The Observer view on the vinyl revival: LPs are the antidote to a frenetic digital world

[Justdafactsmaam]

I’m not going to argue law or first amendment rights. But I will argue with this.

“Again, from a legal perspective, you couldn't even prove that the statement: "the sound of digital music, as every vinyl fan knows, is not, and never will be, half so rich and warm as the sound of an LP, and playing it does not tend to encourage, as spinning a record does, truly serious listening" to be either a lie, or factually incorrect, at least in the US.”

It’s easy to demonstrate the “opinion” is factually incorrect by demonstrating that digital media is capable of copying any signal from vinyl without any audible coloration. So digital copy of vinyl in fact WILL be as rich and warm as the sound of any LP from which a digital copy is made. Sound is an objective quantity.

Just because something is explicitly or implicitly an opinion does not make it unfalsifiable. If I say I like cheese that is an unfalsifiable opinion. If I say in my opinion the moon is made of cheese that is a falsifiable opinion.

 

[benanders]

From the article:

“But this isn’t only about music. LPs are objects. They offer a haptic experience as well as an aural one”

This is not a throw-away line; people are often influenced by multiple stimuli regarding what they like, most of which are not fully conscious or rational.

After recently re-reading “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, I am not surprised by the idea that a haptic experience could influence an aural one.

…

Visual as well. Physical media offers a connection to the music that digital media lacks.

Not to mention the collectibility fixation things like “limited #’ed pressings,” various gatefold editions and NRD colorations (pun!) further fan.

#interaction_effects towards affinity that cannot be teased apart.
Can definitely make stuff sound better. IF produced from the same master, I still cannot imagine how it would increase fidelity

 

[MattHooper]

Editorial does not give one license to print lies. But there is more to a lie than being factually incorrect. It requires willful intent to deceive. Do you think that is the case here?

The new, reflexive tendency to moralize everything, and characterize incorrect statements as "lies" is tiresome. I blame the pernicious influence of social media, among other things, for this tendency to black/white thinking, conflict coddling and the leap to condemning people's character.

It is far more probable that the author simply was incorrect, under a false belief, or naive and repeating what he/she has heard from vinyl enthusiasts. There's no reason to "lie" about it. Yeesh.

 

[Anton D]

Wow, I popped into "LPs are the antidote to a frenetic digital world" and landed in the Vinyl Renaissance thread!

No rest for the antivinyl Onans, I see.

They sound like a.......wait for it.....broken record!

​

 

[krabapple]

I suggest you contact Professor Edgar Choueiri, Director of Princeton's Electric Propulsion and Plasma Dynamics Laboratory (EPPDyL) and the 3D Audio and Applied Acoustics (3D3A) Lab. He is tenured Full Professor in the Applied Physics Group at the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, and associated faculty at the Astrophysical Sciences Department/Program in Plasma Physics at Princeton University. I think he and his team at Princeton who have done the actual measurements can better educate you on the subject than I can. Let me know if you need his email? I’ll happily post it for you.

BACCH isn't news to me. It's yet another scheme for cancelling systemic crosstalk errors at the listener's ears ('interaural' errors)-- the inevitable in-room result of being able to hear, e.g., some output of the right speaker with the left ear in any 'conventional' home audio system setup. I've been following recent posts about it on Archimago's site.

It is not particularly about the crosstalk specs of a piece of hardware: the measured interchannel signal leakage. Nor so much about preferring vinyl to digital, which is the topic of this thread. Though I've already glanced on the fact that even the best vinyl manufacture and playback adds its own dollop of crosstalk to the general melee, which digital media and playback do not...when I quipped : "groove noise, crosstalk, imperfect pitch stability, add 'em all. Vinylphiles love 'em."

These are points one could have addressed when asked in what sense and reasons why your crosstalk numbers pertain to the discussion.

That would have helped make sense of your oblique claim that "Cross talk should be quite popular on ASR" followed by crosstalk numbers. Instead you posted authority credential spew -- though omitting that Dr. Choueri is also president of the company selling BACCH. Perhaps it was really your way of expressing a grudge against Floyd Toole for not being as impressed by Dr. Choueiri's self-promotion as you are, though he allowed that BACCH could work well for its purpose: envelopment at a single listening position using a stereo source and playback. He prefers multichannel. No emails necessary. The exchange between them is right there on that ASR thread for us to read.

