Two entirely different mastering engineers and studio equipment make this A/B void. You need to find a song mastered for vinyl and CD by the same engineer at the same time. Thousands of them are out there, so I wonder what this is about.
Best balance between all parameters ............it took me 3 defades to make CD able to sing .....;now I enjoy both formats , analog stiil is the reference if it's good . The best sounding ( most real and natural ) recordings were made with tube technology in the mid sixties .........after mistening to more than 4000 albums that became clear evidence and fact ..even when transfered to digital .
the quality standard of our Phono is in a class of its own- equal level of performance to our DACs. the issue is that there is hardly any difference in sound character that would give digital and analogie away
I highly appreciate your approach to what denotes a reference source as well as actually offering comparisons to the public. Transparency is highly welcome from a client's point of view. With respect to the outcome I am not sure that I share your interpretation of the outcome. There are many ways how to set up comparisons, each with their merits and possible faults. The A/B picking approach you offered made it clear to the people participating that they should attempt to their best to decipher which is analogue and which is the digital source. Now most people "getting it wrong" and picking the digital source as the analogue one tells me simply that they enjoyed that digital source slightly more (for whatever reason, since people didn't add reasoning in form of commentary on why their choices were like this) and were indeed able to tell a difference. This is a good sign that people like the sound of the DAC and since most consider a high quality analogue source to be a reference point they chose the "better/more natural" sounding on as the analogue (but it was the digital source). However, having said that, your aim as a company pushing the envelope of digital source is to reach a presentation that is as closely to analogue as possible (or in the best case indistinguishable). Now there will always be slight differences since the chain is not exactly the same but we are talking about the type of presentation, fluidity, organic sound, some slight natural warmth etc. A test result where most participants picked one specific side for A or B tells us that statistically it's extremely unlikely that they couldn't tell any difference and this result came out by mere chance. The likelihood of that happening is extremely small (I am a data scientist btw). A test outcome close to 50/50 (picking "A" and "B" right/wrong) conducted on a sufficient number of participants on the other hand would indicate that the presentation of both chains is very similar. Now additional comments from the participants would prove very useful here since there could be two reasons for them detecting a difference: 1. The differences in the chain itself. As stated, this will always be there and if that is the reason participants could detect a difference it simply doesn't provide any evidence for or against the case of the digital source sharing the analogue type presentation. 2. Participants picked them apart by the type of presentation. In this case this test result indicates that the digital source here is not yet there where it should be, i.e. close enough to analogue presentation. So to me it feels like the idea of conducting a public test like this is great but this result is not very conclusive unfortunately. On a sidenote: Your conclusion related to no format other than 16/44.1 providing any benefits if the presentation character could be made indistinguishable from a high quality analogue source is simply incorrect from a logical point of view. Since analogue doesn't even offer that option there is no way for you to ever find out. There are two logical options: 1. Higher formats provide benefits: In this case a properly implemented digital source would have the analogue character but with additional benefits such as more detail being presented in high quality chains. Just like more modern electronics done right can provide a lower noise floor or better speaker drivers provide lower distortion. As musical as good analogue sounds, it's also limited in several ways (mechanical noise limitations, high excursion at low frequencies in recordings or for that matter also no higher formats). 2. Higher formats provide no benefits: In this case the journey ends with having a digital source being indistinguishable from a high quality analogue source. But as you can see just by creating a digital source that is indistinguishable from an analogue source does not provide any scientific evidence for your conclusion that higher formats don't provide any benefits. I hope that you will conduct further tests like these in the future. Thanks for the effort you put into this.
Welcome. Agree with you on most parts. However, this experiment is not supposed to be a proper research. The purpose of this experiement was to see what the broader reaction is going to be as we already do know the results, which the majority is unaware of. If we wanted a proper empirical evidence we would have constructed the methodology differently.
