When HI-RES AUDIO can't compete with VINYL... 

The older I get, the fewer fucks I give about the format my music is on. I just like to just listen to the damn music and forget about the equipment. A good song is a good song, whether played from a vinyl record or a CD on my hifi system, a "hi res" stream through headphones or my studio monitors or via bluetooth on a mono JBL speaker. Edit: grammar.

Agree with many of the comments. Lived through the late fifties era and the 60s into the 70s just enjoying LPs and singles on an auto exchange record player. I am 72 and been into hifi since got a full time job in the 70s. Have chased through that time to get listening perfection but for me never had that until CDs entered the market. A Rega Planar 2 was my final turntable and have never bothered with vinyl again. A friend had a superb set up with Quad speakers and a Linn Sondek LP3? A soon as he had bought the 1st Philips CD player, the CD100 I think, he couldn’t wait to bring it round for me to hear it! That was the end of vinyl for him too. I now only listen to Amazon Music via Shure KSE 1200 electrostatic earphones which give me the best musical experience I’ve ever had.

What a ridiculous situation. One of the touted benefits of CD upon its introduction was the wide dynamic range available from 16-bit digital. Now we have 24-bit and the dynamics are squashed more than they were on cassette tape releases. Just stupid.

I'm glad someone in the RU-vid/Influencer age with a big platform is finally talking about dynamic range compression. Those of us who were veterans of The Loudness Wars from back in the 2000s have discussed this topic (and its negative impact on music quality) for years. I acknowledge that all things being equal (e.g. identical master) I would always choose a high res lossless (or even 16/44) file over vinyl. Vinyl has less overall dynamic range capability than 16/44 or higher, is subject to wear and tear over time, hiss and pops, etc. But we almost never get the same mastering (aka not overcompressed) file. So I accept the weakness of vinyl to get the better mastered music, especially if the digital file is clearly overcompressed. BTW another reason to crush dynamic range for digital files is the thought that people use those files "on the go" so it has to sound good in the car (road noise), on the go (city/street noise) all of which can make the quieter parts of songs inaudible. So to fight that they boost up the quieter parts. The assumption is: if you're listening to vinyl, you're in a controlled environment and really listening to the music for best quality. Also, if you master a record too loud, it risks having the needle jump the groove. In an ideal world, we'd get the final approved master from the band and its mixer and engineer, and have that put on high res lossless and call it a day. But we rarely ever get that.

"When bad digital can't compete with VINYL..."

This is fast becoming my favourite channel. I love it when audiophile youtubers say stuff like "you need lossless 24-bit/192kHz audio through this $10k system so that you can really hear what the artist intended" when the reality is typically, at best, you are hearing what the mastering engineer intended, at worst what the record company instructed the mastering engineer to do. It would be interesting to hear from somebody in the business regarding their views on how vinyl mastering differs from mass market digital mastering.

The only thing i could afford on your table is ..... the door stop 😂😂😂

Vinyl breaks down every time you listen to it. Dynamics are possible in digital world with a good mastering.

Records are just nicer ! I use streaming ! I like my cds ! I love my records !

I love the whole process of playing a record.

One thing JD forgot to mention. The original recording of this album is actually early digital, done at 16/44.1

It's refreshing to hear someone in the audiophile community (aka you) discussing the enjoyment of the music and not just listening to the hardware. Too often people discuss the equipment and the not the enjoyment it provides. However there is a small elephant in the room - so to speak. While some vinyl cuts may have a better dynamic range and sound more natural, the cost of the hardware to listen to this music is significantly higher for vinyl than it is for digital. I am fortunate enough to have heard some crazy expensive vinyl setups and while I have to admit they sound really good the cost is prohibitive. Similar musical enjoyment can be had from a digital setup at a fraction of the cost. In the ideal world, it would be nice if the record companies could release an 'audiophile master' without dynamic compression so we could actually hear what it should sound like.....

this is why i still buy cd and vinyl and havent moved to streaming. i want quality over convenience. ive invested an ungodly amount into media, amps, speakers, treatment, cd players etc and refuse to eat shyte.

Seems to me we have an amazing luxury of choosing between infinite streaming high quality music and the enjoyable quest to find a perfect vinyl recording. And I say to myself, what a wonderful world.

