The Truth About Vinyl Records

[Robin L]

Which "dead horse" are you referring to?
The use of science to determine the most accurate gear and to flush out the snake-oil peddlers ???

No, the instant abreaction to anyone that dares to get some enjoyment out of listening to LPs (of which there are many in this forum).

 

[MattHooper]

"Audio actually used to have a goal: perfect reproduction of the sound of real music performed in a real space.”

JJ’s initial point was any measure of accuracy requires an accessible objective reference (singular) against which to measure. “Real music performed in a real space” fails on several levels, accessibility and singularity. We can’t access it nor can we unify it into a single point. That specific goal was doomed from the get go.

While it's an unwieldy goal for reasons you mention, in principle its subject to fine tuned investigation. You could do blinded live vs reproduce tests using an instrument and find out which system is getting closer or further from being indistinguishable. And the principles you discover could have wide ranging consequences on designing systems that have the potential to reproduce a closer experience to the real thing of well recorded instruments and voices.

“That was found difficult to achieve,”

Actually impossible.

Perfection is usually impossible in most things. That's why we don't let Perfect be the enemy of The Good.

Whether it's impossible to perfectly reproduce the sound of live sources or not, it's possible to move closer or further away from that goal. So it's still a plausible guide.
In fact we tend to use real sounds as our touch stones for sonic quality, e.g. the more "realistic" and "natural" something sounds through a system, the more likely people will be impressed with the sound quality.

“ and it was abandoned when most music lovers, who almost never heard anything except amplified music anyway, forgot what "the real thing" had sounded like.”

And this is where JGH went off the rails. “The real thing” isn’t one objective and easily accessed “thing” It is elusive and ever changing. Not the fault of the consumers of audio. And more importantly not the reason audio journalism went off the rails. Quite the opposite. It was the likes of Harry Pearson and The Absolute Sound that took this idea JGH advocated and proceeded to run with it in completely the wrong direction. By not understanding the inherent problems with using live sound as an objective reference and ignoring psychoacoustics audio journalism began to conflate preferences with accuracy under the assumption that if something sounded *subjectively more realistic to them* that it meant it was objectively more accurate. And when objective measurements conflicted with their anecdotal observations of subjective realism the measurements were the problem not the inherent unreliability of their auditioning protocols.

I think that is a slight disservice to Pearson and TAS. (I think Pearson was a blowhard, but could write quite well at times and could be very insightful in others).
I found Pearson, and generally TAS, were self aware in terms of realizing the shortcomings of reproduced vs live sound, and the limitations of their approach. I don't believe they thought that if a system was sounding "more like the real thing" it was therefore "more accurate to the signal, or to exactly how those instruments sounded" but more "this is generally what real instruments sound like played in real space. It was a capturing the "gestalt" thing. And certainly they recognized that instruments sounded different in different spaces. So about this:

if something sounded *subjectively more realistic to them* that it meant it was objectively more accurate.

Again, the sense in which TAS took the subjective impressions of realism as being more accurate was in the sense of the gestalt of real instruments in real acoustic spaces. The comparison being between their personal observations in analyzing (subjectively usually) live sound, often symphonic. Now this wasn't scientifically controlled, but at the same time I haven't seen the argument that they were always or necessarily "wrong" in their observations.

Fidelity is only relevant in so far as it serves our subjective ideals of what sounds good. Accuracy and objective measurements are our compass and road map. Our destinations are whatever we ****ing want.

Quibbles aside: Yeah. Agree. Accuracy is a means to an end, not the end.

 

[Sal1950]

No, the instant abreaction to anyone that dares to get some enjoyment out of listening to LPs

Although you take it personally, I've never done that?
I've said many times, if that's your idea of fun, have at it.
But when the subject comes up of accuracy, vinyl isn't in the 2024 running for SOTA, it is badly flawed.

Quibbles aside: Yeah. Agree. Accuracy is a means to an end, not the end.

Then what is, whatever you like? That's not and never will be High Fidelity reproduction.

 

[Robin L]

Although you take it personally, I've never done that?

