Faith-Based Electronics (IMO Addendum)

[Mike Sulzer]

Also there is the equalization, which results, on playback, in the requirement for a falling frequency response across nearly the entire audio band. This is a noise issue: there is too much if you do not do this, and the down side is some limitation in the dynamic range at the higher frequencies. There is a reason for that mushy compressed sound!

When you learn to like certain limitations, sometimes it is difficult to learn to do without them; they become "reality". But they are not, and you can relearn.

(None of this is to imply that there were not some spectacularly bad CDs produced in the beginning!)

Let's see... on one hand we have a piece of plastic with a mechanical transducer bumping around in a groove. Invented in 1877! The low end had to be reduced, as well as the overall level to keep the stylus from bounding out of the groove. The signal went to a power amp, and then to small speaker coils to move the cutting head. Right away the sound has been altered and we are several generations from the original. Plus the disk gets dirty and worn and you have all kids of surface noise and mechanical wow and flutter. And the outside cuts on a record sound cleaner than inside ones because of the geometry of the disk. Perfect.

On the other hand we have a medium that sounds EXACTLY like the master tapes, as if you were sitting in the studio listening to the playback, assuming your stereo system was good enough. There is no flutter or even ripple because the disk is setting it's own timing.

Oh yeah, vinyl was always better.

[Steve Conner]

I recently got a Pure I-20 dock for my ipod. It bypasses the pod's internal DAC and offers direct digital output, or line-level analog output on RCAs through a higher quality DAC. I was very pleasantly surprised by the sound quality, especially considering it didn't have an audiophile price tag.

If you use Apple Lossless music files, the digital output from the thing should be bit-perfect. Pure claim this, but I haven't got round to testing it.

So anyway, feeding that into one of my homebuilt amps, there's my favourite system for digital music. Too bad it won't play FLAC though.

The vinyl vs. CD debate is interesting. I agree with Mike, but instead of "limitations", I would say that the engineer has to be aware what sound his listeners will want, and make that sound. Rock'n'roll was inseparably linked with vinyl and AM radio, so maybe the engineers should make their CD releases sound like that, and then everyone or at least Possum would be happy.

The amount of distortion generated by the old analog studio gear and the vinyl cutting chain was gross by today's standards, and I believe just about all of it was euphonic, at least in the hands of an old engineer who knew how to make it work for him. But when digital came in, the old engineer's skills didn't translate to the digital domain.

The alternative was youngsters who knew how to work the digital gear, but maybe didn't understand what the analog gear had been doing, and ended up making records that were too hi-fi. Dave mentions "like listening to the master tapes", but maybe most listeners wouldn't want that!

And above all there was the problem that the designers of the first generation of digital studio gear didn't realise what the analog gear had been doing either. So there were no tools for soft limiting, tape emulation and so on. I think now we understand what was going on and how to emulate it in DSP, or add a few well-chosen pieces of analoggery to the studio signal chain. But I bet that most of the CDs in our collections weren't made "now".

PS: Yep, you can still buy pickup cartridges. Ortofon even make a mono one for your 78s. And I saw at least one audiophile journalist claim that 78s sounded better than LPs.

[rjb]

The alternative was youngsters who knew how to work the digital gear, but maybe didn't understand what the analog gear had been doing, and ended up making records that were too hi-fi.

This may have been an anomaly, but the Howling Wolf CD I mentioned was lower-fi than the LP. The problem wasn't that the raunchy harmonica tone sounded too clean; it was that the drum kit was more muffled, lyrics intelligible on the LP were garbled on the CD, and the band overall sounded like it was recorded in a closet.

I still think it had something to do with chi.

-rb

[rjb]

It's alive! Rrrrrgh!

Good lord, what have I started?
I never expected anyone to take this thread seriously.
I was just making a little joke.

-rb

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

Listen to percussive things, like drums and bass. Vinyl is softer and mushier sounding. You lose all the transients because vinyl is mechanical, the signal was limited and it just can't do it. People like vinyl because the high end is missing and it sounds "warmer" but you are not getting an accurate reproduction of the music. You might be hearing more of the guitar precisely because of there missing high end, and there might be an upper mid bump. And it depends on your sound system. AND you hear the reverb because of all the compression added to the vinyl master. But that's not what the real recording sounds like. Run your CD player though a compressor if you want to hear it like that.

