Why I love Vinyl - Part 1

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Uncle Al, Mar 10, 2002.

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  1. Todd Fredericks

    Todd Fredericks Senior Member

    Location:
    A New Yorker
    I love vinyl because it's round like the world. Well, so are CD's? Hmmm? Well, the world isn't exactly round, it's more egg shaped... Hmmm? Oval? Anyway, I love vinyl because it's? Vinyl? Good night, Gracie...

    Todd

    P.S. Ever try frying an egg on vinyl or a CD, rather messy...
     
  2. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Yeah. what krabapple said!:)
     
  3. Gary

    Gary Nauga Gort! Staff

    Location:
    Toronto
    Yea, what Todd said! :)

    Use a frying pan. Low heat, some butter or margerine in the bottom. Simmer. Now, what does it sound like? Warm & analogue? Can't be cold and digital! What about Steve's eggs - warm and digital, right? Which leads me to conclude that Steve is *Cooking!*.

    Say: "Goodnight, Gracie."
     
  4. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Need to fry up some bacon with that! It must be breafast time!

    :D
     
  5. Beagle

    Beagle Senior Member

    Location:
    Ottawa
    If "euphonic distortion" is actual music, yeah, we like it. CD has it's own set of built-in distortions and is not accurate either.
     
  6. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    ...and the debate continues...
     
  7. krabapple

    krabapple New Member

    Location:
    Washington DC
    By no scientific or engineering measure I know of are LPs less distorting than CDs as a medium (assuming competent mastering and manufacture of both), and for a fair number, they are *more* distorting (and thus less accurate). Doesn't mean both can't sound extremely nice to listen to. May I direct you and your claims to rec.audio.high-end, which as in residence a number of people with both the expensive audiophile jones and the engineering/psychoacoustical knowhow to refute you and them in lavish detail.
     
  8. lpcd2001

    lpcd2001 New Member

    Location:
    san jose
    With all due respects, I trust my equipment and my ears more than the (free) opinions from facists in rec.audio.high-end. In addition to a zillion cast-in-concrete quotes about all solid state amps sound the same, we will find definite statements that cables do not make a difference because they cannot measure it. Despite their claims of engineering knowledge and measurements, their claims just do not match up with my experience in my system. And since I don't know about the resolution of their system, how they tune the room, their music taste, if they compare it with live non-amplified performances, I tend to take their inputs as a guideline that THEY have observed from their system and their room and their preferences rather than as an absolute truth.

    BTW, I started with CD and all solid state components (pseudo high-end such as Krell, Theta Gen Va) and ended up with all analogue and tube components. All components are in a dedicated room with lots of room tuning, dedicated power line, and lots of vibration control. I also go to classical concerts regularly to calibrate my audio imaginations. My system cannot reproduce music as I heard in live system -- not even close. But I know that my system has reached such a finesse FOR ME because I can still be engrossed in its musicality after immediately returning from a live concert of acoustic instrument. And I know that I ain't move back to CD or solid state amp any time soon.
     
  9. Beagle

    Beagle Senior Member

    Location:
    Ottawa
    Ah yes. Those people who enjoy their music and equipment so much that they have zero time for the internet, let alone 50,000 posts :rolleyes:
     
  10. Paul Chang

    Paul Chang Forum Old Boy, Former Senior Member Has-Been

    krabapple,

    Are you familiar with terms such as quantization error and clock jitters like I'm with wow & flutter and surface noise? Also do you know of any "brick wall" anti-aliasing low pass filter realized in the material world as opposed to mathematically formulated on paper?
     
  11. krabapple

    krabapple New Member

    Location:
    Washington DC
    And that's fine. You enjoy your system. But surely you see that your reasons for choosing your components *may* not have been due to their sound -- I'm assuming you didn't do blind , level-matched comparisons. Maybe you accept this possibility and it doesn't matter. But if you deny this, you are pitting yourself against some pretty well-established science, in which case the onus is on you to provide good evidence for your case. That's how science progresses.

