Vinyl is not obsolete, Will CD become obsolete ?

[Rodney gold]

Werner , I have to agree that CD rate is probably adequate , I have heard some wonderfully recorded CD rate music and would be happy to have all my music at that quality.
I actually have some recordings in normal and High rez and have tried to compare. Problem has mostly been that the 2 are not at the same level , often the High Rez is a bit softer , so a meaningful AB comparison switching between the 2 on my Squeezebox or system is difficult. A few also have or seem to have different mastering.
Still, I would feel more comfortable knowing that the signal hasn't been "dumbed down" to fit on a CD....

The real issue here is that the miniscule audiophile market is not really meaningful and they have very little influence on future trends.
I think more insight into whats going to happen re formats and carriers in the future can be gained by observing my 17 yr old daughters habits and preferences rather than mine.

 

[Mikas]

There's room for all 3 formats imho.

I would say two formats. Analogue recorded in vinyl and digital, either CD's or media files.

It will not be an overnight transition whatever happens.

Young people will have more trouble to adopt CDs. They're already used to digital audio and they will hardly see advantages in the CD support because they never got the feeling for the physical object.

Remember 2011 was the first year that digital files surpass 50% of total music sold in the US.
So, yes I believe we will have a rather faster transition due to CD sales drop off.
That doesn't mean they will completely stop producing them anytime soon.

Michael

 

[Evil Emperor]

There is a difference between sampling rate and bit depth , I would venture to say that 24/44 or 24/48 is sufficient , but a 16 bit format is not suitable , especially if there is ANY dsp involved and there is a lot of DSP involved in mastering.
However there is no real problem in using much higher bit depth and sampling rate , the limitation is the carrier medium and effectively computer based audio has no limitation unlike a CD.
I don't understand the objections to using "overkill" in terms of Digital signals, surely we all wan't our music to be in a format that is as "good as it can get" rather than "just adequate" ?

Define 'we'.

If you mean 'us', then yes. Hi-fi enthusiasts will always want a format that is as good as it can get. Or rather, hi-fi enthusiasts will always want the outgoing format to be as good as it got; whatever's new and popular is always a step in the wrong direction, irrespective of actual quality. People have been doing that since we moved from Edison cylinders.

If you try to include record collectors in that quality-demanding argument, then the answer is no. A hardcore record collector is only vaguely interested in the quality of the sound of the format. It's the collecting that takes precedence; collectors work themselves into a frenzy over rarity or typology. The quality of the content is at most a secondary concern.

And if you try to include anyone who listens to recorded music, you are very much mistaken. For the majority, music is a commodity to be acquired, played, traded and discarded without any consideration to its quality. Today, the biggest supplier of music is YouTube, because it's free, it's ubiquitous and it has video content. Teenagers convert YouTube files to MP3 using things like Audioro on their Blackberry phones - they sound disgusting, but they don't care.

 

[Plutox]

I actually have some recordings in normal and High rez and have tried to compare. Problem has mostly been that the 2 are not at the same level , often the High Rez is a bit softer

I will quite happily convert hi-res material down to 16/44 and challenge you, or anybody else, to distinguish the two by listening alone. 99% of the time there is simply no audible difference.

 

[I.D.C.]

"Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48"

Explain to me, then, why everyone - hifi enthusiast or not - reacts more favourably to the DVD-As that I play them in preference to the standard CDs ...

Is there anyone out there who will stand up and say, having listened to both, that they find their Hi-Res, DVD-A or SACDs to be 'slightly inferior' to their CDs ...........?

You are right
I have around 40 studio master 24bit albums. When Wilco brought out there new album
‘The Whole Love’ I purchased the CD and burnt it onto the Naz. A few months later the 24bit studio master came out so down loaded that also. The difference is very obvious when listening back to back. Have done this with a few albums , you pay a premium price for 24bit just now. Do you really think I would pay the extra cost if the difference in sound quality was very close ? Obviously your equipment comes into this also. SACD players play back 24bit recordings also and are superior to CD.
You have to ask yourself this. Is downloading good business sense for the music industry ?It has to be as costs can be brought down to the minimum. No destitution required , no factories required for the production of CD, No album covers need to be printed. This all adds up to bigger probability so it’s not rocket science.

