VERY good explanation.. I really had not fully understood it and now I do so Thank You ! Realizing the value of a very good phono stage more now.

The anecdote from your time as a DJ on radio is interesting. I remember visiting California from Ireland and trying to choose which FM radio station to listen to. In Ireland we had 2, SFO must have had 30+.

I remember back in the mid 1970's I was working at a tacky automated FM station in Ventura County, California and the station owner knew Michael Dorrough of Dorrough Electronics. One night he put in one of his multi-band compressors and I don't recall if it was better or worse than whatever we were using before. And then we went out drinking, which was standard procedure after any equipment change.

Vinyl discs just have a terrible audible noise floor but I’ve enjoyed the dynamics of well mastered analog vinyl a lot in the past. Most modern music lacks the nuances of playing real instruments with tiny sounds of fingers and other artifacts that made me enjoy finding these details on my Stax electrostatic headphones ages ago in my teens. Vinyl could impress me before in making me feel closer to the real thing and I miss some of that in most modern music where sounds are sampled. And yes, I know very well that audiophile music is also made with that in mind, but it’s not the major original leading music by leading artists made in such way.

Good questions! Great answers!

THANKS PAUL!!!!!! Really nice to hear from you!!!!!

I remember that radio station loudness war too well. None of the radio stations sounded as good as vinyl or cassette. Also, thank you for telling me what that RIAA is for.

@georgebertozzi8267

5 күн бұрын

nonsense!

My electronics genius brother in law designed and built his own expander to mitigate the vinyl compression. It was so good, he helped me build my own copy. It was sweet.

@alex_stanley

6 күн бұрын

In the 1980's, I had an RG Pro 20 dynamic range expander.

Nice Information, Thank You Paul Sir...

Then throw in FM pre and de- emphasis. It all comes back to best possible interpretation of the original sound or music. As they say " music should be manned not canned "

you could do a part on Pre-emphasis on early CD's compared to RIAA for vinyl mastering, its pretty related to the confusion of the questions at hand today, would make for some good info...some of those early pre-emphasis CD's are still the best sounding in my collection.

The Orban Optimod - also a must-have here in Germany for nearly every radio station since some decades. 😉

Nice desk!

Compression and RIAA equalization are different animals - compression alters circuit gain in proportion to signal amplitude, in RIAA equalization the gain curve is determined by frequency and is unaffected by the amplitude of the signal. But from the wording of the question, the comparison may not relate to the RIAA curve. If the usage is intentional, "cutting" in vinyl record production relates to creating the master on a cutting lathe. It's normal for there to be peak limiting (a specific type of compression) to avoid overdriving the cutting heads, to prevent either possible head burnout or over excursion of the groove to either be untraceable by a real-world stylus, or to break over into the adjacent track, or be so close as to modulate the adjacent track in a sort of "print through" effect. The peak limiting is designed to be as transparent as possible, but its effect in enabling the maximum possible use of the dynamic range available from the vinyl medium could be viewed as having a certain similarity to the brickwall limiting often used as part of the "loudness war" artillery.

@rabarebra

5 күн бұрын

You don't know what you are talking about.

@PlatypusPerspective

5 күн бұрын

@@rabarebra Aren't you fun? LOL

I ran a vinyl signal striaght from my 1978 Technics SL1200. Pretty dang "raw" and so low voltage grr and the Recievers (good ones I've used last 40yrs include Sansui and Sherwood) would RIAA up signal from the needle, good sounds except Sherwood forgot the rumble filter. A fix in my case is add the RIAA inline and separate sub 200hz 12V amp for "sub" or "woofer" as Sony employees refer to sub/rec out. Early days of digital companies would "trick" consumers by not adding the RIAA to their phono stage then provide the treatment within the Deck even for Coaxial Optical inputs😮. Best to get sub driver to get ya sound to 200hz and main reciever to chop main channels so detailed 4-6 in drivers are not trying to pump out 75hz and below sound. I think conspiracy when home audio systems state subwoofer is set to drop off sound above 80hz

RIAA is not compression in the normally understood meaning of the term - it's just EQ, and the original signal can be recovered providing there is enough dynamic range available.

