Compare your cd playback to vinyl and post here. Please participate!

No contest
The CD is cleaner and has more separation and bandwidth

 

Agreed. Even on my laptop speakers, it was no contest. Playing it on my regular rig wouldn't change that.

 

I preferred the first clip. Is that the CD or the LP?

 

The first clip is from the LP. Me I actually prefer the tonality from the LP. It is less clean but it is less compressed, more natural to me.

 

The first clip sounded like a veil had been lifted over the performance and was smothering it.

 

I don´t disagree, sort of, it´s just that the CD presentation has this typical compressed sound that I´m not that fond of, even if it can normally be much worse.

 

Heard over a P.A. speaker:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we regret to inform you that ALL veils have been lifted. Repeat all veils. There is no further veiling allowed.

 

Not being very familiar with that album, I have no idea how it should sound. I only know I preferred the second clip. You preferred the first. We all have different preferences. It's all good. I appreciate you going to the trouble to post the clips. I find a minute of samples more helpful than page sof discussion. I'll be curious to see which other people prefer.

 

The cd is not more compressed, its just got more bandwidth, clarity , separation and transparency.
The LP is warmer,fuzzier,with a pronounced mid band and low level distortion artefacts
Thanks for posting
It well level matched, that is crucial.

 

Here is what you're comparing. The CD clip (TT DR7) needs a -2.78 dB attenuation to be at the same perceived loudness as the LP clip (TT DR10). After that, the spectrum delta of 2 clips (or their equalization difference graph, if you prefer) looks as follows:



Clearly, the 2 clips are very different in 1-10 kHz & 14-20 kHz frequency ranges.

 

Thanks, yes they sound rather different to me. Higher frequencies is more 'nearer' which will to me mean that the CD is more compressed. I cannot see any resamblance with other factors, really, like lower distortion, bandwidth or whatever. In principle it would be no problem when mastering IMO to make the LP sound exactly like the CD.

 

Are you using an HDCD of Blue, by any chance? Blue HDCD is encoded with Peak Extend feature & track's soft-limited peaks can be restored by decoding (the HDCD-decoded 1:30min excerpt of Carey has a TT DR11, BTW). Regardless, the spectral delta of my HDCD excerpt & your LP clip (at equal perceived loudness) looks very similar to the CDvsLP graph I posted earlier:

 

More HF doesnt mean its more compressed, its just got more bandwidth, the master would have sounded like that
HiFi is meant to be full range fidelity, cds are not meant to sound like the LP.

 

I looked and it is in fact a HDCD, never thought about that. Thanks.

 

Hmm. Wonder if that's part of the logic behind stuff like Led IV.

 

Which turntable, phono pre, and cartridge are you using?

 

There may be a misleading danger lurking in your plots. On the face of things, for each plot left and right channels are combined into a "mid" channel, and that derived "mid" channel is what the spectrum analysis is performed on. Is that correct as you understand it?

It is not unusual for the "mid" for this kind of purpose to be derived by a simple summation of the left and right channels--as an example, Sound Forge Pro takes exactly this approach. With such an approach, if a left channel is a textbook phase inversion of the right channel, the "mid" formed from them would be a "no signal" flat line due to the perfect cancellation of the two stereo channels. Now that extreme case is unlikely, though you might make use of it to test how your process forms its analysis "mid" channel.

That said, what is possible with any recording that once lived on analog tape is that recording/playback heads were not perfectly azimuth aligned. An azimuth misalignment can, and will, mean that one channel is slightly delayed with respect to the other...and that leads to a degree of phase cancellation, of some amount, within a range of frequencies in the formed "mid" going into the spectrum analysis. In your case, if the CD and LP recordings do not have the same azimuth (mis)alignment, the comparative plotted spectrums will show effects of phase cancellation that the ear does not discern in typical two-channel stereo listening.

As a specific case, and using Joni Mitchell's Blue album track "All I Want", I found that the HDTracks version had an azimuth misalignment of 55.2 microseconds between the two channels. On the other hand, the DCC CD version of the same track had an azimuth misalignment of 25 microseconds between the two channels. Using a bit of arithmetic, that means the HDTracks version had the greatest phase cancellation in a range centered at 9058 Hz, the DCC version had the greatest phase cancellation in a range centered at 19231 Hz. Those effects were present in the plotted "mid" frequency spectrums but didn't have a lot to do with how things were actually heard.

 

I've tried to match my turntable sound & my CD sound as closely as possible with my meager funds & modest gear. I like big sound, with a nice holographic soundstage sporting smooth top-end & deep bass. It took a while to get it as close as possible, but it's not rocket-science.

 

You're more than welcome to present your own analysis of the said tracks... I simply wanted to say that LP/CD clips are way different (according to Audacity spectrum exports).

 

The LP may have azimuth issues also
Microseconds are unusual in audio, milliseconds more likely
What is your point ?

 

I own this album on CD and vinyl. Using a Rega TT and CD player and playing through the same amp and speakers I can say this: The CD has a quieter noise floor. But the record kills the CD in dynamics and expression. I owned the CD for years and thought it was a great concert band album. See I played in concert bands and drum and bugle corps in my youth. On a challenge I bought the record and was transported back in time. The record does a better job of conveying what a concert band sounds like.

Note: this recording is DSD in origin. Its a digital recording.

 

Trying to record this particular record is what convinced me my laptop was not up to the task of doing needle drops.

 

I don't have your media. Don't have that kind of time either at present. However, if you are able to run plots that show left and right channels independently, any phase cancellations (if indeed they exist), won't be modifying the plots.

 

Milliseconds or microseconds, what exists is what exists. I said anything that once was on analog tape...that includes the LP, right? Depending on the particular tape chain(s) involved, CD/LP/download azimuth errors aren't necessarily the same.

The point is, plots that are based upon some arithmetically formed "mid" channel have at least a possibility of not corresponding to human hearing. Isn't it better if such factors are surfaced and understood? I'm hardly saying a scientific approach is unworthy, science is cool, but trappings alone do not make science.

Anyway, all knowledge is interim knowledge.