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Topic: I like colored/distorted sound (Read 8749 times) previous topic - next topic
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I like colored/distorted sound

Just to write something about "vinyl does not sound better", well, "betterness" is a very subjective thing. Many people. including me, actually like sound colored/distorted in a certain way, whatever it is old LP records, magnetic tape, or Amiga MODs made with raw crispy 16 Khz 8-bit samples without a reconstruction filter. I am a lo-fi guy and I am not afraid to admit that vinyl, tape, old samplers, Amiga 500, etc. are technologically highly inferior to CDs. However, for some people like me, accurate sound is not really the goal. Vinyl would sound "wrong" with an accurate frequency response and old tracked computer music would sound hideously muffled if "mathematically correct" anti-aliasing filters were applied. Obviously there is place for everything, for example, I wouldn't record bat recordings on vinyl and I don't want to hear heavy metal in MOD format with 16 Khz samples either. However there is absolutely nothing wrong with liking inaccurate sound. What is bad is pretending that those legendary vintage technologies are technologically superior to Redbook or higher resolution audio, as some vinyl lovers do. I am among the many people who love the sound of the legendary Amiga sound chip Paula and the sound of old samplers like Emulator II, but none of those fans would claim that their DACs are better than DACs on a modern 5.1 soundcard or whatever. The vinyl audiophiles should stop pretending that their love for vinyl is based on technological superiority.

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #1
old tracked computer music would sound hideously muffled if "mathematically correct" anti-aliasing filters were applied.

Heh, I’ve been using FM instruments from the Mega Drive (a.k.a. Genesis) on my PC and one of my synths, and although they sound pretty great – and there are certainly uses for the somewhat ‘modernised’ versions that result from the pristine signal paths on the latter devices – I’ve come to realise how much character, good or bad, the YM2612 adds to everything that goes through it. Effects such as bit-crushing, downsampling, and artificial aliasing seem limited in their ability to get that particular edge back – and anyway, above and beyond the aliasing and so on, I imagine the time-division-multiplexed mixer (yes, a TDMd mixer ) is largely responsible*, and there’s no way to simulate that on-the-fly. Oh well: as I said, the other devices are more than close enough, and I’ll be glad for their higher quality in many other contexts.

* Excuse me if my imagination is way off-base, but won’t a TDMd mixer introduce frequent broadband ‘clicks’ at the transitions between the unrelated last sample from one channel and first from the next? If so, that ought to make a significant contribution to the chip’s particular cocktail of distortion.

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #2
I gravitate towards Neuron's point of view. When I read internet "discussions" like this, it seems strange to get riled up when it comes to music. The science will speak for itself about the technical aspects. Another poster put it very poetically once that stuck with me:
Quote
Music sounds good because you like it. Not because of the 'quality' of the playback system. If you think the ability of music to move you is down to the way it was recorded you are doing it wrong. Vinyl is good enough. Fucks sake, cassette was good enough in the right circumstances. -RonaldDumsfeld
from here.
That said, I grew up with tapes and remember taking home a fresh cassette of Pearl Jam's Ten and thinking I was in heaven. (Yeah, I was very late adopting CD.)

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #3
Good cassetes aren't lo-fi through. A better example would say be how a vintage 78 rpm record can be very enjoyable, or a home recorded cheap cassette copy.

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #4
Good cassetes aren't lo-fi through. A better example would say be how a vintage 78 rpm record can be very enjoyable, or a home recorded cheap cassette copy.

How about my 90 minute x6-over-recorded mix tapes? 

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #5
Good cassetes aren't lo-fi through. A better example would say be how a vintage 78 rpm record can be very enjoyable, or a home recorded cheap cassette copy.

How about my 90 minute x6-over-recorded mix tapes? 


True. I have many 1990s tapes that sound like the CD through. It is the "1970s shortwave radio recordings jammed by the communist authorities" cassettes my dad made when he was younger than me that sound "lo-fi".

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #6
The vinyl audiophiles should stop pretending that their love for vinyl is based on technological superiority.

...or even warrants it.

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #7
Just to write something about "vinyl does not sound better", well, "betterness" is a very subjective thing.


I don't think you give yourself enough credit. Are you constantly missing phone calls because when you hear your phone ring, you never recognize it as being your phone?

If this were true then your ears would be untrainable. I think you are better than that. I think your ears are trainable.

Quote
Many people. including me, actually like sound colored/distorted in a certain way, whatever it is old LP records, magnetic tape, or Amiga MODs made with raw crispy 16 Khz 8-bit samples without a reconstruction filter.


