Why every music lover needs to buy a turntable - discuss.

mep

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Not my idea, as far as I can recall it's been discussed for years (since about the beginning of the "LP revival")

I missed those discussions other than I knew record companies were aware and paranoid of the fact that people could make 'perfect' copies of digital music. But I never read that they dumbed down the quality of digital in case they did copy the recordings.
 

MylesBAstor

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Apr 20, 2010
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Most of your post made sense, but you really missed the boat here. In fact, it's likely there would be no LP revival if it weren't for the non-audiophiles buying LP's.

+1 Who do you think is buying vinyl? It's the young kids? :) And also buying turntables too.
 

rbbert

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I missed those discussions other than I knew record companies were aware and paranoid of the fact that people could make 'perfect' copies of digital music. But I never read that they dumbed down the quality of digital in case they did copy the recordings.
Not quite what I meant, although now that you mention it that also makes sense in a perverted way (i.e. right up the record companies' alley). No I just meant that a big part of the appeal of selling LP's is the "copy-protection".
 

rbbert

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+1 Who do you think is buying vinyl? It's the young kids? :) And also buying turntables too.
And for the most part looking for sound qualities that are the opposite of high fidelity or "audiophile"...
 

MylesBAstor

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And for the most part looking for sound qualities that are the opposite of high fidelity or "audiophile"...

Maybe, maybe not. I'd still say the opposite of what they're hearing with digital. But some of these recordings on vinyl sound pretty good. Ralph Karsten turned me onto a few last year at RMAF :)
 

Phelonious Ponk

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Standards differ. Whenever I see an analog vs digital debate what I see is one side imposing their standards over the other and vice versa. The aggression is present on both sides too. Heck, the aggression is present in digital vs digital debates, sometimes even more so.



This is the kind of statement that elicits aggression. You and I both know there are people on both sides that do this projection thing. The same accusation can be hurled at digital only advocates.

That's the' kind of statement that elicits truth. And your argument reminds me of people who reduce politics to the "there all the same" argument. They're not. Show me three cases of someone on the digital side of the debate telling a vinylphile that his preference only sounds good to him because his system isn't good enough to reveal the superiority of digital. Show me three in which a vinylphile has been told he can't possibly have heard a good digital front end or he wouldn't prefer what he prefers. Show me one example. I could probably find a half dozen cases of that kind of thing coming from the vinyl side of the debate without leaving the threads that show above the scroll line on my laptop. It's easy; I know exactly whose posts to search. The two sides of this debate are not the same. They're not even close. I'm probably the most vocal defender of digital on this board, and I don't say that kind of dismissive nonsense. And I dont start threads with titles like why digital is better than analog, why everyone should have a server...to discuss the superiority of my preference and invite another circular debate. Look at where those kinds of remarks, those kinds of threads come from, jack. Look at where the fights start; look at where they turn personal.

Tim
 

garylkoh

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Most of your post made sense, but you really missed the boat here. In fact, it's likely there would be no LP revival if it weren't for the non-audiophiles buying LP's.

That is true. It isn't the audiophile who buys a fully-automatic $1,200 turntable from Thorens. It's the music lover.

The LP revival is driven by "cool" - not whether DSD sounds better than PCM. When mp3's are shared among friends, the whole group buys one copy. When an LP is shared, if my friend also wants a copy, he will have to buy his own. It makes sense to me that the record companies want the LPs to sound better to encourage more sales.
 

garylkoh

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And for the most part looking for sound qualities that are the opposite of high fidelity or "audiophile"...

Not strictly true. One of the young attendees to an event I did in San Francisco told me how cool it was that there was so much "interesting things going on in the bass" that he had never heard in the club or on his headphones. This was in reference to the track Tennis Court by Lorde.
 

rbbert

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Maybe, maybe not. I'd still say the opposite of what they're hearing with digital. But some of these recordings on vinyl sound pretty good. Ralph Karsten turned me onto a few last year at RMAF :)
I think you know what most of the kids and hipsters say (and I can only assume they mean it); they want their music source to remind they are listening to a "recording", crackles, noise and "warmth". Yes, those qualities are often missing from well made digital recordings, and also missing from live music. Some new groups are even releasing CD's with added in LP "surface noise" (I know, I have had a couple).
 

mep

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And for the most part looking for sound qualities that are the opposite of high fidelity or "audiophile"...

