Two Turntables and a Laser Beam 232
karmaflux writes "Dig this. A turntable that uses a five-beam laser system to read your vinyl. Rad, eh? The cheap ($13k) model doesn't do 60 or 90 rpm. Spring for the good one ($20k). Note: an excellent vacuum cleaner is included in both models. What style this company has to release this product during the current MP3 frenzy! " I've just gotten back into collecting and enjoying vinyl records, so this is terribly interesting to me, although the price looks to be a bit too steep, and I doubt I can use it to scratch at parties.
Nothing new about this idea (Score:1)
What would be really neat is a turntable with real-time DSP pop & click removal so I can listen to my old un-released-on-CD vinyl albums without wasting large amounts of time cleaning them up in software.
Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it - Carlos Santayana
NAKED Jacie Chan has nothing to say (Score:1)
I am just here for your viewing pleasure
Re:Actually, this is a common oversight. (Score:1)
On the other hand, have you seen the warnings on The 1712 Overture and The Short-Tempered Clavier? Those digital balloon pops are pretty ... poppy ... and I never worry about them weakening with repeated plays!
Re:But what about the DJs? (Score:1)
Well, that and I can't scratch CD's.
Caution (Score:2)
Re:Caution (Score:2)
CD is generally better, but there's something about a slowly spinning disk
Decent turntable for < $200 ? (Score:2)
Thanks
LP versus CD (Score:2)
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LP versus CD (Score:2)
The answer was that no, they couldn't. Which leads me to believe that my idea is right, that people who like vinyl, don't like vinyl. They like the warm, distorted sound that vinyl afficianados seem to adore. I admit though, I cheated a bit, and did do the digital recording at 24/96. And I'll also give you that a $500 turntable isn't exactly comparable to the digital side of my setup.
Tube amps? Records? They add tons of distortion... it just happens to be pleasing distortion. My personal opinion is that if the artist wanted the vinyl sound, they would've made a final pass after mastering which would consist solely of playing a vinyl version of the mastered record and recording it digitally.
(sorry about the double post. should've previewed)
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Er... (Score:1)
- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
Audiophile 'high end' tables use belts. (Score:2)
- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
It's been done before. (Score:2)
It is nice tech for people who have archives of old records, like Canada's CBC radio archives, and the US's Smithsonian (sp?). As well, some older bands that have wanted to put our CDs of their material have sometimes found that their original masters are either missing, or have deteriorated too much from time/improper storage etc. A facinating story is that of the Canadian Band, FM. Their masters had gone missing and they had to remaster from a virgin vinyl copy of their first album, Black Noise. Luckily, CBC, the label they were on had a nifty piece of technolgy called "No Noise" , that will digitally edit out unwanted noise. It's funny that there are two of these units in Canada, one owned by the CBC with their vast archives of recordings, and the RCMP.
FM did a test pressing of the remasterd CD, and one of the members brought it over to his friends house to try out. This guy was a big time audiophile. Had speakers suspended from the ceiling and everything. In between the cuts, the band member noticed that the woofers of the speakers were going in and out between the tracks, audio wise imperceptable, but quite dramatic with the woofers. He was horrified, they might have goofed up the No Noise session! He asked his audiophile friend what he thought it might be...his friend something to the effect that if they hadn't been playing a CD, he might have though it was turntable rumble!
You can now get the CD in Canada, and order it elsewhere. Without the turntable rumble.
ttyl
Farrell
Lo-Grade Audiphile
Fan of the band FM
Actually, this is a common oversight. (Score:2)
What _isn't_ usually noticed (surprisingly) is the more logical purpose for those huge cables and absurd slew rates and amperage levels- the _big_ transients. Get a whole horn section to raise the hairs on the back of your neck with a FFF line- or for that matter get the whole orchestra going, or for that matter early Who, with those incredibly strong saturated compressed vocals (very 'tubey' sounding) and LOUD guitars and LOUD drums. You'll have loads of transients stuffed into the music that go way beyond what you can pack into 'polite' digital playback at 44.1/16, especially when the digital equipment designers continue screwing it up by anally plastering HF-rolloff capacitors all over everything to eat the tiny negligible hiss that the transistors and analog opamps produce.
When put onto a record, these naturally stress the cutting lathe, but that's why cutting lathes went from 100 to 500 to kilowatt amplifiers that fed off 440 volt lines etc ad nauseam. When placed on a record surface, these are not tiny dustlike details that get scrubbed off with the first play. They are fscking big walls of material that tend to fling the needle physically into the next groove and cause skips. When they don't, you get vinyl playback that has the kind of energy and aggression and life that LPophiles talk about.
A realworld example sure to appeal to CmdrTaco's heart: The Who's album Live At Leeds was released with a label that said in big scrawly letters, "CRACKLING NOISES OK- DO NOT CORRECT". When played on a high end turntable, do you in fact get crackly noises? No, you get the Who, live. It's the same as orchestral recordings breaking up at FFF and fancy cartridges that don't break up at those modulation levels.
Obviously, no matter how abused the LPs get, you continue to have those energy peaks undiminished. They outlast all the other sounds, and they are exactly what you don't get with current digital media- hence the audiophiles. This provides us sound engineer types a very interesting and exciting challenge. How do we translate this into the digital domain? I've found that multiband compression and physically modifiying the digital recorders to be the best bet. In particular, it's impossible to both get most of the energy and also suppress all the noise of the analog parts. You have to treat the circuits as if they were high end analog circuits even if the opamps are kind of cheap, and get rid of 'total hiss elimination' caps. Often this gives you the proper presentation, and in the cases where things become too bright and edgy, inductive resistance (easily got by those digital noise filters- ferrite chokes, in other words) is a hell of a lot better for the sound than ringy little ceramic chips to ground.
