I'm glad someone in the RUclips/Influencer age with a big platform is finally talking about dynamic range compression. Those of us who were veterans of The Loudness Wars from back in the 2000s have discussed this topic (and its negative impact on music quality) for years. I acknowledge that all things being equal (e.g. identical master) I would always choose a high res lossless (or even 16/44) file over vinyl. Vinyl has less overall dynamic range capability than 16/44 or higher, is subject to wear and tear over time, hiss and pops, etc. But we almost never get the same mastering (aka not overcompressed) file. So I accept the weakness of vinyl to get the better mastered music, especially if the digital file is clearly overcompressed. BTW another reason to crush dynamic range for digital files is the thought that people use those files "on the go" so it has to sound good in the car (road noise), on the go (city/street noise) all of which can make the quieter parts of songs inaudible. So to fight that they boost up the quieter parts. The assumption is: if you're listening to vinyl, you're in a controlled environment and really listening to the music for best quality. Also, if you master a record too loud, it risks having the needle jump the groove. In an ideal world, we'd get the final approved master from the band and its mixer and engineer, and have that put on high res lossless and call it a day. But we rarely ever get that.
What a ridiculous situation. One of the touted benefits of CD upon its introduction was the wide dynamic range available from 16-bit digital. Now we have 24-bit and the dynamics are squashed more than they were on cassette tape releases. Just stupid.
Yeah, disgusting people making mixing and mastering decisions to destroy generations of art. Sometimes you can get decent mastering by purchasing old CDs but often you're screwed.
I think the real problem is that DR scores are not required to be printed on labeling. As soon as this happened it would force people to understand this measurement more and at the same time make the record labels and artists more keen to optimize the value.
The problem is a digital audio workstation vst (plugin) called the "Maxamizer" which you set all upper level for and then raise the quieter part of the signal. This is how dynamic range gets squashed. Unfortunately, for the average person that doesn't have any idea what good dynamic range can sound like, louder is always better.
My son purchased a record player a year ago and the unexpected benefits we have reaped are incredible! It is hard to explain, but it seems the limitations imposed by a record player: you cannot -easily- skip songs or switch albums, etc., you’re kind of obligated to listen through. Forced into this situation seems to relieve of us of making decisions, reduces anxiety, helps put more focus on every song. It’s funny, sometimes the whole family (all 5 of us) will gather around the record player and listen to an album. So, is vinyl technically better…no, but does it provide a better experience, it is very possible.
Agree with many of the comments. Lived through the late fifties era and the 60s into the 70s just enjoying LPs and singles on an auto exchange record player. I am 72 and been into hifi since got a full time job in the 70s. Have chased through that time to get listening perfection but for me never had that until CDs entered the market. A Rega Planar 2 was my final turntable and have never bothered with vinyl again. A friend had a superb set up with Quad speakers and a Linn Sondek LP3? A soon as he had bought the 1st Philips CD player, the CD100 I think, he couldn’t wait to bring it round for me to hear it! That was the end of vinyl for him too. I now only listen to Amazon Music via Shure KSE 1200 electrostatic earphones which give me the best musical experience I’ve ever had.
The older I get, the fewer fucks I give about the format my music is on. I just like to just listen to the damn music and forget about the equipment. A good song is a good song, whether played from a vinyl record or a CD on my hifi system, a "hi res" stream through headphones or my studio monitors or via bluetooth on a mono JBL speaker. Edit: grammar.
I don’t give much about format, but stereo versus mono and dynamic range is a big deal. And yes, good music is still good music on a simple Bluetooth speaker, but more enjoyable on better equipment.
You've got it right brother. Music enthusiasts use audio hardware to listen to music. Audiophiles use music to listen to audio hardware. I know which camp I fall into.
You are absolutely right about the mastering process as it is applied to different formats. Even though vinyl has less dynamic range than a CD, we are offered a version with more dynamic range on vinyl. But this is of no fault of the format itself. It is due to the decisions of those mastering the releases.
I'm 59 and, of course, started out listening to vinyl and then CD's. I still have all my albums and CD's. I do not use them. I have Hi-Res services from Amazon and Qobuz. My Blusound Node, Freya+ tube amp, Bifrost 2/64, Emotiva RMC-1L, and XPA-DR-2 (all balanced) sending non sounding compressed music to ELAC Carina's sounds awesome! No hiss or crackle. Having access to any song ever made far exceeds the nostalgia of a crackling record taking up a lot of space. I do enjoy your videos and to each his own! 🥂
As someone else mentioned here a digital step was introduced into vinyl production sometime in the late 70s / early 80s - I believe it was during the lathe cutting process when the analog signal is sampled to provide a delay giving the engineer a few seconds to make their adjustments. It was a particular problem in Japan as they were early adopters and used low bit rate sampling (8bit I believe).
The delay wasn't for the engineer, it was far too short for that. The delay enabled the equipment to automatically adjust the groove positions to "pack" them, which enabled more content to fit in the same space. An engineer could never do that, anyway. But the equipment had to be able to preview the upcoming content to be able to adjust the groove packing, where possible.
It's refreshing to hear someone in the audiophile community (aka you) discussing the enjoyment of the music and not just listening to the hardware. Too often people discuss the equipment and the not the enjoyment it provides. However there is a small elephant in the room - so to speak. While some vinyl cuts may have a better dynamic range and sound more natural, the cost of the hardware to listen to this music is significantly higher for vinyl than it is for digital. I am fortunate enough to have heard some crazy expensive vinyl setups and while I have to admit they sound really good the cost is prohibitive. Similar musical enjoyment can be had from a digital setup at a fraction of the cost. In the ideal world, it would be nice if the record companies could release an 'audiophile master' without dynamic compression so we could actually hear what it should sound like.....
You hit the nail on the head. It all boils down to the mastering. If the mastering and EQ is the same for both, digital will win. I have different versions of famous albums. All the CD that were mastered in the late 80s and early 90s have much better dynamic range 12-15 (in my opinion just as good or better than vinyl) versus the newly "remastered" and botched releases that are very straining to listen to with DR of 4-8.
I love how you are using talking heads music to discuss this issue. I remember listening to psycho killer on the radio when it was first released. It blew my mind. Changed my orientation to music forever. 46 years later and we're still enjoying that song. A lot of credit has to be given to Tina and that wonderful bass line.
The older I’ve become the less things I want to own in my life, owning lots of “things” just don’t do it for me anymore. Every thing gone and currently replaced by a Bluestone Powernode, Chord speaker cables and a set of KEF ls50 meta speakers which I love, it’s as good as I’ll ever need in my small home. Also the amount of new music I’ve found over the last couple of years of streaming is incredible
Seems to me we have an amazing luxury of choosing between infinite streaming high quality music and the enjoyable quest to find a perfect vinyl recording. And I say to myself, what a wonderful world.
this is why i still buy cd and vinyl and havent moved to streaming. i want quality over convenience. ive invested an ungodly amount into media, amps, speakers, treatment, cd players etc and refuse to eat shyte.
My hearing has always been compromised, and music has always been my priority. Combine both and you get an a-audiophile. Years on and the listening fatigue due to digital has compromised my hearing even more, way more. To cut the long story short, when I listened to vinyl again in a used records shop I felt my ears were brought back to life.. I embraced the digital era, arms open wide and ditched the frustrating vinyl experience, and today is the opposite. Therapeutical reasons, I guess because I got 2 choices: to stop listening to music for the rest of my life, or listening to music again in a format I got divorced from and now remarried so I can listen to music properly again. Great video,, it encapsulates in comprehensible terms what digital audiophiles can't understand about analog formats, even if that took you hours to record, lol. I could see the fumes coming out of your ears and nostrils.
As a musician, a drummer specifically, I find vinyl to be a wee bit muddy, like placing a gel over a camera lens, it ends up softening everything, taking away the edges. I'm old enough to remember when CD's first came out and it was exhilarating, I could actually hear the stick tips hitting the cymbals and just like it sounded like sitting at the kit. Yes, the crisp high ends as you say but there is a cleanliness or crispiness to everything with digital that gets lost on Vinyl. Some people actually like that softness - they call it "warmth". No issue, to each his own.I just like that I can hear my cymbal hits and exactly how it sounded on that day in the Studio.
Thank you so much for sharing this kind of thoughts, too - not just reviews and comparisons. It makes a lot of sense to all of us, active listeners of digital audio formats and vynil.
Superb video. You hit on all the points I thought were missing from the previous Stop Making Sense video. I am not the utmost authority on audio but I am pretty savvy... and I must say that your description in this video aligns 100% with my understanding. I look forward to hearing the interview with PBTHAL.
This is fast becoming my favourite channel. I love it when audiophile youtubers say stuff like "you need lossless 24-bit/192kHz audio through this $10k system so that you can really hear what the artist intended" when the reality is typically, at best, you are hearing what the mastering engineer intended, at worst what the record company instructed the mastering engineer to do. It would be interesting to hear from somebody in the business regarding their views on how vinyl mastering differs from mass market digital mastering.
