Is it live or is it Memorex? (2 Viewers)

mjp

Founding member
I was innocently reading an article on WIRED when I came across this nugget of prevailing wisdom:

"Witness the resurgence of LPs, which have a warmer sound than digital tracks, and often reveal a different, more subtle side of the music."​

Those kind of touchy-feely descriptions of sound are usually thrown about by a species known as audiophiles. They believe that as a group, they are blessed with aural perception much greater than the average human. They are not, of course, but when you spend fifteen thousand dollars on a turntable, you have to justify the ridiculous excessiveness somehow.

Fact is, most people - and by most I mean all - don't have audio equipment in their homes that is capable of producing sound that can be analyzed in detail, so all these descriptions are subjective.

The "digital sucks" argument does have a basis in reality though, because early digital did suck. Early CDs were up against storage limits so they sacrificed data (sound) to jam more music on a disc. And the recording studio wasn't much better. I worked on an album at Sony's state-of-the-art digital studio in the late 80s, and the result was horrible.

But it's been quite some time since we've been saddled with those harsh sounding recordings created by machines that could only capture relatively low bitrates. The standard professional digital recording equipment now will capture more sound than your brain can process, and can reproduce frequencies on both ends of the spectrum that humans can't even hear.

It's funny, because in the guitar world a lot of people (myself included) prefer old analog effects and amplifiers. But what we love about those things are the character introduced into the sound by the limitations in the technology. They are noisy, sensitive, and sometimes unpredictable. So naturally they are great! For making guitar noises. But analog audio is no different. It's noisy, unstable, and impermanent, yet people still cling to it as "superior," based on a bunch of hocus-pocus nonsense, or subjective bullshite.

I would like to see a blind study where you played these people the same source recording but told them one was digital and one was analog. I guaran-damn-tee you that every one of them would say one sounded warmer and fuller, while one was harsh and uninviting.

This is well-known human psychology actually, and studies have been done where two food samples are cut from the same hunk of whatever, but test subjects are told that one is high quality and one is generic. The test subjects overwhelmingly claimed a preference for one of the samples, assuming that the one they preferred was of higher quality.

It's all in our heads, this stuff. Or our ears, I guess.
 
Interesting! I always thought music on CD's were inferior to music on LP's because that's what I was told by people who presumably knew what they were talking about. Apparently, it was true back in the eighties but not anymore. It's funny, when you consider how LP's and turntables are back in fashion. It looks like some people out there are not aware of how digital music has evolved over the last 20 years or so.
 
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I can tell you that generally I don't know the difference between audio quality samples. One of my friends was going through my collection on my computer once and asked how I could stand listening to something at ____ hz or whatever-the-fuck the actual measurement is...

I rarely can notice much difference. Although I'm anxious to hear the Beatles Past Master remasters since some of those recordings are really shitty and could definitely use some fixin' up.

Some day. Some... day.

I have a small collection of vinyl (two Richard Pryor albums, a few swing records I found at a pawn shop, and a copy of The Priest They Called Him) and it sounds ok, but... I just don't have ear for it though. It all sounds the same to me.
 
It looks like some people out there are not aware of how digital music has evolved over the last 20 years or so.
Especially in the past few years. In computer technology standards increase rapidly, and soon professional digital recording equipment with be sampling at rates that are difficult to even comprehend.

One of the things I left out of the brief first post (hey, my blog is gone, you'll have to deal with me here) is that much of what we experience through our eyes and ears comes in tiny "bits" similar to the way computers process music. Your brain fills in the blanks quite efficiently.

Trust your brain, save your money: buy CDs. If you don't, the terrorists win!

I was anti-digital music for many years due to my early experiences with the technology. But in the past few years I have been tracking down vinyl copies of some records that I love that were never released on CD. And invariably when I finally get them and drop them onto the turntable I am disappointed in the sound quality (or lack thereof). My memory of it - the subjective experience - is always better than the reality.
 
I think yours is a self defeating argument mjp.

You state that "what we love about those things are the character introduced into the sound by the limitations in the technology", in regards guitar equipment.

