Can anyone explain the vinyl renaissance?

[atmasphere]

No!
As I recall, when the CD RedBook was introduced at 16bit/44.1kHz, it was not the 'best' for audio reproduction but it was what the capabilities of the technology was at that era.
Please recall that the some of the first CD pressings were not even 16bit-depth due to technology shortcomings.

The RedBook could have easily made the standard to be 24bit @ much higher sampling rates (re:44.1kHz << Nyquist) and then blame the recording/playback hardware (manufacturers) for not being able to produce DACs which did not exist to be able to encode/decode data.

I am fully aware of the 5TimeConstants required to charge to 98% but saying the word "again" four more times does not make anything to be a fact.

I have used the word 'again' because I keep getting the same questions, as if people have reacting rather than reading along. None of what you say above though is any sort of counter to what I've said so far except the emphatic 'No'. I take your comments here in abeyance as I can't make sense of them; guessing that an aggressive auto-correct messed with your post.

The media has a major problem with storing the entire audible frequency range hence the RIAA eq. The pre-emphasis introduced in the cutting wouldn't sound so great would it? That alone makes the media storage imperfect not taking into consideration the playback which is the basis of your argument. So as it sits in it's quiescent form might be "low noise" but who care about noise when all you hear is treble?

Huh?? Sorry, but this post makes no sense. The RIAA curve exists to minimize surface noise and to limit excursion of a constant velocity cutter head system. The media has bandwidth well beyond that of human hearing and this is true of both record and playback. This has already been covered.

Any chance you could run some? None of us have access to the same discs you're talking about.

That would be lovely!

What would be needed is cutting a silent groove on a lacquer, showing its spectra, and then cutting an LP in the same fashion and showing that spectra, likely from a test press. A test pressing requires shipment to a pressing house and then however many tests made from the initial stamper. You can see that might be a bit of a trick- I don't do pressings- we ship to a pressing house for that. Lacquers are a bit trickier these days- the only source worldwide now is a single guy in his 80s in Japan who makes them out of his garage, since Apollodisc burned to the ground three years ago and there's no sign they are going to rebuild. Its been getting a lot harder to get lacquers as a result!! Most of the LPs you're seeing these days are done on Neumann and similar machines that have cutters that can handle lots of power so they can do direct metal mastering. Older machines like mine are slowing going the way, tied to the fate of a single manufacturer overseas. So no way will I being wasting a lacquer on this account- once you set the cutter head down, its not coming back up until the side is complete!

 

[atmasphere]

Is the cutter head driven by a voltage source amplifier or current source amplifier? Just curious since in tape machines, record tape heads are driven from a current source so the changing inductive reactance doesn't affect frequency response.

In a cutter system you have a feedback winding and a 30dB feedback amplifier (at least that's how it is in my Westerex 1700 electronics). You don't have that sort of feedback in a tape system since the head has no feedback winding. So the amplifier is a voltage source. The earlier cutter heads employed a 10 Ohm resistor in series with the voice coil, causing the drive to be more like a power source than a voltage source, but the feedback here is what to pay attention to.

One time we substituted a variety of amplifiers and did three cuts: stock amp, a popular 'audiophile' solid state amp from the 1980s and a refurbished Dynaco ST-70. So we could compare the sound simply by moving the tonearm. The differences were less than you might expect, no doubt the feedback playing a role. So a class D could be set up to do the job, which IMO/IME would be a real boon; every time I put power to those 1700 cutter amps, I hold my breath. They were pretty advanced design for 1969 and IMO really on the edge in terms of stability. A class D module would be easy to install and you wouldn't have to worry about heat!

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

In a cutter system you have a feedback winding and a 30dB feedback amplifier (at least that's how it is in my Westerex 1700 electronics). You don't have that sort of feedback in a tape system since the head has no feedback winding. So the amplifier is a voltage source. The earlier cutter heads employed a 10 Ohm resistor in series with the voice coil, causing the drive to be more like a power source than a voltage source, but the feedback here is what to pay attention to.

