is the sound of vinyl due to the physical process of the turntable?
Same here. I do not own a turntable, however, if the sound of vinyl comes from the physical act of the record on the turntable why can't I transfer digital audio or at least emulate that process to digitally recreate that sound? I remember back in the 1970's you had 45rpm records on the back of cereal boxes and they were not vinyl, however they sounded good why can't I do that myself?
I put three thin strips of 3M silver tape on the cd player spindle, taking care not to affect the platter. The middle piece of tape is longer than the two peices on either side. The top of the spindle is curved, so I used a flat edge to gently push the tape down onto the spindle.
cleeds Let me clarify, as you are mistaken. (please check my website, this is what I do daily for a living ...
Your claim that "Vinyl is more punchy because it has to be, else the stylus jumps the groove" suggests you really should have an expert examine your turntable system. There's no way that a stylus should jump a quiet groove unless something else is seriously misaligned or defective. However, a groove with large excursions - such as the cannon shots on
some presssings of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture
- can definitely cause mistracking.
Buy yourself a turntable and start buying records, you can’t emulate this process using digital, forget about it. Vinyl is about physical media and original pressings.
If you want to emulate analog using digital it is FAKE.
I remember back in the 1970’s you had 45rpm records on the back of cereal boxes and they were not vinyl, however they sounded good why can’t I do that myself?
Not sure what you mean. There was a STYRENE pressing of the 7 inch vinyl records (aka 45s) up to the late 70s at least or maybe even longer (parallel to the vinyl pressings). Good sound, but wear off quickly than vinyl. Styrene is not flexible and easy to crack, nobody use styrene for pressing anymore.
You can cut an acetate from your digital file, any pressing plant can offer this option, it’s cheap on 7 inch (about $30 both sides). It will never be as good as pressed vinyl from analog source. Digital source will never be as good as the analog source (master tape). Also we lost the art of pressing nowadays, for this reason old vinyl (most of them) from the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80s is superior.
When digital processing involved it is no longer analog and it does not make sense at all, because you can simply stay with digital master using some nice digital equipment. Digitally remastered vinyl re-issues are so boring.
Analog is not digital! The source is master tape, analog mastering and then vinyl pressing. Think about it this way.
Sam here and i now realize it is not necessarily vinyl in particular but very specific vinyl records that have a warm open soundstage with drums that are relaxed and the music isn't upclose to the speakers and everything sounds alive.
I like example of RVG (Rudy Van Gelder) and Blue Note label which old jazz records costs a fortune now. Although Mingus declined to work with him. So if to discuss it RVG by itself created transfer to digital of most his works. So it's one point which can be compared. Also Led Zeppelin albums remastered by Page so as they are popular you can compare them side by side quite easy digital/remasters vinyl and original ones. Which version sounds the best for you? Digital or remastered record or maybe first press?
cleeds Let me clarify, as you are mistaken. (please check my website, this is what I do daily for a living) -- In actual practice, the level of vinyl is moderated by the medium. The length of a side and the low end needs of a side, etc. Decades of vinyl cutting has always been about not just a better sounding cut BUT ALSO A LOUDER ONE. That’s part of that craft 100% because a bad cut will create vinyl products that do NOT track on all systems. Stylus quality varies, wildly. At the same time, Limiting of the digital variety, square waves, do not cut well at all and sound small on playback from vinyl, and so vinyl premastering (if done digitally as it is in the last 20 years or more) is ALWAYS LESS LIMITED by the mastering engineer, because it sounds better cut to vinyl that way. Digital has gotten louder and louder, less RMS to Full Scale.
So for example, if we had a digital release with say -12 to -6 dbfs average and 0 or -0.5 dbfs peak (true peak over 0 with ISP intersample peaks is normal) that digital release WOULD NOT be sent to vinyl cutting AS IS. A unique premaster would be used, with no limiting on it. This premaster would then be up to the skill of the cutter to get it as loud as possible. This is the physical limitation of vinyl that results in MORE DYNAMIC RANGE in nearly every vinyl release as compared to it’s digital counterpart.
