Holy War #1. Digital vs Vinyl

Some thoughts about digital vs vinyl.  God knows I enjoy holding an LP cover in my hands while listening to music, checking out the album art, reading the recording info on the back.  With digital downloads one is lucky to get even a small reproduction of the front cover art (SACDs do give full reproductions of the LP info, so one has something to hold on to).  Digital downloads also fail, in most cases, to provide info on the derivation of the files...  upsampling from CDs?  remastering from the original master tapes if a reissue?   If from a studio digital recording, is the download at the same resolution?

Digital downloads from small recording companies often provide this info.  DSD256 recordings are the current rage, with other digital formats derived from this recording resolution.  And small companies do provide a pdf of "album notes" and cover art.

New recordings are now often released on vinyl.  And there are many reissues now available on new vinyl.  However, most new recordings are originally digital.  And LP reissues are often from master tapes (or safety tapes) transferred first to digital, then remastered for vinyl release.  But where are releases from those digital masters?  I want those...  I don't want digital masters on vinyl.  Seems like the vinyl release is just a filter, a further generation from the original.  

Maybe people prefer the sound of vinyl, even if from a digital master.  Fine, personal preference... but the vinyl is a bump down, and really an analog filter, from the digital master.  

And both formats have other issues.  Even with $100K (and higher!) vinyl playback system, it's still friction, a hoe through a furrow (OK, a bit of an extreme metaphor).  Eventually noise, clicks and pops, are unavoidable.

But then with digital files, the music is endlessly manipulatable.  The loudness wars of the last 20 years are an example of that.  Music overly compressed, no air (dynamic range)  and almost unlistenable (the ears revolt).  I have a number of plugins in my DAW that can do this manipulation.  Or make a recording sound like something from the 1930's...   Restraint is the most valuable quality of a digital mastering engineer.

I suspect I'll have more to say, or say it differently, in future posts.

Hey, Mr. DJ

Back in the late 70's... yes, last century!...  I was a quasi-famous DJ on a local public radio station broadcasting from the local University.  For about 5 years, Rev. Willis (my nom de plume) presented great shows, featuring often eclectic playlists. Local listeners got their first taste of reggae, punk rock, experiment music, and free jazz.  Brit power pop, SF post psychedelic groups, Sun Ra, and so much more.

I was joined by my good friend Smokey, whose Blues Hour is legendary.  As we hit the 80's, I retired to raise a young family, but a new public radio station emerged and a new DJ, Professor R&B started a run of excellent programs of rhythm and blues, early jazz, and funk.

A few years ago, after digitizing many cassettes and reel to reel tapes, with the help of webmaster Rodney, we posted these shows on a website:  Archived Airwaves.

What has this to do with audiophile cheapskate?  Well, maybe the audio quality is not the best, but it's free music!  And what music!  The best popular music ever recorded...  give a free listen and enjoy.

I Have Connections

Like speaker cables, one can spend zillions on fancy audiophile interconnect cables.  But are they really any better?  I have my doubts.  Maybe if I had $300K system, I might notice a difference between cables.  Would it be an improvement, or just a difference, not better or worse, just different?  

Personally, I just buy quality cables, nothing fancy, and reasonably priced.  Most of my connecting cables are Mogami with gold plated terminations, bought from Redco.  When I bought my subwoofers from SVS, I notice they offered quality cables at a reasonable price, so I bought some of those.  Finally, when I needed balanced cables between my Oppo player and my preamp, I found some fine cables from Blue Jean.

Does any audio fan need to spend more for super fancy cables?  Again, I doubt it.

By the way, a hint.  Redo all your cables once a year.  I have found that when problems creep in, it's often just a connection problem.  Time and oxidation interfere with good sound transfer.  Cleaning the connectors with Deoxit products is also recommended.  I can't count the number of times over the years that I've solved audio problems with these simple measures.

My LPs Are Ripped!

 A couple years ago two events led to a momentous decision in my "audiophile" life.  First, I moved…  this entailed hauling boxes and boxes of CDs and LPs to the new house.  While I now had a very nice "studio" and listening room, the sheer mass of possessions, particularly the LP collection, started me thinking about alternative storage.

The second major event in my recent life was retirement.  Now I had the time to contemplate (and listen!) to my extensive LP music collection (I'm not a golfer nor a gardner…).  Also, as an amateur recordist, I've accumulated very appropriate audio hardware and processing software. 

