How to go from vinyl to digital and still stay an audiophile.

cageymaru

cageymaru

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REVIEW: ROON, TIDAL AND TOTALDAC – PART ONE.
https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2016...g-turn-an-analog-house-into-a-digital-domain/

I thought the article was interesting in that it explained how the author loves his vinyl collection, but his family is afraid to touch his $50,000 record player. They were relegated to listening to Pandora on a TV, than learn how to run his stereo. So he has begun a quest to get audiophile sound from a digital source.

Now of course his budget is much larger than mine, but I could appreciate his choices and it was interesting to find out that Tidal can handle more than what my DAC is capable of. There is a part two coming in January where he tests more of the system and explains how his family enjoys it as far as ease of use goes.

Figured some of you would like it. Substitute iPad for PC and you're good to go!
 
holy shit the price on that stuff! if i had a 50k 'table id have it locked in a cage! any chance you got tripped up by the "snow flakes" on the page?! I thought my gpu was glitching!
 
pendragon1 said:
holy shit the price on that stuff! if i had a 50k 'table id have it locked in a cage! any chance you got tripped up by the "snow flakes" on the page?! I thought my gpu was glitching!
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Ha ha yes the snowflakes tripped me out too. :) He has some nice gear, but you can find mere mortal gear that does the same thing for much less. I figured that the tech brotherhood here could find similar performing pieces that don't break the bank. ;) Also Tidal sound quality is amazing and I wanted to showcase a digital system from an audiophile's perspective. I learned that they support more than just what my DAC is capable of and that's really awesome! Might be looking for something to upgrade to over the next year to take advantage of it.
 
True audiophiles don't use vinyl anymore because they know it is inferior. Are you aware that on vinyl the closer the needle gets to the center of the record the more distortion it outputs? I didn't know that until about a month or so ago when I read an article about it.
 
rezerekted said:
True audiophiles don't use vinyl anymore because they know it is inferior. Are you aware that on vinyl the closer the needle gets to the center of the record the more distortion it outputs? I didn't know that until about a month or so ago when I read an article about it.
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Audiophile /= total perfectionist
Although that guy comes close.
 
rezerekted said:
True audiophiles don't use vinyl anymore because they know it is inferior. Are you aware that on vinyl the closer the needle gets to the center of the record the more distortion it outputs? I didn't know that until about a month or so ago when I read an article about it.
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Not quite so simple. There are still a lot of people who swear for vinyl. They wouldn't be selling $200k turntables if people thought they were inferior.

As for Tidal, I think it's overpriced and last time I looked they lacked a huge amount of artists. It's more targeted towards US consumers.
 
I looked at trying to stream higher-res music, but couldn't find much- Tidal being sparse as hell- and I'm not about to start amassing a physical DVD-A/SACD collection.

Further, there's not much evidence that greater than CD quality is actually usable. I can see getting stuff off records for digital playback, the theory is all sound there, but only because you want to preserve that particular distortion of the music.
 
its not streaming but hdtracks.com seems to be a good source of HD DRM free music. if youre in the states...
 
Still pretty thin. I'd be happy with a streaming service that guaranteed CD quality where bandwidth was available (is there a lossless streaming format?).
 
pendragon1 said:
its not streaming but hdtracks.com seems to be a good source of HD DRM free music. if youre in the states...
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Malwarebytes has that website blocked. ;)

Want to add that after an update Malwarebytes doesn't have it blocked. No idea why it did in the first place. Weird.
 
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the snake said:
i sometimes stream flac files from my home PC to my phone with plex server, just an option ?
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Not a bad one for stuff that's owned, though I'm less concerned with streaming to my phone- it's exclusively used as my car's aux input, and for that, the car's speakers are certainly the limitation.
 
B00nie said:
You have that shit running? ;)
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Odd. I was using Chrome to highlight and go to the link in the post and it was blocked. If I just type it out and do it manually it works. Must be some bug or something. Site seems legit.

Looking at the pricing I think it's cheaper to stream from Tidal if the album is available there. Of course if it's not then you have to buy it.
 
cageymaru said:
Odd. I was using Chrome to highlight and go to the link in the post and it was blocked. If I just type it out and do it manually it works. Must be some bug or something. Site seems legit.

Looking at the pricing I think it's cheaper to stream from Tidal if the album is available there. Of course if it's not then you have to buy it.
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IIRC hdtracks uses their own client to deliver the downloaded tunes, maybe that was flagged as malware.
 
B00nie said:
Not quite so simple. There are still a lot of people who swear for vinyl. They wouldn't be selling $200k turntables if people thought they were inferior.

As for Tidal, I think it's overpriced and last time I looked they lacked a huge amount of artists. It's more targeted towards US consumers.
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Well, I put my money where my mouth is and a friend and I did some testing comparing CD to vinyl way back in 1989 on a Rega Turntable with Grado cartridge. The only album we thought sounded better on vinyl was Lou Reed's Transformer because it had deeper bass but we put that down to the remixing on the CD and not because it was an inferior medium. I've done the research and I know for a fact vinyl is inferior so if they want to spend $200k on a turntable that sounds no better than a $200 cd plyer then more fool them.

