I believe it's actually the amplitude of the signal that determines the groove spacing when a record is cut, not the frequency. Bigger amplitude signal = bigger groove spacing. That's why those budget K-tel and Ronco records with 10 or more songs per side and played 30+ minutes a side, they always sounded rather quiet.
Vinyl records have weaknesses. If an LP record has too much bass, the needle can jump out of the groove. The music that goes on an lp is adjusted with less bass and more treble and a riaa amplifier is only an equalizer which increases the bass and lowers the treble so the sound returns to flat.
The Ampex ADD1 was first made available in 1973, but most mastering facilities continued to use an analog delay loop, and digital preview didn't become more of a thing until digital masters started to become more commonplace in the early to mid 1980s. Many great mastering engineers such as George Marino never switched to a digital preview.
That technology was not possible in 1973. The Ampex ADD-1 digital cutting delay was introduced at the Audio Engineering Society convention in May 1979. It was rejected by many mastering engineers because of poor sound. One said they put a 1Khz squarewave in and got a sinewave out.
@@glenncurry3041 It absolutely was possible in 1973. Eventide Clockworks introduced the 1745 digital delay line in 1971. th-cam.com/video/Kn-BhXdRT0o/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Pvu2diZq50dW2GDD
I have many of Ocative Record albums and the sound is just so sweet and magical. Speaking of analog - something for Jazz folks to check out would be Jerome Sabbagh: Vintage (2023). It was recorded to analog tape on a Studer A800 MKIII at 30ips, by Ryan Streber at Oktaven Audio in Mount Vernon, New York. It was mixed, also at 30ips, on a custom, tubed Ampex 351, by Pete Rende. Bernie Grundman mastered it for vinyl and cut the lacquer, direct from the analog tape, on an all-tube system. It's also very magical.
The Ampex ADD-1 digital cutting delay was introduced at the Audio Engineering Society convention in May 1979. It allowed less expensive decks to be used for mastering. But was rejected by the better engineers. One said he put a 1Khz sqaurewave in and got a sinewave out. Interestingly however, MOFI started using it for half speeds and 45s.
@@Nicholas-m8n I'm around Paul's age. I lived in Nashville in the mid '70's as a Rep selling to HiFi stores and recording studios. Even the Opry. As an active member of AES (Audio Engineering Society) attending meetings at studios involving digital. Met Dr. Stockham at one using the Soundstream. Had a number of discussions with engineers from Sony, Philips, JVC,... Even sold the first Sony ADCs that used 3/4" Umatic.
John Atkinson interviewed Kevin Gray for Stereophile where Kevin describes his cutting system. He is cutting all analog. There are two sets of heads on his Studer tape deck-the first sends the signal to the computer that controls the spacing of the grooves and is not involved in the audio signal that is cut, but the second is taking the analog signal and sending it directly to the cutting head to become the groove. Here is an accept from the interview where Kevin explains how it works: “Gray: The concept of using a computer to control the groove spacing has been in place since the 1950s. It has just gotten more sophisticated with digital control. But this has nothing to do with the audio chain. It's not in the signal path. It's just machine control moving the cutter head across the disc. A lot of people are taking a two-track analog machine and using a digital delay to create a split signal that feeds the computer and the cutter head (footnote 2). But in my room, I'm doing it the way it was always done. I have a Studer tape machine that has two playback heads on it (footnote 3). The first head, the preview head, feeds the computer. The second head feeds the audio chain. One reason that went away is, it takes two complete stereo signal paths to do that, as everything you do to program has to be done to preview. So, when people started building consoles for digital mastering, they thought, "Oh, we don't need preview anymore." We're doing it the old-fashioned way, and there aren't a whole lot of us doing it that way anymore. Footnote 1: The longest music LP I'm aware of is 90 Minutes with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. With 45m of music per side, that record had half the groove spacing Gray recommends. Footnote 2: The computer then controls the groove spacing and sometimes other technical parameters. Cohearant uses a DJR Disc Computer. Footnote 3: When creating the master for Stereophile's Sonata LP in 1996, I prepared a 4-track digital Nagra-D tape with two tracks containing the 20-bit recording advanced in time to feed the preview mechanism. That way, the decoded analog signal that was being fed to the cutter head from the other two tracks would not have to be redigitized, fed to a digital delay, then converted back to analog.”
The answer to the question is YES. vinyl is much more digital than people think! Often it said digital on an LP record! In the late 70's, many sound studios started using digital sound players with magnetic tape. At the beginning of the 80's, almost everyone also started with a digital machine that regulated the width of the sound groov on a vinyl where the sound went from analogue to digital and back to analogue. Before this was done with a 3-head special analog reel-to-reel player. Nowadays, almost ALL music is first recorded digitally. But the actual playback of the LP. Vinyl disc is 100% analog.
Most studio's back in the day used specially adapted reel to reel machines with an extra, movable playback head and an extra tape loop, so the delay could be adjusted depending on the tape speed and record speed. Here's a video of one: th-cam.com/video/l3PCPkEVS68/w-d-xo.htmlsi=E_aIZyDQ_FlvuPIL That's how it was mostly done, I'm sure at some point digital came in but there would be absolutely no good reason to do it digitally with this setup existing.
