The Truth About Vinyl Records

[Sal1950]

Nope. A home stereo setup, no matter how expensive, will not give an absolutely accurate reproduction of an orchestra's sound, if for no other reason than the listening room being different from that where the music was originally played & maybe recorded. My preference is to hear the orchestra live, but absent that, I have to rely on audio equipment in my room. I use the term "euphonic" to describe reproduced, not live sound. Live unamplified sound is what it is, warts & all, while reproduced sound is what I get through my equipment, and that can be all over the road in terms of S.Q. I might, for an example, use a bass control to tame the dreaded Telarc bass drum. I am not into SET amplifiers at all, as they are too inaccurate for my enjoyment. In the end, it's what tickles my nun-handles that matters.

We were talking about digital(accurate) vs vinyl(non-accurate) sources, to which you responded "Some prefer euphony over accuracy.".
Yes, live music "is what it is, warts & all" but it is also the reference "TAS". So I will ask again, if you found the orchestra's live sound also unpleasing, would you ask the conductor to somehow make it more "euphonic"?

I would never argue LP's are better than digital in general but there are examples where old LP's contain the most accurate (or preferred to some people) remaining recording of some music.

Preference will never be a supportable issue in the discussion of High Fidelity.

Finally we are talking about vinyl and outside of a few needle drops the streaming service copies will sound different.

And in the majority of cases superior, being devoid of all vinyls audible distortions and noise.

There's also the fiddly nature of the LP playback equipment. You get to try arms, cartridges, and turntables and countless alignment approaches to no end, if you enjoy fiddling with equipment.

I'd much rather be listening to MUSIC, from a SOTA digital source.

The other issue is worn out master tapes before digital transfer. The best example I have is "Are you Experienced" by Jimi Hendrix. If you listen to an original pressing LP compared to the latest and greatest "remaster" it is clear than a ton of HF information was lost from when the original LP was cut to when the tapes were transferred to digital.

Why not use a apples-apples compare?
The LP was recorded in late 1966, just 20 years before the first CD release in 1986, it has the DR of 12 exactly the same as any vinyl release I'm aware of. I don't believe the tape had deteriorated badly in that time.
And speaking of bad examples, JH extreme distortion from his Strat and Marshal twin stack makes it near impossible to judge any release as to SQ.

 

[levimax]

Why not use a apples-apples compare?
The LP was recorded in late 1966, just 20 years before the first CD release in 1986, it has the DR of 12 exactly the same as any vinyl release I'm aware of. I don't believe the tape had deteriorated badly in that time.
And speaking of bad examples, JH extreme distortion from his Strat and Marshal twin stack makes it near impossible to judge any release as to SQ.

I am hesitant to post this as my copy of the LP is in rough shape and the noise haters will be vindicated but it sounds to me like something bad happened to the master tapes between the pressing of the LP in 1966 and the 1986 CD (which is what my sample is taken from). Curious what others think. These have been level matched and hopefully edited to the same starting point so you can compare with or without ABX software.

Box

app.box.com

 

[Galliardist]

The other issue is worn out master tapes before digital transfer. The best example I have is "Are you Experienced" by Jimi Hendrix. If you listen to an original pressing LP compared to the latest and greatest "remaster" it is clear than a ton of HF information was lost from when the original LP was cut to when the tapes were transferred to digital. They obviously used lots of modern tricks to try to fix it but when information is lost it is gone.

First generation LPs are as prone to issues as any other release, especially first generation LPs from other countries than where the recording was made, and whether or not the source was the original or a copy master.

I had first generation releases from the UK and US of "Focus 3". The UK version was deliberately cut with a "heavy" sound that marred the drum solo which was a key feature of the album (cut in two on LP release as well). On the other hand, the US release would convince anybody that the album was recorded in a bathroom with the shower running!

I don't have them any more of course, so can't post any clips and you'll have to take this as an anecdote. But how do you know that some, or all, that "lost" HF information on "Are You Experienced" was ever actually on the master tape?
Let's see... so I can only find a vinyl rip of the US version on YouTube. It sounds... bright. Of course I have no idea of the quality of what's there, but it seemed clear enough.

What appear to be the original 16/44 transfers of the US and UK versions are on Qobuz. The US version is similarly bright, and worse than the vinyl rip in some ways. I listened to "Third Stone from the Sun" and it sounds like they tried and failed to recreate the US LP sound.

