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Topic: Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl. (Read 205725 times) previous topic - next topic
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Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #225 –
Quote from: pdq on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
It is well known that many people who are even highly sucessful in certain areas of science but stumble and fall when they go outside of their area of expertise. Linus Pauling the physicist did well. His ideas about human nutritiion were straignt out of the world of pulp health food ragazines.

As a chemist myself I think of Linus Pauling as primarily a chemist rather than a physicist. His book "The Nature of the Chemical Bond" (1939) is considered one of the most significant scientific publications of the twentieth century.


A little checking shows that your correction is consistent with Pauling's official biographies. Thanks for the correction. My impressions were based on familiarity with his work on crystal structure.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #226 –
It's worth pointing out that you can be an artsy type, and a logically thinking scientist, and prefer vinyl without any contradictions - as long as you don't try to justify your beliefs based on falsehoods. But this excludes any technical or objective points from consideration, because they all favor CD. (So you should not expect to be able to convince anybody else!)

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #227 –
Quote
It is well known that many people who are even highly sucessful in certain areas of science but stumble and fall when they go outside of their area of expertise. Linus Pauling the physicist did well. His ideas about human nutritiion were straignt out of the world of pulp health food ragazines.

A preference is merely a preference. It is neither a failure nor a success. I simply was citing an example that ran contrary to the assertion that a preference for vinyl would come from someone with an non-scientific mind. Clearly this is both untrue and misleading. True aesthetic preferences are for the most part indepenedent of one's scientific mindedness.

Quote
Time to go back and read what the man said:

"...it (the LP)  is still quite clearly inferior to CD at its purpose: accurately reproducing an audio signal."

We're obviously talking about accuracy in a scientific sense.

OK. I mistakenly thought this would be in consideration of human perception. Given the very purpose of audio in the first place.

Quote
Been there, done that. Again, there is a scientific way to do that. You match the levels, you synchronize the playback, and you control listener bias. I'm quite sure that you have not done this in your evaluations. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I certainly have done bias contolled comparisons. snychronization is not needed element for bias controlled listener preference tests. One need look no further than the tests done by Floyd Toole and Sean Olive on speaker preferences to see that. Level matching is a tricky thing when things sound different. How does one match levels when there is different frequency responses, different levels of noise and different levels of compression?

Quote
The comparison you describe can't be done well, because of the necessary delays between cutting a LP and playing  a mass-produced version of it back. It takes the better part of a day. By the time you get to hear the LP, you pretty well completely forgot the subtle details of what the origional live performance sounded like.

That is irrelevant. All one needs for the preference comparison is the CD, The LP, the equipment to play it on (a SOTA TT rig is needed) and some help from another individual to make the comparisons blind. doesn't matter how old the recording is.

Quote
Furthermore, you may have done this comparison once or a few times in your life, but there's people around here like me who have done a far better and more general and relevant comparison uncountable numbers of times.

Do tell us then what LP and CD did you use that was taken from the same mic feed with no signal manipulation in the mastering of either the CD or LP that was a SOTA recording of live acoustic music? this is not a common comodity. You say you have done it more times than you can count. there are fewer such records and CDs in existance that meet this criteria than I can count so you must have used the same CDs and LPs for many of these countless comparisons. Do tell us the titles at least. Then tell us what you did to level match them.

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I have often, and for hours and hours sat in my choice of seats in a good performance hall, and been able to compare a direct feed from a microphone or microphone array to the actual live sound. They always sound signficiantly different.

That is nice. It's completely irrelevant to any preference comparisons between LPs and CDs of any given recording though.

Quote
The differences in mastering and biases in the comparisons that people usually do partially explain why a tiny, noisy minority can actually stand to  and even say they prefer to listen to LPs, except under duress.

However, the best general explanation is personal bias. Take  the romance and interpersonal interactions away, and vinyl is just not all that attractive to almost everybody. Something about the audible distoriton and noise, I think.