Yeah I don't know why you'd want to digitise it, it seems unnecessary and has no real upsides. They really wanted to push digital down our throats, didn't they? It took decades before it got anywhere near tape. @@dhpbear2
The actual way the groove spacing happens on the legendary Scully lathe is via a person manually changing the groove spacing as the lathe cuts, in real time.
Question for clarity purposes - are you talking about cutting the groove directly into a vinyl disc, or cutting ('machining') the metal 'master' that was used to press the vinyl discs? Decades ago I got to visit Precision Lacquer in Los Angeles and they were doing it the second way I mention above. They didn't do the recordings, just the vinyl pressing (45s and LPs) and packging them. Pretty cool operation, very precise operation with machining, heating/cooling to get the groove that produced the sound we heard/still hear.
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio so it's really not a true "analog" of the original at all, it's all ready compressed, and modified. and putting digital recordings on obsolete vinyl is about as dumb as it can get.
@@cengeb Well RIAA equalization is a compression technology but it's still a fully analog process. Same with NAB/EBU equalization for analog tape. All Dolby and DBX analog noise reduction systems also worked the same way. Dolby though was more frequency selective for the compression, DBX was full bandwidth. Digital compression is a completely different technology where the signal is analyzed and information deemed insignificant or redundant is eliminated. But I do agree with you about putting digital masters on vinyl. I don't get it either. Then there are the folks that record their CDs to open reel tape and now I understand cassette decks are coming back in fashion for the same process. High end audio is like expensive designer clothing. It's all an illusion where trends seem to come and go.
@@cengeb and as the RIAA equalisation doesn't stops at 20kHz, all the frequencies above are buried tens of decibels below, making all the ultrasonic thing a myth.
Exactly what i was thinking. Even if recorded from digital, records dont have the resolution to reproduce 194k or any digital bitrate and it would smooth it all out.
@@blekenbleu Its not about on off as all frequencies are produced by on and off. The times it turns on and off per second is the frequency. Its about a smooth waveform on each cycle. Digital has a stepped waveform. Analog is smooth. You cant make a needle create that stepped wave.
Digital technology (and delay) became commercially viable in the 1980s - exactly at the time that vinyl was on its way out. 14 and 16 bit were popular. Even if the signal was digitally delayed, it is still analog in the groove. The same apples to the output of a DAC. The audible artifacts from early digital were a problem with the microphone signal having more bandwidth and dynamic range than the digital recording process. Most standard LPs were created with (analog) compressed masters that reduced the dynamic range to the vinyl range of 80dB or less.
I once read a study done by someone at a university in Scotland, I think, but I cannot find it now. They were saying that vinyl molecules are big, as far as such things go, big enough that on a not entirely microscopic level the styus doesn't ride along a smooth surface, but rather bounces from the high point of one molecule to the next, like walking along a cobblestone road. In that way it's akin to digital, and not good digital, something like 8 bits. I wish I could find that paper.
The size of a polyvinylchloride polymer is down in the nanometer range so there's no way a stylus would be able to "see" them. A record grove is in the order of 40-80000nm.
@@HittingImage it's false because it's low-fi? Records are low-fi, lower than plain old CDs. Just because you like the sound of something doesn't make it hi-fi.
@@Weissman111 the size of a record groove is approximately 40 to 80 micrometers. The size of a vinyl molecule is approximately 10 micrometers. In comparison, a piece of paper might be 70 micrometers, not exactly microscopic. I posted some links to the paper I mentioned earlier, but apparently that's a no-no here. My comment was deleted. But the gist of it is that the physical limitations of the materials that make up the vinyl record, the stylus, and the manufacturing process amounts to a dirty quantized signal of considerably less than the equivalent of a 16 bit digital signal, not even approaching a higher resolution digital signal. Basically, an lp record might be the equivalent resolution of a 12 bit signal at its theoretical best, but probably more like 8 bits in reality.
@@brianmoore581 Who told you a PVC polymer was 10 micorns in size because that's complete rubbish. You're probably thinking of PVC particles that are used. A typical PVC emulsion contains particles that are in the 50-250 micron range but each particle contains thousands of individual polymer chains.
2:50 - A better idea would have been employing a tape-playback system with two heads spaced one 'rotation' time apart (1.8 mSEC for LP, 1.33 mSEC for 45)
If you really want "pure analog," aside from live, unamplified performances, there are modern tapes to be had. I have a few. Among my favorites are those by Jonathan Horwich. 15 IPS, beautiful copies of the master. I'm in no way affiliated with him or his work, just a fan.
I cant imagine records lovers caring too much about this topic. Records are bought for many reasons..sonic quality being just one of them. As long as it sounds good I do not care how it was made. Some records in my collection sound very good, some not..not everything can be produced in worlds best studios and mastered by best producers in the world. With time all your records grow on you and you enjoy the music. Except few ones which were really shitty, but this is nothing new. Even in "golden age of records" you had good and bad records..just as we have good and bad CDs as well. On a side note purists are full of it. Many records audiophiles have in collection because of its beautiful "analog" sound were somewhat or heavy digitally processed.