My friend had a DBX dynamic range expander for his vinyls and cd made those obsolete because they do not have an issue with dynamic range.

I remember Neil Young in some mag complaining about digital compared to analog but then the next album he put out was DDD when he could have used AAD or even DAD. Fucking hypocrite.
 
cageymaru said:
Malwarebytes has that website blocked. ;)
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Why? I just checked all the url scripts on that site and they are all safe. Malware bytes claimed I had malware urls in my Hosts file just because I had a loopback on google.de and some other site. Nope, no malware at all and that was just me blocking sites.

I'm at that site right now checking out Miles Davis - Tutu and I used to have that album on CD and like it. Um, they want $27.98 for it just because it is lossless and 24bit 192khz sampling rate. All thye did was take the original cd and upsample it, you won't hear a dif and lossless vs high quality MP3 won't sound any dif either.
Waste of money IMO and you can get that album for ten bucks in MP3 elsewhere.
 
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rezerekted said:
Well, I put my money where my mouth is and a friend and I did some testing comparing CD to vinyl way back in 1989 on a Rega Turntable with Grado cartridge. The only album we thought sounded better on vinyl was Lou Reed's Transformer because it had deeper bass but we put that down to the remixing on the CD and not because it was an inferior medium. I've done the research and I know for a fact vinyl is inferior so if they want to spend $200k on a turntable that sounds no better than a $200 cd plyer then more fool them.

My friend had a DBX dynamic range expander for his vinyls and cd made those obsolete because they do not have an issue with dynamic range.

I remember Neil Young in some mag complaining about digital compared to analog but then the next album he put out was DDD when he could have used AAD or even DAD. Fucking hypocrite.
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Well that's just your opinion and a test made with sub-200k equipment ;)

There are many people who genuinely think vinyl is the only true format. It begins just from handling the record and it's casing. It's almost a ritual thing to some people.

I haven't heard really good vinyl players in a price range I could afford so I don't personally own vinyl records. My brother in law has a Pro-ject player and he listens 80% of the time vinyl.
 
You don't need to spend $200K to be able tell if it is better or not and if you do then you are doing it wrong. His system was worth about $20K in 1978 dollars.
 
rezerekted said:
You don't need to spend $200K to be able tell if it is better or not and if you do then you are doing it wrong. His system was worth about $20K in 1978 dollars.
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Technology has advanced since 1978 you know :)

And the point is - that is only your opinion. Other people may have differing opinions. After all there are people willing to pay 5000 bucks for a power cable. I'm 99,999% certain they would never know the difference if someone secretly swapped a 5 dollar general one in.
 
I have a pretty huge vinyl collection, I'm a huge music fan and I love the format. I also have tons of redbook and hi res Including some sacds some DVD audio and blu ray audio.

My table is a mint sl1200 and I have a few different carts none costing more than $200. I have an oppo103 and a parasound p5 pre amp both with awesome DACs IMO. For headphone use I have HD600s and a little dot mk 3 tube amp I do some minor tube rolling with.

I have a lot of copies of the same albums on vinyl, CD, sometimes SACD also. I often compare 24/96 mastered files with vinyl and the redbook and everything in between. The biggest thing I've learned is it's all down to mastering and the level of compression you like. I have copies of albums on vinyl that I never listen to because the sacd or CD sounds better and vice versa. Sometimes a newer recording will sound better to me on vinyl if the CD is really compressed.

I have a pretty nice system but I would never consider myself an audiophile because I'm really just a music fan. I'm also a collector I've had some stuff 25 years or more and it's the way I choose to consume music. As far as distortion on records is concerned and inner groove distortion specifically I don't suffer from it but I keep everything properly aligned and calibrated. Sometimes vinyl suffers from bad pressing quality and if it's sourced from a redbook file it's basically pointless. A nicely mastered and pressed record on my setup of $400 table $200 cart/stylus and $300 phono preamp is just damn fun to listen to and there is always the joy of some 40-50 year old records I have that play beautifully and sound wonderful to my ears.
 
B00nie said:
Technology has advanced since 1978 you know :)

And the point is - that is only your opinion. Other people may have differing opinions. After all there are people willing to pay 5000 bucks for a power cable. I'm 99,999% certain they would never know the difference if someone secretly swapped a 5 dollar general one in.
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So, you are telling me my Onkyo 75w per channel receiver sounds better than a Crown pro power amp with 220w per channel?

And it wasn't just my opinion, that was the results of 2 test subjects, me and my friend.

I posted up above that I recently read an article about how distortion gets worse on an LP the closer the needle gets to the center of the record so it is not just an opinion but fact.
 
rezerekted said:
So, you are telling me my Onkyo 75w per channel receiver sounds better than a Crown pro power amp with 220w per channel?

