Does vinyl really sound better?

monquixote

Drew_fx said:

monquixote said:

The confusion arises because you can point to a CD player and say what the exact dynamic range available is whereas with vinyl it depends on a number of factors, but that doesn't mean that it's infinite or even greater than CD because it isn't.

Tbh, I think the main confusion comes from the old notion that analog = smooth lines and digital = stepped lines. Which is a simplistic model and was never meant to illustrate the difference between the two mediums, it was only meant to simplify understanding of digital sampling.

Indeed people tend to use a lolly stick graph now rather than a stair step because people get confused about what it means. The silly thing is that to accurately reproduce the stair step waveform people think comes out you would need a massively higher sampling frequency.

For anyone who would like to know more watch this:

Monty is the boss!

Danny1969

monquixote said:

Danny1969 said:

I think there is probably more information in a vinyl record in terms of resolution as there's almost infinitely measurable levels of amplitude, if such equipment existed that could measure such tiny amounts. We know the CD has a very finite amount of information as it was sampled at 44.4 thousand times a second and that's your lot. The rest of the information is provided by the filters. Now we know with the Nyquist theory that's enough to perfectly reproduce up to 22Khz but technically the record has more "resolution" 

That's the point I was making earlier. 

If that were really true then you could by putting signwaves of various levels encode a near infinite amount of digital information onto a vinyl LP and it turns out you can't. That's information theory again, you can't get past physics. The difference between the peak excursion and the noise floor is the dynamic range end of story.

The confusion arises because you can point to a CD player and say what the exact dynamic range available is whereas with vinyl it depends on a number of factors, but that doesn't mean that it's infinite or even greater than CD because it isn't.

Also Nyquist dictates that everything under 22KHz means "everything" there is nothing sneaking in, no extra magic under 22kHz mojo to be found.

Yes totally agree but technically the record has more resolution even if it isn't required. I'm not talking frequency response or dynamic range as clearly digital is superior but if you think about it anything that is sampled holds a finite amount of information ... in the case of a 44.4 wav about 38Mb  for stereo song. If you had something that could measure very tiny changes you could get more resolution from a record than that. 

I would be interested to see if 2 samples from a record, one taken at 44.4 and one taken at 192Khk would null in a flipped phase scenario. Because if they don't then there was more information captured by the higher sampling rate. Again, nothing to do with frequency response, dynamic range or noise floor, I'm not even suggesting you need any further information to capture the music I'm just saying technically it's there

monquixote

Danny1969 said:

Yes totally agree but technically the record has more resolution even if it isn't required. I'm not talking frequency response or dynamic range as clearly digital is superior but if you think about it anything that is sampled holds a finite amount of information ... in the case of a 44.4 wav about 38Mb  for stereo song. If you had something that could measure very tiny changes you could get more resolution from a record than that. 

I would be interested to see if 2 samples from a record, one taken at 44.4 and one taken at 192Khk would null in a flipped phase scenario. Because if they don't then there was more information captured by the higher sampling rate. Again, nothing to do with frequency response, dynamic range or noise floor, I'm not even suggesting you need any further information to capture the music I'm just saying technically it's there

Once that resolution gets lower than the noise floor then it effectively doesn't exist it just becomes entropy. If you watch Monty's vid from about ten minutes in you will see that noise floor and bit depth are equivalent so there is no resolution on vinyl beyond the noise floor. If it was greater then the dynamic range would be higher.

Drew_TNBD

Danny1969 said:

 if you think about it anything that is sampled holds a finite amount of information ... in the case of a 44.4 wav about 38Mb  for stereo song.

No dude, this is wrong and is the fundamental incorrect assumption you hold about this. Anything that is sampled does not necessarily hold a finite amount of information. That isn't how floating point numbers work.

Phil_aka_Pip

@Drew_fx I didn't know ADC samples were floating point. 

EDIT and even fp has its limits on accuracy

Drew_TNBD

Phil_aka_Pip said:

I'd hestitate to say that vinyl has been technically bettered on EVERY level, though. To prevent aliasing, the CD has to be sharply cut at 22kHz, whereas an EllPee doesn't. Some will say that even though your ears can't hear those kind of frequencies (and I admit mine certainly can't), if they are present, they will modulate the things you CAN hear. Natch, with higher sampling rates, and better than 16 bits per sample, those kind of arguments diminish in relevance.

I've not seen any evidence to suggest frequencies higher than 22khz have an effect on our hearing. Even so, check the link I posted earlier:

http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)#Myth:_Vinyl_is_better_than_CD_because_it_reproduces_higher_frequencies_than_CD_and_avoids_anti-aliasing_filter_issues_at_the_frequencies_CDs_can_reproduce

Drew_TNBD

Phil_aka_Pip said:

@Drew_fx I didn't know ADC samples were floating point. 

They're initially not. But later on the values between the samples are filled in during additional filter stages. It's a sort of slew behaviour.

Danny1969

Drew

It's nothing to do with floating point, if you sample something 44.4k times a second that's all the information you have whever there was more information there or not. From that point you can't improve on it, same as blowing up a picture that only contained 1 mega pixels won't get you higher res, it will just pixel-ate 

Rounding up to the nearest number is irrelevant 

Imagine you looked at a record groove with a massive massive telescope, it's possible you could detect more than 44.4K changes of amplitude in a one second run .... therefore the record holds more resolution that the CD as the CD has only got it's 44.4K levels the rest is provided by the filters

Drew_TNBD

Dude... it isn't 44.4k - it's 44.1khz sample-rate. That's before you even consider when people record at higher sample-rates and then down sample later.

