[HN Gopher] A Surprising Advantage of Vinyl (2011)
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A Surprising Advantage of Vinyl (2011)
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 40 points
Date : 2024-03-20 11:38 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.andymatuschak.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.andymatuschak.org)
| mborch wrote:
| Here's another reference on this:
| https://www.yoursoundmatters.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness....
|
| > As explained earlier, due to the physical limitations of vinyl,
| there are limits as to how loud you can press a record, and
| because vinyl is "for audiophiles" - there is less incentive for
| record companies to compromise the quality of vinyl releases. As
| a result, many vinyl records are mastered differently to the CD
| release with more dynamic range and at lower volumes.
|
| But I read some place that Radiohead themselves preferred the
| more compressed sound, perhaps owing to listening in a car rather
| than a high fidelity setup.
| tekla wrote:
| I've seen this trotted around and I think its absolute
| bullshit. I've asked multiple people in the music business, and
| they've all told me they use the same masters for CDs and
| Vinyl.
| slily wrote:
| Yeah, it's mostly wishful thinking. The primary audience for
| records is not audiophiles, it's collectors who often don't
| even own a record player putting them up on display. Unless
| an artist/mastering engineer has a particular fondness for
| the medium they're not going to put much effort into the
| "analog" master.
| JALTU wrote:
| I would guess to agree: the "audiophile" is a microscopically
| small segment of the music market, and music companies, let
| alone manufacturers, are NOT going to spend extra time money
| on producing stuff for specialty segments (hence the MoFi
| fiasco). Marketing is enough! Most so-called audiophiles also
| are not really into DR or "dynamic sound" or anything but
| just their audio preferences, whether that's cool/expensive
| hardware or hanging out on head-fi.
| d-lisp wrote:
| I have two versions of the same album, one on CD, one on
| vinyl. They don't sound the same and I prefer the version on
| vinyl, I am not implying it objectively sounds better, maybe
| it sounds worse at the wave level, but it sounds better to
| me, it seems much more "present". Could you teach me what is
| the reason for this ?
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| Differences in the sound waves that reach the ear can come
| from the audio data being written to and retrieved from an
| imperfect recording medium (vinyl), as well as differenced
| in frequency responses between the amplifiers or speakers
| used after the audio is read.
|
| "Presence" is usually associated with high frequency
| content. Turn up the high frequencies and the music seems
| more present. Therefore, differences in
| media/amplifier/speaker high frequency response will make
| the music seem more or less "present".
| squarefoot wrote:
| Vinyl's dynamic range is way inferior to CD's one, that
| makes it a natural compressor. Most like vinyl sound
| because it's compressed as well, albeit not awfully bad
| like modern digital productions. Many vinyl records made in
| the 90s were mastered digitally before printing, and
| audiophiles swear they hear the same magic sound although
| what they listen to comes from 100% digital material.
|
| > it seems much more "present"
|
| That could be due to some low frequencies that vinyl can't
| reproduce and are reduced to avoid distortion. Also vinyl's
| poor crosstalk figures could play a role here.
| butterknife wrote:
| Mastering engineer here. I supply less compressed versions
| for vinyl and would not sign under it if it was the same as
| CD/streaming. What labels do after the fact is another
| story...
| viburnum wrote:
| Now they do but they didn't used to.
| mtillman wrote:
| Related, many SACDs contain a two channel SA layer that is
| completely different than the red book layer. The medium is
| normally mastered to appeal to the widest audience. In the 80's,
| CD players were very expensive so the mastering were made for
| that type of consumer. As CD players in cars became the more
| popular listening mechanism, the DR shrunk and loudness
| increased. Some (most I think) modern vinyl is actually just the
| digital mastering and the newer stuff is written from a DSD
| source-not tape. Even Mobile Fidelity got in trouble for claiming
| tape when in fact it was from a digital source. I'm old so my
| ears can't tell the difference at normal listening volumes to DR
| as the article agrees but I can absolutely tell original redbook
| vs modern mastering. Black Sabbath Sabotage is a good example of
| mastering techniques to "correct" for mic dropouts and what not.
