What annoys me today in marketing and media that too often today then talking on hi-fi, science is replaced by bizarre belief structures and marketing fluff, leading to a decades-long stagnation of the audiophile domain. Science makes progress, pseudo-science doesn’t. Hi-fi world is filled by pseudoscience, dogma and fruitloopery to the extent that it resembles a fundamentalist religion. Loudspeaker performance hasn’t tangibly improved in forty years and vast sums are spent addressing the wrong problems.
Business for Engineers: Marketers Lie article points tout that marketing tells lies — falsehoods — things that serve to convey a false impression. Marketing’s purpose is to determining how the product will be branded, positioned, and sold. It seems that there too many snake oil rubbish products marketed in the name of hifi. It is irritating to watch the stupid people in the world be fooled.
In EEVblog #29 – Audiophile Audiophoolery video David L. Jones (from EEVBlog) cuts loose on the Golden Ear Audiophiles and all their Audiophoolery snake oil rubbish. The information presented in Dave’s unique non-scripted overly enthusiastic style! He’s an enthusiastic chap, but couldn’t agree more with many of the opinions he expressed: Directional cables, thousand dollar IEC power cables, and all that rubbish. Monster Cable gets mostered. Note what he says right at the end: “If you pay ridiculous money for these cable you will hear a difference, but don’t expect your friends to”. If you want to believe, you will.
My points on hifi-nonsense:
One of the tenets of audiophile systems is that they are assembled from components, allegedly so that the user can “choose” the best combination. This is pretty largely a myth. The main advantage of component systems is that the dealer can sell ridiculously expensive cables, hand-knitted by Peruvian virgins and soaked in snake oil, to connect it all up. Say goodbye to the noughties: Yesterday’s hi-fi biz is BUSTED, bro article asks are the days of floorstanders and separates numbered? If traditional two-channel audio does have a future, then it could be as the preserve of high resolution audio. Sony has taken the industry lead in High-Res Audio.
HIFI Cable Humbug and Snake oil etc. blog posting rightly points out that there is too much emphasis placed on spending huge sums of money on HIFI cables. Most of what is written about this subject is complete tripe. HIFI magazines promote myths about the benefits of all sorts of equipment. I am as amazed as the writer that that so called audiophiles and HIFI journalists can be fooled into thinking that very expensive speaker cables etc. improve performance. I generally agree – most of this expensive interconnect cable stuff is just plain overpriced.
I can agree that in analogue interconnect cables there are few cases where better cables can really result in cleaner sound, but usually getting any noticeable difference needs that the one you compare with was very bad yo start with (clearly too thin speaker wires with resistance, interconnect that picks interference etc..) or the equipment in the systems are so that they are overly-sensitive to cable characteristics (generally bad equipment designs can make for example cable capacitance affect 100 times or more than it should). Definitely too much snake oil. Good solid engineering is all that is required (like keep LCR low, Teflon or other good insulation, shielding if required, proper gauge for application and the distance traveled). Geometry is a factor but not in the same sense these yahoos preach and deceive.
In digital interconnect cables story is different than on those analogue interconnect cables. Generally in digital interconnect cables the communication either works, does not work or sometimes work unreliably. The digital cable either gets the bits to the other end or not, it does not magically alter the sound that goes through the cable. You need to have active electronics like digital signal processor to change the tone of the audio signal traveling on the digital cable, cable will just not do that.
But this digital interconnect cables characteristics has not stopped hifi marketers to make very expensive cable products that are marketed with unbelievable claims. Ethernet has come to audio world, so there are hifi Ethernet cables. How about 500 dollar Ethernet cable? That’s ridiculous. And it’s only 1.5 meters. Then how about $10,000 audiophile ethernet cable? Bias your dielectrics with the Dielectric-Bias ethernet cable from AudioQuest: “When insulation is unbiased, it slows down parts of the signal differently, a big problem for very time-sensitive multi-octave audio.” I see this as complete marketing crap speak. It seems that they’re made for gullible idiots. No professional would EVER waste money on those cables. Audioquest even produces iPhone sync cables in similar price ranges.
