Is... Analog Dead?

[joshnich]

 

Some of us just prefer analog sound to digital because we realize digital is not true to how we hear which is in analog.

 

It helps to have a great turntable, such as yours, no?

 

Shakey

 

It does indeed. I recently upgraded my turntable and the improvements are incredible. I still listen to digital audio. I have a music server filled with music and I love the sound quality and the ease of use. But I still prefer analog by a pretty big margin.

[BigStewMan]

To put it into digital terms.  When the  01110011011010000110100101110100 hits the fan you are going to be up a 01100110011101010110001101101011ing creek without a paddle

 well said; but, you missed a zero. 

[kaiser SET say]

Digital really is the superior format, especially if you look at the measurements.  However, analog does have a realistic warmth.  The problem I have with the digital format is not the format at all.  It is the recording engineers who have compressed the the dynamic range of the digital recordings to the point they are no longer wider than analog.  They increase the the levels across all frequencies to the point where they begin to distort.  I just can't stand to listen to any newly issued popular music on a decent quality stereo at any real volume because of the poor sound quality.  With that being said, there are countless benefits of the digital format. Convenience, portability, potential for superior sound quality, etc.

As one hard headed Texan to another your problem with digital kind of flies in the face of your superior format don't you think. I to this day never have that residual toe tapping, continuing to sing after the fact with digital that analog has always given me and that includes tape. I have oh so missed cassette in my cars for years now

[thebes]

 

Now, now Claude, I'm thinking you are a bit confused.  Jitter, distortion, sterile compression are just another form of ticks and pops.   If you are playing cd's you are simply dragging a light over a spinning disk on an arm that's connected to a tangential arm. A hard drive is just another arm dragging across a platter.   So digital is so different from vinyls?  Let's compare the medium. Wax is made from oil and so is a plastic cd.  Yes a diamond is a stone, so what is silicone if not a rock? 

 

LOL. You are a piece of work. What if AC power gets wiped out while we are at it?

 

Jitter is measurable but inaudible since it occurs in the lower bits. Distortion? What distortion? From the Microphone's proximity overload perhaps, What's wrong with Flat from 4 Hz. (subwoofers were never an option with vinyl that could barely get to 35 hz. without himlayan warps and tonearm noises. There is ZERO friction with reading with a laser, unlike a diamond in a groove. The 100th time a CD is played, it sounds the same as the first time. Not true for vinyl. I knew a guy that taped all of his classical LP's and only playing them only once for this reason, then sold them to me cheap.

 

The only benefit of transfering LP's to digital is that it won't wear out beyond the original playback. 96/24 out-resolves any cartridge and has 75 db more dynamic range (135 db vs. 60). No tick no pops ever. Just batch copy on multiple media and your are good to go. The way Solid State memory is going the rotational mechanics of CD/DVD/Blue Ray will disappear. I know there's a limited number of read/write cycles with flash memory, but in read only form, it's not a factor. It will outlive both of us.

 

Interesting observation on flash memory. Could be the wave of the future, until it's day is done and gone in a..can I say it...flash.

 

Oh, another 90 million hacks today at some bank.

 

Be cautious Claude.  When they get tired of doing hacks, they will start outing people's private stuff.

 

For example, some day you may find that on your local community server is your entire playlist.  There may be a head or two turned when they find out your top audio selections are Shirley Temple tunes, Jessica Simpson and David Hasslehof.

Edited October 3, 2014 by thebes

[thebes]

 

You guys have certainly helped me to form an opinion.  Thanks...

As the marketing guru Jack Trout once famously said " If your assigment is to change peoples minds, don't accept the assignment"

 

I get your point, but now get mine.

 

Analogue guys are far from absolutists, sticking with the party line while heads roll at the Kremlin.  Far from it.

 

I, like almost everyone here, abandoned vinyls for cd's in the 80's.  I and many others, when we got a bit older, and started crafting better systems, dipped our toes back into analogue, and realized, very belatedly that we had run from a good thing.

 

I would posit that there is not a vinyls guy here that doesn't have a closet full of cd's.

 

And, here's another point, many of  what you think are nostalgia throwbacks have some of the best systems available in audio today, mostly crafted around horns.  They  have devoted years of their lives to the pursuit of what is much more than a mere hobby, and realize that analogue is heck-of-a-way to go.

