I'll be honest, I just love vinyl. I have an absolutely massive digital collection (several GB's of FLAC files) and only about 200 records but I prefer to listen to my records over my digital collection the vast majority of the time. I don't care about the surface noise or the lack of fidelity, as soon as I drop the needle down I forget about all the negatives and just enioy the music. I also love the ritual and collecting aspect as well.
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The Vinyl Frontier
- Thread starter curiouspeter
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Rubbersoul2
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A nineteenth century daguerreotype has resolution in order of gigapixels and dynamic range not achievable by today's digital cameras .
Never seen that being asserted before. Could you post a reference please?
I know the subsequent chemical film is limited by grain size and its dynamic range is partially saved by non-linearity - I have been a photographer for 60 years - but don't have any data on daguerrotypes.
Mind you the resolution and contrast of contemporary lenses wasn't that good in the same way that lenses and camera shake are the limiting resolution factor now, not digital sensors.
Google is yours friend, just the firsts results
Daguerreotype View of Cincinnati
The history of Porter and Fontayne's monumental 1848 8-plate panorama of Cincinnat
Cincinnati Daguerreotype :: University of Rochester
www.rochester.edu
Daguerreotype - Wikipedia
The-formation-of-chlorine-induced-alterations-in-daguerreotype-image-particles-A-high-resolution-SEM-EDS-study.pdf
"Daguerreotypes amazed 19th century viewers as they do today with their rendering of portraits, landscapes, and other scenes, all with exquisite resolution and dynamic range"
"The image consists of particles of a silver-mercury amalgam upon this reflective surface. Their submicron size ensures a very high optical resolution."
From the Cover: PNAS Plus: Nineteenth-century nanotechnology: The plasmonic properties of daguerreotypes
Daguerreotypes, among the earliest photographs of the 19th century, owe their incredible optical properties, image resolution, and dynamic range to light scattering produced by metallic nanostructures on their surface. Here we provide a detailed experimental ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
"Daguerreotypes, among the earliest photographs of the 19th century, owe their incredible optical properties, image resolution, and dynamic range to light scattering produced by metallic nanostructures on their surface."
And you can find many others publications if you want to know better.
Thanks, I'm a Google free zone for reasons I won't go into.Google is yours friend, just the firsts results
"To capture all of the detail present in the original image the Eastman conservators photographed more than 6300 1040 × 1344 pixel tiles (7.07 GB). The result showed the astonishing resolution of the daguerreotypes "Daguerreotype View of Cincinnati
The history of Porter and Fontayne's monumental 1848 8-plate panorama of Cincinnatwww.codex99.com
"Owned by the Cincinnati Public Library, it is one of the most astounding examples of daguerreotype (the first known photographic method) in existence today. The clarity of each of its eight copper panels is equivalent to a 140,000-megapixel digital image, thousands of times better than high-end commercially available digital cameras today.! "Cincinnati Daguerreotype :: University of Rochester
www.rochester.edu
"A well-exposed and sharp large-format daguerreotype is able to faithfully record fine detail at a resolution that today's digital cameras are not able to match."Daguerreotype - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
The-formation-of-chlorine-induced-alterations-in-daguerreotype-image-particles-A-high-resolution-SEM-EDS-study.pdf
"Daguerreotypes amazed 19th century viewers as they do today with their rendering of portraits, landscapes, and other scenes, all with exquisite resolution and dynamic range"
"The image consists of particles of a silver-mercury amalgam upon this reflective surface. Their submicron size ensures a very high optical resolution."
From the Cover: PNAS Plus: Nineteenth-century nanotechnology: The plasmonic properties of daguerreotypes
Daguerreotypes, among the earliest photographs of the 19th century, owe their incredible optical properties, image resolution, and dynamic range to light scattering produced by metallic nanostructures on their surface. Here we provide a detailed experimental ...
"Daguerreotypes, among the earliest photographs of the 19th century, owe their incredible optical properties, image resolution, and dynamic range to light scattering produced by metallic nanostructures on their surface."
And you can find many others publications if you want to know better.
A friend of mine who is a silversmith still makes daguerrotypes. Large format chemistry is always impressive!
I hadn't noticed exceptional resolution (lens limited) or dynamic range (usually medium limited) I suppose being on polished silver rather than paper is a big boost in contrast.
I will Have to investigate.
I'm skeptic as well. I cannot imagine that lenses were that good in the early time of photography.
For most people today their idea of a good digital camera is their latest smart phone and it's dirty, greasy lens. LOL
They were not very good, no coatings so very prone to flare. To reduce this less well corrected constructions with fewer air/glass surfaces in the optical path were designed since poor contrast was considered by many to be worse than poor resolution.
On small format (ie 35mm lenses) which I used to study extensively the "high speed" Zeiss Sonnar design and its copies had fewer glass/air surfaces, higher contrast but lower resolution than the Planar types of the same aperture.
Now with effective surface coatings the problem is much reduced and the most amazingly complex zoom lenses with a gazillion elements are often pretty good.
OTOH a daguerrotype is a unique image so no resolution reducing enlargement but the exposure time is also very long so tripod and environmental conditions like wind will have an influence on the sharpness of the result.
