Can anyone explain the vinyl renaissance?

[KEM]

If it doesn't look like an FM signal after exiting the the noise limiter, it doesn't go to market.

I know what an FM signal looks like. How does the audio resemble that?

 

[Robin L]

I know what an FM signal looks like. How does the audio resemble that?

FM signals usually have heavy limiting - partially to have the signal be audible in car radios and the like, partially to have the signal be audible over longer distances. I used to volunteer at a public radio station, would hear the pumping/breathing of the signal and the background noise over the on-air monitors.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

I know what an FM signal looks like. How does the audio resemble that?

If you over modulate an FM signal, the RF signal doesn't get bigger, the bandwidth gets wider. This means you encroach on your neighbour's bandwidth. This is absolutely forbidden by radio authorities in every country. So to be safe, broadcasters use a safety limiter to prevent this. BUT, limited signals like this sound brighter, clearer and punchier, so guess what some DJs discovered...

 

[kchap]

I know what an FM signal looks like. How does the audio resemble that?

In the " olden days" an FM receiver passed the the 10.7 MHz IF through a noise clipper/limiter before demodulation to reduce noise. Sort of like running a wooden board through a planer to take of the rough surface. As proof, check this link out All things must pass, particularly the second example. I have taken some poetic licence

 

[Rõlnnbacke]

I was leaving my audio room one day and bumped in to Linda, my partner, Linda said to me "You played vinyl all day".

Could it be that she knows that you have / listen to different music on vinyl than on digital sources and possibly what music that is? And it would have been the same if that (beautifull old Decca) records would have been digitalized?

 

[MattHooper]

So I wonder how upcoming tariffs might affect the vinyl record industry. If there would be tariffs for records, manufactured outside the USA. And of course, USA pressing plants import things like vinyl pellets from I believe Europe and Asia.

If people thought records were expensive now….

 

[Robin L]

So I wonder how upcoming tariffs might affect the vinyl record industry. If there would be tariffs for records, manufactured outside the USA. And of course, USA pressing plants import things like vinyl pellets from I believe Europe and Asia.

If people thought records were expensive now….

As far as I can tell the big tariffs will be some sort of revenge towards China for reasons unknown. In any case, LPs right now are outrageously overpriced anyway. I'm sorry - Nick Drake back catalog, less than 30 minutes for "Pink Moon" over $30? This for a recording that would sound the same if it were low data rate MP3? Glad I'm no longer in the market. And in the case somebody's forgotten, import LPs used to have a big markup compared to domestic product back when they were first introduced in the 1970s.

 

[KEM]

Could it be that she knows that you have / listen to different music on vinyl than on digital sources and possibly what music that is? And it would have been the same if that (beautifull old Decca) records would have been digitalized?

She hears what I play in my audio room. She is in the living room. Linda is completely unaware of the subtleties in music. A beat is all she needs. She never listens to words. She is the last person I would have thought would make a comment like that. Linda knows the music I normally listen to. She knows that I play both vinyl and digital (CDs and digital files). But obviously she doesn't know if I am playing vinyl or digital at the time she's listening, since she doesn't know what versions I have of either source.
I have listened to some of the older Decca recordings on CD. They are fine, but a bit more compressed to my ears. As I've written previously, the recording and mastering techs can make or break a release. Since the Decca recordings were done very meticulously (remember the "Decca Tree"), there's a good chance that the CD will sound good. I don't know whether the CD version was mastered by the same techs that mastered the vinyl. I could research that. There are still quite a number of these Decca recordings that don't seem to have a digital counterpart. Perhaps I haven't looked deep enough.
I can say that if I record vinyl using Audacity for example, the digital copy will sound identical to the vinyl. When I do this recording, I usually chop the ends off to get rid of the needle drop noise, apply mild noise reduction, declick, and renormalize. The digital file sounds just like the LP with the noise reduced and pops gone. I wish I could do this for all my LPs in order to save the vinyl from wearing. Flesh is weak.

 

[KEM]

Here's a very, very, anecdotal comment. I was leaving my audio room one day and bumped in to Linda, my partner, Linda said to me "You played vinyl all day". Since she had no idea what medium I was playing, I asked her "What do you mean"? Her reply "It sounds richer". She was correct about vinyl all day.
Linda only listens to music as background. She has no idea what stuff I have, what it is good for and how it all works together. Clueless. While she was listening she was in the living room, reading.
But she did notice a difference. I find that significant.

