CD vs Vinyl sound

SCompRacer

Cpyder wrote: »

Once a record is played a great amount of time, it becomes very evident that there are losses in the upper frequencies. You can see this in the spectrogram. The question that remains is: How many plays are needed before this becomes visibly obvious? As said before by heiney and others, it depends on several factors of your playback setup.

I appreciate the recap but I have been following along. I did read your post (#151) asking if anyone has any data on the degree of degradation as an LP is played. I respect the way it was brought up. Setup is critical, and Brock (heiney) has seen the tools and procedure I use to properly set up a turntable. As I stated in an earlier post, I don’t see anything to indicate my vinyl is wearing out. Where did you get your data and what is the history of the vinyl and equipment used to play it?

My question about vinyl wear was put to Mr. “science and physics,” who stated

“vinyl wears out, i know this because my grandmother has several 70s vinyl records and the high end of the recordings has been completly trashed.”

What kind of care did the records receive? What kind of equipment were they played on? What type of stylus? Stylus force?

yepimonfire also said

“also up for questioning, can every turntable spin the EXACT same speed all the time? i know when playing vinyls i occasionally notice it slowing down or speeding up for a few half seconds.”

Yes, there are actually turntables that can maintain a steady speed! (It's kind of important for good sounding vinyl playback). They also make testers to check speed. Perhaps the turntable referred to has a problem? Is this the turntable you used to make your vinyl wears and gets completely trashed determination? Maybe find that out before making yep your wingman. His credibility took a hit with me in how he arrived at his findings.

hearingimpared

BlueFox wrote: »

Another troll who has no idea what he is talking about. Plonk!

How you can call Greg a troll is far beyond me.:eek:

hearingimpared

SCompRacer wrote: »

I appreciate the recap but I have been following along. I did read your post (#151) asking if anyone has any data on the degree of degradation as an LP is played. I respect the way it was brought up. Setup is critical, and Brock (heiney) has seen the tools and procedure I use to properly set up a turntable. As I stated in an earlier post, I don’t see anything to indicate my vinyl is wearing out. Where did you get your data and what is the history of the vinyl and equipment used to play it?

My question about vinyl wear was put to Mr. “science and physics,” who stated

What kind of care did the records receive? What kind of equipment were they played on? What type of stylus? Stylus force?

yepimonfire also said

Yes, there are actually turntables that can maintain a steady speed! (It's kind of important for good sounding vinyl playback). They also make testers to check speed. Perhaps the turntable referred to has a problem? Is this the turntable you used to make your vinyl wears and gets completely trashed determination? Maybe find that out before making yep your wingman. His credibility took a hit with me in how he arrived at his findings.

I reiterate;

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1327905&postcount=150

I would also like to add that there are many product made such as the VPI SDS to keep the record speed consistent and true. I have an older VPI product which I have my SAMA motor going through that keeps the speed consistently true so there is another statement by yepimonfire about vinyl playback debunked.

Here's a link from 1998 when the SDS first came out . . . needless to say, it has been improved upon greatly since.

http://www.audiophilia.com/hardware/sds1.htm

There have been many, many more tests and reviews of this product since the article above was first written. I would also like to add that most manufactuers of turntables have gone to great pains to ensure the speed of their motors are true and in many cases an outboard "line conditioner" is not even needed of course the need to take into consideration the dirty and irregular power coming off the pole is necessary.

SCompRacer

Joe, there have been many studies over the years in regards to record wear. Back in the '60's we had elliptical shapes with small contact areas which resulted in high contact pressures. They could begin to wear a record groove out after 20-50 plays.

Modern line contact type styli increased surface area. Some cartridge manufactures claimed none or minimal wear provided you kept your records clean and stylus pressure at the proper spec. Ortofon claimed a correctly shaped and well polished tip does not cause wear.

