/PAlogo_v2.gif "Progarchives.com Homepage")
|
|
Post Reply 
|
Page <1 3435363738> |
| Author | ||||||
rogerthat 
Prog Reviewer 
Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
 Posted: September 19 2012 at 20:12 |
|||||
This sounds like it was addressed to me so I will respond to this. First off, I never specified that I use laptop speakers and I don't. I have a desktop and I connect a 5.1 set to its speaker slot. I never use laptop speakers because they are simply too feeble to listen to music on, let alone dynamic or not. If I use the laptop to listen to music, it is only with headphones, whereby you can hear every detail in the recording. As for dynamics blah blah blah, I have remasters of several 60s and 70s albums like Abbey Road, DSOTM, SEBTP, Red, I have CDs that were not remastered like Virgin Killer, Novella and I have contemporary albums of different styles and genres from pop to world music. I have also attended several concerts of rock, world and classical music so I know what is dynamics and when it is and is not captured on a recording. Shakti's Saturday Night Live at Bombay recording sounds possibly better than actually hearing it in concert - and I have seen them live - because there is too much distraction in an actual concert to notice all the details - even with modern sound systems where the mikes don't play mischief with the musicians. So I have good reason to believe the medium is capable of faithfully reproducing what the musicians play, IF that is what they want. Even in the analog age, some artists used delay and overdub in horrible ways to achieve a certain effect so that kind of decision does not reflect the capability of the medium itself. So please don't try to tell me I have not heard dynamics on a digital recording because that is patently untrue. If you don't like digital, that's fine, but it doesn't mean those who use digital format albums cannot derive enjoyment out of those; it only means you with your possibly nostalgic attachment to vinyl cannot. Edited by rogerthat - September 19 2012 at 20:20 |
||||||
 |
||||||
|
Dean
Special Collaborator 
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: September 19 2012 at 17:56 |
|||||
Do you know what gives me a headache?
Doing this
 does 
You did several times and not in any way that could be mistaken as something else. I would say it doesn't matter but it does. This kind of misrepresentation of what digital media is capable of fuels the arguments that really should not exist. At no point here have I ever denigrated analogue/vinyl or rubished it in any way - I just state the technical facts as they exist, not the subjective, emotional
Another misconception. Hiss comes from magnetic tape. It's called tape hiss. The hiss you are hearing on vinyl comes from the studio master tapes and that same hiss will be transfered to the CD media too. Because CD has more dynamic range than vinyl you can now hear more of this background hiss from the tape - the reason you cannot hear it so much on the vinyl is because vinyl doesn't have that dynamic range. The noise floor of tape is much lower than vinyl and the noise floor of digital is considerably lower than either of them. This still does not make vinyl better than digital just because it is incapable of reproducing this master tape hiss - you are hearing a different type of background noise that is relatively louder than tape hiss, but has a different frequency response and subconsciously you have become innured to it - it's always there so you no longer hear it. What you get from the vinyl media is scratch-noise and surface noise - it can sound a little like hiss because it is random (hiss is random noise) but it has a different audio spectra to tape hiss because it is related directly to the angular velocity of the groove so it is of a much lower frequency and therefore less intrusive. The quality of the vinyl material and the quality of the pressing contributes significantly to this noise. It is not only the physical scratches running over the grooves, it is the minor imperfections in the vinyl itself being picked up by the stylus.
José, I'm 55 years old. I've listened to music since I was born (literally). I was there at the beginning of Prog and I have been involved in audio electronics since I was 15. I have been fanatical about analogue technology for all of that time - while I currently analyse ADCs and DACs for a living (among other things), I also design and build analogue amps and speakers as a hobby and have even built my own turntable and cassette deck. I look at everything scientifically but I listen with my heart, not by brain - if I like something I like something and nothing affects that.
Today's hi-fi terms are no different to those of 1972 - the quality of those early Genesis albums is shoddy by 1972 standards - there are better quality albums recorded in the same studio at the same time - whatever happened to them back then was not special (well it was, but not in a positive way) - a review of Nursery Cryme from 1971 states: "... It's the godawful production, a murky, distant stew that at best bubbles quietly when what is desperately needed are the explosions...", that's not a retrospective view seen through murky spectacles or one measured by today's standards - that was a contemporary view from the year it was released. You cannot blame today's technology for that ("Todays technology maybe has made some of that go away, to me that is sad").
That's not what I said (or meant) - Adequate digital is as close to perfect as anyone needs to be. The returns on going from adequate to absolute perfect are not worth the expense. Seriously. I'm not exaggerating or over-stating the case here - there is so little you can do to improve on a $100 CD player. The technical information I have given over the past 24 hours shows that all the extra money spent on making rock-solid transport mechanics is a wasted effort - its disingenuous marketing to claim that some fancy design of CD transport reduces jitter, because even though it is probably a very true statement, it is irrelevant because transport induced jitter was rendered irrelevant over 25 years ago. A $500 CD player has the same transport mechanism as a $50 CD player and is made by the same manufacturer under licence from Sony or Philips in Korea or China, there is a pretty high probability that they will also use exactly the same DAC chips and controller chips. It is this simple observation that opened my eyes to the dishonesty in hi-fi marketing, not just in these digital systems but across the whole spectrum, from cables through to analogue systems, amplifiers, pre-amps, stands, sound absorption matting and all the other unnecessary paraphernalia they try and sell us. The only two areas that have some integrity left for me are turntables and speakers because they are improved with better mechanical engineering because they are electro-mechanical devices - a better engineered turntable will be better than a cheap plastic one, better engineered speakers will be better than cheap plastic ones.