More punchy = more musical = better.
... vinyl media DEMANDS MORE DYNAMIC RANGE. Vinyl is more punchy because it has to be, else the stylus jumps the groove. Digital can be compressed and limited to a pancake of white noise. This means that NEARLY EVERY vinyl record is more punchy than it’s digital counterpart ...
That is completely mistaken. An LP can be cut with the same squashed dynamic range as any other media. What can make a stylus jump a groove are large excursions, such as loud cannon shots on some versions of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. If your stylus jumps a quiet groove, there is really something amiss with your setup.
I found an old piece of wood on the ground, it could be up to 100 years old and I was thinking about how a Stradivarius violin is revered for It's unparalleled resonating tone and the solid wood that was used to make the violin plays a big part in that tone.
The question is how do I encode the tone of the wood onto digital audio? And then I had the thought why not take the light bulb out of the lamp across the room from my PC and put the wood in the socket? would the electrical current pull the frequencies from the wood into the wiring and encode them onto the digital audio as I did a re-encode? Well, as crazy as it sounds I believe the answer is yes. here is how this old piece of wood colors the tone of digital audio.
... vinyl media DEMANDS MORE DYNAMIC RANGE. Vinyl is more punchy because it has to be, else the stylus jumps the groove. Digital can be compressed and limited to a pancake of white noise. This means that NEARLY EVERY vinyl record is more punchy than it’s digital counterpart ...
That is completely mistaken. An LP can be cut with the same squashed dynamic range as any other media. What can make a stylus jump a groove are large excursions, such as loud cannon shots on some versions of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. If your stylus jumps a quiet groove, there is really something amiss with your setup.
We have to look at the whole recording process. And we have to look at the limitations of vinyl that give it an advantage, and then finally the distortions of vinyl vs digital.
1. The recording process of vinyl era records is usually great players, in a room, playing mostly together. Vocal takes are mostly live. Engineers were experts and decisions were made in real time, building MUSICAL MOMENTUM. Today decisions are not made in real time by most engineers who are not as experienced, and vocals like everything else are done in pieces and edited together. LESS MUSICAL MOMENTUM. So vinyl era records are INNATELY MORE MUSICAL aka "sounds better" with more real instruments, not in the box instruments. And often the recording was to tape, then to vinyl, never a digital stage.
2. The vinyl media DEMANDS MORE DYNAMIC RANGE. Vinyl is more punchy because it has to be, else the stylus jumps the groove. Digital can be compressed and limited to a pancake of white noise. This means that NEARLY EVERY vinyl record is more punchy than it’s digital counterpart and that "sounds better".
3. The vinyl distortions are in the same family as tape distortions, although different. This is not the family of digital distortions. They are more pleasing. Or "sounds better" As a mastering engineer I prefer my own work on digital as I grew up on vinyl and I put those vinyl era musical qualities into my digital work, yet I fully understand the appeal, especially with classic records that were built straight to vinyl. Brian Lucey www.magicgardenmastering.com
guyboisvert @theo@mrubey It all starts with recording the actual instruments in studio. Everything is recorded digitally theses days.
Technically, the best medium is digital and by far: Much Higher Dynanics, much better separation, much lower noise, no wear out, no angle error, no medium saturation, no compression, etc etc etc. The Vinyl is highly processed to fit in the physical medium. There is the RIAA EQ Curve applied so it can sound decent on this very poor medium. And contrary to what you said, there is no "lost information" with digital, it’s simple math theory at work.
All that being said, you are perfectly right to prefer the sound of one or another, digital or analog. Each component has its transfer function, at the end, whatever it is, you are the one who listen and choose.
>>>That may all be true, I don’t know, but I suspect most audiophiles are focused on 👀 and committed to music from an earlier age, back when the recordings were made on tape. Then, staying in the same medium - tape - starts to look very attractive. No chop, chop, chop. Tape is a natural medium. It breathes. That why cassettes and vinyl just sound right. Forget about all the technical arguments. Almost all technical arguments can be disputed anyway. The playback medium is cut from the same cloth ✂️ as the recording.