|
| For loudness comps check out: https://dr.loudness-war.info/
| mrob wrote:
| Looking at waveforms can be misleading because of the frequency-
| dependent sensitivity of the human ear:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour
|
| It's possible the vinyl version just has less bass, and doesn't
| sound noticeably more dynamic. The waveforms might look more
| similar after high-pass filtering at 100Hz or so.
| sfwf wrote:
| True, this is how the CD track looks after applying 100Hz high-
| pass filter and volume normalization
| https://i.imgur.com/lxMMDxd.png
| mikae1 wrote:
| Didn't LUFS and streaming services stop the loudness wars?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36880962
|
| https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war
| mrob wrote:
| Sadly, loudness war mastering is still common. People still
| listen to music in cars and on phone speakers. Low dynamic
| range sounds better with noisy listening environments and bad
| playback equipment.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Perhaps maybe not a super recent example but I remember Bruno
| Mar's 24k magic sounding very "loud"/compressed.
| leokennis wrote:
| Extremely anecdotal, but if I compare top 40 pop from the early
| 2000's (Black Eyed Peas, Anastacia, Maroon 5) with stuff from
| today (Ariana Grande etc.) then the old music sounds like boomy
| maximalism while the new music usually has crisper drums, more
| subtle details etc.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Yeah, loudness war is a plague, but vinyl and CD differences have
| nothing to do with it; it's just incompetent producers and sound
| engineers aiming at making their work more loud to attract
| listeners.
|
| I miss vinyl records for only one thing: big sleeves and their
| art.
| wolrah wrote:
| > but vinyl and CD differences have nothing to do with it; it's
| just incompetent producers and sound engineers aiming at making
| their work more loud to attract listeners.
|
| The physical limitations of vinyl don't allow it to be pushed
| as hard as a digital medium, or even tape, can be.
|
| It's kind of like making a road that only allows air-cooled VWs
| and noting that speeding drops to almost zero.
| ZiiS wrote:
| Till someone makes a Porsche.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| If everybody went for vinyl, they'd bring the loudness war over
| as far as it's possible (the medium is more limited).
|
| Right now, sound engineers, not incompetent at all, optimize
| CDs for the CD audience (and for the most part, they
| preferentially buy "louder," even if they'd deny it if you ask)
| and vinyl for those freaks who maintain their diamond needle.
|
| So vinyl sounds better _because_ it's a hipster medium.
| copperx wrote:
| > optimize CDs for the CD audience
|
| CDs haven't been on anyone's radar for a long time.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| > Yeah, loudness war is a plague, but vinyl and CD differences
| have nothing to do with it; it's just incompetent producers and
| sound engineers aiming at making their work more loud to
| attract listeners.
|
| The claim (not directly made by the article, but generally made
| to support the difference) is that vinyl's physical
| characteristics limit how "loud" a recording can be.
| Specifically, that a vinyl pressing of a "brick walled"
| recording becomes unplayable--or at least unreliably playable--
| because its physical tracks are insufficient to keep a stylus
| in place for playback.
|
| I don't know how true that claim is, but the analysis seems
| cromulent, and analysis of comparable media seems to support it
| well enough.
|
| It isn't a claim that pressing vinyl attracts or requires
| better production etc, but that the medium has inherent
| physical constraints that benefit, at least as a side effect,
| from greater dynamic range.
| starkparker wrote:
| It's quite true. Vinyl mastering is very different from
| digital, or even mastering for tape or other analog formats.
| Sibilance is terrifying in vinyl mastering. The properties of
| different groove lengths influence track order on albums
| because tolerances are different on the outer end of the
| record than the inner end, and you can squeeze out more
| fidelity by sacrificing duration with wider grooves.
