Subscriber comments from my YT channel on this issue. I hope to share multiple sides on the subject, shed light from multiple angles to get a wider outlook on this never-settled issue: what are the differences between using analog OR digital as source?
Snake Oil Audio I started my HiFi journey when CD was a new thing, and I fully agree with you that a CD can be so good you can happily live with the sound quality. The fascinating thing for me is that although I did endless comparisons between CDs and turntables in all different price ranges and I know from experience that a turntable sounds significantly better. Every time I switch from digital to analogue, I am still surprised by how massive the difference is. I know it, I have saved it in my head and I am still surprised every time.
Optimize Yeh, I have the same problem. The issue is that I don't know EXACTLY why I enjoy LPs. My brain and logical thinking is that the digital sounds in many ways better. But my heart are just playing vinyl. Maybe that is the reasons what you express. It is hard to pinpoint. I have the same problem when I have friends over and I am so glad over my latest LP acquisitions that I play them LPs all night long.. Afterwards I have reflected over what I have done.. I got a great analog and digital system but when playing digital it is easier to bring out how good the system is. 💿 Especially when friend/s only listening for a couple of hours.. The LP part is something that you probably need to be in the "zone" to understand and be able to appreciate fully. It takes time and when friends never live with the system or is more than for some hours over at your place. Then they will never get and come into that "zone". 🤯🎉 Maybe a lost cause to play LPs at those occasions when a friend is over.🤔 🤣
Klaus Nielsen My experience is that analog can sound better but not always. CDs/digital are far more consistent in most cases where analog setups and LPs can be all over the place.
Frank Geeraerts It's not really a question of better sounding............for what better stands....... Life and all in the universe is vibration............so is music , emotions, thoughts and energy , even the presence of some one felt as pleasing or disturbing vibes......... Digital is storage medium as well as a processing technololgy ...;A/D & D/A , a reconstruction of the ones and zeros............FINALLY trying to reconstruct analog ..........trying to reconstruct the essence of the message............the vibration of life.............and the vibration of music. Yes digital has advantages and can perform very impressive !...............but analog is an imperfect reproduction of analog..........It is still analog from being mediocre to magic.... Processing NEVER makes something better than the real thing or the nature of the subject....being it food or whatever.....the latest perfect defintion screen does not replace the vision of the natural real world...........something is missing .........the experience felt as a real experience , how perfect it might be and even more " perfect" than the almost blind man who looks at the real sunset...............
Optimize That is a interesting question. If a recording session were done digitally as most if the music has been the last 30 years. Will that LP from the digital recording session also "touch your soul" ? Yes I think so personally and it has not so much about if the music were born analog or digital. For me one factor is LP as format indirectly forces me to listening to the whole side of a LP. I can't do anything else than my brain have to wind down and relax. Maybe pay more attention when nothing else is available to do.. With digital if it a remote for a CD player or streaming with a app on the phone. My stressed little brain are constantly thinking "maybe the next track is even better.." or "the next track is something I also want to listen to.." even if the current track is super and awesome.. When the inner voice thinking about that then I am apparently not listening to the current song. And I press next... Next... ...I hate it. So that is not about SQ. Maybe the LP inferior sound quality in my opinion is good enough as it is.. Another thing we live in a world that everything is "perfect and repeatable" with high MTBF. But vinyl is a bad medium that add random pops and clicks. It is physical and wear and tear of the grove and diamond. It is like nature it is never the exact same thing from time to time. Maybe that variation is nice in this digital time we live in. If we play a CD 100 times it will always sound the same.. maybe that is predictable and dull.🤔😍💕🎼
Frank Geeraerts Hehe................I had a friend with a million dollar system........... He had a 3 record collection..........all 3 were audiophile records ( Chesky and other)...............because no regular recording sounded good...........
bobnot24 if true there might be some correlation of repeated ditherings etc. that generates distortion a way that we can hear it. Every round is singularly "perfect" but repeated edits will start a recursive contraction that breaks the theory. Similarly to hiss would be generated on analog edits but more insidious.