Try not to listen to systems that are better than yours. That will only depress you. Only listen to systems that are worse than yours. That way you can avoid the upgrade urge and the tweak rabbit hole simultaneously. Keep telling yourself, my system sounds fabulous! 🤗
I recommend if your happy with digital don’t listen to vinyl or tape. Hearing vinyl on occasion probably won’t sway you. But if you spend much time with it your brain gets used to the natural sound and you will then be less likely to be satisfied with digital. Then you’ll always be trying to get your digital to sound like vinyl. Vinyl listeners don’t seem to be wanting their systems to sound like digital. I find your brain can adapt and get used to digital if It wants to and even find it enjoyable. This is just my opinion from my own personal experience of 30 years since my first high end Esoteric CD transport and DAC from 1990. I haven’t owned a digital source in 6-7 years now.
@theo@mrubey It all starts with recording the actual instruments in studio. Everything is recorded digitally theses days. Technically, the best medium is digital and by far: Much Higher Dynanics, much better separation, much lower noise, no wear out, no angle error, no medium saturation, no compression, etc etc etc. The Vinyl is highly processed to fit in the physical medium. There is the RIAA EQ Curve applied so it can sound decent on this very poor medium. And contrary to what you said, there is no "lost information" with digital, it's simple math theory at work. All that being said, you are perfectly right to prefer the sound of one or another, digital or analog. Each component has its transfer function, at the end, whatever it is, you are the one who listen and choose.
Personally, i have a decent DAC with a matching intergrated amp and speaker, i love the sound. I'm really not looking back to vinyl, that's for sure! But that's just me. I listened to many HiFi soundsystems for the last 40 years: Linn Sondek, JA Mitchell, Classé, Mark Levinson, Naim, Snell, Magneplanar, KEF, Wadia, etc etc etc. While they sounded very good, for me nothing beats a high quality digital playback with a good DAC and matched component. Happy listening!
Whereas digital is digital, not much too talk about.
You're wrong there. There are many flavors of digital to enjoy and digital sound quality is progressing steadily. All vinyl does not sound better than all digital, either. Good digital can sound as good as good vinyl. If anyone prefers the sound of vinyl, though, that's fine with me. We all like what we like (see Geoff).
I find the area where the greatest improvement can be made is in recording quality. So many albums are just not recorded very well.
A turntable introduces rumble and wow. Rumble is the noise from the turntable and wow is the change in speed from the needle being dragged through the record groove.
Another important point is that if I make a digital file of the playback of a vinyl album I get an exact copy of the ethereal sound. The digital now sounds like vinyl. In 192/24 you can not tell the difference between the actual vinyl and the digital file of the vinyl whereas it is easy to tell the difference between actual vinyl playback and fully digital playback.
absolutely disagree. the high rez digital rip of the vinyl cannot match the actual vinyl. it is easy to hear the difference.
i have 1000 high rez needle drops of my vinyl. these are 2xdsd. 100% of them it’s trivial to hear the difference. i have plenty of high rez PCM rips too of my vinyl, but not as many as the 2xdsd rips.
i listen daily to these files and the vinyl, for the last 10 years.
my digital playback is top level and i love it. mostly listen to it.
uber, some people will buy things you don't even have a Name for....;)
Analog vs. digital....we're approaching a point where the difference will only be noticed if you're standing and Watching the process....and, even then, you'd best verify what cables are going where....
'Ell, even my phone has a setting in the Sound file where it claims to duplicate 'tube sound reproduction'....and gets close.
(Yes, I know the difference....born pre-digital, pre-SS...I can only wish I was 'born yesterday'....and you'd be in trouble anyway....*L*)
"Silly audiophiles.....Tricks are for kicks!"