HIFI Cable insulators/supports (expensive blocks that keep cables few centimeters off the floor) are a product category I don’t get. They typically claim to offer incredible performance as well as appealing appearance. Conventional cable isolation theory holds that optimal cable performance can be achieved by elevating cables from the floor in an attempt to control vibrations and manage static fields. Typical cable elevators are made from electrically insulating materials such as wood, glass, plastic or ceramics. Most of these products claim superior performance based upon the materials or methods of elevation. I don’t get those claims.
Along with green magic markers on CDs and audio bricks is another item called the wire conditioner. The claim is that unused wires do not sound the same as wires that have been used for a period of time. I don’t get this product category. And I don’t believe claims in the line like “Natural Quartz crystals along with proprietary materials cause a molecular restructuring of the media, which reduces stress, and significantly improves its mechanical, acoustic, electric, and optical characteristics.” All sounds like just pure marketing with no real benefits.
CD no evil, hear no evil. But the key thing about the CD was that it represented an obvious leap from earlier recording media that simply weren’t good enough for delivery of post-produced material to the consumer to one that was. Once you have made that leap, there is no requirement to go further. The 16 bits of CD were effectively extended to 18 bits by the development of noise shaping, which allows over 100dB signal to noise ratio. That falls a bit short of the 140dB maximum range of human hearing, but that has never been a real goal. If you improve the digital media, the sound quality limiting problem became the transducers; the headphones and the speakers.
We need to talk about SPEAKERS: Soz, ‘audiophiles’, only IT will break the sound barrier article says that today’s loudspeakers are nowhere near as good as they could be, due in no small measure to the presence of “traditional” audiophile products. that today’s loudspeakers are nowhere near as good as they could be, due in no small measure to the presence of “traditional” audiophile products. I can agree with this. Loudspeaker performance hasn’t tangibly improved in forty years and vast sums are spent addressing the wrong problems.
We need to talk about SPEAKERS: Soz, ‘audiophiles’, only IT will break the sound barrier article makes good points on design, DSPs and the debunking of traditional hi-fi. Science makes progress, pseudo-science doesn’t. Legacy loudspeakers are omni-directional at low frequencies, but as frequency rises, the radiation becomes more directional until at the highest frequencies the sound only emerges directly forwards. Thus to enjoy the full frequency range, the listener has to sit in the so-called sweet spot. As a result legacy loudspeakers with sweet spots need extensive room treatment to soak up the deficient off-axis sound. New tools that can change speaker system designs in the future are omni-directional speakers and DSP-based room correction. It’s a scenario ripe for “disruption”.
Computers have become an integrated part of many audio setups. Back in the day integrated audio solutions in PCs had trouble earning respect. Ode To Sound Blaster: Are Discrete Audio Cards Still Worth the Investment? posting tells that it’s been 25 years since the first Sound Blaster card was introduced (a pretty remarkable feat considering the diminished reliance on discrete audio in PCs) and many enthusiasts still consider a sound card an essential piece to the PC building puzzle. It seems that in general onboard sound is finally “Good Enough”, and has been “Good Enough” for a long time now. For most users it is hard to justify the high price of special sound card on PC anymore. There are still some PCs with bad sound hardware on motherboard and buttload of cheap USB adapters with very poor performance. However, what if you want the best sound possible, the lowest noise possible, and don’t really game or use the various audio enhancements? You just want a plain-vanilla sound card, but with the highest quality audio (products typically made for music makers). You can find some really good USB solutions that will blow on-board audio out of the water for about $100 or so.
Although solid-state technology overwhelmingly dominates today’s world of electronics, vacuum tubes are holding out in two small but vibrant areas. Some people like the sound of tubes. The Cool Sound of Tubes article says that a commercially viable number of people find that they prefer the sound produced by tubed equipment in three areas: musical-instrument (MI) amplifiers (mainly guitar amps), some processing devices used in recording studios, and a small but growing percentage of high-fidelity equipment at the high end of the audiophile market. Keep those filaments lit, Design your own Vacuum Tube Audio Equipment article claims that vacuum tubes do sound better than transistors (before you hate in the comments check out this scholarly article on the topic). The difficulty is cost; tube gear is very expensive because it uses lots of copper, iron, often point-to-point wired by hand, and requires a heavy metal chassis to support all of these parts. With this high cost and relative simplicity of circuitry (compared to modern electronics) comes good justification for building your own gear. Maybe this is one of the last frontiers of do-it-yourself that is actually worth doing.