One time we substituted a variety of amplifiers and did three cuts: stock amp, a popular 'audiophile' solid state amp from the 1980s and a refurbished Dynaco ST-70. So we could compare the sound simply by moving the tonearm. The differences were less than you might expect, no doubt the feedback playing a role. So a class D could be set up to do the job, which IMO/IME would be a real boon; every time I put power to those 1700 cutter amps, I hold my breath. They were pretty advanced design for 1969 and IMO really on the edge in terms of stability. A class D module would be easy to install and you wouldn't have to worry about heat!

I'd be interested to hear how that works out. I'd be especially interested if the output inductor of the class D amp interacts in any way with the cutting head or if the ultrasonic leakage from the amp affects the head in any way.

 

[atmasphere]

I'd be interested to hear how that works out. I'd be especially interested if the output inductor of the class D amp interacts in any way with the cutting head or if the ultrasonic leakage from the amp affects the head in any way.

It won't. The thing is, the stock amps are bandwidth limited to roll off at 42KHz to prevent errant high frequencies from damaging the head. They make about 125 Watts but I'd be surprised if they even make 5 Watts driving the head with as much as the head can handle. The idea is unlimited headroom- the amps are always loafing. The residual of the class D won't be a concern, but the correct term for that isn't 'ultrasonic', 'RF' is more like it since a typical residual frequency is 500KHz.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

It won't. The thing is, the stock amps are bandwidth limited to roll off at 42KHz to prevent errant high frequencies from damaging the head. They make about 125 Watts but I'd be surprised if they even make 5 Watts driving the head with as much as the head can handle. The idea is unlimited headroom- the amps are always loafing. The residual of the class D won't be a concern, but the correct term for that isn't 'ultrasonic', 'RF' is more like it since a typical residual frequency is 500KHz.

Please post how it works out. We make class D amps (I have a hand in the design). There are quarks vs more conventional class A/B which can crop up. Its never really an issue with speaker drivers, but your's is an edge case application.

 

[SIY]

What would be needed is cutting a silent groove on a lacquer, showing its spectra, and then cutting an LP in the same fashion and showing that spectra, likely from a test press. A test pressing requires shipment to a pressing house and then however many tests made from the initial stamper. You can see that might be a bit of a trick- I don't do pressings- we ship to a pressing house for that. Lacquers are a bit trickier these days- the only source worldwide now is a single guy in his 80s in Japan who makes them out of his garage, since Apollodisc burned to the ground three years ago and there's no sign they are going to rebuild. Its been getting a lot harder to get lacquers as a result!! Most of the LPs you're seeing these days are done on Neumann and similar machines that have cutters that can handle lots of power so they can do direct metal mastering. Older machines like mine are slowing going the way, tied to the fate of a single manufacturer overseas. So no way will I being wasting a lacquer on this account- once you set the cutter head down, its not coming back up until the side is complete!

If you do a capture of one of your existing discs, the silent groove between songs can be isolated with a basic editor, and it's long enough to get a decent resolution FFT; if you want to be fancy and do a bunch of averaging, you can loop it. Then a straight up comparison to a lifted needle will reveal a lot.

 

[pseudoid]

guessing that an aggressive auto-correct messed with your post.

I am sorry for my foreign auto-correct.

Perfect media that cannot be played back perfectly.

Simple enough? I can assure you no auto correct was applied.

 

[Newman]

Do you mean 45 RPM versions? If that's what you mean, then yes, if given a choice I always go for the 45 RPM versions despite the increased cost.

Well in that case I call hypocrisy.

Not necessarily by you, but by those who say the technical deficiencies of LP33 against (say) CD don’t manifest in any important audible way. (You haven’t made such a claim at all, have you? Others have, in this very thread.)

Because LP45 doesn’t leapfrog over CD technically. It still sits below CD. So if the audible improvements of LP45 over LP33 are worth having, even at higher cost (actually much higher cost per song), why aren’t the audible improvements of CD over LP33 worth having? It would have to be a bigger improvement, and the cost per song is more like 20% not 200%.

It’s blatantly hypocritical.

 

[Vacceo]

I'd like to thank The Academy and all my countless fans across the globe. You like me. You really like me.