To my ears the UK version, which has far less high frequency information, sounds broadly correct - because the UK album is what I remember. But I suspect I've not listened to what was actually on the studio master with any of those three versions, to be honest.

 

[MattHooper]

Da Trufe:

Vinyl Records Outsell CDs for the First Time Since 1987

About 41 million vinyl albums sold last year, compared with 33 million CDs, according to an industry trade group.

www.wsj.com

 

[Axo1989]

Da Trufe:

Vinyl Records Outsell CDs for the First Time Since 1987

About 41 million vinyl albums sold last year, compared with 33 million CDs, according to an industry trade group.

www.wsj.com

US numbers? I didn't penetrate WSJ's paywall. Germany's numbers were different for 2022, as were UK:

In the wake of our coverage of CD vs. vinyl sales in the UK in 2022 where the former still outsells the latter 2 to 1, I went looking for more data. The most up-to-date figures from Germany’s music industry body, the BVMI, show that 25.1 million CDs were sold in Germany in 2021 but only 4.5 million vinyl LPs. That’s 5 to 1 in favour of the shiny silver disc.

per Darko back in Jan.

[Edit, bad link, looks like Darko doesn't let you do that, see below]

 

[Galliardist]

US numbers? I didn't penetrate WSJ's paywall. Germany's numbers were different for 2022, as were UK:



per Darko back in Jan.

The Darko link is 403, you have to go to the site to search. There, he challenges those US figures as well. And the latest news is that CD sales are rebounding in the US.

I'm suspicious of all these figures. Did US customers really only buy 8 million more CDs in a year than German buyers, for example? Are things like for like in these per country figures and are they really counting purchases by consumers, or discs pressed or sold wholesale? Amazon US supplies discs to other parts of the organisation, and there is a healthy international market in new LPs.

I guess that too many LP sales could lead to lower quality pressings if they outrun capacity: outside of that sales figures won't change the relevant sounds or our preferences one iota. Streaming is outrunning physical sales combined anyway. Throwing these numbers around is just a way of vinyl fans trying to say that their way is preferred by most audiophiles or something.

A recurring figure is also that around half the people who buy LPs don't have a turntable. As sales have grown I bet that figure has fallen.

The truth is that vinyl is just gaining a larger share by revenue (which I don't doubt given price differentials), making more money for sellers, but the market for any physical music media is falling off a cliff. Listeners to digital are just migrating to streaming as their main form of listening.

 

[Robert C]

The aim is high fidelity to the source recording. The manipulation needed to master an LP followed by the inaccuracies inherent in LP playback are in the spotlight.

Mm, not sure about that. All a high fidelity system can do is reproduce that which is fed in to it. The source recording doesn't come in to it, only the finished/mastered product. When it comes to vinyl reproduction, it's clear that different systems will have varying degrees of accuracy. So the aim of a high fidelity vinyl system should be to reproduce what's on the disc as accurately as possible. The greater the accuracy, the greater the fidelity!

 

[Cote Dazur]

Curious what others think

Thank you for taking the time.
Listened to both, to me, it is a great example of 2 perfectly adequate file. I can listen to both and enjoy the music.
Preferring one to the other, will be up to anyone, for a myriad of reasons, fueled by the different set up used to listen to them. Difference is irrelevant and totally expected.
Being able to listen to a 1966 recording on an original LP pressing with a perfectly adequate sound quality, has it charm but might not be for everyone. Does it make it better? in some ways I believe it does.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

Mm, not sure about that. All a high fidelity system can do is reproduce that which is fed in to it. The source recording doesn't come in to it, only the finished/mastered product. When it comes to vinyl reproduction, it's clear that different systems will have varying degrees of accuracy. So the aim of a high fidelity vinyl system should be to reproduce what's on the disc as accurately as possible. The greater the accuracy, the greater the fidelity!

I don't agree - throughout its history, the hobby has been about bringing the listener as close as possible to the final mix, signed off by the artist, sound engineer and producer. The medium has always been irrelevant.

Stuff gets in the way of this signed-off version. In literature, an "autograph" (the final hand-written version) can get messed up by the publisher/printer. I love Ulysses by James Joyce, but he had difficulty getting it published, so much so that the Shakespeare and Company 1922 edition has many errors.

