Even analog studio tapes have audible hiss.
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Neil Young has issues with the MacBook Pro and he's eager to tell you about it.
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Even analog studio tapes have audible hiss.
Called the S/N (Signal to Noise) ratio. Digital has a similar issue regarding aliasing and quantization noise, that's not even taking into consideration the issues regarding the connection of digital equipment and clock jitter.
I am not 100% sure if it is that Vinyl has a warmer range or if it was the mixing and recording techniques and equipment that they were using at the time. I have a few newer vinyl records and while there are differences in playback due to the mediums involved in terms of actual sound there is little difference.Don't think that is what Neil has said at all... he is a proponent of hi res digital music. What he keeps saying... and what he put his money behind. Pono failed of course... but he was never wrong. Compression is cancer, and 44.1khz isn't hi quality. CDs are not terrible... and Vinyl is not "better". Its also not worse given high quality fresh vinyl. There are differences which one can hear beyond just the "Warm" effect people claim. Vinyl is capable of more frequency range... and CDs are capable of more dynamic range. Of course Vinyl will wear out with plays... and CDs won't rot out for years. CD clearly has a lot of advantages... especially for newer recordings. Fully digital modern recordings use modern mics with freq and dynamic range to match digital formats... few artists record analog anymore. Mics that record freq above the CD limit of 22.5khz are rare (cause yes most, perhaps all humans can't hear anything above 20). Still having listened to a lot of older high quality analog recordings pressed on premium vinyl... there is something to Vinyl being superior. Something about the bass and the separation of recorded instruments and voices just sounds more pronounced to me anyway. (but whatever its subjective... on paper CDs are superior, in my experience a a good mid range player on the same setup vinyl sounds different in a good way. Technically the CD is probably the better format still a good record is the closest I have gotten to live music without the live music.)
Point is Neil says MP3s and other compressed formats are BAD I don't recall him ever talking up Vinyl (he sold his own flac player)... and CDs are early 1980s tech that should be updated. Which is why he wanted to sell people 192 khz / 24 bit uncompressed or better recordings. He feels the old high end Analog masters deserve the higher bit rate... and newer studios all record in at least 192/24 and dither things down to 44.1 for CDs and streaming. As good as the algorithms are to do that... there is no doubt 96/24 sounds better as long as you have decent playback hardware. The shit stuff on laptops and on mother boards play 96/24 and sometimes 192/24 these days but they don't do it well... I guess that is his gripe with the Mac. But ya old man screaming into the wind. No laptop maker even Apple is going to include a 300 or 400 dollar DAC that would please someone like Neil. lol
I am not quite sure what his rant is but it is pretty obvious that on-board audio in desktops and laptops is OK at best. There is too much noise and not enough shielding and the cheapest wiring they can afford to get away with. Anybody here who has ever installed a sound card in the last few years will swear by the difference and even using a set of decent USB headphones will often bring substantial improvements.
So far I haven't seen anyone recognize the difference between 96/24 and 44/16 from the same source, and nothing suggests they should be able to.
There is nothing audibly superior about SACD for end playback.
The quality of Vinyl varies a lot. Just like everything else I guess.... there are reference quality blu rays we pull out to show off our new TVs as well.
With Vinyl if your buying new stuff especially, you want to do a bit of research. At the silly prices of some of the better records you don't want to buy a stinker you find out was masted from a digital master of the original analog or something.
My suggestion if you are sort of semi into Vinyl... no matter if you put together a system with some mid range $200-500 Rega or Pro-Ject table, or revived a old classic pioneer or something. Is to go through some of the R2D4 lists and find a record or two you might like, and that won't set you back over a hundred bucks used or something. lol
https://www.stereophile.com/category/records-die
Lots of older stuff on those lists like the Nat King Coles and the like, and classical... but a mix of some interesting newer stuff like Beck as well tend to have reference quality releases. On Brians 2020 list he put the Dark Knight sound track on his list... and ya that is a great Vinyl.
