Why do records sound so much better than digital?

[Racheski]

This is the most ridiculous thread on ASR.

The response to the PS Audio diss video that derailed into a discussion about pineapple pizza takes the cake for me.

 

[Robin L]

The response to the PS Audio diss video that derailed into a discussion about pineapple pizza takes the cake for me.

I'd say the one where Mikey burst through [was that the PS Audio diss video?].

 

[Racheski]

I'd say the one where Mikey burst through [was that the PS Audio diss video?].

It was this one where PM is standing by a pizza oven
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/ps-audio-talking-smack-about-amirm.15649/

 

[AdamG]

I need help finding a “streaming playlist” of Analog Vinyl music? Any suggestions?

 

[Leporello]

This reminds ”test” that I underwent during the advent of SACD. My cousin, who was a vintage violin dealer (Stradivari and such), repeated a test on me that he purportedly learned from Mark Levinson (I have no way in knowing that was true or not).

With an CD queued up, I was asked to extend my arms out parallel to the ground. The music started and the tester (my cousin) gently pushed down on my hand. My arm immediately fell to my side. The test was then repeated after hittting a button on the player, yet this time my arm stayed rigid and did noit fall to my side.

The explanation was given that in the second test, hi-rez music was being played and that my brain was in a different state. I remember thinking at the time that the test was BS and the subject is merely predicting what outcome the tester is looking for. I did not want to burst his bubble at the time, as he was kind and generous man.

I am not refuting or promoting hi-rez music, but I found the test itself to be a bit silly

Your story reminds me of the legendary Dr. Diamond and his "Digital Stress" theory:

I write this not only as a music lover, and a believer in the therapeutic power of music, but even more as a doctor gravely concerned with the increasing amount of disturbance in our society, especially in the children. The very essence of Music is the expression of peace, of comfort—of love. And this digital has destroyed, even reversed!

My wife and I once attended a concert by Mel Tormé at a major concert venue. We were thrilled, I especially so when he played Gene Krupa’s “Sing, Sing, Sing” drum solo. We had, we believed, a wonderful time, coming out of the concert hall so smiling and happy. And then I was nearly killed. My wife just managed to pull me back as I was walking right into a fast moving car. Why?, I wondered. I’m not usually that careless, that unthinking. Could it have been to do with the concert?

Next day I questioned a number of friends who had also been there. Each of them had a similar experience. One man, normally very clear thinking, was so confused it took him a long time to find his parked car. One couple decided after the concert to stay at a city hotel, rather than drive an hour and half home—as they always did after a classical concert at Carnegie Hall—because they felt so “exhausted.” Another couple got into a violent argument—with fists—within fifteen minutes of the last note. And two strict vegetarians ate hamburgers! All the time wondering why. It was so against their principles, yet they felt compelled to.

Surely, I wondered, this could not be due to Mel Torme. None of his records I have examined (all analog) had any serious negative effect. It must be the sound amplification system! So I went to Carnegie Hall and asked about their sound equipment. They were very proud to show me the banks of digital delay apparatus. And to point out the loudspeakers in the columns and pillars throughout the hall to convey this digital magic into the unsuspecting audience.

Gotta love the part about vegetarians falling for hamburgers because of digital.

Read all about it: "Human Stress Provoked By Digitized Recordings" | Dr. John Diamond | Healing from Within

 

[MrPeabody]

The Mahavishnu-influenced guitarist/composer for the Dixie Dregs is 'kind of a poor man's Ted Nugent'.

Right.

This is the most ridiculous thread on ASR.

Yeah, the thread is ridiculous. And yeah, it was ridiculous for me to compare Morse with Nugent. I did that just because of the similar appearance, which struck me as funny.