Interesting video, very well done. I saw this concert and it was fabulous and strangely enough the sound was one of the best and balanced live performances I have ever heard.
You make a fascinating point! Last week I performed a live version of Rachmaninov symphony 2 under the baton of Andrew Litton and we worked very hard on dynamic range. I’ve also performed the same piece with other conductors and I can safely say that focusing energies on d.r. results in a massive impact on the audience satisfaction. In essence you’ve also inadvertently made a pro argument for live classical music. Just pop down to your local symphony orchestra. I can see you worked really hard on this one, you’ve definitely made your point in a very clear manner, congrats as usual !!
The compression af the dynamic range of the music is because it sounds better on a car stereo. I was told this 25 years ago. At that time people even found that a copy of a CD to a casette tape for the car sounded better than a copy of a LP. A person named Garry Miller mentioned some of the same.
Yes indeed a time and place for all formats. At home I usually have vinyl in my car that’s a different but equally satisfying format. Life without music isn’t life at all.
Wow, lots of outtakes at the end. You are very patient! I have not listened to any modern vinyl, as I have not had a turntable set up for ages. I still have my old record albums from the 1970s-late 1990s, when I started to only purchase CDs, and I remember hearing a distinct difference in sound quality on vinyl when purchasing discs from notably high quality vinyl producers who also used top quality master recordings for source material (Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, Sheffield Lab, Direct-Disk Labs, etc), as compared to the standard issue vinyl from CBS, etc. As far as dynamic range goes, I think the big selling point of greater dynamic range for CDs was really because they had a much lower noise floor than vinyl did. Yes, CD could also have a higher end as well (due to the limitations caused by groove tracking of high level signals by the cartridge), but I think the bigger impact was the lower noise floor. But the bottom line is that the source material (master) used to produce the media is the ultimate decider. Garbage in, garbage out! With the advent of higher quality digital recordings, it reflected badly on recording engineers who did a bad job of mastering the original music, so they needed to up their game.
Exactly. CD's are capable of somewhere around 90 db dynamic range. Loudness Wars reversed all the benefits of that DR for a low noise floor and high output. Which often ruins the listening experience with fatigue. Although and honestly, natural music DR in itself can be fatiguing to listen to in a home environment on a consistent basis. What is a useful option that streaming does offer is an adjustable DR compression for late night listening.
Love this. After reading nearly all of the thousand comments here, I'm happy to give my take. 59 years old with not-too-compromised ears. I like vinyl ONLY for those albums that my brain remembers from back in the '70's. Breakfast in America. Hotel California. Hot Streets. I know where every instrument and note "was" in the soundstage, as originally masteted and transferred in the very best way they could at the time. As for any other presentation - original CD, today's high-def, etc. - the specs are infinitely better. But to my brain, for those old albums, it simply sounds wrong, lol. Now as for that new Stones album, I'll enjoy it in the manner that it was just recorded, and it will a great musical experience as well. An old audiophile's "muscle memory" is what this conversation is really all about!
Whether CD, hi-res or Vinyl, it really depends on which type of music fan you are. If you like me as an orchestra fan, I would choose CD and hi-res streaming as which are very similar to a real orchestra replay in a concert hall which has incredible depth in 3D sound stage and clarity. I will be very easy to identify the position and type of the musical instruments. Vinyl will not be able to achieve this. However if you are a solo piano, violin fan prefer small size instruments, Vinyl will be able to shine as it has more musical feeling and touches.
Vinyl can certainly achieve this however a quality setup could easily cost more than a cd transport. Most of my classical vinyl collection outshines cd versions but this wasn't the case until I upgraded my deck and cartridge more recently. Streaming quality is getting very close and you do avoid surface noise in both steaming and cd however vinyl can still outshine based on the mastering source
When I put some tubes in the path of my High Res Audio it sounds just as natural as vinyl. It smooths out any digital sheen, while retaining the musical information. No crackling :p Tubes will obfuscate any digital character.
You know, I'm beginning to see the light on a tube power amp for that very reason, just to smooth out as you say the sheen. There are just so many to choose from these days, which is a good thing but difficult to weed through.
I am always super surprised how much I really enjoy well made vinyl that is cut from digital files. Michael Fremer says as much in his MoFi/Music Direct tour video. At the end of the day, it’s all about the chain of mastering and manufacturing and the end users equipment. Great video!
I own and run a record store, but I'm still mostly interested in original pressings of older recordings. That said, I do get excited about all analog, repress/remasters of classic albums, especially those that are hard to find, or were never released on vinyl.
Great vid and a necessary follow-up from the first one - thanks. The answer to 'why are the digitals mastered with less dynamic range?' To me, likely to be the fact that individual digital tracks could be competing with other individual tracks within PLAYLISTS. However, on Vinyl, the format is only competing with itself for a 20min period of intentional listening of each SIDE... so it could/should have whatever dynamic range it likes... without the competition track-to-track that digital playlists could bring up.
Great subject to dive into John! In the end, the engineer and producer (and sometimes the artist) have a lot more to do with sound quality than the format. Analog tape and vinyl both have pretty severe limitations that never-the-less can deliver great musical enjoyment, Modern vinyl is so expensive that I think the engineers are extra careful to get the best result. Digital (especially hi-res) is capable of capturing live sound without limitation, but that is almost never what we get. There are different kinds of compression used depending on the medium. A very compressed recording (average loud level) really eats up playing time on an LP, but peak limiting is very important to not overload the cutting head and cause tracking problems. As noted, deep bass is mono on vinyl and is rolled off pretty steeply below 40 or 50 Hz to save space and prevent tracking problems. In the days when vinyl was the only choice, the sound and the quality was overall very poor. The discs were thin and usually warped (causing warp wow when played) and usually incorporated reground vinyl (old records that didn't sell, ground up paper labels and all). The most common customer complaint was 'skipping' usually caused by using really cheap crappy turntables and ceramic cartridges. Customers returned records and demanded their money back. For this reason, dynamic range and frequency response were usually purposely severely reduced compared to the master tape. 45RPM singles (used in jukeboxes) were especially bad sounding. These were considered disposable. 33RPM LPs weren't much better with a few exceptions. Big selling albums would require multiple pressing dies (stampers), each one a little worse as the mother wore out, and these dies would be used well past their prime to get the required million discs for sale. Today's vinyl is usually heavy 180g virgin vinyl pressed using long heating/cooling cycles to get beautiful quiet surfaces. I think it also assumed that even modestly priced turntables are very capable these days and the resulting LP can be a bit closer to the master tape. BTW, using a digital master allows the engineer to 'know what's coming' to the cutting head with the benefit that the levels can be pushed a little higher without risk of unintended distortion. Followers should check out: dynamicrangeday.co.uk/ This group is dedicated to ending the 'loudness war'.
The limitations of analog followed, insures at least good sound, and with skill, great sound. Your digital can be done easily by keyboard warriors with high amounts of technology who never were taught how to make a basic Stereo, 3 microphone recording of a live Jazz or Classical ensemble. I know how to do this properly.
Vinyl mastering engineers actually ask for the files supplied to have the least compression applied possible. It allows them to fit more music on the record, since they can make the track spacing narrower when it's quieter, and only wider in the loud parts where it's really needed. If only labels would also release the same less-compressed masters as high-res files...
With streaming you get a black or silver box with a screen and maybe a led light or two. Record albums often come with a big beautiful cover and artwork. With remastered music from the past and newer music you get a compressed audio experience on digital.
In my opinion, the original lossless/High Res file is closest to how the artist intended it to sound. The fact that a recording of a vinyl is different than the master is evidence that it is further from the artist's vision.
I really enjoyed your analysis of DR and how it compares between vinyl and digital formats. I can tell you, however, that the only real reason I buy vinyl is because I love the physical, tangible nature of vinyl. For all intents and purposes, my music needs "for work" as a DJ are focused around the latest digital performance equipment that I rely on when playing on stage, so my vinyl collection is about 85-90% "for pleasure" and, to be frank, it's more about escaping digital fatigue for me. It's the same reason I buy video games on physical media and, when my budget allows for it, I prefer to pick up physical copies of my favorite movies. My profession likely makes my relationship with music more of an outlier than the average person, but it definitely affords me a certain level of awareness around the "why" of my vinyl habits. I think your analysis is spot-on but, respectfully, I think the attraction to physical media and the effects of digital fatigue are grossly underplayed (no pun intended) within the 21st-century vinyl community. That said, whatever the reason for each individual's format preferences, I appreciate videos like this that offer a different way to approach a nuanced conversation.
Very interesting and informative video, as your video's always are. Nice to see the bloopers afterwards; it seems to me a frustrating process to get it al right in as few takes as possible and that you're a perfectionist. Don't be too hard for yourself at this aspect; some flaws are a consequence of being a human. Keep up this good work!
