True Audiophile

[arj]

Manav

"Analogue sounding" is an oft repeated cliche, which makes me wonder why the reviewer is reviewing a digital system in the first place. If he is looking for an "analogue sound" then he should not be reviewing a CDP or DAC.

A good digital system should be unapologetically digital sounding. Personally I am a fan of digital and solid state music. If my source and amp started emanating sounds which could be referred to as 'analogue' or 'tube' sounds, then I would consider them a failure, and I would get rid of them

actually sound is always Analogue Morse code is the only digital sound.

frankly if the recording/system are both good you will be hardpressed to say if it is an LP or a CD. unfortunately many good recordings have been vandalised on CDs (surprisingly reverse is also true)

some of us were at Jochens place a couple of months back listning to the Scheu/Einstein/blumenhofer. The music was so spellbinding that you dont even care about analogue/soundstage/ etc etc...we just opened our mouths/ears/minds and got lost.

but if one concentrated on it..yes the 3D soundstage was all there. need to hear it to believe it (Or believe those who heard it ) hyeah:

i was totally anti LPs for quite some time. today i feel for some music you need to have a good analogue system as there is a magic to it with some recordings...and yes I am all for CDs too.

 

[ajay124]

hiten

Digital information being used for issuing fresh vinyl pressings would be a travesty of the 'pure analogue' sound which is the raison d'etre of vinyl in the first place. The groves of a vinyl record are said to hold more information than a compact disc. But if digital information is used for issuing vinyl then wouldn't that extra bit of information be already missing?

 

[omishra]

But if digital information is used for issuing vinyl then wouldn't that extra bit of information be already missing?

I noticed this and even friend with his family was witness to this session. I played new pressed Pakeeza LP against old one. Old LP won with high margins. New one and CD played more or less same. Simply sharpness of new LP was unpleasant.

 

[spirovious]

Though I am not expert in 2 ch,I can still add that to get the actual feel of Vinyl OR true analog sound,one should invest is digital system which costs lakhs.Like-
dCS: Puccini

 

[biyer]

But most modern or post 90s recordings have been digital. They are then processed on Computers then saved digitally. I guess an analogue/vinyl system will only make sense if at all it does for Old analogue tape recorded music.

for example A.R Rahman vinyls not a good idea. I feel the analogue pressings would be more unoriginal in that case.

 

[venkatcr]

.....and now sir, you ..... please tell me that analogue is the truest sound. The best a digital jig can do is reproduce it at par. Yeah, everybody these days, is having a completely digital setup, I.e. the source and amplification parts are digital. May be because of ease of operation, storage and cross component convergence. But do you think the best of CDP + Integrated Amp combo can beat a top of the line TT + Tube amp jig? Has this been tried before?

Eager to get a reply from Venket sir...

As a few previous posts have been pointing out, most of the current recording is in digital. So, if one is hearing an LP of anything recorded after, say, the 1990, it is basically a digital recording converted to analogue and cut into the LP.

But that is not the point. I find Fermer's statement that, 'hisses and scratches are like a man coughing in a performance' and that he can live with that, not acceptable to me. For me, a song has to be flawless. I have thrown away CDs that have even a small fault. An Audio PC is a god send to me as, once converted, I am assured of the same quality of sound, the first time, and the millionth time. An LP is a mechanical device and the needle is constantly eroding the record. The second time you play the music is not the same as the first time. This is a difference, however small. If some one tells me an LP can play without any noise, I find that hard to believe.

A good DAC can, with proper sampling rates, bring the sound very very close to the analogue sine wave, and that is good enough for me. Frankly the separation, soundstage, and the consistent accuracy I get from a digital recoding is not something an LP can ever deliver. Case in point is Mughal-E-Azam. Just compare the LP to a version of the CD where it was cleaned and recorded completely in digital. You will feel Latha is singing standing next to you. When Rafi sings 'Zindabad', the chorus adds a new dimension of volume to the sound that an LP will find very difficult to deliver. A good digital system can make you forget that you are using an electronic system. The speakers, amps, and source could all disappear.

