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Why do records sound so much better than digital?

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MattHooper

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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 specified recordings, label, number, track. I am all for it.

Sure, I was just reacting to the generalization "However, they have no chance on large orchestra classical music. Dynamics, resolution, nothing."

Which implies basically "forget vinyl for big orchestral music." However, I do indeed find large orchestral music often sounds fantastic as many of my favorite soundtracks especially sound stunning and powerful on vinyl. It sounds very dynamic, very high resolution, clear, rich, all the audiophile descriptors.

If you want to say that *some* recordings of orchestral music will benefit in a significantly audible fashion from the wider dynamic range in digital...sure...no disagreement there. I just find in practice plenty of vinyl sounds excellent with orchestral music (and I like balls-out-dynamic music).
 

sq225917

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The platter less designs serve to limit reflections from material mismatches under the stylus, of course they introduce a host of others.
 

Wes

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Is pulse position modulation discrete? That's how the ear talks to the brain, after all.
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 :)

I started an entire thread for posting of releases of LPs that sound better than a CD or file - very few examples were posted.

If that is a good sample, then yes, the instances are rare.
 

Robin L

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Sure, I was just reacting to the generalization "However, they have no chance on large orchestra classical music. Dynamics, resolution, nothing."

Which implies basically "forget vinyl for big orchestral music." However, I do indeed find large orchestral music often sounds fantastic as many of my favorite soundtracks especially sound stunning and powerful on vinyl. It sounds very dynamic, very high resolution, clear, rich, all the audiophile descriptors.

If you want to say that *some* recordings of orchestral music will benefit in a significantly audible fashion from the wider dynamic range in digital...sure...no disagreement there. I just find in practice plenty of vinyl sounds excellent with orchestral music (and I like balls-out-dynamic music).
Your is a special case. All the situations where I experienced LP playback as "All That" have been special cases. It's not that good sound with LP playback is impossible, it's that LP reproduction that competes with good digital playback is rare. Most of the situations I have encountered with LP playback have the LP artifacts in your face. When a good turntable has a good cartridge and everything's properly aligned, the phono pre has a good overload margin, the turntable is properly set up on a good mounting platform, the LP is in good condition, the duration of each side of the LP is not too long . . .

But if the point is just playing music, there are too many situations that can come up to undermine the music itself. I have owned thousands of classical LPs, most have had a flaw of some sort, audible surface noise, off center pressings, groove damage [if it's a used LP], sides too long to have full dynamics and frequency response, bad mastering.

If one is committed, already has LPs, has sorted out the duds, LP playback can work. But for a neophyte on a budget, it's a long uphill climb to approach the performance of low-cost, no maintenance digital gear.
 

rdenney

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...If one is committed, already has LPs, has sorted out the duds, LP playback can work. But for a neophyte on a budget, it's a long uphill climb to approach the performance of low-cost, no maintenance digital gear.

It's not that digital gear is no maintenance. I've been through several CD players that were troublesome, or were made in a way that was sure to become troublesome.

But that doesn't undermine your point, which I agree with, particularly with that "on a budget" statement. I didn't spend nearly as much as a lot of people have, but I wasn't a newbie, either. And I still have bits of work to do to make it as perfect as it can get.

I've had profound listening experiences with vinyl records, and also with CD's. Even listening to FM radio. There is no question that CD's are technically superior, and no question that recording engineers compress music to fit in the narrower dynamic range of LPs. Would I buy LPs if I was just starting out? Nope. But do I seek out CD versions of the LPs in my collection? Only in rare cases. The only case where I can think of where I was hoping the CD version would be more dynamic was Rick Wakeman's The Six Wives of Henry VIII. It wasn't, but it was cleaner and didn't suffer from groove noise so that's what I used for playback. But most of the time I'm okay with what I hear from the LP--groove noise gets masked by the music or by environmental noise sufficiently to avoid distraction.

Rick "who owns records never rereleased on CD, also" Denney
 

MattHooper

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Again, I'm just reacting to what seem to be generalizations suggesting that vinyl is just no good for a certain type of music, where I have had plenty of excellent experiences with that type of music on vinyl. Generalizations that digital is technically more capable, and that this can be realized audibly more reliably than vinyl...no argument.

