Gear evoking emotion

[AweLoi]

Not vibration of the turntable as such, but the cartridge picks up the airborne vibration from the speakers, and you get a feedback loop. Too much and you get howl around, but just a little adds some pleasing reverb.

Try comparing vinyl and digital with headphones instead of speakers, and see what you think.

That´s a very interesting! Is this a proved phenomena? I do not experience this on my vinyl setup at home but it have all my room problems present since I "fix" them with Dirac on my digital source so this effect might "drown" in other room related acoustic problems. My preamp have a headphone section (don´t know how good it is) but I will surley try!

 

[Prince Valiant]

The good comparison would be lacking emotional response from your OLED TV when watching movies, but getting it from the objectively worse projector. There's absolutely no problem with that, however looking for some objective advantages of the worse medium, just because you prefer the subjective experience of it, is a dead end. You can prefer less perfect reproduction without looking for a flaws in the technically better medium, but it's almost impossible for an audiophile to honestly accept that for some reason he likes distortion, hence this and other threads. Same goes with "full range" single driver speakers, tube amplifiers, non-flat speakers etc.
The question is is it a consistent response, or was it just a one time event that was a result of expectation bias, specific music material, holding cover in hand, or the whole environment and situation mixed together. You said you don't like to listen vinyl at home, so it's probably not vinyl itself, or not by itself.
The best music experiences I had were experienced on wireless headphones and lossy files, just because I was walking outside in a specific weather and it just hit right

Not really, unless you want to be specific about which ways OLED is superior, OLED has its own issues. You're choosing which problems to deal with.

 

[AweLoi]

Vinyl is more compressed than digital for the simple reason the cutting lathe and format has practical limits.
Add to that the distortion that is added, the tonal changes (depends on cartridge, pressing, tone arm, pre-amp load and pre-amp tonality, background noise that is added (with its typical warm noise spectrum).
The funny thing is that many people simply prefer these alterations. How those alterations will affect your 'mood/emotion' is another thing and personal of nature.

Chances are when buying some run of the mill turntable with the usual cartridges connected to your pre-amp or another pre-amp on your system with the albums you have to buy that same 'effect' may not be there or even wear off.

So... in short... the vinyl rig differences mainly lie in mastering of the vinyl, your mood and the alterations that are there.

There are plugins that 'vinylify' the input (add noise, crackling, surface noise, compression/expansion, tonal changes and you might already be there and do not need to go down the vinyl route with buying albums all over again, cleaning records, worrying about the setup of the deck, whether or not you have the right cartridge/needle in combination with the tone arm, the right turntable, the right pre-amp with different input settings etc.

If that simulation fails you must go down the vinyl route to get your emotion... at considerable cost and limited music choice.

It has nothing to do with loudness wars, intersample overs (just lower the volume digitally, use declipper or something like that nor with anything that supposedly cannot be measured electrically.

It has to do with the physical limitations of the format and that seems to trigger an emotional response.

Sounds resonable. I have been thinking of trying something like a tube DAC or preamp and see if that type of distorion is of my liking. I am aware of that some people seem to find some distortion to sound more real in their experience. Could be that I just prefer some type of distortion. One thing I did not like with my digital setup was that tone and timbre felt off compared to real voices and instruments. To lean sounding. I changed to another DAC that measures quite bad compared to top meausring DACs but it is known to have an "analog like" sound, and to my ears it sounds more natural with better tone and timbre than my previus DAC.

 

[solderdude]

A tube pre-amp will not only add harmonic distortion but also intermodulation (you can't separate them)
Also it won't add the vinyl-specific noise (its spectrum) and tonal changes that occur in the vinyl system which might be what gave you 'emotion'.

I assume the DAC you prefer is 'filterless' ?
DACs do not have tone nor timbre.
Timbre says something about the attack,sustain, decay of instruments and how they are played. A DAC cannot change any of that it can only change the high frequency roll-off which is 'weird' in filterless designs as it is rolled off on one sample and may not be rolled off one or 2 samples later.

Most of the 'tube goodness' comes from knowing tubes are in the chain or when the signal is modified that severe that it becomes audible.