I think too much music today is being mastered for playback on mobile phones...through the crappy little built in speakers, because so many people DO listen to music that way. And those of us who listen to music on better playback devices, are effectively getting the short end of the stick.
@rebeccaschade3987 Back in the 60s Berry Gordy (Motown founder) deliberately reduced the quality of his “hit factory” releases (reduced DR, reduced bass, boosted midrange etc) in order to make them sound best on cheap portable transistor radios because he knew that’s how most of his target audience would hear them. And he was right - his “factory” became the most successful pop production company in that period. It’s the same thing now with smart phones - what goes around comes around😄
The "problem" with audible gains made in dynamic range using vinyl, is that you immediately lose that gain advantage by all the noise inherently in vinyl - pops, crackles, humming. Having grown up with vinyl in the 80s, it took me ages to transition to CD, and when I made my first CD purchase (REM automatic for the people) I was just blown away by the sheer clarity and purity of the sound...I was an instant convert overnight and sold almost all my vinyl and began the arduous journey of replacing with CD. I went through exactly the same process with streaming about 10 or so years ago, having already begun dipping my toe in, ripping my CD collection onto a server and thinking "why would I need to pay for a streaming service"...but then, having gradually got used to spotify and then the higher res Tidal, I cannot imagine listening to music any other way. The sheer amount of artists Ive discovered just leaving the player running after an album finishes and does its own thing, is just wonderful. The ability to easily make playlists for a specific social occasion, a dinner party, or just to share with close pals...brilliant! The absolute joyous fun and laughter me and my pals have when they come over, chatting about music and us all pinging our favourites in turns to the streamer or new artists we've found! I still sit and listen critically and focussed to my music as its one of my main loves in life, but I feel completely liberated by streaming now and don't miss vinyl in the slightest. If I want to listen to a record AND read the sleeve details, I can do that easily online. I really don't miss having a physical "thing" in my hands, and I can't help feel that my past vinyl addiction had far more to do with collecting trophies than it did the music itself. It was an attachment to a thing, and that thing (my collection) was part of my identity. I'm glad I let go! All that vinyl space has been replaced by books :)
This is great info as a recording musician and the recording technician, for getting the dynamic range of material prior to going to press. And after testing the record. Thank you sir!
9 dB of dynamics is outrageous! I remember when in the 90s I was disappointed when I found out the Dire Straits Brothers in Arms DDD CD had “only” about 30 dB of dynamic range compared to the 90 dB range available in the CD format! Man, times have changed….
What I truly enjoyed in the last 2 videos is your demonstration that the key is mastering quality. Thanks for that. At the same time, dynamic range is NOT the only factor. Agreed that the loudness war leaves us poorer in sound quality. However, depending on what you are listening to, HI RES files played from a good source (streaming has it's own problems with jitters, internet quality, EM noise, etc.) may provide the best format...if the mastering (or remastering) is of high quality. How to rate and evaluate quality mastering is therefore the true test, not the medium itself (Vinyl or Digital).
A lossless digital streaming file will be the closest you come to the actual file generated in mastering. Thats it. The original. Vinyl is charming and fun, but something completely else. So is lossy streaming in MP3 or AAC or even Atmos for that matter.
I'll take the hi-res digital files every time. I did the record thing back in the '80s when it was the best low-cost source for music, but have since moved on to better and more convenient digital options, beginning with CDs after they became more affordable.
You’ve truly amazed me. I’ve always figured that one of the attractions of vinyl was the necessary compression that comes with the format compared to digital! And the reverse is true. You learn something new every day!
Dynamic range has always been the reason I prefer Vinyl on the whole. Some CD reissues butcher the sound, not because CD is incapable of superb sound, but because the studio butchered it. One of the reasons I prefer Vinyl which I think is inherent in the format and the dynamic range (yes I'm aware the format has less SNR than CD is capable of) is that it's less fatiguing. When I was younger I liked to listen to my hifi *really* loud. With CDs that would cause my ears to ring and my head to ache after a while. With Vinyl I found I could listen at high levels for long periods without any fatigue. Excuse the analogy but highly compressed CD is like living in an ultra modern house with sharp shiny surfaces and Vinyl is more like living is 1970s house full of plants while wearing comfy corduroy slacks!
Thanks Darko, and for me it gets better. One steps can add another layer of WOW, showing just what the format is capable of and it’s mighty impressive. 😊
You've hit the nail on the head regarding the masters used making the most difference rather than the format itself. I'm a mastering engineer with four decades experience and I recently got back into vinyl myself. One of the major reasons for this is that it is far easier to find original pressings of some of my favourite albums without all the hyper compression, brick wall limiting and even intentional clipping done on many digital releases. These "loudness wars" releases are fatiguing and harsh to listen to. While vinyl is technically lacking in some aspects, the vastly superior masters used on the original pressings (in many cases) makes these releases far more engaging to listen to.
That's the pity of it: vinyl is demonstrably inferior even to 16-bit 44.1 KHz by every relevant metric, but there's a flood of poorly mastered CDs out there--exacerbated by the Loudness Wars, not to mention mastering from degraded tapes, using safety copies, using masters EQ'd for vinyl that require, and suffer from, corrective EQing--that have led the underinformed to the bizarre position that 16-bit 44.1 KHz is somehow inherently inferior to vinyl.
John - really appreciate the recent content about hi res and analog vs digital. I’ve been in this hobby a long time and just now realizing that some of the old ways of doing things can be more enjoyable than the new ways. For example, I have an old burr brown pcm63 base DAC that will not accept signals above 16/48, but I enjoy listening to that setup more than the many newer DACs that I’ve owned over the years that can play all of the latest formats at super-high resolution.
We buy compressed audio because it is ahem... "louder". If we bought more audio with performance-level dynamic range, the producers would release it that way on digital. "We have met the enemy and he is us"
I remember watching a movie in it's original language and having the reaction "wow it is far quieter than the dubbed version". The sound was better, but it seems dubbed versions are also "quiet" nowadays so you have to rely on whatever sound system you're hostage to.
I recorded a bunch of records from the 70's (full Led Zeppelin album library, Jimmy Hendrix, the Cars, Supertramp... ) with a Kenwood linear tracking tt I got in 1985, through the 1/4-inch jack out on a PYLE phono preamp into my HP laptop 3.5mm mic jack using Windows basic recording software and they are the best record recordings I've ever heard. Super simple with only one external component (phono preamp). Love your videos. Thanks!
With modern vinyl cutting, I find the 4kHz range needs adding or removing. With one beautiful pressing I have to add 9dbB to equalise it. Apparently this has to do with the natural resonance of the mass of the cutting head which apparently needs constant monitoring and compensating for during cutting. This information comes from an old boy who still works in high end studio gear. He also told me that
Thanks for the video and history. Love your take on the subject. Also thanks on the bluperpers. I can see that as person with a bit OCD how fun your recording can be.
Besides the discussion of what's better, vinyl or digital, what you John are really putting a spotlight on is the importance of really good recordings! In the end it doesn't matter if with an excellent analogue or digital recording we get into our audiophile nirvana, it is the voice of this community (audio playback gourmets) which needs to be heard to stop the corrosion of music sources! It is important that the studio bosses get to know and learn that for the only-mobile-phone-playback-generation it doesn't matter, but for those who really care, now, and also in the future! Thank you John! Enjoy the music! Best regards, Matthias
Since we are all in this hobbie for the love of music . I figured I’d start posting some great songs to enjoy.. Mingo Fishtrap- Not the Same Jamie cullum- Lover, you should have come over Lake street Dive- I want you back Seth walker- I must be in a good place now Fever - Ray Charles It would be cool if everyone started putting some of there favorites out. Discovering new music is what has made the streaming algorithm so great.
Hello Mr Darko, following your youtube channel I have learned so much about how in the world you can play music in a better and different way, I would love to hear more from you about the dynamic range compression, thank you!
This really explains why vinyl collectors tend to gravitate towards certain genres. Those that benefit from from DR more than separation etc. Busy mixes require digital sources for me but sparse and dynamic (Jazz is an obvious one) sounds fantastic on vinyl.
I like the feel of records and their covers, I like turntables, i like how cartridges work, I like the process of playing a record, I like the sound of a lot of lps, not all. I like analog v digital.
Great - Finally - An actual audio pro explains it properly ! - What I always wondered was why audio devices don't just come with a volume control, but with a compression control? The way things are now, we have streaming services (even if they advertise as "HiRes") want more compression so that quiet details can still be heard via on-the-move devices, and vinyl (which is very much a not-on-the-move medium) - sometimes - offering better dynamic range.
Just got a good pre-amp running my 80s Technics record player on my Pioneer surround system and holy crap... the clarity and bass is astounding. So cool watching it spin away as I relax.
