Question for the audiohpiles here.

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

I'm in love!  Who makes that one?

It's a work of art IMO. It is made by Oracle. http://www.oracle-audio.com/
The model shown is the Delphi Mk. IV. I have a very similar Mk. III that I bought used, but in absolutely mint condition about 15 years ago for about $850. I then picked up the SME V arm (also shown in the photo) for a song from an estate sale a few months later. It is still working beautifully to this day and I have no intention of buying another turntable . 

[M forever]

From a point of view of electro-mechanical craftsmanship, these are nice pieces of work, but what's the point if what they are designed for is to play back a massively flawed and outdated signal storage medium?

[71 dB]

From a point of view of electro-mechanical craftsmanship, these are nice pieces of work, but what's the point if what they are designed for is to play back a massively flawed and outdated signal storage medium?

Exactly my thoughts. 

[Daverz]

From a point of view of electro-mechanical craftsmanship, these are nice pieces of work, but what's the point if what they are designed for is to play back a massively flawed and outdated signal storage medium?

Because

1. A lot of great (or at least interesting) recordings are still only available on the outdated medium.  Why not get the best sound of them that you can?
2  LPs and their playback equipment are fun.

[Shrunk]

Because

1. A lot of great (or at least interesting) recordings are still only available on the outdated medium.  Why not get the best sound of them that you can?
2  LPs and their playback equipment are fun.

Plus some people think they sound better.  To my ears, SACD matches or even exceeds analog (haven't heard DVD-A), but it's almost irrelevent since only a negligible amount of recordings will ever be issued in the format.

I suspect that, if we check back in ten years, we will find the the LP will be the only "physical" storage medium still being manufactured, and will have survived the CD just as it has the cassette and the 8-track.

[Daverz]

Plus some people think they sound better.

Unfortunately, I'm still not one of them, despite having sunk over $4k into analog equipment.  And I'm definitely not a "digital" baby, having starting my collecting career in the mid 70s.

[71 dB]

Because

1. A lot of great (or at least interesting) recordings are still only available on the outdated medium.  Why not get the best sound of them that you can?
2  LPs and their playback equipment are fun.

1. True! I have been forced to buy vinyls because of this. Really annoying! I borrow my father's turntable, record the vinyl on my harddrive, remove the clicks and burn CD-R.
2. Yes, fun but also clumsy.

Plus some people think they sound better.  To my ears, SACD matches or even exceeds analog (haven't heard DVD-A), but it's almost irrelevent since only a negligible amount of recordings will ever be issued in the format.

I suspect that, if we check back in ten years, we will find the the LP will be the only "physical" storage medium still being manufactured, and will have survived the CD just as it has the cassette and the 8-track.

Well, they sound nicer, not better. Techically the signal on a vinyl resembles the real recorded signal much less than CD. People like vinyl because it's a constant distortion added to all recordings. All your vinyls have the same kind of familiar sound while every CD sounds "different" because there are so little distortion/colourisation. Vinyl is like a sound effect. You can add it to your recording and than put it on CD or SACD. Do you want your Mahler with sound effects or not?

[orbital]

Vinyl is like a sound effect. You can add it to your recording and than put it on CD or SACD.

My hardware production tool (Roland MC-909) has a vinyl effect that you can add to the overall sound. I sometimes play around with it by using a piano sound to which I purposely add some faux vibrato so that it sounds out of tune and with the vinyl effect added what I play comes out like a 30's piano recording 

[drogulus]

    I wouldn't buy a hugely expensive turntable because I find it highly implausible that you'd need it to capture the sound of an LP, which was designed to be played back with a device that costs far less. It's the same with $10,000 CD players. There's nothing for such a machine to do that can't be done just as well for far less. These are art objects to be admired for their own sake.

Plus some people think they sound better.  To my ears, SACD matches or even exceeds analog (haven't heard DVD-A), but it's almost irrelevent since only a negligible amount of recordings will ever be issued in the format.