No need to for them to compete. One can have both.

I learned more watching this video than I have in the last 3 years of listening to vinyl. Flawless. Sublime video

You hit the nail on the head. It all boils down to the mastering. If the mastering and EQ is the same for both, digital will win. I have different versions of famous albums. All the CD that were mastered in the late 80s and early 90s have much better dynamic range 12-15 (in my opinion just as good or better than vinyl) versus the newly "remastered" and botched releases that are very straining to listen to with DR of 4-8.

Simple answer, vinyl feel soooo good holding it in your hands.

I love how you are using talking heads music to discuss this issue. I remember listening to psycho killer on the radio when it was first released. It blew my mind. Changed my orientation to music forever. 46 years later and we're still enjoying that song. A lot of credit has to be given to Tina and that wonderful bass line.

The lengths we go to just to relax and listen to some music.

CDs 4 life

We buy compressed audio because it is ahem... "louder". If we bought more audio with performance-level dynamic range, the producers would release it that way on digital. "We have met the enemy and he is us"

The older I’ve become the less things I want to own in my life, owning lots of “things” just don’t do it for me anymore. Every thing gone and currently replaced by a Bluestone Powernode, Chord speaker cables and a set of KEF ls50 meta speakers which I love, it’s as good as I’ll ever need in my small home. Also the amount of new music I’ve found over the last couple of years of streaming is incredible

When I put some tubes in the path of my High Res Audio it sounds just as natural as vinyl. It smooths out any digital sheen, while retaining the musical information. No crackling :p Tubes will obfuscate any digital character.

You're spot on with this. DR is considered the most important parameter in assessing the remastering of a recording by most audiophiles.

Pre-1990 Vinyl is for deaf noobs. Pre-1948 shellac is acceptable. Pre-1900 wax cylinders: heaven.

I own and run a record store, but I'm still mostly interested in original pressings of older recordings. That said, I do get excited about all analog, repress/remasters of classic albums, especially those that are hard to find, or were never released on vinyl.

I'll take the hi-res digital files every time. I did the record thing back in the '80s when it was the best low-cost source for music, but have since moved on to better and more convenient digital options, beginning with CDs after they became more affordable.

There’s a major problem in my opinion.. People are buying vinyl ( at premium prices) and playing it back on ..at best Mid Fi ..I mean the place that will sell you a $40 vinyl copy of Taylor Swifts’ new album ..will sell you a Crosley Portable record player to play it on 🤦‍♂️

The compression af the dynamic range of the music is because it sounds better on a car stereo. I was told this 25 years ago. At that time people even found that a copy of a CD to a casette tape for the car sounded better than a copy of a LP. A person named Garry Miller mentioned some of the same.

I am always super surprised how much I really enjoy well made vinyl that is cut from digital files. Michael Fremer says as much in his MoFi/Music Direct tour video. At the end of the day, it’s all about the chain of mastering and manufacturing and the end users equipment. Great video!

By the late 70s many - not all, but many, many, many - mastering facilities (at a time when vinyl was the mass market format!) had moved to using digital delay lines rather than tape preview heads. Ampex and other studio tape deck manufacturers really pushed this technology, and mastering facilities were quite enthusiastic adopters of digital (and quite low-bit at that!). So by the late 70s many - not all, but many, many, many - vinyl records in the marketplace were already digital in the final step, or AAD if you prefer. And that's before digital started to move into the studio setting for tracking with the early machines from Sony, Mitsubishi, etc. in the 1980s, and before ProTools etc. arrive in the 1990s.