Those are not distorted just one way. Each of the distortions you have mentioned is a distinct and different form of distortion. Many of the forms of distortion you mention may be unique to just one piece of media.

Quote
I am a lo-fi guy and I am not afraid to admit that vinyl, tape, old samplers, Amiga 500, etc. are technologically highly inferior to CDs. However, for some people like me, accurate sound is not really the goal. Vinyl would sound "wrong" with an accurate frequency response and old tracked computer music would sound hideously muffled if "mathematically correct" anti-aliasing filters were applied. Obviously there is place for everything, for example, I wouldn't record bat recordings on vinyl and I don't want to hear heavy metal in MOD format with 16 Khz samples either. However there is absolutely nothing wrong with liking inaccurate sound. What is bad is pretending that those legendary vintage technologies are technologically superior to Redbook or higher resolution audio, as some vinyl lovers do. I am among the many people who love the sound of the legendary Amiga sound chip Paula and the sound of old samplers like Emulator II, but none of those fans would claim that their DACs are better than DACs on a modern 5.1 soundcard or whatever. The vinyl audiophiles should stop pretending that their love for vinyl is based on technological superiority.


In my opinon the more likely explanation is that you have a bias towards these recordings that is based on what you know about them by other means than just listening.

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #8
I don't think you give yourself enough credit.
I don’t think you give Neuron enough credit!

Many people. including me, actually like sound colored/distorted in a certain way, whatever it is old LP records, magnetic tape, or Amiga MODs made with raw crispy 16 Khz 8-bit samples without a reconstruction filter.
Those are not distorted just one way. Each of the distortions you have mentioned is a distinct and different form of distortion. Many of the forms of distortion you mention may be unique to just one piece of media.
That’s why Neuron said “whatever it is”. The only person creating a false equivalence here is you. The point was exactly that the peculiar properties of a given device can give it individual character that some people might like, for whatever reason, even at the same time as they acknowledge its technical inferiority. Nowhere was it asserted that there is one type of universally pleasing distortion or any other lo-fi trait that all these devices share.

In my opinon the more likely explanation is that you have a bias towards these recordings that is based on what you know about them by other means than just listening.
Why is that? Not wanting to paint myself as reflective of someone else’s opinions but offering my own example as an analogy, I recognise that the chip in the Mega Drive is a corner-cutting monstrosity that, on paper and in some cases to the ears, is quite ugly. Still, I grew up with those sounds, and something about them works in some way. Some sounds just don’t sound ‘right’, normal, familiar, whatever on equipment with better signal-processing. You can attribute that all to nostalgia if you want, but it remains based on hearing, not on some story you might imagine I’ve heard. No, all the tales I’ve read about lo-fi equipment sound like horror stories. But we don’t listen with our eyes, do we?

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #9
...I recognise that the chip in the Mega Drive is a corner-cutting monstrosity that, on paper and in some cases to the ears, is quite ugly. Still, I grew up with those sounds, and something about them works in some way. Some sounds just don’t sound ‘right’, normal, familiar, whatever on equipment with better signal-processing. You can attribute that all to nostalgia if you want, but it remains based on hearing, not on some story you might imagine I’ve heard.
These vintage sound chips are musical instruments in their own right, with their own characteristics.

In that context, you should no more criticise them for aliasing and distortion than you would criticise a violin for producing harmonics as well as the fundamental. A violin is not a sine wave generator. A vintage sound chip is not an accurate audio reproducer.

Of course, that's not how people saw them back in the day - they were irritated by their limitations and wanted to make them better. But so often in art we look back at limitations or quirks of a previous era and enjoy the impact they had on the art created then - be that paint palettes, instrument design or recording technologies.


I'm not sure this correlates all too well with the current vinyl discussion. It would have more relevance if we were talking about DJs mixing and scratching vinyl.

Interesting though that modern CD mastering practice is widely panned because (I forget where I read this so I'm paraphrasing) "it cannot be right that every recording is supposed to be harsh, dynamically squashed, and clipped" - whereas some vinyl fans are happy for the characteristics of vinyl to be imposed on every recording they listen to (those characteristics on a typical audiophile's set-up apparently being a V-shaped EQ, subtle background noise and distortion, etc).

Sorry for drifting OT.

On on topic: long story short is this: AFAIK no one has successfully ABX'd vinyl against vinyl looped through 16/44.1 conversion. It's not quite the question at hand, but it's a far easier test to perform than ABXing 16/44.1 sourced vinyl from 24/96 sourced vinyl.

