Vinyl will always sound *different* than digital, right?

[MattHooper]

As AI enters the medical world, perhaps a therapy will arise to calm the nerves of those triggered by the Vinyl Revival. It's fairly alarming the toll it seems
to take on some people.

Until then, I guess we need to have compassion, and still expect a lot of "I don't like something other people like; must ridicule to release the pressure!"

 

[deweydm]

It's also endorsed by 6 obscure artists being interviewed for a vinyl article. So there's that too.

Would probably be cooler if the contempt and sarcasm were directed at whoever thought bull shit like this was a good idea: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It’s Blitz. Listening to this on LP is such a better subjective listening experience it’s hilarious. Should it be that way? Hell no, but it is what it is.

Not that I endorse records to anyone new to it. Dropped our youngest daughter back off at college after spring break, and one of her roommates had bought a Crosley turntable, and that just made me kinda sad and a little angry. Didn’t want to be a jerk about it, so I didn’t say anything, but if she had asked, I’d have suggested she take it back and thrift a CD player with optical out and buy a DAC, start hunting for older, used CDs. And for the brick walled recordings like the above, she’ll just have to live with it until/unless a better remastering comes along.

It seems difficult maybe to admit everyone looking to LPs for some alternatives to streaming and CDs isn’t a fool, and at a certain point technical factors aren‘t as important as poor aesthetic choices, like bad mastering decisions made for marketing purpose. That a non negligible percentage of listeners aren’t getting what they want from streaming and CDs, and they’re not idiots for that. Give it a try though, eh.

 

[FrankW]

 

[afinepoint]

Another point is that while digital has the potential to always sound closer to the original source it doesn't always. And not through any fault of its own. Why? One of the jobs of the audio engineers is to give the record companies what they want. Lets be honest trends and fads are everywhere. Nothing is immune. Audio engineers will purposely tweak the sound adding brilliance, deeper sound and so on because that is the market or marketing demands. Likely only the more influential singers have say over this.. The dynamic range of an LP is around 20 db shy of CD. Simply put the engineer has less room for manipulation with vinyl. And why care anyway since the populace streams today. So in these few instances vinyl will be closer to the artist's original work but will forever be sonically handcuffed by it's own physical limitations.

But as stated MANY times (most) vinyl enthusiasts aren't looking to match digital accuracy and don't care. The "digital is better" falls on deaf ears. No pun intended.

 

[atmasphere]

The dynamic range of an LP is around 20 db shy of CD. Simply put the engineer has less room for manipulation with vinyl. And why care anyway since the populace streams today. So in these few instances vinyl will be closer to the artist's original work but will forever be sonically handcuffed by it's own physical limitations.

FWIW dept.: Vinyl has been improving in the last 20 years. Projects we did at QRP in Salinas, KS, indicate that '10dB shy' is more accurate. We have these numbers about LPs that have been floating around for decades and really no good provenance; how good was the pressing used to show dynamic range? What was the tonearm/cartridge/phono section combination used??

A lacquer, if the cutter is set up properly, can be so quiet that the electronics (no matter how quiet) are the noise floor in playback. The surface noise comes in during the pressing process. QRP figured to get around that by mechanically damping their pressing equipment so less noise could creep in as the LP cooled. Tests we got back from them seemed within a couple of dB o of the original lacquers. Its hard to know exactly how quiet the media really is when all the playback gear is making more noise.

None of this is worth a hill of beans though, since LPs often have less compression applied than the digital release simply on account of cars.

 

[jsrtheta]

Another point is that while digital has the potential to always sound closer to the original source it doesn't always. And not through any fault of its own. Why? One of the jobs of the audio engineers is to give the record companies what they want. Lets be honest trends and fads are everywhere. Nothing is immune. Audio engineers will purposely tweak the sound adding brilliance, deeper sound and so on because that is the market or marketing demands. Likely only the more influential singers have say over this.. The dynamic range of an LP is around 20 db shy of CD. Simply put the engineer has less room for manipulation with vinyl. And why care anyway since the populace streams today. So in these few instances vinyl will be closer to the artist's original work but will forever be sonically handcuffed by it's own physical limitations.

But as stated MANY times (most) vinyl enthusiasts aren't looking to match digital accuracy and don't care. The "digital is better" falls on deaf ears. No pun intended.

My limited experience with recording is that the artists are there for most of the process and have artistic control. And I'm not aware of any controls on the mixing board, or elsewhere, for "brilliance" or "deeper sound" (I don't even know what that means). Artists with any clout at all provide input at the recording stages.

I know a (very) few recording engineers, and they don't seem to use these terms either. All the artists I listen to have quite a bit of input on their recordings, some of them have total control. The best recorded stuff I hear is from a friend in the UK who is in on the process from Day One. He works closely with his guitar player, who has been knocking around for decades now and worked with a lot of the bigs. Their works have sounded excellent since their first disc in the '90s through today.

