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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
by allears 4y ago
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 4y ago>(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 4y agoUnless it’s brick-wall normalized during mastering.
- masklinn 4y agoSure 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 4y agoThat'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.
- Tsiklon 4y agoMetallica's Death Magnetic was another truly dreadful example of the loudness war - Thankfully a better mastered release came out in 2015. I've just got my hands on this release and comparing it against my original copy it is a night and day improvement - especially on "All Nightmare Long".
- bayindirh 4y agoYeah, the first release was pure clipping, no music. I remember listening to it and saying? “Did all we wait for this? C’mon”.
- nikau 4y agoHah I had the same experience, I thought some idiot had recorded it via their soundcard line in or something. Eventually got the better mastered version which was leaked from guitar hero or something.
- vosper 4y agoWhich is not an issue with the digital format, but with the mastering.
- bayindirh 4y agoHowever, 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 4y ago"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.
- netr0ute 4y ago> could apply to the vinyl version too They can't, because these choices create enough volume for the needle to go haywire, so mastering always has a better dynamic range.
- Sporktacular 4y agoAgain, mastering choices differ between distribution media, that's obvious. When you say 'mastering always has a better dynamic range', did you mean CD quality PCM has a better dynamic range?
- bayindirh 4y agoNope, you can't apply the same mastering to the vinyl, esp. the latest stonewalling compression/normalization techniques because of RIAA equalization [0]. Without RIAA equalization, it's not possible to keep the needle in the groove with that amount of bass and low end. You can't keep the needle on the track with stonewalling even with RIAA equalization. As a result, you are limited by the medium itself, hence you have to make milder choices. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization
- bayindirh 4y agoTelling 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 4y ago> 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 4y agoI 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 4y agoAnd the standard equalizer you need to apply during record/playback of the medium.
- jrajav 4y ago44100hz 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 4y agoSo 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 4y agoYou 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.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y agoThe highest-of-high end analog tape with Dolby SR and the works is still objectively inferior to vanilla 44.1 kHz / 16 bit PCM.