 

[krabapple]

It's an "opinion" by one person. They have the absolute license to print any opinion they wish, whether you agree with it or not, or even consider that one line to be "lies." That's sort of a fundamental we have in the US, and the UK (but not as protected in the UK as much as the US). That's what the Opinion/Editorial section of a newspaper is for.

Of course true.

It's just, like, some Guardian twat's opinion, man. (or maybe more than one Guardian twat, the lack of byline make it unclear)

(I don't mean to indict the Guardian particularly. If it was in the Daily Mail, it would have been 'some Daily Mail twat'.)

 

[Galliardist]

It's an "opinion" by one person. They have the absolute license to print any opinion they wish, whether you agree with it or not, or even consider that one line to be "lies." That's sort of a fundamental we have in the US, and the UK (but not as protected in the UK as much as the US). That's what the Opinion/Editorial section of a newspaper is for.

No: it’s an editorial, and we know that because it is unsigned, and clearly marked “Editorial”.

As such, it has been deliberated on at the most senior levels and is the “official” view of the Observer, just as much as any editorial comment on the economy or international diplomacy.

They probably saw it as a more lighthearted piece to end the year, and more about digital lifestyle than audio - but there’s always someone who can get upset about an offhand remark in such a piece.

If it was just an opinion piece with a name attached, I wouldn’t be concerned. Editorial should be written more wisely, whatever the subject. It may have been an attempt at wit that didn’t come across.

 

[Anton D]

No: it’s an editorial, and we know that because it is unsigned, and clearly marked “Editorial”.

As such, it has been deliberated on at the most senior levels and is the “official” view of the Observer, just as much as any editorial comment on the economy or international diplomacy.

They probably saw it as a more lighthearted piece to end the year, and more about digital lifestyle than audio - but there’s always someone who can get upset about an offhand remark in such a piece.

If it was just an opinion piece with a name attached, I wouldn’t be concerned. Editorial should be written more wisely, whatever the subject. It may have been an attempt at wit that didn’t come across.

LOL, The Guardian has an official audio position!

It's been deliberated on most senior level.

"If it was just an opinion piece with a name attached, I wouldn’t be concerned."

That might make you the only person 'concerned' by this. I hope you are not too concerned! Still simply a puff piece.

 

[Deleted member 21114]

If it was in the Daily Mail, it would have been 'some Daily Mail twat'.

Tautology.

 

[Burning Sounds]

I'll come clean - long time Guardian and Observer subscriber here - I even have the "tofu eating" T-shirt to prove it and I'm always scraping those pesky croissant crumbs off the phone screen.

Anyway, it's not called the Grauniad for nothing - and I think there's emojis missing in that sentence that's causing all the fuss.

This is how it should have read - ""the sound of digital music, as every vinyl fan knows , is not, and never will be, half so rich and warm as the sound of an LP, and playing it does not tend to encourage, as spinning a record does, truly serious listening"

 

[Travis]

I’m not going to argue law or first amendment rights. But I will argue with this.

“Again, from a legal perspective, you couldn't even prove that the statement: "the sound of digital music, as every vinyl fan knows, is not, and never will be, half so rich and warm as the sound of an LP, and playing it does not tend to encourage, as spinning a record does, truly serious listening" to be either a lie, or factually incorrect, at least in the US.”

It’s easy to demonstrate the “opinion” is factually incorrect by demonstrating that digital media is capable of copying any signal from vinyl without any audible coloration. So digital copy of vinyl in fact WILL be as rich and warm as the sound of any LP from which a digital copy is made. Sound is an objective quantity.

Just because something is explicitly or implicitly an opinion does not make it unfalsifiable. If I say I like cheese that is an unfalsifiable opinion. If I say in my opinion the moon is made of cheese that is a falsifiable opinion.

I agree it f you try and couch something as an “opinion” that is really factual, you can disprove that statement.


But where you will fail on this is trying to get that statement to be purely factual in the context it’s given.

