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

Is it possible to record digital audio onto a vinyl record? And if it is possible, will audiophiles like it? Featuring Betty and Audio Phil.
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[@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]

So cheaper than a CD player? You can buy a DVD external drive for a PC for £14 at today's prices.

[@naibafabdulkobor4301]

@@lyntedrockley7295 Obviously you are too young to know the Laserdisc format. It's not the same as Compact Disc. 😉

[@Richard-bq3ni]

I think the stylus was not mechanical but in stead was capacitive pick up.

[@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]

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. :)

[@artistlovepeace]

You are a great presenter and wonderful professor. Thank you for producing and sharing.

[@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.

[@dmd7472]

No one has time to read this rubbish grandad . Stay away from scissors

[@mstones6642]

​@@dmd7472 that is your opinion and KZbin has no restriction to wrote more than you want read. Get the CEO of KZbin and Change the rules. If not, p... off.

[@mathyou9]

“... old men who can’t hear above 12 kHz ...” 😆🤣😂 OMG, I literally laughed out loud!!

[@andymouse]

You won't be laughing when you get there.:)

[@r423sdex]

What ! I could not hear you. Did you say 10 khz ?

[@johnwatrous3058]

Unfortunately, I'm already there!

[@phrtao]

Very entertaining but we already have a mixture of Digital and Analog. Pretty much all modern vinyl releases are mastered from a digital source and the whole mastering and playback distortion associated with vinyl gives it that warm sound that audiophiles love.

[@AudioMasterclass]

Shh, audiophiles don't know this.

[@DeltaJazzUK]

@@AudioMasterclass Of course they do. That's why they're paying a fortune for LPs that are analogue through the complete recording chain with no digital involved at all.

[@PetesGuide]

@@AudioMasterclassShh! There was recently a KZbin video on just this topic! (Or was that your video?)

[@MC-jv6fs]

Very cool. Buti liked the blistering LP scratches at the end. Its like the rustle of trees and it feels lively.

[@Af1st1]

I love both CD and vinyl!They both sound great depending on how they mastered and recorded! Both also can sound bad! I suppose I would be classed as an audiophile being I use tube amps and magnepan 3.7i speakers!Never understood the snobbery of picking sides!If it sounds good it’s good and to me that is fine!The music is what is important! Not the format !

[@r423sdex]

I have thousands of records from the 60,70 and 80. They sound great. The ones from the 70s are very good.

[@paulbrookes413]

I loved Cassettes on a PYE portable !

[@AlexandruBurda]

Totally with you in this. Mastering is what really matters. I am also trying to find the best mastered version of a recording, being on CD or vinyl. Of course I would always prefer de best sounding suport (CD) but if the best mastered version is on vinyl then is vinyl. 🙂

[@apigge8723]

RIP Jim Winey, January 2024. No ordinary inventor! Glad his work gets you close to the music you love.

[@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.

[@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]

Your modem example is good. I fondly remember my 14.4, just without the fondness.

[@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]

how many holes does it take to fill a woman 🤣🤣🤣

[@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]

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.

[@delatomvione9943]

For me I think the best of both worlds would be recording digitally -> mixing and mastering using analog gear -> saving the final result as a high sample rate digital file.

[@andyboxish4436]

Absolutely. But fo music that is missing that middle step, recording a vinyl rip on excellent equipment that has the euphonic properties you are looking for, and saving the final result as a high sample rate digital file, is the next best thing. It's a way of baking some of that analog presentation into the recording.

[@r423sdex]

Would work well except for one thing, decent music.

[@phrtao]

Totally agree! Any alteration to the digital audio should be done by converting to analog and using a traditional mixing desk, then storing the result as digital audio again.

[@phrtao]

@@r423sdex So true, sadly modern music is rubbish ! The exception being classical music but no one listens to that on vinyl, do they ? So much of what I listen to is old and even if you could find a good quality pressing of the music on vinyl it would never be as good as digitally restored version of the original master tape.

[@naibafabdulkobor4301]

​@@phrtaoBecause ... what?

[@malcolmherbert5127]

In 1978 Ry Cooder recorded his Bop Till You Drop LP. This is generally thought to be the first instance of a rock/pop album recorded digitally and issued on vinyl. It sounds bloody good too, but that might be down to Ry and his super sidemen’s instrumental mastery as much as the recording process.