1,556 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
6 Reasons Why Audiophiles Get a Bad Rap
https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/05/why-people-hate-audiophiles/
Our love for sound has earned us a lot of hate.
Let’s face it, many people don’t like audiophiles
1. Elitism and Pretentiousness
2. High Costs and Priorities
3. Gatekeeping and Exclusivity
4. Pseudo-Science and Snake Oil
5. Negativity and Toxicity Social Interactions
6. Generational and Cultural Divide
Tomi Engdahl says:
love making fun of pseudoscience.
So, a question -
Wouldn’t an expensive pair of headphones give the “best” possible listening experience?
potentially, but you miss out on the room filling sound and the visceral experience when listening at concert levels
Tomi Engdahl says:
bad “rap” ?
Why would you hate someone because of his hobby, unless it has to do with your confort ?
I think nobody really hates anyone because of that. But it’s a good question why we form a counter-group against another one. I think because it’s very hard to watch someone do something wrong when you know (or think you know) the right way to do it. That applies to anything. Then people just need to talk about this feeling.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I’ll make it real easy. They refuse to base their beliefs on science and empirical research, and stubbornly insist and likely even believe they are correct.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Inside The Helix Geometry
https://www.image99.net/blog/files/b4d5249616a56bdabfd28b5580db6cec-79.html
In one email, Yordan reported that he and Evgeny had experienced an improvement in sound quality simply by winding the helix in the opposite direction to that initially shown shown on this site, so I decided to investigate.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://boingboing.net/2012/02/10/alan-parsons-on-audiophiles.html#amp_tf=L%C3%A4hde%3A%20%251%24s&aoh=17175334445223&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fboingboing.net%2F2012%2F02%2F10%2Falan-parsons-on-audiophiles.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
I just saw this in an article about a different subject. Explains well the audiophools’ dilemma.
“Motivated ignorance refers to willfully blinding oneself to facts. It’s choosing not to know. In many cases, for many people, knowing the truth is simply too costly, too psychologically painful, too threatening to their core identity. Nescience is therefore incentivized; people actively decide to remain in a state of ignorance. If they are presented with strong arguments against a position they hold, or compelling evidence that disproves the narrative they embrace, they will reject them. Doing so fends off the psychological distress of the realization that they’ve been lying to themselves and to others.”
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/yML9i5M7JLtbCsCJ/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://service.shure.com/s/article/subjective-audio-qualities-and-descriptive-terms?language=en_US
Tomi Engdahl says:
I’m an audiophile, and these $100 headphones had me fooled
The Treblab Z7 Pros headphones have a surprising clarity of sound that could easily run you two or three times the price.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/im-an-audiophile-and-these-100-headphones-had-me-fooled/
ZDNET’s key takeaways
The Treblab Z7 Pro headphones are available now on Amazon for $100.
They offer a surprising amount of clarity and an impressive soundstage for their price.
Unfortunately, the Treblab Z7 Pros don’t look as good as they sound.
Back in the day, cheap headphones delivered cheap sound, midrange headphones delivered midrange sound, and high-quality sound was limited to products with sky-high prices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s a very very real DNP (Does nothing Product)…..
If Dabby and Dubby designed it, you know it’s got to be good.
Magic holographic sound altering stickers have been a thing since the 1980s courtesy Peter Belt’s British type of audio wackiness.
‘Easy DIY installation’. No need to get a professional in to stick stickers on things.
The fact that there are idiots who buy this crap does not surprise me anymore, but those ” Awards” . . . . How can these reviewers look at themselves in the mirror without disgust . . . .
https://www.sixth-element.com.sg/ST-X_3D_Quantum_Sticker.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tomi Engdahl Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) in this case. The carcinogen and causer of birth defects (mostly of the brain damage type thus creating a whole new generation of audiophools) and liver damage that used to be used in caps and power transformers until there was a big push to be rid of it years ago. Now it can be expensive to dispose of.
