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Young ears

orangeart

orangeart

KJF Audio Ltd.
My thoughts turned recently to the hearing difference between young ears and old, of course it is well understood that the physical mechamism of hearing changes over the years but what about the psychological?

I recently got an LP12 after a LONG time away from records, it's not going to make up a huge part of my listening, more of an amusing aside. My kids thinks it's brilliant, they all love the prog and early rock records I've got. It's the sort of thing they play on guitar and listen to on Tidal etc.

I asked them what it was they liked about the deck, expecting something about the cool record sleeves etc. What they said surprised me.

'It sounds MUCH worse, but somehow it doesn't matter'

Now I happen to generally prefer digital sources, but do think that sometimes the vinyl sounds better, mostly down to the mastering.

When I tried to pin them down I got the impression from thier vague descriptions they were hearing a level of crappiness I wasn't. I don't think however that is a physical thing, I can still hear out to 17k quite well which is probably well past the recordings and the LP12 capability so what gives?
 
Despite your good hearing capabilities, theirs will be unquestionably better, a factor worth considering. You could make an argument that their critical listening capabilities are not as keen, but still their hearing will be more acute. Also, they are used to consuming music with no noise floor, no pops or ticks, no desk introduced wow and flutter etc. Ok, so a mastering may be better, but they're already used to and probably prefer compressed mastering. I know I did too when younger.
 
Once I had sorted electronic versions of my music I tried to take albums played on an LP12 with brand new stylus, super power supply, Arkless Phono stage and listen to those. I ended up seeking the CD or FLAC versions. I haven’t touched my much desired LP12 for almost a year. It is amazing how much we forgive when we love someone or something.
 
It doesn’t surprise me at all. To get near good digital you need to go into high four or five figures, but some people do seem to like the distinct sonic flavour, ‘nice vinyl sound’ of records. I like playing old vinyl, indeed a lot of good masterings that are poor on CD, but even this has levelled off these days.
 
@awkwardbydesign , I think that is a large part of it. That said. My kids don't tend to listen to heavily compressed recordings with a wall of production and a shouty singer. They listen to stuff that is fairly eclectic from accross the ages and generally I'd say the kind of music that sounds good on vinyl.
The stuff they were listening to the other day wasn't stuff with a huge dynamic range, or really low bass or subtle high harmonics etc, i.e. stuff that should be as easy to reproduce on vinyl as digital. Stuff that I (even though I generally prefer digital) would say sounded as good as my digital copies. But they still think it sounded much worse, in fact they were laughing.
 
Yomanze said:
It doesn’t surprise me at all. To get near good digital you need to go into high four or five figures, but some people do seem to like the distinct sonic flavour, ‘nice vinyl sound’ of records. I like playing old vinyl, indeed a lot of good masterings that are poor on CD, but even this has levelled off these days.
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That’s simply not true, have a look at Archimago’s measurements of an IPhone, or over at ASR Amir has been measuring extremely inexpensive DACs which measure superbly, a ‘Topping ‘ is amongst the best at a couple of hundred pounds.
Keith
 
Purité Audio said:
That’s simply not true, have a look at Archimago’s measurements of an IPhone, or over at ASR Amir has been measuring extremely inexpensive DACs which measure superbly, a ‘Topping ‘ is amongst the best at a couple of hundred pounds.
Keith
Click to expand...

Might've got your analogue wires crossed...
 
Purité Audio said:
That’s simply not true, have a look at Archimago’s measurements of an IPhone, or over at ASR Amir has been measuring extremely inexpensive DACs which measure superbly, a ‘Topping ‘ is amongst the best at a couple of hundred pounds.
Keith
Click to expand...

You should fine tune your auto reading / answering algos...
 
My kids are the same, vinyl is a cool curiosity to them, it crackles, its sounds warmer, more fuzzy, bandwidth limited, flawed but 'nicer' is some respects.
 
