Why do records sound so much better than digital?

[rdenney]

I was only involved in the R& D and design of the record players themselves and my knowledge of record cutting is learned from that.
I had heard of records cut that way but saw it as a novelty.
Also, the market was very different then. LP was the main music source and making a substantial increase in the accuracy of pickup was always targeted at inexpensive clever engineering since the majority were not able to buy expensive kit.
Today record players are mainly an expensive and stylish hobby and whilst the engineering is still important there is a lot more non-technically correct BS in the marketing than there was 50 years ago

I remember one mod one of the engineers came up with which was simply a hole punched into the (pressed steel) chassis which prevented one of the vibration modes getting to the arm base at a frequency where it would pass up the arm to the cartridge body, where it would falsely appear in the cartridge output as signal. The production cost was negligible yet the improvement was measureable.

Now the buzz is all about "rigid" which is just wrong since firstly, nothing is rigid over the full range of audio frequencies and the more rigid the arm and plinth the higher up the frequency range spurious vibration can get up the arm to the cartridge body .
It is static thinking applied to a dynamic system and wrong, but even lots of engineers have trouble getting their heads round dynamics. My first boss of the first R&D department told me he saw what the maths showed but couldn't get his head round it so preferred statics!

That's what we need to make--a well-damped turntable. Plastic arm except for the gimbals, but mounted on a decoupling washer (sorbathane?), on a suspended sub-platter hung from very soft plastic grommets instead of elastic springs (gel-filled rubber balls?), high-mass plinth mounted on more very soft pads, etc.

It's impossible to completely remove displacements caused by structural motion, but I'll bet we could remove audio frequencies utterly. This might have been too costly to do back in the 70's when products sold for a reasonable amount, but boutique pricing these days makes nearly any cost feasible.

I tried in discussions of bicycle technologies to persuade people that the stiffer the frame, the higher the frequency of vibration for the same structural strength. But they kept insisting that aluminum was harsh-riding and steel was soft-riding. Nevermind that the aluminum bikes that were harsh had tubing diameters of nearly two inches with wall thicknesses nearly three times that of the thinnest parts of lightweight steel tubing, and the steel frames that were soft were more like 1 or 1-1/8 inches. They weren't even thinking in static terms, let alone dynamic terms.

Rick "a gullible market is awfully tempting..." Denney

 

[murraycamp]

you can literally feel the music in the record grooves

This sounds like a bad marketing pitch from 1978

 

[rdenney]

Wouldn't it be much nice


What do you think of Meitner's AT-2 platterless turntable from an engineering point of view?

http://www.museatex.com/at2.htm

The platter is replaced by a metal flywheel with knife-edge machinings to support the record beneath the label area. The playing surface of the record couples to air on top and bottom.

Turntable designers have made enhancements to platters and mats through the years. As far as they have evolved, however, platters and mats are left with one fundamental problem. The point at which the record contacts the mat or platter is an energy interface that vibrations, traveling at high velocities, must traverse. These vibrations will not be completely absorbed by the interfacing surface, and a significant portion of the energy will be "mirrored" back into the record. Because most of the energy is generated by the cartridge stylus, this is the area to receive most of the reflected energy. The result is a form of distortion read by the stylus and incorporated into the music signal.

Overlooked by most, the twelve inch diameter of the typical record makes it an increasingly ideal half-wave coupler of acoustic energy from the lower mid-range up, and improving as the frequency rises. The record naturally dissipates vibrations, particularly at the levels and frequencies that they occur, to air. Thus air becomes the absorbent "platter", the only substance that does not give energy back to the record.

Removing support at the edge of the disk allows its elasticity to set up resonance, I would think, but not as simplistically as they describe. Supporting disks at the edges with damped material would help damp those resonances, especially at higher frequencies. The notion that unconstrained air provides any reasonable damping seems fanciful to me. Try holding an LP on a firm center support and then strum the edge of the platter like a guitar string. Being plastic, it won't ring like a bell, but it won't be damped, either. For this reason, I'm thinking well-damped platter covers might be a good thing. But good damping there isn't elastic foam, but more like viscous pads. Compressed air (air that is constrained) is quite elastic, it seems to me. Air cushions use damping, often by allowing the air to bleed through an orifice. This would make acoustic noise, however.

A heavy platter is for speed stability, which is also important. Weight on the edge of a 12" platter is much more effective in sustaining angular momentum than weight close to the hub. A platter made from aluminum will ring audibly, however, and I would favor a platter made from a composite material of high mass and good damping at high frequencies. (For this reason, my only beef with the plastic center sub-platter used by Thorens in their cheaper turntables is that they are light, but it's still a decent idea because the weight on the outer platter is located where it counts for speed stability). Then, use the suspension to damp the lower frequencies.

I don't like that the motor seems to be mounted on the same surface as the platter bearing. Motors are vibration machines. The only advantage to belts is that they can be highly damped decouplers, but then they introduce their own speed instabilities.

Rick "arm-waving" Denney

 

[Newman]

Yes, I agree, bad idea.

 

[don'ttrustauthority]

This sounds like a bad marketing pitch from 1978

Seriously, if you run your fingernail through the groove you can feel the music, even actually hear it.

