Why do records sound so much better than digital?

[Inner Space]

What it considers relevant is based on evolution and experience.

I love this stuff. Fletcher-Munson shows that for the last million years or so, we had no predators whose approach sounds were low in frequency. That we can localize so much better in the azimuth rather than vertically means we had no significant airborne predators. And so on.

 

[mohragk]

A VINYL MASTERING can sound better than A HIGH COMPRESSED DIGITAL MASTERING..

Yes, but that has nothing to do with the format.

Furthermore, vinyl mastering is compressed as well, otherwise the stylus wouldn't track well. Another thing is that with vinyl, you have to mono the bass otherwise you, again, might create tracking issues. Those restrictions aren't present in digital mastering. The fact that digital masters are compressed has nothing to do with the format itself.

 

[mohragk]

I love this stuff. Fletcher-Munson shows that for the last million years or so, we had no predators whose approach sounds were low in frequency. That we can localize so much better in the azimuth rather than vertically means we had no significant airborne predators. And so on.

Another effect is that the brain discards similar, delayed sounds. Like reflections. If the delayed sound is similar to another sound and is detected to come from a different direction, it discards the delayed sound. Otherwise you would go insane with all the reverberations and echos. That's why a recording sounds much more echoey than what you experienced yourself; the mic can't discard echos, it get's recorded just the same. Binaural microphones might work better, since when played back, your brain can do the same filtering. But it's not ideal since the microphone is not shaped exactly the same as your ears.
It's also why off-axis response is important: when the reflected sound is similar, your brain will discard it more.

 

[mohragk]

I might've written this out in a Sony thread here, but according to their veteran amp engineer, record players have a slight noise which helps the mids and highs, and arm resonance which helps the low end, and turntable resonance, meaning the whole equipment is shaking, which helps distort the sound in a good way. Now that is the theory behind 'Vinyl Processor' on walkmans as a DSP.

I also think that because of these interactions, the output is always just slightly different. If you record a playback multiple times, the resulting waveform is slightly different each time. You might sense subconciously that the material is "fresh" each playback. It's more dynamic in that sense.
It's also why we like acoustical instruments. Sure, it needs to be played to high degree of accuracy and consistency. But, again, each performance is slightly different due to slight differences in the interaction in the system (the instrument), even if the physical input is exactly the same.

 

[Frgirard]

Yes, but that has nothing to do with the format.

Furthermore, vinyl mastering is compressed as well, otherwise the stylus wouldn't track well. Another thing is that with vinyl, you have to mono the bass otherwise you, again, might create tracking issues. Those restrictions aren't present in digital mastering. The fact that digital masters are compressed has nothing to do with the format itself.

Mechanical vinyl playback does not support loudnesswar prerequisites.

The pitch of the vinyl is a distarer for the piano reproduction.

The decentering.

The bass mono when produced in stereo traîne a electronic comb filtering.

No infra bass on the vinyl.

The poor quality production due to the sell of the first thousand disks, first thousand was destroyed in the vinyl era. Destroyed because used to to adjust the presses.

Are you shure to know what is a vinyl?

 

[levimax]

With all the measurable problems with vinyl playback that have been identified it is amazing how good it can sound. I think humans don't hear as well as they think they do.

 

[LTig]

Everything about vinyl has been written in this thread - not yet by everyone, it seems.

Time to close it I'd say.

 

[Wes]

As H. Sapiens, lets say hundreds of thousands of years, which is certainly in the thousands of years. My analogy is based on my layman's understanding of J.J. Johnston's presentations. The ear brings in megabits of information, the brain discards all but the few bits it considers relevant. What it considers relevant is based on evolution and experience.

Well, No. Human ears did not suddenly spring into being.

Amphibian ears evolved from or replaced the lateral line detectors of fishes. You can trace various forms of hearing in amphibians, reptiles, and early mammals. Then you have primates and their hearing, then Homo spp. - a lineage that goes back about 2 million years.