But the fact that Morse was inspired by John McLaughlin and for a while tried to emulate McLaughin means next to nothing. The Dregs didn't ever compare well to the Mahavishnu Orchestra (I saw them live in mid-summer 1972 at the Victoria Theater in Dayton Ohio). And that jazz fusion style of guitar playing isn't a good match with the kind of music that Deep Purple had always played and continues to play, which is more akin to classical and baroque than to the ultra-modern frantically-paced jazz fusion style. If I were to stop and think about it I could probably recall the number of times I seen Deep Purple in concert, but readily I recall that I've seen them twice since Morse joined. The first time I thought it was like one of those IQ tests where the question is "which one of these things doesn't belong with the others". The second time he seemed less determined to make Deep Purple sound like the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and even though it was an impressive performance, I still think he isn't quite the right fit for Deep Purple and that Satriani's style is a much better fit for Deep Purple. I think that if Satriani had stayed with DP, that they would have been amazing, even more so after being joined by Airey. The bottom line is that the influence of Morse did not make the band more successful, objectively, or better subjectively. Not that any of it matters much. DP has had short periods of brilliance interspersed by much longer periods of mediocrity. The reformation in '84 was one of the highlights, but it didn't last long and since then it has been mostly mediocrity shored up by live performances of the earlier work.

 

[Mariner9]

"Why do records sound so much better than digital?"

There have been some digital re-releases of vinyl-only tracks that were simply rips of the vinyl (e.g. this) due to lost DATs. If vinyl really does sound better than digital, seems like an easy test.

 

[mhardy6647]

Oh Gawd - has anyone else here with a modern system which works with 'digital' ever gone back to the earliest CD players?

now and again... absolutely not the earliest, but fairly close.

Sony old CDP by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

 

[sal]

now and again... absolutely not the earliest, but fairly close.

Sony old CDP by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

Oh man. Certainly glad audio equipment doesn’t look like that anymore. That is a hideous and mangled mix of buttons and logos

 

[mhardy6647]

Your story reminds me of the legendary Dr. Diamond and his "Digital Stress" theory:


Gotta love the part about vegetarians falling for hamburgers because of digital.

Read all about it: "Human Stress Provoked By Digitized Recordings" | Dr. John Diamond | Healing from Within

Ahh, it's like the old legends* (in the US, at any rate) of VHF-TV "Channel 1" (that's right, there is no Channel 1 -- even though early TV tuners included it) and its effects on an unsuspecting populace.

_____________
* and legends they indeed are, just to be clear on that point!

 

[Robin L]

Oh man. Certainly glad audio equipment doesn’t look like that anymore. That is a hideous and mangled mix of buttons and logos

That looks familiar. Back then, all the CD players [including that one] sounded like crap to these ears. I might have been spoiled by having and being accustomed to above average LP playback. I probably had a AR XA with a Grace 707 arm and a Grado cartridge around the time this model came out, had a Thorens with Sumiko High-Output moving coil cartridges soon thereafter. It wasn't until I strapped my battery powered Optimus 3400 [as a digital source] to a t.c. electronics M2000 [a a DAC] that CDs sounded better to these ears. That was 1995.

 

[Rottmannash]

People were collecting huge digital libraries by any mean available before streaming. Streaming is only a game changer for people who don't like to curate such a library.

I've done both-terabytes of flac files and stream Qobuz. I enjoy both, and the occasional LP.

 

[mhardy6647]

That looks familiar. Back then, all the CD players [including that one] sounded like crap to these ears. I might have been spoiled by having and being accustomed to above average LP playback. I probably had a AR XA with a Grace 707 arm and a Grado cartridge around the time this model came out, had a Thorens with Sumiko High-Output moving coil cartridges soon thereafter. It wasn't until I strapped my battery powered Optimus 3400 [as a digital source] to a t.c. electronics M2000 [a a DAC] that CDs sounded better to these ears. That was 1995.

I think (FWIW) the steep (analog) filters in them, plus pretty poor quality of many early CDs, led to the harsh, gritty sonics of early CDPs.
Turned me off of them for about a decade -- I was a late adopter.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

This is the most ridiculous thread on ASR.

It is one of those threads in which the topic-question presumes something untrue or unproven. Thus, it is doomed to be ridiculous.

