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ABC article - Vinyl vs Digital


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Guest deanB

@MattyW

I rather hoped somebody would address Sardi's remarks. That's the elephant I was referring to. Quoting my pithy input is neither here nor there.

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I shut down my digital when I listen to vinyl.

 

And i make sure the turntable motor is kept as far apart as possible from digital hardware (can be totally removed if I wanted to) and the metallic part count of the turntable are minimised. 

 

My system(s) sound best when there is only 1 source physically connected (whether digital or vinyl) in proximity to the amps.

Edited by jeromelang
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3 hours ago, deanB said:

"You've got to be delusional to think that vinyl sounds better," ABC audio engineer Adrian Sardi said.

"If people knew what has to be done to the audio before it's even cut onto a disc, let alone the stages that it then goes through to be pressed …"

Sardi would know — he has had a love affair with vinyl since his days DJing in sweaty nightclubs across Perth in the 1990s.

But perhaps of greater relevance, he is one of only a handful of people in Australia who own a short-run vinyl record cutting lathe, which he keeps locked inside a sleek home studio.

Adrian Sardi owns one of the only short-run vinyl record cutting lathes in Australia.(ABC News: Hugh Sando)

"Vinyl is a flawed and compromised medium and I do have to laugh when a lot of audiophiles will rave about vinyl and spend $20,000 on a turntable," he said.

 

Why are the SNA Vinylites tiptoeing around this elephant in the article?

Your collective silence is tantamount to admitting the jig is up. 

C'mon fellas, either light the beacons and man the ramparts or you can never claim vinyl is superior to cd again!

 

Maybe in this video there are some clues to your question. It is worth watching the whole video.

 

 

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A well mastered CD will sound better than any vinyl. CDs = higher SNR, greater bandwith, greater available dynamic range, etc etc than LPs. However, the ease of mastering digital with any number of iterations at a low cost has led to a situation where ridiculous loudness is demanded from the music on CD and loudness war that was mainly present in the broadcasting before the CDs has just gone rampant once CD's took off in mid/late 80s. This "everything louder than everything else" philosophy has meant many CDs (and a majority in pop) are mastered compressed, sacrificing the dynamic range.

 

With vinyl if you go - too much of anything, you'll probably have ruined the costly lacquer. Hence gotta do it - first time right. Hence comparably greater percentage of vinyl is mastered with greater dynamics. It's a paradox in that a medium with greater limitations produces more consistent results exactly because of its limitation (LPs) and a medium with less inherent limitations often ends up using a tiny chunk (as ridiculously low as 12db) of available dynamic range and is more prone to producing compressed, poor dynamic range in recordings (CDs).

 

Again - if mastered properly - CDs will sound better than LPs. Problem is - too often CDs are not mastered well, and mostly due to the loudness war.

 

A sample of one album (lame), however it does illustrate the problem well.

 

 

A long-ish video that I wish was not so rushed actually as it's got lots of great info and particularly pertaining to how loudness war has affected the streaming music, however some info on vinyl + CDs too and all of it helps understand the big picture.

 

Loudness war issue is a big reason why I prefer vinyl in many cases. In some cases I have the same music on both vinyl and digital. And also have some albums solely on CDs, bluray audio, SACD, flac... If I have an album on CD or other digital, I'm always making sure care was taken to master the album properly and that it hasn't fallen victim to the loudness war.

 

This mastering issue is missing from the entire debate above it seems. Just saying you can use the same master for both vinyl and digital only tells half the truth. A sad fact is if that were actually done 100% of the time -  we would be sure that digital would sound better 100% of the time. Due to market forces, publishing practices and loudness wars it has turned out that in many many cases an inferior master mix has ended up being used on the digital album release. And this they've just left out of the article completely.

 

Edited by zippi
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58dc6ce4a40ac_Screenshot2017-03-30at1_23_09PM.png.5bc4f18ef746f116d4db3467578f1e01.png

 

Another example of why CD sounds better than CD.

 

Extract of CD on left is from the CD layer of an SACD disk (2005).  DRstatistic 8

On right is the same extract of the original 1985 CD.

DRstatistic 16

 

What were they thinking.

 

It is not the delivery medium that determines "goodness", rather the person with their fingers on the knobs.

 

 

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3 minutes ago, aechmea said:

58dc6ce4a40ac_Screenshot2017-03-30at1_23_09PM.png.5bc4f18ef746f116d4db3467578f1e01.png

 

Another example of why CD sounds better than CD.

 

Extract of CD on left is from the CD layer of an SACD disk (2005).  DRstatistic 8

On right is the same extract of the original 1985 CD.

DRstatistic 16

 

What were they thinking.

 

It is not the delivery medium that determines "goodness", rather the person with their fingers on the knobs.

 

 

This isn't the place to be talking about playing with knobs  ?

