Vinyl

[craigr]

Ok I have recently bought a turntable and have been having a lot of fun listening to old vinyl you can find around for good prices. As an engineer type I know about the benefits of digital. However I admit that some of the vinyl recordings definitely sound better than my CD/digital versions. I am not blaming the format, I am blaming the audio engineers that screwed up the mastering onto the CD!

I have some CDs that sound better than the vinyl versions, but I also have some CDs that sound just flat out awful next to the original vinyl version. The contrast is so striking I'm considering ripping the vinyl to digital so I can play that instead.

Also there is a more involved element to vinyl that I was missing with digital. With digital I can have thousands of songs loaded and playing randomly. It kind of made listening to music more like a background filler. With the vinyl I find I have to sit down and get the album ready and just enjoy it as the artists wanted it to be listened to. You just can't leave it running either, so you have to make time to sit down and just enjoy the music. Plus, the album covers and artwork are fun to look at compared to the 1"x1" digital photo you get with downloaded music.

I'm listening to Led Zepplin on vinyl right now and it is just a great sound. I had some Franz Listzt Hungarian Rhapsody #2 going and it sounded like the piano was right in front of me, something I rarely get from the other digital versions I have.

Any other vinyl lovers out there? I bought a used Technics 1200mk5g and it's a great player. The Technics 1200s are legendary and you can find the more common 1200mk2 very cheaply on Craigslist. Technics sadly stopped making them just two years ago.

[dualstow]

As it happens, I have a beautiful Technics player that is the only turntable I have ever owned. I have all the official Led Zeppelin albums plus a couple dozen bootlegs with very interesting sleeves. Remember when cover art mattered? ;-)

Although I bought a few things solely for collecting -- David Bowie on clear vinyl, put out by the wonderful Rykodisc outfit; Kate Bush on metal acetate -- I mostly bought used records when I was in college. It was great to try out entire albums for the same amount of money that now gets you two tracks on iTunes.

I have heard Neil Young's rants about how great the sound of vinyl was, and how poor CDs were. I'm not convinced. But yeah, some albums just weren't properly mastered for CD.  I think it was George Harrison who complained about the percussion on the CD of Sgt Pepper's.
When I first started buying CDs, they were marked AAD, ADD or DDD. (A for Analog, D for Digital.). At least Neil's were all DDD.

Enjoy!

[craigr]

Yeah I'm enjoying the cover art again. Led Zepplin had the best. Unfortunately where I live vinyl has gotten so popular that some albums now cost as much as they did when new. However most of them in excellent condition are under four bucks.

With vinyl I mainly think it just comes down to how it was mastered. One thing I had never considered is that audio engineers may mix an album knowing it is going to be played in a loud car or with small earbud headphones. That is a much different mode than knowing you have an LP that is going to be played on a home stereo. So I understand why they may boost the compression to make it louder, etc. However this makes it sound worse sometimes compared to the vinyl version.

Mostly I find I'm just slowing down and listening to an entire album whereas before I'd just kind of have random stuff playing. Some of the albums I bought (mostly classical) are marked "digital" on cover as a selling point! Funny to think that what was a marketing point back then is now viewed as a negative by hardcore vinyl lovers.

The other thing is that some music I bought simply doesn't have a digital transfer of any kind (no CD, etc.). So the only way to get it is on vinyl. There is a ton of music out there that simply won't be available in any other form than vinyl.

[Storm]

I have a large collection of vinyl as I used to DJ in the 90s and early 2000s.  Almost all of my vinyl are pressings of techno, house, or trance music, which I used to mix on a pair of Technics 1200s.  The 1200s are legendary because the quartz lock on the pitch controls allows very precise adjustments in pitch so that you can match the beats of the record that is playing into the record you are going to play next, allowing the crowd to keep dancing without that annoying pause in between songs.