I prefer not to speculate but do actual comaprisons under blind conditions. The differences are usually quite substantial when we allow for variations in mastering. They far exceed the differences I heard in my comparison of the LP and CD that were both mastered with no signal manipulation. That vinyl wins out a majority of the time in those comparisons suggests that we simply have a history of superior mastering with LPs that is largely ignored by those who are arguing CD superiority on a technical basis. That would be a classic case of bias effects biting the audiophile in the rear. IMO if you are arguing about the two media you have taken your eye off the ball.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #228 –
Quote from: Axon on
It's worth pointing out that you can be an artsy type, and a logically thinking scientist, and prefer vinyl without any contradictions - as long as you don't try to justify your beliefs based on falsehoods. But this excludes any technical or objective points from consideration, because they all favor CD. (So you should not expect to be able to convince anybody else!)


Preferences need no "justification." The very idea that preferences need justification IMO points to a bias that is not connected to pure aesthetic values of sound quality. The auidible differences are real and therefore have a technical objective explanation. So it seems like there will ultimately be a technical reason for an unbiased preference for LPs over CDs when such a preference exists. So such points can not be excluded from consideration when discussing such a preference.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #229 –
Quote from: analog scott on
A preference is merely a preference. It is neither a failure nor a success. I simply was citing an example that ran contrary to the assertion that a preference for vinyl would come from someone with an non-scientific mind. Clearly this is both untrue and misleading. True aesthetic preferences are for the most part indepenedent of one's scientific mindedness.
But you see, this is not merely an aesthetic preference. This is an aesthetic preference that reflects worldview. It is possible to save vinyl's sound to a CD, but it is not always possible to save CD's sound to vinyl. The possibilities are greater with CD, while not excluding the possibility of sound that is like vinyl's. CD's possible sound is a proper super set of vinyl's possible sound.

 
Quote from: analog scott on
OK. I mistakenly thought this would be in consideration of human perception. Given the very purpose of audio in the first place.
Yes, and human perception has its limits. If we are merely considering human perception, MP3 is sufficient. MP3 is superior to vinyl in precisely the same ways that CD is, considering human perception. If one's worldview values high-fidelity, that is, reproducing the sound created by the artist as precisely as possible, it becomes quickly apparent that vinyl fails at that goal.

Quote from: analog scott on
I certainly have done bias contolled comparisons. snychronization is not needed element for bias controlled listener preference tests. One need look no further than the tests done by Floyd Toole and Sean Olive on speaker preferences to see that. Level matching is a tricky thing when things sound different. How does one match levels when there is different frequency responses, different levels of noise and different levels of compression?
These tests are of limited usefulness. The analogy to speakers is also somewhat flawed. The signal characteristics of speakers are quite difficult to measure, especially compared to the signal characteristics of recording media. Recording media can be scientifically analyzed using techniques employed by electrical engineers since before digital formats existed. These techniques are mathematical and objective.

Quote from: analog scott on
That is nice. It's completely irrelevant to any preference comparisons between LPs and CDs of any given recording though.
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It's worth pointing out that you can be an artsy type, and a logically thinking scientist, and  prefer vinyl without any contradictions - as long as you don't try to  justify your beliefs based on falsehoods. But this excludes any  technical or objective points from consideration, because they all favor CD. (So you should not expect to be able to convince anybody else!)
You're welcome to prefer the distorted, low-fidelity sound of vinyl, but be aware of what I mentioned at the start: the vinyl sound is reproducible by CD and not vice-versa.

Quote from: analog scott on
IMO if you are arguing about the two media you have taken your eye off the ball.
Funny, what exactly are you doing in this thread?
 

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #230 –
Quote from: analog scott on
Preferences need no "justification."


As long as you're not interesting in communicating them to others, this is correct.  Of course, once you say "I prefer X" the natural follow up question is "Why do you prefer X" and then you run into trouble

If you have preferences that you know don't make sense, best not to tell other people about them, or they'll think you're a bit nutty. 