Great subject to dive into John! In the end, the engineer and producer (and sometimes the artist) have a lot more to do with sound quality than the format. Analog tape and vinyl both have pretty severe limitations that never-the-less can deliver great musical enjoyment, Modern vinyl is so expensive that I think the engineers are extra careful to get the best result. Digital (especially hi-res) is capable of capturing live sound without limitation, but that is almost never what we get. There are different kinds of compression used depending on the medium. A very compressed recording (average loud level) really eats up playing time on an LP, but peak limiting is very important to not overload the cutting head and cause tracking problems. As noted, deep bass is mono on vinyl and is rolled off pretty steeply below 40 or 50 Hz to save space and prevent tracking problems. In the days when vinyl was the only choice, the sound and the quality was overall very poor. The discs were thin and usually warped (causing warp wow when played) and usually incorporated reground vinyl (old records that didn't sell, ground up paper labels and all). The most common customer complaint was 'skipping' usually caused by using really cheap crappy turntables and ceramic cartridges. Customers returned records and demanded their money back. For this reason, dynamic range and frequency response were usually purposely severely reduced compared to the master tape. 45RPM singles (used in jukeboxes) were especially bad sounding. These were considered disposable. 33RPM LPs weren't much better with a few exceptions. Big selling albums would require multiple pressing dies (stampers), each one a little worse as the mother wore out, and these dies would be used well past their prime to get the required million discs for sale. Today's vinyl is usually heavy 180g virgin vinyl pressed using long heating/cooling cycles to get beautiful quiet surfaces. I think it also assumed that even modestly priced turntables are very capable these days and the resulting LP can be a bit closer to the master tape. BTW, using a digital master allows the engineer to 'know what's coming' to the cutting head with the benefit that the levels can be pushed a little higher without risk of unintended distortion. Followers should check out: dynamicrangeday.co.uk/ This group is dedicated to ending the 'loudness war'.

Thank you so much for sharing this kind of thoughts, too - not just reviews and comparisons. It makes a lot of sense to all of us, active listeners of digital audio formats and vynil.

With modern vinyl cutting, I find the 4kHz range needs adding or removing. With one beautiful pressing I have to add 9dbB to equalise it. Apparently this has to do with the natural resonance of the mass of the cutting head which apparently needs constant monitoring and compensating for during cutting. This information comes from an old boy who still works in high end studio gear. He also told me that

Wow, lots of outtakes at the end. You are very patient! I have not listened to any modern vinyl, as I have not had a turntable set up for ages. I still have my old record albums from the 1970s-late 1990s, when I started to only purchase CDs, and I remember hearing a distinct difference in sound quality on vinyl when purchasing discs from notably high quality vinyl producers who also used top quality master recordings for source material (Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, Sheffield Lab, Direct-Disk Labs, etc), as compared to the standard issue vinyl from CBS, etc. As far as dynamic range goes, I think the big selling point of greater dynamic range for CDs was really because they had a much lower noise floor than vinyl did. Yes, CD could also have a higher end as well (due to the limitations caused by groove tracking of high level signals by the cartridge), but I think the bigger impact was the lower noise floor. But the bottom line is that the source material (master) used to produce the media is the ultimate decider. Garbage in, garbage out! With the advent of higher quality digital recordings, it reflected badly on recording engineers who did a bad job of mastering the original music, so they needed to up their game.

My hearing has always been compromised, and music has always been my priority. Combine both and you get an a-audiophile. Years on and the listening fatigue due to digital has compromised my hearing even more, way more. To cut the long story short, when I listened to vinyl again in a used records shop I felt my ears were brought back to life.. I embraced the digital era, arms open wide and ditched the frustrating vinyl experience, and today is the opposite. Therapeutical reasons, I guess because I got 2 choices: to stop listening to music for the rest of my life, or listening to music again in a format I got divorced from and now remarried so I can listen to music properly again. Great video,, it encapsulates in comprehensible terms what digital audiophiles can't understand about analog formats, even if that took you hours to record, lol. I could see the fumes coming out of your ears and nostrils.

Whether CD, hi-res or Vinyl, it really depends on which type of music fan you are. If you like me as an orchestra fan, I would choose CD and hi-res streaming as which are very similar to a real orchestra replay in a concert hall which has incredible depth in 3D sound stage and clarity. I will be very easy to identify the position and type of the musical instruments. Vinyl will not be able to achieve this. However if you are a solo piano, violin fan prefer small size instruments, Vinyl will be able to shine as it has more musical feeling and touches.

I think too much music today is being mastered for playback on mobile phones...through the crappy little built in speakers, because so many people DO listen to music that way. And those of us who listen to music on better playback devices, are effectively getting the short end of the stick.

Interesting video, very well done. I saw this concert and it was fabulous and strangely enough the sound was one of the best and balanced live performances I have ever heard.