You can tell the difference if you have files from HDtraces at 96/24 if you play it back at 44/16. I'm not going to claim most people can tell the difference. I bet most people can't. But there is one. If your talking about upconverting 44/16 material to 96/24 of course there is no difference. (I know your not talking about that)
I agree on SACD... Technically speaking. The format is not really better in anyway that should matter. The main advantage to SACD is that in general studios and artists took opportunity to make good SACD releases. Often with remasters... sometimes with multi channel versions. And in many cases remasters that where much better then the older remaster. Its why so much pre 90s music have "digital remasters" from the late 90s early 2000s. So they indeed often sound better, and sometimes a lot better... but its not specifically cause the format was superior.
That very well could be it but I think it would be cool if somebody recorded and mixed a new album on equipment from the 60s and 70s for CD or lossless digital release. Would be neat to see how the sounds came across.
Please share a properly conducted test that confirms this. I'm genuinely interested as I haven't seen any so far. Not sure what the scientific explanation would be since 44/16 covers the human hearing range.
44/16 covers it within a margin of error, which is then played back on equipment within a margin of error, over speakers calibrated within yet another margin of error. While 44/16 is “enough” every step along the way adds or removes a little something to the sound. Now my ears may be old and broken and I doubt I could notice a tangible difference somebody with working ears probably could. Starting with a better range probably just gives more buffer along the way against the unwanted changes. Or maybe the changes that do happen along the way are just more appealing to those who can hear the difference.
But that's just it, so far nobody has been able to demonstrate the ability to hear a difference.
Youn
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the secret to telling the difference is to use a DAC that purposefully uses cheap-as-shit 44/16 circuits compared to the 96/24 ones...
You would actually be surprised how many artists still record on tape. No not the abused 15 year olds singing Max Martin songs with tons of auto tune. But bands like Areosmith, Kiss, Lenny Kravitz... and the producers of some more modern artists (well ok their producers) like Taylor Swift use a piece of gear called the clasp. Clasp allows them to seemingly integrate analog recording devices with digital gear. People (ok audiophile cork sniffers) gave Kravitz shit about switching to pro tools... but he runs clasp and still records to the same 24 track Studer machines he has always used.
http://www.endlessanalog.com/home
A clasp setup for a studio standard like the 24 track clasp units will set you back 10 grand or so easy. Still it gives you 99% of the advantages of digital recording while actually recording everything to tape. Listening to modern music if you can find it sans the super loud compression its easy to see how is still recording to tape and how is recording to a hard drive.
I don’t mean just in Analog I mean completely refurbish a 60’s recording studio to as authentic as you can and record that. I am curious how much of the tonal differences are a byproduct of the tools of the time and not so much the method.
I can hear the difference. People haven't properly explained the double slit experiment via the peer review process either, yet it's crazy results definitely exist.
The fact is, that considering modern lossy masters, there is going to be no difference between digital or analog as you can't polish a turd. However, considering lossless analog masters, there could most certainly be a difference favoring analog.
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Zarathustra[H]
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I'd be interested in setting up a blinded test with you some time to make sure this isn't just placebo effect.
It was done funny enough the “audio files” mostly thought the lower quality stuff was better and the normal people were a solid 50/50 split. I came across it years ago on DIGG not sure where it was from originally.
Youn
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be sure to pick up the correct cables my dudes
http://anticables.com/
http://anticables.com/
Factum
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Yes ok the high end cable racket is funny, still... Considering the forum we are on I don't think any of us can laugh to hard at extreme audiophile folks. Considering the average main PC for most of us falls in the 1% high range. lol
I have dabbled in many hobbies where people get carried away. Music / Video / Astronomy / PCs .... it doesn't matter what your into there are people that fall into the 1% that have setups that most people would consider insanity.
I didn't say remove ,I said reduce
A good ten years before the death of the compact cassette, audible hiss was really not a problem assuming the use of decent quality CrO2 or Metal cassettes. I could push the record levels to +5dB no problem, substantially reducing the S/N ratio well below any real audible threshold even on sections of blank recording.
