It looks like the revival of LPs is hotting up. The consumer hi-fi companies are introducing more and more turntables to the market. Panasonic is bringing out an updated model its famous Technics 1200 series complete with a modified direct drive system. You will have to pay big bucks for what is really quite old technology, and the marginal improvement to the sound might not justify the extra expense. Direct drive turntables were introduced to the market in the early 1970s.
Many manufacturers are now producing turntables with built in phono-stages and USB stages so that you can easily digitise your LPs and store the result on a computer drive.
Many of the hi-fi forums have members which pour scorn on the feature of having a phono-stage built in to the turntable. But isn't this where it should have been in the first place? Most modern amplifiers no longer provide a "phono" input. Audiophiles with lots of money to throw away on specialist phono-stages never use an amplifier with a built in phono-stage, anyway.
By having a phono-stage built into your consumer deck you can connect the turntable to any integrated amplifier, powered speakers or even a mini-hi-fi or television sound bar. It's all very convenient and it is all very flexible now and that is the way it should be.
Consumer turntables now sound very good. And, because the limiting factor to quality is the LP production process itself the marginal benefits of spending thousands on a turntable probably do not justify an expensive outlay. A die hard audiophile, who loves his LP, will never acknowledge this fact. Let's face it, LPs are old technology where a diamond is scrapped against a piece of plastic at a fixed speed - it's a minor miracle that an LP can sound very good. A turntable and all its accoutrements could cost you thousands - all that to play a piece of plastic worth 10 pence.
Phono-stages have been around since the 1950s. It is easy for electronics companies to mass produce ones that work very well.
The phono-stage acts as a means of amplifying the rather weak signals generated by a moving magnet (and coil) cartridges. The phono-stage also applies RIAA equalisation to accentuate the bass response and attenuate the treble response. Thus it reverses the equalisation applied when the master vinyl pressing plate is cut.
The circuitry to produce a phono-stage is as cheap as chips, just like the DAC circuitry found in even the most expensive CD player or network streamer. Millions of these hi-fi chips are produced in factories and all hi-fi makers benefit from the economies of scale of modern manufacturing.
One consumer electronics manufacturer is associating its turntable with high definition sound and it provides users with the means to digitise their LPs to 24/192 high definition music files. Don't be fooled by this; the LP is not high definition. LPs cannot reproduce music to a higher definition than CD. The whole process of producing an LP and playing it is flawed. What is more, 24/192 "high definition" files do not sound better than a 16/44.1 CD music file when all other factors remain equal. Double blind listening tests prove this time and time again; no one can hear a difference at safe listening volumes.
Hi-fi magazines perpetuate the myth of using high definition music files to digitise your LPs as if this was going to make the LP sound better - it won't. You can use software to remove the clicks and pops on an LP but doing this actually removes some of the music frequencies. You have made the flaws of vinyl more acceptable but you have not improved frequency response or dynamic range by using noise removal software.
I am not suggesting that those new to LPs should throw away their vinyl and ditch their turntable. I am appealing to their sense of reason so that they can see through all the marketing hype and myths perpetuated on forums. Hi-fi magazines should know better as the vinyl revival will not lead to improved sound reproduction over CD.
I have got two turntables and my wife and I like to sit down and listen to an LP every now and then; just for old time's sake. To this end, I recently bought my wife David Bowie's Blackstar: it cost me a lot of money, £25 as compared to £10 pounds for the CD, but I got a voucher for a 320 kbps mp3 download.
When I played the record it sounded fantastic. The LP was well produced in "180 g virgin vinyl", there were no scratches and there was only one pop which I heard on one of the quiet parts of the album - of which there were few. When I played the digital version it sounded almost exactly the same. Why was that ? I used the same amplifier and speakers and I matched the volume and I also played it back in the same room. Over time the LP will wear out and it will collect minor scratches and ingrained dust, despite cleaning, so the sound will deteriorate. I shall save playing the LP for special occasions or when we feel in the mood. In the main I shall play the mp3 download. There will be no need to digitise the LP to 24/192 high definition. The download will be free of pops and clicks.
There is no doubt that the Blackstar album would have been recorded digitally and then transposed to analogue for the production of the LP. There is nothing wrong with this and this is one of the reasons why the LP sounds so good.
The LP production process degrades the sound by introducing harmonic distortion, clicks and pops and sometimes audible wow and flutter. Playback adds further harmonic distortion and sometimes extra and audible wow and flutter too. Playback also adds surface noise to the sound reproduction just from the stylus rubbing against the plastic disc. Playback can also introduce static electricity pops and dust can land on the playing surface to introduce further hissing noises.