GM ☕️🍩 from Toronto. A perfect match of Red Book vs OG Vinyl…a truly amazing test . Now, there will be difference signatures to the format/playback..as long as you get something that YOU LIKE 👍 Have a great day 😊
It’s about throw away music on streaming services I don’t find any value to streaming but to play a vinyl record is totally absorbing more connection with the artist
agree on streaming. try local playback of digital instead. with our VDT transport as a source played back locally one gets the connection on equal level as with vinyl (which is played back locally)
My best recordings ( the most natural and human sounding ) are from the end of the fifties until the end of the tube era with a peak quality arround 1966 ..........Anybody contesting this has to unlearn before learning what music and music reproducing is all about . I made many friends and .........ennemies...........
My thoughts are that the only sensible conclusion would be that most people thought the digital sounded better and therefore assumed it must be the analogue because of preconceptions that analogue sounds better. The other thing is both have ended up being digital so people who voted are listening to a digital recording of analogue source (this might sort of make the test a bit pointless?) if they could listen to the two in your listening room one as pure analogue and the other as digital it might be a different outcome.
That is one of our conclusions as well. The majority lacks the experience of an analogue source. As some of the voters guessed it correctly, it proves the test is not flawed. A lucky winner won our SW1X Magnum Reference Cable as a result - so congratulations to the winner for having excellent listening skills! We believe there are major clues to recognise the analogue in the recording and were suprised to know that majority did not pick up on it. As always, we ourselves prefer that the customers audition our devices in the showrooms! 🙂 sw1xad.co.uk/home/dealers/
I don’t doubt the sw1x DACs sound great Both digital and analog have their place I feel no need to pick one over the other sw1x components are above my finances, but if I could, I would, try their DACs and other components as they look really nice I am a SE tube enthusiast
Well done all the vinyl heads need to stop saying they can hear digital and don’t like it. No doubt the hiss and pop crew won’t accept this finding because the warm so called sound of vinyl is their thing. Petty the facts prove they couldn’t decipher the difference and proves they know swart.
Are you kidding, cd is flawed at 44.1KHz, I have alot of vinyl that smokes the best cd. I also have 4x DSD and it is good...I also have 250 master tapes, and cd doesn't come close
Yeah right, it's one thing to compare two samples over youtube and having them played on good vinyl & digital rigs. If you think 44.1kHz PCM digital sounds the same to vinyl or R2R for that matter, you simply had little exposure to various formats. Digital and analogue sound different, period. Play a good piano or violin AAA record and you will hear the difference. Or Hugh Masakela "Hope" 45rpm, I gurantee that majoirty will pick up the difference. All formats have their strong and weak point, but no they do not sound the same. And yes I have heard the top Audio Note and Lampizator dacs.
Both sources are not meant to sound exactly the same! There are differences and one can clearly hear that if one listens carefully but there are no differences in the character of the playback. The character or the manner of the playback is the aspect that used to be a give away which source was which. We believe since both both sources play in the same analogue fashion one is not able to attribute the source type correctly. As always, we ourselves prefer that the customers audition our devices in the showrooms! 🙂 sw1xad.co.uk/home/dealers/
I have few the same albums in about 20 years ago issued digital version and original 60 years old LP version. . Have very good quality Bang olufsen turntable with best pickup and stylus. On other side I have Bang Olufsen combo Ouverture with CD using famous TDA 1541 . I purchased these additional original old LP albums because convinced that CD vesions are remasters This albums are for example Moody Blues which require vere sophisticated reproduction because they sound rich, often with symphony and with high dynamic. . To get confidence I play both through the same system and they at first glance sound no different with all nuances - after carefull comparison I found difference like a bit sharper in CD version and also bit less 'vital" sopranos than from turntable but it is noticeable only when we know what to listen to. . So I think both technologies pose no problem, picup is equal or for some like me better sounding than CD anyway I am convinced that big differences are possible only in case of CD of LP remastering.
