Excerpt from Tim de Paravicini regarding the state of digital

**tomelex** · 10-26-2010, 06:15 PM

Tape noise has always intersted me, and vinyl too for that matter. And CD's sort of lack of noise floor.

As always used to listening to tapes and LPs, and noise, it is disturbing in a way (to this day) how CD just abruptly cuts off instead of tailing out, although some recordings do better than others. CD always sounds just a little thick to me, less lively than LP. But I live with both worlds, still.

Concerning analog tape, two theories of magnetism involve aligement of domains, one of them says it is like aligning tiny magnets with north south poles. Folks, that is digital on the tape in a way! Just thought I would throw that in!

Tubes produce noise, so does solid state. Most good solid state is quieter than tube gear, but not by much. I wonder if we like a little noise....maybe the generation brought up on "quiet" digital would not and does not like noise. Just thinking out loud.

It makes sense that Tim says he makes tube gear because the market wants them. It also makes sense he does not pick one over the other given his past designs and statements.

Tom

**mep** · 10-27-2010, 02:10 PM

Tom-I think I have seen you make the same comment before about CD sounding "thick" to you and less lively than LP. What kind of digital playback system do you have that makes CDs sound thick? Do you hear that only on your system or all CD playback systems? To me, CD always sounded on the thin side which is why I find your comment interesting. I get the part about LPs sounding more lively, I am just surprised to hear you say that.

You question if we like a little noise, and I can tell you that I would prefer to have no noise other then the sound of music. I could do without any hiss or hum. Maybe it's more likely that some of us that have been around the block a time or two have come to associate a small amount of hiss with the sound of analog and our brains telll us to relax-good things are coming. You say you still find it disturbing to this day how CD cuts off abruptly as it hits the noise floor. Maybe the deathly digital silence (read: unnatural) makes some of us pucker up instead of relaxing.

And I have no intention of starting an analog vs. digital debate here. I am just commenting on Tom's comments. There are those here that think that digital is perfect and there are those who don't like digital. I have reached the point now that if someone tells me that their method of reproducing music is the best or it's perfect and my way blows, I just don't care anymore. As long as your happy, that's all that matters. If you have found your nirvana in digital music, I am very happy for you. I do want to let everyone in on a little secret though. I once had a near-death experience and I went to the bright light. When I got to the end, I saw a man with long hair and sandals welcoming me and he was smiling. When I looked close I could see he had a ball cap on with the Studer logo and a T-shirt with a picture of a Studer A820 on it. Underneath the picture of the Studer I saw the words "Analog is Heaven." Just thought I would let you know.

**tomelex** · 10-27-2010, 05:51 PM

Originally Posted by mep

Tom-I think I have seen you make the same comment before about CD sounding "thick" to you and less lively than LP. What kind of digital playback system do you have that makes CDs sound thick? Do you hear that only on your system or all CD playback systems? To me, CD always sounded on the thin side which is why I find your comment interesting. I get the part about LPs sounding more lively, I am just surprised to hear you say that.

You question if we like a little noise, and I can tell you that I would prefer to have no noise other then the sound of music. I could do without any hiss or hum. Maybe it's more likely that some of us that have been around the block a time or two have come to associate a small amount of hiss with the sound of analog and our brains telll us to relax-good things are coming. You say you still find it disturbing to this day how CD cuts off abruptly as it hits the noise floor. Maybe the deathly digital silence (read: unnatural) makes some of us pucker up instead of relaxing.

And I have no intention of starting an analog vs. digital debate here. I am just commenting on Tom's comments. There are those here that think that digital is perfect and there are those who don't like digital. I have reached the point now that if someone tells me that their method of reproducing music is the best or it's perfect and my way blows, I just don't care anymore. As long as your happy, that's all that matters. If you have found your nirvana in digital music, I am very happy for you. I do want to let everyone in on a little secret though. I once had a near-death experience and I went to the bright light. When I got to the end, I saw a man with long hair and sandals welcoming me and he was smiling. When I looked close I could see he had a ball cap on with the Studer logo and a T-shirt with a picture of a Studer A820 on it. Underneath the picture of the Studer I saw the words "Analog is Heaven." Just thought I would let you know.

Hi mep.

