Looking for cites of listener tests of vinyl vs. digital

Does anyone have any cites of good quality studies testing whether people can hear the difference between vinyl records and digital recordings? I’m looking for tests of average/typical/random people actually listening, not treatises on technical specs or whether humans should be able to hear a difference.

After extensive Googling, the only thing I could find that was even remotely “scientific” was here: http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/abx_testing2.htm.

Isn’t the difference plainly obvious? Vinyl has a heap (relatively speaking) of background noise while digital has none other than whatever was on the master tape and the tiny bit introduced by the amplifier and speakers. As to whether one sounds “better” than the other, that is purely subjective.

RearEchelon, thanks, that’s interesting and the kind of thing I was looking for, although it’s too bad it’s rather old. You’d think someone or some audiophile group would have done a more extensive study sometime in the last twenty-odd years.

Richard, every now and then, things that are “plainly obvious” turn out to have a surprise lurking when you actually put them to a rigorous blinded test. Or even if there’s no surprise, having rigorous data to support the obvious is better than just assuming it.

I would say that in this case Richard is correct. In the field of auditory testing one of the really difficult things that they have to control is unintended clues leaking into tests for audible differences. Proper rigorous testing usually looks for the least perceptible difference as the metric of difference. This alone is very difficult to define, let alone test for with such different media. There are so many clues in the basic differences between the two media that it would be almost impossible to ever create a test that was not doomed from the start. As noted, the presence of even a single click or pop will instantly give the source away, and essentially render the rest of the test useless. Once the listener knows the identity of the source all the usual biases take over. Auditory testers will tell you just how deep a pit this is.

It also depends upon what you are trying to prove. The hypothesis that humans can’t actually tell the difference is so unlikely to be validated that I doubt anyone would seriously bother to waste their time.

Tests that try to see whether a high quality digital chain introduce discernible distortion have been done by enthusiastic amateurs. Taking the output of a vinyl source, encoding and then decoding from digital and then trying to see if the process affected the sound in any perceptible manner. This isn’t what was asked for however. It also calls into question the quality of the signal chain used. Pro quality AD converters are not common with audiophiles, and many audiophile DA converters can often have deliberately engineered sonic signatures. YOu never get a really definitive test.

The idea that you could start with a master tape, and create a vinyl and a digital version, and then compare the two ignores the very significant amount of processing that is done after the creation of a master tape in the creation of the final product. This is something that is not often talked about, and usually not appreciated in audiophile circles. Indeed the role of the mastering engineer has changed greatly over time. No matter what, the final mixdown created by the recording engineer is not what goes onto a CD, or an LP. Further, the two end points diverge. Even if you got one the modern multiple format releases, that come on both LP and CD, the sound on the two is not the same. CDs are re-equed and compressed from the master, and also edited and reformatted to create a digital master suitable for directly cutting a CD. This involves adding all the control codes, inter-track breaks and the like that a CD contains. But the actual audio is rarely a bitwise copy of what the recording engineer created. Similarly for LPs. However in this case the processing is much more brutal. The frequency response is eq’ed to take into account issues in the vinyl reproduction chain. For instance the high frequencies are usually boosted, the low frequencies are mixed to the centre (you simply can’t have loud bass that comes from one speaker only - it will bounce the stylus out of the groove.) and most of all, the LP requires significantly more dynamic range compression. At the end, the LP simply is not the same piece of audio as the CD.

Any experimenter knowing this is simply not going to bother trying to determine what the objective differences are. Any issues will be so totally dominated by the production that the experiment will be worthless.

The return of vinyl drives me nuts. Vinyl recordings are demonstrably inferior to even CD-quality digital. For instance, bass signals have to be summed to mono to avoid destroying the cutting head of the record lathe. Even the very best recordings are limited to 60 dB of dynamic range, compared to 90 dB on the CD.

The main reason audiophiles report completely bizarre and illogical results of their tests is that they’re doing subjective tests. They’ll listen to something, stop, get up, change something, sit back down. And when they sit back down, their heads are not in exactly the same position. Read this article to see just how much difference there can be in sound if your head is not in exactly the same position.

Is there anyone who disputes that vinyl sounds different to digital though? I can get on board with this sort of thing when it comes down to say Monster Cable speaker wire compared with coat hanger wire, but vinyl vs digital is in a different league.

You can’t say flat out that vinyl is inferior to CD. You can say that vinyl does not reproduce the master tape as faithfully as a CD, but the listener might not want a faithful reproduction, they want something that “sounds good” to them and that is subjective. Some people prefer the sound of vinyl, there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with saying “I prefer vinyl because it sounds better to me than CD”, where you run into problems is when people say “I prefer vinyl because it sounds better than CD” or “vinyl is inferior to CD”. Whether it is better or worse than CD depends entirely on what the listener wants out of the experience.

What do you mean, “even” CD-quality? When it comes to digital music CD quality audio is about as good as you can get; increasing the bits per sample does not give any measurable increase in quality, and increasing the sampling rate actually decreases the fidelity.