Who knows! Perhaps you designed a component that was used in Blasphemy's Fallen Angel of Doom. And that would automatically make you a living legend, a giant that walks among ants, for you helped release Evil in its purest form... And one of my all time fave records.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Well in that case I call hypocrisy.

Not necessarily by you, but by those who say the technical deficiencies of LP33 against (say) CD don’t manifest in any important audible way. (You haven’t made such a claim at all, have you? Others have, in this very thread.)

Because LP45 doesn’t leapfrog over CD technically. It still sits below CD. So if the audible improvements of LP45 over LP33 are worth having, even at higher cost (actually much higher cost per song), why aren’t the audible improvements of CD over LP33 worth having? It would have to be a bigger improvement, and the cost per song is more like 20% not 200%.

It’s blatantly hypocritical.

I don't know how much in depth experience with analog media (tape and disc) you have, but essentially all analog sources exist on a continuum from good to better to best which is directly related to speed (disc and tape) and track width (tape). While all analog media is inferior to digital on a strict measurement basis, all the analog media forms measure better the faster they go and the larger the tracks. Digital of course doesn't suffer from this.

Now speaking from a purely subjective view, I do prefer the 'sound' of vinyl to a digital file of the same music, at least with older recordings which originated with analog tape. This is undoubtedly due to imperfections in the medium causing euphonic distortions. Tape sounds somewhat worse to me than vinyl, and I think this boils down to the unique distortion signatures of the two mediums.

I've posted this graph several times on ASR but I think it is relevant to my point:

This is the distortion spectra of 15ips tape and 331/3 RPM vinyl while playing a 1kHz test tone at their respective reference levels. You will note that the vinyl has a distortion progression of fundamental, 2nd harmonic, 3rd harmonic, 4th harmonic, 5th harmonic etc in descending order, while tape is almost completely devoid of any even order harmonic distortion components.

Generally, if distortion must be present at all, people tend to prefer the presence of even order harmonics. This characteristic is similar to the distortion signature of single ended triode amplifiers. The subjective 'sound' of the presence of these distortion partials is a 'fattening' or 'smoothing' of the sound. Having started my career as a recording engineer, I have had a lot of exposure to master tapes and what I have found is that sometimes the best sounding version is not the master tape, but a copy of it which has been run through a generation of vinyl. Possibly the inclusion of a layer of even order harmonic distortion to the master tape which is itself devoid of these harmonics has something to do with it.

This is mostly true of older recordings pre-digital. I find that I prefer the sound of current digital recordings (good ones at least) as-is rather than a vinyl copy.

 

[captainbeefheart]

Huh?? Sorry, but this post makes no sense. The RIAA curve exists to minimize surface noise and to limit excursion of a constant velocity cutter head system. The media has bandwidth well beyond that of human hearing and this is true of both record and playback. This has already been covered.

I'm not going to discuss the why's to the pre-emphasis because it's moot, the fact remains is what's stored on the LP is only flat at 1kHz, bass is dropped by -20db at 20Hz and at treble frequencies +20db.

Bandwidth is not the problem, the problem is the media isn't flat in regard to the original recording and so if you removed the playback which you say is the limiting factor. The information is incorrect until de-emphasis.

How hard is that to understand. You say the limit of LP's is the playback, yet if you don't have the playback with de-emphasis then the media is practically useless to listen to due to it being such a far different version of the original recording because of the pre-emphasis.

 

[Vear]

I didn't read the entire thread but this being a technical oriented site I can imagine what the consensus is...

I was also an absolute skeptic regarding vinyl ever since I left it behind many years ago. How could it be better than perfect Digital right? Then a few years ago I started dabbling in vinyl again. I had a class A MM/MC phono stage and regardless of the shortfalls I was interested in the fun and challenge of dealing with the physics related to the medium and requirements needed to get it right.

To my surprise I have been amazed at the sound I have been able to extract from vinyl. I specifically prefer albums that were recorded prior to the digital recording age, in other words the vinyl captured the analog master tape at the time. I can't tell you how many digital versions of these pre-digital recordings now sound bloated and thick to me when compared to the original vinyl on a quality analog front end. I don't listen to the digital versions anymore, I go right to the vinyl on those. They sound less compressed and more like what you would expect clear digital to sound, go figure...