Edited by Dean - September 20 2012 at 02:21 |
||||||
|
What?
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Catcher10
Forum Senior Member 
VIP Member Joined: December 23 2009 Location: Emerald City Status: Offline Points: 17847 |
Posted: September 19 2012 at 15:12 |
|||||
|
^ Agree or disagree.....all this technical digital talk gives me a headache, just like I get when I listen to too much digital format music, CD or computer files on my home system or thru a portable media player.
Simply from a technical perspective of course you are right, I am sure you are right.....I don't doubt that. You are 100% right, the digital medium, unless introduced on purpose, has no distortion/noise that just appears....I agree, and I get your points with that, no arguement. And I don't think I have said "a CD has distortion".....If I did I was wrong, and I am sure that was not what I meant....If I said that.
People complain about the hiss from vinyl......Is that the vinyl or is it the recording? I just listened to my CD copy of VDGG H to He....it has hisss all thru the CD, my vinyl copy does not exhibt any hisss. So I know that was introduced somewhere in the transfer process, I suppose. Being that its "old prog"......I do not want to listen to my CD copy, as I do not want to hear that noise.
Moshkito.....it is 100% about the music, I have no idea what the recording sounds like, I don't own any master studio tapes, so I can only go by the consumer copies we all have to buy.....And in a lot of cases to "hear" the music of old prog I prefer vinyl. I don't think I need to becareful because it is 100% a preference as I do have a choice, we all do.
In a lot of cases this discussion of analog-digital is the same as someone having a discussion of who is the better prog band......there is no answer, its a choice......And we all have our reasons why we do what we do.
The thought of having to look at my CDs and digital files as Dean explains them, gives me all the more reasons to look at digital as a very sterile medium, it has no life other than black and white....There is no grey area.......Music is not black and white, to me......That's not what I hear. Those early Genesis albums, as veiled by todays hi-fi terms are, back then were special and a lot of people heard the music then. Todays technology maybe has made some of that go away, to me that is sad. The new music lovers of prog may not experience what I think people like Moshkito experienced back in the day, it is people like that who need to keep the music alive......and remind the young ones, its not all 0s and 1s......Its way more colorful than that, there are actual musical notes that make the sounds, not a computer plastic disc with pits or a file on a harddrive you cannot see.
Moshkito, you say you don't hear a difference in either......That is fine, I will not argue that, its your preference, but when I show my kids music I show them a vinyl record, I show them the grooves where that music lives, I get a magnifying glass and we look at the grooves and how they sway sideways and change shape, go from narrow to wide and I explain to them that IMO that is where the magic is........I choose to look at music that way.
Dean I don't think adequate is good enough, this site slams artists who are just adequate. But my choice on whatever media I listen to, I try not to settle for adequate....digital or analog, I prefer better.
Thanks again for all your information on the realities of digital.....I certainly look at it differently now.
|
||||||
  
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: September 19 2012 at 13:56 |
|||||
Unfortunately I cannot agree with you - analogue data in the digital domain cannot be changed by accidental means. I know that's a mahousive pill to swallow but it's true. If the analogue signal has been converted into a sequence of numbers then that sequence can be copied and transmitted as much as you like and nothing will corrupt that sequence of numbers in such away that we would regard it as distortion - sure you can lose the odd bit or two of data, and maybe even a whole packet (this we call drop-outs) but you cannot change the data sequence by accident. You can do it on purpose and that requires some seriously heavy maths and some seriously heavy processing and it's called Digital Signal Processing because you have to process the data-stream in sequence by applying some very complex mathematical algorythms. This isn't something you can do with a resistor and couple of capacitors and it certainly isn't something that an inanimate piece of interconnecting wire can do.
Remember I am only talking about the digital data here - once you feed it into the DAC and convert back it into an analogue signal then it is subject to the same external distortions that any analogue signal can suffer - if the output of your CD player sounds carp then it's the fault of the analogue subsection between the DAC output and the unit's output jack. All those expensive modifications that people pay to have done to their iPlods to make them audiophilist do absolutely nothing to the digital subsection, they don't even change the Wolfson/Burr Brown DAC, all they do is change the capacitors on the analogue outputs. That's it... $250 for two $4 capacitors... Bargain.
No. Simply No. If this is what you beleive then you haven't understood anything of my previous post.
That's not a criticism of you because I know this stuff is counter-intuitive and I know it's difficult to grasp.
