Is Chronological Order Too Much To Ask For?

[Bryn]

I recall looking very closely at the emergence of DVD-A and SACD. What to do? Oh no, not another format war...

Two points of discouragement kept emerging in the reports and reviews of DVD-A: first, the inclusion of "copy code" duplicate protection embedded into the discs, which was supposedly inaudible but turned out on test to be all-too-audible to reviewers, damaging to SQ. (This found its way onto many CDs too, including some Warners Elatus issues of Harnoncourt).
Then, the need for a screen to access the TOC, bass management and various other issues in the more complex format was off-putting for anyone used to the simplicity of CD replay...
It was a pity, it had huge potential really....

But in the last 5-10 years, rapid and significant innovations in DAC architecture have really changed the CD game; it can sound so good now, you might think, who needs SACD anymore? But it has its adherents just as vinyl does.... DVD-A begat the 24-bit download.... there's a lot of high-quality choices now, the main problem is navigating through it and settling with something.

So the attraction (and sheer simplicity) of streaming, whether CD or hi-res quality or not, is all too obvious...

Two point:

1. Audio DVDs following the DVD Video standard and using 48/24 or 96/24 for the 2-channel LPCM audio do not suffer the problems you mention re. DVD-Audio.

2. Many (most?) audio DVDs, inlcuding those compiled using Audio DVD Creator, offer an auto-start option, avoiding the need for a screen.

[richardfinegold]

Vinyl, in certain circumstances, can provide superior audio quality over the CD. CDs are limited in this respect by the format despite all the hype which surrounded its launch. Hi-res can only be afforded by SACDs, downloads or streaming formats. Side breaks are also a thing of the past. Thanks to Qobuz I can listen to the entire Haydn (never mind Bartok) quartet oeuvre in order without leaving my chair!

I agree that high Rez can only be offered by SACD, downloads, Blu Ray, and whatever, but how did you work vinyl in there as a higher resolution medium than CDs? Lps have about a third the dynamic range of CDs. They suffer from speed instability, surface noise, dust bunnies on the stylus, and the constant assault of the needle on the grooves. Claiming vinyl as a High Res Media is a non sequitir

[Bryn]

I agree that high Rez can only be offered by SACD, downloads, Blu Ray, and whatever, but how did you work vinyl in there as a higher resolution medium than CDs? Lps have about a third the dynamic range of CDs. They suffer from speed instability, surface noise, dust bunnies on the stylus, and the constant assault of the needle on the grooves. Claiming vinyl as a High Res Media is a non sequitir

You seem to have forgotten left/right groove side anomalies and RIAA curve approximations in the playback equipment.

[Serial_Apologist]

Lps have about a third the dynamic range of CDs.

I just knew there was something I still liked about LPs: not having to constantly adjust the volume so as to be able to hear very quiet passages, and not disturb neighbours or frighten myself out of my wits!

[jayne lee wilson]

Two point:

1. Audio DVDs following the DVD Video standard and using 48/24 or 96/24 for the 2-channel LPCM audio do not suffer the problems you mention re. DVD-Audio.

2. Many (most?) audio DVDs, inlcuding those compiled using Audio DVD Creator, offer an auto-start option, avoiding the need for a screen.

Yes, but most of the early features and reviews of the new medium inevitably had to give a fairly detailed account of what were essentially multi-channel playback machines, with all that entailed in learning how to use them. Most of the few DVD-A releases on the market were described as multichannel anyway, requiring the end user to navigate through the menus to tailor playback or even downsample into a two-channel system - the reviews often remarked that a good-sized screen would make this easier, not to mention sonic implications ....

I think later designs did deal with the challenges more succinctly, but "copy protection" was a real audiophile-passion-killer, most of us had lost interest by then and releases were never as numerous as SACD. Anyone remember Dual-Disc?
We saw the writing that was upon the wall..

They were interesting times....one slick young scribe on HiFiChoice bemoaned that most of the scarce DVD-A releases were of jazz or classical, complaining that classical collectors were dated, ludditic, two-cramped-channel stick-in-the-muds.

