Pinnacle of vinyl playback

[svart-hvitt]

Ok, I opened this thread not just to discuss pros and cons of vinyl playback even if such a discussion is entertaining (an opinion-loaded!) per se. However, a technical discussion on vinyl playback within its limitations is perhaps more interesting; it begs the question how far you can take vinyl playback in terms of technical excellence. Do you all see the point of this distinction?

So let's take a look at the SP-10R specifications with its stated SNR of 92 dB. If you intend to keep the noise-level in your playback chain at 92 dB, it means that your phono preamp and amps need to sport better specs than 92 dB, right? The problem is, phono preamps with SNR of 92 dB don't exist. The top Clearaudio preamp (over $15k) has an SNR of "only" 90 dB. Maybe this box (QES Labs is popular among mastering engineers with deep pockets) will keep up with the new Panasonic turntable drive: http://www.qeslabs.com/e_phono_preamp.asp or maybe this one https://www.mil-media.com/LOCi.html .

In other words: Is the SP-10R a game changer because it will expose the flaws of existing vinyl gear? Just think about it; you need to pay over $10-15k for a phono preamp in order to match the noise floor of the SP-10R. It's crazy, and it shows that vinyl in 2017 is a cottage industry of amateurs, sort of time-capsuled in the 1970s. So when a billion dollar (or yen...) company reenters the vinyl space, using 2010s technology, it makes other manufacturers of vinyl gear redundant from a technical point of view (from an aesthetic point of view I think the SP-10R will look great as well, but that's just an opinion and not a fact).

In other words: What is the lowest attainable noise floor in vinyl playback from a technical perspective? Has the SP-10R moved the old limits of vinyl playback noise floor?

 

[DonH56]

I do not think the TT playback system will support anything like 92 dB SNR; the limitations are in the source (record) and cartridge. More like 60 to 70 dB. An SNR spec for a turntable alone does not mean much IMO. Current DACs have dynamic range exceeding 120 dB but few if any recordings approach that, analog or digital... And the DAC has an analog output; a TT does not until you add a cartridge and play a record on it. Of course the RIAA curve serves to magnify any LF TT noise. Not that reducing wow and flutter, other mechanical noise, and electrical coupling into the cartridge and wires is not relevant and important, but ultimately I think the record/cart will dictate the SNR.

 

[amirm]

Panasonic is not clear on what the 92 S/N ratio is. Was that through a cartridge or just the transport measured some other way?

Perhaps the best way to get to that number is to digitize it right at the cartridge!

One crazy thought outside of all of this is to take a detailed picture of every grove and then create sound from that! You would eliminate all tracking errors, wear, etc. You can also easily get rid of dirt and dust through signal processing. Pretty expensive process though but not sure any LP lover would want to hear sound that pure.

 

[Purité Audio]

See the 'laser' turntable, still available I believe, records have to be scrupulously clean though otherwise the laser mistakes dirt for data.
Keith

 

[amirm]

See the 'laser' turntable, still available I believe, records have to be scrupulously clean though otherwise the laser mistakes dirt for data.
Keith

Yeh, I had heard of those. What I was suggesting was actually taking a picture of the grove and then using image processing to extract the grove information. There, a dust particle would be detected and compensated.

Just to see state of the art in converting images to sound, watch this:

 

[Wayne]

Just to see state of the art in converting images to sound, watch this:

Wow, James Bond techniques. Reminds me of the CIA trick of bouncing laser light off windows to "hear" was was going on inside.

Most interesting.

Hard copy: https://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/papers/VisualMic_SIGGRAPH2014.pdf

 

[Cosmik]

Why not bring back VHS Hi-Fi while we're at it?

Yeh, I had heard of those. What I was suggesting was actually taking a picture of the grove and then using image processing to extract the grove information. There, a dust particle would be detected and compensated.

Been suggested before e.g.
https://www.wired.com/2003/02/press-scan-to-play-old-albums/

...a university student from Israel has written a piece of software that goes a step further. Ofer Springer has created a "virtual gramophone" that plays LPs using an ordinary flatbed scanner.

Springer's Digital Needle uses a high-resolution image of an LP captured by a flatbed scanner. (Because 12-inch LPs are bigger than the image glass on most scanners, Springer first takes four pictures and stitches them together into a single image.)