[@apigge8723]

On point.

[@jeremyrichards8327]

Yes I have that album and remember it was recorded from digital sources. It did sound brighter with better clarity to me at the time.

[@neilb2793]

I have it on cd and vinyl. The vinyl sound is very clear and has good dynamic range, but does sound bright and “digitally” if I can use that term, probably due to the early DACs. Great music though.

[@lyntedrockley7295]

So what it didn't have was tape hiss or compression.@@jeremyrichards8327

[@jimmyolsenschannel6263]

Because of this pioneer digital recording, when Ry Cooder turned 50 he was interviewed on BBC Radio 2 and asked about his current thoughts on digital sound. He replied: "Since this is my birthday, I can say what I want. Digital is one step forward and two steps back."

[@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.

[@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...

[@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!

[@andyboxish4436]

What I love about playing vinyl, even if it was recorded digitally, are the euphonic properties that my specific cartridge and phono preamp bring to the presentation. The cartridge essentially "interprets" the recording, and each cartridge can do it slightly differently, giving you different options for presentation, sound stage, depth, width, hall sound, etc. Vinyl is actually a mechanical process where physical vibrations in the groove are converted to an electrical signal by the phono cartridge, and it is this specific mechanical-to-electrical interpretation that gives it a certain qualitative aspect to the sound that is very difficult to achieve without passing it through the process. Ironically, though, if you make a vinyl rip and record it digitally, you can bake some of that quality into the recording itself, and you can then play it back using high quality digital equipment and it will sound exactly like the original vinyl. So there's a bit of a paradox there, it seems.

[@jimsregaturntableshifijukebox]

Very interesting comment, I agree 👍.

[@andyboxish4436]

@@jimsregaturntableshifijukeboxThank you! I don't know if my comment will be deleted if I post a link, but I was convinced of this approach by an essay published in 2001 on a website called DECWARE. It is titled The potential fidelity of CD's vs. LP's. You can easily google it, it is a very interesting philosophy on music reproduction and the role of accuracy in playback.

[@AudioMasterclass]

Here's the link www.decware.com/paper20.htm

[@andyboxish4436]

@@AudioMasterclass What do you think of the approach/point of view described in this essay? Would love to hear your thoughts or maybe a separate video about this whole concept of "interpretation" vs "accuracy", desirable distortions, etc.

[@AudioMasterclass]

The comments here have already given me enough material for another video so you can expect that soon(ish)@@andyboxish4436

[@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]

Vinyl doesn't have the bandwidth just buy CDs

[@msingh1932]

Betty is so clever...I loved that repartee!!

[@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.

[@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

[@gojamiegirl]

DJs have been doing digital vinyl for decades now. I have a digital vinyl system set up w/ Serato timecode vinyl, it works beautifully, and I can switch between analog and digital as I switch records.

[@AudioMasterclass]

DJing is of course a whole other world alongside of pro audio and hi-fi. I don't think I'll be able to resist for long delving into it for my channel.

[@lyntedrockley7295]

please continue the resistance.@@AudioMasterclass

[@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!

[@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.

[@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.

[@pablohrrg8677]

#2 audiophiles would hate it anyway. They say they can hear "digital". They've pointed with their angry fingers when digital have been used in some stage. Even hid their heads when learned that digital have been used in mastering their beloved AAA records from the late 1970s and 1980s #1 we have the technology to make it work, but who would be interested? Philips' DCC attempted something similar, with a different approach, and failed anyway. #3 I am watching your video because I am truly an enthusiast. So I'd love it.

[@user-yk4gd1fl4z]

Duh. We’re you there in the 70’s???? Very few were cut from the digital line. Some. Not many. The record was cut from the analog line and the digital line was used for the computer for groove spacing. Stop repeating things on the internet to try and make yourself sound like Socrates.

[@martineyles]

One magical thing about vinyl is you know that you could play the record with a needle and a yoghurt pot, and if you put your ear near the stylus you can hear some of the sound directly, to remind you of that. If you make it digital you destroy that and kill part of the romance and magic of the format, which strangely comes from the lack of mystery.

[@AudioMasterclass]

Back in the 60s my parents wouldn’t allow me yoghurt. Foreign muck they called it.