The PCB vs point-to-point is just bizarre, but very common among musicians. So much appeal to antiquity polluting both hobbies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The electrical wavelength of 20kHz is over nine miles. I don’t think that characteristic impedance has any bearing unless you have a very large room.
Maybe we should introduce the concept of group delay to these fools and further gum up the works.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Not all cables, but some cables; those with different connectors on each end; eg. USB variants – those suckers won’t work at all if you can’t plug them in.
Gerry S. Mueller or just use an adapter. They are not “directional”, just differently-terminated.
In industrial applications, there actually is a sort of directionality in the way one grounds the shielding of a signal cable. I’ve seen the same done in audio cables, but in a low-noise environment with short cables, I can’t imagine it would make any difference.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The audiofools adagium: The strength of any chain is as strong as the most expensive link.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://sparkoslabs.com/discrete-op-amps/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.electrician-1.com/2024/06/on-video-how-to-make-single-bc547.html#google_vignette
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://artsautomotive.com/home/art-icles/articles-for-the-curious/the-snake-oil-story/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/audiophile-snake-oil
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://vi.aliexpress.com/item/1005006059782669.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
If anyone claims that they can hear the difference between $1000 power cables and $20 ones, we must assume that their parents were fruit bats…..
Gary Stauble there can be difference in hum level on unshielded RCA cable depending if you use shielded or unshielded mains cable. The right solution would have been to throw out the snake oil infused unshielded RCA cable and use properly shielded RCA cable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Clive Saywood
“they were “testing” CD players and one of the tests involved reversing the figure 8 power cable to see which way sounded best”
With some equipment reversing the power cable can affect the equipment leakage current and hum level. Usually there is not any practical difference, but there are special cases where the equipment is plugged in can have noticeable and measurable difference.
Tomi Engdahl says:
If you think vinyl got a higher resolution or better sound then a CD, You bump your head
James Latona Better mastering sometimes. Vinyl just won’t accept a mix that’s been destroyed with brickwall limiting to suit loudness war goals.
Michał Szczerbakowicz It also won’t accept a mix that hasn’t been severely dynamically compressed, EQed and heavily brickwall filtered at either end of the frequency spectrum.
Tomi Engdahl says:
No. Vinyl is superior
Larry Spalla What makes it better, not arguing I’d just like to hear your opinion on what they do in the recording process that makes it superior? I should have phrased that better, ‘What makes vinyl records superior in sound quality to a digital version all things being equal in the recording process’.
just as many vinyl masters are as bad as the cd version they were derived from, if not worse due to the added noise , I noticed that mainly with records released between the second half of the 90s and the 2010s. I own the Nightwish discography in vinyl and god they are even worse than the cd which is BAD… They’re not the only ones. Occasionally, the vinyl is mastered better than the CD. RHCP’s albums are a prime example.
Jeff Thomas Vinyl has limited dynamics by needle jumping the groove, so you can’t take part in loudness war with it You can’t make it loud all the time with hard clipping, because that’s taking risks. Historically it was the only thing holding loudness war back. As soon, as CD replaced black records, dynamic range vanished and distortion flooded every single pop record. For that reason many vinyl masters are very good by comparison to CD counterparts, even if released at the same time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Julián Marino Ramos If it involves singing or acoustic instruments its analog.
Michael Quinn yes but unless you are singing and playing straight to the master tape you’re adding more digital/analog conversions or viceversa. When you put all your recordings into a computer and start mixing and mastering the nearest way to fidelity is a digital format, vinyls are made from a digital file nowadays
Michael Quinn the instrument is not “analog” – what does that even mean? a syntetizer could possibly be analog, but I can’t see how a string vibrating could possibly be analog or digital…
Piergiorgio Cestra it produces a sound wave = analog.
Speakers are analog.
