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The quality from LPs is ludicrous

Werner said:
So, who really has to understand it all? A few thousand circuit designers and audio engineers, and programmers of SRC software (who as a rule don't get it). That leaves out a few billion of people ...
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...and people designing the sampling and reconstruction algorithms for measuring the CMB:

Hinshaw et al, First YearWilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP1) Observations: Data Processing Methods and Systematic Errors Limits,
http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/map/dr1/pub_papers/firstyear/syserr/wmap_syserr.pdf

:D
 
Mescalito said:
The vinyl playback chain is intuitive and easy to understand. Sound is a vibration. You freeze that vibration as a varying magnetic field. You then use that varying magnetic field to make a hot needle melt a copy of that vibration onto a disc.

Digital, on the other hand is deeply counter-intuitive, and to really understand how it all works you really need to be at ease with some pretty sophisticated mathematics and engineering.

That rules out most of the population ever really coming to grips with the mechanics of it at an intellectual level, and many people distrust & fear what they do not understand.

Chris
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Possibly, but I some don't think that's the whole reason for LP's continued place in the audio pantheon. The vinyl lovers seem to have no problems grasping digital communications, digital photography, digital video and almost every other aspect of modern life.

Yes, they work with these things on a surface level, but I don't see how the surface level of digital audio is any different.
 
spxy said:
Why cant you guys accept that the reason people have questions ( whether valid or not ) about digital is because the "best" sound they have ever heard has come from vinyl?

My current situation is that I haven't listened to my record player for 2 years due to work and small children, I only listen to digital for convenience.

It can sound good sometimes great, but never as good as the results I was used to from my Roksan Xerxes or fully spec'ed LP12.

I happy to accept it all down to recoding quality rather than other factors...
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I'm quite happy to accept that- what I have a problem with are not questions but assertions. And either way I am absolutely convinced that they are connected with the fact that the people asking/saying this think vinyl sounds better.
What puzzles me is that so many people seem to refuse to accept that what they think sounds better might be less accurate -see impressionism analogy (not mine) post 174 ish
 
flatpopely said:
Interesting, I don't actually dislike digital at all! I listen to digital audio most days and in some cases will listen to it for ages and not get any vinyl out.
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Don't worry, I was using the 'royal' you, rather than a specific 'you'!

But I was surprised by the number of vinyl die-hards at this year's NYC show; every room had at least one person who said they would never have anything digital in their music replay system. It was like setting your watch to 1980s time.

Many of them also said the same thing about transistors though, so I think the show tapped a very specific sub-set of hi-fi enthusiasts.
 
Alan Sircom said:
Possibly, but I some don't think that's the whole reason for LP's continued place in the audio pantheon. The vinyl lovers seem to have no problems grasping digital communications, digital photography, digital video and almost every other aspect of modern life.

Yes, they work with these things on a surface level, but I don't see how the surface level of digital audio is any different.
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I'm sure you're right: it's not the whole reason.

But actually a lot of people who say they like vinyl have linked this with the idea that film photography is better than digital.
 
Alan Sircom said:
Don't worry, I was using the 'royal' you, rather than a specific 'you'!

But I was surprised by the number of vinyl die-hards at this year's NYC show; every room had at least one person who said they would never have anything digital in their music replay system. It was like setting your watch to 1980s time.

Many of them also said the same thing about transistors though, so I think the show tapped a very specific sub-set of hi-fi enthusiasts.
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The "Fred Dibnah" sub-set:)

Chris
 
spxy said:
Why cant you guys accept that the reason people have questions ( whether valid or not ) about digital is because the "best" sound they have ever heard has come from vinyl?
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That's obviously true, but the question is why do some people find that the "best" sound they have ever heard comers from vinyl.

In others people's case, such as mine, the "best" sound I have ever heard comes from CD/streaming and I can articulate exactly why I prefer it and link that to the ubnderlying technical reasons.

People's preference for vinyl is a bit of a mystery and the reason for that has been the main subject of the thread, although, miraculously, we seem to have come to a bit of a consensus on one of the perennial sticky questions, Which won't, of course, prevent all the arguments being rehearsed again nexrt time the subject comes up.
 
adamdea said:
I agree with all of this.

On the last point, there is a striking coincidence exhibited on this thread of a people with strong preferences for vinyl having an attachment to unconvincing or demonstrably bogus technical explanations for the shortcomings of digital.