Audio is not _that_ bandlimited (Score:2)
You start running into _serious_ problems when you treat the band as strictly what the human ear can pick up. Apart from the fact that subsonics are picked up by the inner ear and supersonics can be sensed though not heard through bone conduction, the trouble is that you get cancellation effects and distortions depending on how you roll off the extremes of the band. This is a nightmarish problem for CD audio, as it must put a _really_ steep filter above 22K if not still lower- a brick wall filter that is about as bad as you can get for causing interactions with lower frequencies. Personally, I prefer to start rolling off a lot lower but a lot more smoothly, but that's just me.
As for the sawtooth, I'm afraid that's the reality. Look, if you take the input signal a bit higher, you start getting a subharmonic through the sampling which can be almost as loud as the sampled frequency! You surely are not suggesting that nearly 100% additive distortion is perfect reconstruction? Try sampling a 44.09 wave at 44.1, obviously you get nothing but the subharmonic. Now try sampling a _22.045_ wave, which technically is supposed to be within the band. Begin to see the problem? The same subharmonic distortions are still affecting you, even within the band. For fun, consider how this affects (less and less) frequencies at 11.0225, 5.51125, and 2.755625K. Each time you're basically halving the distortion- so the interference goes from about 100% at 44.09K to 50% to 25% to 12.5% to 6.25% interference at 2.755625K. But wait, a tone at 2K should be perfect! No, more like a tone at _2.75625K_ (note 756 instead of 7556) will be entirely free of subharmonic distortion sampled at 44.1K, and a tone at 2.755625 is a pathological worst case for that sampling rate w.r.t subharmonic distortions. So be sure not to let your musicians play that frequency ;)
If you think I'm making this up you should study harder. _Everything_ has its limits, and digital recording is interesting because with it, you can really rigorously quantify exactly what and where the limits are. The ones who told you it was perfect reconstruction were not scientists, they were corporate marketers attempting to replace the LP in popular media with the CD. Sure worked, didn't it? Even got many people believing the mathematically, provably wrong claims of no distortion. To me, _SIX!_ percent subharmonic interference in a pathological worst case frequency at a mere 2K or so is pretty damn distorted, frankly. Don't know about you. Maybe I just try harder to overcome this stuff rather than wishing it away...
Re:Actually, this is a common oversight. (Score:2)
The difference is _also_ in the pre/post stages, for instance it doesn't matter how nice your data is if you just run it through J. Random Op-Amp. It's very very common to find extremely crap parts in these supposedly perfect digital devices, and this limits them unfairly. Rotten cheap little op-amps, pathetic coupling caps to save costs- I've bought a _recording_ deck of fairly high end pretensions, an Alesis LX-20 ADAT, and while it does 24 bit recording, and while digital is in theory quite capable of dealing with bass _very_ nicely indeed, this recorder nevertheless has pathetic 47uf coupling caps on the channel outs. This says that they designed to be 3db down at maybe 30hz- they designed out the capacity for clean accurate subsonic information that digital HAS. I'll be rewiring it, probably with 100uf which will at least take the low end down closer to 10hz or so. This will also clean up boominess in the low bass, as when you near such a cutoff you end up getting a certain amount of accentuation- a unit with 47uf cutoffs might 'thunder' pretty impressively but lowering the cutoff frequency produces a cleaner and more responsive sound in those frequency ranges, less muddy. Translates in sonic terms to a touch less sub-bass but going deeper, bass that is markedly clearer and less prone to get in the way of other musical information.
So essentially it's _both_. Yes, digital audio at CD levels is substantially lacking, but on the other hand most of the equipment makes it sound even worse than it is. I'm a rock guy, not really a classical music person, and I know that I've been able to get rid of a _lot_ of the 'polite, sterile, thin' qualities of digital audio by just treating the players and recorders like they were instruments, and tweaking things like the highs. To some extent you really can give the hardware itself more life and energy by letting the digital outputs come through the analog opamps and circuitry as unimpeded as possible. This does also include allowing the noise floor to have normal op-amp noise, transistor hiss. It's not even intrusive, but attempts to completely obliterate this normal circuit noise inevitably also take a major toll on the music.
These aren't new. Or that useful, really. (Score:1)
The reason? Simple: while a contact stylus does produce gradual, minimal wear on the vinyl, it also does a great job of shifting dust, hairs and other crap out of the grooves, without the need for ridiculously expensive vacuum cleaners to blow it out of the way.
Go retro. You can find high quality turntables really cheaply these days in junk shops. And if your vinyl's of decent quality (the disc, not its contents), you won't notice the wear anyway.
Isn't the wavelength of light too long for this? (Score:2)
I'm not an expert on this stuff, and my math may be screwy - but this doesn't check out on my calculator...
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Don't trust (Score:2)
Besides, it looks like a late 80s product (I'm thinking USR plastic type.) If it looked and acted like one of those uber-cool minidisc players, then I'd be interested.
-B
Not really... (Score:2)
The copyright notice on the bottom of the FAQ is dated 1997, and one of testimonials says
<I>"The after-sales service of ELP is perfect. Although I had a failure on LT in 1990, I am fully satisfied with the LT."</I>
Maybe they just need to hire a better publicity manager...
Re:Decent turntable for < $200 ? (Score:1)
Dr. Evil would *LOVE* this! (Score:1)
Bwahahaha!
CowboyNeal Trance Fan? (Score:1)
One of the earliest and most successful underground tracks was called Two Full Moons and a Trout released on Platipus records under the artist title of Art of Trance (I think that's right, or it might be Terra Firma). Wicked track. Anyway, just happy to see another raver in the /. crew.
Is there an icon for RETRO topics? (Score:2)
Or perhaps a music or hifi or A/V icon would be more appropriate, ie. to avoid offending those who don't think vinyl is a retro topic, particularly scratching DJs.
Turntables for archival reproduction (Score:2)
However, the MAJOR use of new turntables (by numbers sold) is still by DJs, whether you like them or not.
