Vinyl sound
Ms. Haiku
Posts: 7,262
Is it possible to have a comprehensive sound (similar to what a person hears in vinyl) through another medium? Vinyl sound and CD sound start from the same master tape/recording don't they? If a group went from the recording studio straight to iTUNES or another avenue like iTUNES, could a person hear the song comprehensively? By comprehensivley I mean that semblancesssssss word. I'm not sure what the word is, but it has a lot of "s" sounds.
There is no such thing as leftover pizza. There is now pizza and later pizza. - anonymous
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
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The best 'alternate' mediums are DVD-Audio and SACD. I am an avid fan & collector of both:
http://www.computerpoweruser.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles%2Farchive%2Fc0307%2F32c07%2F32c07.asp
http://www.devindra.org/tech/2008/01/09/the-forgotten-format-war-toshibas-dvd-audio-vs-sonys-super-audio-cd/
Typo Man: "Thanks kidz, but remembir, stay in skool!"
Issues with compression etc are as relevant to vinyl as they are to CD or MP3.
The weak link in teh music chain is most commonly at the amplifier level, then teh speakers. YOu can spend a fortune on vinyl, but if you are still playing it througha crap system, it will still sound crap.
If you want to really improve your listening experience, invest in a tube audio amp. I bought a cheap as chips CHinese made one, which runs thorugh a modest set of speakers, and it really sounds very good.
My wifey plugs her ipod into it, and it sounds great. CD's sound very good.
It manages to separate the instruments out of the over-compressed mush and restores dynamics.
Try one, you'll see.
For another analogy, it's also similar to old-school film movies, where the "moving picture" was, in reality, a series of still shots shown in fast succession. They move so fast that the human eye is incapable of seeing the stopgaps between frames. So it is with digital music; the approximations are good enough that most people's ears can't tell the difference. Then again, there are some people with good enough ears to tell analog from digital... just as hummingbirds and eagles can see the stopgaps in film movies.
Making a smooth, natural sound in a digital medium is much like trying to draw a curve on an Etch-A-Sketch; instead of a fluid curve, you get an up-and-over, up-and-over. It gets better as the fidelity of the digital signal increases. The two different elements are bit depth and sample rate. Bit depth is how detailed each individual snapshot, or sample, is. Sample rate is how many snapshots, or samples, are taken every second. The higher both bit depth and sample rate are, the better the sound will be. Unfortunately, this also means more data for the same amount of time.
CD's are encoded at 16-bit, 44.1 kHz. 16-bit is the bit depth, 44.1 kHz is the sample rate (44,100 times per second). Most people can't hear the digital-ness of CD audio versus analog sources. SACD and DVD-Audio add higher fidelity, as well as multi-channel audio, because of their higher data storage capacity (basically DVD's, with 4.6 gb of data versus 700 mb for CD's). So, SACD and DVD-A are better-fidelity digital audio. Mp3's, on the other hand, are much smaller digital files. Most mp3's are encoded between 96 and 256 kbps. The "kbps" denotes how many kilobits (kb) of data are used per second. I'm not sure what the numerical conversion would be to bit depth and sample rate; I do know that CD-quality audio is somewhere around 1600-1700 kbps.
So, to answer the original question... you could encode a digital copy of an analog recording at an extremely high fidelity (I'd say 20-bit or 24-bit, and 88.2 kHz or 96 kHz) and get a digital copy that is virtually indistinguishable from the original analog source. But you would need a DVD to hold the data that would normally be held on a CD (hence SACD and DVD-A).
The curveball to all of this is that so many recordings since the mid-90's have been done digitally, which means that even the music on an analog medium (cassette, vinyl) would have been, at some point, digital. Usually, the tracks for digital recordings are higher than CD-quality, so that helps, but it's still not completely faithful to the source.
Another thing to mention is that digital mediums are generally more accurate at approximating bass frequencies and less accurate at higher, treble frequencies. By way of example, a 10 kHz sound wave that is captured by a 44.1 kHz digital recording medium will only capture 4.41 snapshots per waveform, whereas the same recording will show a 100 Hz wave with 441 snapshots per waveform. That may be what you're asking when you talk about the "ssss" stuff (is the word "sibilance"?). Those higher frequencies will sound pretty unnatural at lower digital encoding; if you really concentrate and listen to the cymbals of a drumset on a vinyl album, a CD, and an mp3 encoded at 96 kbps, you should be able to hear the difference.
