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Ridiculous statement regarding vinyl dynamic range


Daniel A

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I almost never fly, but it happened in the beginning of this month. It appears that the airline company has some sort of collaboration with Technics (there were several turntables set up in the lounge at the airport - naturally behind plexiglass so that you couldn't use or touch them). 

In the in-flight magazine, there was a Technics ad that had this statement:

"We've all heard about the warm sound only available on vinyl. It's because vinyl produces a much fuller sound, with greater dynamic range that delivers the true music experience, compared to streamed music." 

There are many nice things about vinyl, but it has not greater dynamic range than a 16 bit digital file. 

Paging Kevin B. 🙂 

https://www.bildtagg.se/file/thumb/txr53f23noli8abnpgxe52xr

Edited by Daniel A
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Most of these claims stem from the fact that the most-used "Dynamic range meter" out there today, TT Meter, does not work well with vinyl. See the video below to see what a mastering engineer has to say.

But... There is another thing at work here. In the digital realm, many newer releases are seriously compressed ("The Loudness Wars" at work) and when measured with TT Meter, the resulting dynamic range numbers are usually much less than what digital can theoretically deliver. So technically, you could have an LP released with the most dynamic range they could eke out of their vinyl pressing, which is around 60 dB, and then take an overcompressed digital version and measure less than that.

BTW - you would probably not want to hear a musical recording that utilized the full dynamic range of 16 bit digital audio (~95 dB) because it's literally too much dynamic range for the human ear. I have some older classical CDs and the volume difference between the soft parts and the loud parts are so far apart, that I have to turn the volume up & down as I listen. I doubt that the difference between these two passages is anywhere near 96 dB either.

 

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It is time, once more, to quote "A Song Of Reproduction", from Flanders and Swann's "At The Drop Of A Hat" (1960)

All the highest notes, neither sharp nor flat, The ear can't hear as high as that, But I thought I'd please any passing bat, With my high fidelitee.

With the tone control, At a single touch, Puccini sounds like double Dutch, But I never did care for music much, It's my high fidelitee.

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I wish we'd stop thinking of sound waves as just things we "hear". The vibrations of the waves are not processed entirely though the ears. Both super- and subsonic frequencies do reach the body and are processed by it.

In the limited world of "hi-fi", yeah, ok, sure. That's a spec game. But people, please - do not allow you or your persons to be fooled into thinking that the things that exist but can't be immediately perceived by your "senses" do not matter. Your emotions and your intellect are at stake.

The de-evolved person is one who allows themselves to be deprived of an awareness of a fuller range of existing vibration. These people will be the dullards who are happy to exist on whatever sustenance is provided to them, no questions asked (because they have no basis from which to ask any questions).

If it exists, it matters. Maybe not to your "ears", but to the basis of a shared existence.

If you don't believe me, ask Milford Graves (or anybody else who is engaged in liberating the species), and/or ask all sorts of propagandists (or anybody else who is trying to enslave it).

5 hours ago, bresna said:

BTW - you would probably not want to hear a musical recording that utilized the full dynamic range of 16 bit digital audio (~95 dB) because it's literally too much dynamic range for the human ear. I have some older classical CDs and the volume difference between the soft parts and the loud parts are so far apart, that I have to turn the volume up & down as I listen. I doubt that the difference between these two passages is anywhere near 96 dB either.

That's usually an unpleasant experience with a recording, right?

But hearing the same thing played live, with presumably the same dynamic execution, can be exhilarating. But - live, you're usually in a bigass concert hall, not in a car or a room in our house. And in that hall, there is ambient noise, air conditioning, people coughing, shifting, hell, breathing...anything but silence! It creates a "buffer" between the sound's source and it's destination. and it's not particularly unpleasant!

I'll not go so far as to argue that the tape hiss of analog recording serves exactly the same function, but I do think that seeking "absolute silence" in a recording/playback chain is something to be filed under "be careful what you ask for, you might get it".

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and I would add, there is ambient sound, which you perceive but do not necessarily hear in a tangible sense, and so which might not be measurable in a conventional way.

But I also wonder about other aspects of sound, and not just frequency and dynamic range; in other words, analog versus digital "warmth." And, at the risk of starting one of those perpetual battles here, I might rather hear analog tape at 15K than digital at 20k. To my (prejudiced) ears, analog, even at lower resolution,  had a sonic depth-of-field that digital does not. 24 bit has helped a LOT, but preference for one over the other presumably has to do, like cheeseburgers, with what you grew up with.

Edited by AllenLowe
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Stats and data are all good for what they are, but ultimately we all "hear" what we think we hear at any given time. Low grade example - how many times/years have any of us listened to a familiar "golden oldie" of any sort before hearing something that we've never heard before, some deeply buried interior part, some subtlety of voicing or of phrasing that we'd never noticed before?

Well, it was always there, and a lot of times, it's not even a new mix or mastering that brings it out, t's just that our minds have for whatever reason cleared enough space to allow us to shift our perspective to a place that gives us room to add more information, information that was always there.

Just saying, stats are good for what they are, and of course, when the difference gets big enough, the difference is obvious (so obvious that you don't really need stats, right?) but our bodies do not process stats. Stats are a trailing indicator of a real time event that happens on all sides, colored by our ability to "measure" in limited segments..

that's all they are.

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3 hours ago, JSngry said:

That's usually an unpleasant experience with a recording, right?

But hearing the same thing played live, with presumably the same dynamic execution, can be exhilarating. But - live, you're usually in a bigass concert hall, not in a car or a room in our house. And in that hall, there is ambient noise, air conditioning, people coughing, shifting, hell, breathing...anything but silence! It creates a "buffer" between the sound's source and it's destination. and it's not particularly unpleasant!

Actually I don't won't the fu***** Rolling Stones in my living room, nor the Berliner Philarmoniker, I just want to play my loving records, if you understand what I mean.

Edited by porcy62
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And then go next door. The old neighbors would have just called the police on that, but this new guy got small kids and for all I know, he's actively exercising his 2nd Amendment rights.

Not that that itself bothers me, so far he seems sane and stable, so it doesn't. But - that would be more questions than I'm in the mood to answer from anybody, especially law enforcement professionals.

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50 minutes ago, Shrdlu said:

I wouldn't want to hear that Stones trash at any stage of their careers. Disgusting people and rubbish "music" (forgive the use of that word). Yechh.

Rubbish music? Your opinion, for what it’s worth, which is not much at all.  You don’t want to hear it? Fine don’t listen.  Who’s forcing you to?

True, they probably are not exemplary persons but aren’t there people in all fields of music (not to mention other professions) who we wouldn’t like but still love what they produce. 

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1 hour ago, chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez said:

 

you talkin to me my guy?   if so get ready for the best example of recorded audio I think exists, yr gonna wanna get track 7 up to full blast, the soundstage will be astonishing 

Wasn’t that one recorded Direct-To-Disk? If so, I can well believe that the sonics will be great.

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I think the dynamics of a live performance (in good acoustics and by a well-balanced group) are impossible to reproduce with a home hifi, unless you have real expensive high end equipment. But some come pretty close to giving the illusion of live music. I have some direct-to-disc recordings that do so. But that should be the subject of a thread of its own.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to that Feldman disc whih should be here by the end of next week.

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