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Post by Ward on May 24, 2018 22:00:19 GMT -6
Well this just got interesting!
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 15,011
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Post by ericn on May 25, 2018 6:30:13 GMT -6
Well this just got interesting! Those glass make analog mixes much more 3-Dđ
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Post by Guitar on May 25, 2018 16:35:45 GMT -6
It's kind of hilarious that people are talking about inaudible bandwidth when vinyl rolls off around 15 kHz...
Anyway, I love the sound of vinyl, I love the experience of playing records. I do think they sound better.
However the convenience of digital makes it my 95% percent choice for listening!
However to that, I adore my 5% of time spent with my beautiful vinyl rig and record collection!
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Post by johneppstein on May 26, 2018 10:55:15 GMT -6
It's kind of hilarious that people are talking about inaudible bandwidth when vinyl rolls off around 15 kHz... Anyway, I love the sound of vinyl, I love the experience of playing records. I do think they sound better. However the convenience of digital makes it my 95% percent choice for listening! However to that, I adore my 5% of time spent with my beautiful vinyl rig and record collection! In this age of bridkwall filters people often tend to forget that "rolled off" does not mean nonexistent. As long as something is there it's retreivable. As long as something is there it still has an effect on the waveform.
The lowest harmonic of a 10k square wave is a "supposedly inaudible" 20k. Yet most people can detect some qualitative difference between the square wave and a sine wave. It just "feels different", although perhaps if you start over-intellectualizing it in a blind A/B test you might not be able to explain why.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on May 26, 2018 11:14:27 GMT -6
Vinyl rolls off around 15k however it's caused by the size of the cutting stylus. The tiny ones used at 1/3 speed for quad allowed response to 40k.
There is no evidence that any human can hear above around 22k. however, the information above that can produce artifacts down in the hearing range. Another complicating factor is that all low pass filters ring with pre and or post-echo. Different people have widely differing sensitivity to that. I know people who can spot it in a heartbeat while I'm not very sensitive to it. Beware of anybody claiming what they hear applies to all people. That ego trip is out and out B.S.
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Post by johneppstein on May 26, 2018 14:34:40 GMT -6
Vinyl rolls off around 15k however it's caused by the size of the cutting stylus. The tiny ones used at 1/3 speed for quad allowed response to 40k. There is no evidence that any human can hear above around 22k. however, the information above that can produce artifacts down in the hearing range. This is a very important thing that most people miss and, indeed, is tied in with exactly how one defines "hearing". Does perception of a difference between an high frequency sine wave and square wave, in which the harmonics of the latter are in the "ultrasonic" constitute "hearing" those allegedly imperceptible harmonics, as long as they're part of a wave with a lower fundamental, or is it some other sort of perception? Myself, I tend to regard it as a sort of hearing. Also, when testing my high frequency hearing with a sine wave oscillator I noticed that even after I couldn't exactly "hear" the tone in the normal sense I was still aware that there was something present - it was not dead silence. As close as I can describe it, it seemed to be a odd sort of "pressure" that varied somewhat with the frequency I wasn't "hearing".
One thing I'm curious about is how much of this is due to the physical hearing apparatus and how much is due to neural processing. Some evidence would seem to suggest that some stuff we "don't" hear is being filtered out by our default perceptual processing, possibly due to evolutionary factors.
It is known that the brain discards a lot of "nonessential" information.
It is often possible, however, to "educate" one's ear to hear things that they previously couldn't. Unless they have physical hearing damage or a mental block, anyway.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on May 26, 2018 14:47:45 GMT -6
Indeed education is important however hearing damage increases sensitivity to artifacts. Expectation bias complicates it further. There is a famous case of a high resolution lossy encoder that was developed for the European Broadcast Union at great expense. It had passed thousands of double-blind tests only to have an engineer at JBL in Los Angeles point out an artifact that became blatantly obvious to everyone involved once it had been described.
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Post by johneppstein on May 27, 2018 7:22:02 GMT -6
Indeed education is important however hearing damage increases sensitivity to artifacts. Expectation bias complicates it further. There is a famous case of a high resolution lossy encoder that was developed for the European Broadcast Union at great expense. It had passed thousands of double-blind tests only to have an engineer at JBL in Los Angeles point out an artifact that became blatantly obvious to everyone involved once it had been described. HAH!
Of course you know what I think of most double blind tests...
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Post by Bob Olhsson on May 27, 2018 7:37:47 GMT -6
They are a very useful tool but you need to understand that expectation bias cuts both ways! If you are invested in the idea that there shouldn't be a difference, you probably won't hear one.
I've posted this a zillion times but I'll say it again. Finding distortions and artifacts is like looking for a fly in the room using a very wide aperture, very long focal length lens. The depth of focus is tiny.
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Post by Guitar on May 27, 2018 11:54:13 GMT -6
Can someone provide a reasonable frequency response of a good turntable system? I don't think there's much left after 15 kHz.
