Digital audio on a vinyl record - The best of both worlds?

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@iu8gouyf6idtu5dryks5: I do not agree with any of this it does matter a lot in the final quality if the sound starts as digital or analogue. Some mastering techniques and gear could improve the overall stereo image and harmonic content and enrich the sound overall; but digital files when cut to vinyl do not sound close to audio that has been recorded on tape first.
In reality vinyl made from digital, like many EDM records nowadays, sound actually as flat as a CD and as noisy as a record. Which rather sucks than not.
The magic of vinyl for me resides in the analogue warmth and stereo field, when its analogue.
Also, why do you encourage your audience to let someone else worry about the actual production of the physical disks, when that is the most important and interesting aspect of the process? What are you an engineer for? That is like telling people to do nothing and let others do it for you... Theories are just theories, and theorists are just theorists and it is practice what matters in the end.
@fredashay: 1. As a computer geek, I suspect this would work. As you say, old microcomputers stored data on audio cassettes, and computers communicated over analog audio phone lines using a device known as a MODEM that converted digital bits to squeaks and squawks. High quality music could even be stored, but not played back in real time since the song "file" would have to be loaded into the computer in its entirety first before being played back.
2. No clue. I love music, and appreciate good equipment, but I don't characterize myself as an "audiophile." As the trope goes, an audiophile uses music to listen to his equipment, a music lover uses equipment to listen to music.
3. No. Analog technology is obsolete. Any waveform can be faithfully reproduced with 100% accuracy by sampling at twice the highest frequency you need to record (get an advanced degree in math if you need convincing). Sadly, the CD sampling rate is a bit shy of what it should have been ideally. But CD technology was developed way back when digital processing power was limited, and digital storage media was expensive and space utilization needed to be conserved. Hence compromises were made that are no longer necessary today when we Gigahertz processors and have multi-terabyte storage media. But CD is still far superior to any analog system that ever existed, IMO.
@MGoudsmits: I love how you with your real life experience prove audiophiles wrong!
@mstones6642: Is the life perfect? If it would be perfect, will there be fun? No
What happens after the mastering during the process of producing vinyl?
The produced phase shift of both channels and this unsharpness produces a nice sounding aspect but it produce also more seperation and more three dimensional deepnes. For the most not catchable and it is not necessary then many of our sins are working subconsciously.
And it is not important if the recording is digital or anologe.
This physical incalcuble problem or sweetnes could only be generated by the process of producing and playing vinyl.
If someone like that sound more then the absolute perfection then it is fine.
Everyone prefer something different and it has nothing to do with if someone can hear till 20 or only 10 kHz.
@helthuismartin: Yess the best of both worlds..Buy House music on vinyl and you will agree with me.
@julianmorrisco: Dammit. Thanks to watching AMC YouTube now thinks I want to watch ‘audiophile’ content.
Is there a way to steer the algorithm away from a particular subculture? I think I’ve resolved this (budddoom, tschhhh!) by telling YT I’m not interested in the 10-20 channels I have in my feed talking about interconnects and OFC. I haven’t seen anything about green marker pens yet, but no doubt that’s a click or two away. I refuse to be radicalised!
@LilaKuhJunge: 256kbps would make a really fine MP3 - stereo 44.1kHz. 16bit - and for most people on most systems in blind A/B impossible to tell from CD.
But it would combine the downsides of CD and vinyl into one perfect pile of magnificence...
@therealwolfspidertoo: Yes it's digital, but it's still an analog final product.
@mischmerz: Well .. the signal would be Mono ...
@MarkThomas-hm3ju: R.I.P. Jim Winey (1934-2024) Founder of Magnepan …: https://youtu.be/v-Hf3D096vA Jim Winey founder of Magnepan 1934-2024
@MarkThomas-hm3ju: Another Fun Info-Video from AM. 😀 Looking at your environs if this is a recent video I would say you are not in England. Sliding glass doors with outside greenery and a t- shirt to boot (maybe Cali.). I can't answer your three questions, but I do love digital. Years ago a turntable was made which used a laser tonearm to read the groove what happened to that. But if you used a laser to read the groove like analog and had a method of immediately turning that into a digital transcription, this would be very close. It's like a reverse of the DAC tech. Analog to digital then back to analog? Anyway, just thinking. What if frequencies higher than 20kHz actually have lots of information which we don't perceive as sound but perhaps as locations in space. Like a hologram. The denser your medium the less grainy. This could have implications for the soundstage. Think of it not like perceiving sound necessarily but as helping to define the image with more clarity. Thanks for your clarity in presentation.
