Can anyone explain the vinyl renaissance?

[Andysu]

Yeah. And since I watch a lot of YouTube music videos on my surround system, even lesser quality YouTube videos can sound really good… because my surround system sounds really good

do a youtube video of your system lets least hear it ?

 

[MattHooper]

so i guess you don't have JBL THX for solaris , think all that pro tools stuff

I’ve mixed in studios outfitted with JBL, but for Home Theatre playback I prefer a somewhat more laid-back relaxed presentation (after listening to sound effects all day long…). I carefully selected my Home Theatre speakers to suit my needs.

 

[Andysu]

I think forcing atmos from AM just works with a 2.0 setup because it's rendering it as 2.0 before sending over lightning/USB. Right hand side of the flow below. (From Rendering a Dolby Atmos mix in Logic Pro for Mac.)

How I think they "attempt to play Dolby Atmos tracks on any headphones or speakers". I mean, how else would they?

View attachment 410005

its got no below surround or below surround matrix , this why i don't bother anymore with stormaudio and those 4k ai coloured discs with near field atmos is a joke , lossless audio ? i stick to theatrical mixes on laserdisc at least they don't bs me like 4k does

 

[Andysu]

I’ve mixed in studios outfitted with JBL, but for Home Theatre playback I prefer a somewhat more laid-back relaxed presentation (after listening to sound effects all day long…). I carefully selected my Home Theatre speakers to suit my needs.

what is your IMDB then ?

 

[Blainethemono]

"You’d written; “there was no time in history that vinyl was the best medium. Never has been, never will be. It was always a non-reference medium”"

Excuse me for weighing in, but that is a fantastic statement. Ive always thought that our own hearing was a non-reference medium as well, but used "subjective" to define it instead. Like taste & a lot of other things, "Art is in the eye of the beholder", one persons garbage is another's treasure. We use each other to quantify our subjectivity that "this or that widget" is the best, & create supposedly quantifiable measuring systems to support it.

For years Ive been running an old Nakamichi PA7 Mkll whose soft start relay finally went on hiatus. In the interim I bought those Fosi Class D Chinese amps to fill the void. On paper they are amazing..... Flat as glass with tremendous S/N & THD, & how I understand the tech, entirely analog

HOW do they sound?

Same vinyl, same system, except the Fosi's, same sound.... but to qualify myself in all this, I have 70 year old ears.. but I do read, & I do listen to Folks younger then me who have used these amp & have had similar experiences.

Im personally stunned. If it were a blind test I would dare you to tell the difference.

Long story short, who knows how far vinyl can go... the tech just keeps getting better & we are still human....who find vinyl fascinating as a medium. Thanks for letting me ramble.

 

[Blumlein 88]

"You’d written; “there was no time in history that vinyl was the best medium. Never has been, never will be. It was always a non-reference medium”"

Excuse me for weighing in, but that is a fantastic statement. Ive always thought that our own hearing was a non-reference medium as well, but used "subjective" to define it instead. Like taste & a lot of other things, "Art is in the eye of the beholder", one persons garbage is another's treasure. We use each other to quantify our subjectivity that "this or that widget" is the best, & create supposedly quantifiable measuring systems to support it.

For years Ive been running an old Nakamichi PA7 Mkll whose soft start relay finally went on hiatus. In the interim I bought those Fosi Class D Chinese amps to fill the void. On paper they are amazing..... Flat as glass with tremendous S/N & THD, & how I understand the tech, entirely analog

HOW do they sound?

Same vinyl, same system, except the Fosi's, same sound....

Im personally stunned. If it were a blind test I would dare you to tell the difference.

Long story short, who knows how far vinyl can go... the tech just keeps getting better & we are still human....who find vinyl fascinating as a medium. Thanks for letting me ramble.

And how does this indicate vinyl is a reference medium? It does not. Art is one thing audio is not art. Reel to reel is of superior fidelity to vinyl. RTR was for a time the best high fidelity medium until digital came along. That you like it is fine. Just don't confuse that assessment as meaning it is a higher fidelity medium.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Hmm..

You’d written; “there was no time in history that vinyl was the best medium. Never has been, never will be. It was always a non-reference medium”

But as I understand it, analog tape itself presented a number of difficulties in order to achieve decent sound quality for quite a while and it wasn’t until around the late 40s that analogue tape became widely used in making commercial recordings. (Ampex first commercial tape recorder released.)

Whereas RCA Victor produce the first commercial vinyl records by 1930. Apparently, even then vinyl had some sonic advantages over shellac 78s (e.g. potential lower record noise), and this was the superior medium, with all sorts of popular music being released on that format (including classical music).

So if vinyl records were being produced, starting in 1930, and they were the superior medium at the time, not to be overtaken by the implementation of analogue tape until around 1948, aren’t these facts that indicate your absolute statement to be incorrect?

Again, I’m no expert and happy to be corrected if I’ve got any of the above facts wrong. Just curious. no big deal in any case.

So maybe the commercially unsuccessful vinyl was a reference from 1930 until 1948. So it has not been a reference in the last 76 years. It was not a reference in stereo.

