I’ve been doing studio quality LP to digital (CD) transcription and remastering, often for commercial release, for nearly 25 years. It’s been an interesting and insightful journey.
Technically, there is no reason whatsoever why Red Book CDs shouldn’t be superior to LPs in nearly every respect. Not that it’s perfect, but digital signal communication is superior in essentially all ways to analog.There are far more possible audio pitfalls along the way in the analog production of LPs from initial recording to playback. That the medium has been so perfected over the decades is remarkable.
THAT SAID, there are several often overlooked points where digital sound recording and production can be problematic, and where LPs have some ameliorating features.
FIRST, technically, jitter results from a very slight variation in the sample clock rate. In most cases, jitter is a non-issue that can and should be ignored. HOWEVER, any jitter that occurs during analog to digital conversion becomes hard coded into the digital file and AFAIK there is no way to remove it. Any mathematical manipulation of that jittery file necessarily assumes that the sample rate is completely constant. Thus, jitter can increasingly distort the digital sound as it’s processed, and it gets significantly worse the more times the music is bounced from digital to analog and back to digital as often happens in many studios. For the first few decades, ADC was often very jittery yet this problem was largely ignored. The result was that both DDD recordings and digital sound boards somehow just didn’t "sound right." Current technology has reduced jitter to vanishingly low levels so it’s ceased to be so much of a problem in digital recording for the last decade or so.
SECOND, very well produced and mastered digital recordings can sound unnaturally perfect. No one sits at the perfect distance from every instrument and vocalist in a perfect acoustic environment. Older LPs especially can sound more "real" simply because they haven’t been overly perfected.
THIRD, digital technology is wondrously powerful, but like the sorcerer’s apprentice it’s all too easy for it to be abused and get away from one in manifold ways. The "loudness wars" are but one infamous example. Again, the results can be untoward in ways that were never possible with analog recording and playback.
FOURTH, the types of distortion and significant limitations in analog recordings, LPs especially, are often rather congenial to the ear. Digital recording has a number of other technical concerns besides jitter which, while typically occurring at much lower and minimal levels, can be more subtly disturbing to the ear due to the intrinsic transparency and low noise floor of the digital medium. In this case, digital’s advantage may be something of a disadvantage.
LASTLY, there’s stochastic resonance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_resonance_%28sensory_neurobiology%29 Simply put, a certain amount of completely random noise can serve to amplify an otherwise undetectable low level signal. I’ve never seen this considered here, but I believe it’s a very significant reason why many people enjoy LPs and tapes. It’s that low surface noise or tape hiss that allow a person to more sense than hear that "inner detail" or whatever. Stochastic resonance in analog and biological systems is somewhat analogous to dither in digital systems. In any case, I find that completely removing the surface noise from an LP transcription has a rather "deadening" effect to the sound. A small bit of surface noise seems to really help.
There. Enough. Just one more little thing for millercarbon. I just sold my old Technics SL-1700, still in good working order, two months ago. Got good money for it!
Technically, there is no reason whatsoever why Red Book CDs shouldn’t be superior to LPs in nearly every respect. Not that it’s perfect, but digital signal communication is superior in essentially all ways to analog.There are far more possible audio pitfalls along the way in the analog production of LPs from initial recording to playback. That the medium has been so perfected over the decades is remarkable.
THAT SAID, there are several often overlooked points where digital sound recording and production can be problematic, and where LPs have some ameliorating features.
FIRST, technically, jitter results from a very slight variation in the sample clock rate. In most cases, jitter is a non-issue that can and should be ignored. HOWEVER, any jitter that occurs during analog to digital conversion becomes hard coded into the digital file and AFAIK there is no way to remove it. Any mathematical manipulation of that jittery file necessarily assumes that the sample rate is completely constant. Thus, jitter can increasingly distort the digital sound as it’s processed, and it gets significantly worse the more times the music is bounced from digital to analog and back to digital as often happens in many studios. For the first few decades, ADC was often very jittery yet this problem was largely ignored. The result was that both DDD recordings and digital sound boards somehow just didn’t "sound right." Current technology has reduced jitter to vanishingly low levels so it’s ceased to be so much of a problem in digital recording for the last decade or so.
SECOND, very well produced and mastered digital recordings can sound unnaturally perfect. No one sits at the perfect distance from every instrument and vocalist in a perfect acoustic environment. Older LPs especially can sound more "real" simply because they haven’t been overly perfected.
THIRD, digital technology is wondrously powerful, but like the sorcerer’s apprentice it’s all too easy for it to be abused and get away from one in manifold ways. The "loudness wars" are but one infamous example. Again, the results can be untoward in ways that were never possible with analog recording and playback.
FOURTH, the types of distortion and significant limitations in analog recordings, LPs especially, are often rather congenial to the ear. Digital recording has a number of other technical concerns besides jitter which, while typically occurring at much lower and minimal levels, can be more subtly disturbing to the ear due to the intrinsic transparency and low noise floor of the digital medium. In this case, digital’s advantage may be something of a disadvantage.
LASTLY, there’s stochastic resonance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_resonance_%28sensory_neurobiology%29 Simply put, a certain amount of completely random noise can serve to amplify an otherwise undetectable low level signal. I’ve never seen this considered here, but I believe it’s a very significant reason why many people enjoy LPs and tapes. It’s that low surface noise or tape hiss that allow a person to more sense than hear that "inner detail" or whatever. Stochastic resonance in analog and biological systems is somewhat analogous to dither in digital systems. In any case, I find that completely removing the surface noise from an LP transcription has a rather "deadening" effect to the sound. A small bit of surface noise seems to really help.
There. Enough. Just one more little thing for millercarbon. I just sold my old Technics SL-1700, still in good working order, two months ago. Got good money for it!
