Go away before you get into some real trouble. And stop whining.
Vinyl / High qual analog tape / High-res digital -- One of these is not like the other
One common theme I read on forums here and elsewhere is the view by many that there is a pecking order in quality:
Top - High Quality Analog TapeNext - VinylBottom - Digital
I will go out on a limb and say that most, probably approaching almost all those making the claim have never heard a really good analog tape machine and high resolution digital side by side, and have certainly never heard what comes out the other end when it goes to vinyl, i.e. heard the tape/file that went to the cutter, then compared that to the resultant record?
High quality analog tape and high quality digital sound very similar. Add a bit of hiss (noise) to digital, and it would be very difficult to tell which is which. It is not digital, especially high resolution digital that is the outlier, it is vinyl. It is different from the other two. Perhaps if more people actually experienced this, they would have a different approach to analog/vinyl?
This post has nothing to do with personal taste. If you prefer vinyl, then stick with it and enjoy it. There are reasons why the analog processing that occurs in the vinyl "process" can result in a sound that pleases someone. However, knowledge is good, and if you are set in your ways, you may be preventing the next leap.
Top - High Quality Analog TapeNext - VinylBottom - Digital
I will go out on a limb and say that most, probably approaching almost all those making the claim have never heard a really good analog tape machine and high resolution digital side by side, and have certainly never heard what comes out the other end when it goes to vinyl, i.e. heard the tape/file that went to the cutter, then compared that to the resultant record?
High quality analog tape and high quality digital sound very similar. Add a bit of hiss (noise) to digital, and it would be very difficult to tell which is which. It is not digital, especially high resolution digital that is the outlier, it is vinyl. It is different from the other two. Perhaps if more people actually experienced this, they would have a different approach to analog/vinyl?
This post has nothing to do with personal taste. If you prefer vinyl, then stick with it and enjoy it. There are reasons why the analog processing that occurs in the vinyl "process" can result in a sound that pleases someone. However, knowledge is good, and if you are set in your ways, you may be preventing the next leap.
Showing 50 responses by geoffkait
Fortunately Wikipedia has a lot of science stuff that everyone’s favorite wiki scientist, roberttdid, roberttcan, whoever can pretend to know. He just can’t remember what thread he’s supposed to be on or who he’s talking to, that’s all. I don’t have to squeeze his head any more, it comes out of his mouth all by itself now. Plooooop! |
You’ll never believe what happened. I bought some of the original Mercury Living Presence recordings on cassette. For example Suppe Overtures with Paray and Detroit, also Saint-Seans Symphony No. 3 Organ also with Paray and Detroit. Absolutely better dynamics than CD, maybe on par with the record and better tonality than CD. Also listened to Fennell and Eastman Wind Ensemble - Ruffles and Flourishes. Sweet! These tapes exhibit tremendous fullness and speed in the lower and upper bass. |
This is what happens sometimes when your friend and humble narrator comes back here from the future trying help out fellow audiophiles. I get stoned and crucified by knuckle dragging mossbacks on some weird mission to make everyone as ignorant as they are. New pseudo scientist, same as the old pseudo scientist. 🎶 |
roberttdid OP When a dude who lies about his qualifications as a physicist (I read old posts), sells Magic Pebbles to improve sound, and claims to improve audio via a telephone call .. just the call, not a call about audio, ...calls you a pseudo scientist, I will take that as high praise. Must really burn your Geoff that you never got published, not once, after that paper in what Junior High and people who actually contribute to science like me get published, cited, even invited to speak. Your envy and jealously is really ugly but keep doing you. >>>You are one angry pseudo scientist. 😡 Are you trying out for the angry old fart on 12 Angry Men? 😃 A device only has to be ahead of the average Joe Blow’s understanding to be considered magic or a hoax. Everything’s topsy turvy, me topsy, you turvy. 🤗 |
Empirical evidence is the information received by means of the senses, particularly by observation and documentation of patterns and behavior through experimentation.[1] The term comes from the Greek word for experience, ἐμπειρία (empeiría). It’s clear robberrttddidd is a pseudo scientist, not a very good one. |
Pure baloney!! This is the oldest con game in audio, so-called “objectivists” dismissing listening results when listening results are empirical evidence, you know, one of the foundations of the scientific method. Don’t let the pseudo scientists con you. At least we have identified 👀 them. Just more jibber jabber from the usual suspects. Be vigilant, they can be very slippery, like eels. |
+1 mahgister - Excellent treatise on philosophy of listening and why you can never know what someone’s system sounds like without actually 🔜 being there 🔙 and hearing it yourself. Technical descriptions, color photographs, subjective evaluations cannot suffice for 🔜 being there 🔙 and hearing for yourself. For one thing, subjective descriptions of a system’s sound can be misleading, intentionally or not. Words describing sound can have different meanings to different people. For example, the words transparent, congealed, analytical, boomy, synthetic, etched, tinny, two-dimensional and compressed can have different meanings to different people. |
Oh, geez, two snappy retorts in a row. Be still my heart. Which illustrates what I’ve been saying all along, two 1/2 wits doesn’t always equal one whole wit. 😳😳 it’s nice to know I can always count on you two knuckleheads for something stupid. In robberrttddidd’s case probably too much time in front of an oscilloscope fried his brain. 🍳 We can probably blame the public school system on glubson. |
glupson In fact, it was "pseudo scientists" that caught my attention. >>>>>Never get into a technical argument with a history major, if history has taught us anything. How can a non technical person be expected to decide which argument is correct. Answer at 11. Cue glubson for clever retort. |
