Digital vs analog

[LarryC]

What do you think now? Roughly comparable costs for equivalent digital and analog?

Thanks...

Not even close. Good analog costs way more. Many times as much. I believe the same was true 10 years ago as well. A case could be made that state of the art digital and state of the art analog could be similar in price (stuff like the DCS Vivaldi stack or the best of the best vinyl rigs)

I could easily have disagreed with you 10 years ago, when the only way to beat a Basis Ovation and Vector arm and a Transfiguration cart was with a 2-box Wadia 270 and 27i plus significant aftermarket upgrades like an Esoteric transport upgrade.

Those digital and analog components are what I have now, btw. It took several years plus great expense to bring my CD setup up to the TT, and it cost a serious bundle more to do it (you don't want to know how much). Every time I improved the analog, I had to do something more with the digital in order to continue to enjoy it alongside the TT.

It's actually all relative -- there are no absolutes in vinyl vs. CD/DVD quality in my experience, and each can be jockeyed to surpass the other by equipment changes.

I'm not trying to one-up anyone here; I wouldn't be surprised if a current top-notch digital player surpasses my analog. My question was only meant to explore that possibility., But I think that guru's statement was correct when he said it back then.

[jorjen]

Yep, I have compared Digital vs Analog side by side, same music, many times. Everytime in my opinion analog was the winner. My wife, Beck, is even more diehard analog than me.

rigma

Ah, finally a voice of reason. [] I concur Marion.

[Chris A]

Corpulent literally or figuratively?

The PWK Rolling Stone article mentions this. See enclosure. It's another side of the man that we typically do not see but I believe reveals a lot more about the real guy.

Chris

I Have Been to the City of Hope and My Ears are Open Wide.pdf

[Marvel]

That is one of the best articles I've read in a long time. What an incredible personality. Thanks for posting it.

Bruce

[DizRotus]

Chris-

That's a great article. The pdf you posted is much easier to read than the version I have (each page as a jpg). Thanks for sharing it. You might like to see the cover of the Rolling Stone from which the article is taken.

[DizRotus]

This photo was also part of the article.

I have a recollection of the article's author explaining elsewhere how he came to own the La Scalas mentioned in the article. It's my recollection he bought them from Steve Miller, the Fly Like An Eagle, Steve Miller. On the other hand, I could be thinking of another article with a different author.

[DizRotus]

As Amazon likes to do, if you liked the Rolling Stone article,you might also like this.

[DizRotus]

. . . and this

[young1]

I prefer both, especially the 180-200gram albums

I just hope im around long enough to experience this [:|]

http://www.sonicinquirer.com/2013/01/neil-youngs-quest-for-quality/

digital-to-analog conversion technology intended to present songs as they first sound during studio recording sessions.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-young-expands-pono-digital-to-analog-music-service-20120927#ixzz2P16QK7Be

Digital versus? Analog i personally have a tough time keeping an open mind on this subject mainly due to the fact that we were spoon fed analog(vinyl/cassettes) for a great many years alot of memories are attached to those which influence the listening experience

I am a complete fence sitter when it comes to D V A i was listening to my HT yesterday thinking what great Digital sound after a couple of pops retired to the cave to my fully analog system and thought what great analog sound im hearing .

Is one cleary better sounding than the other? " NO" its not . Is one more convenient? "YES" it is.

Equipment plays a huge roll in all this as well

Hands down the Klipsch community is one of the best on the globe

[pzannucci]

I prefer both, especially the 180-200gram albums

I just hope im around long enough to experience this

http://www.sonicinquirer.com/2013/01/neil-youngs-quest-for-quality/

I'm not sure what that could change. You are not going to be able to get more than you started with in digital sound and this will need to be a form of digital encoding but you are still stuck with the same data in the end. Since this is targeting portable devices and these devices will be bandwidth limited, it sounds like a company has been formed to go head to head with others such as iTunes and HDtracks, with the intent to make money.

Now if you could keep more of the analog wave, which would require higher bit rate and higher sampling, then great but unfortunately it doesn't sound like any additional stuff is being done in the digital phase to save the data. Most other things would need to be done in the analog phase, maybe controlled by the digital bits but again, more bandwidth to download.

