Is Vinyl better than CD?

[hemantwaghe]

I am sure if vinyl sales pick up Chinese will make fake records ..( Or are they already making?)

BTW fake records mentioned in novel Godfather if I am right. Really do not know if they were in existence.

 

[sachu888]

Hi,

I feel digital is more user friendly than analog(vinyl).Vinyl sound is more natural, if set up properly.I prefer vinyl over cd but again its matter of personal taste.

Regards

Sachin

 

[hemantwaghe]

Hi,

I feel digital is more user friendly than analog(vinyl).Vinyl sound is more natural, if set up properly.I prefer vinyl over cd but again its matter of personal taste.

Regards

Sachin

what hardware and setup u use?
have u bought and auditioned modern pressings ( in last 10 yers recordings?)
have you tested same album in both the formats?

 

[sachu888]

HI Hement,

I am using a budget setup.I have Technics -Sld303 with vintage Shure M55E cartridge.Tt is connected with vintage stereo integrated Technics Su 8022 Amplifier.I have auditioned many mid to high range cd players.My vinyl set up was very much comparable with them.

Regards,

Sachin

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Digital leads to piracy.

You might not have seen those LP sleaves with "Home taping is killing music" printed on them: in those days, they thought that the cassette tape led to "piracy". Of course, any sort of multiple, let alone mass, production of pirated vinyl on tape would have been a slow, slow job without specialist tape machinery.

In asking, quite a few posts ago, what might be developed in analogue sound reproduction, I was actually forgetting the non-vinyl alternatives already available. Digital has been the buzz word for decades now, and "analogue" has been absolutely sidelined, but... had tape quality gone as far as it could? Optical methods like the soundtrack on film? I still wonder what might have been.

 

[ajinkya]

Hi Venkat,

Could but I'd have to spend way too much time googling and reading up to pick out the relevant para and right now a tad occupied with an exam . If I remember right it was on this forum itself and in a Wikipedia article. In the Wiki article it was a para explaining why a part of the theorem couldn't be fulfilled in real life conditions. So if I remember right, it was more the implementation than the theorem that is at fault. That's the max I remember cos theorems are quite boring for me ain't a tech guy at all.

regards

edit: more than implementation it was I think ability to ever implement a part of it ever. seemed like a sort of permanent 'do not pass go' situation.

Control systems (of the kind that run your car, the electricity grid, the space probes like Chandrayaan, the robots that make your car....ad infinitum) use exactly the theorem we've been discussing, to sample sensor readings, and compute control signals. Every day...day after day...for years...and decades. Possibly will do so for centuries to come.

No controls (or signals or any engineer/scientist in a similar domain) has ever complained that the hardware prevents us from getting an accurate reading from sensors because of implementation limitations. That is just a wrong assumption and understanding of the theorem and how it works. What you may be saying is that digital filters cannot be implemented as in the textbook (sharp bandpasses are only approximated in any device). But that is true even for analog filters, unless you have some bandgap to let the filter attenuation go down smoothly.

The Nyquist-Shannon theorem is a fundamental relationship between the frequency of the original signal, and how much information (in time, not bits) is needed to reconstruct it accurately. Implementing a mathematical relationship (whether Nyquist or stress relations in flexible beams) is always limited by our engineering abilities to approximate ideal assumptions. That is the essence of any engineering discipline. I don't understand why this same debate keeps coming up on our forum, only for this particular theorem.

Have people who are engineers here forgotten how many approximations we make every time we design a machine to do our bidding, based on our idealised mathematical view of the Universe? And all these machines do work very well...within the parameters of our design assumptions.

Why is audio reproduction in such a hallowed space? There are more complicated things humans have created using less-than-ideal approximations to mathematical models. I think it's time for us audio enthusiasts to get off the high stool and take another look at the approximated (and still working well) world around us.

 

[sanjay0864]

One can debate this forever, but the fact is that the frequency response range of vinyl is very limited compared to an audio cd. In the lower frequency range, vinyl is very very limited and just cannot produce the kind of bass that audio cds can. Mind you this is just when comparing with a standard audio cd, if we start comparing with SACD then the difference is even greater. Bottom line is, technically audio cds are by far superior to vinyl. Ofcourse personal preference is an entirely seperate matter for that is independent of logic and technicalities.

