I Own A Turntable, Therefore I Am Better Than You

[RGA]

Love it

I Own A Turntable, Therefore I Am Better Than You

[Feanor]

Love it

I Own A Turntable, Therefore I Am Better Than You

Turntable as small phallus compensation.

Tubes too, I guess

[texlle]

Is that what we really sound like to the rest of the A/V world? Hmm, I figured we were a bit more subtle than that.

[JohnMichael]

That was fun. Of course I feel much the same way about owning a turntable. No compressed formats for me.

[frenchmon]

I love it!

You can leave your “dope new albums” in the back of your aging economy car, because I know the difference between an album and a CD.

Priceless!

[3db]

I own a turntable because I'm getting older and its too difficult to read the liner notes of CDs

[dingus]

I do not harbor lossy audio in my home. I own a turntable.

compression is introduced into the recording at the mic, so all audio formats suffer, its just that some do so more than others. when comparing vinyl to cd, the amount of compression is determined by the mastering\engineering and not the physical media.

[3db]

compression is introduced into the recording at the mic, so all audio formats suffer, its just that some do so more than others. when comparing vinyl to cd, the amount of compression is determined by the mastering\engineering and not the physical media.

That is incorrect. The dynamic range of a CD is far greater than its vinyl counterpart because of the physical limitations of vinyl. However, other than classical music and maybe jazz, the remaining genres on CD suffer from the commerical loudness wars and thus reduces the amount of dynamic range available.

[bobsticks]

"I’d love to tell you about them, but then they would become instantly passé and detestable."


Now I'm going to spend my day wondering which Rave Rec contributor leads a double life penning hipster miniblogs for the Campus Socialite...

[dingus]

compression is introduced into the recording at the mic, so all audio formats suffer, its just that some do so more than others. when comparing vinyl to cd, the amount of compression is determined by the mastering\engineering and not the physical media.

That is incorrect. The dynamic range of a CD is far greater than its vinyl counterpart because of the physical limitations of vinyl. However, other than classical music and maybe jazz, the remaining genres on CD suffer from the commerical loudness wars and thus reduces the amount of dynamic range available.

i was talking about compression...

cd does have more bandwidth than vinyl, but that is not the same thing as dynamic range, which is also dependent on the mastering\engineering. because of its wider bandwidth cd has the ability for wider dynamic range over vinyl, but afaik the vinyl format is capable of retaining a recording without introducing further compression.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

i was talking about compression...

cd does have more bandwidth than vinyl, but that is not the same thing as dynamic range, which is also dependent on the mastering\engineering. because of its wider bandwidth cd has the ability for wider dynamic range over vinyl, but afaik the vinyl format is capable of retaining a recording without introducing further compression.

CD has that benefit as well, that benefit is not exclusive to vinyl. Each choice has its subjective pluses and minuses. After listening to my master tapes, and comparing it to a vinyl pressing and CD, I felt the CD sounded more like my master than the vinyl did. After being able to do this kind of comparison on my stuff, and other folks stuff as well, I have come to the conclusion that Vinyl may be pleasing to the ear, but it is not accurate to the source. Since vinyl affectionados have no real comparison, they rely solely on how it sounds to the ear.

Now to be clear, I am not thrilled about the Redbook CD format. As it stands, it does not have enough resolution to fully represent instruments with ultra high frequency harmonics. Vinyl does. However as we go up in sample rate(and out of the Redbook spec) that difference is completely erased. By the time we get to 24/192khz, then vinyl sounds more colored that digital.

[Smokey]

Now to be clear, I am not thrilled about the Redbook CD format. As it stands, it does not have enough resolution to fully represent instruments with ultra high frequency harmonics. Vinyl does.

I don't know Sir TT, but that might be giving vinyl too much credit

Notwithstanding the fact that high frequency harmonics (which have low enegry) are probably buried in the groove due to excessive LP surface noise, the builtin RIAA low pass filter circuitry also take another wack at those harmonics by attenuating and filtering them out.

[thekid]

I own 3 turntables so I guess I am 3 times better...........
But according to many because I also cassettes and laser discs I am not as smart as I think.........