So why has vinyl not disappeared? There are a hard core of people within the music industry who are enthusiasts for the vinyl and keep it alive. It’s understandable simply because it’s the best sound quality you can get. Our ears hear in analog our hearing system is not digital.
iTunes are working in conjunction with Linn at the moment on their computer systems to start selling 24bit. A bunch of growing musicians are demanding that there music should be on 24bit. Neil Youngs exact words were I want my fans to hear how my music sounds in the recording studio not to be compressed in any way such as CD and MP3.
The CD is flawed has been since day one with error correction and spinning jitter. The CD will be produced for a few years yet but it will be faded out for sure.

 

[Rodney gold]

Semantic pedantry... obviously I misspelled we , should be wee....clearly I was taking the p-ss...

Plutox , what you issuing the challenge to me for? .. I didn't say I can hear a difference. One probably can't reliably hear a difference between 1% and 0.1% distortion or a 256 mp3 and wav ..
If some of you are happy with the lowest common denominator and mediocrity , so be it

 

[Evil Emperor]

I'd agree with that, and that tends to be the way technology develops. I can't see anyone having any real grounds for objecting to advancements in digital audio. Equally though, I cannot see an argument for making vinyl or CD's obsolescent, since many people have vast collections of music and won't be transferring to digital files any-time soon.

I don't understand how this elitist attitude of one being "obviously" vastly superior to the other stems from either. I've heard LP recordings that knock spots off their digital counterparts but I have also heard some wonderful digital audio do the opposite. When it comes to music reproduction, there seems to be very little obvious advantage sonically between a well recorded and kept LP being played back on carefully set up quality kit and a decent digital audio file played back on decent kit.

The other point being missed (completely) by die-hard digital audio fans is that it isn't all about the music to some people. Many (if not most) fans of LPs like the whole tactile nature of vinyl playback, the art-meets-engineering of the physical playback systems and the ability to tune (colour) the sound to personal taste with an almost endless variability in choice of ancillaries (I used to see this as a disadvantage of vinyl but have accepted that sonic attributes boil down to subjective choices once a certain standard of fidelity is reached).

For a majority of my own LP's though, the condition is far from pristine, so digital win out on S/N ratio big time, but not always on dynamics nor importantly on the recording (especially where classical is concerned where there have been some standout performances not yet captured or committed to digital). Like with LP technology, the theory is there and the theory is sound but ultimately it's just as limited in some ways due to the variability in recording and mastering standards.

There's room for all 3 formats imho. LP will be here for a long while yet (in fact there's been quite a resurgence in just the past 3 years in terms of world-wide sales) and CD I guess will be around for as long as the technology is cheap to produce (ie as long as CD roms continue to be produced for computers) and even beyond that to service the market for those with large CD collections.

It will not be an overnight transition whatever happens.

Unfortunately, that just means progress marches over them. The "too big to fail" argument might help prop up a bank or two, but it's at best a temporary crutch.

If you were viewing electrification from the position of someone 120 years ago, there were too many people with gas lighting to see the move to electric light in the home being a resounding success.

How many people had a wall full of VHS tapes? How many of those still have a wall full of VHS tapes? That all but vanished in less than a decade.

Superiority of one format over the other or the joys of collecting are essentially side issues. A generation from now, people will be looking back at that twee time when everyone had shelves full of books, records and CDs. Yes, there will always be collectors, but it's becoming a minority interest even now.

 

[Plutox]

Plutox , what you issuing the challenge to me for? .. I didn't say I can hear a difference

I'm issuing a general challenge to anybody who believes that there is an audible difference between material rendered in hi-res (say 24/96) and the same material rendered in 16/44.

 

[Mikas]

For those who are interested, Linn Records have samples to try out the different resolution:
http://www.linnrecords.com/linn-downloads-testfiles.aspx

However, being a High Res audio seller, we could always argue that maybe there was some tampering. I prefer to believe that Linn wouldn't do such a thing.


Michael

 

[I.D.C.]

I'm issuing a general challenge to anybody who believes that there is an audible difference between material rendered in hi-res (say 24/96) and the same material rendered in 16/44.

Ok so there is no difference between a 24bit download – DVD-Audio – SACD player against a CD that’s your argument right ? Maybe you have been listening to loud music for too long and as such is affecting your hearing. You should challenge yourself go out and audition back to back recordings of the same track in 24bit and 16bit. I have heard difference so put my 3,00 odd cd's to one position and spent a small fortune on a DS set up in the name of better sound.

