The death of fidelity.

[Tyll Hertsens]

Oy vey!

Say it ain't so.

[Aimless1]

Especially liked the follow up reply ....

"And then again, I rather hear anything in MP3 than on vynil."

[Dreadhead]

I love fidelity to the orignal music but music is to be enjoyed so if they enjoy it then so be it.

Personally I will never understand vinyl, I find it noisy and rolled off. I know I'm likely in a minority around here but that's what I think.

[Dusty Chalk]

Personally I will never understand vinyl, I find it noisy and rolled off. I know I'm likely in a minority around here but that's what I think.

You just haven't heard a well set-up system yet. Vinyl can (and should) be less rolled off than CD.

[grawk]

Not really. Both should roll off well outside the range of adult hearing, but CD is technically more capable.

The problem with most cds and the benefits to lps is almost entirely in the mastering.

[Dreadhead]

You just haven't heard a well set-up system yet. Vinyl can (and should) be less rolled off than CD.

Technical Articles Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity

The vinyl vs. CD article is particularly enlightening. I may be wrong on the rolled off part (I can't find the reference I've seen before) but "noisy" is true and 30db channel separation is pretty horrible. I particularly like the THD+N measurement.

My problem is the roll off from vinyl varies with how often it's been played: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramophone_record in the section on "Frequency response and noise" though as it says this varies.

Edited March 11, 2009 by Dreadhead

[Dusty Chalk]

Not really. Both should roll off well outside the range of adult hearing, but CD is technically more capable.

Keyword: should.

Also: no, technically, the upper frequency limit on vinyl is theoretically higher than that of CD. <> "more capable".

[grawk]

it depends on if you consider higher crosstalk and worse dynamic range to be less important than the ability to reproduce frequencies only bats can hear.

[Dusty Chalk]

I don't want to hear the actual frequencies, I am of the school of thought that believes even though one can't hear the actual frequencies above 20kHz, that they still affect the total signal in audible ways.

And neither do I agree that the dynamic range is worse -- from my listening experience, they're about the same.

Crosstalk could well be worse, but can't be by much.

[Dusty Chalk]

Technical Articles Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity

The vinyl vs. CD article is particularly enlightening.

First sentence in the second article:

The frequency response of an LP is about 10 Hz to 25 kHz...

I'll read the entire article more thoroughly later, but from skimming it, it seems to spend more time describing vinyl than comparing it/contrasting it with CD. I have no idea how enlightening that could be.

[ingwe]

Not really. Both should roll off well outside the range of adult hearing, but CD is technically more capable.

The problem with most cds and the benefits to lps is almost entirely in the mastering.

Well, getting the good stuff out of the grove also has its challenges.

[grawk]

Especially since most LP mastering was done to prevent said supposed good stuff from getting in there . The best LP masters kept dynamic range to a reasonable level and had low and high pass filtering.

[Dusty Chalk]

As opposed to CD -- where dynamic range is epidemically bad, highs are rolled off by necessity, and bass is rolled off for no good reason whatsoever.

I mean, if you're going to use overgeneralizations, that means I can, too.

[grawk]

Dynamic range and bass resolution on cds is great, it's the mastering that's the problem. And I don't call 22khz rolled off.

Real music reproduction is well within the capabilities of lp and cd. It's just the decisions made at recording and mastering time that make the difference. There's not a technical reason why lps sound better, it's just that the limitations of typical gear encouraged better behavior in the production of the recordings.

[Dusty Chalk]

And I don't call 25kHz rolled off. And CD's will only go up to 22kHz if you brick wall (brick wall low pass, not brick wall compression) them at that point, most will start rolling off earlier. 20kHz is a better number to quote when talking CD's, as that is where most are significantly rolled off. (And if you don't believe me, take some FFT's, yourself. While you're at it, look at the bass rolloff on most CD's -- it's atrocious -- I agree it's a mastering decision, but if you're going to criticize records for mastering decisions, then CD's can be criticized for their mastering decisions as well.)

The signal has to be completely gone by 22.05kHz, otherwise you get divide-down artifacts.

[grawk]

I wasn't criticizing records for mastering decisions, I was saying it was a benefit. That's why I have a turntable.

[Dusty Chalk]

The problem with most cds and the benefits to lps is almost entirely in the mastering.

You're right, I misread this sentence (skipped the bolded part).