The statement, in context, isn’t about “sound”, the statement is about perception of sound (warm) and that always a subjective quantity.

This is how it would work in court, under defamation law: Prove that digital doesn’t sound “half as warm” as vinyl to him. That what you are required to prove. And you are going to do that by bringing in an electrical engineer (who stares at his feet?) who brings in charts and graphs and everything else to prove “a digital copy of vinyl can be made without coloration.” (Digital copy of vinyl? Is that really what you meant? You copy the vinyl?). The defense lawyer says, I just have one question for you: can you say to a reasonable degree of engineering certainty what my clients perception of the signal is? Answer: well no I can’t, that’s beyond my expertise.” That’s why the courts have held that a subjective statement about the quality of art isn’t actionable.

The alternative is that forums like this (reviews with subjective commentary about speakers for example) couldn’t exist.

 

[kemmler3D]

It’s easy to demonstrate the “opinion” is factually incorrect by demonstrating that digital media is capable of copying any signal from vinyl without any audible coloration. So digital copy of vinyl in fact WILL be as rich and warm as the sound of any LP from which a digital copy is made. Sound is an objective quantity.

"rich", "warm", and "serious" are not objective quantities or qualities and no judge would treat them as such - unless there was a TON of evidence that consumers generally understand those words to have a fairly specific, well-known quantitative meaning. Which there isn't. We complain about that on this forum all the time.

If I say in my opinion the moon is made of cheese that is a falsifiable opinion.

Not really, you're just misclassifying a factual statement as opinion in that case. Saying something is "just my opinion" doesn't make it so.

I think true opinions need to be non-falsifiable value judgments. We also use the word opinion as you did, to mean factual statements about personal assessments of what is probable, but I don't know if that counts in this type of nitpicking battle.

 

[Travis]

No: it’s an editorial, and we know that because it is unsigned, and clearly marked “Editorial”.

As such, it has been deliberated on at the most senior levels and is the “official” view of the Observer, just as much as any editorial comment on the economy or international diplomacy.

They probably saw it as a more lighthearted piece to end the year, and more about digital lifestyle than audio - but there’s always someone who can get upset about an offhand remark in such a piece.

If it was just an opinion piece with a name attached, I wouldn’t be concerned. Editorial should be written more wisely, whatever the subject. It may have been an attempt at wit that didn’t come across.

I posted the article in my post, It was clearly marked "opinion" and "editorial", however, the Courts apply the same ultra-high level of protection to "editorials" as they do opinion pieces. I have never had a first amendment case dealing with something labled as both, so I don't know whether there is a distinction with a difference in such a case.

I didn't realize that they really love their vinyl at the Guardian. They have a "Vinyl" section. This recent "Opinion" piece, and by a (gasp) female. She finds analog music to be "beautiful", Oh the humanity.

From the article, linked below:

We put on the Dylan album.

And from the start, I was charmed. I enjoyed the sensory experiences of handling the double-album cover, placing the disc on the spindle, watching it revolve, and listening as the familiar sound of Blowin’ in the Wind flowed from the two speakers set on the floor.

The music sank into my bones in a way that I hadn’t experienced in years

Normally so inseparable from my devices, I began to find it a relief to be non-digital for a little while.

And I listened differently – with more depth and contemplation – somehow. The music sank into my bones in a way that I hadn’t experienced in years.

Part of that, perhaps, was the repetition: without a collection, I had to go deep instead of wide. Dylan’s query – “How many times?” – turned out to be an apt question.

I never thought I’d listen to vinyl records again. Now I am – and I love it | Margaret Sullivan

When my children gifted me a turntable last year, I was dubious. But I’ve since rediscovered the beauty of analog music

www.theguardian.com

Clearly she is lying about music sinking "nto her bones." That can easily be disproven.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

BACCH isn't news to me. It's yet another scheme for cancelling systemic crosstalk errors at the listener's ears ('interaural' errors)-- the inevitable in-room result of being able to hear, e.g., some output of the right speaker with the left ear in any 'conventional' home audio system setup. I've been following recent posts about it on Archimago's site.