[@martineyles]

@@AudioMasterclass Is that why french records sound better? kzbin.info/www/bejne/hWjLaKx5q7aip8Usi=R0BIMFSkdN7Q-Dux

[@martineyles]

In case links aren't allowed, I linked a french song on crackly vinyl, featured in the Ameli soundtrack, Si tu netais pas la. "Is that why French records sound better?"

[@NicoJeanRas]

From an engineer. Absolutely, it will work. With a bit of processing, one can do even a bit better. And all in HW thus analogue domain.

[@MGoudsmits]

I love how you with your real life experience prove audiophiles wrong!

[@peters7949]

Loved the “vinyl” background noise during the “comment prompts” was it true analogue surface noise, or plug in generated?

[@AudioMasterclass]

I sold my Technics SL10 some time ago. I found it on the internet. Noise cannot be copyrighted. Discuss..

[@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

[@ByWire-yk8eh]

As in the New Yorker cartoon, "The two things that really drew me to vinyl were the expense and the inconvenience." It reminds me of an experiment I did in the 1960s by recording single frequency beeps on a tape recorder and playing them back to energize a relay. It was the world's most complicated telephone pulse dialer. But one does these things for fun, not practicality. This proposal is really ridiculous, and it's sort of already been done (vinyl video disks).

[@gilberth_]

Humm... Thanks for your virtual blueprint. I will switch on my 3D printer.

[@kareytodd8054]

I would say it is very similar to DAT, how many people nowadays have a DAT player? That is about how popular digital audio on a vinyl record would be!

[@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.

[@DelmarBrowne]

Thanks so much for the information! Nicely done ✅

[@TroubadourMusic]

My theory is that digital sounds obviously better, but... Vinyl sounds good BECAUSE it is imperfect and fun, but more importantly because it is kind of creamy. Because it is rolled off. I am drifting into vinyl again these days. The reason is because I hate how the digital music world is destroying sound in mastering for volume. I hate the sound of almost everything I hear. Even acoustic music sounds that way. Very few are striving for any balance. Just for max volume. The lack of dynamics fatigues my brain. It was ok at first, all the remastering was cool. It isn't cool anymore. Its stupid. Oh, and "perfection" fatigues my brain. Because in the real world of life and reality, there is no such thing as perfection. No piano is tuned perfectly and cannot be - its supposed to be imperfect. Kind of has to be. So. Digital vinyl is just digital. No rolling off of the harshness, no creaminess, overly max limiter volume, which is not natural or pleasing. In the end, we just want to hear good songs done well.

[@r423sdex]

The music was definitely better in the vinyl era.

[@francoisathome5979]

@@r423sdex What did you measure to come to this conclusion?

[@pablohrrg8677]

Compression is our enemy. It kills dynamic and produces fatigue. But every producer, mixer , mastering engineer and music industry executive loves compression.

[@ksteiger]

​@@pablohrrg8677You know who hated compression? Bruce Swedein. He mixed Thriller. Good enough for me.

[@rabarebra]

This rolled off thing is a misunderstanding. Yes, Beatles preferred their mono's rolled off, but all the classical titles were, and there was a disclaimer on the records that you needed a high grade stylus to "play this". A good example is the classical Decca Full Frequency records. And to add, many 70s prog albums is NOT rolled off. In the 80s they rolled off a lot of records, usually below 80Hz. Not sure why they did that, maybe someone can elaborate.

[@MacinMindSoftware]

I was thinking maybe some form of QAM might fit more than QPSK. But even using lossless compression to match CDs we'd have to get about 1Mbps into whatever frequencies vinyl can hold. I don't know... how about an electric-powered steam engine instead?

[@G8YTZ]

I was thinking that as well, but my comment above I suggested using DRM as it is more or less off the shelf.

[@slowpawstevet3676]

i'm not sure why people are so afraid of digital, especially vinylheads. i have collected vinyl records for many years and in many cases modern vinyl albums recorded digitally still sound like a vinyl album, also old ones that have been digitally remastered and put on vinyl can sound amazing, those old tapes won't last forever and a digital transfer makes editing and mastering a lot easier.

[@enricoself2256]

In the 80's they were able to fit movies on vinyl records (CED by RCA in America and VHD by JVC in Japan); if they could squeeze a video signal with a bandwidth of MHz on a vinyl record, they could as well store digital data. But actually the only fact they had in common with LP's turntables was that they were using vinyl discs, everything else was different, VHD did not even have grooves at all ! CED was also quite unreliable and would worn out rapidly. To me digital data and vinyl discs are an unnatural combination which, luckily, never happened.