I remember reading an article in an audio magazine back in the early 90’s saying the early rock CD’s were mastered from the LP master tapes and not the original masters. Giving credence to why early CD’s sounded poorly. So maybe the RIAA curve would work on those CD’s? Most interesting

@blainefrank9243

6 күн бұрын

I heard that as well and wondered if you could apply EQ to correct the sound. I never heard how many CDs were released this way.

@blainefrank9243

6 күн бұрын

I heard that as well and wondered if you could apply EQ to correct the sound. I never heard how many CDs were released this way. I just asked google Gemini about this and it said it was widely practiced and probably affected thousands of releases. This was practiced only for a brief period until engineers gained experience with the new technology.

@rabarebra

5 күн бұрын

There is no such thing as a LP master tape. 😂

Amplitude compression, it’s not frequency’s compression.

Great video as usual Paul. A couple of comments. 1. The late David C Manley attempted to but a record without the RIAA curve at 78 RPM - all he got was 2 minutes of music (source - The VTL Book) 2. What are your thoughts on the dBX encoded LPs of the 1970s? They were cut with compression, maybe 50dB, & from memory, expanded by a factor of 1.4 to get your 70dB plus of dynamic range; there would be the side effect of "pumping" ot "breathing" if one tried to apply too much expansion. Proponents of the system claimed it expanded regular Lps as well.

Most people's listening environment has around 40dbSPL-45dbSPL noise floor. Threshold of Pain - where ears bleed - is around 110dbSPL. High volume listening is around 90dbSPL. So there is literally around 40db-50db of dynamic range available in most listening situations. Good clean vinyl playback can easily exceed this. However the reality is other than between tracks there is little in musical sources that go much beyond 20db of dynamic range. Especially the more commercial releases. And the max level is going to be hit early in the song and stay at that peak no matter what "dynamic" section comes along next. No that screaming guitar was no louder than the vocalist right before it because both were recorded to peak levels allowed. This claim of how some systems especially speakers show more dynamics is actually showing design problems with them. Artificially creating a dynamic that did not exist in the recording. I repped DBX when it first came out in the 70's. Easily to promote and sell because it added all kinds of extra dynamics not in the source itself. Sailing by Christopher Cross was particularly effective. Other than samples, never owned nor used them.

Only if you are 18 years old where you can listen to sounds older people can't here. Also you must have great speakers. If so maybe you can listen to these soft tones. Only maybe

What’s the “luber” sticker about?

The same with a special curve is used in Dolby noise reduction. The magic is trying to uncompress with the Dolby curve to restore. It is a standard. They did a pretty good job, but that's the first occurrence of the "pumping effect". This was used in cassette tapes and Reel to Reel recording,. I don't think they ever did 8 tracks - what's the point eh

Todaya music Dynamic Range.is about 15db tp 8DB

That RIAA equalization curve you describe is for a velocity sensing cartridge. I had a Germanium Strain Gauge cartridge that was close enough to flat that the remaining could be done mechanically in the stylus linkage. It had an equivalent moving mass of 0.6 mgr. I wish I could still get replacement needles. Cheap crystal cartridges also fudged the playback response to flat.

Beautiful question... I use riia curve in digital playback...it sounds warm and very analogish

One of the criticisms of DSD is its high frequency noise. My ears are too old to worry about this but I've oft wondered if 50uS pre-emphasis like FM radio with the corresponding de-emphasis on playback would be a useful.

@roygalaasen

7 күн бұрын

High frequency noise? Isn’t that the whole point of the extreme sample rate that you can comfortably filter out the unwanted higher frequencies? Having said that, I once made a realtime DSD to PCM player that worked pretty well. I noticed absolutely no high frequency noise despite me doing no filtering at all. The only drawback was a very audible soft noise floor which I blame the pretime calculated array I used to speed up the otherwise intense calculation.