[mirumu]

Dynamic range and bass resolution on cds is great, it's the mastering that's the problem. And I don't call 22khz rolled off.

What does the waveshape look like at 22khz on a CD though? Or even 20Khz? Sine waves, square waves, triangle waves, etc all sound very different even when the frequency is the same. CD has so few samples at higher frequencies that it's can't possibly reproduce the original wave shapes accurately. An analog representation will always beat a digitial representation near it's frequency ceiling.

[grawk]

I'm perfectly ok with sine waves for music reproduction. I'm not going to get into dac design, so I'm going to leave it at that. I believe that there's nothing inherently wrong with digital, and I've had enough experience that I'm comfortable leaving it there. If you want to stick with just analog, be my guest, I won't try and disuade you of that notion.

[mirumu]

I'm perfectly ok with sine waves for music reproduction. I'm not going to get into dac design, so I'm going to leave it at that. I believe that there's nothing inherently wrong with digital, and I've had enough experience that I'm comfortable leaving it there. If you want to stick with just analog, be my guest, I won't try and disuade you of that notion.

My last comment wasn't really meant as an analog good/digital bad statement. Most of my listening is digital. I was just referring more to there being factors beyond frequency and dynamic range that are also quite audible.

I don't deny that picking the difference between wave shapes at 20Khz would be very hard for the human ear. The malformed wave shape problem is a flaw I notice with MP3s at lower frequencies (than 20khz), but that's a whole different can of worms.

[GlendaleViper]

It's kind of weird that the discussion went this way... shouldn't we physical media types be rallying together against the onslaught of "shimmering mp3" users?

Here's my take on it: Most people listen to their brickwalled recordings via compressed to hell rips, through underamplified earphones that suck in the first place, at obscene volume. As far as I'm concerned, that's about 5 bad types of distortion too many. But when these fuckers all go deaf, our niche market will be the ONLY market, and we'll be debating the benefits of vinyl vs. CD while surrounded by people younger than us using some kind of virtual closed captioning machine just to figure out what the guy next to him said.

And besides, we all know what the superior format REALLY is, right?

[Dreadhead]

Nor am I trying to convince people that they should stop listening to vinyl I just get all antsy when they say it's technically superior to CD when it's not.

Dusty you should read the comparison especially the THD+N discussion which is particularly interesting when the record has 7% distortion at 1kHz. That's pretty wild as far as I'm concerned.

[Grahame]

So (sarcastically) eliminate the sonic distortions + artifacts inherent in the recording process, by eliminating the sonic part altogether, and just record the players inputs!

Piano roll - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia or Musical Instrument Digital Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia FTW

We can then engage in discussions as to whether mylar or paper player piano rolls have a warmer tone

[aerius]

There's an interesting chart which I can't find at the moment; it's similar to the Fletcher-Munson curves except it graphs the amount of distortion in the human ear (2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th harmonic) with respect to the decibel level. At 80dB or so, the ear itself is producing something like 50-60% THD, with most of it in the 2nd & 3rd, and at 100dB it's something like 80-90% distortion, which your brain then has to filter out somehow. The ear has very little of the higher order harmonics until the sound level is cranked way up. Sidenote, this is probably why tube amps sound louder, the extra 2nd & 3rd order harmonics fools your brain into thinking the sound is a few dB louder than it actually is, the sound doesn't change much if at all since your brain filters it out and compensates for it anyway.

Aha! Found it!

http://www.fortunecity.com/rivendell/xentar/1179/theory/seamptheory/SEAmplifiertheory.html

Ok, so the distortion wasn't as bad as I remembered, but it's still pretty horrible.

[Dusty Chalk]

Dusty you should read the comparison especially the THD+N discussion which is particularly interesting when the record has 7% distortion at 1kHz. That's pretty wild as far as I'm concerned.

Hey, I'll start paying attention to measurements as soon as they match what I hear. It's not all about distortion. I'm just not one to succumb to that, "oh, distortion is high" or "signal to noise ratio is bad", therefore "...it must be bad". What kind of distortion is it, even order harmonics, all harmonics, nonlinear? What kind of noise floor is it, dither, hum, thermal? I can tolerate quite a bit of thermal, if that is all it is. Etc.

Oh, hells yes -- it's the way I (piano) roll. Edited March 11, 2009 by Dusty Chalk