Uh, actually, records up to the late 70s are really analog even though there MAY HAVE BEEN digital signal fed to the cutter, it was not digital signal directly put on analog media. That "digital signal" as mentioned was only to adjust the groove cutting onto the lacquer. That lacquer as we know, is used to make the mother stamper. That said, around 1979 they started putting digital signal direct to the analog medium on occasion, which sadly, became more prevalent in the early 80s. That is why many 80s and beyond records sound like crap. By the way, you can't fully transfer a "DSD" or high-rez or what have you signal to vinyl, it doesn't have the frequency range to hold it. What ends up happening is either a second, third or fourth harmonic distortion and or too much frequency cut (overcompensation) to fit the analog medium. I can't imagine vinyl records from the PS Audio studios sounding good. I also will not buy modern day re-issues, not only because of the outrageous prices, I could save up if I wanted to, but more so due to the unknown provenance and poor sound. I listen to older music (60s through 70s) mostly and I personally stick with original pressings or very early following year re-presses/issues (which are technically still original pressings as they were only done to meet demand after the first bath went to the store shelves).
Although digital tools and/or digital files were used in the preparation and production of vinyl pressings, the end product (the physical pressing) is 100% analog. If you are watching a digital movie, and you film your TV with your old 8mm camera, then when you have your film developed, that film will be 100% analog. Consider the opposite situation: When we watch old black and white films on our digital computers, does that make our viewing session analog? No, it does not. We are watching on a digital computer, and that makes any image 100% digital -- even though it was derived from an analog source. The same holds true when the source is digital, but the playback is analog. One more example: A CD is produced from reel-to-reel tapes. Does that make that CD analog? No, it does not. That CD is 100% digital, even though its content was derived from an analog source. Any record you are playing is 100% analog. You can play that record on a stereo from 1955 -- because that record is 100% analog. It is an analog representation of a digital source -- but it is still 100% analog.
Tone Poet. Kevin Grey uses an all analog cutting process. I'm a musician, recrd digitally, but these pressings really sound like og pressings but with more dynamic range. If you could reliability tell a difference, MOFI wouldn't have gotten in trouble. DSD 64 pressings pressings can sound good enough if the master tape is no more
So what about music that was recorded in digital (not even dsd) in the first place? Those either must be digital on vinyl or analog after a dac made it analog, right? But in the latter case, why would I listen to someone else's dac in a technically inferior way?
Anyone been in a mixing studio, or heard tape play back in a studio via a DVD feature disc? Wow, boy, we are all getting screwed. Proper thoroughly railed. Good video!
I mean- Music mixed digitally onto tape and then onto Vinyl ...I have a few favourite songs on Vinyl and sadly ruined by distortion caused by recording/mastered to DAT tape before reaching master tape and then made it's way to vinyl pressing house ...The most recent CD release & TH-cam music release of the song contains the same amount of distortion which is sad as the song.
My biased view is vinyl in 2024 is kind of a dumb idea. All of these digital conversions to store a signal on a chunk of vinyl? We take a digital recording and apply an RIIA curve and then compress the highly dynamic passages so a needle can track. And then buy a super expensive cartridge, tone arm, platter, motor, step up transformers, preamps etc. All so that your digitally recorded song can be played on tech from the last century? Why not put all this effort into a digital playback device that sounds good and actually hear the unadulterated signal Octave and others work so hard to produce. Each to their own. I just don't get it.
Darko audio (on YT) and others have made the point that the same piece of music maybe recorded but then remastered into each type of storage vinyl, CD, hi res, SACD etc and the dynamic range the engineer includes in the final production release varies between the end products. Vinyl often has the highest dynamic range applied by the engineer. The record producer will have an impact as well as mutliple companies may release pressings of the same material. Is this all true? I'm no expert and this maybe a good subject for a future video.
I have both an expensive turntable (with $13,000 cartridge) with tube phonostage as well as Lumin U1 streamer into Legacy Audio Wavelet digital preamp (which does room correction, speaker driver time alignment, active crossover, and tone controls in the digital domain). As such, everything I listen to has digital processing in the signal stream. There is stuff that can be done more easily in the digital domain. With my speakers (Legacy Audio Valors), there is a 4th active channel that is processed differently to be sent to the ambient array drivers (which point to the ceiling, front, and side walls, so you hear reflected sound from those drivers). When it comes to recordings from the 70's and 80's, I much prefer vinyl as the streaming digital can sound pretty bad in comparison (and the differences can be dramatic). For modern music, I tend to listen to digital streaming as I see no reason to spend money to buy that record. Modern mixed music is all digital these days. Due to the nature of mastering to the medium, there may be slight differences, and it becomes a matter of personal preference. I would say that I really like the music from the 70's and 80's as it was much more interesting than the music today. I find a lot of the modern music more formulaic. Having both vinyl and digital allows you to get the best of older as well as newer music, and there is a lot of old music around.
