Reading the Analogue Planet website and the (many) reviews of Michael Fremer including the most recent and important reviews of The Beatles Mono Vinyl set, does make me wonder if analogue is far better than digital. I bought the Mono Beatles vinyl box today and as many reviewers have said, it sounds massively better than the already good mono CD's from 2009. Given that everything else is equal: master tapes, remastering team, studios, equipment etc, how else can you explain the superiority of the vinyl for sound quality over the CD? No two reviewers have the same equipment or ears to hear it with either and yet the conclusions are always the same.
Beatles Mono vinyl box proves analogue superiority?
- Thread starter VOE
- Start date
VOE said:
It isn't, can't be and will not be, short of both formats changing out of all recognition.
Given the historical nature of these recordings, everything is in the mastering.
Tzutzu
Well-known member
Covenanter
Well-known member
Oh dear! Another one. You prefer the vinyl because you like distortion. Now there's nothing wrong with that, people watch Eastenders and buy The Sun and enjoy them, but it doesn't make them good tv or a good newspaper.
Chris
Chris
Covenanter said:
Actually, it does, at least to the (many) that watch or read them.
Not unlike vinyl, they have been here for a long time and will, probably, still be here when others have long gone ...
What is the last time you've heard a good vinyl replay system?
regards
Covenanter
Well-known member
Don't you just love the wonderful warm sound of those ones and zeros.
1110011000111110100100011110001101101001111010011101001011001001010101.
What's that? Sounds gorgeous.
1110011000111110100100011110001101101001111010011101001011001001010101.
What's that? Sounds gorgeous.
There is actually an interesting discussion to be had here, if people are prepared to put aside their entrenched positions.
What we should be discussing is why so many people find vinyl playback preferable to digital playback and what is causing it.
I am not one of those who think it is all about 'analogue warmth', in fact I find most modern players in the budget and mid price levels to be unlistenable, but importantly I do find 'good' players a joy.
The question is why, what is it about really good vinyl playback that is, to me, so enjoyable? I have read all kinds of theories and explanations but nothing seems diffinitive, adding the right sort of noise or distortion? A little reverb (reflected sound waves in the vinyl) or something else entirely?
One thing I do know, as I have done the experiment, is top class vinyl replay, digitised and recorded, sounds exactly the same as the vinyl when played back. Ie all the things that make vinyl sound like vinyl remain 100% in place in the digital recording.
I find that interesting.
What we should be discussing is why so many people find vinyl playback preferable to digital playback and what is causing it.
I am not one of those who think it is all about 'analogue warmth', in fact I find most modern players in the budget and mid price levels to be unlistenable, but importantly I do find 'good' players a joy.
The question is why, what is it about really good vinyl playback that is, to me, so enjoyable? I have read all kinds of theories and explanations but nothing seems diffinitive, adding the right sort of noise or distortion? A little reverb (reflected sound waves in the vinyl) or something else entirely?
One thing I do know, as I have done the experiment, is top class vinyl replay, digitised and recorded, sounds exactly the same as the vinyl when played back. Ie all the things that make vinyl sound like vinyl remain 100% in place in the digital recording.
I find that interesting.
Overdose
Well-known member
VOE said:
As with any anecdotal evidence, it proves very little, nothing in fact.
Lets flip this question around. Given the obvious and provable technical superiority of digital systems and given that everything else is equal: master tapes, remastering team, studios, equipment etc, how is a vinyl system going to come even close to a mediocre digital one?
People spend thousands on vinyl playback systems, trying to get the same level of quality that a cheap digital system can deliver. Even 'budget' digital equipment is able to produce a level of transparency that vinyl hasn't a hope of matching.
Covenanter
Well-known member
Tannoyed
Well-known member
At the risk of offending and indeed incurring the wrath of the analogue brigade, I have to say that to me digital is the only option for me. I suffered decades of poor pressings, warped records, distortion, performance deterioration because of constant angular (but not linear) velocity, print through from the previous 'lap', RIAA equalisation (necessary to get the material onto a 12" disc in the first place), dust, scratches, stuff growing in the grooves, space required for storage, stylus wear, liklihood of damaging the wretched thing, ad infinitum ad nauseam.
I grew up with vinyl. Loved it even. Could hear the advantage over cassette tape. Yes a good pressing played on good equipment probably sounds great, warm even, but for me the effort and expense is just too much. If this makes me less than a genuine hifi enthusiast then I apologise. I draw the line at MP3 which sounds awful but to me a 16 bit CD is perfectly adequate. Yes I am a philistine. Yes I should have been strangled at birth, but for me CD's were the answer to all of the problems mentioned above. If a cd can be said to sound harsh, possibly it is because the detail is not being lost in a sea of hissing and scratching.
I shall now say my 'Hail Marys' and beg forgiveness from an angry God!
If you love vinyl- fine. If you love digital- fine. What depresses me more is the fact that most of the world spends its time listening to MP3 or the like. How anyone can live with this degree of compression I shall never understand. If this were the only alternative then give me vinyl any day!
