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-- Interesting articles on the vinyl vs. digital debate
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Originally posted by harriz The richness of vinyl comes from the fact that you are listening to a superior, 24 bit 96k recording. The warmth comes from the RIAA saturation.

Nice, you didn't even read my posts, you just counted them. LOL

You're a tool, through and through. Your fate is sealed, and I can't wait for karma to bite you in ass, for the thousands you've wasted on a hobby you'll never understand or be any good at.

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Originally posted by thoughtlessjex Actually, you bring up the very reason sampling at 44 kHz is fine. DAC. DAC sends an electromagnetic signal to an amplifying source, commonly the driver of a loudspeaker. this caused the loud speaker to move forward or backward depending on the polarity of the electric signal. 44 kHz sends 2.2 of such signals for each period of a 20 kHz wave. Enough, get this, for both peaks. PCM then makes sure that these samples occur such that the full peak is acheived for each such period. In between samples, the driver has to spend a measurable amount of time moving from the first sample intensity to the second. This makes the resulting sound wholly analogue. It is impossible for a DAC to sound worse than an analogue source, because it is an analogue source. In fact, by this logic, there is no such thing as a "squarized" digital effect, as they, ulitmately all produce an analogue result. Further proof of this is that it is physically impossible for air pressure to vary so discontinuously over a distance of 0 m, not even with a membrane because that membrane would be physical, and therefore would occupy space. And no, laughing at someone's assertions does not refute them, so tell us what does cause the "warmth and richness" in vinyl if not the feedback.

Hey man I think I get what your saying. Heres what I learned to be true when i comes to cd sample rates and A/D coversion.
There are two fundimental concepts in digital recording: the sample rate and quantization. Nyquist theory states that the sampling frequency must be at least twice the highest recorded frequency. So lets take CDs for example, recorded at a sample rate of 44.1kHz. 44.1/2= 22.05kHz. This is just out side the limit of human hearing. When this law is broken we get a distortion called aliasing.
Now the other part to this is quantization. Quantization is a binary value which digitally represents the amplitude of an audio siganl at a given point in time. We can use 1 and 0 to represent the compressions and rarefactions of an analogue wave. As a result, the actual amplitude values are not exact, but are close appoximations.
So how do sample rate and quantization come together? When you feed an analogue signal into a A/D coverter, and say its set to convert at CD quality, 44,100 audio snapshots (samples) are taken every sec. Each one of these audio snapshots is descrived that a quantization value in bits. The higher the sample rate the more snapshots we get, resulting in a more complete audio picture.

Just thought people might like to know how the A/D conversion thing works. Hope this helps and doesnt confuse you more

If only somebody could create an invention that makes vinyl cheap, I mean, that is the only reason it is dying, because digital is so much cheaper and "good enough" for most people. If vinyl was cheap to produce, use, and carry around then maybe it would have a better chance of surviving.

Surely somebody out there can invent some sort of analog storage media that is cheap and quality, that could very well solve all these file sharing dramas too since digital is the reason the files are so easy to copy in the first place. There just has to b some sort of research going on that could make a disc which does not warp, or a disc which is smaller and cheaper to make, something that can be transfered easily, anything.

I guess anything can happen, I imagine someody out there is working on a format that is quality and convenient at the same time, I wonder how long it will take to arrive, at the moment most people are choosing convenience over quality.

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Originally posted by stev�sto its remarkable when you think about it, almost a century later, and the speaker is still pretty much the same. no matter how awesome your digital format is, you still need to push it to a very crude mechanical device ... the speaker.

It's remarkable that so many people don't understand the psychology of sound, centuries later.

It's pushed through a speaker, and into one of our most limited sensory inputs -- our ears.

From there, our brain determines the rest, depending on environment and habit.

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Originally posted by DJ Shibby Correct. PS: The word "warmth" contributed to "analogue" is one of the most bullshit things ever created by man. It's an error, and it's fixed now, but instead we give it a positive term like "warmth" to make up for the flaw and save our asses. It's all bullshit. If they had called it "low-end distortion" instead of "warmth", you can bet your ass you wouldn't be standing so firmly behind this illusion of an idea today. Language is an amazing tool, isn't it? PSS: Your low hum feedback can be recreated through digital VSTis too. In a variety of ways limited only to the programmer. You can run your set through many other neat VSTis also, the sky is the limit.