[@Douglas_Blake_579]

As always, I will continue to prefer digital files stored on nice dense hard drives. I got rid of the racks and racks of media storage 15 years ago... and I don't miss them one bit.

[@johnwatrous3058]

That's great until your hard drive crashes for any reason, then you'll have to buy them all over again. BTW, I have ripped all my CD's to a hard drive and play them on my Plex media server and keep the CD's as a backup.

[@Douglas_Blake_579]

@@johnwatrous3058 Don't worry, I have *multiple* backups of everything on all my computers. I don't lose data!

[@vinylview]

@@johnwatrous3058 I suppose you can make a backup of that hard drive? Just an idea.

[@lyntedrockley7295]

Hard drive? Just put it on a USB then you can play it in the car as well.@@vinylview

[@johnwatrous3058]

@@vinylview How many people do that before it's too late?

[@joelcarson4602]

Remember the RCA CED Videodisc format? Using a stylus and groove for the tracking chores and capacitive pickups to read the video. That was on a vinyl disc. That's MORE than enough bandwidth to encode analog audio at high quality. I seem to remember it used a form of analog FM to encapsulate the video content. While FM radio is not super duper HiFi, that is because radio stations are bandwidth limited, this sort of record/playback system could easily be 20 to 22khz in stereo to the limits of studio tape machine audio quality.

[@AudioMasterclass]

I’m sure you’re right. I don’t think audiophiles will like the caddy though.

[@joelcarson4602]

HiFi stereo audio on Beta and VHS tape used analog FM signal encode/decode that on a good video deck with quality tape, closely approach CD levels of frequency response, signal to noise and low distortion. The HiFi heads on the video drum recorded the audio at a slightly different azimuth angle to the video stripes. They also did double duty to help improve video during pause, slow motion and fast forward search.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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”

[@xfoolsgoldx]

80% of audio files appear to have the same records in their collection. The collection all seem to be albums that would sound amazing, streaming on a $10 speaker.

[@phildavis1723]

Did your encoding method use both channels there? If so, did we just sacrifice stereo???

[@AudioMasterclass]

My numbers are based on one channel, so both are available with the same resolution for stereo.

[@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 KZbin said it was the best he had ever heard He said the music literally came out of the speakers

[@xaverlustig3581]

#1 I'm skeptical about the error concealment. It would be working constantly, and that might be audible even under the best circumstances. #2 No, they hate digital as a principle.

[@AudioMasterclass]

Possibly taking this a bit too far but different implementations of error correction could sound different. That would give audiophiles something to talk about and I suspect they might like that.

[@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]

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]

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]

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]

@@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.

[@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]

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]

“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.

[@rabit818]

Unless you live in a space station where it is virtually dust free, maybe I'll go with vinyl. Otherwise, there will be surface noise from the needle regardless if it's a $17k Clearaudio cartridge you are using or something from Temu.

[@carlosquijano2827]

Isn’t it already invented? It’s called Compact Disc, CD 💿!

[@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]

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.

[@paulfriedman4767]

The processor inside your brain is 8 bits. It speaks back to an age where we had to use our imagination to manage with the meagre resources available. I like

[@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

[@sonic2000gr]

RCA Videodisk (CED) had a much higher frequency response than audio vinyl and still used a stylus. So it would be possible to do it, but of course completely meaningless.

[@laut7338]

Could you maybe give me your opinion/take on the sweet vinyl sugarcube mini SC-1 unit (from a technical viewpoint)? I believe it is a digital noise reduction unit, but then specifically for vinyl; i.e. no more cracks/pops, etc. Do you think it is any good (and how does it work)? Just curious. Thanks in advance

[@AudioMasterclass]

I have no experience with this device but I have tried several vinyl crackle/click removal softwares. Though they do work, if not perfectly, setting the parameters was just another thing to worry about. I sold all my vinyls and I've never looked back.

[@user-yk4gd1fl4z]

Then you converted it to digital !! Utterly pointless !

[@evenblackercrow4476]

So, does this proposal have its analog in computer video graphics processing such as with amd and nvidia--in particular I'm thinking about technology that employs video frames inter/extrapolation?