This all seems odd to me, I can't explain why they liked it, nor could they. They were instantly aware of it's short comings but sat down and listened to quite few albums end to end. I think someone is letting me have all their old reel to reel stuff soon (which I haven't touched since I did my sound engineering degree). It'll be interesting to see what they think about that once it's set up.
 
I think what Kieth is trying to say is that to even get near cheap digital (technically) you've got to spend big bucks, even then the actual measurable performance of a broadcast quality transcription is poor in comparison to their phone DAC. None of that seems to matter though. They still keep banging on about the 'vinyls' and can I put a one on for them....
 
I 'upgraded' my LP12 to the point where it's tonality and speed stability (on most records) was just about indistinguishable from my digital source, I then found the clicks, pops etc were much more annoying than they ever had been, so I sold it, bought a classic turntable, which doesn't sound like my digital setup, and I can enjoy some of my LPs again, but minor speed instabilities and surface noise are really irritating now. One oddity I have discovered is that although actual dynamic range of LPs is not as good as digital, pieces of music where the level suddenly changes sound more dynamic on my turntable - I think it is because the distortion goes up (I am using a Decca cartridge!) and my brain associates distortion with loudness, and excitement. What I have decided to do is to separate the two systems so I can optimise each one.
 
JemHayward said:
I 'upgraded' my LP12 to the point where it's tonality and speed stability (on most records) was just about indistinguishable from my digital source, I then found the clicks, pops etc were much more annoying than they ever had been, so I sold it, bought a classic turntable, which doesn't sound like my digital setup, and I can enjoy some of my LPs again, but minor speed instabilities and surface noise are really irritating now. One oddity I have discovered is that although actual dynamic range of LPs is not as good as digital, pieces of music where the level suddenly changes sound more dynamic on my turntable - I think it is because the distortion goes up (I am using a Decca cartridge!) and my brain associates distortion with loudness, and excitement. What I have decided to do is to separate the two systems so I can optimise each one.
Click to expand...

These are really interesting points and ones that I have pondered at length before. We have all upgraded our systems before to the point where a particular bit of kit is 'optimum' For a record deck that means tracking the groves as precisely as possible and maintaining correct speed. There are loads of different ways to accomplish this of course BUT the closer a record/record player gets to being able to reproduce the originating waveform the closer it comes to the sound of redbook which doesn't have these same set of limitations, therefore it can really be argued that the record deck that gives the most 'record deck' sound is in fact one that is not so good where the failings are more obvious.

Your point about distortion is interesting as well. Back in the day us engineering types purposely pushed the recording level higher than either the tape heads of tape itself could handle for drums and bass guitar and sometimes males voices as the (carefully controlled) distortion was pleasing to the ear. People used to mic toms and snares with SM58 vocal mics instead of the SM57beta designed for the job as they would saturate their voice coils in pleasing way. Artist still now use gear that will purposely not be optimal for the task to introduce a certain flavour such as valves for guitar amps that are purposely used outside their intended specs.

Won;t stop me fettling and upgrading this LP12 though :)
 
Many audiophiles run their DACs at full output (no digital volume control) and this isn't the best thing to do with modern recordings. Some DACs perform a little better below full output (not necessarily just inter-sample overs I'm talking about) and modern music is sitting near 0db much of the time with all the loudness shenanigans (sometimes but not always with extra shenanigans on digital masters). Also audiophiles like high sample rates, and if the mastering has been pushed too hard, high sample rate just lets you hear more high frequency damage.

Then audiophiles complain modern music sounds crap.

Whereas youngins are using smart phones, tablets, sound bars, lifestyle, car systems with digital volume control therefore plenty of headroom (analogue and digital) in the DAC device, and at most 48kHz source. Not always optimal in a theoretical world, but at least it works with the recordings and not against them.

This would then impact a comparison of digital versus vinyl.

With well recorded music, well mastered on digital, the above is less of a factor and I'd expect digital to be clearly better in most systems (as reported by OP).
 
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