I grew up with vinyl. Loved it even. Could hear the advantage over cassette tape. Yes a good pressing played on good equipment probably sounds great, warm even, but for me the effort and expense is just too much. If this makes me less than a genuine hifi enthusiast then I apologise. I draw the line at MP3 which sounds awful but to me a 16 bit CD is perfectly adequate. Yes I am a philistine. Yes I should have been strangled at birth, but for me CD's were the answer to all of the problems mentioned above. If a cd can be said to sound harsh, possibly it is because the detail is not being lost in a sea of hissing and scratching.
I shall now say my 'Hail Marys' and beg forgiveness from an angry God!
If you love vinyl- fine. If you love digital- fine. What depresses me more is the fact that most of the world spends its time listening to MP3 or the like. How anyone can live with this degree of compression I shall never understand. If this were the only alternative then give me vinyl any day!
You have got to be kidding me!
I don't buy the argument that it's all in the mastering choices either. The team who remastered The Beatles In Mono for CD also did the vinyl. They were trying in BOTH mediums to get the very best sound they could within the limitations of the media without changing the character of the original recording ie. no added compression etc. Given that they used the SAME tapes both times and the same equipment and did not deliberately make one sound better than the other, if digital is so great and better than analogue, why shoudn't the Cd's automatically sound better? They certainly do not and anyone with ears will tell you that if they are being honest.
Could it be that analogue reproduces a perfectly smooth sine wave whilst digital reproduces a stepped version of the same? Maybe our ears can detect the missing data? Who knows but analogue is certainly musically more coherent and accurate to my ears.
The idea that a cheap digital system can outperform an expensive analogue one is plainly daft IMHO. I have spent over £12,000 on digital systems and never been remotely satisfied with any of them. With a fraction of that money you can buy a great analogue system and your ears will thank you.
Go and check out Michael Fremer's website. He can explain the whys and hows better than I can.
I don't buy the argument that it's all in the mastering choices either. The team who remastered The Beatles In Mono for CD also did the vinyl. They were trying in BOTH mediums to get the very best sound they could within the limitations of the media without changing the character of the original recording ie. no added compression etc. Given that they used the SAME tapes both times and the same equipment and did not deliberately make one sound better than the other, if digital is so great and better than analogue, why shoudn't the Cd's automatically sound better? They certainly do not and anyone with ears will tell you that if they are being honest.
Could it be that analogue reproduces a perfectly smooth sine wave whilst digital reproduces a stepped version of the same? Maybe our ears can detect the missing data? Who knows but analogue is certainly musically more coherent and accurate to my ears.
The idea that a cheap digital system can outperform an expensive analogue one is plainly daft IMHO. I have spent over £12,000 on digital systems and never been remotely satisfied with any of them. With a fraction of that money you can buy a great analogue system and your ears will thank you.
Go and check out Michael Fremer's website. He can explain the whys and hows better than I can.
davedotco said:
Dave I do love the way you seem to come barging in to these threads and stamp your foot and leave the room again. Then you re-enter with a much more rational head on and see the possibilitys for a great mesured discussion. I do prefer the more mesured side of you I have to say.
Overdose and Covenater seem to be happy trampeling everything but we are all entitled to our opinions.
So heres my theory.
There is no doub't digital is the more durable format. It's very hard to get it wrong so stupendously that audio becomes unlistenable but at the same time very easy to do it on perpouse for artistic effect. Staying with the first part digital is clean and "distortion free" CDs won't warp so easily like a vinyl record, they are mor robust and they don't ware out from playing them.
My understanding of vinyl is more care needs to be taken to maintain each disc and of course they take up more space. You can spend just as much trying to get a record to sound its best as you can a CD or audio file to sound it's best. I don't see any differences accept in the cheaper end of both formats. Digital will prevale.
The main question is my do people prefer analogue?
Yes analogue is distorted nut I put this to you. When we hear sounds in real life they have weight to them be it masses or the lightest touch. With digital you have to put the signal through a DAC (at times a stand alone DAC is better than the one in the payback device) so we always end up listening to analogue anyway. Granted the source is cleaner in the first place.
The reason I mentioned weight is with digital you have to use a subwoofer correctly set up to fully achive that weight. Full range speakers will do a great job and give you a warm sounds but a warm sound or a tight bass sound if thats what you prefer is different to the weight of a sound. A cymbal for instance. You might hear the bead of a drumstck strike the cymbal (ride cymbal in this case) and then the body of the cymbal resonates and you hear the pitch and the note of th cymbal but how thick and heavy is the perticular cymbal or any other precussive instrument. We all know how they sound but is the right weight there in the sound too.
With analoge though it may or may not be the correct amount of weight vinyl, cassets and other analogue sources already offer a better representation of the weight of a sound giving it that more life like feel as if you were there when the sound was being made.
Maybe listening to a digital recording is actually listening to a fake (to our ears and brain) representation of a sounds and that in an analogue domain we hear the same distortions that the vinyl puts out. In which case listening to a record or cassett would mean we listen to twice the amount of distortion against listening to none in a digital domain.