I also doubt that artists like Mark Knopfler, Richard Thompson and Sting have anything less than total approval over their finished products. If only because they are responsible for their sound and are there when it's recorded.

 

[jsrtheta]

FWIW dept.: Vinyl has been improving in the last 20 years. Projects we did at QRP in Salinas, KS, indicate that '10dB shy' is more accurate. We have these numbers about LPs that have been floating around for decades and really no good provenance; how good was the pressing used to show dynamic range? What was the tonearm/cartridge/phono section combination used??

A lacquer, if the cutter is set up properly, can be so quiet that the electronics (no matter how quiet) are the noise floor in playback. The surface noise comes in during the pressing process. QRP figured to get around that by mechanically damping their pressing equipment so less noise could creep in as the LP cooled. Tests we got back from them seemed within a couple of dB o of the original lacquers. Its hard to know exactly how quiet the media really is when all the playback gear is making more noise.

None of this is worth a hill of beans though, since LPs often have less compression applied than the digital release simply on account of cars.

"Cars"? What am I missing?

 

[Robin L]

"Cars"? What am I missing?

Massive compression for playback in cars on account of the noise produced by the cars---engine noise, road and wind noise. And this has been true for a long time, explaining the massive compression of top forty in the 50s/60s. This also explains brickwalling, where levels are brough up uniformly to the max so that levels of mixes of tunes are constant.

 

[jsrtheta]

Massive compression for playback in cars on account of the noise produced by the cars---engine noise, road and wind noise. And this has been true for a long time, explaining the massive compression of top forty in the 50s/60s. This also explains brickwalling, where levels are brough up uniformly to the max so that levels of mixes of tunes are constant.

Thanks. Actually, the penny dropped before you responded, but thanks!

 

[Newman]

And this has been true for a long time, explaining the massive compression of top forty in the 50s/60s.

That’s right, so the idea that the “cars” reason for compression only affects CDs was misleading.

 

[j_j]

That’s right, so the idea that the “cars” reason for compression only affects CDs was misleading.

It's been used, but in many cases, the idea that "a bit louder sounds better" has been used to justify the loudness race, which you can not fully participate in when you're putting something on Vinyl.

It *is* true that a slight bit louder (meaning loudness, not SPL or level, please) does generally sound better, this is not a transitive property. At some point, often much quicker than expected, the louder track sounds both better than the "middle" loudness track, but ***WORSE*** than the original track.

Perception is like that, but lots of people who control the production demand louder, louder, louder. And now we are where we are, where CD tracks have massive intersample overs that drive many DAC's crazy, are clipped to <redacted> and in general are "instant listener fatigue".

Radio, in particular, is smashed to bits ABOVE the initial track's squeezed to toothpaste status. There is data that shows that the louder station gets selected more often than a quieter station by most listeners. What I have NOT seen is "how long the person listens before the turn it all off" data vs. "loud loud loud". With "digital radio" (which has other pathetic audio quality problems) you can toothpaste the data much more thoroughly than you can even with FM, and certainly more than AM (where clipping spreads crap all over the entire AM band) so there we go. It all sounds bad.

But with old-timey vinyl, you can't squish it. The mechanics will not allow it.

 

[Newman]

It’s a pity the industry didn’t leave the CDs and old records with their dynamic range intact, and leave it incumbent upon the radio stations, chasing sales, and also car audio player manufacturers, to apply squishing at their end. Oh well. Too late now.

 

[jsrtheta]

It’s a pity the industry didn’t leave the CDs and old records with their dynamic range intact, and leave it incumbent upon the radio stations, chasing sales, and also car audio player manufacturers, to apply squishing at their end. Oh well. Too late now.

That's a great thing about my friend's discs. His name is Trevor Jones, and his "band" is called Miracle Mile. His musical partner is a guy named Marcus Cliffe, who appears on a lot of tunes you may have heard. They do all their own recording. They used to be on Spotify - for all I know they still are. Great stuff.

 

[j_j]

It’s a pity the industry didn’t leave the CDs and old records with their dynamic range intact, and leave it incumbent upon the radio stations, chasing sales, and also car audio player manufacturers, to apply squishing at their end. Oh well. Too late now.

And it's not even hard to make something that senses the actual noise level of the playback venue and adjust (frequency sensitive) the playback to bring up the masked parts, but not anything else.

But noooooo, we can't do THAT.

 

[Mulder]

FWIW dept.: Vinyl has been improving in the last 20 years. Projects we did at QRP in Salinas, KS, indicate that '10dB shy' is more accurate. We have these numbers about LPs that have been floating around for decades and really no good provenance; how good was the pressing used to show dynamic range? What was the tonearm/cartridge/phono section combination used??