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #231 –
Quote from: analog scott on
I mistakenly thought this would be in consideration of human perception. Given the very purpose of audio in the first place.


Human perception is a area that science studies.

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Quote
Been there, done that. Again, there is a scientific way to do that. You match the levels, you synchronize the playback, and you control listener bias. I'm quite sure that you have not done this in your evaluations. Please correct me if I'm wrong.


I certainly have done bias contolled comparisons. synchronization is not needed element for bias controlled listener preference tests.


You're showing your lack of practical experience. If one fails to properly synchronize the playback, one can easily identify the unknowns even if they are otherwise identical. As soon as the unknowns can be reliably identified by means other than sound quality, the test is no longer blind.

Quote
Level matching is a tricky thing when things sound different. How does one match levels when there is different frequency responses, different levels of noise and different levels of compression?


If the alternatives are so different that one sounds clearly different from the reference (generally true of LP) and the other doesn't (generally true of the CD), then this isn't a test of preferences related to sound quality but rather a fancy questionaire about the listener's pre-existing biases.

If you want to agree with me that people who think that vinyl sounds better don't base their prreferences on sound quality but rather base their stated preferences on their pre-existing biases, be my guest. That's basically my current best analysis of the situation.


Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #232 –
Quote from: Mike Giacomelli on
Of course, once you say "I prefer X" the natural follow up question is "Why do you prefer X" and then you run into trouble
"It sounds better to me" is a legitimate response here, and would tend to preclude debate about the technical qualities of the formats.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #233 –
Quote from: Canar on
Quote from: Mike Giacomelli on
Of course, once you say "I prefer X" the natural follow up question is "Why do you prefer X" and then you run into trouble
"It sounds better to me" is a legitimate response here, and would tend to preclude debate about the technical qualities of the formats.


This is of course all old news.  In reallity, the vinyl preferrers would often then launch into whatever *revealed truth about the inherent flaws of digital* they had picked up last, such as "the problem of the empty spaces between samples making it impossible for digital recordings to have a proper soundstage", or some such.

We just got a small replay of this weirdness today in another thread, where the poor misinformed OP seems to think no 16 bit music player could ever do right by his precious classical recordings. He wanted his recordings to sound more like 24 bit or vinyl than 16 bits could ever do. No, I didn't make this up!

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #234 –
E. O. Wilson, the evolutionary biologist, revived a useful word: "consilience." It recognizes the fact of emergent properties, but asks that the two levels of explanation should kind of fit at the boundary; so, chemistry can't be reduced to physics, but chemistry ought to be compatible with the findings of physics, a further stage, not a contradiction.

I find this idea really useful when thinking about the interface between value judgments (aesthetic or otherwise) and scientific knowledge. So, if someone says they prefer vinyl, that's cool. You might ask them "Why?" and they might say that analogue has better reproduction of high frequencies than digital; you might then agree to test this proposition, and discover that in fact the vinyl that's being listened to has worse HF reproduction. This would NOT invalidate the preference, but it would invalidate the stated reason for the preference. You might end up discovering it's album art on an LP cover and the vintage feel of the medium of original release. Or there might be no detectable reason. But the preference would still be "valid," though it might not survive this exploration.

It would be worth doing this if you either wished other people to adopt your preference, or if you wanted to explore the reasons for your preference (which is a good way of understanding more about aesthetics).

The virtue of the word "consilience" in this sort of case is that it avoids the impression of an inevitable clash between the scientific and the aesthetic/preference, whilst showing how someone might coherently operate in two domains.

