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Topic: "Music Sounds Better on Vinyl" (Read 151779 times) previous topic - next topic
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"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #50
When CDs first arrived, people often complaint about their harsh sound; some returned to vinyl. Tho it was not a fault of digital audio some people are still afraid of buying CDs or other digitized forms. IMO, the only reverential place a vinyl may have is when an album etc. is not digitized for its past sale history, or other reasons.
"In the beginning was the Audiophile"

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #51

Quote
people often complaint about their harsh sound;


Actually, I do not think that happened right after the introduction of the CD, but sometime later,0.
I remember reading about this sometime in the early 90s, when some audiophiles put it down to an inherent flaw of the CD instead of problems with the transfers using substandard masters.
I clearly remember the awful quality of the first Kind of Blue CD which sounded like shit. After I bought the remastered version years later I knew that a CD can sound as good or better than LP.

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #52
Yes - for the past 25 years or so, the "audiophile" press has made a professional sport out of shooting the messenger...
"Not sure what the question is, but the answer is probably no."

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #53
New music on both vinyl and digital sounds terrible because it all comes from a brickwall limited distorted master.


I don't think there are many mixed masters that are brickwalled. Hell, even Metallica's Death Magnetic had a good master, which is why the album was able to be saved by Guitar Hero.

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #54
Hell, even Metallica's Death Magnetic had a good master

I'm not so sure about that...
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=588006
http://audiamorous.blogspot.com/2008/09/me...ps-on-both.html
...in fact yours is the very first post I've ever seen claiming that the vinyl edition came from a "good" master.

Do you have any evidence to support this?

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #55
...in fact yours is the very first post I've ever seen claiming that the vinyl edition came from a "good" master.


I did not claim this. In modern music production a mixed master isn't the same as a master that is used for CD and/or vinyl production.

It's actually pretty incredible that the Guitar Hero folks managed to negotiate access to these 'holy grail' recordings... if they could distribute them without using lossy compression and at a higher sample rate it would really be something special.

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #56
Vinyl sounds superior by design.
First step is to EQ the bass of.
Than you cut a groove in a plastic master
Then you make a metal copy of this master
This metal copy is pressed into vinyl
At playback the lack of bass is compensated by EQ
A copy of a copy with EQ applied two times.
Combine this with a silent groove producing 30 dB noise on its own.
Small wonder digital can’t beat this.
TheWellTemperedComputer.com

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #57
Vinyl sounds superior by design.
First step is to EQ the bass of.
Than you cut a groove in a plastic master
Then you make a metal copy of this master
This metal copy is pressed into vinyl
At playback the lack of bass is compensated by EQ
A copy of a copy with EQ applied two times.
Combine this with a silent groove producing 30 dB noise on its own.
Small wonder digital can’t beat this.


 

I couldn't point out some of the many defects of vinyl any better.

Paul

     
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Albert Einstein

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #58
The defects of vinyl are irrelevant if only the CD version of an album is brickwalled - the compressed version will always sound worse.

Now, if a CD has been well mastered then there is little reason to buy the vinyl, but there aren't many new albums on CD that are mastered for dynamics.

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #59
The defects of vinyl are irrelevant if only the CD version of an album is brickwalled - the compressed version will always sound worse.
Over-compression is like vinyl's surface noise: there are some people who legitimately like it, and perhaps prefer it to uncompressed, dynamic music. I don't, nor do most of the people who post around here, but understand that just like vinyl surface noise, it's subjective as a quality criterion.

For what it's worth, I agree with your assessment.

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #60
The defects of vinyl are irrelevant if only the CD version of an album is brickwalled - the compressed version will always sound worse.

Now, if a CD has been well mastered then there is little reason to buy the vinyl, but there aren't many new albums on CD that are mastered for dynamics.

How is it the fault of the CD if there are bozos out there.

Paul

   
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Albert Einstein

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #61
Hell, even Metallica's Death Magnetic had a good master

I'm not so sure about that...


I think he meant that a better master exists, and has been used in the video game Guitar Hero:
http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2008/09/does-metallicas/
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=588122

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #62
I've heard various arguments about vinyl being able to reproduce higher frequencies that CD cannot and they seem bogus given that humans can't hear that high, but I was wondering if anyone could provide information about the "dynamic resolution" or smallest difference in volume that CD can reproduce.  I imagine CD surpasses the human ear in that area, but I haven't been able to get the final word on that.