Despite all the hype most modern LPs will have been recorded digitally and you will not be hearing so called analogue purity.
For pop music, most of the faults of LP playback are inaudible because the music is much louder than the surface noise. Wow and flutter can be audible though. For classical music, which usually has a much wider dynamic range than pop, the surface noise intrudes into to the quieter sections of the performance. I cannot stand this, and for this reason I never play classical music on a turntable. I always use digital sources.
Please do not fall for all the hype and if you do not have lots of money to spend on new equipment then you might be better off sticking to CD. There is also the time overhead of setting up your turntable and making sure it runs properly. LPs can sound very good and it is great to see a mechanical device spinning your music around. But, there are many pitfalls and if you do not look after your records they will eventually sound awful.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading your posts, and generally agree with you on the bullshit surrounding hi-fi, and the quality of CD versus Vinyl.
However, in the case of Blackstar, the CD has been quite heavily brick walled, while the Vinyl retains dynamic range. I find this audible, especially in the general "airiness" and detail of loud passages, and the more natural sound of the drums. Although it is quite subtle and not as badly done as some CDs. I think they've gone for a quite dark compressed sound in the production anyway.
You can see the difference visually in the following plots -
http://www.dropbox.com/s/xhtv8yxots08lgn/Blackstar.jpg?dl=0
http://www.dropbox.com/s/4je4vuin6ksruus/Lazarus.jpg?dl=0
http://www.dropbox.com/s/t0aozz4n8fl8qm3/Sue%20%28Or%20In%20a%20Season%20of%20Crime%29.jpg?dl=0
So many CDs are let down by this kind of mastering. That's the main reason I listen to a lot of vinyl. Although quite often the vinyl of a modern pop/rock recording can be just as bad as the CD. You have to be careful, and there is a lot of luck involved.
Older recordings from the 70s often sound better (to my ears) than a modern remastered CD because quite often they compress and brick wall the remaster to give it that modern squashed and loud sound. There are exceptions, like the Beatles remasters for instance.
So there are genuine reasons why Vinyl can sound better than CDs. It's not the medium, it's the way they master them.
Cheers
Quentin.
I'm glad you enjoy reading the posts. I haven't listened to the CD version of Blackstar and to be honest I can't hear that much difference between the MP3 and the LP version. I agree with all your comments about the compression of dynamic range.
DeleteI stopped listening to most pop music years ago. My musical tastes have changed. The Beatles used compression to musical effect. Some people like compression of music but I find over compressed music dull and boring and impossible to listen to. I rarely listen to Classical FM for this reason - I know that the music must be compressed for listening in a car.
Music technology is as cheap as chips so why not put the compressors in the car amplifiers or MP3 players etc. and allow the user to select their own level of compression?
@shitfan
ReplyDeleteI'm curious: do you 'rip' your preferred vinyl versions to digital? If it was me, I would seek to preserve the vinyl version now, while I knew my turntable was set up optimally, stylus not worn, LP new etc. - who knows, maybe I will scratch the LP next week, or my stylus will damage it. I would also actually get a kick from the idea that all that hardware could be 'frozen' forever as a file and that I could fit 500 LPs in perfect quality onto a memory card as big as my thumbnail - something that we, perhaps, lose the wonder of when downloading digital files.
@therationalaudiophile
DeleteI'm running a battered (although well set up) old Linn Basik with Rega Tonearm and budget Audio-Technica cartridge. I haven't got an ADC. So no facilities to do rips.
There are plenty of vinyl rips available on Torrent sites (Pirate Bay, Kickass Torrents). This is where I get mine for checking, then I might buy the actual vinyl.
Yeah a lot of my vinyl has been much abused and played to death over the years. I still find most of it perfectly listenable, although I'd probably be shocked if I heard a pristine copy of some of them.
I listen to most new stuff digitally with a laptop and external DAC. Also listen to BBC Radio 3 a lot, they have a high quality digital feed (320kbps with little compression) that I run through Foobar2000 to the external DAC.
In the good old days many of my friends immediately recorded their LPs onto reel to reel or cassette tape to preserve the original LP. I don't have many LPs but when I have digitised the few that I have got the copy sounds identical to the original. The digital copies have often fooled my extended family into thinking that they were listening to the actual LP recording. Digitising your new LPs is a great idea and you cannot wear out or scratch the recording from repeated replay. I also find radio 320 kbps to have very good quality sound reproduction.
Delete