Tír Na HiFi

Inflammatory subject alert! Here's the link:

http://www.vox.com/2014/4/19/5626058/vi ... r-than-cds

I nearly didn't post this because I don't really fancy an argument, but there's a question in all of this that is never really addressed properly, IMO. If (many) people consider the sound of vinyl superior and if the reasons for this are well-understood (even if not technically "better") then why aren't some engineers trying to reproduce these "deficiencies" to make a better-sounding product? If the process involved is "technically worse" but people like the sound "technically worse" so much that they consider it "sonically better" then why has nobody stepped up to fill that gap?

Anyway, I enjoyed the article.

I'm not the most knowledgeable on this subject but i have done some comparisons, and some very recently (thin lizzy was just a different level on vinyl) on Dereks set up, any comparisons i have listened too the vinyl has always come out on top.....but damn that getting up to flip the record is annoying!

I've always compared vinyl Vs CDs to an open fire Vs radiators. The temperature might be the same but the warmth is completely different.

Yes. The article doesn't really disagree with that, and I'm not going to argue either.

I thought it was a good article.... I thought the article was well written and balanced.

I think there is a lot of truth in the article.... however quality is subjective to the final user.... I like the last paragraph where it states..

"Each format has its charms"

After all I am still using Music Cassette... of which some recordings sound absolutely great on Dolby B.

Very interesting link. There are so many things that affect the sound that we hear from the speakers it is very hard to pin down what has the biggest bearing on that quality of sound. Back in the early 70's Linn put forward the garbage in garbage out proposal. At the time they claimed that the front end, ie record deck, had the most bearing on the overall quality of sound.

I think this is still probably true today. There are huge differences in the sound quality of
turntables on the market today not to mention arms and cartridges. Generally you get what you pay for. The more expensive decks are generally much better than cheaper decks.

The same cannot be said for digital media. On one occasion a friend of mine was interested in upgrading an Arcam 9 CD player which dost about €1000. He listened to about ten CD players from different companies. The dearest being some Naim CD player and power supply that cost over €5000. None of them were a significant improvement over what he had so he held onto his Arcam.

I have a turntable ,Linn Sondek lp12, and a cd transport, Meridian 500 and a Perpetual Technologies dac, they both cost a similar amount of money. In my case I much preferred the sound quality of vinyl.

Those that propose that something will sound better because it has better measurements may not be measuring the right things. Similarly that because frequencies above 20kHz cannot be heard by the human ear does not mean that they don't matter.

Most people will have come across the messages without vowels that we can still read. Or some messages that appear as gobbledygook at first glance but we can read by the time we get to the end of the passage. This is because the brain likes order and interprets what we see so as it make sense to us. I believe that the brain performs a similar function when listening to music. That is why we talk about soundstage width and height and dept. We make reference to the feeling a singer is in front of you. These sensations of soundstage and presence are the brain making sense of the frequencies coming out of the speakers. This also includes any harmonics and distortions that maybe included in the perceived sound coming from the speakers.
Is it just possible that the brain can process the sound from a record player easier than the sound of cd. The message from vinyl may have more clues which are easier for the brain to decipher.
This might be mute point but I think that computer based music reproduction is currently at least as good and in most cases better than cd reproduction.

Diapason wrote:Yes. The article doesn't really disagree with that, and I'm not going to argue either.

yep, I finally got a chance to read it all.. (thanks lack of customers). Again, no argument here but...
I'm not sure I agree with all of the "facts", the notion that a digital recording is more accurate than an analogue one is irrelevant... there are so many variables between the source recording and the listener's armchair I don't believe we ever really get the performance as delivered... even more so when you consider overdubs and re recordings of vocals or instruments. "Imagery" and "Soundstage"? Most of the time it's engineered in there and not a faithful reproduction of where musicians were standing in the studio... Live albums can be different but of course there's "placement" there too. Bottom line? It is all subjective and while I love my vinyl I don't believe CDs are a lesser beast, just different...

Diapason wrote: If (many) people consider the sound of vinyl superior and if the reasons for this are well-understood (even if not technically "better") then why aren't some engineers trying to reproduce these "deficiencies" to make a better-sounding product? If the process involved is "technically worse" but people like the sound "technically worse" so much that they consider it "sonically better" then why has nobody stepped up to fill that gap?

There a few examples where engineers do this already in the digital side to a certain extent. Like the addition of valves to the output stages of CD players from Raysonic, Lampi, Lektor and AudioNote etc. Even sticking with solid state stuff, the designer of the Resolution Audio tuned the output stage of that CDP to deviate from the 'ideal' to give a more pleasing sound as he saw it.

One of the guys at work here designed an audio dac some years ago. He did two versions. The first one designed to be 'perfect' and another one with some 2nd order distortions deliberately added to the design. The customer prefered the 2nd version even though they werent aware of the details in the design.
Valves and vinyl have large distortions on top of the original signal which for whatever reason the human ear finds pleasing. Does this make instruments sound more accurate? I dunno.

It's not really correct to say that vinyl is better than CD without knowing what went on in the recording and mastering process just as Ivor said above. More care seems to be taken during vinyl mastering it seems. Digital mastering...a lot easier to muck that up. On the other hand, I've got a few vinyl records at home that sound average at best whereas the very best recordings in my collection are mostly CD recordings from the classical genre.
Take a good vinyl record, record it to digital (assuming the ADC and the rest in that path isnt altering too much), then play it back digitally. It will sound like the vinyl record.
The vinyl stage in all Devialets converts to digital yet it preserves perfectly the original sound from the record. Really really good ADC stage there.

On the subject of products that are technically great vs those that have distortions as part of the design, you have the flip side of the coin in the Devialet products. Its distortion levels are the lowest of any hifi product out there yet to my ears and many other people, it sounds absolutely superb. Kinda miss mine and wish I kept it.

Ivor wrote:I've always compared vinyl Vs CDs to an open fire Vs radiators. The temperature might be the same but the warmth is completely different.

I'd have thought that you'd have opted for the

Cork vs Screwtop metaphor!

Screwtop is demonstrably better, but there's nowt to heat the POP - glugglugglug


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

jaybee wrote:[
Screwtop is demonstrably better, but there's nowt to heat the POP - glugglugglug

Now there's a debate worth having over a few bottles!