 

[Wombat]

If you run your fingernails across the surface of a record a scratching sound is produced. Do this with a CD and no groove related sound is heard.

Is the 'scratching sound' on the vinyl better than 'no scratching sound' on the CD?

 

[pma]

It is impossible to say that records sound better than digital. Yes sometimes there is less dynamic compression if someone listens to commercial pop mostly. Yes they have appeal when we listen to 60-ties recordings of Ella Fitzgerald and other giants. However, they have no chance on large orchestra classical music. Dynamics, resolution, nothing. I am just listening to Beethoven Symphony no.3 with Simon Rattle and Wiener Philharmoniker. Digital is great in this kind of music and record has no chance to compete.

 

[Wombat]

The title of this thread, and similar others, is like road-kill. You can keep picking it up but it doesn't resuscitate.

 

[Frank Dernie]

What do you think of Meitner's AT-2 platterless turntable from an engineering point of view?

I have never looked into completely unsupported LPs but there will certainly be loads of resonant modes in the disc potentially being excited and if they are excited the cartridge will pick them up, so this is probably not very accurate.

 

[Mnyb]

The title of this thread, and similar others, is like road-kill. You can keep picking it up but it doesn't resuscitate.

The tread title itself suggest a Troll no more no less .

Otherwise the tread title would been , "why is it that some rare LP's do sound slightly better then their digital release" .
Which is a truthful statement and a thing one could ask about, which places the question where it belongs on what media do labels release what kind of master ? this can be all over the place and there are many possible explanations as explained in several places in the tread

 

[Wombat]

The tread title itself suggest a Troll no more no less .

Otherwise the tread title would been , "why is it that some rare LP's do sound slightly better then their digital release" .
Which is a truthful statement and a thing one could ask about, which places the question where it belongs on what media do labels release what kind of master ? this can be all over the place and there are many possible explanations as explained in several places in the tread

Or, 'Why do I prefer a less capable sound reproduction technology"?

 

[Mnyb]

Or, 'Why do I prefer a less capable sound reproduction technology"?

Habituation ? your used to it for 20 years before transparent tech arrived, now you hear how the recording really sounds like and don't like it.

I think our internal reference for what is good sound change over time too ?

I had vinyl players before and did not like CD when it first arrived , but i chalk it down to habituation . If i where to crank up my old vinyl rig today i would probably throw up trough my nose

 

[tuga]

I have never looked into completely unsupported LPs but there will certainly be loads of resonant modes in the disc potentially being excited and if they are excited the cartridge will pick them up, so this is probably not very accurate.

Meitner, who is known for producing solid digital audio engineering, also took a shot at vinyl playback and speakers, hence my question.
I wondered whether there was sound reasoning behind the decision to do without a platter.

 

[Wombat]

Meitner, who is known for producing solid digital audio engineering, also took a shot at vinyl playback and speakers, hence my question.
I wondered whether there was sound reasoning behind the decision to do without a platter.

FWIW: http://www.museatex.com/at2.htm

 

[Frank Dernie]

Meitner, who is known for producing solid digital audio engineering, also took a shot at vinyl playback and speakers, hence my question.
I wondered whether there was sound reasoning behind the decision to do without a platter.

I would say not solid in any sense of the word.

 

[Mart68]

Meitner, who is known for producing solid digital audio engineering, also took a shot at vinyl playback and speakers, hence my question.
I wondered whether there was sound reasoning behind the decision to do without a platter.

I think it is more about having a USP in a crowded market. You take one of vinyl's many problems and address it - or attempt to address it - and then your marketing dept and your salesman has something to hang his hat on. Plenty of examples out there like that Nakamichi deck that compensates for off-centre pressings.

 

[Frank Dernie]

that Nakamichi deck that compensates for off-centre pressings.

That isn't an altogether worthless objective, actually

 

[Mart68]

I didn't say it was

My point was that there's a whole host of issues with vinyl replay, just tackling one of them is like putting an accident victim's broken leg in plaster but not treating any of his dozen other injuries at all. So tackling just one problem on one turntable is primarily a marketing exercise.

 

[MattHooper]

It is impossible to say that records sound better than digital. Yes sometimes there is less dynamic compression if someone listens to commercial pop mostly. Yes they have appeal when we listen to 60-ties recordings of Ella Fitzgerald and other giants. However, they have no chance on large orchestra classical music. Dynamics, resolution, nothing. I am just listening to Beethoven Symphony no.3 with Simon Rattle and Wiener Philharmoniker. Digital is great in this kind of music and record has no chance to compete.

I actually love listening to classical/orchestral music on my vinyl set up! It's one of my favorite forms of music. I go back and forth between digital and vinyl depending on the album I'm listening to and I find the vinyl often sounds stupendous as well, dynamics, clarity, punch, timbre, it's all there in many cases. (Yes digital has technical advantages in theory, and if you are highly allergic to any artifacts, the occasionally tick/pop etc, then it's not for you. But I find it highly satisfying for orchestral music and actually often like the way strings and other instruments sound on vinyl).

 

[pma]

That is good for you, but in case of recordings of classical music with usable dynamic range of 60dB and realistic SPL the vinyl just cannot make it, sorry. Groove noise is a barrier. We should rather speak about particular and specific recordings, label, number, track. I am all for it.