 

[holdingpants01]

Not really, unless you want to be specific about which ways OLED is superior, OLED has its own issues. You're choosing which problems to deal with.

I'm no expert but no blooming, infinite contrast ratio, HDR capabilities, color accuracy, less motion blur, no problems with extremely annoying issues like rainbow effect, noise from a fan, heat, not being able to see it during the day etc. Regardless that's not the point, insert a modern and convenient format of your choosing that better than the other which is old, nostalgic, distorted, blurred or noisy and the comparison stands

 

[JeremyFife]

Listening to music is about preference too, it's ok for you to prefer a particular sound.

Having said that, emotion comes in at the recording and then again in your perception as you listen. Electronics don't have anything to do with it.

Be very very careful about sighted demos - just having someone say 'this is what I like' will influence you in ways you cannot control.
There is a real danger that you are about to fall into a very expensive rabbit hole as you chase an unobtainable sound based on that experience.

There can be differences between vinyl and digital masters but my feeling is that this is quite rare. What kind of music do you listen to - the problems with loudness seem to apply more to more 'popular' music battling for streaming volumes.

Anecdotally, stereo mixes from SACD or Atmos recordings don't suffer from the same loudness issues. Worth trying?

You have good equipment, and your vinyl setup is nice.
You also have good DSP options, have you measured your system in your room - is there anything in that where an adjustment might be what you are looking for.

I'd be tempted to say that;
1. you were influenced (subconsciously) by the dealer
2. you might like a DSP tweak in your system

Be careful looking for something that is not there!

 

[Mart68]

That´s a very interesting! Is this a proved phenomena? I do not experience this on my vinyl setup at home but it have all my room problems present since I "fix" them with Dirac on my digital source so this effect might "drown" in other room related acoustic problems. My preamp have a headphone section (don´t know how good it is) but I will surley try!

I don't know about 'proven' in terms of the subjective effect but certainly feedback loops are very real and a pickup cartridge is susceptible to them. Try putting your turntable on top of a loudspeaker!

Playback level is going to matter, too. It may be you listen at home at much lower levels than you did at the dealer's?

Member here @Frank Dernie - who did research for Garrard back in the 1970s - has mentioned this effect before IIRC.

 

[AweLoi]

Listening to music is about preference too, it's ok for you to prefer a particular sound.

Having said that, emotion comes in at the recording and then again in your perception as you listen. Electronics don't have anything to do with it.

Be very very careful about sighted demos - just having someone say 'this is what I like' will influence you in ways you cannot control.
There is a real danger that you are about to fall into a very expensive rabbit hole as you chase an unobtainable sound based on that experience.

There can be differences between vinyl and digital masters but my feeling is that this is quite rare. What kind of music do you listen to - the problems with loudness seem to apply more to more 'popular' music battling for streaming volumes.

Anecdotally, stereo mixes from SACD or Atmos recordings don't suffer from the same loudness issues. Worth trying?

You have good equipment, and your vinyl setup is nice.
You also have good DSP options, have you measured your system in your room - is there anything in that where an adjustment might be what you are looking for.

I'd be tempted to say that;
1. you were influenced (subconsciously) by the dealer
2. you might like a DSP tweak in your system

Be careful looking for something that is not there!

"There is a real danger that you are about to fall into a very expensive rabbit hole as you chase an unobtainable sound based on that experience."

That has already started haha. But thanks for the heads up! I will try to keep my cool.

The rest of the pointers are good too. Thanks!

I have measured my room and there are some real problem areas both in frequency response and timing. Dirac fixes the timing issues great but I have a 15db peak at 35hz and a 9db dip at 82hz as well as a few more dips up to 200hz, but not as severe. I know that peaks and dips this big are hard for Dirac to handle. Dips in particular are problematic with DSP since they are created by cancellations and boosting them will not help. So I know I probably should start with dealing with room treatment and fiddle with speaker placement before anything else. Perhaps bring in a sub to battle nulls at listening position.

 

[ppataki]

Perhaps bring in a sub to battle nulls at listening position.