"Right 'bout now....the funk's so rubber...." (FBS)
Dragging a rock through a ditch. But that is not what you are listening to. You are listening to an AC signal generated in tiny coils by the motion of a magnet or visa versa. Magnetic induction. This is followed by the electronics required to equalize the signal and drive amplifiers. Believe it or not the rock actually does a very good job within a certain frequency band and groove velocity. When compared directly to digital files of the same master, vinyl playback has an ethereal quality that adds a sensation of depth. Since a vinyl version of a digital file has the same quality this is obviously a distortion albeit happy one of the vinyl playback chain. It is also a sound quality that humans gravitate towards as even young people are buying vinyl and vinyl playback systems. Another important point is that if I make a digital file of the playback of a vinyl album I get an exact copy of the ethereal sound. The digital now sounds like vinyl. In 192/24 you can not tell the difference between the actual vinyl and the digital file of the vinyl whereas it is easy to tell the difference between actual vinyl playback and fully digital playback. This is a very repeatable observation through a variety of ears. Even my wife picks up on it. Channel D's Pure Vinyl is a great program by the way. It allows you to record vinyl to your computer and makes these comparisons easy. Mikey uses it. You can even edit out the pops and ticks! Anyway, nobody that I know of has ever characterized this happy distortion. Humans like more sensory input. We like brighter colors, spicier food and euphoric sound so in essence vinyl playback becomes an art form. We talk about cartridges as if they were bottles of wine, a painting. Whereas digital is digital, not much too talk about. Speakers are the same way. So, we are all like wine aficionados. Nobody knows the hell what we are talking about.
The CD laser has a nano scale beam width and the spiral of physical data on the CD is also nano scale in diameter. In order to keep the laser focused on the data spiral whilst the disc is fluttering there is laser servo feedback system 🔄 and a tiny spring system for the laser that allows the laser to move very easily back and forth as required to stay on the spiral track.
The trouble is there is so much fluttering of the disc and movement caused by external forces (vibration) along with the out-of-round condition of the CD disc the laser servo system can’t keep up with all of the motion. Furthermore, unless you’ve obtained precise level of the CD while spinning the disc will wobble even more. Further exacerbating the situation, very low frequency seismic forces act 🔜 on the tiny spring suspension of the laser, the Fr of which is about 8 Hz, making the laser move unnecessarily. The CD edge beveler from Germany 🇩🇪 was designed to make the CD perfectly round which helped eliminate the flutter problem, but did not go far enough. I stiffen the CD disc and obtain absolute level whilst playing.
The laser light is scattered inside the transport box while the laser reads the data. The entire inside of the transport is lit up like a Christmas tree 🎄 but you would need infrared goggles to see it since it’s invisible light. The scattered laser light gets into the photodetector, which can’t tell the “good light“ from the scattered light. My NEW DARK MATTER scattered light absorber is the only audiophile device specifically designed to prevent invisible AND invisible scattered laser light from entering the photodetector and damaging the sound.
If a vinyl record sits on a platter and a cd sits on a small spindle how do you keep the cd from wobbling? IfI reverse the process and make a spinning cd size platter and have the laser read the cd from the top by eliminating the wobble could I improve the sound quality? When i play a digital download there is no physical cd player so no wobble and the sound is no better than a cd playing?
The records on the cereal boxes and most importantly inside MAD Magazines ("She Got a Nose Job" and "It's a Gas" were 2 childhood favorites may find them on YouTube) are thin flexible vinyl (PVC). They are made by Eva-Tone Corp. in Illinois and now also FL. I was at the factory in the 70's. Had them stamp clear Fresnel lenses (similar to record grooves- we furnished the stamping masters) in continuous rolls then cut into squares on same production line as the records. We used them in our Psychedelic/Disco color organ sound to light boxes, made for folks like Spencer Gifts, Radio Shack, etc. Stayin' Alive in the good old days.
