|
|
Post by nwobhm on Jul 8, 2016 13:59:55 GMT -5
I agree that folks perception of what they hear leads to a lot of debate. From a scientific standpoint though there really is no debating scientific facts. Anyone who has studied linear systems and basic DSP theory knows for a fact digital is scientifically more accurate. I know this is very confusing as many industry experts say stuff that isn't true... It is the way that digital albums are being mastered that is the problem, not some limitation of the technology. What you should really A/B is a capture of your vinyl track to flac (or some other lossless format) using a good quality phono preamp and 96k/24bit sound card input. Then level match the two sources and compare playback. I bet they sound the same. What is most likely is the vinyl is mastered better than the CD version. Check this site out: dr.loudness-war.info/For almost all albums, the vinyl version has better dynamic range. I have no doubt you can hear the difference, but it has to do with the fault of the marketers of the record labels trying to make their CD as loud as they can by compressing the difference between the highs and lows. Our ears love hearing dynamic range because that is how real life is. I have no doubt anyone on hear can hear the difference in mastering. It is very obvious even for me and I'm not a musician. A few recent examples. For each, the dynamic range of the vinyl version is mastered much better than the CD version. Taylor Swift 1989: dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/83022 versus dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/86980Daft Punk Random Access Memories: dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/99181 and dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/88615Go find your favorite albums in the database. I am certain this is the difference you are hearing and it really is there which is why I try to "find" the best possible version in terms of dynamic range, then play that back on my PC. This is a debate that will never end, will never die, will always be a part of our hobby. For me, in my system, in my room, I can repeatedly a/b the same recording played back via CD and Vinyl and even the non-audiophile friends I have will almost always choose the vinyl as more pleasing. yeah, no - I don't disagree with anything you've written. The annihilation of dynamic range over the last 15 years is a serious issue and a major reason I try to steer digital loving friends and family away from modern "remastering" reissues. The sad fact, though, is most don't care. I do, so, I forgo all that nonsense and "get back to the garden" and seek out the earliest original vinyl pressings I can reasonably afford unless there's a compelling reason to do otherwise. It's important to note that I typically don't listen to a lot of music created in this era and the relatively few CD's (when compared to my vinyl collection that I have curated over more than three decades) I do own are decades old as well. A vast majority of my music purchasing over the last 15 years has either been used vinyl or vinyl re-issues from labels and pressing plants that I trust, and there are painful few of those. Just for the sake of clarification - a good example of an a/b comparison track I use would be pre-remastered The Police "Synchronicity" vs a standard original vinyl pressing. Again, I'm not speaking in absolutes here.... my system, my room, my preferred music genre. Nonetheless, my gut reaction is that the reason we may have for finding the vinyl preferable may be rooted in exactly the butchered modern mastering you reference. At the end of the day though, does the "why" matter? It doesn't. I have limited commercially available media to choose from, I'm going to choose the one that more consistently sounds better to me with the full realization that I am in the minority of the vast music listening public who are completely content to continue streaming bricked highly compressed nonsense. I realize I'm just a curmudgeonly cynic dinosaur, but, the root of the problem is that society, as a whole, has pretty much chosen convenience over quality when it comes to just about everything but especially with regards to music. They are perplexingly happy to have it delivered with little consideration as to the integrity of how the music was made from an artistic standpoint, much less the quality of the mastering and it's delivery system. |
|
KeithL
Administrator 
Posts: 10,274
|
Post by KeithL on Jul 8, 2016 14:11:00 GMT -5
I really do need to correct you on one misunderstanding that a lot of people seem to have... You are absolutely correct that digital filters almost always have ringing. It's what you might refer to as "calculated ringing" - it's the mathematical result of the calculations that make the filter a filter. Because it's built into the math, it's entirely predictable, repeatable, and expected. However, you are incorrect in assuming that vinyl playback lacks this flaw. With a vinyl playback system, rather than being a direct result of math, you instead have all sorts of resonances due to actual mechanical and electrical resonances of the individual parts. For example, assuming your turntable has some sort of isolation from what it's sitting on, you have a low frequency resonance based on the compliance of the suspension and the weight of the suspended mechanism. And you have another resonance based on the compliance of the stylus and cantilever and the mass of the tonearm, and another resonance based on the length of the cantilever itself (it acts like a little tiny metal tuning fork), and another electromechanical resonance involving the inductance of the pickup coil in the cartridge, the capacitance of the tonearm wiring, and the circuitry in the preamp... and maybe a few more resonances based on the dimensions of each of the little pieces of metal inside the cartridge. And, if a cartridge were to try and follow a perfect square wave perfectly, well, for starters, you'd have to accelerate the tiny mass of the stylus and its suspension in zero time, which would require the record surface to push on it with infinite force, which just isn't possible. And, of course, once the cartridge reached the top of the wave shape, it would fly right off the surface of the record due to all the stored momentum of that horrific velocity. That would be pretty bad too. Obviously, in real life, we don't have infinite force or velocity, but we do have to be careful to avoid trying to reach either (if you record a