Vinyl dynamic range questions

The answer usually given by those who believe in Nyquist is that the problem isn't with Nyquist itself, it's with the filtering. The hires DVD-A sounds better because the filter is moved well out of the audible range and so ripple effects, etc., do not distort the audible high frequencies.

This seems a bit simplistic to me. For example, a common trait of hires I see in a lot of commentary is that bass sounds better. I've noticed this myself. Surely filtering in the highest octave or two is not going to really affect the slam and impact of bass frequencies. Yes, the overtones may be better defined, but not the bottom.

 

. . . There'll be a rock show at the Concertgebouw, long hair in Madison Square . . .

Oooooh yeah, baby. The Sheffield Labs records are a great example.

The sound of their LA Phliharmonic LPs just sucks. It was recorded at a film scoring stage with nothing on top, no added reverb. Not quite Studio 8-H but a long way from the Sofiensaal. The performances are nervous and unsettled, predictable for a direct to disc production.

You want orchestra dynamics, try one of Chaiily's SACDs of Mahler with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Now there's one hell of a recording venue for an orchestra.

 

I don't want to get all English teacher on you as I am sure I will misspell several words in this post but...."it" being what? I was refering to the sound of live music when busting your chops about your piano in your living room. Fact is a concert grand piano will overload just about any living room and that is anything but SOTA live sound. This has nothing to do with any recording. It is only about live piano as a reference.

I whole heartedly agree that piano is a great acid test for recording and playback and I am not saying nor have I ever said that any known recording and playback system is fully up to the task of creating a perfect illusion of an original performance of a grand piano in a concert hall.

It has been ill served on vinyl and CD. On analog and on digital. So while it is a true statement it doesn't really shed any light on the subject. Pointing to bad piano LPs is no more insightful than pointing to overly compressed no noised to death CDs. If you want to look at what each medium brings to the game then you have to look at each medium at their best whether you like the performance or not. Otherwise you just aren't looking at the medium. And this thread *is* about the medium in this case. If you really want to argue with my assertion that the decay of a sustained piano is better served on SOTA LPs (SOTA in recording and mastering that is) using SOTA vinyl playback gear then you have to limit yourself to that. When you point to bad sounding LPs as your measuring stick of the medium I have to call a penalty. Burning strawman; 15 yards and loss of down. If that is all you have then you need to hear what the medium is capable of before forming a universal opinion on it's shortcomings.

 

I notice that the further down you go in frequency with a SACD, the better the sound seems to get. I really think the issue is timing. My guess is that we are extraordinarily sensitive to timing differences in the midrange.

 

That's my feeling too, that timing as a big factor. As I wrote above, when I played around with some of the transient enhancer plugins that are showing up these days, I was surprised at how just the right amount gave some recordings a very analog-like sound on the highs and seemed to focus the realism of cymbals, guitar strums, etc. In fact whren I've A-Bed SACDs with their redbook layer, it always sounds like the aural equivalent of blurring when I switch to redbook, much as when an image is resized downwards in a graphics program. It's subtle, but it's there.

 

You are picking on one somewhat contraversial LP out of the entire group. "Orchestra dynamics" depend very much on where you sit and what hall you are in. I would be willing to bet that particular recording I believe you are refering to is the Leinsdorf Sheffield lab LP co-engineered by James Boyk. In his opinion (sorry to speak for James Boyk but if anyone wants to alert him to this post so he can chime in feel free to do so) this LP is the acid test for a system's ability to resolve dynamics and is very much one of the most "accurate" recordings of what an actual orchestra sounds like *IF* your system is up to the task. Which I believe he feels is very rare.

Now we can always talk about the specific LPs I was thinking of when I mentioned the Sheffields and the RRs. The Moscow sessions, The Arnold overtures and a few others. IMO on a system "up to the task" those LPs are amazingly true to the real world dynamics of an orchestra in a concert hall from a good mid distance center seat. My ideal for orchestral music. Of course if one wants something more in your face then there is a plethera of multimiked shlock from the late seventies onward that will fill the bill. No doubt one can come away from such dreck thinking what they heard was more dynamic than anything from Sheffield or RR but it aint what an orchestra sounds like.

 

Bob Katz at Chesky would place 2 414s 30 degrees apart right over the wire to record the piano. That seemed to work well but for us we have nailed to a fraction of an inch the placement of ORTF in the local halls so we tend to stick to that since it works.

 

I have heard the medium at its best. One of the areas where LPs are weak is in good old fashioned S/N ratios, the realm of the OP's original question. LPs at their best are doing things I haven't heard CDs do. CDs at their best do things that I haven't heard from LPs. SACDs do all of the things that CDs do well, many of the things that LPs do well and a lot of things that neither do at all. If the question is about dynamic range then the answer is high-rez.

Not really. It's rational to ask what that LP will sound like in 50 plays.

You will say that I have not heard what the medium is capable of. I say that I have. But after asking questions of what a system is capable at its best it strikes me as rational to point out what one can typically expect, which is a different thing altogether.

 

I actually think the Nyquist Theorem has issues itself in implementation. I honestly don't believe 44.1khz is fast enough as music is not a continuous signal.

 

"Whatever Works"

Anybody who has actually recorded this sort of stuff knows the importance of what works.

As I recall the set-up that Concord Jazz used in recording at Maybeck Hall has similar features to Bob Katz' set up for Chesky.