BTW, Wilson's book _Consilience_ is very good, I think, though I'm troubled that I find it weakest in the area I know most about, namely the Arts. That does so often tend to be the way.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #235 –
Quote from: Canar on
Quote from: analog scott on
I certainly have done bias contolled comparisons. snychronization is not needed element for bias controlled listener preference tests. One need look no further than the tests done by Floyd Toole and Sean Olive on speaker preferences to see that. Level matching is a tricky thing when things sound different. How does one match levels when there is different frequency responses, different levels of noise and different levels of compression?
These tests are of limited usefulness. The analogy to speakers is also somewhat flawed. The signal characteristics of speakers are quite difficult to measure, especially compared to the signal characteristics of recording media. Recording media can be scientifically analyzed using techniques employed by electrical engineers since before digital formats existed. These techniques are mathematical and objective.



Synching is recommended when comparing two sound files or two media/file playback devices; not necessary for comparing two loudspeakers or other parts of the playback chain where the sound files and the playback devices are the same for A and B.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #236 –
Quote from: Canar on
Quote from: Mike Giacomelli on
Of course, once you say "I prefer X" the natural follow up question is "Why do you prefer X" and then you run into trouble
"It sounds better to me" is a legitimate response here, and would tend to preclude debate about the technical qualities of the formats.



I think it could trigger a TOS#8 violation notice, actually, since in that bare-bones form it's arguably a statement concerning subjective sound quality:

8. All members that put forth a statement concerning subjective sound quality, must -- to the best of their ability -- provide objective support for their claims. Acceptable means of support are double blind listening tests (ABX or ABC/HR) demonstrating that the member can discern a difference perceptually, together with a test sample to allow others to reproduce their findings. Graphs, non-blind listening tests, waveform difference comparisons, and so on, are not acceptable means of providing support.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #237 –
Excellent point.

My explanation was meant to cover the general case, not the Hydrogenaudio special case.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #238 –
Quote from: Canar on
If we are merely considering human perception, MP3 is sufficient. MP3 is superior to vinyl in precisely the same ways that CD is, considering human perception. If one's worldview values high-fidelity, that is, reproducing the sound created by the artist as precisely as possible, it becomes quickly apparent that vinyl fails at that goal.


"*Reproducing* the sound created by the artist?" If we are talking about live acoustic music then vinyl, MP3, CD,SACD, DVD-A all fail. Stereo recording and playback fails, even multi-channel fails. You can not begin to capture the original soundfield in real time. stereo recording and playback never has been an attempt to reproduce anything. It has always been about creating an aural illusion.

Quote
These tests are of limited usefulness. The analogy to speakers is also somewhat flawed.



It is not an analogy.

Quote from: Mike Giacomelli on
Quote from: analog scott on
Preferences need no "justification."


As long as you're not interesting in communicating them to others, this is correct.  Of course, once you say "I prefer X" the natural follow up question is "Why do you prefer X" and then you run into trouble

If you have preferences that you know don't make sense, best not to tell other people about them, or they'll think you're a bit nutty.



How does one get into trouble? I can give you an answer in every case none of which get me into any trouble. The answers in every case are just going to be descriptions of the differences in what I heard. Now how do I run into trouble?


How do such preferences not makes sense?

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #239 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
You're showing your lack of practical experience. If one fails to properly synchronize the playback, one can easily identify the unknowns even if they are otherwise identical. As soon as the unknowns can be reliably identified by means other than sound quality, the test is no longer blind.



Not an issue if one simply repeats the program material from the begining each time.

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
If the alternatives are so different that one sounds clearly different from the reference (generally true of LP) and the other doesn't (generally true of the CD), then this isn't a test of preferences related to sound quality but rather a fancy questionaire about the listener's pre-existing biases.



The references? What reference are you using when you compare commercial CDs to their LP counterparts? I recently did a group comparison of LPs (various masterings) of John Coltrane's Love Supreme. What should I have used as a reference? Coltrane apparently wasn't available.