A lacquer, if the cutter is set up properly, can be so quiet that the electronics (no matter how quiet) are the noise floor in playback. The surface noise comes in during the pressing process. QRP figured to get around that by mechanically damping their pressing equipment so less noise could creep in as the LP cooled. Tests we got back from them seemed within a couple of dB o of the original lacquers. Its hard to know exactly how quiet the media really is when all the playback gear is making more noise.

None of this is worth a hill of beans though, since LPs often have less compression applied than the digital release simply on account of cars.

Just, so I understand you correctly. Do you mean the vinyl itself is better or do you mean the pressing technique or do you mean the turntables?
If this high quality vinyl is specific about QRP in Salinas, then how representative is this for the rest of the vinyls out there in the marketplace?

 

[krabapple]

And it's not even hard to make something that senses the actual noise level of the playback venue and adjust (frequency sensitive) the playback to bring up the masked parts, but not anything else.

But noooooo, we can't do THAT.

Most modern cars have something primitively like that...a 'road noise compensator' -- but whether drivers have a clue that it's an option, is debatable. Certainly something could be added to phones too.

But the squished mastering plus added squishing from radio transmissions/streams for most popular music channels would make it often pointless anyway.

I guess what would be needed is a return to old style mastering plus implementing these user-end smart compressors plus a massive public education campaign -- 'hey folks, you can bring the loudness when you need it by using this simple fun trick! ' -- but hah, no, that is not going to happen.

 

[krabapple]

FWIW dept.: Vinyl has been improving in the last 20 years. Projects we did at QRP in Salinas, KS, indicate that '10dB shy' is more accurate. We have these numbers about LPs that have been floating around for decades and really no good provenance; how good was the pressing used to show dynamic range? What was the tonearm/cartridge/phono section combination used??

A lacquer, if the cutter is set up properly, can be so quiet that the electronics (no matter how quiet) are the noise floor in playback. The surface noise comes in during the pressing process. QRP figured to get around that by mechanically damping their pressing equipment so less noise could creep in as the LP cooled. Tests we got back from them seemed within a couple of dB o of the original lacquers. Its hard to know exactly how quiet the media really is when all the playback gear is making more noise.

None of this is worth a hill of beans though, since LPs often have less compression applied than the digital release simply on account of cars.

CDs produced using noise-shaped dither offer a boost of DR from 96 dB to a perceptual 120 dB. No LP is going to ever come within '10 dB shy' of that.

And the CD DR is only dependent on the recording and mastering. Not on the pressing process, not on the disc itself, not on the 'tonearm/cartridge/phono section combination'.

A 'phile who cares enough to hunt the unicorn LPs you cite, and play them on a pristine TT/preamp rig, could as well care enough to hunt for a good digital mastering of same recording. And thereby get as much or more DR...forever.

 

[jsrtheta]

Most modern cars have something primitively like that...a 'road noise compensator' -- but whether drivers have a clue that it's an option, is debatable. Certainly something could be added to phones too.

But the squished mastering plus added squishing from radio transmissions/streams for most popular music channels would make it often pointless anyway.

I guess what would be needed is a return to old style mastering plus implementing these user-end smart compressors plus a massive public education campaign -- 'hey folks, you can bring the loudness when you need it by using this simple fun trick! ' -- but hah, no, that is not going to happen.

I thought the volume control was a road noise compensator.

 

[j_j]

Most modern cars have something primitively like that...a 'road noise compensator' -- but whether drivers have a clue that it's an option, is debatable. Certainly something could be added to phones too.

But the squished mastering plus added squishing from radio transmissions/streams for most popular music channels would make it often pointless anyway.

I guess what would be needed is a return to old style mastering plus implementing these user-end smart compressors plus a massive public education campaign -- 'hey folks, you can bring the loudness when you need it by using this simple fun trick! ' -- but hah, no, that is not going to happen.

I'm not talking about a single gain adjustment across all frequencies.

 

[atmasphere]

That’s right, so the idea that the “cars” reason for compression only affects CDs was misleading.

No, radio stations use compression. The records they play are less compressed. Its important to also understand that back when the LP was King, compression was used solely for the purpose of speeding up the setup process for mastering the record. When you don't use compression you have to be more careful and engineering time for that is $500/hour or so. Compression has been a bane for a long time...

Just, so I understand you correctly. Do you mean the vinyl itself is better or do you mean the pressing technique or do you mean the turntables?

What I mean is vinyl is potentially better. There was a comment about digtial having about 20dB noise floor over the LP, which conflates all examples of LPs together. But that doesn't say anything about the media, just its execution. So I brought up the example of QRP since they are a concrete example that flies in the face of that comment. I did not mean turntables.