So, finally, I decided to rip all my LPs to digital for storage on a RAID hard drive system, plus further backups, simplify my life, and provide the most convenient legacy for my son… and certainly easier to move than 2500 LPs.  This may condemn me in the eyes of analog purists, with LP fanatics tearing their hair out and forming lynch mobs to hunt me down and punish me for LP heresy.  Well, there comes a time in your life when major decisions have to be made, and for me convenience rules over bulk.  Besides, with Airplay and Apple TV boxes, I can stream music all over my house, for as long as I want, without flipping LPs and not be tied to my listening room.   I’m not one to debate the superiority of digital vs. analog.  They both have their good points and bad, but listenability, at least to me, is not a point of concern.  By transferring analog sources to digital, I expected to retain the sound of analog and gain the convenience of digital, and this expectation has proven true.   I do enjoy the LP conversions more than commercial CDs, which are often over processed and unlistenable

Since hard drive space is cheap these days, but not infinite, I felt that keeping "ripped" LPs at 16/44 (CD) resolution would preserve my collection at a reasonable quality level.  I also decided that I would also do a compressed conversion for portable uses (mostly for playback on a small bedroom system… brandy, a book, and jazz for pre-sleep relaxation is my idea of heaven).  Then there are the digital fanatics who would claim that 24/96 files are a better storage solution, but, again, hard drive space is not infinite, and my ears appreciate 16/44 just fine (I did convert several, special, near mint LPs to 24/96, however).  

In general, my LP collection (probably around 2500 total) is in very good condition.  I've always taken good care of the albums and played them on quality equipment (AR/Shure in college, Thorens/SME/Shure after I got a job).  However, many are used, so there are clicks and pops and a few scratches and occasional bad vinyl (when the record companies sacrificed quality for cost savings).  Also, older records often have a low level hum present and apparent in the space between tunes.  But the music is there and sounds good (no excessive groove wear).  This conversion process has had an additional benefit, exploring lots of great music I haven't heard in years. 

So on to the process of converting zillions of LPs to digital.  If you have a modest quantity of LPs, the process may seem simple.  But for preserving a legacy of vast collection, I felt a few extras were required.

First, my LP playback equipment consists of Thorens TD 125 MkII with an SME tonearm and a Shure V15 TypeV cartridge.  My phono preamp is the Bugle kit from Hagerman Technology.  Combined with their power supply (you can use it with batteries if you like), this is a ridiculously good preamp for a ridiculously low amount of buckage.   I couple my phono preamp to a line driver of my own design (it uses a JFET superbuffer card from Borbely Audio…  the construction was published in AudioXpress).  This preamp is connected to a Metric Halo 2882 Firewire computer interface.  The 2882 has an excellent A/D converter, and provides a stable Record Console software app.  All conversion was done at 24/44 for further editing and dithering to 16/44.

Once in my Mac, I used software to clean up the audio and audio editors to create the songs.  Since all LPs have some clicks and pops, I use Izotope RX software to clean up the LPs.  The Declicker plugin gets most of the bad guys (I vary the sensitivity setting depending on the condition of the LP), and the Denoiser cleans up basic surface noise (and often low level hum on older LPs).  I then used RX to raised the overall level to -.5db.  Finally, RX provides great dithering to 16 bit for the final file format.  I used Peak and eventually Twisted Wave for recording, editing, track marking, and file saving.

All tracks are placed in an individual folder named with the LP title.  Using iTunes, an iTunes Plus (or M4a) conversion of each tune was converted, for future transfer to an iPhone or iPad.  Also in the individual LP folder, I add digital photographs of the album covers.  This is done with a very good pocket Panasonic camera, with the photos enhanced in Photoshope Elements and saved in LP and in CD sizes.  Multi page booklets were scanned at my local library (larger format scanner) into pdfs and added to the LP folders.  This allows me to fully archive any album notes for future reference.

Finally, all LP conversions are databased in Filemaker Pro.  Filemaker is a relational database, so I created 3 tables linked by a common field.  The main table holds LP title, lead musician, catalog info, and CD sized LP photos. Additional tables hold supporting musician info and song info..  This allows me to search on track or musician if I want to know how many versions of “House of the Rising Sun” I have or how many Jeff Beck releases I have, for examples.

Of course, besides the RAID hard drives, all LP files were backed up to both a spinner and to a solid state drive.  Initially these backups were stored in my “cloud”, a safe deposit box at my credit union, but since those boxes were discontinued, I’m now looking at other off site storage.

ll this is a lot of work, but I hope it is worth it both for my own interest and as a legacy of an important collection.  The project took about 15 years, working around other projects.  The old LPs have since been sold at a decent price to a collector, garnering enough funds to pay for my gear and software. 

Equipment Used: 

Thorens TD 125 MkII

Shure SME Tonearm

Shure V15 Type 5 cartridge

Hagerman Bugle Phono preamp

Borbely-Clow JFET Superbuffer

Tannoy 502 and Genelec Powered Speakers

Metric Halo 2882 DSP F/W audio I/O

Metric Halo Record Console software

MacMini I7 and iMac Pro

Peak Pro 7 audio editing software

Twisted Wave audio recording and editing software

Izotope RX2 DeClicker and DeNoiser plugins and dithering to 16bit

G-Technology G-RAID Studio Thunderbolt Storage 8TB

Filemaker Pro  database

Panasonic digital cameras

Photoshop Elements software

Power to the People

Power conditioning is a big issue amongst audiophiles.  There are some exotic, expensive gear out there that supposedly provide better AC power to your gear.  I have some doubts about the necessity of some of this gear, but if you have the dough, try them out.