I started my audio journey with a Dual 606 and an Ortofon Concorde cartridge. It is just that a digital system has so many advantages, that it does not make sense for me to re-look at an analogue system at all. Even if I agree that a digital system is 90% analogue only, as I said, that is good enough for me and I am happy with it.

The concept of using an analogue system, worrying about the LP conditions, cleaning it every time before use, worrying about dust, worrying if the cartridge is too heavy - all these do not let me enjoy the music. In a digital system, I drop half a dozen songs into Foobar and I can sit back and enjoy the music with the assurance of 100% repeatable quality.

I will not be too surprised if Fermer himself has switched to digital system. Most reviewers have.

Cheers

 

[stevieboy]

hiten

Digital information being used for issuing fresh vinyl pressings would be a travesty of the 'pure analogue' sound which is the raison d'etre of vinyl in the first place. The groves of a vinyl record are said to hold more information than a compact disc. But if digital information is used for issuing vinyl then wouldn't that extra bit of information be already missing?

Hi Ajay,

I have a doors box set with some lps remastered digitally cos of the condition of the original master tapes. There is quite a difference between the vinyl and cd playback even when a digital remaster is used. At least to my ears.

Regards


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[santhosh]

IMO, both digital and Analog are good but I prefer Vinyl as it is much more involving. Vinyl encapsulates us in the music and we forget to critically dissect/analyze the system. Arj has said it very well. If we do analyze the sound critically, it is all there - the three dimensionality, imaging, soundstage et all. Good clean Vinyl when played on a well setup TT will sound way better than a similarly priced Digital Source. I agree that the cleaning/tweaking is not everybody's cup of tea. For some, it may seem like a huge task. But to us fans of the Vinyl format, it is a way of connecting to the music, our systems - a very satisfying labour of love.

 

[ajay124]

Venkatcr has mentioned most of the problem areas with vinyl. I agree with all the points he has made. But the biggest barrier for me in adopting vinyl is, that it would be impossible to find the music I listen to on vinyl. Amazon is getting it's vinyl act together. But the choice is limited and the pricing is high. And sadly very little western classical music. Looking at the availability of vinyl titles it seems that 'vinylphylia' is mostly targeted at fans of rock and jazz music from the golden age of analogue recordings from 1950-1980.

http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_lin...7SN5&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=318818701&pf_rd_i=51

A quick list of the music that I am currently listening to. Roughly 150 CD's. Mostly budget box sets with the average price of a CD working out to between 100-150. Availability, economy, durability, convenience are my reasons for sticking to CD's. With a mediocre CD player the sound may not be all that great. But I believe that a good CDP from brands like Esoteric, Accuphase, Meridian, Ayre, Ayon would create enough magic to satisfy most audiophiles.

Sibelius/Osmo Vanska and Lahti Symphony Orchestra
Igor Stravinsy/Pierre Boulez
Bela Bartok/Pierre Boulez
Anton Webern/Pierre Boulez
Brahms/Bernard Haitink and Royal Concertgebouw
David Oistrakh
Jascha Heifetz
Sviatoslav Richter
Dmitri Shostakovich/Various Conductors
Gustav Mahler/Various Conductors
Sergie Prokofiev/Various Conductors
Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky/Various Conductors
Bhimsen Joshi
Bismillah Khan
Dagar Brothers
Ali Akbar Khan
Allah Rakha
Zakir Hussain
Phil Ochs
Carpenters
Simon & Garfunkel
Charlie Parker

I wonder what caused the dominance of digital music and the marginalization of vinyl. Was it a choice made by the industry or a choice made by the consumer?

 

[hifiashok]

Pl. peruse Wiki for a description of DDD, AAD, ADD, etc., to get an idea of what could the relevance of digital and analogue be to old vinyl, new vinyl, CD, remasters, etc. So, vinyls are not cut from a CD.

On digital master vis-a-vis quality, the entire game is the sampling rate, or the density in which the music is stored (for master). CDs are much lower sampling, and MP3s even more so.