First off let's dispense with the laser guidance system - this is the biggest cause of CD transport failure and it's a show stopper - if the laser does not track then the effect is immediately noticable - the disc cannot be read or it sticks or jumps and that is always manifest by the player throwing up some enigmatic error code and freezing - it never results in distortion or bad sound because it cannot, it is as simple as that, it is similar to having the stylus skip on a vinyl disc - it's not distortion, it's skipping tththththththrrrp! - but unlike your turntable when this happens the datastream fails to synchronise to the read circuitry and the logic controller in the player calls a halt to everything.
The motor spindle is just like the spindle in a Wurlitzer juke box, it's floating self-centring hub but in this case controlled not by a simple DC motor but by a complex crystal controlled stepper motor driven from some complex control logic - this is necessary not for data integrity but so the spin speed can be accurately controlled as the laser tracks across the disc - as I said before it is variable speed (variable anglular velocity) to ensure that the data comes off at a constant linear speed. Now this digital data is not organised as a continous stream of 16-bit pairs (left and right channels), it is organised in blocks of six 16-bit audio pairs (a total of 24 8-bit bytes), two sets of 4 redundancy bytes of 8-bits each and one 8-bit sub-code so a total of 33 bytes make up each block and those blocks do not contain the audio information in the order they occur in real time, a convoluted algorythm re-orders 6 stereo samples of 24-bytes each and spreads them over 109 blocks. This ensures that the data from byte to byte on the disc contains changing information that the read logic can use to create the Master Clock that reads the data off the disc - again this sounds counter-intuitive because the master clock is created from the data as it is read off the disc, it is not created by the motor spin or the clock that causes the stepper motor to spin - this means that no matter how wobbly the disc spins (within reason) the clock and the data are always in perfect synchronisation - data bit one occurs on clock edge one, data bit two occurs on clock edge two ad infinitum - it can still be wobbly but because the clock and the data are wobbling together the data is not corrupted.
Sure - if we were to feed this directly into a DAC and used that master clock to control the DAC then the resulting analogue signal would be as wobbly as the master clock, but it is never used like that - it always goes into a buffer memory which statisized the data (ie "makes static") and it is read out using a seperate (and far more stable) clock derived from the DAC that does not have any of the wobble associated with the spin of the disc.
Imagine that this buffer memory is like the cold-water header tank in your loft (or wherever you guys keep your cold-water header tanks), your shower head is your output system and the water flowing out of the shower is at a lower flow-rate than the water flowing into the tank from the rising water main. So if you now turn on your shower the tank will start to empty until the ball-valve drops to allow the tank to re-fill from the rising main - since the inflow is faster than the outflow then the tank will fill quickly and the ball-valve will shut off yet the flow of water out of the shower head will remain constant even though the flow of water into the tank is fluctuating wildly. What you have there is an inflow of data with lots of jitter but the outflow of data is jitter free. That's sort of how the buffer in a CD player works and that's sort of why wobbly spindles and fluctuating motor speeds have no effect on what you hear.
It does not work like that. You have to compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges. Back in the days of purely analogue people were happy listening to cassettes, they were happy listening to the limited bandwith of FM radio and they were happy listening to the even more limited AM radio in all its monaural beauty. Hell, here in the UK we even had a telephone service called Dial-A-Disc that played music down the 3.3KHz telephone system and people were more than happy to pay to listen to that. Yet listening to a CD on a laptop PC is infinitely better than all those systems that people "in our day" were more than happy with. The point is that will all those "apples" systems people are hearing all the music, and we, with our "oranges" systems, are hearing all the same music, just in slightly better quality. If the music is good then it is good music regardless of the quality of the medium. When we start hearing the system rather than the music then it is us that's doing it wrong, not the people listening to music on their laptops.
Nope. Not really - I'm not a fan of price-ticket technology - adequate is good enough and in the digital world adequate is close to perfection anyway. I think we've become bogged down in detail, not the detail that the OP is talking of, but the detail of what is possible rather than the detail of what is actually there. As many posts (including yours and mine) have said - whatever faults we think we don't like it's not the fault of the medium used to carry the music, but of the way it is used or misused.
My laptop has a fan - it whirrs - I don't use laptop speakers (I have a nice pair of Kenwoods but seldom use them) - I plug my headphones into the headphone socket and I can hear the music on a perfect soundstage and it's distortion free and I cannot hear the fan. My desktop has lots of fans - they whirr like crazy - I plug the output from my soundcard into my Audio Innovations amp and blast it out through some humonguous floor standing speakers at such a volume that I cannot hear the fans, or my wife screaming from the next room for me to turn it down so she can hear the telly or my neighbours pounding on the wall. I use that desktop to record and mix music - I use headphones for that because I want to listen to every nuance of every instrument and I want to construct the soundstage exactly how I want it. I have my CD player, NAD amp and Mission speakers in the same room as my laptop and I listen to music while typing away on this thing replying to posts on the PA. I don't notice the fan at all, some times I don't notice the CD has finished either.
Edited by Dean - September 19 2012 at 14:16 |
||||||
|
What?
