What sampling / bit rate would equal vinyl?

LP's can record and reproduce frequencies up to ~50 kHz (the CD-4 records of the '70's). However, those higher frequencies were artificially generated, so the real limitation should be how high are the frequencies actually passing through microphones and mic pre-amps; as already noted, the sampling rate needs to be at least twice that highest frequency to avoid aliasing errors in the A>D conversion.

As far as bit-depth, simple dynamic range calculations will not give a useful answer. Both analog recording (tape and/or LP) and dithered PCM digital will record below the noise floor, so the real arbiter of bit-depth will be that hard (impossible?) to quantify quality "detail".

Obviously, in some ways even the CD is already better than analog, speed accuracy and stability and lower noise floor being the two obvious (and fairly non-controversial) ones.

Yeah Robert, the main consideration I think was that to do so required the cut to be done at half speed or 1/4 speed, reducing the speed then has a detrimental effect on recording bass-low frequencies.

Cheers
Orb

I have the Digital samples from Gary's test of deMag and it also has fair bit of ultrasonics. Do we believe that or is that also caused by distortion?

Hi Guys,

I didn't mean to start trouble by mentioning Lesurf's paper. I lack the capability to confirm his thesis. I only mentioned it because I thought it was an interesting take on how we appreciate data. The most relevant thing he said was that digital and analog are idealizations. He went so far as to italicize and underline this. We will find that we will have a heck of a time finding common ground if approaching the topic from said idealized standpoints. I think we can all agree however that in both formats we are far from ideal. We are limited by just how well each is implemented. Amir and Don have both shown where commercial digital formats have yet to meet the math. Those of us into analog know how for example, the quality of PVC used on an LP or the size and shape of a stylus, can affect the sound.

I think if we can accept the fact that both haven't really reached their idealized potentials, there is no need for a debate on what is better even if we leave out the dreaded preference. I say this because it really becomes something of a "case to case basis" deal. Take for example the flimsy rack system turntables prone to external vibration that was common in the 70s and 80s. Not only were they inherently faulty, most people that used them didn't know how to set them up. Compare these with the pop in and play CD player and it was no wonder CDs sounded better. They did. It wasn't the format's fault though. It was a mix of not having a good TT exacerbated by not knowing or bothering to optimize what they had. The same thing is happening today that both formats are "mature". There are price points where one will overtake the other in differing aspects of reproduction.

A funny thing happens when we go higher up the performance totem poles. Suddenly the quality of recordings and pressings take center stage. That to me means both have gotten out of the way to a much higher degree. They've become more transparent. Eventually we will come full circle and bump smack into the format's intrinsic limitations, the idealizations. I just don't think we're there yet or if it will ever really happen before something else with its own problems to solve come and supplant them.

In the meantime, I, we, can surely enjoy both can't we?

JackD201 said:

In the meantime, I, we, can surely enjoy both can't we?

Click to expand...

I know I can. I've said it before, I don't want my system to be a 'one trick pony' and only be able to play one medium. And Jack, I do think there already is a huge quality difference tha can easily be heard from CD to CD or hi-rez file to hi-rez file. Some CDs sound really good and others not so good. The best sounding hi-rez download I have is the Ray Charles GLC. The rest of them are so-so and some CDs actually sound better than the hi-rez files.

I bet if the record companies could have seen into the future, CDs would have never hit the market place. Digital killed the music business because of the rampant copying. Bands can no longer make a living by selling their music-they have to tour to make a living. All the record companies saw at first was dollar signs as people replaced their LP collections with the CD version. It didn't take long for the genie to get out of the bottle though and bite them all on their corporate ass. If the record companies had a "do-over," I bet we would all still be listening to LPs and arguing over the best arm, cartridge, table, and phono section.

And speaking of not-so-good digital, i have all 3 versions of the "great" Beatle re-masters. I have the stereo set, the mono set, and the 24 bit green USB apple. I'm not wild about any of them. I know some people think they are all wonderful, but I don't know what they had to compare them with unless it was the original CDs which were also not so good. The 24 bit apple was the biggest disappointment because I expected the most from it. They all sound like anorexic digital-not enough meat on the bones.

Mark

Indeed Mark. In the Adele thread I gave an example of an LP whose CD counterpart was so much better. Such a waste.

Was that the LP that they crammed a jillion songs on it and had to compress the cutting to death to make the songs fit the LP?

Yessir. I think it would have fit but they definitely squashed one of the most dynamic vocalists to come out in a long time. I'm still angry.

mep said:

I bet if the record companies could have seen into the future, CDs would have never hit the market place. Digital killed the music business because of the rampant copying. Bands can no longer make a living by selling their music-they have to tour to make a living. All the record companies saw at first was dollar signs as people replaced their LP collections with the CD version. It didn't take long for the genie to get out of the bottle though and bite them all on their corporate ass. If the record companies had a "do-over," I bet we would all still be listening to LPs and arguing over the best arm, cartridge, table, and phono section.

Click to expand...

I don't think it matters whether or not the record companies supported the CD. Digital audio (probably PCM) and video recording was coming regardless of what they did or didn't do. Even with analog audio and video cassettes, "home taping" was supposedly wreaking havoc on musicians' rights and record industry profits. With digital recording and the Internet, that was only going to get worse (from the industry standpoint).

And speaking of not-so-good digital, i have all 3 versions of the "great" Beatle re-masters. I have the stereo set, the mono set, and the 24 bit green USB apple. I'm not wild about any of them. I know some people think they are all wonderful, but I don't know what they had to compare them with unless it was the original CDs which were also not so good.

Mark

Click to expand...

Compared to what, then? The MFSL LP's (which I used to have) with their tizzy tonal balance? Mint copy original pressing LP's (not too many of those around today)?

rbbert said:

I don't think it matters whether or not the record companies supported the CD. Digital audio (probably PCM) and video recording was coming regardless of what they did or didn't do. Even with analog audio and video cassettes, "home taping" was supposedly wreaking havoc on musicians' rights and record industry profits. With digital recording and the Internet, that was only going to get worse (from the industry standpoint).

Click to expand...

Maybe your right, maybe you’re not. The music industry didn’t nosedive until the CD era. Digital gave people the ability to make bit for bit perfect copies of their music which could never be done with analog.

rbbert said:

Compared to what, then? The MFSL LP's (which I used to have) with their tizzy tonal balance? Mint copy original pressing LP's (not too many of those around today)?

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No, I never cared for the MSFL Beatle records. I have two of the EMI Parlaphone BC-13 collections, one of which is un-played. I also have numerous EMI Parlaphone LPs I bought over the years. My original BC-13 collection that I bought almost 30 years ago and has been played a zillion times still sounds great.

mep said:

Maybe your right, maybe you’re not. The music industry didn’t nosedive until the CD era. Digital gave people the ability to make bit for bit perfect copies of their music

Click to expand...

Actually, of course, for at least 15 years the CD era provided the industry with huge and unprecedented profits. The nosedive occurred when broadband Internet became common, and/or when most CD's began to sound terrible (due to poor mastering).

amirm said:

I am not an LP guy. Last time I heard a comparison of CD vs LP was in 1982-1983 and the LP sounded better, leaving this poor engineer flabbergasted and embarrassed as he had talked up the advantages of digital . Still, I threw out all of my records and stayed with digital as I put higher value on convenience than extra fidelity.

I was looking for some other point to raise here but by accident landed on this guy's video showing an example of LP's frequency response:

Putting aside perceptual issues, clearly LPs frequency response is quite high. Tim earlier said this is about what we can't measure but may be able to hear. In this example at least, we *can* measure a difference. So the question is the opposite: how the difference we can measure, results in audible differences.

On that front, I have always been disappointed that no one has attempted to model an LP system. If we had such a thing, we could apply it to our digital system and then compare and see if the LP sound is due to non-linear transformation or some limitations of digital we don't yet understand. Lack of commercial interest in answering such questions means that we will probably never have data and analysis we can use to probe further in this area.

Click to expand...

This example is the opposite of what I said. It is about what can be measured but can't be heard. Not even by 13-year-old girls, much less the middle-aged to older men who are the bulk of the analog audiophiles. The mystery of what they hear remains unsolved. And unmeasured.

Tim

mep said:

(...) No, I never cared for the MSFL Beatle records. I have two of the EMI Parlaphone BC-13 collections, one of which is un-played. I also have numerous EMI Parlaphone LPs I bought over the years. My original BC-13 collection that I bought almost 30 years ago and has been played a zillion times still sounds great.

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As you I also never cared for the MSFL Beatle records. Until one day I compared the MFSL Sgt Peppers with a friend well cared blue box BC13 version. I have to say that at that time it seemed much better, much more detail and more rhythmic, and I bought the Sgt Peppers, and later the MFSL full box. It is always a pleasure to listen to them.

rbbert said:

Actually, of course, for at least 15 years the CD era provided the industry with huge and unprecedented profits. The nosedive occurred when broadband Internet became common, and/or when most CD's began to sound terrible (due to poor mastering).

Click to expand...

I think we all have our own ideas of what lead to the music industry being in the state it is in currently. Me thinks part of it was a lack of talent, every song having to pass a computerized algorithm hitmaster to be released, autotune, and compression. But underlying it all, was the fact that there were on most CDs, only one or two songs worth listening too; and couple that with CDs being priced at $15+ compared to 1/2 that for the old LP. So consumers became disenchanted with these silver discs, figured out ways and copy those one or two songs; this became a reality with the advent of Napster and now iTunes, HDtracks, etc., where consumers could pay $2 instead of $15 for their music.

This all reminds me of the argument of getting your news online or reading a good old fashioned newspaper. In the paper instance, the reader has to often go through the whole paper to get to the desired news item. In the process, they will read some other articles they might not have read otherwise. With the advent of online news sources, one tends to only read the articles of interest, thus narrowing down one's knowledge base

mep said:

No, I never cared for the MSFL Beatle records. I have two of the EMI Parlaphone BC-13 collections, one of which is un-played. I also have numerous EMI Parlaphone LPs I bought over the years. My original BC-13 collection that I bought almost 30 years ago and has been played a zillion times still sounds great.

Click to expand...

I can't speak for the Beatles albums but it's my experience that some of those MFSL LPs that were often criticized for their tonal balance are better than we thought. played back on a good system nowadays. It is clear that much of the equipment used to playback the MFSL discs in those days were very bright too and colored the sound. That doesn't take away from the sometimes questionable musical selections eg. AWB????

Speaking of Beatles, was anyone the least bit sad that DCC folded before they could re-release the Beatles? I heard some of the work at CES the past two years and it would have truly been exciting! In fact last year, one of the WBF contributors brought a copy of a 15 ips Beatles tape to RMAF and brother, it didn't sound like any LP release, be it Parlophone, Apple, etc. One of the songs was A Day in the Life and it was like Paul and John were in the room with you. You wanted to cry! And they never sounded better; so good, it was like one had travelled back in time to hear them in the '60s! BTW, the playback system was a Nagra deck to the Doshi electronics driving the Sasha speakers. Oh yes, cabling was from Transparent Audio.

And speaking of not-so-good digital, i have all 3 versions of the "great" Beatle re-masters. I have the stereo set, the mono set, and the 24 bit green USB apple. I'm not wild about any of them. I know some people think they are all wonderful, but I don't know what they had to compare them with unless it was the original CDs which were also not so good.

Mark

Compared to what, then? The MFSL LP's (which I used to have) with their tizzy tonal balance? Mint copy original pressing LP's (not too many of those around today)?

Click to expand...

Compared to the original CDs, even compared to the original LPs. The recording and mastering on the Beatles catalog was never very good until it got pretty close to the end. The fab four were, in a sense, too creative for their own good. They got off the road and started using the studio as a creative medium, doing a lot of crude track stacking and over-dubbing early on, before the equipment was quite up to the task. As a result those records have quite a bit of grungy build-up (sounds like something Draino would fix, huh?) and got pretty congested sounding. The re-masters sure help, as does good mastering to digital. They are, to my ears anyway, the best we have of those recordings. But they don't hold up to later muti-track recordings or even to the jazz records of 10 years earlier which were recorded simply, with minimal over-dubbing.

Tim

Phelonious Ponk said:

Compared to the original CDs, even compared to the original LPs. The recording and mastering on the Beatles catalog was never very good until it got pretty close to the end. The fab four were, in a sense, too creative for their own good. They got off the road and started using the studio as a creative medium, doing a lot of crude track stacking and over-dubbing early on, before the equipment was quite up to the task. As a result those records have quite a bit of grungy build-up (sounds like something Draino would fix, huh?) and got pretty congested sounding. The re-masters sure help, as does good mastering to digital. They are, to my ears anyway, the best we have of those recordings. But they don't hold up to later muti-track recordings or even to the jazz records of 10 years earlier which were recorded simply, with minimal over-dubbing.

Tim

Click to expand...

Does this mean you do like at least one version of the 2009 remasters (since the post you responded to clearly did not )

MylesBAstor said:

Speaking of Beatles, was anyone the least bit sad that DCC folded before they could re-release the Beatles? I heard some of the work at CES the past two years and it would have truly been exciting! In fact last year, one of the WBF contributors brought a copy of a 15 ips Beatles tape to RMAF and brother, it didn't sound like any LP release, be it Parlophone, Apple, etc. One of the songs was A Day in the Life and it was like Paul and John were in the room with you. You wanted to cry! And they never sounded better; so good, it was like one had travelled back in time to hear them in the '60s! BTW, the playback system was a Nagra deck to the Doshi electronics driving the Sasha speakers. Oh yes, cabling was from Transparent Audio.

Click to expand...

As far I have seen in reports it was an old Revox A77 - perhaps with an external head amp?
Curious that Tim just referred one of the qualities I associate to the MFSL LPs - the sound is much less congested, music flows easily.

Edit - just found a link to this system. See it at:
http://www.theaudiobeat.com/rmaf2010/rmaf2010_tablog_tidal_doshi.htm

microstrip said:

As far I have seen in reports it was an old Revox A77 - perhaps with an external head amp?
Curious that Tim just referred one of the qualities I associate to the MFSL LPs - the sound is much less congested, music flows easily.

Edit - just found a link to this system. See it at:
http://www.theaudiobeat.com/rmaf2010/rmaf2010_tablog_tidal_doshi.htm

Click to expand...

Well there was a Revox in the room (a C270?), but we listened thru the Nagra and I think the King/Cello tape preamp.

In regards to PP:
1. Are we talking about Parlophone or Apple pressings?
2. Don't confuse what you hear on the records with how the tape actually sounds. BIG MISTAKE, ESPECIALLY when it comes to jazz or rock recordings. Where the problem lie IMHO is in the record mastering. Like many LPs I've heard and compared to the 15 ips tape version, the records were horribly EQ'd eg. the record labels tailored the "sound" to what they thought the public wanted eg. like the Angel vs original EMI or Decca vs. London or that Americans liked a "brighter" sound than the Brits. Not so long ago, The Band's Stage Fright released on 15 ips/2 track tape from the Tape Project vs the original LP release. Couldn't even tell they were the same recording
3. I totally agree with what Mark observed about the Beatles remasters. To quote a line from HP when talking about the RCA 0.5 series, "they are 1/2 of what they should be." Same for these Beatles remasters. Only they're 1/20th or less of what they should have been. Sure wasn't digital done right. Any resemblance was purely conincidental. The record was a mess.

Myles-I wonder what the source was for the 15 ips 2 track Beatle tape? Send me an email. I would love to own that. And Tim, you are right about the crude multi-tracking that took place in the early days. Sgt. Peppers was recorded on a Studer 4 track deck. It’s remarkable that it sounds as good as it does.

In another life time ago when I lived in Maine, a friend of mine bought the MFSL Beatles collection when it first came out. I brought over my BC-13 collection and we both agreed it sounded better than the MFSL. I don’t know if time and better equipment would change that assessment, but I’m not going to buy the MFSL collection to find out. If I remember correctly, HP put the MFSL collection on his super disc list only to come out sometime later to say there was too much equalization jigger-pookey done by MFSL during the mastering and he de-rated the collection.

And back to the topic of this thread, I wish we had a way of measuring the amount of information density on a CD and an LP that were made from the same master tape to see which one contained more information. I don’t know if a spectrum analyzer would tell us this.