With technology available today, the density and resolution practical with digital would theoretically not be possible with vinyl (though masters for old vinyl were on tape, which allows very good density).

The world moved to CD primarily for convenience and longevity of the media. More storage space, ability to skip tracks, etc., also.

 

[gvenu]

surely you are joking buddy! :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

+1 to that!

 

[arindamcc]

Costly source material + High grade nicely glowing Tube gear + Uncompressed Music = Analog hyeah:hyeah:


Low cost source material or free (Internet) source material + Cheapo black plastic (SS) electronics gear + Compressed Music = Digital :sad::sad:

 

[venkatcr]

I have a doors box set with some lps remastered digitally cos of the condition of the original master tapes. There is quite a difference between the vinyl and cd playback even when a digital remaster is used. At least to my ears.

To a large extent, I think this is because of the equipment used in the studios. The DAC must be having a very high sampling rate - the rest of the equipment must be costing 1000s of dollars. They will be using balanced connections. Unbalanced connection have separate earthing for each cable, and nearly twice the SNR of an equal quality unbalanced connection. Let us an unbalanced connection gives you 75dB SNR, a balanced connection will deliver SNR of 150dB. The final analogue signal, I am sure, is edited before being cut into the LP.

As you move up the ladder in terms of SNR and sampling rates, it will be very difficult to make out the difference. I think in terms of consumer market, we are just scratching the surface on these factors. If I see the current enthusiasm amongst manufacturers, digital sound is the way to go. Today, at about 3-5K$, you can get a DAC with a sampling rate of 384K. people like Asus care already offering SNRs over 100dB.

Analogue, though it has come back, is yet in a rich man's domain. A good and decent TT will end up costing anywhere from 50,000 onwards. I have heard whispers about TTs costing 50,000K$. And what is difference between that and a 1000$ one? Just going to extraordinary extents to stabilise the rotor speed, reduce friction, and the amount of weight the arm plays of the album, and praying to God that a track is not skipped. Compare this to a 20,000 PC and a 500,000 PC both of which will give you the same quality of FLAC or WAV file upto it's I/O. After that what you do with it is your option. if you insert a decent sound card, the PC's capabilities become irrelevant except as a file storage system.

Cheers

 

[odyssey]

Reading through these posts, it shows that many don't know about what makes Vinyl different than CD. I would encourage you to search for how Vinyls are mastered and cut and this is essential to the understanding of differences between Vinyl and CD.
Almost any comparison between a Vinyl of the same album and its CD is USELESS in determining what sounds closer to the original performance - WHY? they are both mastered differently. With CDs there is almost nothing to do in the way of equalization, with Vinyls, its far more complicated and the engineer has to have a lot of experience taking into account a variety of factors such as - dynamic range, where to place a particular track (depending on whether it has mono bass, how loud the bass is, how loud the track is), etc. high frequency has to be increased and bass is always messed with, with low bass being taken out and bass in the 100 to 200 hz being boosted. Vinyl and CD will never sound similar as one isn't comparing the same source material - whats the point of this comparison.
When taking Indian mastered Vinyl, I would doubt as to how many people here have this expertise in doing this in hi-fidelity. This is nothing to do with capability but the market that we are in. When LPs were prevalent in India, there was no need for high fidelity, it didn't matter what imaging was or soundstage, who cared? Present day, I still very much doubt anything has changed in India. Currently CDs/mp3s and radio are the medium of listening in India, thats all that matters.

Heres another commonly mis-understood term - SNR of DACs or CDPs or entire chains - (comprising of multiple components). As Venkat pointed out SNR is used by all digital gear manufacturers with any DAC to showcase that their "noise" levels are different - rather better. A 96dB SNR almost means to say that you the DAC is capable of differentiating an ant walking on the floor (the sound that it makes) while also recording the sound of an airplane engine in the near vicinity. To me the SNR numbers given by most manufacturers are meaningless as they almost always refer to just the number of bits x 20log(base10)2 (for the mathematically inclined). So for a 16 bit DAC this translates to about 96dB. For a higher bit DAC, this number is higher....I ask SO WHAT? you cant hear this anyway, CDs are recorded at best for a few 10's of DB variation, the SNR in this scheme of things is useless. Your entire system is not capable (when you take the pre and power amp) of delivering this SNR. Here's a simple test - put your ear against the tweeter with the volume at regular listening position. Can you hear something - a slight hiss, hum? anything that determines that this system is ON vs OFF (obviously with no music playing?) ? If so, your SNR has gone down the drain - this is all in the context of home systems. In the studio, you clearly want the best signal you can get, period, what you do to it in a real world application is limited by the market and equipment you are trying to serve.

