The muddy waters of Analogue vs. digital today
With new technology, everything is changing so fast it is hard to keep up with new recordings. I have had a turntable all of my audiophile life, although I admit I played mostly CDs for many years. It was only since I upgraded my analogue system to a certain degree in the mid-nineties, that I could hear that records sounded better than CDs. It wasn’t a very expensive upgrade, a used Rega 3 with glass platter, new Sumiko Bluepoint Special, and a floor demo ARC PH-3. Probably somewhere around $3K. Mid-90s remember.
Now my system is very upgraded and I can hear more differences between vinyl and streaming at high resolution. CDs have kind of been left in the dust. 44.1 resolution sounds kind of tinny and flat. I listen if that’s my only choice, but I can easily hear the difference. I credit myself with a decent ear after doing critial listening for 30+ years. My ear is not as good as most reviewers, but you'll understand why it’s good enough to write a forward to this thread.
I won’t go through the differences I hear between analogue and digital, because you’ve heard it all before. What I want to talk about is my confusion in this new recording landscape.
I had purchased Roberta Flack’s "First Take" when it came out and I’d kept the record for more than forty years when I realized it had really seen its better days. Basically, it was unlistenable, even after a few washes in the Degritter. I looked at near mint copies of the record and they were quite expensive. Then I saw that there was a new pressing for a reasonable price.
I was listening to the new pressing of "First Take" a few days ago when I realized it sounded overly compressed at the high end. I asked my new audiophile friend chatgpt if the record was pressed from an analogue source. Nope. I was basically listening to a digital recording pressed into vinyl. Chatgpt says that most records made after 1980 come from digital sources. So, I found a reasonablly priced orignal pressing of "First Take." My grandaugher in college can have the digital one.
Today I was playing a fairly new recording of Gustavo Dudamel and Yuja Wang playing Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme by Paganini. I live in L.A. and have been lucky enough to see Dudamel live many times and Yuga Wang several times. It’s a beautiful recording, wide and deep and detailed and musical. I pronounced it the best classical recording I owned. But it was put out recently. So, I checked with my audiophile buddy chatgpt. The record is from a very high resolution digital source. Chatgpt says that digital can sound more analogue on vinyl because the engineers roll off the high end a bit.
So, now things are more than a bit confusing. Do I buy a recording from before the 80’s on expensive vinyl or might it actually sound better streaming at 192 kHz? If you listen to Patricia Barber’s "Clique" at 172 kHz, it sounds pretty good. So good, i have not bothered to go out and buy it on vinyl.
Does anyone else feel a similar confusion in this modern market, and do you have any suggestions for negotiating it?
Get a DAC that can be clocked with a master clock. For example ESOTERIC DAC with its matching ESOTERIC Master Clock. No longer will CD’s sound “tinny” (unless of course they were recorded that way). The debate about analog vs. digital should be made clear once you hear a highend system clocked by a high precision master clock. |
Gave Sonny an ultrasonic bath and played it. Amazing album. Analog Productions pressing is excellent. I only have a stereo cartridge and my phono stage doesn’t feature a mono switch but the sound is just great! |
As far as I know, these below are current all analog for the most part. Verve mostly all analog (AAA) jazz (they’ll mention it on the release, if not mentioned I would assume high res digital source): https://store.ververecords.com/collections/lp Craft - Bluesville and OJC are mostly AAA (not all their other record labels like Savoy etc, you’d have to go through the release descriptions or use chatgpt to go through the descriptions) https://craftrecordings.com/collections/bluesville https://craftrecordings.com/collections/original-jazz-classics Vinylphile (only a few releases so far, but these are classics) Rhino High Fidelity: https://store.rhino.com/collections/rhino-high-fidelity Blue Note: Tone Poet and Blue Note Classic series.
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I wonder if I do need very high end digital equipment to come to some conclusions. On my Moon 280D streamer, granted the low end of the high end, I can hear a wide set of variations between various recordings. For now, let's say that Patricia Barber's "Clique" is the best and Dido's "No Angel" the worst. These are recordings I know. Granted that a very expensive DAC and Streamer would sound much better. But would it be able to make "No Angel" sound as good as "Clique." I doubt it. I think a recording at lower resolution, especially one recorded for a mass audience rather than, audiophiles as Dido was done. Patricia Barber, I think, was recorded for audiophiles. So, on certain recordings, at least, vinyl would sound better than digital. The problem is to be able to compare apples to apples. A number of years ago I used the "Getz/Gilberto" SACD to compare to the album, which was mastered from the original master tape. It was the only album on which my friend could hear the difference. Ironically, I, who was trying to convince him that vinyl was better, could not hear the difference. I was playing the SACD on my McCormack UDP-1 which had the benefit of not enhancing sound in any part of the sound spectrum. I heard a Moon CD player from the same period that really exaggerated the midrange. I would be curious if anyone could really set up an apples to apples comparison. I am assuming that you have high-end digital equipment. Do you have a decent analogue front end to compare the same recording? Can somebody else do an apples to apples comparison? Otherwise we're just going off the seat of our pants. I wrote a lengthy piece in this thread about a comparison of the orginal 1969 Roberta Flack "First Take" and a digitally mastered vinyl recording. Each has its own benefits, but I will play the original 1969 record because it feels like a group recorded in a studio. The digitally mastered one feels like various instruments enhaanced and put together on a recording. It's not quite home for me. |
I have Nakamichi 682ZX with custom transformer in top condition and use only Maxell Metal Vertex cassettes, the best there are. No heat or sun or moisture anywhere near them. Some of those cassettes have been played hundreds of times and they keep going like Energizer Bunny, seemingly forever. I bought the deck used 25 years ago, made recordings to play in a car too, though not Vertex cassettes, regular Maxell and TDK metal and type II cassettes. I send the Nakamichi to Willy Hermann for service and rare repairs about every three years. In fact, it is there in California at the moment. Capstan motor finally needs replacement, probably after 20000 hours. Heads are still with minimal wear, I take care of them. And I use $1500 RCA cables with it, don't tell anyone or I will be ridiculed. |
