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How to become a serious audiophile

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Don Hills

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... * groove width that is up to 350% wider than specified by the Standard for microgroove LPs. ...

I think the blurb is referring to side-to-side excursion of the groove, not the actual groove width.
 

Wombat

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Wombat

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I think the blurb is referring to side-to-side excursion of the groove, not the actual groove width.


The normal groove figures that were quoted are the standard top-of-groove widths. I don't know what their larger groove width figure means. Copy writer error?

The groove depth figure is suspect, also as I have previously pointed out.
 

Analog Scott

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Who said it did? What it does is maintain a higher level of masking of the groove noise by the signal even in the 'quiet bits'.

I think you missed the quote I included above! Whether it's the tape hiss you are singling out (another sleight of hand?), or the record...
Here it is again, printed bigger.
yeah, I did miss that. As an actual user of these LPs it hasn't been an issue for me.
 

Wombat

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fas42

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There is actually a technical reason for the greater perceptual sense of dynamics for records.
Well, I'm still curious to hear what you believe that reason to be ... IME, both media operating correctly deliver the full monty; when working below par the nature of their failings are typically very different - then one can have favourites, depending upon what irritates more ...
 

fas42

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Disagree. CD sounded good from the start. There were certainly some poor discs made, but one of my favourite and most listened to CDs was one of the first ever released and still sounds fantastic.
Nimbus "Baccanales" by Equale Brass from 1983. Digitally recorded using a Calrec soundfield mike, so plenty of digital sums going on all the way from the beginning.
I DO think a lot of hifi systems didn't match CD players early on, both because their frequency bablance had been suited toi the LPs their owners played, and because a lot of preamps were overloaded by the 2V output of CD players (necessary to keep the quiet bits of CDs high dynamic range out of the noise) compared to the typical 0.2V of the tuners and tape recorders normal at the time.
CD sounded good to me too, when it initially appeared. I was excited as much as anyone else, because I hadn't realised what was possible in sound reproduction - I was then fortunate enough to make some right decisions in terms of what I purchased, which provided an excellent base for tweaking - and achieved a standard of replay which then made me realise what the normal systems were getting wrong. So, my standards of what I expected from playback evolved dramatically - it's always easy to 'understand' in hindsight how one thought something was as good as it gets, etc, and then having new experiences which show that one's knowledge was limited, at that time.
 

Cosmik

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An interesting article! When looking at vinyl distortion he says
At 1 kHz, 0 dB, distortion was 7%. “Wow, that’s a lot of distortion,” you say. You bet it is, but notice that it is nearly all second order. Also, the noise level contributes to this high number. At best, the noise is 70 dB below the signal, whereas with the CD test, it is more than 100 dB lower. We could measure just the THD, but much of the harmonics are buried in the noise, so this would not be a fair estimation of the resulting sound. However, for the sake of just comparing the distortion peaks to my previous tests of other products, I would estimate the THD to be about 1%.
...one of the most significant reasons vinyl aficionados love the LP sound is that the distortion is very, very much like that in Pure Class A triode single-ended tube amplifiers. There is a lot of distortion, but it is virtually all second order (even-ordered), which is euphonic, meaning that it is pleasing to the ears. ... Bottom line is that CD has much less distortion, but more of it is odd-ordered, while vinyl has more distortion, but it is euphonic second order.
In the case of CD, the evil isolated 3rd harmonic peak is 100dB below the sine wave. In the case of vinyl, ignoring the huge 2nd harmonic peak, the 3rd harmonic peak is visible at -60dB. It takes an extreme generosity of spirit to see these two media as "the same but just a bit different".

I dispute that 2nd order distortion is "pleasing to the ears". It might be to some people in mono, or typical 'two channel almost-mono' using carefully chosen music and legacy equipment, but not to people who value the stereo image and clear separation between the elements. Harmonic distortion of any order produces intermodulation distortion with any complex recording, blurring everything together with new non-musical 'spray'.
 

Thomas savage

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You would be mistaken if you think the "big deal" was about vinyl. The problem was never about vinyl, nothing to do with it at all. The problem was the classic forum game of semantics, pedantry and circular, deliberate and pointless argumentativeness which derailed the discussion. Something this forum is almost entirely devoid of thankfully. Even when the "argument" had actually ceased it was brought up again. When I see this behavior I call it out.
Yes certainly that’s a issue, it’s what happens when someone with one level of understanding and possibly a lower level of fact acceptance come here and try’s to establish themselves and their beliefs.

It could be handled better by some of you, we still have claims that though can be accepted as ‘ intresting ‘ and possibly could lead to a further debate have not been presented with the required standard for most of our members to consider ‘ new facts’ and indeed fall short of our forums own standard.

So really as Iv mentioned countless times now we should move on, accept Scots brought information to the best of his capability and in good faith. Further scrutiny is not possible!

In the light of the above the tendency is to go over and over the same ground and indeed as you say it becomes more about semantics, pedantry and circular..

We don’t want that, to that end I’m shutting this thread down ( I wanted to do that some time ago but I left it open after criticism over my ‘shut thread happy finger ‘ )

Any reoccurrence of this debate in other threads will be deleted if however there’s additional and substantial new information a new dedicated thread can be created.. but I won’t tolerate any more of this bollocks in that either.

@Frank Dernie , thanks for bringing your expertise to the discussion unfortunately it was to be a island of knowledge in a sea of conjecture and circular tripe but I very much appreciated it.

Thread closed.
 
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