      You seem to be saying that SACDs have a sound which can somehow be matched. I don't think that's true. SACDs don't sound like anything to me. Like CDs they are capable of transparently rendering what is recorded on them. Technically they are superior to CDs, an irrelevant distinction IMO. The line between hearable differences and unhearable ones lies below both CDs and SACDs.

      Tests show that you can copy an LP to CD-R with no audible difference btween them. They also show you can copy an SACD to CD-R with the same result. If SACDs sound different it's because what's on them is different, and CDs made directly from the SACD will have exactly the same difference.

[M forever]

Very true. Blind testing shows that most of these differences are imagined because people expect to hear something better.

Well, they sound nicer, not better. Techically the signal on a vinyl resembles the real recorded signal much less than CD. People like vinyl because it's a constant distortion added to all recordings. All your vinyls have the same kind of familiar sound while every CD sounds "different" because there are so little distortion/colourisation. Vinyl is like a sound effect. You can add it to your recording and than put it on CD or SACD. Do you want your Mahler with sound effects or not?

Very true, too. Plus CDs simply reveal the shortcomings of a recording more brutally than LPs.

[drogulus]

     If I had a large library of LPs which hadn't been rereleased on CD (or only in inferior versions) I'd make copies to CD-R (or just copy to my music archive on the computer). I don't think you would need a very expensive turntable to do justice to the LPs.

      Something like this would probably do nicely:
     
      Rega - P1 Turntable w/Ortofon OM5e Cartridge

     

      You should be able to find this for $350. I wouldn't pay more.

     

     

[longears]

Go to a high end audio shop.  Ask to hear the same recording, one on CD and one on vinyl, played back over high quality source components and through the same amps and speakers.  Everything else is just hot air.

[12tone.]

So question:

Do LP's sound 'better' than cds?  I don't mean better as in "Cd's don't have that crackle, hiss, pop... so of course cds sound better."  But I mean in actual recorded audio.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

So question:

Do LP's sound 'better' than cds?  I don't mean better as in "Cd's don't have that crackle, hiss, pop... so of course cds sound better."  But I mean in actual recorded audio.

There are too many factors involved for this to be an overriding concern. Quality engineering is what audiophiles should really be focusing on. Get it and ANY recording sounds astonishing.

This constant LP vs. CD argument is wearisome. With quality engineering you get first-rate sound no matter what the era.

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

LPs suck, but since I am such a great guy, I will be happy to take a few select examples off your hands for very little money. Send me a PM with a detailed list of what you have.

[M forever]

So question:

Do LP's sound 'better' than cds?  I don't mean better as in "Cd's don't have that crackle, hiss, pop... so of course cds sound better."  But I mean in actual recorded audio.

Look at it this way: there is no music on a CD or LP or any recording medium. There is no "audio" on them either. They contain information which can be used to recreate an audio signal which can be converted into sound waves. The only relevant quality criterion for any recording/playback medium is how close the recreated signal is to the original, with as little distortion and noise added as possible. In that respect, CDs are vastly superior to LPs.

When it comes to the act of listening to the playback and deciding what "sounds better", a lot of other factors come into play which have nothing to do with those media. I think 71dB put that very well a few posts above, so you should go back and read that. There is no point in arguing about personal preferences. If someone thinks LPs sound "nicer", then that's OK if it makes him happy. The endless discussion that has been going on for over a quarter of a century, whether or not LPs sound "better" or "more musical" is pretty much total nonsense. CDs reproduce the original recording much more faithful, period. Everything else has to do with factors other than the medium.

[Shrunk]

Look at it this way: there is no music on a CD or LP or any recording medium. There is no "audio" on them either. They contain information which can be used to recreate an audio signal which can be converted into sound waves. The only relevant quality criterion for any recording/playback medium is how close the recreated signal is to the original, with as little distortion and noise added as possible. In that respect, CDs are vastly superior to LPs.