@MarkThomas-hm3ju replies to @MarkThomas-hm3ju: Maybe you do have sliding glass doors in Oxfordshire and winters are mild. 🙃
@AudioMasterclass replies to @MarkThomas-hm3ju: What I heard about the laser turntable, although I never heard it myself, was that it was very good at tracking dust and hence it was noisy. I still think there's the germ of a good idea in it but whether it will ever be developed further, who knows? P.S. I'm in the little-known country of Greenscreenland.
@MarkThomas-hm3ju replies to @MarkThomas-hm3ju: That's smart. Next you will use an AI version of you.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @MarkThomas-hm3ju: @MarkThomas-hm3ju I’ve tried it. Too scary.
@MarkThomas-hm3ju replies to @MarkThomas-hm3ju: Just thought of this. What if the laser turntable could be made to work with AI. A huge data base of record scratches pops and clicks could teach the AI to reject these as noise. The close digital conversion and then to analog again. No sound engineer needed. There are ADD conversions of tape and vinyl from the sixties and probably seventies that do sound better than DDD recordings. Best of worlds. Not too far out really with the way tech is going. This would also enable one to play a vinyl from the thirties and forties with no scratch, dust noise.
@MC-jv6fs: Very cool. Buti liked the blistering LP scratches at the end. Its like the rustle of trees and it feels lively.
@andrii4545: Great idea! Count me in xD
@saneneweyes6189: The ratio of bit-rate to sampling frequency discussed in the video seems to deviate from the ideal ratio suggested by the Nyquist theorem. Wouldn't a more linear ratio improve the analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion processes? I'm not an expert, but that's my understanding
Also, I'd prefer just having the uncompressed 24/32/64-bit WAV. This would ensure the master is free from the imperfections introduced in the vinyl pressing process. Between the AD/DA conversions and physical imperfections from acetate / lacquer disc cuts and nickel negative impression pressing discs.
Obviously, this does not account for the few, exceedingly rare examples of those still recording start to finish in an analog environment. Unless you're Jack White, most established mainstream artist recordings intended for a combination of streaming audio/radio, analog media (cassette/vinyl) and of course the fading but still relevant Redbook-compliant CD-DA digital media. As such, the majority of mainstream artists will have these recordings somewhere along the lines, be worked on within a protool environment.
I might be missing the point of the video but for me, when i listen to vinyl, I want to experience the whole ritual that comes with it; If I want to listen to a digital media, I would prefer it be the least lossy as possible with whatever device or platform I'm using.
@Phil_f8andbethere: I guess if it could work, it would give the record companies an excuse to charge even more for what is already over-priced vinyl.
@teashea1: Good dialog between those two.......
@teashea1: An interesting theoretical exercise but as your know, it is never ever going to be developed.
@shipsahoy1793: I thought they were already putting digital audio on vinyl ? which, btw, why is that desired when vinyl is still more flawed in terms of noise and convenience as compared to digital discs. I'm old, I still like some of my old vinyl, but vinyl these days? no thanks..
@yanivshef: Doesn’t make any sense. Digital music intended for digital media without conversions
@jagmarc: "Digital" What are we talking about? MP3 master pressed onto vinyl?
@MrCandude: Wow. That’s a lot of math.
I have a better idea. Prepare the royalty cheques…
Take a turntable and replace the stylus with a solar power laser beam (just like the guitar!) digital pick up.
Sure, you’ll have to play old cds upside down, but I’m sure newer ones can have the label info on the wrong side.
Oh, and new cds can be increased to a 12 inch diameter for that tactile experience.
Paint them black.
🤓
@Richard-bq3ni: The 30kHz carrier on vinyl was for quadrophonic sound system called CD-4 (nothing to do with cd). There was a lot of tear on the higher frequencies resulting in degradation of the quad sound information each time record was played.
Digital on vinyl will not add anything usefull. It will not sound better then the existing digital formats out there.
If you like a large format like vinyl, i would say bring the laserdisc back, but then for audio only. There is plenty of room for the best digital quality and extras. The sleeves can be the same as vinyl with nice art etc.
@ianjohnhorwood2605: vinyl complete waste of money if recorded digitally 🤣🤣🤣
@keithholmes6776: I’m happy with getting the best signal from my vinyl with record cleaning etc. Seems to me that it’s horses for courses vinyl for old men who just love the whole thing and digital for old men who just want to listen to music without climbing the stairs to wade through clothes to reach the turntable and get it going!
@forbeginnersandbeyond6089: 😂. A digital vinyl will sound like a cd. So what’s the point. The vinyl only becomes a medium to deliver digital data stream. The stylus replaces the laser reading the data bits. In the end, it’s no different from CD or streaming.
