Best Bass-Vinyl or Digital?

[nickbaba]

Don't forget most vinyl produced after the mid to late 80s will be cut from digital studio masters, so that confuses the comparison somewhat.

And one can't really compare a vintage acoustic double-bass sound to modern synthetic bass e.g. kraftwerk etc.

And furthermore, the low frequencies you can hear will be more dependent on your audio system than the particular playback medium eg.. can your speakers reproduce sound below +/- 35Hz? And can your ears detect it if they do?

But... given a hypothetically perfect playback system, and hypothetically perfect ears, the low frequency response of vinyl playback is self-limited to around 20Hz by rumble noise (chaotic platter movement around the bearing) and the resonance characteristics of the tonearm and transducer. Analog reel-to-reel tape has a low frequency cutoff of around 10Hz. And in theory digital wins with a low frequency bandwidth down to 0Hz. But given that human hearing only goes down to +/- 20Hz it's a little academic.
Where analog vinyl wins is actually in the high frequencies - CD quality digital has a brickwall cutoff at 20 kHz, whereas analog in theory has no upper limit, and frequencies of over 100kHz have been cut to vinyl. (Although this is again somewhat academic as human hearing cuts out at around 20kHz on a good day, and for the over 50s its probably more like 12 or 13Khz!)

But having said all that personally speaking I prefer the sound of vinyl bass over digital, but I think that's probably due to the slight euphonic effect of 2nd order harmonic distortion being introduced to the signal. And hooray for that, imho.

[Macca]

Bass on vinyl is summed to mono below 100Hz which is technically a degradation of sound quality compared to the original recording but might also be responsible for imparting a subjective 'solidity' to the bass.


For high frequencies there is usually a low pass filter on the cutting head that prevents any signal above 18Khz being cut, in order to avoid over-heating the cutting head. That's assuming the recording was made on equipment that could capture such frequencies to begin with, which for 99% of recordings does not apply. Most microphones don't tend to capture much beyond 20Khz.

[Yomanze]

Without a doubt, digital. I was actually quite surprised when I first realised this, playing the vinyl and CD versions of Massive Attack - Mezzanine. The record player was a Technics SL1210.

I listen to a lot of very bass heavy music, including drum ‘n bass, dub and hip hop. Digital is cleaner and tighter, maybe this isn’t what you want if playing dub music...

[Primalsea]

I think that statements that declare that something is better should be responded to with the question “better for what”?

Making something better implies that there was a goal involved. If something else was made better to a different goal then you can’t really say one is just better than the other.

[Macca]

'Better' is in the ears/mind of the beholder, as always.

IME once a vinyl system gets beyond a certain point comparisons with digital become pointless. There's no way to do that without spending a fair bit of cash, though.

[Clive]

Don't forget most vinyl produced after the mid to late 80s will be cut from digital studio masters, so that confuses the comparison somewhat.

And one can't really compare a vintage acoustic double-bass sound to modern synthetic bass e.g. kraftwerk etc.

And furthermore, the low frequencies you can hear will be more dependent on your audio system than the particular playback medium eg.. can your speakers reproduce sound below +/- 35Hz? And can your ears detect it if they do?

Let me clarify what I intended. I wasn't remotely trying to compare Kraftwerk bass with acoustic double bass. I made the reference as what I value for one is not the same as for the other (or at least my priorities change). Eg with Kraftwerk one thing I want is "slam"; with double bass I want dynamics yes but the balance of other aspects shift what I want - I want to hear the strings wobble and the natural acoustic. My point about vintage recordings aligns with your point about mid to late 80s recording methods - especially too with music that's pretty much created in a DAW without a natural acoustic, bass can then become a sound effect rather than be musical.

My speakers go down to 18Hz (I have measured them) but I'd agree that there's generally little information below around 30Hz. There are a few tracks which are exceptions to this.

[Mr. C]

For me the most impressive bass from a turntable I have listen to, has been on a Rockport Sirius III and grand Utopia III's yep that did quality bass all right pretty deep and tight right the way down to 25Hz easy.

Through the same system a six box Eso digital top of the line (at the time, mono dac's two box transport and the atomic clock) bass was subterranean even shook the tiles off the listening room roof (which was 35 feet high lol) which one is better humm that a personal choice

[Haselsh1]

Oh dear, here we go again. As has already been stated, how do you quantify 'better'..? Meat and poison spring to mind here. There are so many variables involved without even getting into room size and resonances.

[Haselsh1]

Also, I'm pretty sure that the OP's comment about 'slam' has little to do with bass...?

[Haselsh1]

My best experience of 'slam' is on the track 'Finger' by Younger Brother from around four minutes thirty onwards. These days I just don't get what I used to from this track as I am using small nearfield monitors but with a huge excess of power and big cones this track is so bloody emotive. The energy is infectious. The best I ever heard on this track was some bloody huge Cerwin Vega's and a monster power amp. Maybe not hi-fi but then does it matter when the emotion is so high..?