Digital recordings on vinyl

[Marco]

Your comments re the imperfection of digital recording are noted, however they are not relevant here. The recording has been made and it has been made digitally. Therefore any 'sonic footprint' in the recording as a consequence of this is a part of the recording. If the recording is digital then it is a fact that the digital file, or CD is the recording, and that transferring it onto tape, or vinyl can only move us further away from the original.

And there we are in agreement. What you're written is pretty much what I've just said to Jim

Marco.

[Clive197]

Next to loudspeakers, it is cartridges that vary most in sound ime & imo.

Ortofon, Koetsu, ADC, Linn, Dynavector, Decca London, etc etc ..... all different, every one of them.

So how anyone can claim that their particular LP replay is definitively correct, or anywhere near it, quite defeats me.

-- and then there's turntables, arms, phonostages; all with their own sonic signatures.

Just choose what you prefer and enjoy it. Fabulous.

At last, a man who makes total sense.

[Jimbo]

I was using 'artist' in a general sense to mean 'those involved with the recording' as I am aware that many artists are not interested in the production and mastering side.

Your comments re the imperfection of digital recording are noted, however they are not relevant here. The recording has been made and it has been made digitally. Therefore any 'sonic footprint' in the recording as a consequence of this is a part of the recording. If the recording is digital then it is a fact that the digital file, or CD is the recording, and that transferring it onto tape, or vinyl can only move us further away from the original.

Whether we prefer a digital recording once it has been cut to vinyl is a purely personal and subjective thing.

The only occasion when the vinyl will be the closest to the master is if it is a direct to disc recording, which are very rare.

I really do not see that there can be any flaw in this reasoning.

What is recorded digitally may be quite different to what is mastered down to the CD. Digital recording is a fantastic way of capturing audio but when it is then mastered and messed around with after this can result in a very poor approximation of the original recording when it is on CD. It may well be far from what the artist intended the listener to hear.

To be clear what is recorded digitally may be very different from what the CD sounds like for many reasons. Where as if the same digital recording is mastered onto vinyl it may well sound better than the CD and may well be closer to what the artist intended.

[Macca]

How do you know the CD is closest to the master, you have not heard the master! A digital recording is one thing - what is mastered onto a CD is another.
How do you know the 'closest thing to what the artist intended you to hear' is the CD version?

You need to understand and think about what you are actually saying before you police a post about digital audio 'for the sake of balance and accuracy'.

If the recording is digital then the CD is the same as the master. The master is what the mixdown becomes so it can be sold as a commercial product. So for a 16.44.1 KHz recording the CD is the master, there is no difference.

if the recording was made with a more extended bandwidth and dynamic range than 16/44.1 then you will not have exactly the master on CD but you will arguably have something so close as to be irrelevant.

If the recording was made on analogue tape then the CD will not exactly resemble the master, and neither will vinyl, and neither will a copy of the master tape on RTR since with tape every time you copy you degrade the quality, hence what 'generation' of the master was used to cut the vinyl record is relevant to quality with pre-digital recordings.

[Jimbo]

If the recording is digital then the CD is the same as the master. The master is what the mixdown becomes so it can be sold as a commercial product. So for a 16.44.1 KHz recording the CD is the master, there is no difference.

if the recording was made with a more extended bandwidth and dynamic range than 16/44.1 then you will not have exactly the master on CD but you will arguably have something so close as to be irrelevant.

If the recording was made on analogue tape then the CD will not exactly resemble the master, and neither will vinyl, and neither will a copy of the master tape on RTR since with tape every time you copy you degrade the quality, hence what 'generation' of the master was used to cut the vinyl record is relevant to quality with pre-digital recordings.

The original digital recording may go through a whole load of processing before it is mastered for CD, as you well know being an expert. So what actually gets transferred to the CD may be quite different from the original digital recording. Once that shiny disc is put in a CD player it is then once again mangled by the DAC and you are at it mercy as to what you hear.
This may not be what the artist intended you to hear when it finally reaches your lug holes.
Ask any recording engineer and they will tell you what they hear in the studio on the original digital recording may be quite different to what you hear and that's not just because of the digital playback equipment.

[dimkasta]

I have CDs that sound good and CDs that sound bad.
I also have vinyl that sounds good and vinyl that sounds bad.
Some of my CDs sound better than the corresponding vinyl and some of my vinyls sound better than the corresponding CD.
To further mix it up, both my CDs and my records were produced on different factories, with different masters by different engineers, for different artists and under different standards.

I also have a CD player that plays through a DAC. Both can sound better than some others, and worse than some third ones. And a turntable that has a tonearm, a cart and a phono stage. And each of them sound and are setup better than some other setups, and worse than some third ones.

Why would I ever try to get any conclusions about the superiority of one technology in comparison to the other, based on how they sound with the versions of the music that I have bought?
And why would I ever think that if any such superiority objectively exists, it actually matters for my music?

And now to further confuse you, I prefer vinyl Why? Because it tends to sound better for me, my setup and my music, and probably because I also enjoy the ritual and owning the big physical media with the nice artwork
I also enjoy showing off my vinyl skills to the ladies

Good luck coming to any objective conclusions about the two technologies

[Rothchild]

I also enjoy showing off my vinyl skills to the ladies

This thread has now crossed the line from the sublime to the ridiculous, all responses beyond this point have been rendered moot. Dimitris wins!

[magiccarpetride]

Wow, so many interesting points in this discussion. I for one am learning a lot

So as a layman, I have the following imaginary experiment in my mind: suppose I have a record cutting and record printing facility in my basement. I could hypothetically use Amy Winehouse CD (or any CD for that matter) to play it and use the electrical signal produced by the DAC to drive the record cutting machine. I could (hypothetically again) print the newly minted LP from that matrix. So if I were then to play that LP on my turntable, it will sound different than the CD from which the LP was cut, right?

Meaning, it's the sonic signature of my TT that is adding coloration/sugar coating and thus producing a different sonic impression.

I hope I got this correct (at least in theory), but I'm open to be loudly ridiculed for such a heathen way of looking at the arcane art of sound reproduction.

[Firebottle]

..... and this is the point you always fail to grasp, it will still be imbued with coloration imposed on it from the digital recording process, which results in a sonic signature that some of us can clearly hear and apportion as artifice, simply because no recording device so far invented is 'perfect'.

I'm going to be totally pedantic here (please note Idlewithnodrive), but the sonic signature surely is when the playback process is done, i.e. when converted back to analogue so our ears can hear it.

[Macca]

The original digital recording may go through a whole load of processing before it is mastered for CD, as you well know being an expert. So what actually gets transferred to the CD may be quite different from the original digital recording. Once that shiny disc is put in a CD player it is then once again mangled by the DAC and you are at it mercy as to what you hear.
This may not be what the artist intended you to hear when it finally reaches your lug holes.
Ask any recording engineer and they will tell you what they hear in the studio on the original digital recording may be quite different to what you hear and that's not just because of the digital playback equipment.

I agree it is possible that the production process may change the raw recordings that make up a track. If the artist has no say in this then I agree it may not sound how they wanted. But this is can happen in both digital and analogue recording and production. If the artist is not bothered then it is moot anyway. Even if they are bothered about how it sounds there could always be problems with the hardware too such as happened with 'Katy Lied'. But all of this is still the original recording from our point of view as end users, it is all part and parcel of it.