Why The Vinyl Renaissance Is (Mostly) Not For Me
Why the Vinyl Renaissance is (Mostly) Not for Me
By Steve Graham
Spoiler alert: If you love vinyl, what comes next might not be to your taste. The intention of this report is not to dis vinyl lovers or change anybody’s mind. My take on the vinyl resurgence, and why it leaves me (mostly) flat, is just an opinion. If that opinion does not coincide with yours, I think we can be adult enough to agree to disagree.
If you favour music as reproduced by the vinyl medium, I’m happy for you. I am not opposed to analogue reproduction per se. Some of the most magnificent recordings of all time were recorded on analogue magnetic tape. It should continuously surprise us – I know it does me – that we keep “finding” more music on these tapes. Even tapes that have been “found” many times before. It’s just the final step in this process – replaying music from a vinyl disk – that takes the fun out of it for me.
Here’s why vinyl does not do it for me:
- I’m a klutz. Delicate objects are best kept away from my hands. More on this later.
- MFSL’s dubious provenance aside, their pressing quality is suspect. More on this later too.
- Vinyl is inconvenient.
- Vinyl is fragile.
- Backups (multiple copies) of vinyl are expensive and impractical.
- Too much ancillary equipment is required to fully optimize vinyl playback.
- Vinyl is just too damn noisy. Much more on this later.
My LP Ripping System
Those who follow my reviews might have noted that I sometimes use music originating on LP records ripped to high resolution digital files.
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Audacity software (free). Same as Schiit link above.
LP’s are played and digitized at 24-bit, 192 kHz using the system above and files stored on my HP laptop using Audacity software. Once the files had been “corrected,” using Audacity, they are coded into the FLAC format for dissemination to the hard drives of my various digital players.
The following screen grabs are of the waveforms displayed by the Audacity software. The scaling of the horizontal and vertical axes can be changed without affecting the digital data. The left channel is on the top and the right the bottom. The time scale is immediately above the left channel data. I listened to file playback using $60 IEMs connected to my laptop.
Let’s start with the noise:
Shown above, in figure 1, is the background (analogue) noise, the needle drop into the groove, groove background noise, applause and the start of the music.
In figure 2 the big tick (mechanical damage to the groove) in the left channel and a small vestige of it in the right. Note also the level (volume) of that tick compared to the music about 0.037 seconds later. This noise is non-musical and extremely annoying.
The LP digitized in figure 3 is a mono recording which makes the task of finding the offending noise slightly easier. The one shown above is somewhat buried in the music signal but easily audible.
Tick Mitigation
In figure 4 above a tick can be seen in the left channel at about the 10:20.460 mark. There is also a small vestige of it in the right channel.
Figure 5, same tick with the time (horizontal) scale expanded.
Figure 6, same tick as above, the time scale has been expanded again. The darker blue highlights the approximate length of the tick. Checking the time scale the tick is approximately 0.00055 seconds long. This is ½ of a millisecond or five, ten-thousandths of one second!
Now for the HERESY
As shown in Figure 7, I deleted (cut out) 0.00055 seconds to remove the tick. It’s a trade-off between removing as little as possible, leaving a slight step in the waveform (as shown above) and removing more but having a smaller step or no step at all. (Audacity “stitches” the cut “ends” together.) So, is this vestigial step audible? Yes, as a soft thump, if you know where it is and listen very closely with headphones. But it is so low in level that for all intents and purposes it’s inaudible. Heresy! Yes, if you insist. I have thrown away some music, sort of. But I would bet most, if not all, listeners would not miss any music and would be glad to say goodbye to the tick.
Longer Intrusions
Figure 8. More problematic are long scratchy or buzzy flaws as shown in the right channel above. Though not typically as loud as ticks or pops, their longer duration makes them annoying. Generally, they are less audible on speakers than on headphones. I have experimented removing large chunks of the waveform to get rid of them but sometimes a too-noticeable chunk of music gets cut out.
Figure 9. Between the two arrows is another example of what I call a “fuzzy bit” in the right channel. Though not of high amplitude the duration is sufficiently long to be heard as a grating distortion.