FWIW my digital front end is a Benchmark DAC2 HGC and I think it's excellent... but it cannot compensate or correct a digital re-master that is audibly inferior to the original master that was originally pressed onto the vinyl.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

How hard is that to understand. You say the limit of LP's is the playback, yet if you don't have the playback with de-emphasis then the media is practically useless to listen to due to it being such a far different version of the original recording because of the pre-emphasis.

If a tree falls in the forest but there isn't any atmosphere to convey sound because of humankind's self destruction, does it matter if the tree fell at all?

 

[pseudoid]

If a tree falls in the forest but there isn't any atmosphere to convey sound because of humankind's self destruction, does it matter if the tree fell at all?

You think there would be any trees remaining due to the lack of atmosphere?

ASR Rule#17 stipulates that 'trick questions' are to be employed ONLY in cases of extreme emergencies and/or duress!
It must be that we reached that inflection point in this thread...

 

[captainbeefheart]

I didn't read the entire thread but this being a technical oriented site I can imagine what the consensus is...

I was also an absolute skeptic regarding vinyl ever since I left it behind many years ago. How could it be better than perfect Digital right? Then a few years ago I started dabbling in vinyl again. I had a class A MM/MC phono stage and regardless of the shortfalls I was interested in the fun and challenge of dealing with the physics related to the medium and requirements needed to get it right.

To my surprise I have been amazed at the sound I have been able to extract from vinyl. I specifically prefer albums that were recorded prior to the digital recording age, in other words the vinyl captured the analog master tape at the time. I can't tell you how many digital versions of these pre-digital recordings now sound bloated and thick to me when compared to the original vinyl on a quality analog front end. I don't listen to the digital versions anymore, I go right to the vinyl on those. They sound less compressed and more like what you would expect clear digital to sound, go figure...

FWIW my digital front end is a Benchmark DAC2 HGC and I think it's excellent... but it cannot compensate or correct a digital re-master that is audibly inferior to the original master that was originally pressed onto the vinyl.

I also jumped into the conversation sort of late and I'll try and sum up what the argument has become.

The latest argument is that vinyl as a quiescent media just sitting in it's sleeve is better than or as good as the best digital. It's sort of a silly argument because the point most people argue is that vinyl sounds better than digital.

There are some perceptual bias I think involved where you took all this time and effort to set up a decent LP playback system and you're happy with being rewarded with good sound. Your own home grown vegetables always taste amazing right!?!?!

There is also a disconnect between academic performance and audible performance, heck some people even prefer some low order distortion in their playback chain. So although digital bests vinyl in just about every spec that does not equate to such a vastly different audible experience, clearly we can get satisfactory results with an LP playback system, but the numbers don't lie and digital is a better media on paper.

This vinyl vs digital is similar to solid state vs tubes, whether SS is a linear amp of a switching amp it doesn't matter, then there is switching tube amps like ZOTL amps where you get the tubes linear transfer function without the need of a transformer to match impedance. I have worked my butt off to get SS number with tubes and although it's transparent people that like tubes don't like the circuit because it doesn't have the distortion they are use to. Some people just prefer some added distortion. Of course this boils down to how good your speakers are as they are the limiting factor in total distortion for the entire system. I think people put too much emphasis on distortion figures when this is subjective hobby and I have seen a few blind tests where people have chosen the playback with highest distortion as the "best sounding". Of course of you are running a recording studio and you need to hear near perfect playback or as close as you can get so the mixing is done accurately the rest of us just pick our systems by what puts a smile on our face or by if the hair stands up on the back of our necks, chills and goosebumps have been made by not so perfect measuring systems.