Loving something as subjective as sound makes it 'better' by most peoples definitions. (You prefer the sound of the analogue effects, right?).

If someone prefers the sound of a turntable (albeit a well-made turntable in a system capable of exploiting that source) then it is, for them, better sound and hang the technology.

Digital technology may be capable of very, very high standards these days, I agree. But if one prefers a turntable (with the character introduced into the sound by the limitations in the technology) over a CD player than that is, by definition, a better sound for the person doing the listening.

Of course some people have little or no frame of reference and don't recognise one sound over another. They don't count here.

I don't like the hassle of cleaning the stylus and records constantly.

I have a very nice CD-based stereo system but am not an 'audiophile' ...I think.
 
I think yours is a self defeating argument mjp.

You state that "what we love about those things are the character introduced into the sound by the limitations in the technology", in regards guitar equipment.
The point being that analog introduces variables into the recording, whether those variables are created by high end studio equipment (electronic or tape hiss) or the low frequency rumble of your turntable. Either way, they were not originally part of the music.

So to say, as the WIRED piece did, that vinyl produces "[a] more subtle side of the music" is misguided (and crazy). Vinyl adds something to the music that doesn't belong there. Maybe those variables are what people find "warm" about vinyl. But they have nothing to do with reproducing the sound of musical instruments.

In the early days of CDs people used to complain that they could hear ambient room and instrument sounds in their classical recordings now (feet scraping on the floor, the keys of an oboe working - things you were less likely to hear on vinyl) and they didn't much care for that. The sound was too realistic for them. So maybe it is all the background noise of analog that makes some people prefer it.
 
I certainly am not an audiophile, as previously confessed here during the beatles discussions. For me, it's just the overall experience. I have a 160gb iPod, it's full and I use it everyday and am very satisfied with the sound. Yet, there is still nothing like the packaging, the feel and I guess the addiction to tracking down hard to find stuff, that addicts me to vinyl. I have a mixer hooked up to my stereo and I've done numerous comparisons to a song on the iPod and the vinyl. I don't know, sometimes the vinyl sounds better, or louder and fills the room/house more, and sometimes it doesn't. So I certainly am not a proponent of vinyl because I think it's superior...It's just to me, the feeling of taking a vinyl out of the jacket, dropping it down on my 15year old $20.00 turntable makes me feel....ah....special? Ha. So listening to this Deftones "White Pony" album as I type, makes me glad that I have it. I guess seeing that someone is selling it and getting bids up to $154.00 on eBay makes me even more glad that I bought it when it was $12.99 years ago....(almost makes me think I ought to list mine, but nope, couldn't give me a grand for mine...

reddef.jpg
 
The aesthetics are superior, sure. There's more to hang on to. If you like how it feels or makes you feel that's a whole different bag of fish than sound comparisons.

I don't know about the experience though. I hated flipping albums, trying to play individual tracks --- and a double or triple album? Oy. Records were a pain in the ass. I thought CDs were the greatest invention of my lifetime back in the day. But music as computer files kinda bugs me (though I use them). I need something physical. I have thousands of MP3s here and it's too abstract, all these files. CDs take up as much space as vinyl LPs, but I like having them there. I can look at the mass of spines and see what's going on.
 
Analog sound (via vinyl) trumps digital sound (via mp3 or CD). Everybody knows that. You don't need to be an audiophile to tell the difference. Just play your favorite songs -yeah, the ones you know by heart-, and crank them up while listening to them in your old turntable (no need to get a loan for a new one). Then play those songs in your computer or mp3/CD player. If you don't hear any difference, well, there might be something wrong in your equipment, I don't know, but you should hear a difference. Not because I say so, because it is there.

Now, if we're talking about the most recent digital media -basically DVD-A or Blu-Ray- then I do agree with you. Both DVD-A and Blu-Ray can contain up to 192/24 (as opposed to CD's 48/16) and there's no compression of the source. CDs -any kind of CDs- are highly compressed. It's a simple question of storage. A lot of bits are gone, and even if your brain fills in the gaps, those extra layers of information (sound) are forever gone.