It is not particularly about the crosstalk specs of a piece of hardware: the measured interchannel signal leakage. Nor so much about preferring vinyl to digital, which is the topic of this thread. Though I've already glanced on the fact that even the best vinyl manufacture and playback adds its own dollop of crosstalk to the general melee, which digital media and playback do not...when I quipped : "groove noise, crosstalk, imperfect pitch stability, add 'em all. Vinylphiles love 'em."

These are points one could have addressed when asked in what sense and reasons why your crosstalk numbers pertain to the discussion.

That would have helped make sense of your oblique claim that "Cross talk should be quite popular on ASR" followed by crosstalk numbers. Instead you posted authority credential spew -- though omitting that Dr. Choueri is also president of the company selling BACCH. Perhaps it was really your way of expressing a grudge against Floyd Toole for not being as impressed by Dr. Choueiri's self-promotion as you are, though he allowed that BACCH could work well for its purpose: envelopment at a single listening position using a stereo source and playback. He prefers multichannel. No emails necessary. The exchange between them is right there on that ASR thread for us to read.

Your quip “groove noise, crosstalk, imperfect pitch stability, add ‘em all. Vinylphiles love ‘em” has no foundation or support by any studies, surveys or any other verifiable information. As such it was quite worthy of my quip “Cross talk should be quite popular on ASR”

While I side with other experts such as James D Johnston and Ethan Winer over Dr. Toole on the subject of early room reflections I hold no grudge against Dr. Toole. I do have an opinion or two about the small tribe of nearly cult like followers he has.

As for Dr. Choueiri being president of the company you seem to have failed to point out Dr. Toole’s business interests in HK.

If you really want to have an honest discussion about why vinylphiles like the sound of vinyl it should at least begin with an honest look at their claims and some actual listening tests to investigate those claims. Your quip is a non starter for any such conversation as it is really nothing more than a tribalistic ad hominem argument with zero objective support. James D Johnston has, in the past, discussed a few measurable distortions inherent in vinyl and posed very plausible reasons why those specific distortions might be preferred by certain listeners. *That* list of distortions would be worthy of an honest discussion and their psychoacoustic effects as well.

 

[Galliardist]

LOL, The Guardian has an official audio position!

It's been deliberated on most senior level.

"If it was just an opinion piece with a name attached, I wouldn’t be concerned."

That might make you the only person 'concerned' by this. I hope you are not too concerned! Still simply a puff piece.

Well when I say “deliberated”,I probably mean “glanced at by the editor”.

 

[Galliardist]

I posted the article in my post, It was clearly marked "opinion" and "editorial", however, the Courts apply the same ultra-high level of protection to "editorials" as they do opinion pieces. I have never had a first amendment case dealing with something labled as both, so I don't know whether there is a distinction with a difference in such a case.

View attachment 339546
I didn't realize that they really love their vinyl at the Guardian. They have a "Vinyl" section. This recent "Opinion" piece, and by a (gasp) female. She finds analog music to be "beautiful", Oh the humanity.

From the article, linked below:

View attachment 339549

We put on the Dylan album.

And from the start, I was charmed. I enjoyed the sensory experiences of handling the double-album cover, placing the disc on the spindle, watching it revolve, and listening as the familiar sound of Blowin’ in the Wind flowed from the two speakers set on the floor.


Normally so inseparable from my devices, I began to find it a relief to be non-digital for a little while.

And I listened differently – with more depth and contemplation – somehow. The music sank into my bones in a way that I hadn’t experienced in years.

Part of that, perhaps, was the repetition: without a collection, I had to go deep instead of wide. Dylan’s query – “How many times?” – turned out to be an apt question.

I never thought I’d listen to vinyl records again. Now I am – and I love it | Margaret Sullivan

When my children gifted me a turntable last year, I was dubious. But I’ve since rediscovered the beauty of analog music

www.theguardian.com

Clearly she is lying about music sinking "nto her bones." That can easily be disproven.

The editorial is the opinion of the publication.

I do miss the days when news and opinion were actually different.