 

[arj]

One can debate this forever, but the fact is that the frequency response range of vinyl is very limited compared to an audio cd. In the lower frequency range, vinyl is very very limited and just cannot produce the kind of bass that audio cds can. Mind you this is just when comparing with a standard audio cd, if we start comparing with SACD then the difference is even greater. Bottom line is, technically audio cds are by far superior to vinyl. Ofcourse personal preference is an entirely seperate matter for that is independent of logic and technicalities.

This is a very nice objective article on the comparison..

t appears that the vinylphile claims are not as outrageous as they seem: LPs do have a usable dynamic range far greater than the measured dynamic range would suggest, and LPs consistently have higher relative dynamics over digital formats. But it is also true that LPs have higher distortion levels which translate to ultrasonic frequency harmonics.

The question is: is the higher relative dynamics of LPs an indication of higher accuracy, or are LPs exaggerating transients and dynamics? I'm not sure, and I would welcome comments.

If LPs have higher distortion and are exaggerating dynamics, it may explain why the apparent "benefits" of LPs translate even into LP recordings, and potentially explain why LPs of digital recordings sound better than their CD equivalents.

 

[suri]

I don't understand why this same debate keeps coming up on our forum, only for this particular theorem.

that is because almost all of us on this forum know how to spell those words -
but do not know the import of the work done - or the application of the said theorem.

 

[reignofchaos]

One can debate this forever, but the fact is that the frequency response range of vinyl is very limited compared to an audio cd. In the lower frequency range, vinyl is very very limited and just cannot produce the kind of bass that audio cds can. Mind you this is just when comparing with a standard audio cd, if we start comparing with SACD then the difference is even greater. Bottom line is, technically audio cds are by far superior to vinyl. Ofcourse personal preference is an entirely seperate matter for that is independent of logic and technicalities.

Admit the fact that you've never heard a good turntable rig else you'd not point out fingers at the bass performance of vinyl. That is exactly the area where they excel compared to digital - they produce very natural, tactile bass. If you'd said they had grainy treble, I'd agree but they beat digital hollow when it comes to real world bass in spite of RIAA equalization rolling it off below 30-40'ish Hz.

 

[stevieboy]

Psychotropic,

Do read my post carefully, I wasn't suggesting the theorem doesn't work. This is what I was referring to. quoted from wiki.

"Practical considerations

A few consequences can be drawn from the theorem:

If the highest frequency B in the original signal is known, the theorem gives the lower bound on the sampling frequency for which perfect reconstruction can be assured. This lower bound to the sampling frequency, 2B, is called the Nyquist rate.
If instead the sampling frequency is known, the theorem gives us an upper bound for frequency components, B<fs/2, of the signal to allow for perfect reconstruction. This upper bound is the Nyquist frequency, denoted fN.
Both of these cases imply that the signal to be sampled must be bandlimited; that is, any component of this signal which has a frequency above a certain bound should be zero, or at least sufficiently close to zero to allow us to neglect its influence on the resulting reconstruction. In the first case, the condition of bandlimitation of the sampled signal can be accomplished by assuming a model of the signal which can be analysed in terms of the frequency components it contains; for example, sounds that are made by a speaking human normally contain very small frequency components at or above 10 kHz and it is then sufficient to sample such an audio signal with a sampling frequency of at least 20 kHz. For the second case, we have to assure that the sampled signal is bandlimited such that frequency components at or above half of the sampling frequency can be neglected. This is usually accomplished by means of a suitable low-pass filter; for example, if it is desired to sample speech waveforms at 8 kHz, the signals should first be lowpass filtered to below 4 kHz.
In practice, neither of the two statements of the sampling theorem described above can be completely satisfied, and neither can the reconstruction formula be precisely implemented. The reconstruction process that involves scaled and delayed sinc functions can be described as ideal. It cannot be realized in practice since it implies that each sample contributes to the reconstructed signal at almost all time points, requiring summing an infinite number of terms. Instead, some type of approximation of the sinc functions, finite in length, has to be used. The error that corresponds to the sinc-function approximation is referred to as interpolation error. Practical digital-to-analog converters produce neither scaled and delayed sinc functions nor ideal impulses (that if ideally low-pass filtered would yield the original signal), but a sequence of scaled and delayed rectangular pulses. This practical piecewise-constant output can be modeled as a zero-order hold filter driven by the sequence of scaled and delayed dirac impulses referred to in the mathematical basis section below. A shaping filter is sometimes used after the DAC with zero-order hold to make a better overall approximation.
Furthermore, in practice, a signal can never be perfectly bandlimited, since ideal "brick-wall" filters cannot be realized. All practical filters can only attenuate frequencies outside a certain range, not remove them entirely. In addition to this, a "time-limited" signal can never be bandlimited. This means that even if an ideal reconstruction could be made, the reconstructed signal would not be exactly the original signal. The error that corresponds to the failure of bandlimitation is referred to as aliasing.
The sampling theorem does not say what happens when the conditions and procedures are not exactly met, but its proof suggests an analytical framework in which the non-ideality can be studied. A designer of a system that deals with sampling and reconstruction processes needs a thorough understanding of the signal to be sampled, in particular its frequency content, the sampling frequency, how the signal is reconstructed in terms of interpolation, and the requirement for the total reconstruction error, including aliasing, sampling, interpolation and other errors. These properties and parameters may need to be carefully tuned in order to obtain a useful system."