@@matthewbarrow3727 Sounds like a great approach with a really nice system. I also find most modern recordings hard to take with exception of Chesky, MA Recordings etc.
I think 99% of most people agree. The few that do not are fanatics, collectors, sellers of records, or those conned into the idea that a record is best. The past decade of crazy LP prices is a bit like the pet rock or other object collecting crazes. So many other factors matter so much more like the recording itself (as Paul says), the mastering, the system it plays on, and the often forgotten but very important room acoustics it is playing in. I have a friend with zero musical or audio experience. She likes records simply for the nostalgic aspect of them. She grew up with them so, she likes them and plays them on a record player that was never set up right. Actually, she does not play them at all because it broke 20 years ago. She plays Pandora. But her LP preference is a good reason, IMO but, it is not the actual sound they make that is the big attraction to most non audiophile people. The 95% or so. But, a really good LP that was recorded good, on a good system in a good room will be better than a badly recorded CD on an average system in a high reverberant room. Except classical. Classical really benefits from the long CD playtime and no clicks or pops during any passage but especially the soft ones. This is why most classical musicians have CD collections (or maybe younger ones stream music).
According to Quantum Mechanics all signals are discrete. Continuity is an illusion. The question is, is our hearing analog or digital? Nothing is analog - nothing
There's still a difference of many orders of magnitude between the natural quantisation of elemtary particles and that of digital audio or that of analog recording media for that matter.
Our nature at least as we know it is analog we can't hear bits . Now if ( According to Quantum Mechanics all signals are discrete & Continuity is an illusion. i can't answer to that ) but surelly we don't hear bits .
@@florianhofmann7553 Yes, by the OP's justification a film photograph with its film grains would be digital, an all analog AM radio station would be digital due to the time between carrier cycles, (they don't exist anymore), analog tape, having grains of oxides would be digital and so on. Oddly, if you were to make the same claim for a theoretical all analog FM radio signal you would have to separate between electrons because the signal is in the contrary axis from AM and the baseband signal is therefore otherwise truly continuous.
@@razisn I made a philosophical statement in order to annoy people. Especially audiophiles - a community where 83% know very little about music and artistic creativity.
Not a serious comment. Vinyl does not wear out appreciably by playing. I have a 50 year old original of Aja from Steely Dan that stands up to, and exceeds in the opinion of some, any digital version. Digital is always an approximation of analog.
Another question is for me hard to understand - why at all are people are so concerned about purity of digital and analog? In fact it is spiritual approach to technic based on belief . We do not live in heaven. Digits are not cereating any materia while without materia sounds are not existing. Conclusion - pure digital is impossible - pure analog was presented by mr Edison. All so called "digital" gear is produced with materia and materia is not virtual - digits are virtual .They are only idea of material world operation . All faults in reproduction must be assigned to technic and human errors made in developing - not to essence of used inventions. The more inventions the bigger field of errors. .
Edison wasn't the first to record and present analog music, although he might have been the first to claim many things and try stop development of others.
@@Mikexception What's is solved and why do you congratulate me ? It's just history and Edison isn't the inventor of analog recordings as your comment might indicate.
They car because you hear with your ears and listen with your brain. If you "know " it's supposed to sound better it will. There are no "digital " sound waves. That's why you have a DAC
@@Jorge-Fernandez-Lopez Nobody should use somebody history research results and sign them in own name as you did. So I am sarcastic. Correctly you should state who by name is the author of that generaly not popular information even more because mr Edison long time passed away and he is not able to protest . If you do not know who than better say you only heard such idea. BTW I said he presented because I cannot prove what he invented
I believe it's actually the amplitude of the signal that determines the groove spacing when a record is cut, not the frequency. Bigger amplitude signal = bigger groove spacing. That's why those budget K-tel and Ronco records with 10 or more songs per side and played 30+ minutes a side, they always sounded rather quiet.
Vinyl records have weaknesses. If an LP record has too much bass, the needle can jump out of the groove.
The music that goes on an lp is adjusted with less bass and more treble and a riaa amplifier is only an equalizer which increases the bass and lowers the treble so the sound returns to flat.
As the grooves are V-shaped since stereo LPs were invented (you need two flanks) it's both frequency and amplitude that determine the spacing.
Quiet and almost no dynamics
The Ampex ADD1 was first made available in 1973, but most mastering facilities continued to use an analog delay loop, and digital preview didn't become more of a thing until digital masters started to become more commonplace in the early to mid 1980s. Many great mastering engineers such as George Marino never switched to a digital preview.
Thanks for the context 😊
That technology was not possible in 1973. The Ampex ADD-1 digital cutting delay was introduced at the Audio Engineering Society convention in May 1979. It was rejected by many mastering engineers because of poor sound. One said they put a 1Khz squarewave in and got a sinewave out.
@@glenncurry3041 It absolutely was possible in 1973. Eventide Clockworks introduced the 1745 digital delay line in 1971.
th-cam.com/video/Kn-BhXdRT0o/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Pvu2diZq50dW2GDD
The audio quality of your Octave Records LPs is simply second to none. I love my growing collection!
