Vinyl bass?

Amplesamples

Amplesamples

Well-known member
Recently been listening to a lot of dubstep, and since I have a working record deck again, have been buying lots on vinyl.

Now to be honest, the only reason I buy it on vinyl is because I like the whole tactile thing with vinyl and music, and the end product. Given the choice over downloading an mp3 album of 2562 or buying the same on vinyl, I'd plump for the latter.

When reading a lot of stuff about dubstep (I have been obsessing a lot over it at the moment, after discovering and getting into it very slowly), I'm always told about the importance of vinyl, and the claim that bass always comes out better on vinyl over CD or MP3. Is this true?


Given that dubstep is probably produced inside people's computers (inside the digital domain), the fact that it gets transferred to vinyl (going through digital-to-analogue conversion, thus compromising the signal, even with the best equipment) surely adversely affects the end result? Surely CD is a 'purer' medium for a lot of dubstep (and other electronic music)?


MP3 is a compressed aiff or wav file, so I can understand that the quality is lower there. But surely these days, CD is sonically superior to vinyl (even if it is far less cool)?

What do people think?
 
matt b

matt b

Indexing all opinion
Amplesamples said:
Now to be honest, the only reason I buy it on vinyl is because I like the whole tactile thing with vinyl
Click to expand...

end of thread.

there are reasons why vinyl sounds better, due to a lack of signal cut-off-frequencies outside of human hearing which exist as artifacts in analogue recordings and can combine when reproduced to fall within the spectrum of our hearing, but tbh i don't give a shit.

this does of course depend on music being mastered from an analgue source iirc

i just prefer the format of vinyl and like the way records stack on a shelf. it's pretty. innit
 
U

UFO over easy

online mahjong
I think there's an important point which is often neglected in these kind of discussions, which is that even if it's true that digital mediums may be 'purer', as you put it, for tunes made with digital equipment, in practice there is what seems to be a very definite reason
as to why vinyl comes off sounding better most of the time - check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war


it's possible and common for CDs, especially in dance music I guess, to be completely fucked by the mastering engineer in the endless quest for volume, and where the same issue obviously exists with vinyl, analogue distortion sounds a lot nicer than a clipping CD. on that wikipedia page go look especially at the sites they reference showing astonishing pictures and analysis of waveforms of recently mastered CDs, it's crazy. The chronological comparisons are just mad as well.

and obviously vinyl is lovely crackle/warmth/tactile/artwork blah blah blah

this is just what i've gleened from some pretty cursory reading around the subject, so pull me up on it if i'm chatting nonsense, but i think the idea's supported by my experiences comparing albums released on CD and vinyl in the last few years or so
 
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Amplesamples

Amplesamples

Well-known member
Very true, but that all depends on how the music is recorded/mixed in the first place too. If the digital waveform is clipping before it's mastered(I remember reading somewhere that Dr Dre makes a lot of his snare drum sounds clip on purpose), then dynamically the record is already affected.

The loudness war stuff is all very interesting though. I looked at a My Chemical Romance tune in a wave editor recently (don't ask) and it's totally brick-walled. No dynamics at all.

The loudness of a record depends (I think, as I do know a bit about sound, but I'm no mastering engineer) on the length of the tune and the size of the record (7" or 12"). As I understand it, the more space on the record for one tune, the wider the groove and hence the louder the waveform imprinted on the vinyl.

Whereas in CD, that isn't a consideration. It's just that I thought that bass in particular would be adversely affected on vinyl - theoretically the needle can jump off the record if there is too much bass. That's why RIAA amps in turntables exist isn't it?
 
M

mms

sometimes
an engineer who masters on analogue gear, someone like transformation can bring up the bass and dampen the more more grating treble that you get from recording on a computer.
Alot of dubstep producers will also overcompensate on bass lines so someone that knows how to master will reign that in and boost it properly.

loudness depends on both length - although you can do pretty well on a 12" but just how loud a record is mastered too.
cds are compressed with cut off signals in the top and bottom end and mp3s are worse - i really find it hard to listen to mp3s sometimes, they're ok for traveling etc but i get pissed off with it after a while, they distort badly too and the soud just sounds pitifully empty.
Vinyl is my preferred thing because of tactility, sound quality and just labels, sleeves etc, plus pissing about on decks will always be much more fun that ableton of final scratch or whatever anyday.
 
hint

hint

party record with a siren
CD has a wider dynamic range than vinyl and no noise floor.

A properly mastered CD should sound better than a properly mastered piece of vinyl.

The various advantages of vinyl are usually dependent on other factors:

- Some of these dubstep guys might perhaps be comparing a CDr burnt off their computers with a dubplate and forgetting that in order for the dubplate to be cut, it has gone through a rough and ready mastering process by someone who knows what they're doing - i.e. the master isn't the same.

- Club systems are usually set up to make the most of a slab of vinyl playing on a Technics deck.
 
Amplesamples

Amplesamples

Well-known member
mms said:
cds are compressed with cut off signals in the top and bottom end and mp3s are worse
Click to expand...


