vinyl not that bad

[surveyor]

I broke out a record today. It was the Live Cream album.
As good as I feel Cream was in their recent reunion, I think they were a tad better in their youth. Of course they did not inhale!
Vinyl has some deficiencies for sure, but it points out some defiencies in the existing digital format as well.

 

[skizzerflake]

Yikes. Vinyl is great. With a good system, vinyl will easily outperform CDs of the same music and stand up well to SACD or DVD Audio. Yeah you have clicks and some background noise, but a good vinyl recording on a good system has a directness and presence that CDs really can't match. I have hundreds of CDs and records and where they overlap, I find myself preferring the vinyl (except for convenience).

 

[Geno]

Yikes. Vinyl is great. With a good system, vinyl will easily outperform CDs of the same music and stand up well to SACD or DVD Audio. Yeah you have clicks and some background noise, but a good vinyl recording on a good system has a directness and presence that CDs really can't match. I have hundreds of CDs and records and where they overlap, I find myself preferring the vinyl (except for convenience).

I agree completely, with one note: Many of the early CDs were not mastered properly for the digital medium, and sounded terrible, with a harsh, grating quality. My vinyl editions of the same recordings sounded great, except, of course, for the clicks & pops. IMHO, the newer, well-mastered CDs, and especially Multichannel DVD-A and SACD just blow the doors off most vinyl. I sure don't miss the work involved in dealing with LPs.

 

[skizzerflake]

I agree completely, with one note: Many of the early CDs were not mastered properly for the digital medium, and sounded terrible, with a harsh, grating quality. My vinyl editions of the same recordings sounded great, except, of course, for the clicks & pops. IMHO, the newer, well-mastered CDs, and especially Multichannel DVD-A and SACD just blow the doors off most vinyl. I sure don't miss the work involved in dealing with LPs.

CDs have definitely improved over the years. IMO, whatever reservations I have about CDs has been dealt with by SACD and DVA audio. The basic problem with CDs was that the technology of 1980 and the need to get 75 minutes on a disk required a sampling rate and word length that just wasn't enough. The newer formats are the CDs that should have been. I just hope they don't perish due to disinterest.

 

[tbewick]

Yikes. Vinyl is great. With a good system, vinyl will easily outperform CDs of the same music and stand up well to SACD or DVD Audio. Yeah you have clicks and some background noise, but a good vinyl recording on a good system has a directness and presence that CDs really can't match. I have hundreds of CDs and records and where they overlap, I find myself preferring the vinyl (except for convenience).

CDs have definitely improved over the years. IMO, whatever reservations I have about CDs has been dealt with by SACD and DVA audio. The basic problem with CDs was that the technology of 1980 and the need to get 75 minutes on a disk required a sampling rate and word length that just wasn't enough. The newer formats are the CDs that should have been. I just hope they don't perish due to disinterest.

I'm sorry to have to say this, but 16 bit audio has a signal-to-noise ratio of 93 dB, and correctly dithered has no distortion whatsoever. It is true that practical digital converters never actually have zero distortion, but usually the distortion residuals should be so low as to be inaudible in normal listening. The only benefit of DVD-Audio/SACD should be a slightly lower level of background noise, but this improvement is very likely to be swamped out by ambient noise in the recording itself. Similarly, improvements in frequency response may allow for reduced aliasing, but again, a decent 16 bit/44.1 kHz converter should have a filter with aliasing distortion at very low levels.

Vinyl, on the other hand, has lots of crackle, rumble, distortion, noise, modulation noise, timebase errors, interchannel phase errors, crosstalk, skipping, and audibly reduced frequency response. I've actually listened to a large number of vinyl records and, quite frankly, the average sound quality is significantly poorer than that of a decently mastered CD. Only a vinyl record in pristine condition, played on a high-quality turntable, will have sound quality approaching that of a conventional CD.

 

[gene]

Vinyl can sound superior to CD for ONE very good reason - recording quality.

In the days of Vinyl, recording engineers were careful not to exceed levels into clipping to avoid damage to the stylus. With today's LOUDER is better mentality of Radio, the industry is putting out LOUDER and LOUDER CD's that are pegged at 0dBFS and at best have about 6dB of dynamic range.

We have many articles on this topic in our Specs and Formats area.

 

[skizzerflake]

I'm sorry to have to say this, but 16 bit audio has a signal-to-noise ratio of 93 dB, and correctly dithered has no distortion whatsoever. It is true that practical digital converters never actually have zero distortion, but usually the distortion residuals should be so low as to be inaudible in normal listening. The only benefit of DVD-Audio/SACD should be a slightly lower level of background noise, but this improvement is very likely to be swamped out by ambient noise in the recording itself. Similarly, improvements in frequency response may allow for reduced aliasing, but again, a decent 16 bit/44.1 kHz converter should have a filter with aliasing distortion at very low levels.

