[HN Gopher] A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile worl...
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A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire
Author : mtg
Score : 141 points
Date : 2022-08-05 18:54 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| zac23or wrote:
| Audiophile world is strange...
|
| Monster cables vs Coat hangers:
| https://consumerist.com/2008/03/03/do-coat-hangers-sound-as-...
| Warm up new headphones:
| https://soundsightheadphones.com/guides/do-i-need-to-warm-up...
| allears wrote:
| People who claim CDs have more dynamic range than analog are
| missing the point. Think of it in terms of graphics. 8 bit
| graphics can represent totally black, or totally white. That's a
| complete dynamic range. But it's the in-between shades that
| require more bits to specify.
|
| It's the same with audio. It's not how soft or how loud a
| recording can get. It's the subtle shades of variation. 16 bits
| is pretty good, but not as good as 24 bits. You can tell by
| listening to the shimmer of a cymbal, or a plucked string fading
| to silence. You may not experience it as "stair-stepping," but
| there's an added degree of realism that more bits can confer.
|
| And similarly about frequency range. Any audio system or media
| has more linear reproduction in the middle part of its range. So
| if you design a system that exceeds the range of human hearing,
| you'll get more linearity within the audible part of that range.
| mav88 wrote:
| 16-bit 44kHz is fine for playback and stair stepping does not
| exist:
|
| https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| No. A CD audio recording can contain literally all the
| information in the audio spectrum with enough dynamic range to
| capture human breathing and a jet flyover simultaneously.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist-Shannon_sampling_theor...
| Sporktacular wrote:
| You are not understanding his point. Linear PCM systems
| encode quiet parts of music with a lower signal to noise
| level than louder parts. So by over-engineering the bit
| depth, you keep the quantisation noise further from
| perceptibility than without it.
|
| I think everyone gets sampling theory by now, your response
| was to an audio engineer.
| WiseWeasel wrote:
| 1 bit color encoding is black and white (represented by 0 or
| 1). 8 bits can encode 256 colors (2^8).
| bfgoodrich wrote:
| Kirby64 wrote:
| I don't think they are. Dynamic range is easily quantifiable
| and vinyl has worse dynamic range, full stop, compared to CDs.
| Anyone claiming otherwise does not know how to measure dynamic
| range.
|
| Likewise for bits, there is very little evidence (and, in fact,
| lots of evidence to the contrary) that you can detect the
| difference between a 24-bit and a 16-bit recording, assuming
| they're mastered the same way.
| apohn wrote:
| > You can tell by listening to the shimmer of a cymbal, or a
| plucked string fading to silence.
|
| I don't think this is true. A long time ago I was involved in
| the headphone audiophile community and people were always using
| the shimmer of a cymbal as how they could tell the difference
| between MP3s and Lossless, Analog vs Digital, CD vs SACD or
| whatever. Then they'd do a blind test using Foobar2000 and
| start saying the whole blind testing methodology is flawed
| because surely they can hear the difference under normal
| listening conditions with their $1000 headphone connected to
| their $3000 amp using their $2000 DAC.
|
| My favorite quote was from somebody who said "Nobody in this
| community cares about music. They only care about their
| equipment."
| allears wrote:
| I'm a recording engineer, and I can tell you that there
| definitely is such a thing as high quality audio. Certainly
| there are people who believe in snake oil and like to parade
| their ignorance as though it were knowledge. But if you
| bother to study the science of audio, read trade magazines,
| or hang out with engineers and studio owners, you will find
| that just quoting frequency range or dynamic range, or even
| noise floor, is not enough to specify an excellent audio
| signal. And if you think CD audio is as good as it gets, and
| nobody can tell the difference between that and a studio
| master tape, for instance, you are dismissing the expertise
| of the people who have studied and worked to make the
| recordings you love.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| The reasons for higher quality audio (24/32-bit data,
| higher frequency, etc) have value in the mastering process.
| For recording, yes there is value in it. It gives you
| freedom to adjust your recording without running out of
| headroom.
|
| For listening, no. Find me a double-blind test where 16-bit
| 48 or 44.1 kHz audio compares poorly to 24-bit 192 kHz
| audio. You won't find it. You'll find PLENTY of people
| claiming they can tell a difference, but it's just
| unfounded claims.
| hakfoo wrote:
| I wonder if there's some real-world "resonance" we're
| ignoring.
|
| I could imagine an accurate statement like "the converted
| signal out of the DAC never diverges more than 0.005%
| from the original input", but could some aspects of that
| .005% produce some outsized weight when fed through a
| real audio system? I could imagine circuits that "rang"
| if given something that looks a little too square-wavey
| or hitting non-linear spots on the speaker's response
| curve differently.
|
| It would be interesting to do some sort of A/B/C/D
| testing-- analog and digital, on two different audio
| systems, for example, to see if some systems are more
| subject to that.
| apohn wrote:
| So don't take this personally, but comments like yours
| are one of the major reasons I refuse to participate in
| any audiophile communities.
|
| There's always a hypothetical edge case for some
| audiophiles to claim that what they hear is possible. And
| no matter how much blind testing, research, or
| engineering is done, this hypothetical edge case means
| that something has not been proven. It's both pointless
| and exhausting to discuss anything with these people
| because the end result is always that the possibility
| that an edge case exists means you can't claim something
| is BS.
|
| Imagine somebody claimed that people can fly by flapping
| their arms. You say this is nonsense, but they said you
| have to prove it. So you ask 10 people to try to fly by
| flapping their hands and they cannot. This is not enough
| proof for them. So now you ask 1000 people to try it.
| Then the person claims maybe people in your country
| cannot fly this way, but in other countries they might be
| able to. So you go to 10 countries and ask 1000 people to
| try. Now the claim is that you did not test enough people
| who went to the gym every day and you should have asked
| the strongest people to fly. When nobody from this group
| can fly, maybe you should test the lightest people with
| light bones. This keeps going forever because there is
| always yet another edge case. Welcome to Audiophilia.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| He's spot on. There are dozens of parameters that can
| describe audio quality. And his comment compared CD/44.1
| kHz to master tape. He said nothing about hi-def.
| tptacek wrote:
| In 2021, on the MoFi page, about their one-step process:
|
| _MFSL engineers begin with the original master tapes and
| meticulously cut a set of lacquers._
|
| Today:
|
| _MFSL engineers begin with the original master recordings,
| painstakingly transfer them to DSD 256, and meticulously cut a
| set of lacquers._
|
| Meanwhile, Michael Fremer, "the dean of audiophile writing":
|
| _I've now spoken to someone who would know and who confirmed,
| out of necessity off the record for now, that in 2018 Mobile
| Fidelity cut lacquers using analog master tapes (not copies).
| Will speculative click bait YouTube videos claiming otherwise be
| taken down after reading this?_
|
| (A bunch of this is in the article, I just think the quotes are
| kind of funny).
| topgun77 wrote:
| ben7799 wrote:
| Audiophile is full of nonsense but one of the more hilarious ones
| in something like this where the goal is "no digital" is it's
| been a long time since you could guarantee there was no digital
| going on between the instrument and the master.
|
| They talk about Thriller a lot. Is it possible to have a
| completely analog copy of Thriller if it turned out a guitar went
| through a digital rack unit or a digital synthesizer was used? I
| don't know the answer to the question but in 1982 there were
| plenty of digital effects available.
|
| The more recent you get the more unlikely it is the signal got
| from the instrument onto the master without going digital at some
| point, even if the recording is done on tape and then transferred
| to vinyl in a completely analog old fashioned sense.
|
| If I plug my guitar directly into my amp and you're in the room
| you hear 100% analog. If I use the pedal board it got transferred
| A <->D <-> at least once before it went into the amp. Possibly
| with a dry signal staying analog but the effects might be digital
| and mixed back in.
| acomjean wrote:
| Digital was a badge of honor back in the 80s and 90s when CDs
| were new. No hiss, better sound. They Used to label CDs with 3
| letters (the SARS code) : A for analog D for digital. For
| recording, mixing and mastering
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code
|
| We had a high school radio station (10 Watts, mono FM). One kid
| had all these great classic rock albums he was getting from his
| neighbor who was giving him them when he got the redone CD
| versions.
|
| Even my old Sony V6 headphones have a "For Digital" sticker on
| them which thinking about it is pure marketing.
