We went to see Avitar in 3D and my wife couldn't watch it. I didn't like it either but I could tolerate it.
DACs vs Turntables
- Thread starter hermit
- Start date
We went to see Avitar in 3D and my wife couldn't watch it. I didn't like it either but I could tolerate it.
Ayya Khema
pfm Member
its really weird
My technics sl-1200 with a denon dl-103r plugged into my ifi retro stereo 50 and using my focal utopia headphone, I find the sound just more captivating then any dac ive had (Yggydrassil, moisac t ec designs, ect).
for me it seems obvious how better my modest decent analog system is even compared to "high-end" dac's ive had
My technics sl-1200 with a denon dl-103r plugged into my ifi retro stereo 50 and using my focal utopia headphone, I find the sound just more captivating then any dac ive had (Yggydrassil, moisac t ec designs, ect).
for me it seems obvious how better my modest decent analog system is even compared to "high-end" dac's ive had
Like I say, I prefer my CD player to my turntable. It doesn't sound the same as vinyl, it wins some ways and loses others, but it's just as involving. It can be done.
Anh
Naim ghetto blaster
Now I am in my 40’s, having listened to an all digital front end for 25+ years, I have returned to Vinyl and Cassettes. IMO , 99.9% of new music does little for me, seems like most young singers or guitar / instrument players out there reminds me of someone impersonating someone else from the 60s-80s and wears pink or sports a beard, also the sound quality of modern pop / rock still suffers from loudness disease.
So I enjoyed digital recordings and replay - I listened out for stereo imagery stability, clarity, dynamics, detail - all which digital does well and those qualities translates well into their superior measured performance, but something subjectively sounds right on a good record ok a half decent vinyl system (mine is an old and modest priced deck and cart) and I feel I have done myself out for those 2+ decades listening to CDs and streaming.
So I enjoyed digital recordings and replay - I listened out for stereo imagery stability, clarity, dynamics, detail - all which digital does well and those qualities translates well into their superior measured performance, but something subjectively sounds right on a good record ok a half decent vinyl system (mine is an old and modest priced deck and cart) and I feel I have done myself out for those 2+ decades listening to CDs and streaming.
Ayya Khema
pfm Member
there's lot of variables. going from what vinyl you listen to to what is your analog chain, etc
Personally, with 60's jazz and my analog system, I find vinyl much better.
but if i listen to modern bon iver vinyl vs cd, I prefer the cd variant.
I think with 50's to 70's jazz and classical record when everything was recorded to tape and the signal did not pass threw and ADC to DAC like modern vinyl's do, vinyl from that era is quite apparently better then any digital vesion ime
I've listened to 50's vinyl and thought 'How the heck could they forget how to record like this?'. All the progress, all the new technology and all they've done for the most part is make things worse.
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fegs
pfm Member
totally agree, It amazes me when I listen to old stuff just how good the whole process was
I think it was partly the simplicity. The more crap you run the signal through, the more you lose. Today the idea often seems to be to just capture the performance and add the effects you want later. They couldn't do that in the fifties so everything had to be there during the take.
Tony L
Administrator
A lot of it is down to terrible mastering decisions made very consciously and deliberately, e.g. ‘loudness wars’ etc. There are some stunning recordings being made now, but they are more likely to be found in the world of classical and jazz where the aim isn’t to squash all the dynamics out with compression/limiting and then normalise everything to zero db so any transients that do remain likely overshoot! None of this is by accident! I’d rate say ECM right up there with any recorded music, even of the golden early stereo age, it is very well done.
darrenyeats
pfm Member
Some of it can be put down to some DACs used by audiophiles not handling "inter-sample overs", adding an extra layer of distortion to squashed recordings that is avoided with soundbars, phones etc. - because they use digital volume control. AKA digital headroom. Switching to digital volume control was a step change for a lot of the music I like (but this is very dependent on each person's musical diet!)
However, there is the odd recording that is mangled beyond repair. Between a Breath and a Breath by Dyble Longdon - love the music but some tracks have crescendos that are clearly, irretrievably distorted (and that's the hi-rez!) Doesn't stop me listening but does make we wonder about the vinyl version?
PS: Having made the case of digital volume control, I think it's worth using a good one that uses dither, and getting the gain structure right first.
However, there is the odd recording that is mangled beyond repair. Between a Breath and a Breath by Dyble Longdon - love the music but some tracks have crescendos that are clearly, irretrievably distorted (and that's the hi-rez!) Doesn't stop me listening but does make we wonder about the vinyl version?
PS: Having made the case of digital volume control, I think it's worth using a good one that uses dither, and getting the gain structure right first.
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Like I said, the Rega DAC gets music out of everything. I'm not saying it fixes everything, maybe it hides the flaws I don't know, and I'm not saying everything sounds wonderful. What it does do is present the tone and strength of the music well enough that you forget about the flaws. It, and the similar Saturn-R, are the first digital sources that do this.
darrenyeats
pfm Member
I did a quick check of recent albums I bought - about 50% have many inter-sample peaks that need 1-1.5dB digital headroom. Given these modern recordings tend to have about 4-5dB of dynamic range to begin with, constraining inter-sample peaks by 1-1.5dB artificially, unnecessarily, and wrongly, makes a difference with OS/digital filter DACs! This is for about half of the kind of music I like (as I said this would be very dependent on musical diet - if you like mostly just jazz and classical then it makes no difference at all!)
In contrast, the irretrievably mangled recordings I mentioned are VERY rare, I'm talking about maybe 10 tracks out of thousands.
My point is that even a regular OS design DAC will work well with the vast majority of modern highly processed recordings - if it has digital headroom, either by design or by you giving it headroom by using digital VC.
This is one tangible advantage of many NOS designs, they don't impose digital clipping on dynamically compressed recordings. You don't need a NOS DAC to get this benefit, but if you have a NOS DAC, you get it.
When an audiophile says modern recordings are unlistenable, I interpret that as "I am using a DAC without digital headroom, unlike 99% of planet earth (with phones, soundbars, lifestyle systems etc. whose digital VCs guarantee digital headroom)".
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