It does make one wonder whether
a. this is simply a case of reason following the passion (or, to put it another way, what catholic theology calls demonstrative proof); or
b. instinctive distrust of how sampling works, a process that pretty much everyone who understands it realises is not intuitive, influences people to dislike it.
c. no one understands digital sampling anyway and vinyl lovers are simply representative of the population generally.
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I suspect 'a' and 'c' are more significant than 'b'. Probably in that order too.
 
In thinking about the points raised in this thread, and in particular about the emotional connection to the music that some people feel is stronger with vinyl, I remember that for many years I owned a 1920s horn gramophone and a whole pile of '78s. Sadly I no longer have them, but I used to play shellac regularly. The reason I did was mainly Fred Dibnah-ish, but also, at least with some recordings and particularly with opera arias and jazz, the emotional hit could be tremendous, in spite of or because of the characteristic sound of the gramophone. I'm sure that its association with the era, a sense of sweet nostalgia and its use in films of the day played a huge part. What to me was even more emotionally powerful was hearing a 78 that someone else in the house had put on, so that it came to me unheralded through an open patio door on a warm summer's day.

Remember how the grampophone and its sound was used as the emotional lynchpin of Fitzcarraldo - the Klaus Kinski character playing Caruso from the bridge of the steamer to the listening jungle. Emotional response to sound is a complex and enigmatic thing, and in this case at least, the very large distortions and colouratios enhance the experience.
 
So some people still prefer lps for the same reason Arthur Dent preferred dried leaves in boiling water.

Makes sense...
 
hecd2 said:
That's obviously true, but the question is why do some people find that the "best" sound they have ever heard comers from vinyl.

In others people's case, such as mine, the "best" sound I have ever heard comes from CD/streaming and I can articulate exactly why I prefer it and link that to the ubnderlying technical reasons.

People's preference for vinyl is a bit of a mystery and the reason for that has been the main subject of the thread, although, miraculously, we seem to have come to a bit of a consensus on one of the perennial sticky questions, Which won't, of course, prevent all the arguments being rehearsed again nexrt time the subject comes up.
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Actually peoples preference for vinyl is hardly ever a mystery. Ask a person that prefers the medium to CD and they'll tell you why. The problem is that the view is hardly ever accepted by the technocrats because it doesn't correlate with their factual understanding. The issue is that one person is stating personal perceptual experience and the other can only see things in terms of technicalities.

The statement in a previous post made about "inky blackness" was immediately met with "the noise floor is higher that can't be true" type response. The point is the "inky blackness" statement was a aural perception not a statement of technical fact. As we know from psycho acoustics the two don't always (or often) correlate. Unfortunately too many technically minded people seem to continuously discount this lack of correlation and see the statement of perception as a statement of technical fact that needs to be challenged.

For clarity I am talking solely about statements made by people who prefer vinyl about why they like vinyl not any technically inaccurate statements they may make about CD reproduction or digital in general.
 
GTM said:
Actually peoples preference for vinyl is hardly ever a mystery. Ask a person that prefers the medium to CD and they'll tell you why. The problem is that the view is hardly ever accepted by the technocrats because it doesn't correlate with their factual understanding. The issue is that one person is stating personal perceptual experience and the other can only see things in terms of technicalities.

The statement in a previous post made about "inky blackness" was immediately met with "the noise floor is higher that can't be true" type response. The point is the "inky blackness" statement was a aural perception not a statement of technical fact. As we know from psycho acoustics the two don't always (or often) correlate. Unfortunately too many technically minded people seem to continuously discount this lack of correlation and see the statement of perception as a statement of technical fact that needs to be challenged.

For clarity I am talking solely about statements made by people who prefer vinyl about why they like vinyl not any technically inaccurate statements they may make about CD reproduction or digital in general.
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I think this is a fair point, but in practice expression of love for vinyl seem tediously often to be accompanied by statements about digital. I shall look out for the possibility that I am misunderstanding what people are saying, as opposed to them just saying rather more than they can back up. One of the joys/horrors of internet forums is that one's never really sure whether one is having a serious discussion or a chat in the pub; and the conventions of discourse are hazy.
 
GTM said:
Actually peoples preference for vinyl is hardly ever a mystery. Ask a person that prefers the medium to CD and they'll tell you why. The problem is that the view is hardly ever accepted by the technocrats because it doesn't correlate with their factual understanding. The issue is that one person is stating personal perceptual experience and the other can only see things in terms of technicalities.

The statement in a previous post made about "inky blackness" was immediately met with "the noise floor is higher that can't be true" type response. The point is the "inky blackness" statement was a aural perception not a statement of technical fact. As we know from psycho acoustics the two don't always (or often) correlate. Unfortunately too many technically minded people seem to continuously discount this lack of correlation and see the statement of perception as a statement of technical fact that needs to be challenged.