That being said, I'm really under no illusions that vinyl sounds better than CD.  Vinyl does have a warmth due to the way that the analog process slightly distorts the signal.  We perceive this warmth as sounding more natural, which perhaps is a more pleasing sound to many, but what makes that pleasing is simple distortion.  Distortion in a more natural way, such as with vacuum tube amps and reel to reel tapes that when overdriven sound pleasing to the human ear, is still distortion.

That being said, if you drive a digital signal past 0db (maximum amplitude) you will get the most harsh, unpleasing distortion imaginable.  I guess you could say that analog distorts in a way that is pleasing to the human ear, with vacuum tubs and tape heads that are overdriven giving off pleasant harmonics.  Digital distorts in a way that is totally unnatural and should never be  attempted.

Vinyl does degrade in quality over time, especially if played often, and you will find older records that have been played too often, left in a warm climate, or perhaps played with too much needle weight to be missing some high end clarity.

Another thing to consider is that any music created past the 1990s was most likely recorded to digital, so a vinyl pressing of such music is simply converting it back to the analog realm, and cannot really add anything that wasn't present on the original digital recording, except of course, that pleasing vinyl distortion.

I suspect the reason why you find the Led Zeppelin vinyl to sound so good is because it was produced with analog guitars, through analog tube amplifiers, recorded through an analog tube mixing desk, to analog tape, and pressed onto analog vinyl.  In short, the entire musical supply chain back then was designed for analog.  The recording engineers at the time knew a lot of tricks to making it sound excellent - for example, overdriving the tape deck because the distortion it added was very pleasing.  One engineer (I forget who) practically invented the phaser/flanger effect by running two tape decks with the same recording and slowing down the tape head on one of them, thereby causing one copy to play slightly out of phase with the other.  This became the basis for the modern phaser/flanger guitar pedal.

In any case, I'm not trying to convince you that analog doesn't sound better - it probably does in many cases.  All I'm trying to say really is that the music supply chain was entirely different at that point in time.  The music supply chain is completely digital now and brand new pressings onto vinyl doesn't make a lot of sense to me.  It would be the equivalent of having a master woodworker who crafted hand carved furniture working on a modern furniture assembly line.  But, I do have to say, the furniture they made by hand was probably 10x better quality and lasted 10x longer - much like the music made back then.

[MediumTex]

Storm, that was a really great post.

Thanks Craig for bringing up this great topic. 

I see these USB turntables here and there.  How does vinyl sound when transferred to a computer?

[gizmo_rat]

I left my record collection in our old house, I wish I'd been into something a little more lasting than early electronica and Goth punk.

The 12 inch picture discs still looked pretty striking. I did hear on a recent homage to the 80's on the radiogram that the production costs of some 12 inch picture discs and cover artwork meant that the record company were making a loss on each sale. So bizarrely a hit could put them in danger of bankruptcy. Can't get more 80's than that.   

[craigr]

I have a large collection of vinyl as I used to DJ in the 90s and early 2000s.  Almost all of my vinyl are pressings of techno, house, or trance music, which I used to mix on a pair of Technics 1200s.  The 1200s are legendary because the quartz lock on the pitch controls allows very precise adjustments in pitch so that you can match the beats of the record that is playing into the record you are going to play next, allowing the crowd to keep dancing without that annoying pause in between songs.

The Technics is built like Swiss watch compared to some of the "audiophile" tables I looked at. I think people criticize the direct drive saying it is noisier than a belt drive system. However I have an extremely sensitive electronic stethoscope I use for other purposes and I decided to put it on the table and listen. Know what I heard? Nothing. There was a very slight electrical buzz coming from the strobe light. But it is so far from the pickup coil I doubt it would register. My conclusion is that the critics of this style of drive on the 1200 are way off base. The thing is dead quiet. The quartz lock is also extremely precise and the motor design is ingenious (the turntable platter is the rotor!). Very smart engineering went into that table.

That being said, I'm really under no illusions that vinyl sounds better than CD.  Vinyl does have a warmth due to the way that the analog process slightly distorts the signal.  We perceive this warmth as sounding more natural, which perhaps is a more pleasing sound to many, but what makes that pleasing is simple distortion.  Distortion in a more natural way, such as with vacuum tube amps and reel to reel tapes that when overdriven sound pleasing to the human ear, is still distortion.