Re:Turntables for archival reproduction (Score:2)
Been around for ages (Score:1)
Re:Audiophiles (Score:1)
Re:needles and dirt (Score:1)
Re:CED Laserdisk would've been a kick ass audio fm (Score:1)
Re:Tape, not wire (Score:1)
Re:Top 5% of old stories (Score:2)
Big Bucks and No Brains (Score:2)
In other words, people with way more money than brains.
Basically they claim to have golden ears which are not satisfied with any recordings except live to master to vinyl. These idiots spent tens of thousands of dollars just for a stylus, not to mention more tens of thousands for the tone arm and huge block of granite for a base.
I might allow that the very first listening of a vinyl record might seem better than a CD, but not the 2nd or subsequent ones. So that's why the laser turntable -- no mechanical wear.
But this only applies if there's no dust on the vinyl, which explains the emphasis on its vacuum cleaner. I doubt that's really good enough. I often wondered, reading those couple of High End issues, how much it would have cost these suckers to build a clean room for their collection, with rubber gloves to access the vinyl and place it on the turntable.
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Big ears with nothing between (Score:2)
What I sneer at is idiots who waste money on concrete bunkers, separate pole transformers, etc, when the wear of each playback makes the next one worse, and when all that money could have gone into a filtered container for all that vinyl, so it would sound better the tenth time than the dirty one sounds the second time. I suppose the ultimate is to record direct to vinyl (could you get even a hundred copies for each recording?) and one playback, then toss it out and buy another. When you get to that level, you'd be better off hiring the artists in the first place and skip the damned one-shot recording. Is there any point in having a playback room of better quality than the recording studio, or the concert hall?
The point of a recording is to get a wider audience, in both time and space. A recording which is only good for one playback because the playback wears it out is pretty useless in my book.
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Re:Big ears with nothing between (Score:2)
A recording is meant to distribute the sound in time and space, so more people can hear a performance, and hear it when they want, and more than once. Vinyl wears out. The closest vinyl will get to The One True Sound is the first playback, and then only a direct to disk with limited copies. Your second playback will not sound as good as the first. And if this is how you want to listen to a performance, and you have the bucks, then you also have the bucks to simply hire the artist for a live performance.
Any playback, vinyl or CD, goes thru so many imperfect steps, and depends on speakers which don't even come close to The One True Sound, that if you like fancy schmancy playback methods, it's because you like that sound, NOT because that sound is closer to The One True Sound.
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Top 5% of old stories (Score:1)
Great turntable... for a bubble boy (Score:1)
I saw a review of these once that summed it up like this, if you've kept your LP's in a cleanroom all of their life, and never used anything but a laser on them, they might be in good enough condition... Then again, they still might not.
Re:Big bucks (Score:1)
If somebody requests an item from your archive, the options are either to use a conventional stylus-based turntable for transcription, which will add some wear (not much, but it adds up) to the record, or use one of these gizmos, which won't cause wear. You can then dump it to DAT, Minidisc, or whatever, for the end user.
And as to the cost - the CD player cost millions to develop, but is now cheap through mass production and high volume sales. These turntables will have also cost a lot to develop, but as the market is so much smaller, the unit cost to recoup your investment has to be higher. Remember, these are high-end turntables, not the gramophonic equivalent of a £70 Discman. And high-end kit is always expensive.
Re:Hang on to your 1200s (Score:2)
"despite its CD-like design, the ELP is still a 100% analog device as far as the signal path is concerned."
This product is _not_ for Vinyl DJs. It is _not_ for CD DJs. It is _not_ for people who want to digitize thier vinyl collection. It _is_ for people who love to listen to their vinyl, and wish to cause as little wear as possible while doing so. It _is_ for libraries, museums and other historical institutions who wish to preserve a piece of musical history, again without causing damage. In the audiophile community, where many consider their collection of vinyl irreplacable and priceless, the ELP is a bargain.
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Re:Caution (Score:2)
If you don't suffer from audiophilia, you can get a reasonable one for under $20.
(I feel blessed that my ears are crude enough to forgive most forms of electrical noise in recordings, my music habit would be a lot more expensive otherwise)
a valuable service (Score:1)
The complaint isn't always "noise" (Score:1)
Some (ok, several) musicians complain about digital not because it introduces noise -- mere amplification alone can cause enough of this -- but because it's not as "warm". This is one of those terms that is mighty hard to explain in words, but it seems nevertheless to identify something: many musicians I have known can identify "blindly" a digital versus an analogue recording.
Of course, this could reflect alternative aesthetics. After all, some musicians like digital recordings better. The question, I suspect, is really one of what makes sound better. And it does seem obvious that a multiple-laser reading system will necessarily be subject to a DSP. Given that, the lack of "warmth" will show up. Whether this is good or bad, then, is related only to the listener.
Re:But what about the DJs? (Score:1)
God is a DJ.
Re:so is it digital or analog? (Score:1)
> from the 60's and 70's, much of which is very
> obscure and they'll never release the albums
> onto CD
if you aren't already hipped to it, check out www.dustygroove.com [dustygroove.com] to feed your 60's 70's soul jazz bossa dub reggae funk habit
-freq
Re:Fuck the DJs and the horse they rode in on!!! (Score:1)
And im real sorry, but most turntables ARE aimed at djs. I can think of roughly 10 models off the top of my head which are aimed at djs... including the venerable Technics SL-1200-MK2, and kids are buying boatloads of them! I know alot more people who own turntables than portable mp3 players actually
and wether you are a stuck up old audiophile who can afford a 30k turntable or a 14 year old with some beat up geminis and a couple cheezy hiphop battle records, vinyl is A BEAUTIFUL THING. and regardless of the "original primary purpose" of the turntable, some kids are doing some really interesting things with them these days besides just playing music.
VINYL IS BEAUTIFUL! and given the choice between a future with vinyl and a future with dvd audio, well i think its an easy decision
--freq--
to paraphrase from Third Rock (Score:1)
and I really dig this one...Dick Solomon says something to the effect of
'Cds? Ha! When will these silly human realise the superiority of vinyl!'