For clarity I am talking solely about statements made by people who prefer vinyl about why they like vinyl not any technically inaccurate statements they may make about CD reproduction or digital in general.
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I don't disagree with the proposition that people can articulate in subjective terms what they prefer about vinyl. Obviously I'm not saying that vinyl lovers just shrug and say "because I do". But to me, the interesting thing is understanding what reasons underpin the subjective preference, whether they are to do with certain technical aspects of the replay media, psychological factors or things to do with mastering. These are things that that are generally not well explained (although we have made some significant progress in this thread to some sort of consensus).

What is clearly false is the explanation that is sometimes given for vinyl preference which is that CD replay is somehow flawed in ways that it is not, and that are proposed on a fundamental misunderstanding of digital audio.

Take the "inky blackness" example. I am sure that the person who said it is experiencing something that they prefer, but attempting to link it to some relative technical aspect of the two media is difficult. It's a fact that the noise floor in CD is considerably and audibly below the noise floor in vinyl (it's one of the reasons I prefer CD). I accept all you say about the psychacoustics, so wouldn't it be interesting and potentially useful to understand what it is that that person was experiencing when they describe their subjective preference, and what the underlying reasons for the preference are? To me, and I dare say to the person who said it and to everyone else the underlying reason for the preference is a mystery and that is what I meant.
 
It may have been me that referred to 'blackness' although i didnt use the word 'inky' . The point i was trying to make was that the instrumental notes seem to emanate from a blacker background with my vinyl. The inter track vinyl roar is obviously higher than the noise heard between tracks on CD, but is not intrusive to me.
I have tried to explain this phenomenon to myself by suggesting that the vinyl is subtracting data somehow but even that doesnt seem to correlate with the amount of low level detail that i can hear.
If someone has a convincing theory as to how this occurs, i would love to hear it.
 
Who knows what one person means when they say 'inky blackness' it's intangible so there's little use in everyone attempting to use it as a known good term because it doesn't actually mean anything that one can measure.

If someone prefers the sound of vinyl that's great they don't need to justify in technical terms. The truth is most people who do prefer vinyl probably
Don't really understand why they do, they might think they do, but how honest are they being about it really?

I prefer it because I like the format, the large sleeves, the heft of vinyl, the ritual of it all and the fact I was spoon fed vinyl by my old man as a kid. That's probably why I listen to vinyl, because I have a deep rooted psychological attachment to it as it is indicative of parts of My childhood. It doesn't actually sound better than my dac in any measurable way, I just connect with it more.
 
redhunter said:
The point i was trying to make was that the instrumental notes seem to emanate from a blacker background with my vinyl. The inter track vinyl roar is obviously higher than the noise heard between tracks on CD,
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The baffling thing is not that you get that blackness from LPs (I do too), but rather that you refer to / imply that you don't get similar silence with CD, and even "the noise heard between tracks on CD". Especially the latter is interesting. There should not be any such noise, and if there is, it is likely injected by the amplifiers.
 
I like it because I can fiddle with it, tweak it, alter the sound relatively easily, admire the engineering of a good TT and because it feels like playing with proper hi-fi.
The power exists to easily exert influence over the result.
So if it appeals to an audiophile geek like me, I'm sure the same goes for the many other geeks and nerds who buy audiophile hi-fi kit.

Despite the efforts of some to complicate things, digital is just boring boring meh from a tweaky audiophile perspective. Place digital equipment on shelf, plug in and it all usually works well.
It demystifies things and that simply isn't playing the game!

I think these differences in the way audiophiles see the two options goes part way to explaining why the TT remains so popular with our demographic.
To put this into some perspective, I recently sold a very nice sounding Rega TT and replaced with something more modular and configurable - because I missed the farting about aspect which comes with vinyl. I also couldn't give a toss about transparency with vinyl, firstly because it never can be transparent and secondly because it represents my audio playground and I don't apply the same rules.
 
Sorry Werner, i should make clear that i do not hear noise between tracks with CD at all. I do with vinyl but it is not intrusive to me.
If i listen to CDs, its via my Rega planet. This sounds different to all of the CD players i have tried on my system and gives a kind of 'rosy glow' to the sound. Not very scientific i know but its the best way i can describe it.
 
Rob,

To put this into some perspective, I recently sold a very nice sounding Rega TT and replaced with something more modular and configurable - because I missed the farting about aspect which comes with vinyl.
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But that's the beauty of the P9 -- it works without any fretting and farting. Well, all that and it sounds great.

What did you replace it with?

Joe
 
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