Thick. Yes, I use that word. I think it perhaps means the same as thin. I guess I will expain thick as follows:

I think first, that LP is lively, perhaps more lively than it needs to be, so a little over the top, but nice, very nice. In fact, a cartridge costing say $350 or so will provide that LP sound IMO.

Next, CD (as opposed to other possible digitals, including SACD, etc). While LP is a little over the top in presentation, CD is a little under the top to me.

You could say if we could marry CD lows and gently add some of LPs highs, that would hit a sweet spot with me. That to me is middle and accurate.

To me CD rules the lows and lower middle range, say to 4 KHz, but LP rules from say 4kHz up to 12Khz or greater. Don't wrap me around the axle on these break points, I have not scientifically evaluated them, just close!

Many say CD sounds thin. No meat on the bones compared to LP. Perhaps not quite as distorted, but I think there is more. CD for me puts a fundamental wash across all the sound.

Its as if you are in your sweet spot listening to speakers, and someone comes along and places a bedsheet all the way across the speakers and so now all the sound has to get through that bedsheet. The result to me is that where LP had a soundstage with all instruments in their space but each instruments space extending and touching (but not intruding into) the other instruments space, then when you put that bedsheet across, the sounds are still there, but there is now dead space between the instruements on the soundstage,they no longer touch each other but have clear space around them, and the impact, of the stick on the hihat, etc, is having a hard time pushing through the bedsheet.

I prefer LPs ability to fill up the soundstage, although after listening to CD I can see LP fills up a little too much, but CD "un fills" the soundstage a little too much. CD is polite. LP is lively.

After saying all that, as generalizations, I have heard direct to disc LPs that sound more like CDs than they have a right to. I have never heard a CD that throws the soundstage like the LP, but I have not heard a CD that was recorded from an LP and have been told that it is near impossible to tell the difference. So, this would tend to indicate that CD is pretty good, but I have not heard this sort of comparison,maybe someone has and can chime in about it.

In the end, I suppose that thin works to describe what I hear, given that you take LP as the "real deal" then CD sounds "thin". In any case, I use the work thick to describe that it seems that CD has wrung something out of the presentation, cleaned it up, but too clean. LP is a bit too lively.

LP seems to sound good as you turn it up where CD does not sound as good as it gets turned up.

Again, to me, the idea of the bedsheet best describes what I percieve, and the biggest impact is on the soundstage and the transients. LP fills the soundstage more than digital....so thin in that sense works for me.

I would say that the recording has probably 90% to do with it all anyway. I have heard CD on numerous systems and I always come away with the same feeling, so that is why I subsribe, like others, that there is some sort of CD sound and some sort of LP sound. Wish there was something in the middle!

Tom

**FrantzM** · 10-27-2010, 07:57 PM

Tomelex

Read your comment about CD .. It's all good... One inquiry: Have you ever heard a CD recording of an LP? Do you think you would be able to separate the two? Reliably? By the way this inquiry is not to dispute your preference. One likes what one likes ...
On my side it seemed to me the last time I conducted a serious comparison that the LP was as you say more realistic above 8 KHz... I did however find many CD on the Burmester system more satisfying than their (few and rare) LP counterparts... (Basis, Graham, Koetsu). The Mercury CDs in particular sounded very good on equal (different) but sometimes "better" than what I got from the few LPs I had... For the better piano recordings (Nojima plays Lizt Reference Recordings or the Stereophile Rhapsody by Hyperion Knight) and even for voices the CDs seemed better in term of verisimilitude of reproduction and when the LP was available as in the case of the RR Nojima...were IMO superior
YMMV but CDs on the better DAC are far from "thin" IMO ...
The sense of decay was a fault of earlier DACs up to the early 90's, the better contemporary DACs don't seem to have that problem...

**tomelex** · 10-27-2010, 08:35 PM

Originally Posted by FrantzM

Tomelex

Read your comment about CD .. It's all good... One inquiry: Have you ever heard a CD recording of an LP? Do you think you would be able to separate the two? Reliably? By the way this inquiry is not to dispute your preference. One likes what one likes ...

Tom here in blue. Hello Frantz! I have not heard a CD recording of an LP. But just because of plenty of great sounding CDs that I have heard, I can guess that I would not be able to tell the difference realiably. Somehow, something has been lost in the recording arts with digital. We all know that many studios have tube units to add tube warmth, and we all know they have all kinds of gizmos to add all kinds of stuff, and yet, perhaps they try to put too much of all their stuff in the mix...I don't know what it is. I think we all have the dream of wishing we could go in an mix a song in person....my step son had a studio for a short while but I only visited it once and the genre he recorded (hip hop and stuff like that) was not appealing to me no matter what one did to the recording....