Dynamic range keeps going down because dumb record executives, and the artists themselves, will not go against the grain of LOUDER UNTIL IT BLEEDS. This is the real cause. The original Stop Making sense, recorded digitally and released at the onset was probably the best sounding of the bunch, but when CDs became mainstream, the loudness wars also began. And it has gotten worse. Vinyl isn't better, and neither is tape. What is better about those formats is that they cannot be pushed. That's it. That's the whole thing. IF an artist releases material with a full dynamic range and leaves it alone, the digital file and CD it will blow all other formats out of the water. Especially a 24bit, 48k file, with over 100db of dynamic range. Leave them things alone and we get back to music, not loudness.
Thank you for again drawing attention to the problem of dynamic range (over)compression that continues to plague most remasters and new releases. I’m looking forward to the podcast episode you mentioned.
For me, it’s not about the vinyl it’s about what’s on it, and I can safely say you can’t unscratch a vinyl record and if you have a favourite recording you frequently listen to either for enjoyment or as a musician to learn from it ( some of us still like to learn by ear) , it just can’t compete to a cd on either durability or price
Excellent video. I'm an audio engineer and an avid collector of records. The truth of the matter is certainly that, with the exception of One-Step records costing hundreds of dollars on release, most of the records we hear nowadays are indeed digitally sourced... and it doesn't detract whatsoever from the experience. I think a lot should be said for the tactile and aesthetic experience of having a large physical copy to hold and look at rather than limited credits on a screen with only front cover art. Ear fatigue is another issue that too many people eschew when considering the differences between Hi-Res Digital Vs Vinyl masters. I can listen to Grindcore, Psych, Metal or furious Jazz without limit on vinyl. If I try the same via 192kHz Flac/Wav, it's only a matter of time before I start tuning out. A rewarding and engaging experience is subjective of course, but for my money, you are bang on here. Cheers
Great point. It's very hard to explain but playing anything digitally streamed on a decent system can be wearing after a while. DR compression maybe fools the ear but not the brain...or vice-versa!
The MoFi One Step releases were quite recently outed as having gone through a DSD or DXD AD/DA in the mastering, so not even those (though the manufact). There are still some, but few who are not doing this. And honestly, I'm not even sure I care. As long as recording, mixing, and mastering is competently and tastefully done, I'm good with most equipment likely to be involved.
E1DA is a russian engineer living in China in order to design an manufacture some incredible audio equipment. A real cool down to earth guy. Great video. For us who lived through the cd revolution remember when they had symbols on cds telling you how it it was recorded, mixed qnd master.
This is a great follow up to your prior video. You are correct in that any reasonably high quality vinyl playback chain will produce a very similar dynamic range as any other reasonably high quality vinyl playback chain, assuming that dynamic range is measured using the industry standard metric for this which is LUFS. Looking forward to the next follow up video.
Fun fact to end all current and future debates: pretty much ALL LP records after 1971 are actually 12-bit digital audio because during mastering they would go through a digital delay (of which the Ampex ADD-1 was the first). The use of digital delays for mastering became the standard very quickly, so now essentially all commercial releases from the 70s on are, in fact, digital audio. Also, LP records and 45s (not "vinyls": no one called them that, just like no one called CDs "polycarbonates") are MASTERED differently precisely to overcome the limitations of the format. That makes them sound a bit different. So, any differences you hear -or think you hear- can be attributed to the mastering process. (edit: swapped paragraph order)
Two days before my son sent me the link to this post, I watched a movie from 1946, Two Sisters From Boston. In the film, there is a scene where Lauritz Melchior records Prize Song from Die Meistersinger. When he finishes he has the following exchange with a record company exec. You can find the clip online. Record exec: You wasn’t loud enough. People don’t want records that they have to listen to. Melchior: But it is the right rendition of the aria Mr. Gibson. Record exec: Who cares about the song. It’s the phenomenon. That’s what the people want. It’s the noise that comes out of the box.
This is good information. I agree with your conclusions. The public generally assumes “remastered” is a good thing. Many times, it’s worse. This however assumes the dynamic range across all frequencies. If I found an old cassette/vinyl with good dynamic range but sounds muffled or noisy, I would probably choose the format with more compression but better overall frequency response and that isn't a constant reminder of the noisy media it is being played on.
By the late 70s many - not all, but many, many, many - mastering facilities (at a time when vinyl was the mass market format!) had moved to using digital delay lines rather than tape preview heads. Ampex and other studio tape deck manufacturers really pushed this technology, and mastering facilities were quite enthusiastic adopters of digital (and quite low-bit at that!). So by the late 70s many - not all, but many, many, many - vinyl records in the marketplace were already digital in the final step, or AAD if you prefer. And that's before digital started to move into the studio setting for tracking with the early machines from Sony, Mitsubishi, etc. in the 1980s, and before ProTools etc. arrive in the 1990s.
I've heard about the 12-bit delay being a thing, but I have yet to hear exactly how widespread the usage of it really was, because I've heard at least one vinyl-mastering engineer who worked in the '70s and '80s say he never saw or heard of anyone using it in his company, and didn't know who did otherwise. I think it was the English guy who makes videos with titles like 'vinyl is coming back and it's so wrong on so many levels'. He explains things well but I hate the clickbait and he comes off strangely snarky in comments.
I'm pretty sure the whole audio chain was analogue until at least the mid-1980's. Stereo masters were mixed onto analogue Ampex and Studer two track machines, and it was those that were delivered to mastering engineers. All the eq's and compressors that were then used were all analogue too. There were outlier digital recordings made in the early 1980's, but as a working studio musician in London the first time I started seeing digital tape machines was around 1988/89 and that was for specialist, big budget albums. Most people were still recording to tape on analogue machines. A few pioneers started using pro-tools around 1990, but when I bought my first system in 1992 it was still quite basic and very expensive.
@@ChrisWhittenMusic I think maybe you misunderstood the original comment you’re responding too - he’s not talking about digital in the studio he’s talking about in the pressing plant I think ?
The loudness war has caused a post-1990 degradation on CD releases in terms of Dynamic Range (DR). It's no secret that many audiophiles seek older CD releases and avoid like the plague new remasterings. Vinyl is indeed more resilient to that trend.
In photography we say that the best camera in the world is the one that we have at hand right now. The best sound to me at the moment comes from my gear and my format in my room or car. That is why sound preferences are so interesting, because my friends can come along and show their setup and philosophy and I get to experience their world and their sound. - a win win for all
Not just that but quite often I find my favourite record is the one I'm playing at the moment. What's your favourite, for instance, Beatles album? Tends to be the one you have on at the time!
So limitations of vinyl format don't allow publishers to enforce that crazy level of dynamic compression that they want and that can be reached with digital formats, and that spoils perception of music more than imperfections and limitations of vinyl media. Totally works for me! :)
Having explored every music format since the early 60s, including vinyl, reel-to-reel, 8-tracks and cassettes, I now make both lossy and CD quality playlists on iTunes. Can't beat the convenience!... and won't abide by vinyl ticks and pops!
Wow! That's really interesting to know. I've always felt that original recordings were preferable to Re-mastered versions, and now I know why. Your herculean efforts to investigate and explain this phenomenon are really appreciated. Thx.
I think the real reason, why the dynamic range decreases from release to release is: It should sound good on any device, especially the cheap modern mass consumer devices and BT boom boxes which are not capable of handling a dynamic range of 14 or more.
Just got back into vinyl and this is one of the most relevant and educational video's I have seen in providing a measurable understanding of the audio transfer between between analog to digital and back. Great description of testing process to avoid biased data interpretations. Just subscribed. Great work
I'm glad someone in the RUclips/Influencer age with a big platform is finally talking about dynamic range compression. Those of us who were veterans of The Loudness Wars from back in the 2000s have discussed this topic (and its negative impact on music quality) for years. I acknowledge that all things being equal (e.g. identical master) I would always choose a high res lossless (or even 16/44) file over vinyl. Vinyl has less overall dynamic range capability than 16/44 or higher, is subject to wear and tear over time, hiss and pops, etc. But we almost never get the same mastering (aka not overcompressed) file. So I accept the weakness of vinyl to get the better mastered music, especially if the digital file is clearly overcompressed. BTW another reason to crush dynamic range for digital files is the thought that people use those files "on the go" so it has to sound good in the car (road noise), on the go (city/street noise) all of which can make the quieter parts of songs inaudible. So to fight that they boost up the quieter parts. The assumption is: if you're listening to vinyl, you're in a controlled environment and really listening to the music for best quality. Also, if you master a record too loud, it risks having the needle jump the groove. In an ideal world, we'd get the final approved master from the band and its mixer and engineer, and have that put on high res lossless and call it a day. But we rarely ever get that.
And - you often get a beautiful jacket and artwork.
With analog, you can record below the noise floor...
My favorite aspect of vinyl is that I see no way for companies to make me subscribe to their streaming service.
