Cds have more dynamic range than vinyl?

What I mean is all signals, in principle, will pass through zero, like a needletip will pass through zero at max amplitude.

 

That seems like a trivial point when discussing actual measured resolution of audio signals. OTOH loss of resolution with lower levels is anything but a trivial point and the audible effects are a problem if not addressed in a given system.

 

To know you must look if there is a resonance between arm and cantilever that will have an amplitude. If so it is introducing W&F. That is the nature of the beast.

 

Years ago I took a college music course and the instructor said that ever year he drives from Atlanta to NYC and he uses the time to listen to the entire Ring cycle. I kinda envy him.

 

I thought this wasn´t trivial, as this is the argument that vinyl sounds better, but vinyl will also have tracings problems where the resolution is low. I don´t think we should believe that the needle is accurately tracing the grooves, and with a velocity without variations. To do that the friction vinyl/needle must be much lower than it normally is, IMO.

 

Right, thanks for your info.
Glassplates have , dependent on size, very big resolution, perhaps better than any digital camera.
Sorry to hear that a little background noise is bothering you. The original lackers are not available for the public, but here in my country there's a guy who stamp 78's on vinyl and then transfer to CD, most old pre-war Jazz. Very good, noisefree, but I want the vinyl platter.
Noise or not, I hear music, natural sounding, instruments in full bloom, hifi was the goal from 1928 on, now it's all trickery, processed music, sounds for sound sake.
When talking about the sound of a violin nobody talks about the strings, stable tuning, tuning knobs, holes, color of body, price, weight etc.
Talking about the sound of CD's, vinyl : I make the choice blindfolded which I prefer and it alway's turns out to be analogue.

 

Unfortunately for the moment and for the mass consumer vinyl platters are the only option to enjoy analogue. Perhaps, who knows, a better material is invented in the future ? Reel to reel is too expensive but is the best I've heard.

 

My understanding is that lower resolution is about noise and nothing else. Digital silence - by definition the lowest level possible - is represented in CD format as 0000000000000000, which is still a full 16-bit word. The fact that it's all zeros with no ones doesn't change the resolution. It only changes the amplitude.

There's an idea out there that digital sound gets grainy or "breaks up" or gets somehow "blocky" at low volume because there aren't enough bits to describe low-level sounds. (Not saying Scott necessarily agrees with this, and not saying that this is how he would voice this idea if he does.)

But unless I misunderstand (which is certainly possible! ), there are still 16 bits, and the only real issue is if the noise floor contains noticeable harmonic distortion, a problem that is easily addressed with dither (and even better with noise-shaping dither).

Of course the CD format has other issues, primarily related to the implementation of steep antialiasing filters because the Nyquist frequency of 22.05kHz is so close to the top of the audible human-hearing range. I am in no way trying to deny or ignore that. I'm just commenting on the "loss of resolution at low-levels" argument.

Finally, I recognize that a digital volume control can indeed reduce the resolution of a digital signal, because for every approx. 6dB you turn down the volume, you lose a bit of resolution - the digital waveform has to get resampled, and since every single sample now starts with one or more zeros, in this case you are indeed reducing the available bit depth for the signal.

But even there, the resolution of the quiet sounds is no different than the resolution of the loud ones. Sonic degradation comes from (A) increased noise, and (B) unwanted effects from the on-the-fly signal modification, which potentially produces harmonic distortion from quantization error, since AFAIK digital volume controls don't dither (but again, I could be mistaken on that one).

 

Earlier in this thread I posted several graphs / measurements of certain 16/44 rez sample that clearly showed over 90 dB range of musical information, not noise (from below -90 dBFS fading trumpet note, clearly heard, to a -0.77 dBFS peak of a trumpet-percussions duo at full blast). The sound quality of this native 24/88 recording is astonishing (even in downconverted to CDDA form), & can't be matched by vinyl, IMO...

 

The mass consumer with a CD player who wants his favorite music/artists has one choice: CD. That's the problem. Better format's could be a thing of the future, but for now it's still redbook CD as a digital choice and virtually unlimited music choice. Other options too much hassle, no music choice and for me still unsatisfactory.

 

A piano in a quiet room comes with no noise. And those 'quiet digital spaces" aren't totally silent. Decaying notes, room reverb, etc. So, no. I disagree about it being unnatural sounding.

 

Low level signals are recorded with 16 bits, but the resulting digital signal is build with the correspondenting fewer increments. (bits).
You can increase level and burn the CD again, the same signal has more bits, but these are just interpolations, original low resoltion still there.
What is lost during digital recording is lost forever.
Nowaday's recording is done with more bits, streaming etc , just to have better recordings for better future formats. I the meantime most people have to listen to their CD collection build over 25 years, I think they, and I, are conned.

 

One man's opinion.

 

So was Einstein, Pasteur, Fleming,Newton, Freud to name a few.
Do some rythmetic. Do some listening.

 

I listen for a living.

 

I think we decide this is how it works, if noone has any objections. It would suit most I think, certainly me.

 

This isn't making sense. All vibration be they on a resonant frequency or not have an amplitude. This just isn't an issue with even entry level tonearms these days unless they are grossly mismatched with the cartridge. It is really far from "normal"

 

No. Actually in this case those were all facts. all except his last line

 

What argument about "vinyl sounds better?" In this moment we are talking about the math of digital resolution. Vinyl has nothing to do with it. And yes your point was quite trivial in any discussion about the resolution of digital audio. OTOH discussions on loss of resolution with low level signals is anything but trivial. If it weren't an issue there would be no such thing as dither.

 

A piano in a quiet room? You mean like an anechoic chamber? No thanks. I don't want live music played in dead spaces. In a concert hall, particularly with an audience, the room is anything but quiet. Either way the room should have a sound. If it is a "digital quiet space" that is an artifact of losing low level information. That is very unnatural sounding. Heard it many times on CD. Not good IMO.

 

It is normal to have a resonance between the arm´s eff mass and the cantilever suspension. Depending on how damped this resonance is the arm vibrations will have different amplitudes. Most arms are not particularly damped, so the amplitudes are quite substancial.
You have to do some recording from e.g. the most outer grooves and look at the resonance hump with an FFT software, otherwise you don´t see it.

 

Ok. You hate CDs. I get it...

 

You are talking about one sample. If we talk about an actual audio signal then the amplitude will make a difference in the resolution. Look at it this way. Take a simple sine wave. Same frequency but different levels. And let's look at extremes. Let's say one is so low in level that it never gets past 0000000000000100. While the one with more level goes all the way up to 1111111111111100. For the same sine wave (remember the only difference is level) You have an order of several magnitudes less distortion than the other. Think about. How accurately can you quantify a sine wave with only three bits of information? So while there may be 16 bits of dynamic range, if the signal is low it only uses the bits that measure it's amplitude. If the signal never rises about 000000000000100. Then we only have 8 discrete levels to measure it. Quantization noise becomes a major factor and substantial resolution is lost.

I'm not even getting into the audible effects. I am strictly talking about the actual math in measuring digital resolution.

It doesn't matter how many there are when talking about actual resolution. What matters is how many are used. Yes dither does help. That is why it's there. Because digital loses resolution at low levels.

 

No, you don't get it. I don't hate CDs. Along with having many that suck in this way I have many that don't. Just because I am aware of this kind of common problem doesn't mean I hate anything. If you want to talk audio let's do so. But if you are going to fall back on personal attacks and arguments from authority the conversation will not go well for you

 

No, quite the opposite. Most modern arms more than sufficiently damped to prevent audible wow so long as they are properly matched with a suitable cartridge