On my side it seemed to me the last time I conducted a serious comparison that the LP was as you say more realistic above 8 KHz... I did however find many CD on the Burmester system more satisfying than their (few and rare) LP counterparts... (Basis, Graham, Koetsu). The Mercury CDs in particular sounded very good on equal (different) but sometimes "better" than what I got from the few LPs I had... For the better piano recordings (Nojima plays Lizt Reference Recordings or the Stereophile Rhapsody by Hyperion Knight) and even for voices the CDs seemed better in term of verisimilitude of reproduction and when the LP was available as in the case of the RR Nojima...were IMO superior

I can dig it. As I said before, a lot of it is just the recordings, not the medium so much.

YMMV but CDs on the better DAC are far from "thin" IMO ...

Yes, well, that word thin, I dont know. We can perhaps agree that LP sounds lively, and that CD could if recorded properly. But why has that LP "sound" not been popular if it is just a matter of recording?

Really, I am convinced that there is another subtle thing going on in the LP setup. Whether it is because the RIAA and inverse RIAA cancel each other out (in CD of course you low pass filter first, then low pass filter again, but not an inverse filter) or the dynamic distortions of the mechanical interface of the stylus, some would say a sensual thing, not unlike the burning of a tube filament, or what, but something in that mechanical interface is appealing to many as well.

I live in both camps, have CD and LP and enjoy both, perhaps more CD and headphones these days. In any case, I think we can agree that there is a weakness in the high frequencies, I mean really, relying on a filter to "reconstuct" a sampled waveform is a technical weakness.

A long time ago I read an article and a guy termed a type of distortion called "sineward" distortion, referring to how amps rc circuits can tend to make things turn into sinewaves (of course so does RIAA and CD low pass filters, any filters). Anyway, now I am just rambling on.....

The sense of decay was a fault of earlier DACs up to the early 90's, the better contemporary DACs don't seem to have that problem...

My Oppo is only a few years old, and I still hear to me, an abrupt cutoff (well a little bit, you know what I mean maybe) of the trailing final finish "sound", not smooth and into the noise floor (the non existant noise floor, but still, something weird about that to me).

At any live event I attend, there is a backround noise floor or noise level, whether it is outside wind blowing or tree leaves rustling or inside the reverberations of the room or hearing my breathing, etc.

Cheers

Tom

**mep** · 10-28-2010, 01:41 PM

Tom-Sounds like you are a bit confiicted. I do find your comments very interesting though.

Mark

**tomelex** · 10-28-2010, 06:43 PM

Originally Posted by mep

Tom-Sounds like you are a bit confiicted. I do find your comments very interesting though.

Mark

Yes, CD and vinyl conflict me big time. I entered this WBF forum after seeing Ethans video linked from a technical publication, and I started a conversation with him about the technical difference between CD and vinyl, and it has kind of floundered.

I feel that understanding what is causing the difference will lead to something perhaps a bit the best of both worlds or something like that. I will re-iterate that the recording itself is a huge part of the puzzle, but that thinness or bedsheet thickness across the speakers is there, always lurking, always keeping the little gray cells firing and grasping for something in a technical nature, where of course the answer will be. That is the curse of the electronics side of my audio hobby!

As my comments above in blue say, I am leaning on something to do with the double low pass filtering in the CD format verses in LP you inverse filter, and there is that mechanical interface in LP that may add something we can't quite put our finger on.

The differences show up in the soundstage depth and width to my ears and in the decay and initial attack, but are subtle on some recording for sure.

By the way, to be clear, the bedsheet is that thin sheet, the one next to your skin. Just thought someone might not know what I meant, as a lot of that goes on around forums!

Cheers

Tom

**Ethan Winer** · 10-29-2010, 11:10 AM

Originally Posted by tomelex

I am leaning on something to do with the double low pass filtering in the CD format verses in LP you inverse filter, and there is that mechanical interface in LP that may add something we can't quite put our finger on. The differences show up in the soundstage depth and width to my ears and in the decay and initial attack, but are subtle on some recording for sure.

