As a physicist and electrical engineer, I am not one who believes that
analog or vinyl is inherently or mystically better than digital. In my
experiments, perfecting Ambiophonics and giving demonstrations of
loudspeaker binaural reproduction, I am often able to compare vinyl to
digital recording media using binaural rather than stereo reproduction
methods. That is, reproducing two channel recordings of differing vintages
and media, using Ambiophonic software to recover and make audible all the
ITD and ILD captured by the original microphones and later console
processing. I also eliminate most pinna angle errors, and in some cases by
using real concert hall IRs to generate signals for surround speakers, I
have a much better chance of hearing all the localization, depth, and
ambience data actually captured and stored on the given media.
Ignoring, considerations of ticks and pops, tape hiss, and sometimes
frequency response, I have been able to judge and compare hundreds of LPs,
CDs, and DVDs just on the basis of how realistic a stage presence they
deliver. That is, is there clarity, depth, full stage width out to almost
180 degrees (if an orchestra or chorus), and cocktail party effect (so I can
concentrate on just one singer or instrument). (In the case of vinyl, ticks
and pops are off in left field somewhere and are not frontal as in stereo
reproduction, more like a cough or paper rattling at a live concert so
comparisons to digital are perhaps fairer.) My remarks do not apply to
recordings of a single vocalist and guitar, etc. since mono localization or
quality is not the issue I am concerned with here.
To make a long story short, in general the older the stereo LP the more
realistic it seems to be, ignoring some frequency range issues. The reason
seems to be that in the early days, the microphone setups were simpler, just
two or three spaced omnis, coincident figure eights, or cardioids. Post
processing was minimal with few or no spot mics mixed in. Today, too many
digital recordings, have a lot of mono soloists or groups and the mic ITD
and ILD is pan potted, spot mic'd, and then mixed to binaural garbage. They
could not do this in the analog era and I believe it is this lack of such
brutal psychoacoustic manipulation of the ITD and ILD that accounts for much
of the preference for older vinyl exhibited by audiophiles. Since I use an
ELP laser turntable to do these demos and its tick eliminator output is
digital, the differences in psychoacoustic realism between different
recordings or media cannot be due to analog versus digital.
Of course I also have hundreds of CDs/DVDs that have preserved localization
cues and have not been processed to death. You can hear some great samples
by downloading them from the Ambiophonic website. There is no scientific
reason why digital cannot always outperform analog.
Ralph Glasgal
www.ambiophonics.org
-----Original Message-----
From: music-dsp-boun...@music.columbia.edu
[mailto:music-dsp-boun...@music.columbia.edu] On Behalf Of Ross Bencina
Sent: Sunday, November 28, 2010 10:53 PM
To: A discussion list for music-related DSP
Subject: Re: [music-dsp] [OT] vinyl? No, thanks...
Andrew Reilly wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 05:56:17PM +0100, Rainer Buchty wrote:
>> On Mon, 22 Nov 2010, Stephen Sinclair wrote:
>>
>> >("Vinyl just sounds.. different.. better.. but I couldn't tell you
>> >why.")
>>
>> Jumping on this (being a long-time lurker on this list), I never
>> believed the above statement until I bought some LPs which I also had on
>> CD. Until I had my own kind of "revelation" playing the old Art of Noise
>> LPs and CDs in comparison...
>
> My own CD-vs-LP "revelation" came a few years ago when I bought
> some sufficiently high-grade analog/digital IO gear, and had a
> go at digitising some of my favourite LPs. I noticed two things
> immediately:
>
> 1. replaying the PCM sounded *exactly* like the LP, and
>
> 2. the mean recorded level (in PCM) was *significantly* lower
> than the normal signal level of pre-recorded CDs.
That's a great test :-)
> I could get the signal level back up towards "CD-level" by using
> compression of various sorts, but in doing so the result wound
> up sounding like the CD version, rather than the LP version.
>
> The obvious conclusion is that the LP mastering process has
> to use a different paradigm than that for CDs, since the
> limitations of excursion and dynamics are different.
Agreed.
I have friends who press new LPs and dub plates pretty regularly -- although
this is indie and dance music, I imagine similar same processes would apply
to audiophile material:
When the masters are cut, the signal is compressed/tweaked to squeeze it in
to the available dynamics of the medium and the cutting lathe -- this is
done "at the lathe", often under direction of the producer to get a decent
dynamics/compression trade off. This is quite different from producing a
digital master in a mastering studio and sending it off to the CD plant for
reproduction.
Perhaps high-end LP mastering software/hardware can be used in a mastering
studio to predict lathe dynamics so this tuning can be done in the studio
rather than at the lathe.. never seen that myself.
In any case, in response to Rainer's comment: this process could easily
account for the difference between Art of Noise vynil and CDs -- I wouldn't
jump to any conclusions simply based on a direct comparison. I imagine
comparing the latest digital Michael Jackson remasters with the original
vynil might yeild a different conclusion.
Ross.
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