|
| I mean we tried A/B testing when I was kid, CD vs Cassettes. The
| Cassettes with dolbyC sounded better when recorded from CD onto
| decent tapes (they were a little louder) and it was hard to tell
| the difference anyway. Maybe in the quiet passages you could hear
| hiss... CDs were a better format though and we knew it. Becuase
| cars and cd walkmans were rare, my CDs were often copied to
| cassettes.
|
| At some point its good enough, just enjoy the performance.
| taylodl wrote:
| Nyquist Theorem - learn it, love it, live it. I'm a musician and
| my mates and I have been going round and round on this issue for
| years. They _swear_ analog is "warm" and "captures the whole
| wave." It's all BS. It's _always_ been BS.
|
| What the vinyl lovers never stop to realize is the audio signal
| has to be modified to record on vinyl - you're not listening to
| the music as recorded on the master tape, you're listening to an
| altered copy of it. Why is that? Because of limitations of the
| playback mechanism - you can't impart too much kinetic energy
| into the needle. So, the bass gets rolled off, pop filters and
| transient filters are employed, and high hats get dialed back.
| All to keep that stupid needle in its groove. Bottom line - the
| music is altered, the dynamics have been diminished, and it all
| sounds muddier, i.e. "warm", as a result.
|
| The problem is a couple of generations grew up listening to this
| and thinking it was what music sounded like. The musicians making
| the music always complained that it never sounded right, but had
| to accept the limitations of the playback medium. I grew up in a
| musical family. All my friends played music. We always knew, and
| thought everybody else knew, that the music on records didn't
| sound right, it sounded muddy and compressed.
|
| Then CD Audio came out in the 80's and what a difference! The
| bass was punchy instead of muddy, the high-hats and riding
| cymbals rang, the dynamic range was breathtaking and the stereo
| separation was unreal! I was elated the first time I heard an
| audio CD.
|
| Then the critics came. It sounds "harsh" or "cold", it lost that
| "warmth", computers can't capture the actual analog waveform.
| That's when I began to realize that these audiophiles and critics
| didn't know what they were talking about. They obviously weren't
| musicians.
|
| Fast forward 30 years and the only people still debating this
| topic are the rock & metal guys. The Jazz and Classical musicians
| quickly recognized the superiority of digital audio. But the
| masses don't listen to Jazz and Classical music, they listen to
| rock and metal (and pop - but the pop world doesn't seem to care
| one way or the other). I don't even know what to say to the rock
| and metal guys anymore (full disclosure - I'm a guitarist
| primarily playing rock, metal, prog and folk - they're pretty
| much all in the same camp on this issue). Rare is the guitarist
| that isn't using a pedal board. Extremely rare is the guitarist
| using an all-analog pedal board. Many guitarists are using SS
| (solid-state) amps now. They're recording into a DAW ( _digital_
| audio workstation). Then they claim that somehow distributing the
| end result of vinyl is somehow pure? It 's nuts, it's simply
| nuts. Add to that almost none of us are playing our amps clean
| and pristine, so what - you think it matters how accurately you
| capture our harmonic distortion?
|
| Yet I see people lining up paying $40-$50 to get these albums
| thinking they're getting something different. Which I guess they
| are, they're getting an altered recording. This only reinforces
| what I've been saying for decades - vinyl is a scam and these
| people are laughing all the way to the bank.
|
| I'm hoping now we can _finally_ put this issue to rest and get
| everyone on board with digital audio. Now if we can talk to the
| recording engineers about these stupid "loudness wars"...
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > Fast forward 30 years and the only people still debating this
| topic are the rock & metal guys.
|
| An it makes sense. Rock and metal are played with electric
| guitars, and electric guitars are not much unless they are
| plugged into an amplifier. What it means is that the amp is not
| just part of sound reproduction, it is actually part of the
| instrument.
|
| It is especially true in metal, where amps are frequently
| overdriven for that characteristic sound, here the idea of
| sound reproduction completely goes out of the window, the sound
| characteristics come as much from the amp as they come from the
| guitar itself, if not more. And if you look closely during
| rock/metal concerts, guitars are almost never plugged directly
| into the PA system, the band come with their own amps and if
| necessary, the sound is picked up using microphones and then
| sent to the PA system.
|
| So it make as much sense for guitarists to want a specific kind
| of tube amp as it is for a violinist to care about the wood
| their instrument is made of.
| brightball wrote:
| I spent a year working on a site that catered to the audiophile
| world and it blew my mind at the time. The lengths that people
| will go to are incredible.
|
| There was one guy who had a $200,000 house with over $2 million
| worth of audio to setup his sound system. He had these special
| electrical units installed outside his house that were supposed
| to guarantee a perfectly steady current.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Seems like if they had used high quality analog tape instead of
| DSD they would only be getting criticism for not calling it 'two-
| step'.
|
| There are some amazing analogue mastering recorders like the
| Ampex ATR-102 which they could have used. Tape wear would have
| been an eventual issue if they had to re-press hundreds of times,
| but that's just what the vinyl nuts want right?
|
| But on the other hand, they lied. Seems Jim Davis deserves every
| bit of criticism he gets. As do some of the golden-eared
| audiophile journalists who also happily oiled the BS machine.
| politelemon wrote:
| _> That visit resulted in a second video, published July 20, in
| which MoFi's engineers confirmed, with a kind of awkward
| casualness, that Esposito was correct with his claims._
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shg0780YgAE
| eertami wrote:
| https://archive.ph/z83rO
| everyone wrote:
| This does seem more like a religious issue, eg. its more about
| faith, dogma, orthodoxy, and heresy, than it about anything
| tangible.
| focusedone wrote:
| Bingo. Audio religion begging to be marketed to.
| egypturnash wrote:
| _Syd Schwartz, Mobile Fidelity's chief marketing officer, made an
| apology._
|
| _"Mobile Fidelity makes great records, the best-sounding records
| that you can buy," he said. "There had been choices made over the
| years and choices in marketing that have led to confusion and
| anger and a lot of questions, and there were narratives that had
| been propagating for a while that were untrue or false or myths.
| We were wrong not to have addressed this sooner."_
|
| That sure is a lot of words to say "Yeah, uh, we lied, and we got
| caught. Sorry." All these "choices" and "narratives" that just
| sort of... appeared... without _any_ source to them.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Heavy use of the passive voice -- the dead giveaway for BS.
|
| It's interesting whether "digital is better than analog" but
| hardly relevant here. There are people who believe it's not
| true, and MoFi lied to them.
| thih9 wrote:
| > "These people who claim they have golden ears and can hear the
| difference between analog and digital, well, it turns out you
| couldn't."
|
| But was there an album without DSD to compare to and hear the
| difference? I guess most people heard just the album with DSD
| (that admittedly sounded great).
|
| What would happen if there was also a One Press version without
| DSD? Would people with "golden ears" be able to recognize it in a
| blind test?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Almost nothing has ever been recorded and released using only
| DSD. Why not? Most fundamentally because you can't edit DSD
| data, it has to be converted to PCM format first. This means it
| can only be used for live takes, with nothing done except
| topping & tailing the recording.
|
| There are are few "ultra-audiophile" recordings that have been
| made this way, but so few of them that the question of whether
| it's better or audibly different is almsot irrelevant.
| thih9 wrote:
| > Almost nothing has ever been recorded and released using
| only DSD.
|
| I don't understand; I was talking about an album without DSD.
| Why are you referring to albums produced with only DSD?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| My point was tha an album _with_ DSD (only) is so rare that
| asking about a comparison to album _without_ DSD is a
| little strange. Almost all albums are produced with digital
| technology that is not DSD, even the ones that include DSD.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Who knew that snake oil might not turn out even to be made from
| snakes?!
