True Audiophile

[jls001]

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.

A small correction: CD sampling rate is 44.1 kHz. mp3 sampling rate is 48 kHz. Bit rate of CD is 1440 kbps (or thereabouts, I don't remember exact bit rate off hand). mp3 bit rate is anything upto 384 kbps. It is the bit rate which makes the difference, not the sampling rate.
Regards,
Joshua

 

[stevieboy]

To a large extent, I think this is because of the equipment used in the studios.

Analogue, though it has come back, is yet in a rich man's domain.

Hi Venkat,

Don't you think that even CDs are remastered using top of the line equipment? I don't quite understand your first statement.

As for your second statement, the number of average middle class guys who are getting into vinyl on this forum itself contradicts the statement

Regards

 

[square_wave]

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.

Whoaa

Have you done a comparison of a well pressed LP against its cd or digital wave/Flac in a setup which can do justice to both mediums to come to this conclusion ?????

Would like to know and also conduct a test for this if possible !

 

[venkatcr]

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

An unbalanced, for stereo, carries two channels in the same cable. A balanced carries each channel separately with a earthing in each cable. That is how the double figure of 150dB (which is a rough, BTW) is arrived at. SNR is not the same as amplitude.

BTW, Odyssey, your post is not very convincing on any point. At least to me. I am not ready to write of the Nyquist-Shannon theorem that states, 'In essence, the theorem shows that a bandlimited analog signal that has been sampled can be perfectly reconstructed from an infinite sequence of samples if the sampling rate exceeds 2B samples per second, where B is the highest frequency of the original signal.'.

With modern sampling coming close to 384KHz, the reconstructed sample will be indistinguishable from the original. This has been proved umpteen times in measurements, where the sinusoidal wave has been reconstructed and measured to have the same shape as the original at all frequencies. If some one at this stage says, 'you do not know what you are missing', my answer is neither of our ears can hear the difference, if any.

SNR has to be looked at as the quantum of noise vs quantum of actual data to understand why this is important. It is not what you say in terms of putting your ears against a speaker or something. It has to do with what each word length contains. How much of that word length has real data and how much is noise, or shall we say extraneous or irrelevant information.

Your statements about way of recording is agreeable. But the whole thing does not make sense to me because software companies are not holding analogue masters any more. Nearly all the original content is digital.

Cheers

 

[venkatcr]

Don't you think that even CDs are remastered using top of the line equipment? I don't quite understand your first statement.

This is exactly what I said. Unfortunately, at the consumer end, we do not have equivalent equipment.

As for your second statement, the number of average middle class guys who are getting into vinyl on this forum itself contradicts the statement

True, but these are entry level systems or, at the most, middle level systems. An digital system that can deliver the same quality will cost much less.

Cheers

 

[arj]

These days with the abundance of information and user experience available it is rather Naive to proclaim superiority of one well regarded medium over another.

While there can always be personal inclinations and likings, which are perfectly acceptable in this hobby, putting a medium like an LP or CD as bad is almost as bad as religious fundamentalism :sad:

there are really well recorded CDs and well recorded LPS which play well even in Mid Fi systems can give one immense joy ..there is no need of mega buck systems to realise this potential.

eg I recently heard an EMT 938 turntable in Singapore,using a Naim entry level amp and some Chinese speakers..the sound was incredible..No pops/clicks (even on really old unclean LPS !!) and immensely detailed.perhaps a bit too analytical for my taste though.

 

[jls001]

I think the whole argument of analog versus digital will take us nowhere. It's like a religious war, internecine in nature, with neither side willing to give way, see logic, or hear the other's point of view. Much pixel space will be taken up and we will still come out no better than when we started.

Digital gear has been through lots of refinements since its inception in the late 70s when Fremer proclaimed "Compact Discs Suck" in a custom printed car bumper sticker, and is therefore here to stay in one form or another, irrespective of whether we like it or not.

Vinyl gear has been through even more refinements, starting from at least the early 50s, and has seen a veritable resurgence in the last decade.

Each has its strengths, and weaknesses. If one can invest more than a quarter of a million dollar on either format, there would still be differences but it would no longer would be a question of which is superior. Just differences.

Some folks don't mind the act of "fremering" [as defined by Sam Tellig in one of his Stereophile columns as "incessant fiddling with analog gear" (or something close to that effect)], and I believe a slightly derogatory banter between old hands at the magazine.

Some folks don't have the patience. Or had never taken the plunge.

The best option is to enjoy the best of what both religions have to offer, for the simple reason that there are lots of material out there which one will never find in CD format. And vice versa.