[RGA]

Smokey - please source the link of graphs.

[RGA]

It would also help if we had real world comparisons.

For instance when I compare I try where possible to list the comparison. So for example:

Madonna Immaculate Collection song "Vogue" on LP versus the same on the CD via CA CD6 versus NAD 533/Rega 250 Arm Shure M97xE or AN TT2/Arm3/IQ 3.

This way when the CD wins or the vinyl wins you have some idea as to what was compared and you can somewhat crosscheck back and say I get why you came to that opinion because I heard the same or similar combo and agree that the CD or the LP was clearly better.

I never quite understand the arguments over these technologies. If I have 100 albums recorded on CD and LP and 50 albums sound better on CD and 50 sound better on vinyl then I need both to get the best out of the recorded music.

I personally have found that replay is an important factor via the turntable and the phono stage. They're more finicky and big name or prices doesn't necessarily mean good. CD replay is less substantial in playback quality in comparison to vinyl replay.

Changing a $70 cart to $100 cart was a massive improvement - going from a $400 CD player to a $700 CD player isn't nearly as noticeable and not likely to pass a DBT - with the carts you would.

The info is fairly important because plenty of people own a $100 Fisher or Sony turntable with a misaligned cart and then proclaim vinyl to suck. That is considerably different than using a Voyd Reference and Helius arm with an Io Gold cartridge and S4 step up transformer. I tried plenty of the Duals and used cheapies of the world as well as project and Regas and Oracles and Linns and the classic 124. I wasn't convinced by any of them.

[3db]

i was talking about compression...

cd does have more bandwidth than vinyl, but that is not the same thing as dynamic range, which is also dependent on the mastering\engineering. because of its wider bandwidth cd has the ability for wider dynamic range over vinyl, but afaik the vinyl format is capable of retaining a recording without introducing further compression.

Dynamic range of CDs is far greater than that of vinyl. Its a non arguement. However, you are correct that the recording engineer ultimately determines how much of that range is used. In classical music, a recording on CD will wipe the floor of its vinyl counterpart in dynamic range. The differences in loudness between the loudest and quitest part is far greater than it is on vinyl.

[E-Stat]

Smokey - please source the link of graphs.

That's simply the RIAA de-emphasis curve. Understand that the signal is boosted initially by an identically inverse curve. Which does not support Smokey's rather simplistic claim.

The top octave is where vinyl can be superior in harmonic integrity to Redbook.

[E-Stat]

The differences in loudness between the loudest and quitest part is far greater than it is on vinyl.

Some of that is "false" dynamic range at the bottom end of the scale. The Redbook standard 16 bit word length is insufficient to render the lowest level signals without going deaf (losing detail). The challenge is that you don't get 16 bit resolution at the lowest levels because not all of the bits are firing. Even in the presence of surface noise, however, you can hear detail on analog at lower levels where below a certain threshold, 16/44 ignores it.

As Sir T pointed out, that is solved with when one improves the word length to 24 or greater. Higher sampling rate solves the HF extension limitation.

[3db]

From what I've been reading... 60db tops is what one gets out of vinyl...and for bass its much lower than that almost half...



Audioholics Home Theater Forums - View Single Post - Dynamic range of vinyl

[E-Stat]

From what I've been reading... 60db tops is what one gets out of vinyl...and for bass its much lower than that almost half...

You forgot the qualifier "prior to noise reduction" which occurred in what - the 60s? Your *poster* provided the answer as 75 db. As for bass and "groove touching", that is addressed by shorter play lengths as found in 12" 45 RPM recordings. I have about a dozen of those and the bass response is much better.

Unfortunately, there are precious few commercial recordings on any format that even approach that level.

Redbook's theoretical dynamic range occurs only at the highest modulation levels. When the level drops, so do the number of bits. Just as the S/N ratio drops in an analog system when the input level is reduced. Which is one of the reasons why higher resolution formats sound more like the live mic feed. Redbook at its best sounds a bit sterile at the top and goes deaf at the lowest levels.