16 bit is the equilibrium ........a Japanese inginere from Sony made also that statement ..... digital as good as analog .......understanding that digital is processing analog information by nature , as good means .........NO losses and that's fiction , meaning as close to analog as possibleand that may be possible , less the noise floor of analog ( after recording ) .
i briefly listened to it but i didn't vote as i couldn't pick up on the sound through youtube. In hindsight is should have listened to the WAV but i didn't know it was available. I can't comment why most people guessed incorrectly but my guess is that they are more accustomed to solid state sources therefore don't know how realistic and analogue a tube DAC can sound. Between my SW1X DAC3 BALANCED SP and LPU 2 SP I have at home i can hear the differences.
Your system does not have the VDT transport as a digital source, which closes the gap between digital and analogue. Both sources are not meant to sound exactly the same! There are differences and one can clearly hear that if one listens carefully but there are no differences in the character of the playback. The character or the manner of the playback is the aspect that used to be a give away which source was which. Since both both sources play in the same analogue fashion one is not able to attribute the source type correctly.
So you digitize the analog record and compare that digital file to the CD and then claim that is comparing analog to digital? And we know that they did a very different mix for the CD. I actually took part in a Direct to Disc compared to a Digital (Soundstream) and 1/2 track Ampex analog tape session. An AES meeting in Nashville in the '70's. The disc was chosen 100% over both other formats. The disc was played back on the cutting lathe (SME arm) and playback was in the mastering studio.
It is a simple sound test for our online community and we found some interesting insights. We invite everyone to participate and interpret the results. In our opinion, both devices have audible differences and hints even after the youtube compression. However, the sound character for both devices is strikingly similar and the test was an affirmation of this achievement. And again, the best comparison is live, in-person comparison and you are welcome to hear our equipment with a dealer near you. sw1xad.co.uk/home/dealers/
Agree with your conclusion !
Two entirely different mastering engineers and studio equipment make this A/B void. You need to find a song mastered for vinyl and CD by the same engineer at the same time. Thousands of them are out there, so I wonder what this is about.
Best balance between all parameters ............it took me 3 defades to make CD able to sing .....;now I enjoy both formats , analog stiil is the reference if it's good .
The best sounding ( most real and natural ) recordings were made with tube technology in the mid sixties .........after mistening to more than 4000 albums that became clear evidence and fact ..even when transfered to digital .
7:43 there’s the rub ..if you do digital better it’s going to be ironically enough..sounding more like high quality analog 😊
the quality standard of our Phono is in a class of its own- equal level of performance to our DACs. the issue is that there is hardly any difference in sound character that would give digital and analogie away
I highly appreciate your approach to what denotes a reference source as well as actually offering comparisons to the public. Transparency is highly welcome from a client's point of view.
With respect to the outcome I am not sure that I share your interpretation of the outcome. There are many ways how to set up comparisons, each with their merits and possible faults. The A/B picking approach you offered made it clear to the people participating that they should attempt to their best to decipher which is analogue and which is the digital source. Now most people "getting it wrong" and picking the digital source as the analogue one tells me simply that they enjoyed that digital source slightly more (for whatever reason, since people didn't add reasoning in form of commentary on why their choices were like this) and were indeed able to tell a difference. This is a good sign that people like the sound of the DAC and since most consider a high quality analogue source to be a reference point they chose the "better/more natural" sounding on as the analogue (but it was the digital source). However, having said that, your aim as a company pushing the envelope of digital source is to reach a presentation that is as closely to analogue as possible (or in the best case indistinguishable). Now there will always be slight differences since the chain is not exactly the same but we are talking about the type of presentation, fluidity, organic sound, some slight natural warmth etc. A test result where most participants picked one specific side for A or B tells us that statistically it's extremely unlikely that they couldn't tell any difference and this result came out by mere chance. The likelihood of that happening is extremely small (I am a data scientist btw). A test outcome close to 50/50 (picking "A" and "B" right/wrong) conducted on a sufficient number of participants on the other hand would indicate that the presentation of both chains is very similar. Now additional comments from the participants would prove very useful here since there could be two reasons for them detecting a difference:
1. The differences in the chain itself. As stated, this will always be there and if that is the reason participants could detect a difference it simply doesn't provide any evidence for or against the case of the digital source sharing the analogue type presentation.