I hope that at least some of that made sense...
Exactly. This began to be an issue in the early 80's when CDs became popular. Look for the "AAA" or "DDD" (SPARS code) letters on the back of CD liners.
Wikipedia:
AAD - Analog tape recorder used during initial recording, mixing/editing, Digital mastering.
ADD - Analog tape recorder used during initial recording, Digital tape recorder used during mixing/editing and for mastering.
DDD - Digital tape recorder used during initial recording, mixing/editing and for mastering.
DAD - Digital tape recorder used during initial recording, Analog tape recorder used during mixing/editing, Digital mastering.
All CD's have a D as the final letter, because they are a digital medium.
Typo Man: "Thanks kidz, but remembir, stay in skool!"
For instance Emperical Labs has those distressor and Tape Sim units for studio front ends or mastering I guess.
And there are other companies that specialize on the listening end after everything and have specialized Digital to Analog converters. Even with vinyl using better needles and preamps improves the sound, I have to imagine better DA converters would only improve the sound but if the mix is overly compressed which tends to happen with digital sound production you lose a bit of the quality as mentioned already well by you guys above.
I too love SACD and DVD Audio (the Flaming Lips stuff is awesome BTW) but I also have a very soft spot for vinyl especially when coming through a good needle.
Much like the compression differences between DTS and Dolby Digital I'm just not sure without spending vast sums of money that you can make a DDD recording ever sound like an AAA.
http://www.crutchfield.com/p_681DLIII/PS-Audio-Digital-Link-III.html?tp=202
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Fatso/
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ELI8SX/
Is that right?
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
That's not entirely true. There are a lot of bands who didn't make the digital transition back in the early 90's because they couldn't afford it. The older analog recording studios were still out there, and the brand-new digital studios had to charge a lot more to pay for buying completely new recording systems. So a lot of punk, grunge, indie and underground artists recorded on analog because, at the time, analog was considered inferior to digital (oh, the irony).
A few bands have made a special effort to use analog studios because they felt the quality was better, despite what the industry was saying. Pearl Jam is a classic example. They knew that their stuff would eventually be digitized and sold on CD's, and CD's would make up the bulk of sales, but they wanted their stuff recorded on analog equipment and tape machines. So the analog releases of these records are actually completely analog.
In recent years, a lot of folks have started to appreciate the benefits of analog recording, so there has been a lot of interest in buying and fixing up old analog gear to use in modern studios. There are a few places where you can still do entirely analog recording, but most of the studios, engineers, and producers use some form of hybrid analog/digital recording. A lot of places do their initial recording on a multi-track tape machine, then transfer the recordings onto a digital editing and mixing platform. Others will record and edit digitally, then transfer tracks to analog tape for mixing. Most engineers will agree that editing digitally is worth any sonic compromises made; but they will likely use a substantially higher digital quality when doing so (usually 20- or 24-bit, 88.1 kHz or 96 kHz). These days, recording to an analog medium is usually an added expense compared to recording digitally, especially since there are a lot of affordable digital recording options out there these days. I personally own enough equipment to make a comprehensive digital recording (I've recorded a half-dozen albums for other bands that have been professionally mastered and released, so I'm not exaggerating).
Finding the codes that Binfrog mentioned will help you determine whether or not a recording has ever been digitized, and if so, how much was done digitally.
Any digital source is going to have gaps in the signal; the bit depth and sample rate will just determine how big and rough the gaps are. It's also worth noting that, with mp3's, different software companies will encode differently, even if their stated numerical bitrate is the exact same as another software's. For example, I used to use a shareware mp3 encoder (this is 8 or 9 years ago) and encoded a lot of stuff at 160 or 192 kbps. Once I got my iPod and installed iTunes, I started encoding my entire CD collection. I encoded everything at 160 kbps, and it sounded twice as good as all the old stuff I had encoded. In fact, iTunes set for 128 kbps (anything bought from the iTunes store) sounds better than a lot of older encoded files I have at 192 kbps. Not that it matters to me anymore, but I used to notice a lot better quality from Windows Media audio (wma) files compared to mp3's, because their encoding, while similar, was a better quality.