@danielduesentriebjunior: Astonishing that some people still believe that vinyl is better than digital. Compare the chanel separation of vinyl versus digital for example: Ridiculous.
@roytofilovski9530: I for one would LOVE this. You get most of the benefits of both vinyl and digital. The experience of playing a disc, the artwork, but with less worry about keeping the disc pristine. Not as physically tough as a CD, but better than an an analog disc.
@DewtbArenatsiz replies to @roytofilovski9530: Vinyl doesn't have the bandwidth just buy CDs
@ac81017: Don't care about formats, i use expensive cables, cable holders, audiophile grade fuses to tweak the sound. Over to you Audiophile Phil.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @ac81017: Phil changes his fuses according to what music he's playing.
@KimmoJaskari: Vinyl can sound better if it's mastered by someone trying to max out the dynamic range (compared to digital where they compressed it completely flat and maximum volume, that is). But that aside, it's 100% inferior in every single way to digital like CD. Since we already have digital, and can store digital, storing it on a markedly inferior old technology makes no sense at all. All we have to do is beat up all the mastering engineers so they stop the insane loudness wars and make good CD's or FLAC's.
@Douglas_Blake_579 replies to @KimmoJaskari: Years ago I transcoded my vinyl to high bit rate MP3s. After I got the settings all worked out, the resulting digital files sounded exactly like the vinyl ... pops and all. They were so close I often had to check to see which was playing.
I agree fully ... properly done PCM or Redbook digital would mop the floor with a vinyl pressing. The problem really is that once they discovered digital could be louder they went crazy stupid manipulating an artform to extract money.
@pierreduchesne0001: I'm surprised how little addresses the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MOFI) controversy. MOFI produced from digital sources many audiophile quality LPs, lacking transparency for a while on what exactly they were doing, but claiming that their products were ultimate analog experiences on vinyl. For example, in their very expensive "one-step" LPs, MOFI's reportedly all-analog vinyl production process actually involved converting the master tape source material into digital DSD files, before remastering and pressing records. They were doing that for several years, starting 2015. What was funny, but at the same time tragic, illustrating once again how polarized the debate is, is that some analog purists thought that their over 100$ MOFI LPs were 100% analog, without any digital step, explaining why they sounded so good, pure analog sound. But in some cases these LPs were coming from DSD 64, DSD 128 or DSD 256 sources. Some vinyl aficionados were unhappy. For me, this explains why there is no "digital sound bad" "analog sound good" things. CDs, LPs, these are just audio supports. What is important is the mastering. MOFI's LPs sound good because they are well mastered, not because they are pressed on vinyl.
@mstones6642 replies to @pierreduchesne0001: @dmd7472 that is your opinion and YouTube has no restriction to wrote more than you want read.
Get the CEO of YouTube and Change the rules.
If not, p... off.
@dangerzone007: Why bother making such a dumb ass video. Entertainment I suppose. But most audiophiles are not that hard up for entertainment.
@mickeydr: Make a video about the opposite: record vinyl on digital. I use this to show to people that think that vinyl is superior that digital can fully capture the nuances, imperfections and even the"warmth" of the vinyl. Therefore, digital is superior since it is a faithful representation of the input sound (in the limits of human hearing) including analog sources. Digital can fully emulate analog, how could it be inferior.
@thepuma2012: first all must get rid of dynamic compression, loudness war issues. These days you cannot buy an blu-ray audio CD or stream without compressed stereo sound. Only those surround files are less compressed.
@TwentyTenPhotography: This is genius! It would need buffering, so finally enough time after dropping the needle to get to the millimeter perfect listening position before the music starts 😊
#1 I suppose that would work. With vinyl and a stylus optimized for that, a much higher bit rate should be possible
#2 No, audiophiles always want „the best“, no matter if they can actually hear a difference. And they would start shoehorning $1000 Ethernet cables in the tonearm, because they are „optimized“ for digital audio
#3 No, I like my crackles and pops
@timh6510: Cool. We can take good sounding digital and make it a pain to play, like vinyl lovers like. 😁
@fernandofonseca3354: Reductio ad absurdum
@AudioMasterclass replies to @fernandofonseca3354: It's all Greek to me.
@fernandofonseca3354 replies to @fernandofonseca3354: 😂
@sntxrrr: Lets degrade our digital format and put it on a fragile and cumbersome medium, that sounds so stupid it will probably sell well.
@FrightfulMess: I remember back in the 80's a friend of mine showing off his digital vinyl record system, no pops, no hiss, no noise between tracks whatsoever, and I thought that was the future of music. In no time at all I was buying compact discs and I forgot all about that amazing record he played me.