signal that's too loud onto the vinyl, the cartridge will actually "hop" off the surface - it's called "mistracking due to excessive recorded velocity"). All of these little flaws and resonances occur at different frequencies, they're different for every individual component, and for every different combination of components, and what you hear in the end is the sum of all of them - which is why every combination of turntable, cartridge, and preamp sounds a tiny bit different. (After all, if they were all anywhere near perfect, then they'd all sound the same - right?) Then, of course, we have all the other types of mechanical limitations. The tonearm isn't perfectly stiff, and neither is the cantilever, and neither is the platter. And, before you worry about a tiny bit of rumble from your turntable, you have to ask how flat the record you're playing really is - in thousandths or millionths of an inch. And how smooth is the vinyl.... and, for that matter, is the arm or the record going to vibrate because of the sound from your speaker reaching it through the air? That's another sort of resonance we call "feedback". And we shouldn't ignore electrical limitations either. Guess what, the inductance of the cartridge produces an analog version of "time smear", and everything from the flaws in frequency response to the size of the actual molecules in the vinyl of the record surface introduces mechanical "losses of resolution" and "inaccuracy". The main reason digital filters ring is because they are basically a simulation of a physical circuit.... however, where a digital filter has the calculated flaws of a "perfect simulation of a system which has limits", with cartridges and tonearms, it's all more arbitrary and random... which simply results in a wider variety of more variable, and not entirely known, flaws - rather than a few that can be calculated to several decimal places. While it may intuitively seem to be the opposite, the reality is that figuring out exactly what a digital filter is going to put out is relatively simple - while figuring out how all of the little mechanical and electrical parts in a vinyl playback system are going to interact with each other in precise detail is somewhere between incredibly complex and downright impossible. If you actually analyze all this in detail, you'll find that vinyl has a lot more mechanisms by which "information gets lost or altered", and those mechanisms are a lot less predictable and repeatable, than with a digital system. In simplest terms, if you analyze the waveform from a digital recording and an analog recording, the waveform produced by the digital recording is much closer to the original - by virtually every known method of measurement. (You can feel free to argue that the flaws inherent in vinyl, even though much greater in magnitude, are less "aesthetically annoying" than the flaws in digital reproduction... but there most certainly are a lot more of them.) Playback of all-analog mastered vinyl records does not have any pre-ringing, though. The fact CD playback has a far more consistent quality level than vinyl playback is only a theoretical advantage when, in practice, it does not make the pre-ringing any less audible than it factually is. In pure terms of measurements and signal accuracy, the magnitude of pre-ringing *looks* like it is subtle. However, human hearing is incredibly sensitive to some types of errors in a signal, and very tolerant of others. So it is not just about which type of error is *aesthetically* more annoying. Accuracy of a signal essentially is meaningless if the human audible significance of the signal's multi-type error instance is ignored. What you say - about pre-ringing - is true.... however its relevance is limited by context. In many types of digital filters, some pre-ringing is an unavoidable consequence of good time response on transients (you can avoid pre-ringing, but only at the cost of compromising transient response). However, that limitation on transient performance is already there in virtually all mechanical systems - including vinyl. In other words, I can design a digital filter that has as little pre-ringing as vinyl. However, the cost of doing so will probably be transient response that is as poor as that of vinyl. As someone else already mentioned, a better solution is to use a higher sample rate, which will allow me to design a filter which has excellent transient response, while the pre-ringing that goes with that is pushed far above the range of audible frequencies where nobody will hear it. (There are DACs with filters that have virtually no pre-ringing.... or at least very little.... but there is usually a cost in other performance areas.) In other words, with vinyl, you are basically "stuck" with one particular set of capabilities, flaws, and compromises..... while, with digital, you can trade them off by choice of design, and you can reduce all of them to arbitrarily lower levels by using a higher sample rate or bit depth(by "trading off" quality against large file size). Personally, I think that the question of whether the best CD quality is better than the best vinyl quality may still be undecided.... But, while vinyl is already at the performance limit of the materials and technologies involved, I can achieve a major improvement in performance by going from CD (16/44) to 24/96... and another jump by going from 24/96 to 24/192... and another jump by going to 24/384k... and it's plain that, at one of those jumps, I've gone so far beyond the capabilities of vinyl that there's nothing left to argue about. (A fifteen inch vinyl platter, spinning at 500 RPM, and made from some new synthetic polymer, might exceed the performance of a 24/96 digital file.... but you can't buy one of those... and, even if you could, very few people would be willing to pay $100 for the five minutes of music it would hold. ) |
|
KeithL
Administrator
Posts: 10,274
|
Post by KeithL on Jul 8, 2016 14:55:13 GMT -5