Hey clueless 'screw head' unlike digital distortion, the worst sound man has brought to mankind, the warmth of analog second harmonic distortion is a pleasant effect no one can deny.
A great example of that is the 500$ Studio Projects T3 tube Mic.
This is the microphone that Gabriel & Dresden had Jes sing into on the song "As the Rush Comes''.
That mic matches her voice and the mood of the track perfectly.
They could afford to use a far more transparent microphone that costs several times the price of that but what they used matched the source in the best way possible.
Listen to that track you will hear the 'mud' and 'dirt' in her voice making it much more airy and human sounding.
It's all idillic sophisticated and pleasant as trance-cracker, wanna-be reviewer System-j would say.

There is tube equipment that costs several thousands of dollars to distort the signal in a pleasant way.
There are people in audio research paying the best programmers of the world millions of dollars to digitally emulate distortion and saturation in plug ins.
And I am talking TDM resolution stuff not cheap vst shit.


Get a fu cking clue before you open your mouth again.

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Originally posted by stev�sto did you know a microphone and speaker are practically the same thing? sometimes you can plug a small speaker into the microphone jack and actually pick up some sound. a microphone is just a small speaker with a more sensitive diaphram. instead of applying voltage and driving the diaphram, a microphone's diaphram is moved back and forth from sound vibrations, this moves the magnet by the electrocoil which creates a small voltage signal. for the most live pure sound, it doesn't get much simpler than straightforward amplifying that small signal to a larger diaphram electrocoil. now what makes you thing digitizing that signal with an ADC, and then compiling it back together with a DAC, is going to sound just as good, (or better as some are hinting) as just a straight microphone amplified to speaker?

To the average human? Yes. As both Shibby and I have stated. The majority of the problems that occur are inaudible in all but the most extreme situation, and are constantly being improved upon.

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a loudspeaker's driver is an amplifying source? heh.

It amplifies a wave form, doesn't it? Very well, how about sound producing source? You pick something, because I don't have time to argue about semantics.

This isn't even part of my argument.

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you're mixing up sound frquency with digital sampling rate.

No. I'm not. I'm pointing out their correlation, which you are subsequently ignoring and trivializing.

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imagine drawing a soundwave,

Gladly:



It's not a shining example, but it gets the point across, I think.

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"impossible for a DAC to sound worse than an analog source" ??? right, all DACs sound the same, from the cell phone to the cd deck.

The problem in cell phones isn't due to the DAC. Cells actually do have shit-poor sample rates, not to mention their speakers lack the volume to reproduce an audible bass noise. The DAC creates as high-fidelity a sound as it can with what it's given.

quote:

the warmth/richness whatever the hell people describe of vinyl, is because its a higher fidelity format. also because they're most likely talking about a 12" SINGLE, where one whole side is devoted to a few mins. 12" singles sound much better than albums because you can have a deeper groove with more physical area in the groove, this allows much more movement of the needle and thus you can create a louder signal. because there is more material devoted, the record also lasts much longer.

Wrong. Simply wrong. The one thing that anyone who's even given an iota of thought to psychoacoustics can tell you is that "warmth" is a word that is commonly attached to a sound that is rich in low end, and as I have essentially said more times than I can count, 44.1 kHz is more than enough to reproduce any sound in the low end. Fidelity, in fact, does not create warmth. Fidelity creates a clean, shining sound with a great deal of high end, because the high end doesn't attenuate.

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the decreasing sound quality argument is so overrated. i have 15 year old records ive played atleast 200 times and they still sound better than the same song on a cd.

This says one of three things.

You take incredibly good care of your records. (Clean before and after use, take all precautions to reduce wear, have the highest quality needle that money can buy, etc.)

You can't hear the attenuation, and shouldn't be taking the audiophile's stance in the first place.

You've been taken in by the only somewhat meritous notion that the imperfections inherent in vinyl make the sound somehow "better."

It says nothing about vinyl itself.

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Originally posted by thoughtlessjex Wrong. Simply wrong. The one thing that anyone who's even given an iota of thought to psychoacoustics can tell you is that "warmth" is a word that is commonly attached to a sound that is rich in low end, and as I have essentially said more times than I can count, 44.1 kHz is more than enough to reproduce any sound in the low end. Fidelity, in fact, does not create warmth. Fidelity creates a clean, shining sound with a great deal of high end, because the high end doesn't attenuate.

Damn right it's shinning.
Shinny and and brittle is the word to describe redbook.
Lets assume for a second that you are right and red-book is just as good sonically as DVD-A...
A sample of 24 bit 96.000 is just as good in terms of clarity and depth as a sample of 16 bit 44.100...
Tell me...
Why do studios since the early 90s record at DVD-A and not at red-book fidelity?
Why do they dither to cover up the linearity of digital?
Why does most professional digital audio equipment operate at least at 24 bit 96k resolution?