Re:Not 1950, ca 1935 (Score:1)
Re:Muy Nifty! (Score:2)
There's turntables MORE expensive? (Score:1)
OK, so this guy claims he knows of turntables out there that cost >US$27,000? Wow... I think it'd be a rare audiophile who threw out cash for one of those. He also claims that it makes CDs "unlistenable." Oh really? Hmm... seems to me that even a clean vinyl record (played with a laser) would sound worse than a dirty CD. Remember that a CD has a protective coating on it, and it's impossible to keep those records PERFECTLY clean.
Nice concept though, and awfully weird how it follows my dream last night of listening to my record collection.
Re:so is it digital or analog? (Score:2)
There is not necessarily any need to go digital.
Remember Video Disc? those big 2 sided suckers? They were read with a laser... and were completely analog (digital audio tracks did come later, and are now standard). The video was all analog....
it was via modulated beam.
There is no reason an analog circuit cannot be built do accomplish whatever a DSP can accomplish; it's just simpler and more flexible to use a DSP.
Re:Decent turntable for < $200 ? (Score:1)
For $13500... (Score:1)
12"(30cm)/10"(25cm)/7"(17cm) Black Record - This might mean that it can only play black vinyl. While most records are black, I have many splatter and colored vinyl records in my collection. Also, many many records (mostly from Europe) were pressed useing colored vinyl. This may or might not be the best turntable if your looking to play rare vinyl, especially if it's colored, etc.
Re:Analog IS better than digital (Score:1)
Tell me, in the scenario you listed above, what would the point be of putting any digital component into the system? The main reasons for digitizing an audio signal are:
1) Storing it for later playback
2) Transmitting it greater distances than it will carry naturally
3) Applying special effects to it
If you're not going to do any of these things to the signal, a digital system is totally pointless anyway, so there's no point in comparing them.
Nyquist's theorem is useful for data transmission. If it is applied to audio, then there's really no reason that a classical music CD should sound worse than actually being there, even when played on the best hardware. But then we'd be getting into psychoacoustics.
Indeed.
There are plenty of other weak points in the channel, though. Microphones, amplifiers, speakers... These all add their own bits of distortion into the signal.
Correct me on this if I'm wrong (but do it nicely). If the original sound source has two signal components of 60kHz and 65kHz, there will be a tertiary tone of 5kHz as a result of the other two being superimposed. Is that 5kHz tone sampled successfully with a 44.1kHz sampling rate?
Consider the opposite question. 60-65kHz is outside the range of any consumer-quality analog recording equipment. (Maybe some professional quality equipment can do it, but then, you can trivially expand the range of a digital system by increasing the sampling rate and sample size, too.)
So, neither the analog nor the digital system will pick up the fundamental frequencies. That means, then, that either both the digital and the analog system will pick up the 5kHz beat signal, or neither of them will.
Re:Audio is not _that_ bandlimited (Score:1)
Kindly refrain from constructing straw men. I don't recall anyone ever saying that there was no distortion in practical applications -- just that the distortion was much less than was possible with comparable analog systems. If you think that this isn't the case, then kindly provide some proof.
BTW, the claim of no distortion is provably correct, but only assuming a bunch of ideal conditions that never occur in the real world.
Re:There's turntables MORE expensive? (Score:1)
I beg to differ. I suspect that you only _think_ that you have better sound quality.
Do you remember back in the late 80's/early 90's when people swore that colouring the edge of a CD with a green marker improved the sound quality? I think the same thing is at work here.
Re:so is it digital or analog? (Score:1)
Interestingly enough, with your 60Hz sine wave example, you got the situation backwards. If you sample a 60Hz triangle wave at 120Hz, playing it back will result in a 60Hz sine wave. The reason? A 60Hz sine wave consists of only a single harmonic -- that is, if you took the Fourier transform of it, you'd end up with a single spike at 60Hz. The 60Hz triangle wave, on the other hand, consists of a fundamental harmonic at 60Hz, and a diminishing series of harmonics at higher frequencies. Since all of these higher harmonics would be lost in the sampling process, you'd end up with only the fundamental harmonic -- a 60Hz sine wave.
Neat, huh?
Re:Analog IS better than digital (Score:1)
I'm not going to go through the derivation of this -- check out a DSP textbook if you want to know that -- but the formula for the SQNR (Signal to Quantization Noise Ratio) for a digital system is:
SQNR = 6.02B + 1.76 dB
where B is the number of bits per sample.
Therefore, the theoretical maximum SNR for a 16 bit digital system is 98.08 dB. For a 24 bit system, it's 146.24 dB, and for a 32 bit system, it's 194.4 dB.
There are actually upper limits on the SNR of an analog system, too, that result from the effects of thermal noise, but I don't know what they are, off-hand. Also, you never truly have infinite bandwidth.
The thing is, I find that comparing devices that can only exist in theory to be rather pointless.
Re:Actually, this is a common oversight. (Score:1)
Re:There's turntables MORE expensive? (Score:1)
Considering that compressing a digital audio signal with an MP3 encoder will discard about 90% of the information in the original signal while only having a slight impact on sound quality, you can see that the minute amount of information lost in the quantization process shouldn't amount to a hill of beans.
Re:so is it digital or analog? (Score:1)
Certainly true. I should have prefixed that with 'theoretically'. In practice, no device performs very well near the limits of its range.
Most audio pros work with the digital audio at 96k and then downsample right before the CD master. On the other hand, my SBLive insists on outputting 48khz, which makes that card useless for digital transfers to/from DAT that wind up on CD. I just do everything at 44.1k (on another soundcard) and I'm happy.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. The oversampling I was talking about occurs in the A/D converter, and the end user never sees it. As it turns out, it's easier to sample at a rate so high that aliasing simply won't occur, then use a digital filter for antialiasing, then convert the sample rate down to the user requested sample rate than it is to create an analog filter with the sharp cutoff required for the antialiasing filter.