Also, like I've mentioned before, one reason I love vinyl for many soundtracks and some classical is because I more regularly find things like string sections sound "more believable" to my ears. Even when I've done some direct comparisons with the digital versions of an orchestral piece with the vinly release (for instance, some sound tracks are being re-mastered and released simultaneously on CD and vinyl versions, and I have bought both). I can hear in the CD version a tiny bit more clean signal, which I could understand some to prefer. But the vinyl version has just a bit of added texture that, to me, enhances the sense of "bows on string" texture that really makes string sections sound like bows actually being used on a string instrument, vs a "digitally sampled" string section. Perhaps it's my background as a keyboard player who has covered tons of string parts in the past, and tried countless keyboards with digitally sampled string sections, that makes me allergic. I find string sections one of the hardest things to sound natural in reproduced sound, as the nuances of the bow texture yet relaxed resolution of the real thing are hard to reproduce.
So when I'm listening, often to strings play on a digital source, I can't help but notice how often I'm thinking it's reminding me of the sampled string sections that aren't-quite-convincing on keyboards and sample programs. Whereas on vinyl I'm more often hearing this texture that makes my brain say "yes, those ARE strings being played" rather than the sample-effect.

This is me bringing my own history and criteria to my preferences, of course. But I know many people who have similar experiences listening to orchestral music on vinyl, though they won't be represented much on a forum like this :)
 

Newman

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Sure, I was just reacting to the generalization "However, they have no chance on large orchestra classical music. Dynamics, resolution, nothing."....However, I do indeed find large orchestral music often sounds fantastic as many of my favorite soundtracks especially sound stunning and powerful on vinyl.

Sure. There are always fans of every product for every purpose, no matter how much an alternative product is better suited. What I always take away from anecdotes like that, is how very low our human standards really are for music playback audio quality. We huff and we puff, but in the end, we settle. We can get ”sounds fantastic” experiences from modest dynamics, modest bitrates, missing frequency extremes, lumpy frequency response in speakers, shocking room acoustics, wow, flutter, jitter, distortion......you name it.

I was there when CD first came out in the 80s. Initial take up was slow. Records still ruled. But I couldn’t help noticing who jumped off the LP bandwagon first. It was the classical music recording industry. They couldn’t leave LP behind quickly enough. I think it was because they had standards, and so did some of their customers, and their product, classical music, suffered more if the medium was prone to production issues like ticks and wow. I remember later reading an article by the Nimbus LP engineers and owners on their move to CD. They said how very obvious it was to their customers that the inside track of an LP sounded lower quality than the first track. That was a perpetual issue with LP, and CD solved it, stone cold dead.

cheers
 

MattHooper

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Sure. There are always fans of every product for every purpose, no matter how much an alternative product is better suited. What I always take away from anecdotes like that, is how very low our human standards really are for music playback audio quality. We huff and we puff, but in the end, we settle. We can get ”sounds fantastic” experiences from modest dynamics, modest bitrates, missing frequency extremes, lumpy frequency response in speakers, shocking room acoustics, wow, flutter, jitter, distortion......you name it.

Well...yes and no, I would say. :)

It's true of course that people can find musical satisfaction in wide ranging scenarios of audio quality. I often love listening to music in my car even though it's not nearly the same quality as my hi-fi rig. My sons can dance around to music from their tinny lap top speakers. People used to groove to transistor radios. So people can have musical experiences listening to what we would all here likely agree is "poor quality sound."

But I wouldn't want to mix up that fact with a discussion about whether a medium is capable of excellent sound quality or not. Which I think was the point of some of this discussion.

I was there when CD first came out in the 80s. Initial take up was slow. Records still ruled. But I couldn’t help noticing who jumped off the LP bandwagon first. It was the classical music recording industry. They couldn’t leave LP behind quickly enough. I think it was because they had standards, and so did some of their customers, and their product, classical music, suffered more if the medium was prone to production issues like ticks and wow. I remember later reading an article by the Nimbus LP engineers and owners on their move to CD. They said how very obvious it was to their customers that the inside track of an LP sounded lower quality than the first track. That was a perpetual issue with LP, and CD solved it, stone cold dead.

cheers

Absolutely. I sure get that. I inherited my father-in-law's turntable only because he'd never thrown it out. But he's a classical music fanatic and ditched LPs as fast as he could and built a huge classical CD library. Full symphonies without having to flip the record, silent noise floor, great clarity for complex music, wider dynamic range...perfect for classical music.