I can't see how filters that operate at the extremes of the audio range would have any effect on soundstage. The background noise on LPs is much louder than digital whose self-noise is inaudible. And LP noise is stereo. Stop me if you've heard this before: I once mixed stereo pink noise at varying levels into a clean mono recording. Once the noise was loud enough to hear, the imaging seemed to get wider because the noise was different left and right. That's the best explanation I have for why people think LPs (and analog tape) sound "larger" than digital. So it may be true that LPs sound wider than digital, but it's an artificial effect and a less-accurate representation of the music.

--Ethan

**tomelex** · 10-29-2010, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by Ethan Winer

I can't see how filters that operate at the extremes of the audio range would have any effect on soundstage.

Tom in blue. Hi Ethan! Reminds me our experiment with CD vs LP has sort of floundered, remember the tone that guy was going to cut for you on an LP and all that. These comments I made above are just more musings on that same issue. Although we agree they sound different, it would be great to know more of the reasons why. When talking about filters, as for CD and LP I mean the entire 20 to 20K if you will. The CD low pass filters everything before ADC then low pass filters it again after DAC. So, as far as a filters effect of smoothing out waves into sinewaves, the CD chain does it twice. The LP chain also filters but then as you pointed out reverse filters and so there should be some cancelling going on there. Just my thoughts on the filter side (band limit) of both CD and LP.

The background noise on LPs is much louder than digital whose self-noise is inaudible. And LP noise is stereo.

Yes agreed. And LP has more distortion as well, being added by the mechanical cutting and playing back physical mechanisms involved. This can possibly also add more transient energy and create more overtones that make the music sound livelier. The RIAA filter in the preamp is going to damp down some of this stuff created by the needle and the groove, but not all of it.

Stop me if you've heard this before: I once mixed stereo pink noise at varying levels into a clean mono recording. Once the noise was loud enough to hear, the imaging seemed to get wider because the noise was different left and right. That's the best explanation I have for why people think LPs (and analog tape) sound "larger" than digital.

No Ethan, I have not heard this before. Thank you for that information. It is important and I agree part of the difference. And what I heard different when comparing an LP and a CD which claimed to have just taken the same cut as used on the LP, well, I describe it as this:

Take out a sheet of paper, say your song had 5 instruments in it. The paper represents the soundstage. Draw circles on the paper in the ares you heard the instruments, but do not let the circles touch one another, leave some space in between them. That is the CD. Next, just use another colore and now make those circles larger so they share their boundary with the other instruments, that is the LP version of the song. I also heard the difference in headphones, but of course not in the same way. I played the 5th dimension song Aquarius/Let the sunshinen it from their original album and from an Arista Heritage CD called the 5th dimension. Anyway, one of the songs is longer than the other, so I had to sync up some and then with may preamp was able to instantly switch back and forth and the difference was easy to hear in near field speaker listening. It is the only example I personally have with dual songs that are supposed to be the same. The LP soundstage was a bit flatter front to rear, the CD soundstage had a little bit more depth front ot back but less side to side . Both sounded good, but in comparison the end sound from the LP was more engaging and more you are there.

So it may be true that LPs sound wider than digital, but it's an artificial effect and a less-accurate representation of the music.

Well, that word accurate again. Let me re-iterate that POS (plain old stereo) is a bit boring and really pales in comparison to binaural recordings. Given that statement, I am not always sure that absolute accuracy in POS is going to get me closer to the music (let me be clear here, stereo is not IMO a very good illusion system in and of itself...so why would I want all it can produce necessarily?). I know that LP is noisier and creates more distortions than CD, but I think I know that CD tends to take away something in I suspect the double filtering or whatever (that is what I am trying to understand as you know) and leaves out stuff. OK, perhaps it leaves out the noise, the stereo channel re-mixing..less seperation or more intermixing..same thing, and some extra added energy in the upper midrange on up, say about 5 or 6K (no measurements here just "ear" balling it) but it leaves something out that tends to make, for me, LP always more enjoyable when I have a choice. Perhaps accuracy to the recording in POS is not the absolute best thing it can be, IMO. Maybe CD is more accurate in the low end, but something funny going on in the high end, IMO.

To be sure, Ethan, you know I am looking for the technical reasons they sound different, and thanks again for the info above about noise effects!

Cheers! Tom
--Ethan

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