@necrodh

5 күн бұрын

The problem is the modern crap dacs like sabre, also using level 6, flacs those somehow have an audio degradation and sound more higher and produce tinnitus, use a level 0 flac or even better a wav file and all sound clear and relaxed

@roygalaasen

5 күн бұрын

@@necrodh flac is lossless. The levels of compression is just the amount of resources the encoder will throw at the audio to compress it. Decompression takes roughly the same amount of time either way. Regardless of compression level, there is absolutely no loss. Edit: Flac is PCM, and while FLAC probably can compress anything as long as you format it in a certain way, it won’t be much efficient on anything else, as it was designed for PCM audio and not DSD or text or binary.

you need some room treatments😂

Someone please answer my question like I’m someone with zero audio experience. I have 3 copies of Tears for Fears “Songs From the Big Chair” 1 is the OG vinyl in mint condition, play perfectly. 2 is the OG Cd, European release. 3 is the 2020 CD Remaster. ALL 3 were Digitally Mastered. So, why does the Vinyl have better front to back depth and overall better sense of space than CD’s? And basically 95% of my vinyl records does this over my CD’s. No one can explain this to me.

Tweety bird, oh thy tweety tweety.

The correct terms regarding the RIAA curves are attenuation and boost, it is not compression.

chosing a radio by volume not by programs ..mmm never did that. gargage comes loud. and good stuff were in shitty stations.

So long as an album is well recorded, mixed and mastered, and stamped to a good quality cd or carved into a good quality vinyl disc, it will sound great. The safest and cheapest way in general to get great sound quality of older recordings is to seek out versions released in the mid 80s to about 1992. This was the golden era of commercial cd mastering. Dizzie Gillespie's greatest hits cd around this era AAD sounds fantastic including many others. Nirvana's original release of Nevermind an AAD release sounds fantastic also or Prince Diamonds and Pearls AAD from the same year 1991. In such an expensive economy I implore folk who want affordable dynamic well made music to seek out cds from this era.

@birgerolovsson5203

7 күн бұрын

90 and 92 was the year of my 2 main references. Mike Oldfields - Amarok (which I use in a HDCD-version now) and Roger Waters - Amused To Death.

@puglife6291

7 күн бұрын

@@birgerolovsson5203 awesome. I have the early 80s Virgin records cd of Tubular Bells with pre-emphasis. The one everyone says sounds thin and tinny. It only sounds this way if the album is not de-emphasized then it sounds great.

@AnimusInvidious

6 күн бұрын

Oh, yikes. Some of the worst digital masters of all-time are from CDs of that era. They really didn't know how to do the low end, and they tended to be overly thin and bright. Watch out!

@musicman8270

6 күн бұрын

You need to listen to recordings from the fifties to sixties. Especically jazz. The sound is amazing. Take five, Kind Of Blue, all of the recordings from that period. Amazing really.

@puglife6291

6 күн бұрын

@@AnimusInvidious relative to their respective remasters, they are much more preferable. Also sensitive speakers and powerful amps can get the best out of those albums. I'd rather sacrifice some of the body of the sound for more true dynamic range and lower distortion. As I said, a quality set up will more or less make up for this.

I wonder how a digital recording would sound like with no compression at all but the digital recording would be completely 100% uncompressed. The dynamic range compression is completely off since it would not be used at all, the equalization is completely off since the eq would not be used at all. The digital recording on the frequency response graph would be completely 100% ruler flat. The digital recording would have 0 coloration to the original track with 0 plug-ins. There would be 2 versions, 1 version would be the digital recording methods that I have already mentioned and another recording method would be recorded with live instruments in anechoic chamber and the same vocalist in the same anechoic chamber with the live instruments. These recording methods that I have described is something that I would be interested in hearing live for examples and being able to hear them in person inside of a recording studio.

@vinylrules4838

6 күн бұрын

They sound great. Think Orchestral or wind band recordings. Huge dynamic range, usually no or very little compression. I remember taking an orchestral CD to a box audio store; it starts out -45db. The salesman looking at the meter was like, what is wrong with this recording. 🤣

@rabarebra

5 күн бұрын

There are literally tons of blu-ray pure audio discs you can test. Even Dark Side of the Moon, which is now sold separately on blu-ray - instead of just avail from the overpriced boxset. In the menu you can choose uncompressed audio.

Sound in that video sucks a bit (pumping)... That's new.

@Fastvoice

6 күн бұрын

Camera mic instead of the usual lavalier.

guy who sent you the letter didn't ask for you radio compression 2:30 minute chitchat

Most recordings require a sensible amount of compression to be playable on even the best home system. Too much dynamic range can make quiet passages too low to hear or loud passages screamingly loud and the listener will constantly have to adjust volume.