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
moshkito
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 04 2007 Location: Grok City Status: Offline Points: 17524 |
Posted: September 19 2012 at 12:19 |
|||||
Careful ... this is a preference, in many ways. 1. If you had never heard it before on vinyl, you might not know what the difference was. 2. Who's to say, that it was not the music that takes you to another place? Might have been the radio, the tv, the vinyl ... different ways (which is my case on the post above. I don't hear any difference between "now" and "then" ... because I hear the music!) I think it is important that we grab these subtleties and understand them ... because otherwise, the medium of "recording" or "remembering" music, becomes the very medium that kills it ... the veritable/inevitable "Childhood's End" ... and then we would have been better off with the "remembering" ... not the "recording"! It has to be about the music ... not the "recording". Or, even the live thing, is a dead end and looses its importance.
Edited by moshkito - September 19 2012 at 12:25 |
||||||
|
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Catcher10
Forum Senior Member
VIP Member Joined: December 23 2009 Location: Emerald City Status: Offline Points: 17847 |
Posted: September 19 2012 at 10:57 |
|||||
|
Thanks Dean.......certainly as I have said before I cannot argue technical specifications, I also said before that my intelligent mind tells me I should always stick to digital because the numbers tell me it should always sound better, with no sibilance/distortion/jitter/W&F/ un-needed noise...call it what you want, in most cases this can be true.
I completely understand your detailed explanation above, again it makes total sense to me......but I fear that these type of explanations cause the normal listener of digital to give them the impression that regardless of equipment they are hearing pure music with no hint of what I will call "distortion".......I just don't believe that to be true and I don't think you would agree with that.
How does the CD spin? What makes it spin? How does the laser housing move from the inner disc to the outer? What does that laser housing ride on? The digital medium is close to perfection, I agree any imperfections are so minute you may never hear them, as well as the the range of music capable on a CD does not matter, you will not hear it...But the spindle motor, the pulley system used to move the laser, the rails the housing rides on.....are all mechanical and can contribute to noise/distortion/sibilance whatever u wanna call it. Just like a vinyl playback system, these parts of a CDP do create noise.....My point is how the music comes off that perfect plastic disc with the perfect 0s and 1s...does not always sound perfect.
Forget about mixing and mastering......if a CD sounds bad its bad music. You cannot tell me that people who have abandoned the stand alone CDP for their laptop disc drive thru some laptop speakers are hearing all the music, to my mind that does not make much sense.....Especially when you go thru so much detail above on explaining the behind the scenes goings on of digital medium.
I am probably wrong...but to hear music the way you have described to me would only happen on a system that most of us could not afford or choose not to afford.....What the digital world describes is too perfect, again why I cannot argue what you wrote nor what the CD can do....its pretty close to perfection........100% agree.
I have more invested in the sound process of my digital sources. I have a standalone DAC, I have a higher end CDP, I use optical cable to connect my portable media player to bypass its internal DAC, which is krap, and run thru the external DAC. I run coax cable from my CDP to the external DAC, and honestly that is a lateral move, the NAD DAC is better...but the ext DAC is valve based so it gives me the analog sound I want....LOL! I do this because I want my CDs to sound the best they can for what I choose to afford......As far as my vinyl setup, well like you said it is always a tweek in progress and I am very close to where I want to be.
Listen, I have heard how bad CDs/Digital can sound.....In most cases the reason is due to the components being used, again forget about mixing/mastering. Since we don't know what the actual recorded music sounded like in the studio, we only have the consumer CD to go by.
If you are a listener of music on your laptop.....I see no way how you can decribe to me soundstage, dynamic range, distortion free music as compared to a well matched hi-fi component system......on the surface. So you are NOT hearing nor taking advantage of what the digital medium can offer, as Dean has described. And please.....I am not advocating you go out and spend US$5,000 or more for a system, that's not my point. That's a different topic/thread......
Back to the OP comment......If listening to Genesis or Yes or Pink Floyd on CD takes you to that special place, that's all that matters....keep listening.
But I agree with the words the OP used.......For me to "hear" some older prog, I prefer to hear that in analog form......I remember one of the first CDs I bought about 1985 was Dire Straits-Brothers In Arms, the SPARS code is DDD, all digital processing....Its about as flawless as music gets on CD. My copy of Madonna-Like A Virgin also DDD, again flawless.....nothing better. But...my DDD copy of Saga-Behaviour from 1985 although very good, does not come close to the other two.
I'll end this excellent thread with this quote.......have a great day and listen to however your ears like, that's the point.
"The new album "Banks Of Eden" was recorded with the band playing live in one room in Varispeed studio in January 2012, a recording much like in the old days of classic prog, before computers hit the market and this time with plenty of original 60's and 70's recording equipment, for a true warm analogue vintage sound. "We aimed for the classic big warm vinyl-sound of old records by Queen, Genesis, Zeppelin or Deep Purple," says Stolt.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: September 19 2012 at 08:26 |
|||||
 Sorry, José but no. Jitter is the most misunderstood parameter in digital systems by the layperson, part of this is misinformation by unscrupulous system manufactures, part from the continued disinformation perpetrated by audiophilists and part from the misconception that jitter is akin to wow and flutter.
