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vinyl versus digital redux

Has anyone compared the sound of vinyl with the sound of digital converted from a vinyl intermediary ?

I am referring to 'rips' of vinyl made with high end, high quality vinyl playback systems, with
conversion to high resolution digital.
I find it nearly impossible to distinguish the two results.
The digital rip of a vinyl record sounds identical...or very nearly so...to direct playback of the vinyl.

If one has 'experienced' the foregoing, one might question why digital made without the intermediary of vinyl sounds so different from vinyl.   A detective story ?

We are talking about vinyl made by ADC (analog to digital conversion) of an amplified microphone signal and re-conversion to analog for output to the record cutting lathe, or from analog tape recording of an amplified microphone signal, and then....as above...via ADCl and back to analog for output to the cutting lathe.

Of course vinyl can be and is 'cut' (pressings made from 'stamper' copies the 'master' cut in lacquer) without digital intermediary.  Such practice is apparently uncommon, and ?? identified as such by the 'label' (production)

Has anyone compared vinyl and high resolution digital (downloads) albums offered by the same 'label' of the same performance ?  Granted, digital versus vinyl difference should diminish with higher digital resolution.   Sound waves are sine waves....air waves do not 'travel' in digital bits.    A digital signal cannot be more than an approximation of a sine wave, but a closer approximation as potential digital resolution (equating to bit depth times sampling frequency) increases.

If vinyl and digital well made from vinyl intermediary sound almost identical, and If vinyl and digital not made via vinyl intermediary sound quite different, what is the source of this difference ? 

Could it reside....I'll skip the sound processing stages (including RIAA equalization)...in the electro-mechanical process imparting the signal to the vinyl groove ?

Is there analogy with speaker cone material and the need for a degree of self-damping ?
Were self-damping not to some extent desirable, would not all speaker cones, from tweeter to sub-woofer, be made of materials where stiffness to weight ratio was of sole importance ?

Thanks for any comments.
seventies
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
Thank you cleeds. But euphonic would mean "true sound" which it is not.
There are a host of distortions that are inherent in the analog process that are not present in digital. This is easy to demonstrate playing exactly the same master of Dylan's Desire in 24/192 digital download and 45 rpm analog at the same time, in sync so you can switch back and forth between the two. The digital has a wider dynamic range as you would expect and is more detailed. You can hear this particularly in the violin. In spite of this every last person I have done this for prefers the vinyl. The violin's details are rounded over giving a smoother presentation. The music and Dylan's voice are recessed, farther away giving one a sense of the third dimension where as the Digital is up front. Having said all this it is impossible to blind this experiment because the vinyl has occasional tics on the quiet parts that can not be hidden. But I would bet that played apart people would have a harder time deciding on a preference. 
Nelson Pass admits adding harmonic distortion to his amps because it makes audiophiles happier. Certainly a preference can be based on different masters but this may not be just a digital to analog comparison. I have all the original Roxy Music Albums and just got the remastered box set. The remasters are so much better that people who never liked Roxy 
are now collecting their music (two friends of mine). If you were to compare these new masters in digital to the old vinyl there would be no competition. I have many digital remasters that are superior to the original vinyl. Led Zeppelin One is a good example another would be Bowie's Aladdin Sane. 
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cleeds
6,026 posts
 
mijostyn
Thank you cleeds. But euphonic would mean "true sound" which it is not.
The definition of euphonic is "pleasing to the ear" not "true sound." In fact, euphonic reflects a deviation from accuracy. I’m not sure why you seek to apply your own, conflicting definition to such a simple word.
There are a host of distortions that are inherent in the analog process that are not present in digital.
Of course. That’s why digital was invented. It’s also true that many of those inherent analog distortions can be reduced to levels that can be below audibility, just as the potentially superior specs of digital don’t always yield a better sounding result.
This is easy to demonstrate playing exactly the same master of Dylan’s Desire in 24/192 digital download and 45 rpm analog at the same time, in sync so you can switch back and forth between the two. The digital has a wider dynamic range as you would expect and is more detailed. You can hear this particularly in the violin. In spite of this every last person I have done this for prefers the vinyl.
If the digital has a wider dynamic range than the LP, then it’s most likely the two are not cut from the same exact master. The digital recording may have wider DR, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the higher quality transfer, especially if it was made from an old master and you’re comparing it to something like an original pressing or early Mo-Fi release. So this test of yours proves nothing by itself.

In any event, I’ve done similar comparisons with similar results, but also find that sometimes the digital version sounds better. And that’s the point: Sometimes, the best available version of a recording is on LP, and sometimes it’s on digital.

The Mercury Living Presence LPs are good examples of this - the best version is always one of the early LPs. Although a lot of effort went in to the digital transfers, the original master tapes have aged to the point that they just can’t compete with the sonics of the LPs.

And returning to the thread topic - it is possible to make digital transfers of those old Mercury LPs that are indistinguishable from the LP itself. On this, @mijostyn, we seem to agree.


seventies OP
67 posts
 
Steve and cleeds and others,

So studios do sell digital 'copies' of vinyl sources.

Do you agree that the audio result of initial digital recording, tape recording, and 'direct to disc' analog recording (via vinyl lathe cutting or lacquer to 'stamper' to vinyl) is distinct (and to many 'euphonic') so long as the music is played back from vinyl, whether or not that analog playback signal is converted to hi resolution digital ? 
If so, returning to the start of this 'thread', what imbues 'vinyl' with that sonic characteristic ?

I suspect by the process of elimination....which contributors to this thread greatly aided....that it is the electro-mechanical disc cutting and disc reading process, to which RIAA equalization is integral.
Is it the electro-mechanical cutting process ? Is it the electro-mechanical reading process ?  These cannot be separated.

The result of those two electro-mechanical processes can as you affirmed be rendered digitally and as such "indistinguishable from the lp source".

So why bother with lp's, turntables, cartridges and phono pre-amps ? Why not await more from companies like Jeton Audiophile Legends ?

One may, of course, wish to digitize an lp collection.  One may even feel that high frequencies (in particular) are far better preserved on lp's made 3 to 5 decades ago than on 'master tapes' of the same performances.

Respondents to this thread appreciate that such 'lp rips' must be done very well...or not done at all.

Again thanks
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cleeds
6,026 posts
 
seventies
Do you agree that the audio result of initial digital recording, tape recording, and 'direct to disc' analog recording (via vinyl lathe cutting or lacquer to 'stamper' to vinyl) is distinct (and to many 'euphonic') so long as the music is played back from vinyl, whether or not that analog playback signal is converted to hi resolution digital ?
No, I don't. The very best quality LP playback is very, very close to the best quality digital playback.

Of course, some people like LP distortion and will go out of their way to maximize it. They'll use warm-sounding phono cartridges, tube phono sections with gobs of distortion and their alignment geometry will often be out of spec. But they like the euphonic result, which is fine. But that's not my approach - I want sound as close to neutral as I can get, regardless of the source. I want whatever distortion is inherent to be as little as possible.
seventies OP
67 posts
 
Cleeds,
I'm not sure we're on different pages.
I am not talking about 'quality' connoting 'accuracy' of reproduction of a performance.
I am talking about a sonic characteristic, a sonic 'signature' if you wish, which is achieved only through the intermediary of vinyl.
Once that cutting to/reading from vinyl is accomplished the analog result can be converted to digital with preservation of that characteristic.
Were the case otherwise, why would one chose 'vinyl' or digitized playback from vinyl over high resolution digital recordings processed without intervention of vinyl ?
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