Vinyl, on the other hand, has lots of crackle, rumble, distortion, noise, modulation noise, timebase errors, interchannel phase errors, crosstalk, skipping, and audibly reduced frequency response. I've actually listened to a large number of vinyl records and, quite frankly, the average sound quality is significantly poorer than that of a decently mastered CD. Only a vinyl record in pristine condition, played on a high-quality turntable, will have sound quality approaching that of a conventional CD.

I've been hearing the "perfect" claims about cds since the beginning and I have always been aware that vinyl has surface noise, off-center holes, warps and all of those other errors. Also, I am assuming that vinyl is clean, not worn and played on a decent (though not extravagantly expensive) player with a fresh stylus and interconnects with clean contacts. The problem I have is that I can't prove anything or cite lots of technical terms but I almost always find myself saying "yikes that sounds good" when I hear good vinyl. Cds are not bad, but again, when I hear sacds I have the same impression. Since at worst there's no harm in increasing the sampling rate (we have the technology now, unlike 1980), and you can get cheap players that play everything...why not; why keep defending cds. Maybe I'm technically wrong, but my impressions and the impressions of other people I demonstrate to are so consistent that I can't ignore them either. It could be that the explanations don't address something about the sound but I can't ignore my ears.

 

[tbewick]

Vinyl can sound superior to CD for ONE very good reason - recording quality.

In the days of Vinyl, recording engineers were careful not to exceed levels into clipping to avoid damage to the stylus. With today's LOUDER is better mentality of Radio, the industry is putting out LOUDER and LOUDER CD's that are pegged at 0dBFS and at best have about 6dB of dynamic range.

We have many articles on this topic in our Specs and Formats area.

Yes, and as I understand it the SACD format may benefit from the fact that there is a restriction to allow, or force, there to be some digital headroom in recordings. Possibly this is reflects the need for headroom due to the greater potential instability of single-bit converters.

I've been hearing the "perfect" claims about cds since the beginning and I have always been aware that vinyl has surface noise, off-center holes, warps and all of those other errors. Also, I am assuming that vinyl is clean, not worn and played on a decent (though not extravagantly expensive) player with a fresh stylus and interconnects with clean contacts. The problem I have is that I can't prove anything or cite lots of technical terms but I almost always find myself saying "yikes that sounds good" when I hear good vinyl. Cds are not bad, but again, when I hear sacds I have the same impression. Since at worst there's no harm in increasing the sampling rate (we have the technology now, unlike 1980), and you can get cheap players that play everything...why not; why keep defending cds. Maybe I'm technically wrong, but my impressions and the impressions of other people I demonstrate to are so consistent that I can't ignore them either. It could be that the explanations don't address something about the sound but I can't ignore my ears.

It is not a claim of there being no distortion, but a mathematical proof that dither allows 16 bit recordings to have no distortion at all:

Vanderkooy, J., and Lipshitz, S.P., ‘Digital Dither: Signal Processing with Resolution Far Below the Least Significant Bit’, AES 7th International Conference – Audio in Digital Times, Toronto, 87–96 (1989)

I see that there are difficulties in examining the absolute performance of practical converters, both from a practical and theoretical standpoint. In saying this, however, there are objective tests with good resolution that can be run on converters, e.g. the null test:

C30 TOWARDS A DEFINITIVE ANALYSIS OF AUDIO SYSTEM ERRORS, Dunn, C., and Hawksford, M.O.J., 91st Convention of the Audio Engineering Society, New York, October 1991, preprint 3137 (P-1)
http://www.essex.ac.uk/ese/research/audio_lab/malcolmspubdocs/C30 Analysis of audio system errors.pdf

When I say good resolution, I mean that based on detecting distortion within what can be reasonably assumed to be the limits of human hearing.

When compared to conventional CD, I do recognise that SACD and DVD-Audio are objectively superior formats, but it is important to differentiate between variations in recording quality from differences in quality associated with the format. What I mean is that if you were to take a high-quality recording and convert it into the DVD-Audio, SACD, and audio CD formats, in a properly controlled test, it would be extremely difficult to discern any audible difference between the formats.

If you were to record a vinyl record with a high-quality digital converter, and convert it into SACD, DVD-Audio, and audio CD formats, I again suspect that there would be very little audible difference between any of the different formats when compared to the original vinyl recording. Stanley Lipshitz once did this sort of test with a digital adapter:

http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/abx_testing2.htm

The extended frequency response available with SACD and DVD-Audio has been shown not result in any audible difference from recordings limited to a response of 21 kHz:

Nishiguchi, T. et al. (2004). "Perceptual Discrimination between Musical Sounds with and without Very High Frequency Components", NHK Laboratories Note No. 486, NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation).
http://www.nhk.or.jp/strl/publica/labnote/lab486.html

 

[Rock&Roll Ninja]

Many of the early CDs were not mastered properly for the digital medium, and sounded terrible, with a harsh, grating quality.

