Skeptoid: Digital vs Vinyl, Podcast casts its skeptical eye on digital audio Options

[rick.hughes]

Skeptoid: Digital vs Vinyl

[Pio2001]

No, I mean that I observed the same distortion artifacts (e.g. the RMB EP has the same intermodulation in treble, the Question of Lust 7" has the same loss of clarity), and the same difference of frequency response from vinyl to vinyl (eg. the Intercord german pressings have less treble than the french of english pressings, the last track of Legendary pink dots has much less treble than the first), but the frequency response of the Denon cartridge is different from the Stanton's. It doesn't have the same lack of treble, for example.

Thus, while all my vinyl samples seem to have less treble than my CD samples, this is Stanton's fault. Denon disagrees with this. It is not, in any way, a demonstration that CD sounds metallic, cold and dry compared to vinyl.

But if all german records of Depeche Mode have less treble than the same records imported from England, this is not Stanton's fault. Denon agrees with this. There are variations from a record to another.

I didn't bother posting samples from different pressings of a given CD from the same master, as they are usually bit-wise identical.
I checked this with Dead Can Dance - Within the Realm of a Dying Sun, english CD vs french CD. Same result with Depeche Mode - Strangelove (maxi mix), taken from the 1987 cardboard sleeved english Maxi-CD vs the german 1991 reedition of all Depeche Mode maxi-CD. Bit for bit identical... until the fade out, that doesn't have the same length of both CDs.

This post has been edited by Pio2001: Sep 17 2012, 22:24

[robbo1802]

Hello Pio,

It has been a long time, I think I last corresponded with you in the EAC forums under the username Bobhere.

I happened upon this thread through a search for something else and saw your avatar.

I for one was grateful for the appearance of CDs, up until that time I had spent a truly obscene amount of money on vinyl playback equipment (not that CD players were cheap, my Sony CDP101 cost about $1100AUD when released - if memory serves).

I will add a few more points as grist to the mill. The difference between different vinyl pressings both within a label and between labels is a rather complicated mess. Not only can these differences be attributed to which master/mother/stamper was used but also to how many mothers/stampers/records had been created from each higher level part of the process, worn out or damaged stampers were more common than people realized (not to mention disgusting considering the cost of records). Also the quality of the vinyl was a big issue, the major companies used a lot of recycled vinyl, initially when they got back records for recycling they would use a big punch to remove the label area and throw it away but as vinyl costs increased they took to grinding the paper label off and reusing all the vinyl, this often lead to contamination of the subsequent pressings - I remember a high end Decca I bought that had a piece of paper embedded in the playing surface! Yet this recycled vinyl was often of better quality that some new vinyl which had too much filler.

To make things worse, the analog tapes used to create the masters were often shipped to the country where the records were mastered and pressed. This caused numerous problems such as the different playback tapedecks having different playback qualities - these could be much greater that you would think amounting to multiple dB variance in the top end and serious distortion issues. Even worse there is no guarantee that the different tapes were even of the same generation, i.e whether they are 1st or 2nd generation copies of the stereo master.

I did a lot of work comparing different playback chains in the seventies and for me the phono cartridge was always the weak link. I must add that I live in a sub-tropical climate and this has serious effects on both the performance and longevity of phono cartridges, especially moving coils (due to the type of suspension normally used on MCCs of that period).

I used to test cartridges against each other using 2 identical but modified Pioneer PL1000A linear tracking turntables, they each had modified tonearms, phono wiring, and each had its own identical RIAA preamp (and MCC head amp) with variable input impedance. The two direct drive turntable motors could be slaved to the one master clock so that they rotated at identical speed. Despite this (and a variable spead control with allowed the two records to be brought into close synch) direct switching AB testing was never very successful, the slight out of synch was too confusing. In the end testing consisted of running the two turntables about 20 seconds apart and comparing the same sound fragments one after the other.

All this required multiple copies of the same records and at one time I had 5 copies of each of Sheffield records, Harry James, Amanda McBroome, and Dave Gruisin as testers - I did say obscene amounts of money, didn't I?. There were of course many other test record sets of 5 as well as some 2 and 3 record sets of the Nimbus Supercuts. I will add that the Sheffield Labs CDs sound quite poor compared to my (fallible) memory of the LPs, but of course we are comparing direct cut LPs to CDs mastered from hissy analog tape recordings (using valve electronics (if memory serves).

Enough rambling.

Regards,
Bob