What a ridiculous situation. One of the touted benefits of CD upon its introduction was the wide dynamic range available from 16-bit digital. Now we have 24-bit and the dynamics are squashed more than they were on cassette tape releases. Just stupid.
Yeah, disgusting people making mixing and mastering decisions to destroy generations of art.
Sometimes you can get decent mastering by purchasing old CDs but often you're screwed.
People are too lazy to use the volume control today.
I think the real problem is that DR scores are not required to be printed on labeling. As soon as this happened it would force people to understand this measurement more and at the same time make the record labels and artists more keen to optimize the value.
The problem is a digital audio workstation vst (plugin) called the "Maxamizer" which you set all upper level for and then raise the quieter part of the signal. This is how dynamic range gets squashed. Unfortunately, for the average person that doesn't have any idea what good dynamic range can sound like, louder is always better.
Sounds like the loudness war, but with extra steps.
My son purchased a record player a year ago and the unexpected benefits we have reaped are incredible! It is hard to explain, but it seems the limitations imposed by a record player: you cannot -easily- skip songs or switch albums, etc., you’re kind of obligated to listen through. Forced into this situation seems to relieve of us of making decisions, reduces anxiety, helps put more focus on every song. It’s funny, sometimes the whole family (all 5 of us) will gather around the record player and listen to an album. So, is vinyl technically better…no, but does it provide a better experience, it is very possible.
Ah yes, you get it. 99% of the people in these comments do not. Enjoy the music!
Agree with many of the comments. Lived through the late fifties era and the 60s into the 70s just enjoying LPs and singles on an auto exchange record player. I am 72 and been into hifi since got a full time job in the 70s. Have chased through that time to get listening perfection but for me never had that until CDs entered the market. A Rega Planar 2 was my final turntable and have never bothered with vinyl again. A friend had a superb set up with Quad speakers and a Linn Sondek LP3? A soon as he had bought the 1st Philips CD player, the CD100 I think, he couldn’t wait to bring it round for me to hear it! That was the end of vinyl for him too.
I now only listen to Amazon Music via Shure KSE 1200 electrostatic earphones which give me the best musical experience I’ve ever had.
I learned more watching this video than I have in the last 3 years of listening to vinyl. Flawless. Sublime video
The older I get, the fewer fucks I give about the format my music is on. I just like to just listen to the damn music and forget about the equipment. A good song is a good song, whether played from a vinyl record or a CD on my hifi system, a "hi res" stream through headphones or my studio monitors or via bluetooth on a mono JBL speaker.
Edit: grammar.
That’s my memory of the 70s. Records, cassette, 8 track, reel to reel, radio…it was just about the music, not this modern format fan boy bollocks!
I’m the same as you. I used to be sucked in with gear and the format. Now I couldn’t give two rats about it. Just play the music and be done with it.
*fewer fucks, not less 👍
I don’t give much about format, but stereo versus mono and dynamic range is a big deal. And yes, good music is still good music on a simple Bluetooth speaker, but more enjoyable on better equipment.
You've got it right brother.
Music enthusiasts use audio hardware to listen to music.
Audiophiles use music to listen to audio hardware.
I know which camp I fall into.
You are absolutely right about the mastering process as it is applied to different formats. Even though vinyl has less dynamic range than a CD, we are offered a version with more dynamic range on vinyl. But this is of no fault of the format itself. It is due to the decisions of those mastering the releases.
I'm 59 and, of course, started out listening to vinyl and then CD's. I still have all my albums and CD's. I do not use them. I have Hi-Res services from Amazon and Qobuz.
My Blusound Node, Freya+ tube amp, Bifrost 2/64, Emotiva RMC-1L, and XPA-DR-2 (all balanced) sending non sounding compressed music to ELAC Carina's sounds awesome! No hiss or crackle. Having access to any song ever made far exceeds the nostalgia of a crackling record taking up a lot of space.
I do enjoy your videos and to each his own! 🥂
As someone else mentioned here a digital step was introduced into vinyl production sometime in the late 70s / early 80s - I believe it was during the lathe cutting process when the analog signal is sampled to provide a delay giving the engineer a few seconds to make their adjustments. It was a particular problem in Japan as they were early adopters and used low bit rate sampling (8bit I believe).
The delay wasn't for the engineer, it was far too short for that. The delay enabled the equipment to automatically adjust the groove positions to "pack" them, which enabled more content to fit in the same space. An engineer could never do that, anyway. But the equipment had to be able to preview the upcoming content to be able to adjust the groove packing, where possible.
It's refreshing to hear someone in the audiophile community (aka you) discussing the enjoyment of the music and not just listening to the hardware. Too often people discuss the equipment and the not the enjoyment it provides. However there is a small elephant in the room - so to speak. While some vinyl cuts may have a better dynamic range and sound more natural, the cost of the hardware to listen to this music is significantly higher for vinyl than it is for digital.
I am fortunate enough to have heard some crazy expensive vinyl setups and while I have to admit they sound really good the cost is prohibitive. Similar musical enjoyment can be had from a digital setup at a fraction of the cost.
In the ideal world, it would be nice if the record companies could release an 'audiophile master' without dynamic compression so we could actually hear what it should sound like.....
You hit the nail on the head. It all boils down to the mastering. If the mastering and EQ is the same for both, digital will win. I have different versions of famous albums. All the CD that were mastered in the late 80s and early 90s have much better dynamic range 12-15 (in my opinion just as good or better than vinyl) versus the newly "remastered" and botched releases that are very straining to listen to with DR of 4-8.
I love how you are using talking heads music to discuss this issue. I remember listening to psycho killer on the radio when it was first released. It blew my mind. Changed my orientation to music forever. 46 years later and we're still enjoying that song. A lot of credit has to be given to Tina and that wonderful bass line.
The older I’ve become the less things I want to own in my life, owning lots of “things” just don’t do it for me anymore. Every thing gone and currently replaced by a Bluestone Powernode, Chord speaker cables and a set of KEF ls50 meta speakers which I love, it’s as good as I’ll ever need in my small home. Also the amount of new music I’ve found over the last couple of years of streaming is incredible
Very good point! It is a wonderland for music lovers! ✌️😎
Seems to me we have an amazing luxury of choosing between infinite streaming high quality music and the enjoyable quest to find a perfect vinyl recording. And I say to myself, what a wonderful world.
this is why i still buy cd and vinyl and havent moved to streaming. i want quality over convenience. ive invested an ungodly amount into media, amps, speakers, treatment, cd players etc and refuse to eat shyte.
My hearing has always been compromised, and music has always been my priority. Combine both and you get an a-audiophile.
Years on and the listening fatigue due to digital has compromised my hearing even more, way more.
To cut the long story short, when I listened to vinyl again in a used records shop I felt my ears were brought back to life..
I embraced the digital era, arms open wide and ditched the frustrating vinyl experience, and today is the opposite.
Therapeutical reasons, I guess because I got 2 choices: to stop listening to music for the rest of my life, or listening to music again in a format I got divorced from and now remarried so I can listen to music properly again.
Great video,, it encapsulates in comprehensible terms what digital audiophiles can't understand about analog formats, even if that took you hours to record, lol.
I could see the fumes coming out of your ears and nostrils.
As a musician, a drummer specifically, I find vinyl to be a wee bit muddy, like placing a gel over a camera lens, it ends up softening everything, taking away the edges.
I'm old enough to remember when CD's first came out and it was exhilarating, I could actually hear the stick tips hitting the cymbals and just like it sounded like sitting at the kit. Yes, the crisp high ends as you say but there is a cleanliness or crispiness to everything with digital that gets lost on Vinyl. Some people actually like that softness - they call it "warmth". No issue, to each his own.I just like that I can hear my cymbal hits and exactly how it sounded on that day in the Studio.
Thank you so much for sharing this kind of thoughts, too - not just reviews and comparisons. It makes a lot of sense to all of us, active listeners of digital audio formats and vynil.
Superb video. You hit on all the points I thought were missing from the previous Stop Making Sense video. I am not the utmost authority on audio but I am pretty savvy... and I must say that your description in this video aligns 100% with my understanding. I look forward to hearing the interview with PBTHAL.
This is fast becoming my favourite channel. I love it when audiophile youtubers say stuff like "you need lossless 24-bit/192kHz audio through this $10k system so that you can really hear what the artist intended" when the reality is typically, at best, you are hearing what the mastering engineer intended, at worst what the record company instructed the mastering engineer to do. It would be interesting to hear from somebody in the business regarding their views on how vinyl mastering differs from mass market digital mastering.
And this is why I subscribed years ago... for extreme thought provoking content like this one, amazing.
you’re totally correct, it’s all in the mastering!
Interesting video, very well done. I saw this concert and it was fabulous and strangely enough the sound was one of the best and balanced live performances I have ever heard.