You can do things that deal with the reconstruction of the signal such as SRS/Hughes or BSG's Signal Completion Stage, maybe that would be helpful but it's not the original signal. It is a modification done by adding certain parameters to playback which could be pleasing but again...

To me you can't get better than analog (that's where it all started) and as said before in this thread, digital is a subset or tries to mimic analog through reconstruction. Unfortunately though, analog playback has too many detractors and possibilities for failure or impact on the sound. I will stay with high quality digital playback as it is more consistent over time. Just get rid of those guys that don't do good mastering and mixing with digital, the ones that wreaked havoc on all the great music from the 70's and 80's. []

[artto]

I prefer both, especially the 180-200gram albums

I just hope im around long enough to experience this

http://www.sonicinquirer.com/2013/01/neil-youngs-quest-for-quality/

I'm not sure what that could change. You are not going to be able to get more than you started with in digital sound and this will need to be a form of digital encoding but you are still stuck with the same data in the end. Since this is targeting portable devices and these devices will be bandwidth limited, it sounds like a company has been formed to go head to head with others such as iTunes and HDtracks, with the intent to make money.

Now if you could keep more of the analog wave, which would require higher bit rate and higher sampling, then great but unfortunately it doesn't sound like any additional stuff is being done in the digital phase to save the data. Most other things would need to be done in the analog phase, maybe controlled by the digital bits but again, more bandwidth to download.

You can do things that deal with the reconstruction of the signal such as SRS/Hughes or BSG's Signal Completion Stage, maybe that would be helpful but it's not the original signal. It is a modification done by adding certain parameters to playback which could be pleasing but again...

To me you can't get better than analog (that's where it all started) and as said before in this thread, digital is a subset or tries to mimic analog through reconstruction. Unfortunately though, analog playback has too many detractors and possibilities for failure or impact on the sound. I will stay with high quality digital playback as it is more consistent over time. Just get rid of those guys that don't do good mastering and mixing with digital, the ones that wreaked havoc on all the great music from the 70's and 80's.

Whatever55......see what you started!!! [6]

http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

"digital is a subset of analog"

NONSENSE

That is old world Newtoian thinking. The flowing river analogy.

The truth is a river is made up of "bits". And the "bits" are called molecules. And the molecule "bits" bump along into each other.

definition of molecule:

1. The smallest particle of a substance
that retains the chemical and physical properties of the substance and
is composed of two or more atoms; a group of like or different atoms
held together by chemical forces.

2. A small particle; a tiny bit.

And from we currently know about physics even time is composed of "bits", the smallest "bit" of time ~ 10 to the -43 power seconds.

From this I suppose we could deduce that "analog", if anything (other than pure fantasy) is a subset of digital however I would prefer to just say that "analog" as we perceive it, doesn't actually exist.

As far as digital goes, the above link clearly explains why higher "audio" resolutions are not needed, and may actually be detrimental to the sound reproduction process. This is only one read on the subject. There are plenty more and lots of support material for further reading included in the article or feel free to do your own research.

That's my existential two "bits" worth.

[O]

[LarryC]

I'm not sure what that could change. You are not going to be able to get more than you started with in digital sound and this will need to be a form of digital encoding but you are still stuck with the same data in the end. Since this is targeting portable devices and these devices will be bandwidth limited, it sounds like a company has been formed to go head to head with others such as iTunes and HDtracks, with the intent to make money.

I agree with this, at least in principle. However, look at this tech paper from Wadia, which shows how much they fiddle with the signal to try to make it more musical: http://www.wadia.com/technology/technicalpapers/Resolution_Enhancement.pdf

For example, look at the section "Self-Similarity" -- this is their attempt to fill in the dead digital silence below 16 bits: Their explanation is a bit hokey, but I believe it works in 16-bit music:

Resolution Enhancement recreates the Self-Similar quality of music.

... Noise from the data stream contaminates the Clock, resulting in correlated jitter. DAC Chip system is not capable of reproducing any smaller than allowed by 16-bits of resolution. A 16-bit digital system can not even produce random sinusoidal noise, like the kind contained in live music, below the resolution threshold. Wadia’s Resolution Enhancement system adds 9 additional bits below the 16-bit resolution threshold of a CD system. These bits allow the system to produce sine waves that are much lower in amplitude than those from a 16-bit system. Although these small signals are not related to the music signal, they allow the system to retain the self-similar nature down to a much lower signal level than a standard CD system. The result is sound quality that more closely matches the character of music occurring in live space.

