Vinyl / High qual analog tape / High-res digital -- One of these is not like the other
roberttdid, You're right, it was more of an anecdotal impression of the various formats from Steve Hoffman than any clearly defined conclusion. Still interesting in itself. I tend to respect his work because he claims his mission is to restore rather remix historic recordings, rather like an art restorer approaching period masterpieces. Anyway, damn it! It seems as if DSD is no better than PCM, especially when it's not DSD all the way, which it hardly ever is. On the other hand, it could equally be argued that in practice PCM is just as good as DSD but that's not what most of us were hoping for is it? According to the Ben Zwickel's Mojo Audio article (linked below) it's still the recording that counts the most. Just as it ever was. As for the odd one out between tape, digital and vinyl, it's not tape, and it's not digital, so... https://www.mojo-audio.com/blog/dsd-vs-pcm-myth-vs-truth/#:~:text=DSD%20recordings%20are%20commercia.... |
kren0006 @mikelavigne: in your opinion is there value today in SACD versus the highest quality digital streams ... I am asking because I am contemplating getting an SACD player if there is an improvement to be had in sound quality over digital streaming ...With all due respect to Mike, that's a decision I think can best be made by you. Why not borrow a player from your dealer and arrive at your own conclusion? |
This is an awesome discussion. Much appreciated. @mikelavigne: in your opinion is there value today in SACD versus the highest quality digital streams from Tidal or Qobuz? If so, do you expect that to be the case in a couple of years? I hope this is not a stupid question. I am asking because I am contemplating getting an SACD player if there is an improvement to be had in sound quality over digital streaming for my 10-30% of time I’d be willing to listen to it over streaming. For point of reference, I have an all-digital system with total msrp in the low $20k’s (speakers, amps, source, cables included), if that impacts the answer. Thanks! |
mikelavigne ... digital absolutely misses things objectively, and by degrees. and the musical experience equation is much more diminished by what is missing from digital, even the very best digital, compare to anything added to the very best analog.This could be true, and it’s sometimes how digital sounds to me. So please tell us @mikelavigne : What is digital objectively missing? |
my yard is littered with the bones of former digital zealots.....now reborn.:) I think that it is possible to fool the ears but no so the soul with mathematical artefact at the end..... Case closed....We can approximate the sound but not the soul.... A great Jazz musician says about the African rhythm drum music, that this music always wheeled over, that can be feeled and not so easily reproduced.... :) I will go on with my modest digital set-up tough but I will not dig your graveyard for my own tomb stone.... I dont think that digital lack something in particular, especially if rightly embedded, except that it is a mathematical approximation of the phenomenal analog qualia, be it the closest you can, it lack nothing in particular but it is not the same.... :) But in most ordinary audio systems with regular source, I dont think that this difference is clearly perceptible.... I know I make the test.... And we cannot choose between the 2 my friend and i..... What digital miss is in truth mikelavigne audio system..... :) |
Wow, three turntables and $160k in digital hardware? Do you mind me asking what you do for a living Mike?i’m about to retire from managing a car dealership. it took 25 years to build up my system. a little each year. hifi is my way of coping with daily job stress. I care to differ a little. I was busy typing my last post when yours was added. It is not that digital is missing something. It is that something is added to vinyl. I have several direct to disc albums and it is interesting to note that they sound more like Hi Res digital files than other records.i cannot argue that the analog process is without any artifacts. OTOH digital absolutely misses things objectively, and by degrees. and the musical experience equation is much more diminished by what is missing from digital, even the very best digital, compare to anything added to the very best analog. been comparing the best of each 30 hours a week for decades. just how it sounds to me and my visitors. if we take analog out of the discussion, digital music, at it’s best today, is objectively, completely, wonderful and satisfying. missing nothing. but on forums people like to bring up analog....so we do this dance. i don’t start threads like this. but sometimes i finish them. I certainly agree that digital is more convenient. How could you not? I can’t listen to classical playlists streaming or otherwise. I just can’t enjoy it as background music. I have to sit in front of the system for classical.there is a multi-task component to my listening which is unavoidable. but my 30 hours a week is time spent in my 2 channel dedicated room. so i might have classical playing while i’m reading or web surfing. the music competing for my attention. with analog there are no distractions, the music is too compelling. not that the digital cannot also be compelling.....and it too can demand i pay complete attention....just not as consistently. Ideally digital and analog should sound exactly the same. If they don’t something is happening in the signal path or master to alter the original recording. What sounds better I suspect is a matter of taste more than anything.filtering a musical signal through a math equation is not without a cost. on a forum here we can debate this. if we were both sitting in my room the debate would be very very short. a note or two likely, but sometimes a dozen cuts are needed to get it. i’ve had that experience dozens of times. my yard is littered with the bones of former digital zealots.....now reborn. |
