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Is it Just Because CD's Are Louder?


thebes

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Let's face it no matter how hard you try if you transition from your record player to your cd, or your favorite internet streaming thingy it's almost impossible to have the same sound  level.  The cd is always louder than a properly recorded record.  And gee, what do we all do when we want to impress others with the glory of our sound system?  Yes, that 's right, we turn up the volume!

 

We fool ourselves and call it "concert levels".  What is really is we are cheating in one sense, because secretly in our heart of hearts we know that a record recording is like a  an honest gent driving down the road at the proper speed and observing the road signs, whilst digital is a brash young fool speeding along in a convertible heading straight towards dead man's curve.

 

Oh Thebes you say, "You're just talking about the " loudness wars" and we've already taken that into account in belief that zeros and one rule.

 

I'm sorry, but while there may be one or two cd's out there recorded at the same levels as vinyl, compression aside, the typical cd is always still louder than wax.

 

Now, realize this, turning up the volume is all good and well, until you go a bit too far, and then once the excitement dies down, it's fatiguing and the sound is soon turned back down to normal listening levels.  And that's why, my friends, I think that every cd I've ever heard  comes with built-in distortion.  It's "clarity" is basically an assault. It's something you can feel in your gut. And that's why vinyl rules.  You can make it equally annoying but you have to work at it.

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, thebes said:

Let's face it no matter how hard you try if you transition from your record player to your cd, or your favorite internet streaming thingy it's almost impossible to have the same sound  level.  The cd is always louder than a properly recorded record.  And gee, what do we all do when we want to impress others with the glory of our sound system?  Yes, that 's right, we turn up the volume!

 

We fool ourselves and call it "concert levels".  What is really is we are cheating in one sense, because secretly in our heart of hearts we know that a record recording is like a  an honest gent driving down the road at the proper speed and observing the road signs, whilst digital is a brash young fool speeding along in a convertible heading straight towards dead man's curve.

 

Oh Thebes you say, "You're just talking about the " loudness wars" and we've already taken that into account in belief that zeros and one rule.

 

I'm sorry, but while there may be one or two cd's out there recorded at the same levels as vinyl, compression aside, the typical cd is always still louder than wax.

 

Now, realize this, turning up the volume is all good and well, until you go a bit too far, and then once the excitement dies down, it's fatiguing and the sound is soon turned back down to normal listening levels.  And that's why, my friends, I think that every cd I've ever heard  comes with built-in distortion.  It's "clarity" is basically an assault. It's something you can feel in your gut. And that's why vinyl rules.  You can make it equally annoying but you have to work at it.

 

 

 

Digitizing always loses SOME sound information! They make dithering circuits to try and interpolate between the 44.1KHz sampling points, but that analog musical info is GONE FOREVER!

John Kuthe...

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1 hour ago, JohnKuthe said:

Digitizing always loses SOME sound information! They make dithering circuits to try and interpolate between the 44.1KHz sampling points, but that analog musical info is GONE FOREVER!

 

Mustering as much civility as I can:

These are superstitions. The first claim is provably false, the second claim is a misstatement of what dither does, and believing otherwise will not change the facts no matter how forcefully anybody asserts those beliefs.

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23 minutes ago, Edgar said:

 

Mustering as much civility as I can:

These are superstitions. The first claim is provably false, the second claim is a misstatement of what dither does, and believing otherwise will not change the facts no matter how forcefully anybody asserts those beliefs.

OK!

Then WHY do some still prefer vinyl and magnetic tapes?

Dithering defined:

https://techterms.com/definition/dithering

Granted somer may PREFER digital dithering! But it's NOT the same as the original analog signal! NOT IDENTICAL!! And THAT my obsequious friend is a BALD HEADED FACT! 😉

John Kuthe, BS degrees in CS, EE and Nursing

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3 minutes ago, JohnKuthe said:

Then WHY do some still prefer vinyl and magnetic tapes?

 

For the same reason that some people still prefer chocolate ice cream over vanilla -- they like it.

 

Quote

 

That's a layman's explanation of dither, and not a very good one. The true purpose of dither is to decorrelate the quantization error and the signal.

 

Quote

And THAT my obsequious friend is a BALD HEADED FACT!

 

Believing otherwise will not change the facts no matter how forcefully anybody asserts those beliefs.

 

Obsequious? Non sequitur.

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2 minutes ago, Jeff Matthews said:

If there is no difference, then why is there a "quantization error" to "decorrelate?"

 

Who said there is no difference? The original assertion was, "Digitizing always loses SOME sound information!" Proper digitization adds some quantization noise. That's not the same as losing information.

 

Quantization error may be correlated with the input signal (bad -- it actually appears as distortion) or it may be uncorrelated with the input signal (good -- it appears as noise). If the analog to digital conversion is good enough (in this case meaning that the digital word is large enough and the analog electronics are good enough to support that word length), then the noise from the digitization will be less than the noise already in the input signal. And with digital dither we have the luxury of shaping the noise spectrum as we please.

 

All of this information is readily available to anyone who looks for it.

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43 minutes ago, Edgar said:

 

For the same reason that some people still prefer chocolate ice cream over vanilla -- they like it.

 

 

That's a layman's explanation of dither, and not a very good one. The true purpose of dither is to decorrelate the quantization error and the signal.

 

 

Believing otherwise will not change the facts no matter how forcefully anybody asserts those beliefs.

 

Obsequious? Non sequitur.

True enough! NO standards for opinions! Based solely on the opiner!

John Kuthe, Knows Lots Of Words!

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I sold my new streamer... it was convenient,  played any modern format at high levels of resolutions, and ran software that had dsp filter and eq capabilities... but it just didn't sound as good as the original files from cd's or downloads, UNLESS I was listening to very high sample rates files... but those good files are so far and few between.

 

I've gone back to physical media.

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4 minutes ago, Schu said:

I sold my new streamer... it was convenient,  played any modern format at high levels of resolutions, and ran software that had dsp filter and eq capabilities... but it just didn't sound as good as the original files from cd's or downloads, UNLESS I was listening to very high sample rates files... but those good files are so far and few between.

 

I've gone back to physical media.

 

So that just means you like the sound of your CD transport and its DAC.

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8 hours ago, JohnKuthe said:

True enough! NO standards for opinions! Based solely on the opiner!

 

FWIW; I am an electrical engineer, my specialty is digital signal processing, I have designed digital audio firmware professionally, and my favorite source medium is still vinyl.

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26 minutes ago, Edgar said:

 

FWIW; I am an electrical engineer, my specialty is digital signal processing, I have designed digital audio firmware professionally, and my favorite source medium is still vinyl.

That kind of says it all........just saying

 

George

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Most cd players will put out up to a full 2v , which a turntable will not. This will make the cd output signal louder. My Shanling cd player has a built in output volume control, so I can turn down the output and balance it to my turntable level. Now that I have everything playing at the same level, the vinyl sounds way better. Period.

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10 hours ago, Edgar said:

Who said there is no difference? The original assertion was, "Digitizing always loses SOME sound information!" Proper digitization adds some quantization noise. That's not the same as losing information.

 

I'm no expert, but I don't think a battle over semantics addresses the real issue.  The issue involves the claim that the quality of digitized music is not as good as that of analog.  Whether you add or subtract to analog, you get something different.

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15 minutes ago, Jeff Matthews said:

I'm no expert, but I don't think a battle over semantics addresses the real issue.

 

Semantics does have a part in it. "Information", "noise", "quantization", "distortion", etc., all have mathematical definitions. So when someone makes claims that use those terms but not their associated definitions, a problem with understanding often follows.

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