The only point on which I disagree with you is about "whether the why matters"...... My personal listening tastes run mostly to albums that were mastered between about 1970 and the present day - with a lot of them being very recent... and many of the current albums I've bought are available in vinyl. Now, if there was something INHERENTLY better about vinyl, and a lot of those new vinyl releases were actually significantly better than their digital counterparts, I would consider putting up with the negative aspects of vinyl to get the better sound quality. (I'd probably invest in a good turntable, and a good A/D converter, and convert that great modern vinyl into a more convenient format - but I'd still buy them - because they were better.) However, if it turns out instead that most modern albums are simply poorly mastered, and the only way a modern vinyl album might occasionally sound better than its digital counterpart is by dumb luck, then the value equation is considerably different. It doesn't help me that fifty year old vinyl sounds better than modern CDs - because none of the albums I want are that old - and so there's no fifty year old vinyl version to be had. Now, if you happen to be a classical listener, where you have dozens or even hundreds of performances and recordings to choose from, dating back from the days of wax cylinders to the present, then figuring out which one is likely to sound better is a valid question. However, if, like me, when your favorite group comes out with a new album, and that one album is offered in exactly two versions - CD or vinyl - then the only question is: Do I have any reason to think the vinyl version of that particular album will sound better than the CD? And, unless the group specifically mastered the vinyl version differently - which is not impossible - then the answer to that question seems likely to be No. I would also be very cautious about taking the values listed on the popular "loudness wars" database at face value. There was a recent article (I don't have the link handy, but it was posted on the forum somewhere) where the author discussed the fact that the numbers in the database, calculated with the recommended program, aren't always accurate. The author of the article cited the specific example of an album on which he had been the mastering engineer, and which had then been produced on both vinyl and CD - FROM THE SAME MASTER TAPE which he himself had sent to both mastering facilities. However, according to the analysis program, the vinyl version showed "a better dynamic range" by several dB, and even looked "bouncier" on a waveform picture. (He also listened to clips from both, and stated his opinion that they didn't sound very different, and that the digital version actually sounded slightly better, and more like his original master. He provided links to samples of both.) His conclusion was that the apparent improvement in dynamic range was actually due to anomalies on the vinyl recording. (In other words, the level of the recording did in fact "bounce around more" - but it was due to inconsistencies in the recording rather than to a better dynamic range in the music itself. I agree that folks perception of what they hear leads to a lot of debate. From a scientific standpoint though there really is no debating scientific facts. Anyone who has studied linear systems and basic DSP theory knows for a fact digital is scientifically more accurate. I know this is very confusing as many industry experts say stuff that isn't true... It is the way that digital albums are being mastered that is the problem, not some limitation of the technology. What you should really A/B is a capture of your vinyl track to flac (or some other lossless format) using a good quality phono preamp and 96k/24bit sound card input. Then level match the two sources and compare playback. I bet they sound the same. What is most likely is the vinyl is mastered better than the CD version. Check this site out: dr.loudness-war.info/For almost all albums, the vinyl version has better dynamic range. I have no doubt you can hear the difference, but it has to do with the fault of the marketers of the record labels trying to make their CD as loud as they can by compressing the difference between the highs and lows. Our ears love hearing dynamic range because that is how real life is. I have no doubt anyone on hear can hear the difference in mastering. It is very obvious even for me and I'm not a musician. A few recent examples. For each, the dynamic range of the vinyl version is mastered much better than the CD version. Taylor Swift 1989: dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/83022 versus dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/86980Daft Punk Random Access Memories: dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/99181 and dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/88615Go find your favorite albums in the database. I am certain this is the difference you are hearing and it really is there which is why I try to "find" the best possible version in terms of dynamic range, then play that back on my PC. yeah, no - I don't disagree with anything you've written. The annihilation of dynamic range over the last 15 years is a serious issue and a major reason I try to steer digital loving friends and family away from modern "remastering" reissues. The sad fact, though, is most don't care. I do, so, I forgo all that nonsense and "get back to the garden" and seek out the earliest original vinyl pressings I can reasonably afford unless there's a compelling reason to do otherwise. It's important to note that I typically don't listen to a lot of music created in this era and the relatively few CD's (when compared to my vinyl collection that I have curated over more than three decades) I do own are decades old as well. A vast majority of my music purchasing over the last 15 years has either been used vinyl or vinyl re-issues from labels and pressing plants that I trust, and there are painful few of those. Just for the sake of clarification - a good example of an a/b comparison track I use would be pre-remastered The Police "Synchronicity" vs a standard original vinyl pressing. Again, I'm not speaking in absolutes here.... my system, my room, my preferred music genre. Nonetheless, my gut reaction is that the reason we may have for finding the vinyl preferable may be rooted in exactly the butchered modern mastering you reference. At the end of the day though, does the "why" matter? It doesn't. I have limited commercially available media to choose from, I'm going to choose the one that more consistently sounds better to me with the full realization that I am in the minority of the vast music listening public who are completely content to continue streaming bricked highly compressed nonsense. I realize I'm just a curmudgeonly cynic dinosaur, but, the root of the problem is that society, as a whole, has pretty much chosen convenience over quality when it comes to just about everything but especially with regards to music. They are perplexingly happy to have it delivered with little consideration as to the integrity of how the music was made from an artistic standpoint, much less the quality of the mastering and it's delivery system. |