The Klutzy Part
The ticks, pops, fuzzes, and other random nasties kills vinyl enjoyment for me. However, I am forced to admit that as a klutz, I’m my own worst enemy.
See damage above in figure 10. I’m sure there is no need to point out the horrible noise spikes. This was a self-inflicted wound on one side of the MFSL 45 RPM, Kind of Blue, double-disk remaster. The damage lasts for several revolutions.
The Sickening Part
The MFSL LP that I dropped and gouged was nearly pristine. So off I went and bought another double LP set.
The second pressing I purchased, figure 11 above, has radial scratches that show up as repetitive ticks. I’ve only marked a few of them but they are still audible even when “buried” in the music. An audiophile buddy has the same set and when I borrowed his, it had the same fault. A close inspection of the numbers revealed that his pressing had been made with the same stampers as mine. Thanks a lot, MFSL. Your quality control really impresses.
After this fiasco I purchased the 24/192 download from HD Tracks.
By now, every vinylphile from here to Mars is aware of the MFSL controversy regarding digital intermediates between session masters and cutting lathe. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the least of our problems. We should not be surprised that Columbia (Sony) won’t let irreplaceable master tapes out of their sight. In my estimation, the best copy of an analogue session master is a well-done, high sampling rate, digital file.
When demand exceeds supply, there are always unscrupulous people willing to cut corners to make quick bucks. I’m not singling out MFSL in this regard. Some of the figures presented at the beginning of this article are from the Bill Evans LP pictured at the top. There are procedures and technology available that can recover and repair music contained on historic analogue recordings. For those interested see the Plangent Process at plangentprocess.com.
For more information on the mastering process go to Stereophile.com and read the two-part interview with Bob Ludwig, one of the masters of mastering.
Conclusions?
So, does this mean I’m in love with digital, specifically CD-rate digital? No, not exactly. Sure, there has been and continues to be nasty sounding digital recordings. There are also some very good ones. Part of the problem with early CDs (can it really be forty years ago that the CD was released in North America?) was that they were not remastered for the digital medium. Often the CD was just “cut” from LP mastering tapes a generation or more removed from the mixed down session masters. See my earlier comment regarding supply and demand. If you want to hear the difference remastering and remixing can make listen to The Beatles, Abbey Road, on a first generation CD, then listen again to the Tidal MQA stream.
Will I still acquire new vinyl? Perhaps, but I will be very, very, selective. It will only happen if a digital download or a good quality CD is not available. I am in the process of ripping my small vinyl collection to 24/192. I’ve already had one fishing expedition (strictly catch and release) through a much larger vinyl collection and digitized many of interest there. I like to think I’m a music lover first and a gear geek second. I have almost convinced myself of that.
On a personal note, I probably won’t be writing any more in-depth reviews for Wall of Sound. At least reviews where I must parse the finer points of a component’s sound quality. Time is catching up with me, or more specifically with my hearing. Tinnitus comes and goes. Some days my main system just sounds sour. The irony is, I’ve never enjoyed music, and a greater variety of music, more. If I don’t trust my ears, it would be unfair to foist their sonic shortcomings on others.
I’d like to thank my long-suffering editor Noam Bronstein, for giving me the opportunity to realize a long-held ambition. Sharing what little I know with others has been great fun. I guess in modern parlance I might be called an influencer. Though influencer has always seemed to me to have a negative connotation. I like to think of my self as an informer, or more precisely, a source of information. Interestingly, relating my observations to you has made me a better listener.
Let us all share and inspire, where we can, our love of music and Hifi gear with the next generation of audiophiles.
Goodbye and thanks,
Steve Graham
Editor’s Note: I’ve been on both sides of the vinyl love-hate fence, and more than once. I do still enjoy it, on my own terms (I’m not obsessed). Why do people enjoy the format? Some things defy reason. More importantly, I want to thank Steve for his many (many!) outstanding contributions over the last eight years. I think I can speak for Wall Of Sound’s readers too in saying “he’ll be missed”. Hopefully we’ll still hear from him now and then.
I think anyone with a vinyl system a notch above the one mentioned in the article will not find much to agree with .