@MartinMartin-yi9to: Message from a pro audio engineer : most vinyl records are mastered in digital. So what you're listening is a vinyl copy of a digital file.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @MartinMartin-yi9to: Shh, don't tell my commenters.
@MartinMartin-yi9to replies to @MartinMartin-yi9to: @@AudioMasterclass A-Ha!
@goodtimejohnny8972: Answer 1, yes it works unless of course your actually talking about cutting the ones and zeros into vinyl. If thats the case the record player wouldn't do anything with that unless it had decoders and digital to analog converters in it. Answer 2 and 3, It is a matter of the Individuals mind set. I personally see all formats as mediums to deliver a product. Some people enjoy vinyl, CDs, tape products because they are tangible. Artwork, info about production, pictures of the band, and lyrics. Just to name a few things that are missed by today's norm. One more thought, take a long drive into the country. Spotty or no cell phone reception means you can't stream your audio desires. You'll have to settle for crappy Bluetooth audio and listen to whatever you might have downloaded. Much better audio quality on a cd. The highway quality in the USA prohibits record player use in a car. Not to mention you would need a classic car from the 60s to be equipped with one. Oh my, where did I put my AC/DC 8 track?😅
@SteveD-m6z: Conversely you could create an analogue CD using the technology of the LaserDisc.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @SteveD-m6z: You are so very close to the topic of my future video.
@CraigMecak replies to @SteveD-m6z: Yes, FM analogue stereo with CX noise reduction! @@AudioMasterclass
@pedge66: All very good but why?😅
@AudioMasterclass replies to @pedge66: This is a 'why not'? channel.
@tom75uk: I don't understand why these kids love vinyl I hated vinyl when I was growing up I was so happy when CD came along
@BobGeogeo: You are clearly a MoFi shill muddying the analog-digital waters. Kidding! 🙃
@AudioMasterclass replies to @BobGeogeo: Your metaphor is appropriate. Crystal clarity on top, mud underneath.
@trottophone: Here's a computer program loaded from a 7" vinyl single.
The music is not digital, of course!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eIzNE356-Q
@peters7949: Loved the “vinyl” background noise during the “comment prompts” was it true analogue surface noise, or plug in generated?
@AudioMasterclass replies to @peters7949: I sold my Technics SL10 some time ago. I found it on the internet. Noise cannot be copyrighted. Discuss..
@MrAdopado: An entertaining thought experiment! But we all know that once you are in the digital domain the method of "transcription" and storage doesn't make any difference so long as the bits at the beginning of the process match the bits at the end. Whether it's via a laser counting the pits on the reflective surface of a CD or a re-imagined record playing stylus on vinyl isn't really the point ... but you already know that!
@paulcope3183: But you won't get the best of both worlds - you'll get all the weaknesses of a digital file presented with the weaknesses of vinyl as a carrier.
This is how the music industry is hard wired to treat its customers.
Factor in that it will allow them to save loads of money in production but vastly inflate the retail price and the only winner is the industry.
As usual.
@cuoresportivo155: Convert a song to your 25kHz, 10 bit digital stream and have a listen?
@analoghardwaretops3976: Low level scratch noise in the background...of this analog microphone pickup to all Y.T. customers ears😢😢😮😮
@lyntedrockley7295: Work for who? Idiots?
Nice thought experiment and a nice run through the technicalities. But you ommited to consider the rotational and longitudinal speed. The frequency response (whatever it might be for the carrier) would have to be achieved at the inner part of the spiral. So that might require a faster rpm. Unless varialble rotation constant velocity could be achieved which I doubt with a heavy platter. Then stylus tracking would be an issue. They don't track accurately on analogue at 33.3 rpm as it is. At least 78rpm shellac discs were flat, imagine a vinyl going round at 70rpm with the stylus arm going up and down to follow the warp! Its gonna have to be a heavy arm, oops its just scoured out all the detail from the groove.
The easiest way for 'The best of both worlds' is to glue a CD to the centre of a vinyl.
@fluffycat087: Lol, if you are using Ai just get it to read the track data then connect to streaming service. Add some crackles and occasional skips and I think most would be happy. This would need to be a well kept secret though.
@jimhines5145: Great video. I laughed my arse off!
@electronraygun6346: Digital vinyl is such an incredibly redundant concept. It's like wondering if we could make chocolate out of the same substance we wrap it in.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @electronraygun6346: Quick! Off to the patent office!
@mephitusincognito7918: Would it work? Not that great, they tried distributing computer programs in the 80s using the same signal recorded to tape... It... sorta worked? You could get data but a 'pop' or 'crackle' in the audio would destroy the program so the records that 'worked' were recorded to tape whilst still in pristine condition before being used rather than directly feeding the audio to the computer...