You make a fascinating point! Last week I performed a live version of Rachmaninov symphony 2 under the baton of Andrew Litton and we worked very hard on dynamic range. I’ve also performed the same piece with other conductors and I can safely say that focusing energies on d.r. results in a massive impact on the audience satisfaction. In essence you’ve also inadvertently made a pro argument for live classical music. Just pop down to your local symphony orchestra.
I can see you worked really hard on this one, you’ve definitely made your point in a very clear manner, congrats as usual !!
You're spot on with this. DR is considered the most important parameter in assessing the remastering of a recording by most audiophiles.
The compression af the dynamic range of the music is because it sounds better on a car stereo. I was told this 25 years ago. At that time people even found that a copy of a CD to a casette tape for the car sounded better than a copy of a LP. A person named Garry Miller mentioned some of the same.
John. I love this video. Thank you for your time. Terrific what you do. Also the outtakes are hilarious. 😅
Records are just nicer !
I use streaming !
I like my cds !
I love my records !
Yes indeed a time and place for all formats. At home I usually have vinyl in my car that’s a different but equally satisfying format. Life without music isn’t life at all.
Wow, lots of outtakes at the end. You are very patient!
I have not listened to any modern vinyl, as I have not had a turntable set up for ages. I still have my old record albums from the 1970s-late 1990s, when I started to only purchase CDs, and I remember hearing a distinct difference in sound quality on vinyl when purchasing discs from notably high quality vinyl producers who also used top quality master recordings for source material (Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, Sheffield Lab, Direct-Disk Labs, etc), as compared to the standard issue vinyl from CBS, etc.
As far as dynamic range goes, I think the big selling point of greater dynamic range for CDs was really because they had a much lower noise floor than vinyl did. Yes, CD could also have a higher end as well (due to the limitations caused by groove tracking of high level signals by the cartridge), but I think the bigger impact was the lower noise floor.
But the bottom line is that the source material (master) used to produce the media is the ultimate decider. Garbage in, garbage out! With the advent of higher quality digital recordings, it reflected badly on recording engineers who did a bad job of mastering the original music, so they needed to up their game.
Exactly.
CD's are capable of somewhere around 90 db dynamic range.
Loudness Wars reversed all the benefits of that DR for a low noise floor and high output. Which often ruins the listening experience with fatigue.
Although and honestly, natural music DR in itself can be fatiguing to listen to in a home environment on a consistent basis.
What is a useful option that streaming does offer is an adjustable DR compression for late night listening.
Love this. After reading nearly all of the thousand comments here, I'm happy to give my take. 59 years old with not-too-compromised ears. I like vinyl ONLY for those albums that my brain remembers from back in the '70's. Breakfast in America. Hotel California. Hot Streets. I know where every instrument and note "was" in the soundstage, as originally masteted and transferred in the very best way they could at the time. As for any other presentation - original CD, today's high-def, etc. - the specs are infinitely better. But to my brain, for those old albums, it simply sounds wrong, lol. Now as for that new Stones album, I'll enjoy it in the manner that it was just recorded, and it will a great musical experience as well. An old audiophile's "muscle memory" is what this conversation is really all about!
Whether CD, hi-res or Vinyl, it really depends on which type of music fan you are. If you like me as an orchestra fan, I would choose CD and hi-res streaming as which are very similar to a real orchestra replay in a concert hall which has incredible depth in 3D sound stage and clarity. I will be very easy to identify the position and type of the musical instruments. Vinyl will not be able to achieve this. However if you are a solo piano, violin fan prefer small size instruments, Vinyl will be able to shine as it has more musical feeling and touches.
Vinyl can certainly achieve this however a quality setup could easily cost more than a cd transport. Most of my classical vinyl collection outshines cd versions but this wasn't the case until I upgraded my deck and cartridge more recently.
Streaming quality is getting very close and you do avoid surface noise in both steaming and cd however vinyl can still outshine based on the mastering source
When I put some tubes in the path of my High Res Audio it sounds just as natural as vinyl. It smooths out any digital sheen, while retaining the musical information. No crackling :p Tubes will obfuscate any digital character.
You know, I'm beginning to see the light on a tube power amp for that very reason, just to smooth out as you say the sheen. There are just so many to choose from these days, which is a good thing but difficult to weed through.
I am always super surprised how much I really enjoy well made vinyl that is cut from digital files. Michael Fremer says as much in his MoFi/Music Direct tour video. At the end of the day, it’s all about the chain of mastering and manufacturing and the end users equipment. Great video!
I own and run a record store, but I'm still mostly interested in original pressings of older recordings. That said, I do get excited about all analog, repress/remasters of classic albums, especially those that are hard to find, or were never released on vinyl.
Yep, I almost always try to buy originals.
Great vid and a necessary follow-up from the first one - thanks. The answer to 'why are the digitals mastered with less dynamic range?' To me, likely to be the fact that individual digital tracks could be competing with other individual tracks within PLAYLISTS. However, on Vinyl, the format is only competing with itself for a 20min period of intentional listening of each SIDE... so it could/should have whatever dynamic range it likes... without the competition track-to-track that digital playlists could bring up.
Great subject to dive into John! In the end, the engineer and producer (and sometimes the artist) have a lot more to do with sound quality than the format. Analog tape and vinyl both have pretty severe limitations that never-the-less can deliver great musical enjoyment, Modern vinyl is so expensive that I think the engineers are extra careful to get the best result. Digital (especially hi-res) is capable of capturing live sound without limitation, but that is almost never what we get.
There are different kinds of compression used depending on the medium. A very compressed recording (average loud level) really eats up playing time on an LP, but peak limiting is very important to not overload the cutting head and cause tracking problems. As noted, deep bass is mono on vinyl and is rolled off pretty steeply below 40 or 50 Hz to save space and prevent tracking problems.
In the days when vinyl was the only choice, the sound and the quality was overall very poor. The discs were thin and usually warped (causing warp wow when played) and usually incorporated reground vinyl (old records that didn't sell, ground up paper labels and all). The most common customer complaint was 'skipping' usually caused by using really cheap crappy turntables and ceramic cartridges. Customers returned records and demanded their money back. For this reason, dynamic range and frequency response were usually purposely severely reduced compared to the master tape. 45RPM singles (used in jukeboxes) were especially bad sounding. These were considered disposable. 33RPM LPs weren't much better with a few exceptions. Big selling albums would require multiple pressing dies (stampers), each one a little worse as the mother wore out, and these dies would be used well past their prime to get the required million discs for sale.
Today's vinyl is usually heavy 180g virgin vinyl pressed using long heating/cooling cycles to get beautiful quiet surfaces. I think it also assumed that even modestly priced turntables are very capable these days and the resulting LP can be a bit closer to the master tape. BTW, using a digital master allows the engineer to 'know what's coming' to the cutting head with the benefit that the levels can be pushed a little higher without risk of unintended distortion.
Followers should check out: dynamicrangeday.co.uk/ This group is dedicated to ending the 'loudness war'.
The limitations of analog followed, insures at least good sound, and with skill, great sound. Your digital can be done easily by keyboard warriors with high amounts of technology who never were taught how to make a basic Stereo, 3 microphone recording of a live Jazz or Classical ensemble. I know how to do this properly.
Vinyl mastering engineers actually ask for the files supplied to have the least compression applied possible. It allows them to fit more music on the record, since they can make the track spacing narrower when it's quieter, and only wider in the loud parts where it's really needed. If only labels would also release the same less-compressed masters as high-res files...
With streaming you get a black or silver box with a screen and maybe a led light or two.
Record albums often come with a big beautiful cover and artwork.
With remastered music from the past and newer music you get a compressed audio experience on digital.
In my opinion, the original lossless/High Res file is closest to how the artist intended it to sound. The fact that a recording of a vinyl is different than the master is evidence that it is further from the artist's vision.
I really enjoyed your analysis of DR and how it compares between vinyl and digital formats. I can tell you, however, that the only real reason I buy vinyl is because I love the physical, tangible nature of vinyl.
For all intents and purposes, my music needs "for work" as a DJ are focused around the latest digital performance equipment that I rely on when playing on stage, so my vinyl collection is about 85-90% "for pleasure" and, to be frank, it's more about escaping digital fatigue for me. It's the same reason I buy video games on physical media and, when my budget allows for it, I prefer to pick up physical copies of my favorite movies. My profession likely makes my relationship with music more of an outlier than the average person, but it definitely affords me a certain level of awareness around the "why" of my vinyl habits.
I think your analysis is spot-on but, respectfully, I think the attraction to physical media and the effects of digital fatigue are grossly underplayed (no pun intended) within the 21st-century vinyl community. That said, whatever the reason for each individual's format preferences, I appreciate videos like this that offer a different way to approach a nuanced conversation.
Very interesting and informative video, as your video's always are. Nice to see the bloopers afterwards; it seems to me a frustrating process to get it al right in as few takes as possible and that you're a perfectionist. Don't be too hard for yourself at this aspect; some flaws are a consequence of being a human. Keep up this good work!