I can hear all kinds of things on CDs you can't hear on vinyl. Check out some of the Beatles stuff like the White Album. So likely you hear the guitar better, but I'd bet if you went into the studio that's not what the recording sounds like.

AND, the outside of the record sounds better than the inside. Thats a fact.

Signal chain makes no difference at all on a digital recording. None! The signal is intact from beginning to end. You also do not get errors on any modern A/D D/A converters, even cheap ones. Don't believe me?

....

Also, if you look it up, the Apple iPod has exceptional audio reproduction. Tests were done. I use them to test out new mixes on different audio systems like the car, boom boxes, etc. before that I had to burn a CD every time. I'd never play music on a cell phone (well maybe an iPhone). But I like it that I have 17,000 songs on my iPod.

Actually, with the Flex-Able example if you compare the vinyl and CD to the sound of an actual guitar amp and reverb unit, the vinyl sounds a lot closer. The problem isn't that the CD is too accurate or that the vinyl is softening the sound - it simply sounds more realistic. It sounds more like I have a guitar amp sitting in front of me and less like a recording thereof.

On the iPods, I have several recordings where I could hear certain things on CD with a portable Panasonic CD player, (nothing special) put them onto an iPod and then with the same headphones listened and could hear an immediate difference. One example is the backwards reverb on Pinball Wizard, another is a couple CDs I have of Maurizio Pollini playing Chopin. On the CDs you can clearly hear the dampers in the piano creaking back and forth. On the iPod it is barely there. The answer could simply be about the internal headphone amp on each device and could have nothing to do with the format. I really don't know, but the differences are there.

I didn't say signal chain has anything to do with recording, I'm talking about reproduction. A record player requires very few components to bring it up to a level for the stereo receiver, and after that not much is required. The needle itself produces a comparatively strong signal. To my understanding, a basic CD player has more gain stages and various compromises need to be made to avoid noise. If signal chains and methods of amplification didn't make any difference, then we'd all have the same kind of guitar amp!

[Jag]

Dave mentions "like listening to the master tapes", but maybe most listeners wouldn't want that!

Yes, I agree totally!

I think of it like listening to a saxophone right at the bell. It's one of the most Godawful gross sounds ever (you can even hear the spit bubbling through). But put the mic in the right place and it sounds AMAZING on playback. I think it took the music industry a while to realize that higher resolution, in and of itself, is not intrinsically better. Engineers/producers needed to learn to deal with the new technology and the fact that a perfect reproduction of the source is not always pleasing. I've got a ton of what I term, "first generation" CD's that sound like absolute crap. They were recorded based on a pool of experience that knew what sounded good on vinyl but didn't understand how the new technology had changed the game. Twenty years down the road, and a few generations of remastering experience, some of those albums sound sound much better now. A particular example, for me, is the Rush album "Roll The Bones". I HATED the sound of that CD in '92, I still have that copy and it still sucks from a sonic perspective. The 2004 remaster was an improvement and the 2011 remaster is even better.

Frankly, I think it depends on what qualifies as a "remaster". Many classic vinyl albums were initially digitized without any regard for the change in technology and they sound like crap. When the whole "remastered for CD" thing started happening, I think they mainly just did some multi band EQ'ing (if we were lucky) and maximized the overall levels. To me, that still sounds like crap, just with less dynamics and louder overall. I think a true remaster, of anything originally recorded for vinyl, should include a REMIX as well. This would not sound like the vinyl original but, I don't think it would suck either. I've heard some albums that were remixed and remastered that, while sounding different, sounded as good or better than the original. It's a matter of getting the best out of the delivery mechanism. If I were doing two versions of an album, one for CD/digital and one for vinyl, the mix would get tweaked and mastered specifically for the medium.

On another topic, anyone who cannot hear that a Strat is clearly far better than a Les Paul needs to have their head examined!

[Steve Conner]

RJB: Time for garlic and silver bullets perhaps?

I hate Steve Vai. Maybe it's because I never listened to him on vinyl. The Beano album is what a proper guitar sounds like, Vai's tone is more like a robot with a stomach ache. (IMO.)

If you rip music into an iPod with the default settings, you get lossy compression: MP3 or Apple's AAC which is similar. (note, data compression, not dynamic compression) That certainly does affect the sound. Little details like reverb and piano dampers may well get discarded, because the compression algorithm figured you wouldn't notice. And, the stereo image gets a little mangled - IMO.

iTunes has a lossless option, but the storage capacity of your player takes a big hit. Mind you, it might be feasible now that you can get a 160GB iPod.

