Vinyl v. digital curiosity

I go straight from the turntable, through a very "neutral" phono pre-amp, into a cd recorder. That's it. - And my needle drops keep most of the "vinyl" character that I love. Luckily, I have mostly
"minty" condition records. But even less than perfect condition records, I don't fuss with any "noise" fixes. If needed, I will attenuate the tone with a Schiit Loki equalizer, that is "in line" after the
pre-amp and before the cd recorder. It really works nicely to bring up the bass a tad, or roll off a bit of high end.

 

My experience is quite different. The digital processing depends on the type of software you use, whether you work in 24-bit vs. 16-bit, and your skill level. A lot of people who aren't happy with the processing are usually using something like Audacity on 16-bit files, and do not have the skills to use the processing.

 

Actually, it was from digital fans who decided that digital music should have dead-silent background, and thus, all tape hiss should be removed. This is in part of why the old SPARS code was developed in the early 90s. That resulted in those people not even buying a CD unless it was tagged DDD. But, even being an all-digital recording was no guarantee that the background would be silent. I remember that quite a few people were upset that Joe Jackson's "Body And Soul" CD still had hiss! They were hearing dither. This was back in 1984 when people really didn't know what that was.

The first digital noise reduction came out in the 80s. As far as I know, it was Hank Waring's FDS, a convoluted noise elimination scheme that had the effect of making everything bone dry, removing all ambience. That wasn't the original goal for the FDS team. They discovered it by accident. I don't quite remember what their goal was, but I think it was one of those attempts at separating elements from mono tracks to enable stereo remixing, another one of those dead-silent digital enthusiasts dreams.

Somewhere around that time, though, Sonic Solutions was developed for serious professional digital noise reduction. Since then, many companies also developed digital noise reduction software and hardware, and were soon available to consumers. Since the 90s, it has been a steady line of improvement. But, you still have a lot of the more rudimentary types of NR out there. The old adage of you get what you pay for applies, and one must remember this when using such freeware as Audacity.

 

I actually don't mind having a "pop" or "click" here or there on a needle-drop. It reminds me that it IS from a record that I am hearing, and that's ok.
If you are going to "sanitize" the recording so much, maybe that's just satisfying something else...

 

Have to disagree here, the smoothness is not a distortion, Im not even sure that distortion can be considered smooth in music. I understand that its all down to the mastering which is often smoother sounding when done right.

 

You sort of have to be a good mastering engineer in the vinyl world to avoid the problems that can arise otherwise due to the mediums limitations.

 

Vinyl does not really predate the loudness wars. It started happening a long time ago.

 

It's not about sanitizing, it's about restoring the recording to a pristine state.

If you have to have a click or pop in it to remind yourself that you're listening to a needledrop, I have to wonder why that is important to you.

 

I'm trying to understand, but maybe I'm missing something here. I thought you can reconstruct the original analogue wave only if you have a periodic wave. My previous comment made reference to the fact (?) that if "an analogue wave is comprised of a set of superimposed of sine waves", and the number of sine waves is infinite, then you need an infinite number of samples.
So the question would be (I remember Barry Diament talked about it a few years ago), what's the minimum sampling rate we need so we can't tell the difference between the original and the reconstructed anymore?

 

There are no absolutes in general rules of thumb. It certainly is possible to do digital processing without loosing those special aspects of the original sound. I wonder what's the secret? One theory I have is that digital processing that introduces too many different types of digital filters adds to the problem. If every digital processing step layers on a new digital filter that is different than all the other digital filters used then you end up with bad digital sound. For example, if one digital step is done linear phase, the nest one mixed phase, the next one minimum phase, and the one after that a different minimum phase, and every digital plugin/process does its own upsampling so it can work at a higher res and then downsamples. Well, I think a digital processing chain like that would make a mess of things. But if you have a digital processing chain that uses the same digital filter from the same company and chain it together to do the least harm then digital processing can work out well.

Unfortunately I don't have the digital recording setup and tools to actually test that theory out properly.