What I call the 'underwater effect' of MP3 is far more noticeable today considering low or medium bitrate rips than audible hiss on cassette as the quality of cassettes and decks improved.
prime2515102
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I still have one of those laying around somewhere. I was a little bummed when they changed the design to use the plastic front and back though - the original was all magnesium with a tiny window.
The cassette with the black plastic front and back housings as well as the plastic chassis was the MA-X, they still sold the MA-XG with the transparent casing and the aluminum chassis. In some cases the MA-X was preferable as slot load players (like cars) had problems ejecting the weighty MA-XG with the aluminum chassis.
funkydmunky
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prime2515102
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Except that it has 64 times the resolution of of CD, which, if I remember correctly, exceeds the resolution of analog tape, and 30db more theoretical dynamic range (10db more than dithered CD, 18db more non-dithered, typically, in practice).
If a good analog recording was converted straight to DSD, or recorded with DSD to begin with, I would bet you my computer I could tell the difference between it and CD in a blind a/b comparison given good playback equipment (and I'm not talking about a Denon receiver with Klipsch speakers either). DVD-A and Blu-ray Audio might be another story at lower volume (SACD's lower noise floor would give it away instantly at higher volume).
Then there's the frequency response. It goes all the way to 100khz, which puts any quantization noise well beyond the audible spectrum. Quantization noise is what makes digital sound digital and why SACD sounds more like a "perfect" analog recording.
There is a lot more to sound than than just low distortion, low noise, and bandwidth. As I already mentioned, some people can hear the difference and some people can't, and I know this first-hand because when I first got into hi-fi I couldn't hear shit - it took me a good 15 years of "ear training" to be able to perceive some of these differences.
I am aware of the theoretical advantages, but there is no audible one. Many have tried and all have failed to demonstrate their ability to hear the difference.
There is a notibale difference compared to CD, which could also be attributed to the fact that better master's are used to create the media.
I actually love the multi channel mixes on SACD.
Yes, better mastering is the main reason for the different sound.
Possibly, but I never heard anyone say you can't have too much resolution.
prime2515102
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The MA-XG came in two versions (see image below). The clear one was the second version.
I was just looking through my Audio Magazine archive and it turns out the front and back were fiberglass reinforced plastic on the original (I doubt the clear version was). I'm 99% sure one of them had a magnesium chassis, but magnesium is lighter than aluminum and the clear version seems awfully weighty for it's size so I'm assuming it's the original version. There was no mention of it in the magazine so I'm guessing I saw it on the packaging at some point, or maybe in another magazine.
Anyway... I'll stop hijacking this thread. lol
Wow! I don't believe we got that variant in out market, we only got the aluminum chassis/clear plastic variant and it was very heavy - Like I say, heavy enough that you struggled to eject the cassettes in the car.
I've been avoiding commenting on this thread because music/audio/what sounds good is hugely subjective, but screw it, I'm bored.
First off, I can't stand Neil Young as a singer, hate him, good song writer, underated musician, but I'd rather listen to a metal desk get drug along concrete floor. However, he has been a pretty big proponent for quality audio, audio formats and equipment. He saying that the MacBook has a garbage DAC, plain and simple. It doesn't matter if you have custom made dolphin placenta unobtainium speakers that are 100% efficient and can exactly reproduce every soundwave possible, if the audio signal that is being sent to them is crap, it's going to sound like crap.
There has already been a pretty decent discussion about the various pros and cons of analog, digital, lossy/lossless compression, etc so I'm not going to rehash that, really there could be max character dissertations written about the various pros and cons and you will not sway people either way.
I collect vinyl, I do, I have a couple hundred total albums and singles. I have maybe 20 modern recordings and remasters.
Why?
Well, it's not because vinyl is magically better sounding, because it's not. I'm not one of those hipster douche bags who stand next to their garbage sounding Crosly mumbling about "the music just sound so live, bro".
