DSD to Vinyl Versus Analog Tape to Vinyl

[Solypsa]

Oh and it should be standard business to have a checksum or such for a high end digital file no?

Makes me wonder if the analog laser disc needs resurrection

 

[Al M.]

If 'servers' are bit exact why are there so many different price levels with such a reported SQ difference? Seems like with streaming routers, switches, and servers become more costly as a group, and perhaps as important as the dac. I'm vinyl only so I am mostly curious about all this but I have many clients that are knee deep in digital upgrades in front of the dacs...

Part of the problem in computer audio seems to be RF noise, but there seem to be other problems too. I have watched/heard dramas unfold in other systems about computer audio/servers as well . Endless upgrades and software "improvements" over years and years. It *CAN* be done right, but oh boy, to get there. I just hate the plasticky, synthetic sound of computer audio when it's not quite right.

It's one of the reasons why I am so hesitant about getting into computer audio for my high end system (I do streaming on YouTube over my computer and headphones). I stick with CDs and CD transport for the time being. Just not worth the hassle for me.

My Empirical Audio re-clocker between CD transport and DAC brings jitter down to computer audio levels, so there's no advantage to the latter in that sense anymore either.

This recent thread was another turnoff for me:

I've finally made up my mind about FLAC vs uncompressed...sigh. Hard drive makers rejoice.

Just read the first three paragraphs.


Hell, no.

 

[Joe Whip]

All my downloads and rips are in AIFF but I do have some flac files. I am not hearing what this guy above is hearing,

 

[Addicted to hifi]

I don’t think downloading or streaming will ever be as good as vinyl or digital.

 

[Addicted to hifi]

I have heard a direct comparison with streaming and vinyl and vinyl one out.

 

[Al M.]

All my downloads and rips are in AIFF but I do have some flac files. I am not hearing what this guy above is hearing,

So why did he end up with everything in FLAC and you with almost everything in AIFF, which he would prefer?

 

[Joe Whip]

Don’t know Al. I use Apple products and wasn’t concerned with storage space as it is so cheap. Plus, AIFF is easier than WAV to add album art. So, I have always used AIFF if it was available. My flac files are almost all from friends. There are a few WAV files sprinkled in there too.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

If 'servers' are bit exact why are there so many different price levels with such a reported SQ difference? Seems like with streaming routers, switches, and servers become more costly as a group, and perhaps as important as the dac. I'm vinyl only so I am mostly curious about all this but I have many clients that are knee deep in digital upgrades in front of the dacs...

why are turntables and arms so variable? after 100 years of evolution. servers do the same thing, they allow the media to be accurately delivered to the reader mechanism.

we are about 10 years (maybe 15) into server evolution. it might be helpful just to try and see how Taiko evolved from their SGM 2015 server, to their EVO version, then the Extreme, and then a USB interface and the TAS software....over 7+ years (not that Emile was not messing with servers for years earlier before it went commercial). the process is on-going and never stands still.

and it turns out that like turntables and arms, everything matters and the best most effective methods are not cheap or casual endeavors. and they are learning still as it's early in the process.

getting musical reality out of one's and zero's and having millions of choices at your fingertips is not trivial. but i'd say it's doing pretty good so far.

 

[Kingrex]

Interesting choice of words there; The frequency response of magnetic tape is between 30 Hz and 15 kHz and the dynamic range of magnetic tape is 55dB, while DSD can deliver a dynamic range of 120 dB from 20 Hz to 20 kHz and an extended frequency response up to 100 kHz.......... In other words, magnetic tape has a resolution of approximately 9 bits, even at 30ips it can only deliver 12-13 bits of real performance in terms of resolution.

Having said that, because of it’s non-linearities: saturation, compression of the high frequencies, harmonics (low frequency distortions) and irregular phase response characteristic, coupled with replay-head’s bass bump, tape does sound wonderfully warm and ironically dynamic.

Magnetic tape is compromised at both ends: at low levels, the magnetic field in tape has to reach the minimum threshold to be effective (the hysteresis effect) and at high levels magnetic tape will experience saturation compression.

The take away is, no matter how pleasant and enjoyable magnetic tape sounds, it is no match for digital DSD signal capture. I think that you said it best, when it comes to the intrinsic potential of the two formats.......it is “not really very close”!

Numbers are only numbers in that they give a logical result to a math formula. The problem with numbers is they are based upon measurements. The problem with measurements is did you measure the right thing. Are you a neuro scientist, audiologist etc who knows the exact process how a brain translate sound into the electo chemical responses firing across the dendrites and synapse in a brain. Even if you were, that person still does not know a whole lot about how the process of memory and consciousness actually "Are" in our brains. They only have an idea how the brian works. Not much more.

If someone sits in front of 2 forms of media and prefers one over the other, you have no way to measure what is going on in their ear/brain connection and why they arrived at that conclusion. You thereby have not arrived at a conclusion as to what is a better format. You only know one piece of math applied to one side of the process. You know nothing about the whole equation, how is the brain processing the stimuli. So really your math means nothing at all.