The quality of vinyl matters too. Constant playing of the same record without allowing the groove to cool rapidly accelerates record wear. Temps at the stylus can be 300 + degrees. Using a clamp or periphery ring to keep the record flat on the platter helps maintain steady VTF in the groove, which reduces wear. The type of arm, length of arm, Baerwald alignment, Loefgren B alignment, air bearing linear arms are other factors. It gets complicated.

Your cartridge have a Micro-Ridge stylus?

hearingimpared

SCompRacer wrote: »

Joe, there have been many studies over the years in regards to record wear. Back in the '60's we had elliptical shapes with small contact areas which resulted in high contact pressures. They could begin to wear a record groove out after 20-50 plays.

Modern line contact type styli increased surface area. Some cartridge manufactures claimed none or minimal wear provided you kept your records clean and stylus pressure at the proper spec. Ortofon claimed a correctly shaped and well polished tip does not cause wear.

The quality of vinyl matters too. Constant playing of the same record without allowing the groove to cool rapidly accelerates record wear. Temps at the stylus can be 300 + degrees. Using a clamp or periphery ring to keep the record flat on the platter helps maintain steady VTF in the groove, which reduces wear. The type of arm, length of arm, Baerwald alignment, Loefgren B alignment, air bearing linear arms are other factors. It gets complicated.

Your cartridge have a Micro-Ridge stylus?

Yes there are a few factors involved here but once these are carefully taken care of, there is little wear if any wear.

Yes Richie it is a Microridge stylus. From what I've read it is one of the long line contact styli made and is touted for its ability to reduce or eliminate record wear at the high speeds it runs the grooves.

SCompRacer

My Karat is Micro-Ridge.

hearingimpared

SCompRacer wrote: »

My Karat is Micro-Ridge.

One day Richie, one day, I'm gonna make out to RAS and get my ears on your awesome rig as well as the other RAS members.

nooshinjohn

^^^You can crash at my place. I am 2 1/2 hours away from them, so we can go together.


John

heiney9

You are talking in absolutes as well as Headrott............there are no absolutes and to think there are is ignorance, fantasy and wishful thinking. If proper care is not taken when replicating data errors do occur. The errors may not be fatal or impede the flow of data but the end result *could* result in a less than perfect copy. Most if not all errors in digital music reproduction occur in the analog domain. (at conversion)

Vinyl if properly stored, cared for and proper modern equipment is used has virtually no wear characteristics.

H9

nooshinjohn

BlueFox wrote: »

Every time you play a CD you are copying the data from the CD to the player. Does it sound different each time you play it? Of course not. If it did it is because something is broken, not because the digital data changes when it is copied.

Gotta call BS here... the material encoded on the disc is NOT COPIED. It is "read" by the player and the output of the player is heard as sound. There is no copy made anywhere in the chain.

nooshinjohn

When I read a book I am transfering it from the page through my eyes and to the brain, where it is converted from gibberish on piece of paper to language I can interpret as words. At no point have I made a copy of anything. The CDP does nothing different anywhere in its process.

Cpyder

headrott wrote: »

As I stated before Cpyder, I know that people throw out numbers that they get from a computer, multimeter, etc. to show that there is no loss of data. I question the accuracy of these readings. Have you? You can question the accuracy of my hearing so that makes questioning the accuracy of your readings fair game, agreed? The difference between your readings and my hearing is where they are coming from. My hearing is coming form me, but your readings are coming from a computer program in a machine designed by someone else and therefore based off of someone elses design. As I stated earlier, you cannot claim accuracy or inaccuracy of those numbers you generate with your computer.

Greg

I think you are confusing the nature of digital with the nature of analog. Small changes in a digital signal do not affect it's code. Small changes in an analog signal do cause changes.

I am very confident in the ability of computers to analyze differences in digital information. Here is an example for you I did myself. I made a 30 second clip of a 2,000Hz signal. (This is digital of course) I copied that clip and bit-compared the two sound files. This was the control. Here was the result:



No differences were found.

Now, I made another copy and took it into Audacity. I changed one bit at 15 seconds. After running bit-compare, you can see it found the difference and reported it.