Cheers,
David.

P.S. Irony with those old sound chips is that some pumped out huge amounts of ultrasonics that could, conceivably, cause an audible effect in-band when subsequently distorted by the amplifier or speakers. You'd need to sample at 96kHz or 192kHz if you wanted to preserve that effect.

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #10
Good cassetes aren't lo-fi through. A better example would say be how a vintage 78 rpm record can be very enjoyable, or a home recorded cheap cassette copy.

78s don't have to be lo-fi either...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Z-ae7bcNY
...depends on the recording technology, and the pressing material - both could be good from the 1920s onwards.

Cheers,
David.

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #11
Good cassetes aren't lo-fi through. A better example would say be how a vintage 78 rpm record can be very enjoyable, or a home recorded cheap cassette copy.

78s don't have to be lo-fi either...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Z-ae7bcNY
...depends on the recording technology, and the pressing material - both could be good from the 1920s onwards.


The cartrdiges weren't too good until light-tracking magnetics with reliable styli became available. That happened in the late 1950s.

wikipedia:

"The first commercially successful type of electrical phonograph pickup was introduced in 1925. Although electromagnetic, its resemblance to later magnetic cartridges is remote: it contained a bulky horseshoe magnet and employed the same imprecisely mass-produced single-use steel needles which had been standard since the first crude disc record players appeared in the 1890s. Its tracking weight was specified in ounces, not grams. This early type of magnetic pickup completely dominated the market well into the 1930s, but by the end of that decade it had been superseded by a comparatively lightweight piezoelectric crystal pickup type. The use of short-lived disposable metal needles remained standard. During the years of affluence and long-deferred consumer demand immediately following World War II, as old record players with very heavy pickups were replaced, precision-ground and conveniently long-lasting stylus tips made of sapphire or exotic hard metals such as osmium were increasingly popular. However, records made for home use still played at 78 rpm and most of them were still made of the same old abrasive shellac compound formulated to rapidly wear down the points of steel needles to fit the groove.

The introduction of the 33? rpm vinyl LP "album" in 1948 and the 45 rpm vinyl "single" in 1949 prompted consumers to upgrade to a new multi-speed record player with the required smaller-tipped "microgroove" stylus. Sapphire and diamond then became the standard stylus tip materials. At first, the new styli came installed in smaller, lighter piezoelectric crystal or ceramic cartridges of the general type found in inexpensive self-contained portable record players throughout the vinyl era. Ceramic cartridges continue to be used in most of the "retro" and compact record players currently being made, in part because they are comparatively robust and resistant to damage from careless handling. However, during the 1950s, a new generation of small, lightweight, highly compliant magnetic cartridges appeared and quickly found favor among high-fidelity enthusiasts because of their audibly superior performance. The high compliance also reduced record wear. They soon became standard in all but the cheapest component audio systems and are the most common type of pickup cartridge in use today."

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #12
Good cassetes aren't lo-fi through. A better example would say be how a vintage 78 rpm record can be very enjoyable, or a home recorded cheap cassette copy.

78s don't have to be lo-fi either...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Z-ae7bcNY
...depends on the recording technology, and the pressing material - both could be good from the 1920s onwards.


The cartrdiges weren't too good until light-tracking magnetics with reliable styli became available.
I wasn't talking about the period reproduction, but the recordings themselves. The records always had more on them than contemporary domestic playback could reveal.

Not all period electrical reproduction used steel needles though...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SZKgJU08i4
(not hi-fi!)

Cheers,
David.

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #13
Good cassetes aren't lo-fi through. A better example would say be how a vintage 78 rpm record can be very enjoyable, or a home recorded cheap cassette copy.

78s don't have to be lo-fi either...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Z-ae7bcNY
...depends on the recording technology, and the pressing material - both could be good from the 1920s onwards.

Cheers,
David.


Quite good, but then, not even most home recorded cassetes are lo-fi, because the cassettes that my dad recorded from vinyl sound slightly better than this.

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #14
A recording with a DR of 4 is practically unlistenable to me. True vinyl has its own faults, but what is funny about analog sound is that often these distortions are euphonic as opposed to something like distortion from digital clipping which is disruptive for most people except for those who listen to extreme electronic music (and they won't like the overcompressed Beyonce CDs either as they like the distortion to be a part of their music style, not something good for pop). There are differences between analogue and digital clipping and distortion, just try to achieve an overdriven guitar tube sound by using the Audacity hard limiter, nope, not gonna happen.