[rjb]

RJB: Time for garlic and silver bullets perhaps?

IIR, we'll have to chase it to the old windmill with torches.

-rb

[Mike Sulzer]

I think you have that backwards. The stereo cartridge puts out mv. It needs a lot of amplification, as well as accurate equalization. The cd is digital; as long as it can be read with a very low error rate, and it can if in good condition, there is no loss of information in the reading process up to the digital to analog converter, and a modern one is really good, far, far better than the performance of the stereo cartridge.

Your analogy with the guitar amp is not good, because a guitar amp is intended to modify or create the sound in a way that you want. The cd playback is intended to output what is there, although you are free to modify that however you want or can, of course.

I didn't say signal chain has anything to do with recording, I'm talking about reproduction. A record player requires very few components to bring it up to a level for the stereo receiver, and after that not much is required. The needle itself produces a comparatively strong signal. To my understanding, a basic CD player has more gain stages and various compromises need to be made to avoid noise. If signal chains and methods of amplification didn't make any difference, then we'd all have the same kind of guitar amp!

[David Schwab]

Also there is the equalization, which results, on playback, in the requirement for a falling frequency response across nearly the entire audio band. This is a noise issue: there is too much if you do not do this, and the down side is some limitation in the dynamic range at the higher frequencies. There is a reason for that mushy compressed sound!

When you learn to like certain limitations, sometimes it is difficult to learn to do without them; they become "reality". But they are not, and you can relearn.

(None of this is to imply that there were not some spectacularly bad CDs produced in the beginning!)

Yep. I didn't even get into the RIAA EQ. There are better versions, but you have to start out with them. But that;s the thing, many people grew up listing to vinyl, myself included. A lot of the early CDs did sound bad. They were brittle sounding. I was lucky that the very first CDs I heard in person were Japanese pressings of the Beatles. They sounded very good. Because I wasn't use to the brighter tone, I felt they lacked that big oomph of Paul's bass. But after I got used to hearing them, it was a revelation. You could hear all kinds of stuff.

[David Schwab]

Actually, with the Flex-Able example if you compare the vinyl and CD to the sound of an actual guitar amp and reverb unit, the vinyl sounds a lot closer. The problem isn't that the CD is too accurate or that the vinyl is softening the sound - it simply sounds more realistic. It sounds more like I have a guitar amp sitting in front of me and less like a recording thereof.

On the iPods, I have several recordings where I could hear certain things on CD with a portable Panasonic CD player, (nothing special) put them onto an iPod and then with the same headphones listened and could hear an immediate difference. One example is the backwards reverb on Pinball Wizard, another is a couple CDs I have of Maurizio Pollini playing Chopin. On the CDs you can clearly hear the dampers in the piano creaking back and forth. On the iPod it is barely there. The answer could simply be about the internal headphone amp on each device and could have nothing to do with the format. I really don't know, but the differences are there.

I don't use use Apple's ear buds. They sound OK, but you have to crank them up. If you RIP your CDs at least at 192kbps, and use AAC format instead of MP3, you should not really hear any difference. If you really are more concerned with a small difference in sound compared to how many songs you can fit, use 256 or 320, or even Apple Lossless.

I compare tracks I have recorded myself, and saved as AIFF files, and then played back those same AIFF files on the iPod. I don't hear any difference. If you want to bypass the iPods headphone amp, which I have read introduces a small bass boost, use the dock connector for the line out.

I didn't say signal chain has anything to do with recording, I'm talking about reproduction. A record player requires very few components to bring it up to a level for the stereo receiver, and after that not much is required. The needle itself produces a comparatively strong signal. To my understanding, a basic CD player has more gain stages and various compromises need to be made to avoid noise. If signal chains and methods of amplification didn't make any difference, then we'd all have the same kind of guitar amp!

As Mike pointed out, you have it backwards. This is why you need a photo cartridge preamp. Not only does the level need to be boosted quite a bit, but it also has the RIAA curve, which rolls off the high end to make up for the record having the low end rolled off.

But think of this, you have the signal gong thought all these coils. Coils to cut the disk, and coils to play it back. This is like using a small speaker, sticking a guitar pickup in front of it, and then amplifying the output of the pickup. Do you think it's going to sound the same?

With a CD, it goes though the D/A converter and then to the line out jack.

The bottom line is you are used to the softening and dynamic range compression you get with vinyl. It's a pleasing sound to many, but it's not accurate at all. A high quality CD player will beat that every time.