roberttdid I am not sure why you are taking such an adversarial tone ...I really didn't intend to sound adversarial but c'mon, you have to admit this is a pretty tired topic. You and I are probably much more in agreement on these matters than not. This applies both ways too. There is a lot of blind devotion to Redbook CD capturing all the possible range of human experience.That is really a good point and I'll take it one step further: If you want access to the highest quality copies of your favorite commercial recordings, you'll need to be able to play multiple formats. |
Cleeds, I am not sure why you are taking such an adversarial tone. The links you posted really do not discuss this topic, and this is not a conversation about "mastering", which if done differently for the formats, will make them all sound much much different. This is a discussion about high resolution digital, good quality analog tape, and vinyl and what they are capable of. The link that CD318 posted gets into this, but dig further, and you realize that even though the first post makes it look like an exact comparison, read farther into the thread and it is not (as I posted), not to mention at that time he didn't even want to discuss high res formats due to, at that time, lack of availability. There is little discussion of the playback chain as well. I never mentioned distortion at all with regards to vinyl. I specifically said "analog processing". That is a critical difference. Again the link that CD318 posted is interesting as Steve says they could tell CD and vinyl apart by listening to the tails on sounds (which does make me question their digital signal chain), and that tape and acetate master sounded the same (to him). I could sit someone down and in about 10-15 minutes teach them how to easily identify vinyl at least with headphones and near-field monitors, based on how the "sound-stage" changes. In normal listening environments because of the interaction of speakers, room, and cross-talk, the effect is not as consistent. Notice I said changes, not better, worse, but different and you don't hear that differences between high res digital and tape. I am familiar with Mike's tests, and see that you have different results. I know that Mike has very high end equipment, but in the audiophile world, with digital, that could work against the most transparent result. Most high end audiophile companies claim to make products "tuned" for the best sound (to whoever was doing the tuning by ear). There is a difference between technically transparent, and "tuned". If the DAC is "tuned", then it is not a faithful transparent reproduction of the digital capture. This is similar to some high end DACs now having user selectable filters, which all sound a bit different, but without knowing what the original source material sounds like, how do you know which one is most transparent? It's the same with MQA. Claims technical superiority, but is it transparent or tuned? Cleeds, you saw my posts w.r.t. azimuth tuning on a turntable, and how tonearm pivot effects azimuth with height changes. Should be obvious from those posts I am not a neophyte w.r.t. vinyl. You did, however, make my point with your last line. I never said as a group you are preventing advancing, nor did I say that enjoying LPs was flawed (just the opposite actually). What I said is that blind devotion to a format based on perceived superiority, that may not actually be the case, can prevent you from moving forward. You could call that blind devotion, blind aversion as well. It would be akin to not buying a 2020 Hyundai based on how bad the 1980's vintage Hyundai Excel was. "The suggestion that those of us enjoying LPs may be "preventing the next leap" is just absurd. Many of us have made that "leap" and found the potential of digital is often not realized." This applies both ways too. There is a lot of blind devotion to Redbook CD capturing all the possible range of human experience. |
Wow, three turntables and $160k in digital hardware? Do you mind me asking what you do for a living Mike? I care to differ a little. I was busy typing my last post when yours was added. It is not that digital is missing something. It is that something is added to vinyl. I have several direct to disc albums and it is interesting to note that they sound more like Hi Res digital files than other records. I certainly agree that digital is more convenient. How could you not? I can't listen to classical playlists streaming or otherwise. I just can't enjoy it as background music. I have to sit in front of the system for classical. Ideally digital and analog should sound exactly the same. If they don't something is happening in the signal path or master to alter the original recording. What sounds better I suspect is a matter of taste more than anything. |
