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How I learned to stop worrying and love vinyl

news.qthemusic.com

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Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love vinyl

#31

Post by jff »

SageRaven wrote: post #23
IanDrake wrote: post #4

Vinyl sounds great for increasing one's hipster cred, but last time I heard a vinyl album it sounded like, well, crap. The author seems to be comparing the sound of the record shop's nicest player to an MP3, of god knows what bit-rate, played through ear buds. Maybe what he's really discovered is that a nice hi-fi system goes a long way and he should get more disk space for his audio files and go lossless.

For shits and giggles, I snagged a vinyl rip of Simon and Garfunkle's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" in 24-bit 96KHz FLAC format online, just to see what all the fuss was about. Some guys who do serious vinyl rips spare no expense, using pristine vinyl on high-end rigs, washing the disk before the first play, etc.. I don't pretend to understand all the jargon. Now I obviously couldn't perform scientifically sound liste…

Put several instances of each song into a playlist and hit "shuffle". Try to identify which is which. That's the best way to make sure it's a real difference, not just your head playing tricks.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love vinyl

#32

Post by EliRivers »

__david__ wrote: post #30
EliRivers wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no kind of music fan, and even I can hear how crappy 48kHz sounds next to 192kHz; you can hear it even over a bad pair of earbuds.

> even I can hear how crappy 48kHz sounds next to 192kHz :-) No you can't. All raising the sampling rate does is raise the Nyquist frequency and unless you have super human ears that can hear up to 96KHz ( you don't ), then all you're doing is wasting disk space.

I thought IvyM said he talking about bitrate; not sampling rate?

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love vinyl

#33

Post by glomph »

jff wrote: post #31
SageRaven wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For shits and giggles, I snagged a vinyl rip of Simon and Garfunkle's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" in 24-bit 96KHz FLAC format online, just to see what all the fuss was about. Some guys who do serious vinyl rips spare no expense, using pristine vinyl on high-end rigs, washing the disk before the first play, etc.. I don't pretend to understand all the jargon. Now I obviously couldn't perform scientifically sound liste…

Put several instances of each song into a playlist and hit "shuffle". Try to identify which is which. That's the best way to make sure it's a real difference, not just your head playing tricks.

Agreed. Blind tests are the only reliable way. If nothing else tests in this area have managed to show is that people are not good at judging without bias if they know which is which.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love vinyl

#34

Post by taylodl »

markfig wrote: post #8

There are plenty of reasons to listen to vinyl and it's fine if you are doing it to be hip. I do it because of the sound quality. CDs were invented in the 1980s. The digital resolution is simply not very high. Remember what the first digital cameras looked like next to film? That's the CD next to vinyl. And MP3s and AACs are so much worse. It's like comparing a compressed JPG to an Ansel Adams print on a gallery wall…

I grew up in the analog age. Trust me, there was much rejoicing when CDs came out. Your lament about the digital resolution of CDs is baseless: the resolution is far beyond what the human ear can discern. We've already been through all this in the 80's. It's comical to watch you hipsters stir up this old dust that had settled long ago.

Oh, and it's well-known that some people prefer the sound of vinyl. It's a particular distortion accentuating the midrange. This distortion provides a "warmer" sound. But let's not kid ourselves - it's a distortion.

But if you prefer the warmer sound of vinyl then I suggest you try 7,5 IPS reel-to-reel. It'll knock your socks off!

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love vinyl

#35

Post by snogglethorpe »

taylodl wrote: post #34
markfig wrote: post #8

There are plenty of reasons to listen to vinyl and it's fine if you are doing it to be hip. I do it because of the sound quality. CDs were invented in the 1980s. The digital resolution is simply not very high. Remember what the first digital cameras looked like next to film? That's the CD next to vinyl. And MP3s and AACs are so much worse. It's like comparing a compressed JPG to an Ansel Adams print on a gallery wall…

I grew up in the analog age. Trust me, there was much rejoicing when CDs came out. Your lament about the digital resolution of CDs is baseless: the resolution is far beyond what the human ear can discern. We've already been through all this in the 80's. It's comical to watch you hipsters stir up this old dust that had settled long ago. Oh, and it's well-known that some people prefer the sound of vinyl. It's a particu…

> Oh, and it's well-known that some people prefer the sound of vinyl. It's a particular distortion accentuating the midrange. This distortion provides a "warmer" sound. But let's not kid ourselves - it's a distortion.