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Post by popmann on May 27, 2018 17:01:11 GMT -6
Most decent carts go to 25k....moving coils up into the 40s.
I can testify that I rarely see a needle drop of a 70s era record that doesnât show cymbal activity in the 27khz rangeâsome part of that is cartridge distortion OF HF peaks....you can te the digital ones because theyâll show a hard line at 21ish with little trails up on snare hits and cymbal crashes. But, like I dropped a track from the Chaka red album and theee was no âlineââit was continuously up and down from 16khz in some sections to 27 in others, you can see on the digital source records the small amount that IS the cartridge distortion.
I think if you gave 100 vinyl fans a âniceâ table, youâd lose a big percentage. The better the table the closer to CD it sounds....and by that, I MEAN more like CD without the 44.1 filter effects, so often a little better, but out of thiose 100, 95 donât have the amp/speakers to even hear that stuff anyway.
At best, vinyl sounds like HD digital with messed up pitch and added noise and less bottom AND top.
Some of the discrepancy has to do with the placement in the side. One of the issues with the medium is how much high end and dynamics and overall volume inner tracks lose. Better tracking carts can alleviate a lot of the inner track distortions, but the other losses are in the press itself. Which is why I often dislike the vinylâthey would stick the ballads on the inner tracks...which they somehow figured was better to lose highs and dynamics? So, often my faves are the worst sounding on a record. Iâve done gain matched comparisons with a GOOD CD master and vinyl and HD. HD wins always to my ear. But, the other two, as you listen to the side switching back and forth....first two tracks? Vinyl sounds better....next fewâtoss up based on instrumentation....last couple? You have to redo the digital gain to match because it losss so much on the record.even after, the CD EASILY wins.
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Post by Ward on May 27, 2018 18:49:39 GMT -6
Can someone provide a reasonable frequency response of a good turntable system? I don't think there's much left after 15 kHz.
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Post by Guitar on May 27, 2018 19:22:00 GMT -6
Can someone provide a reasonable frequency response of a good turntable system? I don't think there's much left after 15 kHz. Haha, yeah that's what my brain and heart and big toe activity look like when listening to records.. On a serious note, I think the distortion, noise, and timing artifacts are a big part of why I like the sound of vinyl. Not accuracy.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on May 28, 2018 10:39:30 GMT -6
The way it's mastered and recorded with considerably less compression and eq. is most of it.
I also believe tape deteriorates over time. This is based on hearing digital copies of acetates I cut that were flat transfers. This means CDs mastered from the original tapes may well not sound as good as lacquers cut within days or even hours of when the mix was printed. The thing is that digital recordings made from vinyl or lacquers sound mighty close so I have a hard time blaming digital.
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Post by johneppstein on May 28, 2018 13:22:50 GMT -6
The way it's mastered and recorded with considerably less compression and eq. is most of it. I also believe tape deteriorates over time. This is based on hearing digital copies of acetates I cut that were flat transfers. This means CDs mastered from the original tapes may well not sound as good as lacquers cut within days or even hours of when the mix was printed. The thing is that digital recordings made from vinyl or lacquers sound mighty close so I have a hard time blaming digital. Well, it's well known that some tape formulations do physically deteriorate over time, somewhat dependent on storage conditions, but there's also something that I wouldn't actually call deterioration exactly. I has to do with the fact that any magnetized substance/object loses a certain amount of field strength in a relatively short time period after the initial magntization before achieving long term stability.
So yeah, anything cut off a freshly recorded master is going to be somewhat better than something cut after the master has been stored for awhile. How much depends on the tape formulation and how hot it was initially recorded.
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Post by Ward on May 28, 2018 17:58:35 GMT -6
The way it's mastered and recorded with considerably less compression and eq. is most of it. I also believe tape deteriorates over time. This is based on hearing digital copies of acetates I cut that were flat transfers. This means CDs mastered from the original tapes may well not sound as good as lacquers cut within days or even hours of when the mix was printed. The thing is that digital recordings made from vinyl or lacquers sound mighty close so I have a hard time blaming digital. Were these transfers 16 bit, Mr. Bob Olhsson ?
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Post by Bob Olhsson on May 28, 2018 18:14:57 GMT -6
Indeed, 16 bit.
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Post by Ward on May 29, 2018 6:44:31 GMT -6
I did a myriad of transfers from analog to 16 bit back 20 years ago, and many more about 8-10 years ago. They still hold up.
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 15,011
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Post by ericn on May 29, 2018 8:08:29 GMT -6
Itâs amazing how rushed the early transfers were, and how many of those are still the basis of what we are listening to today. One of the biggest things that I still notice on early transfers was how much more bass there was. I remember sitting in a demo at CES and Mobile Fidelity was debuting one of their Gold CD reissues of one of the Steely Dan records, the guy who did the transfer was so excited about all the lowend he was able to get out of it, the original mastering engineer, I think it was Ludwig, was there and was saying how he had to cut all the lowend to make it listenable and playable on the average turntable.
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