You deliberately do it practically every time you post in threads concerning LPs. I have no LPs, have no intention of having any every again. But you are just being rude to those that do. I'm sure the bulk of LP collectors who are in this forum are aware that LPs are technologically inferior to digital formats, but they have their reasons for collecting and playing LPs. I'm not "taking it personally", I'm finding you consistently rude. It's a display of arrogance and a "know it all" attitude.

 

[MattHooper]

Although you take it personally, I've never done that?
I've said many times, if that's your idea of fun, have at it.
But when the subject comes up of accuracy, vinyl isn't in the 2024 running for SOTA, it is badly flawed.


Then what is, whatever you like? That's not and never will be High Fidelity reproduction.

As usual: this is not to downplay accuracy or reject it as a goal: it's simply to recognize that accuracy, like everything else, is a preference. If you want accuracy, you can certainly talk objectively (to a degree) about what is accurate or not. But the pursuit of accuracy in the first place is a subjective goal or preference. And also, most if not all audiophiles are pursuing accuracy not as an end, but a means to an end. And that end is at least the promise, and often realization, of what they perceive as pleasingly high sound quality. One can talk in some noble abstract about "simply being interested in the most accurate reproduction of the signal" but it's quite clear that this wouldn't be terribly compelling if everything ended up sounding like a bad iphone recording. The reason audiophiles generally pursue accuracy is that it often results in more subjectively pleasing sound quality.

Can you tell me why you'd bother chasing accurate equipment, if the results were not often enough subjectively pleasing?

So in the end, yeah, it's about subjective goals and pleasing ourselves, whether your preference is for accurate playback equipment or not.

 

[atmasphere]

Although you take it personally, I've never done that?
I've said many times, if that's your idea of fun, have at it.
But when the subject comes up of accuracy, vinyl isn't in the 2024 running for SOTA, it is badly flawed.


Then what is, whatever you like? That's not and never will be High Fidelity reproduction.

Your assessment isn't accurate on several levels, starting with Mr Holt, whose assessment also wasn't accurate.

There are people and companies that are dedicated to furthering the SOTA, which includes vinyl. So let's discuss vinyl, which is far better than you seem to realize.
The cutter of any mastering system has a feedback loop around it that provides (in the case of the Westerex cutter) 30dB of feedback at all frequencies, which is more than most solid state amps have today (pay attention to the emphasis). I refer you to Bruno Putzeys as to the effect of that much feedback.

What this means is the LP media is far lower distortion than most people realize. How is the distortion measured? Usually by cutting an LP and then playing it back. Its that latter bit where most of the studies I've seen fall right flat on their respective faces, as zero attention is paid to the pickup. Setup, the big weakness of LPs, is never discussed not the cartridge and arm combination. So its pretty safe to conclude that those studies do not represent LP distortion in any way: they represent how well the author did his homework and in most cases that was abysmal.

IME as a mastering engineer, I found that the dynamic limitations of the LP have entirely to do with playback and not record. The record system has a lot of headroom- its impossible to overload the amps, since the cutter will burn up by the time they make 10% of full power. And the cutter can cut undistorted grooves no pickup has a hope of tracking. So the engineer's task is to fit the recording into a groove the playback can manage. I found that if you spent time with the recording project, that there was never a need to resort to compression or mono bass. But usually labels don't want to pay for the engineering time so LPs used to be compressed.

These days digital releases tend to be more compressed than the LPs as there's no expectation the LP will be played in a car; that is if the producer wants to turn out a quality product and many do IME.

My Westerex system was bandwidth limited to 42KHz where a 6dB slope was introduced to cause the record side to go to flat. Clearly wider bandwidth than digital...

Finally, Acoustic Sounds in Salinas KS found that most of the surface noise of the LP comes in when the vinyl is cooling in the pressing machines. By damping their machines they knocked out about 20dB of the noise floor. Now this might come as a surprise to you, but when the mastering engineer changes the stylus he then has to set up the cutter again, with the goal of being able to cut a silent groove. Its a combination of a new stylus, cutting angle, cutting pressure, tangent cutting and stylus temperature. If he gets it all right, the noise floor of the lacquer is so low it does not matter the electronics- they will be the noise floor. By my estimates this puts it around -85-90dB, so quiet that with the DSP of any release can easily be contained in the grooves without any processing.

