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Topic: Vinyl's great, but it's not better than CDs (Read 7903 times) previous topic - next topic
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Vinyl's great, but it's not better than CDs

Perhaps you'll find it worth reading:

Vinyl's great, but it's not better than CDs


Better known as Vox.com is probably The Verge, both belong to Vox Media Inc.
This is HA. Not the Jerry Springer Show.

Vinyl's great, but it's not better than CDs

Reply #1 –
Nice article and Youtube video, thanks!

Vinyl's great, but it's not better than CDs

Reply #2 –
I read that yesterday, but it kinda rubbed me the wrong way. Note this part:
Quote
While vinyl records, in theory, directly encode a smooth audio wave, CDs sample that audio wave at various points and then collate those samples. "No matter how high a sampling rate is," Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk once wrote, "it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove."

That's true. CDs work by taking a bunch of samples from a source audio wave and stringing them together. But this criticism is misleading on two counts. [...] It's true that CDs can't exactly replicate the whole audio wave in a master, in every case (update: in many cases, the Nyquist-Shannon theorem means it can) — but neither can vinyl records.


Note that before the "update" there was no mention of Nyquist-Shannon, and also note that "that's true". They left that quote by the Wired writer which, after the "update" is completely irrelevant at least and at most it's just a contradicting statement. And since they're using him as some kind of authority, go take a look at that article and try not to puke a little.

Also, they don't make the distinction between transparency and so-called euphonic distortion, which is a problem when you can also do that kind of distortion on a digital source, but you can't achieve the same transparency on vinyl.

Vinyl's great, but it's not better than CDs

Reply #3 –
Quote from: skamp on
Nice article and Youtube video, thanks!

Thank you for your feedback, skamp. Much appreciated

Quote from: andy o on
it kinda rubbed me the wrong way.

The Vox article has its pros and cons. The problem for me is that there is nearly none article I could unreservedly agree with.
This is HA. Not the Jerry Springer Show.

Vinyl's great, but it's not better than CDs

Reply #4 –
Rather  than Nyquist sampling,  it is quantization that is the defining feature of digital, and  Nyquist sampling theorum is not directly applicable as it is about the discrete time sampling of a continuouse signals, not the following quantization,  and it is dithered sampling and quantization that explains how it "captures the analog waveform" or... "all of the data present in an analog groove." - as it is  written in the quote.

Vinyl's great, but it's not better than CDs

Reply #5 –
Quote from: KMD on
Rather  than Nyquist sampling,  it is quantization that is the defining feature of digital, and  Nyquist sampling theorum is not directly applicable as it is about the discrete time sampling of a continuouse signals, not the following quantization,  and it is dithered sampling and quantization that explains how it "captures the analog waveform" or... "all of the data present in an analog groove." - as it is  written in the quote.

Being even more picky, it's the quantisation that's dithered, not the sampling.

But yes, you can have analogue sampling. You can do it with a bank of capacitors. You can do it with a row of buckets! (not audio, but rainfall or river flow.)

Cheers,
David.

Vinyl's great, but it's not better than CDs

Reply #6 –
I don't think  your comment is  being  picky , its important to get it right as being imprecise often leads to  Nyquist being used incorrectly  to explain digital audio and the indispensable  pupose of dither is often left out or misunderstood.

I was thinking that once the voltage was on the S/H cap it was too late to dither but on second thoughts it is not  and,

  as you say ,

it is dithered quantization.



Having worked with CCDs I always thought the serial nature of  bucket brigade lines were inefficient and noisy as you could do the same thing by storing a wavefrom on a CCD and accessing it like addressing the bits on a RAM chip.

Vinyl's great, but it's not better than CDs

Reply #7 –
I don't think dither (noise around -90dB) has any effect on digitized vinyl (noise around -60dB).

Vinyl's great, but it's not better than CDs

Reply #8 –
Quote from: DVDdoug on
I don't think dither (noise around -90dB) has any effect on digitized vinyl (noise around -60dB).

I believe the combination of -60 dB plus -90dB works out to about -59.99 dB.

Vinyl's great, but it's not better than CDs

Reply #9 –
Digitising vinyl is not really the concern. Rather the nature of digitizing an analogue waveform.

Refering dither to noise levels  is an example of the innacuracy I was refering to.

Dithering  is of often left out of explanations of digital audio but infact it is  an inherant  part of the digitizing process. Dithering and quantization combined is how the analog waveform is captured. Quantization alone does not suffice. The quote refering to not  "capturing all the data present..." is correct without dither. And so a correct explantion is nessasary.

quote

"  Insufficient dither will cause .....low level signals be severely distorted or even all together lost  "

( emphasis mine )


Paper

  Resolution below the least significant bit in digital systems with dither  - Vanderkooy, John; Lipshitz, Stanley P.

Vinyl's great, but it's not better than CDs

Reply #10 –
Quote from: KMD on
"  Insufficient dither will cause .....low level signals be severely distorted or even all together lost "


The point is that you will distort/lose "low level signals" down at the -90 dB level - and anything below -60 dB or so is only noise anyway. So without dithering, you will only lose/distort some hiss and noise. Only makes a difference if you consider the hiss/noise to be part of the authentic experience you want to represent accurately

Vinyl's great, but it's not better than CDs

Reply #11 –
julf was faster...
 

Vinyl's great, but it's not better than CDs

Reply #12 –
I don't think the article was talking about anything other than frequency range in the disputed paragraph.