I collect vinyl because generally current mastering and even moreso remastering is garbage in a majority of the cases. Back in ye olden days a remastered album would be cleaned up, maybe some master pops or issues fixed, transients removed etc, but the dynamics and core of the recording would not be messed with. That is not the case anymore, and has not been since the 90's.
In my experience modern remasters generally just destroy the dynamics of the recording and and are generally just louder. Some of the most destructive ones actually change the recording, adding originally non existent reverb or echo, or "enhancing" one instrument or another.
So in many cases, the only way to get unraped, I'm sorry "remastered" recordings is to pick up the original vinyl(or even reel to reel) Or if you like late eighties 90's music the original release CD, because most labels stopped even releasing vinyl albums around that time.
But even then buying vinyl is a crap shoot. Not all pressings of vinyl are equal, even during the height of quality vinyl pressing. Take for instance the late 70's, vinyl pressed during the oil crisis, are in a lot of cases crap, because they had to use inferior recycled vinyl instead of "virgin" PVC. The colored/picture albums usually sound worse than the "normal" version released at the same time because of the material used. A good portion of modern pressings are not great or are very hit and miss, because there are literally just not that many pressing houses left, and in a lot of cases the recording was not mastered to play on vinyl.
And regardless whether you are playing vinyl, CD, reel to reel or a "good enough" 128kb mp3 you are probably playing them through a device that is using a DAC. If that DAC is garbage, or doesn't provide a good unbiased conversion, then it really doesn't matter what the source is. You could be running the original master reel of The Dark Side of the Moon, and it will sound like vomit if your DAC is crap, even if you are rocking those sweet dolphin placenta speakers.
And that is what Neil, in his rambling way, is getting at.
First off, I can't stand Neil Young as a singer, hate him, good song writer, underated musician, but I'd rather listen to a metal desk get drug along concrete floor. However, he has been a pretty big proponent for quality audio, audio formats and equipment. He saying that the MacBook has a garbage DAC, plain and simple. It doesn't matter if you have custom made dolphin placenta unobtainium speakers that are 100% efficient and can exactly reproduce every soundwave possible, if the audio signal that is being sent to them is crap, it's going to sound like crap.
There has already been a pretty decent discussion about the various pros and cons of analog, digital, lossy/lossless compression, etc so I'm not going to rehash that, really there could be max character dissertations written about the various pros and cons and you will not sway people either way.
I collect vinyl, I do, I have a couple hundred total albums and singles. I have maybe 20 modern recordings and remasters.
Why?
Well, it's not because vinyl is magically better sounding, because it's not. I'm not one of those hipster douche bags who stand next to their garbage sounding Crosly mumbling about "the music just sound so live, bro".
I collect vinyl because generally current mastering and even moreso remastering is garbage in a majority of the cases. Back in ye olden days a remastered album would be cleaned up, maybe some master pops or issues fixed, transients removed etc, but the dynamics and core of the recording would not be messed with. That is not the case anymore, and has not been since the 90's.
In my experience modern remasters generally just destroy the dynamics of the recording and and are generally just louder. Some of the most destructive ones actually change the recording, adding originally non existent reverb or echo, or "enhancing" one instrument or another.
So in many cases, the only way to get unraped, I'm sorry "remastered" recordings is to pick up the original vinyl(or even reel to reel) Or if you like late eighties 90's music the original release CD, because most labels stopped even releasing vinyl albums around that time.
But even then buying vinyl is a crap shoot. Not all pressings of vinyl are equal, even during the height of quality vinyl pressing. Take for instance the late 70's, vinyl pressed during the oil crisis, are in a lot of cases crap, because they had to use inferior recycled vinyl instead of "virgin" PVC. The colored/picture albums usually sound worse than the "normal" version released at the same time because of the material used. A good portion of modern pressings are not great or are very hit and miss, because there are literally just not that many pressing houses left, and in a lot of cases the recording was not mastered to play on vinyl.