2. Participants picked them apart by the type of presentation. In this case this test result indicates that the digital source here is not yet there where it should be, i.e. close enough to analogue presentation.
So to me it feels like the idea of conducting a public test like this is great but this result is not very conclusive unfortunately.
On a sidenote: Your conclusion related to no format other than 16/44.1 providing any benefits if the presentation character could be made indistinguishable from a high quality analogue source is simply incorrect from a logical point of view. Since analogue doesn't even offer that option there is no way for you to ever find out. There are two logical options:
1. Higher formats provide benefits: In this case a properly implemented digital source would have the analogue character but with additional benefits such as more detail being presented in high quality chains. Just like more modern electronics done right can provide a lower noise floor or better speaker drivers provide lower distortion. As musical as good analogue sounds, it's also limited in several ways (mechanical noise limitations, high excursion at low frequencies in recordings or for that matter also no higher formats).
2. Higher formats provide no benefits: In this case the journey ends with having a digital source being indistinguishable from a high quality analogue source.
But as you can see just by creating a digital source that is indistinguishable from an analogue source does not provide any scientific evidence for your conclusion that higher formats don't provide any benefits.
I hope that you will conduct further tests like these in the future. Thanks for the effort you put into this.
Welcome. Agree with you on most parts. However, this experiment is not supposed to be a proper research. The purpose of this experiement was to see what the broader reaction is going to be as we already do know the results, which the majority is unaware of. If we wanted a proper empirical evidence we would have constructed the methodology differently.
GM ☕️🍩 from Toronto.
A perfect match of Red Book vs OG Vinyl…a truly amazing test .
Now, there will be difference signatures to the format/playback..as long as you get something that YOU LIKE 👍
Have a great day 😊
It’s about throw away music on streaming services I don’t find any value to streaming but to play a vinyl record is totally absorbing more connection with the artist
agree on streaming. try local playback of digital instead. with our VDT transport as a source played back locally one gets the connection on equal level as with vinyl (which is played back locally)
My best recordings ( the most natural and human sounding ) are from the end of the fifties until the end of the tube era with a peak quality arround 1966 ..........Anybody contesting this has to unlearn before learning what music and music reproducing is all about .
I made many friends and .........ennemies...........
My thoughts are that the only sensible conclusion would be that most people thought the digital sounded better and therefore assumed it must be the analogue because of preconceptions that analogue sounds better.
The other thing is both have ended up being digital so people who voted are listening to a digital recording of analogue source (this might sort of make the test a bit pointless?) if they could listen to the two in your listening room one as pure analogue and the other as digital it might be a different outcome.
That is one of our conclusions as well. The majority lacks the experience of an analogue source.
As some of the voters guessed it correctly, it proves the test is not flawed. A lucky winner won our SW1X Magnum Reference Cable as a result - so congratulations to the winner for having excellent listening skills! We believe there are major clues to recognise the analogue in the recording and were suprised to know that majority did not pick up on it.
As always, we ourselves prefer that the customers audition our devices in the showrooms! 🙂
sw1xad.co.uk/home/dealers/
I don’t doubt the sw1x DACs sound great
Both digital and analog have their place I feel no need to pick one over the other
sw1x components are above my finances, but if I could, I would, try their DACs and other components as they look really nice
I am a SE tube enthusiast
thank you for the feedback. if you wish to try our products, please let us know which product you wish to try
Well done all the vinyl heads need to stop saying they can hear digital and don’t like it. No doubt the hiss and pop crew won’t accept this finding because the warm so called sound of vinyl is their thing. Petty the facts prove they couldn’t decipher the difference and proves they know swart.
thank you. yes, until one experiences a different kind of digital playback that does not sound like the mainsteam
Are you kidding, cd is flawed at 44.1KHz, I have alot of vinyl that smokes the best cd. I also have 4x DSD and it is good...I also have 250 master tapes, and cd doesn't come close
It's not about analogue sounding "warm", as we keep being told. It's about digital sounding like fingernails being scraped on a blackboard.
