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Simon Wood, Uk

Hey Paul - Try the decaf next time

I think that when a vinyl record is played our ears also pick up the ambient noise of the record. it's like when you hear someones earbud headphones on the bus. they are maxing out to the latest tupac and all the rest of us hear is tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tikkka tsk tsk. playing a record with no amp, actually has a fairly loud sound that when mixed with an amp turned up, adds some air.

just a guess, dont flame me

Jeff Adkins, Los Angeles, Ca, U.s.a.

Are we hearing the actual vinyl to some degree, when a record is played? I'd assume the electronics in each turntable color the sound as well. At any rate, I'm convince a large part of the attraction of vinyl, tubes, tape sat, etc. is due to there being much better music in the past, especially in the 70's. People had to master instruments back then, for example, instead of relying on tech, and I think that made a big difference in their compositional abilities. Then again maybe it's as you say, just me and the fact that's the music and sound I was exposed to early in life. But contemporary records really are far more simplistic, formulaic, and derivative, even if that's what we used as a critique back in the day as well....

John, Tidewater, Va, USA

@Paul Manfrini: You should write your own blog...That way I could enjoy this one without your snobish ramblings. Honestly, your post (4 times longer than any other) is at best a copyright infringement on previous articals. If I wanted to read a post from on top of a high horse, I'd pick up a post about clidesdales.

Paul Manfrini, Irvine, USA

Oh, please use your brain!
Of course digital recordings are better than analog recordings. But you are losing sight of the fact that there is a wide range of quality in both formats.
Bottom line is that the BEST QUALITY analog recordings are not even close to the BEST QUALITY digital recordings. Just reading your comments made me laugh, there are people talking about MP3! MP3 is a compressed format, and there are several degrees of compression. So talking about MP3 is meaningless unless you specify what bit rate you are considering. MP3 is not a good example of a digital format to compare to vinyl because mp3 is a compromise, so that we are able to carry our music with us, much in the same way that cassettes were a compromise in the vinyl days. In other words, mp3 is to CDs what cassettes are to vinyl.

Let me point out that just because analog is not a "sampling" of the audio signal it doesn't mean that it's a "perfect" reproduction: far from it. Analog recordings are huge compromises in both frequency range and dynamic range that don't even resemble the original sounds, even in the BEST QUALITY analog recordings.

Comparing analog vs. digital recordings is like comparing photographs captured on film vs. photographs captured digitally in a silicon chip. You cannot compare them in general, because there is a huge range of quality in both, however, the BEST QUALITY image captured in film doesn't come even near the BEST QUALITY image captured digitally.

And by the way, "sampling" is a much more accurate method of capturing both sounds and images once you are above certain sampling rates that are way beyond what our senses can detect, and by "well beyond" I mean IMPOSSIBLY beyond. The evidence is just overwhelming: just watch a movie in Blu-ray format in a good LED LCD HD monitor, and then watch the same movie in a movie theater with the best analog projector available: no one in their right mind would argue that the movie theater's analog image is better than the Blu-ray version.

Sound has basically 2 dimensions, that's why it lends itself to parallels with a 2-dimentional image. The 2 dimensions of any given sound wave are FREQUENCY which is represented along the X axis on all diagrams, and AMPLITUDE (also called pressure level) which is represented along the Y axis. To clarify, the X axis is the horizontal line and it measures changes in the waveform over time, and the Y axis is the vertical line, and it measures the magnitude of the changes.

In digital audio, the X resolution is expressed in measurements per second, and the most common resolution is 44,100 measurements per second or 44.1 kHz. The Y resolution is expressed in "bits" (binary digits): this tells us in essence how small of a fraction can we use to detect small changes in each of the 44,100 meaurements the converter makes every given second.

Professional studio digital recorders, and even home digital recording systems today can have resolutions of 24bits for the Y and 192 KHz for the X. Where the bits express the accuracy of the dynamic range (sound pressure levels) and the KiloHertz express the accuracy of the frequency range.

To parallel the movie experience to the audio experience let me just say that at Red Book (CD) sampling rates of 44.1 KHz measured with 16 bit accuracy (that's 16 binary digits for each value measured) the accuracy is such, that if it were an image instead of audio, single molecules could be reproduced. We are not able to see single molecules unless we look through an electron microscope. No one listens to music with the equivalent of an electron microscope slowing down the wave form so that we can hear the microscopic details (and nobody would want to, because it wouldn't sound like music anymore).