 

Don't forget that many of us dinosaurs also share with you the idea that Heritage speakers are still cutting edge and not simple nostalgia.

[Don Richard]

I would posit that there is not a vinyls guy here that doesn't have a closet full of cd's.

 

 

Nor are there digital guys who don't have a closet or two filled with vinyl. Over 1200 LPs in my case, none of which have been played for 30 years.

[Boxx]

none of which have been played for 30 years.

[ClaudeJ1]

 

none of which have been played for 30 years.

 

Same here but that will change shortly.

[Boxx]

 

 

none of which have been played for 30 years.

 

Same here but that will change shortly.

 

 

Care to give us a hint on how it will change?

[Shakeydeal]

Over 1200 LPs in my case, none of which have been played for 30 years.

 

 

That is truly your loss. For I contend that a good rig on a good system will make a believer out of you.

 

Now if you don't want the expense or inconvenience of vinyl, that's one thing. I have a friend who tried it and walked away. But he concedes that in many cases, it does bring forth the best sound. He just doesn't want to deal with the hassle.

 

 

Shakey

[artto]

 

Unlike dragging a miniature rock on the end a small stick mounted to a large stick

 

I said goodbye to ticks and pops over 30 years ago

Now, now Claude, I'm thinking you are a bit confused.  Jitter, distortion, sterile compression are just another form of ticks and pops.

 

If you are playing cd's you are simply dragging a light over a spinning disk on an arm that's connected to a tangential arm. A hard drive is just another arm dragging across a platter.

 

So digital is so different from vinyls?  Let's compare the medium. Wax is made from oil and so is a plastic cd.  Yes a diamond is a stone, so what is silicone if not a rock? 

 

Find me someone here who has never lost a large amount of data, weather records, pictures, whatever on their foolproof digital devices such as hard drives, ram, or smartypants phones.  You can't because everyone had had a data dump of some kind or another.  Between Home Depot and Target over 130 billion private accounts have been hacked.  Someday soon there will be a virus that simply wipes hard drives. What then?  Wait until we have a real cyber-war, with whole governments involved, and you know that will happen sooner or later.  What's going to be left of your online experience then, not to mention the cloud?

 

To put it into digital terms.  When the  01110011011010000110100101110100 hits the fan you are going to be up a

01100110011101010110001101101011ing creek without a paddle.

 

Plus vinyls sound better to analogue beings.  If you want digital become a robot.

 

 

Thebes, not quite.

 

"Jitter, distortion, sterile compression are just another form of ticks and pops."

Not true. The result of jitter is actually much like wow & flutter in the analog domain. Distortion is the alteration of the original shape of something. Ticks and pops are not part of the original "shape" or sound at all. They are added after the fact with little or no control of the user/listener. Pray tell, what exactly is "sterile compression"? It certainly is NOT another form of "ticks & pops". If anything, the vast majority of vinyl LP have much more compression (of any kind) than CD or better quality digital. That's a fact. Vinyl LP (or analog tape) do not have as much dynamic range as any decent digital system, especially by today's standards, even if you through in the digital dither argument.

 

"If you are playing cd's you are simply dragging a light over a spinning disk on an arm that's connected to a tangential arm."

No. you are NOT dragging light over anything. You are reading reflected light from a spinning surface. The fact that its a tangential arm has nothing to do with anything. In fact the digital data is not even in "sequence". It's interleaved - to make forward error correction more robust and data less susceptible to damage than if all the data where arranged sequentially along the same "path".

 

"A hard drive is just another arm dragging across a platter"

No it is not. It is not dragging across anything. If it were, the disk would sustain the same eventual damage that vinyl records do. In the hard drive world this eventually comes to be known as a "crash".

 

So digital is so different from vinyls?  Let's compare the medium. Wax is made from oil and so is a plastic cd.  Yes a diamond is a stone, so what is silicone if not a rock?

And wax, oil, plastic, diamond, silicone, breasts, ice cream sandwiches, vacuum tubes, transistors, my lunch, your lunch, and everything else, are made of atoms, or more accurately, fields.

So What.