@paulmilligan3007

7 күн бұрын

Any recording should have the dynamic range the original artist or composer played in the performance, anything else is not high fidelity.

@3Cr15w311

6 күн бұрын

That is especially true when listening in a vehicle's audio system. Even a good cassette recording from a vinyl album would be so that you would hear the loud parts fine but the quiet parts of the song couldn't be heard at all due to vehicle noise while driving. I found that listening on computer speakers in my office had a similar problem due to ambient noise. Listening at a lower level was necessary in the office but you could only hear the loud parts and the quiet parts vanished into the ambient noise. My home system doesn't have any ambient noise competing with it since I live alone so it's never been a problem there since my HVAC system is very quiet.

@kc9scott

6 күн бұрын

@@paulmilligan3007 There are a few recordings where the dynamic range IS too much, and the musicality can be improved by judicious use of compression. It is however a very small percentage of recordings that are like that.

luber? LOL

The simple fact is that recordists back in the day knew how to make it work and work well. A typical album from the 70s for example will usually have a variance in level between the various parts of a song around 12db, sometimes closer to 15db. Most recordings made today if you measure you will see between 1db and maximum 3db. It sounds like it's been through a trash compactor. In other words it sounds like garbage, it hurts your ears to try to listen to it

I'm still looking for music that needs 32 bits, or 24 bits, or even 16 bits bit depth. Vinyl discs might have much more dynamic range available than the music available. I'm not sure I would want to listen any dynamic range close to 70 dB.

@AnimusInvidious

6 күн бұрын

What, are you listening to music at 12 or 8 bit? Lol. Bit rate is more about the noise floor more than the dynamic range. But yeah, 16 is pretty much adequate for everything - unless you plan to do any further processing on it, in which case higher bit rates do gain benefit.

@Jorge-Fernandez-Lopez

6 күн бұрын

@@AnimusInvidious I was talking about bit depth, not bit rate. Sample rate is a different topic.

@rabarebra

5 күн бұрын

@@Jorge-Fernandez-Lopez jesus, what a noobhead

First😊

@spacemissing

7 күн бұрын

Being first here is meaningless.

@MCMTL

7 күн бұрын

Aww, man! I'm usually first... It's ok, it's your turn.

@MCMTL

7 күн бұрын

@@spacemissing Party pooper alert!

@NoEgg4u

7 күн бұрын

The mindset about being pathetic, is not realizing that you are pathetic. There is nothing virtuous about being pathetic. Spamming the comments section with self-congratulatory comments over achieving nothing is inappropriate and pathetic.

@MCMTL

6 күн бұрын

@NoEgg4u We're having fun. If you're not happy about it, take a hike! *First to tell him off!*

Paul is wrong, again. Vinyl can only get to 70 dB on the outside track. Vinyl's average is more like 60 dB, and is audibly worse than digital.

@roygalaasen

7 күн бұрын

It makes sense, really. Not sure why it is so difficult for people to understand. 1. Every aspect of a vinyl recording is full of places where quality can and will degrade. 2. Vinyls aren’t analogue any more. If it a vinyl production starts off being digital and analogue is the reason for listening to vinyls in the first place, you better check your head. 3. If you cut a piece of a circular cake the normal way, which piece of the cake is the biggest? Innermost or outermost? So when you spin a vinyl, the needle traverses a greater distance per time than in the inner grooves. Making sound quality better in the beginning of a record than in the end.

@StrangeBrewReviews

7 күн бұрын

sure but almost no one is using half of the CD's ability..I have Vinyl albums that are way more dynamic then the CD versions, mostly with very good jazz albums. but thats really a different discussion, 60DB range is still above what is often used even on CD.

@RoderikvanReekum

7 күн бұрын

60dB will do!

@CHSS

6 күн бұрын

1. Surface noise is bad, and you can say digital is better in that aspect. 2. The average loudness of vinyl makes it more live than most digital masters made for streaming or CD. Take the latest Rolling Stones record. The average loudness master for digital use is about -6db, while the digital master for vinyl has an average of almost -12db. Not much, you think, but a lot when you listen to it.

@markmeridian3360

6 күн бұрын

@@StrangeBrewReviews The point isn't that there are bad CD recordings, the point is that digital is inherently better. MUCH better.