I often glory in listening to orchestral music from my digital source for some of those reasons. But I also find many vinyl LPs to be similarly satisfying, plus I can listen through certain artifacts because I also find certain aspects of the sound can be more attractive. How we react to these things is pretty personal, though I think there can be grounds for some agreement on what type of features indicate "good/great sound quality" so I don't think it's a hopeless topic. Like I've mentioned, I've had some "vinyl skeptics" listen to music they like on my system and they certainly averred that they'd just heard terrific sound quality. We were able to easily agree on that.
 

Robin L

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Again, I'm just reacting to what seem to be generalizations suggesting that vinyl is just no good for a certain type of music, where I have had plenty of excellent experiences with that type of music on vinyl. Generalizations that digital is technically more capable, and that this can be realized audibly more reliably than vinyl...no argument.

Also, like I've mentioned before, one reason I love vinyl for many soundtracks and some classical is because I more regularly find things like string sections sound "more believable" to my ears. Even when I've done some direct comparisons with the digital versions of an orchestral piece with the vinly release (for instance, some sound tracks are being re-mastered and released simultaneously on CD and vinyl versions, and I have bought both). I can hear in the CD version a tiny bit more clean signal, which I could understand some to prefer. But the vinyl version has just a bit of added texture that, to me, enhances the sense of "bows on string" texture that really makes string sections sound like bows actually being used on a string instrument, vs a "digitally sampled" string section. Perhaps it's my background as a keyboard player who has covered tons of string parts in the past, and tried countless keyboards with digitally sampled string sections, that makes me allergic. I find string sections one of the hardest things to sound natural in reproduced sound, as the nuances of the bow texture yet relaxed resolution of the real thing are hard to reproduce.
So when I'm listening, often to strings play on a digital source, I can't help but notice how often I'm thinking it's reminding me of the sampled string sections that aren't-quite-convincing on keyboards and sample programs. Whereas on vinyl I'm more often hearing this texture that makes my brain say "yes, those ARE strings being played" rather than the sample-effect.

This is me bringing my own history and criteria to my preferences, of course. But I know many people who have similar experiences listening to orchestral music on vinyl, though they won't be represented much on a forum like this :)
I still love the RCA Living Stereo and Mercury Living Presence recordings, though now I listen to them as digital rips. I have to wonder about my personal expectations for massed string sound coming from having the sound of those recordings as a standard until I started recording massed strings. The Chicago and Boston Symphony orchestra's sound in recorded form---the crown jewel of that enterprise---has a lot to do with multiple factors that obtained at the time.

First, both were first rate ensembles playing in great sounding venues. Mercury was also finding good ensembles/recording venues, though their batting average wasn't quite as high. Have to mention Decca and EMI as well, of course The recording technique at the time for symphony orchestras required gain riding the microphone feed to the recorder, because of the limited headroom/dynamic range of pre-Dolby analog tape. There was also some soft clipping. My sense is that increasing the volume level of quiet passages would enhance the sense of acoustic ambience. And my experience with tube gear points to transformers as a very audible component in a tube amplifier, tending to reduce detail at frequency extremes.

Put it all together, and there is an enhanced quality to recording techniques of the 1950's 1960's, that some would [do] call euphonic. What I have heard from the best LP playback seems to boost the sense of tactile proximity at the expense of granular detail. The more digital seems to emphasize detail, the less tactile it seems. But things can get a little blurry with "good analog". And vice-versa. The best of the best nearly meets at the center.

At the same time, the more time I spent listening to massed strings in situ, the less realistic those classic LPs [and their digital counterparts] appeared to be. I always hear grain and grit when I'm in close proximity to a violin, the further back, the less grit. And some rooms I recorded in were great on the DAT but were nearly inaudible to the audience like Grace Cathedral, some were good everywhere, like First Congregation Church in Berkeley, some sucked everywhere, like Zellerbach Hall. The early music/original instrument antique fiddle playing Biber at First Congo sounded sweeter than the concertmaster at Zellerbach playing Sibelius. I've heard a few early digital recordings of orchestra with exaggerated treble on account of the consistently wideband nature of digital recording exposing the rising top end of popular microphones, something that went away in a few years.

But the experience of recording orchestra changed what would sound "real" for me in audio playback. Until I recorded massed strings and regularly heard massed strings, live, in front of me, from any seat in the house [during rehearsals], my ideal of that sound was based on the sound of old and highly compromised but artistically successful recordings.
 