    It really comes down to what sorts of statements audio hobbyists make.
    Are they statements of preference -- in which case there can hardly be a scientific objection -- or are they statements of *difference*? The latter can be validated scientifically, the former can't be. Audiophiles tend to make a lot of statements of 'difference' that simply aren't well-supported. Then again, if they'd stick to statements of preference, there'd be nothing to argue about. ;>
     
  12. krabapple

    krabapple New Member

    Location:
    Washington DC
    Yes, I'm at least passingly familiar with the above. Are you familiar with any results showing at what level jitter, quantization error, and brickwall filtering are *audible*? Are *audible* distortions inherent to digital recording and playback? Or is it a matter or poor implementation? These are issues that have been discussed by peopel far more knowledgable than I am, on RAHE. I direct you there for more.

    I like to toss out this statement once in awhile to digiphobes: the existence of even *one* CD that sounds 'musical' to you suggests that there is nothing inherently 'wrong' with digital. Of course the same can be said about solid-state versus tubes, etc.

    Another test: run the signal from your turntable/preamp through a good digital recorder and burn it to CD using something like Exact Audio Copy. Play back the CD and the LP (ensuring the levels are matched at the speaker terminals), switching at whatever intervals you like. The test should be 'blinded' somehow for rigor. Can you tell the difference between them in a statistically significant way? If not, it's more evidence that there's nothing inherently 'wrong' with digital. (If there is, then it *could* mean that digital inherently adds or subtracts something to the analog sound...or it could be something about your recorder, your burner, or your CD playback.)
     
    krisbee likes this.
  13. Seagoat

    Seagoat New Member

    Location:
    Chatsworth, Ca
    "brick wall" anti-aliasing low pass filter

    Dear Paul and audiophiles out there, my friend Grover Huffman indicated that prior to oversampling in CD players, many or all CD Players prior to 1986 used analog rather than brick wall filters. He said that the change was due to the more expensive coil type analog filters replacement with cheaper and easier to manufacture brick wall filters. The result, together with the discontinued use of 3 beam lasers in favor of single beam lasers, has been immediately inferior sound reproduction. Many of my friends and I use 1985 CD Players with 3 beam lasers and analog rather than brick wall digital filters and no oversampling. We have compared these players to current $1000 to $4000 players which they are superior to. They sound more like analog sound than any players currently made or made since the late 1980s. A really cheap version is the Sharp 650 and 750. The more expensive CD Players from that era are very rare now. So, CD reproduction can be really, really good with the correct reproduction equipment. P.S. we use various types of vibration control devices to extract about 100% more resolution, starting from simple $10 husk pillows to aurios. The older units were generally not very good at vibration control (the Sharp not at all). Try using deep cell battery power to retrieve even more information-it works too.
     
  14. Seagoat

    Seagoat New Member

    Location:
    Chatsworth, Ca
    Preferences

    Dear Krabapple, If you have read my posts, you would find that I prefer certain custom designed tube equipment over solid state, records to CDs and live, unamplified music to canned music. My preferences were borne of trial and error over decades with the greatest changes occurring in the past few years from associating with Tom Port, Steve Hoffman, Grover Huffman, Robert Pincus and others who either know what to listen for, how to make a recording sound good, how to design good sounding equipment... My friend Robert's preference is for a forward soundstage, ambience be damned. Grover's preference is for resolution and ambience with noisy records not a particular problem. We have are preferences but they do not rule out any particular type of reproduction equipment or technology. Unless I have tried it and if it stinks, I don't go back to it (unless it is substantially modified).

    P.S. Exact Audio Copy was recommended by a Plextor engineer to make exact audio copies. I have never been able to make an exact dupe using either Plextor's discdupe, Audio Capture or Roxio/CD Creator. I thought it was because I am using a ADAPI internal Plextor drive (four so far from the 16X to the 4X writer over the years) the electromagnetic interference from the machine itself, the wiring, etc. My friends who are in the profession of making CDs use only SCUZIs on dedicated audio computers with no other programs or devices other than their audio extraction, modification programing. On a walkman, the differences between the original and the computer generated copy cannot be heard using Plextor or Roxio software. On my high resolution equipment, its immediate, a leaner harmonic, less dynamic sound. This occurs everywhere I've done the test, including my pro friends CD copying labs. Do you know the answer? Thanks
     
  15. krabapple

    krabapple New Member

    Location:
    Washington DC
    Re: Preferences

    See above -- are you making bit-perfect copies? In either case, AFAIC, if you haven't tested the 'leaner harmonic, less dynamic' claim under blind, levelmatched conditions, the report is hard to interpret. (Also, a change in dynamic range or harmonic content should be readily measurable or visible using .wav analysis software.) If hte difference you hear is real, then it should hold up statistically under conditions where you don't know beforehand which version is playing. I can't emphasize this point enough -- we *know* from decades of research that 'sighted' trials are prone to certain kinds of expectation effects. If these aren't accounted for, then the 'experimental result' is inconclusive.