[@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

[@Andersljungberg]

Would your digital vinyl give the same depth in the sound and make the male singing voice just as good

[@danielduesentriebjunior]

Astonishing that some people still believe that vinyl is better than digital. Compare the chanel separation of vinyl versus digital for example: Ridiculous.

[@MarkThomas-hm3ju]

R.I.P. Jim Winey (1934-2024) Founder of Magnepan …: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rF6rl2Z6ZZ5prKM Jim Winey founder of Magnepan 1934-2024

[@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.

[@teashea1]

Good dialog between those two.......

[@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. 🤓

[@Synthematix]

"Audiophiles" dont like digital audio, yet they dont mind a vinyl record thats been recorded digitally? i can smell the irony from here.

[@jimhines5145]

Great video. I laughed my arse off!

[@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]

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.

[@Forbidden303]

A raspberry pi with a hard drive attached, with time/tag coded vinyl to select the song/position in a database. All seems a bit much just to satisfy the feel and experience of vinyl.

[@AudioMasterclass]

Logically a bit much perhaps but I know from comments on my videos that there’s a desire that isn’t being met.

[@Roof_Pizza]

It burns, it burns. LOL.

[@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]

Shh, don't tell my commenters.

[@MartinMartin-yi9to]

@@AudioMasterclass A-Ha!

[@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]

Maybe you do have sliding glass doors in Oxfordshire and winters are mild. 🙃

[@AudioMasterclass]

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]

That's smart. Next you will use an AI version of you.

[@AudioMasterclass]

@MarkThomas-hm3ju I’ve tried it. Too scary.

[@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.

[@grumpy9478]

1: yes, it is technically feasible, though your initial assumptions must be validated in the usual development & test process. 2: hard to define or generalize about audiophiles. if you don't like audiophiles, then no. if you are neutral, then maybe. a market analyst might posit that there's an upcoming generation/segment of enthusiasts for whom this solution would appeal (founded upon the quality of the listening experience) - comprised of those who don't make a religious issue of analog vs digital. 3: maybe... but I am pretty satisfied (being old) w/ all that I have now or can acquire. however, I would like to experience a prototype & compare (both musically & as "novel architectural investment") w/ extant, very high quality analog & digital systems.

[@Andersljungberg]

Instead, you could have analogue sound on an optical disc such as Laserdisc. As it used to be analog video on

[@nigelsilverthorn9188]

I followed your analysis and your arguments are sensible, however the error concealment in the digital domain requires a valve DSP system (written in Fortran as I always find this most agreeable though Cobal lovers may argue this one) to maintain warmth and meet my audiophile needs, This should have been mentioned to complete the story, IMHO.... Good work!

[@AudioMasterclass]

I can see an argument developing for which programming language is most musical. And then which mainframe you’re going to run it on.

[@martineyles]

​@@AudioMasterclass I propose a combination of C and F# for Jazz albums, maybe even for some metal recordings, but this combination should never be used for the likes of Handle's Messiah or Palestrina.

[@nigelsilverthorn9188]

Topical perhaps but ICL 1900S gets my vote....nay not have the horsepower...need some calcs :)

[@davidkclayton]

Seems like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist

[@AudioMasterclass]

Don't worry! Audiophiles are always looking for problems that don't exist.

[@rabarebra]

@@AudioMasterclass I can't stand hi-fi, and I am an audiophile. Go figure.

[@jishcatg]

If you play a 12 inch disk at 45 RPM, you should be able to increase the bitrate.

[@julianmorrisco]

Dammit. Thanks to watching AMC KZbin 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!

[@lmkan]

This is so freaky/funky that I would like to see/hear it just for the rock & roll of it! Apart from that... ehhh.... So yes, I'm game!

[@timh6510]

Cool. We can take good sounding digital and make it a pain to play, like vinyl lovers like. 😁

[@Wildknaap]

Love your glasses, being audiophile.

[@AudioMasterclass]

Jelli from Tiger Specs www.tigerspecs.co.uk/reading-glasses/jelli

[@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]

Quick! Off to the patent office!

[@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.

[@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.

[@grandadgamer8390]

Funny vid this, taking the concept so far, then realising, hey, let's invent CD😅

[@SteveD-m6z]

Conversely you could create an analogue CD using the technology of the LaserDisc.

[@AudioMasterclass]

You are so very close to the topic of my future video.