I have many of Ocative Record albums and the sound is just so sweet and magical. Speaking of analog - something for Jazz folks to check out would be Jerome Sabbagh: Vintage (2023). It was recorded to analog tape on a Studer A800 MKIII at 30ips, by Ryan Streber at Oktaven Audio in Mount Vernon, New York. It was mixed, also at 30ips, on a custom, tubed Ampex 351, by Pete Rende. Bernie Grundman mastered it for vinyl and cut the lacquer, direct from the analog tape, on an all-tube system. It's also very magical.
The Ampex ADD-1 digital cutting delay was introduced at the Audio Engineering Society convention in May 1979. It allowed less expensive decks to be used for mastering. But was rejected by the better engineers. One said he put a 1Khz sqaurewave in and got a sinewave out. Interestingly however, MOFI started using it for half speeds and 45s.
And then they got caught lying about their sources...amen.
@@Nicholas-m8n I'm around Paul's age. I lived in Nashville in the mid '70's as a Rep selling to HiFi stores and recording studios. Even the Opry. As an active member of AES (Audio Engineering Society) attending meetings at studios involving digital. Met Dr. Stockham at one using the Soundstream. Had a number of discussions with engineers from Sony, Philips, JVC,... Even sold the first Sony ADCs that used 3/4" Umatic.
John Atkinson interviewed Kevin Gray for Stereophile where Kevin describes his cutting system. He is cutting all analog. There are two sets of heads on his Studer tape deck-the first sends the signal to the computer that controls the spacing of the grooves and is not involved in the audio signal that is cut, but the second is taking the analog signal and sending it directly to the cutting head to become the groove. Here is an accept from the interview where Kevin explains how it works:
“Gray: The concept of using a computer to control the groove spacing has been in place since the 1950s. It has just gotten more sophisticated with digital control. But this has nothing to do with the audio chain. It's not in the signal path. It's just machine control moving the cutter head across the disc. A lot of people are taking a two-track analog machine and using a digital delay to create a split signal that feeds the computer and the cutter head (footnote 2). But in my room, I'm doing it the way it was always done. I have a Studer tape machine that has two playback heads on it (footnote 3). The first head, the preview head, feeds the computer. The second head feeds the audio chain. One reason that went away is, it takes two complete stereo signal paths to do that, as everything you do to program has to be done to preview. So, when people started building consoles for digital mastering, they thought, "Oh, we don't need preview anymore." We're doing it the old-fashioned way, and there aren't a whole lot of us doing it that way anymore.
Footnote 1: The longest music LP I'm aware of is 90 Minutes with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. With 45m of music per side, that record had half the groove spacing Gray recommends.
Footnote 2: The computer then controls the groove spacing and sometimes other technical parameters. Cohearant uses a DJR Disc Computer.
Footnote 3: When creating the master for Stereophile's Sonata LP in 1996, I prepared a 4-track digital Nagra-D tape with two tracks containing the 20-bit recording advanced in time to feed the preview mechanism. That way, the decoded analog signal that was being fed to the cutter head from the other two tracks would not have to be redigitized, fed to a digital delay, then converted back to analog.”
The answer to the question is YES. vinyl is much more digital than people think! Often it said digital on an LP record!
In the late 70's, many sound studios started using digital sound players with magnetic tape. At the beginning of the 80's, almost everyone also started with a digital machine that regulated the width of the sound groov on a vinyl where the sound went from analogue to digital and back to analogue. Before this was done with a 3-head special analog reel-to-reel player.
Nowadays, almost ALL music is first recorded digitally.
But the actual playback of the LP. Vinyl disc is 100% analog.
Most studio's back in the day used specially adapted reel to reel machines with an extra, movable playback head and an extra tape loop, so the delay could be adjusted depending on the tape speed and record speed. Here's a video of one:
th-cam.com/video/l3PCPkEVS68/w-d-xo.htmlsi=E_aIZyDQ_FlvuPIL
That's how it was mostly done, I'm sure at some point digital came in but there would be absolutely no good reason to do it digitally with this setup existing.
This is EXACTLY what I was thinking (see my earlier post).
Yeah I don't know why you'd want to digitise it, it seems unnecessary and has no real upsides. They really wanted to push digital down our throats, didn't they? It took decades before it got anywhere near tape. @@dhpbear2
Very interesting. I had not heard of the delayed signal going into the cutter head before.
A great CD recording sounds just as good as any record in my experience.
The actual way the groove spacing happens on the legendary Scully lathe is via a person manually changing the groove spacing as the lathe cuts, in real time.
Question for clarity purposes - are you talking about cutting the groove directly into a vinyl disc, or cutting ('machining') the metal 'master' that was used to press the vinyl discs? Decades ago I got to visit Precision Lacquer in Los Angeles and they were doing it the second way I mention above. They didn't do the recordings, just the vinyl pressing (45s and LPs) and packging them. Pretty cool operation, very precise operation with machining, heating/cooling to get the groove that produced the sound we heard/still hear.
This delay line is needed for both purposes.
He is referring to the delay used to cut the grooves to the lacquer from the master tape.