    (I wonder how many people here have had this experience: you are comparing two things related to audio -- say, your system under two conditions -- and you are convinced you hear a difference, only to realize afterwards that, by accident, *you had never switched the conditions*. Because you were *expecting* to hear a difference...you heard one, where there was none. This phenomenon is easy to duplicate in an actual controlled test (inluding tests of 'golden ears'), by telling the subjects they will be comparing two things, when in fact there's only one. It's hardly unique to audio, either.)

    I'm not saying anyone must employ controlled comparison to enjoy their music. I certainly haven't performed blind tests to pick out my stuff. But I don't make claims about it that exceeds what I can reasonably know, based on the sort of comparison I have done.
     
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  16. Seagoat

    Seagoat New Member

    Location:
    Chatsworth, Ca
    CD Copies

    Dear Krabapple, I KNOW the difference as does everyone who has heard the immediate difference except on discmans. I don't need a double blind test for this. Steve Hoffman knows I have a great ear as does Tom Port and several others who know me from this site. The current computer method I've used makes INFERIOR copies. When I use my Marantz CDR 500 professional CD burner, the copies are exact or close to it using Mitsui Gold media. I've tried all types of media, so its not that. Unless you have a very high resolution audio system, you might be fooled when comparing equipment and/or recordings. The reason I would like to use the computer is for speed-my latest Plextor burns at 24X for audio (yes, I've tried burning as slow as 1X and the identical problem occurs).

    No, I did not analyze the discs on the computer with sophisticated software; however, a check using CD99 software analysis indicated that the waveforms were very slightly different than the original, sort of softer or rounder (truncated peaks) than the sharper waves on the original. The wave height was sometimes similar and sometimes slightly reduced on the copy, but varied from the few copies I tested. Data is perfectly copied. No errors were noted on error detection software. I've done this on multiple computers with multiple Plextor burners and media. That's why I think it has something to do with the computer itself, dedicated or not, internal electrical interference (would not explain perfect data copying), the type of burner (internal versus external/atapi versus scuzi). The audio extraction process is always perfect according to the various software used. Is Exact Audio Copy superior to Roxio/CD Creator/Plextor Discdupe&AudioExtract software?
     
  17. Seagoat

    Seagoat New Member

    Location:
    Chatsworth, Ca
    Double blind testing was used for others

    And yes, double blind testing was used when I demonstrated the CDs for friends. They only reported what they heard, without me telling them which was which. It was very obvious to us all.
     
  18. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Seagoat, you obviously overlooked the part that if you copied your CDs on a computer, at least ONE of the drives you used, probably the CD ROM, was inferior. Also, if any part of that data passed through a soundcard converter, that would also show up un the CD99 program. One has to be very careful when using a computer to do this. Your little test was not controlled.
     
  19. lpcd2001

    lpcd2001 New Member

    Location:
    san jose
    Krabapple, my point is those fascists on r.a.h-e can claim all they want but as I cannot reconcile theire claims with my experience, I suspect there are other factors, i.e., resolution of their system. I recalled Pinkerton wrote that all ss amps sound the same if not overloaded. Some wrote that electrical cords at HomeDepot sound the same as Nordost Vallaha. Just shook my head.
     
  20. Seagoat

    Seagoat New Member

    Location:
    Chatsworth, Ca
    Dear Grant

    No, the CD-ROM drives were identical, in fact, it was the same Plextor burner used for DAE to the hard drive and back to the Plextor to burn. CD-ROM quality is not the issue.