Tomi Engdahl says:
They got cd and vinyl swapped. As has been noted before, there are cases where vinyl sounds better because it was better mastered than the CD version, but that has little to do with the medium. The best mastered cd will always sound better than the best mastered vinyl. That said, there’s something special about putting on a record, watching it spin and listening through an all analog chain.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The bumpy story of vinyl record players in cars
https://shoppress.dormanproducts.com/vinyl-record-players-in-cars/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pro Audio Is Going The Way Of Hi-Fi – Can We Stop It?
https://www.production-expert.com/production-expert-1/pro-audio-is-going-the-way-of-hi-fi-can-we-stop-it
Tomi Engdahl says:
there are definitely mastering differences and sometimes vinyl gets less compression and more conservative eq for practical purposes which also makes the music sound better. This is an interesting situation, where the inherent limitations of the medium forces more careful mastering and therefore results in s better product..
Tomi Engdahl says:
i don´t understand all the love for uncomfortable and technically inferior media from the past. i´m fine with cd and lossless codecs and happy that i don´t have to take care of sensitive, heavy and bulky lp or audio tape anymore.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Recording at 88.2 kHz does mean that the “brick-wall” anti-aliasing filter is now well above the range of human hearing, so while it does provide some theoretical advantages in terms of slight phase shifts at very high audible frequencies, in many carefully controlled double-blind studies, very few people can hear that difference, with many people’s range of hearing limited to 17 kHz, and lessening with age, so it’s rather impractical from a consumer standpoint.
Few, if any, pieces of endpoint recording equipment (instruments, microphones) will really ever utilize anything above 20 kHz analog, so capturing at a digital sampling rate of above 44.1 kHz is rather unnecessary from a perspective of the listener. anything above that is considered ultrasonic and therefore used in niche projects (think along the lines of scientific research). The main reason for higher sampling rates comes down to having additional headroom for the audio engineer and little else.
There are actually technical reasons for use of the redbook standard utilizing a standard of 44.1 kHz at 16-bit. Refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/44,100_Hz for a technical explanation if you’re interested.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I don’t miss the limited frequency response of vinyl
Or the hiss and scratches.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Practically all professionally published music since the mid-80s was mastered straight to digital to begin with. Whatever advantage there possibly could’ve been by preserving an end-to-end analogue experience is pretty much negated.
The reason they mastered straight to digital is there never was an advantage in analogue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Does vinyl matter for modern music when everything is recorded digitally?
I understand the benefits with old music recorded on analog gear.
Collin Verry even then you need to find a vinyl printed using a master made on analog era.
That’s why some records are so expensive because they are from the original “analog” master.
In the end is a needle scratching on plastic that wears over time and usage
Collin Verry
Yeah, most studios record and mix at 88.2kHz; some at 92kHz. 88.2 gained preference due to easier conversion to the CD sample rate.
Recording at 88.2 kHz does mean that the “brick-wall” anti-aliasing filter is now well above the range of human hearing, so while it does provide some theoretical advantages in terms of slight phase shifts at very high audible frequencies, in many carefully controlled double-blind studies, very few people can hear that difference, with many people’s range of hearing limited to 17 kHz, and lessening with age, so it’s rather impractical from a consumer standpoint.
Few, if any, pieces of endpoint recording equipment (instruments, microphones) will really ever utilize anything above 20 kHz analog, so capturing at a digital sampling rate of above 44.1 kHz is rather unnecessary from a perspective of the listener. anything above that is considered ultrasonic and therefore used in niche projects (think along the lines of scientific research). The main reason for higher sampling rates comes down to having additional headroom for the audio engineer and little else.
There are actually technical reasons for use of the redbook standard utilizing a standard of 44.1 kHz at 16-bit. Refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/44,100_Hz for a technical explanation if you’re interested.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rob Cooper doubling the sampling rate as per the Nyquist Criterion, such as at 44.1kHz is all you need to capture frequencies within the human hearing range with a maximum of 20kHz, and usually less than 15kHz as you get older. So anyone that thinks 88.2kHz “sounds better, than Redbook CD & that they can hear the difference is simply BS. It’s just as bad as those that think their system sounds better ever since they added cable risers.