@@pablohrrg8677 But it's also true for direct cuts.
I thought vinyl was an analog process all the way through. Thanks for sharing that information Paul!
I thought that the solution for having more space un LP was to drastically cut off the low and mid frequencies with the "RIAA" eq.
Wasn't the RIAA equalisation curve also to reduce the bass low frequencies which could otherwise make the stylus jump out of the groove
That is correct. Low frequencies are reduced by 20dB while high frequencies are similarly boosted by the RIAA curve.
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio so it's really not a true "analog" of the original at all, it's all ready compressed, and modified. and putting digital recordings on obsolete vinyl is about as dumb as it can get.
@@cengeb Well RIAA equalization is a compression technology but it's still a fully analog process. Same with NAB/EBU equalization for analog tape. All Dolby and DBX analog noise reduction systems also worked the same way. Dolby though was more frequency selective for the compression, DBX was full bandwidth. Digital compression is a completely different technology where the signal is analyzed and information deemed insignificant or redundant is eliminated. But I do agree with you about putting digital masters on vinyl. I don't get it either. Then there are the folks that record their CDs to open reel tape and now I understand cassette decks are coming back in fashion for the same process. High end audio is like expensive designer clothing. It's all an illusion where trends seem to come and go.
@@cengeb and as the RIAA equalisation doesn't stops at 20kHz, all the frequencies above are buried tens of decibels below, making all the ultrasonic thing a myth.
By the way ‘vinyl’ works, every output signal will be analog. The stylus can’t produce an ‘on-off’ signal.
Exactly what i was thinking. Even if recorded from digital, records dont have the resolution to reproduce 194k or any digital bitrate and it would smooth it all out.
Neither can conventional electromagnetic loudspeakers produce 'on-off' signals.
@@blekenbleu Its not about on off as all frequencies are produced by on and off. The times it turns on and off per second is the frequency. Its about a smooth waveform on each cycle. Digital has a stepped waveform. Analog is smooth. You cant make a needle create that stepped wave.
Digital technology (and delay) became commercially viable in the 1980s - exactly at the time that vinyl was on its way out. 14 and 16 bit were popular.
Even if the signal was digitally delayed, it is still analog in the groove. The same apples to the output of a DAC. The audible artifacts from early digital were a problem with the microphone signal having more bandwidth and dynamic range than the digital recording process. Most standard LPs were created with (analog) compressed masters that reduced the dynamic range to the vinyl range of 80dB or less.
That was a cool question.
I once read a study done by someone at a university in Scotland, I think, but I cannot find it now. They were saying that vinyl molecules are big, as far as such things go, big enough that on a not entirely microscopic level the styus doesn't ride along a smooth surface, but rather bounces from the high point of one molecule to the next, like walking along a cobblestone road. In that way it's akin to digital, and not good digital, something like 8 bits. I wish I could find that paper.
The size of a polyvinylchloride polymer is down in the nanometer range so there's no way a stylus would be able to "see" them. A record grove is in the order of 40-80000nm.
8 bit dugital is extremely lo-fi, so this is plain false.
@@HittingImage it's false because it's low-fi? Records are low-fi, lower than plain old CDs. Just because you like the sound of something doesn't make it hi-fi.
@@Weissman111 the size of a record groove is approximately 40 to 80 micrometers. The size of a vinyl molecule is approximately 10 micrometers. In comparison, a piece of paper might be 70 micrometers, not exactly microscopic.
I posted some links to the paper I mentioned earlier, but apparently that's a no-no here. My comment was deleted.
But the gist of it is that the physical limitations of the materials that make up the vinyl record, the stylus, and the manufacturing process amounts to a dirty quantized signal of considerably less than the equivalent of a 16 bit digital signal, not even approaching a higher resolution digital signal. Basically, an lp record might be the equivalent resolution of a 12 bit signal at its theoretical best, but probably more like 8 bits in reality.
@@brianmoore581 Who told you a PVC polymer was 10 micorns in size because that's complete rubbish. You're probably thinking of PVC particles that are used. A typical PVC emulsion contains particles that are in the 50-250 micron range but each particle contains thousands of individual polymer chains.
might have been easier to use a second head on the analog tape machine for the cutter positioning, suitably placed ahead of the music signal head.
Indeed, that is how so-called tape delay worked for most analog recordings.
That's how they did it, but those tape machines were expensive and less available (too niche)
2:50 - A better idea would have been employing a tape-playback system with two heads spaced one 'rotation' time apart (1.8 mSEC for LP, 1.33 mSEC for 45)
Honestly, I never knew all of that. I was happy just getting the disc to play without problems.
If you really want "pure analog," aside from live, unamplified performances, there are modern tapes to be had. I have a few. Among my favorites are those by Jonathan Horwich. 15 IPS, beautiful copies of the master. I'm in no way affiliated with him or his work, just a fan.
I cant imagine records lovers caring too much about this topic. Records are bought for many reasons..sonic quality being just one of them. As long as it sounds good I do not care how it was made. Some records in my collection sound very good, some not..not everything can be produced in worlds best studios and mastered by best producers in the world. With time all your records grow on you and you enjoy the music. Except few ones which were really shitty, but this is nothing new. Even in "golden age of records" you had good and bad records..just as we have good and bad CDs as well.
