs come closer than most, but even they are somewhat compressed in dynamics, but of course not as badly as vinyl. Turns out most people don't want wide dynamic range music. It's a great idea and a high-fidelity ideal, but the truth is that people don't want to keep raising and lowering the volume of their playback to keep from blasting the family and neighbors on crescendos or to adequately hear the triple pianissimos.

George

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14 minutes ago, Nordkapp said:

You asked. 

 

 

1200x630bb.jpg

I was going to mention that one, but GUTB said CD and this was released as either an SACD or a DVD-A, not a CD. OTOH, it too is dynamic range limited, just not as much as the CD layer of the same recording would be or any LP of this work.  

George

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6 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

I was going to mention that one, but GUTB said CD and this was released as either an SACD or a DVD-A, not a CD. OTOH, it too is dynamic range limited, just not as much as the CD layer of the same recording would be or any LP of this work.  

It's a CD. I own it.

https://www.discogs.com/Tchaikovsky-Erich-Kunzel-Cincinnati-Pops-Orchestra-Tchaikovsky-1812/release/2375701

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, The_K-Man said:

 

Read my reply to Rexp.  And NO: the earlier the CD release, of any music style or genre, the less likely it was brickwall limited, not more.  

 

(sigh... so many misconceptions to sweep up around here!  I'ma have to let my boy Monte loose up in here pretty soon!)

 

 

hmm - well  - lemme explain my answer - I think we agree... true - the earliest CDs are more likely not to be brickwalled, classical or pop or anything - they might have had other issues, but not brickwalling.  

 

BUT 

 

As the late 90s and 2000s came, it was the pop CDs that got brickwalled, not the classical.  It is NOT ABOUT THE MUSIC STYLE. It's about the MARKET. Of course, anything can be brickwalled. But I am sure that if the classical market had the need to sound fantastic on FM radio or crappy earbuds,  the record companies would have forced brickwalling. It is just not needed, so it has not been done, in general,  of course might be exceptions, but I don't know them.

 

v

 

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6 hours ago, mansr said:

It's a marvel of engineering. I'm still glad we don't need it any more.

And how many direct to disc, original RCA Reiner recordings do you own? I can't say that any digital recording solution I've heard matches these recordings on a good vinyl solution.

Not saying that digital is necessarily inferior to vinyl, just that engineering skill in making the recording is make or break for  also ran vs a masterpiece recording.

Regards,

Dave

 

Audio system

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I don’t own much modern pop....actually I do have a couple of LPs, I think I’ll compare those.

 

So far, the LP vs digital versions of music I own have favored the vinyl by a significant margin in terms of dynamics.

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14 minutes ago, davide256 said:

And how many direct to disc, original RCA Reiner recordings do you own? I can't say that any digital recording solution I've heard matches these recordings on a good vinyl solution.

Not saying that digital is necessarily inferior to vinyl, just that engineering skill in making the recording is make or break for  also ran vs a masterpiece recording.

I have neither a turntable nor any vinyl discs. The recordings you mention are surely wonderful. I never said vinyl can't sound good. However, digital sounds at least as good with far less expense and effort.

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