Let me make it more simple. You designed the perfect automobile tire. Thats it. You don't know what car or truck or whatever is sitting on that tire so you have no idea what the ride in the vehicle is really like.

 

[rando]

This recent thread was another turnoff for me:

It really was. A bad starting place for discussion. High end digital is tantalizing and defeating currently. For your purposes I'd suggest the plausible response to way the world is moving lies in smaller solutions than typical. Unavoidable is starting with the right source material. Determining what's best in digital recordings.


PCM/WAV is what CD are written with. Mistake number one is relinquishing hold of ability to desire an improved modern format surpassing it by large strides. DXD should by all rights have been the revolution mp3 was 30 years ago. Stagnant is an understatement. This is not necessarily a matter of outright replacement. Once the basic form factor and practical elements of vinyl were determined. Refinements produced great results. However, digital might at this point prosper from a clean slate. One that allows the luxury of a physical product to contain the same content as file downloads.

This divide makes for hard decisions between the currently cleaner source (to extract directly in a secure environment) of CD or higher resolution downloads "running the gauntlet." The right source material going forwards is almost certainly going to come from smaller artist focused entities with smaller margins and smaller public awareness. A A & A will continue to hamstring consumers into yet another mp3 cycle.

 

[Carlos269]

Numbers are only numbers in that they give a logical result to a math formula. The problem with numbers is they are based upon measurements. The problem with measurements is did you measure the right thing. Are you a neuro scientist, audiologist etc who knows the exact process how a brain translate sound into the electo chemical responses firing across the dendrites and synapse in a brain. Even if you were, that person still does not know a whole lot about how the process of memory and consciousness actually "Are" in our brains. They only have an idea how the brian works. Not much more.

If someone sits in front of 2 forms of media and prefers one over the other, you have no way to measure what is going on in their ear/brain connection and why they arrived at that conclusion. You thereby have not arrived at a conclusion as to what is a better format. You only know one piece of math applied to one side of the process. You know nothing about the whole equation, how is the brain processing the stimuli. So really your math means nothing at all.

Let me make it more simple. You designed the perfect automobile tire. Thats it. You don't know what car or truck or whatever is sitting on that tire so you have no idea what the ride in the vehicle is really like.

In the current world we live in, full of misinformation and alternative facts, it is nice to have confidence that it was science and technology that got human kind to the moon and back, allows for precise space travel and rovers on Mars, and is responsible for all the medical and technological breakthroughs that we experience everyday. The “we don’t know everything“ argument is a cop-out. We may never know how everything works, but math and science provide enough insight to paint extraordinary pictures and to tell the stories of the world around us.

In the grand realm of science, audio is a relatively simple technology that has been well established and defined for well over a century, and “most” details are clearly understood.

We can pretend and believe the black magic and voodoo that surrounds it or choose to live in reality.

 

[Atmasphere]

In the current world we live in, full of misinformation and alternative facts, it is nice to have confidence that it was science and technology that got human kind to the moon and back, allows for precise space travel and rovers on Mars, and is responsible for all the medical and technological breakthroughs that we experience everyday. The “we don’t know everything“ argument is a cop-out. We may never know how everything works, but math and science provide enough insight to paint extraordinary pictures and to tell the stories of the world around us.

In the grand realm of science, audio is a relatively simple technology that has been well established and defined for well over a century, and “most” details are clearly understood.

We can pretend and believe the black magic and voodoo that surrounds it or choose to live in reality.

Interesting anecdote dept: when doing the programming for the first moon landing, the gravity factor was accidentally entered as a negative value. It was entirely serendipitous that they caught it.

 

[AMR / iFi audio]

getting musical reality out of one's and zero's and having millions of choices at your fingertips is not trivial. but i'd say it's doing pretty good so far.

But this variety is at the same time exciting and beautiful, isn't it?

 

[Al M.]

In the current world we live in, full of misinformation and alternative facts, it is nice to have confidence that it was science and technology that got human kind to the moon and back, allows for precise space travel and rovers on Mars, and is responsible for all the medical and technological breakthroughs that we experience everyday. The “we don’t know everything“ argument is a cop-out. We may never know how everything works, but math and science provide enough insight to paint extraordinary pictures and to tell the stories of the world around us.

In the grand realm of science, audio is a relatively simple technology that has been well established and defined for well over a century, and “most” details are clearly understood.

We can pretend and believe the black magic and voodoo that surrounds it or choose to live in reality.

Indeed. Now that finally practical implementation has much better caught up to theory than before (while still not being perfect), it has become clear that digital theory has been right all along and that the Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem was correct.

It took a while to get there, but the math was right, proving all the naysayers wrong that the standard sampling rate was "too low" and "could not capture all the signal". Sure, for practical reasons higher sampling rates may still sound better (and some equipment may "need" them more than some other), but not because they ever were theoretically necessary. Decoded on a great DAC, it is now obvious what immense resolution the standard Redbook CD format harbors. Just as the Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem predicted. It took a while to better extract it, but the information was always there -- as science said it was.