 

[square_wave]

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

You kind of nailed it !

Discussion of theories and how it should translate to real world sound in an ideal world is pretty much meaning less !

I have heard some very high spec DACs sound pretty much poor compared to some which have inferior paper specs. From an engineering point of view, this should not be the case. But the fact is that different Dac makers employ methods of implementation. For example if DCS makes two dacs; one with the inferior paper specs will sound inferior !

A majority of digital recordings in the market do not have the dynamic range that digital is capable of.

In theory, digital can do wonders with your music. It can sound very close to analogue sound. But there will still be a minute gap between the life and blood feel of the LP and the slightly stark nature of digital. The higher sampling rate hi-rez digital downloads are quite good and sound very close to analogue but there is still a gap which I am sure is not possible to bridge because of the nature of digital.

Hardcore audiophiles are not about convenience or sound without any clocks and pops . Slight Clicks and pops in a LP is a compromise or price you pay for the life and blood feel of Vinyl. I completely agree with Fremer.
It is all part of the game for an audiophile. Otherwise we would all be listening to i-pods !

 

[jls001]

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?

Typical FM radio chain: source is wave files ripped from CDs --> wave file normalised (meaning high amplitude passages are lowered, low amplitude passages are raised) --> computerised playout --> sent to Transmitter --> audio processing before it goes into the Exciter (modulator, which does the frequency modulation) --> high power amplifier --> antenna --> listener.

Some stations use computer audio cards, others use virtual audio drivers (like Axia).

Audio processing is what gives different stations their different sound signatures.
Joshua

 

[prem]

Guys does it really matter what you listen to your music on? As long as one is enjoying it, i guess its fine.

 

[Bluu]

Guys does it really matter what you listen to your music on? As long as one is enjoying it, i guess its fine.

It's best to invest in both formats and enjoy them. Vinyl needs more work so it can be reserved for those special listening sessions while digital's convenience can be utilized for all other occasions.

 

[jls001]

Guys does it really matter what you listen to your music on? As long as one is enjoying it, i guess its fine.

Amen to that.

 

[stevieboy]

This is exactly what I said. Unfortunately, at the consumer end, we do not have equivalent equipment.



True, but these are entry level systems or, at the most, middle level systems. An digital system that can deliver the same quality will cost much less.

Cheers

Venkat,

For the first statement, you implied that better quality was cos of the equipment in the studio, I asked whether when mastering a CD would not the same level of equipment be present? If so, then your theory of better equipment in the vinyl studio is not valid.

As for the second, it depends on the individual view point I guess. For me its quite the reverse.

Regards

 

[stevieboy]

On a connected note, I had written to Van Vliet who restores and sells EMT turntables, asking about the differences in sound between the 930 and 938 and he replied 'I never answer questions about sound because sound also and always is a matter of taste'.

Amen to variety digital will always be digital and vinyl always vinyl and never shall the twain meet.

 

[omishra]

I think we are waved off. This is not against capabilities of these formats - vinyl or digital. It is true that audio band frequencies are never changing its shape either stored in analog tape or highly sampled digital data.

This is for mastering which decides what/how included in the final presentation which comes to us.

CD mastering is done with very HQ equipments. But question of tight filtering (equalization) of each instrument and loosing some harmonics which gives natural effect to it. These harmonics were supposed to be present in old format but now people like to clean up.

Please don't consider FM transmission as benchmark. It can't be. Because they have to transmit 19KHz pilot signal with the transmission which is used for stereo decoding by your FM receiver. So they have brick-wall filter at 16KHz which sharply cuts audio band at that point itself. You lost all above 16KHz (BTW human like me can't recognize/listen 14KHz-20KHz effectively).

So love you music where you find them in most correct way irrespective of format. I have all sources in my rack, not biased towards one. Still music decides which source to be used.

 

[Hiten]

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.

Absolutely no arguing about that. And I wholeheartedly say that technically Digital is superior to Analogue medium. And if source material of your favourite music is in Digital format it only makes sense to go that way. But repeating again most of the great music of 60s, 70s to somewhat 80s and 90s (Rock, pop, Classical, Hindi Films) is analogue and recorded well and mastered well. And there is lots of music still to be explored by me. I have seen some superb Western classical (being classical pieces I guess westerners have taken extra good care of preserving and reproducing them ) Vinyls. And with passage of time Pros in audio and engineers have acquired enough experience and knowledge to remaster them and publish in both media accordingly.

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?

Yes the industry (I think Philips & Sony) made that choice, and totally ruined the amazing capabilities of digital with out having vision about future advances and capabilities of digital medium.

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.