[@CraigMecak]

Yes, FM analogue stereo with CX noise reduction! @@AudioMasterclass

[@andymouse]

Certainly food for thought here, not sure it's going to taste very good bit I did end up thinking how to hollow out a stylus and put a light pipe in there to channel a laser down and a micro bearing assembly for it to run on in the groove, eddy current damping an..........................cheers !

[@DeanGroovy]

Instead of polyvinyl, I'd use a stronger, tougher polycarbonate plastic, then instead of a stylist, I'd probably use some form of image detection of the information on that plastic, like a camera, so I don't degrade the surface of what I'm playing. I don't know if you could spin that format backwards and discover the devil's music or that Paul is dead, but you have to make trade-offs for high fidelity.

[@markbrookes5953]

Sound like your describing a 12" CD, that will have all the nice artwork. With suitable playback software to reverse the sound we could eventually all discover if 'Paul' was indeed 'The Devil'. I think the 'Dead' is in the detail.

[@paulgrant1712]

How about recording meta data and time code on the vinyl and using it to sync a separate digital recording. Placing the needle anywhere on the record would play the digital recording from the same point in time. This would give the experience of vinyl with the fidelity of a digital recording. Even the clunk of the needle being dropped could be simulated.

[@AudioMasterclass]

Bravo. You think the same way as I did when I mentioned this in a video a while ago. It could work with existing vinyl by recognising the music then playing it from a streaming service.

[@andyboxish4436]

That is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard in my life. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having heard it.

[@MgShewchuk]

@@AudioMasterclass was thinking this too but I think the audience would like things self contained some kind of a tiny flash chip embedded with a rf reader to pull the actual digital data magically into the player in the time it takes to cue up the first play.

[@MgShewchuk]

Addendum put the error correction/concealment data onto an embedded flash chip to keep things legit ;)

[@Andy.Garcia]

Lol, LOVE the last 3 seconds of the video! Guess that answers question 3 for me…….no, I would not like it, bother with it, nor listen to it!!!!

[@andrii4545]

Great idea! Count me in xD

[@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.

[@trleith]

I did NOT see that coming.

[@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]

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.

[@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.

[@helthuismartin]

Yess the best of both worlds..Buy House music on vinyl and you will agree with me.

[@razisn]

I would suggest a radically different approach, much easier to implement. Have a system by which the hands-on process of playing a vinyl record will automatically trigger the reproduction of digital music from a digital file. The system would sense when the needle is lowered on the vinyl and automatically initiate playback. One could enhance this by introducing artificial clicks and pops or various kinds of vinyl distortions in the digital stream. The transfer functions of various cartridge / arm/ deck / phono stage combinations could be measured and be included in the playback. In fact I have played this trick to a couple of my vinyl friends and they seemed very happy with that vinyl audition until they realised they had been fooled.

[@AudioMasterclass]

You don't know how right you are. I'm saying that because you added clicks and pops. Now if you stopped before that and the player would identify the music and stream it digitally, I think that people would go for that. Not a big market, but it wouldn't be rocket science to implement.

[@OPM_Viking]

Maintaining a constant speed is an issue. Modern digital medias will just "read ahead". It will need to adjust platter speed with very high precision if a real time sound is expected. Same issue as all digital chain relying on a word clock. The platter is just a heavy thing in this realm.

[@martineyles]

PLL strobe locked direct drive turntables. Technics amongst others have decks that solve this problem.

[@OPM_Viking]

@@martineyles Yes, but misalignment of center whole, the arm shape compared to the expected “arm” of the pressing and so in will all make variances in the read speed. Just look how the arm moves when playing. But I guess a small delay will be ok anyway 😀

[@martineyles]

@@OPM_Viking Well, I'm sure Audio Phil will prefer the organic jitter of vinyl to the clinical jitter he can definitely hear on CD.

[@igorbeuk4068]

For me there are solution for bit rate lower than 16, more 10 and 8 that I saw inside the HW having a system for sound cancelation design to clean sound from Noise but about CD'S, I have collector Bundle of CD's and they touched the 0db so all 3 are producing noise like a bi product sound I never heard before almost aluminum foil and paper together above Music. When I got it I didn't understand but several years after when I migrate to in the box I was surprised how so big Record Lable didn't know what will happen 😂 first electonic music played on love parade made with hardware is ruined on those Disc's.