Some people claim that the human ear cannot tell the difference between 192/24 and 48/16. I call them liars. They probably want to sell tons of CDs stored away in some basement. I certainly cannot tell the difference between 96/24 and 192/24 -and I tried hard- but the difference between either 96/24 or 192/24 and 48/16 is too obvious to be ignored.

So CD/Mp3 sound sucks -but it's convenient. Vinyl sound is great (warm, cozy, with a lot of depth, blah, blah), but it's a pain to use. DVD-A and Blu-Ray are the way to go now. Though I'm sure they'll be obsolete in no time (DVD-A already is). I guess high-rez media (96/24) would be a nice option for most people. 192/24 would be theoretically better, but I cannot hear the advantages.
 
Most DVDA and Blue Ray players on the market a horrible, nasty pieces of crap.

It is seldom the technology alone that is responsible for the end result. It is the implementation of the technology and all the pieces of the system being well matched that result in great sound.

A great turntable-based system will shit all over a mediocre CD-based one; a great CD-based system will beat a mediocre Blue Ray-based one.

Execution is all.
 
mjp, you're probably right. I like vinyl records, as physical objects, and I like record players. They are old and clunky and buzzy and make clicks and pops and hisses. My current turntable has a nasty thump on every revolution. So obviously, I think it has a richer sound than my CD player.
 
Back then, tapes were a good way for groups to make demos. Copied DIN A4 pages had the cover, lyrics, a band photo, the list of titles and the contact adress. Kind of cute, and it was affordable for everyone to make a recording like that. But no matter how well you store and treat casettes, the sound gets worse from playing to playing.

They look good, yes, and I can't look at an mp3 file directly, nor hold it in my hands or smell it. It's very abstract and distant in a way an lp or cd won't let me feel. When it comes to the physical point, a vinyl gatefold record is unbeatable. A group's artwork has always turned me on like their music like their lyrics. There's no dividing that, it all belongs together to make the piece of art.

Storing a billion songs on a fingernail isn't bad though, if the sound quality is decent it's actually fascinating. It's a different mammal err... cyborg.
 
Just play your favorite songs -yeah, the ones you know by heart-, and crank them up while listening to them in your old turntable (no need to get a loan for a new one). Then play those songs in your computer or mp3/CD player. you should hear a difference. Not because I say so, because it is there.
That's like saying VHS is better than Beta, and you can prove it to yourself by watching your favorite movie on a professional VHS broadcast deck through a high definition TV and comparing it to the Beta tape viewed through a 1956 black and white Zenith. Apples and oranges. A turntable/stereo is always going to trump a computer/*pod device because your stereo, even if it sucks, is likely to have larger speakers, and, most importantly, a computer is not audio equipment. Any music player with one button is not a music player. And who the hell listens to 48/16 audio? It's not 1999. Prince already partied us out of that year, baby!

CDs are not compressed during the mastering phase the way they used to be. You aren't comparing modern technology (there is nothing earth shattering about "blu-ray" technology, it's just an increase in storage density), you're talking about old CD standards and MP3 rips some kid made a decade ago. Besides, the rip isn't the issue, the issue is the mastering, and whether you want to believe it or not, the mastering for CD and vinyl (from the source) is virtually the same now. Besides, hardly anyone masters "for vinyl" anymore.

I wasted a large chunk of my life immersed in these things, recording and mixing in state of the art analog and digital studios, sitting in mastering sessions at Bernie Grundman in Hollywood (practically every record made west of the Mississippi was mastered there), mixing live sound on PA systems held together with spit and kite string in Africa - so I think my ears have a small amount of credibility. In other words, I think my opinion just might carry more weight than some hipster doofus who read an article on WIRED, and now takes the "warm" and "subtle" voodoo buzzwords as gospel. Of course I think my opinion of everything is terribly important, so my view may be slightly skewed. But just slightly, you know. ;)

Technically, you can analyze these signals and point to graphs that show differences. Of course there are technical differences. If your ears and brain prefer one over the other, great. What I find funny about the whole thing though, and what prompted me to say anything about it in the first place, is that 999 out of every 1000 people who pay a premium for vinyl these days and swear up and down that it's better, could not tell the difference between their $50 NipponPomoLabs Quarter Speed Gold Leaf Master LP and a $6.99 CD from Walmart.

