@Peder, you weighed criticising that post of mine apparently without reading my primary post where I had talked about music and used that to answer the OP’s question. But whilst you have made it clear that you like vinyl and Having it makes you feel important, you haven’t responded to the OP as to what you get for your money in terms of turntables vs digital. Care to do so?
…hi FR…I hope that you are all well in France. Interestingly, since my P10 arrived, I have been buying and listening to more vinyl. In my case, the balance has shifted. I have found that it’s best, on any day, to just listen to one format, rather than mixing.
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the signal that comes out of the mixing desk is the master
when it does recorded to analog tape it gets degraded
when it gets recorded to digital it also gets degraded
some top mastering engineers do say a 192/24 digital recording is much closer the master signal from the mixing desk than analog tape recording…
some recent digital recordings are truly stunning and much superior that some analog mastered ones I have ever heard.
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Hugo was the digital game changer for me and then came DAVE and just when we thought digital could not get much better out came the mScaler as part of Blu2 my favourite CD player ever.
I only buy collectors items gramophone records these days such as the Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake boxset and everything else is download or CD. Blu2 DAVE is the best replay source I have - though the Klimax LP12 runs it close. To prove it beyond reasonable doubt, I did a test the other day and played Eamon Andrews singing Shifting Whisper Sands from this classic gramophone record
vs a CD playing the Beatles A Day in the Life from Sgt Pepper.
The CD won hands down - it is the music not the format that matters.
I agree with @Fatcat and can’t understand why people who no longer use a CD player and don’t like streaming waste their time criticising and finding fault with digital replay. Is it they feel the need to justify using a turntable?
I upgraded my turntable and it now has a superb digital phono stage giving me the best of both worlds … and what’s wrong with that I’d like to know, but here we go again …
To answer @Bart, for your money you get something to play music on, it may be a turntable, it may be digital - but as long as you enjoy the music that’s all that matters even if a listening panel in Outer Ruritania disagree with your choice and wax lyrically about for post after post. You’ll be hard pushed to find a record player better than Blu2 DAVE or to find digital replay better than the LP12, but who knows? It’s wild world and it’s hard to get by with just a smile.
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Spot on.
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That’s not where the problems with Vinyl lie. It’s not what digital is about - it is simply the way that digital works - and there are advantages.
With vinyl, you have several technical difficulties to overcome (and some cannot be overcome). Firstly, there is a maximum excursion that the needle can make - so you are immediately limited in dynamic range and frequency response. For this reason we use the RIAA curve - changing the loudness of some frequencies - to try to fit the music onto the LP. We then have to reverse those changes to get back to something like the original music signal. Even so, the mixing engineers have to do things like turn the bass frequencies from stereo to mono in order to get the music to fit. Then there are problems with the high frequencies. You are limited by the size(s) of the stylus (both cutting and replay) - too high a frequency (and particularly at too high a volume) and the stylus will skip over the tops of the waveform on the grooves, to a greater or less extent. Then you have problems with channel crosstalk. And also with crosstalk between adjacent parts of the groove (noticeable on several Pink Floyd albums where a quiet passage is followed by a very loud passage. You can hear (faintly, but clearly) the loud bit during the quiet bit.
Then of course there is the fact that the velocity at which the vinyl passes the needle varies throughout the LP - faster near the edge than near the centre. So although great efforts can be put into ensuring that the LP rotates at 33.333 RPM, that has little importance, because the actual linear velocity changes hugely from beginning to end of the record.
And, surface noise. I always hated that. Even if digital had absolutely no advantages over vinyl, I would use it simply for the absolute silence you get when appropriate.
People talk about the ‘inky black’ that some cables and amps are capable of - but with vinyl you do not have that.
Of course, a good record player should not introduce other noises such as rumble (my first one did - Garrard transcription, which had an idler wheel), and most of the later ones I had (Garrard SP25, Pioneer PL12D, Rega Planar 3) were much better. And wow and flutter is usually well controlled.
Digital, OTOH, has none of these problems, and has many advantages - much much greater dynamic range is possible, and greater frequency response, no crosstalk or bleed through, dead silence where appropriate etc. I’m not really aware of any real disadvantages (apart from the lack of a large record sleeve, and - if it floats your boat - the faff of getting the dust jacket and record out of the sleeve, then getting the record out of the jacket, putting the record on the turntable, wiping off most of the dust, placing the needle on the album, etc.)
The treble is so much better with digital - and you get it every time you play the track. With vinyl you gradually lose the higher frequencies over time as the record gets played repeatedly.
So for me there is no contest. I sold my Rega a few years ago, and keep meaning to sell my record collection when I can sort that out.
Just to be clear (Peder, for instance), technically digital out-performs vinyl in every respect - and, to me, is more musical, in my opinion and experience.
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It’s relevant in that even though digital recordings are well above the Nyquist frequency, that is still a relevant theory.
That is a slightly interesting observation. I changed from analogue watches to digital many years ago, pleased with the greater accuracy. Some years later I went back to analogue - but for aesthetic reasons (and the practical reason of not needing a battery). I currently have several analogue watches, which I enjoy using. They are very nearly as accurate as quartz, and for all practical purposes just as accurate. But there is something pleasurable in owning something that is intricately designed and made like that.
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…and yet, despite technical explanations suggesting the contrary…many prefer the music on vinyl. This should be the starting point, not why vinyl is not/cannot be as good.
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Yes, I know they do. And there is nothing wrong with that. People enjoy what they enjoy. But that is not the same as saying that it is better in any absolute sense - it is simply what they prefer, for whatever reason.