Let's dispense with the last one first - wow and flutter is horrible, it affects every aspect of the playback of a vinyl or tape recording because it varies the speed of the playback which affects the pitch of every frequency in the recording and it affects the timing of every beat in the music. It is so bad that it is immediately obvious and can never be mistaken for anything else - it is rightfully an anathema to any lover of vinyl. The same mechanical defect on an optical disc can never affect the audio component of the recording in that way, it simply doesn't work like that.
Jitter exists - that is a natural consequence of recovering information from a mechanical system - what it does not do is affect the reconstituted analogue signal and there are very good technical reasons why that is. Let's look at the component parts of any system:
1. The optical disc: CDs are circular platters with the data stored on a concentric spiral in a fixed spacing of pits, this data is read from the inside of the disc to the outside edge at a constant linear rate. Since the number of pits on the inner part of the spiral is few than on the outer edge the angular speed of the disc has to slow down as the read-laser moves towards the outer edge, this means that the disc has a varying angular velocity to maintain a fixed linear data-rate. This linear speed is fixed to achieve a data-rate of 1.23Mbits/s on a CD player with a transfer speed of "x1" - you can contrast this with vinyl where the angular velocity is constant but the linear velocity slows down towards the centre of the disc - that varying linear velocity can affect what you hear off vinyl.
2. The CD transport/player: CD players can read at transfer speeds of greater than "1x". When we use transfer speeds of "8x" or "48x" we do not hear the music played 8 or 48 times faster. What this means is the speed that the digital data is read off the optical disc does not affect the analogue signal coming out of the L & R channels of the DAC. In simplistic terms the Master Clock that reads the data off the CD is not the same Master Clock that the DAC uses to convert then digital data into an analogue signal. Two clocks, two different sources of clock jitter but only one of them affects what you hear, and that's the one in the DAC not the one that reads the data off the disc.
3. Jitter: Disc read clock-jitter is caused by minute variations in the read speed of the digital data being read from the disc. This jitter is on the Master Clock which we've already asserted is 1.23MHz and the jitter is measured in picoseconds (10−12) - which is far far above any audio spectrum and simply does not manifest itself as "wow and flutter" in the traditional parlance. On the DAC master clock any jitter is solely caused by the stability of the crystal oscillator used to generate the clock signal - this is completely (and utterly) unaffected by read speeds and all those technical sounding but highly spurious cable transmission factors that audoiphilists love to prattle on about. What jitter can affect is the Signal To Noise Ratio, electronic engineers know all about this jitter and we even have a theoretical maximum formula for it:
SNR(dBFS) = –20log(2πfinσ)
And this formula still comes up with figures that are much much better than the SNR you get off vinyl or tape media even if such variations as read speed and cable effects did have an effect (which they don't).
4. Buffering: because data can be read off the CD at speeds between "1x" and "72x" yet what we hear is at "1x" what happens to the digital data between reading off the CD and playing back through the DAC is it is stored in a piece of memory that can be written at one speed using the Master Clock from the CD transport and read at a completely different speed using the Master Clock from the DAC. There is a technical terminology for this and it is called Staticizing:
This buffering of the data in the digital form completely and utterly eliminates any clock-jitter caused by the reading of the optical CD because the variations in data-rate are during writing are irrelevant: the data bits and the master clock would both be jittering at the same time by the same degree so when you write bit 1 into memory location 1 it fits perfectly and when you write bit 2 into memory location 2 it also fits perfectly regardless of whether jitter causes that write operation to occur a few pico-seconds later than it theoretically should because the clock that clocks the data into the memory is always in sync with the data regardless of the amount of jitter. Once this data has been staticized in the buffer memory we can now read it out at a different rate at a different time using a different master clock, a clock that is not generated by the CD transport and does not get transmitted down co-axial or optical fibre. So the jitter of the CD transport master clock is now totally eliminated - the only clock jitter we have to worry about is in the DAC itself and Mr Wolfson (or Mr Burr-Brown) has got that one licked because the distance the signal travels is so very short.
5. Cost: This solution to jitter is cheap, stupidly cheap, and it's been present in CD players for over a quarter of a century: Remember when anti-jog (or anti-skip) was a big selling point of portable CD players? That's buffering, that is the technique of reading the disc, storing the digital bits in a 3 second memory buffer and then converting the digital to analogue using a different conversion clock; Remember when CD transports first became available with 2x or 4x read and write speeds? That's the same buffering but using larger memories than the 2 or 3 second buffers used in anti-jog systems. And all this technology is in every CD player whether it is $10, $100, $1000 or $10,000 or on your PC.
This is true, and it's something that doesn't happen on digital. I have several vinyls that are ever so slightly warped and a few where the centre hole is just a smidgen off-centre - that does cause distortion and they sound awful. Nothing will fix or compensate for that.