|
|
|
Post by yves on Jul 9, 2016 7:36:10 GMT -5
Playback of all-analog mastered vinyl records does not have any pre-ringing, though. The fact CD playback has a far more consistent quality level than vinyl playback is only a theoretical advantage when, in practice, it does not make the pre-ringing any less audible than it factually is. In pure terms of measurements and signal accuracy, the magnitude of pre-ringing *looks* like it is subtle. However, human hearing is incredibly sensitive to some types of errors in a signal, and very tolerant of others. So it is not just about which type of error is *aesthetically* more annoying. Accuracy of a signal essentially is meaningless if the human audible significance of the signal's multi-type error instance is ignored. What you say - about pre-ringing - is true.... however its relevance is limited by context. In many types of digital filters, some pre-ringing is an unavoidable consequence of good time response on transients (you can avoid pre-ringing, but only at the cost of compromising transient response). However, that limitation on transient performance is already there in virtually all mechanical systems - including vinyl. In other words, I can design a digital filter that has as little pre-ringing as vinyl. However, the cost of doing so will probably be transient response that is as poor as that of vinyl. As someone else already mentioned, a better solution is to use a higher sample rate, which will allow me to design a filter which has excellent transient response, while the pre-ringing that goes with that is pushed far above the range of audible frequencies where nobody will hear it. (There are DACs with filters that have virtually no pre-ringing.... or at least very little.... but there is usually a cost in other performance areas.) In other words, with vinyl, you are basically "stuck" with one particular set of capabilities, flaws, and compromises..... while, with digital, you can trade them off by choice of design, and you can reduce all of them to arbitrarily lower levels by using a higher sample rate or bit depth(by "trading off" quality against large file size). Personally, I think that the question of whether the best CD quality is better than the best vinyl quality may still be undecided.... But, while vinyl is already at the performance limit of the materials and technologies involved, I can achieve a major improvement in performance by going from CD (16/44) to 24/96... and another jump by going from 24/96 to 24/192... and another jump by going to 24/384k... and it's plain that, at one of those jumps, I've gone so far beyond the capabilities of vinyl that there's nothing left to argue about. (A fifteen inch vinyl platter, spinning at 500 RPM, and made from some new synthetic polymer, might exceed the performance of a 24/96 digital file.... but you can't buy one of those... and, even if you could, very few people would be willing to pay $100 for the five minutes of music it would hold. ) While I agree its relevance is somewhat limited by the factors that you mention, it can be argued that this relevance often gets magnified by several other important factors nevertheless. To name a few, there's the quality of the mastering used on the vinyl vs. on the other formats on which the same music album is commercially available to me, there's also the shortcomings of early digital, and there's the fact the vast majority of old music recordings I like are suffering from at least one of the aforementioned problems to the point where the vinyl, in pure terms of sound quality (i.e., closeness to what the artist originally intended) still wins so, *because* it still wins there, in these particular cases its relevancy is often nearly as high as Mt. Everest, IMO anyway. |
|
|
|
Post by yves on Jul 9, 2016 9:33:31 GMT -5
The only point on which I disagree with you is about "whether the why matters"...... My personal listening tastes run mostly to albums that were mastered between about 1970 and the present day - with a lot of them being very recent... and many of the current albums I've bought are available in vinyl. Now, if there was something INHERENTLY better about vinyl, and a lot of those new vinyl releases were actually significantly better than their digital counterparts, I would consider putting up with the negative aspects of vinyl to get the better sound quality. (I'd probably invest in a good turntable, and a good A/D converter, and convert that great modern vinyl into a more convenient format - but I'd still buy them - because they were better.) However, if it turns out instead that most modern albums are simply poorly mastered, and the only way a modern vinyl album might occasionally sound better than its digital counterpart is by dumb luck, then the value equation is considerably different. It doesn't help me that fifty year old vinyl sounds better than modern CDs - because none of the albums I want are that old - and so there's no fifty year old vinyl version to be had. Now, if you happen to be a classical listener, where you have dozens or even hundreds of performances and recordings to choose from, dating back from the days of wax cylinders to the present, then figuring out which one is likely to sound better is a valid question. However, if, like me, when your favorite group comes out with a new album, and that one album is offered in exactly two versions - CD or vinyl - then the only question is: Do I have any reason to think the vinyl version of that particular album will sound better than the CD? And, unless the group specifically mastered the vinyl version differently - which is not impossible - then the answer to that question seems likely to be No. I would also be very cautious about taking the values listed on the popular "loudness wars" database at face value. There was a recent article (I don't have the link handy, but it was posted on the forum somewhere) where the author discussed the fact that the numbers in the database, calculated with the recommended program, aren't always accurate. The author of the article cited the specific example of an album on which he had been the mastering engineer, and which had then been produced on both vinyl and CD - FROM THE SAME MASTER TAPE which he himself had sent to both mastering facilities. However, according to the analysis program, the vinyl version showed "a better dynamic range" by