None of the studies you can point to have valid measurements that really show what is going on. Many of them date from the 1960s using absurdly out of date equipment!

My point here is there aren't the measurements to support your claims (which has a good deal to do with why LPs are still around) - just anecdote made to look like 'science' (so I'm not blaming you for that). My advice is get your hands on a mastering system and figure it out. I don't contest that playback has a ways to go, but the LP itself isn't the problem!

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

Only when you have no interest in hearing what the artists and mixing engineers want us to hear.

If that is your goal then vinyl original pressings are state of the art for most recordings up to the mid 80s. Most artists over the years signed off on vinyl test pressings of their recordings. So unless you have documented testimony to the contrary that is our best record (pun intended) of the artists’ intentions. If that is YOUR preference I will not argue with it. ;-)

You are then perfectly welcome to take the hard work of these folks and screw it up in any way that pleases you.

Kind of like when you listen to upmixed Dolby Atmos versions of recordings that were originally recorded and mixed in stereo? Yes we are all free to choose what version and format we like. Even revisionist dolby Atmos upmixes that IMO are utter crap. Preferences are inarguable even a preference for awful tasteless gaudy surround sound upmixes.

Do you see what I am doing here? ;-) Do you feel the obnoxiousness of it. It’s kind of annoying to be told your preferences suck isn’t it? It’s arrogant and demeaning.

My advice. Take JJ’s advice on arguing preferences. Don’t do it. It’s obnoxious.

But Gordon and (much later) I, came up in a time when all the sources and reproduction gear were badly flawed.
We fought for decades to advance the SOTA in all areas so that our playback at home had some resemblance
to what the microphones and then the engineers heard.

Did you not watch JJ’s video on accuracy? You don’t know what they heard. So you don’t know what you are hearing is what they heard. In fact you can be quite confident it really isn’t. I won’t argue with your preferences but your point here is built on a false axiom.

the entire path a bit more like a "straight wire with gain".

Again, were you not paying attention to JJ’s lecture?

1. Not the entire path, only the path from your digital source component to your speaker terminals. Not the original live acoustic performance if there was one. Not the microphones, not the monitors and control room, not the recording mixing and signal processing in production, not your speakers and listening room.

2. Despite all those undetermined variables you are talking about accuracy. If accuracy is YOUR preference so be it. There is no arguing preferences. Audiophiles who argue preferences are just being obnoxious.

This hobby has always had only one real goal, High Fidelity.

Hobbies don’t have goals. People have goals. Your goals are your preferences. Trying to elevate your preferences over those of others by citing some grand goal of an abstract entity with no Will or consciousness of it’s own is just a logically flawed passive aggressive tactic to argue preferences. Listen to JJ. Preferences are inarguable.

Are you seeing a reoccurring theme here?

By the way…..

JGH always held that digital did some things better than vinyl and vinyl did some things better than digital. If you are going to use him as your champion best to know his preferences.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

Although you take it personally, I've never done that?

You do it all the time. You’ve done it just a few posts ago

I've said many times, if that's your idea of fun, have at it.
But when the subject comes up of accuracy, vinyl isn't in the 2024 running for SOTA, it is badly flawed.

And you use this to disrespect other people’s’ preferences

Then what is, whatever you like? That's not and never will be High Fidelity reproduction.

Kind of like when you listen to any upmixed recording on Dolby Atmos. That will never be High Fidelity reproduction. IMO it’s revisionist garbage. But hey, if you like listening to such aberrations and abominations of high fidelity….”have fun”

Point being it’s obnoxious and insulting to be told what you like sucks. There is no higher purpose to the crusade. It’s just a juvenile pissing contest.

 

[Sal1950]

ROTFLMAO.

Hobbies don’t have goals. People have goals. Your goals are your preferences.

Sorry, High Fidelity is the goal of High Fidelity, what part of that don't you understand.
That was the "preference" of the engineers and listeners who became enthusiastic about moving the goal-posts forward since the beginning.
OH BROTHER, the Luddite's are out in force today.

Kind of like when you listen to any upmixed recording on Dolby Atmos.

Once more you have no idea what your talking about, I don't listen to that crap, do you???

