Vinyl rips versus official digital hires files

[StanleyB]

I started ripping vinyl onto a PC harddisk at least 20 years ago. It was an expensive method then since hard disks storage space came at a high price. About £1 per Megabyte to be exact. Ripping software such as Roxy Easy CD Creator were the bee's knees. Than came Cd burners and that made the whole process a lot cheaper as far as storage space was concerned.
But life has turned full circle and it is back to a hard disk again since they can store a lot more than a CD.

Over the years I have used a regular set of records for testing and I am always on the look out for alternative format releases of those records. One of them is the album from Marvin Gaye called What's Going On. I have used that without fail to determine all sorts of things within a recording and the playback there of through various equipment. I have ripped the album many times and using a variety of arms, carts, turntables, A t D converters, etc. So there is very little that I don't know about that album as far as its quality is concerned.

But then I went a got myself the official digital release in 24/192 (plus a few others). Within the first few seconds of playing that I noticed the better channel separation and depth, plus additional notes from the instruments that I had not heard before.

This has had me thinking over the past few weeks. I concluded that the better separation is down to the fact that the separation on a TT cartridge is nowhere as good as a proper L and R recording in a digital format. As for the audio information: the vinyl cut is dependent on the quality of the cutter and its audio performance. In a direct master analogue tape to digital transfer the vinyl cutter is no longer in the loop and therefore no longer a factor.

I am only just beginning to experiment with vinyl rips versus direct mastering tape A to D audio file. But the results so far are most encouraging.

[attilio7]

Hello, Is this a hint of a new hardware product?

[StanleyB]

.

[joethebus]

Stanley, and whether you think there would be any chance that good vinyl rips recorded straight into a DSD recorder, then played back through a DSD DAC without any PCM conversion stage might sound very analogue and similar to the original vinyl?

The reason I ask is that I'm looking for a way of playing music away from home that's on vinyl but isn't generally available, well recorded anyway, on a digital format. I routinely travel to various festival and show sites but reckon delicate and expensive records plus a high quality deck/arm/cartridge would be too fragile to risk in a festival/bar/camping environment.

Part of the idea is to record a collection of 78s digitally, then make those available to whomsoever is DJing too - and I'm wondering whether DSD copies of those might be better too.

I'm intending to make DSD copies of especially delicious SACDs using an early Playstation 3, also to be played back through a DSD DAC. Quite a few of my audience won't have heard really well recorded and reproduced music, and certainly won't be expecting it at an out-door party/festival bar/venue! Providing it's a bit of an indulgence, but is fun!

I'd hurry up and start experimenting if work wasn't rather irritatingly interfering with my leisure/hobby schedule; also I'm thinking it would be best to ask around and get advice before I plunge into a project that could turn out to be a big one.

What I don't want to do is go PCM, then discover I could have made better rips using DSD (as so many did with lossy/lossless) after I have invested a lot of time using a less-than-satisfactory format.

If you have any needle drop tips or thoughts generally I'd be very glad of them.

[johncaul]

Stan, I've got a longstanding project ripping my vinyl, but where possible have gone down the high res download route. Where did you get "what's going on" from- it's one of my favourite albums and i'd love to buy it!

[StanleyB]

Stan, I've got a longstanding project ripping my vinyl, but where possible have gone down the high res download route. Where did you get "what's going on" from- it's one of my favourite albums and i'd love to buy it!

Check out https://www.hdtracks.com/

[johncaul]

Great, cheers stan. For what it's worth beethoven's 7th is a favourite of mine, I have it on vinyl, reg cd, high res download and ripped from vinyl. I accept there are a ton of different variables- different orchestras, recordings and conductors for a start, plus my set up isn't exactly high end; but I have to say the high res route has got a lot going for it. I'll leave it at that!

[johncaul]

Well, using HDtracks has turned into a massive ball ache for anyone without a US ip address. I ended up having to go through a proxy server- which is much less complicated than it sounds. It seems nuts that wanting to pay and download music legitamately is more difficult than getting pirated stuff. Anyway. Marvin has never sounded better, i also got a copy of wonderful world by louis armstrong. Sublime. Well worth the extra effort required in my book!

[Lodgesound]

I started ripping vinyl onto a PC harddisk at least 20 years ago. It was an expensive method then since hard disks storage space came at a high price. About £1 per Megabyte to be exact. Ripping software such as Roxy Easy CD Creator were the bee's knees. Than came Cd burners and that made the whole process a lot cheaper as far as storage space was concerned.
But life has turned full circle and it is back to a hard disk again since they can store a lot more than a CD.

Over the years I have used a regular set of records for testing and I am always on the look out for alternative format releases of those records. One of them is the album from Marvin Gaye called What's Going On. I have used that without fail to determine all sorts of things within a recording and the playback there of through various equipment. I have ripped the album many times and using a variety of arms, carts, turntables, A t D converters, etc. So there is very little that I don't know about that album as far as its quality is concerned.

But then I went a got myself the official digital release in 24/192 (plus a few others). Within the first few seconds of playing that I noticed the better channel separation and depth, plus additional notes from the instruments that I had not heard before.

This has had me thinking over the past few weeks. I concluded that the better separation is down to the fact that the separation on a TT cartridge is nowhere as good as a proper L and R recording in a digital format. As for the audio information: the vinyl cut is dependent on the quality of the cutter and its audio performance. In a direct master analogue tape to digital transfer the vinyl cutter is no longer in the loop and therefore no longer a factor.

I am only just beginning to experiment with vinyl rips versus direct mastering tape A to D audio file. But the results so far are most encouraging.

Being completely honest here are you really surprised?

Vinyl is a good distribution medium - but that's all it is ultimately. If it was any better we would have used it for mastering in the industry - which we did not - and it would have been nearly 10 times the cost to buy for an end user if it was a mastering format - not that an end user would ever have been allowed to officially buy master recordings.

This is where digital comes into it's own with these high bitrate/sampling frequency recordings becoming available now.