Vinyl Records

@helenS however good that theory is our ears can easily distinguish the two on the right equipment.

@Millerdog No you can't 😏
Likewise, you can easily emulate vacuum tubes using digital equipment.

@helenS have you ever heard a high end stereo. $10k+ range? Try listening on some $30,000 speakers. For people who own this type of equipment they can. In fact i had to switch

@Millerdog No I haven't. I would assume that $30k speakers are really good though. Of course it will always depend on the quality of the DAC.
If you really have $30k speakers it would be great to spend an evening with you.

@helenS Vinyl is more than just "What it sounds like". While the sound quality, good or bad, is a factor but it is also the tangibility. The hunt can be fun also.

Vinyl is not about convenience. ONE big convenience though is unlike streaming online, there are no commercials nor do you have to pay extra every month to avoid them. Nor is google trying to figure out what you might like. You pay for the LP, once and done.

And if all that doesn't say anything, think of it like this -
Some hobbies people just enjoy. Kind of like people who grow their own fruits and vegetables. Yeah you could just buy it at the store but for a gardener, it is more enjoyable.

@Punches Well said!

@helenS Digital Repro does a great approximation of Analog...we may or may not be able to distinguish a difference - but for purists...they know there's a difference

@Millerdog While that may be true, it doesn't tell us vinyl is "superior." I grew up in the era of vinyl; I was in my late 20s when CDs came on the market. A good clean fresh vinyl record has a very faint high frequency hiss in the background. We used to call it "airiness." It's one of the telltale signs of good vinyl sound. And CDs don't have it. That doesn't make CDs worse.

First, the only fair way to compare two sensory experiences is called "ABX." You listen to source A, then source B, then random source X (which is either A or B), and see if you can correctly identify X. If you're only correctly identifying X 50% of the time, your answers are effectively random, indicating you can't tell the difference.

Now let me describe an experiment done, I think, in the 90s. Some guy claimed that CDs sounded better on most equipment, but on his Linn gear, vinyl was better. So some folks brought in a Sony studio grade A-to-D and D-to-A. The source was vinyl, but, between pre-amp & amp, they set up and balanced two paths; one direct analog, the other thru A-to-D and D-to-A back to analog. All the rest of the gear was this guy's top of the line Linn equipment.

So they ABX swapped between the two inputs for a bunch of listeners who considered themselves "golden eared." The result was nobody could tell the difference between the two signal paths. There may have been slight deviations around 50%, but nothing statistically significant.

As I said up top, you may easily hear the difference between CD and vinyl, but it's an artifact of a needle in a groove. That doesn't make it worse or better, just different. If you like the sound of high quality vinyl, then just digitize each record the first time you play it. You'll capture that high quality vinyl experience forever!

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UPDATE

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While we're dealing with audio sacred cows, lemme talk a bit about vacuum tubes! I agree that having tubes somewhere in your audio path makes things sound warmer, fuller, better. BUT. That doesn't mean tubes are more accurate - just more pleasing. Also, it doesn't mean you need tubes at every stage in your audio path; you just need them somewhere.

If your favorite star is singing into a Neumann condenser mic with a tube inside, and playing a guitar thru a good tube amp cranked up into its non-linear range, that's good enough. It's OK if the sound then goes thru a 64 channel mixer full of high quality solid state isolation op amps. The op amps won't ruin the pleasing effects of the tubes.

It's OK if the signal then gets digitized with transistors, D-to-A with transistors, and amplified with transistors as long as all the amps are operating in their linear range. High quality solid state gear will not lose that fine tube sound!

@Punches Fully agree with you on that! The haptic element is of the utmost importance, the way the vinyl record looks, the cover artwork, the way the record reflects light, even the way it smells when purchased. It's an experience for all senses, whereas digital music is just that - music.

@ElwoodBlues It is, of course, possible, to emulate those acoustic features by using digital equipment. Really it's just a question of running appropriate digital filters over the sampling data.
Vacuum tubes look "better" though, as they glow in the dark.

@helenS That may well be true; my ears are no longer good enough to tell. My impression is that good DSP "tube sound" has only been commercial in the last decade or so, but I could be wrong.

@ElwoodBlues What do you mean, your ears are no longer good enough, please??

@helenS absolutely true I do this all the time, mixing and mastering out the cold shrill digital for starters, then applying mostly pre amp emulations. Most people cannot hear anything beyond 14 KHZ anyway

@helenS I don't hear above 10KHz anymore, and I often have a bit of tinnitus style ringing going on which further confounds my ability to hear sonic textures. Sure, I can hear the difference between "phat" and dry sound, but faint high frequency distortion escapes my notice. It's OK, I still love music!

@ElwoodBlues the music you are listening to is so distorted you have no idea. Often those loud lead guitars are actually a few guitars blended. Neil Young is a master at doing this. Your D/A which converts it back to analog loses this. But on a department store quality stereo you can never hear it

@Millerdog For good audio imaging you want "linear phase" throughout your audio chain. Transistors excel at this. Power output tubes need output transformers and with output transformers, linear phase is harder to achieve. If you recall an old high end brand called PhaseLinear, they were selling linear phase amplifiers. Of course speakers with crossovers do crazy things with phase, so maybe it doesn't matter so much.