Those kind of sheep were my target, not people who really know or care about the quality of what goes into their earholes. And really, honestly and truly, the vast, painful, overwhelming majority of music recorded today doesn't deserve to be mastered for anything. It should be burned immediately after the recording sessions, and the artistes sent to Chinese prison camps to manufacture counterfeit Yves St. Laurent bags for their friends to buy on Venice beach.
 
During the late 80s and early 90s I spent a fortune (compared to my income) on 2nd hand maxi-singles, which were only available at import shops, because they were never released here. 29.90 deutschmark for a 2nd hand record which probably costs about 3$ in the usa? "no problem! I MUST have this groove!" I was addicted ;)
Today all records I ever bought can be downloaded from the usenet within a few minutes.
 
when i was in high school, i bought up 7" punk rock records, since that was the cheapest way to give new music a try (i'm not that old, but this was still before you could stream an album on the internet or whatever). i was never into it for the sound, particularly, just the fact that they were $4, compared to $12 for a CD. turns out some of my old records are collector's items (for those that collect early 90's out of print punk rock vinyl), which surprised me, since i never thought about "collecting" back when i was buying them.

and i think the deal with vinyl vs cd/mp3 is the same as you get in any specialist industry... to wit, i was reading reviews of digital photo printers and read through a long forum topic about whether you could create a neutral gray using a standard ultrachrome printer and the right settings in photoshop that would match the neutral gray you could get from an ultrachrome K3 printer. and the argument was along the same lines - some said "no, absoultely not," while other said that you could get it so close that the human eye couldn't tell the difference, and so you could.
 
I think I've read some of those printer forums!

But that's true. It's all an argument over a subjective issue, so no one is right and no one is wrong.
 
This is well-known human psychology actually, and studies have been done where two food samples are cut from the same hunk of whatever, but test subjects are told that one is high quality and one is generic. The test subjects overwhelmingly claimed a preference for one of the samples, assuming that the one they preferred was of higher quality.

It's all in our heads, this stuff. Or our ears, I guess.
most definitely. this reminds me of something i read in my linguistic anthropology textbook a few weeks ago. i don't have the book anymore, so this will be from memory.

a study with two groups of people was done, and they were to watch a video of a woman giving a lecture. group 1 was told she was from someplace, USA, and group 2 was told she was from another country (don't recall which). afterwards, something like 40% of group 2 claimed they couldn't understand much of her lecture because of her accent, while group 1 understood her perfectly.

i guess it has alot to do with preconceived notions, ideas, etc...

and i love the ritual of vinyl myself. just picked up neil young's Decade last week for 9 bucks. great stuff...
 
I can't tell the difference in sound. but I like owning the package, whether it's an lp or cd (but not cassette. fuck you cassette and your disintegrating nature! the money I wasted on tapes in the '80s now rotting).

but I'm glad the lp is making a comeback, because the print on the liner notes is larger and therefore easier on my middle aged eyes.
 
I mistakenly assumed everybody would be using my settings. My bad. I use my computer to play everything. I have a decent soundcard which can handle up to 192/24 signals and then I send the signal directly to an external receiver which decodes the raw signal. No trickery or conversion involved. Some computer soundcards have better internal DACs than those of many receivers; in that case, it is better to do the decoding in the computer and then send the signal to the receiver. So I can easily play a 48/16 audio source and compare it to a 192/24 one. I have done this alone and with friends. No one has disagreed so far: the mp3 tracks or the CDs sound way worse (this is of course subjective) than the 192/24 or 96/24 material. There's no need to deceive yourself into making you believe that the higher bitrate material sounds better than the one with a lower bitrate because it does sound better if you use the same settings. This is not a case of apple vs oranges or VHS vs Beta. But, as I said, I cannot tell a 192/24 track from a 96/24 one.