This is not to say digital sound imperfections can not be euphonic (pleasant to the ear), I am indeed a lover of vintage digital audio. However digital clipping is not pleasant.

In my unscientific opinion, the difference between analog and digital is this. Digital sounds perfect if the media is good and when the source is good. However, people in the recording industry have no idea about a limit in loudness or any basics of digital audio at all and mix their products at extreme levels of compression and clipping. By contrast, tape is more "tolerant" and foolproof - with tape you get soft saturation when you are recording loud instead of hard clipping, and you don't compress the product as much because the tape already has some compression inherent in it. Same applies to vinyl, the physical nature of the recording media simply forbids you from fucking the audio up too much. On the other hand, vynil or tape can never hold such clear sound like CDs do. The distortions of vinyl or tape are however pleasant to a huge number of people, including me, while I never heard anyone saying "Oh, I love this wonderful sizzly sound of Death Magnetic". The possibilities are greater with digital however most people who make digital music media have no taste when it comes to mastering, while much of vinyl is mastered by people who know what they are doing.

About the fuss about even good vinyl not exceeding the SNR of a 13-bit file, well, first, vinyl is not equivalent to 13-bit because vinyl or tape can have sounds under the noise level (unlike with PCM quantization "noise"). Second, this can be helped by dithering, but you'd have to have a 14-bit dithered file as dither usually adds 1-bit of noise. Third, most people cannot distinguish a 12-bit file from a 16-bit one as was proven in a test on this site. Most of the "oldschool crunchy sound" of 12-bit samplers was caused by their low sampling rate and aliasing, not bit reduction. A 44.1 Khz 12-bit file will sound crystal clear as long as you are not in a soundproof room. If you have a refrigerator in your house, odds are that that noise is much louder even with you being in a room with closed doors than any 12-bit quantization noise or noise from a good FM radio transmission. Contrary to rumors, 44.1 Khz 16-bit was not chosed because it was the "acceptable compromise in the 80s", it was chosen because before CD digital audio was often stored on videotapes at 44.1 Khz and 16 bits happen to be 2 bytes so adressing data was easier. Yes, CD is a bit overkill, if you ever had a stereo television and recieved analog TV, the stereo sound was in fact transmitted in a digital format called  NICAM which was 32 Khz 10-bit companded to 14-bit, yet nobody is going around saying "omg those analog TVs had such lo-fi crunchy sound".

About vinyl being technically crap yet so great sounding ... well so is mp3. Otherwise you wouldn't have music transparent to the CD source at 2.9 bits per sample. If you subtract the mp3 from the original source you will uncover tons of psychoacoustically hidden weird noise. However it does not matter, the noise is hidden and completely non-disruptive, just like the many technical faults of vinyl.

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #15
BTW to respond to Arnold, no, I don't like LP because of the "stuff I read on the web". All my LPs are my dad's old LPs from the 1980s with quite noticeable scratches and pops. You know, some people actually like "not perfect" sound. When I was a kid we did not have CDs at first, so CDs feel "cold" to a person like me who expects a certain pleasant distortion in the sound he hears and he does not hear it in CD, plus new CDs distort the sound in a harsh, unfamiliar way with DRC and loudness smashing.

About vinyl "inferiority" when it comes to durability, well, I have a 1979 The Police LP which still has almost zero pops. On the other hand I have a ton of CDs and DVDs that are completely unplayable after 5 years. Both vinyl and CDs were not stored in exactly best conditions as we moved our place of living multiple times in the last 2 decades. I even found cement dust on some of the LPs yet they all sounded OK after a little shower cleaning. On the other hand I was unable to save the damaged CDs despite them being just a few years old as opposed to 3 decades.

LPs might acquire audible defects more easily, but in terms of "will it play?" it is far more durable than the CD. The biggest trouble with digital is the "all or nothing" nature. You make a little scratch, error correction corrects it perfectly. You make a bigger scratch, you get heavily mangled sound. You make a huge scratch, you destroyed the CD, it won't play ever again.

You scratch an LP a bit, you get some pops. You scratch more, you get more pops. But even the LPs that were played and handled thousand of times by my 6 year old self still play ok, if with a lot of pops. But I managed to accidentally completely destroy a CD just 1 day after it was brought when I was 7 just by trying to "clean" it.