If you are right they wouldn't need those cpu intensive sample rates...
Everything would be redbook...
But it is not redbook anymore is it?
Why?
Redbook is just as good according to you...

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The DAC creates as high-fidelity a sound as it can with what it's given.

There are several DAC and come in different prices...
Which DAC are you talking about?

LOL @ this thread..

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Originally posted by harriz Why does most professional digital audio equipment operate at least at 24 bit 96k resolution?

Because RECORDING at 24bit reduces noise in final processing. You can't hear any difference, if you record a vinyl to harddisk at 44,1/16 or 96/24. 44,1/16 sounds exactly like the original vinyl source, for your ears. If you hear ultrasounds above 20kHz, then I'm wrong. Ok, 24bits add more dynamics to the sound, below the 96dBs of dynamic range. Is there any record available which uses those dynamics? Vinyl has less dynamics than CD.
96kHz and 192kHz are salesman's bullshit, 48kHz is a standard in studios and almost every vinyl record is from 44,1 or 48kHz source. And actually, I do know vinyl mastering engineers who only accept their mastering source in CD-format. 44,1/24 is the standard, though. What do you think about that?

You should read some theory about sampling:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquis...ampling_theorem

quote:

Originally posted by humilis Ok, 24bits add more dynamics to the sound, below the 96dBs of dynamic range.

Boy you are truly clueless....
Recording at a higher sample rate does not ''add'' any dynamics to the sound you idiot.
It is just capable of capturing the sound far more accurately due to the higher resolution. There is more room for rounding errors as it goes from thousands to millions.

quote:

48kHz is a standard in studios and almost every vinyl record is from 44,1 or 48kHz source. 44,1/24 is the standard, though.

I think that it's true only for the older records.
You don't buy these for their super awesome fidelity you buy them because you like the music and it's damn cool to own it on vinyl.

quote:

What do you think about that?

I think you don't know what you are talking about.
If it' s 24 bit there is more continuous fu cking bass there.
The longer waveforms of the low end sound better if you are listening to 24 bits.

(Real) studios work at 24bit 96k and so do high end audio equipment.
All things in the analog stage equal the higher the sample rate the better the sound.

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Vinyl has less dynamics than CD.

Wrong again.

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96kHz and 192kHz are salesman's bullshit...

I am sure that after the people working at these studios (bothering with they high sample rates) read your very convincing post they will then realize they are being marketed upon by ''salesmen bullshit'' and they will sell everything and start using redbook as if it was 85 all over again...
Those naive people are being marketed upon to believe they need 24 bit 96k gear when they build commercial recording facilities.
They should come visit trance addict and hear what humils has to say about digital audio.
They will listen to the 'vandykclubber' as well.
They will start recording everything straight to the superior sound of mp3.

Does anyone in this thread actually have any authority on the subject? You've all been calling each other fools and idiots and laughing at everything since the beginning.

Proof damnit!

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Originally posted by harriz Boy you are truly clueless....

Well I think I'm not.

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Recording at a higher sample rate does not ''add'' any dynamics to the sound you idiot.

When I said that?

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It is just capable of capturing the sound far more accurately due to the higher resolution. There is more room for rounding errors as it goes from thousands to millions.

Yes. That only matters when you are MIXING TRACKS TOGETHER. Not in the final product.

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I think you don't know what you are talking about. If it' s 24 bit there is more continuous fu cking bass there. The longer waveforms of the low end sound better if you are listening to 24 bits.

LOL. You don't know anything about sampling.. bit depth is only amount of possible sound pressures. It has nothing to do with waveform lenghts.

quote:

Wrong again.

In theory wrong, but for practical situations right.

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(Real) studios work at 24bit 96k and so do high end audio equipment. All things in the analog stage equal the higher the sample rate the better the sound.

Yeah. 24bit/96kHz is for BETTER MIXING. Mixing 70 tracks together, the result is better when it has less quantization noise (errors). That's why people still use ANALOG mixers, because there's is no such a thing like quantization noise / error. 96kHz is better for mixing digitally than 44,1 but it has NOTHING TO DO WITH playing a record at 44,1/16bit.

quote:

Originally posted by humilis Yes. That only matters when you are MIXING TRACKS TOGETHER. Not in the final product.

If your final poduct is 24bit 96.000 will it or will it not be higher in resolution that if your final product is 16bit 44.100?

quote:

Originally posted by harriz If your final poduct is 24bit 96.000 will it or will it not be higher in resolution that if your final product is 16bit 44.100?