Yeah right, it's one thing to compare two samples over youtube and having them played on good vinyl & digital rigs. If you think 44.1kHz PCM digital sounds the same to vinyl or R2R for that matter, you simply had little exposure to various formats. Digital and analogue sound different, period. Play a good piano or violin AAA record and you will hear the difference. Or Hugh Masakela "Hope" 45rpm, I gurantee that majoirty will pick up the difference. All formats have their strong and weak point, but no they do not sound the same. And yes I have heard the top Audio Note and Lampizator dacs.
Both sources are not meant to sound exactly the same! There are differences and one can clearly hear that if one listens carefully but there are no differences in the character of the playback. The character or the manner of the playback is the aspect that used to be a give away which source was which. We believe since both both sources play in the same analogue fashion one is not able to attribute the source type correctly. As always, we ourselves prefer that the customers audition our devices in the showrooms! 🙂 sw1xad.co.uk/home/dealers/
Yes, they are different. An LP will never achieve the pitch/speed correctness of digital
Does cartridge choice make any difference? One could argue it makes a significant contribution to quality?
I have few the same albums in about 20 years ago issued digital version and original 60 years old LP version. . Have very good quality Bang olufsen turntable with best pickup and stylus. On other side I have Bang Olufsen combo Ouverture with CD using famous TDA 1541 . I purchased these additional original old LP albums because convinced that CD vesions are remasters This albums are for example Moody Blues which require vere sophisticated reproduction because they sound rich, often with symphony and with high dynamic. .
To get confidence I play both through the same system and they at first glance sound no different with all nuances - after carefull comparison I found difference like a bit sharper in CD version and also bit less 'vital" sopranos than from turntable but it is noticeable only when we know what to listen to. . So I think both technologies pose no problem, picup is equal or for some like me better sounding than CD anyway I am convinced that big differences are possible only in case of CD of LP remastering.
16 bit is the equilibrium ........a Japanese inginere from Sony made also that statement .....
digital as good as analog .......understanding that digital is processing analog information by nature , as good means .........NO losses and that's fiction , meaning as close to analog as possibleand that may be possible , less the noise floor of analog ( after recording ) .
i briefly listened to it but i didn't vote as i couldn't pick up on the sound through youtube. In hindsight is should have listened to the WAV but i didn't know it was available. I can't comment why most people guessed incorrectly but my guess is that they are more accustomed to solid state sources therefore don't know how realistic and analogue a tube DAC can sound. Between my SW1X DAC3 BALANCED SP and LPU 2 SP I have at home i can hear the differences.
Your system does not have the VDT transport as a digital source, which closes the gap between digital and analogue.
Both sources are not meant to sound exactly the same! There are differences and one can clearly hear that if one listens carefully but there are no differences in the character of the playback. The character or the manner of the playback is the aspect that used to be a give away which source was which. Since both both sources play in the same analogue fashion one is not able to attribute the source type correctly.
So you digitize the analog record and compare that digital file to the CD and then claim that is comparing analog to digital? And we know that they did a very different mix for the CD.
I actually took part in a Direct to Disc compared to a Digital (Soundstream) and 1/2 track Ampex analog tape session. An AES meeting in Nashville in the '70's. The disc was chosen 100% over both other formats. The disc was played back on the cutting lathe (SME arm) and playback was in the mastering studio.
It is a simple sound test for our online community and we found some interesting insights. We invite everyone to participate and interpret the results. In our opinion, both devices have audible differences and hints even after the youtube compression. However, the sound character for both devices is strikingly similar and the test was an affirmation of this achievement.
And again, the best comparison is live, in-person comparison and you are welcome to hear our equipment with a dealer near you.
sw1xad.co.uk/home/dealers/