Yes I agree. I went in very skeptical as well. My only conclusion is it comes down to how the digital copy was processed beforehand. I have bought some duplicate albums in mint condition to do some A/B testing (admittedly not blind). I bought a Simon and Garfunkel album because I had a CD with some of their songs on it. The CD sounded much better. Then I bought a Fleetwood Mac album and the vinyl was better than the CD. I bought a Jackson Browne album which sounds phenomenal but I've not compared it to the CD yet.

Then I bought a recent pressing of Nirvana MTV Unplugged and did a comparison. This would almost certainly be all digital. Between the CD and vinyl I could not tell the difference to be honest. Maybe a slight edge to the CD, but the vinyl didn't sound any worse if that means anything.

Albums made in the 1970s during the height of analog technology tend to all sound pretty good though. Better than the CD? I don't know if I'd say that or not yet, but certainly I'm not pining for the CD versions based on what I'm hearing.

Vinyl does degrade in quality over time, especially if played often, and you will find older records that have been played too often, left in a warm climate, or perhaps played with too much needle weight to be missing some high end clarity.

Yep. Basically there is a diamond scratching against plastic.

I had an old Victorola player once and you had to swap out the needle for a new one on each side of the record play. The old shellac records actually would form the needle to the groove as it played and if you kept using the same needle you'd eventually damage the surface. But even then I'd say the sound quality was interesting as it had no electrical in it at all. It had its own sound and it wasn't unpleasant.

I suspect the reason why you find the Led Zeppelin vinyl to sound so good is because it was produced with analog guitars, through analog tube amplifiers, recorded through an analog tube mixing desk, to analog tape, and pressed onto analog vinyl.  In short, the entire musical supply chain back then was designed for analog.  

Definitely. I suspect the earlier Pink Floyd will have a similar sound. I listened to some early Rolling Stones last night and again it sounds pretty good. Maybe a little bright in places, but it was live so controlling for everything is tough.

In any case, I'm not trying to convince you that analog doesn't sound better - it probably does in many cases.  All I'm trying to say really is that the music supply chain was entirely different at that point in time.  The music supply chain is completely digital now and brand new pressings onto vinyl doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

I agree. The only modern album I bought was Nirvana's MTV because I wanted to test a modern vinyl press from digital to the all digital version. As I said above, while I don't think it was better than CD, it definitely wasn't bad. But this is all subjective stuff and unless you do a double blind A/B you will never know. But for some of the older albums I will say I don't need an A/B to tell the difference. Some early CD transfers just sound really bad. Modern remixes may be better…

Thanks for your interesting post. It's good to hear the backstory on some of this stuff!

[craigr]

I see these USB turntables here and there.  How does vinyl sound when transferred to a computer?

I am mainly interested in an academic view. So can I rip a lossless version of vinyl to the computer and play it against a CD version and hear the difference? So it would differentiate between the digital vs. vinyl format question and the CD vs. vinyl audio mastering question.

If I do this then I think it will become clear that the audio difference is almost always due to how the audio engineers brought the album onto digital and not that digital is inherently bad as some claim.

The thing with the USB tables is that they are kind of low quality. So the drive systems probably have a lot of wow/flutter and that will affect things.

I think a decent setup for the price would be:

- Technics 1200mk2 (or later 1200) that you find on Craigslist for a good price (a hundred dollars on up I've seen) that weren't beat to death by up and coming DJs in their bedroom or at a club.

- Denon DL-110 cartridge. High output moving coil. Sounds really good for the price.

- A phono pre-amp like a Music Hall 1.2 if your receiver does not have a phono input stage (many don't now).

- Cables to connect it all. Nothing fancy needed.

If you wanted to transfer to digital, you could probably plug the player into your audio input on your computer and do it that way.

[Coffee]

Can't... resist... temptation... to make fun of Craig....