 

[darrenyeats]

surely we all wan't our music to be in a format that is as "good as it can get" rather than "just adequate" ?

One would think so wouldn't one? But, counter-intuitively, there are strong arguments that a 44.1/48kHz sampling rate will sound BETTER than higher sampling rates AS A PLAYBACK FORMAT (NOT necessarily for recording purposes in the studio).

It doesn't make sense at first but there are solid arguments for it.
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Digital audio doesn't work in an intuitive way.
Darren

 

[darrenyeats]

Newsflash. It's all about the mastering!

Mainstream music mores are tending to kill sound quality for digital because it is the mainstream format e.g. Loudness War.

Vinyl and SACD benefit purely from not being the mainstream format that is used for airplay. Because they are targeted at the audiophile segment they don't get brickwalled and they tend to be mastered with more care.

In an alternate universe, if vinyl became mainstream enough to be used for airplay then it would tend to get mastered for airplay*.

In the meantime (a) audiophiles can enjoy their vinyl, which I have no problem with, and (b) continue to preach how vinyl is superior to digital audio, a view akin to believing literally that the earth is flat.
Darren

*I refer to mass-marketing including radio, online videos, streaming services etc. (Yes, the alternate universe would require some kind of vinyl delivery system for YouTube!)

 

[formbypc]

Basically yes; it's a consequence of the sampling theorem. If a band- limited signal can be reproduced perfectly from samples at 44.1 then there's no point sampling at a higher rate. Even hi fi news gets that which is why they expose hi Rez downloads which are bandlimited to 22 kHz or so.

There is a separate question as to what is an acceptable band limit and another one about how accurate the samples have to be.

That's not why HiFi News are analysing the downloads. They're not analysing them to prove that 44.1 is perfect, they're trying to expose which ones are falsely marketed as Hi Res ....

 

[Werner]

It doesn't make sense at first but there are solid arguments for it.

Er, no. Nothing solid.

That article has its value, since it describes many phenomena in a mostly correct way.

But it has two great flaws:

1) the silly title

2) " practical fidelity is slightly worse. The ultrasonics are a liability during playback. "

Half-decent amplifiers and loudspeakers are not allergic to mild amounts of ultrasonics, especially not close to 20kHz. Hi-res, at worst, really is harmless.

And if it were not, for the cited reasons, then these would apply too to analogue studio masters (tape stretches to 30kHz, on a good day) and especially LP, as the tracing process of the stylus generates a huge swath of mainly ultrasonic distortion components.

 

[Plutox]

Ok so there is no difference between a 24bit download – DVD-Audio – SACD player against a CD that’s your argument right ? Maybe you have been listening to loud music for too long and as such is affecting your hearing.

I did not say that - kindly read my posts properly before impugning my listening skill or hearing.

I merely said that I can convert anything you choose to 16/44 and you will be unable to distinguish the two by listening alone.

I cannot possibly account for differences between different formats purchased by you. Perhaps they are supposed to be the same, perhaps they are the progeny of entirely different masters. Who knows?

 

[darrenyeats]

the cited reasons ... would apply too to analogue studio masters (tape stretches to 30kHz, on a good day) and especially LP, as the tracing process of the stylus generates a huge swath of mainly ultrasonic distortion components.

Well ... who says they don't? By the way, I refer to playback in my previous post (I wrote it in capitals to be fair) and here.

 

[Evil Emperor]

You are right
I have around 40 studio master 24bit albums. When Wilco brought out there new album
‘The Whole Love’ I purchased the CD and burnt it onto the Naz. A few months later the 24bit studio master came out so down loaded that also. The difference is very obvious when listening back to back. Have done this with a few albums , you pay a premium price for 24bit just now. Do you really think I would pay the extra cost if the difference in sound quality was very close ? Obviously your equipment comes into this also. SACD players play back 24bit recordings also and are superior to CD.
You have to ask yourself this. Is downloading good business sense for the music industry ?It has to be as costs can be brought down to the minimum. No destitution required , no factories required for the production of CD, No album covers need to be printed. This all adds up to bigger probability so it’s not rocket science every moves to probability.

