TIHZ_HO says:

$43 Lauren the Ghoti

“T_H – you’re making a serious misassumption.”

Thanks for the post but I am not I am afraid

“It seems you’re not up on turntable tech,”

That is not quite true – I was an old school live and studio soundman – and have the slight ringing in my ears to show for it.

You may not be up on it I am afraid. It all has to do with the medium we are talking about and not the hardware. Vinyl records are not the transparent medium for sound recordings.

What is recorded on vinyl is compressed and must be recorded with RIAA EQ curve (est 1954). In short (without jargon) RIAA is all about bosting treble and reducing bass during recording and upon playback doing the reverse.

A stylus in a groove cannot distinguish between pops, cliks, noise and music. As most is at high frequency the RIAA de-emphasis reduces it but as the same boosts bass mechanical rumble is a problem.

Why record with less bass? For a groove which doesn’t wiggle too much and take up room on the disc and to reduce the dynamics of keeping the stylus in the groove.

When making the master (disc) the cutting head moves in a linear motion from the outside to the centre. Most turntables have the pickup arm on a pivot which the stylus describing an arc from the outside track to the centre. This misalignment causes distortion. To correct this means expensive mechanic to allow the stylus to move in a linear motion.

LPs are for the most demanding audiophiles,

No matter what the hardware the sound will never be better than the source. In the past when CDs first came out the digital to analogue converters were not up to par and highs tended to be shrilly – this stuck with many people even though current technology has improved to the point where the recording medium is transparent – meaning there is no colouration or distortion of the recorded sound. Despite all improvements, the bottleneck of analogue sound reproduction remained the physical surface carrier.

While there were special ‘mastered’ vinyl where the original master was cut at one half speed to ensure a more accurate reproduction of the sound in the groove it still was not perfect as there still are physical dynamics to contend with such as the compression and RIAA EQ curve.

Even CDs are compressed as the dynamic range would have then sounding ‘thin’. By compression (not nearly as much as vinyl) it sounds louder.

There is so much more I could expand on but suffice to say I am up on all this. 😉

Cheers

PS Pardon any typos.

TIHZ_HO says:

#48 “You bring up a very important point that many would-be audiophiles never actually took into consideration, the cruel things done to a signal to render it in three dimensions in a record groove.”

—-Well said, I couldn’t have stated that better.

“Pro soundmen, in my 43 years of audio experience, are very rarely audiophiles, just as audiophiles rarely understand fully the processes that ultimately deliver music to their ears.”

—-It depends on the definition of audiophiles. “An audiophile (literally, “one who loves sound”) is one who is concerned with achieving high-quality results in the recording and playback of music.”

What is meant by “high quality” results? The recording medium accurately reproduces the recorded sound with no colouration or distortion.

Musicians create the music that audiophiles listen to. Paul McCartney – Wings – would use cheap speakers during the downmixing so it sounds best with them. Therefore the music in a Wings recording is already coloured – modified from the original so no amount of HIGH END audiophile equipment is going to improve on this.

If an audiophile wishes to hear the original recording in its pure form then one needs the same playback equipment used during the original mixdown. In other words go to the studio and listen to what Paul listened to.

You did comment that people do not have access to the original ‘open reel masters’ but most studios record digitally now verses the magnetic tape so as there is no degradation of the signal during the mixing process – E.G. bouncing.

I used to have 1500w per channel using four amps per channel with an active quad channel crossover, Lows, Low-mid, High mid, Highs. If I ran any of my live uncompressed recordings through this rig I was tapped out if it went beyond moderate listing levels. I needed about twice what I had to even attempt to be happy. I also had Stanton studio series 681 EEE cartridges and turntables which were often used to test play LPs before pressings. One could easily start chasing audio phantoms IMHO as many differences one hears can be attributed to placebos – the power of suggestion.

Please don’t misunderstand my meaning – I am not saying you are wrong at all! Far from it.

Listening to music is a personal preference and you obviously enjoy getting into the technology behind it so that is correct for you and you derive pleasure from it. 😀

On another topic, tube amplification verses solid state is a hotly discussed topic. IMHO ff one has a well designed solid state amp with sufficient power the point becomes moot. Tube amps do handle clipping much better than solid state amps – which often happens with music playback. To reproduce a music with a 96db dynamic range one needs a lot of power on tap. It gets scary! LOL To have a increase of 10db, which we hear as twice as loud, means 10 times the power while a 40db increase means 10,000 times the power.

In some instances tube amps are used as part of music creation – there is nothing like that Marshall tube amp sound for overdriven guitars – right?

Cheers