 

Though yeah, the video about how streaming is changing mixing was very informative. Gives me hope...... That I'll hear well mixed music new music before I suffer hearing loss and can't tell the difference   :)

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"This mastering issue is missing from the entire debate above it seems".

 

Yep and the music Industry is not really interested. HiFi News Review all Formats and their sound quality assessments on Albums can sometimes be downright appalling for new releases. The loudness wars I think contribute to new music these days all sounding the same - at least to my ears anyway.

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4 hours ago, aechmea said:

58dc6ce4a40ac_Screenshot2017-03-30at1_23_09PM.png.5bc4f18ef746f116d4db3467578f1e01.png

 

Another example of why CD sounds better than CD.

 

Extract of CD on left is from the CD layer of an SACD disk (2005).  DRstatistic 8

On right is the same extract of the original 1985 CD.

DRstatistic 16

 

What were they thinking.

 

It is not the delivery medium that determines "goodness", rather the person with their fingers on the knobs.

 

 

Wasn't it said that on many SACD's they incorporate a inferior CD layer to make the SACD layer seem much better?

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4 hours ago, aechmea said:

58dc6ce4a40ac_Screenshot2017-03-30at1_23_09PM.png.5bc4f18ef746f116d4db3467578f1e01.png

 

What were they thinking.

They were thinking and intelligently in a business sense and I think it goes something like this.


If we don't make a drastic change to the content then end users won't be able to tell a difference.

End users usually think the louder one sounds better.

 

You could think of it positively in at least you have a choice of two different masters.

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On 02/03/2020 at 10:25 AM, rantan said:

A disc of either colour gives a sense of ownership and collectability that streaming can never offer.

Never say never. One can rip all of their CD purchases and then play/stream them. The best of both worlds?

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Surerly if you put digital through a tube amp it has to sound the best.?

 

Its up to the indervidual  and the sound you like against convenience.

Some like putting  a big black thing on a turntable, some a silver disk in a slot.

Me l like to press buttons and enjoy.

 

regards Bruce

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43 minutes ago, sloper said:

Surerly if you put digital through a tube amp it has to sound the best.?

 

Its up to the indervidual  and the sound you like against convenience.

Some like putting  a big black thing on a turntable, some a silver disk in a slot.

Me l like to press buttons and enjoy.

 

regards Bruce

Interesting concept, in that all you need is a tube amp...........it certainly fixes the problem of what source sounds the best. Indervidual??

 

Cheers Keith

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I gave up long ago on the superiority of one over the other, for the most part either can be done well and sound very good, or badly and sound bad, rather than one being better or worse IMO, they can sound different.

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Guest deanB
52 minutes ago, cheekyboy said:

Interesting concept, in that all you need is a tube amp...........it certainly fixes the problem of what source sounds the best. Indervidual??

 

Cheers Keith

For me there's a correlation between valve equipment and vinyl playback. Measurements and science might not be on your side but it sounds good/great anyway.

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21 minutes ago, deanB said:

For me there's a correlation between valve equipment and vinyl playback. Measurements and science might not be on your side but it sounds good/great anyway.

There's a correlation between certain R2R DAC's in this sense too. The venerable Phillips TDA1541 implemented in non oversampling mode in particular. Sounds very vinyl like. ;)

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2 hours ago, sloper said:

 

Surely if you put digital through a tube amp it has to sound the best.?

 

 

Weeeell ... yes!  Digital thru tubes sounds better than digital through ss only ... but I wouldn't agree that this (digital!) is 'the best'.

 

48 minutes ago, deanB said:

 

For me there's a correlation between valve equipment and vinyl playback. Measurements and science might not be on your side but it sounds good/great anyway.

 

 

I don't get what you mean by "correlation, Dean?

 

Care to explain?  :)

 

Andy

 

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Guest deanB
38 minutes ago, MattyW said:

There's a correlation between certain R2R DAC's in this sense too. The venerable Phillips TDA1541 implemented in non oversampling mode in particular. Sounds very vinyl like. ;)

Yes, I think I know what you mean. My Naim CD5X is the most analog sounding player I've owned, R2R/PCM1704 chip.

Certainly lends itself to long listening sessions.

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20 hours ago, MattyW said:

 

But it's not up. In terms of sound quality,  I find both vinyl and digital formats about the same.  Where I enjoy vinyl more is because it forces you to listen. It's the ritual and critical listening makes it so enjoyable. But sound.... No it's cheaper to get quality sound from digital content.

I've never had a top echelon vinyl rig and haven't undertaken any critical comparisons of formats. At different times, the convenience of one format suits my listening preference. At other times, i like to sit back and focus. I agree that the process of listening to vinyl deepens my enjoyment because I DO listen and don't flit between tracks.

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Guest deanB

I had a Technics Mash cdp, don't recall a lot about it except that it had an A/B function that enabled playing a cd like an lp, side 1 or side 2. Should be a function on every cdp.

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