IF I still had my first vinyl rig today(similar level gear)I would most likely be in agreement.But with almost 50 years at this hobby(and not quitting)I’ve constantly moved up the ladder to Linns, Sota, Oracle,VPI and lastly SME.My latest set up certainly has flaws,but so does streaming and digital.Nothing is perfect, but some gear is just closer to perfection than others, warts and all.I always told myself,quit with the best system you can get, then enjoy it for the rest of your life having no regrets.
Welcome to getting older! I’m in a similar position, with a combination of age and medication making my tinnitus completely unenjoyable most days. Still loving music as much as I ever have, but I’m very careful with the volume.
Thank you for your comment Mr. Lee.
I don’t doubt that a vinyl setup better than mine should sound better. The points I’m trying to make are this: 1) the fragile nature of vinyl coupled with my clumsiness makes me wary of dropping a lot of money on this format and 2) regardless of system capabilities, a crap pressing is a crap pressing. If you can hear past crap pressings, you are fortunate. I can’t. When an expensive MFSL or any other vinyl disk, regardless of audio provenance, has been poorly mastered or pressed it makes me sad and angry in equal measure.
May we all have many more years of musical enjoyment regardless of the method of delivery.
Cheers, Steve Graham
My two cents; 6 and 7 are interrelated. Quality of pressing aside, to properly clean a record requires an investment of hundreds to thousands in the equipment needed to accomplish the job. IMO, when expense is not a factor (which it is for all but a fortunate few) digital playback has yet to equal what Vinyl is capable of but digital playback is getting closer and closer.
Wherein it still lags behind is in tonality, soundstage size and imaging and most of all; the elusive sense that you the listener and the musicians/singer are in the room together. Perhaps that is why those qualities are so rarely mentioned in reviews of digital equipment. There’s more to music reproduction than tightness and extension of bass, midrange fidelity and extension/airiness of treble.
I agree, Geoffrey. I would add that it takes not just money, but a serious investment of time, to curate a good vinyl collection.
-Noam
Hi,
Two things. I agree with Steve’s take on vinyl. There is just too much surface disruption. I always have to listen through it to the content. I don’t care how expensive the TT is or the cartridge or the cost of the various disc cleaners, there is always some surface disruptions that spoil the experience, at least for me. I laugh at those Crossley owners who think vinyl is inherently better. Once the jitter problem in CD playback was solved it became such a superior medium that there is no contest and with lossless streaming the doors open even wider. I only listen to vinyl because I have a large collection of older records that I do not have a digital source for at present. However, vinyl album covers and inserts are definitely superior, no doubt.
Secondly, I want to recognize the efforts of Steve Graham over the years for his reviewing. I have said it before and I will say it again, his technical chops are exceptional and if I had half those abilities I would be a better reviewer. A diagnosis of tinnitus is not a trivial thing for an audiophile and I feel his distress. Hopefully, he can use his technical skills to keep writing about ‘projects’ such as his exemplary Raspberry Pi experiment. Otherwise, as a fellow reviewer, he will be sorely missed.
Cheers,
David Neice
Hello Steve –
I learned of WoS just a few years ago, drawn by your DIY expertise and outstanding abilty to make things clear for a non-initiate like me. Like David Neice, I hope you plan to keep doing the occasional project series. Many thanks!
p.s. I have had tinnitus for years. Most of the time it isn’t a problem, and it never prevents me from enjoying music.
I have comparable analog and digital sources. Both have their plusses but I grew up with Vinyl and FM and that is what I am predisposed to cleave to. I leave the debate over formats for people with more time on their hands than me. I prefer to just enjoy music where I find it.
100% agree, Jim. The best ‘case’ to be made for vinyl was always continuity.
Noam
It’s seems correct to say that vinyl has it’s issues. I enjoy music in three formats:Vinyl, HD stream and live concerts! My passion for quality sound means that I can even make some decent comments during a concert about room acousitcs and the sound engineer. The best concerts I have seen was at the Roman arena in Nimes which dates from 100 BC! Not everyone can anjoy such a wonderful musical performance and this has allowed me to expect less from my current set-up. Nothing compares to this and I now save money to enjoy more concerts. I buy a vinyl every month of new recordings. My local vinyl store is independent and they also organize events and get cheap concert tickets. I have stopped Spotify and now use Qobuz. It would be fair to say that buying Vinyl gives more money to the artist. I guess this is a big plus in my opinion.