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Audiophools got played yet again.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > Audiophools
|
| You don't need to attack any community, no matter how stupid it
| may be, if they are just minding their own business.
| isatty wrote:
| Audiophile here - if they were using a proper master, minimally
| a true lossless file I don't really see the problem.
|
| On the other hand, it seems to me like I meet more people who
| are just into buying new gear rather than enjoying the music,
| which is what the hobby is to me. Don't even get me started on
| snake oil like cables.
| criddell wrote:
| Can you reliably hear a difference between a lossless file
| and a modern high bit rate MP3 (or other lossy format)?
|
| I can't, but then I have tinnitus...
| isatty wrote:
| Depends on the music. 320k mp3 is actually pretty good.
|
| Anyway in this case I want a studio promising that their
| records were pressed from a high quality master to actually
| use a high quality master. It doesn't matter if I can't
| distinguish it.
|
| Just because a Camry can also transport my ass from a to b
| does not mean the Porsche dealership gets to sell me one
| over another car I specifically wanted.
| allears wrote:
| Depends on the signal level and the impedance. For speaker
| cables, all you need is a big enough gauge to carry the
| current. But for low level signals, especially less than line
| level (magnetic phono cartridges, microphones, guitar
| pickups) a good quality cable with proper impedance and low
| capacitance can make a big difference. If you look at
| professional studio and broadcast supply catalogs, you will
| see mic cables with a specified capacitance per foot --
| that's a spec that engineers look for. And I can personally
| vouch that an expensive guitar cable sounds better than a
| cheap one -- I was a skeptic until I tried one, and compared
| it with the standard cable I had been using. The difference
| wasn't subtle.
| isatty wrote:
| The average person buying $2000 snake oil cables have no
| idea about impedance or capacitance. I'm not talking about
| studio professionals buying gear here.
|
| Idk what the cheap guitar cable was but any decent guitar
| cable will be indistinguishable from an expensive ass cable
| sonically. This doesn't take into account better quality of
| construction and better connectors etc.
| bayindirh wrote:
| There's a fine line between a healthy audiophile and an over-
| obsessed one. Latter is a bad slippery slope, too.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Seems like now that it's out in the open, there'd be a lucrative
| market in selling the DSDs directly, rather than waiting until it
| goes to the labels or vendors to re-rip the vinyl remasters into
| FLAC/MP3?
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| There is a market for DSD albums: https://www.nativedsd.com/
|
| I can see why people would be angry about the deception, but
| DSD is probably the highest fidelity audio anyone has ever
| heard (with the right equipment).
|
| Audiophiles should be celebrating a situation in which we today
| can listen to albums in higher fidelity than anyone except
| those who were around when they were being recorded... and that
| quality is accessible basically anywhere via the internet.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You can't edit DSD data in any conventional sense. This makes
| the use of fully DSD recordings rather limited in more or
| less any style of recorded music.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _But these days, with the right equipment, digital recordings
| can be so good they can fool even the best ears._
|
| "These days" being what, 1982-2022?
| gwern wrote:
| "The fallout of the MoFi revelation has thrown the audiophile
| community into something of an existential crisis. The quality of
| digitized music has long been criticized because of how much data
| was stripped out of files so MP3s could fit on mobile devices.
| But these days, with the right equipment, digital recordings can
| be so good they can fool even the best ears. Many of MoFi's now-
| exposed records were on Fremer and Esposito's own lists of the
| best sounding analog albums..."One of the reasons they want to
| excoriate MoFi is for lying," says Howarth. "The other part that
| bothers them is that they've been listening to digital all along
| and they're highly invested in believing that any digital step
| will destroy their experience. And they're wrong."...And Randy
| Braun, a music lover, Hoffman message board member and lawyer in
| New York, hopes that, in the end, the MoFi revelation will prove
| what he's been saying for years, that the anti-digital crowd has
| been lying to itself: "These people who claim they have golden
| ears and can hear the difference between analog and digital,
| well, it turns out you couldn't.""
|
| Hard to imagine a better A/A-test.
| apohn wrote:
| >The fallout of the MoFi revelation has thrown the audiophile
| community into something of an existential crisis.
|
| Don't worry, the crisis will not last long. Audiophiles will
| find a way to get over it and buy some better cables that would
| have revealed they were using a Digital source all along.
| floren wrote:
| Cables are all well and good, but the quest for perfect audio
| will continue until somebody invents a gadget which makes you
| 15 years old again, hanging out in your friend's basement,
| having just tried pot for the first time and hearing Led
| Zeppelin III on a cheap Sears record player. I don't know
| exactly what this gadget will look like, but it's the only
| thing that will get audiophiles the sound they've been
| chasing.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > Don't worry, the crisis will not last long. Audiophiles
| will find a way to get over it and buy some better cables
| that would have revealed they were using a Digital source all
| along.
|
| You don't need to attack any person or community - especially
| given that rich people buying expensive stuff is hardly
| hurting others directly. Please make good faith arguments.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| If they just bought it and shut up about it maybe.
| bambax wrote:
| > _especially given that rich people buying expensive stuff
| is hardly hurting others directly_
|
| Superstition is always bad.
| user_7832 wrote:
| If superstition is always bad, I take it you're also
| annoyed/angry at Wayne Gretzky or Serena Williams? Or any
| athlete engaging in superstition?
|
| (https://thevarsity.ca/2022/03/20/athletes-superstition/)
| bambax wrote:
| I have never heard of Wayne Gretzky; Google tells me he's
| a hockey player. I don't think I have ever seen a match
| of hockey in my entire life. I'm not annoyed by what I
| don't know.
|
| But the "superstitions" that the linked article mentions,
| are rituals, lucky charms. They're much less dangerous
| than going around pretending that something exists, that
| provably isn't there.
|
| Audiophiles are moon-landing deniers. Some might think
| it's funny or harmless. I think it's terrifying.
| allears wrote:
| That's a little simplistic. You can certainly tell the
| difference between a good analog recording played on a high
| quality system vs. an MP3. But once you throw enough samples
| and bit depth at it (more than are on a standard CD), you get
| quality that's equivalent to, or better than, most analog
| media.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| >(more than are on a standard CD)
|
| Sorry, but CD (16bit PCM) has better dynamic range than
| vinyl. The best vinyl systems can have dynamic range of
| around 80dB. 16bit PCM is 96dB.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Unless it's brick-wall normalized during mastering.
| masklinn wrote:
| Sure but that's got nothing to do with the CD itself.
| Except in that you would not be able to brick-wall a
| vynil at all so you don't.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's a real thing, to be sure. The Loudness Wars have
| completely ruined any number of otherwise decent
| recordings. The worst I ever heard was Dropkick Murphys's
| "The Meanest of Times" which had the dynamic range of an
| air conditioner in Phoenix.
|
| Still, you can always take a great analog recording, pipe
| it into a good ADC, and listen to that sample forever
| without degradation. I think almost everything can play
| FLACs now.
| vosper wrote:
| Which is not an issue with the digital format, but with
| the mastering.
| bayindirh wrote:
| However, you can't change the mastering of the album you
| have bought. When the CD version of the album you have
| bought has subpar audio quality, the abilities of the
| medium has no value and importance.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| "When the CD version of the album you have bought has
| subpar audio quality"
|
| Yes, but these mastering choices could apply to the vinyl
| version too. In other words, your response had nothing to
| do with a comparison of the two media.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Telling this out loud upsets a lot of people, but I'm on the
| same boat with you.
|
| A good lossless album, regardless of the medium played
| through shows a significant difference in soundstage given
| the system can handle the resolution thrown at it when
| compared with a MP3/M4A file.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Telling this out loud upsets a lot of people, but I'm on
| the same boat with you.
|
| It "upsets a lot of people" in the same sense and for the
| same reason as telling them drinking alkaline water cures
| cancer.
| TylerE wrote:
| I suspect the real reason is that vinyl largely escaped the
| ravages of the loudness war, because physics.
|
| (And also much of the digital gear in the 80s when the first
| wave of CD releases was pretty crappy)
| bayindirh wrote:
| And the standard equalizer you need to apply during
| record/playback of the medium.
| jrajav wrote:
| 44100hz sample rate is enough to reproduce well above the
| highest frequency even young humans can hear, and 16 bits of
| depth is enough for 96db of dynamic range, enough to make the
| noise floor of any consumer system totally inaudible.
|
| Standard CDs might not be good enough for archival and
| further production work (where you also need wiggle room for
| further processing or format changes), but they have plenty
| of headroom to reproduce any kind of sound for playback
| purposes. Any more is just placebo.
| doix wrote:
| So it's been many years since I looked at this stuff, but
| the reason for higher sample rate isn't to do with humans
| being able to hear over 20khz. If you sample at 44khz you
| need a high pass filter at 22khz to avoid aliasing. Since
| that's pretty close to 20khz, it needs a pretty sharp drop
| off. Having a filter with a sharp drop off can introduce
| artifacts.
|
| With 96khz sampling rate, you don't need as a sharp drop
| off in your filter.
|
| The above is mostly accurate, hopefully someone else will
| comment and tell me how I'm wrong and correct the
| inaccuracies.