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
If you want to agree with me that people who think that vinyl sounds better don't base their prreferences on sound quality but rather base their stated preferences on their pre-existing biases, be my guest. That's basically my current best analysis of the situation.



can you offer any sort of meaningful account of actual blind comparisons that show this is actually based on the sound of various LPs and CDs at their best or is it safe to say that this is merely a reflection of your biases? my bias controlled comparisons tell a different story about the actual sound quality of various LPs and CDs of many different titles. As I stated before, it is quite obvious that the majority of the differences are mastring related as well as hardware related and that the intrinsic sound of each medium is a minor factor in most comparisons. So it should be no surprise that the results vary quite widely from title to title.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #240 –
Quote from: analog scott on
"*Reproducing* the sound created by the artist?" If we are talking about live acoustic music then vinyl, MP3, CD,SACD, DVD-A all fail. Stereo recording and playback fails, even multi-channel fails. You can not begin to capture the original soundfield in real time. stereo recording and playback never has been an attempt to reproduce anything. It has always been about creating an aural illusion.
You're missing the point. At the end of the day, the artist (along with some associated personnel) is creating some recording. CD and digital reproduce that recording more quantifiably more accurately than vinyl can.

As for the matter of speakers, if you were not drawing a parallel, what was the point of that anecdote? The parallel breaks just as the analogy would, and the anecdote is really rather impotent if it is neither parallel nor analogy.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #241 –
Quote from: Canar on
You're missing the point. At the end of the day, the artist (along with some associated personnel) is creating some recording. CD and digital reproduce that recording more quantifiably more accurately than vinyl can.


Why is that the point? Why is the goal to reproduce a stored intermediate signal (a recording) with a particular greater quantifiable accuracy the point?

Quote from: Canar on
As for the matter of speakers, if you were not drawing a parallel, what was the point of that anecdote? The parallel breaks just as the analogy would, and the anecdote is really rather impotent if it is neither parallel nor analogy.


A Parallel yes. an analogy no. Why does the parallel "break?" what is so unique about speakers that one can make preference comparisons without time syncing but one can not do the same when comparing CDs to LPs for the same purpose?

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #242 –
The question is not about mastering, it is about format.

To make it clear allow me to repeat Canar's point:  one can easily capture the vinyl experience on CD but you can't go in the opposite direction.  It really doesn't get any simpler than that.

Apples and oranges side discussion regarding mastering is going to find its way into the Recycle Bin.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #243 –
Quote from: greynol on
The question is not about mastering, it is about format.

To make it clear allow me to repeat Canar's point:  one can easily capture the vinyl experience on CD but you can't go in the opposite direction.  It really doesn't get any simpler than that.

Apples and oranges side discussion regarding mastering is going to find its way into the Recycle Bin.