 

[antcollinet]

Which "dead horse" are you referring to?
The use of science to determine the most accurate gear and to flush out the snake-oil peddlers ???

Poor old horse is getting beat from both sides as far as I can see.

 

[Newman]

J Gordon Holt’s commentary is most definitely interesting and relevant to JJ’s lecture. I think at this point in his life he proved to be a sharp critic of audio journalism that was ironically rooted in his own work when he created Stereophile. His points about DBTs and the rejection of them in audio evaluation were on point and cut to the bone coming from him. But let’s look at his opinions on “accuracy” and see how they stack up with JJ’s lecture.

"Audio actually used to have a goal: perfect reproduction of the sound of real music performed in a real space.”

JJ’s initial point was any measure of accuracy requires an accessible objective reference (singular) against which to measure. “Real music performed in a real space” fails on several levels, accessibility and singularity. We can’t access it nor can we unify it into a single point. That specific goal was doomed from the get go.

“That was found difficult to achieve,”

Actually impossible.

“ and it was abandoned when most music lovers, who almost never heard anything except amplified music anyway, forgot what "the real thing" had sounded like.”

And this is where JGH went off the rails. “The real thing” isn’t one objective and easily accessed “thing” It is elusive and ever changing. Not the fault of the consumers of audio. And more importantly not the reason audio journalism went off the rails. Quite the opposite. It was the likes of Harry Pearson and The Absolute Sound that took this idea JGH advocated and proceeded to run with it in completely the wrong direction. By not understanding the inherent problems with using live sound as an objective reference and ignoring psychoacoustics audio journalism began to conflate preferences with accuracy under the assumption that if something sounded *subjectively more realistic to them* that it meant it was objectively more accurate. And when objective measurements conflicted with their anecdotal observations of subjective realism the measurements were the problem not the inherent unreliability of their auditioning protocols.


“Today, "good" sound is whatever one likes. As Art Dudley so succinctly said [in his January 2004 "Listening," see "Letters," p.9], fidelity is irrelevant to music.”

It’s always been that! Before audio when all humans had was live music, good sound was whatever one liked. Period. What differentiated a Stradivarius from a dime store fiddle before audio? Mostly Strads sound subjectively better to most listeners than a cheap violin. Yet both are equally “real.” Tell that to a disciple of HP and watch them lose their minds. “Live music is live music! That’s the reference!!!!” What if it sounds bad? “LIVE MUSIC IS THE REFERENCE!!!!!”

Fidelity is only relevant in so far as it serves our subjective ideals of what sounds good. Accuracy and objective measurements are our compass and road map. Our destinations are whatever we ****ing want.

You are misinterpreting those statements of Holt (also JJ). Read Toole.

Holt is saying that people getting into the hobby used to have high standards for the quality of reproduction, but nowadays it's "anything goes" for so many, and that depressed him greatly. In other words, members of the hifi hobby, by and large, have dropped the ball. He hated being witness to that, and he hated the way the hifi press made a large contribution to that.

 

[MattHooper]

I think "anything goes" in the audiophile world INCLUDES: seeking accuracy.

There's plenty of freedom for manufacturers, researchers, engineers, audiophiles to seek ever more accuracy in reproduction, while also allowing for products and approaches that satisfy other niches or interests among audiophiles. And thank goodness for that! So that it hasn't just become some single-minded mono-culture, IMO.

 

[Sal1950]

There's plenty of freedom for manufacturers, researchers, engineers, audiophiles to seek ever more accuracy in reproduction, while also allowing for products and approaches that satisfy other niches or interests among audiophiles.

So your "anything goes" attitude also supports the peddleing of snake-oil cables, widgets, the entirety of Synergistic Research's catalog of lies and falsh representations. How about cable lifters, grounding boxes and such.
Should we support that too ????

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

ROTFLMAO.

It’s as if you deliberately tried to illustrate the juvenile pissing contests I was calling out

Sorry, High Fidelity is the goal of High Fidelity, what part of that don't you understand.

High Fidelity is an abstract concept and abstract concepts don’t have personal goals. I’ve already called you out on this logically flawed passive aggressive attempt to argue preferences. Are you just not getting it or is it your goal to be disrespectful towards others?