Soundstage is the product of three parameters:
We've already established that digital has a greater usable dynamic range than analogue and since no one here is going to read any technical blurb I post here I will simply state that digital has far greater channel separation that vinyl. Those who want to check that by reading technical specifications can do so, (just remember that 3dB difference is twice as good, 20dB is 100 times better and 30dB is 1000 times better). So that just leaves bandwidth, so lets disect bandwidth and see what the differences are and see whether that realistically and practically affects soundstage:
Bandwidth of digital and analogue causes humongous arguments and its all rather pointless. The audio pectrum can be subdivided into four principle regions:
the first is the subsonics, anything that you feel in your chest and not in your ears is subsonic - digital doesn't have much of that - it is removed by filtering prior to being recorded onto the disc to give the maximum headroom to the audio part of the signal. Unfortunately analogue doesn't have much of that either for pretty much the same reason -super low frequencies cause wide variations in the grooves on a disc and thus reduce the playing time per side - the RIAA pre-emphasis filter removes all subsonics before the disc is cut, no amount of RIAA de-emphasis can recreate those lost subsonics.
the second is the region that contains the fundamental frequecies of the notes being played, and typically this ranges from 30Hz upto around 4.19KHz (C8 on a piano) - simply put: if you cannot hear those frequencies then you cannot hear music.
the third region is the top-end of human hearing, this is the range above C8 that contains the harmonics that colours each note and extends from 8KHz up to around 18Khz - this is the spectrum that all audio media can reproduce.
the final region is the supersonic, these are frequencies above 20KHz that no human can hear. Now while it is impossible to hear thiose frequencies it is possible to hear the effect of them on other frequencies - the interaction between two supersonics or a supersonic and a top-end frequency can be heard in the audio spectrum - this is like the beat between two notes that produces a lower frequency component. UNFORTUNATELY, regardless of how good your analogue audio system is and regardless of how flat your system response is all the way up to 33KHz and beyond those frequencies are completely removed by your RIAA de-emphasis (equalisation filter):
 That roll-off that starts at 2.122KHz does not stop at 20KHz , it keeps going and it keeps going down further attenuating signals above 20KHz by more than the -20dB shown on the graph - and remember what I said before -20dB is 100 times smaller than 0dB. Ah! you may say, but surely the RIAA de-emphasis simply reverses the RIAA pre-emphasis - and it does, except that vinyl mastering removes supersonics above 20KHz from the recording to prevent overheating of the cutter and subsequent warping of the blank being cut... this is one of the reasons why Quadraphonic discs required specialist lathes.
Therefore bandwidth issues between analogue and digital are not that different in reality, however what we see empirically when we do spectral analysis of both system is significantly flatter responses in digital systems - whether that is important or not is open to debate - what it does not affect too greatly is soundstaging because the tonal soundstage you hear is pretty close to what the record producer wanted you to hear.
Sooo.... all things considered the parameters that contribute to soundstaging are technically better with digital - the wider channel separation will result in clearer left-right positioning, the improved dynamic range will contribute to the front-to-back depth and the more or less equally bandwidth will result in similar "height" - whether you like that possibility of a more open soundstaging is another matter altogether but the actual position of each instrument in that soundstage is a direct product of the studio production, not your ability to recreate it in your city room. With a digital system you get closer to the soundstage that the producer and sound engineer wanted you to hear, analogue mushes that up a bit - if you prefer that then that's fine.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
tl;dr
I'm neither knocking analogue nor am I defending digital. I am merely presenting the absolute technical facts above the emotional mythology. I love vinyl and I love my valve (tube) amps, I also love digital and I love my discrete transistor amps and my solid state IC amps and I certainly love the two turntables I own, the Thorens because it's a Thorens (dagnabit!) and the QED because it's a marvel of simplistic British design and it's got a glass platter and that's one of the coolest things I've ever seen and I'm never going to get that emotional or nostalgic over CDs and CD transports. With vinyl I love the ritual associated with the whole shebang - the truing-up of the platter, the levelling of the deck, the balancing of the tone arm, the care and attention I impart on keeping it lubed and dust free and the loving attention I have to give the discs; I love removing them from their sleeves and de-ionising and de-dusting them before placing them reverently on the platter; I love the slight click as the stylus gets lowered onto the groove and the faint crackling rumble of the lead-in to the first note of the first track - everything about this puts me into exactly the right frame-of-mind to sit down and listen - it sets my mood and it settles my mood - and if that ritual makes me think the music sound sweeter then that's a bonus, but because I am an Engineer with a capital "E" I know that is all psychological but it does not matter. I love it just the same.
|
||||||
|
What?
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
rogerthat
Prog Reviewer
Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: September 18 2012 at 23:17 |
|||||
My point, exactly. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
rogerthat
Prog Reviewer
Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: September 18 2012 at 23:15 |
|||||
That was indeed the original question but the topic has gone well beyond the scope of it. I don't have any problem with what people prefer because it is their choice. I am just saying objective claims about the capabilities of one format vis a vis the other may be very difficult to justify. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
rogerthat
Prog Reviewer
Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: September 18 2012 at 23:13 |
|||||
I did mention over compression. My argument is that is a conscious choice by the producer, the engineer or the band, whomsoever are responsible for it. It does not mean any and every digital recording is bound to be over compressed and lose detail. And what I am saying is not just theoretical. There are digital recordings that are not over compressed, don't sound like one constant, loud wall of sound. Not every digital recording is as bad as Death Magnetic.