Hats of to the early photographers for their immense skill and the results they got. Today's cameras have a far higher capability than most photographers using them
With my RCM with aspiration, new vinyl is practically silence. Used records with some click from time to time, nothing annoying.
Zero rumble.
And with a microline stylus, I can't hear IGD. Nothing.
I really enjoy vinyl, I don't hear any SQ difference with CDs, only better or poorer mastering.
So, I read and understand the measurements, but maybe the differences are eaten by speakers / acoustics and what you know theoretically can be much different in reality. I don't know ... and also I don't know how much it cares for me. I really hear very good sound from vinyl.
Zero rumble.
And with a microline stylus, I can't hear IGD. Nothing.
I really enjoy vinyl, I don't hear any SQ difference with CDs, only better or poorer mastering.
So, I read and understand the measurements, but maybe the differences are eaten by speakers / acoustics and what you know theoretically can be much different in reality. I don't know ... and also I don't know how much it cares for me. I really hear very good sound from vinyl.
Compared to what, a 78 shellac or a Edison cylinder? LOL
Well, for many people the CD is like a 78 shellac, a totally anachronistic format ... they only use streaming. LOL.
More funny ... LPs sells more than CDs in 2020. To die for ... isn't?.
It is certainly possible to get what I personally consider very good sound from vinyl, which confirms, IMHO, that our ears, or to be more accurate, our recorded music needs neither the low distortion nor wide dynamic range of even 16-bit digital.
OTOH to achieve this good SQ the prices are truly absurd particularly for the hardware because it has become a fashion business and as such its exponents don't seem to care about how much they are being charged.
I used to buy an LP a week in the late '60s and early 70s and they cost £1.50 full price with some sale discs as low as £0.38. This equates to around £30 an LP today, so not far from what one pays.
When I worked for Garrard a 401 was £72 iirc and Linn LP12 started at a similar price at launch. A SME 3009-Improved arm was £24
Very little, if anything, has been learned about what is needed to play LPs well since the papers I read back then, particularly the Bruel and Kjaer work, and the only substantial technical improvement has been improved stylus profiles. A top quality deck, arm and cartridge today, to stay in proportion, shouldn't be more than around £2500.
The price charged for the hardware and the pseudo technical bollox used to justify it to people who don't understand proves it to be mainly a very successful fashion business today.
I am lucky enough to have loads of LPs and 4 top quality (IME) record players but starting out today buying record players and records is an expensive way to enjoy music, but a personal choice.
Getting involved in "high end" is an invitation to be profoundly ripped off. IME and IMO.
You posted an experienced and real opinion, I respect that.
I listen to vinyl since 70s, and let me agree with you. I don't listen to records because is the cheaper way ... in that argument streaming is more than convenient and cheaper. I listen to records because the experience with the music is much more profound and enjoyable ... and ... the SQ is really good. I don't agree with the basic opinion on "vinyl sounds like crap".
However, also let me say that today you can have a MC cartridge with boron cantilever and microline stylus for a price you cannot ever dream in 80s. And it sounds amazing.
Finally, I don't want to "convince" anyone (I don't care about it), only try to say that vinyl (with determinated conditions) can sound very, very good. Convenience, price, etc is other aspect, most important for many, and it's ok, but we need to separate the concepts.
IME the sound is almost entirely dependant on the recording.
I have LPs which sound fabulous and others which are poor.
I also have CDs which sound fabulous and others that are poor.
Getting hung up on sound quality of the medium is pointless IMO, 44/16 is definitely potentially better than LP in distortion, even frequency response and SNR but if the recording is poor, and many are, that is of zero consequence.
I think THAT is a science and experienced opinion. I can't agree more with you.
If we see only one aspect of a complex problem, we can get a generalization as a truth. Sound is not based only on the technical characteristics of the medium.
If you compare a source with other source based on measurements, it's perfect, you can have a "better" source. But if you want the better sound in your home ... you need to do an acoustic measurement of the sound in your chair. That's the final truth, your ears are analog, you hear the acoustic waves in your room with the SNR of the speakers, room imperfections, etc etc.
Also don't forget that science and placebo works ... your mental prejudice will try to show you "but it's a record, it must sound bad".
In my system (I already said this) records works very good ... But also I listened to very expensive analog / digital systems when records are literally jaw dropping. It's not a measurements based opinion, but with other really inferior sources (192khz MP3 as an example) the difference is huge and unquestioned by any parameter in the same system
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There is endless incredible music that isn’t available digitally readily purchasable on Discogs alone for next to nothing. I don’t know why this gets lost in these conversations, the vinyl resurgence wasn’t spearheaded by aesthetics, nostalgia or sound quality it was about collectors wanting the best quality / only available format of rare music. There is the added bonus of pride of ownership and the visual appeal of large format art, similar to how a library of books you have read is more satisfying than a kindle.
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When you have a face made for radio, like mine, that's what you want when taking your photo.
Megapixels aren't your friend; and the more dirt and grease on the lens, the better.
Actually they are "digital" in the way they work, ie they do not work in a continuous way in frequency but have discreet hairs in the cochlea which resonate at different frequencies and the signal from them is processedd by the brain...
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