Vinyl sound quality?

[pompende]

Not saying your wrong but you won't be able to actually hear any difference at least not with loud dance music, mabeye different with jazz or classical as they are much quieter. I've done this test with loads of tunes its very hard to tell any difference in blind comparisons you can read all you like about how the data has changed but in the real world its real hard to hear any difference with most tunes, BTW if your not using a decent mp3 converter like Lame then of course the 320s are going to sound shit

i think the primary limitations of mp3 are that it doesn't treat all frequency bands equally and the effects of the time window i mentioned earlier... ultimately i think this would make it less forgiving to synthetic music but that is conjecture.

i've knocked up a little example that should exploit some of the weaknesses inherent to mp3 compression. Its a clap with a large reverb presented in white noise.

wave : 44.1 kHz / 16 bit
http://www.mediafire.com/?3yg84f1iwi1vi6h

mp3: 44.1 kHz / 320 kbs CBR
http://www.mediafire.com/?vc4ayc7dmpdmss9

if you listen to one 4 or 5 times in a row, then compare it to the other, you should notice a difference in the 'depth' of the reverb. particularly on the double clap at the end..

feedback is welcome as i may be deluding myself.

so, clearly its not very noticeable but it does exist but it certainly doesnt hurt to limit your distortion to the digital->analog and analog->mechanical sites

[wolf89]

^^^ When you are listening to these are you using a program that blinds you as to which one is which. Otherwise it's an unfair test, there's a program (can't remember the name of it) that has a blinded ABX comparison test in it you can try on yourself to compare files properly. I'll try remember it's name as it's a useful thing to do from time to time (like when deciding how to encode things for your mp3 player, cause it's it's pointless if you can't hear a difference on your headphones just for one example)

[pompende]

^^^ When you are listening to these are you using a program that blinds you as to which one is which.

i am not and you are absolutely right. I'm hoping that there is a noticeable enough difference that it shouldn't matter.

if people are interested i can make a similar clip and do a single blind presentation: by transcoding the mp3 to wav and uploading both as a wav, using A and B to differentiate so the listener doesn't know which clip has been compressed (the transcode could potentially introduce some distortion but the results are relevant because almost all dj software performs that 'decompression' on mp3s)

you should post up the link to that prog tho if you ever remember its name...

[staticcast]

i think the primary limitations of mp3 are that it doesn't treat all frequency bands equally

Isn't that the whole point? The whole idea behind mp3 encoders is that certain sounds have a tendency to mask others, both temporally and in the frequency domain.

ultimately i think this would make it less forgiving to synthetic music but that is conjecture.

You may well be right -- but 320 is pretty good and I think you'd still struggle to tell the difference in a truly blind test (unless, as I said before, you're allowed to do stuff like look at the frequency spectrum, listen to the 200% wide signal, etc).

i've knocked up a little example that should exploit some of the weaknesses inherent to mp3 compression. Its a clap with a large reverb presented in white noise.

wave : 44.1 kHz / 16 bit
http://www.mediafire.com/?3yg84f1iwi1vi6h

mp3: 44.1 kHz / 320 kbs CBR
http://www.mediafire.com/?vc4ayc7dmpdmss9

if you listen to one 4 or 5 times in a row, then compare it to the other, you should notice a difference in the 'depth' of the reverb. particularly on the double clap at the end..

feedback is welcome as i may be deluding myself.

To be honest, I don't think can tell the two apart. I don't claim to have golden ears but I'm reasonably careful with earplugs and what have you. My room is untreated but not heinously bad, and my monitors are good (KRK VXT8). I've tried on headphones too. True, if you load them into a wave editor and compare the waveforms, they look completely different, but that's because you're dealing with noise and a clap (which is pretty uncorrelated and somewhat similar to noise). Of course lossy, perceptually-driven compression is going to drastically affect how the waveform looks on noisy, uncorrelated high-frequency content - the point is how it sounds rather than how it looks.

so, clearly its not very noticeable but it does exist but it certainly doesnt hurt to limit your distortion to the digital->analog and analog->mechanical sites

Maybe, but I think it's fair to say that the sonic difference between WAV and vinyl is orders of magnitude more noticeable than the difference between WAV and 320kbps MP3.

