A/B Sound quality...what would you check first?

I have a dilemma. I did some A/B comparing for the heck of it and was not happy with my findings. It seems the HDTracks version of a record sounds better than the actual record on my equipment. I thought I had a pretty decent vinyl setup but I hear more openness and just a bit more detail with the digital versus vinyl. Here's some titles where the vinyl was not quite as nice as HDTracks version.

45 RPM Rumours LP (SH master)
Vince Guaraldi Charlie Brown Christmas 200g (KG master)
Pink Floyd 20th anniversary The Division Bell LP (the included 320 KB download beats the vinyl by a hair)
Eagles Hotel California original LP

So what am I missing here? Is the DAC in my Peachtree Nova that darn good or is the Debut Carbon/Ortonfon Blue/acrylic platter/Lounge Audio/Speed Box S combo not as nice a vinyl rig as I thought?

What would you check or try first to improve this problem? Any advice is appreciated.

 

How did you A/B? Phone pre out against DAC out? Volume matching is tricky. Also, it seems you compared some different masterings against each other. The Rumours 45 rpm is a unique mastering that can't be found digitally.

 

The Pro-Ject Debut Carbon is a cracking little starter turntable and brilliant for the money BUT don't expect miracles from a £300 deck, even with a pretty respectable cartridge. To put it into some perspective my Pro-Ject Xtension "10" with Evolution carbon fibre tone-arm and Cadenza Black (MC) costs 10 times the price of your setup! I doubt it's ten times as good but you get my point. This setup can match any HDTracks for detail, transparency and clarity but with it comes oodles of bass, warmth and natural resolution, decay of instruments etc that absolutely NO digital rig with Hi-Resolution I've heard can even begin to match.

 

There's every scientific reason that high resolution digital has the potential to sound better than vinyl. Not sure why you see that as a problem. Maybe if that's what your A/B test tells you, despite it not being a blind test and you seemingly coming in with a bias favoring vinyl, it is worth believing your ears.

Of course in A/B testing you always need to make sure you have a perfect level match between the two sources, as otherwise most people instinctively favor the higher volume one.

And, as noted above, if you are comparing different masterings, your preference among those could easily be a more significant factor than the playback format or equipment you use.

 

If one simply listens with your ears and not with scientific data, it is also every bit as feasible to understand that the weaker analogue system in the original poster's question, is not up to the same level as the Hi-res source. A better analogue system would beat that until the human ear couldn't tell where Hi-res was "better" than analogue as shown by some technical data.

To the OP I would suggest you might want a better deck? The cart is ok with a much better deck.

 

Yes, just hit the corresponding the push button on the Nova for each. I did notice the volume was higher for the digital side, but I adjusted as best as my ears would allow ;-)

 

This doesn't help. Now I just want to spend more money on my vinyl rig!!!

 

Some good info here thanks. I did favor vinyl and to be fair, I only see it as a problem because I was under the impression the money I spent on the equipment and upgrades to play records should have yielded better than average results and certainly better than the DAC in the Nova. But that does not seem to be the case. I honestly did not factor in mastering's. Shame on me for that.

 

When shopping for turntables I was ready to go with a higher end Rega or Music Fidelity but the folks at MD offered that the Debut Carbon, with platter, cartridge and speedbox upgrade would outperform the other two. So assuming that is somewhat true I guess I need to look at decks in the 2k range or higher?

 

There are no "ranges" in truth with turntables! The more money you can spend on it the better it will sound, yes! It comes down to how much vinyl you own / want to buy, how much you listen and how much money you're prepared to throw at it.

I've heard a £10,000 deck that beats my Xtension 10 but I haven't got that much to spend!

 

It's not an unusual conclusion to come to with what I'll call a high end starter analog system. I chased my tail for years until I got to the point where my vinyl setup was in-arguably and clearly superior to my digital set up. My present analog rig absolutely creams any digital I've ever heard. However, I have quite a bit of money in the analog rig, the components are nicely matched, and I have spent untold hours on my analog setup.

 

I wonder when the debate on the superiority of vinyl over digital will retire? I thought the availability of HD digital audio will put it to rest but apparently not for everyone. Anyway, statements like "a better analogue system will beat a HD digital" are 100% subjective. The fact that someone likes the euphonic distortion and the limitations of vinyl does not mean that this is the universal truth about the superiority of the medium. If we are talking about which medium offers higher fidelity the answer is much easier and quite obvious, especially given the fact the the great majority of recordings since the 80s are being recorded, mixed and mastered digitally.