It is very simple for laymen playing records From cereal boxes. Records provide a continuous signal. Any digital source, even if “oversampled” still is not continuous- it has individual bits of information. Remastered records are usually better because the original tapes are typically half speed mastered so it can be cleaned up. Also they are usually made on better vinyl and pressed better. 45s are even better Because you’re getting the information delivered at even higher rates and since they take up less space on the record, the tone arm sits closer to tangent to the record and spends less time at a reduced angle.
I think another aspect is that, as I understand it, digital and vinyl are mastered differently, so of course they will sound different.
The mathematician in me can understand the theory of digital, and some of the higher sampling rates should theoretically continue to come closer and closer to vinyl, but the emotion in me understands that it just isn't the same.
One other often overlooked difference, with vinyl people would usually listen to an entire side of a record, with digital they are skipping only between "great songs," yet to me they're still missing out on the "esoteric-ness" of what vinyl is.
is the sound of vinyl due to the physical process of the turntable?
@guitarsam - not due to, in spite of. From a noise perspective, turntables only contribute to the noise floor. What a better (but not necessarily expensive) turntable provides is less background noise.
The sound of vinyl is due to the process of the stylus being dragged through the grooves and mechanical energy being transferred to low-level electrical energy. The cartridge/tonearm/wiring/phono stage/preamp
symbiosis
AND turntable noise floor is responsible for our tail wagging response. All other things being equal
Same here and by giving up and going vinyl I will not have the answer which I believe will be found by stepping outside the box + I believe that new remastered vinyl is fake vinyl and to my ears does not have that stereosI hear from 1st press vinyl. This is a conspiracy to destroy the healing effects of real audio and the Hypersonic effect
Sam hereagain, i'm not sure if the soundI like from vintage vinyl is the hardware creating thestereo effectI hear or is it present on the master tape?And if it is present how comeI don't hear it on the digital album.
I did discover this and it may just be the placebo effect however i think it sounds more vinyl like with that stereoness i hear with 1970's vinyl. i'm running digital audio through this filter with all the effects turned off.
You keep saying you like the sound of vintage vinyl. But for a guy who likes the sound of vintage vinyl you sure seem to spend a lot of time messing around with digital. In spite of what you say it seems what you really like is fooling around with digital files, trying to make them sound like vintage vinyl.
If you really do like vintage vinyl why not just listen to vintage vinyl? Why try and put legs on a snake?
And if your answer is, to be able to make modern recordings sound as good as vintage vinyl, well then good luck. Better men than you have devoted whole careers trying to make digital sound as good as analog. So good luck with that!
Geoffkait, I agree! The information is on the silver disc, extracting it is the issue. I recently sold my 47 Labs 4735 CD player with their non over sampling, non filtering dac. It was a great CD player and produced an impressive musicality but still fell short of my analog rig. I sold it to buy a better cartridge which will increase that delta. Some say the AN UK DAC 5 makes redbook sound like good analog. But then its a little pricey. I think the argument though is that digital renders a discontinuous sampled playback that our perception stitches together and it never quite gets there, for me. The argument against analog is pops and clicks, artifacts of crappy analog. We could no doubt agree that crappy is crappy be it digital or analog. Other issue..... A microphone or cartridge are examples of electromagnetic transducers. They convert vibration into electrical signal. This signal in its unaltered form is a near if not perfect analog of the source. I guess that begs the question of is digital not also a near if not perfect analog of the source within its own context. hmmm, maybe so.
Sam here again, i'm not sure if the sound I like from vintage vinyl is the hardware creating the stereo effect I hear or is it present on the master tape? And if it is present how come I don't hear it on the digital album.
I did discover this and it may just be the placebo effect however i think it sounds more vinyl like with that stereoness i hear with 1970's vinyl. i'm running digital audio through this filter with all the effects turned off. https://i.postimg.cc/Y0v3Hsgt/azimuth.jpgI realize running audio through the azimuth filter with all the effects turned off should have no effect on the sound quality? So what am I hearing.