The conclusion being if I'm right that to achive audio playback perfection you need to find the mod ground between the to which make neither analogue or digital in their pureist form wholey accurate in the first place rendering all our disussions null an void.
Tha's my theory anyway.
The_Lhc
Well-known member
VOE said:
No it couldn't because digital recording does not produce a "stepped version" of the original sine wave, it reproduces the sine wave in perfect accuracy.
Lots of love,
a Vinyl enthusiast.
Frank Harvey
Well-known member
davedotco said:
I don't. It just means the CD has recorded what the vinyl is doing. I wouldn't expect anything less.
Frank Harvey
Well-known member
Overdose said:
More often than not I find that digital produces too flat a soundstage when compared with analogue. The DAC is very important - Chord's Qute DAC can make Napster sound like CD quality in comparison to the DAC in my processor, so there are big differences in DAC quality and how it affects replay.
Of course, it all depends what products you're comparing - there are just as many, if not more, low quality digital replay systems as there are analogue ones out there. And just because digital is clean, it doesn't mean it sounds good. Budget CD player can easily be shown up in good quality hifi systems.
Why did the Foo fighters go back to an analogue master tape when recording their last album? And could this have a hand in why the vinyl copy walks all over the digital copy for sound quality?
The Foo Fighters are only doing what Neil Young, Peter Gabriel, Peter Buck (R.E.M.) and many others did before them: discovering that the "digital revolution" was a bit of a con and that analogue tape recordings when played back in the studio sounded identical to what they had just played whereas the digital version was a harsher, colder, flatter and thoroughly sterile facsimile of the same.
I find Fremer's assumptions about the digitisation of music being responsible for the harsh sibilents and "mush" of the earlier Beatles mono Cd's, quite interesting. The new vinyl from the same tape does not have any of this problem.
I find Fremer's assumptions about the digitisation of music being responsible for the harsh sibilents and "mush" of the earlier Beatles mono Cd's, quite interesting. The new vinyl from the same tape does not have any of this problem.
VOE said:
ie, it was more accurate and people had gotten so used to anaglogue distortion, one of the first things producers due when recording in digital is to put analogue compression on the track to make it sound more distorted to get it to sound more like the sound people are used to.
Just like film/digital. I love film grain and actually prefer the lesser quality image from film over High def digital as it hides a hell of a lot more cracks than high def does. Doesn't make it better, it means it's what I prefer.
Interesting article on the whole analogue digital thing in the studio here http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb10/articles/analoguewarmth.htm
David@FrankHarvey said:
Exactly, the digital record/playback sequence is essentially transparent, whether at home or in the studio.
It does not, of itself, produce "cold, sterile, masters" as some have claimed, that is a function of the recording and the work done in post preduction. That it happens is true enough, it is the why that is interesting.
Distortion levels are higher in analogue recording and playback systems than in digital, that needs to be understoood and accepted before we can move on.
The interesting thing is that many people find analogue playback more 'realistic' than digital and therefore prefer it. I think there are a number of reasons for that, higher noise for example.
One interesting arguement I came across recently is this.
'Real', live music is, almost universaly, much louder than hi-fi playback and our ears produce progressively more distortion as levels rise. In a playback system the levels produced produce lower levels of distortion in the ear, in a digital system there is no significant distortion inherent in the system but in an analogue system there is. The ear hears the 'expected' levels of distortion on the analogue system so the music sounds quite realistic, on the digital system there is no such distortion so the music sounds unrealistic.
Not sure that I agree but I thought I would add it to the debate for your amusement.
matt49
Well-known member
VOE said:
The point The Lhc was making is that talk of "stepped sine waves" is irrelevant to digital audio. Digital audio signals cannot be represented accurately by stepped sine waves.
If you want to understand why, watch this: http://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml
EDIT sorry, first time round I got the URL wrong
The_Lhc
Well-known member
VOE said:
Clearly, because there's no such thing. A sine wave by definition is a smooth continuously changing oscillation. If it has steps in it, it is NOT a sine wave.
There are no steps in digital audio, you really need to look this stuff up as you're going to make yourself look very silly.
Covenanter
Well-known member
davedotco said:
Yep 100% right. That's what people need to understand. There is nothing wrong with liking vinyl if it sounds better to you. Indeed you would be mad not to prefer it. At the end of the day it's your perception that counts to you. But please don't pretend that it isn't more distorted than digital, that's without dispute. (Someone once posted videos of sine waves reproduced from vinyl and from cd which clearly showed the distortion. It would be nice if they could post them again.)
So please keep liking vinyl but don't make specious claims about it.
Chris
PS As another example of "good" distortion the compression you often get on modern "pop" recordings is great for playing music in a car as it assists with hearing the music above the higher noise background. I can't listen to many of my "classical" recordings in a car as you can't hear the quiet passages or if you can the loud passages deafen you.
Frank Harvey
Well-known member
I believe that sine wave video was shown to slightly doctored, if I'm thinking of the right one.
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