And don't think you are just dealing with mechanical structures either - the sensory coding system and neural structures have surely evolved over time as well. How great was the efficacy of selection in producing various performance criteria? How large are the phylogenetic "barriers" to selection?

This is a very complicated area.

As to your 2nd point, there is a lot of processing involved (tho likely not so much as with the visual system). It is not merely stimulus filtering. one likely candidate is what is usually called "edge detection" in some areas - this would relate to sudden transients, and also to attempting to re-construct a predator moving left (spatial) from a temporal sequence of leaf rustling sounds in the env.

etc. etc.

 

[krabapple]

Mechanical vinyl playback does not support loudnesswar prerequisites.

The pitch of the vinyl is a distarer for the piano reproduction.

The decentering.

The bass mono when produced in stereo traîne a electronic comb filtering.

No infra bass on the vinyl.

The poor quality production due to the sell of the first thousand disks, first thousand was destroyed in the vinyl era. Destroyed because used to to adjust the presses.

Are you shure to know what is a vinyl?

Your reply seems to completely miss his point. I'm sure mohragk agrees that vinyl has problems like the ones you mention here.

And btw calling an *LP* 'a vinyl', is awful.

 

[Wes]

I love this stuff. Fletcher-Munson shows that for the last million years or so, we had no predators whose approach sounds were low in frequency. That we can localize so much better in the azimuth rather than vertically means we had no significant airborne predators. And so on.

neither is correct

 

[Inner Space]

neither is correct

Keep on thinking, Wes. That's what you're good at.

 

[Wes]

your attempt at humor merely shows you don't know what you are talking about

LMK if you want some basic readings

 

[appelz]

Interesting point. No physical sound reaches our brains. Sound waves are converted to electrical impulses by our auditory system. From there on it is a matter of perception and interpretation when the brain determines was 'heard'.

We 'hear' what our brain decides we heard.

Sound, in the absolute sense, does not exist for us, only our impression of what occurred. Our brain 'creates' a sense like when we read a book. As we read our brain 'creates' a visual. Sometimes it is vague, other times it is pretty complete and realistic. Perhaps this is why the book is (usually LOL) better that the movie? Because we cast each character perfectly and can create the images of scenery we think are 'best'.

If we all hear the same thing there would probably be only one type of speakers. But since what sounds good to me might not be to your liking, there are a myriad of speakers and not just to meet different price points. There are no speakers on earth that are for some people, unaffordable.

What does this have to do with digital and analog recording and playback?

I read a study a few years ago where subjects were played the same song four times. Each recording was digitized at a different sample rate from MP3 on up. After each song they were given a set of seemingly random questions that were related to neither the music nor to each other. From their answers the psychologists assessed the mental state of the subject on a spectrum from anxious to peaceful and relaxed.

Their conclusion was there is a statistically significant correlation between the sample rate and the psychological sense of wellbeing of a person.

I find this conclusion credible. While we may not be able to elucidate in a meaningful way a difference between analog and digital recordings or between recordings digitized at varying sample rates, the mind is capable of considerable feats of perception.

Too bad I did not save a copy of the paper. I will search for it.

I don't think the study was referenced in this book, but I can highly recommend "This is your brain on Music", by Daniel Levitin. I suspect the many participants in this thread would appreciate it.

 

[Prep74]

In any measurable way, digital formats outperform most analog format.
(It may be persuasively argued that high speed analog tape is a rival.)

It wouldn't persuade me as there are no objective measurements to support that argument. At best, a turn of the century studio recorder running at 30 ips can only get near the SNR and dynamic range of the humble CD if sophisticated noise reduction is used and even so, it would have higher levels of distortion and won't match the CD for a linear frequency response. If that same machine was running high grade tape, perfectly calibrated ect, it would have a more extended high end frequency response than CD's 20khz but the low end won't go down as low as CD's theoretical 1hz - either way it is moot as your ears won't hear it. If it is recording at 'high speed' ie 30 ips the low end would be compromised.