Great vid and a necessary follow-up from the first one - thanks. The answer to 'why are the digitals mastered with less dynamic range?' To me, likely to be the fact that individual digital tracks could be competing with other individual tracks within PLAYLISTS. However, on Vinyl, the format is only competing with itself for a 20min period of intentional listening of each SIDE... so it could/should have whatever dynamic range it likes... without the competition track-to-track that digital playlists could bring up.

Vinyl mastering engineers actually ask for the files supplied to have the least compression applied possible. It allows them to fit more music on the record, since they can make the track spacing narrower when it's quieter, and only wider in the loud parts where it's really needed. If only labels would also release the same less-compressed masters as high-res files...

Perhaps you get that extra DR from the crackles and pops ? :)

The "problem" with audible gains made in dynamic range using vinyl, is that you immediately lose that gain advantage by all the noise inherently in vinyl - pops, crackles, humming. Having grown up with vinyl in the 80s, it took me ages to transition to CD, and when I made my first CD purchase (REM automatic for the people) I was just blown away by the sheer clarity and purity of the sound...I was an instant convert overnight and sold almost all my vinyl and began the arduous journey of replacing with CD. I went through exactly the same process with streaming about 10 or so years ago, having already begun dipping my toe in, ripping my CD collection onto a server and thinking "why would I need to pay for a streaming service"...but then, having gradually got used to spotify and then the higher res Tidal, I cannot imagine listening to music any other way. The sheer amount of artists Ive discovered just leaving the player running after an album finishes and does its own thing, is just wonderful. The ability to easily make playlists for a specific social occasion, a dinner party, or just to share with close pals...brilliant! The absolute joyous fun and laughter me and my pals have when they come over, chatting about music and us all pinging our favourites in turns to the streamer or new artists we've found! I still sit and listen critically and focussed to my music as its one of my main loves in life, but I feel completely liberated by streaming now and don't miss vinyl in the slightest. If I want to listen to a record AND read the sleeve details, I can do that easily online. I really don't miss having a physical "thing" in my hands, and I can't help feel that my past vinyl addiction had far more to do with collecting trophies than it did the music itself. It was an attachment to a thing, and that thing (my collection) was part of my identity. I'm glad I let go! All that vinyl space has been replaced by books :)

For me, it’s not about the vinyl it’s about what’s on it, and I can safely say you can’t unscratch a vinyl record and if you have a favourite recording you frequently listen to either for enjoyment or as a musician to learn from it ( some of us still like to learn by ear) , it just can’t compete to a cd on either durability or price

There's a Wikipedia article about the Loudness War. Especially mechanic Instruments sound weird with to much compression. I like the digital domain for the details and fast impulses but dropped a lot of titles from my collection because of the gruesome compression. Dynamic compression may be useful in a car on a highway or on a construction site but not on a good stereo system in a quiet home. Record labels should let the stereo systems do the dynamic compression as only the stereo system can know the listening environment and the preferences of the listeners. Or at least offer a natural edit with full dynamic range and a compressed loudness edit for loud environments.

I think the real reason, why the dynamic range decreases from release to release is: It should sound good on any device, especially the cheap modern mass consumer devices and BT boom boxes which are not capable of handling a dynamic range of 14 or more.

With streaming you get a black or silver box with a screen and maybe a led light or two. Record albums often come with a big beautiful cover and artwork. With remastered music from the past and newer music you get a compressed audio experience on digital.

You make a fascinating point! Last week I performed a live version of Rachmaninov symphony 2 under the baton of Andrew Litton and we worked very hard on dynamic range. I’ve also performed the same piece with other conductors and I can safely say that focusing energies on d.r. results in a massive impact on the audience satisfaction. In essence you’ve also inadvertently made a pro argument for live classical music. Just pop down to your local symphony orchestra. I can see you worked really hard on this one, you’ve definitely made your point in a very clear manner, congrats as usual !!