 

I dont think it could be infinite really. Its a part of the physical world.
And havnt we reached that point yet? Havnt we done countless tests showing that higher sampling rates are indestinguishable from lower ones?

 

People have different interest and different goals. Restoring to a 'prestine condition' could be the goal of some, but hardly a general rule.

 

That is a factor, however there are more things in sound that frequencies. The mastering engineers making the best sounding albums are not exactly 10 year olds you know.

 

I don't. I envy them. I was perfectly happy playing my CD's and had forgotten all about vinyl until I re-experienced what you have mentioned. Two years later, it has cost me a fortune and no small amount of frustration. Still, the juice was worth the squeeze as they say.

 

The sampling rate only dictates the upper limit on the frequency content of the waveform being encoded - content allowed into the system which is above the half-sampling frequency will be misinterpreted as being content below that limit due to the inadequate number of sample intervals per period to correctly identify the original signal. The misinterpreted frequency of this content itself cycles within the passband as the content gets further and further above the half-sampling frequency.

This can be understood more easily with the analogous effect of camera frame-rate on circular motion of discrete, evenly spaced markers:



The frame-rate of the camera is fixed so as the wheel spins slower and slower, the aliased rotational speed of each ring of markers captured by the camera cycles up and down until the rotational speed of the markers on a ring is such that more than two frame intervals occur between each marker interval, at which point the camera can capture the actual rotational speed of the ring correctly.

From the centre outwards, each successive ring has a slightly larger gap between markers but also contains more markers, hence the different aliasing for each ring.

Lighting flicker can also create this strobing effect which may or may not be a factor in this clip.

The 'infinite sum of sine waves' consideration is a mathematical construct - that's not to say it's not fundamentally true somehow (maths isn't just fun and games) but it doesn't mean we need to deal with infinity in a practical sense. On a day to day basis it just means we can exploit the Fourier transform.

 

Two things I remember about CDs when were introduced and sold as an improvement on "pitch control (zero wow and flutter)" and "increased dynamic range". Of course we've experienced the almost complete abandonment of better dynamic range. After many years of listening to just CDs I started to listen to vinyl again. I still like the sound but discovered I had become very pitch sensitive which is the way I was about cassettes in the day. I've spent a lot of money (speed controllers etc.) on trying to deal with the "pitch" issue but have been mostly unsuccessful. I was wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience.

 

It's not, I just don't mind it. I hear it when I play the record, so why should I mind it on the needle-drop...

 

I would be wary of any turntable that requires an accessory to playback an accurate, steady speed. Extremely wary.

 

Just play your vinyl and stop worrying about the differences.

 

In the early days of the CD, I had many friends who "hated digital audio". When it was finally made possible to needle-drop an LP, I made quite a few, mainly for listening experiments. I A/B'ed the two (needle-drop CD vs LP) for several of these friends who hated digital audio and they changed their mind. It really wasn't "digital audio" that they hated after all - the needle-drop CDs sounded great.

When you come right down to it, any "distortion" that vinyl adds, pleasant or unpleasant, is not found on any master tape. These distortions could be captured on any CD on the market if the mastering engineer wanted them there. I've done many needle-drops and the resulting CD captures all of the alterations made by vinyl, both pleasant and unpleasant.

So really, it's not the advantages of digital audio that people dislike, it's the limitations of vinyl that they do like.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

 

I haven’t. I wonder if you might benefit from the Nakamichi Dragon CT, which could center a record that was even slightly off. See what you think of this demo:



I believe this video is from a forum member and includes sustained piano notes.

 

Pinknik, thanks for sharing.

 

Well, I just told you what the secret was: tools, condition, and skill. I've been doing needledrops for 20 years. The first ones were horrendous because I did not have quality tools, the experience, or did not use correct file types. But, I kept at it, and now I can do a transparent job.

 

True. But, don't say that, just because it's not your goal, or that you don't have the skill, that it cannot be done.

 

I think you nailed it. People like distortion.