To the OP - I see no reason for you to think something is wrong if you like HD Digital better than vinyl - a lot of people do )

 

A better analog system will never get rid of IGD. As the record is running slower [as far as the stylus is concerned] at the end of an LP, it will necessarily sound worse than at the start of the LP. There's the additional issue of how pivoted tonearms add additional distortion, but even the best linear tracking arm will display IGD because of the relative reduction of treble content as the stylus approaches the deadwax.

The LP will always have a higher noise floor than digital formats, starting with Redbook, but clearly running away with the race with Hi-Rez.

You can't get good surround sound from any commercially produced analog format. LPs in particular.

Modern Hi-Rez digital can sound better than analog in a lot of audio systems. Nothing weird about what you are experiencing at all. I've got a really good turntable and a pretty crappy digital rig. But consider everything that can [and does] go wrong with LP reproduction, my "bad" digital rig often beats my 'good' analog set-up.

 

I guess there's some truth in all of audio that the more money you throw at it the better it should sound. I'd imagine that's true in the digital domain as well, though.

I think its odd that the OP didn't have any issue with his analog system, but views it as a 'problem' that something digital bettered it. Didn't you get the HDTracks because you hoped it would sound good?!?!

 

I would expect that if you paid as much attention to the digital side of things, the result would be ambiguous.

 

Another thing to consider- you may just like the "sound" of the hi-res digital format better. There's nothing wrong with that conclusion- in fact, you'll probably save yourself some cash & time spent tweaking your turntable setup. At the end of the day, if you're more satisfied with digital, go digital!

 

LP might well have a higher noise floor than even Redbook, but the sad fact remains (for would-be digital lovers) that most commercially made LP's sound much better than their contemporary CD equivalents. It isn't all "distortion" or other weird exclusive-to-analogue characteristics that make vinyl sound better. The music on every LP I own sounds more "real" and has more depth and is seemingly higher resolution to the ear (I know it's not but you know what I'm getting at) than any CD I own of the same music produced by the same artist / label at the same time. Why is that? It can't all be down to poor CD mastering? Where does the bass go for a start?

 

Are you seriously suggesting that LPs are inherently better at reproducing bass?! A cd reproduces what was recorded with brutal precision- if there is a lack of bass, it's not due to the format.

 

Yes, I am from my own personal experience. I've owned many high-end CDP's and heard some costing five to ten times the price of my most expensive models and yet not one of them reproduced bass as solidly and weighty as a great vinyl rig. Coincidence?

 

I think we should differentiate between "better" sounding (as in "it pleases me more") and "HiFi" (as in closer to the original). I won't ever argue with anyone about what he should like better as that would be plain stupid on me If we are talking about HiFi, though, I strongly believe that the HD Digital Audio produces sound that is closer to the original than vinyl. It is becoming more and more common that the HD files available to the end consumer are not just closer to the original master - they ARE the original master.

As far as the early CDs are concerned - yes, most of them were mastered awfully and are plain unlistenable, but you have to agree that exactly the same format produces much better results today so the difference should be in the better CD mastering.

 

I don't know, but I do know when it's time to leave a conversation.

 

Good question and let me be clear. I dropped analog 30 years ago and never thought I would look back. But I have been a music lover since I was old enough to hear and have always tried to get that next best upgrade or medium in the hopes it would make my music sound better. When I wandered onto these forums many years ago (as a lurker) I started to understand what mastering could do as well and so the quest for better sound was not always about new speakers or a better amp. I decided a give vinyl a try and got lucky in that the first few used records I purchased sounded AMAZING (Steely Dan Greatest Hits, some Floyd stuff, etc) and so I thought I was headed in the right direction again as far as the ultimate in sound quality.

That said, my relationship with Hi Rez had already begun a couple of years ago and so I had some titles already downloaded but since the whole "mastering" thing came into play had decided to repurchase those same titles on Vinyl. The other night I decided to play around and compare (assuming the vinyl would win hands down) and was surprised at the results. Hence this post. I hope that makes some sense

 

I am sorry, but the bass is precisely where digital exceeds vinyl in terms of accuracy by far. If you take your time and research how vinyl is cut and how the bass is processed in order to sound reasonably accurate, you would understand that what you like so much is a lot of distortion resulting in what some might call "warm', "fat", "full", whatever, but no one should call accurate.

 

I have to chime in and agree that I have heard bass in vinyl versions of an album that I have never heard before in the CD. Toto's Hydra and various Steely Dan come to mind right quick.

 

Time to listen to some LP's I think! Anyone fancy a beer?