I like analog tape, particularly the smooth low end sound saturation at mildly distorting peak levels of recording, but it doesn't rival digital for fidelity.

 

[BrEpBrEpBrEpBrEp]

It wouldn't persuade me as there are no objective measurements to support that argument. At best, a turn of the century studio recorder running at 30 ips can only get near the SNR and dynamic range of the humble CD if sophisticated noise reduction is used and even so, it would have higher levels of distortion and won't match the CD for a linear frequency response. If that same machine was running high grade tape, perfectly calibrated ect, it would have a more extended high end frequency response than CD's 20khz but the low end won't go down as low as CD's theoretical 1hz - either way it is moot as your ears won't hear it. If it is recording at 'high speed' ie 30 ips the low end would be compromised.

I like analog tape, particularly the smooth low end sound saturation at mildly distorting peak levels of recording, but it doesn't rival digital for fidelity.

Doesn't analog tape degrade over time? Kind of makes any of the arguments moot. After all, the tagline for CD was "perfect sound that lasts forever". Digital files can be backed us as many times as needed and don't degrade over time (if stored correctly - before someone gets on my back about random bits flipping).

 

[Prep74]

How early is early? My Philips cd104 from 1984 sounded wonderful from day one. I also own quite a few cds manufactured at that time or earlier. Some of them sound better than others, just like it is today.

Audible improvements since those days have been very small. What actually has happened is that you have gotten used to the sound of cd.

I tend to agree. My first CD player, a 1985 Pioneer Elite playing those early pre 1986 CDs were a significant improvement in sound quality to my LPs and analog rig (and I always had pretty high end TTs and carts). Maybe I was lucky as that CD player was one of the first with an oversampling DAC and my first CDs were mostly the early ones that are sought after today, eg Black Triangle Dark Side of the Moon, David Bowie RCAs etc. I haven't really noticed any incremental improvements since then with late model players and current CDs, but maybe my ears have degraded with age

 

[Jim Matthews]

Everything about vinyl has been written in this thread - not yet by everyone, it seems.

Time to close it I'd say.

You mean, there's an endless/tedious/pointless argument over minutiae?

 

[mohragk]

Mechanical vinyl playback does not support loudnesswar prerequisites.

The pitch of the vinyl is a distarer for the piano reproduction.

The decentering.

The bass mono when produced in stereo traîne a electronic comb filtering.

No infra bass on the vinyl.

The poor quality production due to the sell of the first thousand disks, first thousand was destroyed in the vinyl era. Destroyed because used to to adjust the presses.

Are you shure to know what is a vinyl?

What? You said digital is worse because of mastering and know you say vinyl is worse due to technical limitations? Be consistent.

 

[GGroch]

How early is early? My Philips cd104 from 1984 sounded wonderful from day one......
Audible improvements since those days have been very small. What actually has happened is that you have gotten used to the sound of cd.

A Google of your classic Philips CD104 turns up a some interesting stuff. This owner describes the 14-bit DAC chip, the CD104 uses. He reports that 16-bit resolution was achieved through use of oversampling and error correction/filtering.

Of course, some CD104 owners have since determined that pure 14 bit is audibly superior and created mods to defeat the oversampling. These are describe in following posts. You could be enjoying "more detailed bass and sound that goes beyond belief" through pure stepped 14 bit audio.

SteveJewels cites a report that correlates higher resolution audio files with a greater sense of well being. It appears that reducing resolution and hand soldering also correlates to a greater sense of well being. The CD104, modded or unmodded would not do well on Amir's bench compared to modern DACs.

This makes sense to me. Our enjoyment of music, whether played on LP or CD, is impacted more by factors like ritual, social interactions, our experiences, prejudices, and focus, than it is by the actual fidelity of the audio played. Of course, as ASR audiophiles, a negative result in of one of Amir's bench tests also directly impacts our sense of well being, even if the deficiencies found are not objectively audible.

 

[GGroch]

What? You said digital is worse because of mastering and now you say vinyl is worse due to technical limitations? Be consistent.

Both can be true, right?