I have recently stepped back into the vinyl foray, having been a hardcore digital advocate for years, and thought I’d share my feelings on the matter.
My recent Rega P10/Apheta3/AOS combo is an absolute joy to use and listen to, and when listening to clean, well pressed digitally recorded albums I have in both formats, the sound is really close, when compared to my Naim NSS333, barring the topic under discussion, pressing quality and the resulting noise.
Where vinyl steps ahead, in my view, is when you’re listening to a top notch AAA recording from the likes of Acoustic Sounds, where the inherent vinyl weakness of background noise plays second fiddle to the elevated emotional and tonal/textural qualities of record playback. Those well recorded, well mastered and well pressed classic albums are incredibly expensive, but I can understand why people splash out them, because they really are the gold standard of record playback.
However, I do find the consistency of playback through my NSS333 a joy, because 99/100 times you’re getting something you don’t need to send or take back. Vinyl can be a right royal PITA to achieve that nth degree of musical connection, and I’m talking AAA here, because I do think you cannot ever get that back by just sticking a digitally recorded record on - something is just missing , and I’m not talking noise here! This makes buying 2nd hand records a bit of a lottery, especially when it comes to noise, pops and crackles, although I have found some that are like new and this is always a pleasant surprise.
Maybe I’ll get used to it, but there is no doubt being a primary digital user for years, the pops and crackles do get on my nerves a bit.
I fully intend to persevere because the joy of a well-recorded AAA pressing is worth it for those few, special albums in one’s collection, but for the rest of my collection I’m going to coin a phrase, “digital for discovery, records for recovery!”
If a silent background is important, you could always try a turntable/cartridge that will give you a silent background.
By coincidence I was researching turntable SN ratio.
For some reason there seems to be no information regarding SN ratio of Rega turntables. Either from Rega or reviewers.
There must be some out there, but I couldn’t find it.
@adeypoos i don’t worry about pressing quality. I tske it as a given that some will be poor. Returning is too much of a hassle. If it’s totally unplayable I throw it out. That is very rarely the case. Glad you like your P10/Apheta. I have that as well.
Sorry to hear of your frustration with imperfect vinyl. I read a lot about this, but I must say my experience these days is quite the opposite. I very very rarely seem to have a problem with noise (pops/crackles).
Having said this I always thoroughly clean all vinyl (whether old or new) on a “Glass” ultrasonic record cleaning machine. I think this helps a lot.
I have a feeling this is also system dependent and that some turntable set-ups are more prone to highlight vinyl noise.
Rega Naia and Aura here. (Heavenly !)
Interesting points about AAA recording sounding better on vinyl.
I much prefer a crystal clear modern digital recording on CD/file. I hear a clarity and dynamic range that I never got with vinyl. Older recordings can be problematic, especially older transfers.
Perhaps the problem lies in the remastering of old AAA recordings to digital. Should be possible to breath some impact into these transfers.
I believe a lot of prejudice towards digital can be laid at the door of poor remastering.
I have a DeGritter Mk2 inbound and I have shop experience of what this does, so I’m hoping it’ll bring some noisy records back like I’ve experienced before. However if the press has a fault then little can be done. What’s annoying is it has been the mail order ones that have been the most problematic and they’re the most hassle. Buy locally I guess.
After the subjectives of performer quality, I believe the ultimate source is the recording equipment, the engineers and the mastering techniques used. The old analog recordings of the mid fifties through 60’s for jazz and classical were the epitome of “masters” at work. They really knew how to place the correct mics, had quality recording equipment and years of experience in editing, mastering and pressing vinyl. When digital came along, it required a different skill set, where dynamics were wider, clipping was an issue and a new format in the form of compact disc. No wonder it’s taken a while to get digital recording perfected. Even so, capitalists and money makers have changed the way music is delivered and compressed the hell out of a lot of it. When records became popular again, the necessary skills often had to be relearned, with the consequences often all to easy to see and hear.
I agree with you about digital recording and playback but, and it is a big but, when AAA is done right, there is no sampling frequency, bit depth et al that can match vinyl(other than open reel tape). The information just isn’t all there and our ears can hear it’s not there, working much harder to interpolate what’s missing than to deal with a bit of hiss or a lower S/N ratio - so long as the level of noise/clicks are at a minimal level. What that level is different for all of us and my tolerance threshold is quite low, hence why I mostly listen to digital.
If it’s second hand, worn out and cheap, then fine, throw it out. However, if you’re buying new, given record prices, I want the record to be flat and quiet, otherwise return it( a problem with mailed records). I have no control over the pressing, so I guess I’ll get what is produced.
There is no such thing as a silent turntable, it’s not physically possible because of the mechanical operation and the contaminants of dust, grease etc and static! Good turntables reduce it to levels that are acceptable, but if the record is poor then you will get noise.
I think it’s mastering in general. It’s not just vinyl. Hi-res downloads generally have little to no information on where the master came from. If it’s just a 96/24 version of the same one used for the CD, or std. Spotify/Tidal/Apple etc. then unless it’s cheaper (Qobuz Sublime) I don’t see the point.
How well the music is mastered for the intended playback mechanism makes a huge difference, and sadly digital does allow for the dreaded LOUD masters to be too easily used. At least Vinyl can’t take that level of abuse, maybe that’s the bigger attraction for some, still can’t be doing with the level of faff personally… 
I do think the music industry is missing out on an additional revenue stream for decently mastered hi-res versions of stuff. I’d be happy with CD resolution if mastered well, but I guess the marketing merchant bankers would want to use the hi-res digits as the main selling point.