"Craig: What are you burning in the basement? Don't make me send your mother down there..."

My mental image of Craig is of an old retired guy with too much time on his hands, listening to records and shaving with a straight razor, just to fill his day.  From his mother's basement.  -zing.

[craigr]

Can't... resist... temptation... to make fun of Craig....

"Craig: What are you burning in the basement? Don't make me send your mother down there..."

My mental image of Craig is of an old retired guy with too much time on his hands, listening to records and shaving with a straight razor, just to fill his day.  From his mother's basement.  -zing.

A few things in my defense:

1) My mom doesn't have a basement so we live as roommates. Which is nice because I still have my race car bed with Star Wars sheets from when I was a kid.*

2) I mainly use the safety razor because the blades are around .05 each which saves a lot of money. Although I still do like having the chance to slice my face open using the straight edge every now and then.

3) I live in a small city with at least six stores that sell almost nothing but vinyl records. No joke! So if you think *I'm* bad then you should meet other people I know that turn up their noses when I mention Dire Straits on vinyl which for them is not being esoteric enough.

4) I watch almost no television. So that leaves me time at night to do delusional things like pretend vinyl sounds better than digital and write about it on the Internet.

So there!

* Actually I never had these things, but hope to one day.

[Storm]

Storm, that was a really great post.

Thanks Craig for bringing up this great topic. 

I see these USB turntables here and there.  How does vinyl sound when transferred to a computer?

Unfortunately, the quality of a digital copy depends entirely on how good the analog to digital converter (ADC) is.  So, if you have a $49 USB turntable, most likely the ADC is the cheapest part you can buy.  I would not expect to get very good results there.  Also, a huge part of what makes a turntable sound good are things like a lack of rumble (solid platter), a good needle, and a tonearm that doesn't pick up a lot of excess vibration from the speakers.  Your average USB turntable has none of these.

The best way to go would be to find someone like Craig that has a nice turntable setup, and connect it to a good studio quality USB sound card, and record it that way.

[Storm]

The Technics is built like Swiss watch compared to some of the "audiophile" tables I looked at. I think people criticize the direct drive saying it is noisier than a belt drive system. However I have an extremely sensitive electronic stethoscope I use for other purposes and I decided to put it on the table and listen. Know what I heard? Nothing. There was a very slight electrical buzz coming from the strobe light. But it is so far from the pickup coil I doubt it would register. My conclusion is that the critics of this style of drive on the 1200 are way off base. The thing is dead quiet. The quartz lock is also extremely precise and the motor design is ingenious (the turntable platter is the rotor!). Very smart engineering went into that table.

I completely agree with you on the 1200.  I've played with a lot of belt drive tables and you can't help but hear the rumble that is present in any belt drive mechanism.  The genius that went into making the entire platter the rotor of the motor is what made the 1200 ubiquitous in the dance scene.  I'm not sure how anyone could say a platter that is isolated from the magnetic drive mechanism by a layer of air is more noisy than one that has physical contact with it (through a belt).

Besides, where else could you find such a perfect example of the PP in action (at least the gold allocation ):

[Ad Orientem]

Can't... resist... temptation... to make fun of Craig....

"Craig: What are you burning in the basement? Don't make me send your mother down there..."

My mental image of Craig is of an old retired guy with too much time on his hands, listening to records and shaving with a straight razor, just to fill his day.  From his mother's basement.  -zing.

Like my daddy always said, if your gonna do something, do it right.

[craigr]

Besides, where else could you find such a perfect example of the PP in action (at least the gold allocation ):

Where did you find a photo of my turntable?  ;D

Funny though because I have the 1200mk5g "Grandmaster" that I bought used. Even has a blue LED for the needle light. I just like owning something called the "Grandmaster" and trying to tell people that with a straight face.

[Coffee]

Can't... resist... temptation... to make fun of Craig....

"Craig: What are you burning in the basement? Don't make me send your mother down there..."