For example, to get that 96kHz sample rate, the A/D chip might sample at 250kHz or 500kHz, then use an FIR lowpass filter (which can be made with a very sharp cutoff, and, as a bonus, can be made so that they don't mess with the phase of the signal like analog filters do) for antialiasing. Then they might downsample the signal to 96kHz.
All this happens on the A/D converter chip. (Obviously, it has to have a DSP processor -- essentially a special-purpose CPU -- integrated if it's going to do this.) The downsample to 44.1kHz just before the CD mastering stage is an entirely separate step.
Re:Analog IS better than digital (Score:1)
BTW, what exactly do you mean by 50% of the signal? It doesn't seem to have a lot of meaning.
Re:so is it digital or analog? (pedantry) (Score:1)
The problem w/ consumer digital sound is simply that the sampling rate and SN ratio, while fine on paper, require that the post-D/A filtering be very good. Unrealistically good (Heck, it was very ambitious for the time in which it was designed). But it is very hard to design zero-phase filters with a steep cutoff and low ringing, and I think this is what the audiophiles typically complain about. If the sampling rate had been 100,000Hz and 24-30 bits of quantization, then the filters could have been much more gentle in the high end, the D/A could have been very linear where it counted, and audiophiles who claim to like the "warmth" of analog systems, would be very pleased. Methods like oversampling, etc. are very helpful in this respect, but have their own implementation issues.
I personally think that "warmth" that analog audiophiles often talk about is simply a learned response to the type of gentle noise that good analog systems inherently have. A good digital system is all about reducing or removing noise, since the type of noise it introduces (aliasing typically) is quite unpleasant. But the noise of analog systems has a different and distinctive feel, which many people simply call "warmth". It is still an artifact of playback, though, and not an example of better reproduction of the signal. In other words, gaussian noise is something that people are just trained to accept, and when you mess with it, some people get upset.
Anyway, CDs were a good compromise at the time, for producing decent consumer audio that didn't degrade with plays, and shouldn't really be held as an example of what digital audio is truly capable of. Perhaps, in the future, we will have DVDs with much higher grade audio that WILL show everyone that digital can be both "warm" and accurate. Audiophiles will still want to play them on tube-amps, however.
Re:Decent turntable for < $200 ? (Score:1)
And I wouldn't listen to the people who are urging you to get a Technics 1200 and warning you against belt drive. It might suck when a belt breaks, but there are no high-end direct drive turntables, because direct drive is noisy. And the 1200 is a great table, if you're a DJ, but otherwise it's just a pretty good table, and probably has a heavier arm than you want (the heavier the arm, the quicker your records die).
Muy Nifty! (Score:1)
One possible bad thing--vinyl records have that wonderful sound partially because of the needle riding in the groove. If you removed that interface it would sound different.
Scratching is fun. Check out this crazy setup [n2it.net] that lets you scratch mp3s using a turntable interface.
Re:Big bucks (Score:2)
I won't argue that they definitely have a niche product here, but I can think of a few reasons to buy one:
Nevertheless, this is very cool, old meets new. And I wouldn't be surprised to see vinyl revatalized a bit (only a bit). The high cost of these is probably because they don't expect to sell many. They have to recoup their dev. costs.
Yep: Re:It's been done before. (Score:1)
Probably not related, but I recall a George Michael video (one with lots of soopamodels) where there's a brief shot of a record playing with laser light shining on it. Dunno if that was a laser turntable or just a regular turntable with a separate laser set up to look nifty.
Re:Defeats the purpose of vinyl (Score:1)
Nope. Simply using a laser doesn't mean that it's a digital process.
It's probably like the technique of eavesdropping on a room by bouncing a laserbeam off the window. Sounds cause vibration in the glass, which changes how the laser beam is reflected. Measure the changes in the beam, convert the changes into sound, and voila, you're listening in.
No analog/digital/analog conversion involved.
In the case of a record, they just have to bounce lasers off the sides of the groove. Pick up the reflected laser light, convert the fluctuations in the beams into voltages (an analog process), and feed that signal into an amp.
There may be an analog delay circuit involved, if the lasers aren't pointed at the same place in the groove. Point one slightly ahead and put a slight delay on the signal. This may not be necessary.
Re:Hang on to your 1200s (Score:1)
Their page has quotes from the National Library of Canada, a brain surgeon (big $$), a dentist (big $$), and a professional classical musician. These are not Wal-Mart electronics department shoppers.
SNR is not very important. (Score:1)
Some of my favourite records are 45s from the 60s that I bought second hand, and which must have spent more time out of their sleeves than in. There is an abundance of surface noise, scratches, and distortion from mastering. Still, they sound great to me. A great song with noise is still a great song.
When arguing the pros and cons of analogue vs. digital you also have to bear in mind that not all distortion is a bad thing. To illustrate, I can make copies of CDs onto a 20+ year old tape recorder (1/4 track, 1/4 inch, 7.5ips, Dolby B) which sound, to me, better than the original CD. The tape recorder specs claim 65dB SNR with Dobly. There's no way that I can have done anything other than _add_ noise, colouration, and distortion, and I know there's nothing above 17kHz on the tape, yet the sound is wonderful, smooth yet detailed, and without the harshness that you can get on some CD recordings, particularly older ones. If I had the time and money I'd make copies of all my CDs onto tape, but what with a reel of tape costing at least as much as the CD itself, and the hassle of threading the machine each time, I don't think I'll bother.
>Of course, I master digitally on a DAT, because
>my analog setup would introduce more noise.
I mix (I don't master) to 1/2 track 1/4 inch tape at 15ips. No significant noise that I can hear, and more importantly, it sounds great. If I want to get my sounds onto CD I go to a mastering engineer who has better A/D converters than I could ever afford, and better than the ones in any DAT recorder.