|
| Edit: to anyone reading this, read the replies if you want
| the correct explanation. To everyone that replied, thank
| you :).
| kazinator wrote:
| You are correct; with a 96 kHz sampling rate, you don't
| need such a brick wall filter. But then you dohn't have
| to actually keep the data at 96 kHz; it can be reduced to
| 44, this time using a digital filter.
|
| A sharply cutting off analog filter is expensive to
| produce. It has multiple stages to create the multiple
| poles. High precision resistors and capacitors have to be
| used to get all those circuit stages to line up. The
| filter will have phase distortion.
|
| That's the basis of "supersampling": sampling at a higher
| rate with a simpler filter with less of a cutoff, then
| completing the job with a digital filter to get to the
| target sample rate.
|
| This can be done in reverse, in reproducion. Take, say, a
| 48 KHz signal, and digitally interpolate it to a higher
| sample rate like 96 KHz. That is fed to the DAC. The
| filter after the DAC then doesn't need such a steep
| cutoff after 20 KHz. A greater bit depth can be used;
| like 16 bit samples interpolated to 24 bit at a higher
| rate, fed to a 24 bit DAC.
|
| The digital filter or interpolator doesn't care about
| accurate resistors, capacitors or drift in component
| values over time or due to heat; it does the same thing
| with the same data every time.
|
| Digital filters can look at future values also. The state
| of an analog filter is determined by only the current and
| past values of the signal; but digital signal processing
| can delay the signal a little bit and look at a "box"
| around the current value. I think that is key to
| preserving phase relationships.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > with a 96 kHz sampling rate, you don't need such a
| brick wall filter.
|
| This is incorrect. See my comment above/below.
| TylerE wrote:
| Yes, i hate when people talk about Nyquist as if its some
| Panacea.
|
| Its vwry "spherical cow". It assumes all your filters,
| DACs, are perfect, and that time is infinite.
| masklinn wrote:
| The exact same spherical cow issue applies, with worse
| effects, when you increase your sampling rate
| unnecessarily.
|
| And you can use oversampling to correct for the filtering
| issues. That's pretty standard in modern DACs and ADCs.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Nyquist isn't about such assumptions at all. It is an
| information theoretic value, based on the provable claim
| that there is zero information present in the original
| analog waveform that is not represented in the digital
| version.
|
| Yes, your filters, DAC and _speaker wire_ could still
| create a less than ideal listening situation, but the
| fundamental aspect of the Nyquist frequency is not
| concerned with any of that.
| kazinator wrote:
| There is zero information present in a waveform that is
| not contained in the digital version, if that original
| waveform is confined below the Nyquist limit. Either it
| is that way already, or else is derived from an original-
| original waveform that isn't, by low-pass filtering.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| That's an excellent coda/qualification of what I said.
| Put into a more listener centric context: there's no
| audible information in a waveform that is not captured by
| sampling it at 44.1khz.
| masklinn wrote:
| Anything above 44 is problematic because lots of systems
| have non-linear responses and will create audible
| intermodulations of the ultraharmonics.
|
| Monty (of xiph) has an article on the subject (well on
| 24/192 but it applies all the same) which goes into the
| gory details:
| https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
| ajross wrote:
| That's the "further processing" notion the grandparent
| comment talked about. A correctly processed signal at
| 44.1kHz is more than sufficient to reproduce all audio.
| But if you're going to do something with the sample
| series (like low-pass it for aliasing protection in your
| example, or to resample it for conversion, or for any
| effects or mixing step really) it's good to have extra
| data in there to prevent headaches. Likewise sampling at
| 24+ bits prevents accumulated error in repeated
| processing, etc...
|
| There's a space in the audio world for more bits of data.
| But the final output format isn't where it belongs.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| That's fine - but, to the extent that's true, it's true
| only about the recording and mastering process. CD, as a
| delivery mechanism, is totally fine and perceptually
| flawless.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| [ EDIT: contents of this post were factually incorrect.
| What Kazinator wrote in response is correct, and I don't
| want to leave incorrect ideas floating around. ]
| mturmon wrote:
| This explanation loses me at "infinity per dB" ... and
| I'm an EE. I think you're trying to cover too much ground
| here, it's really confusing to try to understand what you
| mean.
|
| I believe the comment you're responding to is talking
| about the analog filter that is needed to avoid aliasing
| -- as the first words of your comment correctly
| note/explain.
|
| And in particular, the original comment seems to be
| noting the phase distortion (in frequencies near the
| cutoff) that analog brick-wall filters will cause. This
| has been a design contention for decades, really, ever
| since the CD format was introduced.
|
| It's a big design space, with options for gentler analog
| filters, followed by very fast digital sampling, and
| further tricks with filtering in the digital domain,
| where you don't have to worry about getting great
| capacitors, etc.
|
| It may be out-of-scope to lay all that out in one
| paragraph!
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| That's why I had some blank lines in there :)
|
| You're right that its a big design space. The key
| takeaway is that "yes, higher sample rates can actually
| make a difference, but almost entirely down to the filter
| design, not because Nyquist moves ... and you probably
| cannot hear the difference."
| kazinator wrote:
| If the goal is audio capture and reproduction, the filter
| used when sampling at 96 kHz still starts rolling off at
| around 20 kHz. The wrap-around aliasing artifacts do not
| begin until around half of 96 kHz, or around 48 kHz. So
| the filter only has to be steep enough to hit a large
| attenuation at 48 kHz: full signal to virtually nothing
| over the space of 28 kHz.
|
| If you're sampling at 48 kHz, the signal has to be
| severely attenuated already; it has to go from 20 kHz to
| deep cutoff in just the space of a few kHz.
|
| At 96 kHz can achieve the _effect_ as if you were
| sampling at 48 kHz, with a steep filter. You sample at 96
| kHz with a milder filter, and then purely in the digital
| realm, you down-sample to 48 kHz. There is an overall
| filter consisting of the original analog one plus the
| digital processing.
|
| That is cheaper and more reliable than doing it all in
| analog.
|
| An analog filter with a steep cut off will be challenging
| in mass production because of the strict component
| tolerances.
|
| Sure, you could use a steep filter with 96 kHz also. Say,
| a steep filter that starts cutting off at 30 kHz. It
| would still be a less demanding filtering application
| because of the margin that you have in the frequency
| domain. The multiple poles of the filter don't have to be
| lined up as well. E.g. if the first pole starts rolling
| off at around 30 kHz, and then next ones at 31, and the
| third one at 28, ... it doesn't matter because you're
| still hitting the absolute target of there being next to
| nothing at 48 kHz, and nearly the full signal at 20 kHz.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Sure, but going to disagree about the numbers there. I
| have a DAW interface which is exceedingly linear (+/-
| <0.15 dB) up to 35 kHz. Don't need to start filtering so
| low to hit those results.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You're right, and I'm wrong.
| kazinator wrote:
| Not only that, but _what_ you hear at those upper
| frequencies isn 't tone anyway. the highest harmonics of
| tonal sounds live in that region, plus aperiodic signals
| (the hiss from sibilants, cymbals crashing, and so on).
|
| The content can be faked, and this is used in low-bandwidth
| codecs and such.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_extension
| throwawaycities wrote:
| > Hard to imagine a better A/A-test.
|
| In part it goes to prove Mark Twain's quote that it's easier to
| fool people that to convince them they have been fooled. So
| many people build their identity around being something like an
| audiophile and something like this demonstrates the are mostly
| frauds...not all of it is a bad-faith fraud either which makes
| it so much more difficult for those people who believed they
| had a genuine passion and talent to accept.
|
| On the other hand there are people who really don't give a shit
| and just shill themselves in a given industry to make money as
| self-proclaimed experts. It's part of a sickness social media
| pushes on people where they think they are brands...as opposed
| to actual humans. These people have no allegiance and will
| readily move on the the next money making opportunity so long
| as they can...probably high priced wines.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That whole line of thinking just blows me away. It's possible
| to accurately sample and reproduce _any_ vinyl recording in the
| digital realm. It 's absolutely _not_ possible to accurately
| record _every_ digital recording onto vinyl. For instance, it
| 's not hard at all to make bass so loud that it causes the
| needle to leap out of the track, or treble so high that the
| needle can't accurately track the high frequency vibrations.
|
| In fact, part of the record player spec is the "RIAA
| equalization"[0] that attempts to account for the fact that
| vinyl isn't good at recording a wide range of frequencies well.