I think too much music today is being mastered for playback on mobile phones...through the crappy little built in speakers, because so many people DO listen to music that way. And those of us who listen to music on better playback devices, are effectively getting the short end of the stick.
@rebeccaschade3987
Back in the 60s Berry Gordy (Motown founder) deliberately reduced the quality of his “hit factory” releases (reduced DR, reduced bass, boosted midrange etc) in order to make them sound best on cheap portable transistor radios because he knew that’s how most of his target audience would hear them. And he was right - his “factory” became the most successful pop production company in that period. It’s the same thing now with smart phones - what goes around comes around😄
Great video! All the vloggers that keep repeating the "pleasant distortion" bs when talking about the sound of vinyl should be obliged to watch this.
The "problem" with audible gains made in dynamic range using vinyl, is that you immediately lose that gain advantage by all the noise inherently in vinyl - pops, crackles, humming. Having grown up with vinyl in the 80s, it took me ages to transition to CD, and when I made my first CD purchase (REM automatic for the people) I was just blown away by the sheer clarity and purity of the sound...I was an instant convert overnight and sold almost all my vinyl and began the arduous journey of replacing with CD. I went through exactly the same process with streaming about 10 or so years ago, having already begun dipping my toe in, ripping my CD collection onto a server and thinking "why would I need to pay for a streaming service"...but then, having gradually got used to spotify and then the higher res Tidal, I cannot imagine listening to music any other way. The sheer amount of artists Ive discovered just leaving the player running after an album finishes and does its own thing, is just wonderful. The ability to easily make playlists for a specific social occasion, a dinner party, or just to share with close pals...brilliant! The absolute joyous fun and laughter me and my pals have when they come over, chatting about music and us all pinging our favourites in turns to the streamer or new artists we've found! I still sit and listen critically and focussed to my music as its one of my main loves in life, but I feel completely liberated by streaming now and don't miss vinyl in the slightest. If I want to listen to a record AND read the sleeve details, I can do that easily online. I really don't miss having a physical "thing" in my hands, and I can't help feel that my past vinyl addiction had far more to do with collecting trophies than it did the music itself. It was an attachment to a thing, and that thing (my collection) was part of my identity. I'm glad I let go! All that vinyl space has been replaced by books :)
Why not eBooks?
@@phonomat1587Haha that was exactly my thought 😂
A maintained turntable/records don't exhibit noise like you describe.
This is great info as a recording musician and the recording technician, for getting the dynamic range of material prior to going to press. And after testing the record. Thank you sir!
Great video John, I look forward to doing your podcast soon and breaking down the whole vinyl rip thing, thanks in advance
Brilliantly explained. Thanks for all your effort to educate audiophiles.
9 dB of dynamics is outrageous! I remember when in the 90s I was disappointed when I found out the Dire Straits Brothers in Arms DDD CD had “only” about 30 dB of dynamic range compared to the 90 dB range available in the CD format! Man, times have changed….
What I truly enjoyed in the last 2 videos is your demonstration that the key is mastering quality. Thanks for that. At the same time, dynamic range is NOT the only factor. Agreed that the loudness war leaves us poorer in sound quality. However, depending on what you are listening to, HI RES files played from a good source (streaming has it's own problems with jitters, internet quality, EM noise, etc.) may provide the best format...if the mastering (or remastering) is of high quality. How to rate and evaluate quality mastering is therefore the true test, not the medium itself (Vinyl or Digital).
A lossless digital streaming file will be the closest you come to the actual file generated in mastering. Thats it. The original.
Vinyl is charming and fun, but something completely else. So is lossy streaming in MP3 or AAC or even Atmos for that matter.
Thanks as always! Oh and Thanks for the outtakes! Great to see beyond your beautifully edited video that you're a human too!
I'll take the hi-res digital files every time. I did the record thing back in the '80s when it was the best low-cost source for music, but have since moved on to better and more convenient digital options, beginning with CDs after they became more affordable.
You’ve truly amazed me. I’ve always figured that one of the attractions of vinyl was the necessary compression that comes with the format compared to digital! And the reverse is true. You learn something new every day!
Dynamic range has always been the reason I prefer Vinyl on the whole. Some CD reissues butcher the sound, not because CD is incapable of superb sound, but because the studio butchered it.
One of the reasons I prefer Vinyl which I think is inherent in the format and the dynamic range (yes I'm aware the format has less SNR than CD is capable of) is that it's less fatiguing. When I was younger I liked to listen to my hifi *really* loud. With CDs that would cause my ears to ring and my head to ache after a while. With Vinyl I found I could listen at high levels for long periods without any fatigue.
Excuse the analogy but highly compressed CD is like living in an ultra modern house with sharp shiny surfaces and Vinyl is more like living is 1970s house full of plants while wearing comfy corduroy slacks!
Thanks Darko, and for me it gets better. One steps can add another layer of WOW, showing just what the format is capable of and it’s mighty impressive. 😊
You've hit the nail on the head regarding the masters used making the most difference rather than the format itself. I'm a mastering engineer with four decades experience and I recently got back into vinyl myself. One of the major reasons for this is that it is far easier to find original pressings of some of my favourite albums without all the hyper compression, brick wall limiting and even intentional clipping done on many digital releases. These "loudness wars" releases are fatiguing and harsh to listen to.
While vinyl is technically lacking in some aspects, the vastly superior masters used on the original pressings (in many cases) makes these releases far more engaging to listen to.
That's the pity of it: vinyl is demonstrably inferior even to 16-bit 44.1 KHz by every relevant metric, but there's a flood of poorly mastered CDs out there--exacerbated by the Loudness Wars, not to mention mastering from degraded tapes, using safety copies, using masters EQ'd for vinyl that require, and suffer from, corrective EQing--that have led the underinformed to the bizarre position that 16-bit 44.1 KHz is somehow inherently inferior to vinyl.
John - really appreciate the recent content about hi res and analog vs digital. I’ve been in this hobby a long time and just now realizing that some of the old ways of doing things can be more enjoyable than the new ways. For example, I have an old burr brown pcm63 base DAC that will not accept signals above 16/48, but I enjoy listening to that setup more than the many newer DACs that I’ve owned over the years that can play all of the latest formats at super-high resolution.
Vinyl breaks down every time you listen to it. Dynamics are possible in digital world with a good mastering.
Please explain how vinyl breaks down.
YES! Excited for that podcast conversation. Sometimes videos like this are so I don't have to repeat myself and just point to a direction.
We buy compressed audio because it is ahem... "louder". If we bought more audio with performance-level dynamic range, the producers would release it that way on digital.
"We have met the enemy and he is us"
I remember watching a movie in it's original language and having the reaction "wow it is far quieter than the dubbed version".
The sound was better, but it seems dubbed versions are also "quiet" nowadays so you have to rely on whatever sound system you're hostage to.
I recorded a bunch of records from the 70's (full Led Zeppelin album library, Jimmy Hendrix, the Cars, Supertramp... ) with a Kenwood linear tracking tt I got in 1985, through the 1/4-inch jack out on a PYLE phono preamp into my HP laptop 3.5mm mic jack using Windows basic recording software and they are the best record recordings I've ever heard. Super simple with only one external component (phono preamp). Love your videos. Thanks!
With modern vinyl cutting, I find the 4kHz range needs adding or removing. With one beautiful pressing I have to add 9dbB to equalise it. Apparently this has to do with the natural resonance of the mass of the cutting head which apparently needs constant monitoring and compensating for during cutting. This information comes from an old boy who still works in high end studio gear. He also told me that
Thanks for the video and history. Love your take on the subject. Also thanks on the bluperpers. I can see that as person with a bit OCD how fun your recording can be.
No need to for them to compete. One can have both.
Besides the discussion of what's better, vinyl or digital, what you John are really putting a spotlight on is the importance of really good recordings! In the end it doesn't matter if with an excellent analogue or digital recording we get into our audiophile nirvana, it is the voice of this community (audio playback gourmets) which needs to be heard to stop the corrosion of music sources! It is important that the studio bosses get to know and learn that for the only-mobile-phone-playback-generation it doesn't matter, but for those who really care, now, and also in the future!
Thank you John!
Enjoy the music!
Best regards,
Matthias
Since we are all in this hobbie for the love of music . I figured I’d start posting some great songs to enjoy..
Mingo Fishtrap- Not the Same
Jamie cullum- Lover, you should have come over
Lake street Dive- I want you back
Seth walker- I must be in a good place now
Fever - Ray Charles
It would be cool if everyone started putting some of there favorites out. Discovering new music is what has made the streaming algorithm so great.
Hello Mr Darko, following your youtube channel I have learned so much about how in the world you can play music in a better and different way, I would love to hear more from you about the dynamic range compression, thank you!
This really explains why vinyl collectors tend to gravitate towards certain genres. Those that benefit from from DR more than separation etc. Busy mixes require digital sources for me but sparse and dynamic (Jazz is an obvious one) sounds fantastic on vinyl.
