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Vinyl resolution vs digital resolution


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I spun a few discs last night, and sometimes I will switch over to the CD while listening to the vinyl to hear what differences there are.

Now usually on my rig, the vinyl sounds nicer, with more life and vitality in the music. But not last night.

No, last night the audiophile 180g version of Radiohead's OK Computer was bested by the CD (played via Sonos and Stello DAC). The vinyl seemed to have a seriously rolled off top end and a very closed soundstage. Compared to the CD it was boring and flat. How strange.

Just to check I then spun Kid A on both, and switching between the two I found a clear winner in the vinyl. Interesting.

Just thought I'd share that, now get back to your arguing.

:)

Cheers,

Jake

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How about you stop being elitist and explain it to the (obviously) many interested people here?

Or am I asking for too much?

What's elitist about knowing some chemistry? Thousands of kids study it each year in high schools, TAFEs, polytechnics, and universities, and I'm not aware that they constitute an intellectual elite. No more so than those who study electronics and advanced circuit theory and construction - a subject about which I know nothing. Plenty of the latter write beneficially on this and other audio fora without being accused of elitism, so why are chemists to be singled out? Note that you won't find me writing anything anywhere about advanced electronics. I'm happy to leave that to people who know what they're talking about.

Yes, you are asking too much. If I were to go back far enough to deal with the misconception appearing above that cutting a piece of plastic with a knife involves the breaking of carbon-carbon bonds, and then progress though essential background to the chemical and physical properties of polymers I'd need to write a 500-page textbook. I can't be bothered doing that and you wouldn't be particularly interested in reading it - PVC polymers and PVC/PVA copolymers wouldn't turn up until about p450.

So why not rest comfortable with the fact that nearly all of the chemical conjecture in this thread and the article that spawned it is nonsense? Science doesn't and shouldn't explain everything - my preferences in the analogue vs digital debate were arrived at simply by listening and finding that one format generally gives me more satisfaction than the other. Likewise nobody rationalises their preference for Mozart over Michael Jackson, or vice-versa, by trying to subject their respective musical outputs to pseudo-scientific analysis.

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Yeah Steves Linn/Edgar system is sweet (thanks Steve) and I must admit to being very impressed with the vinyl I heard, prefer it to CD, but still there is too much of an argument against it, for me in my circumstances, and I think that a server based system fundamentally serves the music better for the simple fact that I find myself visiting the far corners of my library more often, rather than listening to 20% of my collection 80% of the time for fear of having to get up off the couch to change it if I'm not liking it.

(I'll also say I found the change in realism and involvement going from bookshelves to horns much greater than in going from cd to vinyl so I'm not getting to hung up on anything but speakers for the next while)

Sorry BD, missed this the other day ...

All pretty spot-on comments Bevan and I agree about the horn speaker option vs. the route to invest in vinyl replay. You know my view, loudspeaker choice is supremo! get the best and (biggest) loudspeaker you can fit into your living space and everything else will fall into place audio-wise.

Steve.

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I may be strange, but I'm happy with logan's comment as it stands :) makes more sense to me than the article referred to in the OP.

Plus I'd never make it through the 500 pages.

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What's elitist about knowing some chemistry? Thousands of kids study it each year in high schools, TAFEs, polytechnics, and universities, and I'm not aware that they constitute an intellectual elite. No more so than those who study electronics and advanced circuit theory and construction - a subject about which I know nothing. Plenty of the latter write beneficially on this and other audio fora without being accused of elitism, so why are chemists to be singled out? Note that you won't find me writing anything anywhere about advanced electronics. I'm happy to leave that to people who know what they're talking about.

Yes, you are asking too much. If I were to go back far enough to deal with the misconception appearing above that cutting a piece of plastic with a knife involves the breaking of carbon-carbon bonds, and then progress though essential background to the chemical and physical properties of polymers I'd need to write a 500-page textbook. I can't be bothered doing that and you wouldn't be particularly interested in reading it - PVC polymers and PVC/PVA copolymers wouldn't turn up until about p450.