| On recording, you cut the bass and jack up the treble. On
| playback, you boost the bass and reduce the treble. Without
| that, vinyl would be even worse than it is today.
|
| It's absolutely, 100% fine for someone to say that they
| subjectively prefer the sound quality of a record player to a
| CD. I don't, but that's fine: it's purely a preference thing.
| But to claim that vinyl is objectively better in some way is
| just ludicrous.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization
| jrajav wrote:
| Most of the time people will argue that vinyl has "warmth"
| and this makes it subjectively better. This is true, but it's
| actually because of the pleasing distortion record players
| add to the music. Being distortion, even if it improves your
| listening experience (and this depends on genre, though it
| generally does), it is certainly objectively worse in terms
| of accurate reproduction.
| taylorportman wrote:
| An instrument amplified by vacuum tubes does have a
| distinct sound, "vinyl" also has its own signature..
| magnetic tape is pretty analog too. All of these signature
| sounds can be digitized/discretized at sampling rates that
| preserve the vinyl crackle or tube warmth or combinations.
| To me it seems like marketing and the consumers
| justification of their susceptibility.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I still think that "warmth" is a way to describe not
| actually hearing the separate digital samples
| subconsciously, and just hearing the sounds gliss into each
| other. I also think it's an anachronism that comes from way
| back when the digital sample rate was often a lot lower
| (and people would insist that their live digital effects
| sounded as good as analog, when you could sometimes even
| consciously hear the samples jumping into each other.)
| Other than that, it seems like something that people
| project onto music with bassy reverb.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Exactly. If you like that warmth, awesome. There's not a
| thing wrong with that. It's when people confuse "warm" for
| "better" that the problems start.
| christkv wrote:
| Reminds me of the tube vs transistor amplifiers discussions
| where tube amplifiers are supposed to have a warmer sound.
| mod wrote:
| Can't the warmth just be reproduced in a digital player
| anyway?
| kstrauser wrote:
| Yup. Boost the mids on your EQ and you're halfway there.
| djbusby wrote:
| What's the other half? Magic in the amp-circuit?
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Thousand dollar rocks and crystals to place around your
| room.
| masklinn wrote:
| Well yes but that's not actually what the intent was.
|
| Though I would expect it'd be more of an eq profile
| thing.
| mrandish wrote:
| You can also bake analog sounding warmth into your hi-res
| digital master and it's done all the time. There are a
| wide variety of different digital mastering plug-ins
| which do remarkably sophisticated analog modeling.
|
| Ultimately, this boils down to signal which vibrates
| speakers. As a thought experiment, if you use some kind
| of theoretically perfect surface-sampling laser to
| capture every movement of the speaker surface at
| sufficient frequency and fidelity to reproduce all of the
| information in the original signal and speaker surface
| vibrations (ala Shannon->Nyquist), then a digital
| playback of that signal which vibrates the same speaker
| surface identically will sound exactly the same.
|
| Individuals can prefer different sonic characteristics
| encoded in an output but that's an aesthetic choice. The
| entire signal chain creating that output is the result of
| creative and technical choices. It goes from guitar
| string to studio acoustics to microphone to mixing board
| to outboard processing gear to recording medium to
| duplication to distribution to playback to amplifier to
| speakers to room acoustics to human ear. Most of those
| elements significantly color the sound. Yes, mistakes can
| be made in the downstream signal chain which diverge from
| the creative intent. However, those mistakes are
| exceptions, and not inevitable. Done correctly, there's
| no reason a digital step in the chain shouldn't be
| completely undetectable.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > Individuals can prefer different sonic characteristics
| encoded in an output but that's an aesthetic choice.
|
| I find that listening to one of three different sources
| (earbuds, gaming headset which is EQ'd via open source
| software, and inexpensive-but-fancy headphones) causes me
| to adjust to that particular set of headphones' sound. It
| seems to be like the equivalent of our brain continuously
| auto-white-balancing our vision.
| com2kid wrote:
| Yes, the "warmth" generated by from literally any
| possible analog circuit can be reproduced digitally.
|
| Physics doesn't care about people's beliefs, but sadly
| many people also don't care about physics.
| 323 wrote:
| In theory.
|
| In practice, if I give you a random analog box,
| transforming it into an accurate DSP algorithm it's an
| extremely difficult problem.
|
| Which is why people instead of doing that, they recreate
| the "idea" (reverb, delay, ...) digitally, but it's not a
| copy.
| conradfr wrote:
| Although for some reasons 2021 was a great year for
| distortion/saturation plugins.
| smnc wrote:
| Any recommendations?
| conradfr wrote:
| The hotly debated P42
| https://www.pulsarmodular.com/product/p42-climax-line-
| amp/
|
| The popular Kelvin Tone Shaper
| https://www.toneprojects.com/kelvin-tone-shaper.html
|
| Maybe you want tape? London Acoustics Tapei
| https://www.londonacoustics.com/product/taipei-studio-
| tape-r...
|
| As for freeware, the comeback of Variety of Sound with
| https://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/2021/11/30/tesslase-
| mki... or the less subtle
| https://kitplugins.com/pages/burier-free
|
| This is just a part of (good) saturation plugins from
| 2021...
| analog31 wrote:
| My son told me that some hip-hop recordings incorporate
| digitally generated tics and scratches to simulate vinyl.
| bambax wrote:
| YES! The article says this:
|
| > _But a few specialty houses (...) have long advocated for
| the warmth of analog. "Not that you can't make good records
| with digital, but it just isn't as natural as when you use
| the original tape," says Bernie Grundman_
|
| which is absurd. "Warmth" is a kind of distortion, and if a
| signal is distorted then it's less accurate or "natural"!
|
| They can't claim "fidelity" and "warmth" at the same time.
| It's one or the other.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| But if analog is what you knew, that wasn't "distortion".
| That was "natural", because it was what you grew up with.
| That was the way things were supposed to be.
|
| So "fidelity" means "fidelity to the way I remember" (and
| like).
| ryukoposting wrote:
| I absolutely despise most of the vinyl community. Don't get
| me wrong, I love my records. I have hundreds of them and I
| play them regularly. For some reason, almost everyone I come
| by has this delusion that vinyl is objectively better than a
| good digital recording. Anyone who dissents from that
| narrative gets gaslit:
|
| "oh what kind of turntable do you have? oh that's not good
| enough, there's your problem right there."
|
| "what speakers do you have? what about your phono + power
| amps? oh that's not good enough, there's your problem right
| there."
|
| "how did you place your speakers? oh, you should have them at
| 45 degrees, not 60."
|
| "is it a re-pressing? from whom? oh, there's your problem
| right there."
|
| The end result is a bunch of nerds ruining their credit
| scores because someone told them they need gold-plated
| hydraulic bearings in their tonearm to properly listen to
| their mom's copy of Led Zeppelin IV.
|
| Does it sound different? Yes. Does it sound better? If you're
| really trying to get the most out of _the music itself_ , no.
| Warm [?] good.
|
| Vinyl is great because you aren't just listening to music.
| The medium demands something from you. It's tactile. The
| album artwork is a complete ensemble, rather than a little
| icon on your phone. In my case, I had to put in effort to
| restore the equipment I play my records on, so there's a bit
| of pride in it. It's a more intimate experience.
| dekhn wrote:
| There definitely was a short period in college where I
| needed to spend money I barely had to upgrade my system.
| This was when CDs first came out. I could tell, when
| listening through my stereo (as compared to plugging my
| headphones into the CD player) that there was a ton of
| extra noise/distortion and most importantly, a very high
| noise level (audible hiss). Ended up having to go to
| Salvation Army to buy a $25 used receiver and the speaker
| store to buy a pair of $200 speakers before I got decent
| results. Even after that, I had no end of problems with the
| analog cable. it took a long time to switch to digital.
|
| Nowadays I can get excellent audio quality watching good
| Youtube videos or streaming from my preferred music site (I
| only listen through headphones now).
|
| I'm super glad I was able to get to the quality level I
| liked for fairly cheap.
| madengr wrote:
| jgust wrote:
| There is a certain ceremony involved with choosing and
| playing vinyl that cannot be recreated with digital media.
| That, to me, is the magic. In modern times a full digital
| setup is going to provide a more "faithful recreation" than
| anything analog.
| gerdesj wrote:
| Been there. Browsing vinyl involves flipping fore and aft
| and is very tactile. Browsing tape and CDROM involves
| running your eyes over them but you can run a finger
| along them to get another sense involved.
