I want to love vinyl, but...

No vibration in digital. But I was not saying which one sounds better just that in my opinion human hearing is closer to analog .

 

The video explains why you are wrong. It not only explains in detail why you are wrong, it actually demonstrates for you that you are wrong. Did you watch it?

(And that's a very weird statement in any case. Any recording/playback is an approximation of the captured sound. Same if you capture sound digitally. In any case you are breaking the original sound down, transmuting it in to the selected technology and back to sound again.

Consider just how different a record in your hand containing squiggles in wax is from the real symphony orchestra's performance represented by those squiggles. How is that not "teleporting" an orchestra down in to teeny, new types of information, to be restored again through a sound system, any different from digital does a similar thing?

It's all utterly artificial, a magic show.

 

I'm not going to watch the video - I know how digital to analog works.

 

Your post indicates otherwise. And don't seem to be open to seeing any evidence you are wrong. So...that's that I guess. Cheers.

 

They are all an approximation, and all are very good. Even Direct-to-Disc is an approximation for although they have cut out the Magnetic Tape stage, there is a risk that instruments can drift out of tune during an album side and you are still going through a conversion there and back.

 

Thank you for replying so frankly! You did not hear any difference in the analog and digital path. Would it be possible that you can hear a difference with the latest, modern equipment?
The reason I am asking is that a German magazine has made their own LP, CD and download with identical mastering. As they are really “gründlich“ , like you were, they say that this a basic requirement for comparison!
They use their recordings to compare equipment in public hearing sessions at selected dealers. And people always heard a difference between the different formats. That’s is fine and one discuss this endlessly. However what interests me is that when using a “direct cut” LP versus a the same CD, people always agree that direct cut sounds best, most real. That seems plausible as well, as there is no tape related loss.

Given the premises of digital (no tape loss) it should mean that in theory a CD should be able to sound at least as good, if all digital information is perfectly read and re-constructed. I think here development is still ongoing by smart processing through really powerful chips to re-create (almost) perfectly the recorded signal. There may be already some CDP’s that can do this or come close, however their purchase price still has 5 figures, as far as I can tell.

As you know, I am hoping that this software technology will become more affordable in the near future. There are some interesting efforts, like the Waversa approach and the one in my post here Sparkler Audio S512 D/A processor to improve CD sound!?, although that one takes a different approach through analog processing. Problem is that it is early days. Let’s wait and see, but I would love to feel the same excitement when listening to CD’s as I do when playing a direct cut LP!

 

Post of the day, so far

 

For you I watched the video briefly - nothing I didn't already know - or pick up from my Calculus class back in college - digital takes samples over an interval to approximate the analog curve. The source is sound waves that need to be converted to digital.

Cheers.

 

Aren't you a smarty.

 

It's a truly absurd argument that analog is somehow more "natural" because it is the "real sound as it is captured" where digital can't capture the sound.

In each case you have taken (often) real sounds, e.g. a symphony orchestra or live band, and utterly CHANGED and reduced that phenomenon down to an information medium: entirely different
medium that now simply has information representing the sound, where a playback system then is made to "read" the information that represents the original sound, and tries to recreate that sound via transducers.

The little squiggles in a record are simply codes containing information, not the "real sound," just like digital bits contain information about the real sound, that need to be translated back in to sound. There is no magic "difference" that makes the squiggles in wax "more consonant with" or "more like the real thing" than representing the sound by digital information. Just as that video explains. This is just folk reasoning, bro science, that audiophiles can get up to when trying to rationalize preferences, when they don't understand how technology works.

 

So sound waves don't exist?

 

There's usually an easy way to test this....listen to an all analog setup first (analog album > stylus > phono stage > receiver > speakers or headphones). Then record the album in high res, repeat the test. Mastering is then the same, vinyl distortions are the same, main difference is now the actual source.

If someone can pick out the digital source versus analog with this kind of comparison, then congratulations because their ears are better than mine then.

 

But the point you are ignoring is that BOTH methods at the output reproduce the analog signal! Both methods deconstruct an analog input - analog via electrical signals encoded on tape or squiggles in wax, digital by transposing the analog waveform in to bits. The output in both cases is a reconstruction of the analog waveform. There is nothing less accurate, nothing missing, in the analog signal produced by the digital process vs the analog. So even the transporter analogy seems a red herring. If you were "transported" by an "analog" process similar to recording on tape or vinyl, you'd be just as deconstructed, changed, killed, with a new product at the end, as you would digitally.

So I don't know what point you were trying to make.

 

Do what? How can you ask such a silly question? Sound Waves are what are being recorded and then reproduced either by analogue or digital means.

 

My point was simple Digital has to approximate the analog curve. It needs analog - whereas analog doesn't need digital.

 

sound waves are analog.

 

Everyone should know that! Don't they?

Storing them as 1's and 0's or up's and down's/left's and right's.

 

Sure as everyone should know that digital has to approximate analog through sampling. The source isn't digital.

 

So storing them as 1's and 0's is bad and storing them as up's and down's/left's and right's is good.

 

If you read any of my posts above I never said that. I work in 0's and 1's.

They are simply different. Both capable of awesome playback - I have records, CDs etc. My digital front end is slightly less $$ than my analog - only because I get more pleasure out of records.

From an analytical standpoint - the sound of our old records - ex Stones - was captured with microphones - and waves written to tape - waves stamped into vinyl which our cartridges stylus traverse to recreate sound - which is fascinating to me.

That is all.

 

Again...your point is utterly obscure.

Of course digital and analog deconstruct and reconstruct the signal in their own way. But the analog signal coming out of your analog system at home - e.g. tape or vinyl - is NOT the original analog signal. It is a new analog signal, reconstructed by the information on the analog medium. It is suitably "analogous" to the original signal.

Digital does the same. It simply encodes the original analog signal in a different way. But the analog signal that emerges from the digital reconstruction is a FULL analog representation of the original analog signal. It is, like the above, suitably analogous to the original signal, using the same principles of reducing the original signal to information to recreate an "analog" of the original.

If we are talking about how each medium works in breaking down the original signal to information, then BOTH are "approximations." Analog takes the original acoustic signal hitting the microphone and translates it in to electric signals and then in to purely physical representation - tape or squiggles in wax. In that sense all you have in your analog storage of the signal is an "approximation" of the original signal. You don't have an "analog" signal. You have to re-created it from the information you've created on the medium. It's exactly the same with digital.

And all this came out of people trying to explain why analog may be the superior medium for reproducing wound. I have no idea what point you have in this or any other context.

 

Minor point 1 came before zero, zero was invented much later.

Though people have always understood the concept of nothing or having nothing, the concept of zero is relatively new; it fully developed in India around the fifth century A.D., perhaps a couple of centuries earlier. Before then, mathematicians struggled to perform the simplest arithmetic calculations. Today, zero — both as a symbol (or numeral) and a concept meaning the absence of any quantity — allows us to perform calculus, do complicated equations, and to have invented computers.

 

I don't want to argue but I will say your comment above is incorrect:

"But the analog signal coming out of your analog system at home - e.g. tape or vinyl - is NOT the original analog signal. It is a new analog signal, reconstructed by the information on the analog medium."

Yes it is - there would be no other way to produce records but with the original analog signal from the masters. Sure it is a copy but the signal is the same - perhaps messaged/flavored which can then possibly support your point....

Let's not argue. I'm not an analog is better guy - I love both formats and one to me isn't better than the other.

 

Send me your paypals - and I'll send you two a beer.

Cheers!

 

What he suggested is an old, worn-out canard. It needs to be buried once and for all.