[test_recordings]

You can't beat the sound quality of analogue with a digital reproduction, it's like wearing clothes with loads of thin holes in (an analogy of analogue's continuous waveform being solid material and digital being separated by the sampling frequency).

Go to listen to a good dub sound system spinning dub plates and it makes EDM sound weak in comparison!

Don't be a sheep though go out and put that theory to the test in the way I've described ie. make a high quality (£1000+ soundcard) recording of a dubplate and play through a decent cdj or the new serato in a club, see if you can actually hear any significant difference. I very much doubt you've actually ever done a proper comparison you've probably just compared a vinyl to an mp3 of the same tune which is an unfair comparison as one has the benefits of vinyl sound quality whilst the other is just digital, if the mp3 was a high quality recording of the vinyl they would sound pretty similar.

Sure there's a load of theory as to why analogue is better than digital but doesn't mean they won't sound pretty much exactly the same when recorded and played back with quality kit - digital recordings should be after all transparent recreations of sound so if you record a vinyl then it will sound like a vinyl, ok sample rates etc may mean when speed is changed the character of the sound is a bit different but its not very noticable

What model/spec? I've heard £1000+ setups that are quite frankly a waste of money, I was thinking of patching together a PC-based behemoth but to be frank the analogue recording process using tape is a lot more forgiving and you're not really stuck with a strict headroom limit; it just warmly saturates (to a point)... I also find the transient response of the 96kHz sampling rate a big improvement over 41- or 48kHz and it's very noticeable on rigs like Iration Steppas', DnB sounds flat through that!
I have actually compared high quality rips (24bit, 96kHz) of 70s rock like Led Zeppelin and Budgie through the same speakers and there is definitely a difference (in that the vinyl is superior). The soundcard used is probably not the best though I'm not shifting over anytime soon!

[Blerim]

fascinating thread!

[life after math]

Thank you, Static_Cast.

This thread should be stickied...permanently.

[rob sparx]

You can't beat the sound quality of analogue with a digital reproduction, it's like wearing clothes with loads of thin holes in (an analogy of analogue's continuous waveform being solid material and digital being separated by the sampling frequency).

Go to listen to a good dub sound system spinning dub plates and it makes EDM sound weak in comparison!

Don't be a sheep though go out and put that theory to the test in the way I've described ie. make a high quality (£1000+ soundcard) recording of a dubplate and play through a decent cdj or the new serato in a club, see if you can actually hear any significant difference. I very much doubt you've actually ever done a proper comparison you've probably just compared a vinyl to an mp3 of the same tune which is an unfair comparison as one has the benefits of vinyl sound quality whilst the other is just digital, if the mp3 was a high quality recording of the vinyl they would sound pretty similar.

Sure there's a load of theory as to why analogue is better than digital but doesn't mean they won't sound pretty much exactly the same when recorded and played back with quality kit - digital recordings should be after all transparent recreations of sound so if you record a vinyl then it will sound like a vinyl, ok sample rates etc may mean when speed is changed the character of the sound is a bit different but its not very noticable

What model/spec? I've heard £1000+ setups that are quite frankly a waste of money, I was thinking of patching together a PC-based behemoth but to be frank the analogue recording process using tape is a lot more forgiving and you're not really stuck with a strict headroom limit; it just warmly saturates (to a point)... I also find the transient response of the 96kHz sampling rate a big improvement over 41- or 48kHz and it's very noticeable on rigs like Iration Steppas', DnB sounds flat through that!
I have actually compared high quality rips (24bit, 96kHz) of 70s rock like Led Zeppelin and Budgie through the same speakers and there is definitely a difference (in that the vinyl is superior). The soundcard used is probably not the best though I'm not shifting over anytime soon!