On a side note purists are full of it. Many records audiophiles have in collection because of its beautiful "analog" sound were somewhat or heavy digitally processed.
Uh, actually, records up to the late 70s are really analog even though there MAY HAVE BEEN digital signal fed to the cutter, it was not digital signal directly put on analog media. That "digital signal" as mentioned was only to adjust the groove cutting onto the lacquer. That lacquer as we know, is used to make the mother stamper.
That said, around 1979 they started putting digital signal direct to the analog medium on occasion, which sadly, became more prevalent in the early 80s. That is why many 80s and beyond records sound like crap.
By the way, you can't fully transfer a "DSD" or high-rez or what have you signal to vinyl, it doesn't have the frequency range to hold it. What ends up happening is either a second, third or fourth harmonic distortion and or too much frequency cut (overcompensation) to fit the analog medium. I can't imagine vinyl records from the PS Audio studios sounding good. I also will not buy modern day re-issues, not only because of the outrageous prices, I could save up if I wanted to, but more so due to the unknown provenance and poor sound. I listen to older music (60s through 70s) mostly and I personally stick with original pressings or very early following year re-presses/issues (which are technically still original pressings as they were only done to meet demand after the first bath went to the store shelves).
Regardless of whether or not there is a digital process used at sometime during mastering, vinyl is still analog.
So in the end you should just listen to the DSD recording directly 😊
Although digital tools and/or digital files were used in the preparation and production of vinyl pressings, the end product (the physical pressing) is 100% analog.
If you are watching a digital movie, and you film your TV with your old 8mm camera, then when you have your film developed, that film will be 100% analog.
Consider the opposite situation:
When we watch old black and white films on our digital computers, does that make our viewing session analog?
No, it does not. We are watching on a digital computer, and that makes any image 100% digital -- even though it was derived from an analog source.
The same holds true when the source is digital, but the playback is analog.
One more example:
A CD is produced from reel-to-reel tapes.
Does that make that CD analog?
No, it does not. That CD is 100% digital, even though its content was derived from an analog source.
Any record you are playing is 100% analog. You can play that record on a stereo from 1955 -- because that record is 100% analog. It is an analog representation of a digital source -- but it is still 100% analog.
Tone Poet. Kevin Grey uses an all analog cutting process. I'm a musician, recrd digitally, but these pressings really sound like og pressings but with more dynamic range. If you could reliability tell a difference, MOFI wouldn't have gotten in trouble. DSD 64 pressings pressings can sound good enough if the master tape is no more
So what about music that was recorded in digital (not even dsd) in the first place? Those either must be digital on vinyl or analog after a dac made it analog, right? But in the latter case, why would I listen to someone else's dac in a technically inferior way?
All well and good with a run of low amplitude signals and then along comes a loud bang on a bass drum ..
Anyone been in a mixing studio, or heard tape play back in a studio via a DVD feature disc? Wow, boy, we are all getting screwed. Proper thoroughly railed. Good video!
@@clickbeetle2720pretty sure = screwed
Sodomy
PS really should set up upgrade program in Canada also. i can't sell my DAC I so i can't upgrade to DAC II
I mean- Music mixed digitally onto tape and then onto Vinyl ...I have a few favourite songs on Vinyl and sadly ruined by distortion caused by recording/mastered to DAT tape before reaching master tape and then made it's way to vinyl pressing house ...The most recent CD release & TH-cam music release of the song contains the same amount of distortion which is sad as the song.
The signal comming out of your DAC is analog.
My biased view is vinyl in 2024 is kind of a dumb idea. All of these digital conversions to store a signal on a chunk of vinyl? We take a digital recording and apply an RIIA curve and then compress the highly dynamic passages so a needle can track. And then buy a super expensive cartridge, tone arm, platter, motor, step up transformers, preamps etc. All so that your digitally recorded song can be played on tech from the last century?
Why not put all this effort into a digital playback device that sounds good and actually hear the unadulterated signal Octave and others work so hard to produce. Each to their own. I just don't get it.
Darko audio (on YT) and others have made the point that the same piece of music maybe recorded but then remastered into each type of storage vinyl, CD, hi res, SACD etc and the dynamic range the engineer includes in the final production release varies between the end products. Vinyl often has the highest dynamic range applied by the engineer. The record producer will have an impact as well as mutliple companies may release pressings of the same material.
Is this all true? I'm no expert and this maybe a good subject for a future video.