When it comes to the act of listening to the playback and deciding what "sounds better", a lot of other factors come into play which have nothing to do with those media. I think 71dB put that very well a few posts above, so you should go back and read that. There is no point in arguing about personal preferences. If someone thinks LPs sound "nicer", then that's OK if it makes him happy. The endless discussion that has been going on for over a quarter of a century, whether or not LPs sound "better" or "more musical" is pretty much total nonsense. CDs reproduce the original recording much more faithful, period. Everything else has to do with factors other than the medium.

I think the sticking point is how you define "the original signal".  If you define it as what is on the master tape, then all you need do is reproduce that signal with as much fidelity as possible i.e. the proverbial  "wire with gain."

However, my ideal audio system would not reproduce the sound of a recording.  It would reproduce the sound of a performance.  I think we would all agree that even under the optimal conditions a recording still does not sound anything close to a live performance.  In a blindfold test you would almost always be able to tell a live piano performance from a recording.  So I think we must assume that the greatest degradation in the sound "signal" occurs between the actual live instrument and the microphone.

Let's use an analogy with video.  Suppose that for some reason it was impossible for a TV camera to record the colour blue.  Would the ideal TV monitor be one that accurately reproduced that signal from the camera, including the absence of blue?  I think it's obvious that the ideal monitor would "distort" the signal by replacing the blue hues that had been lost in the broadcast process.

Suppose, further, that for some reason it was also impossible for the video monitor to reproduce blue.  The video image might still be improved by reducing orange, (the complementary colour to blue, IIRC) and thereby achieving a more pleasant looking colour balance, even if not one that accurately reproduces the original image.  In other words, even though the signal might be distorted by the monitor, the resulting image might more closely resemble what one would expect to see in real life. Or, it might just be more pleasant to look at, by choosing the "correct" combination of distortions.

I understand the reasoning behind the "objectivist" philosophy of evaluating sound equipment in terms of it's neutrality and fidelity to the original signal, and I have no argument with it.  It's a perfectly valid goal.  However, I think it is equally valid to judge audio equipment based on purely subjective impressions of how much you enjoy listening to the music it produces.  And for me, personally, that goal is most consistently achieved by playing LP's thru tube amplification and high-efficiency speakers.

[head-case]

I don't find you analogy to be very fitting.  More like, if your TV has no blue, then you look at it through dirty, smudged, scratched sunglasses and don't really notice that blue is missing anymore.

I think the sticking point is how you define "the original signal".  If you define it as what is on the master tape, then all you need do is reproduce that signal with as much fidelity as possible i.e. the proverbial  "wire with gain."

However, my ideal audio system would not reproduce the sound of a recording.  It would reproduce the sound of a performance.  I think we would all agree that even under the optimal conditions a recording still does not sound anything close to a live performance.  In a blindfold test you would almost always be able to tell a live piano performance from a recording.  So I think we must assume that the greatest degradation in the sound "signal" occurs between the actual live instrument and the microphone.

Let's use an analogy with video.  Suppose that for some reason it was impossible for a TV camera to record the colour blue.  Would the ideal TV monitor be one that accurately reproduced that signal from the camera, including the absence of blue?  I think it's obvious that the ideal monitor would "distort" the signal by replacing the blue hues that had been lost in the broadcast process.

Suppose, further, that for some reason it was also impossible for the video monitor to reproduce blue.  The video image might still be improved by reducing orange, (the complementary colour to blue, IIRC) and thereby achieving a more pleasant looking colour balance, even if not one that accurately reproduces the original image.  In other words, even though the signal might be distorted by the monitor, the resulting image might more closely resemble what one would expect to see in real life. Or, it might just be more pleasant to look at, by choosing the "correct" combination of distortions.

I understand the reasoning behind the "objectivist" philosophy of evaluating sound equipment in terms of it's neutrality and fidelity to the original signal, and I have no argument with it.  It's a perfectly valid goal.  However, I think it is equally valid to judge audio equipment based on purely subjective impressions of how much you enjoy listening to the music it produces.  And for me, personally, that goal is most consistently achieved by playing LP's thru tube amplification and high-efficiency speakers.