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #63
If you don't change the volume setting while you are listening (i.e. turn it up during very soft passages) and don't make the loud passages so loud that they are painful, you are very unlikely to hear the limitations in dynamic range of a CD. The same is not true of vinyl, tape, etc.

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #64
If you don't change the volume setting while you are listening (i.e. turn it up during very soft passages) and don't make the loud passages so loud that they are painful, you are very unlikely to hear the limitations in dynamic range of a CD. The same is not true of vinyl, tape, etc.


In which vinyl and tape have less dynamic Range than a CD.

Paul

   
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Albert Einstein

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #65
I was wondering if anyone could provide information about the "dynamic resolution" or smallest difference in volume that CD can reproduce.


The theoretical resolution of CD (16 bits) is 96 dB.

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #66
With using dither, the dynamic range can be increased on CD's, 115dB comes to mind.

Paul

   
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Albert Einstein

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #67
A lot of people definitely like noise, and I'd bet the result wouldn't be consistent across different tracks for the same person. NwAvGuy said he found a few users preferring equipment with oscillating opamps and strange, rather noisy design, because it added interest to the audio. Non-repetitiveness is interesting.

The reason "humanization" (randomly varying the time offset/amplitude of the samples) is added to a lot of synthesizers (eg. drum machines), the brain clearly recognizes that the music is too perfect and mechanical, and can predict what comes next. In contrast, listening to a human play the same drum loop forever can be comforting and enjoyable, since the same sound pattern never hits the listener's ear twice. The brain can start focusing on the few millisecond shift and few percent difference in volume as being the entire meat of the music in this case.

For a plainly synthesized, repetitive pattern, adding noise would "humanize" it slightly. I bet that is why we clip a lot of pop... the easiest way to make it non-periodic! Combined with the differences in how each system handles 0dbfs signal, the record is even more psychologically "interesting" on each listen, whether you focus on the difference or not.

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #68
For a plainly synthesized, repetitive pattern, adding noise would "humanize" it slightly. I bet that is why we clip a lot of pop... the easiest way to make it non-periodic!

if you don't want, say, a drum loop to sound perfectly quantized, you can simply put in slight random variations (for example using follow actions in ableton). personally, i don't see the virtue of clipping your track...

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #69
I was wondering if anyone could provide information about the "dynamic resolution" or smallest difference in volume that CD can reproduce.


The theoretical resolution of CD (16 bits) is 96 dB.

I think what he means is that 16-bit should have in theory at the most 65536 discrete levels of "volume". I think it's a misguided way to look at it, but if someone could explain in detail I'd also be interested.

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #70
Why do you think it is misguided? Of course, you could argue that turning one LSB in one word in the whole file from a "0" to a "1" increases the average volume of the whole file by very, very small amount, but I am not sure that is the right way to look at it either.

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #71
I'm not sure that I would call it misguided either. If no dither is applied then the ratio of the largest signal value to the digital noise is 96 dB.

When the signal is properly dithered, however, the ratio of the largest signal to the audible noise is considerably higher, well over 100 dB.

Not that one generally needs even 96 dB S/N.

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #72
When the signal is properly dithered, however, the ratio of the largest signal to the audible noise is considerably higher, well over 100 dB.


Absolutely. But I don't think the original question was about S/N.

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #73
The question was about dynamic resolution.  Maybe someone might like to define it first, as it is not an accepted technical term to the best of my knowledge.

EDIT:  I should have put dynamic resolution in italics, as I am interested in the term "dynamic resolution" not resolution (of course I know what resolution means ).  I also know what dynamic means , but seriously, these two words placed together don't really make much sense.  Is this intended to be the same as the nonsense audiophile term "microdynamics" or was it the proper term, "dynamic range" that was meant?

"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl"

Reply #74
What I think he meant is that if there's any way if you could tell sound jumping from one level to another (of the 65536), in any circumstance. That's what I thought was misguided, but again, I also would like more clarification, cause I don't really know. It would be easier to picture the example with 8-bit audio or lower, for instance.