    The question you may be able to answer is, did data go through the soundcard converter when using the various software programs (Plextor Discdupe, Audio Capture, Roxio Disc Copy, CD Creator and copying through drag and drop from the CD to the Hard drive then back through Plextor's MVP 2000 burn program)? My listening test was controlled and very, very obvious. My burning method may be corrupted by the software or computer, but which one, or is it both. Several years ago I tried CD Creator (Adaptec) which made the worst sounding copy, plus a reduction in signal level by about 2 db. I'm pretty sure that that program went through the soundcard converter (a cheap Creative Labs live card) because it apparently manipulated the sound the most. How do I remedy the situation or can I? Do I use other software, require a Scuzi burner or a dedicated audio only computer? That's what Plextor engineers suggested, but they don't know about high resolution sound quality, so I would say they are only guessing. My friends don't use a computer for duplication but rather optical digital out from one CD player to a professional burner to make exact copies at 1 and 2 speed. I'd like to make them at 24 speed as Plextor states is possible, onto the highest quality media, Mitsui Gold Type 6. Thanks
     
  21. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    First, let me say that the burner itself has very little to do, if anything, with sound quality, particularly if it is a Plextor!

    If you record your CDs to the hard drive in real time, the sound is very likely going through the card. If you play back the copy throught the card your sound will of course be worse.

    I say, get another card!

    Also, to avoid recording anything through the card, "rip" the data from the CD to the hard drive. In CD Creator it is to extract, I use CD creator as well as other programs to rip, copy, and record files, and I get identical sound out of the copies. Unless you are trying to convert different sampling rates and formats other that .wav files, there is absolutley NO reason you should get different sounding copies.

    Something IS wrong with your setup.
     
  22. Seagoat

    Seagoat New Member

    Location:
    Chatsworth, Ca
    Dear Grant

    Yes, I know that the Plextor is not a problem. Also, I avoid recording anything through the card and only "rip" the data from the CD to the hard drive. I only use DAE to extract and never use real time, since that would be a waste of my time. The ripping is now at up to 40X. I am not trying to convert different sampling rates; however, using DiscDupe results in .pxi files rather than .wav files. Plextor engineers gave me 3 reasons why the copy CDs sound different which I previously listed for Krabapple. Are you certain that your ripped copies are identical sounding to the originals? Should I stick with .wav file software transfers only? Thanks, Stephen
     
  23. krabapple

    krabapple New Member

    Location:
    Washington DC
    <sigh> Have you any clue what the word 'fascist' means, or do you just like writing it for effect? RAHE is a moderated newsgroup, and the fact is, the moderators allow plenty of 'subjectivist' and 'objectivist' posting. And debate.

    As for the claims of Stewart Pinkerton -- who has an engineering background, as well as a high-end setup -- I suspect you've misremembered them -- he himself has posted about experiencing audible differences between ss amps. I suspect he'd agree with me that 'transparent' ss amps will all sound the same, though, and that ss amps which *do* sound different will measure 'audibly' differently too. As for the claims about cords, unless the Nordost are specifically designed to alter the signal, there's no physical (as in 'physics- and engineering-based') reason why a similar length and thickness of Home Depot 'cord' shouldn't sound the same. Thus, there's no reason a priori to expect them to , and every reason to verify a report of such a difference by a controlled comparison. If anything the publication of controlled tests by manufactueres, *demonstrating* that their cables have a distinct sound, could be a boon to hobbysists looking to choose a cable. But they've not published any. Why?
     
  24. krabapple

    krabapple New Member

    Location:
    Washington DC
    Re: Dear Grant


    If you are ripping Red Book CD tracks from the Plextor drive to .wav files on the hard drive, then burning them back as Red Book to a CDR,
    the soundcard should not ever have been involved.

    Can you detail more about the control conditions -- switching method, blinding method, number of trials, number of successes, etc?


    Something is seriously wrong , then. I've never noticed an artifact like that on EZCD burn I've made from ripped-to-hd .wav tracks.


     
  25. Sam

    Sam Senior Member

    Location:
    Rochester, NY
    Krabapple, what if science is not yet able to measure the difference between power cords? Do you therefore state that since no mearsurement can be taken, THE DIFFERENCE DOES NOT EXIST!? Early man had no way to measure the actual temperature of fire. So, I guess it was O.K for him to stick his hand into the flame stating "there's no way I am going to be burned because I can't measure the temp". Therefore, the fire contains no heat! HA!
     
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