 

"Find me someone here who has never lost a large amount of data, weather records, pictures, whatever on their foolproof digital devices such as hard drives, ram, or smartypants phones.  You can't because everyone had had a data dump of some kind or another.  Between Home Depot and Target over 130 billion private accounts have been hacked.  Someday soon there will be a virus that simply wipes hard drives. What then?  Wait until we have a real cyber-war, with whole governments involved, and you know that will happen sooner or later.  What's going to be left of your online experience then, not to mention the cloud?"

And what will happen to all our vinyl when the sun turns into a white dwarf?

 

"To put it into digital terms.  When the  01110011011010000110100101110100 hits the fan you are going to be up a

01100110011101010110001101101011ing creek without a paddle."

That's what error correction and offline backup are for. Anyone not doing that is simply asking for trouble. Anyone who wants to steal or destroy what's on my laptop media center ~ be my guest. I'll have it up and running within hours while I'm off doing something else. BTW, interesting bit depth ~ 31

 

"Plus vinyls sound better to analogue beings.  If you want digital become a robot."

Your embellished dramatization are always entertaining and fun. However, there is no such thing as "analog beings. We are made of bits & pieces (and fields). And so is time itself, the smallest "bit" of time being the Planck Unit,

 

which is roughly 10 to the minus 43 seconds.

 

Like it or not, We are digital robots, in a digital world.

Edited October 3, 2014 by artto

[kaiser SET say]

 

 

Unlike dragging a miniature rock on the end a small stick mounted to a large stick

 

I said goodbye to ticks and pops over 30 years ago

Now, now Claude, I'm thinking you are a bit confused.  Jitter, distortion, sterile compression are just another form of ticks and pops.

 

If you are playing cd's you are simply dragging a light over a spinning disk on an arm that's connected to a tangential arm. A hard drive is just another arm dragging across a platter.

 

So digital is so different from vinyls?  Let's compare the medium. Wax is made from oil and so is a plastic cd.  Yes a diamond is a stone, so what is silicone if not a rock? 

 

Find me someone here who has never lost a large amount of data, weather records, pictures, whatever on their foolproof digital devices such as hard drives, ram, or smartypants phones.  You can't because everyone had had a data dump of some kind or another.  Between Home Depot and Target over 130 billion private accounts have been hacked.  Someday soon there will be a virus that simply wipes hard drives. What then?  Wait until we have a real cyber-war, with whole governments involved, and you know that will happen sooner or later.  What's going to be left of your online experience then, not to mention the cloud?

 

To put it into digital terms.  When the  01110011011010000110100101110100 hits the fan you are going to be up a

01100110011101010110001101101011ing creek without a paddle.

 

Plus vinyls sound better to analogue beings.  If you want digital become a robot.

 

 

Thebes, not quite.

 

"Jitter, distortion, sterile compression are just another form of ticks and pops."

Not true. The result of jitter is actually much like wow & flutter in the analog domain. Distortion is the alteration of the original shape of something. Ticks and pops are not part of the original "shape" or sound at all. They are added after the fact with little or no control of the user/listener. Pray tell, what exactly is "sterile compression"? It certainly is NOT another form of "ticks & pops". If anything, the vast majority of vinyl LP have much more compression (of any kind) than CD or better quality digital. That's a fact. Vinyl LP (or analog tape) do not have as much dynamic range as any decent digital system, especially by today's standards, even if you through in the digital dither argument.

 

"If you are playing cd's you are simply dragging a light over a spinning disk on an arm that's connected to a tangential arm."

No. you are NOT dragging light over anything. You are reading reflected light from a spinning surface. The fact that its a tangential arm has nothing to do with anything. In fact the digital data is not even in "sequence". It's interleaved - to make forward error correction more robust and data less susceptible to damage than if all the data where arranged sequentially along the same "path".

 

"A hard drive is just another arm dragging across a platter"

No it is not. It is not dragging across anything. If it were, the disk would sustain the same eventual damage that vinyl records do. In the hard drive world this eventually comes to be known as a "crash".

 

So digital is so different from vinyls?  Let's compare the medium. Wax is made from oil and so is a plastic cd.  Yes a diamond is a stone, so what is silicone if not a rock?

And wax, oil, plastic, diamond, silicone, breasts, ice cream sandwiches, vacuum tubes, transistors, my lunch, your lunch, and everything else, are made of atoms, or more accurately, fields.