I'm was fortunate in having access to some "back of the mixing desk" tapes. These are often considerably more dynamic than anything mastered for distribution. In classical music, the fact that the 2nd movement peaks 15dB below the 1st is not a problem (since audiences expect this), but in pop, jazz and rock, people seem to expect track 4 to be roughly the same as track 6, even if track 6 is acoustic without drums. Mastering engineers perform this normalisation before "cutting" the LP or CD. So, although CD is sufficient to exceed our rooms' SNR, rarely is this used (which also lets the much more limited LP off the hook!).

LP mastering is an incredible compromise. The task of handling dynamics, low frequency energy etc. is much tougher on LP, than on CD - I could release a track which has one minute of a 25Hz tone on the left channel and 83Hz on the right channel at -80dB followed by one minute of the same tones at 0dB. CD can easily cope with this, but LP cutters could not. There are whole sets of potential "music" easily encoded in CD which can simply not be mastered on LP.

LP playback is similarly compromised. Warps create huge energy peaks at very low frequencies. Because the LP is cut with a linear tracking head, any single-point bearing based arm introduces distortion at different points of the groove. Distortion increases towards the inner grooves, whilst high-frequencies drop off. As diamonds age the distortion increase.

So the steps Mixing-desk -> Mastering -> LP-Mastering -> LP-Playback is more complicated and intrinsically more limited than:
Mixing-desk -> Mastering -> CD-Playback. The latter gets us closer to the signed-off "autograph" of the artist.

I enjoy listening to my LPs, but they cannot get me as close to the "autograph" as digital solutions can

 

[Galliardist]

I am hesitant to post this as my copy of the LP is in rough shape and the noise haters will be vindicated but it sounds to me like something bad happened to the master tapes between the pressing of the LP in 1966 and the 1986 CD (which is what my sample is taken from). Curious what others think. These have been level matched and hopefully edited to the same starting point so you can compare with or without ABX software.

Box

app.box.com

Unfortuntately I can hear noise as you expect and so I know which sample is the vinyl. I won't say which it is. The other clip sounds a bit like the UK release on Qobuz. (which is actually marked as "Ex-US" though it has the UK track listing). I'd actually say the CD is superior - not by much, and apart from the noise: and also for my money more accurate. For example, listen to the cymbals on the right, towards the end of the clip, The strikes are cleaner. I'm listening from computer using a couple of Sennheiser models.

There is very little in it, but it's there.

Thanks for posting. Having level matched samples makes for a better comparison.

Edit - of course! Ex-US - except US

 

[levimax]

Unfortuntately I can hear noise as you expect and so I know which sample is the vinyl. I won't say which it is. The other clip sounds a bit like the UK release on Qobuz. (which is actually marked as "Ex-US" though it has the UK track listing). I'd actually say the CD is superior - not by much, and apart from the noise: and also for my money more accurate. For example, listen to the cymbals on the right, towards the end of the clip, The strikes are cleaner. I'm listening from computer using a couple of Sennheiser models.

There is very little in it, but it's there.

Thanks for posting. Having level matched samples makes for a better comparison.

Edit - of course! Ex-US - except US

What's interesting to me is that despite all the hand waving about new remasters and the like the original 1986 CD sounds pretty much identical to the latest and greatest version on the streaming services. Probably because the original 1966 recording was not great quality to being with so not much to do with it.

One thing I find, which may which may explain why some (especially older people) prefer the original LP mastering (whether or not it is closer or further from the performance / master tape), is familiarity. Growing up I listened to AM and then FM radio all the time and the popular music of the day was played over and over and that sound becomes burned into your brain. I see first hand the limitations for short term audio memory when I play around with ABX'ing various mastering's but "long term" audio memory seems like a different animal and many times modern remasters don't sound "right" to me but the old LP versions do.

 

[Axo1989]

The Darko link is 403, you have to go to the site to search. There, he challenges those US figures as well. And the latest news is that CD sales are rebounding in the US.

Oh sh*t sorry didn't think to test the link. I forgot about his idiosyncratic website content control (I'd likely do the same thing but that's another issue).

I didn't see final 2022 US figures there, the article I quoted—and tried to link—that included the German numbers also quoted 2021 for US along with H1 2022, which had vinyl leading CD at that stage:

In the USA, the RIAA’s EoY report for 2021 reveals a much closer call between these two physical formats: 39.7 million vinyl LPs vs. 46.6 million CDs. However, it could be closer still by year’s end with the RIAA’s report for the first half of 2022 showing vinyl pipping CDs to the post – 21.8 million vs 17.7 million units shifted. It will be interesting to see where those EoY sales figures land once Black Friday and Christmas have been factored in.