The music I listen makes the digital file a way better format. Because the way it’s produced is digital (mixing, mastering, etc), so making it analog again would tend to degrade it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vinyl and analog tape can be enjoyable, but all their electroacoustical specifications are magnitudes worse than those of CD. Audiophools aren’t even aware vinyls are most often cut from the same digital masters CDs are pressed from, with a bonus: all the degradation that comes with the media. I only buy vinyl for releases not available on (well mastered) CDs. If for some reason vinyl is unavailable, I buy cassette tapes, then digitise and remaster them with all the tricks I know to compensate for cassette degradation, to the extent possible.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Does vinyl matter for modern music when everything is recorded digitally?
I understand the benefits with old music recorded on analog gear.
Collin Verry even then you need to find a vinyl printed using a master made on analog era.
That’s why some records are so expensive because they are from the original “analog” master.
In the end is a needle scratching on plastic that wears over time and usage
Quite a bit, actually. Either by the math via Nyquist-Shannon theory or actual measurements, both show that vinyl actually has a great deal less equivalent resolution capability than CD or even 128kbps MP3. A typical clean LP is closer to what 64kbps would be with better examples doing better. CD actually does do better than the human ear is capable of as has been confirmed time and again by actually competently performed research. Increasing to supposed “hi res” audio only increases the potential dynamic range beyond what the human ear is capable of. It’s handy in recording so levels don’t have to be set exactly, but a waste for the final product (and even introduces more problems as DSD is notorious for).
If you think vinyl has a higher resolution or better sound then a CD you bumped your head
James Latona Better mastering sometimes. Vinyl just won’t accept a mix that’s been destroyed with brickwall limiting to suit loudness war goals.
Michał Szczerbakowicz It also won’t accept a mix that hasn’t been severely dynamically compressed, EQed and heavily brickwall filtered at either end of the frequency spectrum.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The music I listen makes the digital file a way better format. Because the way it’s produced is digital (mixing, mastering, etc), so making it analog again would tend to degrade it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vinyl and analog tape can be enjoyable, but all their electroacoustical specifications are magnitudes worse than those of CD.
Tomi Engdahl says:
cd is dead vinyl lives
Tomi Engdahl says:
Audie Murrell No…
16bit CDs already have more dynamic range than the best studio tape machines at no more than 14bit equivalent bit depth. And far less distortion and perfectly flat freq response even after infinite playbacks. LPs are laughable at 12 bits, maybe, if the disc is fresh and equipment is perfect and the moon is in the seventh house.
The fact that the fashion since the 1990s has been to compress the life out of mainstream music doesn’t make it digital’s fault.
I’ll definitely give him that analog systems may be more reliable or at least more fault-tolerant than digital, with more likely manageable partial failures vs show stoppers, which for high-stakes live sound would be a huge deal.
The flexibility and ultimate performance of state of the art digital is only approximately available in analog at far greater cost in gear and the labour to set up and operate it, however.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Zenon Holtz they both behave differently and have to be treated as such. Digital is fantastic in all the options we have inside the mixer. Analog requires extra gear. Biggest issue I see with some people are the overuse of digital features, especially compression. Some tend to use it to excess instead of riding faders!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Audie Murrell I think that’s because analog adds a bunch of harmonic distortion in a very nonlinear way. This can add apparent loudness to certain frequencies over others. It sort of acts like an EQ but not exactly. When it distorts, it doesn’t do so as harshly, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t do so sooner.