Re:The complaint isn't always "noise" (Score:1)
>the fact that analogue outputs nice rounded
>waves, whereas digital outputs square waves.
Not quite. There are various ways of doing digital to analogue conversion, some of which produce the sort of 'stair-step' output that you describe, and some of which don't. Whatever process is used, the raw output _will_ have edges or discontinuities that weren't in the original signal. For this reason, all DACs use a low pass reconstruction filter on the output, with a cut-off at approximately half the sampling rate. The characteristics of this filter, such as the steepness of the cutoff, and the flatness and phase response in the passband can have a significant effect on the quality of the output signal, but I can assure you that the analogue outputs of your CD player don't have any square edges.
Various different types of DAC (one-bit, multi-bit, oversampling, etc.) have different characteristics that allow different kinds of filter to be used. For example, a one bit DAC with a lot of oversampling pushes the effective sampling frequency right up allowing a very gentle filter to be used, and a filter with a very gentle roll-off tends to have fewer undesirable effects in the passband.
In fact, if you listen to sine and square wave outputs from a function generator, I think you'll find that the sine wave sounds rather thin and 'cold' whereas the square wave will sound 'warmer'. This is because the sine wave is a single frequency, f, whereas the square wave also contains components at 3*f, 5*f, etc., which tend to be quite musical, and 'nice' sounding.
Winsk, in his/her reply to your posting, talks about clipping and distortion. Solid state amplifiers can actually manage 'warm' and 'analogue' pretty well, and cannot be held entirely to blame for the 'cold' sound of digital. When clipping does occur, valves tend to generate odd harmonics (like 1/3 and 1/5) which sound quite musical and 'good', whereas transistors generate even, and higher order odd harmonics which sound less 'good'. Under normal operating conditions transistors should not be generating significant amounts of distortion of this type anyway, whereas valves distort slightly thoughout their operating range, giving rise to the 'warming effect' of valve amplifiers.
I am unable to explain why digital signals sound 'cold'. Early digital recording and reproduction systems had a reputation for a harsh and overly bright sound, but modern systems are considerably smoother. I suspect it is that digital sound is not subject to the same colourations and distortions as signals coming of tape or vinyl, and for whatever reason, we find those imperfections pleasing to the ear.
Don't forget that any recording, digital or analogue, is nothing like it would sound if the performer was there in the room with you. The difference between digital and analogue sound is miniscule in comparison.
Molly.
Hang on to your 1200s (Score:1)
Re:Hang on to your 1200s (Score:1)
Re:There's turntables MORE expensive? (Score:1)
Re:Audio is not _that_ bandlimited (Score:1)
In modern oversampling DA converters this is done in the digital domain where one can make a very well behaved filter. AD konversion on the studio side typically uses a higher resolution which is downsampled to 16 bit also digitally.
As for the sawtooth, I'm afraid that's the reality. Look, if you take the input signal a bit higher, you start getting a subharmonic through the sampling which can be almost as loud as the sampled frequency!
Now there is no such thing as 'subharmonic distortion' usually this term is incorrectly used for intermodulation distortion or aliasing. In this case you seem to refer to the latter. Obviously if one doesn't filter out frequency components over the f/2 limit one will suffer from distortion. At 22.045 KHz the antialiasingfilter, be it digital or analogue, should have reduced the input level to below the quantification noise limits (or sufficiently close).
Why you imply that aliasing distortion should affect frequency components below f/2 are however beyond me. While it's correct that to achieve perfect DA decoding require infinite computing power, we can approach perfection sufficiently that it's not reasonable to think we can hear the difference.
You seem to think that only a tone whose frequency goes an integer amount into fs can be correctly decoded. This is _not_ the case neither in theory nor in RL. I suggest a closer examination of the universal sampling theorem.
Correct decoding will look at more than the sample ta T=t to determine et correct momentary value, preceeding and following samples will also be used.
Re:But the Home delivery is always FREE! (Score:1)
Ryan
Re:Very Strange... (Score:1)
Different people are passionate about different things. To get some understanding, go to a hi-end Hi-Fi shop, and listen to some good recordings on a good setup. Beware though, you may end up with a distinct desire to spend some serious money before leaving! The big disadvantage of a decent setup is that is does highlight how crappy some recording are (CD or LP).
Re:Decent turntable for < $200 ? (Score:1)
Most deck aimed at audio-philes are belt drive.
Re:Decent turntable for < $200 ? (Score:1)
Audio-phile decks almost exclusively use belts, and do not include speed correctors; they are full manual, and some even have clamps to hold the LP. Oh, and higher up the range, you'll need a fork-lift to carry it.
Re:For $13500... (Score:1)
HERE, and only here, IS THE POINT. (Score:1)
Yeah, sure, some say digitize the vinyl and be done with it. But some listeners want to hear the recording in its original analog mellifluousness (a Katzian-style word in a tech posting -- see he does have influence).
And correct me if I am wrong, but can't a laser drive an analog process? The unit doesn't necessarily have to digitize the sound before playing it through the speakers.
Re:so is it digital or analog? (Score:2)
It's read with a laser, so it must go through digital processing.
Where does laser reading imply digital processing? THe optical input they're using to read the laser is most probably a photodiode, which would give an analog waveform. Granted, they're using 5 lasers probably to get a better picture of the "grooves" which seems to hint at some fancy DSP, but just using a laser in no means automatically implies "digital".
This would seem to undermine the goal of listening to vinyl - that is, to avoid the "noise" that some audiophiles feel is added through digital processing.
Ummmm, that's not why I listen to vinyl (I'm maybe semi audiophile). As far as I know, very vew albums are released not on Vinyl, most that are released are aimed for DJ's and spinners. I listen to vinyl because I'm into ALOT of the funky soul jazz from the 60's and 70's, much of which is very obscure and they'll never release the albums onto CD (probably because they'll sell 5 copies, one of which would be to me, but still not very profitable for them. Sucks...) If I could get most of this stuff on CD, I'd definitely go for it. In fact, once I get off my arse, I've got plans to lay out a decent analog-digital front-end for my computer such that I can sample the songs off my records onto MP3. THis leads me to the next point...
