I want to love vinyl, but...

The physical (I think you mean mechanical) parameters of each media type are irrelevant. While the quality of the plastic used to press LPs can have an effect on audible quality, given the type of plastic extant it is a relatively fixed and known quantum within a generally minor quality variation. By contrast, the storage medium for a digital file has no effect whatsoever on its encoding or audible quality when reproduced by a given system. The file can be stored on a CD, in a solid state drive, on a mechanical hard drive using magnetic media, and so on.

The mechanical differences in storage media don't cause audible differences when comparing the same recording and mastering stored on LP and a digital file, nor do differences in storage media cause differences in a given digital file (e.g., one mastered to a file and the master used to stamp a CD). That's because the encoding of the digital file and its original production determine the quality. The medium on which a digital file is stored cannot, by definition, alter its encoding.

You are looking for comparative audible quality differences caused by physical differences in medium, but the storage medium and the way in which the master was physically cut only matters for LP because it makes an audible difference. With a CD, the quality of the stamping has nothing to do with the quality of music encoded in the master stamper and cannot, for example, add noise or distortion or reduce noise or distortion or change tonality. The opposite is true for LP.

What I'm getting at is that if you try to think about your posit intuitively, it leads to a dead end. Analytical thinking is needed.

In fact, the physical dimensionality and the physical limits of the plastic of an LP are its limitations, but because those limits approximate the recording limits of magnetic tape we get great results. In that sense, your intuitive thinking has reversed reality. Digital recording and encoding has the potential to easily exceed the physical limits of LP (and sometimes does) particularly in areas of perceived resolution and actual dynamic range among other things.

It is LP that is comparatively physically limited, not CD, and certainly not digital files. Having three physical directions of stylus movement, in a comparative analysis, only defines the limits of the LP medium not anything superior.

 

You talked about digital distribution. Streaming is a major form of digital distribution. Huge.
Streaming music is driving up harmful emissions, according to study

 

No, I mean physical or mathematical space, not the mechanics.

I disagree, the mechanical differences, and consequent information storage methods DO cause a difference when retrieving the information. For example analog does not have digital artifacts and a cut off based on sampling rate.

The digital process is non-linear, the analog is linear.
Digital: analog to digital to analog
The lp can be analog for the entire chain

An example in power engineering is a variable freq drive (VFD) used to vary AC motor speed. An AC motor's speed is proportional to line freq., which is fixed at 60 Hz. A VFD is similar to a class D amp: AC power is rectified to a DC bus, from which a signal switches transistors (or SCR's or IGBT's) to allow current to flow as an analog wave. In an amp the switch control is the music waveform, in a VFD it is a sine wave of the freq corresponding to the desired speed. This is non-linear since the input and output are disconnected by the DC conversion.
A change to the input freq has no effect on the output. And the output will never be an exact replica of the input, it can get very close by increasing PWM rate, IGBT switching speed, feedback, etc., but never perfect. Digital audio confronts the same challenge.

Digital can be 'technically' accurate but still lack 'musicality' to a trained ear. My question is the 3 information (analog) vs. 2 (digital) spaces got anything to do with it?

It is like the difference between a sculpture and a painting, the 3D can store more information and appear more realistic than the 2D painting.
Music is 3D (actually 4, x,y,z and time). Digital only has magnitude and time. Not saying one is better, only different, and can 3D vs 2D account for some of the difference.

 

You clearly missed debates on computeraudiophile website, where people claimed that copying file degrades the sound, that WD drives sounds more analog-like compared to Seagate, discussing merits for vibration-reducing platform under NAS power supply and were pushing $500 audiophile-grade SCSI ribbon cables.