That was the "preference" of the engineers and listeners who became enthusiastic about moving the goal-posts forward since the beginning.
OH BROTHER, the Luddite's are out in force today.

You really should watch JJ’s lecture on accuracy and really take it in. Here’s what you missed. You don’t know what any recording engineer heard. You don’t know what they preferred unless there is documentation of them saying what they preferred so any arguments made on the premise of engineers’ preferences or intentions fail on their face.

In case you missed it the last dozen times preferences are inarguable and your preferences do not have any higher status than anyone else’s

And just to drive the point home about the obnoxiousness disrespecting other peoples’ preferences, IMO your system demonstrates bad taste and poor judgement in sound quality. Or to be more succinct, it sucks.

Have fun!

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

You are misinterpreting those statements of Holt (also JJ). Read Toole.

Nope. But feel free to ask JJ if he thinks I’m misrepresenting the content of his lecture. I’m sure he will set the record straight.

As for Toole. Where did that come from? How can I misrepresent his statements when I never mentioned him?

Holt is saying that people getting into the hobby used to have high standards for the quality of reproduction, but nowadays it's "anything goes"

Yeah I know what he said. I disagreed with him on that.

for so many, and that depressed him greatly. In other words, members of the hifi hobby, by and large, have dropped the ball. He hated being witness to that, and he hated the way the hifi press made a large contribution to that.

And he was wrong. Enjoying personal preferences isn’t dropping the ball. Confusing them with objective accuracy is where they dropped the ball and assuming their personal sense of realism was an objective reference for fidelity made it worse. JGH was the original ball dropper and he saw just how far off the rails his approach to audio had gone and regretted it.

 

[MattHooper]

So your "anything goes" attitude also supports the peddleing of snake-oil cables, widgets, the entirety of Synergistic Research's catalog of lies and falsh representations. How about cable lifters, grounding boxes and such.
Should we support that too ????

You don't have to support anything you don't want to.

I'm free to support what I want to, and little of it is in the category we would both agree is snake oil. But perhaps some of it is in the category you wouldn't "support" (e.g. vinyl 'n stuff). And I'm glad my goals are also being supported. I'm glad that not *every single audiophile and manufacture* had the single minded goal that only aligns with, say, your goals, leaving out the goals of many others.

 

[levimax]

I think the industry lost it's way by figuring out the McGurk effect, where with visual cues and a compelling story people ACTUALLY DO hear differences even if none exist. The McGurk effect when combined with greedy companies landed us where we are in snake oil land. The video below never ceases to amaze me.

 

[Anton D]

You don't have to support anything you don't want to.

I'm free to support what I want to, and little of it is in the category we would both agree is snake oil. But perhaps some of it is in the category you wouldn't "support" (e.g. vinyl 'n stuff). And I'm glad my goals are also being supported. I'm glad that not *every single audiophile and manufacture* had the single minded goal that only aligns with, say, your goals, leaving out the goals of many others.

That's a slippery slope some folks live on.

"Like vinyl? Well, here's some voodoo fuses for ya, Mr. Audio Anarchist."

Let someone say they like to play records and we get some unhinged diatribes with the typical slogans: snake oil, snap crackle pop...it's a limited repetoire.

It's a bit of a crack up, though. Angry man yells at vinyl.

Is liking to play records a gateway to general audio entropy?

 

[Anton D]

I think the industry lost it's way by figuring out the McGurk effect, where with visual cues and a compelling story people ACTUALLY DO hear differences even if none exist. The McGurk effect when combined with greedy companies landed us where we are in snake oil land. The video below never ceases to amaze me.

Can I request a list of non-greedy greedy companies?

Perhaps the altruists at the Chinese audio companies we like so much?

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

I think the industry lost it's way by figuring out the McGurk effect, where with visual cues and a compelling story people ACTUALLY DO hear differences even if none exist. The McGurk effect when combined with greedy companies landed us where we are in snake oil land. The video below never ceases to amaze me.

McGurk effect is amazing and shows the power of biology to be sure. But you don’t even need that. All you need is more than 6 seconds between comparisons to get people to think they are hearing differences where none exist.