There's no AUDIBLE differences between 96 and 44,1kHz (if there is, the most of the audible differences will come from crappy DA-converters or bad sample rate conversion when downsampling). Between 16 and 24bits there is, but it depends on what are you listening to. And I don't know any record, which needs those extra bits

quote:

Originally posted by harriz Damn right it's shinning. Shinny and and brittle is the word to describe redbook. Lets assume for a second that you are right and red-book is just as good sonically as DVD-A... A sample of 24 bit 96.000 is just as good in terms of clarity and depth as a sample of 16 bit 44.100... Tell me... Why do studios since the early 90s record at DVD-A and not at red-book fidelity? Why do they dither to cover up the linearity of digital? Why does most professional digital audio equipment operate at least at 24 bit 96k resolution?

Why? Because of math. When mixing, the depth given by sixteen bits only provides so many units to work with, so the summing of some transients will be inaccurate in some cases. Furthermore, sample rates may not line up perfectly, and lower bit rates make the resulting summing problems more apparent. Raising the bit rate reduces the commonness of this. So the higher fidelity at the production stage prevents lower fidelity later on.

When listening to music, however, this precision is not needed, so to save space, producers bring the fidelity down to within such parameters that the drop in quality cannot be discerned.

quote:

If you are right they wouldn't need those cpu intensive sample rates... Everything would be redbook... But it is not redbook anymore is it? Why? Redbook is just as good according to you...

It's not as good. It sounds the same to the human ear, though.

Seriously, read up on psychoacoustics, and you'll learn a lot about just how little humans can distinguish.

quote:

There are several DAC and come in different prices... Which DAC are you talking about?

Ok, I'll concede that There are shit DAC's, but even then. What does that have to do with the CD's quality? The quality inherent in the CD?

dude are you really from chapel hill?

i think the problem is you guys either have crappy stereo+speakers you bought at a pawn shop or you have damaged ears or something. the first time i heard dvd-a i was blown away, i couldn't believe how much better it sounds vs regular cds. the first thing i recall was how much it sounds like a vinyl record.

the same reason vinyl sounds better than a cd is the same reason an electric guitar sounds better than a cd of an electric guitar.

im at work i dont have time to search google to back this up.

quote:

Originally posted by stev�sto i think the problem is you guys either have crappy stereo+speakers you bought at a pawn shop or you have damaged ears or something.

Then that'd only have me saying that vinyl is better than CD, because I listen to vinyls on my Dad's Hi-Fi, while my personal stereo is for CDs.

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the first time i heard dvd-a i was blown away, i couldn't believe how much better it sounds vs regular cds. the first thing i recall was how much it sounds like a vinyl record.

I'm not saying anything about DVDs. Personally, I'd support a move by the music industry to that medium. You can argue in favor of DVDs all you want, but thus far, the only valid argument I've heard anyone here make in favor of vinyl is romanticization of its imperfections.

And no, "you can hear the difference," is not a valid argument, because psychoacoustics, like anything with the affix, "psycho," are subject to the whims of suggestion. In other words, you can fool yourself into hearing things that aren't there if you think you're going to hear it.

Unworldly:
Well, during the academic year, I live in Chapel Hill, mostly for the sake of attending UNC (Go Heels). I live with my family in Cary otherwise.

quote:

Originally posted by stev�sto i think the problem is you guys either have crappy stereo+speakers you bought at a pawn shop or you have damaged ears or something. the first time i heard dvd-a i was blown away, i couldn't believe how much better it sounds vs regular cds. the first thing i recall was how much it sounds like a vinyl record.

Well, how about a blind ABX listening test then?

Let's sample a vinyl record to harddrive and burn it to 44,1/16 CDA and 96/24 DVD-Audio and let's see your listening results.

Ok. That is almost impossible to prove, because vinyl sounds different every time and converters of CD and DVD sound different in different sample rates..

And. I prefer vinyl's warmer sound too, but when playing sampled vinyl from cd, I can't hear differences in sound in general. That was my point.

So then, I think we all finally agree that vinyl sounds better.

I thought we all had accepted that and were arguing about whether CD is good enough for most people or not. Really I don't think it is as simple as "all vinyls sound better than all cd's", cuz some vinyls are crackly and some cd's are made through bad ADC's. Given both are in mint condition then vinyl would win obviously, but in the real practical non ideal world, you have to factor in economics and the costs of vinyl is much much greater.