Using it for actual audio would give it the same problems the CED players had... as a family member put it 'wiggle-vision'... ...a scratch on a digital audio vinyl record wouldn't be a 'pop', it would be a burst of really nasty static...
If 'digital vinyl' could be made to work it would be a very interesting way of archiving computer data rather than playing music.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @mephitusincognito7918: Yes I should have mentioned this. Flexidiscs of music were regularly distributed with magazines, the advantage over cassette being flat and thin. Flexidiscs with software were a thing too. No experience personally with the software version but the problems you mention don't surprise me.
@atoptip6193: “Vinyl” is the only “oldtimer” hobby where fans try to prove “superiority” through performance… It is like the owner of a 1935 Bugatti saying, my car will outbrake a 2023 Toyota. Or that a 1955 Patek Philippe will show time more accurately than a $2 digital watch. Hobbies make us enjoy the world better. Idiotic arguments on the other hand, well… (even then…”vinyl” is such an antiquated, brutal system…I can get almost any of my reel-to-reels to sound near-indistinguishable from the digital original. Vinyl…never. Unless it is a Portishead song.)
@atoptip6193: I do not think NICAM “scaled 10 bits to 16.” First it started with 14 bits. Then it chopped off 4 (or is it 3?) bits off the top or the bottom, depending on whether the passage was quiet or loud, respectively. On playback, a bit told the receiver which 4 (or 3) bits were cut out and the receiver shifted the remaing 10 bits to their appropriate place. This worked well. I cannot figure out if today’s compression strategems use a similar method (in addition to their psychoacoustic bit elimination, which is mostly what is written about).
@AudioMasterclass replies to @atoptip6193: Yes this is correct for a two sentence description. As far as I understand it the reconstruction was to the original 14 bits and I suspect your mention of 16 is a typoe. See, I just made one myself. Who's perfect?
@atoptip6193 replies to @atoptip6193: “the reconstruction was to the original 14 bits” — yes but not scaled, rather, shifted. The selected 10 bits became either, 4X zeros (zeroes?) + 10 bits, or, 10 bits + 4X zeros. But what do I know, I read that in Wikipedia.
@bba935: It's an interesting idea, but at the end of the day you have to ask why bother? CD's and other digital formats exist, so wouldn't it just be better to use that? Digital is digital in the end. the delivery device doesn't influence the sound at all. I'm a digital fan by the way.
@DelmarBrowne: Thanks so much for the information! Nicely done ✅
@spacemissing: i'm glad someone other than me did all the hard work on this subject.
The idea is fascinating but unlikely to attract a sufficient number of adopters.
Maybe if the disc was cut at 45 or 78 RPM the bit rate and depth could be increased to more appealing numbers.
@christopherward5065: A great thought exercise. It has a lot of virtues and some obvious flaws. If its limitations meant great and enjoyable sound was still possible, then why not? Perhaps artificially intelligent DSP applied to normal analogue disc output would be even better and wouldn’t need a new digital vinyl format to be developed. The DSP with AI could be evolved continuously until we get past the current major inherent limitations of using analogue vinyl. Good vinyl playback is still valid and relevant and amazing but requires expensive equipment and fine engineering tolerances to work. Digital vinyl though AI and DSP could level the playing field between high-end equipment and budget equipment sufficiently to kill the audiophile itch for extra refinement through upgrading. Game over for audiophiles…
@ericquasney8832: Forget vinyl. Snap ,crackle, and pops belong in cereal. Sorry. 🙉
@drewwilson1477: I once read an article stating that if the DtoA chip was based on logarithmic scale like the ear rather than the linear scale then the number of bits required to produce sound would be much less. The existing low order bits are in the noise floor. The reason it never occurred is that that logarithmic chip would have cost more than the existing linear chips. An interesting discussion. Re your digital vinyl design would likely work but who cares. Bring back better liner notes. lol
@peters7949 replies to @drewwilson1477: Sony used such a system to add stereo digital audio to their V8 video recorder, 8bits with DBX companding. It sounded remarkably ok, and enabled a mode where a 90m tape could hold 6 x 180m stereo tracks, great for party tapes.
@jishcatg: If you play a 12 inch disk at 45 RPM, you should be able to increase the bitrate.