Thank you for taking the time to comment Mr. Lawrence.
I envy your access to live concerts and a local vinyl store. Perhaps it’s impatience in my “golden” years but the convenience of music stored on a hard drive has seduced me. I can understand the attraction of vinyl “sound.” I have ripped some of my favourite music on LP to 24/192 digital so I can have the best of both worlds. 🙂
Regards, Steve Graham
Vinyl… Incandescent lightbulbs… Tube hi-fi electronics… Cathode ray tubes…
What do they all have in common? They all have been obsolete for decades (some longer than others).
As a musician, I have always hated vinyl records. They are the audio equivalent of VHS video tape. Just imagine how any movie director felt in the 1980s when their cinematic dreams got jammed onto TVs with such terrible fidelity. Your grand cinematic vision gets crushed and destroyed and put on a little box that is 21 inches corner to corner.
For musicians, that is the vinyl record.
For decades, with digital recording, what you put in is audibly exactly what you got out with vanishingly low distortion and noise. It is only gotten better with time. Digital, at present, has surpassed human hearing by several orders of magnitude.
With the DAC chips that ESS is making, there is really no improvement they can make that will be audible. I would love to read a white paper on this subject if I am incorrect.
The only improvement they can be made is to make the products less expensive with the same level of performance.
Hey, go ahead, enjoy your vinyl albums. Just do not think that they are high fidelity or anything close to it.
Hi Jeff,
Are you trolling us for fun?
Every musician is lined up trying to have their releases pressed on vinyl. I don’t think you speak for any, and the rest of your assertions are inaccurate as well.
The way I see it, early digital was about on par with your VHS metaphor. Then around 2000, as sound quality was theoretically improving, the music industry decided ‘VHS’ was too good for us, let’s go down to 8-track levels of compression. Actual high fidelity recordings largely disappeared after the 1960’s. I suppose you’ve never heard a great vinyl playback system?
-Noam
Iam also a musician,and I use a 700 watt class D amp because it’s light and small and it does the job.
Is it Hifi? No.
But my audio system is a different story.
I have a small SS amp for the summer and a 845 tube based amp for the rest of the year.
I’ll bet even you can hear the difference.And so you would if you compared the sound from my Bryston cd3 cd player to my SME rig.
Analog, tubes, vinyl, yes all old school, but if you listen to the music and forget about white papers and all the dogma,your ears will tell you.I listen to my system, I don’t read about it.
Remember “perfect sound forever”?
If it was perfect,back then, how come digital sounds so much better today than it did when it was already “perfect”?
What you’re describing here is nothing to do with ‘vinyl’ and everything to do with buying Secondhand vinyl. I have never experienced a single pop or tick (or non-fill) with any LP that I have bought, the point being that all of my vinyl is 1) bought brand-new, 2) vintage, and 3) UK issues. These three aspects make all of the difference in the world and you do the “resurgence” of vinyl cause a disservice with your commentary, which is akin to buying your clothes in goodwill stores and then complaining that they’re worn and tatty. Sure, sealed vintage UK is neither cheap nor easy to build a collection of, but it’s all from a time when records were pressed in clean-air environments by people who knew what they were doing (rather than the bandwagon-jumping johnny-come-lately CD-technical-rejects of today’s opportunistic record companies) on quality, non-recycled vinyl (cf. US releases of the same 70s-80s period), and were from unfutzed-with, undigitised sources.
Try listening to these kinds of records and you’ll reacquaint yourself with what all the fuss is/was about…
Thank you for your comment Dave.
The recordings mentioned in the article were all new pressings. I should have stated this at the beginning of the article. Your assumption that they were second-hand is incorrect. The KOBs were US pressings. I don’t recall the provenance of the others but they were all new pressings too.