 

Digital is cleaner, more polished, and precise... However, analog, when presented well, has a more 'realistic' sound because it lacks what digital has. The sound is more raw, unfiltered, and textured. I have have multiple albums on vinyl, as well as digital. My favorite thing is when records come with digital download cards, and I always say that this should be mandatory in the industry. If youre paying 15-25$ for a new record, the digital files should be included, obviously, this way you have both... I have albums that I think sound better on record than the lossless digital file. It comes down to the mastering as we know. Too aggressive of mastering, tends to destroy the 'texture' and 'liveliness' that we hear in good analog. I have albums that i love on the cassette format as well. Something about the extremely analog sound out of a good cassette, through an up to spec deck, that I really enjoy. I like all of these formats, and if you have good ears, and learn to listen to music, not just longing for 'perfect sound', but for 'realism', and 'interaction', analog is distinguishably worth it. It ends up being subjective, yet again. It depends on what you listen for. I havent bought a cd in years, as I find cd's uninteresting??? If im going to spend money on an album, its going to be on vinyl or cassettes. Now Im just waiting for reels to come back around (lol!). Beautiful sound. I listen to a lot of heavy metal as well. I prefer analog far and away for this sort of music. A nasty digital master destroys heavier music, and unfortunately introduces some ugly qualities at times.

 

Analog Vs. Digital Sound - Electronic Products

 

The OP:

36 pages later:

It's always an analog vs. digital debate at SHF.

 

No sampling rate in analog, but it does have a cut off based on a number of things including speed, tape head design, tape formulation, groove modulation (you have a physical velocity limit), number of copy generations, really lots of things. The analog signal path is actually rather significantly bandwidth limited, it’s not infinite, and it’s not flat up into the ultrasonic at all.

Lets examine this one. Which system has distortions that vary with amplitude? Which system has frequency response that varies with amplitude? Which system has variations in speed/pitch? Which has a noise floor that varies with generational copies, and specific format and media quality? Those would all be analog. Unless you have some other definition of what “linear” means that is used off-world, digital is the linear one here.

In the digital chain today you convert analog to digital once, digital to analog once. The net result is linear.

In the analog chain you have multiple generations. Copies. For one generation of analog, and you can pick any analog method here, you had a set of nonlinearities. Each copy within the same method, say, tape for example, has an additive effect. For each dB of frequency response variation in the original, the copy has double the amount. Each copy has 3dB higher noise floor. A wonderful all-analog record is made from at least 3 or more copies of an analog tape, the original, the mix down, the dub master. And, there’s likely an edit master in there too, and always a safety. The lacquer is never ever cut from the original, it’s cut from a copy of the final stereo mix, a copy which is 4 generations away from the original. How many “conversions” is that? A digital workflow has 2 conversions.

An interesting, but irrelevant story.

This has never been scientifically verified, in fact, quite the opposite. It’s a belief system, not factual. If you have a scientific reference to the contrary please post a link.

Careful there....that’s not a good analogy.

Look at recording sound carefully. All we ever have in recording is magnitude and time, regardless of the medium, digital, analog, or live transmission. And that 3D space you’re referring to is acoustic. We can’t actually capture it with microphones in a way that makes holographic sense to a listener. It’s no more reality than a painting represents reality. When you play back a recording you are creating an entirely different 3D space, you cannot and are not recreating the original. It doesn’t matter the recording medium, because any medium is only recording an analog of the original acoustic signal, magnitude vs time, with a bandwidth limit, all media does that. And many recordings don’t even have an original acoustic signal at all.

There is no 3D vs 2d, it’s all 2d. And yes, you are saying one is better, pretty consistently. And I’m disagreeing with your assertion based on scientific fact.

 

More than producing Records & CDs, then distributing them to wholesalers, then retailers and finally consumers, I think not!

BTW I, almost, never have streamed music, however I may have googled, used this forum and viewed Netflix. Glad to see many servers are now wind and solar powered, and naturally cooled.

Renewable energy – Data Centers – Google

 

A digital enthusiast gives a warning about analog vinyl enthusiasts.

 

It’s not easy being green. Even digital downloads come under criticism for their emissions. Wind power kills birds caught up in the turbines. And solar power burns birds.

 

No, I'm a vinyl enthusiast that abhors evangelizing. Analog or digital

 

Okay. Discussion in a vinyl thread could be looked at like that. Discussion forums do involve debate and advocacy. And strong warnings from stern critiquing observers.