So why not rest comfortable with the fact that nearly all of the chemical conjecture in this thread and the article that spawned it is nonsense? Science doesn't and shouldn't explain everything - my preferences in the analogue vs digital debate were arrived at simply by listening and finding that one format generally gives me more satisfaction than the other. Likewise nobody rationalises their preference for Mozart over Michael Jackson, or vice-versa, by trying to subject their respective musical outputs to pseudo-scientific analysis.

If you can't explain things to lay people in simple terms, then you don't understand what you're saying. Or if you can, but you don't want to, that just makes you an idiot.

I'm quite happy to accept the original post to be incorrect, and using grossly inaccurate assumptions. Outside of talking about how much you know on the subject, you haven't actually made a point.

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We try to keep things friendly here Logan

Thanks for pointing this out. I did indeed accuse someone of being ignorant, but since it was myself I thought that this would fall within the guidelines. Now I know better.

Having been accused of elitism in one post and described as either ignorant or an idiot (take your pick) in another, it could be argued that I might have grounds for temporarily overlooking the requirement for warm and friendly responses.

I'll start work immediately on an exposition of synthetic polymer chemistry and technology, in words of one syllable, involving no more than 140 characters. I'm told that this is the ultra-modern mode of information sharing, and that anything which needs any more detail is not worth knowing. I'll have my posting ready when someone explains the fundamentals of digital electronics to me within the same constraints.

It would be nice if complex things were more simple, and could readily be assimilated by laypersons lacking any background knowledge. But they're not. Scientifically and technologically-illiterate politicians at the Copenhagen Global Warming fiasco have just discovered this.

Friendly enough, or am I still missing something?

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Hello Adam,

Thanks for sharing...

That's an interesting comment/evaluation if the 11 bit resolution was actually determined that way...i.e: as some sort of dynamic range based on smallest possible movement traced in the goove compared with the largest possible movement.

Out of interest, one will often see reference to LPs having anything between 70-80 dB of dynamic range for high quality/mastered recording and pressings. At 6 dB per bit our 70-80 dB dynamic range would equate to an equivalent resolution of 70/6 = 11.7 bits to 80/6 = 13.3 bits. So the stated comment of vinyl having an 11 bit resolution is in the ballpark.

Sounds plausible to me.

One thing about LPs, possibly by nature of the era they come from and in more recent times the purity they often adhere to in recording technique, is that they don't seem to "want to play in the loudness war" and hence the sound quality can be stellar, compared with ultra compressed/over manipulted- made for boom box/car CD. (I can't really see LPs back in use at radio stations or in cars...so they are lucky in a way as the are shileded from the loudness war)

Perhaps when we see the 'supposed future death' of CD, maybe then we'll find more well produced music on CD because it will become more of an enthusiast nostalgic item just like vinyl is now, rather than the mainstream item it is today.

When CD, DVD or SACD are used to their ultimate they also demonstrate incredible quality.

You said it, CD's are still my media of choice, by a long shot.

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Yup , still way off the mark in the friendly stakes:)

At least I haven't called anyone an elitist idiot - or is that now a warm and cuddly greeting in current Australian vernacular? Abiding by one set of standards is hard enough - meeting your apparently parochial double standard may well prove impossible.

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At least I haven't called anyone an elitist idiot - or is that now a warm and cuddly greeting in current Australian vernacular? Abiding by one set of standards is hard enough - meeting your apparently parochial double standard may well prove impossible.

it is an Australian greeting Logan. We use a lot of irony here, it translates as "can you please explain for us dumb-arsed colonials?"

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Logan, from an impartial viewpoint, you're posts have come across as aggressive and condescending. I agree that the linked thread is a load of nonsense, and stated such in the first page of this thread. I didn't, however, insult a lot of other posters in the process. People come on these forums to share and gain knowledge, and when they do so in a spirit of good humour, the forums function well.

As for your challenge:

Change naught and one through D.A.C. to smooth up and down sound. High bit good. Low bit bad. High hertz good. Low hertz bad.

The character limit was easy, the monosyllabic bit a touch harder (yes, a bit of licence taken with D.A.C. I agree). Now how you gonna do polyvinyl chloride in one syllable?:cool:

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If any of the protagonists in this discussion, starting with the actual originator of the idea, knew any chemistry in general or polymer chemistry in particular there would have been no discussion. The 'calculations" involving suggested molecular sizes and shapes plus the wrong-headed ideas about cutter heads clicking against molecules or chemically fragmenting them are simply chemical nonsense. And since the argument falls over at Step 1, all the rest is irrelevant.