-1 to that Even with low end system that I have I could hardly hear any hiss. Have heard Manav's system and it was dead quiet.

durability, convenience are my reasons for sticking to CD's.

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

Hardly any trouble at all for vinyl faithfuls. Think of it as pilgrims suffering hardship on travelling from far away places to visit the holy places of worship just for the sake of faith. :lol:

But the whole thing does not make sense to me because software companies are not holding analogue masters any more. Nearly all the original content is digital.

Even more reason to buy and stock more records.
Regards

 

[odyssey]

An unbalanced, for stereo, carries two channels in the same cable. A balanced carries each channel separately with a earthing in each cable. That is how the double figure of 150dB (which is a rough, BTW) is arrived at. SNR is not the same as amplitude.

BTW, Odyssey, your post is not very convincing on any point. At least to me. I am not ready to write of the Nyquist-Shannon theorem that states, 'In essence, the theorem shows that a bandlimited analog signal that has been sampled can be perfectly reconstructed from an infinite sequence of samples if the sampling rate exceeds 2B samples per second, where B is the highest frequency of the original signal.'.

With modern sampling coming close to 384KHz, the reconstructed sample will be indistinguishable from the original. This has been proved umpteen times in measurements, where the sinusoidal wave has been reconstructed and measured to have the same shape as the original at all frequencies. If some one at this stage says, 'you do not know what you are missing', my answer is neither of our ears can hear the difference, if any.

SNR has to be looked at as the quantum of noise vs quantum of actual data to understand why this is important. It is not what you say in terms of putting your ears against a speaker or something. It has to do with what each word length contains. How much of that word length has real data and how much is noise, or shall we say extraneous or irrelevant information.

Your statements about way of recording is agreeable. But the whole thing does not make sense to me because software companies are not holding analogue masters any more. Nearly all the original content is digital.

Cheers

You seem to be mistaking my post on (your bold) the part about sampling and nyquist theorm. I don't remember commenting on sampling frequencies or accuracy of reconstruction of the original signal. Furthermore, I am also not advocating vinyl or CD. I wanted to post about how one cant generically compare Vinyl and CD and say the sound the same or not (unless they have been mastered to sound the same).
Ofcourse SNR in the context of a digital gear is as you say, my point is WHAT DOES IT MATTER in the context of an entire system? you don't hear digital gear by itself, you hear it with other components whose SNR isn't as high. My point about putting your ear to the speaker is about demonstrating that this is useless in the home environment. Heres another reason - do you think you can make out a difference between a 100dB SNR DAC and a 120dB SNR DAC in your system? ofcourse, in reality the point is mootless because you probably wont find two such DACs (with all things being the same) to compare.

SNR is the ratio of Signal to noise power in dB which is a function of both the respective signal amplitudes, it is in fact very much to do with amplitude (or voltage). Google is your friend you can see numerous explanations as to why the signal improvement is anywhere between 3dB to 6dB depending on how the output driver stage is designed - impedance matched or dual differential. I am obviously talking about the context of balanced cables to connect into true or quasi balanced connections (where equipment has been designed to work with true balanced) not just a adaptor type from unbalanced to balanced.

What other part of my post is not convincing to you?

cheers

 

[venkatcr]

For the first statement, you implied that better quality was cos of the equipment in the studio, I asked whether when mastering a CD would not the same level of equipment be present? If so, then your theory of better equipment in the vinyl studio is not valid.

What I meant was this. For a studio to cut an LP, they have to decode the digital data first. They do this using high quality equipment. For creating a CD, they do not have to do anything. They just record the data in a CD master. There is possibility that there might a change in word length and sampling rates because of lack of space in CDs. That is why I am looking forward to Blu-Ray discs that will take us all to a different level of music listening.

This is where we are all looking forward to and enjoying DACs that come with high sampling rates. If it can up-sample the data, even better.

Cheers

 

[square_wave]

The best DYNAMICS i have ever heard on any music on any system is a "direct cut LP" at the listening room in bangalore. It was mind boggling ! I forgot the name of the LP. Dr bass, ROC was present at the audition.

 

[arj]

What I meant was this. For a studio to cut an LP, they have to decode the digital data first. They do this using high quality equipment. For creating a CD, they do not have to do anything. They just record the data in a CD master. There is possibility that there might a change in word length and sampling rates because of lack of space in CDs. That is why I am looking forward to Blu-Ray discs that will take us all to a different level of music listening.

This is where we are all looking forward to and enjoying DACs that come with high sampling rates. If it can up-sample the data, even better.

Cheers

Isn't the sampling for a digital master and cd master different ?



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