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[sevenlayermuddle]

Hmm, not convinced that microphony expains the vinyl difference, else the difference would be absent when using headphones?

One possible explanation I have come across is that the brain perceives recorded music to be more reallistic if it can correlate what it hears with what it sees.   With vinyl, we see a stylus being lowered to the surface, and hear a click as it makes contact, then some background rumble as it trudges along the groove to where the more dense area of track where music starts.   Everything adds up, the brain accepts what is happening.   If there’s a scratch, the brain can visualise the mechanical effect, predict and maybe even filter out each subsequent ‘pop’ as the stylus hits the damage.  Whereas with CD all we get is this magical stream of (very good) music, which is slightly counterintuitive to the natural world, as we can’t see where it comes from.

Another thing that gets digital music a bad reputation is of course the various compressed formats, but that’s avoidable by not doing that.    Also with some CDs, and digital recordings in general, are sometimes deliberately processed and “emphasised” by the studio on the assumption they should be optimised for portable earphones, or for car audio, or for background music in elevators.  They then sound downright strange, if played in a normal home environment with half decent speakers.

No matter what the explanation, I do often find it easy to convince sceptics that Vinyl sounds nicer, and more natural, just by letting them switch back/forth for a while.  In particular, certain vocals that I can think of, can create a feeling that the artist is in the room with me on vinyl.  That just doesn’t happen with corresponding CD release of same album.

[Weaver]

The issue of microphony is well documented and I have had personal unfortunate acquaintance with it. There’s more to it than just that though.

There is also reverb within the vinyl record itself, with the sound from the stylus echoing around and coming back from the outer rim of the record. I think headphones are indeed more accurate in this respect, as you say.

Some turntables isolate much better than others of course and some supports are more solid. There’s also the option of a cover over the turntable which shields the cartridge and record from the sound from the speakers. This can all be tested by turning the gain up and down and a record cut at a high level will be better of course too.

[sevenlayermuddle]

I don’t doubt that microphony exists, affecting vinyl replay in an adverse way, and always present to a greater or lesser extent, though infintesimaly small when using headphones.

I do doubt whether it influences the effect, illusionary or otherwise, whereby many people think Vinyl sounds nicer.     My doubts are based on the fact that such folks, if I am typical, would assert that vinyl sounds nicer even through headphones, which would exclude the microphony factor.

[Weaver]

From my personal experience and articles I have read, I would say that vinyl sounds ‘nicer’ on some recordings because they were mastered wrong, assuming treble loss in the master cutting phase and precompensating for it. Some digital recordings in my experience are horrible, too bright and things got better when engineers forgot about vinyl being the target.

I absolutely agree about vinyl being nicer, in certain cases only though.

It is my belief that microphony if present can sound nicer because everyone likes reverb, so much so that performers add artificial reverb and in most situations all musicians seek natural reverb out. My wife is a singer, as was I after a fashion, although only an amateur unlike her, and she can attest to this love of all sources of reverb.

I have shouted into a valve amp and got microphony back and of course a turntable is more sensitive.

A high-end turntable will often use an expensive cartridge that requires a very high gain. This too increases the microphony. And the vinyl-internal stylus reverb is always present. Articles have been published on this subject and that is why some high end turntables have specially designed record mats some of which are sticky, many are damping felt. Record clamps also play a part although this is less clear and I don’t remember seeing much written about them. Didn’t the Oracle turntable come with a clamp? I always used one and a special sticky damping mat, on my Thorens.

But sevenlayermuddle is right to be sceptical as I have never seen anything published about human testing of record player microphony or amp microphony. I do have personal experience of it though and I can’t say anything about the reverb because of the possibility of reverb already being orsent in recordings and I didn’t do A-B comparisons with very high end headphones, but then in any case you would just be testing speakers vs headphones so the test would be hopeless. But I got the feeling that the bass was enhanced and warmer when there was more uncontrolled acoustic feedback and the sound retreated become colder and darker and more distant when the record player support was dramatically improved by the Humber Bridge and concrete blocks. One interesting test for anyone to do would be record player lid/cover-on-vs-off. (If you have one.) it seems to me that hinged lids are not clever as they are microphones unless the lid is fully closed and the whole thing is damped. A swinging wobbling lid on a part-closed hinge is very silly. A lid that is oversized and goes right over the outside of the whole turntable, like a bell jar, would be a better option surely. I just put a very heavy paperweight on my lid.

Actually forget headphones - a better test would be to put the turntable in the next room or in an insulated box, out of the way of the speakers. Then do a test with high gain.

God all of this is taking me back.

I don’t mind talking about audio _at all_ but I was interested in the future of dsl so I started something with a mention of a topic that we all love. Should perhaps have split the thread. Will we mourn dsl and copper? Anyone for COBOL? (Shudders.)

I did a lot of Z80 assembler for a living at work to begin with, 100% full time. I found it really annoying though, even though it is a capable 8 but processor but a but slow unless it’s strengths can shine. Other processors I all found enjoyable but not the Z80. Aside from that I really miss writing in assembler and mourn the transition into high level languages for pretty much absolutely everything. that’s why I have been writing a few very small bits of AMD64/Intel x64 asm code recently for a giant speed-up of certain algorithms wher compilers don’t have access to certain new instructions or don’t know to use them.

[sevenlayermuddle]

I actually think the audio debate is very relevant to DSL.   Should FTTP ever deprive us of the metalic path for telephony, there might be corresponding arguments over VoIP vs POTS.   For example, packetisation delays, compression artefacts, comfort noise, all of which have potential to be debated and liked/disliked.

Re assemblers, yes, a great way to program.   I started with mainframe assembler, did some Intel but never liked It, found Motorola much easier.   I have done some Microchip PIC at hobby level, which is fun too, disciplines you to produce small footprint efficient code.  I regret I never got the chance to write PowerPC assembler, simply because I think I would have felt some satisfaction whenever using the instruction “EIEIO”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enforce_In-order_Execution_of_I/O

[kitz]

I find the vinyl -v- CD debate rather interesting.   

As someone who can recall saving up several months wages for a "Music System" that contained a CD player, I was blown away by the sound quality of my very first CD.   
The reason I wanted a CD player - being a big Dire Straits fan, it was the sound quality of Brothers in Arms and there were only about half a dozen available CDs back then - but make no mistake the CD was definitely better than the vinyl version.

Gawd knows what happened to most of my record collection, because at one time I had a lot.  As a teen I had just about every top 10 single, and a fair collection of LP's and even some 12" EPs that I had to specially order.   I suspect most of them went AWOL after my last house move and/or my daughter sold them like she did with her full collection of first edition Disney VHS tapes that I later found she sold for peanuts  

[Weaver]

I don’t know what happened to all the LPs. They may have got lost in a house move. When we had a flat in Crouch End / Hornsey, in North London for eleven years 1987-1998, after which we left and came to Skye, even at the start of that period, back in 1987, I didn’t have a turntable any more in that flat. I had given the Thorens and my amp to someone at work so it would go to a good home.

Kitz - I was there too, my wife loved that Dire Straits album and the sound of it was special.