Cpyder

heiney9 wrote: »

You are talking in absolutes as well as Headrott............there are no absolutes and to think there are is ignorance, fantasy and wishful thinking. If proper care is not taken when replicating data errors do occur. The errors may not be fatal or impede the flow of data but the end result *could* result in a less than perfect copy. Most if not all errors in digital music reproduction occur in the analog domain. (at conversion)

Vinyl if properly stored, cared for and proper modern equipment is used has virtually no wear characteristics.

H9

I agree with this. In the audio chain, errors are many many times more likely to happen in the conversion from digital to analog and once in the analog domain than actually in the digital domain.

Cpyder

Here's one more example where I changed 3 samples at/around 7, 14, and 21 seconds. See how it flagged those 3 differences in the bits of data?

hearingimpared

nooshinjohn wrote: »

^^^You can crash at my place. I am 2 1/2 hours away from them, so we can go together.


John

Thank you John for your kind offer. If/when I can get out there, I will keep your generous offer in mind.:)

reeltrouble1

headrott wrote: »

I think these types of threads sometimes lean towards phrygian mode.

Greg

well they are certainly minor......................and full of flats......:eek:

RT1

yepimonfire

BlueFox wrote: »

What do you think "reading" is? :rolleyes:

It is a copying what is on the CD. The original material is still there. Additionally, it gets transformed from physical pits to optical to electrical. Certainly errors can be introduced at any point in that chain, but that would be the result of other issues. Of course, it also gets turned into analog, but that is a different story.

that is true, the material IS copyed when it is sent to the DAC, it certainly cannot remain on the disc. but you can make a copy of a CD and a copy of the copied CD etc etc, and still have no degradation of the signal. actually i already proved that earlier, i copied a file from the HD to a cd and back to the hard drive and did this six times, each time copying the previous copy and had no degradation of a signal. anyone here who has own a two-deck cassete player knows that if you make a copy of the original tape, it does not sound as good as the original tape. analog waveforms are very complex and open to errors, heres a rough idea of why, analog waveforms have an almost infinite number of varying voltages they can be, if your not in the EXACT voltage, your not getting the EXACT waveform, for instance if the microphone picks up a sound causing a voltage of .2345 (just being general) volts, you would expect the recording of that immediate sample to play back a .2345 voltage and send it to the amplifier (or a multiple of it depending on how much pre-amping is done) problem is i doubt this always happens to exactness. digital signals however are incredibly resistant to errors because they are basically alternating voltages say you have a steady voltage of 1.5v now reverse the polarity to get - 1.5v in other words the current flowing in the opposite direction, you get a 0. even if the voltages are different as long as it maintains the same polarity then your information is not changed example if your signal has lost some strength on one or two bits and one of the bits registers at + 1.2v or eve +.5v it will still register as a 1 until the polarity reverses. the only way to ruin a digital signal is like someone pointed out before is erase it, which usually gives you a non-exsistant voltage. this can be applied to magnetic media as well, you either have a south or north magnetic polarity, as long as the supposed to be 1 stays in the north polarity (or whichever it happens to be) it remains a 1, even if the signal becomes distorted or weakened.

polkfan38

I know that with tapes, the tape itself can be stretched. Become dry and/or brittle or become demagnitized. Out of curiosity, how come tapes never seemed to go beyond 16-17kHz? What was the limiting factor?

comfortablycurt

yepimonfire wrote: »

nope, its either a placebo effect or the recording was bad to begin with, many times when you copy a digital recording the copying program does a bit for bit comparison of the original and the copy and if its not correct, it will tell you.

oh and you can "hear" anything you WANT to hear, this is why people claim different transistor amps have different "sounds" in honesty most of them do not. same goes for 1000 dollar cables versus plain cable.

That is complete and utter BS!!


I have heard VERY BIG differences between solid state amps, and with my OWN EARS.