mikelavigneI trust your opinion because I cannot experience this to the level you did.... And it speak volume.... Thanks for sharing... I go entirely digital for convenience and anyway at the price level where I am the differences is sometimes not clearly perceptible if the digital is good and if the system is rightly embedded because a rightly embedded digital system will crush a wrongly embedded turntable... The most important factor in audio is the acoustic of the room way more than owning a low price turntable or a low price dac ( I means a few thousand dollars max)….But you already know that yourself with all these money involved in the room.... :) My regards to you.... P.S. I own an audio system that is of way less value than the 4 feet of one your turntable, but never mind, I am proud of my work to make it sound great by controlling the resonance, electrical grid, and acoustic.... :) Nevertheless I am a bit envious of your house..... :) |
Having made numerous digital copies of vinyl albums I am inclined to agree will cleeds. As I mentioned above it is difficult to tell which is which. However in comparing a vinyl album with it's digital download is another issue. It is very easy to distinguish the versions even with a very clean record. As to which one sounds better it is a toss up. I will say there is a consistent quality that the vinyl has across several cartridges that distinguishes it from the digital download and these are all 24/96 or better. The vinyl sounds a bit more distant and (this is hard to describe) you get the sense of an echo or perhaps air around voices and instruments. The digital is more up front with less going on in the background. Given that there is much more going on in the analog signal path to get to the vinyl copy one would have to believe there is additional harmonic distortion added which many of us like. You get this even with vinyl versions of digital recordings. With digital recordings played back digitally you are in numbers immediately and stay there all the way to your DAC. You can do pretty much anything to a digital file without unintentionally adding distortion. Certainly we all try to minimize distortion in our own systems but there is nothing we can do about the process that produced the software. In short, vinyl adds something to the music that is missing in Hi Res Downloads. Call it whatever you want. Sometimes it sounds better. Sometimes not. If I had to guess I would think analog tape and Hi Res downloads have more in common than any comparison with vinyl. If I did not have a huge vinyl collection would I get started now? You bet. Turntables are cool devices and a tinkerer's dream. A turntable is a record playing tool. I love tools. You can never have enough of them. Holding on to a record cover is so much more fulfilling than a CD box. It is artwork. But as an early adapter I also have 2 terabytes of music on my hard drive. One can never have enough music. Music is a tool for happiness. People who listen to a lot of music live longer. That is an association and not necessarily causation. |
i have invested high degrees of assets in tape, vinyl and digital. taken each as far as i can go. as far as anyone. and my comments are related to the top level of each format. what happens in each format on the way to these levels could be completely different than my experience. so for me and my system.......i’d say that the best vinyl sounds really the same as tape. when you play the best pressings, including 45rpm and direct to disc on vinyl, then play tape, it’s doing the same things. maybe 1/2" tape steps up farther. i have three turntables with different drive systems and different type tone arms and so there are tiny variations in those playback characters that the tape does not have in the same way. yet the tape quality is more all over the board so there are variations on each side. we could spend 10 hours switching back and forth and i think it’s easier to keep playing stellar vinyl and stellar tape is more challenging to find. with digital there are degrees of things missing, that are not missing from the vinyl and tape. period. exclamation point. m i s s i n g. and i’m a guy with $160k invested in my digital hardware. i’m a serious digital person. yet......it’s not like those other 2. you can talk mic feeds and all that crap. just listen head to head for a period of time. it hits you right in the nose. i do lots of listening sessions with visitors. we start with digital, but once we switch to analog we rarely switch back unless people want to play something they know that is only digital. analog is just more real. no math conversions holding back reality involved in the formats. where digital is better, is in the way it works for my life. it fits. i can listen to lots of new music and it works for the 70% of the time i’m not in the mood for analog. i love all the new classical music i can stream at really high levels of performance. i love exploring musically. and the sound is great. the reason i’m so invested in digital is that all around it is better.......but let’s just forget it sounding like analog. it just does not, nor does it need to. my 2 cents, YMMV. |
cd318, I remember that post well, it created a lot of confusion, frustration, and annoyance if that is the right word? ... check out page 2: Ian Lascell said: ↑Thanks for the clarification. I thought you were saying that the same exact steps/settings were taken to master for each (except for digital conversion). I realize now that you meant you are shooting for the same sound in all formats. Of course that makes sense.Steve Hoffmann: Glad you understand what I was trying to say. I am never sure it's coming out exactly like I mean it to.. Especially when typing in the back seat of a Taxi.. Not sure what generation of Pacific Microsonics unit they were using and can't remember if it was HDCD encoded, which had a "sound". |