I had no Idea that I would kick up such a storm of comments. It seems that people who contribute to this forum topic are quite enraged by my post and by my subsequent posts.
There's no way that I wanted to do that. Such an innocent statement, I thought. I will remember this experience in the future.
Seems that every one of these audio fora has some amount of built-in bias(es). And I tripped over one.
This post is not an apology, just an observation.

 

[antcollinet]

I had no Idea that I would kick up such a storm of comments. It seems that people who contribute to this forum topic are quite enraged by my post and by my subsequent posts.
There's no way that I wanted to do that. Such an innocent statement, I thought. I will remember this experience in the future.
Seems that every one of these audio fora has some amount of built-in bias(es). And I tripped over one.
This post is not an apology, just an observation.

I don't see anyone being enraged. Just people correcting you on the validity and significance of the story you told. The closest I saw to "enragement" was the odd eye-rolll here and there.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

I had no Idea that I would kick up such a storm of comments. It seems that people who contribute to this forum topic are quite enraged by my post and by my subsequent posts.
There's no way that I wanted to do that. Such an innocent statement, I thought. I will remember this experience in the future.
Seems that every one of these audio fora has some amount of built-in bias(es). And I tripped over one.
This post is not an apology, just an observation.

One of the key things about SCIENCE is its reproducibility. If you measure something in your lab in your continent, I should be able to follow your methodology in my lab in my continent and get the same result. Since this is Audio Science Review, measured results should normally be reproducible to within small margins of error.

I enjoyed what you wrote. It didn't upset me, but I can't reproduce it. Neither can anyone else here. It makes it hard to call it "science", since it applied to you and your wife, at that point in time, in those circumstances. My house is laid out differently. When I listen to vinyl - my wife may notice there is a break at the end of each side...

You talk about mastering and how the Decca guys did it. But were you there? I wasn't. I'm an Electronic Engineer and I have been involved in studios where music is being recorded. So, I can call on a certain amount of "authority", but I can't tell you what the Decca guys actually did. Did they keep a timestamped log, coupled with reliable measurements, and has that been published? You consider that some engineers doing mastering in the mid 1980s had out-date analogue-only skills and had to learn how to do mastering in the new digital medium and this affected sound quality. Maybe, but there's no global evidence of that - and I didn't attend the mastering labs, so can't give a first hand account. No logs have been published confirming this lack of skill, as far as I'm aware. I know that there are claims of egregious mistakes with incorrect masters during the rush to mass digitisation to get CD content in the shops. But some of the 1980's CDs are now considered a gold standard.

 

[Robin L]

She hears what I play in my audio room. She is in the living room. Linda is completely unaware of the subtleties in music. A beat is all she needs. She never listens to words. She is the last person I would have thought would make a comment like that. Linda knows the music I normally listen to. She knows that I play both vinyl and digital (CDs and digital files). But obviously she doesn't know if I am playing vinyl or digital at the time she's listening, since she doesn't know what versions I have of either source.
I have listened to some of the older Decca recordings on CD. They are fine, but a bit more compressed to my ears. As I've written previously, the recording and mastering techs can make or break a release. Since the Decca recordings were done very meticulously (remember the "Decca Tree"), there's a good chance that the CD will sound good. I don't know whether the CD version was mastered by the same techs that mastered the vinyl. I could research that. There are still quite a number of these Decca recordings that don't seem to have a digital counterpart. Perhaps I haven't looked deep enough.
I can say that if I record vinyl using Audacity for example, the digital copy will sound identical to the vinyl. When I do this recording, I usually chop the ends off to get rid of the needle drop noise, apply mild noise reduction, declick, and renormalize. The digital file sounds just like the LP with the noise reduced and pops gone. I wish I could do this for all my LPs in order to save the vinyl from wearing. Flesh is weak.