 

[MattHooper]

So maybe the commercially unsuccessful vinyl was a reference from 1930 until 1948. So it has not been a reference in the last 76 years. It was not a reference in stereo.

OK, cool. It was worth updating my knowledge on this.

 

[Galliardist]

Hmm..

You’d written; “there was no time in history that vinyl was the best medium. Never has been, never will be. It was always a non-reference medium”

But as I understand it, analog tape itself presented a number of difficulties in order to achieve decent sound quality for quite a while and it wasn’t until around the late 40s that analogue tape became widely used in making commercial recordings. (Ampex first commercial tape recorder released.)

Whereas RCA Victor produce the first commercial vinyl records by 1930. Apparently, even then vinyl had some sonic advantages over shellac 78s (e.g. potential lower record noise), and this was the superior medium, with all sorts of popular music being released on that format (including classical music).

So if vinyl records were being produced, starting in 1930, and they were the superior medium at the time, not to be overtaken by the implementation of analogue tape until around 1948, aren’t these facts that indicate your absolute statement to be incorrect?

Again, I’m no expert and happy to be corrected if I’ve got any of the above facts wrong. Just curious. no big deal in any case.

So far, so good? The first wire recorder was invented in 1898 and was only good enough for voice dictation recording.
The first vinyl records were released in 1930, they were a commercial flop as a home format but found a home at radio stations.
The first magnetic tape recorder was invented in Germany in 1928, and was superior to wire from day one, and probably superior to those first vinyl records. By 1935, AEG had pretty much perfected the tape recorder for mono. I'm not sure, but I believe availability of these recorders was limited.

In 1945, the US military got hold of some of those tape recorders and the German patents were nullified. The first Ampex recorders were made in 1947/8 (depending on which source I read) but they were effectively copies of the older German devices.

I'm sure I've seen a source that suggested the Germans made commercial wire recordings in the 1930s, which would indicate that the superior tape wasn't exactly common.

So - which was better in 1930 may be up for grabs, but tape was the superior format within a couple of years, and well before 1947. For what it's worth. And yes, it was the late 1940s before commercial recordings were being made on any scale which was your point. We can choose our facts to create our narrative, I guess.

 

[Leporello]

I was talking to my Bartender about this very thing the other day. He is about 40+ years my junior, me being 70. Vinyl, I think, forces the Listener to participate, to pay attention, focus on the music, put in an EFFORT, for a reward. You have to put in personal TIME & physical work to experience this art form, so I think Folks become more invested in the process, & get more satisfaction from it, especially if a person actually builds their own analog system on a component level. The Album art, the inner sleeves & "nuggets" an Artist will sometimes put there, plus the physicality of holding it, actually possessing it, cherishing it & protecting it from harm... its becomes part of you...


A person become fully absorbed into the whole process

The reward.... The MUSIC

On the other hand your bartender is saying things a true believer is supposed to say.

”physicality of holding it, actually possessing it, cherishing it & protecting it from harm...”

Oh my. What is actually missing from a vinylphile's life?

 

[Multicore]

The thread blew through ten thousand posts while I was sleeping. Looks like I can claim

#10,011​

which is not 19. Anyway, congratulations and thanks to everyone who has made this thread so productive, by some measure of productivity, for example number of posts.

To answer the question in the title: Yes. Lots of people have explained it. Just not to everyone else's satisfaction.

 

[deweydm]

so i guess you don't have JBL THX for solaris , think all that pro tools stuff

Heh, this threw me for a second. JBL released THX software for Solaris? What? Were they was using unix workstations for sound production? Oh, the film, Solaris. <shakes head>

 

[deweydm]

There remain plusses and minuses to digital and vinyl. I recently picked up a copy of Bella Donna on vinyl and it was poorly pressed and had a locked grove during the third song so you weren't getting past that on any turntable. Never had an issue with a poorly made CD in the 1500 I own but I have had pressing problems with dozens of records especially those pressed by GZ Vinyl. Thankfully I bought it at Target and they take returns. If I had bought it at a record store I would be stuck with it.

On the flip side I picked up the digital version of the Cure's new album and it is atrocious. It is brickwalled and sounds very harsh. My friend picked up the vinyl record and it is a completely different mastering and sounds very good.

For new music if there isn't a well mastered SACD or Blu-ray audio I can buy I have to go to vinyl as my best option for sound quality. I'm very sensitive to brickwalled audio and just turning it down isn't enough to make it listenable for me.

You should give the Atmos version of The Cure’s latest a listen. I’ve done casual listening comparisons between the Miles Showell single LP, and the Atmos stream from Apple Music rendered in stereo, and to 5.1.2, and these sound very good to me. Mastering doesn’t get in the way of my enjoying the music, as it does with the louder, less dynamic lossless stereo version from AM.

 

[Rob_Gordon]

Hey,
it's not worth starting a whole thread about it but I'm also wondering about the "digital bashing".
I mean, I can understand some of the vinyl renaissance. I do listen to vinyl sometimes. But I always feel like my tv just turned HD when I get back on streaming/compact disc (I love saying "compact disc").