Hmmm..... current CDs have the exact same problem

CD: 1982 - 20xx
Good CD Mastering: 1992 - 1997ish

 

[audiofox]

Vinyl can sound superior to CD for ONE very good reason - recording quality.

In the days of Vinyl, recording engineers were careful not to exceed levels into clipping to avoid damage to the stylus. With today's LOUDER is better mentality of Radio, the industry is putting out LOUDER and LOUDER CD's that are pegged at 0dBFS and at best have about 6dB of dynamic range.

We have many articles on this topic in our Specs and Formats area.

That probably means one should seek out new (vs reissue) recordings that are released on CD and vinyl, since the mastering will by necessity need to accommodate the vinyl release. There are several new artists that are doing this today, including Belle and Sebastian, The Faint, the Decembrists, and several others.

 

[audiofox]

What I mean is that if you were to take a high-quality recording and convert it into the DVD-Audio, SACD, and audio CD formats, in a properly controlled test, it would be extremely difficult to discern any audible difference between the formats.

Do you have any specific examples of this claim and/or data, or is this an assumption based on the baseline technical specs of the formats? The only example I have is Leo Kottke's "6 and 12 String Guitar", which is available in vinyl, CD and SACD formats (I have all three). Unfortunately, the CD version appears to have been mastered from a 5th generation tape, as it is one of the worst CDs I own in terms of sound quality. OTOH, the vinyl and SACD are very similar in sound quality, although that is a subjective assessment on the part of my ears.

 

[allsop4now]

Do you have any specific examples of this claim and/or data, or is this an assumption based on the baseline technical specs of the formats? The only example I have is Leo Kottke's "6 and 12 String Guitar", which is available in vinyl, CD and SACD formats (I have all three). Unfortunately, the CD version appears to have been mastered from a 5th generation tape, as it is one of the worst CDs I own in terms of sound quality. OTOH, the vinyl and SACD are very similar in sound quality, although that is a subjective assessment on the part of my ears.

On http://stockfish-records.de/stckff/sf_stockfisch_e.html there is both hybrid SACD and vinyl for some recordings. One recording is even available in XRCD.

 

[tbewick]

Do you have any specific examples of this claim and/or data, or is this an assumption based on the baseline technical specs of the formats? The only example I have is Leo Kottke's "6 and 12 String Guitar", which is available in vinyl, CD and SACD formats (I have all three). Unfortunately, the CD version appears to have been mastered from a 5th generation tape, as it is one of the worst CDs I own in terms of sound quality. OTOH, the vinyl and SACD are very similar in sound quality, although that is a subjective assessment on the part of my ears.

Thanks to mtrycrafts, he provided this reference to a double-blind subjective comparison of the DVD-Audio and SACD:

Blech, D. & Yang, M. (2004). "Perceptual Discrimination of Digital Coding Formats", AES Convention Paper 6086, May 2004.
http://www.hfm-detmold.de/eti/projekte/diplomarbeiten/dsdvspcm/aes_paper_6086.pdf

The white paper I referred to earlier by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation was a subjective test that examined whether high-frequency music content above 21 kHz is audible or not:

Nishiguchi, T. et al. (2004). "Perceptual Discrimination between Musical Sounds with and without Very High Frequency Components", NHK Laboratories Note No. 486, NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation).
http://www.nhk.or.jp/strl/publica/labnote/lab486.html

The Boston Audio Society article by Stanley Lipshitz I mentioned earlier was a subjective double-blind test which examined whether a signal from a vinyl record player and that same signal run through a digital audio adapter could be distinguished from one another:

http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/abx_testing2.htm

Using a psychoacoustic model of human hearing, J.R. Stuart has compared DVD-Audio, the LP record, and the audio CD formats:

http://www.meridian-audio.com/ara/coding2.pdf

One other thing I'd like to mention is that in cutting and producing a vinyl record, there is far greater likelihood that the final product will sound different from the original master tape than would be the case with a CD release. CD's produced from masters of more than 16 bits and sampling rates higher than 44.1 kHz can be converted down to 16 bits/44.1 kHz with an extremely high degree of accuracy and precision. The performance of the digital editors used to do this should very closely approximate the maximum theoretical level of performance that Lipshitz and Vanderkooy showed in their dither paper.

 

[audiofox]

Interesting reads-thanks for the links.