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A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

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Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#251

Post by Night_Thastus »

Tao3300 wrote: post #221
nerfbatplz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only can you not tell the difference between analogue and digital, you also cannot tell the difference between lossless and properly transcoded MP3. Most audiophile mania is poorly informed at best and astrology at worst. http://abx.digitalfeed.net/

Cymbals always sound like bubbling shit in mp3.

MP3 is not monolithic, and has changed drastically since it was released.

You're going to get a pretty terrible experience with MP3 128kbps, whereas modern variable bit rate schemes can actually be quite decent. Personally I prefer to always go lossless, but for most people on most systems, the difference isn't noticeable. (Moreso the better the system gets, ofc)

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#252

Post by Night_Thastus »

nerfbatplz wrote: post #28
gwern wrote: post #2

"The fallout of the MoFi revelation has thrown the audiophile community into something of an existential crisis. The quality of digitized music has long been criticized because of how much data was stripped out of files so MP3s could fit on mobile devices. But these days, with the right equipment, digital recordings can be so good they can fool even the best ears. Many of MoFi’s now-exposed records were on Fremer and…

Not only can you not tell the difference between analogue and digital, you also cannot tell the difference between lossless and properly transcoded MP3. Most audiophile mania is poorly informed at best and astrology at worst. http://abx.digitalfeed.net/

Those are two completely different situations.

I'm not a fan of analog, but a high-end analog system will sound far different than a similarly priced digital one. It's a very different type of sound.

Whether someone likes it or not is personal preference. But it does sound night-and-day different to listen to a vinyl from a turntable and using a DAC.

As for MP3 vs lossless, that's mostly true assuming a modern variable bit rate MP3 on OK hardware. The better the audio, the better the equipment, the more noticeable it gets. But yes, for 95%, it's basically not significant.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#253

Post by naikrovek »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #248

"In the world of audiophiles — where provenance is everything and the quest is to get as close to the sound of an album’s original recording as possible — digital is considered almost unholy." Out of context of the rest of the article, this is total nonsense. While some in the audiophile scene like going analog, none of them debate against the truth that objectively , vinyl is far lower quality. Vinyl doesn't have ne…

if your DAC is a DAC, truly (that is not a high bar) then the audio that comes out of it is a perfect reproduction of the audio that went into the ADC that produced the digital audio, provided it is a true ADC (also not a high bar at all).

Nyquist theory proves it.

The Ogg people have a fantastic video explaining this. Technology Connections on YouTube has a video about it as well (the Ogg video explains things better, imo.)

https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#254

Post by throwaway81523 »

boring_twenties wrote: post #249
throwaway81523 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to say the date but my birthday is exactly 4 months before a certain holiday. So some years back (too many, alas), on this holiday and 4 months after I turned 33, my friends put on a party to celebrate both the holiday and my 33 1/3'rd birthday. Naturally, LP records were played.

Hopefully the night ended with a screening of the third Naked Gun movie? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110622/

Damn, we didn't think of that.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#255

Post by tomc1985 »

bambax wrote: post #130
jrajav wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the time people will argue that vinyl has "warmth" and this makes it subjectively better. This is true, but it's actually because of the pleasing distortion record players add to the music. Being distortion, even if it improves your listening experience (and this depends on genre, though it generally does), it is certainly objectively worse in terms of accurate reproduction.

YES! The article says this: > But a few specialty houses (...) have long advocated for the warmth of analog. “Not that you can’t make good records with digital, but it just isn’t as natural as when you use the original tape,” says Bernie Grundman which is absurd. "Warmth" is a kind of distortion, and if a signal is distorted then it's less accurate or "natural"! They can't claim "fidelity" and "warmth" at the same ti…

On a high quality record with a high quality setup, you can have both. It's because the distortion is really subtle, and hits all the right harmonics. On bass-heavy music it makes the bass sound really nice. The other parts of "warmth" aren't really in my wheelhouse, but it makes the bass in bass music better

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#256

Post by notRobot »

Nav_Panel wrote: post #98

Afaict the cool thing about MoFi pressings (at least, ones from back in the day) is they were done at half speed. So, when the lacquer is cut from the master tape, they'd do it at half playback speed rather than full playback speed, which allowed the physical cutting head to track the high frequencies more accurately. I can say that this absolutely does make a difference during playback; my MoFi copy of Aja sounds ve…

I'm genuinely really curious, what kinds of recordings remain inaccessible in digital formats?

How do you find out about them? And where do you procure them from? Do you mind sharing a couple examples?

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#257

Post by macintux »

jamiek88 wrote: post #193
gerdesj wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been there. Browsing vinyl involves flipping fore and aft and is very tactile. Browsing tape and CDROM involves running your eyes over them but you can run a finger along them to get another sense involved. Loading a record is quite the event: slip out of the card sleeve, then slip the dic out of the waxed paper sleeve and pop it on the spindle without scratching it. There is of course the correct way to handle them…

I did the same as you but iTunes Match for $25 per year is my ‘vault’. It’s very convenient especially now that lossless is an option.

I have a few songs ripped from CDs over the years that I’ll be very unhappy to lose if iTunes Match ever goes away, since I’ve lost the CDs and as far as I know they simply aren’t online. Such a great service.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#258

Post by madaxe_again »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #248

"In the world of audiophiles — where provenance is everything and the quest is to get as close to the sound of an album’s original recording as possible — digital is considered almost unholy." Out of context of the rest of the article, this is total nonsense. While some in the audiophile scene like going analog, none of them debate against the truth that objectively , vinyl is far lower quality. Vinyl doesn't have ne…

You may be speaking to better informed suckers than I am - as of the people I know who are “into audio”, they all get the magic ceramic quantum nanomagnets for their cables to go on, they all swear that 8-track was the pinnacle of sound quality, and that they can “hear” digital noise on CDs.

Honestly, it’s 1% “I like music” and 99% snake oil salesmen taking advantage of fragile egos.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#259

Post by iforgotpassword »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #187
defterGoose wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still true that it takes a skillful ear/hand to do that mastering. I've heard terribly mastered older (not abused) records and modern releases that are excellent. A good original copy of Rumours is about as good as it gets IME. Vinyl _does_ also provide a nice soft upper limit to the loudness wars.

Couldn't we characterize vinyl limitations and capture that as a digital filter? And if so would you be able to tell the difference between the vinyl and filtered digital?

It wouldn't work with albums where the mastering is different, especially if the digital release is compressed more. You cannot undo squashed dynamic range really. A famous example from a while ago is the album stadium arcadium by the red hot chili peppers. Comparing the two versions of a song should sound notably different even to a casual listener. And you can really see the difference just looking at the wave forms.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#260

Post by kstrauser »

brigandish wrote: post #241
kstrauser wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That whole line of thinking just blows me away. It's possible to accurately sample and reproduce any vinyl recording in the digital realm. It's absolutely not possible to accurately record every digital recording onto vinyl. For instance, it's not hard at all to make bass so loud that it causes the needle to leap out of the track, or treble so high that the needle can't accurately track the high frequency vibrations.…

> For instance, it's not hard at all to make bass so loud that it causes the needle to leap out of the track I was a drum and bass dj when it was all still vinyl. Even in a club with huge speakers, I've never seen the needle jump due to the bass (although some places used to tape a penny to the top of the headshelf). The weighting on the tone arms can be adjusted so if you've got a needle dancing around it's due to y…

See my other comment here about the 1812 Overture.
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