So the question, for me, is "how can some people spit on digital?"
I've heard that Fremer, for instance, keeps saying that CDs sound bad. Is it pure snobbery? Is it sincere placebo auto-administered?

I have a friend who spent a scary amount on his rig. I went to his place for an afternoon of listening. We regularly switched from his LPs to his FLAC files... To me it sounded obvious, but not to him... or rather, he felt like the vinyls sounded better.

I know I'm also prone to biases... But I just don't get it.

 

[pinger]

Hey,
it's not worth starting a whole thread about it but I'm also wondering about the "digital bashing".
I mean, I can understand some of the vinyl renaissance. I do listen to vinyl sometimes. But I always feel like my tv just turned HD when I get back on streaming/compact disc (I love saying "compact disc").

So the question, for me, is "how can some people spit on digital?"
I've heard that Fremer, for instance, keeps saying that CDs sound bad. Is it pure snobbery? Is it sincere placebo auto-administered?

I have a friend who spent a scary amount on his rig. I went to his place for an afternoon of listening. We regularly switched from his LPs to his FLAC files... To me it sounded obvious, but not to him... or rather, he felt like the vinyls sounded better.

I know I'm also prone to biases... But I just don't get it.

The whole digital sounds bad narrative is nonsense. IMO folks like vinyl because it allows tinkering and may actually affect sound quality. Digital is plug and play and it all sounds the same. Good enough for me

 

[Rob_Gordon]

isn't it crazy that in the 70s and 80s, label would put proudly "digital master" on the sleeves of LPs, and that now, labels promise "all analog" and get huge backlash if there's a digital step in their process? (though I understand they get backlash for lying, of course)

 

[Robin L]

I've heard that Fremer, for instance, keeps saying that CDs sound bad. Is it pure snobbery? Is it sincere placebo auto-administered?

Fremer needs to convince people that vinyl sounds better. That's his job. Of course, it doesn't, but he has to continue to gaslight folks in order to stay in the business.

 

[Rob_Gordon]

Fremer needs to convince people that vinyl sounds better. That's his job. Of course, it doesn't, but he has to continue to gaslight folks in order to stay in the business.

he has to be more or less convinced it's true, don't you think?

and I mean, when you see his listening room, you can spot some CDs... but he obviously really believes in vinyl!

 

[Robin L]

he has to be more or less convinced it's true, don't you think?

He has to convince himself that it's true. He's gaslighting himself.

and I mean, when you see his listening room, you can spot some CDs... but he obviously really believes in vinyl!

He's been doing this for decades. He has to believe in vinyl in order to maintain any credibility. Judging from the pictures I've seen, his listening chamber is far from ideal.

Collecting LPs is a thing onto itself - one doesn't have to think that vinyl sounds better than digits in order to want the objects - the cover art and bragging rights, the physicality of the format are all that it really takes. If I still had the room, I might have kept mine. In any case, just about everything now released on LPs came from a digital file that doesn't suffer from the known distortions of vinyl and analog reproduction. And many LPs going back to the 1970s analog era went through a bucket brigade delay line on the way to the cutting head, so a lot of pre - "digital" LPs are digital (sort of) anyway.

I recently was given a Denon CD that was mastered from a 1975 digital recording. It was a 13-bit recording. Sounded, frankly, wonderful. Suk Trio performing Beethoven's "Archduke" trio. LPs top out around 13 bits. Redbook standard exceeds that.

I'm not saying LPs can't sound good. Like Matt says, the quality of the playback gear - speakers and the way they integrate into room acoustics in particular - are far more important than the source. But all things being equal, a digital source will sound better.

 

[Rob_Gordon]

He has to convince himself that it's true. He's gaslighting himself.

ahaha, yes, most definitely. I wish I could love vinyl so much (and at the same time, no, cause it's a hassle)

He's been doing this for decades. He has to believe in vinyl in order to maintain any credibility. Judging from the pictures I've seen, his listening chamber is far from ideal.

Collecting LPs is a thing onto itself - one doesn't have to think that vinyl sounds better than digits in order to want the objects - the cover art and bragging rights, the physicality of the format are all that it really takes. If I still had the room, I might have kept mine. In any case, just about everything now released on LPs came from a digital file that doesn't suffer from the known distortions of vinyl and analog reproduction. And many LPs going back to the 1970s analog era went through a bucket brigade delay line on the way to the cutting head, so a lot of pre - "digital" LPs are digital (sort of) anyway.

I recently was given a Denon CD that was mastered from a 1975 digital recording. It was a 13-bit recording. Sounded, frankly, wonderful. Suk Trio performing Beethoven's "Archduke" trio. LPs top out around 13 bits. Redbook standard exceeds that.

I'm not saying LPs can't sound good. Like Matt says, the quality of the playback gear - speakers and the way they integrate into room acoustics in particular - are far more important than the source. But all things being equal, a digital source will sound better.

Yes of course, you're right, that settles it.