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Analog: Still Better?


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44 minutes ago, One and a half said:

As always we are at the mercy of the recording itself, especially in popular music, a regular crap shoot.  CD's can reproduce the master tapes very well, but when the master tapes contained hiss or other abberations, careless transfers will make the sound of the CD worse than vinyl. Careless can also be pressure due to $$$ and shortcuts made, rather than 'engineering' expertise or lack of. Repeated exceptions from the likes of Bernie Grundmann whose techniques are legendary, take this release as an example.

 

I bought the Technics 1200GR with an Orofon 2M blue some time ago now and gradually built up a collection of records. Each record, even the old ones from the 70's are great sounding, but the soundstage really opened up with an Ortofon 2M Black! Where digital exceeds vinyl is with SACD, the noise floor just vanishes, but these are exceptions. like Fleetwood Mac Rumours on SACD. With good cleaning, vinyl has no perceptible surface noise when playing. If I buy a new release, it is usually on LP.

 

When the Swing Out Sister Kaleidoscope World Fontana release from 1989 on LP and CD, the CD is DULL compared with the LP. LP has sparkle, the opening to Where in the World xylophone is background on CD, LP is right in front. The Japan 2010 SHM-CD release fares worse, nowhere near enough to the LP. If I hear the album on digital, I need to listen to the LP to 'kill the taste' of digital. 

 

Digital. when all the ducks in a row work, it can sound great, variability is a problem caused by insidious background/leakage noise, imperceptible on its own, but combined with signal just screws it up. Vinyl has the advantage of true analog signals, no aliasing errors. I read an article years ago on do we need such wide channel separation and it wasn't all that necessary, but can't seem to find it now.

Can you list a few CD's and SACD's that match vinyl (glare free, alive, gripping) Cheers! 

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12 minutes ago, dminches said:

 

I have LPs which I bought in the mid 70s which still sound great.  And 45 years ago I didn’t have an audiophile vinyl setup.  If you take care of your records they will last a lifetime.

 

Plus, I am not going to base my decision on what to listen to on a guess as to what will be here in 20 years.

 

 

Would love to know your take on Analog v Digital, I have heard the Pacific DAC at shows and it sounded very good in combination with the Lampizator server. 

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1 hour ago, sandyk said:

 

Jon 

Are you doubting that Gary is hearing the exact same bits whether played directly from the disc or over his network ?

Perhaps you are insinuating that his SACD player MUST have a higher quality Analogue output  stage ? 

 

BTW,  For those of you who insist that LP sounds better than Digital, and you have the LP of Norah Jones-Come Away With Me., compare the attached with your vinyl playback.
IF the LP sounds better, then you have REAL problems in your digital area !!! 

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cwmqtvh3wqflqbx/05.Come AwayWith Me.zip?dl=0

I did an lp v CD of this album a while back, lp won easily. Which version is this file sourced from? Some say the AP SACD matches the vinyl. 

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17 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

This was sourced from the RBCD track of the Blue Note SACD 7243 5 41747 2 8 , and was a fresh rip after improving the earthing area of my PC as recommended by one and a half

 

If this doesn't crap all over the LP, then you either like colouration, or you need to spend almost as much on your digital area as you have on your vinyl gear. 😋

The question is, is this RBCD version ever going to sound good or is distortion baked into it. 

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29 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 In which case it is probably derived from the same master as my Hybrid SACD that I uploaded the track from. 

 Unfortunately, the UL doesn't sound as good, even after downloading again, as the original source track. 

Norah Jones ‎– Come Away With Me

Label:
Blue Note ‎– 7243 5 41747 2 8
Format:
SACD, Album, Hybrid, Multichannel
Country:
US
Released:
Genre:
Style:

 

Apparently the Bluenote SACD came from the Redbook (shock horror), whereas the vinyl and AP SACD came from the Analog master. 

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  • 4 months later...
3 hours ago, hopkins said:

 

 

Serious audiophiles should have both. You can then easily remind yourself, when testing new digital gear, what is achieved and remains to be accomplished. 

 

 

Agreed, most audiophiles know that its the quality of the recording/mastering that determines the SQ, obviously there are alot of snake oil salesmen that disagree. 

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2 hours ago, semente said:

 

 

And whilst CD can sound almost indistinguishable from the master tape it cannot sound like an LP unless it has been digitalised from one (I have some very old jazz and blues digital recordings which where made by the Bibliothèque nationale de France which sound like the shellac records they were made from, warts-n-all).

Which master tapes and their CD equivalents have you compared? 

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1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

Which means that you're not so far from intuitively understanding what's going on ... the vinyl playback is not highlighting the deficiencies of the recording, by exaggerating them with the wrong type of added playback chain distortion. Something that digital systems often have troubles with.

 

What you seem intent on confirming, to yourself, is that digital is inherently incapable of "getting it right" - this was wrong thinking, over 3 decades; and is even more wrong these days. Which means you will probably unconsciously always sabotage every listening session you're at - because it's more important for you, to hang onto that belief as compared to being able to hear competent digital sound.

Quite strange that you are giving hopkins advice when he has both vinyl and digital so can easily compare and you have what? 

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14 hours ago, hopkins said:

 

Yes, I did come in a little strong - sorry for that.

 

Vis à vis your second comment, I see no contradiction here. 

