Thread: Digital vs. Vinyl

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Post by crazyhayashi December 16, 2004 (41 of 140)
You make a good point.

Post by mdt December 16, 2004 (42 of 140)
Dan Popp said:

It's not. Neither is 24. But 22 usable bits out of 24 ain't bad.

We are in a situation now where we cannot realize the full potential of what we have, yet some of us are pushing for more. Only a handful of people have heard, for example, how good a CD can really sound. I'm not one of them, in case you were wondering. But does it make sense to demand higher resolution/data formats when 99.99% of us aren't even aware of the capabilities of what we have?

The clocks, filters and converters in these digital systems are the quality bottleneck right now - not (I over-generalize for effect) the quantity of data.

What exactly do you mean? That it is not possible to get everything on to a Cd that would theoretically be possible, or that in playback most people dont get all the info encoded on the CD back ?
In the first case i would say this problem has been solved by the process of recording to DSD and downconverting to 16/44.1, this should fully exploit the capabilitys of RBCD.
As for the second it is shurely so that most people have no idea what is captured on their CDs do to less than top quality equipment (equally important with CD as with LP) and above all due to inadequate set up of the equipment. Technically i should think modern high-end equipment is capable today to exctract the maximum from a CD.

Post by Dan Popp December 16, 2004 (43 of 140)
m wrote:
"What exactly do you mean? That it is not possible to get everything on to a Cd that would theoretically be possible, or that in playback most people dont get all the info encoded on the CD back ?"

Yes. 8-)

We are still discovering things that affect the quality of digital recording and playback. "Jitter" is a perfect example. When people made and played the first digital recordings, no one knew there even was such a thing. "1" in should equal "1" out. We knew the filtering would be tough, but we didn't understand how much a tiny bit of ripple could harm the sound.

Of course, as you wrote, almost no one has the equipment and the room that can fully disclose what's on the lowly CD disc... that's what I mean.

If we had had the same format explosion 23 years ago that we have now, we would be working with 10 different formats and know 1/10th as much about each as we do about CD now. The fact that we have had one "standard" has forced the audio community to deal with it and learn about how to make it work. In contrast, the knee-jerk reaction today with a perceived problem with a format is not to fix it, but to scream for the audio gods to add more bits to it and make it go faster.

Post by raffells December 17, 2004 (44 of 140)
DBB said:

I would like to know if you have been successful capturing the magic of vinyl digitally. I tried with an Audigy II Platinum Pro (not pro quality), very convenient. It has a remote and lets you organize your albums nicely. I used Wavelab to record them.

At first I felt the sound coming out was just about equivalent to my LPs. I recorded at 24/96. But, as I said, the more I listened to the LPs when recording them, the more I realized the LPs were far superior to the play back of the wave file off the hard drive. Interestingly, the CDs I occasionally burned sounded better than the sound coming off the hard drive at 24/96, but still not nearly as palpable as vinyl. Probably the DAC in the Audigy card was inferior to the one in the CD player.

Ok, this is the issue. Is it worth upgrading to UBS recording and getting better a/d and d/a converter? (like the mini me) or is there some other solution. Should I just give up trying to capture the beautiful sound of vinyl on a hard drive or even on a dvd?

I am currently using the EMU 1820 M soundcards (3) and loading directly on to a specially quietened down PC.ie Fans, filters, screening etc.I intend to go DVDA at 24/96 when I am happy.....Also this is a time consuming hobby and other interests and listening to lots of music have slowed me down...I must admit that straight off the HD the sound is superior to CD,even recording onto HD at 44.1. 16 bit can sound better than a lot of CDs but I think that the modest (modded) Pioneer 747 is not really good enough to be compared with a highly tuned disc front...... I have been toying with further upgrading the player or just getting a Denon.5900. There are several ways to modify (improve?) sonics and oversampling and UPsampling are sometimes beneficial. As regards quality of DAC being inferior? I must admit theres a lot more to it than that...power supply speed//regulation and Opamps//compononts all are relevant..Then of course the normal top end roll off of vinyl doesnt create as much demand on amplifiers/tweeters ..I think the subject of sound being basically analogue and the digital storage method having a modifying effect is well known....Its not just the number of digits used (well not with sacd/dsd) but other factors ie distortion inversion by digital being one that the average perceptive listener will notice..ie the very low level information that gives you that three dimensional imagery is poorer on digital and the opposite of natural (analogue) sound.......I have of course noticed that the full dynamic range of copied vinyl seems narrower that the Cds on classical recordings anyway..One thing I believe is that the use of 20 to 24 bit issue has far more relevance than the 88.2/176.4 sampling..... .Dave