[M forever]

Not very fitting is very nicley put. It's a bunch of half-reflected...well, let's stay nice here for once.  Sure, anyone can listen to whatever media and equipment he/she likes, that goes without saying. 71dB explained very well why some people cling on to the distorted, hazy, smudged sound of LPs.

As a former professional musician, it always amuses me when people start talking about the "sound of a performance" as opposed to the "sound of a recording" as if they were particularly "musical" listeners while people who look at technical details more soberly are just technocrats who don't see the complete picture.

The blue stuff is all confused and only half thought through, but to pick it up, if the blue was lost during recording, the idea of an "ideal monitor" which would "distort" the signal to "replace" the blue hues to bring back what was lost during the "broadcast" is silly. No playback device can intelligently fill in elements which aren't there. Neither LPs nor CDs nor any other medium are "musically intelligent", nor is there a visually intelligent monitor which could do that. Even a highly trained and artistic person could only speculate what is missing and replace it - and not in real time during playback either.

There is no "musical" element which gets lost during recordings. Recordings don't record music. They record sound waves. The music is only in our heads. In order to get the played back music as close as possible to the live music, the #1 goal is to get as close as possible to the original waveform. How the recording engineer captures that wave form is an artistic and musical decision since it is indeed not possible to exactly reproduce a live sound experience, so, just like things always look different in pictures from real life and the photographer has to decide how to use the technical limitations of his medium to get his vision of the captured object across in a way which is not just technical, but interesting to look at, in the same way the recording engineer has to make a lot of artistic decisions.

The role of recording and playback medium is simply to store what the recording engineer has captured with his equipment and reporduce it as faithfully as possible.

So, the argument is completely the wrong way around. *Especially* when we don't want to talk about naked technical facts, but the end product, the enjoyment of recorded music, then it is essential that the playback medium adds or changes as little as possible because it is not an artistically competent being. It is just a cold dead storage and playback medium. The less we notice it and its contribution, the better. The closer it gets us to the work of the people who made the recording, the better.

The idea that there is something missing from a digital recordings on CD which is there in analog recordings on LP is also completely wrong. That is the product of people reading something they don't technically understand and forming a wrong idea about it. First of all, we can't hear the frequencies which get filtered off at half the sampling rate on a digital recording (22,050Hz on a CD quality recording) anyway, and even if we could, they aren't on the LP to begin with. There is little above 10-12kHz on even the best LP which has anything remotely to do with the original signal, and it has nothing to do with "music" either. It is just random noise - the exact opposite of music in our heads.

Second, the breaking up of the waveform into samples and the resultant "craggy line" shape of the signal is not what gets played back. That gets smoothed out by filters and to a certain degree reconstructed by oversampling. It is still not quite the original, but it is much closer to what any LP could approximate.

Another problem is that people always confuse media with technical principles. Analog and digital are the latter. A *very high quality analog tape* has the potential to store and play back an audio signal (or "the music") more faithfully than a CD, but that doesn't mean any analog medium can do hat. LPs certainly can't. They are basically an outdated, cheap, low quality playback medium. And even in that scenario, the quality difference between a very good analog tape and the CD is much smaller than the step down from the CD to the LP.

Besides, in the "blue" analogy, the LP wouldn't be the monitor. The monitor would be *the speakers*. The place of LP and CD in that analogy could be taken by VHS and DVD or other video formats/media. But that would stretch it a lot and not really contribute much.

[head-case]

It is a shame that the best technical solution often doesn't have commercial success.  There is a technique for sound recording  called "binaural" which works much better than stereo.  Stereo tries to use speakers in your room to reproduce the sound produced by the original source, which is basically impossible.  How can two discrete speakers approximate the sound field produced by many instruments in a fine concert hall?  A binaural recording is made with a mock-up of a human head in microphones have been positioned where the ears should be.  This way to two microphones record the sound waves that would reach your ears if you were there.  When you listen to the recording on headphones, the sound field that hits your ears is exactly what it would have been if you had been in the hall.  The trouble with such a recording is that it must be listened to with headphones.  Played back on speakers it sounds awful.