So What.

 

"Find me someone here who has never lost a large amount of data, weather records, pictures, whatever on their foolproof digital devices such as hard drives, ram, or smartypants phones.  You can't because everyone had had a data dump of some kind or another.  Between Home Depot and Target over 130 billion private accounts have been hacked.  Someday soon there will be a virus that simply wipes hard drives. What then?  Wait until we have a real cyber-war, with whole governments involved, and you know that will happen sooner or later.  What's going to be left of your online experience then, not to mention the cloud?"

And what will happen to all our vinyl when the sun turns into a white dwarf?

 

"To put it into digital terms.  When the  01110011011010000110100101110100 hits the fan you are going to be up a

01100110011101010110001101101011ing creek without a paddle."

That's what error correction and offline backup are for. Anyone not doing that is simply asking for trouble. Anyone who wants to steal or destroy what's on my laptop media center ~ be my guest. I'll have it up and running within hours while I'm off doing something else. BTW, interesting bit depth ~ 31

 

"Plus vinyls sound better to analogue beings.  If you want digital become a robot."

Your embellished dramatization are always entertaining and fun. However, there is no such thing as "analog beings. We are made of bits & pieces (and fields). And so is time itself, the smallest "bit" of time being the Planck Unit,

 

which is roughly 10 to the minus 43 seconds.

 

Like it or not, We are digital robots, in a digital world.

 

I....................Refuse...............to.......................believe................that..........ARTTO  LOL

[JBryan]

Just checking in while the next batch of popcorn pops away in the microwave and I gotta say, this has been a terribly genteel thread so far - you guys are playing way too nice! This thread is a love-fest by our standards and wouldn't even register on the scale compared with the venerable Kforum Classics like horns v. drivers, ss v. tubes and who could forget the wires v. snake-oil cable melees - I remember folks being banned during some of those threads.

 

Anyway, no one is ever convinced or swayed as a result of anything said in these 'discussions' but its always a fun read. My only thoughts are that as with the other topics, the argument inevitably subsides and the once-entrenched stalwarts begin to accept that they may be losing their footing as the tide of acceptance rolls over them and their arguments go unheeded or worse, become trivialized. They file away their personal bias, opinions, measurements, and white papers and shuffle off to the next debate. 

 

The bottom line is that both formats have their attributes and drawbacks and any choice will come with an armful of compromises but come on guys.. pick up the pitchforks and axes and lets get some blood flowin' here!   

[joshnich]

You guys have certainly helped me to form an opinion.  Thanks...

As the marketing guru Jack Trout once famously said " If your assigment is to change peoples minds, don't accept the assignment"

I get your point, but now get mine.

 

Analogue guys are far from absolutists, sticking with the party line while heads roll at the Kremlin.  Far from it.

 

I, like almost everyone here, abandoned vinyls for cd's in the 80's.  I and many others, when we got a bit older, and started crafting better systems, dipped our toes back into analogue, and realized, very belatedly that we had run from a good thing.

 

I would posit that there is not a vinyls guy here that doesn't have a closet full of cd's.

 

And, here's another point, many of  what you think are nostalgia throwbacks have some of the best systems available in audio today, mostly crafted around horns.  They  have devoted years of their lives to the pursuit of what is much more than a mere hobby, and realize that analogue is heck-of-a-way to go.

 

Don't forget that many of us dinosaurs also share with you the idea that Heritage speakers are still cutting edge and not simple nostalgia.

I'm not sure if you addressing this to me....but I could not agree more. My road back to vinyl was very similar to yours and it definitely wasn't based on nostalgia! I have continued to search for a digital option and indeed have put together what many would consider a "serviceable " system. My digital combo components sound great and they are indeed easy and convienent to use. They just don't produce music that is as pleasurable to listen to!

[artto]

I think a lot of it has to do with one’s personal experiences, and therefore, preferences. For instance, a lot of “younger” (I’m 62) folks grew up in the “digital age”. What’s their point of reference? It’s most likely iTunes (acc file format) or MP3, both are compressed “lossy” audio formats that quite frankly, I don’t like to listen to. It’s the modern version of the 45 rpm single for my age group. I don’t think anyone would argue that the sound from a 45 rpm single from the 60’s is superior and compelling, compared to MP3 regardless of what it’s played through, even though it’s (the 45) technologically the same thing as an LP. In fact, the higher rotation speed should theoretically provide better fidelity, but it doesn’t. Why is that?