@Andersljungberg: Would your digital vinyl give the same depth in the sound and make the male singing voice just as good
@Andersljungberg: Then there are those who say that the vinyl record gives off up to 50 kHz
@Andersljungberg: But who wants a digital vinyl record
@Andersljungberg: CX disc, i.e. vinyl records recorded with CX noise reduction. would have given dynamic range of 90 dB. and greatly reduced problems with track noise or pop sounds. an elderly British man on YouTube said it was the best he had ever heard He said the music literally came out of the speakers
@xprcloud: easer to create analog WOW Flutter, alternating hiss with random clicks , and even the old needle thump using a plugin to your favorite digital stream.
I know, a tiny metal box with SPDIF In/Out,
you choose your vinyl flavor from 78-33,1/3 of messing up your audio. MAKES SENSE since MOST VINYL IS CUT from a Digital source. save the environment.
@draaitafels: Wouldn't it be simpler to cut the whole thing in analogue and use AI to mask surface noise and clicks ?
As for digital audio, they should sell LTO cartridges with high-res files on them and call it a day. Now that would be the best of both worlds, technically.
@Andersljungberg: Instead, you could have analogue sound on an optical disc such as Laserdisc. As it used to be analog video on
@TucsonBillD: It’s been done… back in the 80’s. I have several “digital” vinyl records including the Telarc recording of the 1812 Overture with the warning of the Digital Cannons on the front of the cover. My turntable easily handled it… eat your digital cat box, Phil.
@peters7949 replies to @TucsonBillD: Not quite the same thing. Superb Telarc digital recording and mastering, but the vinyl was a very nicely cut analogue transfer not digital as such.
@rlstowe3: Totally ridiculous!
@golfjunkymusicjunky8370: MOFI did. it already for years…haha
@moddaudio: You can use a 56K modem over a phone line that only goes up to 3.4Khz. I think it splits everything into frequency bands before doing an FSK on each band. You would still have clock issues which would require some sort of asynchronous sample rate conversion .(lots of hardware) A cheaper/better approach would be to convert it into a PDM stream that is easily digested by a codec.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @moddaudio: Your modem example is good. I fondly remember my 14.4, just without the fondness.
@bikdav: A lot of the complaints that I've heard about CD I"ve never been able to hear regardless of the quality of the CD player and the equipment that it's hooked up to.
@mgman6000: I went to a stereo show at Universal City in 1979 and at the Sony room they were playing a cassette tape that sounded great no hiss etc the guy working there said it was digital and was the future we were amazed and a few years later I was buying CDs
@Craig1967: I think that it would be very "mono." LOL The numbers you mentioned are suggesting only one channel. I would hate it.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @Craig1967: Everything I said, holes potholes and all, can be applied to both sides of the groove for stereo. Perhaps a version could be designed with twice the duration in mono, for the small number but not zero of mono-loving audiophiles out there.
@Craig1967 replies to @Craig1967: @@AudioMasterclass Good point. Didn't think of that. Thanks!
@SubTroppo: Don't trust Betty, Phil: she doesn't seem to be able to take a joke. Horses for Courses with a little "They're trying to go to the moon AGAIN: why bother?" thrown in for good measure.
@MostlyBuicks: The WORST of both worlds.
@twowheelmacneil: Love it. /r/they(he)didthemath
@AudioMasterclass replies to @twowheelmacneil: Comment reading Reddit users, please feel free to post the link https://youtu.be/tEHFfpiemyw to https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/
@johnwakefield3141: I have classical compact discs that sound really good some better than the vinyl equivalents I'm not a pureist this way l.p's can be such a drag flipping them over all the time and taking care of the tonearm and stylus also on my project experience x2 turntable the belt comes off from time to time so I have to keep putting it back on you don't have any of this with compact disc audio format.
@richh650: HaHa
@Cpt_Adama: The real question in this day and age would be, Why? 😂 If this could have been done before CD's it would have been a good stop gap though.
@vwestlife: The RCA CED VideoDisc system was able to use a vinyl record with a stylus playing a groove to reproduce a video signal with a bandwidth of 3 MHz, over 40 years ago, using a much smaller groove and keeping it in a plastic caddy to protect it from dust and fingerprints. The video quality wasn't as good as the optically-read LaserDisc format, but the discs were much cheaper to manufacture, since the equipment and process to press them was very similar to conventional vinyl records, and the players were cheaper too, since it was really just a more advanced form of a record player.
@lyntedrockley7295 replies to @vwestlife: So cheaper than a CD player? You can buy a DVD external drive for a PC for £14 at today's prices.
@naibafabdulkobor4301 replies to @vwestlife: @@lyntedrockley7295 Obviously you are too young to know the Laserdisc format. It's not the same as Compact Disc. 😉
@Richard-bq3ni replies to @vwestlife: I think the stylus was not mechanical but in stead was capacitive pick up.