Anyway, they sure did try!

[Quiet_Hollow]

So where's the bleeding-heart argument to go back to analog video? [^o)]

[garyrc]

There is a fair amount of agreement that both CDs and players got better a number of years after they were introduced. About when did that happen?

My experience: 1) They were pretty bad when introduced (c. 1983?). I suspected that the large number of my friends who said they compared a CD to an Lp of the same recording, and found the CD sounded better did so because their relatively inexpensive record players were not very good. 2) A few years later (1985?) I was shocked when Consumers Reports said they found that CD versions of the same recordings were better than Lps. Consumers had a top of the line Shure V-15 (IV?) and a good arm ... not my taste, but not too shabby. Since digital was still disappointing to me, I concluded that the speakers favored by Consumers (tending toward acoustic suspension direct radiators) were not as articulate as my Khorns, therefore they couldn't hear the problem with CDs, but I grew ashamed of my arrogance. I really wanted CDs to sound better so that I could avoid the inconveinance of Diskwashers, Dust Bugs fitted with little red alpha particle emitting anti static attachments, and record cleaning machines. 3) I began to listen again, got a new CD player, and every once in a while found a good CD. The year 1996 sticks out in my mind as the time when many CDs began to sound good. Later, some -- but not by any means all -- SACDs and DVD-As sounded even better. Then a funny thing happened -- newly recorded digital seemed to get worse. WTF? The best of the older ones sounded as good as ever.

Then there is the matter of Blu-ray v.s. DVD. When I've attempted to replace movies I have in DVD with BDs, the new ones definitely look better, but what about the highly touted Blu-ray sound? Some seem to sound more distorted, or lacking in shimmer and sparkle. I'm afraid to compare them directly.

[Chris A]

3) I began to listen again, got a new CD player, and every once in a while found a good CD. The year 1996 sticks out in my mind as the time when many CDs began to sound good. Later, some -- but not by any means all -- SACDs and DVD-As sounded even better. Then a funny thing happened -- newly recorded digital seemed to get worse.

I think that you've identified the source of the issue, and I believe that we've talked about it: recording engineer, mixing engineer, and mastering engineer. Red book CD format isn't the issue - it's the recording industry's periodic use of it, and LPCM can be abused even more than the vinyl format--which has far less latitude in SNR, FR, and absolute "loudness" than LPCM. I've got CDs from 1982 that are still impressive by today's standards, so I don't believe that it's a format issue.

When the iPod starting taking off, with its automatic loudness limiting control, I noticed that things started to go backwards in terms of sound quality. Vinyl had long since been assigned to obsolescence by then, then they made a comeback of sorts, i.e., new recordings being issued in both CD and vinyl.

The arguments about "digital being a subset of analog" are, I believe, odd in light of the above discussion. I think that recording industry giants--RIAA-member companies--really aren't nice guys, and that they really don't care about SQ--rather only profit. As long as they can, they will sell what they can sell regardless of SQ (I'm thinking the mp3 marketplace now).

The problem isn't digital recording, and you can't get around these folks just by buying vinyl instead of digital formats. What recordings you buy and from which company determines what they keep putting out. It's just like Detroit selling low quality, low reliability autos: there is a culture of management that must change.

I believe that there continues to be recording companies, here and there, that issue high quality as a rule, and as newer recording artists demand quality choose different record companies to issue their recordings, these newer high quality recording companies will continue to put out good recordings--if we buy them in quantity.

And for those recording artists that don't care...well...

BTW: I find that the year 1990 is the year when I begin to find many good CDs - and that is my typical sweet spot-1990-2002--when I buy reissued popular recordings on CD, SACD and DVD-A. I'm also finding that Naxos and other companies has been putting out BDs of classical music of late, and these recordings are truly outstanding.

Chris

[pzannucci]

3) I began to listen again, got a new CD player, and every once in a while found a good CD. The year 1996 sticks out in my mind as the time when many CDs began to sound good. Later, some -- but not by any means all -- SACDs and DVD-As sounded even better. Then a funny thing happened -- newly recorded digital seemed to get worse.