several dB, and even looked "bouncier" on a waveform picture. (He also listened to clips from both, and stated his opinion that they didn't sound very different, and that the digital version actually sounded slightly better, and more like his original master. He provided links to samples of both.) His conclusion was that the apparent improvement in dynamic range was actually due to anomalies on the vinyl recording. (In other words, the level of the recording did in fact "bounce around more" - but it was due to inconsistencies in the recording rather than to a better dynamic range in the music itself. yeah, no - I don't disagree with anything you've written. The annihilation of dynamic range over the last 15 years is a serious issue and a major reason I try to steer digital loving friends and family away from modern "remastering" reissues. The sad fact, though, is most don't care. I do, so, I forgo all that nonsense and "get back to the garden" and seek out the earliest original vinyl pressings I can reasonably afford unless there's a compelling reason to do otherwise. It's important to note that I typically don't listen to a lot of music created in this era and the relatively few CD's (when compared to my vinyl collection that I have curated over more than three decades) I do own are decades old as well. A vast majority of my music purchasing over the last 15 years has either been used vinyl or vinyl re-issues from labels and pressing plants that I trust, and there are painful few of those. Just for the sake of clarification - a good example of an a/b comparison track I use would be pre-remastered The Police "Synchronicity" vs a standard original vinyl pressing. Again, I'm not speaking in absolutes here.... my system, my room, my preferred music genre. Nonetheless, my gut reaction is that the reason we may have for finding the vinyl preferable may be rooted in exactly the butchered modern mastering you reference. At the end of the day though, does the "why" matter? It doesn't. I have limited commercially available media to choose from, I'm going to choose the one that more consistently sounds better to me with the full realization that I am in the minority of the vast music listening public who are completely content to continue streaming bricked highly compressed nonsense. I realize I'm just a curmudgeonly cynic dinosaur, but, the root of the problem is that society, as a whole, has pretty much chosen convenience over quality when it comes to just about everything but especially with regards to music. They are perplexingly happy to have it delivered with little consideration as to the integrity of how the music was made from an artistic standpoint, much less the quality of the mastering and it's delivery system. The DR values listed on the Dynamic Range Database website are calculated by using TT Dynamic Range Meter software (see "Links" in the top right corner on the website). It doesn't measure Dynamic Range, but nevertheless it gives a useful indication of whether (overly) heavy Dynamic Range compression was used in the mastering. The distortion of vinyl does however skew the DR values enough for them to no longer be as meaningful, i.e., typically the DR values will be higher by 2 or 3 when compared to the digital files from which the digitally mastered vinyl has been created. Despite this, the vinyl often *sounds* more dynamic than the CD counterpart (subjectively). The vinyl also often sounds warmer, less bright and brittle, less fatiguing. I have done a lot of comparisons by listening. Not so long ago, I compared the 24/48 official digital download version of Radiohead ~ A Moon Shaped Pool (2016) to the limited edition 180 gram double-LP version (XL Recordings XLLP790X), the audible improvement that the vinyl has to offer is like throwing a light switch, but then the digital download only scores a really disappointing DR5. P.S. - Here's a video that discusses why TT Dynamic Range meter doesn't work for vinyl, but I strongly disagree with him that using the same mastering for the vinyl as that used for the CD will "work", because IMO they need to be mastered completely differently to get better than mediocre sound. |
|
|
|
Post by etc6849 on Jul 10, 2016 12:29:49 GMT -5
I'm sure the digital track's DR5 indeed has something to do with it... No doubt you can hear a difference. If that's the quality of work the studio wants to put out on digital, they won't get any of my money. Hypothetically (of course), it is too easy to find vinyl rips online for circumstances like this, not that I would do that though. the audible improvement that the vinyl has to offer is like throwing a light switch, but then the digital download only scores a really disappointing DR5. |
|
|
|
Post by yves on Jul 10, 2016 14:58:53 GMT -5
I'm sure the digital track's DR5 indeed has something to do with it... No doubt you can hear a difference. If that's the quality of work the studio wants to put out on digital, they won't get any of my money. Hypothetically (of course), it is too easy to find vinyl rips online for circumstances like this, not that I would do that though. the audible improvement that the vinyl has to offer is like throwing a light switch, but then the digital download only scores a really disappointing DR5. The thing with vinyl rips is you can always decide to create your own, and you do not even have to have a turntable setup for it because you can also decide to buy just the records you like. Take your records to a personal friend who does have a good turntable setup, hook up your analog-to-digital converter unit to it if he/she doesn't already have one that can sound decent and that you are allowed to use instead, rip your records onto a portable digital storage medium by using his/her computer or bring your own laptop for that, travel back home again, and then finally use your software on your computer to manually declick your rips. |
|
|
|
Post by Gary Cook on Jul 10, 2016 19:04:57 GMT -5
An eclectic discussion, I have 3 copies of Dire Straights Brothers in Arms, one on vinyl, one on CD (late 80's mastering) and one on hybrid SACD. My daughter's boyfriend, a bit of a Dire Straights fan, complains about the SACD version being overly dynamic. He reckons the engineer/producer/mixer got carried away with the ability of the hi res version to handle increased dynamics and blew it up to unrealistic levels. Keeping in mind that he's used to the CD and downloaded versions, even MP3's played on an iPod (yes, I know). The SACD version just sounded "wrong" to him.