[3db]

You forgot the qualifier "prior to noise reduction" which occurred in what - the 60s? Your *poster* provided the answer as 75 db. As for bass and "groove touching", that is addressed by shorter play lengths as found in 12" 45 RPM recordings. I have about a dozen of those and the bass response is much better.

Unfortunately, there are precious few commercial recordings on any format that even approach that level.

.

Metric's latest album came out on vinyl as well as CD and I managed to scoop it up on a double 45rpm set. Not that it has 75db of range ...Its just my first album of that ilk.

[E-Stat]

Metric's latest album came out on vinyl as well as CD and I managed to scoop it up on a double 45rpm set.

Well, now you can compare them directly yourself. What are the turntable-arm-phono pre/CD playback systems used for each?

Not that it has 75db of range ...

Understood. Since most of Synthetica will most likely be sold as lossy downloads, the mix was made for those formats. Just as cassettes dumbed down the quality of vinyl mixes years ago.

Its just my first album of that ilk.

I acquired mine twenty years ago!

[RGA]

As Sir T pointed out, that is solved with when one improves the word length to 24 or greater. Higher sampling rate solves the HF extension limitation.

But then you enter the real world problem (instead of just technology arguments) that barely anything is available to actually listen to at high res/

190,000+ albums on CD and close or more than that on vinyl and less than 7000 SACDs and less again on other high res formats. I said it at CAS - master tape sounded the best but there's no music - so as great as it sounds IMO the point is moot. You could go an subscribe to the tape project - they make 12 tapes a year and you get to have any 8 that you want - the price is $3000 for 8 albums (as was described to me). And one of those is pretentious drivel in Patricia Barber so I am already down to choosing 8 out of 11.

[E-Stat]

But then you enter the real world problem (instead of just technology arguments) that barely anything is available to actually listen to at high res/

Which is why I never bought a SACD player. It just wasn't worth the money required to buy a unit that would provide equivalent Redbook performance along with providing the capability to play a tiny minority of high resolution recordings in my library.

The music industry correctly assumed that most folks think CD is "perfect sound forever", so there was little need to roll out a new format across the board. Then they shot themselves in the foot with the copy protection schemes on the few high rez formats that preclude server based playback.

Despite the fact that I'm an old boomer who grew up having to spin one record at a time, I'm all about server based music. Consequently, I will never invest in dead end shiny disc-only formats for music - nor will the current generation. Yes, I own two turntables and spin my early library contents on a regular basis. I'd rather make selections, however, with an iPhone based remote to the music server. .

I really wish I could buy the music of my choice on a better sounding format.

[Feanor]

Which is why I never bought a SACD player. It just wasn't worth the money required to buy a unit that would provide equivalent Redbook performance along with providing the capability to play a tiny minority of high resolution recordings in my library.

The music industry correctly assumed that most folks think CD is "perfect sound forever", so there was little need to roll out a new format across the board. Then they shot themselves in the foot with the copy protection schemes on the few high rez formats that preclude server based playback.

Despite the fact that I'm an old boomer who grew up having to spin one record at a time, I'm all about server based music. Consequently, I will never invest in dead end shiny disc-only formats for music - nor will the current generation. Yes, I own two turntables and spin my early library contents on a regular basis. I'd rather make selections, however, with an iPhone based remote to the music server. .

I really wish I could buy the music of my choice on a better sounding format.

As a classical music listener I have a better selection on SACD format than is relevant to a lot of people. I have an SACD player but it is just not capable of extracting any more resolution from the SACD layer than the CD layer of hybrid discs. Possibly adequate SACD players seem to start at $1000 which is a lot money to me.

Nevertheless I know that Hi-rez is better than RBCD because of 24/88.2 tracks I have downloaded from HDTracks: I've compared the hi-rez downloads with CD rips which demonstrated the point. Unfortunately there is a much smaller selection than even that for SACD -- and they are are 2 channel only.

Yes, copy protection sucks. It's an interference with "fair use", IMO, but then the digital world is unprecedented and other people have a different idea.

BTW, I can listen to SACD multichannel with my HT system but that system doesn't extract the highest resolution either.