I will keep that point in mind should I be considering a choice between copying CDs on vinyl or copying vinyl on CD. Given that I don't have a cutting lathe it really isn't an issue for me at this point. But the thing that spawned this current exhange was the assertion that one would likely be more artsy (or flakey) and less "scientific" (or smart or rational) to have a preference for vinyl. That is really a bunch of balony. The fact is one can have a preference for vinyl based on sound alone regardless of their scientific prowess. But one can't ignore that such a preference will likely involve things like mastering and hardware more than the intrinsic sound of either medium. How many actual CDs and LPs of the same title that you know of were mastered exactly the same way? But heck, if you guys want to discuss these subjects in a vaccuum that ignores the most obvious real world point of audio (playing actual commercial recordings) go right ahead. But when you chose to exlude these things from the discussion and only allow for an academic discussion on the merits of the two media on paper only, you chose to make the discussion irrelevant to the persuit of better sound by audiophiles. How often is it that there are no differences in mastering when one makes a comparison between an LP and a CD of the same title? How often is it that one makes such a comparison using Lp playback equipment that isn't something less than state of the art? How can you have a meaningful discussion about the merits of either media when we have no evidence that these factors are not an intrinsic part of every opinion expressed so far on this thread? Do you understand the significance of this point? Who among you who have been so critical of the sonic merits of LPs can honestly say thay have formed their opinions on the intrnsic sonic merits of the two media based on actual bias controlled comparisons using state of the art hardware and Lps and CDs of the same material that was designed to preclude any and all differences other than the two media? Considering the forum's policy on insisting on bias controlled tests to support opinions it does seem you are allowing for a lot of opinions to fly here without the requisit support. If the CD medium is so superior that not only can we say that it will clobber LPs played back on SOTA equipment under blind conditions but it will do so by such a margin that we can really ignore real world mastering differences that permiate the market, where are the bias controlled  tests to support such a strong belief? Like I said before, the blind comparisons I actually did with an actual recording that was deliberately designed to isolate the two media themselves by using no signal proccessing in the mastering wrought a preference for vinyl but it did not wrought a such a dramatic difference that one can  ignore factors like mastering and hardware in the real world. so given these real world factors it is nothing short of pure prejudice to reduce people to artsy (flakey) or scientific (smart and rational) based on their personal preferences between the two media.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #244 –
Quote from: analog scott on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
You're showing your lack of practical experience. If one fails to properly synchronize the playback, one can easily identify the unknowns even if they are otherwise identical. As soon as the unknowns can be reliably identified by means other than sound quality, the test is no longer blind.


Not an issue if one simply repeats the program material from the begining each time.


Again, you are showing your lack of experience. If you repeat the program material from the begining each time the listener's sensitvity to small details is totally compromised by the delay time between hearing the identical same music.

Quote from: analog scott on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
If the alternatives are so different that one sounds clearly different from the reference (generally true of LP) and the other doesn't (generally true of the CD), then this isn't a test of preferences related to sound quality but rather a fancy questionaire about the listener's pre-existing biases.


The references?


Yes, references, the one thing that is absent from most alleged comparisons of LP and vinyl.  No references, no test.

Quote
What reference are you using when you compare commercial CDs to their LP counterparts? I recently did a group comparison of LPs (various masterings) of John Coltrane's Love Supreme. What should I have used as a reference? Coltrane apparently wasn't available.


Then you weren't doing tests.

Given what you have revealed so far Scott, it appears that what you were actually doing was a fancy survey of people's pre-existing biases.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #245 –
Quote from: analog scott on
But the thing that spawned this current exhange was the assertion that one would likely be more artsy (or flakey) and less "scientific" (or smart or rational) to have a preference for vinyl.


It probably helps to take a step back. This is really about music and media. Supposedly, we listen to music beause we like music. Alternatively, one might like a particular medium, less so than want to enjoy the music.

If your primary interest is music, then of course you want to  listen to the most accurate form of the music which is of course live music. Since that is often difficult or impossible, us music lovers fall back on listening to music via some medium.

Comparing and contrasting the LP and CD mediums, let us first agree that both mediums force us to resort to the process of micing and mixing, which in and of itself dramatically changes the sound of the music. This problem is common to both the LP and the CD, and sequel mediums, which are now common. Most newer mediums behave more like the CD than the LP as typically used.

Now, actualy comparing just the 2 mediums, we should agree that the CD medium can deliver a near-perfect or functionally perfect presentation of whatever we miced and mixed. The LP medium is highly sonically instrusive, and that is not an opinion, it is a scientifically provable fact.

Therefore, if your interest is primarily listening to music, and not primarily listening to the sonic and experiencing the other non-sonic properties of the medium, then the CD is the logical, scientific choice.


Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #246 –
analog scott,

We've had this argument tens of times before on HA.

1. No one has proven that the sound of an LP can't be faithfully reproduced on a CD. Lots of people copy LPs onto CDs. They seem happy with the process. No one seems to be able to ABX a difference. If you can, step right up.