Solution: make it mandatory for record labels to state the dynamic range of every track on the back cover of the CD and on the streaming service page, then hit them in the balls by refusing to buy any release with a dynamic range smaller than 12 dB. Force the record labels to stop interfering with the mastering engineers and allow them to bring back the dynamics. Usually, every track release should be mastered in different versions: for vinyl recod, for CD, for streaming platforms and for promotional use (online or on the air).

if you like wow - if you like flutter - if you like second order harmonic distortion - if you like ticks and pops - if you like limited dynamics - then records are definitely your medium of choice

Love this. After reading nearly all of the thousand comments here, I'm happy to give my take. 59 years old with not-too-compromised ears. I like vinyl ONLY for those albums that my brain remembers from back in the '70's. Breakfast in America. Hotel California. Hot Streets. I know where every instrument and note "was" in the soundstage, as originally masteted and transferred in the very best way they could at the time. As for any other presentation - original CD, today's high-def, etc. - the specs are infinitely better. But to my brain, for those old albums, it simply sounds wrong, lol. Now as for that new Stones album, I'll enjoy it in the manner that it was just recorded, and it will a great musical experience as well. An old audiophile's "muscle memory" is what this conversation is really all about!

Outtakes: And we thought you were perfect. 🤓❤

The loudness war has caused a post-1990 degradation on CD releases in terms of Dynamic Range (DR). It's no secret that many audiophiles seek older CD releases and avoid like the plague new remasterings. Vinyl is indeed more resilient to that trend.

The compression process can also work the other way. The tubular bells at end of the first side of Mike Oldfield’s album were recorded using a claw hammer rather than the standard mallet to give them a brighter, louder, ringing sound. The problem was that they had to be reduced in volume when it came to the tape for cutting the master lacquer as otherwise the huge increase in volume towards the end of the side would have caused heavy distortion, or even the stylus on some decks to jump out of the groove. When it came to producing (I think) the SACD version they were able to restore the original dynamic range. It would be interesting to know roughly how many LPs cut nowadays use a less compressed digital master than for the streaming/download version. I think it’s correct that dynamic range can make a difference (though not always) but how often are there the kinds of differences noted with this recent edition of “Stop Making Sense”? It’s a good point but to what extent can one extrapolate?

Great video! All the vloggers that keep repeating the "pleasant distortion" bs when talking about the sound of vinyl should be obliged to watch this.

I really enjoyed your analysis of DR and how it compares between vinyl and digital formats. I can tell you, however, that the only real reason I buy vinyl is because I love the physical, tangible nature of vinyl. For all intents and purposes, my music needs "for work" as a DJ are focused around the latest digital performance equipment that I rely on when playing on stage, so my vinyl collection is about 85-90% "for pleasure" and, to be frank, it's more about escaping digital fatigue for me. It's the same reason I buy video games on physical media and, when my budget allows for it, I prefer to pick up physical copies of my favorite movies. My profession likely makes my relationship with music more of an outlier than the average person, but it definitely affords me a certain level of awareness around the "why" of my vinyl habits. I think your analysis is spot-on but, respectfully, I think the attraction to physical media and the effects of digital fatigue are grossly underplayed (no pun intended) within the 21st-century vinyl community. That said, whatever the reason for each individual's format preferences, I appreciate videos like this that offer a different way to approach a nuanced conversation.

Two days before my son sent me the link to this post, I watched a movie from 1946, Two Sisters From Boston. In the film, there is a scene where Lauritz Melchior records Prize Song from Die Meistersinger. When he finishes he has the following exchange with a record company exec. You can find the clip online. Record exec: You wasn’t loud enough. People don’t want records that they have to listen to. Melchior: But it is the right rendition of the aria Mr. Gibson. Record exec: Who cares about the song. It’s the phenomenon. That’s what the people want. It’s the noise that comes out of the box.

I like the feel of records and their covers, I like turntables, i like how cartridges work, I like the process of playing a record, I like the sound of a lot of lps, not all. I like analog v digital.

What I truly enjoyed in the last 2 videos is your demonstration that the key is mastering quality. Thanks for that. At the same time, dynamic range is NOT the only factor. Agreed that the loudness war leaves us poorer in sound quality. However, depending on what you are listening to, HI RES files played from a good source (streaming has it's own problems with jitters, internet quality, EM noise, etc.) may provide the best format...if the mastering (or remastering) is of high quality. How to rate and evaluate quality mastering is therefore the true test, not the medium itself (Vinyl or Digital).