Indeed.

In fact, surely there must be filters (the digital kind) around that simulate the distortion caused by vinyl (both the mastering differences and the effect of the medium itself).

Consumer electronics could have a "vinyl" button right next to the "megabass" button ... :]

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love vinyl

#36

Post by snogglethorpe »

kefka wrote: post #16
markfig wrote: post #8

There are plenty of reasons to listen to vinyl and it's fine if you are doing it to be hip. I do it because of the sound quality. CDs were invented in the 1980s. The digital resolution is simply not very high. Remember what the first digital cameras looked like next to film? That's the CD next to vinyl. And MP3s and AACs are so much worse. It's like comparing a compressed JPG to an Ansel Adams print on a gallery wall…

I have access to quite a different formats in our house. Our materials go all the way back to our edisongraph, with the cylinder box-eulas. The best format I've heard is 24 bit depth, 96KHz full stereo audio files. That is assuming the microphones were tuned appropriately for their response. MP3's clip higher frequencies, as well as 'round the tops'. Other lossy encoders do other hard-but-easy to hear. Of course, one…

There are applications that benefit from high-resolution (bit-depth and sample rate) audio formats, but it's not really clear that listening to music is one of them:

http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

[TL;DR: "Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space."]

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love vinyl

#37

Post by __david__ »

EliRivers wrote: post #32
__david__ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even I can hear how crappy 48kHz sounds next to 192kHz :-) No you can't. All raising the sampling rate does is raise the Nyquist frequency and unless you have super human ears that can hear up to 96KHz ( you don't ), then all you're doing is wasting disk space.

I thought IvyM said he talking about bitrate; not sampling rate?

Yeah, he probably is. His units threw me off.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love vinyl

#38

Post by markfig »

taylodl wrote: post #34
markfig wrote: post #8

There are plenty of reasons to listen to vinyl and it's fine if you are doing it to be hip. I do it because of the sound quality. CDs were invented in the 1980s. The digital resolution is simply not very high. Remember what the first digital cameras looked like next to film? That's the CD next to vinyl. And MP3s and AACs are so much worse. It's like comparing a compressed JPG to an Ansel Adams print on a gallery wall…

I grew up in the analog age. Trust me, there was much rejoicing when CDs came out. Your lament about the digital resolution of CDs is baseless: the resolution is far beyond what the human ear can discern. We've already been through all this in the 80's. It's comical to watch you hipsters stir up this old dust that had settled long ago. Oh, and it's well-known that some people prefer the sound of vinyl. It's a particu…

Sorry I missed this when first posted. But it needs a response. You say "the resolution is far beyond what the human ear can discern" as though that were undisputed science, which I should simply have looked up. But that is not the case.

You listen to two recordings of a high-hat. One CD, and one high quality analog such as pristine vinyl. And then you tell me you cannot discern the compression on a cd in comparison to vinyl. It's in the highest frequencies that the redbook cd format creates the most audible distortion. (Vinyl has issues too, obviously - but different ones.) But nobody could reasonably claim that redbook CDs are undistorted while vinyl is distorted. Both formats distort sound.

If you can't hear the difference, that's fine, but let's not pretend it is a scientific fact that CDs are somehow "accurate."

Edit: to be clear, I am not talking about frequency (highs and lows), I am talking about frame-rate. And I'm not talking about what is theoretically possible in "digital sound reproduction" I am talking about what is implemented in the standard format for audio CDs sold today.

Regarding reel-to-reel, I bet you're right! But it's not for me.

If you grew up in the era of records, I dare you to go find a record of one of your favorite recordings that you currently listen to on cd.... go find the record and listen to it. I dare you.

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