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #16
This is in some ways coming down to whose anecdotes are most satisfying to one's biases.  I have a thousand or more CDs collected over decades; I'm pretty sure 99.9% of them still play.  And I can always archive them first with extreme ease and zero loss of fidelity, if I'm worried about damage later. A 'huge scratch' on an LP renders that part of the lp unlistenable, for me.  Meawhile I have repaired 'huge scratches' on CDs and made them perfectly replayable (the shape of the scratch matters, as does which side of the CD is scratched).  I have bought LPs that were warped or stamped offcenter right out of the box -- 'unplayable'. 

And so?  I'll listen to both formats.  Good sound can be had from both-- I grew up with LPs.  I can 'listen through' DR compression (which need NOT mean 'digital clipping', nor does the mere presence of clipping mean you can hear it) and through surface noise and tics  (but not offcenter stamping or big scratches or warping, sorry).

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #17
I can enjoy pop music with DRC, although honestly, in some modern music the content itself is just as bad as the DRC.

I am not some stupid 1980s snob through. For example I really like Torches by Foster the People despite really obvious hard limiting done on the album. When bad music is combined with DRC however I want to break and burn the CD.

Your CDs play because you store them in good conditions. In my case, both LPs and CDs were through a lot during the years, but LPs survived it much better.


I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #19
About the fuss about even good vinyl not exceeding the SNR of a 13-bit file, well, first, vinyl is not equivalent to 13-bit because vinyl or tape can have sounds under the noise level (unlike with PCM quantization "noise").

Please explain this further, especially the part about quantization noise.  I don't know that we should just take your word on faith.

I'll gladly split the topic for you so the new topic doesn't get mired down in a side-discussion like you did to the original topic from which this side-discussion was split, though there are other points you've raised that may also don't really fit your initial post.

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #20
The distortions of vinyl or tape are however pleasant to a huge number of people, including me, while I never heard anyone saying "Oh, I love this wonderful sizzly sound of Death Magnetic".

I assume you realize that the vinyl version of Death Magnetic was made from the same master that created the CD.  Are you telling us you prefer the vinyl version better?

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #21
P.S. Irony with those old sound chips is that some pumped out huge amounts of ultrasonics that could, conceivably, cause an audible effect in-band when subsequently distorted by the amplifier or speakers. You'd need to sample at 96kHz or 192kHz if you wanted to preserve that effect.

And of course play them back with the same amplifiers and speakers...
... I live by long distance.


I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #23
About the fuss about even good vinyl not exceeding the SNR of a 13-bit file, well, first, vinyl is not equivalent to 13-bit because vinyl or tape can have sounds under the noise level (unlike with PCM quantization "noise").


That's a vinylphile myth. Real world digital easily handles signals well below the LSB.

Quote
Second, this can be helped by dithering, but you'd have to have a 14-bit dithered file as dither usually adds 1-bit of noise.


Since digital files are generally always at least 16 bits, you have made up a problem that does not exist to go with your loss of sound smaller than 1 LSB which is equally fanciful.


Quote
Third, most people cannot distinguish a 12-bit file from a 16-bit one as was proven in a test on this site.


I know how to contrive files so this is true, and I can cherry pick files so that it is true. In general its takes more like 13 bits to fool people.

Most people pick out vinyl in listening tests by its poor SNR, although a well declicked LP transcription can be pleasing.

Quote
About vinyl being technically crap yet so great sounding ... well so is mp3.


You've got that bass-ackwards. MP3s generally measure better than they sound if traditional pure-tone tests are used. Real music is where they first fall apart. 

That's one reason why listening tests are so critical to the development of high quality perceptual coders - you can't rely on traditional measurement methodologies and signals.

I like colored/distorted sound

Reply #24
I can enjoy pop music with DRC, although honestly, in some modern music the content itself is just as bad as the DRC.


And there's always been bad 'modern' music too, and people complaining about it.

FWIW, I like 'colored' sound too -- I have Dolby Pro Logic II Music on pretty much all the time. 

And of course, room EQ.

Sometimes I add compression or other compensation for low-level listening ('night mode' or now 'Dynamic EQ' ) . I would *PREFER* to add my own dynamic range adjusments, and that is my main beef with modern mastering practice as regards
DR -- even though it's probably more sophisicated than what I can do at home, the bad thing is that it's irreversible

I pretty much never use 'Pure' or 'Direct' modes , or anything that bypasses room EQ.

The advances and range of 'coloring' choices  that digital audio playback offers today over the days of just stereo analog playback of LPs and cassette tapes + graphic EQ  or 'tone controls' (my only recourses in the 1970s/early 80s) are probably unimaginable to those who didn't live in that era.