Going by this logic, aside from different wattages, the amp section of a $50 boombox at Walmart should sound every bit as good as any external amp at any price. Right? That's BS. Pure BS.


How many different amps have you heard to come to this conclusion? Or did you just read that somewhere on the internet and assume that it has to be true, because it's "science"?


You say "most" of them do not? So, you're admitting that there are differences between solid state amps, while at the same time denying that these differences could possibly exist?


You've got a LOT to learn about this hobby. A whole lot.

yepimonfire

no a boombox amp cannot supply clean power and most likely has bad THD ratings. two amps with the same amount of power and the same THD ratings (assuming they are realistic specs) will not have much difference in sound. and i have heard several different amps and i do know some of them will sound different based on power ratings and THD ratings, i was mainly reffering to people saying different amps have better imaging, which amps have nothing to do with imaging. point is amps generally have a flat frequency response unless they are a piece of crap, the only thing that will give you a bad sounding amp is if it cannot supply enough power to your speakers to keep up with musical peaks and the low end. for instance i have a Kenwood amp with a THD of .09% and a Marantz amp with a THD of 0.08%, the Marantz can supply approx. 170wpc running in 2ch mode, the Kenwood can supply 55wpc. if i listen to both amps at the same relative volume, there is no difference in sound, however if i try to crank the Kenwood past half on the volume knob, it runs out of juice and sounds like hell. the Marantz will not run out of juice because 170wpc will give me enough gain to immediatly ruin my hearing. so yes headrom does give you a difference in sound, but the amps sounds the exact same.

yepimonfire

polkfan38 wrote: »

I know that with tapes, the tape itself can be stretched. Become dry and/or brittle or become demagnitized. Out of curiosity, how come tapes never seemed to go beyond 16-17kHz? What was the limiting factor?

on some tapes it has to do with NR factor, many tapes (and players) are intentionally cut off at 18khz because there is a large amount of audible noise after that.

heiney9

polkfan38 wrote: »

I know that with tapes, the tape itself can be stretched. Become dry and/or brittle or become demagnitized. Out of curiosity, how come tapes never seemed to go beyond 16-17kHz? What was the limiting factor?

You must never have had the right deck. I owned several Nakamichi decks including the $3K Dragon...............they had no limiting factor as far as frequency response. Tapes *could* be fragile, but at the time I really had very little issues with them.

mhardy6647

The 18 kHz cutoff on some tape decks is an "MPX filter" to cut out audible intermodulation artifacts arising from the 19 kHz MPX pilot signal on stereo FM broadcasts.
Reel to reel tape can have flat frequency response from 20 Hz to well beyond 20 kHz. The performance of cassette tape is limited by the narrow track with and slow linear speed (1-7/8 ips). The best cassette decks (e.g., the aforementioned Nakamichis) can be fairly flat to nearly 20 kHz. It is worth noting (albeit off-topic!) that the frequency response for most cassette decks is quoted at a recording level of -20 dB. Because of the inherently limited dynamic range of cassette recording, the flat response at 0 dB is rolled off, particularly at the high end. Some manufacturers would quote the 0 dB response range, though, and it was often shown in equipment tests in the better magazines. Because Dolby NR boosts HF when recording, the frequency response and overall performance of all cassette recorders (except S/N) is worse with Dolby "on" compared to Dolby "off". Frequency response specs are virtually always given with Dolby "off" (whether this is clearly stated or not).

yepimonfire

tapes also lose their magnetic charge do to the moons magnetic pull and the earths magnetic field. its a slow proccess though that takes around 15 years. brand new tapes just like brand new vinyl sound good.

mhardy6647

comment is superfluous :-P

Actually, though, the question about tape frequency response raises an interesting point: all of the media used to store sound for electronic reproduction are inherently nonlinear. The magnetization of tape to encode (analog) sound waveforms is done in the presence of a high-frequency (inaudible) AC bias signal to get the "gross" recording level into the range where amplitude is proportional to voltage. Even then, a significant equalization curve (NAB, e.g.) is applied to 'normalize' high and low frequency recording; the recording EQ must be mirrored in playback by the tape head preamp/EQ to result in flat response.