The point I’m trying to make is that we, as audiophiles and music lovers, in search of the next new thing, (digital circa 1983) or the next old thing (the current LP revival), can get shafted by unscrupulous music sellers who put profit ahead of quality. You are fortunate that the vinyl you have purchased is of good quality. For me, it’s not worth the effort.
Any used vinyl I have purchased, and all of my old records, have been cleaned with a vacuum record-cleaning machine. What I’ve read from Fremer et. al., suggests that ultrasonic cleaners are the way to go, if you can afford one.
You and others who have taken the time to comment should note that I haven’t said digital files sound better than vinyl playback. Digital recordings just work work best for me and also allow other members of my household to access music effortlessly.
I’m not trying to say that digital is more accurate than vinyl. Accuracy does NOT equate to enjoyability. Music lovers must to decide for themselves what is the most enjoyable format(s) for reproduction, regardless of what others say.
I don’t subscribe to the theory that more spent on a system will necessarily lead to increased enjoyment. To those who suggest that if I’d spent more on a higher grade of vinyl playback equipment, a substandard pressing would be more enjoyable I say, what?
One of my most favourite recordings is a Ralph Vaughan-Williams LP on Argo-Decca pressed in Holland in 1972. I’ve ripped to to 24/192 and can enjoy it anytime on any of the three streaming systems in my home. In 1972 I was gifted the Rolling Stones, BRAVO, LP, a German pressing on TELDEC (Telefunken-Decca). The pressing is pristine and sound is amazing.
Noam and I had a conversation recently and the topic of vinyl replay came up. I agree with his advice that someone with a large collection should pursue making the most of it. The cost of starting a vinyl collection at today’s prices is best left to the very well-heeled. The only thing I would add to this is that someone who has a large vinyl collection should, if they have not already done so, spend an imprudent amount of money on a turntable, cartridge and phono preamp. Then spend a bit more on a record cleaning machine.
I’m not telling anyone how or what to listen to. That would be pointless. Do what brings you the most enjoyment.
Cheers, Steve Graham
Thanks for making my point for me.
I do have a rather large lp collection.I started back in 1963,so I am not new to vinyl.I have original mono Stones lp that I purchased with my lunch money back in 65 and yes I have a Kirmus ultr sonic cleaning machine,before that a VPI vacuumcleaning rig.The ultra sonic is the way to go.
My vinyl rig is an SME 10, with the V arm,the cart. is a Benze LO.4 mc,the phono stage is a Parasound JP3+,the tonearm wiring all wiring is Wireworld Silver eclipse 8.Pre-amp CJ ET3SE,power anp Line magnetic 845 1a, and for dun a solid state Schiit G horn( 10 watts).The speakers are Klipsch Cornwall IV. This is not to boast about my gear is better than yours,but that this is a revealing system, so any flaws with vinyl have nowhere to hide.
I have a friend whose system is very much better than mine and if you heard it, I think you would change your mind about the cost vs the quality.
You do get better the more you spend, but you have to spend way more than what we average guys can afford.Way more.
One of the things that yor vinyl rig isn’t doing for you tells me that it should be improved.
There is a certain relaxation effect when you switch from digital(Bryston BCD3) to analogue.
And I’ve also heard the same thing at my friends and he has also has a top tier digital system, that costs more than my entire system.And yes it too sounds more realistic than my cd player or any of my friends systems.Streaming is still the third rung down in what I hear because he has that too.
I’ve heard $200.00 plus lps and $1.50 lps on his system and both are reproduced with less background noise than thru mine, so if I had the money I would move up from what I have.
It’s unfortunate that there aren’t too many stereo stores where you can come in and have listen to what is available.That was always an eye/ear opener for me on my journey.
The best tip I can give you is to vivt the Montreal Audio show.
Bring you files and have a listen to some systems and pick out which ones feel right.Then also visit an analog set up and have a listen.I think you will find that when done right,it’s hard to beat.
Got over vynil ages ago. Even CDs went by the wayside 7 years ago, unless I cannot obtain a particular title such as the rare and excellent ‘Rinse The Algorithm’, which I had to purchase as a CD, and immediately ripped a copy to my NAS.