2. Mastering differences, noise, and distortion can all cause a commercial LP to sound different from a commercial CD. Sometimes the commercial LP will sound better. My stereo LP of A Hard Day's Night sounds far better than my mono CD


You might think the solution to point 2 is to spend a lot of money on a decent turntable and buy vinyl for those releases where vinyl sounds better.

Some people would rather get the "superior" vinyl copied to CD or digital file by someone else, and use that.

Unless you can disprove point 1, using a digital copy of the "superior" vinyl is rational, gives equivalent sound quality, and is far cheaper - not to mention more convenient, as the digital file won't scratch or wear out!

Cheers,
David.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #247 –
Quote from: analog scott on
Quote from: greynol on

To make it clear allow me to repeat Canar's point:  one can easily capture the vinyl experience on CD but you can't go in the opposite direction.  It really doesn't get any simpler than that.



I will keep that point in mind should I be considering a choice between copying CDs on vinyl or copying vinyl on CD. Given that I don't have a cutting lathe it really isn't an issue for me at this point. But the thing that spawned this current exhange was the assertion that one would likely be more artsy (or flakey) and less "scientific" (or smart or rational) to have a preference for vinyl. That is really a bunch of balony.

Once you're willing to accept what Canar and greynol said, and it seems you do, then the choice for vinyl becomes either a romantic one or a practical one. I don't think you can argue much for practicality of vinyl over CD, so you're stuck with romantic. Which is fine, but it's not a rational nor scientific choice.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #248 –
The preference for vinyl could be likened to a smoker who prefers to roll their own - filters and all. In a similar way to recently non-smokers who don't know what to do with their hands, the 25 minute cycle of LP side change may be part of the "habit".
lossyWAV -q X -a 4 -s h -A --feedback 2 --limit 15848 --scale 0.5 | FLAC -5 -e -p -b 512 -P=4096 -S- (having set foobar to output 24-bit PCM; scaling by 0.5 gives the ANS headroom to work)

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #249 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Again, you are showing your lack of experience. If you repeat the program material from the begining each time the listener's sensitvity to small details is totally compromised by the delay time between hearing the identical same music.


That would be a problem if we were looking for subtle differences near the threshold of human hearing. since these are tests for preferences all we need are consistant results to know that the alleged loss of sensitivity is not an issue.

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Yes, references, the one thing that is absent from most alleged comparisons of LP and vinyl.  No references, no test.


I was asking you what you would suggest one use as a reference when comparing LPs and CDs of the same title given that you claim to have done countless such tests. now you claim that they were absent from most alleged tests and you offer no answer for yourself on the question of what references you used.  It would seem that by your own defintions you did not do actual tests. I would love to see some consistancy from your answers about *your* alleged tests if I am to believe they ever really happened. Let me remind you that you claim to have done countelss such tests. I wonder how any of them could have met your new defintion of a test? What was your references for yourt countless tests and what were your sources for CDs and LPs? As for your assertion that one need a reference in a preference test for it to be a test that is just nonsense. The preference is based on personal aesthetic values. They are subjective and need not have a reference. The choice of any reference would in and of itself be a subjective choice. What reference do they use in blind taste comparisons for wine? Are they no longer "tests" because they lack any reference?



Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
"What reference are you using when you compare commercial CDs to their LP counterparts? I recently did a group comparison of LPs (various masterings) of John Coltrane's Love Supreme. What should I have used as a reference? Coltrane apparently wasn't available."

Then you weren't doing tests.



Sure I was. Are you seriously now suggesting that one can't do bias contolled tests to form a preference based on sound alone without an arbitrary reference? That is absurd.

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Given what you have revealed so far Scott, it appears that what you were actually doing was a fancy survey of people's pre-existing biases.



Given what you have said it seems you are desperate to come up with some reason or another to dismiss my bias controlled comparisons no matter how absurb the reason may be. Now that is obviously a bias driven agenda. I wonder if anyone on this thread would be making any of the arguments they are making if I had reported consistant preferences for CD?