I think that you've identified the source of the issue, and I believe that we've talked about it: recording engineer, mixing engineer, and mastering engineer. Red book CD format isn't the issue - it's the recording industry's periodic use of it, and LPCM can be abused even more than the vinyl format--which has far less latitude in SNR, FR, and absolute "loudness" than LPCM. I've got CDs from 1982 that are still impressive by today's standards, so I don't believe that it's a format issue.

When the iPod starting taking off, with its automatic loudness limiting control, I noticed that things started to go backwards in terms of sound quality. Vinyl had long since been assigned to obsolescence by then, then they made a comeback of sorts, i.e., new recordings being issued in both CD and vinyl.

The arguments about "digital being a subset of analog" are, I believe, odd in light of the above discussion. I think that recording industry giants--RIAA-member companies--really aren't nice guys, and that they really don't care about SQ--rather only profit. As long as they can, they will sell what they can sell regardless of SQ (I'm thinking the mp3 marketplace now).

The problem isn't digital recording, and you can't get around these folks just by buying vinyl instead of digital formats. What recordings you buy and from which company determines what they keep putting out. It's just like Detroit selling low quality, low reliability autos: there is a culture of management that must change.

I believe that there continues to be recording companies, here and there, that issue high quality as a rule, and as newer recording artists demand quality choose different record companies to issue their recordings, these newer high quality recording companies will continue to put out good recordings--if we buy them in quantity.

And for those recording artists that don't care...well...

BTW: I find that the year 1990 is the year when I begin to find many good CDs - and that is my typical sweet spot-1990-2002--when I buy reissued popular recordings on CD, SACD and DVD-A. I'm also finding that Naxos and other companies has been putting out BDs of classical music of late, and these recordings are truly outstanding.

Chris

Exactly.... The engineers needed to learn how to work with the medium and how to store the data.

The reason that I, and possibly Dr Who said digital is a subset of analog is because sound is made up of vibrations, just as a plucked string on a guitar, digital have to recreate that analog signal to create those vibrations through a speaker. Speakers are analog hence conversion.

This link by artto:

http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

has been widely disputed because of the fact that high res downloads and SACD (somewhat different) exist. According to Nyquist, we shouldn't need anything better than a CD 16/44.1k though we can hear the difference (for the better) with higher resolution/sampling information (SACD and such). The closer you can get to replicating that analog signal in a sine wave
(more bits and/or better bit reconstruction and faster sampling) the less artifacts will be introduced
by the conversion. The closer you can get to the original, the more likely you can remove the pre-ringing and other artifacts introduced by the conversion that doesn't occur in nature, and generate more accurate sound.

Again this is all in a perfect world since we are left up to the engineer's decision of what the sound should be and their ability to capture and save it. I still would rather have excellent digital recordings that can be stored on my hard drive vs. cleaning a record, having the warping, and hearing the noise. Better than that, I can throw in a blu-ray and be at the performance!!!

Very enlightening points of view. That's why I like this forum though I've owned too many Klipsch speakers.

[The Dude]

I am sure there is some good reading in this thread, I just read the first page of stuff. But I did want to put in my 2 cents worth, I have herd some really good stuff on sacd. The nice thing is if you get drunk and pass out it doesn't keep running the stylus in the end of the record, like my non automatic turntable does. I like having a music server as it makes it easier to play what ever music you want at parties. But when sitting around listening to music sometimes I really like playing records. I am happy with what ever as long as it sounds good, or what ever mood I am in.

[Boxx]

The nice thing is if you get drunk and pass out it doesn't keep running the stylus in the end of the record, like my non automatic turntable does.

You mean that I'm not the only one that this happens to?

[The Dude]

Nope!!!!!!!!!

[seti]

Why limit yourself to analog or digital? Each format has its strengths. When I am out looking for music I am looking for music regardless of format. Ok perhaps I don't go through the 8 track tapes... But I will gladly flip through a stack of records or cds.

A subject I find interesting is not all wax cylinders or 78rpm records made it to 33 or 45 LP format. Nor has all 33 or 45 LP format made it to digital. That is alot of rare and interesting music that gets lost each time we step forward with a format.