Interesting thread. A few months ago, I inherited a collection of 200 records from my late brother-in-law. I’d never owned any vinyl before, so I’m a total beginner. I’ve since bought a mid-range turntable system and am now listening to the inherited records one by one. The differences in recording and sound quality are striking. Classical recordings, in particular, are usually good to very good. I now understand better why classical music fans (such as the german “Phonophono” channel on YouTube) still prefer vinyl. With older pop and rock recordings, the quality varies wildly. There are some great vinyl records here as well that are truly a pleasure to listen to. Much of it is mediocre, and quite a bit is simply terrible: weak bass, weak treble, noisy, and shallow. It reminds me more of a portable radio sound. I’m now sorting through the records and will clean the ones I keep (if necessary). My dealer will lending me a Degritter record cleaner. Let’s see how that goes. And the other day, I was browsing in a record store and bought a few records that seemed interesting to me. My experience there has been mixed as well, even with recordings labeled as “audiophile.” I still need to look more closely into audiophile labels. After watching the YouTube video “The problem with vinyl is…” (“A British Audiophile”), I’m also being cautious when ordering expensive audiophile vinyl recordings.
A major advantage of vinyl is the different way it engages you with the music and the artists. I listen to entire albums, not just individual tracks, as I do with my Qobuz playlists. That’s a new experience.
I have to disagree with this. Our hearing is not able to distinguish the steps that make up the frequency curve. I have just finished listening to a well recorded CD via a pair of high end earphones (Heddphone 2GT) and a very well regarded HP amplifier (SPL Phonitor SE) and the recording I listened too (Henry Threadgill 15) sounds incredibly real.
Google “Can we hear the steps on a digital cd recording”, and you will get some good explanations of why you cannot hear the steps, and why a digital playback is superior to viynl.
Remember since the eighties, most studio recordings are digital recordings.
I’m not sure it’s that black and white, though mastering will generally decide on either format. However, the playback and auditory processing is interesting - arguably the record playback is a true recreation of a natural sound wave, as it comes from a vibration that is formed as, and amplified, as an analogue sound wave, whereas the digital playback is a reconstructed sound wave, and I think that makes a difference in how one’s brain processes the differance into a listening experience.
I know that CD achieves mathematically exact reproduction of an analog sound wave within human hearing limits by using digital signal processing theory—specifically the Nyquist–Shannon Sampling Theorem, but re-construction, filters and dithering do have deleterious effects, to the point that one can hear those effects and our ears don’t really “like it”. Perfect in theory, but in practise. Now where have we heard that before(pun intended)?
It’s interesting isn’t it? We regularly question digital playback but rarely question digital recording. Very little these days is recorded in analogue, yet people still prefer analogue playback.
I think Nyquist’s theory holds up better than we think, but, and this is a big but, the filtering is key. This is where I think vinyl possibly wins in so far as once you have the analogue signal, you only have one output target and the RIAA filtering applied pre-cutting and post playback is far more benign, and presumably you are relying on high quality professional equipment to create the analogue master from the digital source.
Quality of vinyl and how well it’s cut and pressed then become the important factors. The stamps created then wear out, and you get into the whole 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. pressings and quality deterioration. Do vinyl releases sell enough these days for that to matter, or does its niche status mean that’s a problem of the past?
On digital, it still feels a bit like the wild west in comparison. The music can be distributed in a huge range of formats, mp3, CD, FLAC, WAV, DSD, and then 16, 24, 32 bits, 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 192, and even 384 KHz.
In terms of the frequency, I do think more samples just deliver more points on the same line, it’s not the stepped graph peddlers of high-res stuff might want you to believe. I also don’t buy the ultrasonic stuff either. Vinyl can’t reproduce that and no-one complains it’s missing. In terms of bits, then clearly more bits means more dynamic range, but…
As there are so many more combinations of output files for digital, surely to maximise 24/48 vs. 16/44.1 for example, you’d need to master both differently to take advantage of that? However, I’d be quite confident in saying that there will generally be the one master that is down/upsampled accordingly and therefore you don’t really get to see any potential benefit.
So in a desperate attempt to try and keep vaguely on track, I think there is less to go wrong (see firmware-gate) in vinyl, and less target formats to distribute, 1 vs many, and less challenges in playback to overcome. Hence pressing quality matters. For me though it still doesn’t override all the faff and storage/cleaning requirements, but that’s my choice
Since the mid Eighties almost all recordings have been made made with digital recording equipment, so a vinyl record has a “reconstructed” sound as well.
The problem is not digital recording/playback. The problem is that a vinyl record has a more distorted playback that sounds “warmer” and maybe nicer.
I much prefer a crystal clear digital playback.
Personally I came to hate vinyl in the eighties, as the quality of most pressings were pretty poor. The CD came as a welcome element of progress. No more pre warped, pre scratched discs. I did not need to worry about the fact the record shop might have played my record with their crap record deck with a worn out stylus. I could lend records to friends without worry.
Not all turntable/cartridges sound warm, some do, and some don’t. The same with CD some sound warmer than others.
Some modern CD players are using FGPA processors before the dac. Applying an algorithm to the stepped waveform, and producing a modified smoother waveform to send to the dac. The waveform has been distorted to produce a sound that the designer thinks sounds nice.
There is a good chance the sound will be warm, analogue, natural and fatigue free. Apparently that’s what a lot of people want. Something that sounds like a good turntable.
In my experience, sometimes crystal clear digital playback should have the word unnatural added.
But at the end of the day, people appreciate different things. I doubt anybody would try to persuade you that you are wrong. Because. You are not wrong.
There may be no such thing as a silent turntable but some turntable/arm/cartridge combinations are quieter than others.
If having an inky black background is what you crave, buy a turntable/arm/cartridge combination that gives you a inky black background.
Contaminants of dust, grease etc and static can be removed by cleaning.