I'm a defender of both, I use and enjoy both, my LP's sound great and when I stream hi-res files from Qobuz it also sounds great. I'd be as bold to say digital 24-bit / 196kHz sounds amazing with little effort and little money, my LP setup is more expensive and more work but that work is enjoyable for different reasons, mostly nostalgia for me. For the younger generation i think they just like retro stuff and they never heard records growing up so it's new to them and exciting, the rest of us old folks are happy to have so much music at our disposal without having to dig through records and set them up. One big reason for me liking these services is I can listen to high quality music that I normally wouldn't spend the money on for an LP but I like a track or two from them so I can stream the songs I like without paying for the entire LP that might get played once a year for 2 songs. Who wants to setup up a record for one song? I don't enjoy this anymore and in that regard digital streaming has the advantage for me. When I want to sit down with the wife or friends and enjoy an entire record that we love then I'll choose vinyl as it's seems a little more intimate experience.

 

[coonmanx]

It's simple. It goes round in circles...

 

[captainbeefheart]

Love Billy Preston! Great song!!

 

[Newman]

I thought I was being extremely clear. What I hear is what I hear. I'm not in the habit of posting bullshit for the sake of bullshit.

Sure…and that is why they don’t bother with controlled listening test conditions in all those research experiments into what we hear. (…NOT!!)

Because, y’know, “what I hear is what I hear”.

…I have a good number of LPs (not 7") which are at 45 RPM and a normal album occupies two discs. These sound noticeably cleaner when directly compared to the same disc at 33 1/3.

…if given a choice I always go for the 45 RPM versions despite the increased cost.

Cool, so, they would also lower the distortions, and the cleaner it sounds, the better. Got it. CD lovers knew this since forever. Oh wait: someone else is busy defending vinyl as sounding so close to digital that the audible differences don’t matter. And yet, when it’s a 45 vs 33 rpm, it matters.

…from a purely subjective view, I do prefer the 'sound' of vinyl to a digital file of the same music, at least with older recordings which originated with analog tape. This is undoubtedly due to imperfections in the medium causing euphonic distortions. …sometimes the best sounding version is not the master tape, but a copy of it which has been run through a generation of vinyl.

So the vinyl distortions, we are told above, make a sound that is preferred to the digital source file. And yet, when we go to 45rpm, which has LESS of those very same distortions, more like the digital original, we prefer it even more! (cough, cough)

So-called euphonic distortions always fail the common-sense “I wish the live instruments had some more of those euphonic distortions added” test. Come off it. Even where a carefully controlled listening experiment were to show this preference for vinyl errors added to clean recordings, there is bound to be something else unlikable in the recording, mixing, mastering, speakers, room or calibration used for the test, that the addition of vinyl errors happens to be masking, in that one particular experiment. We do not wish that live music had vinyl errors added so we could like it more, so the claim that we actually prefer the errors is false. A case of false attribution.

No, no no. Until people making these claims convincingly demonstrate that they have controlled their personal listening tests for non-sonic biases, those very biases will remain the go-to explanation for their claims. That’s basic science.

cheers

 

[anmpr1]

I was also an absolute skeptic regarding vinyl ever since I left it behind many years ago. ... To my surprise I have been amazed at the sound I have been able to extract from vinyl.

It is almost impossible for the consumer to understand, know and then subsequently identify what is going on with their recordings, regardless of whether it is an LP or digit format. Thus, it is probably impossible to expect anyone to definitively state what it is they are even comparing, when they listen to different formats.

From the latter days of analog and with the introduction of digital records (1980), noticeable sonic differences were evident. That is clear. But why? Was it ever a simple matter of 'digits v analog'? Consider all the variables (known and unknown) among the variety of LP formats. In an effort to clarify the situation, High Fidelity magazine (11/80) created listening panels. From the article (which is on-line, BTW):

Golden Crest released comparison sets of piano recitals by Grant Johannesen, the first made in 1977, the second in 1979. In the earlier set... the Ampex ATR-100 analog tape recorder using the Telcom noise-reduction system onto a Neumann computer lathe through the Westrex 3D II-H cutting heads/amplifiers [microphones not listed] [The second recording] on the Telefunken Series 12 machine [with] Dolby A ... [Another] used the Sony digital system, [and another was] cut directly into the Neumann lathe. Microphones were Neumann FET-89s. Thus, the record company was giving us four procedures: direct to disc, digital tape, analog tape [with two different NR systems].