 

That is all generally true, but again irrelevant. The inherent limits of, for example, a studio session recorded and mastered at 16/44 have nothing to do with the physical CD or file in which the session is eventually stored. The medium is not the message, in this case. Although the physical storage limit affects, for example, the number of tracks (e.g., 5 minutes in length at 16/44 compared to 5 minutes in length at 24/96) that can be stored on a CD, the physical media has no effect on the perceived audible quality. That last bit is entirely a function of the musicians, the recording process, the production process and the skill of the mastering engineer. Ditto for an LP, except for the fact that the physical state of the LP (when played) and the care and attention to the pressing process very much affect the audible quality.

At any given ‘resolution’, the inherent limitations of a given process and encoding for digital files have nothing to do with the media on which the files are stored.

You’ve shifted your position to one of the mathematics of transducers reproducing music transcribed from an LP to an analogy about replication of input. However, even if you want to go down that path, there’s still a hiccup. In the replication process, a digital master file can be copied infinitely (for all reasonable intents and purposes), but analog masters (e.g., master tape, master tape copy, and an analog stamper for an LP press) degrade with each use to make a subsequent copy. A master stamp is used in a press to make an LP and the quality is very slightly degraded in the process because of the physical limitations of the process and the medium (i.e., the stamper metal, the LP plastic); play the LP and record it on a good quality reel-to-reel tape deck to get a highly listenable but (again) very slightly degraded recording (in terms of dynamic range and/or noise increase, etc.). At the same time, use a good quality ADAC to make a digital recording with a demonstrably smaller degradation and no added noise. Make a copy of the reel and inevitably impose another generational degradation. Make a copy of the digital file dubbing it while it’s playing back and you will introduce a generational degradation due to whatever noise is imposed during the re-encoding (that’s your digital-to-analog-to-digital problem). But if you simply maintain the digital domain and make a non-decoded copy using a file manager on a computer, no further degradation occurs.

Whether a particular audiophile prefers music stored in digital format over analogue format, or vice versa, is irrelevant. The technical differences between the methods of recording are also irrelevant because in the hands of competent recordists and competent producers and competent master engineers, LPs and CDs from that source are indistinguishable to listeners except for the audible differences that are almost unavoidable due to phono cartridges and phono preamps being inherently different, electronically and in their mechanical distinctiveness, from DACs. Consider that it is this major and generally unavoidable difference that most audiophiles hear when comparing a digital file (e.g., a CD) to an LP when both formats have been generated using the same master. Again, that has nothing to do with the conceptual dimensionality, or conceptual physical limitations of the media or whether digital is better or worse than analogue or anything of the kind.

There is no way to blend the two spaces you’re trying to define, because they don’t exist within the same physical context and they don’t exist within the same dimensional frame. It’s the same as trying to compare sound to light - while they certainly both function as waves, light is also composed of generated particles (photons) while sound consists entirely of waveforms constructed of and generated with existing media (air/gas) which impacts our sense of hearing and which generates electrical signals that are processed by the brain to create the sensation of sound. It’s that issue of particle existence which fouls up that analogy in a manner similar to the way in which your AC motor analogy can’t be applied to the dimensionality comparison (in physical space by direct measurement or through a mathematical calculation of the differences in, for example, groove striations of a given section of music compared to the pits on a CD of the same section of music. One (the LP) requires physical space and incredibly rapid and physically traceable changes to that physical space in order for a transducer to work and generate a viable electrical signal. The other (CD, digital file) requires no dimensionality to work other than a conceptual idea of space, and then only because encoded (compressed, uncompressed, whatever) data requires a physical medium for storage and access. Of course, if you apply your intuitive concept of dimensionality differences to a digital filed stored in solid state media - e.g., a USB stick/Flash drive, an EPROM, a solid state hard drive - the entire concept of dimensionality falls completely apart. If you try to reconcile physical dimensionality as a possible effect on sound, how is it possible to visualize the artificially derived conceptual dimensionality of a CD with hundreds or thousands of times more music stored on a solid state device the size of your fingernail. There is no rational dimensional comparison because mathematically and conceptually, none exists. You’ve built a construct based on intuitive thinking that can’t be applied, instead of analytical thinking which can be.

