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Compared to what? Are vinyls all pressed off of an analog source? Does that mean new vinyls can't be made after the master is degraded? I'm curious what you mea

Compared to what? Are vinyls all pressed off of an analog source? Does that mean new vinyls can't be made after the master is degraded? I'm curious what you mean here.

dzhiurgis 10y ago
Compared to "HD audio" aka 24 bit, 192kHz. Vinyls by definition is very lossy format (low dynamic range (although there was obscure "HD" vinyl format once)).
- LeoPanthera 10y ago
  You might be surprised to learn that "HD audio" often has worse sound quality than "CD quality". The science is here: https://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html https://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html Edit: You're being downvoted which I think is unfair. It's completely logical that higher sample rates and higher bit depths "should" sound better, and certainly the music industry wants you to believe that. Unfortunately it's simply not true above a certain threshold. "Lossless" here is defined as "stays the same once it has entered the digital domain", and not "identical to the real-life source", and so CDs are in fact lossless.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    > You might be surprised to learn that "HD audio" often has worse sound quality than "CD quality". That only applies if you have a perfect master. If you want to listen to a song mastered for CD, unless it’s 24/192, it’ll likely clip at several points. Which is about 90% of songs today. And if you want to remix the song, or use an equalizer, or other effects, you’ll also want 24/192. And nowadays the ultrasonic effects he describes don’t even affect mobile phones anymore, and storage is plenty – making the disadvantages he describes moot.
    - iopq 10y ago
      That's not true, after you band-limit a 24/192 file and convert to CD quality there will be no clipping. Nobody can tell the difference in a blind test between CD quality and higher.
      - kuschku 10y ago
        If it’s properly done. There’s thousands of retail CDs out there with clipping, intentionally created during the Loudness War. To listen to them properly, one would require a remaster, or 24/192.
        pja 10y ago
        That’s a problem with the mastering, not the recording format: There’s plenty of dB available in a CD to cover the full range of human hearing. Sadly you have no guarantee that a random 24/192 recording wont have the same compression / clipping problems that plague CDs thanks to the loudness wars.
        kuschku 10y ago
        Well, not "a random" remaster, but most of the time, the hi-fi versions are just a reencoding of the actual master, at the mastering resolution of 24/192. Which is quite awesome, because that doesn’t have clipping. Basically, what I want, is ideally the master, in the original version. Just like I’d prefer RAW images with a header telling my program which settings to apply for rendering – but still allowing me to change exposure.
        ubercow13 10y ago
        The 'master' has already been mastered. If it didn't it would sound awful. The conversion to redbook format is just one small step at the end of the process that has nothing to do with clipping.
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    > "Lossless" here is defined as "stays the same once it has entered the digital domain", and not "identical to the real-life source", and so CDs are in fact lossless. That's certainly not the usual sense of "lossless" as applied to recordings, since it would make mp3s lossless as well. We generally say that mp3s are lossy because the mp3 encoding process loses information that was present in its input, not because the encoded mp3 degrades when played (it doesn't!) or when copied (it doesn't!). CDs, as the original source of music, cannot have this sense of "lossy" or "lossless" usefully applied to them. (You could claim that the performance is the original source, in which case it's still not possible to apply the lossy-vs-lossless concept, as no lossless recording of a physical performance is possible.)
    - Natanael_L 10y ago
      It would not apply to MP3:s, because by the time it hits the MP3 encoder it must ALREADY be digitized, and it loses quality as it goes through the encoder.
      - ubercow13 10y ago
        Of course it does..the digitised signal loses information as it is processed by the MP3 encoder therefore it is lossy
    - LeoPanthera 10y ago
      An MP3 encoder works with digital data to start with, so the data is already in the digital domain. The data out does not contain all the information from the data in, so it is definitely not "lossless".

Compared to what? Are vinyls all pressed off of an analog source? Does that mean new vinyls can't be made after the master is degraded? I'm curious what you mean here.

dzhiurgis 10y ago

Compared to "HD audio" aka 24 bit, 192kHz. Vinyls by definition is very lossy format (low dynamic range (although there was obscure "HD" vinyl format once)).

LeoPanthera 10y ago
You might be surprised to learn that "HD audio" often has worse sound quality than "CD quality". The science is here: https://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html https://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html Edit: You're being downvoted which I think is unfair. It's completely logical that higher sample rates and higher bit depths "should" sound better, and certainly the music industry wants you to believe that. Unfortunately it's simply not true above a certain threshold. "Lossless" here is defined as "stays the same once it has entered the digital domain", and not "identical to the real-life source", and so CDs are in fact lossless.
- kuschku 10y ago
  > You might be surprised to learn that "HD audio" often has worse sound quality than "CD quality". That only applies if you have a perfect master. If you want to listen to a song mastered for CD, unless it’s 24/192, it’ll likely clip at several points. Which is about 90% of songs today. And if you want to remix the song, or use an equalizer, or other effects, you’ll also want 24/192. And nowadays the ultrasonic effects he describes don’t even affect mobile phones anymore, and storage is plenty – making the disadvantages he describes moot.
  - iopq 10y ago
    That's not true, after you band-limit a 24/192 file and convert to CD quality there will be no clipping. Nobody can tell the difference in a blind test between CD quality and higher.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      If it’s properly done. There’s thousands of retail CDs out there with clipping, intentionally created during the Loudness War. To listen to them properly, one would require a remaster, or 24/192.
      - pja 10y ago
        That’s a problem with the mastering, not the recording format: There’s plenty of dB available in a CD to cover the full range of human hearing. Sadly you have no guarantee that a random 24/192 recording wont have the same compression / clipping problems that plague CDs thanks to the loudness wars.
        kuschku 10y ago
        Well, not "a random" remaster, but most of the time, the hi-fi versions are just a reencoding of the actual master, at the mastering resolution of 24/192. Which is quite awesome, because that doesn’t have clipping. Basically, what I want, is ideally the master, in the original version. Just like I’d prefer RAW images with a header telling my program which settings to apply for rendering – but still allowing me to change exposure.
        ubercow13 10y ago
        The 'master' has already been mastered. If it didn't it would sound awful. The conversion to redbook format is just one small step at the end of the process that has nothing to do with clipping.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  > "Lossless" here is defined as "stays the same once it has entered the digital domain", and not "identical to the real-life source", and so CDs are in fact lossless. That's certainly not the usual sense of "lossless" as applied to recordings, since it would make mp3s lossless as well. We generally say that mp3s are lossy because the mp3 encoding process loses information that was present in its input, not because the encoded mp3 degrades when played (it doesn't!) or when copied (it doesn't!). CDs, as the original source of music, cannot have this sense of "lossy" or "lossless" usefully applied to them. (You could claim that the performance is the original source, in which case it's still not possible to apply the lossy-vs-lossless concept, as no lossless recording of a physical performance is possible.)
  - Natanael_L 10y ago
    It would not apply to MP3:s, because by the time it hits the MP3 encoder it must ALREADY be digitized, and it loses quality as it goes through the encoder.
    - ubercow13 10y ago
      Of course it does..the digitised signal loses information as it is processed by the MP3 encoder therefore it is lossy
  - LeoPanthera 10y ago
    An MP3 encoder works with digital data to start with, so the data is already in the digital domain. The data out does not contain all the information from the data in, so it is definitely not "lossless".