As I said I was quite shocked when I did an A/B test. I had the album Big Express by XTC on both vinyl and CD. I cued them up so they were synched and then switched back and forth. The CD was punchier, had a tighter low end and sparely highs. The drums sounded like mush on the vinyl. This was with my old Dual turntable I used to have. I don't even own a turntable anymore, but I still have a bunch of vinyl.

So you can like what every you like, but you can't call vinyl superior because it's not. The tone is very colored.

[David Schwab]

I think of it like listening to a saxophone right at the bell. It's one of the most Godawful gross sounds ever (you can even hear the spit bubbling through). But put the mic in the right place and it sounds AMAZING on playback. I think it took the music industry a while to realize that higher resolution, in and of itself, is not intrinsically better.

That's nonsense. First off, no one records an album that doesn't sound good in the studio. They know where to place the mic. That's how they are mixing it, and that's what it sounds like. And in mastering they smooth the tone out some. Do some recording in studios and you will see. The problem with early CDs were the record companies were cutting corners. They did not want to spend money to remaster the albums, so they took the master tapes that were done for vinyl, and used them for CDs. When you master for vinyl you have to compensate for what you are going to lose. They boost the high end, and remove some low end. So you ended up with a cold, hard sounding CD. Some of the early all digital recordings were also not the greatest sounding thing I ever heard.

If you listen to a recording played back in the studio it sounds like you are hearing the band play. if you like the way your guitar sounds live, why would you need it processed and squashed by vinyl to sound good?

Roll The Bones is a perfect example of how not to master for a CD. That has nothing to do with it being a CD. That was bad mastering. An even worst sounding mastering job was Vapor Trails. You'd think by 2002 that they would know how to not get digital clipping on a recording. But the record labels wanted everything louder than everything else so it stood out on the radio. It's not the technology, it's poor judgment. Listen to some classical CDs to hear something that sounds really nice.

Honestly though, I'd rather listen to cassette tapes than vinyl these days. They have better fidelity.

[David Schwab]

The Beano album is what a proper guitar sounds like

That's easy to get. Use both pickups. Turn both tone controls all the way off, and use a RangeMaster treble booster into a Marshall combo. But that won't work for every kind of music.

Vai just gets a different kind of tone. I don't really care for him that much either.

I'd rather listen to Jeff Beck.

Check this lead tone out (My Beck impersonation):

Do What Makes Your Heart Sing (Part I)

Now guess the signal chain.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

I don't use the earbuds, either. They are still in the factory wrapping sitting in my desk drawer. I have a set of Audio-Technica ATH-D40s that I use for most of my normal day-to-day listening.

The guitar amp analogy does work. Think about it: guitar amp development hinges on the idea that audio circuits qualitatively and quantitatively change sound, often in ways other than the most immediate function of the circuit design. If that idea was invalid, guitar amps wouldn't ever differ. Once you leave the guitar amp world, no one waves a magic wand transforming them into perfect replication machines incapable of altering the sound in ways other than how they're designed. That's just silly. There is no reason to think that basic principle would be perfectly valid for guitar amps and invalid for home audio. Guitar amp people exploit those principles while home audio people try to minimize them, but that is a question of usage and basic approach, not of principles.

I'm not saying that vinyl is king, I'm saying it has definite advantages that the current market doesn't care about except for hi-fi folks who are a very narrow segment. Nor am I arguing that current technology in inherently flawed. I'm just saying that people aren't putting enough effort into sound quality. And, why should they? MP3 players are marketed based on fancy features and how many songs it can hold, the only stereos people spend big money on are car sound systems, and those are judged by how loud and annoying they are. The dreaded earbuds will only keep up with a certain level of audio quality, and that is how most people listen to music these days.

The bit about the gain stages came from an article I read a while ago that I failed to bookmark. As best I can recall, it stated that in the development days gain stages had to be added to help reduce noise, since the initial signal/noise ratio was highly unfavorable when the audio signal was in its earliest state. It was a trusted article, but I can't remember enough of it to do it justice.

"The bottom line is you are used to the softening and dynamic range compression you get with vinyl. "

That's an assumption, not a bottom line and it is incorrect. I did not grow up with vinyl and completely lack that bias, and when I'm talking about comparing vinyl and CD I'm not talking about which is more pleasing, but which sounds closer to the source material. Oboes sound more like oboes, guitar amps sound more like guitar amps, reverb tanks sound more like reverb tanks, etc. Of course I'm aware that there are plenty of OTHER problems in there (and that is why I don't listen to records with any regularity) but there are definite strengths amidst the impracticalities.