Dialectic

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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.
I know of no serious engineer of classical music recordings who has ever taken the view that vinyl is better than CD or that analog tape is better than digital recording media. I can think of several who took the opposite view and put their money where their mouths were.

I anticipate someone will mention the late David Wilson as a counterexample...
 

MattHooper

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I know of no serious engineer of classical music recordings who has ever taken the view that vinyl is better than CD or that analog tape is better than digital recording media. I can think of several who took the opposite view and put their money where their mouths were.

Agreed. Apples to apples, digital clearly has an advantage. (Though in the real world, we don't always have apples-to-apples in our music collection. Sometimes the production/sound of an orchestral piece may sound "better" on vinyl, than another one on digital. And sometimes the digital version of an LP doesn't sound as good as the original LP. I have a number of old LPs featuring orchestra that later were offered in digital form, but whoever did the digital version sucked, or grabbed some bad copy to transfer. The LPs sound distinctly "better" in almost all the ways one would normally identify as "better," clearer, richer, more dynamic, more vivid etc).

I'd only object to a statement that implied that vinyl can't sound excellent with orchestral music.
 

MattHooper

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I still love the RCA Living Stereo and Mercury Living Presence recordings, though now I listen to them as digital rips. I have to wonder about my personal expectations for massed string sound coming from having the sound of those recordings as a standard until I started recording massed strings. The Chicago and Boston Symphony orchestra's sound in recorded form---the crown jewel of that enterprise---has a lot to do with multiple factors that obtained at the time.

First, both were first rate ensembles playing in great sounding venues. Mercury was also finding good ensembles/recording venues, though their batting average wasn't quite as high. Have to mention Decca and EMI as well, of course The recording technique at the time for symphony orchestras required gain riding the microphone feed to the recorder, because of the limited headroom/dynamic range of pre-Dolby analog tape. There was also some soft clipping. My sense is that increasing the volume level of quiet passages would enhance the sense of acoustic ambience. And my experience with tube gear points to transformers as a very audible component in a tube amplifier, tending to reduce detail at frequency extremes.

Put it all together, and there is an enhanced quality to recording techniques of the 1950's 1960's, that some would [do] call euphonic. What I have heard from the best LP playback seems to boost the sense of tactile proximity at the expense of granular detail. The more digital seems to emphasize detail, the less tactile it seems. But things can get a little blurry with "good analog". And vice-versa. The best of the best nearly meets at the center.

At the same time, the more time I spent listening to massed strings in situ, the less realistic those classic LPs [and their digital counterparts] appeared to be. I always hear grain and grit when I'm in close proximity to a violin, the further back, the less grit. And some rooms I recorded in were great on the DAT but were nearly inaudible to the audience like Grace Cathedral, some were good everywhere, like First Congregation Church in Berkeley, some sucked everywhere, like Zellerbach Hall. The early music/original instrument antique fiddle playing Biber at First Congo sounded sweeter than the concertmaster at Zellerbach playing Sibelius. I've heard a few early digital recordings of orchestra with exaggerated treble on account of the consistently wideband nature of digital recording exposing the rising top end of popular microphones, something that went away in a few years.

But the experience of recording orchestra changed what would sound "real" for me in audio playback. Until I recorded massed strings and regularly heard massed strings, live, in front of me, from any seat in the house [during rehearsals], my ideal of that sound was based on the sound of old and highly compromised but artistically successful recordings.

You put all that so well! A delight to read.

And you also get at some of what I hear too, and also where I can understand why you would prefer it differently than I do.

I've always loved vivid instrumental tone, so I'd often choose the close seats at the symphony. It makes sense then that I may favor a sound that seems to make for a slightly more present, vivid timbre/texture to orchestral instruments. (But not to the extent that I percieve it as added "grit." I just went through diagnosing some subtle gritty distortion in my set up and it drove me crazy until I fixed it - old tubes on my tube amp. I don't like a gritty sound from vinyl either).

(Lately my vinyl rig went on the blink so I've been listening to my digital collection (streamed to Benchmark DAC), and enjoying some mind-bogglingly great sounding soundtracks and orchestral music).
 

Robin L

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You put all that so well! A delight to read.

And you also get at some of what I hear too, and also where I can understand why you would prefer it differently than I do.