 

My digital system consists of equipment from ECDesigns (you can refer to the thread in the DAC section). I have been using their equipment for the past few years, and it has constantly improved. I don't think I could significantly improve upon it today by "tinkering" - I use their DAC with their source, which is a low noise USB key player (UPL), so no network (it does not bother me). They are working on a new version which I will upgrade to when it is released (sometime this year). Anyone who has read that thread knows how enthusiastic I have been over their products. I have obviously listened to other digital systems (high end stuff as well). The current issues of digital are well know - as I mentioned earlier - and they (ECD) are striving to understand them and to find solutions, undoubtedly other manufacturers as well. We will see what all this leads to.

 

My turntable is certainly not "high end". The funny thing is - and it really does surprise me - I feel no need to invest more (I prefer spending money purchasing records). To my years, it is very satisfying as is. Why ? Very hard to explain...

 

I recently bought this album: https://elusivedisc.com/frank-sinatra-sing-and-dance-with-frank-sinatra-numbered-limited-edition-180g-lp-mono

 

When I put it on, I told myself: damn this sounds good, maybe I should have started collecting vinyl 10 years ago ! 

 

This one also impressed me (also available on CD, which I ordred out of curiosity, to compare): https://www.discogs.com/Earl-Hines-Hines-Comes-In-Handy/release/5456308

 

 

 

 

 

This is true, I feel very sorry for folks who listen to audiofools like Darko who tell them a Node 2 sounds as good as an equivalent turntable. 

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2 hours ago, semente said:

 

I don't watch Darko but isn't that a matter of opinion?

 

I much prefer digital so it is likely that I would find the Node 2 better than the equivalent vinyl player, you would probably say the opposite. None of us is wrong of course because it is a matter of personal preference...

Most of the population think mp3 sounds as good as lossless, do you value their opinion? No, they are clearly wrong. Darko seems to play mainly poorly recorded modern pop records, which sound as bad on vinyl as they do digital, hence his conclusion. 

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14 hours ago, Confused said:

I know what you mean here, but I do not think they can ever "completely match". 

 

They might get close.  As it happens I was running through some recordings for which I have both vinyl and digital versions.  I was listening to one track, and the vinyl and digital versions sounded very similar, in terms of tonality, detail and other factors.  They did not completely match though.  With this track there was a clear difference in soundstage.  I suspect this is resulting from the small amount of crosstalk that you get with vinyl, something that is virtually non-existent with digital.  Plus, as frequencies drop, vinyl is mono.   

 

In this case, I actually subjectively preferred the soundstage effect with the vinyl version, but I suspect this is simply a case of the vinyl crosstalk "messing things up a bit" from a purely technical perspective, but then actually creating something subjectively preferable.

 

As an aside, in the digital domain you could add some crosstalk, in an attempt to get the digital side to maybe more "completely match" the vinyl.  It would be impossible to do this the other way around though. 

Could your class D amps be a bottleneck perhaps, have you tried a class A amp in this system? 

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2 hours ago, sandyk said:

 I used to have quite a few vinyl recordings that sounded better than the later digital release, but that wasn't due to the CD format, it was due to poor quality mastering to the CD format by more than likely Mastering Engineers who didn't put the same amount of effort into it as when the Vinyl recording was mastered, or perhaps were simply inexperienced in the early days of the CD format. 

The very first CD players were also pretty poor by today's standards, and that may not have helped either with their early mastering efforts? (I had a Sony CDP101 . The Sony CDP -101 is the world's first commercially released compact disc player. The system was launched in Japan on October 1, 1982 at a list price of 168,000 yen (approx US$730). )

 

All CD playback sucks IMO

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3 minutes ago, sandyk said:

If ALL CD playback sucks, then it is due to the gear that you are using . 😜

Have you tried playing your CDs after being ripped to HDD/SSD in an electrically quiet PC from System Memory, using a player such as JRiver 27 into a high quality stand alone DAC, and NOT via a typical inferior USB  implementation ?

I like some 16/44.1 files... 

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55 minutes ago, Confused said:

I am not sure what I wrote that gave you the impression that I have a "bottleneck"? 

 

Anyway, it is more the other way around, if we are talking pure class A, yes I have tried class A amps in my system, I have tried class AB, but I have never tried pure class D.  The Devialet amps are a class A class D hybrid.

Some class D amps make sources sound

more similar. 

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3 hours ago, firedog said:

Then you are doing it poorly.

 

Well done needle drops are indistinguishable from the original. They sound just like vinyl. 

I suggest you read JA's review of the Ayre ADC from a few years ago: he said, "but there was no doubt that with a 192kHz sample rate I could not distinguish between the LP and the digital rip. And believe me, I tried. I A/B'd the two versions until blood came out of my ears". 

You get all the sound of vinyl, even the surface noise, tonearm induced distortion, etc. 

Thing is he had to use 24/192. Many ADC's seem to need higher rates to work properly, then the mastering engineer butchers it to get to 16/44.1 which can sound bad, then they distribute it on a CD which sounds even worse. 

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15 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

Barry Diament reports that 24/192 sounds like his microphone feed.

The recordings on CD do not normally start out in anywhere near 24/192 resolution, with many these days starting out as 24/44.1. 

High Res releases from HD Tracks etc. in 24/192 are usually sourced from Tape, with rarely much more than 30kHZ HF information due to the limitations of both the microphones and Tape medium.

 

24/192 is no guarantee of quality though, Linn Records changed their ADC and got much better sound:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/philip-hobbs-linn-records-recording-dunedin-consort

 

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