Article: "Spin Me Round: Why Vinyl is Better Than Digital"

Raspberries taste better than strawberries.

No, strawberries taste better than raspberries.

You need more concentration when reading posts...

Some argue about raspberries or strawberries.... It has never been my point by the way...


My point is lost because people understand thing only if we speak in binary alternatives...

Anyway i miss my work it seems..... 😁

Arguing with ghosts.....

But twoleftears i wish you the best and thanks for your last musical recommendation....

Just what, exactly, is so controversial about the use of the term “micro dynamic nuance”?  I doubt very much that I am the first person to ever use that term.  However, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I am the first to use this “made up” term.  Let’s see:

“Micro dynamic nuance”.  I think we can agree that the term “micro dynamics” is a term commonly used in audiophile parlance.  The notion, if not the actual term, is commonly used by musicians.  So, within the realm of the micro dynamics in a performance, or how a piece of gear or format is able to convey micro dynamics there can be “nuance”.  No?  The term describes the very fine gradations of micro dynamics present or not.  The perfectly gradated crescendo made by a string section playing Mahler, or the extremely fine gradations of volume in a beautifully executed phrase by a solo flute for example.  The difference between pppp and ppp; or ff and fff.  So, again, just what is so controversial, or offensive, about the use of term “micro dynamic nuance”?  Oh, wait, I get it, “recording engineers don’t use the term”. Well, I could simply say, “I rest my case”, but I will expound.  

Just what on earth does the fact that recording engineers don’t use the term prove or have to do with anything?  I have worked with some recording engineers who are absolutely clueless when it comes to some of the aspects of sound that astute audiophiles, never mind musicians, concern themselves with.  This should come as no surprise to anyone when one considers the sonic quality of many recordings.  Obviously, there are and have been many great engineers.  However, as in any endeavor there are also many marginally capable ones and some who are absolutely terrible.  Just as in the world of the audiophile there are engineers who are simply gear heads and don’t have a grasp of.....here it comes.....the “nuances” of a musical performance.  They may have “intimate knowledge of the recording process”, but they do so only in the technical sense.  I can’t begin to describe how many times I have told a recording engineer: “please, try putting the mic here instead you’ll get a better sound from me” and been proven correct.  Of course, often one only gets a dirty look or even told to mind one’s own business.  It IS my business.  Just two weeks before the COVID lock down, I was at a recording session with a twenty five piece orchestra at one of the sadly few remaining studios in NYC that can accommodate an ensemble of that size.  I could clearly hear that my mic was breaking up during loud passages.  I kept trying to point this out to the engineer and got the “mind your own business” attitude.  I gave up.  Not my dime.  Guess what phone call I got the next day asking me to go back in for some retakes?  To those who often question why musicians don’t have better playback equipment at home, you would be shocked at what some recording engineers consider to be SOTA playback equipment.  Please note that I said “some”.  As I said there are many very fine engineers.  

Now, and this is why I don’t like to relate these discussions to my professional experiences.  The fact is that the level of nuance (there’s that pesky term again) that most musicians concern themselves with in the sound of musical instruments and ancillary gear when choosing their personal instruments is much more subtle and varied than most of what gets discussed among audiophiles and by some of the engineers that I have had experience with.  This, when discussing the various sound characteristics of sound equipment.  Then there is the issue of nuance (sorry) in performance: phrasing, pitch,  timbre, ensemble (playing with others) to name a few; all which, for a good musician, have to be even more nuanced (☺️) for there to be a credible performance.  

It is true that a player (or singer) does not always have a clear sense of he actually sounds like in the room due to the proximity of the instrument to that musician’s ears.  Again, so what?  This assertion mistakenly assumes that this type of comparison is made only when considering one’s own sound.  This is nonsense.  In the realm of acoustic music such as chamber and orchestral “Classical” music and acoustic Jazz, musicians are often obsessive about having trusted colleagues describe what they hear in each others’ sound while performing and while recording.  

Once again it is shown that dependence on “evidence” is pure folly.  Sound familiar?  There is no sonic difference between cables, right?  Ignore what your ears tell you and show me the “evidence” that there is.  Right.  



 

I discuss 4 days, none of my arguments were answered at all...

Timbre concept was dimiss being an euphonic "taste" or a subjective superficial color on top of the "accurate" objective "sound". 


For example : no microphone choices is perfect, it is a trade-off and the possible locations are numerous...

Then no recording process could be a PERFECT timbre musical dynamic reproduction....( i will not count for a loss the mixing works but there is a loss also there)

Then a musician or an audiophile will evaluate positively his instrumental timbre experience with his chosen format, ONLY in the optimal acoustical conditions of his listening room... His experience is not a reproduction but an always more or less successful recreation of a timbre experience and dynamics, phrase, from a chosen format in a SPECIFIC acoustical listening room and specific hi-fi system with his specific right embeddings dimensions or the lack of........

My point is the installation of the electrical, mechanical and acoustical treatment and controls are more important to the recreation of the live event for an audiophile in his listening room than the choice of the digital format recording under ONLY the pretext of his mathematical " accurate" translation from the microphones to the speakers... Accurate in bits does not equal automatically accurate for the ears in a concrete room...More than that any audio system work optimally ONLY if its mechanical and electrical embeddings and the acoustical dimension are well under control....




The reason why i argued with him was his judgement about all turntable owners to be deluded by their illusory "taste" or only ignorant, all that by virtue of a very well known theorem that assure us that the translation from the analog microphone to the digital format and his retranslation to the speakers are "accurate" mathematically( a reverse microphone) All that forgetting about the right conditions necessary to live or recreate the musical concrete timbre experience...

A dynamical timbre living event in the acoustical space in his own timing dimension resemble more to a cell than to a mass of bits, even accurate....

Music need sound but is not only sound, it is an embodied sound...A conscious historical event ( said Ernest Ansermet mathematician and one of the greatest maestro writer of the most important book about music in the last century, by the way, i read it try this 1000 pages book 😊). Is Ansermet lying? 😁

My point was that musical timbre dynamic of a playing musician CANNOT be totally perfectly recorded...Then no format can reproduce PURELY the original... But it seems to many people that perhaps analog format is more robust than digital with this lost of information at the recording moment by microphone choices and locations...I dont know that for sure...You are in a better place than me to know that frogman....

My main point is controlling the mechanical and electrical and acoustical dimensions of the audio system are more important for me than the format even if it is a digital one...This i know for sure....

No speakers can beat the room, no microphones can perfectly digest an instrument, no audio system can work great without being rightfully embedded in these 3 dimensions where it work.....

A lived event can be recreated more or less perfectly not perfectly reproduced....I use the term recreatebecause there ia always something that will be added and substracted from the live original event...Our best hope are then a relative recreation not a perfect reproduction ....

Frogman, for all your experience you still don't get this recording and playback process. I am glad you complained about microphone position. Few recording engineers are overly familiar with effective live ensemble recording. They know what they were taught but can't visually the sound field and make bad decisions.

However it's all moot. The only thing you can record is what reaches the microphone. All else is periphery and deflection. If you want to accurately capture what reaches that microphone analog does not do that and has not need as good at doing that for 2+ decades.

When you accept that digital can record and playback vinyl without being able to tell the two apart you have to accept that vinyl is no more colorations or a transfer function of you will no different from the many used day in and day out in the recording industry. You may play an instrument but you seem oblivious to what happens after the sound reaches the microphone.