And, of course, this is also true of LP record cutting. A steep EQ curve is applied during disc cutting (the RIAA curve, for virtually all modern LPs since at least the early 1950s). This curve covers 35 dB (over three orders of magnitude in terms of signal level).

http://www.roger-russell.com/equalizers/grapha.jpg


Digital, of course, is the ultimate in nonlinerity, as all data are represented by combinations of only two states (1/0, on/off, logic "high"/"low"). Transistors are fundamentally switches (i.e., very nonlinear devices), best employed in the digital domain. Of course, considerable signal processing is needed to resynthesize a continuous waveform from the digital data.

Cpyder

yepimonfire wrote: »

tapes also lose their magnetic charge do to the moons magnetic pull and the earths magnetic field. its a slow proccess though that takes around 15 years. brand new tapes just like brand new vinyl sound good.

This I have not heard. Got a link?

[Deleted User]

Hello,
From what I gather the moon has a very weak magnetic field, possibly left over from being whacked by so much cosmic debris over the years. However, since it is so weak and so far away I don't believe it causes much problem with stored music tapes.
Regards, Ken

F1nut

yepimonfire wrote: »

no a boombox amp cannot supply clean power and most likely has bad THD ratings. two amps with the same amount of power and the same THD ratings (assuming they are realistic specs) will not have much difference in sound. and i have heard several different amps and i do know some of them will sound different based on power ratings and THD ratings, i was mainly reffering to people saying different amps have better imaging, which amps have nothing to do with imaging. point is amps generally have a flat frequency response unless they are a piece of crap, the only thing that will give you a bad sounding amp is if it cannot supply enough power to your speakers to keep up with musical peaks and the low end. for instance i have a Kenwood amp with a THD of .09% and a Marantz amp with a THD of 0.08%, the Marantz can supply approx. 170wpc running in 2ch mode, the Kenwood can supply 55wpc. if i listen to both amps at the same relative volume, there is no difference in sound, however if i try to crank the Kenwood past half on the volume knob, it runs out of juice and sounds like hell. the Marantz will not run out of juice because 170wpc will give me enough gain to immediatly ruin my hearing. so yes headrom does give you a difference in sound, but the amps sounds the exact same.

You have a lot to learn. These days the THD of any SS amp, even the dirt cheap ones, are below the threshold thought to be audible. What's interesting is that tube amps have much higher THD ratings and a lot of folks think they sound better than SS amps. Therefore, THD has a lot less to do with it than you think.

Amps have nothing to do with imaging.

Are you kidding me!?! Every part of the audio chain has to do with imaging.

the only thing that will give you a bad sounding amp is if it cannot supply enough power to your speakers to keep up with musical peaks and the low end.

Just about every amp has its limits and when pushed into clipping they all sound bad. Some of what makes SS amps sound different is the design/circuit topology and the components used. The class type (goes to design) of the amp plays a large part in how it sounds. Pure class A SS amps sound different (better) than class A/B or class D......by design.

the Marantz will not run out of juice because 170wpc will give me enough gain to immediatly ruin my hearing. so yes headrom does give you a difference in sound, but the amps sounds the exact same

Ummm....yes, it will run out of juice, a few dB after your other amp will. For example, it takes double the power to get a 3 dB increase in volume, so if your speakers are rated at 90dB........

1 watt= 90dB
2=93
4=96
8=99
16=102
32=105
64=108
132=111
264=113

So, let's say your Marantz will be able to play roughly 5dB louder than your Kenwood. Not a lot really.

While I don't know the exact headroom rating of either amp you own, I'm willing to bet both are around 1.5dB making that a non-factor.

All for now, gotta go.

TNRabbit

"When F1Nut speaks, people listen..."

nooshinjohn

I think F1nut as been around the track a few times. Chequered flag for that post bro!