So why has vinyl not disappeared? There are a hard core of people within the music industry who are enthusiasts for the vinyl and keep it alive. It’s understandable simply because it’s the best sound quality you can get. Our ears hear in analog our hearing system is not digital.
iTunes are working in conjunction with Linn at the moment on their computer systems to start selling 24bit. A bunch of growing musicians are demanding that there music should be on 24bit. Neil Youngs exact words were I want my fans to hear how my music sounds in the recording studio not to be compressed in any way such as CD and MP3.
The CD is flawed has been since day one with error correction and spinning jitter. The CD will be produced for a few years yet but it will be faded out for sure.

Oh good grief. So much wrong in so few words...

1. When you are listening to the CD copy and the 24bit Studio Master, are you listening to the same master in both cases? The chances are you are not, and that will significantly cloud your judgment
2. If you are paying a premium, you are expecting a premium product. That not only clouds your judgment, but influences those making the masters ("this is the audiophile master, which goes to snooty, sound obsessed types who pay massively over the odds, so you had better do a good job!")
3. If one master is just a bit louder than the other, you will prefer it
4. Alternately, if one is significantly quieter than the other, you will think the quieter is the more 'considered' and therefore better, especially in classical music
5. When compared 'cetaris paribus', the differences between 16/44 and hi-res magically disappear
6. LP is a collector's format. It's been kept alive by the collector's love of collecting more than the audiophile's love of sound quality. The 'it sounds better' arguments are frequently debunked, but the debunking is swept aside by a Creationist-grade "I don't care" counter argument from the vinyl junkies
7. Neil Young is an old curmudgeon who has about as much understanding of how digital works as I have of why Neil Young remains popular
8. So a format that has error correction is better than one that demands personal error correction ("oh, you learn to listen past the pops and crackles and the jumps and the track damage and the build-up of fuzz on the needle")
9. I'd rather have a few picoseconds of jitter (that I can't hear) than end of side distortion (that I can)
10. AFAIK, Linn and Apple are not in discussions about 24bit. Linn's boss blogged about the rumour about Apple going to 24-bit in 2011. This was a mistaken reading of the Mastered For iTunes standards document, which recommends tracks submitted to Apple for the 'Mastered For iTunes' logo be submitted in 24/96, but this is to standardise Apple's encoding process. The same document also suggests files should be mastered with Sound Check taken into account, something that is anathema to the likes of Linn (this part is conveniently overlooked).

 

[formbypc]

The formal proof is public. It is very solid and really not subject to debate.

1) when it comes to 44.1kHz: is a 22kHz bandwidth sufficient for the transparent delivery of music to the vast majority of target listeners?

The need for hi-res in a delivery format can be debated, though.

sorry, I don't accept the argument that 44.1 delivery is as good as 96k merely because it satisfies many of a 'target' market ...

 

[adamdea]

I don't understand the objections to using "overkill" in terms of Digital signals, surely we all wan't our music to be in a format that is as "good as it can get" rather than "just adequate" ?

I think this is a good point, but its not straightforward

If the higher rez is available, all else being equal I would generally take it- for example I subscribe to B & W Society of Sound which gets me 12 classical downloads a year which I'm generally interested in and 12 others which I am occasionally interested in- anyway I always download at 24/48 not 16/44 except sometimes for the purpose of comparison. To me this is a no brainer and I assume that in most cases it comes from a hi rez master either dsd or pcm. either way i'm happy to assume that if one is mastered better than the other then it will probably be the 24 bit since its their usp.

But generally all is not necessarily equal, especially in price. It usually costs an awful lot more for the hi rez and may contain no more information. Also it might be a different master, and not necessarily a better one.

An awful lot of the time someone is trying to sell me something I already own.

From what I can see the performance of many dacs seems to break down above 24/96. The levels of noise and distortion actually get worse so the information redundancy really does start to have a sonic price.

Finally, and perhaps most nebulously, I'm reluctant to get involved in a culture of bullshit. And there is no doubt that hi rez hype feeds into that. Just looking at the noise floor of a mic is a sobering experience.

 

[adamdea]

sorry, I don't accept the argument that 44.1 delivery is as good as 96k merely because it satisfies many of a 'target' market?

The target market is human beings. It's not a question of connaisseurship: ironically it's the mp3 listening kids who are the only ones with much chance of hearing the hf material that might just make it through the studio mics, the recording process and your speakers.