Lou Reda Hi Janos digital has difficulty in retreiving the low level ambience in a hall or theatre. How do I know you might ask ,well listen to the space or black background. Just listen to low level noises in the background that are present on the tape or vinyl that are missing on the cd.Things like soft paper rustling or the faint noise of a fan after the orchestra stops for a quiet passage. That low level information is discounted by the dac as a zero and not a 1 so it is quiet but missing low level info that was in the performance. Anything below 2,5 volts will be disregarded by the dac as not being there when it clearly was. Regards Lou
Optimize This is a hard topic.. You listening to old LPs that were pressed in the 80-ties? Or 2020? The digital in the 80-ties were the DA converter in its infancy low numbers of bits that translate to how much dynamic range it could hold! So that is likely the case of your experience that resulted in your experience with that corner cases. Many of us want to go with the times and when analog recordings were ditched ~40 years ago. And I am not willing to just listen to old recordings the rest of my life like evolution have suddenly stopped.🤣
There is audiophiles that I see with only their TT cost more than entire my system on YouTube with record collection and ultrasonic cleaners and so on that could not hear difference between analog/digital MOFI one steps plus many say that if it sounded fine/good before they got to know that they were DSD (for example not yet invented in the 80-ties = progress/evaluation since then) it is still good after they learned that it is DSD.
A totally different experience than yours.. .. when it is a totally different "digital" now then it were in its infancy. As for Bernie Grundman. You need take into the consideration that he were sitting in that video together with Chad that is the owner of "ANALOG productions" that is offering job and hires guys like Bernie Grundman to make a ANALOG release from tapes. So Chad can press LPs in his pressing plant that is 100% analog. It were a "elevator pitch" towards Chad that we see loved everything Bernie said.. But I learned in that video that Bernie have SEVERAL ovens.. and not just one.. that tells us something important.
Jimboob If I remember correctly Arthur Salvatore writes about this lack of low level information with digital on his website. I agree also, however an experience I had yesterday has altered my perception a little. I was listening to Akira Symphonic Suite on LP yesterday, remastered in DSD256. The low level information was fantastic, some of the best I have heard in a long time and I had quite a profound experience listening to this music, mostly percussion and voices. After the LP finished it was like waking from a very vivid dream, not an experience I have ever had with digital before. Perhaps the problems we hear with digital are specifically issues with PCM?
Cipollae Real World Audio Hi Janos, thought-provoking video as always! I've recently been brawling with a nagging doubt about the special traits that cause vinyl and valve amplification to stand above digital media and solid state: could it be that the low-level detail, spacious soundstage and holographic images we perceive when listening to vinyl or valves (especially SET) are just second-order distortion artefacts, perhaps even comparable to the sound enrichment effects that you tell us about when you explain why you prefer loudspeakers with live cabinets? I would be very curious to hear your take on this hypothesis.
Anona Mouse Real World Audio 'Harsh and scrapy' sounds like aliasing artifacts. In the early days of digital, they had yet to figure out a low pass filter had to be put in front of the ADC to avoid it.
Nyquist Digital audio used without dithering would have that problem. Granted, the level is so low that the effect would be buried under vinyl noise. However, the problem was solved decades ago. The problem is that audiophiles do not know this - or they do not want to know.
Nyquist Before asking for reasons why digital sources lose small details it is appropriate to ask, whether this actually happens at all. And the answer of course is: no it does not. This is a thing which only lives in audiophiles' imagination. You can easily test this: take any analog source, digitize the output and then do a level matched blind comparison: all the small details present in the analog original will be audible on that digital copy. Whereas the opposite cannot be done: take any sufficiently dynamic digital recording and make an analog copy of it. The analog copy will be more noisy and distorted and the all important musical details will be at least partly masked by noise. Sorry, cannot change the laws of physics.
Chris F Real World Audio most audio systems the vast majority of people don’t have enough sensitivity or clarity to observe a difference. So most people wouldn’t have any experience to have an informed opinion.
Digital has a sort of plastic aftertaste.... a certain aspect of life, liveliness is missing from the experience. While it can get you great detail level and satisfy the brain completely at an intellectual level, yet after a period of digital-only listening diet I start to feel that something is missing, some part of my being is not engaged, been left out.
With my main system the lack of very low level information on digital bothers me right away. The lack of life stems from the lack of these tiniest cues that we hear in real life and in analogue sources. With other systems the lack of finest detail level cannot be observed - I cannot hear it, as I cannot hear that low level information - it is buried under the noise floor, or removed by the error correction of the system. I can only tell that the sound is more mechanical than sounds in real life.
Like feathers on an angels wing.... elusive and nearly imperceptible but you know right away when you are touched by an angel...
Cire Nosnor Nyquist - And digital playback doesn’t have deficiencies? Such as ear fatigue? Distortion and noise levels aren’t the only aspects of music reproduction. We also have things such as ambiance and it’s dumbfounding that it’s usually overlooked by people who parade digital as being a superior format. He touches on this starting round 16:50 - 18:00 and Bernie touches on it as well. More are starting to figure out that when you eliminate all noise, you also eliminate aspects of sound reproduction that help create ambiance and a bigger soundstage n’ such. It’s like as they used to say “throwing the baby out with the bath water”
(From ANAdiaLOG, from the thread with Nyquist and I.)