Imagine his surprise when I played the vinyl version and it had far more dynamic range than the "CD versions" that he was accustomed to listening to. Not quite SACD levels, but it is a perfect example of his conditioning by experience.
BTW my daughter, having listened to the vinyl version many many times, knew what was going on and had quite a few laughs while we were doing the listening tests.
Cheers
Gary
|
|
|
|
Post by yves on Jul 11, 2016 0:53:38 GMT -5
An eclectic discussion, I have 3 copies of Dire Straights Brothers in Arms, one on vinyl, one on CD (late 80's mastering) and one on hybrid SACD. My daughter's boyfriend, a bit of a Dire Straights fan, complains about the SACD version being overly dynamic. He reckons the engineer/producer/mixer got carried away with the ability of the hi res version to handle increased dynamics and blew it up to unrealistic levels. Keeping in mind that he's used to the CD and downloaded versions, even MP3's played on an iPod (yes, I know). The SACD version just sounded "wrong" to him. Imagine his surprise when I played the vinyl version and it had far more dynamic range than the "CD versions" that he was accustomed to listening to. Not quite SACD levels, but it is a perfect example of his conditioning by experience. BTW my daughter, having listened to the vinyl version many many times, knew what was going on and had quite a few laughs while we were doing the listening tests. Cheers Gary Dynamic Range Compression is almost always being abused in mastering for CD. The sheer loudness that can result from it is addicting, and, once the people are addicted, they can't hear the pre-ringing anymore because there's not enough dynamics left for pre-ringing to still be audible underneath all the loudness, and the people lose sight of how real music sounds like because they're blinded by measurements and doing other things whilst listening to music like doing the dishes or driving a car so they're merely *hearing* music as opposed to actually *listening* to music. |
|
|
|
Post by garbulky on Jul 11, 2016 9:13:44 GMT -5
An eclectic discussion, I have 3 copies of Dire Straights Brothers in Arms, one on vinyl, one on CD (late 80's mastering) and one on hybrid SACD. My daughter's boyfriend, a bit of a Dire Straights fan, complains about the SACD version being overly dynamic. He reckons the engineer/producer/mixer got carried away with the ability of the hi res version to handle increased dynamics and blew it up to unrealistic levels. Keeping in mind that he's used to the CD and downloaded versions, even MP3's played on an iPod (yes, I know). The SACD version just sounded "wrong" to him. Imagine his surprise when I played the vinyl version and it had far more dynamic range than the "CD versions" that he was accustomed to listening to. Not quite SACD levels, but it is a perfect example of his conditioning by experience. BTW my daughter, having listened to the vinyl version many many times, knew what was going on and had quite a few laughs while we were doing the listening tests. Cheers Gary Too much dynamic range for Dire Straights - yes I reconize what he is talking about. Money for nothing was a good example. Still sounds great though. But unrealistic scaling. I'd prefer too much than too little any day! |
|
|
|
Post by novisnick on Jul 11, 2016 9:35:16 GMT -5
An eclectic discussion, I have 3 copies of Dire Straights Brothers in Arms, one on vinyl, one on CD (late 80's mastering) and one on hybrid SACD. My daughter's boyfriend, a bit of a Dire Straights fan, complains about the SACD version being overly dynamic. He reckons the engineer/producer/mixer got carried away with the ability of the hi res version to handle increased dynamics and blew it up to unrealistic levels. Keeping in mind that he's used to the CD and downloaded versions, even MP3's played on an iPod (yes, I know). The SACD version just sounded "wrong" to him. Imagine his surprise when I played the vinyl version and it had far more dynamic range than the "CD versions" that he was accustomed to listening to. Not quite SACD levels, but it is a perfect example of his conditioning by experience. BTW my daughter, having listened to the vinyl version many many times, knew what was going on and had quite a few laughs while we were doing the listening tests. Cheers Gary Too much dynamic range for Dire Straights - yes I reconize what he is talking about. Money for nothing was a good example. Still sounds great though. But unrealistic scaling. I'd prefer too much than too little any day! " too much than too little", true! A bald man has no reason to be at the barber shop, but to gossip!!   |
|
KeithL
Administrator
Posts: 10,274
|
Post by KeithL on Jul 11, 2016 10:39:30 GMT -5
Here's a REALLY interesting article claiming that dynamic range really HASN'T been getting worse over time.....It goes into a whole lot of technical discussion about what dynamic range really is (the definition isn't as cut-and-dried as you might think). It also argues that, while the character and type of dynamics in music has been changing over the last twenty years, and a lot more limiting is indeed used, the overall dynamic range actually hasn't changed. (Think of it as talking about the quantity, quality, and "flavor" of dynamics.) Here's the "tickler" for the article: We all know music is getting louder. But is it less dynamic? Our ground-breaking research proves beyond any doubt that the answer is no — and that popular beliefs about the 'loudness war' need a radical rethink. I HIGHLY recommend it for anyone who's bothered to read this far.... www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/dynamic-range-loudness-war
|
|
|
|
Post by yves on Jul 11, 2016 12:19:23 GMT -5
Here's a REALLY interesting article claiming that dynamic range really HASN'T been getting worse over time.....It goes into a whole lot of technical discussion about what dynamic range really is (the definition isn't as cut-and-dried as you might think). It also argues that, while the character and type of dynamics in music has been changing over the last twenty years, and a lot more limiting is indeed used, the overall dynamic range actually hasn't changed. (Think of it as talking about the quantity, quality, and "flavor" of dynamics.) Here's the "tickler" for the article: We all know music is getting louder. But is it less dynamic? Our ground-breaking research proves beyond any doubt that the answer is no — and that popular beliefs about the 'loudness war' need a radical rethink. I HIGHLY recommend it for anyone who's bothered to read this far.... www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/dynamic-range-loudness-war If it uses Dynamic Range Compression, I have to turn the volume down. If I have to turn the volume down, I can hear less dynamics. |