 

Back in the day, LP was not considered the “highest fidelity” media. Analog tape was king, preferably at 30 inches per second. It was a very expensive proposition, and still is. No “serious” audiophile would be without a reel to reel tape deck that could play at least 15 inch per second tapes. And like records, it still has its proponents.

 

Ironically, analog tape has many of the same problems as LP & turntables. They are just manifested differently.

 

Much of the debate today is the same. Tubes verses transistors, analog verses digital, etc. The fact of the matter is very few of us have ever had their “ears” on a truly superior analog or digital system. And by that I mean everything, from the recording to the listening room. And even fewer have extensive experience recording live acoustical performances in both (or all?) formats. Many (most?) of today’s audiophiles haven’t even been to a live (non-amplified) music performance, at least not in a long time or frequently, or play a musical instrument. What’s their point of reference?

 

It’s only in the last 1.5 years that I have gone to completely digital throughput. And by that I mean, there isn’t even any spinning disc, like an SACD player or hard disk drive. Lossless high resolution sound files are played directly from RAM in the computer, transmitted digitally without format or sampling conversion via HDMI (not asynchronous USB) with no error correction required, to a direct digital feedback amplifier which processes everything, volume, tone control, EQ, crossovers, distortion cancellation, etc. completely in the digital domain at 108MHz/35 bit PWM. This is the one and only (upsampling) digital conversion in the signal path. No analog anything anywhere in the signal path. I’m also one of the lucky ones who happen to have many years worth of my own digital (and analog) recordings of a local chorale with orchestra or band accompaniment performing in an acoustical space which is regionally acknowledged for its fine acoustics as well as the studio recordings of the bands I’ve played in. And as many of you know, I have an excellent dedicated acoustically tuned listening room/studio.

 

That being said, I think for most people it all boils down to their personal preferences for certain kinds of sounds and distortions (or lack of it). For instance, I really don’t like the sound of the high notes of violins, piccolo, or even alto sopranos. They sound edgy, strident. It bothers my ears. I’m a bass player (ha!). On the other extreme I’ve heard some audiophiles say with great aplomb how they like “the warm fuzzy sound of tubes”. A far as records go, I can’t tell you how many LP’s I’ve taken back to the record store because of ticks, pops and excessive surface noise, skips, occasionally even on the most expensive audiophile discs.

 

The other thing I’ve discovered, is that as the playback “system” (the recording, playback equipment & room) gets dialed in better and better, the differences between analog and digital, tape or LP, or even the recordings themselves, gets to be less & and less. I now find that more recordings are “acceptable” ~ listenable and enjoyable. Whereas in the past long ago, my system was obviously biased, it sounded much better with some recordings while most of them didn’t sound nearly as good and caused me to avoid listening to them.

 

How do we “extract” the “sound” from a record anyway? Without even considering all the things that go into actually making the record, what are we trying to do? What we have is a nearly microscopic polished stone, attached to one end of a (usually) metal cantilever, which is suspended by a tiny rubber grommet. At the opposite end of this cantilever we have either a pair of tiny magnets or coils of wire, both of which have much more mass than the stone stylus. This little device, the pickup, is attached to one end of a nine to twelve inch arm usually made of a lightweight metal, which is balanced on some bearings. At the opposite end of this arm are heavy weights for balancing the whole apparatus. There is also a weight or spring-loaded component to compensate for the arm’s natural tendency to skate towards the center of a spinning disk. Then, we spin this disk at 7-1/2 inches per second, while dragging the nearly microscopic stone through a pressed plastic groove, which is most likely at least the 10,000^th copy pressed from the mother production disk stamper, wriggling the cantilever back and forth as well as up and down, while having to move the entire mass of the pickup, arm, overcome its frictional components, and then amplify the minute electrical signal created by this device 8,000 times and get stereo (or even 4 channel) playback from the single groove! It’s a wonder we get anything resembling “fidelity” at all from this little miracle. If records and record players didn't exist, and someone came up and told me about this new invention as described above, and what kind of fidelity it could reproduce, I’d think they were nuts. Of course the same argument could be said for reading 1's and 0's with a magnetic head or beam of light from a variable speed spinning disk, or solid state memory at MHz speeds and turning it into something resembling the original waveform.