And it wasn't just my opinion, that was the results of 2 test subjects, me and my friend.

I posted up above that I recently read an article about how distortion gets worse on an LP the closer the needle gets to the center of the record so it is not just an opinion but fact.
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Amps have very small sonic differences after a certain quality level. Some differences cannot be explained by reading measurements. Like it was the case with TIM distortion, measuring methods we use may not yet reveal the problem areas in sound. The amplifier power has nothing to do with the sonic quality nor does the brand or pro/non-pro status. You can have an excellent tube amp that only produces 1 watt per channel and you can have a 2500 watt pro amp that sounds relatively horrible.

The distortion rising towards the record is most likely a far smaller problem than the distortion coming from your speakers which is orders of magnitude higher than the LP or especially the CD. Front-end biased people are building a Hubble telescope that has the last lense made out of an old beer bottle and they keep on polishing the first lense in the telescope to insanely expensive reaches being happily oblivious to the fact that they're still going to be limited by the beer bottle bottom end.

The electrostatic speakers I use have a distortion that is orders of magnitude lower than conventional speakers. When you get to that level it's reasonable to start worrying about the source.
 
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Meeho said:
None in a double blind test, but, hey, whatever works for you.
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I prefer ABX Double Blind to Double Blind by itself.

And I may love my audio setup and definitely feel that high end audio can be justified, but I'd need to borrow Superman's ears to hear (not just see on a graph) the difference between 16/44 and 24/192 sorry snakeoildrinkers...
 
A physical medium superior to digital? With all the hiss, wow, flutter, low SNR and the rest can go take a hike to history. Records is just hifi hype to sell expensive crap to people, thats coming from someone who has tried both. Yeah I understand some with the physical medium thing and the unique sound but I'm fucking well over records, tapes, CDs and the rest. They can all die in a fire where they belong. They are inferior for the purpose of long term sound reproduction, which is why I enjoy my hifi. Other than bit-rot you're pretty safe from scratches, lint and dirty fingerprints.. and dirty heads.. and worn needles and crap like that.
 
N4CR said:
A physical medium superior to digital? With all the hiss, wow, flutter, low SNR and the rest can go take a hike to history. Records is just hifi hype to sell expensive crap to people, thats coming from someone who has tried both. Yeah I understand some with the physical medium thing and the unique sound but I'm fucking well over records, tapes, CDs and the rest. They can all die in a fire where they belong. They are inferior for the purpose of long term sound reproduction, which is why I enjoy my hifi. Other than bit-rot you're pretty safe from scratches, lint and dirty fingerprints.. and dirty heads.. and worn needles and crap like that.
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Who needs objectivity when said market when placebo and confirmation bias are sold as features?
 
B00nie said:
Amps have very small sonic differences after a certain quality level. Some differences cannot be explained by reading measurements. Like it was the case with TIM distortion, measuring methods we use may not yet reveal the problem areas in sound. The amplifier power has nothing to do with the sonic quality nor does the brand or pro/non-pro status. You can have an excellent tube amp that only produces 1 watt per channel and you can have a 2500 watt pro amp that sounds relatively horrible.

The distortion rising towards the record is most likely a far smaller problem than the distortion coming from your speakers which is orders of magnitude higher than the LP or especially the CD. Front-end biased people are building a Hubble telescope that has the last lense made out of an old beer bottle and they keep on polishing the first lense in the telescope to insanely expensive reaches being happily oblivious to the fact that they're still going to be limited by the beer bottle bottom end.

The electrostatic speakers I use have a distortion that is orders of magnitude lower than conventional speakers. When you get to that level it's reasonable to start worrying about the source.
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OK, but we haven't even started to discuss dynamic range, which LPs are inferior in too.

Which electrostatic speakers you have? I wouldn't mind a pair of Quads.
 
rezerekted said:
OK, but we haven't even started to discuss dynamic range, which LPs are inferior in too.

Which electrostatic speakers you have? I wouldn't mind a pair of Quads.
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My electrostats are my own design and build. They're DSP corrected and based on studies made by Roger R. Sanders, D.R. White, Linkwitz Labs, Peter Walker and Peter Baxandall.
 
Meeho said:
None in a double blind test, but, hey, whatever works for you.
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Its unfortunate you cant tell the difference but there certainly is one with my equipment.

I recommend decent tweeters at minimum, I use Ribbon.
All the Ribbon tweeter speakers I have heard make it very easy to tell the difference.
The source is vital too. Less detail in, less detail out.
 
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B00nie said:
My electrostats are my own design and build. They're DSP corrected and based on studies made by Roger R. Sanders, D.R. White, Linkwitz Labs, Peter Walker and Peter Baxandall.
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How much they cost? I have had two pairs of Monsoon planar speakers for computer use in the past. Good mids and sweet highs but need a sub woofer, which they did come with.
 
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