Superb video. You hit on all the points I thought were missing from the previous Stop Making Sense video. I am not the utmost authority on audio but I am pretty savvy... and I must say that your description in this video aligns 100% with my understanding. I look forward to hearing the interview with PBTHAL.

I love my vinyl , wonderful sound . i love digital for convienience . i don't need to choose one or the other .

Since we are all in this hobbie for the love of music . I figured I’d start posting some great songs to enjoy.. Mingo Fishtrap- Not the Same Jamie cullum- Lover, you should have come over Lake street Dive- I want you back Seth walker- I must be in a good place now Fever - Ray Charles It would be cool if everyone started putting some of there favorites out. Discovering new music is what has made the streaming algorithm so great.

You’ve truly amazed me. I’ve always figured that one of the attractions of vinyl was the necessary compression that comes with the format compared to digital! And the reverse is true. You learn something new every day!

When I was into collecting physical media, it was never about the quality. I wasn't sitting there, melting in my couch with a glass of wine thinking "listen to THOSE freqnecies" or whatever. It was just a hobby to have a physical library of... stuff. Usually I had some sort of sub-par system and I bought the cheapest vinyls on Discogs in bulk. It was just different from having a Spotify-playlist. If I had really been interested inhigh-quality audio I would have simply gone to high-resolution flie formats, i would have never been able to tell the difference between digital and analogue at that level (except if a different mix is used).

So limitations of vinyl format don't allow publishers to enforce that crazy level of dynamic compression that they want and that can be reached with digital formats, and that spoils perception of music more than imperfections and limitations of vinyl media. Totally works for me! :)

Great presentation/topic...!!! Your time spent and hard work invested on this subject are much appreciated...!!! Kudos...!!!

When you did the DR analysis you were not comparing equivalent products. If the first release has only 8 tracks, you need to compare only those 8 tracks from other releases, not anymore since the additional tracks that are not present in the original may influence the average DR.

Its also bands and producers and engineers. Ive spent decades making records and almost anytime you delever even a rough mix to a ckient, they want it louder. The rough unfinished mix needs to conpete with polished, mastered tracks. I talk and rant about this all the time, but NO ONE is willing to let dynamics exist anymore. It bums me out.

Even though you're measuring the DR of the entire vinyl playback chain there's no way that chain can add DR.

This is the kind of content that keeps me coming back. Thank you!

Vintage vinyl on a vintage stereo is music to my ears.

Great video John, I look forward to doing your podcast soon and breaking down the whole vinyl rip thing, thanks in advance

Digital or vinyl, remastered & manipulated or not remastered, with aging your hearing will change. Exposure to sounds will shape your final experience of what you actually hear. Fact of life. Just appreciate the music whatever the format while you can.

After watching those outtakes I think the editor deserves a pay rise, or a medal

Thanks as always! Oh and Thanks for the outtakes! Great to see beyond your beautifully edited video that you're a human too!

You've hit the nail on the head regarding the masters used making the most difference rather than the format itself. I'm a mastering engineer with four decades experience and I recently got back into vinyl myself. One of the major reasons for this is that it is far easier to find original pressings of some of my favourite albums without all the hyper compression, brick wall limiting and even intentional clipping done on many digital releases. These "loudness wars" releases are fatiguing and harsh to listen to. While vinyl is technically lacking in some aspects, the vastly superior masters used on the original pressings (in many cases) makes these releases far more engaging to listen to.

To me, I love vinyl for all the reasons mentioned, but also: pure enjoyment, fun to play, nice to care for the record, and the sound quality most often. How does the DR14 original CD sound compared to the rip?

I wish they just release the master tapes! They usually have all the details and it is the most authentic sound ever. Of course slight EQ or compression could be done if it makes the record sounds better (for example rock music sounds better with some compression and the mixing engineer expected it to be there). But no limiting or compression should be done to make anything louder, it is just destroying the music. You want loud - turn up the volume, no problem :)

Thanks John. Love what you do.

I'm 52 years old. I started listening to records and cassettes, then moved onto CDs, which were a gamechanger. I had a iPod Classic for a while. Now I only listen to hi-res streaming. When you read about the mastering compromises required to get modern music onto vinyl, I don't know why anyone would bother.