Tomi Engdahl says:
When comparing excellent analog to mediocre digital, this argument is valid. But with great digital this century, analog cannot come close to the dynamic range, purity and accuracy of digital. By the time the signal is output to loudspeakers, it’s analog. So this notion that we’re “hearing” digital is nonsense.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Great analogue mixing gear is so good you’ll get results as good as digital. If someone prefers the analogue it’s no problem. Let’s be right, microphone amps are all still analogue, even though they may then be digitised.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Derek Robinson, I’m not against digital or analogue both have there place. My comment was specifically about mixing desks, if you look at the op-amps available these days(e.g. opa1678, opa1611 etc) they have such low distortion and noise that even ten or more in the audio path and you’ll still get no noise and no distortion in audible terms. Hence my comment that analogue mixing desks are as good as digital, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t digitised at some point. Good equipment is good equipment that’s it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
In my opinion, it’s got nothing to do with sample rate or frequencies reproduced. A vinyl master needs to have reasonable dynamic range and pretty solid phase coherence so the needle won’t skip. It’s the laws of physics preventing engineers from doing stuff that sounds bad.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Larry Spalla Channel separation on vinyl is poor
Larry Spalla Its not. Also, all vinyl lathes since like the 80s have digital digital delay lines, so its all pre-digitized anyway. Ill take the convenience AND the better audio of the CD with a good master over any vinyl any day.
Larry Spalla it isn’t. If I record that vinyl directly into a digital file at just 44.1khz, then burn that to a CD, it will sound identical to the recording. So no, it isn’t superior.
Decent, though.
Larry Spalla superior in nostalgia lol
Tomi Engdahl says:
Larry Spalla What makes it better, not arguing I’d just like to hear your opinion on what they do in the recording process that makes it superior? I should have phrased that better, ‘What makes vinyl records superior in sound quality to a digital version all things being equal in the recording process’.
Jeff Thomas The mastering is an art and is what makes a record fantastic, or not. I own records that are on a par with the CD and the 24/96 or 24/88.2 digital versions.
Jeff Thomas Vinyl has limited dynamics by needle jumping the groove, so you can’t take part in loudness war with it You can’t make it loud all the time with hard clipping, because that’s taking risks. Historically it was the only thing holding loudness war back. As soon, as CD replaced black records, dynamic range vanished and distortion flooded every single pop record. For that reason many vinyl masters are very good by comparison to CD counterparts, even if released at the same time.
just as many vinyl masters are as bad as the cd version they were derived from, if not worse due to the added noise , I noticed that mainly with records released between the second half of the 90s and the 2010s. I own the Nightwish discography in vinyl and god they are even worse than the cd which is BAD… They’re not the only ones. Occasionally, the vinyl is mastered better than the CD. RHCP’s albums are a prime example.
Sylvain Vanier there are definitely mastering differences and sometimes vinyl gets less compression and more conservative eq for practical purposes which also makes the music sound better. This is an interesting situation, where the inherent limitations of the medium forces more careful mastering and therefore results in s better product..
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/udKEJ9z3CAoxL8XQ/6
Tomi Engdahl says:
Footnote: If you listen to streaming music over Bluetooth the sound quality can be significantly worsened by recompression
E.g. CD quality published sound file at 1,5 Mbit/s uncompressed
-> encoded for 128 bit/s with Ogg Vorbis
-> Delivered to playback device
-> Reencoded with AptX at ~320 kbit/s
-> Sent via bluetooth, which can lose packets
-> decoded in speaker/headphone to whatever format the the DA converter expects
Better would be on e.g. Apple devices:
Encoded for streaming with the *same*codec and bitrate the bluetooth codec is *currently* using, e.g AAC 256 kbit/s
The bitstream is sent all the way to the bluetooth speaker/headphone and decoded once.
Note that the bluetooth codec will adapt the bitrate to the current radio quality, so the streaming service needs to get feedback in order to adapt the sending bitrate
Tomi Engdahl says:
Benjamin Wick they do sound different from each other and you can absolutely hear it with one caveat. If a CD is a burned recording of that exact vinyl record, THEN they will sound the same.
However, generally a record and a CD will receive a completely different master of a mix due to limitations of vinyl. So it sounds different from that alone. Also, if you burned a CD with the same master audio that is pressed to the vinyl, it will sound different due to vinyl being interior to CD, which is effectively going to be a perfect reproduction of the recording, while vinyl will color that recording.
Once again though, if you record THAT EXACT RECORD back to a digital file and burn it to a CD, they will effectively sound the same, with differences introduced from your recording gear notwithstanding.
Trey Motes and a cd will sound better with cheaper decks