I remember a number of Decca analog issues being re-issued as CDs on "Weekend Classics", a budget reissue series that came out early - late 1980s/early 1990s. I still have a copy of the István Kertész/Vienna Philharmonic recording of Dvořák's Symphony #9 from 1967, reissued as a Weekend Classic in 1988. Later re-issues involved higher resolution remastering (though, of course, the CDs were Redbook). The "Decca Legends" series from the late 1990s boasts 96kHz/24 bit remastering. I owned a lot of the Decca/London original pressings. The Blue-Back Londons were quite vivid, but surfaces were less than perfect. However, the Decca issues were about the same anyway.

Here's a useful article concerning Decca's Classical issues with a focus on their famous microphone tree - turns out this technique involved many different things, and many of the Decca recordings adopted outriggers just like the other recording companies. I made a recording that deployed the Microphone tree with good results. However, I also used a couple of widely spread omnis back in the hall for additional ambience:

The Decca Sound: Secrets of the engeneers - Pro Áudio Clube

In 1984, Mike Gray helped assemble a discography of Decca’s classical releases, giving him access to their engineers and recording logs, and a valuable insight into how their records were made. He reveals the truth about the famous Decca tree and the creation of the label’s unique sound. Decca...

proaudioclube.com

One more thing - Decca got into recording Digitally early and had their own ADC that recorded with 18 bit resolution back in 1979 and made a recording of 1979's New Year's concert of the Vienna Philharmonic directed by Willi Boskovsky:

https://www.aes.org/aeshc/pdf/fine_dawn-of-digital.pdf

 

[Rõlnnbacke]

She is the last person I would have thought would make a comment like that.

There are just so many explanations thinkable, apart from sound quality.

It seems that people who contribute to this forum topic are quite enraged by my post and by my subsequent posts.

Like @antcollinet wrote, not enraged. But this story give the impression of meaning to point in the direction of 'proof that vinyl sounds better'. Hope that Linda and you are not enraged as well!

 

[KEM]

There are just so many explanations thinkable, apart from sound quality.


Like @antcollinet wrote, not enraged. But this story give the impression of meaning to point in the direction of 'proof that vinyl sounds better'. Hope that Linda and you are not enraged as well!

Didn't think I needed to explain. Explaining kinda ruins it. No matter what you think, I posted to somewhat counter the bashing vinyl takes on this forum and to generate a healthy discussion. That didn't happen.
I've learned my lesson. Bye.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Didn't think I needed to explain. Explaining kinda ruins it. No matter what you think, I posted to somewhat counter the bashing vinyl takes on this forum and to generate a healthy discussion. That didn't happen.
I've learned my lesson. Bye.

Quite simply what you posted had no content. I also don't know that vinyl takes a bashing around here. It still sounds as if you are implying it has something extra that is better. What it has extra is noise, distortion, uneven frequency response and speed irregularities. If you had something to add other than the wife anecdote then maybe discussion was warranted.

 

[Galliardist]

So I wonder how upcoming tariffs might affect the vinyl record industry. If there would be tariffs for records, manufactured outside the USA. And of course, USA pressing plants import things like vinyl pellets from I believe Europe and Asia.

If people thought records were expensive now….

I believe vinyl pellets can also be sourced in the US from a video I saw a couple of years ago. There may be some realignment of where records get pressed, but it doesn't seem to be too much of a worry.
The US does import quite a lot of turntables, and tariff differences may favour products from outside China at entry level. I suspect from pricing, that a large part of the vinyl industry will be able to absorb some degree of tariffs. It may prevent prices falling though.

The question I have is different. Will streaming services be affected? That could hit US users of Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer, Spotify... and there may be problems with music licensing in the fallout and which services have what music, especially after reciprocal measures from other countries.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Here's a very, very, anecdotal comment. I was leaving my audio room one day and bumped in to Linda, my partner, Linda said to me "You played vinyl all day". Since she had no idea what medium I was playing, I asked her "What do you mean"? Her reply "It sounds richer". She was correct about vinyl all day.
Linda only listens to music as background. She has no idea what stuff I have, what it is good for and how it all works together. Clueless. While she was listening she was in the living room, reading.
But she did notice a difference. I find that significant.

Many, indeed most IME of the popular high end cartridges, I am thinking Koetsu, have a very "rich" frequency response and I enjoy them despite it.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

Many, indeed most IME of the popular high end cartridges, I am thinking Koetsu, have a very "rich" frequency response and I enjoy them despite it.