A CD does not have 44.4 (or even 44.1) "levels" ... I don't know where you're getting that notion from.

Seriously... watch that video that Nick posted. It explains why you're wrong very thoroughly.

Bogwhoppit

You'll all stop worrying about 'this type of thing' when you hit 50, instead you will be grateful that you can still hear the dog fart...

 

 

 

...the early warning will protect your nose.

monquixote

@Danny1969 are you talking about the frequency or the dynamic range?

The frequency is easy to work out, you just keep putting higher and higher sine waves in until they stop coming out the other end. The limiting factor is IIRC in the lathe heads which don't like high frequencies, but assuming you didn't mind blowing up your lathe you would hit a point where it stopped being reproduced and there is your effective sampling frequency.

If you are talking about dynamic range then it's the number of times the noise floor divides into the maximum extent. Which as it's a discreet value is effectively a bit depth. I can explain that in a bit more detail.

richardhomer

The theoretical frequency response of an LP diminishes the nearer to the centre you get, as the groove speed gets lower with each rotation.

We are talking microns here - any 'play' in the cutting lathe, or in the turntable system (main bearing, arm bearings, etc) will 'lose' information.

High res digital formats (once noise and wow and flutter are taken into account) outperform analogue comfortably to my ears.

Anyone who thinks MP3 is poor needs to listen to a cassette - high noise, limited high frequency response, wow and flutter, deterioration as coating wears off, head alignment can vary from deck to deck. Give me MP3 any day!

monquixote

As monty points out cassettes were effectively 5 bit!

Danny1969

@monquixote Neither really, just pointing out that due to it's analog nature the groove in a record is capable of holding more resolution in terms amplitude change (variations of volume for any given frequency ) than the CD that represents it as the AD that made the CD only sampled it a finite amount of times.

 Drew yes meant44.1 sorry and i mean the AD that makes the digital wav for the CD samples at 44.1k a second and the rest of the information is completed by the filters. Again it's not relevent to music, just being pedantic in pointing out that in terms of "resolution" something that doesn't rely on fixed snap shots in time will always have more resolution than it's digital sample as the digital sample has a finite resolution. I'm probably still not explaining it right now

monquixote

Once you get down to the noise floor the record is also going to be acting like a digital device in that anything smaller in size than the noise floor is nothing but white noise. So that quantity is your quantum of data or effectively your vinyl bit. The amount of those you can fit into the maximum allowable size of the groove is your bit depth. 

There is no more data than that. 

robinbowes

Drew_fx said:

These people who go "it's just an opinion..."

What if your opinion is an ILL INFORMED opinion? What then? HUH? HUH?!?!

But that's only your opinion that their opinion is ill-informed...

chillidoggy

Drew_fx said:

These people who go "it's just an opinion..."

What if your opinion is an ILL INFORMED opinion? What then? HUH? HUH?!?!

I'm going with "it's still an opinion"?

Cacofonix

monquixote said:

Danny1969 said:

Once that resolution gets lower than the noise floor then it effectively doesn't exist it just becomes entropy. If you watch Monty's vid from about ten minutes in you will see that noise floor and bit depth are equivalent so there is no resolution on vinyl beyond the noise floor. If it was greater then the dynamic range would be higher.

I'm not sure that's the case.  That's like saying a page that's been scribbled on is unreadable.  It might not be, and an expert can extract audio data from white noise: there was even a job ad for a forensic noise analyst for precisely that purpose.  If it can be done by digital means, it can certainly be done by human audio processing systems.

Secondly, there is a surmise that you can't hear super-sonic noise.  That is also not correct, there is equipment that can be purchased which is designed to detect whether you are being subjected to sonic attack.  Even though it may be above the frequencies considered within hearing range, that does not mean it does not affect you.  Subsonics are known to do so, so why not supersonics?

monquixote

Cacofonix said:

monquixote said:

Danny1969 said:

Once that resolution gets lower than the noise floor then it effectively doesn't exist it just becomes entropy. If you watch Monty's vid from about ten minutes in you will see that noise floor and bit depth are equivalent so there is no resolution on vinyl beyond the noise floor. If it was greater then the dynamic range would be higher.

I'm not sure that's the case.  That's like saying a page that's been scribbled on is unreadable.  It might not be, and an expert can extract audio data from white noise: there was even a job ad for a forensic noise analyst for precisely that purpose.  If it can be done by digital means, it can certainly be done by human audio processing systems.

Secondly, there is a surmise that you can't hear super-sonic noise.  That is also not correct, there is equipment that can be purchased which is designed to detect whether you are being subjected to sonic attack.  Even though it may be above the frequencies considered within hearing range, that does not mean it does not affect you.  Subsonics are known to do so, so why not supersonics?

I think you might have been watching too much CSI

Below the noise threshold there can be no information. All that you will find is white noise, pure entropy and no information whatsoever. If you could you would be breaking the laws of thermodynamics. 

If you are interested to understand why this is then read up on the Shannon Hartley Theorem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon–Hartley_theorem

Paul_C

I mentioned this on another thread, and despite it being of limited use, I'll mention it again.

I recently bought the Atoms For Peace album on vinyl and as it came with a CD I compared the two.

I have a Thorens turntable connected to a Pioneer A207R amp and Heybrook HB1 speakers

I have a Compac PC with a CD/DVD drive in it, also connected to the Pioneer amp.

Playing the first track and switching between the two I could hear no discernible difference.