You’re mixing concepts and mixing metaphors, but there are no useful relationships in the comparison. Perhaps more important, you seem to be misunderstanding the substantive differences between formats. What you observe in physical space as dimensions only have relevance when dealing with analogue media - the LP in this case. Digital encoding is by definition, non-physical. So trying to apply physicality to it is functionally pointless. Suggesting that an absence of physical dimension in CD or as you have errantly suggested, an insufficiency of physical dimension, that might affect potential quality makes no sense on any mathematical or conceptual or physical level. A digital file - the entire digital domain - does not depend on physical space or transduction at the (two-channel home stereo storage) source. Even restricting that reality (for no rational reason) to that of comparative reproduction falls apart because all music ends up (in order to be heard by us) being generated in the listening space by transducers - either speakers or headphones or IEMs, dynamic or electrostatic, all of which are physical transducers that convert electrical signals into sound waves.

 

Popularity of Vinyl growing....



Trucks delivering the latest Vinyl blockbuster, as the others queue to get to the Amazon Fulfillment centre.

 

Just a slight nit-pick here. If the end result is to be a Redbook CD, then actually the file type, data format, bit depth and sampling rate is a limitation of the media format. You can't do anything outside of 16/44.1 on a Redbook CD. If you move outside of the specific Redbook format, (ignoring sub-sets like SACD) then sure, the limit is only in total data storage, not file type or data format. Heck, it doesn't even have to be audio.

However, you can still correctly say "the physical media has no effect on the perceived audible quality." Still true for the audio CD, as it's a bit-clone of the master (and now we can let the arguing begin on that). The same statement cannot be said of any analog recording and reproducing media, all of which definitely have an effect on the audible quality, and those effects are known, considered, and partially accommodated for during mastering. One obvious example is that vinyl has a finite maximum stylus velocity which limits the maximum modulation level vs frequency. In other words, you cannot get as much maximum level off vinyl at 20kHz as you can at 1kHz, and the difference is not small, it's like 15 - 20dB less at 20kHz (that's from memory, I have not looked at it in a while). That's not frequency response, that's maximum recordable level. So, if you want a loud record, you have to forcibly limit high frequencies so maximum velocity is never exceeded, which is usually done dynamically with a special high frequency limiter. The limit is physical. If you attempt to move the cutter stylus to fast the rear facet scrapes the wall of the groove just cut and ruins it.

You don't have to do any of that in PCM, as it can reproduce full output at any frequency.

 

Those look like network data packets to me, not vinyl.

 

For sure such arguments occur repeatedly. Such arguments are most often examples of two realities that are forced together to form a third, non-substantive one. So, when the Dunning-Kruger effect (i.e., the inability of a person to realize that the expertise or fundamental knowledge he lacks with respect to a particular subject is exceedingly important because the lack of knowledge precludes him from understanding what he is talking about, i.e., he doesn’t realize how little he actually knows about the subject on which he’s expressing an opinion) and misapplied intuitive thinking are applied to a demonstrable problem or to a hypothesis, what makes sense to the person asserting such a position is understood more clearly by bona fide experts as inept nonsense. The Dunning-Kruger effect is also defined as the way in which someone with low or little or no ability on a subject overestimates his knowledge or ability.

That’s not to say that when people who aren’t experts on a subject offer opinions they shouldn’t be heard. Far from it, it’s an opportunity to engage in discussion and for a person with bona fide expertise to reply with accurate information. The wisdom lies in checking the new information against established sources (not product marketing or advertorials or so-called ‘white papers’ published by product makers). Anybody can state, with impunity, that quantum level changes in encoded data inevitably occur and that such occurrences must eventually result in an audible deterioration of/or differences in sound quality. Unfortunately, unlike accurate explanations of the technology by experts who’ve both studied and developed the technology, such posits are non-falsifiable and therefore opinions without any basis in rationality. Quantum level changes don’t manifest in the digital data realm in the form of anything useful enough to affect a digital audio file stored on a drive of some sort. The problem, not realized by intuitive thinkers who put their minds on the notion - and here’s Dunning-Kruger again - is that as quantum-level effects (both real and theoretical) begin to rise in magnitude to the point where quantum particles enter normal space, the little buggers insist on acting just like normal matter (which of course they are at that point). It’s one of the reasons that the scientists working on quantum computing are having a lot of difficulties getting it off the ground.