I'd like to see more reviews/discussions of vinyl records from you. Your perspective would be a very fresh one in the vinyl record collecting community, something that is very badly needed.

YES! Excited for that podcast conversation. Sometimes videos like this are so I don't have to repeat myself and just point to a direction.

this is awesome !!! thanks for the clever analysis !

You have jumped headfirst into a black hole of minutiae where there is almost no escape

The Rolling Stones will soon release their new album which they recorded last winter. The release was delayed because of the queue to the LP manufacturer. This according to Mick Jagger.

Just got back into vinyl and this is one of the most relevant and educational video's I have seen in providing a measurable understanding of the audio transfer between between analog to digital and back. Great description of testing process to avoid biased data interpretations. Just subscribed. Great work

Quite insightful analysis on different editions of an album… as well as enlightening reflection on the Joy of listening to Vinyl 🤟🏼🙌🏼

GEEKing out with John is a fun diversion 😂 As a reality check: " recorded classical music typically offers between about 20 dB and 32 dB of dynamic range." (40db being the theoretical range;-) A live symphony orchestra has a dynamic range of 100db((😮)) CD and HD can cope with that. Vinyl can't. Lets get out to hear the real thing more John. You live in a Mecca for truly dynamically ALIVE emotionally stirring performances! I'm jealous and a little Disappointed you get excited about a 3db(x2) improvement between pop remasters:-/

The video was very interesting but the thing that I took away from it was, subjectivity is everything. Personally, I prefer the sound of vinyl over the clinical sound of digital recordings. Obviously there is an element of nostalgia, owning the physical disc etc. but if it sounds better to me, that's what matters. To use an analogy, I don't like strong coffee, in fact I drink cheap instant coffee. A colleague at work insisted that my coffee was rubbish and his ground coffee was far better quality. I didn't like the taste of his ground coffee so, from my perspective, his coffee was rubbish.

Great explanation on how it all works thanks

Great content and delivery

PBTHAL legend

I think that many people are being overcome by nostalgia for something that they never truly experienced. I grew up with vinyl in the 70s and owing to the oil crisis, poorer quality vinyl was produced for recording purposes. The other questions surrounding vinyl are governed by the simple laws of physics. When the hardest substance in the world, i.e. diamond comes into contact with a soft material like vinyl, friction will take place, which over a period of time and exacerbated by the presence of dust, will end up damaging the groove. If we go back to hifi magazines of the 70s, it was calculated that a vinyl record could be played about 5 times before deterioration took place. No one can honestly deny that the noise floor of vinyl is frankly appalling in comparison with digital. It is also worth noting that original vintage recordings cannot and never will be hi-res, as they were laid down on 1/2-inch analogue tape. If I purchase a hi-res version of Fear of Music by Talking Heads from 1979, I am actually paying in large part for silence as the dynamic range is not there on the original recording. I agree that vinyl has a pleasant sound, which may come form colouration as the tape goes through the heads and there could be an argument made for reproducing an analogue recording on analogue equipment. However, it is often necessary to transfer the original recording to a DSD file in order to preserve the delicate tapes, which will also have suffered deterioration with the passing of time.

John. I love this video. Thank you for your time. Terrific what you do. Also the outtakes are hilarious. 😅

I recorded a bunch of records from the 70's (full Led Zeppelin album library, Jimmy Hendrix, the Cars, Supertramp... ) with a Kenwood linear tracking tt I got in 1985, through the 1/4-inch jack out on a PYLE phono preamp into my HP laptop 3.5mm mic jack using Windows basic recording software and they are the best record recordings I've ever heard. Super simple with only one external component (phono preamp). Love your videos. Thanks!

Love the outtakes 😅

We enjoyed your video a lot ❤

Thanks Darko, and for me it gets better. One steps can add another layer of WOW, showing just what the format is capable of and it’s mighty impressive. 😊

John - really appreciate the recent content about hi res and analog vs digital. I’ve been in this hobby a long time and just now realizing that some of the old ways of doing things can be more enjoyable than the new ways. For example, I have an old burr brown pcm63 base DAC that will not accept signals above 16/48, but I enjoy listening to that setup more than the many newer DACs that I’ve owned over the years that can play all of the latest formats at super-high resolution.