LP still better than Digital?
On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 04:36:42 -0700, Paul D. Spiegel wrote
(in article ):
I mostly agree with Audio_Engine. While it's fun to debate formats it is
also a little silly. I have LP's that sound great and I have LP's that
are sound awful. I have CD's that sound wonderful and others that are
nearly unlistenable. There are many variables that make generalizations
difficult.
The August 2012 _Absolute_Sound_ has a nice article by Robert Harley on
the audio production chain that can result in a lovely or dreadful digital
recording. Quite interesting.
The LP is a remarkable technical achievement that still can make excellent
music. It is almost incredible that it works as well as it does by
dragging a little needle through a spiral groove. I am not throwing my
records away anytime soon and you can still pick up great tunes at the
swap meet for very little $$.
So after my caveat about generalizations I will offer my opinion of the
relative merits of the available recorded media with my own playback
equipment:
SACD - The best sound is from the format didn't quite catch on. Expensive.
I will only purchase my very favorites or when available at close-out
prices. I have about 30 SACD's.
I have hundreds of SACDs, and I have to say that they are as variable as any
other commercial format. I have great-sounding SACDs and I have mediocre
sounding SACDs.
LP - A clean quiet disc of a good recording is next best. I have built a
collection of 2000+ over the years and am still adding to it via swap meet
and yard sale. Many are delightful historical objects to own. I can't
bring myself to buy new discs at $25 though.
I too have over 2000 LPs. Like anything else they run the gamut from dreadful
to truly magical. At their best, it's hard to imagine anything being better.
CD - Digital recording and playback has come a long ways in the last 15
years or so. There is a universe of available music at reasonable prices.
My collection is at about 1500 discs. Still below a good recording on a
clean LP, IMHO, but capable of providing an enjoyable and moving musical
experience.
This is not my experience. My experience tells me that a CD, done right, is
about as close to perfect as one could want. I have some JVC XRCD titles of
both (British) Decca and especially RCA victor Red Seal titles that sound so
great that they make the same titles, mastered by BMG to SACD, sound truly
wretched by comparison.
MP3 - Can't beat the convenience and the ultimate in portability. At best
sounds washed out to me, somewhat like a cassette.
MP3 is OK for background music and Internet Radio, but that's pretty much
all. I can't stand to listen to listen to it on headphones and by the time
that you kick-up the data rate so that MP3s are listenable on headphones, you
might as well switch to FLAC or Apple Lossless Compression (ALC) because
there is no longer that big of a difference between the size of the files!
I don't have any experience with the high bit/sample rate digital
recordings yet. I imagine that they can sound very good and perhaps rival
SACD. Of course, they are subject to the quality of the analog to digital
chain as described in Mr. Harley's article.
I record in DSD, which is the SACD format. Unfortunately, I can't make SACD
recordings from those DSD files because the disc format is NOT straight DSD.
It involves special formating as well as some lossless compression (I've been
told). IOW, burning a DSD file to a blank DVD does not an SACD yield and SACD
authoring software is NOT reasonable ($5K for the cheapest app I've seen).
However, I do have software called "Audiogate" that will allow a DSD file to
be "translated" into Linear PCM and from that I can make everything from a
24-bit/192 KHz DVD-Audio Disc down to an MP3. Mostly I make 24/192 DVDs
(using Discwelder Bronze) and Red Book (16/44.1) CDs (using Audacity) for
myself and for clients. Of course, I've experimented with other formats and
varying bit-rates. Here is what I have found: 24-bits sounds noticeably
cleaner than does 16-bit, however, there is no advantage whatsoever to
sampling-rates above 48KHz. I can compare 24-bit discs made at 88.2KHz,
96KHz, 176.4KHz, and 192 KHz and NOBODY can tell the difference in the same
material laid-down in different data rates in a DBT. This is the easiest kind
of DBT to facilitate. Merely burn a DVD-A with the same cut burned at the
different sampling rates and in random order, slap the disc on a player that
will play DVD-A and run it through either the player's internal DAC, or use a
good external DAC, and let the disc play. Then let the listeners decide which
is which. They can't. In fact several people that I have run this test for
have questioned whether or not I actually recorded the sample cut in various
sampling rates and suggested that they were all the same. I had to take the
masking tape off of the player's vacuum fluorescent display on the player
and SHOW them that the cuts were made at 48, 88.2, 96, 176,.4 and 192 KHz!
As for digital's accuracy, as I said before, when the recording sounds
EXACTLY like the mike feed when the monitor headphones are switched between
the mike and the recording (on a digital recorder with read-after-write
capability such as the Marantz PMD671), that's about as accurate as it gets.
It means that, for all intents and purposes, the recording chain (from the
microphone-on, anyway) is as totally transparent as it needs to be.
Paul
South Pasadena, CA
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