Seems like not much more than an expensive toy (obviously) to show your friends rather than a realistic audiophile piece.
You're missing one point here. While CD's and DAT's are digital, and employ some sort of error-correcting methodology, records are inherently analog. And every time you play the record, you damage it slightly (ultimately governed by quantum physics - you can't measure a system without changing it). In CD's, at least you've got some hysteresis between 0's and 1's, but with a record every time you play that track the needle drags in the groove and rubs it down a little. Just listen to a record track that's been played a hundred times or so, it can sound horrible, even if care was used with good sharp needles. That's why this laser system is pretty cool, because you don't need much contact with the record, so this won't be an issue. Also much harder to scratch now that you've removed the needle altogether.
Finally, I've not heard the arguments about DSP adding to the noise, can anyone comment on the validity of this? As far as I know, once the analog waveform has been sampled (which is where most limitations are introduced), they use 24 or 32 bit wide DSP's to avoid introducing any noticable errors through the processing stages. Then at the Digital-Analog stage, the choice of output filter can affect the waveform too. But I didn't think the DSP was too much to blame.
Analog IS better than digital (Score:2)
However, with digital, you're taking repeated samples, and approximating each sample to the nearest quantized level determined by the bit depth. So you lose some quality converting to digital.
And then you lose some more when going from digital back to analog, which you HAVE to do with sound or you can't hear it.
You can build an purely analog sound system that introduces less noise than digital. The big advantage digital has is the ability to make exact reproductions, with no loss from generation to generation.
That doesn't change the fact that you can't make a true 10khz sine wave on a CD (roughly 4 sample points per cycle, and you actually have a sawtooth wave that phases in and out w/ the sample rate).
To get the best of both worlds for audio, you need to go digital with a very high sample rate (96kHz) at 24-bit depth. That way you have a much better digital approximation of an analog signal.
Re:so is it digital or analog? (Score:2)
Imagine you have a recording with lots of high's, like around 5kHz. What happens when you try to convert a 5kHz waveform to digital?
Well if you're sampling at 44.1kHz, it'll take (on average) 8.82 samples to record one cycle of the 5kHz wave. Try to draw a complete crest and trough with only 8 points-- it's pretty jagged! Plus, you really can't have that
Re:so is it digital or analog? (Score:2)
Re:Analog IS better than digital (Score:2)
Thanks for rephrasing what I already said.
And this quantization noise can easily be less than the noise introduced in going to an analog medium. Easily. What consumer-available analog medium has better SNR than you get with 16-bit quantization?
Did I say consumer-level? I was speaking on principle. Let's see... a near perfect analog system would consist of 1) somebody playing an acoustic instrument, and 2) a human ear. Better SNR than 16-bit quantization, and the only noise in the system is going to be due to bloodflow in the ear (ok, maybe dogs and traffic if you're not in a sound room). Anything else processing the sound in between, digital or analog, is just going to add noise.
Please, learn Nyquist's theorem. Audio is bandlimited. You can reconstruct it perfectly from discrete samples. No "sawtooth wave" at all.
...as long as the highest frequency is less than half the sampling rate. Yes, I know. In actuality, you can't (without filters) recreate a perfect SINE WAVE (that was my point), but you'll get something that's the same frequency. However, anything that's not a sine wave would have harmonics added which you won't hear anyway, and don't need. Now I'm sure some more DSP engineers are going to want to jump in again and smack me around, but I'm speaking purely from a musician's standpoint.
Nyquist's theorem is useful for data transmission. If it is applied to audio, then there's really no reason that a classical music CD should sound worse than actually being there, even when played on the best hardware. But then we'd be getting into psychoacoustics.
Correct me on this if I'm wrong (but do it nicely). If the original sound source has two signal components of 60kHz and 65kHz, there will be a tertiary tone of 5kHz as a result of the other two being superimposed. Is that 5kHz tone sampled successfully with a 44.1kHz sampling rate?
Re:so is it digital or analog? (Score:2)
man fourier
And then read my reply to billybob jr.
Re:so is it digital or analog? (Score:2)
It seems to me that if you had (for example) a 100Hz sawtooth wave, you couldn't ever reproduce it digitally. Well, with filters you could, and in essence a speaker cone is a filter, but let's just stick to theory.
A sawtooth wave is the sum of an infinite series of harmonics, ie sine wave components. Therefore, you'd have to sample at infinite frequency to reproduce it perfectly. Now, most people can't hear above 15kHz anyway and the realistic upper limit is 20kHz, so generally we're OK with 44.1kHz sampling.
BUT.... let's say you have a low, 60hz sine way. You sample it at 120Hz.
If you play it back digitally, at the 120Hz sample rate, do you get a 60hz sine wave? Absolutely not. You get a 60hz base with a bunch of higher harmonics thrown in, because you're playing back a 60hz triangle wave. A triangle wave contains higher frequency components that weren't there in the original recording. This is noise. So, you have to apply a filter on the output that blocks out all frequencies that are over half your sampling rate.
So, *my* interpretation of Nyquist's theorem is that if you sample at twice the frequency of the highest component you care about, you won't lose any information. But my point I was trying to make, before a bunch of engineers jumped on my case, was that the playback waveform has all the original sounds plus some additional unwanted artifacts, which has to be taken care of with filtering. In my mind, that's not a perfect reproduction. Fortunately, in a CD, most of the unwanted noise is well above the human range of perception, although there are other factors at play that can cause reduction in sound quality when recording to CD.
On another note (bad pun), there is a noticeable difference in sound quality between 24bit 96kHz audio vs. 16-bit 44.1kHz. According to Nyquist's theorem and the frequency response range of the human ear, that shouldn't be the case.
