Why do records sound so much better than digital?

[Frank Dernie]

The spectrum of music does not change but the higher sampling rate allows using a low pass filter that is not so steep as to cause problems in the audio band that a steep filter gives you

You know.....that sterile / gritty CD sound quality

The quality and type of low pass filter can have a major impact on the sound quality

The reconstruction filter does indeed have an audible influence, but the ones I hear the difference with either have an audible treble roll off or audible artefacts left there because the filter does not comply with the Shannon Nyquist, so it isn't a "proper" digital playback device.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Neither theory rang true to me. So I bought a Marantz CD54 (from 1984) to test the 'poor players' theory. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, I also have a number of early (1983-1986) releases on CD and there's nothing wrong with them either. In fact I actively seek them out over more recent remasters as they often have much better dynamic range.

My own theory is that there were some amps and/or speakers back then (maybe even now judging by the o/p) which were the cause of the problem. I agree that this is also an unlikely theory but when you've eliminated the impossible...

My experience and opinion too.
I have written it before, so everybody ignore if you have read it before, but IMO there were 2 possibilities for some people not liking CDs at the beginning. First was if they had a system balanced by ear so the speakers compensated for the FR of certain popular pickup cartridges so were too bright with the flat FR of CD players, the second is whether some preamp line stages clipped with the standard 2 volt output of CD players, since tuner and tape standard which they will have been designed for originally was 200mV.

Either way I was one of the "lucky" ones who found CD splendid from day 1, and I too think the early CDs often sound better than recent "re-mastered" ones which have been compressed for on the move listening.

 

[Koeitje]

It does. It's more dynamic, natural, live, the instruments are clearer in space, Lou Reed (who's talking as much as singing) seems like he's in the room, having a conversation with me.

So is the more 'present' because of the nature of the source? Interactive vs point and click. 20 minutes vs ? hours. Large cover vs tiny print on a screen, maybe? Does my increased level of interaction with the source increase my appreciation of it? Am I just paying closer attention because analog demands it?

Or is there some quality of the sound that is taken out when it removed from the physical realm -- into the theoretical realm? A record after all is a physical imprint of the sound.

You can literally feel the sound in a record groove.

Can't do that with 1s and 0s.

Of course, that shouldn't matter. the resolution of digital is so high that machines can't tell anything is missing, so why should humans be able to. There is no "physicality" to sound, in reality.

Is there?

Except vinyl doesn't sound better. Low dynamic range range, high noise floor, less treble range, distortion.

I still buy vinyl sometimes just for the artwork, because that's what I like in the format.

 

[Bullwinkle J Moose]

OK, j_j & Frank are likely correct about the oversampling and low pass filter statements

I was going by some random Internet explanation, when the cause of gritty / sterile sound was more likely chocked up to poor decoding hardware and in some cases, a bad mastering job

"likely", but need more data and testing

Wait...............come to think of it, I do have an ADC that always has that classic digital grunge sound and I never use it because of that

I have always bypassed the ADC on a Behringer DEQ 24/96 and used the optical inputs instead due to its crappy ADC sound quality

It may be that ADC's are causing that specific problem

 

[DSJR]

I repeat, I honestly believe it was the gritty sterile early 80's sound systems to blame for a heck of a lot of CD's early woes. Old discs sound really good now and people with less aggressive sound systems never had an issue with 'digital' right from the start.

 

[Wombat]

OK, j_j & Frank are likely correct about the oversampling and low pass filter statements

I was going by some random Internet explanation, when the cause of gritty / sterile sound was more likely chocked up to poor decoding hardware and in some cases, a bad mastering job

"likely", but need more data and testing

General comment:

Check the reliability of your sources.

If you can't establish their veracity it is not a good idea to disseminate their views.

 

[restorer-john]

I repeat, I honestly believe it was the gritty sterile early 80's sound systems to blame for a heck of a lot of CD's early woes.

Yes, we had decades of systems and speakers tuned to perform well with the pre-eminent format being vinyl. Bass reflex speakers were rare, two way speakers were even rarer and bass was not as deep. Plenty of acoustic suspension designs and raucous cone midranges. A subwoofer was virtually unheard of, as such luxuries were incompatible with a TT (acoustic feedback)

Along comes a ruler flat repsonse from DC-20kHz, zero distortion and no feedback issues, and not all systems, ears, or people were happy.

 

[q3cpma]

Just curious, what's the use case for that device?

Listening to music, obviously. I don't have and don't want a smartphone.

 

[restorer-john]

I don't have and don't want a smartphone.

I sympathize. So called "smart" phones have, in my opinion, in less than 15 years, contributed to the mass dumbing-down of the global populace.

We have a generation unable to read a map, do any form of basic navigation, sit on a train or bus and just observe the surroundings, or even take a walk along a footpath making eye contact and exchanging basic pleasantries with fellow pedestrians.