|
| Loading a record is quite the event: slip out of the card
| sleeve, then slip the dic out of the waxed paper sleeve
| and pop it on the spindle without scratching it. There is
| of course the correct way to handle them that if you are
| around or older than my age (52), you already know - the
| delicate fingers on the rim and your thumb on the centre.
|
| I can remember my Dad going to the "biggest NAAFI in the
| world" (Rheindahlen) and coming back with a brand new
| record player in around 1978 or 79. This thing could
| handle something like five LPs at once and play them
| sequentially.
|
| Pissing around with Spotify isn't quite the same and I do
| understand why people enjoy the theatrics but to be
| honest: I turned my CDs into FLACs and ditched the tapes
| a long time ago. I still prefer to buy my music by the
| CDROM and rip it to FLAC or mp3 or whatever - now that is
| me showing my age!
| JJMcJ wrote:
| There is also some with CDs, but vinyl's the real deal.
| The record cleaner brush. Inspect the needle for dust. Be
| sure the record is properly seated. Sit back and enjoy.
| jgust wrote:
| Just watching the record spin is so incredibly
| satisfying.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Yes, a connection to the physical world.
|
| Sometimes especially on Zoom I look at my cabling and
| think it's amazing that images of other people and their
| voices are going through that cable.
|
| Only on Zoom and similar video conferencing. For all
| other uses I don't even think about it.
| xbar wrote:
| Is this not the experience in every human community?
|
| For the record, I like your approach to music enjoyment.
| hbn wrote:
| I recently got a record player and have been amassing a
| small collection of my favourite albums. Including the
| reasons you gave, my excuse for buying/listening to records
| is I like having a physical representation of albums I
| like, and something that won't disappear because a contract
| expired with a streaming service.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| I remember when CDs were very very new the first review of
| them in an audiophile magazine a friend subscribed to. The
| reviewer was quite unhappy.
|
| The next month he reviewed a different player. He basically
| retracted his opinion of CDs but said the player from the
| previous month was obviously terrible, at least the
| particular one that he did his review on, if not the entire
| brand.
|
| And for audiophiles themselves, I notice many of them seem
| to have very poor taste in music. Like do you really need
| $50,000 of equipment and sand weighted speakers that weigh
| 700 pounds each to play 1968 bachelor pad music?
| gerdesj wrote:
| "I notice many of them seem to have very poor taste in
| music."
|
| Great response and critique until that point. I'm old
| (52) enough to have seen quite a few media changes too. I
| recall that when you were off your tits at a party, and
| discussing music, you tried to find common ground. That
| could lead to some impressive contortions!
|
| Can't say I ever spent much on playback hardware. I
| generally went second hand for speakers/amps etc. Once
| the Walkman was invented and then rather a lot of Chinese
| (and other copies were available) clones appeared then
| you could ruin your hearing close up with seriously
| decent quality sound on the move. I was still walking
| around with a mini cassette player with wired ear plugs
| in my jacket's breast pocket until around 1993ish.
|
| I did lay out something like PS200 on a pair of decent
| headphones for use at home. They make anything from O
| Fortuna to Ghost Town via say Schehehererherereherezade,
| Finlandia and One sound rather ... Special.
| analog31 wrote:
| There's no _a priori_ reason why any recording medium needs
| to have a flat response curve, so long as the curve is known
| so it can be reversed. The reason for the RIAA curve is that
| most sound has an inverse relationship between amplitude and
| frequency. The RIAA recording curve limits the overall
| amplitude of the groove, allowing for better management of
| dynamic range and distortion in the cutting and playback
| processes. The slight lumps in the curve are a concession to
| practical filter technology of the 1950s.
|
| Other analog broadcast and recording media have similar
| curves, called pre- and de-emphasis.
|
| Digital doesn't need it because it has effectively zero
| distortion, and dynamic range to spare.
|
| An advantage of vinyl is that there's a physical deliverable,
| making it possible to monetize it. I think that's why a lot
| of indie bands use vinyl.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > It's absolutely, 100% fine for someone to say that they
| subjectively prefer the sound quality of a record player to a
| CD.
|
| There's a lot of weirdos out there, but these ones aren't
| hurting anybody.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _100% fine for someone to say that they subjectively prefer
| the sound quality of a record player to a CD_
|
| It's not intellectually fine, only fine in the sense that
| it's well within the bounds of free speech.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I subjectively prefer to add sriracha to my burrito. That's
| intellectually fine. It doesn't make it an objectively
| better burrito.
| kazinator wrote:
| Yes, because the sriracha can be confirmed to exist.
|
| If you say that waving your hand over the shriracha while
| murmuring a magic incantation makes it taste better, then
| that may not be so intellectually fine any more.
| Edman274 wrote:
| A digital recording has to be mastered with the
| understanding that it could end up getting played on a car
| stereo, on a bluetooth boombox, on cell phone speakers, in
| bluetooth earbuds, at a dance party with a DJ or on a hi-fi
| stereo setup that looks like the one from the old Maxell
| "blown away" ad. A recording on a vinyl record doesn't. The
| person mastering a record doesn't need to care about
| bluetooth earbuds, car stereos, cell phone speakers,
| boomboxes, and only marginally about DJs at dance parties.
| They can tune their mixing and mastering decisions to just
| the case of a hi-fi stereo setup with an enthusiast
| listening. They have to make fewer compromises because
| there are fewer cases to handle. The format enforces those
| constraints. You can't just ignore that.
| mrandish wrote:
| > They can tune their mixing and mastering decisions to
| just the case of a hi-fi stereo setup with an enthusiast
| listening.
|
| This is what audio purists should be asking for. Let's
| pay the creative production team to create and release a
| high-fidelity digital mix optimized for us. No concerns
| about radio play, boomboxes or loudness wars. Just their
| original creative intent.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| No; it's really fine - same with tube amps etc. It's OK to
| have a subjective preference for some kinds of distortion.
| It's not OK to say it's "truer to the original sound",
| which is where this usually comes off the rails.
| kazinator wrote:
| Sure, if the artifact you prefer actually exists and you
| can confirm it in a double blind test.
| wolrah wrote:
| You're not wrong in the general "audiophile" world where
| fools and their money are parted over snake oil magical
| cables claiming benefits only those with the most golden
| of ears can enjoy.
|
| Where you're getting pushback is that this thread is
| talking about vinyl records and tube amps, things where
| the noise and distortions introduced by their operation
| are well known, well documented, audible to anyone with
| normally functional ears, and regularly utilized
| artistically. These are not the inventions of grifters
| with a product to sell, it's just an older technology
| that is less precise in a certain predictable way which
| some people find pleasant.
| cwillu wrote:
| "I prefer bit of oregano on my pasta."
|
| "Not without a double-blind test you don't!"
| pessimizer wrote:
| "The pasta you just said was the best pasta you ever had
| didn't have any oregano on it."
| cwillu wrote:
| There was no cilantro in the dish you just said was
| delicious: we substituted dove-brand soap shavings.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > it's not hard at all to make bass so loud that it causes
| the needle to leap out of the track
|
| Reminds me of the LP my band teacher in high school had. It
| was the 1812 overture, and the groves for the cannon shots at
| the end were easily distinguishable with just a casual
| examination. Based on what you're saying, I suspect that
| recording was pushing the limits of vinyl.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Yes! That exact song is perhaps _the_ canonical
| demonstration of the limitations of vinyl! Here are some
| pics of the grooves on that LP: https://imgur.com/a/veVB0
| cwillu wrote:
| I'm imagining a recording of a nuclear blast with
| sufficiently deep grooves to accurately reproduce the shock
| wave.
|
| With the satisfying full warm tone vinyl is known for.
| FullyFunctional wrote:
| Flat earth, Scientology, dowsing rods, ... willful ignorance
| is hard to fight.
|
| Anyone with basic understanding of A/D conversion and
| sampling theory will understand that you can always exceed
| analog with digital, given enough bits (and 2*16 @ 44.1 kHz
| is already pretty darn good).
|
| In the early days of MPEG Audio, Level 2 (not mp3) I spent a
| lot of time listening to samples and I was taken aback when I
| finally traced flaws back to the CD itself (Cranberries,
| Zombie, 1994). Many of the early CDs really weren't that
| great, but that wasn't due to being "digital", just a sloppy
| production.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| That's the main reason I really like vinyl. Physics prevents
| the mastering engineers from going overly crazy. Vinyl often
| sounds more carefully mastered, even though nothing would
| technically prevent you from releasing the same thing in
| digital form.