That would be your best option
Even bring two if needed
Use REW's Room Sim to pre-simulate the results and perform measurements once you got the sub

Make sure the sub(s) will be on separate channel(s) so you can adjust delay/volume/etc. independently

 

[dfiler]

With those peaks and nulls, improved / different gear is likely not likely to a productive quest. You're right, focusing on room treatment and possibly another sub would be the most productive thing to do.

As for why it sounded better, my money is on a volume difference, a different master or perhaps you like at least part of the compression and frequency response limitations of vinyl.

 

[AlphaSquared]

Interesting that this discussion has revolved around different reproduction technologies with no mention of live music.

In the past, I served on the Board of Directors of New Vintage Baroque a small band that among other things commissions new music for Baroque instruments. Very talented players, most coming-out of Juilliard's Masters program in early music. Mostly, I'd feed a bunch of them Sunday dinners, but occasionally they'd use my loft to rehearse.

I've spent hours and hours listening to them play live across many venues. I have almost everything they've recorded.
That experience very much led to different choices in my stereo system.

I can't claim, my system perfectly reproduces them, but in its current version it approaches the emotional depth of the experience.
Even the players that I've sat down to listen to themselves have come away with the "wow" feeling.

I take from all of this, that we now have within our grasp the means to recreate very much of the experience of live music in our homes.

That said, I also recognize that as we listen deeply and critically our brains can begin to fill in gaps and make corrections.

All part of the mystery of how and why music moves us.

 

[AweLoi]

Interesting that this discussion has revolved around different reproduction technologies with no mention of live music.

In the past, I served on the Board of Directors of New Vintage Baroque a small band that among other things commissions new music for Baroque instruments. Very talented players, most coming-out of Juilliard's Masters program in early music. Mostly, I'd feed a bunch of them Sunday dinners, but occasionally they'd use my loft to rehearse.

I've spent hours and hours listening to them play live across many venues. I have almost everything they've recorded.
That experience very much led to different choices in my stereo system.

I can't claim, my system perfectly reproduces them, but in its current version it approaches the emotional depth of the experience.
Even the players that I've sat down to listen to themselves have come away with the "wow" feeling.

I take from all of this, that we now have within our grasp the means to recreate very much of the experience of live music in our homes.

That said, I also recognize that as we listen deeply and critically our brains can begin to fill in gaps and make corrections.

All part of the mystery of how and why music moves us.

Good point!

What was your findings when choosing equipment? What worked and what didn´t work?

 

[GXAlan]

@AweLoi
If you are in the U.S., consider trying a Yamaha A8A in your setup with the CinemaDSP and YPAO Volume. The movie modes (Sci-Fi or Enhanced) can add subtle reverb like you would get from vinyl and let you see if that’s what you find musical/emotional.

Yamaha’s DSP isn’t “simple” reverb and their flagships (CX-A5100/CX-A5200/RX-A8A) do a great job of utilizing your in room measurements to provide just the right amount of reverb.

 

[JeffS7444]

If you haven't yet incorporated room correction into your setup, I'd urge you to give it a try before spending a lot of money on new equipment. And by all means, familiarize yourself with the tone controls on your preamplifier! It's possible that something as simple as moving the Treble control down to the 11 o'clock position could deliver the magic you seek.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

Also for some strange reason I never searched is that some vinyl versions have vastly higher DR.Is it some flaw causing it?

Discussed here frequently (perhaps weekly). The "DR" measurement tool gets the wrong result with vinyl because of the way the disc is cut. This results in an artificially high value of about 1 or 2dB for LP.

 

[digitalfrost]

Most likely this is due to channel crosstalk https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...nel-crosstalk-be-actually-a-good-thing.12087/

and frequency response differences. No matter how good the cartridge and the phono pre are, they are never as flat as digital would be.

 

[EERecordist]

So, this is going to be quite a long post because I want to give as much details as possible before I get feedback because I would really love to hear different theories about an experience I had recently that made me question measurements. Or at least to some extent. I want to figure out what I experienced.

I have been an avid believer of measurements, basically because it makes sense. I have a decent hifi setup consisting of a pair of DIY Troels Gravendsen Revelator 851 speakers that are really good. Well balanced, very transparent etc. Probably would cost 20k-30k if they were a commercial product. I use an Audiophonics HPA-S400ET Purifi class D power amp paired with an Accuphase C-2150 preamp. At the time of this event I had a Vincent DAC-1MK and a MiniDSP Studio with Volumio as source. This system sounded quite good. Good soundstage, great details and separation of instruments etc, but I always felt something was missing. I did not feel moved emotionally by the music the way I would have liked to.