cd318 Needless to say that cable merchants, snake oil doctors, magic pebble peddlers etc all tend to all be firmly on the subjectivist side. No surprises there. >>>>>Logical fallacy alert. 🚨 No surprises there if you’re a self-annointed pseudo skeptic. Typical phony baloney argument presumably made to create a false concept of US and THEM, everything is BLACK and WHITE with them. Controlled blind tests promoted by Olive and Toole are in fact.... subjective. Hello! I like Toole, he was great in Lawrence of Arabia. |
rauliruegas Other importan reason why could not likes the digital alternative could be that normally we LP lovers fine tunned our room/system to this specific alternative. Digital performs way different and is an alternative where the room/system overall " errors " can’t be hidding through its low distortions levels . The full distortions levels in the LP alternatives could hide those room/system overall set up " errors ". >>>>I’d say that entire paragraph is probably false. I humbly submit the proposition that subjective experience is just as valid as measurements, as evidence in a debate, perhaps even more valid. If the thing that measures better doesn’t sound better maybe you’re measuring the wrong parameter. Once the myth of Total Harmonic Distortion THD was revealed 40 years ago measurements as an enterprise has been on a steady decline. ↘️ But I’m not saying all measurements are irrelevant or of no value. For example, mapping out the room acoustic anomalies is quite important. Otherwise how can you know where the room treatments are supposed to go? |
glupson geoffkait, Are you having a bad day? Tell us more about it. We may be able to help. I have no come backs. I also have no recycled quasi-jokes like your "ghostwriter" ones. It seems that after manners, we will have to go to creative writing class. >>>>No, I’m having a good day. You’re the one having a bad day. 🤗 https://youtu.be/R8sSS_VptAE |
roberttdid OP @geoffkait, Has anyone every told you that you project (In the psychological sense), an awful lot? I don’t think I have seen one post from you that indicated you had any significant knowledge in any area important to audio. Pretty much most posts are blathering about CD players, and perhaps vibration, no matter what the topic and whether that was relevant. geoffkait23,012 posts06-29-2020 4:00pmRobberrttddidd is a pseudo scientist. He is the very definition of one. Notice he doesn’t debate the subject, apparently he would rather pretend to have all the answers and call names.>>>>As I said, robberrttddidd is excellent at name calling, poor at actual debate. Well, what do expect from Mr. Smarty Pants? 👖The new pseudo scientist, same as the old pseudo scientist. Pseudo psychologist, too. Anyone who makes the statement in the OP that high end tape and high end digital sound the same has most likely been listening to a great many mediocre systems, they oft sound very generic, rather poor and boring and similar. It’s due to lack of real quality. It’s what separates the advanced audiophile from the average clutz. The average clutz is plug and play and bits is bits. Fair enough? |
glupson "Pretty much most posts are blathering about CD players, and perhaps vibration..." What about wire directionality? >>>>Speaking of direction, once glubby joins the thread the direction will be going down. ⬇️ |
Certainly a CD player that’s on an isolation stand will outperform one that’s not. Same for a turntable. Can we at least start there? Yes, I know what some of you are thinking - streaming circumvents the CD player! But streaming has even more variables itself, judging by people’s comments, sometimes it sounds good, sometimes it doesn’t. Even in the case of streaming, isolating the DAC must improve performance, no? How can you have a competition unless there’s a level playing field? Hel-loo! As I have mentioned at least twice on these fora disengaging the Reed Solomon error codes on the CD transport can be successfully done IF the problems inherent in CD transports can be significantly reduced or eliminated. Then it’s a whole new ballgame, folks. I’m not hot dogging you. 🌭 I have heard the future. That’s because I’m from the future. Good luck to everybody. - Bob Dylan |
mahgister Live events and a live instrument is one kind of experience; a cd or a vinyl are other experiences....Is it necessary to preach with engineering numbers the sacred truth of the digital gospel? Is it realist to ask a cd, a vinyl, or a files or a tape, to reproduce the lived event totally? Each one will do his job with his own means and biases.... >>>>>While a great many audiophiles consider live acoustic music to be the sine qua non of sound quality and that “live music“ should be the absolute yardstick for measuring our home systems’ performance I believe that’s a logical fallacy. For one thing all venues where live music is performed sound different. Even one’s location at a venue sounds different from others. So how can they ever be an ideal sound? There can’t. Second, we should be striving to reproduce whatever was Encoded on the CD or Record or tape. Live music is a red herring. |
Just received my brand new sealed J. Geils Band Full House live cassette. Digitally remastered. The best of both worlds? Hugely dynamic, low noise and much more analog sounding than CD. The digitally remastered Stones on Virgin and Zeppelin on Atlantic, by Ludwig and Page/Marino respectively, on cassette will raise some eyebrows. 😲 For all you Kind of Blue freaks out there check out the digitally remastered cassette on Columbia. |
I do so dislike making categorical remarks but generally speaking cassettes from the mid 80s through the 90s, the evolved cassettes as it were, have greater dynamic range than many records and certainly greater than many CDs from about 2000 on, you know, because of the Loudness Wars. Tape is a natural medium. It breathes. It’s cut from the same cloth as the master tape. Width of the medium probably isn’t a guarantee of SQ, the digital spiral Width on a CD is only nanoscale. 😬 |
When someone describes his system in words, they’re still just words. Words mean different things to different people. Highly resolved, transparent, Low noise floor, holographic soundstage, they’re just words. Words tend to lose their meaning, especially audiophile words. Most of them are way overused. As of you know what a system sounds like by someone’s description of it. You won’t know what a system sounds like until you are actually there. “My system sounds fabulous” seems to the war cry of the audiophile. |
glupson "The sound of a very good well-tuned system can be expected to change week to week and day to day and hour to hour sometimes for any number of reasons."Michael Green has entered the building. ‘Fraid not globular, son of glub, MG and I are polar opposites on most things. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: what about this? What about that? Endless drivel. 5400 and counting of drivel. No offense. |