Vanguard issued a comparative disc... side 1 using Neumann KM-86 microphones into an MCI JH-110B analog tape recorder that Vanguard says has a FR of 30-24KHz, +0.5,-2.0dB, and a dynamic range of 78dB [tape formulation not specified]. The flip side used the Sony PCM-1600 coupled to Sony's U-Matic video cassette recorder BVU-200A, with rated FR 20-20KHz, +0.05, -1.0 dB, and dynamic range 'greater than 90dB'.

Nimbus (1979) released 45rpm versions of Beethoven's Piano Sonata... for the analog version Nimbus used an Ampex ATR-104 four track half-inch tape running at 30 ips with Ampex 456 Grand Master and Dolby A. The digital equipment was the same as Vanguard's... Neumann stereo valve cutting amplifier system, SX-74 stereo cutter head and lathe both made the direct to disc version, and cut the masters from tapes. Numbus used a Calrec Soundfield microphone and amplifier, and UHJ stereo encoder.

The article goes on to report how one listening setup (Boston Audio Society-ish) was 'mid-fi', but 'decent', consisting of AR9 speakers, Technics belt drive (!) turntable with Shure V15 IV, and a top of the line Yamaha integrated amplifier.

The other system (New York, Audio Critic-ish) was that of analog guru, Mitchell Cotter. Made up of his 'cost no object' preamplifier modules (line control, phono stage, MC transformer, noise buffer, etc), Bedini 25/25 class A amplifier, Quad ESL (original), Janus W-1 subwoofer powered by a Janus Interphase 1 bass amplifier. Record player was a modified Technics SP-10 Mk2 (disassembled and inserted into Cotter's B1 'hardened to survive a nuclear explosion' enclosure). A low impedance MC incorporating a line contact stylus on an 'experimentally developed cantilever' was mounted in a FR-66S tonearm. It is not clear what cartridge was used, but since this system was essentially Aczel's 'Reference A' set-up, it may have been a one-off Coral 777 (aka GAS Sleeping Beauty) featuring a modified aluminum cantilever and Van den Hul stylus that Peter was fooling around with at the time.

Results? Opinions were all over the place. Some liked this, some that. Some thought vinylized digits were best, others disagreed. What panelists agreed upon (in a banal sense), was that in spite of 'sonic' differences among the LP formats, the poor quality of some of the records (surface noise, pre-echo, etc.) ruined the experience.

With all the unknowns in the upstream chain, and with all possible mastering vagaries, and certainly with QC limitations in the final product, one cannot say that differences one hears in one's living room are simply a matter of analog tape versus digits. We know that some of the best sounding LPs (but not necessarily their subsequent digital transfers) were done in the '50s. Who can deny that? Some direct to disc LPs that sound great. And a person would be a fool to argue that digits done correctly (however and whatever that is) don't result in 'sonic' masterpieces.

 

[Vear]

With all the unknowns in the upstream chain, and with all possible mastering vagaries, and certainly with QC limitations in the final product, one cannot say that differences one hears in one's living room are simply a matter of analog tape versus digits.

I should clarify that I did not mean to imply that the difference was due to analog tape vs. digital but rather the quality of the master that was captured at the time on the analog tape that was mastered for vinyl.

a person would be a fool to argue that digits done correctly (however and whatever that is) don't result in 'sonic' masterpieces.

They sure can and do but all too often the digital remasters of much of the old analog recordings have been butchered. Sure, with no comparison the digital versions sound great but when you actually compare to an original vinyl the digital often sounds bloated and veiled. The "openness" is gone. It kind of reminds me of the difference one would hear on cassette tapes when Dolby was applied on a basic deck.

I was an early adopter of both Tidal and Qobuz as soon as they became available but I have been surprised that so many of the '70s recordings I have sound better on vinyl. Less thick, clearer and more analytical sounding which I prefer (I personally don't like warm so that's not why I listen to vinyl)... I guess I'll blame it on the mastering that was done or the provenance of what Tidal and Qobuz is making available to us.