No, I don’t think aliasing is the culprit. Because if you listen to a digitally remastered cassette the so called digititis is absent. No more harsh weird sounding high frequencies and overall hardness to the sound, which are the calling cards of CD playback. No, the answer lies elsewhere. It lies in the inherent problems of CD players, their inability to extract the data correctly from the CD - as I’ve been saying for some time. The “digital artifacts” are produced by the act of playing the CD. Insidious isn’t it?
Once you mechanically isolate the player, eliminate the scattered light problem and stiffen the CD itself the sound you hear is the pure analog sound that was encoded on the CD in the first place in all its glory. Old or new CDs, doesn’t matter. Hel-loo! Anybody out there?! Car 54 where are you? 😟 Wake up and smell the roses!! 🌹🌹🌹
is it possible to make a dummy record like the nothing record (1978)
that was cut with no music just the blank grooves and play that while i
run digital audio somehow through the stylus cartridge
No. The problem is that digital itself has artifacts called 'aliasing' which the digital industry does not like to acknowledge is actually distortion. In the analog world this form of distortion is a kind of intermodulation known as 'inharmonic distortion'. The ear is keenly sensitive to it! as its mostly higher frequencies. This is part of the brightness of digital. The LP actually has wider bandwidth, being good in playback and record to at least 42KHz (my cutter system is bandwidth limited at that frequency to help reduce the likelihood of damage to the cutter; it can actually go higher). Almost any cartridge these days can go that high. While there isn't much information up there (mostly harmonics if anything) this does help to reduce phase shift.
Hi, it shows, have: 96, want: 111. and a good median price. Physical contact in real time and no computing time. But there is the CD version also for comparisons, here have: 1, want: 1.
mrubey This explanation occurred to me back in the 80s when I first heard digital. It mimics Theo’s explanation.
Sound is a physical vibratory phenomena. Analog technology captures and replays vibration as vibration all within the vibratory realm. It is not changed from its fundamental nature and has a sense of reality. Digital on the other hand, like a teletransporter, disassembles then reassembles sound. Something is lost.
>>>>No. No. No. A thousand times no! Sound is only vibratory in the air. In wires and cables it’s not vibratory. Sound only becomes vibratory when the speaker transducers make them so. We re not even sure at this point as a group what the audio signal in wire even is. How’s that for reality? The CD itself contains all the intricate information of the music. You just can’t extract that information correctly. That’s all.
This explanation occurred to me back in the 80s when I first heard digital. It mimics Theo's explanation.
Sound is a physical vibratory phenomena. Analog technology captures and replays vibration as vibration all within the vibratory realm. It is not changed from its fundamental nature and has a sense of reality. Digital on the other hand, like a teletransporter, disassembles then reassembles sound. Something is lost.
sam here is it possible to make a dummy record like the nothing record (1978) that was cut with no music just the blank grooves and play that while i run digital audio somehow through the stylus cartridge
Personally I think the answer is “no”. We hear in analog and by playing vinyl the music remains in the analog domain, by converting to a digital storage, we abandon the analog domain. Then by trying to reproduce that digital stored format back to analog so our ears can understand it, something gets lost. We have been trying for years and have come close with expensive DAC’s, but it is never exact, acceptable yes, but not exact.
@mikelavigne , I don't own a single LP and really not interested. But that was THE BEST explanation you provided on how turntables work and how the sound is produced using the coil. Thanks much 🙏
sometimes the first step in responding is to try to make sure we understand the question.
the ’sound’ comes from a stylus being dragged through a groove of undulations that cause the stylus to deflect and move a coil or magnet to send a signal. the tiny signal then gets amplified and we hear music from a speaker. although there are even more crude methods of using a megaphone to amplify the signal from the stylus.
the media the groove is on can be a round metal cylinder, a piece of vinyl, or a cardboard cereal box. anything you can cut the groove in and will imprint the undulations then be rotated could work. then something has to rotate the media for the stylus to read it and send the signal.
a turntable is what is now used to rotate media, and it’s the choice that has become a mature process. but fundamentally if all you want is sound of some sort the components of the process are not locked into what we view as present day turntables.
OTOH we did not get here by accident. it was 143 years of messing around.
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