And regardless whether you are playing vinyl, CD, reel to reel or a "good enough" 128kb mp3 you are probably playing them through a device that is using a DAC. If that DAC is garbage, or doesn't provide a good unbiased conversion, then it really doesn't matter what the source is. You could be running the original master reel of The Dark Side of the Moon, and it will sound like vomit if your DAC is crap, even if you are rocking those sweet dolphin placenta speakers.
And that is what Neil, in his rambling way, is getting at.
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I've built machines for musicians. Due to the fact most software is now available under Windows, and a well spec'd Windows machine will cost half the price of a similarly spec'd MacOS machine - Such machines are quite popular.
However not one of them has used an inbuilt DAC, and essentially that's all a sound card is. The idea of a DAC contained within what can only be described as one of the nosiest electronic environments on the planet for audio mastering is just ludicrous.
I also think it has to emphasized that vinyl and reel to reel can be connected in such a way on decent multi channel receivers/amplifiers as to totally bypass any inbuilt DAC.
However not one of them has used an inbuilt DAC, and essentially that's all a sound card is. The idea of a DAC contained within what can only be described as one of the nosiest electronic environments on the planet for audio mastering is just ludicrous.
I also think it has to emphasized that vinyl and reel to reel can be connected in such a way on decent multi channel receivers/amplifiers as to totally bypass any inbuilt DAC.
And we listened to cassette tapes in boomboxes and fm radio. The general public has always listened to 'good enough' quality of music. Audiophile grade equipment was never the standard, it was outlier.
Or did you forget about the "SSSSSSSSSSSS' noise floor of tapes?
This....and please, nobody bring up the Lie that was Dolby NR ....A/B/C/S/WTF = Kill Hiss? Lop off the high end! Make your cassettes sound like 8-tracks. And 8 tracks, for those who may not remember (and I barely do), sounded like AM Radio to me.
I hear Dolby S was closest to actually delivering some high-end on cassettes, but everyone had moved on to cd's by then or, at the very least, were listening to these things on stereos where we just ignored the hiss so we could actually hear some treble......mostly in our cars, at least in my case.
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I can honestly state that my cassettes never sounded anything like 8 track cartridges with Dolby enabled. You also failed to mention HX Pro, which was a little different to Dolby A,B and C. My recordings sounded better than low/mid bitrate MP3's no problem.
Home musicians use windows. Studios use macs.
All the high end studio quality audio interfaces the motos, the Lynx stuff is all much more stable with much better latency on a Mac. The windows sound system is basically trash... lots of home musicians make it work. But everyone that runs even a smaller studio will be using macs.
The apple platform has been superior for sound recording for so long that it also has a lot of familiarity. All the reasons people have a hard time switching to Linux from windows cause its different... musicians, especially working recording professionals have been mac people since the 90s.
Home musicians use windows. Studios use macs.
All the high end studio quality audio interfaces the motos, the Lynx stuff is all much more stable with much better latency on a Mac. The windows sound system is basically trash... lots of home musicians make it work. But everyone that runs even a smaller studio will be using macs.
The apple platform has been superior for sound recording for so long that it also has a lot of familiarity. All the reasons people have a hard time switching to Linux from windows cause its different... musicians, especially working recording professionals have been mac people since the 90s.
The latancy issue is pretty much on par with MacOS now, even Linux has kernels with substantially reduced audio latency. The fact is: Even using MacPro's, most musicians and even studio's do not use the onboard DAC's, they use external DAC's with more inputs/outputs.
Of course no one uses on board sound cards. But even externally connected units like the motos ect have to deal with latency. The ASIO drivers everyone uses under windows are pretty good... but core audio is still better and it just works.
I think they could do the same with Blu Ray (or close enough), and you could use a plain old blu ray player. I was always a bit bummed that Dark Side of the moon had a newer mix on the CD, but it wasn't playable on my drive. These days everything I get like that just includes a 2nd disk on Blu Ray and/or DVD.