People say that they prefer vinyl even when it is created from digital sources - so presumably there is something about the limited dynamic range, altered frequency response, less deep bass etc., that they prefer. More power to their elbow.
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…you do highlight an interesting point: previously, digital recordings transferred to vinyl did not sound good (in my opinion)…but now they do. There must be some explanation, perhaps the engineers are getting better at making the transfers. Such a difficult area, as so much of this is subjective.
It has nothing to do with either the value (cost of performance) or listener preference for digital or analog.
Only in that there are those who believe that digital cannot reproduce the full analogue information, because it is readings taken at regular time intervals, and it ‘misses’ the information that lies between the time intervals. And this is true for much higher frequencies than we can distinguish. If you had a sine wave at 30 KHz, then the 44.1 KHz frequency would miss some information, for instance. But then if we could hear things at 30KHz or above, we would simply have to raise the Nyquist frequency to cater for that. Of course, you would not be able to record that frequency to vinyl anyway, and most speakers would not be able to follow that frequency either.
But there is no specific Nyquist frequency (AIUI). You decide on the highest frequency you wish to reproduce, and the Nyquist frequency for that is double. His theory was that, for sine waves, you do not need to sample at more than double the frequency. So at 44.1 KHz sample rate you can reproduce sine waves up to 22.05KHz - which is a higher frequency than most people can hear. But you have to filter out frequencies above that, or you will get distortions (aliasing). And ideally you would have a brick wall filter - which we don’t have. So if you increase your sample rate, you can move your filter to a higher frequency, with consequently less disturbance of the audible frequencies below that filter. But then you can get artifacts at a much lower frequency (coming up into the lower frequency response of the human ear).
At least, that is how I understand it.
But it leaves a question in my mind about non-sinusoidal waves. It would not, presumably, reproduce a 22.050 square wave if that were recorded, for instance.
Hi Beachcomber,
I find these “vinyl rules forever” versus " digital has such a theoretical advantage that it knocks vinyl into a cocked hat for all but old reminiscing romantics" to be a silly and fruitless exercise.
The very real limitations of the vinyl mastering, EQing, production and extraction processes are all well known & understood. Given all of these, it should be rubbish in comparison with a digitally mastered, processed, transmitted and reproduced system.
And yet. And yet it isn’t at the moment. The very best digital sources that I have had the pleasure of enjoying have been the DCS Rossini + clock and the MSB Premier with (expensive) Powerbase power supply. These two sources, when fed with 192/24 recordings off a Melco posh/Innuos Statement server using a Roon Nucleus+, are (give or take) close to equivalent to the corresponding, well recorded vinyl record of the same music on our Vertere turntable. In summary, they are not the same but both versions are truly wonderful, albeit with different presentations, strengths & weaknesses.
Now this gives me great cause for optimism. Here’s why. If vinyl, with all its well documented limitations, can still keep up with the very best of today’s digital, then today’s digital is still doing a lot wrong. We can hear that it’s wrong but we just haven’t yet come up with the right explanations as to what is wrong or why. As we do (like Rob Watts explanation of the importance of micro-timing), digital will only get better and will surely overtake the best that vinyl can manage.
And I can’t wait for that day to arrive. In the meantime, we get to enjoy very good versions of both vinyl & digital.
Hence my lack of tolerance for the close-minded mindset which says that digital is already better, unless you are an old romantic who prefers the distortion of vinyl.
Best regards, BF
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Indeed, my experience exactly, with my system is that vinyl can outperform digital sq in every respect and by quite a large margin.
Here’s something I don’t understand. Many on here are disciples of the LP12 and yes it’s a fine turntable and yet if you purchase a new all Linn system it will convert the analogue output from the TT to digital to convert it back to analogue. I love vinyl but how can it be superior to digital in that scenario?
Regards,
Lindsay
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The signal gets converted to digital so that it can be Space Optimised.
I agre with LM…and in fact I do not use SO at all…I think that it detracts from the music.
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and yet, and yet. records are a miracle: a 142 year-old technology that competes with the very best the modern world can offer.
my parents had a record collection that I never bothered to listen to when i was growing up. surely, my line of reasoning went, no one would have bothered to invent cassettes and CDs if they weren’t better than dragging tiny rocks across plastic discs. i went on thinking this until 2001 or thereabouts. i went to a friend’s house and he played an LP of the Jam’s “Sound Affects”, and you could have knocked me over with a feather. it was very obviously better than the CD version i had – played on a old, cheap Sony deck, no less! i’ve been hooked ever since: 1,000 LPs and counting, including the one i’m spinning now. (Peter Cat Recording Co.'s “Portraits of a Time”. highly recommended!)
I saw the video of Rob Watts explanation of the importance of micro-timing. I honestly think he doesn’t know why his DAC’s sound so good. His theory on micro timing only applies to listeners wearing headphones.
If his theory is correct the sound coming from a pair of speakers in a room should sound awful. Transient coming from left speaker would arrive at left and right ears at different times. Transient coming from right speaker would arrive at left and right ears at different times. That’s one transient with four different timings.
The simple answer, per our ears and home, and apparently we’re not alone, vinyl can.
But I’m not convinced of your conclusion – that there is “a lot wrong” with digital replay. I might turn it around; only relatively recently (compared to the dawn of the vinyl replay age) has digital gotten to where it is.
Maybe it’s an attestation to the “genius” of vinyl replay and the RIAA curve.
I’ve never had the privilege of doing an a vs. b of good tape vs. vinyl. It would be fascinating to hear, after being equalized, cut, pressed, played back and un-equalized, how a decent generation of tape sounds vs. vinyl.
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