I'm sure someone knowledgeable like ajinkya could clarify further. The way I understand it is yes tons of applications could be made in daily life like ajinkya suggests but they would not be as perfect as they could have been. Workable yes, perfect no.

regards

 

[stevieboy]

At very high sampling rates, even a testing instrument cannot differentiate between the original wave and the ADC-DAC converted wave, leave alone a human ear. Thus if one says that even at this high level of sampling, a vinyl sounds better - the response is very subjective.

Ah Venkat,

You seem to place higher faith in a testing device than the human ear. sigh.

 

[suri]

Ah Venkat,

You seem to place higher faith in a testing device than the human ear. sigh.

aaaaaaaaaaah!
stevieboy!
the wonders that god has wrought - are beyond human ken!

 

[Asit]

Hi all,

I do not want to get into the debate of whether vinyl sounds better than CDs or vice versa. CDs are convenient. But a carefully implemented TT system can be magical and can have a natural texture to the sound that is very hard to achieve otherwise. Given the quality of the source material and the equipments I can enjoy both CDs and vinyls.

The above issue regarding music is one and is not the type likely to be resolved any time soon, not just here in hifivision but worldwide. On the other hand, the on-going discussion about the sampling theorem is another matter. It is a matter of mathematics and there should not be any confusion about it.

It IS wrong to think that just because engineers cannot build a perfect digital filter, the sampling theorem cannot be implemented perfectly in practice. Even if engineers could build a perfect filter, the theorem would not be implemented perfectly in practice. There are other reasons for the theorem not being implementable perfectly in reality. I explained this in detail in a thread in this forum here http://www.hifivision.com/phono-tur...-vinyl-sounds-better-digital-4.html#post37340 . When forum member ajinkya-ji raised doubts about reasonings of that post of mine, I answered back with this post http://www.hifivision.com/phono-tur...-vinyl-sounds-better-digital-4.html#post37340 in the same thread. I apologize for the technical nature of these posts, especially the second one, but that could not be helped, because the issue concerns mathematics which by definition is a technical subject beyond a certain level.

Some time later our forum member gobble-ji created a thread http://www.hifivision.com/phono-tur...-vinyl-sounds-better-digital-4.html#post37340 in this forum where he basically gave a link to a very very interesting article (http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpres...estoration.pdf).

I am a physicist by profession and not a mathematician. But because I am a theoretical physicist, I know a bit of mathematics and my two posts referred to above were written from that background after taking a quick look at the proof of the theorem. But I was still in my mind searching for real evidence. Thanks to the article referenced by gobble-ji, I found that piece of evidence in page 29 of that article, it says:
".. if perfect filters are approached by careful engineering, another mathematical theorem called the Gibbs effect may distort the resulting waveshapes.
An analogue square-wave signal will acquire ripples along its top and bottom edges, looking exactly like a high-frequency resonance."

The article then goes on and describes how oversampling is needed to overcome the Gibbs effect.

I looked up this "Gibbs effect" in the literature, even wiki has it Gibbs phenomenon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . It turns out that the general phenomenon of this kind was first discovered more than 150 years ago, and in 1898 Gibbs wrote a paper on it from theory of Fourier series.

Anyway, my general reasoning based on the simple fact that one cannot get infinite amount of information from a finite amount of data seems to hold water. I did not want to make a noise about my findings on the Gibbs effect then, but now that the same wrong arguments have surfaced again, I want to lay down the mathematical facts. Anybody who knows and uses Fourier transforms should be able to understand the reasoning with a bit of effort.

Let me say at the end that I honestly do not think it plays a huge role in determining whether vinyls or CDs sound better than each other, if both are recorded and played well. Of course it plays a role in the basic designs of the CDPs, DVDPs, camera sensors and a whole lot other things as more knowledgable members have already stated.