 

[Thomas savage]

It does. It's more dynamic, natural, live, the instruments are clearer in space, Lou Reed (who's talking as much as singing) seems like he's in the room, having a conversation with me.

So is the more 'present' because of the nature of the source? Interactive vs point and click. 20 minutes vs ? hours. Large cover vs tiny print on a screen, maybe? Does my increased level of interaction with the source increase my appreciation of it? Am I just paying closer attention because analog demands it?

Or is there some quality of the sound that is taken out when it removed from the physical realm -- into the theoretical realm? A record after all is a physical imprint of the sound.

You can literally feel the sound in a record groove.

Can't do that with 1s and 0s.

Of course, that shouldn't matter. the resolution of digital is so high that machines can't tell anything is missing, so why should humans be able to. There is no "physicality" to sound, in reality.

Is there?

Noise , I think somehow for some theres a psychoacoustic benefit for the music sounds to be set within a ' acoustic fog ' of noise .

If You digitise those records and do some listening tests that would be interesting.

 

[dscottj]

Doesn't anyone listen to classical music anymore? IMO that's the raison d'etre for digital.

 

[Bullwinkle J Moose]

Why do records sound so much better than digital?

Depends on the record, AND the CD (or digital copy)

Early CD's had horrible remastering techniques along with horrible equipment

Now we know what to fix and have the tools to do it better than the original records

Well,.....Some of us do!

 

[Robin L]

I think (FWIW) the steep (analog) filters in them, plus pretty poor quality of many early CDs, led to the harsh, gritty sonics of early CDPs.
Turned me off of them for about a decade -- I was a late adopter.

I was forced to adopt. Did radio production starting in 1987, digital technology was at the toddler stage. Had to work with early, cheap and sub-par ADCs and DACs. The whole process was very educational.

 

[mhardy6647]

I was forced to adopt. Did radio production starting in 1987, digital technology was at the toddler stage. Had to work with early, cheap and sub-par ACDs and DACs. The whole process was very educational.

Ca. 1993, I went to Lechmere (a once-storied, Boston-area chain of electronics component discount stores) and bought a Sony CD boombox for the folks in my lab to enjoy. I also bought one CD to test it with* and I took it home to test. It (the boombox, that is, playing the CD) sounded pretty good -- so I hooked a patch cable from the stereo headphone output of the boombox to a line-level input on my venerable Yamaha CA-610II at home & listened to it through my equally venerable Polk Audio Monitor Series Model 7A loudspeakers. I was... quite surprised... by how good it sounded.

I did take it to work, though.

And I bought "us" a 5-CD Sony changer for Christmas later that year (if memory serves) -- also from Lechmere** Still have it, come to think of it. Still have it hooked up in our "den" and still use it occasionally... come to think of it.

_______________________
* The Eagles Greatest Hits, Vol. II Don't judge me. (still have that CD, too)
** Pronounced, roughly, Leechmeah' by the indigenous inhabitants of the Bay State, in their colorful dialect.

 

[Bullwinkle J Moose]

I was forced to adopt. Did radio production starting in 1987, digital technology was at the toddler stage. Had to work with early, cheap and sub-par ACDs and DACs. The whole process was very educational.

Thanks, that reminded me of the ADC on my Behringer ultracurve pro DEQ2496

I had to bypass the ADC and use optical inputs to get decent quality sound

To me, even the basically free ADC on a modern $40 bluetooth transmitter sounds better

I have the Taotronic and sent the optical output to the behringer for giggles and stuff

https://www.amazon.com/TaoTronics-B...50N0VMHGZ6R&psc=1&refRID=8R3WP7QMW50N0VMHGZ6R

XLR mic to 3.5mm output of Tascam recorder to Taotronic 3.5mm input which converts to Optical to the Behringer Digital EQ and then to a camcorder

It sounded unbelievably good for basically what amounts to a free ADC to show off how good the bluetooth device is

Am I wrong, or do most early ADC's sound like garbage?

I send the optical output of the digital EQ to a real DAC as well

Everyone should have a digital parametric EQ for their Mic's

Giggity