My mental image of Craig is of an old retired guy with too much time on his hands, listening to records and shaving with a straight razor, just to fill his day.  From his mother's basement.  -zing.

Like my daddy always said, if your gonna do something, do it right.

Jesus Christ, look at that thing!  Was your daddy a mohel?

[Coffee]

Can't... resist... temptation... to make fun of Craig....

"Craig: What are you burning in the basement? Don't make me send your mother down there..."

My mental image of Craig is of an old retired guy with too much time on his hands, listening to records and shaving with a straight razor, just to fill his day.  From his mother's basement.  -zing.

Which is nice because I still have my race car bed with Star Wars sheets from when I was a kid.*

Yeah, I'm thinking something like this?



Although it would be funny if the man behind the modern Permanent Portfolio was actually this kid.
(Kinda looks like you, now that I think about it). 

[craigr]

I alternate my bed sheets between these two:



And...

[Ad Orientem]

Can't... resist... temptation... to make fun of Craig....

"Craig: What are you burning in the basement? Don't make me send your mother down there..."

My mental image of Craig is of an old retired guy with too much time on his hands, listening to records and shaving with a straight razor, just to fill his day.  From his mother's basement.  -zing.

Like my daddy always said, if your gonna do something, do it right.

Jesus Christ, look at that thing!  Was your daddy a mohel?

LOL @ "mohel" I had to look that up. But I will offer a little piece of advice for anyone who may be tempted to take up real shaving. NEVER, and I do mean NEVER, attempt a straight razor shave in the shower.

[Xan]

I did not know such awesome bedsheets existed.

[MediumTex]

I did not know such awesome bedsheets existed.

They do exist:



Based on all this Led Zeppelin talk I purchased the complete Led Zeppelin set through iTunes for $99.  I can now shuffle 165 Led Zeppelin songs (the whole catalog, plus several live performances), which is quite cool.

[Coffee]

I did not know such awesome bedsheets existed.

I can now shuffle 165 Led Zeppelin songs (the whole catalog, plus several live performances), which is quite cool.

Shoot me, now.

[MediumTex]

I did not know such awesome bedsheets existed.

I can now shuffle 165 Led Zeppelin songs (the whole catalog, plus several live performances), which is quite cool.

Shoot me, now.

You don't like Led Zeppelin?

What do you like?

[MachineGhost]

It's not your imagination!

And it has been quantified!

I hereby present the Dynamic Range Database: http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/

Sort it by oldest to latest year and you will see the downtrend.  It's not a CD problem per se, but a corporate capitalism problem.

The same declining dynamic range phenomenon existed with the transition of analog to digital hearing aids over the last decade.  In that case, it was due to digital aids using 16-bit ADCs which limit the dynamic range input to just 96dB.  Music easily peaks past that, especially live, and will overdrive the ADC causing distortion that cannot be resolved down the chain.  Again, it is corporate capitalism problem, though it has been very slowly changing over the past several years at the very high end as manufactuers responded to negative consumer feedback.  But for a long time, wearers were shit out of luck and for those with more severe hearing losses (the low end of the market), they still are as analogs have all but ceased production.  For them, analogs are treasured just like vinyls.

[craigr]

It's not your imagination!

And it has been quantified!

I hereby present the Dynamic Range Database: http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/

Very cool site! I tried out that software package they had to rate the dynamic range of albums. I analyzed those I thought sounded good vs. those I thought were bad and it pretty much matched what my ears told me. Some CDs I have just sound bad.

[lazyboy]

I had some old recordings of opera on vinyl. One in particular, Puccini's La Boheme with Renata Tebaldi was recorded in a Cathedral. The sound on that LP was so gorgeous, rich and warm. Really incomparable to opera on cd, which usually sounds a bit harsh.  Classical music usually sounds better to me on vinyl, but operatic voices, in particular, make the most difference. I usually experience no problem listening to pop, rock or jazz on cd. Thanks to Storm's explanation, explaining the technical reasons for the vinyl "distortion" that make it feel more pleasing and warm.