Questions about vinyl

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ Yes, that's what I meant. But I'm still trying to figure out how the Album Gain figure calculated by ReplayGain relates to the figures usually mentioned in articles. ReplayGain calculates the difference between the album gain and a mysterious "reference" (either 83dB or 89dB - sources vary), while articles usually specify the difference between the album gain and 0dB (full scale). Am I right in assuming that "full scale" means 96dB?

^ just add an "Album Gain" field to your database and voilà!

^^ sorry, I still don't quite understand. But is this all really important today? I mean, even cheap computer sound cards do the digital/analog conversion correctly. I looked at the wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(signal_processing)#Audio_sampling

Consider the following statement:

"One advantage of higher sampling rates is that they can relax the low-pass filter design requirements for ADCs and DACs, but with modern oversampling sigma-delta converters this advantage is less important"

Doesn't this mean that whatever happens during sampling, in the end a low pass filter eliminates this high frequency noise which could affect the original signal?


Edited by MikeEnRegalia - June 06 2008 at 11:53

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ where does that 22.1kHz signal come from ... why should it be "automatically" present in the digital signal? Or in other words: When/How is it added to the signal?

And we're off! Again.
I think the bottom line here is that it's horses for courses. I like vinyl and analogue, so does Oliver, Mike's a digi fiend. I find digital flat and hard, he champions its accuracy.
The correlation here I suppose is as simple as whether you like a smooth, warm sounding system or something that delivers anlaytical detail and crispness. Personally I want it all - warmth and a tangible midband but with crispness treble and tight bass but I guess I veer towards the warm side of the spectrum. Others prize that "hi-fi" sound of forensic detail (which I find comes at the expense of musicality).
In the end it doesn't matter one whit.
Both formats have their strengths. If you get something that makes your ears tingle when you slap on a CD or a record then voila - happiness. And that's it.
None of us are ever going to agree on this eternal circular debate so best to probably leave it.

I still say vinyl rule though ;-)

MikeEnRegalia wrote: Don't take me too serious here ... I currently don't have the time to brush up on my knowledge in this domain.

But nobody does!
You see, things are a little more complex than it seems.

^ the 20kHz is part of the audio signal, but the 22.1kHz is the bit-rate/2, which is inherent in the digitised signal, so is present in the reconstituted analogue signal.

MikeEnRegalia wrote: 22khz is already well outside the hearing range ... isn't it? I doubt that there are many adults around who can even hear anything beyond 18khz.

MikeEnRegalia wrote: arcer wrote: Actually I think you're very right. You can get an awful lot of performance from a cheap CD player. For example, I did think about selling on my Roksan (which I'm less than convinced by) and investing in an Oppo DVD player, the latest of which will also stream SACD and the CD playback is reckoned to be more than fine. They had had rave reviews everywhere, including Stereophile magazine and only cost £160. Could be the way to go. The point is, I don't think CD is a good format in the first place, so don't see why once a decent clock has resolved jitter problems (and most budget players have good clocks now) that a cheapy should perform much worse on an inherently flawed format than an expensive player. The reason I mentioned thre Cambridge is that it upsamples and apparently the upsampling gives a smoother more even tone. Again it is a machine that has had very positive reviews with again Stereophile saying it beats anything under $5000. In principle what upsampling does is that is smoothes the waveform. Generally that's a good idea, and the result should sound smoother ... but the problem is that this smoothing happens in a frequency range which is well above our hearing threshold (20khz). At least this is true for upsampling in the frequency domain (44,1khz -> 96khz), audible results may actually be possible in the bit depth domain (16bit -> 24bit).

One more time, i'll repeat myself, and you will too, until your death...

I don't need to listen to your "whisper boxes" to know how crappy it is. You can't judge nothing with that, whereas i had the chance to listen to some of the best digital and analog sources on real big systems in bi amplification. So i know what the best of the best digital source does (imagine a 60 000 dollars Mark Levinson CD setup), i know that it's impressive for some CD, but it's ridiculized by a good turntable of the third of its price. So please don't repeat endlessly what other ignorants and/or jealous say on Internet.
I know a little what im talking about, whereas you have no experience in Hifi. You can have a look at my portable system into the heaphones thread, and everybody who listen to it agrees that the good Sony Discman is completly smoked by the Sony cassette Walkman. Much more low, highs, dynamic, detail, image, mateer, precense, smoothness...Now i don't say that vinyl and cassette is simple or convenient, but it's so superior to digital...

Now it's not a mater of price, a second hand 100 dollars Nad Cd player will explode any computer or Ipod, and "Imod" (modified version of the Ipod by the american company "Red wine audio") beats the Ipod and so on...well you can listen to music through the worse equipment and still enjoy it...your brain will "fill the gaps" just like with digital... but you're more likely to end up with an headache than when listening to good digital and a tube amp or better to a decent turntable such as a Rega 3, a little good tuner such as a Rega Radio.

Edited by oliverstoned - June 05 2008 at 05:13