Fascinating stuff.I always come away learning so much from your videos.thanks
Simple answer, vinyl feel soooo good holding it in your hands.
This is the kind of content that keeps me coming back. Thank you!
I like the feel of records and their covers, I like turntables, i like how cartridges work, I like the process of playing a record, I like the sound of a lot of lps, not all. I like analog v digital.
Great explanation on how it all works thanks
I love my vinyl , wonderful sound . i love digital for convienience . i don't need to choose one or the other .
Great - Finally - An actual audio pro explains it properly ! - What I always wondered was why audio devices don't just come with a volume control, but with a compression control? The way things are now, we have streaming services (even if they advertise as "HiRes") want more compression so that quiet details can still be heard via on-the-move devices, and vinyl (which is very much a not-on-the-move medium) - sometimes - offering better dynamic range.
The lengths we go to just to relax and listen to some music.
Just got a good pre-amp running my 80s Technics record player on my Pioneer surround system and holy crap... the clarity and bass is astounding. So cool watching it spin away as I relax.
Dynamic range keeps going down because dumb record executives, and the artists themselves, will not go against the grain of LOUDER UNTIL IT BLEEDS. This is the real cause. The original Stop Making sense, recorded digitally and released at the onset was probably the best sounding of the bunch, but when CDs became mainstream, the loudness wars also began. And it has gotten worse. Vinyl isn't better, and neither is tape. What is better about those formats is that they cannot be pushed. That's it. That's the whole thing. IF an artist releases material with a full dynamic range and leaves it alone, the digital file and CD it will blow all other formats out of the water. Especially a 24bit, 48k file, with over 100db of dynamic range. Leave them things alone and we get back to music, not loudness.
Thank you for again drawing attention to the problem of dynamic range (over)compression that continues to plague most remasters and new releases. I’m looking forward to the podcast episode you mentioned.
For me, it’s not about the vinyl it’s about what’s on it, and I can safely say you can’t unscratch a vinyl record and if you have a favourite recording you frequently listen to either for enjoyment or as a musician to learn from it ( some of us still like to learn by ear) , it just can’t compete to a cd on either durability or price
Excellent video. I'm an audio engineer and an avid collector of records. The truth of the matter is certainly that, with the exception of One-Step records costing hundreds of dollars on release, most of the records we hear nowadays are indeed digitally sourced... and it doesn't detract whatsoever from the experience. I think a lot should be said for the tactile and aesthetic experience of having a large physical copy to hold and look at rather than limited credits on a screen with only front cover art. Ear fatigue is another issue that too many people eschew when considering the differences between Hi-Res Digital Vs Vinyl masters. I can listen to Grindcore, Psych, Metal or furious Jazz without limit on vinyl. If I try the same via 192kHz Flac/Wav, it's only a matter of time before I start tuning out. A rewarding and engaging experience is subjective of course, but for my money, you are bang on here. Cheers
Great point. It's very hard to explain but playing anything digitally streamed on a decent system can be wearing after a while. DR compression maybe fools the ear but not the brain...or vice-versa!
The MoFi One Step releases were quite recently outed as having gone through a DSD or DXD AD/DA in the mastering, so not even those (though the manufact). There are still some, but few who are not doing this. And honestly, I'm not even sure I care. As long as recording, mixing, and mastering is competently and tastefully done, I'm good with most equipment likely to be involved.
E1DA is a russian engineer living in China in order to design an manufacture some incredible audio equipment. A real cool down to earth guy.
Great video. For us who lived through the cd revolution remember when they had symbols on cds telling you how it it was recorded, mixed qnd master.
This is a great follow up to your prior video. You are correct in that any reasonably high quality vinyl playback chain will produce a very similar dynamic range as any other reasonably high quality vinyl playback chain, assuming that dynamic range is measured using the industry standard metric for this which is LUFS. Looking forward to the next follow up video.
Love the outtakes 😅
Fun fact to end all current and future debates: pretty much ALL LP records after 1971 are actually 12-bit digital audio because during mastering they would go through a digital delay (of which the Ampex ADD-1 was the first). The use of digital delays for mastering became the standard very quickly, so now essentially all commercial releases from the 70s on are, in fact, digital audio.
Also, LP records and 45s (not "vinyls": no one called them that, just like no one called CDs "polycarbonates") are MASTERED differently precisely to overcome the limitations of the format. That makes them sound a bit different. So, any differences you hear -or think you hear- can be attributed to the mastering process.
(edit: swapped paragraph order)
Two days before my son sent me the link to this post, I watched a movie from 1946, Two Sisters From Boston. In the film, there is a scene where Lauritz Melchior records Prize Song from Die Meistersinger. When he finishes he has the following exchange with a record company exec. You can find the clip online.
Record exec: You wasn’t loud enough. People don’t want records that they have to listen to.
Melchior: But it is the right rendition of the aria Mr. Gibson.
Record exec: Who cares about the song. It’s the phenomenon. That’s what the people want. It’s the noise that comes out of the box.
This is good information. I agree with your conclusions. The public generally assumes “remastered” is a good thing. Many times, it’s worse.
This however assumes the dynamic range across all frequencies. If I found an old cassette/vinyl with good dynamic range but sounds muffled or noisy, I would probably choose the format with more compression but better overall frequency response and that isn't a constant reminder of the noisy media it is being played on.
By the late 70s many - not all, but many, many, many - mastering facilities (at a time when vinyl was the mass market format!) had moved to using digital delay lines rather than tape preview heads. Ampex and other studio tape deck manufacturers really pushed this technology, and mastering facilities were quite enthusiastic adopters of digital (and quite low-bit at that!). So by the late 70s many - not all, but many, many, many - vinyl records in the marketplace were already digital in the final step, or AAD if you prefer. And that's before digital started to move into the studio setting for tracking with the early machines from Sony, Mitsubishi, etc. in the 1980s, and before ProTools etc. arrive in the 1990s.
I've heard about the 12-bit delay being a thing, but I have yet to hear exactly how widespread the usage of it really was, because I've heard at least one vinyl-mastering engineer who worked in the '70s and '80s say he never saw or heard of anyone using it in his company, and didn't know who did otherwise. I think it was the English guy who makes videos with titles like 'vinyl is coming back and it's so wrong on so many levels'. He explains things well but I hate the clickbait and he comes off strangely snarky in comments.
I'm pretty sure the whole audio chain was analogue until at least the mid-1980's. Stereo masters were mixed onto analogue Ampex and Studer two track machines, and it was those that were delivered to mastering engineers. All the eq's and compressors that were then used were all analogue too. There were outlier digital recordings made in the early 1980's, but as a working studio musician in London the first time I started seeing digital tape machines was around 1988/89 and that was for specialist, big budget albums. Most people were still recording to tape on analogue machines. A few pioneers started using pro-tools around 1990, but when I bought my first system in 1992 it was still quite basic and very expensive.
@@ChrisWhittenMusic I think maybe you misunderstood the original comment you’re responding too - he’s not talking about digital in the studio he’s talking about in the pressing plant I think ?
Great informative video John... and I like your outtakes at the end!
The loudness war has caused a post-1990 degradation on CD releases in terms of Dynamic Range (DR). It's no secret that many audiophiles seek older CD releases and avoid like the plague new remasterings. Vinyl is indeed more resilient to that trend.
In photography we say that the best camera in the world is the one that we have at hand right now. The best sound to me at the moment comes from my gear and my format in my room or car. That is why sound preferences are so interesting, because my friends can come along and show their setup and philosophy and I get to experience their world and their sound. - a win win for all
Not just that but quite often I find my favourite record is the one I'm playing at the moment. What's your favourite, for instance, Beatles album? Tends to be the one you have on at the time!
So limitations of vinyl format don't allow publishers to enforce that crazy level of dynamic compression that they want and that can be reached with digital formats, and that spoils perception of music more than imperfections and limitations of vinyl media. Totally works for me! :)
Having explored every music format since the early 60s, including vinyl, reel-to-reel, 8-tracks and cassettes, I now make both lossy and CD quality playlists on iTunes. Can't beat the convenience!... and won't abide by vinyl ticks and pops!
We enjoyed your video a lot ❤
Wow! That's really interesting to know. I've always felt that original recordings were preferable to Re-mastered versions, and now I know why. Your herculean efforts to investigate and explain this phenomenon are really appreciated. Thx.
I think the real reason, why the dynamic range decreases from release to release is: It should sound good on any device, especially the cheap modern mass consumer devices and BT boom boxes which are not capable of handling a dynamic range of 14 or more.
Just got back into vinyl and this is one of the most relevant and educational video's I have seen in providing a measurable understanding of the audio transfer between between analog to digital and back. Great description of testing process to avoid biased data interpretations. Just subscribed. Great work
The only thing i could afford on your table is ..... the door stop 😂😂😂
After watching those outtakes I think the editor deserves a pay rise, or a medal