I can't be bothered correcting any of the chemical misconceptions. Except to point out an old adage - if you don't know what you're talking about, don't talk about it.

Logan,

As many other contributors to this thread have already pointed out, your attitude/comments here are well...Not Quite Right. Your first post in this thread #118 above starts the ball rolling, where you

  • insinuate ignorance on the part of all the protagonists in this discussion,
  • represent their views as either "wrong-headed", "nonsense" or irrelevant"
  • and then suggest we should essentially shut-up if we don't comply with whatever views you may hold ,but are supposedly unwilling to espouse.

That is the behaviour of a TROLL.

If you change your behaviour and attitude you are more than welcome to rejoin the debate. Otherwise please leave those that wish to engage in friendly discussion and debate to do just that.

JA

PM Sent

Edited by JA
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This is fundamentally wrong thinking (the one form the first post). Guy is comparing apples and elephants. How can you compare a physical representation of an analogue signal (no matter how imperfect that is) to a digital sampling resolution of presumably the same signal? A groove cutter is not "sampling" the signal it is recreating it. You can say that this is a "sampling process" with infinite rate. So if you want to compare a record pressing process and digital sampling you can maybe (but only maybe) draw a parallel between jitter and other timing issues in digital sampling with mechanical accuracy of the grove cutting. This is allowable ONLY if you assume that 24bit or 32 bit or any sampling rate is reconstructing signal in the full which is not an accurate assumption to start with.

Some people should just stop thinking and spend more time listening to the music.

^^^ THIS. The 'logic' in the original post is quite flawed.

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This is fundamentally wrong thinking (the one form the first post). Guy is comparing apples and elephants. How can you compare a physical representation of an analogue signal (no matter how imperfect that is) to a digital sampling resolution of presumably the same signal? A groove cutter is not "sampling" the signal it is recreating it. You can say that this is a "sampling process" with infinite rate.

Decky, I think you pretty much hit it on the head.

Pure analogue has in essence an infinite number of samples and more significantly zero quantising distortion within its useful dynamic range. If one eliminates clicks and pops in the equation, vinyl is theoretically capable of very good reproduction. What possibly lets the format down is frictional noise and thermal noise generated by wiring, cartridges and phono pre-amps. Regrettably, records are never as perfectly quiet as we would like them to be.

IMHO what might be contributing to the (say) less than perfect performance of Redbook CD is phase and quantising distortion at the high frequency end of the audible range. This may account for formats with significantly higher sampling rates (DVD-A and SACD) sounding to some to be apparently "nicer" or "smoother", perhaps even "analogue like"?

Some people should just stop thinking and spend more time listening to the music.
I'll second that motion. :cool: All in favour say aye!

Cheers,

Alan R.

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Abiding by one set of standards is hard enough - meeting your apparently parochial double standard may well prove impossible.

If that's a back-handed attempt at peace, I will take it.

People are friendly here, but it is a two way street.

PS. Aye.

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What possibly lets the format down is frictional noise and thermal noise generated by wiring, cartridges and phono pre-amps.

You forgot static build up of the turning vinyl, that results in an occasional 'pop'. Which is nigh on impossible to avoid.

Adds to the charm for me...... (or is that just implied as part of frictional noise?)

Edited by ozmillsy
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I think we've missed something here...

with digital, the bits are all in pre-destined locations on a grid and the signal is either above or below each one.

with analogue, the grains can be wherever we want to put them.

I can track a curved line better with freely-placed oranges than I can with golf balls placed on a fixed grid.

there will be some limitation to where the cutter can put the molecules of vinyl during the cutting process, but there will be a lot more flexibility than would occur if they were in a fixed grid and could only be removed, not moved.

not sure if this got lost in the noise or if it's too ridiculous to even comment on... if it is, i'm not too sure why!

it would certainly emplain why vinyl has more apparent resolution. even if the blocks may be of significant size.

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