 

[microstrip]

If 'servers' are bit exact why are there so many different price levels with such a reported SQ difference? Seems like with streaming routers, switches, and servers become more costly as a group, and perhaps as important as the dac. I'm vinyl only so I am mostly curious about all this but I have many clients that are knee deep in digital upgrades in front of the dacs...

We debated this issue with some depth in the Tailko Extreme thread - Emile was so persuasive in the technical aspects that after bombarding him with hard questions I decided to get an Extreme!

 

[Rensselaer]

In the current world we live in, full of misinformation and alternative facts, it is nice to have confidence that it was science and technology that got human kind to the moon and back, allows for precise space travel and rovers on Mars, and is responsible for all the medical and technological breakthroughs that we experience everyday. The “we don’t know everything“ argument is a cop-out. We may never know how everything works, but math and science provide enough insight to paint extraordinary pictures and to tell the stories of the world around us.

In the grand realm of science, audio is a relatively simple technology that has been well established and defined for well over a century, and “most” details are clearly understood.

We can pretend and believe the black magic and voodoo that surrounds it or choose to live in reality.

(IMHO). I believe Kingrex was saying that despite all the technology we currently have at our disposal, we are still unable to determine what the brain of any biological being comprehends as sound, regardless of the measured differences in vibrations reproduced on their way to the external auditory apparatus. "Measurements" of those vibrations outside of the acoustic-neuro pathway, or even within it, will not explain what the auditory gyrus of the brain is actually perceiving any more than measurements of brush strokes and light-refractive character of chosen paint will explain why some might prefer paintings done by Van Gough over say those of Constable.

 

[Carlos269]

(IMHO). I believe Kingrex was saying that despite all the technology we currently have at our disposal, we are still unable to determine what the brain of any biological being comprehends as sound, regardless of the measured differences in vibrations reproduced on their way to the external auditory apparatus. "Measurements" of those vibrations outside of the acoustic-neuro pathway, or even within it, will not explain what the auditory gyrus of the brain is actually perceiving any more than measurements of brush strokes and light-refractive character of chosen paint will explain why some might prefer paintings done by Van Gough over say those of Constable.

I think that neuroscientists would disagree with this assertion.

 

[Joe Whip]

We all have a processor between our ears ie our brains. However, no two are alike, we each process the same incoming data differently, hence we all have different preferences, whether sound, sight or taste. It is why I bristle when I read someone claiming this or that format is better. Better to you may be worse to me. Hence, we really should say we prefer something over something else.

 

[Rensselaer]

I think that neuroscientists would disagree with this assertion.

Well, I am certainly no neuroscientist (are you?), but have spent my entire working life as a health care provider so have a little insight.

From what I've read about as far as we can go into measuring how music is interpreted (though I do not know of any comparing different music playback systems/designs) is with a PET scan. The positron emission tomography (PET) scan lights up the parts of the brain which are being accessed by the individual at the time of a particular stimulus, so when listening to music the areas of the brain associated with that particular individuals different functions/feelings that he/she responds normally with, will light up (which will include different parts depending upon the listener, individuals respond differently).

For instance, in a paper by I.J. Hass et al, Soc. Just Res (2017) 30:355-380, they point out findings (from a series of studies with PET) that proved that "conservatives" tended to respond to incongruent policy decisions with greater illumination in areas of the brain associated with the recognition of threat and conflict; whereas liberals, when hearing incongruent policy decisions, alight problem-solving and behaviour-modifying areas of the brain. Hence, we are genetically preprogrammed or apparently choose our party affiliation in-utero when the nerve connections are initially strung. If true for political party identification then why not preference for digital over analogue?

 

[Al M.]

Well, I am certainly no neuroscientist (are you?), but have spent my entire working life as a health care provider so have a little insight.

From what I've read about as far as we can go into measuring how music is interpreted (though I do not know of any comparing different music playback systems/designs) is with a PET scan. The positron emission tomography (PET) scan lights up the parts of the brain which are being accessed by the individual at the time of a particular stimulus, so when listening to music the areas of the brain associated with that particular individuals different functions/feelings that he/she responds normally with, will light up (which will include different parts depending upon the listener, individuals respond differently).

For instance, in a paper by I.J. Hass et al, Soc. Just Res (2017) 30:355-380, they point out findings (from a series of studies with PET) that proved that "conservatives" tended to respond to incongruent policy decisions with greater illumination in areas of the brain associated with the recognition of threat and conflict; whereas liberals, when hearing incongruent policy decisions, alight problem-solving and behaviour-modifying areas of the brain.

Good points. There are also many neuroscientists who will readily concede how little we know yet about the brain. Certainly, the science of individual personality and individual perception is nowhere near the exact science that allowed us to land on the Moon, or rovers on Mars -- spectacular achievements indeed. Being a scientist myself (a biochemist) I have learned my share of humility about what science does not yet know.

Having said that, there should be no relativism when there is no room for one. The resolution expressed in bit depth of analog tape and digital formats, and their respective frequency responses, are well known, as are the workings of the Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem, for example. I agree with Carlos that there is no space for voodoo opinions in that regard.