Fyi that article is currently the second item on the second page of his website/blog (I've not used that sites search). I though that speculation was superseded by the numbers @MattHooper's link provided so didn't quote it. The item on UK sales is prior to that.

I'm suspicious of all these figures. Did US customers really only buy 8 million more CDs in a year than German buyers, for example? Are things like for like in these per country figures and are they really counting purchases by consumers, or discs pressed or sold wholesale? Amazon US supplies discs to other parts of the organisation, and there is a healthy international market in new LPs.

I guess that too many LP sales could lead to lower quality pressings if they outrun capacity: outside of that sales figures won't change the relevant sounds or our preferences one iota. Streaming is outrunning physical sales combined anyway. Throwing these numbers around is just a way of vinyl fans trying to say that their way is preferred by most audiophiles or something.

A recurring figure is also that around half the people who buy LPs don't have a turntable. As sales have grown I bet that figure has fallen.

The truth is that vinyl is just gaining a larger share by revenue (which I don't doubt given price differentials), making more money for sellers, but the market for any physical music media is falling off a cliff. Listeners to digital are just migrating to streaming as their main form of listening.

I can't address those complexities and agree you'd have to do a thorough analysis. Darko did make the point that some claims for vinyl leading were dollars not units.

The bit about people without turntables is amusing, I've almost bought some pre-release/limited edition vinyl merch myself, until the fact that I also have no turntable sinks in.

 

[krabapple]

Why bother digitising and labelling all the tracks when someone has done it for you?
View attachment 270537

er....because most of the time those haven't been sourced from vinyl...and so won't have the vinyl 'sound'.....which is what vinylphiles want.

Was this really unclear in what I wrote?

 

[krabapple]

Da Trufe:

Vinyl Records Outsell CDs for the First Time Since 1987

About 41 million vinyl albums sold last year, compared with 33 million CDs, according to an industry trade group.

www.wsj.com

The Whole Truf is that physical media are a minority niche of music sales, period, and have been for some years now.

 

[VQR]

Oh indeed? Completely incorrect. You are so far from what is true, it is not even worth discussion. Consider how sound is made, then consider modification of said sound- then compare it to the premise.

TIL that distortions from recording and playback are the same as the timbre of live recorded music.

I get where you're trying to go philosophically, but you're equating the timbre made by a valve amplified guitar with the distortion of an amp or mic. If the goal is minimal distortion from live music, vinyl and tube playback are inherently a technically inferior choice.

I'm not saying an LP master can't be subjectively better for taste than a digital master. I do often for older albums like some vintage pressings over digital rereleases. All things being equal, a digital file with modern SOTA equipment will be able to outperform an LP.

 

[egellings]

Mm, not sure about that. All a high fidelity system can do is reproduce that which is fed in to it. The source recording doesn't come in to it, only the finished/mastered product. When it comes to vinyl reproduction, it's clear that different systems will have varying degrees of accuracy. So the aim of a high fidelity vinyl system should be to reproduce what's on the disc as accurately as possible. The greater the accuracy, the greater the fidelity!

Agree, even if what's on the master is not high fidelity. Just accurately reproduce it, warts & all.

 

[MattHooper]

The Whole Truf is that physical media are a minority niche of music sales, period, and have been for some years now.

That's obvious.

Though vinyl is a niche that has gained a pretty large profile among the public, and among musicians ;-)

It's not for nothing that most major artists (and many minor artists) now seek to release their music on vinyl. That's a pretty profound change from the days when vinyl was thought dead.

And there isn't an audiophile forum that doesn't discuss vinyl. Even ASR...of all places!...has seen the interest is high enough to have a subforum dedicated to vinyl playback!

At least we've finally moved beyond calling it a "fad" ;-)

 

[krabapple]

It's not for nothing, but it's not about objective high fidelity either.

A lot of it is about 'feels'.

 

[MattHooper]

Different point.

(And in any case, in a sense, all purchases are motivated by "feels"...)

 

[Axo1989]

... I could release a track which has one minute of a 25Hz tone on the left channel and 83Hz on the right channel at -80dB followed by one minute of the same tones at 0dB. CD can easily cope with this, but LP cutters could not. ...

Poppy: Music To Scream To

MaxwellsEq: hold my beer