When I rewired my house, I put my stereo system on a separate circuit.  This made some sense, but may not be possible if buying an existing house.  I also used 12 gauge romex, houses today have downgraded to 14 guage (smaller diameter) electrical cable, which may be OK.  I also used 20amp, outlets which guaranteed a tight fit for my power cables.  These were not much of an additional expense.

I was also impressed by comments from Bob Carver that all decent audio gear has filtering built in.  I know enough about circuit analysis to see all the filtering and bypass caps universally used in gear.

Today you can buy super boxes that protect, filter, even regenerate the AC into your gear.  But why go from sine wave AC to square wave back to sine wave?  Seems like losses would enter into the equation.

I did find several recommendations for this power strip, even from Absolute Audio!  This strip provides plenty of outlets, has sophisticated surge protection, and noise filtering, all for under $200!  And all your equipment grounds are tied back to the same point. You can find it on Amazon and some local dealers.

 

Tributaries - T10 - 10 Outlet - Swivel Power Strip

Speak to Me, Mr. Cable

 

Oh, boy!  Religious arguments about speaker cables abound.  Well, I'm an atheist when it comes to such arguments.  Lots of exotic, very expensive, options to worship.  Me, as a cheapskate, just give me generic, but quality cabling, no supernatural needed.

One day in Home Depot I saw a roll of bulk speaker cable, branded Monster Cable, 14 gauge (might even be 12 gauge, not labeled on the insulation).  About $1.00 a foot, or somewhere in that range.  So I bought about 40 feet and created my own speaker cables.  Cheap, thick, flexible...  perfect!  Capable of handling lots of amp power with no audio additives.  Worth checking out your local home improvement center.

 I can't believe all those expensive, exotic cables really sound any better unless maybe you have $1M invested in gear, but even then...   By the way, according to my copper mining engineer friend, all copper is essentially 5 Nines pure, so ignore the vendor hype.  

I have bought really nice and reasonably priced cables from SVS.  Blue Jean cables are also a good source.  Maybe even Monoprice.

Connectors are another story.  I use banana plugs since I like to switch between amps or speakers easily.  As long as there's a tight fit, all is good.  Lots of good quality options are found on Amazon.  14 gauge means a little work to get thing together, but not that difficult.  Crimping would be best, but crimp type banana plugs are hard to find.  If you use screw tightening connectors, just remember to retighten periodically.  Maybe I should investigate using lock washers.

Note that due to some sort of European Union regulations, many years ago the spacing between speaker terminals changed, so dual banana jacks can't be used, unless you have old speakers.

Good Vibrations

Well, maybe not so good for audio systems.  I suspect the amount of vibration and its audio effects in a system is minimal, if even audible, but at least there are cheap ways to deal with it if it is a concern.

Vibration control seems divided between two camps, the spikers and the absorbers.  Some feel all gear and shelving should be spiked solidly down through the carpet (if using) to the concrete foundation (if in a basement).  This may not be practical (wood floors, many shelves, much gear).

The alternative is to absorb vibrations.  There are some exotic footers out there claiming very sophisticated materials and technology to rid systems of vibrations.  And the cost can be astronomical!

But years ago I saw mention of a simpler kind of footer in a couple equipment reviews in Stereophile magazine.  Checking it out, I found these rubber/cord squares offered by many sources on Amazon.  A set of four for $10-$15 bucks!  I've since discovered that cork is a magic material that, along with duct tape and white vinegar, will save the world...  

Anyway, I've used these footers for years between shelves and under all my gear, including hard drives on my computer.  Here's one Amazon source:

There are other vendors on Amazon that offer different sizes.  I use 4x4 inch rubber/cord footers under my Oppo players and between some shelves.  

One caveat...   When you receive this product, it stinks to high heaven!   Place them outdoors for a few days (where they probably destroy the ozone layer) to get rid of the stink.

Cheap But Good

 Just started this blog.  I thought I would use this forum to give tips on improving audio sound without paying a bundle.  There's lots of hype in the audiophile world, and some may be justified, and, if you have the dough, you may get a little better sound, if you still have ears after that Metallica concert!

Some future posts:

--cheap but great anti vibration feet

-- a great power strip, noise filtering and protection for $200

--an inexpensive turntable, well, table

--Class D amps, lots of clean output power with reasonable cost

--How to convert your LP collection to digital

--A great turntable at a great price

--Reasonably priced cables