Problem with recording anything with tape is it colours the sound - I know a good quality reel to reel sound great
(sure ive read some engineers record their cd collection onto reel to reel then back onto digital to get it sounding nicer) but the whole point of digital is that its as transparent as its possible to get so if your recording a vinyl onto a good quality digital source it should sound as similar as possible a recording as your gonna get. Reel to reel would be better for recording individual channels for a production Mad Professor style, you could record from vinyl to reel to reel to digital but its a bit of a mission and might overcolour the sound if the original recording is already very warm - sure some digital recordings would benefit but not so clear cut with recording from analogue source and if you wanted the recording on digital then you'd still need have to record using soundcard etc anyway just an extra stage in the process. Also reel to reels are like soundcards in that you get what you pay for only I think we're talking much bigger figures and £100+ for the tape which is getting very rare these days.

£1000+ for soundcard was just a rough figure, I know its very possible to waste money on that sort of thing but you should be able to get a decent quality soundcard for that kind of dough. Like you've said if you've done the test on a not great soundcard then its not a fair comparison - I haven't actually done this sort of testing myself but I take Loefah's word for it that its hard to hear the difference with a decent soundcard.

Not done this yet but I'm going to be recording all my new beats at the mastering studio either from laquer or acetate onto a sadie (not sure what the ad/da's are @ finyl tweek but im sure they're better than any bedroom studio soundcard) so not even using a soundcard for the process. If im cutting a dub then at least this way I will have a permanent high quality rip of the dub/laquer from its very first play (before it gets fukt up) and any pops/clicks can be removed in cool edit so this way playing digital won't be so harsh on the ears, can also process the sound in the studio after recording (bit of saturation from the cutting desk much better than limiting) - u might have to sort the engineer out a bit more for this but deffo worthwhile I think.

I will probably start selling my digital tunes in this way soon too but only from a Migration website (work in progress!) not all the usual places as they don't sell 24bit wavs - ableton users will have to warp the tunes in 16 bar sections or whatever (as the physical recording makes the pitch unstable) but cdj/serato users won't notice any difference other than tune sounds nicer and needs a bit more attention on the beatmatching

[rbnc]

Unless you have some very high spec kit a well mastered mp3 will be indeterminable from a wav.

no. even on cheap speakers you can tell. its just the nature of the compression. that would be like saying a dvix is as good as a dvd iso....

But DVDs are compressed, DIVX compression is actually far,far better than the MPEG-2 compression used on DVDs.

[rbnc]

i'm sorry but that's nonsense. even people who are sworn digital DJs will tell you that vinyl sounds better

Yep.

Ricardo Villalobos who knows more about audio than any of us talks constantly about how much better vinyl sounds.

[staticcast]

i'm sorry but that's nonsense. even people who are sworn digital DJs will tell you that vinyl sounds better

Yep.

Ricardo Villalobos who knows more about audio than any of us talks constantly about how much better vinyl sounds.

Ricardo Villalobos talks a load of shit too, to be fair. Wasn't he quoted as saying that he could hear the difference between Ableton and everything else?

[test_recordings]

i'm sorry but that's nonsense. even people who are sworn digital DJs will tell you that vinyl sounds better

Yep.

Ricardo Villalobos who knows more about audio than any of us talks constantly about how much better vinyl sounds.

Ricardo Villalobos talks a load of shit too, to be fair. Wasn't he quoted as saying that he could hear the difference between Ableton and everything else?

Different DAWs do have slightly different clock synchs apparently, maybe it's that. You can also actually hear the difference with media players (I can DEFINITELY) I don't see why not DAWs (my fave is Real Player, espec. over WinMedia, it's just an arse to load different stuff as you've got to go through loads of different menus on the player itself)

[polho]

All my vinyl is absolutely steeped in crackle and it still brings fucking deep bass. Love cd's, love mp3, love minidisc, love cassettes, what's your excuse?

[staticcast]

i'm sorry but that's nonsense. even people who are sworn digital DJs will tell you that vinyl sounds better

Yep.

Ricardo Villalobos who knows more about audio than any of us talks constantly about how much better vinyl sounds.