I have both an expensive turntable (with $13,000 cartridge) with tube phonostage as well as Lumin U1 streamer into Legacy Audio Wavelet digital preamp (which does room correction, speaker driver time alignment, active crossover, and tone controls in the digital domain). As such, everything I listen to has digital processing in the signal stream. There is stuff that can be done more easily in the digital domain. With my speakers (Legacy Audio Valors), there is a 4th active channel that is processed differently to be sent to the ambient array drivers (which point to the ceiling, front, and side walls, so you hear reflected sound from those drivers). When it comes to recordings from the 70's and 80's, I much prefer vinyl as the streaming digital can sound pretty bad in comparison (and the differences can be dramatic). For modern music, I tend to listen to digital streaming as I see no reason to spend money to buy that record. Modern mixed music is all digital these days. Due to the nature of mastering to the medium, there may be slight differences, and it becomes a matter of personal preference. I would say that I really like the music from the 70's and 80's as it was much more interesting than the music today. I find a lot of the modern music more formulaic. Having both vinyl and digital allows you to get the best of older as well as newer music, and there is a lot of old music around.
@@matthewbarrow3727 Sounds like a great approach with a really nice system.
I also find most modern recordings hard to take with exception of Chesky, MA Recordings etc.
I think 99% of most people agree. The few that do not are fanatics, collectors, sellers of records, or those conned into the idea that a record is best. The past decade of crazy LP prices is a bit like the pet rock or other object collecting crazes.
So many other factors matter so much more like the recording itself (as Paul says), the mastering, the system it plays on, and the often forgotten but very important room acoustics it is playing in. I have a friend with zero musical or audio experience. She likes records simply for the nostalgic aspect of them. She grew up with them so, she likes them and plays them on a record player that was never set up right. Actually, she does not play them at all because it broke 20 years ago. She plays Pandora. But her LP preference is a good reason, IMO but, it is not the actual sound they make that is the big attraction to most non audiophile people. The 95% or so.
But, a really good LP that was recorded good, on a good system in a good room will be better than a badly recorded CD on an average system in a high reverberant room.
Except classical. Classical really benefits from the long CD playtime and no clicks or pops during any passage but especially the soft ones. This is why most classical musicians have CD collections (or maybe younger ones stream music).
The only place where you are going to get pure analog is at an unamplified live performance 😊
Words matter; analog and acoustic differ.
Amplification could mean ADC and DAC@@blekenbleu
Once it's on the record it is Analog all the way through :)
The only question is, if the vinyl signal based on a digital source, why do you need a record player ?
For all the old music, recorded analog ?
can i have a free dac plz .
According to Quantum Mechanics all signals are discrete. Continuity is an illusion.
The question is, is our hearing analog or digital?
Nothing is analog - nothing
There's still a difference of many orders of magnitude between the natural quantisation of elemtary particles and that of digital audio or that of analog recording media for that matter.
Our nature at least as we know it is analog we can't hear bits .
Now if ( According to Quantum Mechanics all signals are discrete & Continuity is an illusion. i can't answer to that ) but surelly we don't hear bits .
@@florianhofmann7553 Yes, by the OP's justification a film photograph with its film grains would be digital, an all analog AM radio station would be digital due to the time between carrier cycles, (they don't exist anymore), analog tape, having grains of oxides would be digital and so on. Oddly, if you were to make the same claim for a theoretical all analog FM radio signal you would have to separate between electrons because the signal is in the contrary axis from AM and the baseband signal is therefore otherwise truly continuous.
Quantised is not the same as digital.. You seem confused.
@@razisn I made a philosophical statement in order to annoy people. Especially audiophiles - a community where 83% know very little about music and artistic creativity.
so you use the best digital tech to lay it on vinyl... marketing is killing us... and you know it.
It doesn't matter. Vinyl sucks. It sounds good on the first play and will never sound the same again. DDD is awesome!
Not a serious comment. Vinyl does not wear out appreciably by playing. I have a 50 year old original of Aja from Steely Dan that stands up to, and exceeds in the opinion of some, any digital version. Digital is always an approximation of analog.
Another question is for me hard to understand - why at all are people are so concerned about purity of digital and analog? In fact it is spiritual approach to technic based on belief . We do not live in heaven. Digits are not cereating any materia while without materia sounds are not existing. Conclusion - pure digital is impossible - pure analog was presented by mr Edison. All so called "digital" gear is produced with materia and materia is not virtual - digits are virtual .They are only idea of material world operation . All faults in reproduction must be assigned to technic and human errors made in developing - not to essence of used inventions. The more inventions the bigger field of errors. .
Edison wasn't the first to record and present analog music, although he might have been the first to claim many things and try stop development of others.
@@Jorge-Fernandez-Lopez Congrats but had to be hard for you to solve that after so long time .
@@Mikexception What's is solved and why do you congratulate me ? It's just history and Edison isn't the inventor of analog recordings as your comment might indicate.
They car because you hear with your ears and listen with your brain. If you "know " it's supposed to sound better it will. There are no "digital " sound waves. That's why you have a DAC
@@Jorge-Fernandez-Lopez Nobody should use somebody history research results and sign them in own name as you did. So I am sarcastic. Correctly you should state who by name is the author of that generaly not popular information even more because mr Edison long time passed away and he is not able to protest . If you do not know who than better say you only heard such idea.
BTW I said he presented because I cannot prove what he invented
finnaly vinyl didn’t worth it in any way today… Just appreciate what’s your epoch have to offer to you and enjoy Hi-Res music with your streamer/DAC