The retaliatory argument then ensues in which it is asserted that “science does not know everything.” That is correct. What’s left unstated is the fact that “science” has never claimed to know everything. In fact, scientists of all kinds repeatedly insist that they’re discovering new things every day, learning new things every day, and even advancing new knowledge to modify and improve some things that were known earlier. We all certainly benefit from such advances. Someone inexpert who is holding tightly to his errant, intuitively derived opinion (or similarly someone who has expertise in some other field of science and confers upon himself authority by tenuous association, e.g., I’m a researcher in another field, so that makes my opinion authoritative in this unrelated field) can then react by shouting, “Ah hah! So you admit that science doesn’t know everything! That means I’m right!” Of course it means nothing of the kind. It’s just a self-serving bounce from one extreme to another within the inevitable boundaries imposed by lack of specific knowledge and an apparently unbreakable adherence to informal logical fallacies.

When bona fide authorities post on SHF and when members who share expertise conferred by successful application of practical experience and recognized study post on SHF, I pay attention. I recognize that there are things I cannot possibly know or learn just by try to think about them intuitively. I recognize that people study electronics and theory and engineering and chemistry and physics for years and years before they’re allowed to foist themselves on an unprotected public. I recognize that all those years of study involve learning complicated knowledge that itself gives rise to deep complexities that nobody who hasn’t studied the subject(s) could possibly know about or derive simply by applying intuitive thinking. I recognize that I cannot form an authoritative opinion on some technical subject just because I really, really, really read the Wikipedia article carefully. Anybody who thinks they can is a fool. There’s Dunning-Kruger again. I, or they, are certainly entitled to discuss the subject, but I (and they) must do so in a way that invites more knowledge rather than blocks knowledge because of trying to hold onto a grossly inexpert opinion.

 

It's very often true that the one that claims, in response to a challenge of belief, "Science doesn't know everything!" also has little idea what sciences actually "knows".

I was completely sure that I understood Dunning-Kruger, but it turns out I misjudged my own competence.

 

My brain hurts.

 

The calling card response of pretty much every pseudo-science, spiritual, new age, religious and fringe claim in the world. Sure science is great for other things, but it can't be applied to my thing - my knowledge exists outside the boundaries of known science. Someday science will validate my claims!

High End audio enthusiastic often inhabit these fringes too: "I have an experience that something changes about X even though you can't measure anything changing in X. "

The observer is never wrong; only the science is wrong. If measurements don't support the claim, then the measurements are wrong. Either it can't be measured, or we don't know what to measure yet. Maybe someday science will find out what to measure and validate my claim. Until then, I'll go on believing it's true.

That is the nature of subjective-based epistemology.

 

It’s a wonderful epistemology. It is self-validating, and in that regard comforting and self-supporting, and of course, non-falsifiable. Just as you’ve posted elsewhere on SHF, it is precisely the associated non-falsifiability and the associated assertive dissonance that helps to spread nonsensical marketing language (often presented in a form that hints at objective validity) as applicable technical fact. In and of itself, I think a non-falsifiable epistemology (a theory of knowledge) can be followed quite reasonably and harmlessly by a person who is insistent on doing so at least insofar as there’s no foul and hence no harm. The problem arises when the person with the theory begins crossing from the epistemological into the ontological because they came to some conclusion arising from misapplied intuitive thinking.