Also, like I mentioned earlier, high frequencies (treble) will be less accurate than low frequencies (bass). That means that music with a lot of bass will sound fine in digital or mp3 form (rap and hip-hop, dance, techno, etc). Music with more natural acoustic transients will sound much worse. So, you're more likely to notice the digitalness of a Joni Mitchell or Susanne Vega record than a 50-cent or Daft Punk record.
The last thing I'll say is that analog tape had two qualities that affected the sound of recordings. One is a loss of high-frequency information, and the other is a natural compression. The high-frequency loss is much different than the high-frequency problems that digital mediums have; in digital, the signals are still there at full volume, they just get mangled; in analog, it's like someone turned down the treble control so that they're actually quieter. This contributes to a warmer sound quality. The compression quality of analog tape squashes the loudest notes and brings up the quieter notes, making the recording seem "fatter" and more full. It's these two qualities (warmer and fatter sound) that make people want to use tape now in lieu of digital recording.
Stay tuned for part 3 of MIG's 20-part series, "Who Cares, Now Pass Me The iPod"...
My understanding is that this can occur multiple times, and that the there is a lot of information loss at this level too.
Which brings me back to my trusty pure analogue tube amp.
Oh, good lord. Really, people, I'm just pulling this stuff out my ass.
Okay, so sound is waves of air pressure, and to make those sound waves, your speakers push and pull based on the power fed to them by the amplifier. So, in the air, sound is analog. At the speakers, the sound is analog. The signal fed to the speakers from the amp is analog. 99.9% of amplifiers recieve their signals in analog form. So, from the input of the power amp to the input of your ears, the signal stays in analog form. Before that, it gets more complicated.
When CD players first arrived, they were the only piece of digital equipment in most homes, where they were asked to play with people's older analog stereo equipment. The red-and-white RCA jacks on the back of the CD player fed out analog signals. Those went into your receiver (the thing which selects from CD, Phono, FM, AM, AUX, etc, which may or may not have been the same unit as the power amp), then into the power amp, then out to the speakers, etc. So, the Digital to Analog (D/A) conversion happened INSIDE the CD player. At the time, the converters were considered high technology, but by today's A/D/A standards, those consumer-grade D/A converters were pretty much shite.
Even then, however, manufacturers anticipated that more and more stuff would interact digitally as time went on. They added coaxial digital connections (that funny third-leg RCA jack) as well as optical digital (also known as ADAT or Lightpipe) outputs on a lot of those CD players. Then they started to add these connections to the receivers. When you connect a digital source to the receiver via digital connection, then the D/A occurs inside the receiver. The CD player may still have analog RCA jacks and hence it's own D/A converters, but the digital signal was also sent to the digital output, so the D/A in the signal path is still inside the receiver. The idea was/is that the receiver has better D/A converters than the CD player did. This is sometimes true, but definitely not always.
So far, we're just talking about one conversion: from digital (on the CD) to analog (into the power amp). This is true of most home STEREO equipment, those with only Left and Right speaker channels. What complicates things is multi-channel audio (5.1, 7.1, etc). Newer surround-sound home THEATER systems have digital signal manipulation within the receiver. This means that any audio-manipulation functions performed by many of these newer home theater receivers are performed digitally. So, when you plug your CD player into the receiver, the signal is moved through the receiver digitally, and then converted to analog before sent to the power amp.
Now, if you use a CD player's analog outputs into the receiver's analog inputs, the signal goes like this: Digital (CD) to Analog (CD player's D/A) to Digital (receiver's input converters) to Analog (receiver's output converters). That's 4 times the signal is converted from analog to digital. If all the converters are of good quality, then you probably won't hear the degradation. If one of the four (or two of the four, or three of the four) converters is low-quality, then the signal will suffer. Also, if you use a record player that plugs into your digital home theater system, then 100% pure analog signal from your phonograph is digitized before hitting your speakers, which kinda defeats the point of having a record player.