|
| There are a few general tricks here:
| https://www.sageaudio.com/articles/how-to-master-for-vinyl
| but in practice there are so many variables that vinyl
| mastering engineers are worth their weight in gold, and
| there's some significant investment made in trying to
| automate most of all of it algorithmically or via ML/AI.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| There are a lot of 'old school' edm records in online stores
| that were redigitized from vinyl, and you can tell just
| looking at the wave forms the difference in how they were
| mastered, and they sound noticeably _worse_ than modern EDM
| records, with much less powerful bass. It's actually sort of
| interesting how they worked around that with more dynamics in
| older records to make the bass pop more, but I'm not sure
| that it's better over all, it's just different.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _but vinyl and CD differences have nothing to do with it_
|
| The kind of do. With vinyl if you master like this you're
| making the grooves (the paths where the needle runs in) more
| pronounced, meaning less space for music (which is a premium in
| CDs compared to streaming, and even more so to vinyl compared
| to CDs: many vinyl "double albums" could have beeen a single
| CD). And it can make the needle jump around or have issues too.
|
| So vinyl kind of forces you to master with actual dynamics, as
| opposed to squashing everything.
| ghusto wrote:
| Fixed title: Vinyl Can't be Abused as Badly as Higher Quality
| Mediums Such as CDs.
|
| Also, this only effects recent stuff, after the "loudness wars"
| started.
| dylan604 wrote:
| "recent stuff" is somewhat relative. the loudness war has been
| fought on other fronts than just CDs/mp3s. my cassette player
| from the 80s had a loudness button. the sales rep at Guitar
| Center bragged about the easiest one-button sale for a 1RU
| piece of gear to add to your rack that made your sound better.
| it was just a loudness on/off button. so it was playback device
| dependent at that time which allowed the listener to choose it.
| they just moved the battle field to format itself and took away
| the choice
| mrob wrote:
| The "loudness" button on old equipment is actually a combined
| bass and treble boost, designed to the make the music sound
| louder at low listening levels by compensating for the
| effects of the equal loudness contour. It's a great idea for
| anybody who cares about protecting their hearing. You can do
| even better using modern DSP by equalizing to a curve based
| on the difference between the equal loudness contour at your
| preferred listening level and the equal loudness contour
| several decibels louder.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| These nicer masters tend to also be used on other audiophile
| digital formats, such as "High resolution" downloads, Super Audio
| CDs, DVD-Audio, and other niche formats.
| itronitron wrote:
| Interesting, both 15 second segments sound like the same garbage
| to me.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Yes, the first re-compressed CD segment sounds so much worse
| than the iTunes version that I'm not sure what to think. Two
| possibilities: (1) The album was remastered for a subsequent CD
| reissue. (2) I'm hearing the benefits of the "Apple Digital
| Masters"1 process.
|
| 1 https://www.apple.com/apple-music/apple-digital-masters/
| itronitron wrote:
| I occasionally play a used CD of Bob Marley's Legend album in
| the car and the clarity of the music is so much greater than
| any of the current songs playing on the radio. Not sure if
| it's a measure of the quality of the artist, the producer, or
| the technology.
| CharlesW wrote:
| The degree to which radio stations process the life out of
| music is unbelievable. https://web.archive.org/web/20210618
| 142217/http://www.master...
| Animats wrote:
| "You don't want your CD to be the quietest one in the stack" -
| some writer on mastering in the 1990s.
| gizajob wrote:
| Vinyl actually has quite a limited bandwidth too, so what you
| gain by not having digital limiting, you often lose by only
| having a small amount of dynamic range.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| The dynamic range also reduces as you get closer to the center
| of the record because the linear tracking speed reduces. Some
| albums had to have their tracks rearranged so that the louder
| tracks weren't near the end.
| CharlesW wrote:
| The Audacity waveform rendering is a bit misleading because each
| pixel is reflecting the peak of nearly 10,000 samples. Here's a
| higher-resolution look ("Open Image in New Tab" and click to zoom
| for detail) at one segment of the track:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/7mncY77
|
| From the waveform analysis, you can see that the LRA of the
| selected segment is fairly narrow at 2.1 LU, but the dynamic
| range is quite high at 38.59 dB. The effect is minimal variation
| in music intensity, but a substantial difference between the
| quietest and loudest sounds in that segment.
|
| I'd guess that the degree to which this causes ear sparkles is
| probably not achievable when mastering to plastic.
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