Then, like a needle on a record player, his software follows the image of the groove as it spirals around the record, generating sounds based on the wavelike patterns of the groove.

 

[RayDunzl]

*waits for someone to invent grooved vinyl tape.

 

[watchnerd]

In other words: What is the lowest attainable noise floor in vinyl playback from a technical perspective? Has the SP-10R moved the old limits of vinyl playback noise floor?

The LP itself is limited to 10-13 bits, so like 60-78 dB.

Anything beyond 80 dB SNR is probably wasted because it's below the noise floor of the LP itself.

 

[Sal1950]

The mastering is different and often better than what is put on CD. I know for my tape sampler for example, I have no digital versions that are mastered remotely ask good. So should what is on LP be what is on my tape, then clearly that would be a reason to listen to LP.

I don't like the pops and clicks so it is not for me but I can't dey the mastering differences.

We all realize the mastering is different, but as good or better than digital I would argue.
The one area may be in DR due to marketing concerns, with vinyl masters DR tuned for "a perceived audiophile" grope of buyers while digital is being mixed for earbuds and iphones, FM radio, and all the rest of the mass market needs.

On the other hand we have vinyl masters being tweaked with mono'd bass, rolled off highs, sibilant reduction, all the unavoidable inherit weaknesses of vinyl.
The very opposite of aiming to offer a media for High Fidelity reproduction.
https://www.gottagrooverecords.com/vinyl-mastering/

As to hyper expensive turntables, a enormous waste of time and money if your really interested in SOTA audio.
You'll never get a silk purse from a sow's ear.
But being of a lifetime machinist/mechanic bend. I would love to have one of those engineering works of art in my living room.
Hugely impressive towers of metal and acrylic parts looking like something from a alien world.
If only I had the cash.

 

[watchnerd]

But being of a lifetime machinist/mechanic bend. I would love to have one of those engineering works of art in my living room.
Hugely impressive towers of metal and acrylic parts looking like something from a alien world.

Not my video, but I also have a Michell Gyro SE like the one pictured. People love to watch the motion of the weights spinning:

I use a different tonearm on mine (Jelco SA-750D) with a Nagaoka MP-500 cart, which has a gold color that matches the weights.

 

[Sal1950]

What happens in the turntable market if Panasonic just released a player that is unbeatable specifications wise? Will people still pay more for less hifi?

Absolutely! Who wants some boring direct drive piece of Japanese crap at the front of their $1 million dollar Hi Fi altar?
Making it look like some disco record scratchers booth. GAG
The whole impressive visual bit is a major part of what the vinyl world is all about.

 

[svart-hvitt]

Don, you're probably right when you point out that the reproduction chain in vinyl playback is complex, which means it's difficult to forecast a meaningful SNR number.

Here's a good read on the theoretial DR of vinyl:
https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~jcgl/Scots_Guide/iandm/part12/page2.html

The author assumes that the LP disc is made of diamond and makes some calculations to estimate DR.

However, DR and SNR is not exactly the same thing...

When it comes to cartridges, it's been said that the Clearaudio Goldfinger Statement, at the ridiculous price of $15k, has an SNR of more than 100 dB:
http://www.needledoctor.com/Clearaudio-Goldfinger-Statement-Phono-Cartridge

I don't know where those figures come from and how they are measured, but this guy claims the same thing:

http://www.purevinylclub.com/key-advantages/

I know the 2 latest sources are dubious, and cartridge producers don't publish SNR data of their über expensive gear.

In other words, it seems like it may be possible to keep SNR at around 90 dB in vinyl playback, given the LP disc doesn't ruin an otherwise perfect audio chain...

 

[svart-hvitt]

Panasonic is not clear on what the 92 S/N ratio is. Was that through a cartridge or just the transport measured some other way?

Perhaps the best way to get to that number is to digitize it right at the cartridge!

One crazy thought outside of all of this is to take a detailed picture of every grove and then create sound from that! You would eliminate all tracking errors, wear, etc. You can also easily get rid of dirt and dust through signal processing. Pretty expensive process though but not sure any LP lover would want to hear sound that pure.

Amir, take a look at pages 41-47, specifially measurements of the SL-1200G on page 47:

https://smartaudio.pt/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Audiolab_M-DAC_HiFiNews_062016-HiCom.pdf

Maybe those SNR figures are comparable to the data from Panasonic? If so, a leap of 20 dB would be quite disturbing from competitors' point of view.

