Digitizing Vinyl with your Devialet 120/200/250/400/800

[marcor]

I did some tests using audacity. Just to figure out input and levels following the discussion on the other thread.
This is the plot of 7 seconds of Touch Me from The Doors' The Soft Parade. Second press, red label.
Full of informations up almost to 95000 Hz. now that curve on a cd ends at 22k ...

Excuse me for being sceptical, but this graph doesn't convince me that there is any useful information from the recording process in the range 20-95 kHz. Frank (f1eng) knows infinitely more about this than I, but I doubt when that recording was made that the recording chain would be capable of capturing information above ~20 kHz, never mind encoding it accurately onto vinyl… On the other hand I can understand how there could be noise and distortion in this frequency range.

Still, it comes down to whether you like what you hear, and in that sense what the graph shows doesn't really matter in the slightest.

Well I am not an expert. Probably there is a noise component for sure and perhaps the sound information is only up to the 48k as Frank says and the rest is noise. I am limiting myself in showing what I got from my dabbling.
Regarding the ability of a vinyl of having more range than a cd I would think is a known fact. The nowadays hires music a lot of time is the result of new digital aquisition of old analog recording and the spectrogram are very similar to the one I posted. I found the thing interesting.
To my hear the difference between cd and vinyl is quite clear. I had friends doubting it and so far when I had them to listen the same recording in the 2 formats they were able to discern the differences.

cheers

M

[thumb5]

I'm no expert either. But from a science/engineering point of view, I think the less the spectrogram showed above about 20 kHz, the happier I'd be. That's because I believe (a) my (most?) loudspeakers aren't designed to reproduce signals above 20 kHz, and (b) I can't hear them anyway.

I don't doubt that there may be differences between vinyl and CD, by the way; I just wouldn't bet on them being due to vinyl having "higher range" than a CD.

[f1eng]

LPs are capable of recording above 20kHz, but not at very high level. It depends on the cutter head. The HF bit wears quite quickly too.
Some cartridges can pick up above 20 kHz. There is a massive difference between cartridges in this area. Some are chock full of resonances above audible frequencies, double digit distortion is common in the top audible octave, even in very expensive cartridges.
Some designers chose to roll the cartridge off early (this sounds best to me ) some starting at 15 kHz some lower. Electrical characteristics of the phono stage and interference susceptibility of the wiring make a big difference at very high frequencies too. Thank goodness we can't hear them...
If you are seeing output above 40kHz it will almost certainly be 100% noise pickup from equipment not screened for this environment.

In terms of a CD and LP sounding different this is no surprise. The compromises needed for each medium are different, apart from the common recent choice to compress the hell out of everything so the sound is OK in a car and on ear buds in public.

If a CD and LP of the same basic recording sounded the same it would imply lazy engineering from the mastering engineer.

For LP the bass has to be mono, or the groove wouldn't be continuous. The signal to noise ratio is poorer so usually low level sound is amplified up a bit to keep it away from the noise. High level upper frequencies are limited if too high (this is not often necessary).
Mono bass is "good" since the power is shared between both amps and speakers and bass is supposed to be non-directional anyway.
Raising the low level sounds makes the detail easier to hear, which is a benefit too.
So there are two shortcomings of the LP manufacturing process which encourage the application of a "fix" which will sound nicer on every system.

Marcor which cartridge, phono cable and phono stage are you using?

[marcor]

LPs are capable of recording above 20kHz, but not at very high level. It depends on the cutter head. The HF bit wears quite quickly too.
Some cartridges can pick up above 20 kHz. There is a massive difference between cartridges in this area. Some are chock full of resonances above audible frequencies, double digit distortion is common in the top audible octave, even in very expensive cartridges.
Some designers chose to roll the cartridge off early (this sounds best to me ) some starting at 15 kHz some lower. Electrical characteristics of the phono stage and interference susceptibility of the wiring make a big difference at very high frequencies too. Thank goodness we can't hear them...
If you are seeing output above 40kHz it will almost certainly be 100% noise pickup from equipment not screened for this environment.

In terms of a CD and LP sounding different this is no surprise. The compromises needed for each medium are different, apart from the common recent choice to compress the hell out of everything so the sound is OK in a car and on ear buds in public.

If a CD and LP of the same basic recording sounded the same it would imply lazy engineering from the mastering engineer.

For LP the bass has to be mono, or the groove wouldn't be continuous. The signal to noise ratio is poorer so usually low level sound is amplified up a bit to keep it away from the noise. High level upper frequencies are limited if too high (this is not often necessary).
Mono bass is "good" since the power is shared between both amps and speakers and bass is supposed to be non-directional anyway.
Raising the low level sounds makes the detail easier to hear, which is a benefit too.
So there are two shortcomings of the LP manufacturing process which encourage the application of a "fix" which will sound nicer on every system.

Marcor which cartridge, phono cable and phono stage are you using?

Hi Frank,
my cartridge is an Air Tight PC-3
http://www.elusivedisc.com/AIR-TIGHT-PC-...o/AIRTPC3/
phonostage is the Devialet's one, cables are the standard cable that come with my SME V series tonearm.
Just a couple of notes. Not all the vinyl I did try to record come out like this. This particular one has a lot of brass in this piece and probably that contributes to the plot.
Yes there is a lot of noise. I am attaching a picture of the spectrogram, (not the plot) you can clearly see the noise and the resonance arriving up to the 96kHz but you can also see the sound going over the 50k. The spike you see match with the spikes in the dB (they are not tick).

Just to be clear I am not trying to make a point just sharing what I found. I am pretty pleased of how my gear sounds, i am just trying to understand a bit what is behind it.

thanks

Marco

[f1eng]

Interesting Marco, thanks.
Brass and much percussion definitely produces sound above 20kHz, I have never been convince I could hear it!
Which LP is this? I am tempted to buy and listen.

[marcor]

Interesting Marco, thanks.
Brass and much percussion definitely produces sound above 20kHz, I have never been convince I could hear it!
Which LP is this? I am tempted to buy and listen.

Hi Frank,

I don't claim I can hear them either
What I discovered is that I perceive that the sounds keep going beyond my audible limit. It is very difficult to explain it, but when I compare the recordings I feel like the sound is more open. It is similar to what Mikeeo was saying about the 192 vs 96 settings on the Devialet. You perceive a difference but you cannot point it out. Some people can hear it better in his case was the wife in mine was my daughter.
I did this test here with my daughters and they managed to hear the highest one but that is only 19k I stopped earlier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxcbppCX6Rk

the LP is The Doors' The Soft Parade. Second press, red label. the song was Touch Me

cheers
Marco

[thumb5]

Marco - very interesting to see these results, thanks for posting. Like you, I'm interested mainly in the end result, i.e. what the system sounds like, although trying to understand how that result is achieved is also part of the enjoyment for me.

Ian

[f1eng]

the LP is The Doors' The Soft Parade. Second press, red label. the song was Touch Me

cheers
Marco

Unfortunately I only have Strange Days and L. A. Woman on LP...

[thumb5]

Just completed my first vinyl rip using the Devialet. It worked like a charm!

By the way, I used AlpineSoft's Vinyl Studio (highly recommended!) on my MacBook Pro to record the audio from the Devialet, add metadata, split tracks, get rid of the worst of the clicks, and spit out the track files in ALAC. All done in recording time plus about 10 minutes.

[mangolego]

Hi everyone ! I am having hard time to set the USB jack as an output. Anyone can help me.

Thank you