(I wanted to put a little experiment in here... take a song from a CD, convert it to an mp3 at 128 kbps, which is a decent quality. Then burn an audio CD of that mp3 where you convert the mp3 back to a CD-quality file. Then take THAT CD and convert the song back to an mp3 at 128 kbps. What's that line from "Multiplicity"? When you make a copy of a copy...)
So, you can do three things:
1) Just resign yourself to the digital revolution;
2) Research and purchase equipment with REALLY good [expensive] A/D/A converters, and do your best to minimize the number of times the signal is converted;
3) Use a turntable through a good analog receiver.
I guess that's the point I was making, that just going to vinyl will not necessarily result in a better sound, because of all the other things in the chain, esp most modern amps, which tend to be Home Theatre type things, which basically make vinyl a waste of time and effort, unless tyou ljust like vinyl and teh other sonsory things that go with it, like I do.
Thanks to all who provide input on this subject.
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green
I disagree. I recently made the move to vinyl. I immediately noticed the difference between my digital stuff and the vinyls. There are some records I have played that don't benefit from it, but most have some extra layers or a a more realistic quality when compared to their digital counterparts.
Dude! It's great to see you back here and learning us all again!
I couldn't ever have said this better!
And you stated one of the cruxes of the biscuit right there! "Who Cares, Now Pass Me The iPod"
It's damn hard to drive along the highway with a good turntable and tube amp and my Klipsch speakers. At least on the roads on the east coast anyway.
I still have pretty good ears after all those years with too much loud stage volume, and I can definitely hear the difference between vinyl and digital on the same stereo system,
except that all my vinyl is disbursed throughout the country at friends' houses, leaning against radiators and warping, and when you DO put them on, there is a very high fidelity:
Phhhh-P Phhhh-P Phhhh-P Phhhh-P Phhhh-P every two seconds from the scratches and wear over the years.
But one of the beauties of digital music is that, I have SO much music from all over the world in three full Ipods lined up against each other.
There is sonic beauty in a great vinyl through a great system, but also beauty in the fact that I have a few thousand CD's ready to go at any second, and as long as I keep it backed up, it won't wear out. Vinyl will wear a bit with every play.
It's right there in the space of three decks of cards and I have it running through my tube stereo preamp and can run it through my great stereo system, but I can also hop in my car and rock out to whatever I want to and enjoy the crappier sound just as much as my good stereo, because now we can be driving through the country roads listening to Zap Mama, or Maria Gabrielle Epumar, (Thanks Buru!) or Elvis Costello at the punch of a few buttons.
I think it's great to have the best of both worlds now.
I still am happy that a lot of bands are using analog tape, like you say, because it is a great archival source for later when digital becomes even more resolute.
Thanks again, MIG and it's great to see you around! We were just talking about when you sent those pics of Montana to Africa through here when we were posting from Timbucktu.
Don't be mankind. ~Captain Beefheart
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It used to be that I'd spend an hour going through my CD's before a big roadtrip, loading up a case with 20 discs that I thought would get me through the trip. Now, I grab my iPod and toss it in the car. Every album I own, plus others I ripped from friends' collections, stuff I've got off iTunes, and then my podcasts. I don't know HOW I ever drove cross-country without Car Talk and This American Life.
I don't fault anyone for choosing good fidelity or taking the effort and expense to stay completely analog. I wish I had the time and money.
For me, it's that music is an idea, like the words in a book. If the typeface is nominally harder to read, I don't lose the words on the page; if the music has some digital artifacts, but I can still tell what's going on, it doesn't bother me. Of course, there's a threshold there... when the hi-hats sound like they were recorded in a tin can with a mic made out of aluminum foil and cellophane, I can't do it. And I've got some plans to get a set of really nice earbuds (thinking Shure E2's) when the money is lying around. I've made sure my truck has a decent stereo with good speakers and a decent deck (I listen to a lot more music while driving). So we all do what we can, and in the end, you let the music be more important than the medium.