This is such a silly conversation to be having in the third millennium, especially given that there are similar threads on Audiogon here, and here, and here, and here, and ... If you prefer vinyl, then stick with it and enjoy it.Pardon me, but did we need your permission? 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.The next leap, to what?? Here’s a simple fact: The highest fidelity copy of many recordings can only be had on LP. It may be that digital versions were deliberately squashed in dynamic range to compete in the Loudness War. Or it may be that the master tape has aged so badly that early LP pressings remain truest to the original. Or it may be that something was lost in the digital remastering process. I find that even streaming services that aim for high SQ (such as Qobuz) sometimes don’t have the best sounding copies. Of course, when Qobuz gets it right, those files can swamp an LP. Sometimes. The notion that those who prefer LP to digital do so because of inherent distortions in the LP process is also misguided; it’s the logical error of confusing correlation with causation. While it may be true of some listeners, it overlooks those who take satisfaction in reducing those distortions to the lowest possible level. And there are those here - @mikelavigne is one of them - who insist they are unable to make digital copies that can equal the SQ of the best LPs, and that the two are easily distinguishable. (That hasn’t been my experience, though.) To be clear, I wouldn’t bother with a turntable and LPs if I were starting in audio today - the expense and inconvenience just wouldn’t be worth it. But I’ve been into audio since the LP era. The suggestion that those of us enjoying LPs may be "preventing the next leap" is just absurd. Many of us have made that "leap" and found the potential of digital is often not realized. |
The humble cassette, no not the crappy ones from the 70s, the good ones from the 80s and 90s, out perform many LPs and CDs, no bout a doubt it. Greater dynamic range, more musical, more air and sweeter. Funny, Steve Hoffman left cassettes off his evaluation. That’s a shame. Tape is a natural medium. It breathes. 🤗 |
There is no pecking order. Unless you are recording, tape machines are pretty worthless due to lack of software. Yes they can sound fabulous. Otherwise, it all depends on the mastering. If you switch back and forth between analog and a 24/192 copy it is unlikely you will be able to label the two versions reliably. I have duplicate copies of many albums in vinyl and Hi Res digital. In comparing them it can go either way and I'd guess that it is pretty close to 50/50. I do not care for streaming. The drop outs drive me crazy. I have tried several wireless routers and systems and I still get them. I suppose once you have a huge collection of music you are not as interested? My daughters (who I trained well) turn me on to new artists. They filter out the mountains of really bad stuff out there now. You use to have to be tolerably good to get a recording contract. Them days are over. In the jazz world it is nowhere near as bad. You have to have at least some mastery of your instrument for admission. |
Renowned mastering engineer Steve Hoffman apparently did a direct comparison a while back between the master, an acetate, CD and DSD files with surprising conclusions. He went on to write an update last year confirming that he feels that with better converters DSD is now closer to the master than CD. The record acetate also seems to acquit itself well in all cases. However, due to inevitable losses in manufacturing and production of a physical copy, if Steve is right, wouldn't a direct DSD stream, be the closest to the original master? If so, maybe DSD streaming is the next big thing for audiophiles? https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/what-sounds-just-like-the-analog-master-tape-cd-vinyl-sacd-or... |
@roberttdid
....almost all those making the claim have never heard a really good analog tape machine and high resolution digital side by side. (...)Coincidentally, I am one of those who have (a restored Studer compared to an Ideon Audio Absolute Suite - streamer-reclocker-dac). None of this equipment belongs to me, I was just a happy bystander. High quality analog tape and high quality digital sound very similarApples to apples I would agree BUT we don't often get the opportunity to compare identical sources, do we? I.e. copy of a master tape and a hi-res digital file of said master-tape. In my case, the comparison was made between a reel purporting to be a copy of master tape(s), and files that were (supposedly) 24/96 conversions of the same master tape(s) (Pink Floyd The Wall + DSotM). Keep in mind that I don't mind tape hiss one bit. So, to the sound: I won't rehash the hi-end vocabulary (jaw dropped, etc). Suffice it to say that the sound was exceptionally good -- we had depth, height, instrument separation, dynamic impact, sound-effects, and sonic details: all over the place and in spades. The music made sense and it was difficult to sit and think about the SQ -- rather than just get immersed in the music. Digital: consistently more energy especially in the lower register (i.e. bass notes were more powerful and went deeperR2R: a slightly sweeter upper register (more pronounced even harmonics maybe?). Bass just as clear but not as deep (small differences). OTOH, cymbals were slightly longer-lasting on digital Perhaps classical would have helped us spot more differences -- alas, we didn't have any such content.So there you have it - a recent R2R - digital experience! |