Also, Unabalanced vs Balanced - the balanced is definitely higher noise rejection - amplitude goes up by twice, which translates to an SNR increase of 3dB - so 75 dB becomes 78dB balanced, not 150 dB.

cheers

 

[spirovious]

To add the topic,which system FM radio stations do use?Most of them play songs off PC & even after transmission they sound very good on aiwa walkman.
Which DAC/card they may be using to get good analog sound?

 

[manoj.p]

Almost any comparison between a Vinyl of the same album and its CD is USELESS in determining what sounds closer to the original performance - WHY? they are both mastered differently. With CDs there is almost nothing to do in the way of equalization, with Vinyls, its far more complicated and the engineer has to have a lot of experience taking into account a variety of factors such as - dynamic range, where to place a particular track (depending on whether it has mono bass, how loud the bass is, how loud the track is), etc. high frequency has to be increased and bass is always messed with, with low bass being taken out and bass in the 100 to 200 hz being boosted. Vinyl and CD will never sound similar as one isn't comparing the same source material - whats the point of this comparison.

Based on what you just described, I now know which medium is NOT closer to original. guesses, anybody?

 

[odyssey]

Based on what you just described, I now know which medium is NOT closer to original. guesses, anybody?

Neither are - with music today primarily mastered for radio listening (at least the bulk of rock, pop, etc) they are done with almost no dynamic range and with a lot of compression, its like screaming on the top of your lungs to be heard over everyone else.
This is the single biggest reason that audiophile recordings are premium and there are audiophiles who are willing to pay for it.

cheers

 

[manoj.p]

agreed. All the recordings are specifically mastered and tweaked, earlier too and now too. But its the Audiophiles who claim to go to original which can never be possible. The only original that they can get to is "Studio" original. Again, that like listening to what the recording/sound engineer wanted you to hear, not what the musician intended. When we take these things in perspective, its hard to get to a reference when recordings vary from studio to studio, engineer to engineer.

CD has the limitations, there is no doubt about it. Thats why there are SACD/DVD-Audio and now the lossless bluray audio. There are recordings available in these and people are willing to pay. But its another thing to say Vinyl is always better than CD and then proclaim that hiss, pop are the part of music. If someone lives near the railway tracks, then they would like some extra noise added to the recordings and call it life like. Will that be acceptable?

 

[square_wave]

actually sound is always Analogue Morse code is the only digital sound.

frankly if the recording/system are both good you will be hardpressed to say if it is an LP or a CD. unfortunately many good recordings have been vandalised on CDs (surprisingly reverse is also true)

some of us were at Jochens place a couple of months back listning to the Scheu/Einstein/blumenhofer. The music was so spellbinding that you dont even care about analogue/soundstage/ etc etc...we just opened our mouths/ears/minds and got lost.

but if one concentrated on it..yes the 3D soundstage was all there. need to hear it to believe it (Or believe those who heard it ) hyeah:

i was totally anti LPs for quite some time. today i feel for some music you need to have a good analogue system as there is a magic to it with some recordings...and yes I am all for CDs too.

Agree:

Have listened to Jochens system and couple of LP12 front end systems.
The only digital systems that even came close to showing a clear window into the music are a custom made system by Siva of corrson and then a complete DCS system based front end a few years ago.

I mean they come close and maybe score a few points when it comes to pyro-technics. But for a clear window into the music, it is LP for me anyday !

Please bear in mind that both these digital systems are state of the art !

 

[square_wave]

+1 to that!

Another plus to that