I don't use CD players anymore, just play them on the computer with good speakers. So I am not really aware of this problem and cannot comment on it. I used CD players earlier but abandoned them, not because I noticed such a problem (though it may have been present) but because the players generally wore out too quickly and I felt it was redundant if I could connect the PC to good speakers.
So the point is....? I never said analog lacks dynamics. I said it is not true that digital inherently lacks the capability to capture dynamics. Merely because the music recorded on some digital albums inherently lacks dynamism doesn't mean the format itself destroys dynamics. And a lot of heavy music of today IS very un-dynamic and excessively loud, but that has more to do with the priorities of the musicians and the producers than the capabilities of digital.
I disagree. Again, it has to do with the decisions made by the technicians involved. A friend of mine who makes prog rock had a thing against delay or reverb and preferred a dry sound for vocals. He seems to have finally been persuaded against this but my point is, the dry sound would then be his choice, not a lack of delay in digital systems. What did the musicians want the listeners to hear on the album, what was the equipment used, how capable were the engineers...without all this information, it is difficult to make generalized comments on digital recording. Also, do consider that almost every analog recording of a reasonably successful band from the 70s is quite professionally done but there is a lot more DIY involved in today's scene. I think recordings of mainstream albums are still quite powerful and professional. They might be consciously recorded too loud or compressed or they might simply have music that you don't enjoy, but that's beside the point. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
stonebeard
Forum Senior Member
Joined: May 27 2005 Location: NE Indiana Status: Offline Points: 28057 |
Posted: September 18 2012 at 23:07 |
|||||
|
I think a lot of people confuse poor mixing and mastering with a flaw in the medium. Over-compression and distortion can occur at all stages of recording up till pressing. It is a fact that CDs have the ability to produce more dynamic range than vinyl. Higher quality digital mediums have that even more so. So the devil is in the mix and master, and the point it that for most "normal" mixes won't even want to use that range because it would be tedious for most songs. The capability for high dynamic range is nice, and if you want a really, really clear mix with as little noise as possible, digital is obviously more for you. Plus, yippee for any medium being able to record frequencies over 22kHz. Good luck hearing it.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Catcher10
Forum Senior Member
VIP Member Joined: December 23 2009 Location: Emerald City Status: Offline Points: 17847 |
Posted: September 18 2012 at 22:59 |
|||||
|
To me it sounds like the ones that oppose analog took the question from the OP as a comparison question/comment between analog and digital.....Where I as a music lover, and I enjoy both mediums, took the question more as a comment that to understand old prog there is a thought that listening to the analog issues gives you the ability/background to understand these old prog rock albums. I find some substance in that thought...... But as Dean states how you eventually listen to the music on an ongoing basis is totally subjective......Do what you feel your ears like best and what gives you the best physical experience......and to me I like how my vinyl takes me to another place when I spin Yes - Tales/Topographic Oceans.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Catcher10
Forum Senior Member
VIP Member Joined: December 23 2009 Location: Emerald City Status: Offline Points: 17847 |
Posted: September 18 2012 at 22:51 |
|||||
Hmm...I don't agree with much here. You CAN lose detail in digital, if it is compressed too much and the mids and highs dominate the sound then you do not hear the low end details. For example the long sustain of a bass pedal or bass guitar, digital has a difficult time with low end sounds and an easy time elevating the mids and highs to the point of distortion as you say.
Also digital has the ability to have as much wow & flutter as a turntable....Almost all CDP are tray designed so there IS a moving part that will cause jitter and distortion (I think this word is being used wrong here, but it is what you are using). Also there is digital jitter from a not so good DAC, that does not convert the digital signal to analog very well....it exists and can be heard.
There are many digital albums I have heard I do not like, plenty of CDs I own I do not play.
Some of my mishandled vinyl has scratches, but that does not cause distortion.......For example inner groove distortion is due to misaligned equipment, not the vinyl.
Fagan's digital album may not lack in dynamics, but in the same respect a lot of my vinyl does not lack in dynamics either......And CD/Digital IMO cannot match the soundstage effect that analog does create, new or old. Edited by Catcher10 - September 18 2012 at 23:00 |
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
rogerthat
Prog Reviewer
Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: September 18 2012 at 22:47 |
|||||
You seem to have misunderstood the OP. It talks about analog vis-a-vis digital formats. Now I agree that simply copy pasting the same 'perfect' drum fill wherever it is required in a track instead of recording the drummer playing it each time sucks out the human element, which is vital to rock and metal recordings. I don't have strong opinions, one way or the other, on the instruments, which is in any case a matter of preference. But I believe the question was about ostensibly the same music recorded in analog vis-a-vis digital format? |
||||||
|
||||||
|
rogerthat
Prog Reviewer
Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: September 18 2012 at 22:17 |
|||||
|
You CAN lose more detail in analog because of the scratches and the hissing and all that but you don't in digital, every sound is well separated and clear. At the most, you may have to adjust the equalizers to push up some sounds you want to hear more clearly. When people say they don't like digital recording, in all likelihood they only mean they don't like what albums they have heard that were recorded digitally. Donald Fagen's Nightfly was recorded with some of the earliest and most rudimentary digital systems and it does not lack in dynamics. It is not digital by itself that kills dynamics but (a) the nature of the music itself and (b) excessive compression. In what way does 12:5 lack dynamics or detail....even a so called live-in-studio prog recording from the 70s wouldn't have so much detail. Grace for Drowning is another example often cited in these debates.
