2. analog
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Is a vinyl rig only worth it for oldies?

I have always been curious about vinyl and its touted superiority over digital, so I decided to try it for myself. Over the course of the past several years I bought a few turntables, phono stages, and a bunch of new albums. They sounded fine I thought, but didn't stomp all over digital like some would tend to believe.

It wasn't until I popped on some old disk that I picked up used from a garage sale somewhere that I heard what vinyl was really about: it was the smoothest, most organic, and 3d sound that ever came out of my speakers. I had never heard anything quite like it. All of the digital I had, no matter how high the resolution, did not really come close to approaching that type of sound.

Out of the handful of albums I have from the 70s-80s, most of them have this type of sound. Problem is, most of my music and preferences are new releases (not necessarily in an audiophile genre) or stuff from the past decade and these albums sounded like music from a CD player but with the added noise, pops, clicks, higher price, and inconveniences inherent with vinyl. Of all the new albums I bought recently, only two sounded like they were mastered in the analog domain.

It seems that almost anything released after the 2000's (except audiophile reissues) sounded like music from a CD player of some sort, only worse due to the added noise making the CD version superior. I have experienced this on a variety of turntables, and this was even true in a friend's setup with a high end TT/cart.

So my question is, is vinyl only good for older pre-80s music when mastering was still analog and not all digital?
solman989
lowrider57's avatar
lowrider57
5,417 posts
 
Rauliruegas, a very good explanation of the analog signal path and I understand your rationale for enjoying digital.
BUT, your analog setup is so beautiful I hope you are still using it. I can only dream of a setup like that.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,935 posts
 
Then the signal is trasfered to vinyl with all imperfections where does not exist a perfect cutting system, here there is several kind of signal loses: certainly what is in the recording was not what was recorded before all that proccess.

Raul, I would invite you to spend some time with a mastering lathe sometime. It may change your opinion!

The lathe can cut anything! It has dynamic range that must be very much in the range of the human ear itself- certainly far beyond that of any digital. It is this unlimited quality about them that makes them tricky to work with, as the cartridges and tone arms are the area where you have severe limited imposed- bandwidth, dynamic range, distortion and the like. The ability of the engineer to understand what can be reproduced is the mark of a good engineer.

But in general, the processing done by an LP mastering machine is minuscule compared to the damage done by an analog to digital converter, and all the digital process that follows.

There are those that say its a miracle that the LP system works, but its not a miracle, its simple engineering and an understanding of the nuances.
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rauliruegas
13,103 posts
 
Dear Lowrider57: I'm a music lover and I still enjoy my analog set up but I'm not talking of what we like or dislike but more what is " right " against what is " wrong ".

IMHO we can't cover up the sun one " one finger ", we have to understand what happen in each one of our analog rigs during playback and IMHO what happen there is that those " " hundreds " links where the signal must pass degrade distort colored the cartridge signal where in de digital medium does not happen in that huge way.

The analog LP medium IMHO is not only imperfect ( nothing is perfect not even digital. ) but extremely faulty during playback.

Anyway, like all of you I'm still enjoy it.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,407 posts
 
I tend to agree with Raul's latest stated position on both digital and vinyl.

DIgital signal processing is much more flexible and accurate in general than analog. I doubt anybody familiar with both technologies in detail could dispute that? CD redbook specifically was a compromise format but one that was well thought out and is now quite mature and very well executed for the most part these days. The potential for digital audio is wide open from a technology perspective. What happens will mostly be determined by the usually open market business drivers as determined by what people want and are willing to pay for.

On the other hand, the 331/3 vinyl format may have some untapped potential still as well that can be realized still by modern technology, but most of what occurs here will be quite expensive and not to far removed from a laboratory experiment in terms of complexity and cost and is not likely to find a wide market, especially as digital continues to evolve.

HEy, look, I'm an old time vinyl record playing lover, but the facts are facts. Some things continue to progress due to the value proposition and some do not. BEtween digital and vinyl, guess which one will continue to progress in a manner that works well for most? In many cases, the gap has already been closed between 331/3 vinyl and digital and digital is obviously continuing to move ahead at warp speed while vinyl is barely moving on the grand scale of things.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,935 posts
 
Hi Mapman, I can't agree with you on the 'laboratory experiment' comment. We have a cutting lathe that we set up with the stock electronics, then we substituted a variety of amplifiers and did the same cut with each of them.

You can take that lacquer and thus hear the difference between the amps on any system. We are now using our own amps that we modified for this purpose (the mods were only to make the amplifier easier to use with the cutter and were very slight).

It was easy! And also an advancement- we now have the world's first transformer-less vacuum tube cutting system.

If you were to talk to Acoustic Sounds, you would find that they have found a variety of ways to improve the pressing machines as well. These are all easy changes, the only reason you don't see more people doing them at various plants is that they are too busy to take the gear out of service!
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