"What multichannel needs right now isn't Brahms, it's Britney" he concluded.
But the World chose the iPod....

[cloughie]

I just knew there was something I still liked about LPs: not having to constantly adjust the volume so as to be able to hear very quiet passages, and not disturb neighbours or frighten myself out of my wits!

Now about listening to the start of Firebird. The dilemma - furn it up on CD to hear it, or listen on vinyl beneath the scrape and click!

[Sir Velo]

I agree that high Rez can only be offered by SACD, downloads, Blu Ray, and whatever, but how did you work vinyl in there as a higher resolution medium than CDs? Lps have about a third the dynamic range of CDs. They suffer from speed instability, surface noise, dust bunnies on the stylus, and the constant assault of the needle on the grooves. Claiming vinyl as a High Res Media is a non sequitir(sic)

I obviously didn't explain myself well! Umslopogaas is probably a far better advocate for vinyl than I am and can explain its characteristics more eloquently. However, as I understand it, vinyl is the only consumer playback format that's fully analog and fully lossless at source. Contrary to popular belief, CDs are not lossless. A digital recording takes snapshots of the analog signal at a certain rate (for CDs it is 44,100 times per second) which means it is not capturing the complete sound wave. It is approximating it with a series of steps. Some sounds that have very quick transitions will be distorted because they change too quickly for the sample rate. A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform. This means that no information is lost. The output of a record player is analog. It can be fed directly to your amplifier and requires no conversion from digital to analog. Having said that, vinyl has many issues in playback which you refer to. Not least it requires high end equipment to reach true audiophile quality. Like you I suspect a lot of the vinyl neophytes are converts because (a) they have been weaned on MP3 files and have come to associate that lossy format with digital; (b) rock music is flattered by vinyl (ie vinyl sounds well in the midrange frequencies); and (c) vinyl is "cool". I certainly wouldn't dream of calling vinyl "hi res", and only in certain rare cirumstances (outlined above) would I compare it with CDs, let alone hi res downloads.

[prb]

I obviously didn't explain myself well! Umslopogaas is probably a far better advocate for vinyl than I am and can explain its characteristics more eloquently. However, as I understand it, vinyl is the only consumer playback format that's fully analog and fully lossless at source. Contrary to popular belief, CDs are not lossless. A digital recording takes snapshots of the analog signal at a certain rate (for CDs it is 44,100 times per second) which means it is not capturing the complete sound wave. It is approximating it with a series of steps. Some sounds that have very quick transitions will be distorted because they change too quickly for the sample rate. A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform. This means that no information is lost. The output of a record player is analog. It can be fed directly to your amplifier and requires no conversion from digital to analog. Having said that, vinyl has many issues in playback which you refer to. Not least it requires high end equipment to reach true audiophile quality. Like you I suspect a lot of the vinyl neophytes are converts because (a) they have been weaned on MP3 files and have come to associate that lossy format with digital; (b) rock music is flattered by vinyl (ie vinyl sounds well in the midrange frequencies); and (c) vinyl is "cool". I certainly wouldn't dream of calling vinyl "hi res", and only in certain rare cirumstances (outlined above) would I compare it with CDs, let alone hi res downloads.

This isn't correct. A correctly-designed digital system loses only information that is inaudible to the human ear, and can then perfectly preserve that information through every stage of transmission or storage, while an analog system loses information at every stage.

[Dave2002]

I just knew there was something I still liked about LPs: not having to constantly adjust the volume so as to be able to hear very quiet passages, and not disturb neighbours or frighten myself out of my wits!

It is possible to “overcome” some of the “problems” with CDs you mentioned about hearing quiet passages, or not frightening yourself or the neighbours, though I’m not sure if the kit required is available for use in a domestic environment. My car audio has the facility to compress the dynamics, and also to adjust the volume level depending on the car engine noise/speed. The audio quality is significantly lower than decent audio, however. You might not like the listening environment though.

[Bryn]

. . . as I understand it, vinyl is the only consumer playback format that's fully analog and fully lossless at source. Contrary to popular belief, CDs are not lossless.