And what sound qualities would that be in LPs "that are the opposite of high fidelity or audiophile?"
 

garylkoh

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Gary,

The best way of avoiding the analog/digital food fight would be putting some weight in the other pan of the balance scale. Do you know of cases where a good mastering could make a CD sound better than the original good quality analog LP? We should avoid the Beatles, otherwise we will have a Beatles fight ...

Not a CD, but downloads. The album "Live at the Happy Dog" - which was funded on Kickstarter - comes with a free high-rez download that sounded better than the vinyl. I guessed that the quality of the pressing was suspect as it was their first attempt. I bought numerous copies, but they all had some distortion.
 

rbbert

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And what sound qualities would that be in LPs "that are the opposite of high fidelity or audiophile?"
See the post before yours...
 

Don Hills

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Jun 20, 2013
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Funny thing, it still sounds way better than digital. Give me a call once they figure out a perfect vs the current approximation of analog.... getting it in the ballpark is not enough for me.

That's your experience. Others have had different experiences. There's one thing you should never do:
Play a reference tone track from a test LP. Then play the same tone from a test CD or generated by a program. I assure you that the difference is not subtle. Then realise that the wow, flutter, noise, scrape modulation etc that you hear on the LP version is present in every piece of music you play on that turntable. If it can't get a simple single tone correct, how can it possibly do better on complex signals like music? But as I said, don't do it. It's like learning to recognise the effects of MP3 encoding. Once the illusion is shattered, you'll never be content with it again.

I should point out that I'm not anti-vinyl. I enjoyed state-of-the-art LP equipment when I was young and could afford to spend all my spare income on gear. I still have a few hundred LPs that I'll never part with because they were never re-released on CD. I'm aware of vinyl shortcomings, but I can still enjoy the music.
 

rockitman

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Sep 20, 2011
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That's your experience. Others have had different experiences. There's one thing you should never do:
Play a reference tone track from a test LP. Then play the same tone from a test CD or generated by a program. I assure you that the difference is not subtle. Then realise that the wow, flutter, noise, scrape modulation etc that you hear on the LP version is present in every piece of music you play on that turntable. If it can't get a simple single tone correct, how can it possibly do better on complex signals like music? But as I said, don't do it. It's like learning to recognise the effects of MP3 encoding. Once the illusion is shattered, you'll never be content with it again.

I should point out that I'm not anti-vinyl. I enjoyed state-of-the-art LP equipment when I was young and could afford to spend all my spare income on gear. I still have a few hundred LPs that I'll never part with because they were never re-released on CD. I'm aware of vinyl shortcomings, but I can still enjoy the music.

AS MF says, we already won the war !!! Cheers ! Digital approximations miss the mark with accuracy of timbre especially cymbals, fail to reproduce the natural instrumental space and decay of said instruments and voices. I could care less about test tones and digital specs. digital sounds sterile & dry unless mastered in digital in the first place. That is about 1% of my listening. Each to their own.
 

Whatmore

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Jun 2, 2011
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Funny thing, it still sounds way better than digital. Give me a call once they figure out a perfect vs the current approximation of analog.... getting it in the ballpark is not enough for me.


why?
Because:

I spent the last week touring and meeting with audio dealers, and I am quite astonished that no one else I met knew this: If you are a music lover, you have to buy a turntable. Why? Because the musician is delivering two different mixes/masters, and the better mix/master is always on the vinyl.

so is it the mix/master or is it the medium ?
 

JackD201

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Apr 20, 2010
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why?
Because:



so is it the mix/master or is it the medium ?

The selected medium influences the decisions made in the creation of the mix/master for that medium.
 

garylkoh

WBF Technical Expert (Speakers & Audio Equipment)
Sep 6, 2010
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The selected medium influences the decisions made in the creation of the mix/master for that medium.

That's right. It wasn't so long ago when recording engineers were discussing the amount of compression needed in the master so that the lathe technician wouldn't need to invoke limiters and compression on the amplifiers so that the cutting lathe isn't over-driven. I had a fascinating discussion with Steve McCormack about cutting the direct-to-disk Flamenco Fever and For Duke.
 

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