|
|
|
Post by yves on Jul 11, 2016 12:39:34 GMT -5
An eclectic discussion, I have 3 copies of Dire Straights Brothers in Arms, one on vinyl, one on CD (late 80's mastering) and one on hybrid SACD. My daughter's boyfriend, a bit of a Dire Straights fan, complains about the SACD version being overly dynamic. He reckons the engineer/producer/mixer got carried away with the ability of the hi res version to handle increased dynamics and blew it up to unrealistic levels. Keeping in mind that he's used to the CD and downloaded versions, even MP3's played on an iPod (yes, I know). The SACD version just sounded "wrong" to him. Imagine his surprise when I played the vinyl version and it had far more dynamic range than the "CD versions" that he was accustomed to listening to. Not quite SACD levels, but it is a perfect example of his conditioning by experience. BTW my daughter, having listened to the vinyl version many many times, knew what was going on and had quite a few laughs while we were doing the listening tests. Cheers Gary Too much dynamic range for Dire Straights - yes I reconize what he is talking about. Money for nothing was a good example. Still sounds great though. But unrealistic scaling. I'd prefer too much than too little any day! It's spelled Dire Str aits BTW, but then I also have misspelled Grateful Dead a while ago until I finally noticed it myself. |
|
|
|
Post by yves on Jul 11, 2016 13:54:13 GMT -5
, while the pre-ringing that goes with that is pushed far above the range of audible frequencies where nobody will hear it. A common mistake is the assumption that the frequency of the ringing gets pushed above the upper frequency limit of human hearing. Here's an example illustration of theoretical "ringing" consisting of only a frequency that's too high to be heard by humans:  As you can see in the example illustration below, in practice the ringing consists of both this inaudible very high frequency component and other, much lower frequency components:  So the hypothesis is that the ringing is audible in 44.1 kHz sampling because these much lower frequency components aren't fading fast enough. Which is why we call it time smear. |
|
KeithL
Administrator
Posts: 10,274
|
Post by KeithL on Jul 11, 2016 14:13:28 GMT -5
That sort of depends on how you look at it - which I think was the whole point of the article. The point is that the reason they use more compression is that they want it to sound louder.
And peak limiting allows them to raise the average level, while not raising the peak levels, or reducing the dynamic range (by the way most people define it). Therefore, yes, if you want the average loudness to be the same, then you will have to turn it down. However, that isn't necessarily everyone's goal... The whole gist of the article was that compression allows them to raise the average loudness while NOT in fact reducing the dynamic range. I think the best analogy was their comparison to photography..... Newspaper photos have a dynamic range limited by the medium.... the ink is only so black, the paper is only so white, and those spell out the limits of the dynamic range. However, by using more or larger white areas, and fewer or smaller black areas, a given newspaper could "make all their pictures brighter" WITHOUT altering the dynamic range. (The whites would still be equally bright, and the blacks would be equally dark, there would just be more whites.) It's sort of obvious that, if you want your pictures to look brighter, but you are limited on how bright "white" is by the color of your paper, you increase the white area. However, as long as a reasonable amount of area remains black, and the black remains the same color black as before, then you haven't technically reduced the dynamic range of the content. The interesting larger point they made is that dynamic range isn't very well defined.... and many people seem to have different ideas about what the term actually means. (So it's a fair claim that what most people are calling "less dynamic range" in modern music is really "higher average level" or "higher average level relative to peak level".) I think their main point was that, while we may consider "reduction in dynamic range" to be a symptom of "poor production values", "higher average level" and "a louder, denser overall sound" can more reasonably be thought of as a shift in style; and, while you or I may prefer the previously favored style, the difference isn't one of simply "lower production quality". Here's a REALLY interesting article claiming that dynamic range really HASN'T been getting worse over time.....It goes into a whole lot of technical discussion about what dynamic range really is (the definition isn't as cut-and-dried as you might think). It also argues that, while the character and type of dynamics in music has been changing over the last twenty years, and a lot more limiting is indeed used, the overall dynamic range actually hasn't changed. (Think of it as talking about the quantity, quality, and "flavor" of dynamics.) Here's the "tickler" for the article: We all know music is getting louder. But is it less dynamic? Our ground-breaking research proves beyond any doubt that the answer is no — and that popular beliefs about the 'loudness war' need a radical rethink. I HIGHLY recommend it for anyone who's bothered to read this far.... www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/dynamic-range-loudness-war If it uses Dynamic Range Compression, I have to turn the volume down. If I have to turn the volume down, I can hear less dynamics. |
|
|
|
Post by yves on Jul 11, 2016 14:51:25 GMT -5
That sort of depends on how you look at it - which I think was the whole point of the article. The point is that the reason they use more compression is that they want it to sound louder.