|
| The other thing I like is that it really takes more effort to
| put on a record than start a track on Spotify. I really only
| do it when I can take the time to do so. Pick a record from
| the shelf, carefully take it out of the sleeve, carefully put
| it down on the turntable, and then really listen to a full
| record while sitting or lying on the couch doing _nothing
| else_. Again nothing you couldn 't do with Spotify or YouTube
| music, but somehow you (well, at least I) never do.
| defterGoose wrote:
| It's still true that it takes a skillful ear/hand to do
| that mastering. I've heard terribly mastered older (not
| abused) records and modern releases that are excellent. A
| good original copy of Rumours is about as good as it gets
| IME.
|
| Vinyl _does_ also provide a nice soft upper limit to the
| loudness wars.
| FullyFunctional wrote:
| Couldn't we characterize vinyl limitations and capture
| that as a digital filter? And if so would you be able to
| tell the difference between the vinyl and filtered
| digital?
| conradfr wrote:
| That's why I like to download vinyl rips.
|
| But some vinyls actually come from a digital master anyway.
| aeyes wrote:
| Even if the master wasn't digital, how many vinyl
| mastering engineers used a digital reverse RIAA?
|
| I have a ton of vinyl records myself, never understood
| why anyone would say they sound better. Vinyl is a
| compressed format, even if the compression is analog.
| There is significant loss of signal in the whole signal
| chain. You need to do reverse RIAA (compression), then
| you fabricate a master, then you press vinyl from this
| master which is only good for a few thousand presses,
| then you have the pickup and at last the RIAA preamp
| (decompression)...
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Don't forget that playback progressively damages the
| medium. A true audiophool keeps a stockpile of virgin
| vinyl so they can playback once and throw it away.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I listened to "Disintegration" last week exactly like that,
| but with Apple Music. It was the first time I'd listened to
| an album start-to-finish in years, and I highly recommend
| it.
|
| I like not having to flip the record halfway through, or
| being able to listen to "The Wall" without 3 flips.
| wk_end wrote:
| The structure that side/disc limitations impose is part
| of the listening experience, to me - I like having to
| take a moment to consider the sub-narrative of the side
| as a whole before moving on. Even when streaming I'll
| often look up the vinyl track listings to get a sense of
| the artist's intended schema.
| hbn wrote:
| > I like having to take a moment to consider the sub-
| narrative of the side as a whole before moving on.
|
| That's a great way of putting it! And something I hadn't
| considered before I bought a record player and started
| listening to it. There's that point in time where you
| realize the A-side is done, you get up to go and flip it,
| and you have a half-minute or so of reflection on the
| first half. Then the B-side starts and it's like the
| second act of a play is starting after intermission.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I get it. I still like having the option to skip it if
| I'm being lazy.
| cammikebrown wrote:
| What's really funny about this is that although CDs
| objectively can present a greater dynamic range, the loudness
| wars have created a lot of highly compressed CDs that do
| sound worse than a lot of vinyl, where it often seems that
| more cars is taken with mastering because of the limitations
| of the medium. Additionally, a lot of early 80s albums sound
| better on vinyl because digital mastering wasn't as good
| then. It is an absolutely night and day difference between my
| vinyl copy of Unknown Pleasures and my CD.
| Nav_Panel wrote:
| Yep. This is why I like buying original 80s CDs where they
| just chucked the master tape onto a digital disk, rather
| than post-2000 reissues where they slap a limiter on the
| master and jack it up +8 dB.
| btown wrote:
| > it often seems that more cars is taken with mastering
|
| I know this was a typo, but tools like
| https://shop.audified.com/products/mixchecker (with a
| literal "sedan" button) and articles like
| https://ask.audio/articles/the-final-mix-using-your-car are
| sadly indicative of the emphasis in modern mastering on
| sounding good on car speakers - which is the entire problem
| in a nutshell.
| wrycoder wrote:
| The thing I miss with the Apple audio chain is a user-
| controlled equalizer. With my hearing issues, I really need
| to boost treble, and I prefer to boost bass. I haven't yet
| discovered a way to do that. Apple thinks that flat is best,
| and so should you, apparently.
| ben7799 wrote:
| There are hearing accommodations in iOS that can even use
| your audiogram.
|
| Settings -> Accessibility -> Audio/Visual -> Headphone
| accommodations
| bitcurious wrote:
| On iOS, settings>music>EQ has some presets you could try.
| Not quite the same as custom eq but might be better than
| flat.
| ultrarunner wrote:
| And it's insane that this hasn't changed for at least a
| decade! Apple's own PowerBeats Pro sound like garbage
| without bumping up the low frequencies, but with an
| equalizer they sound great. Or maybe this is just
| subjective and you can file it under "accessibility".
|
| I was jailbroken on iOS 14 for the longest time _solely_
| for a system-wide equalizer for Apple Music. With a new
| phone it 's a major step back, and I've switched to
| Spotify for their (worse) equalizer and somewhat worse
| overall experience (Spotify doesn't even have an
| equalizer on desktop!)
|
| It's really unfortunate that such a straightforward
| feature is so limited on Apple platforms, and for no
| discernible reason.
| egypturnash wrote:
| On OSX Music, window>equalizer. You can also grab Rogue
| Amoeba's "SoundSource" to have volume controls for every
| noise-generating app on the computer, and apply effects
| chains to them, including EQ.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I love SoundSource so much. I bought it so I could use
| the volume keys on my keyboard to adjust the system
| volume on my HDMI monitor. I was blown away when I found
| out I could plug my collection of VSTs into the output
| pipeline.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Yeah, adjusting the volume on my monitor was really the
| reason I bought it, too. All the other stuff's a nice
| bonus.
| amelius wrote:
| > On recording, you cut the bass and jack up the treble. On
| playback, you boost the bass and reduce the treble.
|
| Sounds like if you combine the two steps you end up with the
| identity operator :)
| Jaxan wrote:
| That's the point!
| amelius wrote:
| Parent was trying to show that
|
| > It's absolutely not possible to accurately record every
| digital recording onto vinyl.
|
| Outlining an idempotent process of recording and playback
| does not help there.
| kstrauser wrote:
| If they were idempotent, yes. But they're not. Analog
| processing can't be perfect, and amplification is an
| inherently noisy process. The RIAA curve first cuts the
| signal on the bass end of the spectrum, throwing away
| information in the process (because vinyl doesn't have
| infinite resolution). Then it amplifies that degraded
| signal.
|
| You can simulate this pretty well with computer speakers.
| Turn down your audio outputs so that it's barely audible,
| then turn up the speakers as load as they'll go. Noisy,
| isn't it? _In theory_ that should be the same as turning
| the outputs to their maximum clean level and turning your
| speakers way down, but in practice it 's absolutely not.
| Well, every vinyl record made does exactly that to the
| bass.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| That's the idea, _in theory._ But because analog components
| such as the resistors, capacitors, and transistors will not
| be identical[0] between the master and player, it's not
| perfect.
|
| [0]: you can get very low tolerance resistors and
| capacitors, but they'll cost you
| kstrauser wrote:
| To a point, but remember that you're dealing with low-bit
| floating point math. That boosting stage creates
| information that wasn't originally there. That's not so bad
| in the treble case where original * boost / filter is
| pretty close to the original. But in the bass case,
| original / filter * boost might be significantly different
| than the original. That's usually not a huge problem
| because the low bass frequencies are pretty forgiving, but
| it's something to consider.
| mturmon wrote:
| It is the identity for the signal, but RIAA equalization
| cuts the high-frequency noise that's characteristic of
| needles in grooves. signal -> [HF boost] ->
| [needle adds HF noise] -> [HF cut] -> same signal, less HF
| noise
|
| As for the low end, cutting the bass helps to control the
| size/excursions of the grooves, which are rather close
| together (https://groverlab.org/hnbfpr/2019-08-06-stereo-
| records.html).
|
| Dolby B for cassette tapes is the same idea (but only for
| the highs).
| nerfbatplz wrote:
| Not only can you not tell the difference between analogue and
| digital, you also cannot tell the difference between lossless
| and properly transcoded MP3.
|
| Most audiophile mania is poorly informed at best and astrology
| at worst.