To conclude, let me point out that ANALOG recordings are subject to SAMPLING RATES as well, because analog recordings are done by electrically charging small cells of magnetic material on the surface of a moving tape. These magnetically sensitive cells are called DOMAINS and they have a specific size which is not that small. To make them appear smaller, recording engineers used to speed up the tape, so more of these domains would pass over the recording head at any given second. Even with the faster tape speeds used in professional recording studios, the number of domains passing over the recorder's head gap (the magnetizing segment of the head) doesn't even come close to 44,100 (the sampling rate of a Red Book CD) and the range of magnetic charge that each of these tape domains can take doesn't even come close to the range offered by 16 binary digits.

So analog recordings, before they even get to vinyl, are already far from the original sound. Then, the process of mastering the waveform with the cutting stylus distorts the sound even further, and the sound fed into the stylus has to be formatted with a narrower dynamic range in order to prevent the stylus from clipping. The mechanic limitations of the stylus also narrow the frequency range even further. This original lacquer-coated aluminum disc is then used to produce a metal disc through a multiple plating process. The metal disc is then used to press the vinyl.

Whoever thinks that the audio coming out of this barbarian and rudimentary process that is full of compromises and approximations, can even hold a candle to today's ultra-accurate digital recordings, well then, these people can delude themselves into pretty much anything. I will sell them tape worms too, if they want to lose weight.

Paul Manfrini
Saturday, February 27, 2010


For those who need a refresher course on how sound is recorded:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/manual-1.2/tutorial_basics_1.html

Karel Post, Grou, The Netherlands

I recently bought the latest Yello CD.
I think the experience of that record is very well captured on CD, so it's not only the quality that counts, also te "sonic experience" that you get from playing a vinyl record or CD.

I personally immediately feel at home with quality reel to reel and vinyl recordings.
CD's are soundwise often "throw away" in my opinion, whilst i really cherish my vinyl collection.

I preferably use vintage DAC and CD player designs as i think a lot CD-players with modern converter designs sound "spongy" and inconsistent.
They lack the "bite" (or byte) of for example classic Philips players / converters or Pro-end DCS units and Otari RADAR in the studio.

It ALSO depends as was mentioned in the article for which format the music was produced.
Like the Yello-Touch album sounding really great on CD because Boris Blank USES the dynamic possibility's (especially the silence not the audiodynamics themselves) of the digital format.

Keith, Hollister, USA

Don't forget one significant point... digital is not true to an analog waveform. Regardless of the sampling frequency, a digital waveform (taken from analog audio) is a SAMPLING of the analog waveform. There's much talk about MP3 versus WAV files, as an example, where MP3 is compressed and, therefore, not a true representation. However, WAV is lossless. True, but the bottom line is that digital recordings are not perfectly true to the analog signal. Can we hear this imperfection? Another controversial point. Analog recordings on tape and vinyl, with the inherent limitations, are exact analog presentations of the original audio that was captured and recorded. Digital isn't.

Julien, Paris, France

Vintage, to me, is popular because people don't know what to do with their current set ups and think that if they could only get a Juno 60 and a tape recording system, their songs would finally sell. I wonder how many people in 2030 will be trying to downgrade themselves to Mac OS 10.6.2 because ... "it ... just had that sound!"

Paul Van Der Jonckheyd, Lier, Belgium

Hi RecordProducer.com
I have been working as a recording engineer since the late 60's and have been cutting vinyl discs from 1972 until today.
To me,there are mainly two reasons why a lot of people still prefer the sound of vinyl over the sound of most CD's.
1. A cutting system, the cutting head, has the same tolerances as the human ear: the excessive bass and crazy high frequences that you can find on todays CD's are just not possible on vinyl.
2. The old days' vinyls are much less compressed than most today's CD's, giving a much more open and dynamic sound.
I still love cutting the black vinyl disc
Paul Van der Jonckheyd, FOON Mastering Center, Belgium, eu, www.foon.be

Francis, Yaounde, Cameroon

Hello RecordProducer.com. I read the article on the superiority of vinyl over digital, and would have to agree completely. I was born in 88, so i cannot say taht I was deep into the era, since I witnessed mostly the change from cassette to CD, and then to digital downloads, but as an aspiring hip hop producer and audio engineer, I've had to mess with vinyl while sampling, and I've grown attached to the sonic quality. There is something about vinyl that gives music some sort of warmth, to which listeners very much like myself would get attached to immediately. Digital is more defined and cleaner, sure, but it lacks character, which is so essential to envelope the listener, and make him/her feel as part of the performance. It is similar to live shows and CDs... people prefer concerts to listening to their CDs, but would still listen to the CDs since the performances can't be repeated incessantly. You can't say that listening to Jimi Hendrix's All Along The WatchTower on vinyl does not surpass most of the performances on digital nowadays... It does, on all levels.

To conclude, I agree with you that vinyl IS infinitely better than digital.