And peak limiting allows them to raise the average level, while not raising the peak levels, or reducing the dynamic range (by the way most people define it). Therefore, yes, if you want the average loudness to be the same, then you will have to turn it down. However, that isn't necessarily everyone's goal... The whole gist of the article was that compression allows them to raise the average loudness while NOT in fact reducing the dynamic range. I think the best analogy was their comparison to photography..... Newspaper photos have a dynamic range limited by the medium.... the ink is only so black, the paper is only so white, and those spell out the limits of the dynamic range. However, by using more or larger white areas, and fewer or smaller black areas, a given newspaper could "make all their pictures brighter" WITHOUT altering the dynamic range. (The whites would still be equally bright, and the blacks would be equally dark, there would just be more whites.) It's sort of obvious that, if you want your pictures to look brighter, but you are limited on how bright "white" is by the color of your paper, you increase the white area. However, as long as a reasonable amount of area remains black, and the black remains the same color black as before, then you haven't technically reduced the dynamic range of the content. The interesting larger point they made is that dynamic range isn't very well defined.... and many people seem to have different ideas about what the term actually means. (So it's a fair claim that what most people are calling "less dynamic range" in modern music is really "higher average level" or "higher average level relative to peak level".) I think their main point was that, while we may consider "reduction in dynamic range" to be a symptom of "poor production values", "higher average level" and "a louder, denser overall sound" can more reasonably be thought of as a shift in style; and, while you or I may prefer the previously favored style, the difference isn't one of simply "lower production quality". If it uses Dynamic Range Compression, I have to turn the volume down. If I have to turn the volume down, I can hear less dynamics. Of course they want it to sound louder. But the correct way to make it louder is to use the volume control knob instead, as doing that will avoid the big amounts of distortion typical of heavy dynamic range compression and limiting. The *correct* use of dynamic range compression and peak limiting is to get above the noise floor, and using it mildly so that it can be transparent instead of it introducing a lot of bad sounding artifacts. That is, apart from the possibility of it being used as a stylistic choice made by the artist. |
|
|
|
Post by frenchyfranky on Jul 26, 2016 9:56:22 GMT -5
I prefer vinyls probably because I prefer imperfections and 2nd harmonic and bla bla bla whatever making it sounds worse, and probably for the most important point, because it's sounds alive , organic, you can feel the living mechanical analog works for producing the music to your ears and for sure also every tick and pop that reminds you are listening vinyls.
Compared this to the perfection of digital playback with the absence of imperfections and an absolutely dead noise floor with an interstellar clinical digital sounds, making this comparison purely a non sense, BUT...! As I'm human and not an Android, I imperfectly tend to prefer imperfections that is reminds me I'm still alive.
For sure most of the times I'm listening my digital CD's ripped collection for a question of convenience, on this point we all agree.
BUT...! When I need to communion with the human spiritual musical life (it's my own religion) I put an old good jazz vinyl of the 50's or the 60's with a big recording tape noise on my good old fashion 35 years turntable and I enjoying the musical life with all his imperfections and noise bliss (not hiss) and all that reminds me of some peoples playing and enjoying music beautifully long time ago before digital technology and even before I was born.
|
|
|
|
Post by vneal on Jul 26, 2016 10:25:33 GMT -5
I prefer Hi Rez downloads. I still listen to CDs and LPs and a little streaming. Turntables are a little bit like fine watches. Who needs one ? (I do) Your cell phone has the time
The future..........I actually think streaming will be the future
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2016 10:42:24 GMT -5
I was reading a article about streaming music he went on with the pros and cons of, streaming versus actually owning the CD.He goes with streaming you own nothing. His articles was about the death of the music CD. To each his owe I say.
|
|