So I went to a dealer here in northern Sweden that had a decent listening room and asked him to show me some good products and to discuss with me what I could do as my next step. I made clear to him that I was not interested in vinyl since it is too inconvenient. Also I do have a decent vinyl setup at home (Rega P6 turntable, ClearAudio MC pickup and EAR 834P RIIA with Lundhal step up transformers) that I bought because I had a romanticized idea based on childhood memories. I quickly realized that it did not sound any better than my digital setup and was mostly a hassle and had all the clicks and pops that comes with vinyl so I stopped using it pretty much completely after a while.

The dealer played some music on his system and it sounded good, but not better than what I had at home already. His system consisted of a pair of Hörning Eufrodite speakers (that cost 27k and I think my speakers sound somewhat better to be honest), a TEAC AP-701 power amp (NCore class d, 35k), TEAC UD-701N preamp with built in DAC (41k) and a Lindemann Limetree streamer (9k). Prices are for the Swedish market so might vary, but you get the idea.

After a couple of hours of talking and listening the dealer told me that now when I had listened to my digital stuff he wanted to show me what he likes about hifi and put on a LP on his vinyl setup going through the same preamp, power amp and speakers. I had no idea at that time what the components in the vinyl setup cost and as I said my bias was strongly against vinyl. But from the first note of music my jaw dropped. I had never heard music move me emotionally in that way. I was completely stunned. It sounded so beautiful. It did not sound any more detailed, or had a better soundstage or anything like that but somehow the music went straight to the heart. It was hard to pinpoint the difference soundwise, but it was so much more emotional. I got goosebumps and it just sounded amazing.

I asked him to put on the same song digitally (Qobus) and while it sounded good, it was a night and day difference emotionally. I did not do a blind test (no point since the pops and clicks from the LP would have spoiled it anyway) nor did I do any volume matching, but changing volume made no difference. The emotion was there no matter the volume, and the difference compared to the digital version was not subtle, it was night and day.

After I came back home I could not stop thinking about this. That emotion I had experienced was the missing piece, it was what I had been looking for. In my amazement I forgot to ask the dealer what gear he had used so I emailed him the day after and asked. It turned out to be pretty expensive top notch gear. Gold Notes top turntable Mediterraneo X (12k), with Gold Note Machiavelli Gold pickup (3.6k) and a Gold Note PH-1000 Lite phono stage (7.2k). Very expensive stuff it turned out, but it certainly sounded better than anything I had heard.

This experience turned everything I thought I knew about Hifi upside down. A format that measures worse than digital blew digital out of its socks completely.

The interesting thing here is that this source went through the same preamp and NCore class D power amp from TEAC so this tells me that a good measuring class D amp like NCore, Purifi etc, can pass through the emotion I am looking for. Many audiophiles despise class d but for me this proved that good class d is very good indeed. So what is going on here from a technical point of view? This really messes with my mind trying to understand what I experienced and I want to hear what you guys think. I don´t believe in some hifi magic so there must be an explanation to this.

I know some of you will say that I didn´t blind test or volume match and think the case is closed because of that. So be it, but it certainly is not a closed case for me. The difference was so big that it just blew my mind. So for the sake of argument, let's assume there was a noticeable difference in favor of the vinyl setup, what could be the cause of that difference?

I really don't think it has anything to do with digital being inferior. Perhaps some of you are familiar with the MoFi scandal? Analog purists for decades happily went to MoFi for analog audiophile LP recordings but then it leaked that they use digital DSD processing before pressing and the purists are in shambles.

My first thought was that perhaps the streaming services are not as lossless as they claim. So I bought a digital lossless copy of the album. It was the album “Thank God we left the garden” by Jeffrey Martin by the way. The song we listened to was “Red Station Wagon”. It did not convey the same emotion in my system at least, even though I used a lossless file. It is possible that it is my system or room that is the problem and that it might have sounded better in the dealers room.