I think that is the cause of all the argument, many people seem to feel as if the increased sound quality of vinyl doesn't justify the extra cost. The DVD thing might actually be a good idea, dvd burners are really cheap and could be the the higher quality cheap alternative that people are looking for, at least until somebody makes a cheap analog storage that isn't so bulky and fragile.

I heard that many of the popular portable mp3 players use 12 bits rather than 16, I wonder where this threshold is, when are people going to start noticing the difference?

forget about the convenience, economics, etc. harriz and I are arguing one specific point with people that act smarter than they are ... that vinyl is still the best sound quality format available, even to this day. especially when the volume is turned way up where every detail is magnified. especially when you take certain drugs that makes your hearing much more accute. especially when you mix 2, 3 or more tracks together with an analog mixer. these are the times the unbroken waveform really stands out.

To avoid the flame war, I will say this: I bedroom DJ only, and it's all I will ever do, as I mix because I simply love it. It breaks the monotony of an office/desk job. It takes away the stress of haggling for money over the phone (I collect past due loans for a bank). It lets me contstruct my own little musical journey using my favorite producers tracks. I use a cheap set of Numarks, and thus far I use vinyl only. Eventually I will add a CDJ so that I can add that challenge to myself and so that I can probably get tracks I would otherwise be unable to locate. HOWEVER: nothing will ever replace my love for the feel and sound of my vinyl collection.

Regardless of how you choose to mix and what medium you employ, if you are damned good people are going to notice. Use what makes you happy, and I think that happiness and energy will flow to the audience. I think that DJing now is more about a show. People pay to see a certain show that they are already expecting to see. They have preconceived notions. So, in order to sell tickets and make a profit, these superstar DJs give those people exactly what they want: a show. This is nothing more than the free market at work. If people want (i.e., vote with their dollars) to see DJs that only spin vinyl on Tech 12s, then that is what they/we'll see. However I would argue that this is not the trend now. People want 6 or 8 hours shows of hands-in-the-air epic trance complete with a VJ show, fireworks, circus performers, strobe lights, lasers, etc. I think that if they get all that, they don't care if you're mixing on a laptop or a Fisher Price kid's record player.

quote:

Originally posted by stev�sto forget about the convenience, economics, etc. harriz and I are arguing one specific point with people that act smarter than they are ... that vinyl is still the best sound quality format available, even to this day. especially when the volume is turned way up where every detail is magnified. especially when you take certain drugs that makes your hearing much more accute. especially when you mix 2, 3 or more tracks together with an analog mixer. these are the times the unbroken waveform really stands out.

As I've already said, and you have obviously ignored, the aliasing of 16 bit depth at 120 dBSPL is -85 dBSPL (0 dBSPL is the average threshold of audiability). That means you can add maybe another 75 dBSPL of gain before the aliasing becomes audible, and that would only be between 1 kHz and 5 kHz. Furthermore, you can convert a CD's signal to analoge before you mix. Any DJ worth his salt will likely be using a top class DAC for his mixing, and even harriz has implied that those ones will have sound that is within acceptable parameters.

You've used the consumer level technology used in reading CDs as the evidence for your assertion that CDs are low quality, and that's a logical fallacy. You have failed to prove yet that CDs themselves lack anything in audible sound quality.

I think it all just comes down to personal preferance with this ongoing debate. For someone starting out in 2006, i'de say CDs would be your best bet. As digital stores are becoming larger and larger, with more and more tracks being released digitally, going CD just makes sense. And it's less expensive, and CDs take up less space than vinyl. That's just a given really. Sound quality wise...it depends. I prefer digital, because I find the sound to be cleaner (none of that popping, crackling noise) but when I had vinyl, they did sound good but I wouldn't say they sounded good 6 months down the line (it was probably dust, but I tried hard to keep as much dust away from them and I did clean my styluses and replace them). With digital files, I know they wont degrade, nor do I need to clean my CDs that often, as they don't get too dusty or scratched up in cases. I can tell you a few times I had to buy new records after some became warped or I accidently dropped them. Never have to worry about this with CDs. I am really not an expert in sound quality though so I can't get into the technical debate, although I do understand some of it.

quote:

Originally posted by Spirit5 I can tell you a few times I had to buy new records after some became warped or I accidently dropped them. Never have to worry about this with CDs. I am really not an expert in sound quality though so I can't get into the technical debate, although I do understand some of it.

I don't mean to just pick a part a small part of your post but you should be very careful with pretty much all platforms of music, whether it be vinyl, cd or whatever. CD's scratch and will skip badly if not taken care of. I honestly find I can handle records a bit tougher then I can with cd's but that is just from my own personal experience.

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