But you're right. We do not know exactly what Panasonic means by the 92 dB figure.

 

[svart-hvitt]

Yeh, I had heard of those. What I was suggesting was actually taking a picture of the grove and then using image processing to extract the grove information. There, a dust particle would be detected and compensated.

Just to see state of the art in converting images to sound, watch this:

Amir,

I believe vinyl playback needs to create its "limiatations" like those we have between male and female athletes and regulations on equipment used in sports. If you start to take pictures of the LP disc in order to extract the sound from the pictured information - with heavy DSP involved - you will start to ask the next question:

Why bother about the LP disc in the first place? Why not go back to the original digital file (from which most modern LP records are made) or the original tape (or a perfect digital copy of the tape)?

In other words: When you start to go down the rabbit hole of perfecting vinyl playback using modern, research-driven equipment - it's as if you realize that LP discs are a dead end. Still, I think there may be some thing missing in this analysis, and I think "aesthetics" is what is missing.

I believe spinning an LP on a platter connected to a needle and cartridge is a first rule on vinyl playback. After that, I am not so sure what are the "rules" of vinyl playback?

From my point of view, I think digitizing electric signals direct from the cartridge is fascinating. A state of the art AD converter like the Stagetec Truematch (https://www.stagetec.com/en/audio-routing/nexus/truematch.html) is interesting because it makes preamps obsolete (test in German: http://www.professional-audio.de/test-da-wandler-stage-tec-truematch-rmc/ ). In other words, if you take the electric signals from the cartridge directly into an AD converter - bypassing the phono preamp - you could (I guess...) process those tiny electric signals at the AD stage where a perfect RIAA (or the like) conversion takes place.

Amir, I believe your picture based vinyl playback is partly science fiction because you don't have products - only prototypes - available. What the SP-10R may tell us is that you now have readily available vinyl playback equipment that makes it possible to achieve SNR data that in practical listening is (almost) as good as digital playback.

The question is if "aesthetics" is worth the price of SP-10R and related equipment. I believe that is up to the enthusiast to decide, and not least his (very, very thick) wallet...

 

[Burning Sounds]

Not my video, but I also have a Michell Gyro SE like the one pictured. People love to watch the motion of the weights spinning:

I use a different tonearm on mine (Jelco SA-750D) with a Nagaoka MP-500 cart, which has a gold color that matches the weights.

I have the grandaddy to the Gyro - a Hydraulic Reference - more than 40 years old and still going strong. Michell are a wonderful engineering company and recently resurfaced the platter for £110 - a bargan at todays prices for turnables.

 

[Cosmik]

Why bother about the LP disc in the first place? Why not go back to the original digital file (from which most modern LP records are made) or the original tape (or a perfect digital copy of the tape)?

In other words: When you start to go down the rabbit hole of perfecting vinyl playback using modern, research-driven equipment - it's as if you realize that LP discs are a dead end.

I think you are illustrating quite nicely the 'axiomatic' audiophile viewpoint that vinyl is superior to digital. It comes as a revelation when a process of logic and rationality reveals the truth - as though you are discovering what Soylent Green is made of, or that we live in the Matrix.

Anyway, what you say above *never* enters my head, because I know it to be true without question. To me, LPs are like 78s and wax cylinders: interesting artefacts from the past but that is all.

 

[watchnerd]

To me, LPs are like 78s and wax cylinders: interesting artefacts from the past but that is all.

Artifacts of the past is exactly why I listen to them.

I only buy LPs of music that was recorded before the release of CDs, i.e. stuff that was originally released on LP, specifically jazz, within the narrow window of the mid 1950s to late 1970s.

If I can get enough of a good reel to reel tape collection going, I'll start doing similarly for that medium, too.

 

[watchnerd]

I have the grandaddy to the Gyro - a Hydraulic Reference - more than 40 years old and still going strong. Michell are a wonderful engineering company and recently resurfaced the platter for £110 - a bargan at todays prices for turnables.

That's a better Platterspeed result than a lot of modern TT's, especially Rega.

 

[svart-hvitt]

That's a better Platterspeed result than a lot of modern TT's, especially Rega.

Which is my point, really: That vinyl playback has been locked in a 1970s bubble where few or no real game changing improvements have taken place in the past 40 years.