[David Schwab]

The guitar amp analogy does work. Think about it: guitar amp development hinges on the idea that audio circuits qualitatively and quantitatively change sound, often in ways other than the most immediate function of the circuit design. If that idea was invalid, guitar amps wouldn't ever differ. Once you leave the guitar amp world, no one waves a magic wand transforming them into perfect replication machines incapable of altering the sound in ways other than how they're designed. That's just silly. There is no reason to think that basic principle would be perfectly valid for guitar amps and invalid for home audio. Guitar amp people exploit those principles while home audio people try to minimize them, but that is a question of usage and basic approach, not of principles.

The guitar amp analogy does not work because guitar amps are sound modifiers. They are not hi-fi. Plug your guitar DI into the board. That's what your guitar sounds like. People use amps because they distort in s pleasing way. But you don't use a Marshall stack to listen to music, right? That would sound like crap. You want your playback device to reproduce that Marshal stack as it was recorded, not add more distortion to it.

I'm not saying that vinyl is king, I'm saying it has definite advantages that the current market doesn't care about except for hi-fi folks who are a very narrow segment. Nor am I arguing that current technology in inherently flawed. I'm just saying that people aren't putting enough effort into sound quality. And, why should they? MP3 players are marketed based on fancy features and how many songs it can hold, the only stereos people spend big money on are car sound systems, and those are judged by how loud and annoying they are. The dreaded earbuds will only keep up with a certain level of audio quality, and that is how most people listen to music these days.

What are the advantages? The hi-fi people are dopy as well, because they want high fidelity, but you aren't getting hi fidelity with vinyl. And these same people do dumb things like put holographic stickers on CDs to make them sound better! If you check out what a lot of the real audiophiles use, you will see Magnavox CD players with different D/A converters. That's because Phillips makes them. They also look for Phillips/Dupont Optical pressed disks because they are known to sound better.

I'm not talking about "MP3 players", I'm talking about iPods. Apple just plain makes better products than just about every other tech company. The iPod will accurately play back what you put into it.

"The bottom line is you are used to the softening and dynamic range compression you get with vinyl. "

That's an assumption, not a bottom line and it is incorrect. I did not grow up with vinyl and completely lack that bias, and when I'm talking about comparing vinyl and CD I'm not talking about which is more pleasing, but which sounds closer to the source material. Oboes sound more like oboes, guitar amps sound more like guitar amps, reverb tanks sound more like reverb tanks, etc. Of course I'm aware that there are plenty of OTHER problems in there (and that is why I don't listen to records with any regularity) but there are definite strengths amidst the impracticalities.

It is not an assumption. The signal must be processed for vinyl. That's a fact. There is not freakin' way vinyl sounds more like the source. It just sounds a way you like. You can see that vinyl doesn't sound like the source by looking at the waveforms. As far as oboes and stuff, I was a classically trained tubist when I was younger and played in orchestras. Classical CDs sound like the real thing IMO. Vinyl has a blanket over it. it's blurry sounding.

The low end is reduced with the RIAA curve. The dynamic range is also reduced in the mastering stage. CDs have a wider dynamic range. Because vinyl is mechanical, there is hysteresis involved. You have to physically move the stylus. You have to over come some inertia to do that. So that further cripples the dynamic range. It's slower in reaction time. The CD is using a laser to read the pits, and light is obviously much faster than the stylus. The CD also spins faster.

Then there is the fact that the grove gets smaller in diameter on vinyl as you get to the middle. That further reduces the clarity of the sound.

So there are a lot of compromises involved in producing a vinyl record. The source audio is not accurately reproduced, but they manage to give a pleasant sound. Vinyl had a good run, and then something better was invented. The newer high resolution audio disks coming out will be better still. At that point the media will match most of the source recordings in bit depth and playback sampling rate.

Now some analog stuff does sound good, like magnetic tape saturation. But for me digital playback is best because it's punchier and cleaner. Drums sound like drums. You can feel them. Same with bass. If you are only listening to guitars and stuff then if won't make that much of a difference.

I grew up with vinyl. I can clearly hear an improvement with CDs.

But listen to what you like. The facts is that it ain't "better" or hi-fi, but that hasn't stopped people from liking what they are familiar with.