|
| http://abx.digitalfeed.net/
| MivLives wrote:
| Badly transcoded mp3s are the worst. For most artists I
| couldn't tell the difference between a v2 and a flac. There
| were a few who you could but they're mostly not what people
| are listening to (intentionally very noisy artists).
| Realistically if I just heard them blind I don't think I
| would have cared.
| havblue wrote:
| As an anecdote I've noticed that while driving, the bass line
| in YouTube music jazz can be incredibly hard to hear despite
| my shelling out for the premium Bose sound system that can
| shake the vehicle. So I wonder whether this is the encoding
| or whether it's really supposed to be that quiet.
| Maursault wrote:
| > you also cannot tell the difference between lossless and
| properly transcoded MP3
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by "properly transcoded," as
| though there's a scourge of bad encoders out there and
| everyone has nutty encoding practices, but I really, really
| bet you can. Listen to an mp3 of a rock/pop track. Try to
| focus on the cymbals. See if you can isolate them aurally
| from the rest of the music. Can you hear how mp3 encoding
| completely munges high frequencies to sound like digital
| glass breaking? Then you shall finally understand why mp3
| encoding has always sucked, and Napster really, really should
| have won.
| kimixa wrote:
| Many mp3 encoders cut off really high frequency stuff -
| somewhere between 16khz and 20khz depending on the encoder.
| Often this isn't changed by any of the quality settings,
| e.g. on lame it's still enabled on the "insane" preset
| without manually disabling it.
|
| While that's on the very top-end of human hearing - most by
| middle age can't detect anything above 14-16khz, but it's
| certainly possible (especially for those younger) to have
| frequencies all the way up to 20khz as audible.
|
| So it is possible for _some_ people to hear a difference
| with some mp3 encoders, no matter the bitrate or quality
| settings.
|
| And the psychoacoustic model is going to focus on the
| "average" listener, so it's perfectly possible that an
| lower bitrate encoding is transparent (IE: Completely
| indistinguishable) to one person, while another may be able
| to notice higher frequencies that have been cut off to
| provide more quality in the more noticeable parts of the
| spectrum. Or even the same person at different ages. This
| is completely physical difference, and no amount of
| training or harder listening would be able to bridge the
| gap.
|
| And I find many of the higher frequencies that are hit by
| such things are often not particularly noticeable unless
| you're actively looking for them, being able to tell
| there's a difference and knowing what to specifically look
| far isn't the same as saying the recording is somehow less
| enjoyable due to quality differences.
| Nav_Panel wrote:
| ^ yeah exactly. Also, you really do need a pretty good
| sound system to hear it. I was with the poster above you
| for a long time, but then I did blind A/B testing on my
| buddy's $10k monitors, and the difference was clear.
|
| I wouldn't call it "night and day", but I had no trouble
| distinguishing even 320 MP3 from FLAC on his system by
| focusing on the very high frequencies (3/3, small N I know
| I know, but I felt like I could've gone on indefinitely).
| The MP3s lost some clarity in the highs which led to less
| dimensionality/sense of space ("soundstage"), because our
| spatial hearing is very attuned to minute transient
| differences in high frequencies in particular. But you need
| to be listening on a system that is adequately equipped to
| reproduce very high frequency transients accurately, which
| most people don't have access to.
| conradfr wrote:
| The encoders of today create really good mp3 even at
| 192kbps (at 128kbps not so much which is a shame as a lot
| of internet radios use that).
|
| Do you have a favorite rock track we can do an ABX test
| with?
| user_7832 wrote:
| Not the person you replied to, but Hotel California's
| Hell Freezes Over version is generally very well regarded
| in mastering.
|
| If I'm not mistaken one of those A/B/X test websites also
| tested that, and while I was using a very simple pair of
| headphones, the difference was noticeable.
| conradfr wrote:
| Why not.
|
| https://abx.funkybits.fr/test/the-eagles-hell-freezes-
| over-h...
|
| (obviously there's a bug on the tracks display after
| round 1)
| bayindirh wrote:
| As a former orchestra player I can say that, with a good hi-
| fi system, the difference is audible, in terms of soundstage
| size/depth, not in details.
|
| I have a couple systems, one is a proper hi-fi system. If the
| album is mastered without brick-wall normalization, the
| difference is easier to hear.
|
| When I listen the same album via my DAC, from MP4, I enjoy
| it. When I listen the same album, from a CD, I sit in front
| of the system like a rabbit blinded by lights.
|
| The DAC is the same. It's a Yamaha CD-S300 with a proper iPod
| interface, which carries the signal digitally till DAC.
|
| This ABX test is the same. You need a high fidelity chain to
| enjoy it. I have a nice sound card, but the speakers
| connected to it can't handle the resolution put out by it.
| user_7832 wrote:
| (Meta) I was hoping HN would stay civil and while it mostly is,
| I'd like to remind that what people do in their homes for
| themselves isn't really something worth circle jerking over. If
| you like expensive gear and find a difference, great. If you
| don't find a difference, that's also fine. Please don't bother
| attacking either group for their (relatively) harmless views.
| peanut_worm wrote:
| Audiophiles are funny. I remember seeing some guy on the internet
| was selling expensive "sound crystals" that you would put near
| your stereo that would make the sound "warmer" or "clearer".
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| It's likely these records are still better than anything else out
| there because DSD is an extraordinary format for audio and they
| were still pulling directly from the masters (if anyone trusts
| that clarification of the story at this point).
| jef_leppard wrote:
| This whole thing reminds me of the time some renowned wine
| connoisseurs blind taste tested vintage wines and they slipped 2
| buck chuck in there. A few of them picked the 2 buck chuck as
| their favorite. None of them called it out as inferior wine. They
| all said stuff like "hints of smoke. Berry finish."
| iasay wrote:
| I've heard a "wine expert" spew a load of rubbish like that and
| when offered it was obviously corked. Tasted like vinegar.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| I recall reading a similar piece where they gave expert wine
| judges flights of wines to judge but some glasses would be the
| same wine from the same bottle and they'd judge it differently.
| Nav_Panel wrote:
| Afaict the cool thing about MoFi pressings (at least, ones from
| back in the day) is they were done at half speed. So, when the
| lacquer is cut from the master tape, they'd do it at half
| playback speed rather than full playback speed, which allowed the
| physical cutting head to track the high frequencies more
| accurately. I can say that this absolutely does make a difference
| during playback; my MoFi copy of Aja sounds very good (almost as
| good as the digital version!).
|
| That said, vinyl is effectively an obsolete medium. I say this as
| someone who owns upwards of 1k vinyl records. I buy them because
| many recordings remain inaccessible or very challenging to find
| digitally. But I would never buy a newly released album on vinyl
| over digital if I had the choice and if both were using the same
| master.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| In 2006 a "Controversies" section was removed from their
| Wikipedia page[1] after "a letter of complaint". You can still
| read it of course[2], part of which is:
|
| _" Additionally, some both inside and outside the audiophile
| community have criticized MFSL's [aka MoFi] willingness to
| stretch its "Original Master Recording" logo. For example,
| critics note that several MFSL Mk I releases are not from the
| original masters; one notorious example is the Beatles "Magical
| Mystery Tour". More troublesome to some, though, is MFSL's recent
| habit of releasing gold CDs that are sourced from digital master
| tapes instead of the original analog masters."_
|
| So it seems these allegations go back quite some time.
|
| For what it's worth, I don't really buy in to the whole
| "audiophile" stuff and am skeptical you can hear the difference,
| but delivering "B" while it says "A" on the label is essentially
| defrauding your customers, and possibly illegal (or at least, it
| ought to be).
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mobile_Fidelity_Sound_Lab...
|
| [2]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mobile_Fidelity_S...
| eventhorizonpl wrote:
| post_break wrote:
| This is so funny. Company touts no digital, then goes on record
| saying yeah we used digital, completely ruining their reputation.
| Meanwhile I'm over here still mourning OiNK.
| Nav_Panel wrote:
| Don't worry, its legacy lives on. Other sites have taken up the
| mantle (hmu). OiNK is gone, but not forgotten.
| post_break wrote:
| How do I get in touch?
| Nav_Panel wrote:
| check my profile, twitter is a good easy way, or email me
| via substack
| [deleted]
| deltree7 wrote:
| Audiophiles:vinyl::HNers:Privacy
|
| This is no different than a section HNers fooled by companies
| like DuckDuckGo and VPNs
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