Re: WSJ asks Why Vinyls Boom Is Over
Reply #98 – 2017-08-01 22:14:19
I mean music, like certain orchestral works, with the widest dynamic range, deep bass (below 20hz), etc., played at realistic levels, to expose the limitations of vinyl...which electronic/rock/pop music that vinyl clutchers mainly listen to, won't expose. Look out for the Verdi Requiem on the RCA Soria series. Side 1 track 2 and tell me that you don't hear some dynamic range (most systems can reproduce it...). Or the Saint Saens Organ symphony, which has sub-20Hz in the grooves- it can shake the walls.... I don't think you really understand the point. There's an audible dynamic range on every classical recording, whatever the format: LP, CD, MP3. There's no need to mention any composition, or recording, or specific tracks. On vinyl the maximal dynamic range is reduced compared to PCM 44,1/16 based formats. Because every time the music comes closer to silence you'll hear noise surface, pops, cracks, distortion… Something you can't ear at all with CD on normal listening conditions . The dynamic range here simply means Signal to Noise Ratio (and has nothing to do with the rather misleading DR Range). I have more than 2500 classical CD in my own collection, and I'm used to this sound. When I had the opportunity to listen recently classical music on vinyl (it was an Oratorio from Haendel) I was very excited… and was really astonished by the high amount of noise and other defects. It's was absolutely not transparent, and the sound was clearly behind the CD version. It was simply poor. I also downloaded for "science" some high quality vinyl rip (those made with insanely expensive material and time costly preparation) which were sampled in DSD128 or PCM 192/24…32 and I thought it was a kind of joke. The noise amount is really high and the only time I wasn't disturbed by it is when the music played loudly. There were also many other sound issues mainly audible with low volume music on those "high resolution audiophile hardware" vinyl rip. The dynamic range is clearly and by far lower on classical LP than on classical CD. Especially on modern and crystal clear recordings. I guess I could post samples but I also guess that some people will just say the vinyl rip was just poorly made by someone who can't set up properly his own turntable. For the little story, here are the amazon sales for LP in 2004 and 2012. In 2012, 0,1% of LP sales were classical music albums. 0,1%… Which is really surprising when you know the appetite of classical music audiophiles for SACD (~50% of the whole catalog are classical stuff) or more recently Blu-Ray Audio.