@vwestlife replies to @vwestlife: @@Richard-bq3ni Correct, the stylus was just to keep it in the groove. It used a capacitive pickup to actually read the information from the groove.
@roxics replies to @vwestlife: My big question is, would a CED disc even be necessary with today's digital compression technology? Could you get away with a method like this video suggests but use something like digital with AV1 or H.265 compression instead of analog video? Because in my opinion, the big shortcomings to the CED are the playback issues due to dust/scratches with grooves that small and the fact they have to be housed in big plastic caddies, rather than naked discs. Which takes away all of the fun of colored vinyl and splatter vinyl and all of that, which makes vinyl collecting fun and I think would translate to a fun video format to collect if it were possible/available. Although today's video enthusiasts wouldn't be happy with the lower resolution/bitrate it would have. In which case we'll just have to develop a time machine and send it back to 1950 or 1979 or something. :)
@sbwlearning1372: Im happy with both . Good digital sounds great . Good analogue sounds great .
But it feels pointless to mix them.
To be clear my 1970s rock albums sound superb on vinyl . My 1990s / 2000 trip hop and drum and bass albums sound superb via CD or my hi end DAC.
The playback should match the creation technology.
1970s reggae / dub sounds magical on vinyl less so on CD
This is why early CDs of 70s music sound so awful.
It is all in the mastering and the engineering and the production
Equally i have modern CDs that sound horrifying. Compressed thin glassy and shrill.
Also there are many 70s albums that sound garbage via hi end cartridges and phono stages excellent amplification and wonderful speakers.
Once again it is all in the mastering production engineering etc.
Some engineers amd producers should be tried for crimes against sound quality!!😂
A great example from a mediocre band ( sorry guys just my opinion) is Dire Straits . The sound quality on vinyl or Cd is pretty fab
What a hobby this is
🎸🎧🎵
@grandadgamer8390: Funny vid this, taking the concept so far, then realising, hey, let's invent CD😅
@bacarandii: Now we know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall! Thank you for the calculations. Decades ago I had a vinyl "impulse noise reduction system," the SAE 5000 (really, that was its name), that you could plug in with RCA cables between your turntable and your preamp and it would (it said) detect noise that was "out of phase" with the musical signals in the grooves of an LP and fill in the fraction of a second of adjacent sound to mask (or "cover") the offending tick, pop, or scratch. It worked, though I'm told it also lost about 10 percent of the musical signal in the process. I don't know why. Anyway, I appreciate your attention to waves, bit depths, ones and even zeroes. Or zeds.
@ianjohnhorwood2605 replies to @bacarandii: how many holes does it take to fill a woman 🤣🤣🤣
@mattmilford: Uncompressed? You could get 192kbit MP3 on there with some error correction.
Better yet, use atrac (the minidisc codec) to give it a “sound”
@daccrowell4776: It's not possible to record digital pulses to vinyl, period. This is because no matter what you do, digital requires very strict characteristics of "on" and "off". There's never supposed to be any "slop" there, as that leads to read errors.
One of the very first things you learn about cutting lacquers is that it is completely impossible to have the cutting head on the lathe go back and forth as in any sort of pulse wave. Not only is it impossible due to the mechanical physics involved, some heads won't put up with this at all...and with cutting heads being scarce and expensive, it's not something to even attempt.
Secondly, even if it were possible to get those mechanical pulses through the process of master tape to vinyl, the typical phono cartridge isn't capable of reading the result...for the same reason.
And as for trying to cut a 60 kHz pilot tone on vinyl...nice idea, but once that record has been played a dozen times, the normal wear on vinyl will have buffed-off that subcarrier's signal...because the very highest frequencies are VERY fragile. This, btw, was the unsolved problem with CD-4 in the first place; expensive quad vinyl really feels like a huge monetary burn when you realize your quad vinyl isn't so quad anymore.
Face it: vinyl reissues are being done NOT because of some mysterious HiFi improvement. They're being pushed by big labels because it gives them a big return on their original releases since they don't have to finance the creation of new content. Seriously.
I'm a composer, but my background contains plenty of audio engineering background...including mastering. I'm quite used to the carved-in-stone rules for what can and cannot be sent to the lathe. And pure on-off digital signals...no matter what coding scheme gets used...are one of those "nope!" signals.
As for QPSK (extra class ham license here, also), that requires VERY stable pitches to be reproduced so that a QPSK decoder can handle the shifted signals. So you not only would have to deal with impossible cutting signals and subcarrier wear, you would have to have a VERY accurate, stable turntable in order for the decoder to "track" all of the subcarriers and phase shifts.