Regards.

 

[venkatcr]

You seem to place higher faith in a testing device than the human ear. sigh.

Simply because an instrument is not subjective, and has a much larger capability across the frequency spectrum that the human ear can never match. I have said this before, but this is one of the reasons I like Stereophile reviews. Their human reviews are always backed by simple scientific testing. They do not have 100% belief in their own 'experienced' ears. It is easy for a trained human ear to identify a flaw in an audio delivery. But beyond a certain level of, let us say perfection in the delivery, the reviewers' words start to get meaningless.

Cheers

 

[Rajiv]

Simply because an instrument is not subjective, and has a much larger capability across the frequency spectrum that the human ear can never match. I have said this before, but this is one of the reasons I like Stereophile reviews. Their human reviews are always backed by simple scientific testing. They do not have 100% belief in their own 'experienced' ears. It is easy for a trained human ear to identify a flaw in an audio delivery. But beyond a certain level of, let us say perfection in the delivery, the reviewers' words start to get meaningless.

Hi,

"The purpose of audio is the communication of the original musical inspiration rather than simply obtaining impressive measurement results."


Rajiv

 

[viren bakhshi]

Hi,

This is also from "stereophile" :

In the March 2006 issue of Stereophile, Art Dudley reviews the Yamamoto A-08 power amplifier. This is a tube SET amp made by Yamamoto Sound Craft of Japan. Let me paraphrase Art: "The Yamamoto A-08 was fun to have, fun to use, fun to look at, fun to swap tubes in and out of, and, most of all, fun to listen to. ... The Yamamoto A-08 is a fine alternative to dense, boring, unmusical high-end audio products. It stands with other handcrafted amplifiers in its aspiration to transmit the soul of music by embodying some of the soul of its maker. That's all there is to it, really: It has soul."

And here's John Atkinson's take on it in the Measurements section: "The spectrum of distortion is heavily second-harmonic, though at low frequencies, odd-order harmonics are also apparent. ... The A-08 performed dismally on the high-frequency intermodulation test... I don't think I need say anything more about the Yamamoto A-08's measured performance. It does look very handsome and it is beautifully made."

Whose take would you take home with you?

Though the example is that of of an amp, the same reasoning would amply to all audio equipment.

Regards,
Viren

 

[Rajiv]

Hi,

More from Stereophile

Review of the Cary 300SEI.

"A joke?
I could be kind and use the phrase "less than ideal" to describe the 300SEI's technical performance. But I'll tell it like it is: this amplifier measures so poorly it's a joke. The large (more than 4dB) frequency-response aberrations when driving a reactive load, ridiculously high output impedance (more than 4 ohms), ultrahigh distortion levels, and severely limited output power are all contrary to what we consider good technical performance.

I can easily imagine the non-listening audio-engineering community looking at these measurement results and laughing at audiophiles who must "like the sound of distortion." But after close critical scrutinyboth in the listening room and the test labI'm convinced that the 300SEI doesn't harm the signal in some of the ways push-pull amplifiers do, and that what the 300SEI does right is beyond the ability of today's traditional measurements to quantify. Further, I didn't enjoy the 300SEI so much musically merely because it introduced frequency-response deviations and added lots of low-order harmonic distortion. Instead, the 300SEI's fundamental musical rightness overcame its limitations."Robert Harley

Dennis Had in Stereophile in the review of the Cary 805

"I could have made the CAD-805C measure better," a cheerful Dennis Had told me. "But when I tried that, the magic went out the window."


Regards
Rajiv

 

[gannyboy]

well there s also this famous quote that says ' listening to vinyl is making love and to digital sources is like having sex'...both are physical processes but there s this physiological parameter called 'emotions' involved that cannot be measured....we can leave things at that and do what our heart and mind say which is purely subjective but best for the individual.

 

[malvai]

Admit the fact that you've never heard a good turntable rig else you'd not point out fingers at the bass performance of vinyl. That is exactly the area where they excel compared to digital - they produce very natural, tactile bass. If you'd said they had grainy treble, I'd agree but they beat digital hollow when it comes to real world bass in spite of RIAA equalization rolling it off below 30-40'ish Hz.

Bang on! CD's just don't deliver on BASS like vinyl's do! The HF's though, can be rolled off if the right cartridge is not aligned correct and many other factors.... but the bass oh my my... its something else!