I have smart a phone, but at the most basic level, it fails as a good telephone- its entire reason for existing.

 

[q3cpma]

I sympathize. So called "smart" phones have, in my opinion, in less than 15 years, contributed to the mass dumbing down of the global populace.

We have a generation unable to read a map, do any form of basic navigation, sit on a train or bus and just observe the surroundings, or even take a walk along a footpath making eye contact and exchanging basic pleasantries with fellow pedestrians.

I have smart phone, but at the most basic level, it fails as a good telephone- it's entire reason for existing.

Mostly agree, but the real problem is small children, sometimes toddlers using/having one. The damage to their ability to focus and exert patience is immense and probably irreversible.
The other problem is of course that it's a device straight out of the baby of 1984 and Brave New World, but apathy and degeneracy is a good argument for not caring, I guess.

 

[sal]

Upsample the harsh/gritty CD to 352 Khz and the gritty harshness around 3Khz will move up to around 24 Khz where you no longer here it

88Khz upsampling moves it to 6Khz
176Khz sample moves it to 12Khz
352 moves it to 24Khz where a mild filter no longer effects the audio quality

Too bad the song is now over a Gigabyte however

This does not make much sense to me. I’m not an audio engineer, but I am a software engineer. Seems to me that the process of upsampling does not multiply the frequency of the signal, but will just repeat a given sample multiple times.

 

[pkane]

This does not make much sense to me. I’m not an audio engineer, but I am a software engineer. Seems to me that the process of upsampling does not multiply the frequency of the signal, but will just repeat a given sample multiple times.

In general, the samples are not simply repeated, but the signal is sampled on a finer grid. This generates more samples per unit time from the same waveform, so 3kHz in the original remains 3kHz in the resampled, regardless of what resampling factor you use.

 

[sal]

1984

Now that’s a good album

 

[sal]

In general, the samples are not simply repeated, but the signal is sampled on a finer grid. This generates more samples per unit time from the same waveform, so 3kHz in the original remains 3kHz in the resampled, regardless of what resampling factor you use.

Yeah that’s what I’m saying, just in a different way. My DAC operates natively at 352khz, and has a variable up sample feature, so this is testable. I’m quite sure it’s not multiplying any frequencies, otherwise Bing Crosby would sound like Geddy Lee

 

[rdenney]

The first digital recorder I used was already transparent. I had used reel-to-reel tape for years and was used to monitoring the difference between off-tape and direct microphone feed to judge record levels - between audible distortion if too high and hiss in the quiet bits when too low.
The first time I used the StellaDAT digital recorder the off tape and microphone feed were indistinguishable up to clipping, which was obvious and awful, of course....

Just as an aside, in the 80’s I used VHS tape to do location recordings using the HiFi feature. This recorded audio onto the video tracks using depth multiplexing, instead of the linear audio tracks. This was the first time I heard a recording that really sounded like the direct microphone feed.

HiFi provided 70 dB S/N and 90 dB dynamic range, which is much better than linear tape. It’s probably the best accessible analog technology.

And I could afford it, which was a big plus!

Rick “but now need to transcribe the recordings, which will mean repairing an old player” Denney

 

[Rottmannash]

One thing I know for sure is that the only thing better than vinyl is MQA

You trying to stir things up?

 

[sal]

You trying to stir things up?

Whatever gave you that idea? lol

It worked too:

Dude, you've wasted your life....
You could've been a comedian!

Nothing is higher fidelity (yet) than uncompressed digital on top quality gear

If your vinyl sounds better than digital, you transferred it wrong and your engineer should go back to flipping burgers

Admittedly, that's not the fish I was looking for. The White Wale still eludes me

 

[mhardy6647]

I heard that Dylan was abducted by a UFO in 1968, and was replaced with a shape-shifting alien. I don't know whether to believe that or not. Elvis says it's true, but I don't believe everything Elvis says, either. Jim

Paul McCartney.
ca. 1966.
Car Accident.

Note the black flower.

"Miss him, miss him, miss him."

 

[mhardy6647]

I would really like to see the old Sony 102 player pictured up-thread tested. I think it looks great too!

Well -- at the very least, this thread has "convinced" me that I am -- at the least -- gonna pull one of them out & fire it up soon and give it a good listening-to!

 

[Frank Dernie]

Well -- at the very least, this thread has "convinced" me that I am -- at the least -- gonna pull one of them out & fire it up soon and give it a good listening-to!

I have the first separate DAC Sony sold, the DAS 702-ES which still worked when I lat checked a couple of years ago.
I keep thinking I should do a level matched comparison with one of my modern DACs but it would require quite an upheaval given that I have gone Devialet since my last DAC comparison convinced me any differences were insignificant to zero.