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A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

washingtonpost.com

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

#31

Post by mod »

jrajav wrote: post #16
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.…

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.

Can't the warmth just be reproduced in a digital player anyway?

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

#32

Post by isatty »

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #8

Audiophools got played yet again.

Audiophile here - if they were using a proper master, minimally a true lossless file I don’t really see the problem.

On the other hand, it seems to me like I meet more people who are just into buying new gear rather than enjoying the music, which is what the hobby is to me. Don’t even get me started on snake oil like cables.

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

#33

Post by doix »

jrajav wrote: post #12
allears wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a little simplistic. You can certainly tell the difference between a good analog recording played on a high quality system vs. an MP3. But once you throw enough samples and bit depth at it (more than are on a standard CD), you get quality that's equivalent to, or better than, most analog media.

44100hz sample rate is enough to reproduce well above the highest frequency even young humans can hear, and 16 bits of depth is enough for 96db of dynamic range, enough to make the noise floor of any consumer system totally inaudible. Standard CDs might not be good enough for archival and further production work (where you also need wiggle room for further processing or format changes), but they have plenty of headro…

So it's been many years since I looked at this stuff, but the reason for higher sample rate isn't to do with humans being able to hear over 20khz. If you sample at 44khz you need a high pass filter at 22khz to avoid aliasing. Since that's pretty close to 20khz, it needs a pretty sharp drop off. Having a filter with a sharp drop off can introduce artifacts.

With 96khz sampling rate, you don't need as a sharp drop off in your filter.

The above is mostly accurate, hopefully someone else will comment and tell me how I'm wrong and correct the inaccuracies.

Edit: to anyone reading this, read the replies if you want the correct explanation. To everyone that replied, thank you :).

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

#36

Post by egypturnash »

wrycoder wrote: post #13
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.…

The thing I miss with the Apple audio chain is a user-controlled equalizer. With my hearing issues, I really need to boost treble, and I prefer to boost bass. I haven't yet discovered a way to do that. Apple thinks that flat is best, and so should you, apparently.

On OSX Music, window>equalizer. You can also grab Rogue Amoeba’s “SoundSource” to have volume controls for every noise-generating app on the computer, and apply effects chains to them, including EQ.

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

#38

Post by kazinator »

jrajav wrote: post #12
allears wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a little simplistic. You can certainly tell the difference between a good analog recording played on a high quality system vs. an MP3. But once you throw enough samples and bit depth at it (more than are on a standard CD), you get quality that's equivalent to, or better than, most analog media.

44100hz sample rate is enough to reproduce well above the highest frequency even young humans can hear, and 16 bits of depth is enough for 96db of dynamic range, enough to make the noise floor of any consumer system totally inaudible. Standard CDs might not be good enough for archival and further production work (where you also need wiggle room for further processing or format changes), but they have plenty of headro…

Not only that, but what you hear at those upper frequencies isn't tone anyway. the highest harmonics of tonal sounds live in that region, plus aperiodic signals (the hiss from sibilants, cymbals crashing, and so on).

The content can be faked, and this is used in low-bandwidth codecs and such.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_extension

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

#39

Post by amelius »

kstrauser wrote: post #5
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…

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.…

> On recording, you cut the bass and jack up the treble. On playback, you boost the bass and reduce the treble.

Sounds like if you combine the two steps you end up with the identity operator :)

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

#40

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

kazinator wrote: post #24
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.…

> 100% fine for someone to say that they subjectively prefer the sound quality of a record player to a CD It's not intellectually fine, only fine in the sense that it's well within the bounds of free speech.

No; it's really fine - same with tube amps etc. It's OK to have a subjective preference for some kinds of distortion. It's not OK to say it's "truer to the original sound", which is where this usually comes off the rails.
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