I don't give a shit about Blu-Ray, DVD-A, etc, that's all business and money for the big companies. I was just saying that the larger capacity of the Blu-Ray and the DVD-A discs allow the end-users to enjoy a higher bitrate material (192/24). It's not a question of better technology, it's simply that they can store more information. I usually buy the discs, rip them to my hard drive and then they're no longer Blu-Ray, DVD-A, SACD, etc, but simple stereo (sometimes multichannel) PCM tracks that I send to the receiver.

I think that I can safely say that 90% of the population (probably 99%) listen to mp3 tracks most of the time. In the best case scenario, they're encoded using a 320KB bitrate and a 48/16 sample frequency. That's the best case scenario. In many, many cases, they're 160KB or 128KB only. Those mp3 tracks sound worse than the hideous, hollow sounding CDs from the early to mid 80s. This is happening today. We're listening to sheer shit. Or rubbish, as the Brits would say with a wicked smile.
 
I miss my 'Walkman'. Actually, mine was a Toshiba. But it really did sound great, especially in the dark.
 
The aesthetics are superior, sure. There's more to hang on to. If you like how it feels or makes you feel that's a whole different bag of fish than sound comparisons

Yeah, I guess that hits it on the head for me. It's kinda the same with these new digital reading devices like Amazons Kindle. I mean, at the end of reading a book on Amazon's kindle, I'm sure the book would get the same meaning/feeling across to me as the paperback/hardcover, but I want that physical book in my hands. The cover, the design, etc. I really have no idea how someone reads a book on one of those things. The iPhone has a free service that offers a bunch of free books to read, I downloaded it and can't get through more than two pages of any book!

I also am just madly in love with the look of 8 bookshelves filled with books, and 5 bookshelves filled with vinyl records. It just does something for me.
 
But music as computer files kinda bugs me (though I use them). I need something physical. I have thousands of MP3s here and it's too abstract, all these files.

I think this is eventually going to be a problem in the modern world. Everyone is going to have book files, movie, music, and video game files but they're all going to be stored on some supercomputer some place and I won't own an ACTUAL movie, game, book, or CD.

Sony is already working on that model for their DVDs and video games and now that Kindle is gaining steam (and Sony and B&N have their own e-Readers)... I just don't know. I would prefer to be able to buy a physical copy and get a free digital copy with it. That would be great (which is why I love the digital copies that come with more and more movies these days).

But people's possessions won't even be posses-able soon... Worrisome, worrisome.
 
If you want something physical you could burn your MP3's/CD's/DVD's onto a disc. That's what I do. I want to be able to hear my music on my stereo and watch my movies on a regular DVD player. It's also handy with discs if you want to visit a friend and show him your new movie f.ex.
Of course, I could connect my computer to my stereo and TV with some fancy device, I guess.
 
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Yeh, but a blank cd that you burned something onto can look like this...

Blank-cd.jpg


While the Vinyl looks like this...

yyy.jpg


And it's just not the same...
 
No, it's not the same, not even if you print out the original cover for the plastic case, but at least it's a physical copy. Of course, you could buy the original if you can't do without the label.

Btw, I doubt most LP's looks like the one in your example ;). They're mostly black, just like a CD is blank. Not that big a difference when it comes to looks, I think.
 
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I think these LP enthusiasts are full of shit too. Looking for a WARMER SOUND than digital technology can provide..... no thanks. There's a reason my turntable lid has newspapers and mags stacked on top.

Wait. There's a reason my turntable is in the spare room to collect newspapers and mags in the first place. Oh yeah - outdated technology

Everything in my collection, except 70's-80's power-pop, is available on disc or file. And Cactus World News or Utopia is arriving soon anyway
 
Hahah, Mark73, are you referring to the pic above? Because that's a man baby! None other than Bret Michaels, lead singer of Poison! Oh Yeah!
 
Yes, I was talking about the spandex lady above. She must have WASP Poison inside her lips. Why do beautiful women want to look like men?