I suppose signal theory alone doesn't completely account for sound quality.
Re:so is it digital or analog? (Score:2)
Re:so is it digital or analog? (Score:2)
Here's what I know about DSP: Korg, Proteus, Tascam. And that the SBLive does sample rate conversions when you don't want it to.
At least in the end, there's always beer.
I'll stick to quantum mechanics from now on...
Re:Analog IS better than digital (Score:2)
With 16-bit audio, the best S/N ratio you can hope for is 96db, am I correct? I haven't seen the math behind this, I've just read this in several places as being the theoretical S/N ratio for 16-bit digital audio.
With an ideal, perfect, doesn't-exist analog system, it's much higher. Like I said, the closest thing is the human ear.
If I had my way, all my digital equipment would work @ 24 bit 96kHz. But that's expensive...
When I said "analog is better than digital" I was referring to the ideal conditions. Of course, I master digitally on a DAT, because my analog setup would introduce more noise.
Re:Audio is not _that_ bandlimited (Score:2)
I was about to spend a couple hours doing research to back up my claims which I simply and "intuitively" knew to be true.
The engineers are correct in that you don't lose any INFORMATION in a signal if you sample at at least twice its frequency. However, that doesn't account for the, uh, "extra" information that's added. When transmitting data across a wire, you don't really need to worry about subharmonic distortion. But as I said in another post... there's more to reproducing the original sound than signal theory suggests.
I take it you're a musician?
Re:Analog IS better than digital (Score:2)
That's a shame, because that will be a requirement for Windows 2010. The problem with keeping a system thermally noise free (absolute zero) is that as soon as you have a signal, you have heat, and thus noise.
The thing is, I find that comparing devices that can only exist in theory to be rather pointless.
And thus is the difference between theoretical science and engineering! Anybody have a massless, frictionless pulley that I can borrow?
Re:After a certain point it doesn't matter (Score:2)
However, as soon as the Klipsch Promedia's come off of backorder, I'll have the next best thing.
Re:Analog IS better than digital (Score:2)
I know what you mean-- those retarded idiots that don't know anything about nanophase solid-state physics beyond the Hall-Petch relationship annoy the crap out of me too. [/sarcasm]
However, you did give a reason why 96kHz audio is preferable (especially during the mixing stage) compared to 44kHz 16-bit.
Re:so is it digital or analog? (Score:2)
Most audio pros work with the digital audio at 96k and then downsample right before the CD master. On the other hand, my SBLive insists on outputting 48khz, which makes that card useless for digital transfers to/from DAT that wind up on CD. I just do everything at 44.1k (on another soundcard) and I'm happy.
Re:Decent turntable for < $200 ? (Score:2)
I have a cheap 120 dollar sony turntable. I bought it about 2 years ago and it works great. I use it for my small collection of techno that I have on vinyl. To me it sounds almost as good as my cd's. I got it at best buy as well, most larger electronics stores actually still keep 1 or 2 models in stock.
Basically you're looking at spending about 90 - 140 dollars for my cheap turntable which works well enough, or you have to spend at least 400 dollars to get a good DJ style turntable. There are also "audiophile" type decks for up to 10k, but you wouldn't want those....I think its funny that they even exist
Re:Don't trust (Score:2)
I think you miss the point. Vinyl, IMHO, gives a much better, smoother, richer sound than does digital. CD's are great and all, but they really can't compare to the sound of a well-mastered vinyl record played on a top-quality turntable. The whole reason CDs are more popular than vinyl is that a cheap CD player sounds 10 times better than a cheap record player. But a really excellent record player sounds at least 10 times better than a really excellent CD player. It's a tradeoff. I, for one, would definitely buy one of these if I had the extra $30k lying around. Maybe Hemos wants to buy one for me? come on Hemos, support a starving college student:)!
As for your point about the cost of compact lasers, it's well taken, but the cost of this unit is most likely _not_ in the lasers. There's a whole load of signal processing equipment that's required to turn the (I'm assuming) Doppler shift detected in the reflected light into sound.
In short: Yes, you could buy a CD player that will give you decent sound for $30. But keep in mind that you won't even come _close_ to the quality of a really, really good record player. And if this unit is all they promised, which seems reasonable, then the cost of a really, really good record player just dropped by an order of magnitude.
--
Re:digitize it (Score:2)
Re:Decent turntable for < $200 ? (Score:2)
Fuck the DJs and the horse they rode in on!!! (Score:2)
Some of you youngsters should beat it into your thick skull that the original and still primary purpose for a turntable is reproducing sound that's on records. NOT scratching, NOT sampling, and NOT back-cueing.
Furthermore, there are a lot of records out there, some well over half a century old, which are one-of-a-kind. There are historic recordings on wax cylinders (including some of Caruso) which will NEVER be copied onto CD or MP3...unless they can read those recordings in a non-destructive process. For record studios, for museums, and for archivists, this sort of technology is invaluable.
So if you STILL can't figure it out;
1) These turntables are not aimed at DJs.
2) Most turntables made aren't aimed at DJs.
3) The world of vinyl doesn't revolve around DJs.
4) Deal with it.
Re:Fuck the DJs and the horse they rode in on!!! (Score:2)
"And im real sorry, but most turntables ARE aimed at djs. I can think of roughly 10 models off the top of my head which are aimed at djs... including the venerable Technics SL-1200-MK2, and kids are buying boatloads of them!"
Heh heh heh... Considering the SL-1200 was originally considered a 'DJ-quality playback table, the above statement is amusing. Regardless, I can list probably five times that many turntables that are aimed at audiophiles/old vinyl owners.
More to the point, "VINYL IS BEAUTIFUL!" I can agree with that. As long as people are willing to accept that a turntable could possibly be useful for or even (gasp!) aimed at a group OTHER than DJs, we can all get along.