 

For what it’s worth, in the above dissertation I've left out most of the other things that are inherently problematic in record playback as it exists today.

 

There is something to be said however for the “pressed plastic groove”. It is of course, a physical "analog" representation of the actual waveform, albeit probably compressed and with reverse equalization compensation applied. And quite frankly, that’s all it has to be. It’s the getting from point A to point Z that is astonishing. If anything, it demonstrates how tolerant the ear/brain system is of distortion.

 

 

FWIW, my all-digital throughput signal chain is composed of Toshiba Satellite C855-S5350 laptop, J River Media Center as the music server, using synchronous  HDMI output to HDMI input of NAD C390DD. The C390 utilizes the latest HDMI specification employing Audio Rate Control which enables the C390 as the master  clock for both the C390 and laptop thereby minimizing (virtually eliminating) digital jitter. Earlier versions of HDMI or components which do not utilize Audio Rate Control use the video sink for sychronization/clock timing. Obviously if no video signal is present, this presents a problem, resulting is much higher digital jitter than the best asynchronous USB systems .

 

The analog vinyl part of the system is a Linn Sondeck LP12, modified with Origin Live Advanced DC motor and outboard power supply upgrade, Moerch UP-4 tonearm, red arm tube wand, Decca Jubilee pickup, Audio Research SP6B to the analog input module of the NAD C390DD (or McIntosh MX135/MC7205, or Luxman MB3045, or Wright Sound Labs 3.5 Mono 2A3 SET).

Edited October 3, 2014 by artto

[Schu]

I just listened to two new releases of OLD albums I own in MULTIPLE formats.

 

I just received (last night) Yes- Close to the Edge and The Yes Album in Blu ray Audio...

 

I own both Albums, in Vinyl... I own both Albums on CD... I also Own Close to the Edge on Half Speed Master Vinyl and SACD... in addition I own The Yes Album on SACD.

 

ALL OF THOSE FORMATS are no where near what Blu ray audio uncompressed has delivered... Pure Nirvana. The presence, the presentation, the separation are all light years ahead of any of those older formats.

 

both those releases are stunning.

Edited October 3, 2014 by Schu

[Chris A]

The problem, of course, is that many of the old analog recording practices of the master tapes aren't necessarily up to the quality that you mention in the two releases above.  For the recordings from 20+ years ago, Blu-Ray is only being made for the biggest hits.  Bummer. 

 

The download 24/96 tracks from HDTracks and others are essentially the same quality.  You have to watch the Blu-Ray music disks a bit because they sometimes want to sell you 48 KHz sample rate recordings (DVD quality) for a Blu-Ray price.  It's not the bit rate--it's the care and attention to detail, including not compressing the final tracks down to make it sound "phat". 

Edited October 3, 2014 by Chris A

[Marvel]

so what is silicone if not a rock?

Everyone keeps saying this, but it is silicon, which I'm sure you really know...

 

Bruce

[Schu]

The problem, of course, is that many of the old analog recording practices of the master tapes aren't necessarily up to the quality that you mention in the two releases above.  For the recordings from 20+ years ago, Blu-Ray is only being made for the biggest hits.  Bummer. 

 

The download 24/96 tracks from HDTracks and others are essentially the same quality.  You have to watch the Blu-Ray music disks a bit because they sometimes want to sell you 48 KHz sample rate recordings (DVD quality) for a Blu-Ray price.  It's not the bit rate--it's the care and attention to detail, including not compressing the final tracks down to make it sound "phat". 

 

 

indeed... I could not agree more. A think a major draw back is that these releases take a lot of WORK to produce... much like remastering a movie.

 

not many albums are going to get that treatment, as a matter of fact there are only a handful at best that I would consider owning.

[artto]

 

so what is silicone if not a rock?

Everyone keeps saying this, but it is silicon, which I'm sure you really know...

 

Bruce

 

Bruce, actually I didn't say that ~ thebes said it ~ and I quoted him