Ricardo Villalobos talks a load of shit too, to be fair. Wasn't he quoted as saying that he could hear the difference between Ableton and everything else?

Different DAWs do have slightly different clock synchs apparently, maybe it's that. You can also actually hear the difference with media players (I can DEFINITELY) I don't see why not DAWs (my fave is Real Player, espec. over WinMedia, it's just an arse to load different stuff as you've got to go through loads of different menus on the player itself)

The different-DAWs-sound-different horse has been flogged to death many times over. It's the in-built FX that sound different, not the mixer or "audio engine".

[Basic A]

And 140 bpm is a maths equation, not something daws can be subjected to differences on. From whatnperson above is saying about midi clocks, we shouldnt be able to mix tunes from daw a into daw b without pitching, but anyone who djs knows this just isnt true, and you can, easily.

[deadly_habit]

i'm sorry but that's nonsense. even people who are sworn digital DJs will tell you that vinyl sounds better

Yep.

Ricardo Villalobos who knows more about audio than any of us talks constantly about how much better vinyl sounds.

Ricardo Villalobos talks a load of shit too, to be fair. Wasn't he quoted as saying that he could hear the difference between Ableton and everything else?

Different DAWs do have slightly different clock synchs apparently, maybe it's that. You can also actually hear the difference with media players (I can DEFINITELY) I don't see why not DAWs (my fave is Real Player, espec. over WinMedia, it's just an arse to load different stuff as you've got to go through loads of different menus on the player itself)

unless they are using completely unique and native codecs to decode standard encoded files, or have some sort of colorization element like an eq, no... just no

as far as different DAW enigines that goes into how they are setup as far as native setups, TDM is completely different
love when people try to say something about say pro tools engine being louder than say cubase and they know 0 about the panning law setting in cubase
ricardo villalobos is talking out his ass

[wolf89]

i'm sorry but that's nonsense. even people who are sworn digital DJs will tell you that vinyl sounds better

Yep.

Ricardo Villalobos who knows more about audio than any of us talks constantly about how much better vinyl sounds.

Ricardo Villalobos talks a load of shit too, to be fair. Wasn't he quoted as saying that he could hear the difference between Ableton and everything else?

To be honest. I will say that you have to work hard to make something not sound like it's been made on Reason...

[Basic A]

i'm sorry but that's nonsense. even people who are sworn digital DJs will tell you that vinyl sounds better

Yep.

Ricardo Villalobos who knows more about audio than any of us talks constantly about how much better vinyl sounds.

Ricardo Villalobos talks a load of shit too, to be fair. Wasn't he quoted as saying that he could hear the difference between Ableton and everything else?

To be honest. I will say that you have to work hard to make something not sound like it's been made on Reason...

Reason doesnt count, almost every plugin on that program claims to be colored, modeled after analogue, and you dont have numbers on your mixer do you?

[staticcast]

i'm sorry but that's nonsense. even people who are sworn digital DJs will tell you that vinyl sounds better

Yep.

Ricardo Villalobos who knows more about audio than any of us talks constantly about how much better vinyl sounds.

Ricardo Villalobos talks a load of shit too, to be fair. Wasn't he quoted as saying that he could hear the difference between Ableton and everything else?

To be honest. I will say that you have to work hard to make something not sound like it's been made on Reason...

Reason's the exception; I believe the actual mixer is an analog model (same with Record).

[test_recordings]

And 140 bpm is a maths equation, not something daws can be subjected to differences on. From whatnperson above is saying about midi clocks, we shouldnt be able to mix tunes from daw a into daw b without pitching, but anyone who djs knows this just isnt true, and you can, easily.

Meh on the DAW audio quality I haven't noticed personally but I the 'swing' function definitely is a cause of differences in quantisation between programs and I have actually seen that as the case (but straight-locked stuff sounds shit anyway and real drummers are never absolutely perfect, hell the first Red Hot Chili Peppers album was recorded to a click track made by the drummer tapping to a click track they complained the drum machine had 'no soul'!)