A great article on analogue Vs Digital

bretty

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I'd often heard that vinyl sounded better than CD, before I'd bought my first TT and after hearing vinyl I concur. But I didn't really know why. I found this article today, and it really simply and clearly explains why vinyl sounds better. It also clearly shows how much superior DVD-A is to CD. Shame it didn't catch on.

HERE
 
I have mixed feelings about these techno graphs. I'm sure they are very accurate, in a scientific way. Unfortunately, our ears aren't scientific. Vinyl is fantastic yet digital stuff has its place...

I'm sure there are those that'll disagree with my simplistic conclusion, but that's wot makes this hobby so fascinating.
 

WinterRacer

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I'd take the opposite view, my view is it's a naive or misleading article written by someone with an agenda. Yes digital systems suffer from distortion, the two highlighted in the article are called quantisation and aliasing. If you're interested wikipedia explains both of these very well. However, the article makes no attempt to quantify these issues or compare them to the inherent problems suffered by records & turntables.

If you're interested in high(er) resolution digital music, it may be worth investigating computer audio and one of the many streaming devices that support greater than CD resolution. The cheapest I can think of is the Squeezebox Touch.

However, keep enjoying the vinyl, it's all music!
 
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Anonymous

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"A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform. This means that no information is lost."

...and from that point on, it's obvious this person doesn't understand how vinyl works, and the article loses all credibility. No information is lost? Really now?

Like most of "howstuffworks", it's an oversimplification written for people who enjoy finding out interesting facts and trivia, without having to truly understand anything technical or complicated.
 

bretty

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stayawayfromymybins said:
Like most of "howstuffworks", it's an oversimplification written for people who enjoy finding out interesting facts and trivia, without having to truly understand anything technical or complicated.

The lack of technobabble is what I liked about it. Kept it simple for the layman, like me.
smiley-smile.gif
 

idc

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Ah, but how audible is the difference? I would say that the CDs sample rate is high enough to greatly overshadow the problem of vinyl, which is background noise caused by dust etc as mentioned in the article.
 

CnoEvil

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24/192 through an expensive DAC has come close to closing the gap with good quality vinyl.

The trouble is with the selection of music available on 24 bit.

My old Linn Sondek was the most musical source that I've ever owned - but too much faff and not toddler friendly, so sold on 2o years ago. :(
 
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Anonymous

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The information given in the article is misleading because it omits the Shanon Nyquist principal of signal reconstruction using a series of Sinc function. The actual analogue reconstruction process employed in modern DACs is much more sophisticated in practice and use oversampling to reconstruct the waveform acurately along with a low pass filter to remove high order harmonics. Modern ADC and DACs dont have a problem sampling and reconstrucing real world signals which are sinusoidal in nature with lower distortion and excellent SNR.
 
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Anonymous

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bretty said:
The lack of technobabble is what I liked about it. Kept it simple for the layman, like me.
smiley-smile.gif

That's fine! And that's the aim of the article :) but I don't like to see so much compromise between plain english presentation of something technical, and bending the truth to make it possible.
 
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Anonymous

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Another article more convincing with a simple explanation and common sense (in french):

Which unfortunately falls foul of House Rules - MODS
 
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Anonymous

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The problem is not support but the recording mode

As does that one - MODS
 

Richard Allen

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idc said:
Ah, but how audible is the difference? I would say that the CDs sample rate is high enough to greatly overshadow the problem of vinyl, which is background noise caused by dust etc as mentioned in the article.

Agreed, but you can only encode what is there in the first place. This is why high quality vinyl will outshine a CD anyday. It's also interesting to note that if you record vinyl to CD the resulting sound is very analogue as opposed to digital.
 
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Anonymous

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Music, or sounds in general are not only heard, but felt. Hence the dynamic range restrictions of digital systems (which are designed to cater for human ears) simply cannot replicate the detail that analogue systems can.

Of course, the infinite bandwidth of analogue audio can and often will incorporate noise into the sound outputted from a HiFi setup. Digital audio eliminates noise, but ultimately you lose data...

Take your pick. For me analogue recordings and reproductions sound 100% better than digital.

How's that for a first post?!!
smiley-wink.gif
 

CnoEvil

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socratys said:
Music, or sounds in general are not only heard, but felt. Hence the dynamic range restrictions of digital systems (which are designed to cater for human ears) simply cannot replicate the detail that analogue systems can.

Of course, the infinite bandwidth of analogue audio can and often will incorporate noise into the sound outputted from a HiFi setup. Digital audio eliminates noise, but ultimately you lose data...

Take your pick. For me analogue recordings and reproductions sound 100% better than digital.

How's that for a first post?!!
smiley-wink.gif

Philosophical
 
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Anonymous

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The original reference is complete nonsense. There is no other word for it.

"A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform"

Not so. The signal and frequency range has to be modified quite a bit in order to be put into a groove - check riaa equalization.

"This means that no information is lost."

Not so. In an analog to analog conversion information is also lost, simply because the devices have different mechanical/physical properties. That sets limits to for instance the attack and decay rates.

"The output of a record player is analog."

Hey, 1 out of 4 is right! Sorry it was not complete nonsense.

"It can be fed directly to your amplifier with no conversion."

Not true. This is why phono stages are needed, see above.

As far as socratys post: it is a bit misleading to call analog 'infinite'. Although there are no steps, analog has other limitations that vary from device to device. An ideal device would have zero weight to allow infinite reaction speed, and maximum damping to avoid that the vibrations continue after the signal is gone, no resonance frequency in the audible realm, and probably more. Speaker and turntable designers have to come up with the best compromise, and succeed incredibly well.

What is true is that the CD quality sampling puts a limit on the SNR of 98db, due to the quantisation in steps. Much better than your phono/vinyl setup, so decide for yourself how important this is. But still, 24/96 or 24/192 would have been better.

There are several reasons why you are allowed to prefer vinyl. No problem with that at all. One is that the mastering for vinyl is usually different. Another is that an analog device adds something to the sound that you like. No (pseudo)science is needed for that.
 

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