Quite often, in common interchanges, the word “intuitive” implies wisdom even when nothing of the sort is true or applicable or relevant. Intuition is not always good or beneficial or correct. It’s merely a process. Like all intellectual processes, sometimes it’s useful and sometimes it’s utterly useless. The point is that it’s a well-known tenet of behavioural psychology that a very large number of people believe that when they come to an conclusion based on intuitive thinking about some problem or issue or obstacle that it must be the correct conclusion. That is just as often false as it is true. The validity of any conclusion arrived at by intuitive thinking is invariably based on the amount of factual knowledge and practical experience a person has prior to applying the intuitive thinking process to the matter.

One of the most common problems I’ve encountered when approached privately (i.e., a PM, a listening session with my group, or someplace other than an online discussion forum) about digital’s inferiority or analogue’s inferiority is usually total absence of technical balance. I’ve lost count of the number of times an avowed LP/analogue devotee possessed of a very high quality and well-matched system of turntable, tonearm, cartridge, beautifully cared-for LP collection consisting of good quality (or better) masterings, carefully chosen phono preamp, carefully chosen amp/preamp or integrated and carefully chosen speakers decides to try streaming or CD and does so by grabbing the first item that comes to hand. A cheap CD player or streamer containing a DAC whose analogue output was mostly an afterthought by the manufacturer. His declaration thereafter, triumphant in tone and assertively stated, that digital is awful or it sucks or it will never match (let alone exceed) vinyl, is primarily a neatly self-organized, self-serving result based on a subconsciously contrived comparison that was doomed by its fundamental nature to fail.

The other companion problem I’ve encountered almost as often, is the precise opposite. It consists of the CD and streaming system that a digital audio audiophile has by careful measures built over time, paying careful attention to the right choice of DAC that provides analogue output of high quality, a CD transport that is responsive and mechanically silent (among other important things), a CD and file and TIDAL playlist collection consisting primarily of good quality (or better) masterings, a carefully chosen amp/preamp or integrated amp and carefully chosen speakers, which is then compared to a budget turntable with a factory installed cartridge of limited ability feeding an inexpensive phono preamp. Of course the audiophile declares that vinyl is labour-intensive, noisy, hard to manage, unmusical, and so on.

Both of those audiophiles can’t be right, and they’re not. As soon as rational comparisons are made with the use of equipment of equal quality - i.e., when the analogue guy acquires digital components as good as the ones owned by the digital guy - differences in music enjoyment disappear like morning mist rapidly burned off by a mid-summer sunrise. Clarity and understanding ensues.

The problem is, too many audiophiles state quite directly that while they probably didn’t do a fair comparison they actually really seriously really can tell that vinyl (or digital) isn’t for them and seems inferior. It’s just intellectual laziness or the real need, when money is tight, to find a way to not spend more money, or to validate the financial commitment already sunk into existing components. What so many audiophiles I meet and talk to sometimes miss is that it is only their music enjoyment that matters, and the method by which they achieve that enjoyment is non-contentious. But instead of learning about what the other ‘side’ is enjoying (and how), they engage in destructive defensive argument that is built, most often, on intuitive thinking (when analytical thinking would serve them better), and on the subconscious ontology that worms its way into their considerations as they are (slightly) moved to question their previous choices.

 

"Because quantization is a many-to-few mapping, it is an inherently non-linear and irreversible process" Found under the "Mathenatical properties" section in Wiki.
Quantization (signal processing) - Wikipedia

 

That is the correct mathematical analysis, but has nothing whatever to do with how relatively linear the process is in actual application. It's the difference between the absolute, and the practically negligible. For example, a 0dBFS signal with 16bit quantization has distortion products at -96dBFS.

Now show us all where analog recording of any kind is more linear. An analog tape recorder often references the 3% THD point. That puts the errors created at 30dB below the fundamental. 1% results in distortion products (that's non-linear errors) at 40dB below the fundamental.

So which one is relatively non-linear?

 

Quantization error has non harmonically related artifacts. Even if they are smaller in amplitude, since they don't relate in any musical sense to the input signal I will say they are relatively more non-linear to the input signal than most analog based harmonic distortion. As for your point about compression related distortions; Human hearing compresses already, so the brain is much more able to compensate for this kind of distortion.