Post by DBB December 17, 2004 (45 of 140)
Thanks for you thoughts. Are you saying that you think, ultimately, it may not be possible, at least for now, to capture all the magic of vinyl digitally? Better to stick with vinyl and get my lazy bones up every 20 minutes or so to turn the thing over.

Post by raffells December 18, 2004 (46 of 140)
DBB said:

Are you saying that you think, ultimately, it may not be possible, at least for now, to capture all the magic of vinyl digitally? Better to stick with vinyl and get my lazy bones up every 20 minutes or so to turn the thing over.

Im not saying exactly that as I havent succeeded yet but what Ive got and expect to get will be close and more than satisfactory..Contrary to what someone has misinterpreted on another post as stated by me I dont DISLIKE digital nor do I agree with some of the other points stated as a consequence of other errors stated by this person... I do intend to use 24/192 when dual layer discs make it worthwhile...maybe then? ..The big advantage apart from getting up every 20 mins is to organize One composer DVDAs from several compilations which have duplications and sometime restore and clean up pops clicks...As Lps are now almost being given away, DVDA home recording is not an economic way of doing things....The getting up and down and carrying Lps from my storage room is now part of my personal fitness regime...I recently decided to reduce my lps by getting rid of anything once I ve played it...Working out it takes many years to be played again (if ever)..This lasted 2 days,,I replaced the 5 Lps back in there file...I had meanwhile played 15 SACDs.and 3 Cds...hope Dan reads this with a smile on his face... Dave

Post by dsd sucks February 28, 2010 (47 of 140)
DSD Sucks and PCM Rocks. See it yourself.

http://www.craigmandigital.com/education/PCM_vs_DSD.aspx

Post by audioholik February 28, 2010 (48 of 140)
does anybody know why the rise time parameter of DSD has the closest value to the original square wave's rise time? I knew that CD sucked (29.800us) but PCM24bit/96kHz?? 14.693us :-O

PCM 192kHz improves the rise time but it creates problems with the impulse response time http://www.merging.com/products/show?product=1&page=11

Post by xmen269 February 28, 2010 (49 of 140)
This is very "disturbing" scientific measurments.Is there anyone who can refute false allegations of "dsd sucks"?

Post by canonical February 28, 2010 (50 of 140)
Disturbing? Why?

It is well-known that, by its very design:

1) DSD encoding shifts the noise out into the ultrasonic range ... and that
2) The D/A chip in your SACD player then filters it out, typically at 50 kHz and above.

The person writing this article states the very same thing. The problem with his article is that, even though he states this, and acknowledges it ... he then gets confused at the end:

(a) by thinking that hi-res is all about capturing high-frequencies when it is not, and

(b) by his statement:

" How can warmth and harmonics be reproduced in such a maelstrom? It’s like listening to an ultrasonic cassette. This is, by the way, why most SACD players are made with a built-in 50kHz rolloff filter"

And that is the point. He can't have the argument both ways. The maelstrom he complains about does not exist because, by his own admission, it gets filtered out. So nu? What's the issue? What's his point? I think he is arguing that, using DSD, one would 'lose' frequencies in the 50kHz to 100 kHz range. And that is true. Whereas CD truncates at say 20 kHz, SACD players effectively truncate at 50 kHz. I've seen papers on the frequency spectrum of natural musical instruments ... violins, pianos, percussion etc ... see for instance the summary paper:

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~ashon/audio/Ultrasonics.htm

and although there is still some energy above 20 kHz (which is lost on redbook CD), ... there is generally very minimal energy happening above 50 kHz. And if it's not there, and your equipment probably can't play it back anyway, I don't think he has much of an argument left.

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