This captures the situation rather well!

 

[MattHooper]

Many, indeed most IME of the popular high end cartridges, I am thinking Koetsu, have a very "rich" frequency response and I enjoy them despite it.

When I set up my cartridge, it’s clear that settings like impedance on the phono stage and tracking weight affect the sound.
With tracking weight: to light, and the sound gets too thin and bright. Too heavy and it goes the opposite direction, too rich, sluggish and more dull.

So when it comes to the last bit of dialling in my cartridge set up, I tend to compare the sound of my vinyl playback to my digital source, using both media media that came from the same original masters. Of course there’s also the issue that even taken from the same original master tapes, the mastering for the vinyl may be slightly different. But ultimately I can get them really close, so the vinyl playback sounds pretty neutral. And then I tend to tick the cartridge weight just a little bit heavier, erring on the side of a slightly richer sound.

As I’ve mentioned before, In comparison with digital counterparts, I can sometimes perceive the vinyl playback as conveying a bit more of a warm, organic, human quality, especially to voices.

One striking example, I remember was comparing my ripped CD playback of an Air album with the vinyl version, set them up, matched levels (not with a voltmeter, but best I could) played them at the same time and with a remote button I could switch between the vinyl playback and the CD version, and when the female voices came on the CD version Had the voices sounding more like recordings, crispy edged and artificial. On the vinyl version it sounded like they suddenly became human beings singing between the speakers. (or more in that direction.). In that particular case
“ warmer” certainly seemed a reasonable way to describe the sound of the vinyl over the digital. (before this term goes on someone’s naughty list, I have said before that, I don’t think we can say that vinyl is my default “ warm sounding.”)

 

[Mean & Green]

I dip in and out of this thread periodically because curiosity gets the better of me and I come to see how much further the thread has derailed.

I’ve got to say I do find the recent increasing references to the ‘warmth’ and ‘richness’ of the format to be something of a surprise here on ASR. Not wanting to side with the few vinyl naysayers within this thread, but I do feel the richness and warmth terminology is a complete fallacy that really shouldn’t be promoted.

Saying that, who am I to tell people what they perceive is wrong? I suspect there is some bias with claims of richness. I can only say that my own subjective experiences do not at all support ‘the warmth of vinyl’ and nothing scientifically does either with regards to a competent playback system.

Ten years ago I dug out my vinyl again after a long break. Being an audiophile and with the increasing popularity of the revival I was reading about the ‘warmth of vinyl’ and how much more ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ it sounds. I’d never had a ‘hifi’ turntable in my younger years so couldn’t really draw on any valid experience if any of this was actually a thing. So I bought an entry level Pro-Ject and hooked it up to my already existing decent system played my old records in anticipation of this more realistic and warm sound and it was then that I realised all of the talk of richness and being more musical etc was indeed not true. Distorted sibilance, inner groove distortion and surface noise are all very real.

Unless conditions are right (clean good condition pressings, optimal TT setup, impedance and capacitance matching and so forth) it can be a very sub par experience for anyone who is fussy about sound quality. It does take effort to get it right and I can fully understand why many people abandoned the format and never looked back, the faff isn’t for everyone.

At best good vinyl playback rivals digital playback. It’s amazing how good vinyl can sound and how little difference subjectively there is between an immaculate record and the digital version of the same master. For such old and primitive tech it really is staggeringly good. It shows to me how little SINAD is needed to be able to have a fully immersive, throughly enjoyable listening experience.

Ten years after getting my records back out, I’m still playing them and I’m also buying more of them and I’ve upgraded the vinyl front end of my system. It has nothing to do with preferring the sound, I simply like toys and collecting physical formats and I enjoy the cliche of ‘the ritual’. I’ve enjoyed upgrading my system to get vinyl to sound acceptable to me and that equates to rivalling digital playback subjectively. I no longer have problems with the flaws of the format that I just previously mentioned - it didn’t cost a fortune to achieve and doesn’t require anything exotic to do so. Although it is more expensive than a digital source it isn’t more warm, rich, organic or anything else of the sort it’s very much just the same to me. I just like the ritual of playing with a mechanical device and handling the big artwork from time to time.