My second idea was loudness wars. Some of you might know that there was a huge problem in the 90s and early 2000s that studios made albums “hotter” by increasing loudness so that their songs would stand out as louder on radio and CD than the competition. This process meant heavy compressing, killing the life and dynamics of the music, especially noticeable on a good system. LP often had a different master since LP was never part of the loudness wars and could sound much better than the digital version because of this. Even though this problem is not as common any more since there were reactions after some time and when streaming became popular the streaming services normalized the volume anyway and it became pointless. However some digital masters are still worse than their analog counterparts. I checked the dynamic range on the digital album I bought (I uploaded it here: https://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/212351) but it looks quite ok. I do not know what the dynamic range is on the LP version though. But I suspect this might not be the reason why the LP sounded so much better, but it is possible that it could be.

My third idea was the inter-sample issue that many DACs have. A problem that is rarely measured but can cause a lot of distortion. The problem is still quite common and it is discussed here for anyone who are interested:

I don´t know if the TEAC Dac had this issue or not, but I do know that I do not have that issue in my system since MiniDSP fixed that problem in their products in 2023. If this was the problem why doesn't the song sound as emotional in my system?

One possibility could be that the dealer's DAC had this problem and even though my system does not, I might have other problems holding the sound quality back in my system. I do know that I have some room issues. I have my system in my living room so there is a lot of furniture and stuff and very little room treatment. I only use Dirac to correct things but Dirac cannot solve a dip in the bass of almost 10db (which I have).

A fourth possibility is that the measurements are missing something. It is not impossible since the inter-sample issue went under the radar for a long time and still does. I do not think Amir measures it either, so what else could we be missing in measurements?
Perhaps good capacitors, resistors, linear power supplies, clean power, cables etc do make some difference that we can hear (as many audiophiles claim) but we don't measure it properly? This experience with the dealer's analog system certainly has made me reconsider some of the claims made in the audiophile world but there might be a simpler explanation too that I am missing.

A long post I know, but what do you think? I really want to go to the bottom of this and understand what I experienced. I kindly ask for a civilized and open discussion. I am a science oriented guy, but in my world science must always be open to the idea that there are more things to learn and discover otherwise it's not really science.

If I am understanding your description, vinyl is mastered differently than CD, and SACD; streaming services have their own standards from mastering. In different eras of mixing and mastering, there have been different tools available, which will sound different. Once you have the basic tracks or microphones in an acoustic music hall recording, compressors differ, echo systems differ, EQ systems differ, pre-about the 80s there were many transformers in the signal chain, magnetic tape is not perfectly linear, the mastering and mixing rooms differ, and much of the signal chain downstream from the original tracks can change.

I find live recordings with a little large hall echo more engaging. I have been fortunate to hear a lot of music live, so that is what I compare recordings and systems to.

No doubt audio stores have a few sale-closing vinyl selections!

You might try the same original performance mastered out different ways as a fair comparison. Maybe you can bring home a copy of the vinyl the store used? You could digitize it, run it through your dynamic range tool, and report back.

But the fine details of all the tools in the chains across different remixing and mastering would be impossible to derive from the final master with the computational tools of today. Maybe there is some AI mix deconvolver in the future!

 

[A Surfer]

Emotions are a cumulative, neurological, socially mediated effect. Socially mediated in the sense that our perception of emotions is somewhat socially constructed and learned. In this sense, absolutely the gear used is part of the emotional perception of the experience. It is highly reductionist to ignore that.

 

[Mikig]

thanks AweLoi, I read the post, which I found interesting and I watched the whole video. In a certain way, if I understood correctly, in the video you posted, the interaction between the signal and the hardware of the Dac is measured, and the result as seen in the video obviously makes you think. I am not a technician so I cannot give answers, but I found the test performed by the two in the video very interesting.
I saw the Dac3 reviewed by Amirm, a few years ago, which was defined as absolutely competent.

 

[Mikig]

anyway it's always a mystery, about how some systems to our ear we like, others we don't like and about how some songs with the same system are engaging while others are downright annoying....and maybe, this very heterogeneity is the beautiful and fun part of this hobby that leads you to experiment, search, learn and try to understand!!