This, to put it mildly, is highly misleading. The level of processing used between microphone and cutting lathe for vinyl discs varies greatly from dynamic range compression and application of RIAA equalisation to further frequency manipulation, including filtering out of very low frequencies. These distortions even apply to so-called direct to disc masters.

A digital recording takes snapshots of the analog[sic] signal at a certain rate (for CDs it is 44,100 times per second) which means it is not capturing the complete sound wave.

I would suggest you familiarise yourself with the work of Harry Nyquist. What you claim is of the order of an urban myth. As long as the Nyquist frequency for the highest frequency to be recorded is exceeded, the resulting playback can be a full analogue of the original. For this reason, a hard filter is applied to all frequencies above 22kHz (considerably above the highest frequency the human ear can directly respond to) prior to sampling for CD. These days, far higher sampling frequencies are employed in the original sampling. When preparing such material for CD production, the sample rate is down-converted (with the application of anti-aliasing filtering to prevent aliasing artefacts). There is a great deal of misleading marketing hype applied to the current vinyl fad.

[Dave2002]

Bryn's response is correct. However, I have on occasions heard LPs on very good equipment which sounded as good or better than CDs. To get anything like that level of SQ many ££££s have to be spent, and where an LP does sound better than a CD is probably mostly because the CD transfer has been poorly done.

The kit which is now on sale in supermarkets would not be anything like the level of quality required to get even moderately reasonable sound.

[Bryn]

Bryn's response is correct. However, I have on occasions heard LPs on very good equipment which sounded as good or better than CDs. To get anything like that level of SQ many ££££s have to be spent, and where an LP does sound better than a CD is probably mostly because the CD transfer has been poorly done.

The kit which is now on sale in supermarkets would not be anything like the level of quality required to get even moderately reasonable sound.

I certainly do not intend to dispose of any LPs in my considerable collection unless they are effectively unplayable or have been replaced by decent digitalised replacements. I did lose rather too many as the result of a house fire, back in the '80s. However, on the rare occasions that I spin an LP, I make a point of taking the opportunity to simulaneously digitally record it at high resolution for editing and transfer to either CD-R or DVD-R, in addition to retaining it on hard disc. It will then probably never be played from the vinyl disc again.

[Conchis]

I certainly do not intend to dispose of any LPs in my considerable collection unless they are effectively unplayable or have been replaced by decent digitalised replacements. I did lose rather too many as the result of a house fire, back in the '80s. However, on the rare occasions that I spin an LP, I make a point of taking the opportunity to simulaneously digitally record it at high resolution for editing and transfer to either CD-R or DVD-R, in addition to retaining it on hard disc. It will then probably never be played from the vinyl disc again.

I'm amazed by how much vinyl I still have. I didn't get around to replacing vinyl with CD equivalents until relatively late in the day, so ending up keeping the vinyl anyway.

A lot of it is made up Cademon sound recordings which I keep as object d'art because of their truly wonderful covers.

Most of the rock LPs I have are reissues from the 80s - bad from a sonic point of hearing and (I'd say) probably worthless. But I do retain some original vinyl Fairport Convention and Donovan vinyl that is (possibly) valuable (I bought it second hand in the 80s, after the gatefolds had been culled from the then-present iterations).

[Bryn]

Were some of those broadcast? I really don't recollect them at all. However, I did go to a George Crumb immersion at the Barbican a number of years ago, and there have been others since - though I didn't quite manage to get to them.

I missed this earlier but yes, they were all broadcast, and I recorded them to cassette at the time (since copied to CD-R). Some wonderful performances.

[gradus]

I still have record playing equipment and can still be thrilled by the quality and silent surfaces of some records even having owned them for nearly 50 years eg Monteux Daphnis and Chloe. Of course my hearing has deteriorated so there is even less reason to discard LPs that have given so much enjoyment.
I think a healthy dose of scepticism is required when the experts or the golden-eared claim to discern significant differences when reviewing music reproducing systems, it's not that I don't acknowledge differences in sound its the qualitative judgements that I distrust. Out of interest has anyone here actually measured the frequency range of their hearing?