I know there's low-pass filters for digital sound at the top end (anti-aliasing filters).

But I'm not sure about filters at the bottom end.

Surely as all the sounds in dubstep are electronic it doesn't matter if CD is used. The filters have already filtered out frequencies because it's already electronic - it's not a case of a band being recorded into Pro Tools/Logic and the sound being affected afterwards.

What are the frequencies that CD is filtering out at the bottom end? 20Hz? 30 Hz?
 
N

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Amplesamples said:
What are the frequencies that CD is filtering out at the bottom end? 20Hz? 30 Hz?
Click to expand...
Yes generally, maybe even 40hz in many cases. The main reason simply being that most systems just aren't capable of reproducing those frequencies with any power so it's a big waste of headroom. It's not a hard and fast rule though and obviously bass heavy music would generally allow for a bit more low end than your standard pop tunes for instance.

Mastering is a big part of it but I think the process of taking a digital file, putting it on piece of vinyl and reading it back with a physical stylus changes something about the sound - makes it more fluid. Also when music is mixed on computer it's now generally at a depth of 24/32 bits and maybe up to 96 or 192khz bandwidth - mastering for CD immediately means you are reducing to 16bit / 44khz so a certain amount of depth is lost that could actually be retained when going to vinyl. You can hear quite clearly the difference in bass fluidity especially between 24bit and 16bit recordings IMO. A lot of CD players have really average D/A converters as well so even basic record players are at an advantage in some ways.
 
D

droid

Guest
hint said:
CD has a wider dynamic range than vinyl and no noise floor.

A properly mastered CD should sound better than a properly mastered piece of vinyl.

The various advantages of vinyl are usually dependent on other factors:
Click to expand...

It appears that the vinylphile claims are not as outrageous as they seem: LPs do have a usable dynamic range far greater than the measured dynamic range would suggest, and LPs consistently have higher relative dynamics over digital formats. But it is also true that LPs have higher distortion levels which translate to ultrasonic frequency harmonics.

The question is: is the higher relative dynamics of LPs an indication of higher accuracy, or are LPs exaggerating transients and dynamics? I'm not sure, and I would welcome comments.

If LPs have higher distortion and are exaggerating dynamics, it may explain why the apparent "benefits" of LPs translate even into LP recordings, and potentially explain why LPs of digital recordings sound better than their CD equivalents.

http://www.audioholics.com/educatio...ology/dynamic-comparison-of-lps-vs-cds-part-4
 
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Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
matt b said:
there are reasons why vinyl sounds better, due to a lack of signal cut-off-frequencies outside of human hearing which exist as artifacts in analogue recordings and can combine when reproduced to fall within the spectrum of our hearing, but tbh i don't give a shit.

this does of course depend on music being mastered from an analgue source iirc
Click to expand...
FWIW, and it's not directly related, someone did a really careful and well designed test a few months ago that proved fairly conclusively that taking a bunch of audiophile-approved recordings on one of the higher sampling rate digital formats (128kHz or something) that audiophiles claim sound much better than CDs and playing them back on top audiophile hardware through a sample-rate reducer to CD quality didn't make any difference that a group of recording engineers, production students and self proclaimed audiophile gurus could identify.
 
N

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
In my experience bit depth makes more of a difference than sampling rate, but I suppose they took that into account.

But anyway, just because it's not easy to do memory based comparisons in blind tests doesn't mean that there isn't a qualitative difference there. Those tests assume that if it isn't an obvious difference it doesn't matter which I think is missing the point. If that was really the case people wouldn't bother with low bit rate mp3s at all but most of us can agree they sound quite pants.
 
hint

hint

party record with a siren
droid said:
LPs consistently have higher relative dynamics over digital formats.
Click to expand...

Interesting article - thanks.

But isn't the lack of dynamics on the CD versions down to the over-cooked mastering process, rather than the format itself not being able to handle a wider dynamic range?
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
noel emits said:
But anyway, just because it's not easy to do memory based comparisons in blind tests doesn't mean that there isn't a qualitative difference there. Those tests assume that if it isn't an obvious difference it doesn't matter which I think is missing the point.
Click to expand...
It assumes that if given an allegedly superior sound and an allegedly inferior sound and the ability to switch between them at will, no self proclaimed connoisseurs can tell the difference between them, then there they don't in fact sound any difference and there's no benefit in using the 'superior' version.

ABX tests are designed to give people every possible advantage in comparing sources - if no difference is detectable in an ABX, what real world situation would it make a difference in?
 
D

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
Amplesamples said:
Very true, but that all depends on how the music is recorded/mixed in the first place too. If the digital waveform is clipping before it's mastered(I remember reading somewhere that Dr Dre makes a lot of his snare drum sounds clip on purpose), then dynamically the record is already affected.
Click to expand...
Hes probably talking about clipping the sample itself (either in a sampler or software) rather than driving it so hard across the master bus that it clips.

Lots of producers do this as a quick means of getting samples punchy/crunchy. DnB producers have been doing it for years.
 
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