Hahaha.
 
Sorry I'm gonna get technical...

Thought I would just interject here, being that I kinda do this thing in sound. So the idea that an LP might sound warmer has to do with the fact that you conceivably have no limits in frequency and dynamic range. (that is the theory anyway) The greater the dynamics the deeper the grooves and the higher or lower the frequency the smaller or wider the grooves.

In the world of Audio CDs the Red Book Standard is 44.1khz and 16 bits. That is STILL the standard today...
The idea is that the sample rate, 44.1 is double the Frequency range. They came up with that because as a Human you can only hear possibly up to around 18,000 hrz or 18Khz, and usually if you are older then say 20 you can't hear frequencies that high.
The bit depth is related to the Dynamic range, each bit representing 6 decibels, so 16 bits equals 96 db dynamic range. I.E. the threshold of hearing is around 130db. A loud rock band is around 130 db. A really fucking loud Rock Band.
With red book audio that is the standard. If you burn a Audio CD you are burning audio material at 44.1 k and 16 bits.

Today, as you record, prior to down sampling the Audio you have the choice to record at higher sample rates and bit depths.
Music tracks may be recorded at 192k or 96 k with a bit depth of 24. And then at the end of the mix or when you Master it, you down sample it to the Red Book Standard.
In most Film Sound the standard is 48k 24bits. The Production Dialog is almost always recorded at 48k 24bit. The original Sound effects may be recorded at the higher sample rates and then down sampled as it gets edited into the tracks.
The Score may be recorded at a Higher sample rate but the bite depth is for the most part 24 bits, which equals 144db of dynamic range.
I am working on a film now where the Score was recorded at 48k 24 bits, basically the logic behind it is that it will have to come to the mix at 48k 24 anyway so why not record it that way.

Although the technology is there with Blu Ray etc. to playback the higher sample rates, it is not as of yet wildly used. I must admit that music is more then likely recorded at higher sample rates and down sampled later.

The mp3 is a compressed medium of the one mentioned above. I.E. where there are duplicate digital bits it chucks the duplicate, making the file smaller.

The biggest difference between then and now is the way in which people mix. When Mp3s first came on to the scene people didn't mix for that medium, they were still mixing for CD and vinyl. And although they are not technically mixing for that medium now, they are much more aware of where it will end up and will take that in to account. Also now you have tools that give the mixers the opportunity to mix better for the medium. Mp3 is definitely an inferior quality, no doubt about it. But most of us, myself included, have come to accept the inferior quality due to convenience.

The live performance will always be the best, the higher the sample rate and bit depth the better the representation of the audio.
I think the Lp has it's place. And old recordings were based on ALL the technology at the time. Granted you have some great tube gear that totally kicks ass that is still in use today. The overall quality has been a growing beast. Mixing consoles today, if you are so inclined to go that way, are way better in some ways. The digital recorders and technology has evolved immensely. Today for what the end product is the tools have gotten much much better.

But... In the end it's the performance that does it for me.
Now you can have endless overdubs and make it feel like it has no feeling. Back in the day most of the musicians really had be able to play.
What you captured was a true performance. 1 or 2 takes and minimal over dubs if any. Musicians could really play. And above everything else that's what you hear and that to me is what spins my whinny.

Anyway sorry for rambling just thought I'd clear up the sample rate thingy.

Hope you all are having super cool holidays. :)
 
The live performance will always be the best...
Wrong.
But... In the end it's the performance that does it for me.
Well, that's a different thing to the previous comment, so maybe that's what you mean [?]
Musicians could really play.
Who?
This sort of smacks of 'Ah, those were the good old days!' Maybe your impressions, but hardly objective or demonstrable.
just thought I'd clear up the sample rate thingy.
Cool but...reproducing sound above 18,000 Hertz or below 20,000 Hertz influences and changes they way we perceive sounds in the audible spectrum. Hence true sub-woofers and super tweeters.

Also the threshold of pain is around 130db (depending on the individual). The threshold of hearing would be the figure at the lower end of the scale, no?
 

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