And the cost. So, stable decks exist, such as the venerable Technics 1200. But most people these days use those crapodelic Crosley et al turntables, and they're not all that on stability...nor do they really connect to anything else, so there goes the decode idea. They have crap ceramic carts too... can't see those as being capable of reading ultrasonic subcarriers.
So...digital.
@jagmarc replies to @daccrowell4776: That all sounds so complicated. How about just having actual sound vibration itself molded into the disc and then the same actual sound vibration played back. What could possibly go wrong
@ronald3836 replies to @daccrowell4776: With modern coding techniques it is possible to communicate bits over whatever lousy analog channel you have at a rate which is relatively close to the Shannon capacity of the channel.
@jagmarc replies to @daccrowell4776: But that's coding and stuff. What I'm saying is simply have the actual shape the sound vibrations make, recorded on a disc, nothing more complicated. Exactly the same as what you see on an osciloscope. @@ronald3836
@daccrowell4776 replies to @daccrowell4776: @@ronald3836 Right...and you could even implement some type of error correction, etc. But at that point, you're talking about a pointless exercise. The tech would be more complex than CDs, vinyl erosion still wipes out any subcarriers, etc.
This is a more extreme example of why quad on vinyl died. You had competing systems with different operating methods, some would work, others were kludges so companies could claim "the new XXXX has quadrophonic sound" when it really wasn't, etc. It was the original "VHS vs Betamax" fight.
Frankly, the very best solution to this does exist and sees routine use: DSD. 1-bit...but at a data rate of several MHz. No aliasing, crazy frequency response, multitrack audio, and so on. If we could just get that tied in with Blu-ray, this would be a moot point as the results from DSD allow everything necessary. Tech already exists, and some higher-end media players can playback DSD formats. Still spendy, but in the hundreds...more consumer-friendly.
@Synthematix: "Audiophiles" dont like digital audio, yet they dont mind a vinyl record thats been recorded digitally? i can smell the irony from here.
@trleith: I did NOT see that coming.
@G8YTZ: Slightly different technology I realise, but Digital Compact Cassette, in effect, achieved this with 1980s technology.
The NICAM bitrate was 728kb/s for TV and that included some forward error correction, but for FM radio distribution, it was 636kb/s with six channels multiplexed into a 2112kb/s tributary (then 4 x 2112 = 8448 for 24 channels) stream including a bit of bit stuffing and synchronisation/control data for RDS and signalling.
The BBC NICAM decoders used the Phillips first-generation CD digital to analogue converters
Nowadays, for what you describe I would leverage existing technology probably modulating a DRM (Digital Radio Mondial) signal on to the vinyl disk. Not too difficult to build a encoder and a decoder using GNU Radio software, I would probably start with trying it with baseband, but I’d have to think about what you would do with equalisation,, probably just remove it to start with.
In the 1980s, I actually experimented with a friend of mine and we built a codec to work, recording digital audio onto VHS cassette. The design used conventional television sync pulses, but with 16 µs intervals, instead of 64 µs and with the digital data as baseband video. Budget was limited, so we used cheap ZN427 and ZN428 8 bit A2D and D2A chips, there was quite a bit of quantising noise, but it worked well enough and the early JVC VHS machines we had were quite happy to lock at 4x TV line frequency. I guess it was a poor man’s PCMF1, a truly remarkable bit of technology for the time.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @G8YTZ: The PCM F1 was a fantastic leap forward at the time. Affordable by individuals rather than the immense cost of the Sony 1630. I did use F1 briefly, but for myself I held out for DAT. Oddly enough I had to keep my Revox because I couldn't possibly afford a DAT editing system.
@repairitdontreplaceit: most analog recording from as early as the 1970s use digital processing . as time went on more digital systems were used , most analog recordings have been digitised and then converted back to analog before recording to vinyl anyway
@scottstrang1583: AHD. I don’t think it ever came to fruition.
@carlosquijano2827: Isn’t it already invented? It’s called Compact Disc, CD 💿!
@phildavis1723: Did your encoding method use both channels there? If so, did we just sacrifice stereo???
@AudioMasterclass replies to @phildavis1723: My numbers are based on one channel, so both are available with the same resolution for stereo.
@robw3000: Biggest pressing plant in the EU uses a digital audio mastering desk to cut the lacquer. Digital is perfect and I love to spin vinyl.
@rabarebra: Ever heard of Laserdiscs. 😂
@AudioMasterclass replies to @rabarebra: I have one! I bought it at a boot sale thinking it was a vinyl.
@rabarebra replies to @rabarebra: @@AudioMasterclass I've bought many movies from such as you who thought it were vinyl records, for a bargain - were the laserdisc actually were of very high collectible value.