I see nothing wrong with the content of this article except as a description of another person who can’t, in a way, cope with digital delivery, or so it reads.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

"rich", "warm", and "serious" are not objective quantities or qualities and no judge would treat them as such - unless there was a TON of evidence that consumers generally understand those words to have a fairly specific, well-known quantitative meaning. Which there isn't. We complain about that on this forum all the time.


Not really, you're just misclassifying a factual statement as opinion in that case. Saying something is "just my opinion" doesn't make it so.

I think true opinions need to be non-falsifiable value judgments. We also use the word opinion as you did, to mean factual statements about personal assessments of what is probable, but I don't know if that counts in this type of nitpicking battle.

You are taking “warm” and “rich” out of context. I don’t agree that they are non quantifiable qualities of sound but even if I concede that point you still took out the noun, “sound.” The assertion was that the *sound* of vinyl could not be matched by digital. Doesn’t matter what subjective descriptive language is used the sound itself is an objective quantity and by virtue of the fact that the sound of vinyl can be perfectly perceptually matched by a digital copy means that objectively speaking any qualities of vinyl sound can be matched by digital copies. So the subjective qualities ascribed to vinyl are irrelevant. The assertion that digital can’t match *any* qualities of *sound* is not only falsifiable but has been falsified.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

I agree it f you try and couch something as an “opinion” that is really factual, you can disprove that statement.


But where you will fail on this is trying to get that statement to be purely factual in the context it’s given.

The statement, in context, isn’t about “sound”, the statement is about perception of sound (warm) and that always a subjective quantity.

This is how it would work in court, under defamation law: Prove that digital doesn’t sound “half as warm” as vinyl to him. That what you are required to prove. And you are going to do that by bringing in an electrical engineer (who stares at his feet?) who brings in charts and graphs and everything else to prove “a digital copy of vinyl can be made without coloration.” (Digital copy of vinyl? Is that really what you meant? You copy the vinyl?). The defense lawyer says, I just have one question for you: can you say to a reasonable degree of engineering certainty what my clients perception of the signal is? Answer: well no I can’t, that’s beyond my expertise.” That’s why the courts have held that a subjective statement about the quality of art isn’t actionable.

The alternative is that forums like this (reviews with subjective commentary about speakers for example) couldn’t exist.

Here is what was actually said.

“But the sound of digital music, as every vinyl fan knows, is not, and never will be, half so rich and warm as the sound of an LP”

It clearly is about the actual sound. And it’s a myth built on a long history objective falsifiable claims about non existent inabilities of digital media to accurately capture aspects of the original source signal that only analog and vinyl can capture.

And if we really want to get right down to it, as an actual fan of vinyl I actually do know that digital copies from vinyl are every bit as rich and warm as the original signal from vinyl playback. So his attempt to speak for all “vinyl fans” fails on its face.

 

[Travis]

Here is what was actually said.

“But the sound of digital music, as every vinyl fan knows, is not, and never will be, half so rich and warm as the sound of an LP”

It clearly is about the actual sound. And it’s a myth built on a long history objective falsifiable claims about non existent inabilities of digital media to accurately capture aspects of the original source signal that only analog and vinyl can capture.

And if we really want to get right down to it, as an actual fan of vinyl I actually do know that digital copies from vinyl are every bit as rich and warm as the original signal from vinyl playback. So his attempt to speak for all “vinyl fans” fails on its face.

It's about perception. "Rich" and "warm". Those are subjective terms. As the courts would say "any reasonable person reading that would understand them to be 'subjective'".

However, I think you have a shot at the lady who says vinyl sounds "beautiful" and she can feel it down to her bones.

 

[kemmler3D]

“But the sound of digital music, as every vinyl fan knows, is not, and never will be, half so rich and warm as the sound of an LP”

My point is basically orthogonal to whether or not digital can take on all the qualities of vinyl sound. The point is just that you can't quantify rich or warm, so you can't quantify anything you'd need to quantify to prove a lie in court.

Of course we know this is a BS statement and fundamentally wrong, but I think it's also not really meant to be taken literally. It's as if they said nobody could ever be so round and jolly as Santa Claus.

On the other hand I agree it's a troublesome statement because it's just another instance of the mainstream press repeating audiophile nonsense. But I don't think it's worth losing sleep over.