Help me understand this analog fetish

[Gamma-UT]

The weird thing about Hutchison is that he's doing this for classical - which pretty much seized on digital the day it came out because of the obvious problems with vinyl. Take Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony as an example. There's a very slow crescendo about a quarter of the way into the first movement (which unless you play it very quickly won't even fit properly onto one side of vinyl). Even in the concert hall the start of the passage is on the threshold of audibility. Bernstein's 1989 recording on CD has it peaking at about -54dB. The end of the passage peaks around -3dB.

Toscanini's much older recording (the first recording of the Seventh in the West IIRC) which got reissued on CD about 15 years ago makes this passage slightly louder presumably to cope with the recording technology of the time. There's some noise reduction on it as you can hear the artefacts in this part but even that clocks in at around -50dB.

When you consider that the practical dynamic range of vinyl is 60dB, and is probably somewhat less for the densely packed tracks you need for the first movement, it seems bizarre to tout vinyl as superior to practically any digital format.

[DuX]

I think all that's wrong with digital audio is not the quality of sound of it, but simply the quality of production. Remember that digital audio revolution coincided with the "revolution" of the loudness war, so the quality of the audio production went downwards drastically, not trying to preserve the quality of audio, but utilise it for a different purpose and ruining it in the process. My "theory" is that many people perceive digital audio as sounding harsh because yes - it does sound harsh, and flat, and distorted, and generally ugly, because people made it to sound that way. That's the only problem with digital audio.

Digital audio just sounds the way you want it to sound, so great is the quality of a digital recording. A 24-bit digital audio recording of some audio is the most perfect representation of that audio, within the current limits of the audio technology, bar none. Put it through "modern production techniques" [especially limiting] and it's ruined. Put it on a vinyl, and it's ruined, too, but at least not *that* ruined, since you can't limit that much for vinyl, and you have to stick to some rules when mastering for vinyl. Same goes for the analog tape, but at least you don't have to put up with crackling, and thinking how the needle deteriorates the record every time you play it. I have experienced all that, too, when I was a kid and a teenager, recording records on tape just to save them from deterioration, and I always hated that crackling, and need to clean the records all the time.

So I think all that's wrong with digital audio is the perception of the people of it, which is just all wrong at the present situation, because people haven't been able to hear a quality digital audio production yet. If you judge the quality of digital audio by any of the contemporary pop albums, or the so called "re-mastered" versions of them, you're terribly wrong, because these are nowhere near the accurate representation of how great digital audio can actually sound. A great digitally recorded and produced albums are an absolute rarity these days, sadly.

In short: we just haven't utilised digital audio properly just yet. That's what's wrong with it. Nothing else. It's like that saying "computer can't be wrong, but when it is, it is due to the human error."

[ZenPunkHippy]

When you consider that the practical dynamic range of vinyl is 60dB, and is probably somewhat less for the densely packed tracks you need for the first movement, it seems bizarre to tout vinyl as superior to practically any digital format.

But it sounds warm and phat on vinyl, right?

*ahem*

[DuX]

To rephrase my sig to be within the context: "It is no measure of digital audio quality when it's well adjusted to a profoundly sick society's audio production techniques". And ignorance, I might add...

[BertKoor]

Digitized music, since it can be copied without generation loss, can be copied and shared with any and all over and over again.

Last week I had to throw away my early-nineties Sony CDP-991 CD player. It had a dedicated button for Peak Search, and another selected tracks so it best fitted a C-90 tape. Then Sony only sold hardware and did care less about DRM.

Point is, when I went shopping for a true CD Player, the cheapest I could find was above $350. So I bought a BlueRay player of $80 and just use that instead to play audio CD's.

I'll report the quality of the DAC compared to that of the deceased CDP-991 when I can. But since even my portable discman rates simulary according to RMAA, I'm not too worried about the outcome.

PS: do you ever hear audiophiles complaining about the fidelity of audio of their TV? You don't want to know how many times the audio (and video alike) is encoded and decoded again using lossy algorithms.

[Gamma-UT]

PS: do you ever hear audiophiles complaining about the fidelity of audio of their TV? You don't want to know how many times the audio (and video alike) is encoded and decoded again using lossy algorithms.

Or of their room. They'll often park some magic rocks on a shelf but don't bother buying bass traps.

[trimph1]

mmmm.

I once had a turntable that had, as the plinth, a slab of pink granite that was polished to a ridiculous degree. that thing was heavy!! but incredibly stable. I just wish I remember what company made it...

[SODDI]

If the subject of the article was the true audiophile he claims to be, don't you think that he would be championing analog reel-to-reel tape rather than analog vinyl?

[tomtoo]

https://www.google.de/search?hl=de&site ... 4wRth08CEU