I've always loved vivid instrumental tone, so I'd often choose the close seats at the symphony. It makes sense then that I may favor a sound that seems to make for a slightly more present, vivid timbre/texture to orchestral instruments. (But not to the extent that I percieve it as added "grit." I just went through diagnosing some subtle gritty distortion in my set up and it drove me crazy until I fixed it - old tubes on my tube amp. I don't like a gritty sound from vinyl either).

(Lately my vinyl rig went on the blink so I've been listening to my digital collection (streamed to Benchmark DAC), and enjoying some mind-bogglingly great sounding soundtracks and orchestral music).
My perception of violin "grit" was greatly expanded during 12 years of playing at a Bluegrass jam session where fiddlers of various levels of technical fluency were in close proximity at all times. One, by the way, played some purdy good Bach before anybody showed up. And before that I had about 10 years recording Early Musique, so I've heard some unusual string tone from obsolete instruments as well. I do expect grit from strings, if I don't hear it, it sounds "wrong" to me. The Drop 6XX didn't sound right to me until I jacked up the eq around 4khz. Too smooth.
 

MattHooper

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My perception of violin "grit" was greatly expanded during 12 years of playing at a Bluegrass jam session where fiddlers of various levels of technical fluency were in close proximity at all times. One, by the way, played some purdy good Bach before anybody showed up. And before that I had about 10 years recording Early Musique, so I've heard some unusual string tone from obsolete instruments as well. I do expect grit from strings, if I don't hear it, it sounds "wrong" to me. The Drop 6XX didn't sound right to me until I jacked up the eq around 4khz. Too smooth.

Right, I see how you are using the term "grit" there. I was using it to denote the type of unpleasant granular, grainy distortion in an audio system or source.

I do like the textural vividness and "tartness" of tone in many medieval stringed instruments, old chamber music etc. I wouldn't want an audio system to smooth that over either.
 

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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? View attachment 123925

Digital scratching is very much a thing. Turntables make better music controllers than playback devices.

https://www.digitaldjtips.com/2017/06/a-beginners-guide-to-digital-vinyl-systems/

The ability to hit a button and instantly change the track under the stylus is very powerful.

This video shows visually how the digital vinyl software maps the special blank vinyl to whatever sample Craze has mapped to it.

(And you get those gold SL1200s by winning the DMC World Championship. Craze has won 5 times.)

 

j_j

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It's not that digital gear is no maintenance. I've been through several CD players that were troublesome, or were made in a way that was sure to become troublesome.

Yeah. I've tossed 3 players for mechanical transport issues, mostly drawer related, and one when the power supply switcher chip blew up (literally) and the whole thing overvoltaged and died.

Then there's the one that had different gains in the two channels...

As to your comment about LP's that will never hit CD, you betcha on that. That's why I still have a table.
 

MattHooper

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Digital scratching is very much a thing. Turntables make better music controllers than playback devices.

https://www.digitaldjtips.com/2017/06/a-beginners-guide-to-digital-vinyl-systems/

The ability to hit a button and instantly change the track under the stylus is very powerful.

This video shows visually how the digital vinyl software maps the special blank vinyl to whatever sample Craze has mapped to it.

(And you get those gold SL1200s by winning the DMC World Championship. Craze has won 5 times.)


Not so insult any resident DJs but...

I NEVER got the whole "scratching" thing with rap/records, even as I was a big funk/dance/R&B fan while it was in it's heyday. It just never seemed to add anything and rarely sounded anything but distracting or silly to my ears.
 

Mart68

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Easy to be too hard on vinyl but I have heard vinyl sound so good that you forget the medium and just enjoy the music. That is possible and does not require spending a small fortune although it can't be done for just a couple of hundred as some claim.

I've only got a Technics SL1200 with a Nagaoka MP50 but it has still impressed a few people who grew up in the 1990s and had never heard clean vinyl records played on 'proper' equipment. 'There's no pops! There's no clicks!' One didn't even realise it was vinyl playing until it reached the lead out groove and I got up to take the record off.

I abandoned it mainly because the quality of the records themselves is too variable and replacing the stylus every 6 months is a cost I can do without.
 

pma

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I've only got a Technics SL1200

I have been with it by nowadays and it is a good turntable. However living happily with LP's since 1960's I know very well their limitations.

gramo_006.jpg
 
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