Vinyl Sound Signature

If you are due for a phone upgrade I can recommend the LG V series and G series phones. They have a very good DAC and enough power to drive most "normal" headphones without the aid of anything else. I had a V20 and now have a V40. My wife has the G7 I think which IIRC has the same DAC. Although I much prefer to listen to my stereo system at home the V40 does the trick for portable listening. Although there are some very good DAPs out there I don't want to carry around a separate device either. 

   I have CD’s from the very early days and at the time they sounded not very good. Now they sound excellent. I agree that the red book specs are good enough, but I think the early CD players just didn’t cut it. However, the low noise pushed turntable, cartridge and preamp designers to develop lower noise systems for LP. A good outcome.

Digital replay is now fantastic. I use two DACS (Majestic and Ch**d M*jo) and they have vastly different sound signatures. Both sound wonderful. Much like two really great cartridges that involve and impress, but sound very different. The choice available today is stonkingly good and we should all be grateful. It’s  so easy these days to get a system that you can be happy with for a very small amount of cash. 

Red book, as I said above, is excellent. However, I do like the extra flexibility higher resolutions give recording and mastering engineers to push noise out of the audible frequency band. Having said that, it’s my experience that LOTS of engineers aren’t taking advantage of it. I own a number of 96/24 and 192/24 recordings that sound no better than the 44.1/16 red book version. Buyer beware.

Which brings me to my final point on digital. The gulf between low-res mp3 and 44.1/16 is huge. A massively worthwhile jump. The gap from 44.1 to 48 can also be worthwhile and noticeable when done well, but is a much smaller jump ahead. From there it’s diminishing returns, I think. The wind has to be just right and the caffeine levels perfect for the higher-res versions to seem worthwhile to me. I think the cat has to be sleeping in the spare room and pointing west, too).

As for vinyl vs digital, I wonder if it’s simply down to digital being a design problem and vinyl a manufacturing problem. The LP replay mechanics seem so straightforward, but tough to machine to such tight tolerances. Everyone and his/her dog has a DAC on the market and it makes me think it must be REALLY EASY to do, but difficult to design exceptionally well.

I feel very lucky to be in a position to own the system I own. It’s super well balanced and the differences between LP, CD and hi-res replay are small. I’ve found balance. Vinyl is now my number 1 way to get hold of music I doubt will be reissued in any form. Streaming via Tidal is my way of hearing new music or easily taking favorite albums with me. My CD, download and LP collections get equal use at home.

Balance in Hi-Fi, as in life, is a beautiful thing. 

Cheers,

Mick.

Yes, definitely re: DACs. There is great stuff out there and not so great. A high price tag is no guarantee of high performance either. I sometimes visit a site where an engineer measures various DACs from quite cheap to very expensive and you would be shocked at the performance of some of these pieces of gear. Recently a DAC that starts at $6,000 USD (more if options/upgrades are purchased) was measured (with Audio Precision equipment) and the S/N ratio was shockingly bad for a supposed state of the art piece of equipment. Worse than many CD players from the 80s, matter of fact. 

I'm also with you on hi-rez digital audio. I've purchased quite a few albums on 24/96, 24/192, and even a couple pure DSD recordings (recorded and edited in DSD). My takeaway is that it comes down to the mastering, not the bitrate if we are talking sound quality. If it's an older album that was recorded on tape, the condition and generation of the tape source also play a huge role.