I’m sorry for doing what you asked responders not to do by the way; my motivation for posting was to provide a reason for why people might not have bothered with the specific test you’re looking for.

objectively, yes, you absolutely can say that. Vinyl has inferior dynamic range, miserable stereo separation, pathetic noise floor, and degrades every single time you play it.

anyone who can’t hear the difference between vinyl and a digital recording is deaf.

But listening to music is not an objective experience. If I get more pleasure out of listening to vinyl are you saying I’m somehow wrong?

Of course. You are wrong if you like vinyl better. Everyone who dosn;t like vinyl knows that! :wink:

When I first bought a CD player, a friend of mine was so fantastically impressed he ran out and bought his own. I played a DDD (remember that code?) disk of classical piano music, and in the quiet parts you could even hear the piano pedals squeak. Maybe with a good turntable you can match that, but for The $100 to $200 I ever spent on a turntable… no.

One criticism I recall during the early years of the D-V debate was that many CD’s were rushed to market using the original master tapes for cutting vinyl. One critic said that these tapes had been adjusted to emphasize the high end frequencies (almost like Dolby) since turntable stylus response was poorer at high frequencies; it was simply compensating for poor turntable response, which became overcompensation on CD. This, early critics complained the discs sounded “tinny” or “less warm”.

Return? Not everyone jumps onto every electronic fad. There’s a certain asthetic to owning and playing vinyl that is unmatched with CDs or digital memory. Not everyone is listening with baited breath for audio differences.

It’s like the difference between a wine drinker and a beer drinker. To each his own.

I do appreciate that, and I apologize if my earlier post came across as snarky. What you, and others here, are saying is probably true, but I still just find it hard to believe that someone, somewhere, during the last twenty years, hasn’t tried to do some kind of testing. I could have sworn I remembered hearing many years ago about testing that tried to compensate for some of the obvious differences by artificially introducing random clicks and pops into the digital being played back, so that the mere presence of those wouldn’t be a dead giveaway.

Go to hydrogenaudio and look around. Tons of info there

As said above, digital music provides objectively superior fidelity. Also as said above, early digital recordings were mastered specifically for vinyl and when put on higher fidelity recordings would, of course, sound poor in comparison. However, when properly mastered, you will be able to get closer to the original recording.

Specifically to the OP, this would be extraordinarily difficult to test in an objective manner precisely because, to try to sound the same, the recordings on each medium would be different, and without taking steps to either mask the artifacts inherent to methods or artificially insert them into the other one, it will be immediately obvious to almost any ear what the medium is, and bias will play in.

Either way, I don’t think comparing beer and wine is a fair analogy because there isn’t an objective comparison between them other than perhaps alcohol content. A better comparison would be comparing a film reel to a DVD or BluRay. I don’t think anyone would disagree that there is a certain aesthetic value to certain older media that, for some people, is desirable, perhaps even moreso than fidelity. However, at the same time, short of actually highly valuing putting the vinyl on a turn table vs. inserting a CD or setting up a projector vs. playing a DVD, even the artifacts that the older media have can be simulated. So I think it’s even really hard to say that the aesthetics could have THAT much of an impact.

I’ve been a sound engineer since I was 16 and am now 51. I have recorded albums, done sound for a Broadway show, engineered radio, mixed sound for concerts and mastered both LPs and CDs. So when I say something is “better”, I’d like to think that mine is, at very least, a professional opinion.

When you say something is better, you mean it is better at certain specific things. The advantages of the CD over vinyl recordings have already been listed above so I won’t type them out. I don’t dispute that those advantages exist, all I’m saying is that listening to music is subjective and if someone prefers the pops and crackles and low dynamic range of vinyl over a CD then vinyl is better at providing their listening experience than a CD is. It may even be that someone enjoys the process of getting the vinyl out of the cover and placing it on the turntable, or looking at the album cover while they are listening. You could make the argument that an ebook is better than a hard copy. The ebook is cheaper, thousands of books can be carried on a small device, books can be shopped, purchased, and downloaded without you ever having to step out of the house, most readers have a dictionary so unknown words can be looked up on the fly, passages can be bookmarked and shared etc, but if the reader prefers the feel of an actual book in their hands, all of the advantages of an ebook are meaningless.

This debate will probably never be settled. Just to say, any recording medium introduces a change. Nothing is pure and a performance recorded “live” is not pure at all.

I have a friend that had a job at a major company that sold music (the name begins with S). His job was to remaster albums of major recording artists for sale on CD’s. He has won a Grammy. He told me that there was always a huge debate. They had the tapes of the original recordings and the production notes. Should they remaster the albums to sound like the original recordings and the notes or should they remaster them to sound like the original vinyl? There is a difference. The debate always raged.

The proponents of vinyl like to think of themselves a purists. They are not. They are proponents of the sound that come out of vinyl. To them, the more “pure” sound is not what is important. It is what they heard the first time they heard it from a vinyl record.