 

Charles Hansen (Ayre engineer) says the same thing about the digital filters required for redbook and why vinyl and high res playback sounds better.

http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/t.mpl?f=digital&m=143618

 

Well whatever they did at Concord, it seemed to work well judging from my SACDs.

One clarification...Katz would record the piano that way for accent. He was still mixing in with the normal modded Chesky AKG C24 (circa 90s).

 

I don't want to jump into the digital vs. analog debate...just that small statement, that for me, any recorded performance of a large scale orchestra, opera or piano is so far away from from a live performance (on whatever stereo), that it's not worth to compare. Independent of that I have much fun with records like the Sheffield lab or the RR. They are some of the best in one area, others in another area. Similar with Big Band recordings..anyone here, who knows a Big Band recording which sounds like 20% of a live performance (don't tell me Bill Berry For Duke ). IMO it's ridiculous to compare these genres with live...it's like comparing Ipod video with cinema scope.

 

We Have All Been Here Before

Apropos my previous mention of the Rubinstein solo Chopin SACD being sonically about as good as it gets, from today's New York Times:

With dozens of options available, I am especially partial to Rubinstein’s magisterial 1959 recordings of the Ballades and Scherzos, made when he was 72. Even this late in Rubinstein’s life his technical capacity holds up. Racing lines in the Scherzo No. 1 will leave you breathless. An overall sense of consideration and rightness permeates this session, and John Pfeiffer’s recording is outstandingly lifelike in a 2004 hybrid Super Audio CD edition, even when played on conventional stereo equipment.

Steve Smith, NYT 5/27/10​

 

Thanks for the link Scott, had missed that! Good stuff.

 

Pointless comparison. Sheffield Labs and Reference Recordings offer great audiophile vinyl, but let me know when the majors with a real catalogue of great performances offer this quality of vinyl.

 

Sorry last time I checked we were discussing the dynamic range of vinyl and my Sheffields and RRs are still vinyl unless something very strange has happened.

Of course one can find reissues of golden age classical music on vinyl that is in the same league. The performances aren't bad either.

 

I didn't say they weren't. In fact I said they make great vinyl. They just don't have a great catalogue of classical music. Most of what is/was available from the majors does not compare.

 

That may make an interesting topic for a different thread. "What great performances in classical music are available in what format with what sort of mastering?" It just isn't relavent to this thread though. In the spirit of staying off topic and discussing the quality of performances available on Sheffield and RR, IMO the Nojima recordings on RR actually do compare quite favorably as well as the Moscow sessions on Sheffield. Those are very respectable performances. I can point to Waterlilly as a source for audiophile quality vinyl with world class performances of classical music from Africa and the Middle East. That is enough off topic discussion from me. Sorry

 

You’re letting the media dictate your choice and not the music. While it may work for you, it’s not realistic for most classical fans who want a deep catalogue and that’s why it’s a pointless comparison. If I have to buy the pinnacle of vinyl quality from boutique labels just to match or beat an average CD, you’ve lost the argument.

 

Pretty much my point.

It doesn't matter if we are talking classical—where we are going to find the greatest number of pieces of music with a wide dynamic range—or any other type of music. Vinyl has self-noise, just like a resistor does. And the self noise of that vinyl is greater than the self-noise of digital systems. LPs may beat CDs sonically on some levels, dynamic range is not one of them.

 

From the article:

. . . Now clearly LP loses out in dynamic range, even against the CD recording (by comparing the figures in the Maximum - Minimum RMS Power row). This is to be expected, given the surface noise on LP (which is quite audible on my system) . . .​

. . . 'nuff said . . .

 

No, I am not letting the media dictate any of my choices when it comes to music. I have plenty of music on CD as well as LP. I do not choose music based on the media at all. But this is not a discussion on what music is available on what media and in what quality. It is about the dynamic range of LPs.

With that said, if you want the best performances with the best sound in classical IMO you will be much better served by LPs more often than not. The vast catalog of great sounding great performances one can find from the London/Decca label, EMI label as well as RCA from the golden age are IMO best represented on vinyl. Sure, there are some pretty terrific SACDs from those catalogs, at least with the RCAs but IME the best vinyl wins most of the time from those catalogs.

1. This is simply my personal opinion based on my personal expperience. When I say "you" I mean the proverbial unnamed person.

2. This is a silly argument. IMO the choice of media is something that has to be taken on a title by title basis. If a title does not exist on LP obviously one has to get the best CD or SACD version. If a title only exists on vinyl one obviously has to get the vinyl. If a title is available on multiple formats then one has to do a little homework and maybe a comparison or two and choose their own preference for that title. Maybe it will be vinyl maybe not. But this *is* a totally unrelated subject and belongs on another thread. The intrinsic dynamic range of vinyl is not affected by the depth of any classical catalogs.

 

Listen to Stadium Arcadium and tell me that. Yeah I know it's the mastering but so what? Can't let the medium dictate your choice in music can you? In the dynamic range contest vinyl 1 CD 0. We can go from there. Joni Mitchell Blue anyone? Um, how about the Blue Note catalog? Boy I can cherry pick em and make a great case. I think you will find on a title by title basis the LPs will be mostly kicking the doodoo out of their CD counterparts in the dynamic range catagory. So if we are going to ignore the actual physical propperties of each medium and just talk catalogs I say LP wins hands down.

 

Nuff said? I think not. The article says a lot more. But if it is cherry season and we are going to start cherry picking we can go back and forth all night.