If you like the scratches and the distortion, fine, but those are not details. Details are the sounds you don't get to hear as well as you could if there was no distortion. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: September 18 2012 at 19:17 |
|||||
That detail is present in the analogue recording but it is there more in digital recordings. If people think they can hear more detail in analogue then that's fine but what they are hearing is the perception of more detail. If people prefer recordings from 1950, 1940, 1930 or 1920 then that's just fine too, but do not say it is because those recordings are better on any technical level because they are not, (nor can they ever be) or because they contain more detail because they can't.
In the extreme detail is like listening for the tick of a watch while standing next to a 747 jet at take-off, moreover, it's like listening to that watch and trying to tell whether it is an Omega Incabloc Oyster or a Timex - with digital you have the dynamic range where both the watch-tick and the jet engine noise can be present in the recording simultaneously and you have the signal-to-noise ratio such that the watch-tick is "louder" than the noise-floor. Now obviously no human can hear a watch-tick over the sound of a jet engine, but if you now remove the jet from the recording without changing any of the volume levels (on the microphone recording the watch back in the studio or on the playback system in your living room) you can now hear the tick. You don't have that with analogue - the dynamic range is limited by the noise-floor and because the jet-engine is so loud the noise-floor is now "louder" than the tick of the watch, once you remove the jet-engine from the analogue recording without changing the volume levels just as before you still cannot hear the watch-tick because the background noise drowns it out. This isn't some esoteric subjective assessment that can be overcome with fancy cables, sound absorbing/deadening foams or any other audiophilist techniques or with set-ups that have price tickets worth more than the value of my car, it's a physical objective limitation of the recording media.
As I said, that example is in the extreme, with good technical artists we are not listening for detail that is anything like as subtle as that. Certainly the majority of the "detail" we are listening too is well within the range of analogue media even if it is not as detailed as digital media can be (emphasis on the "can be") - if it wasn't there we would not have revered those musicians back in the day.
I had the immeasurable pleasure of seeing Steve Hackett play live last month and took the opportunity to watch the deftness his techniques at close-hand when he effortlessly played the lead in Firth of Fifth. Standing in a field in the Surrey countryside isn't the ideal listening environment and outdoor stage PA isn't the ideal playback equipment but I "heard" more of Hackett's technique that day than I ever got from listening to the various recordings (analogue and digital) because I could see the fingers that made the notes (and a lot more of the sounds made during that song came from his guitar than I thought from just listening to a recording). Attention to detail is of some importance to Prog, but whether analogue or digital is better for that is purely subjective and purely a matter of personal preference.
Edited by Dean - September 18 2012 at 19:21 |
||||||
|
What?
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
presdoug
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 24 2010 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 8618 |
Posted: September 18 2012 at 18:15 |
|||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
presdoug
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 24 2010 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 8618 |
Posted: September 18 2012 at 18:11 |
|||||
|
And in the world of progressive music, i must say it is really something to hear from members of PA that are older than myself, like moshkito, cstack3, TODDLER, and more, with their insights and perspectives on older scenes like the analog sound period, which i find invaluable. Guys, your words are precious to me.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Catcher10
Forum Senior Member
VIP Member Joined: December 23 2009 Location: Emerald City Status: Offline Points: 17847 |
Posted: September 18 2012 at 18:06 |
|||||
I get it....and its the main reason I listen to vinyl, because I do "get it". Hearing something the same way over and over is not a pleasure for me.
Now I may not listen to classical, but I totally understand why there would be certain recordings you may only want to hear in mono......I have heard some mono recordings and they are ear boggling to say the least at the detail you can hear......It makes sense.
The title of this thread is "the importance of analog sound in prog". Its not asking for the tech/specs/detail of analog sound.....you have to read the title carefully to understand that the question does make some sense, especially if you consider older prog rock, jazz and even classical music.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
presdoug
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 24 2010 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 8618 |
Posted: September 18 2012 at 18:01 |
|||||
|
And there is not as much diversity or individuality in Classical music interpretation today. In the golden age, you had "the Stokowski Sound", "the Toscanini Sound", the "Furtwangler school" of interpretation.
Nowadays, a lot of important orchestras and their conductors sound so much alike, it's scary. As each year passes, people tuned into the older eras die off, and i know you all know that already, but it really is a shame. A lot of today's crowd don't know what they are missing, and that is a crime. Edited by presdoug - September 18 2012 at 18:02 |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Post Reply
|
Page <1 3435363738> |
| Forum Jump | Forum Permissions You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot create polls in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum |
the importance of analog sound in prog
Topic Options
Catcher10 wrote: