No doubt about progress in digital. On the other hand, when auditioning the NAD M51 DAC and the Hegel DAC25 at home, I still preferred my old Wadia 12 DAC. The Berkeley DAC was an entirely different matter, and I ended up purchasing it.
LP with better dynamic range than digital
- Thread starter amirm
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No doubt about progress in digital. On the other hand, when auditioning the NAD M51 DAC and the Hegel DAC25 at home, I still preferred my old Wadia 12 DAC. The Berkeley DAC was an entirely different matter, and I ended up purchasing it.
There are plenty for/against either vinyl or CD in the recording/mastering industry.
It is probably fair to say digital is more resiliant to technical fook ups, plenty of hires releases that are seriously FUBAR and yet can still be listened to (one good reason to subscribe to HiFiNews), do the same to analogue and I think you end up with a mess.
Even the simplest aspect can be a logistical headache for vinyl; compound composition/heat-duration pressed/time left to cool and how.
Before this the lathe cutter from what I understand starts to degrade once it has cut around 10 sides and needs to be retooled/sharpened (bah whatever its called and this costs quite a lot of thousands with number of skilled-experienced engineers less than ever before), degradation can also be considered for the created stampers and defining ideal number before any degradation.
Ironically one who is accepted (by many here and on other forums) as being credible creates hirez digital files from the best LP released (depends upon batch he can get I would say) when there is no available hirez file for commercial purchase; that is Jim Lesurf (was reader of Physics and Electronics at St Andrews and does technical articles in HiFi News).
Now why does he not buy the CD, but instead goes to the effort of using a quality ADC to create his own hires from the LP
And yes he is a supporter of digital, lets all remember though a lot of the challenges and considerations-limitations with analogue-LP has already been mentioned so no need to reiterate them IMO.
Yes I know and apologies I did reiterate some in this post a bit on LP manufacturing
Cheers
Orb
Minor correction: the cutter stylus has a life of about 10 hours- at which point the noise has crept up, and even by increasing stylus temperature it barely acceptable. We retire our styli at about 7-8 hours. Usually we have to readjust the temperature at about 5 hours.
They don't get resharpened and there is no retooling- just install another stylus in the cutterhead and see if you can get the darn thing to do as well as the one you just took out of there
They don't get resharpened and there is no retooling- just install another stylus in the cutterhead and see if you can get the darn thing to do as well as the one you just took out of there
There are plenty for/against either vinyl or CD in the recording/mastering industry.
It is probably fair to say digital is more resiliant to technical fook ups, plenty of hires releases that are seriously FUBAR and yet can still be listened to (one good reason to subscribe to HiFiNews), do the same to analogue and I think you end up with a mess.
Even the simplest aspect can be a logistical headache for vinyl; compound composition/heat-duration pressed/time left to cool and how.
Before this the lathe cutter from what I understand starts to degrade once it has cut around 10 sides and needs to be retooled/sharpened (bah whatever its called and this costs quite a lot of thousands with number of skilled-experienced engineers less than ever before), degradation can also be considered for the created stampers and defining ideal number before any degradation.
Ironically one who is accepted (by many here and on other forums) as being credible creates hirez digital files from the best LP released (depends upon batch he can get I would say) when there is no available hirez file for commercial purchase; that is Jim Lesurf (was reader of Physics and Electronics at St Andrews and does technical articles in HiFi News).
Now why does he not buy the CD, but instead goes to the effort of using a quality ADC to create his own hires from the LP
And yes he is a supporter of digital, lets all remember though a lot of the challenges and considerations-limitations with analogue-LP has already been mentioned so no need to reiterate them IMO.
Yes I know and apologies I did reiterate some in this post a bit on LP manufacturing
Cheers
Orb
My take (short version)
Some LPs will always sound better than the digital version and vice versa – you can find an example for both
But speaking in general - If you'll invest in an analog setup it will sound better vs digital, if you decide to invest in a digital setup that digital setup will sound better (in your home)
Ah thanks interesting, ages ago I read it was around $5k to redo the ends, based upon ideal 10 sides *shrug*Minor correction: the cutter stylus has a life of about 10 hours- at which point the noise has crept up, and even by increasing stylus temperature it barely acceptable. We retire our styli at about 7-8 hours. Usually we have to readjust the temperature at about 5 hours.
They don't get resharpened and there is no retooling- just install another stylus in the cutterhead and see if you can get the darn thing to do as well as the one you just took out of there
Need to try and remember where I read that, oh man lost cause
Cheers
Orb
Apart from Jim uses LP (lets assume this is best LPs) to create hires files when there are no commercial hires available, and does not use the available CD (unless no high quality vinyl available to convert I would assume).
Reason for converting to digital is to ensure perfect repeatable-consistent play that will suffer no degradation (separate to what I was talking about earlier).
So he is actually using digital hires when available, and when not LPs converted to hirez with a quality ADC.
Just reiterating this because it does not match up to your post in response to mine.
Cheers
Orb
Do you notice any issues with the heater wires resonating at certain frequencies?
No- as far as that goes, the mechanism that moves the stylus is really the elephant in the room.
It uses springs for its suspension. Interestingly, if you don't run the feedback (which controls the resonance of the cutterhead) you don't get any separation. I'm sure Chaos Theory has something to say about that!
It uses springs for its suspension. Interestingly, if you don't run the feedback (which controls the resonance of the cutterhead) you don't get any separation. I'm sure Chaos Theory has something to say about that!
Ah k I get where you are coming from.
Although reading this thread and debates in other audio forums one would think audiophiles/audio hobbyists care more about the technical/theory
Kind of like the heated debates between AMD and Nvidia fans on PC sites; who should care more about the gaming experience.
That said us audiophiles have a long way to fall to match them (I cannot stop myself reading WCCFTech discussions and other sites when it involves AMD/Nvidia)
Cheers
Orb
But that assumes that the recording is done with analog tape. I have recorded solo violin and violin + piano and violin + cello a number of times both with digital (just DAT) and analog (TEAC R2R) and with the TEAC you get go quite Hot without it sounding nasty but the DAT I had to ride the gain and anticipate where it would clip by lowering the levels at crescendos and other loud passages. OR I had to set the gain so low that noise became a problem in quiet passages. The Analog tapes I made sound really awesome and the digital ones a bit bland.
If anyone wants to get into cutting lacquers, there's a Kickstarter campaign for a new Lathe...
Desktop Record Cutting
Desktop Record Cutting
Tom, I don't know how to put this (cutter or no) other than almost universally I can expect better bass from an LP with rare exception. I played string bass for many years; its one of the things I'm picky about. I've yet to hear a CD play bass properly, regardless of the system. So I have come to think of it as universal.
I think the real issue is, what music do you listen too ? if it's the classic stuff mastered on analog tape, then virtually all the vinyl releases will be superior to the digital releases of the same analog master. Take Marcus Miller (Strange Fruit) recorded digital and not really compressed..You have a point for digital. It was mastered that way. The thing about vinyl proponents...all the best music has been recorded analog. The best way to reproduce it is in analog. It's really that simple.
My response is only specific to the very low bass frequencies; that being in terms of the loudness wars-compression bass distortion according to some mastering engineers (Bruce would be great source to add on this here) can happen quickly and not nice audibly (unless EQ is used before hand), the context here is loudness-clipping and dynamic compression, which may be a big consideration for CD releases.
It is interesting even for hirez digital just how close bass frequencies are to clipping for many releases (going by HiFi News measurement-review of hirez albums each month).
I appreciate another aspect would be the genre and goal of the songs and album, anyway interesting just how much influence EQ can have (some of this probably comes back to the discussion a few of us had on the ear's critical bandwidth and summation of multi-tones/chords/complex sounds) and also its requirements when mastering close to clipping.
Cheers
Orb
I think it has to do with the title of this thread and the way the industry behaves. They know they have to compress the digital product, so they do. They know they don't have to compress the LP as much, so they don't. As a result, the LP has more impact, because as we all know, most of the energy in music is in the bass. If you are going to compress things, the bass is 80% of what gets compressed.
If you think digital has better bass, the only reasonable explanation is that you simply don't listen to vinyl with gear at the same par as your digital rig.
It helps also to look at the equalization curve. During record, the preemphasis network is boosting the highs and rolling off bass on a 6DB per octave slope below the turnover frequency. This makes bass pretty easy to cut in the groove. Its the highs that are actually the harder thing to do. During playback, the bass rolloff helps the stylus as it does not have to move as much. A 6 db slope in mechanical terms is profound, as it means the stylus might be moving only 1/4 or 1/8th or less of what it might have done otherwise, depending on frequency.
I find that if I encounter breakup problems on an LP, its far more likely to be occurring at high frequencies rather than bass frequencies. I think most people have experienced this but they don't think about the why/significance of it. One excellent and classic example: Garden of Wurm on the Wake of Poseidon by King Crimson. If the LP has tracking damage, it will show up on this track. What distorts?? The Mellotron. Its not playing any bass at all. But its pretty intense. OTOH, the same damaged LP (which has good bass impact on the title track), will have no breakup. I can give plenty of other examples, and I am sure others can too.
The bottom line is bass is far more likely to be better on an LP than the same thing on CD. The caveat comes in when the same source and compression is used for both media- then they tend to be the same. I have a few LPs where that is obviously the case, notably, the reissue of Porcupine Tree's Voyage 34, which is lame compared to the original.
I like all sorts of music. In the old days, on our website we used to have a page called 'the Bass of the Year Award' which was simply a list of the recordings we were playing as reference to see how the bottom end was doing. The recordings were all over the map: Zoon by Fields of Nephilm (LP), The Thin Red Line (CD only), Early Man by Steve Roach (CD only), 1492 soundtrack by Vangelis (LP)... Of course I have recordings that we have released on LP and CD as well, one is Canto General, which when recorded featured the largest bass drum in the state (I insisted on it with the producer).
Now when you produce an LP or CD, one thing you have at your disposal is the master file or tape. In the case of Canto, I also have the tape machine that made the recording. I know exactly how that recording is supposed to sound; I spent a week setting up the recording rig and experimenting while the ensemble rehearsed in the actual space. When you have that kind of experience, you have a real reference. Anyone here that runs a label and has released both LP and CD knows what I am talking about.
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