Needledrops and demo tracks - pro and cons discussion

Have a nice vinyl front end or been doing something interesting with it lately?
Found a £15 cartridge that beats a £5000 Koetsu? ........ well let's it!

This is the thread for posting links for download so that we can all sample what you've achieved.

Doesn't have to be a vinyl front end of course.
Could be digital transports, cables, pre amps........

 

What makes you think that a home digitised version of an analogue source will tell you anything meaningfull. For some of us the whole point of analogue is to remove the dirt that the digital process creates, and you expect to judge that analogue performance through a variable (because everyone is using different ways to do it) method and medium that just creates a dirty window to view the music through.

A completely pointless exercise!

 

Hi Richard, Have you considered a post at the UN?

Thanks for posting, Stuart; I'll be listening with interest later myself to see what differences, if any, I can hear.

I think most folks here are clever enough to know that this exercise is really only good to show a little of the differences achieved and has little bearing on the actual user's experience.

Sometimes we have to do the best with what we have.

 

The way to experience it is to experience it - simples. A facsimile is just that, a facsimile.

 

hardly pointless, I am in the process of looking for a new cartridge at the moment, and while needle drops may not be the perfect solution, they can give you a flavour of the cart/stage combination. A flavour of is a damm site better than taking a wild stab in the dark, which is the other alternate. I have telephoned round a few dealers within a sensible travelling distance to find out what they have available. In real terms bugger all, and certainly not with my deck and phono stage. As I do not much feel like dropping £500 on a whim I will either find something interesting from a needle drop, or stay where I am. The chance to experiance it is somewhat remote.

 

I along with many others can hear these differences quite clearly - we wouldn't be wasting our time doing it otherwise.

FWIW the resolution of even a half decent digital system knocks analogue into a cocked hat!

The dirt added by modern digital is nothing compared to the layers of muck that analogue spreads over a clean recording. No doubt that many enjoy the sound of analogue distortions since they can be quite euphonic. The best analogue sounds excellent - the best digital is stunning.

More than happy to demonstrate that you cannot detect your Pioneer PL71 through a 16 or 24 bit digital encode/decode loop if you wish.
All you need do is provide me with a tape loop.

 

Another pointless exercise, if the window is dirty in the first place you will not hear the difference.

It is very simple if you wish to hear the differences through analogue sources then 1/ get a system capable of showing those differences 2/ and listen for them.

I know we dissagree on this as with many other things, so it is a test as to whether the forum will be able to be allowed to have an open mind. Given the preference I will only listen to analogue, and digital only when I have to, and then with the minimum number of digital conversions as possible as each time destroys a bit more of the reality for me. That reality is a musical reality, not a hi-fi reality.

 

and how do we pick that source. such as cartridges when very few places offer any kind of meaningful demonstration possibilities?
________
Marysville collective solution dispensary

 

You have two choices, buy second hand and sell on what you don't want. Buy new on-line and you have *by law* a 30 day return for full refund legal right, so take advantage of it.

 

Stuart thanks but I think you can do a lot better recordings these look & sound suppressed & the difference is not significant

If you experiment with upping the sound level in Audacity to around 3 - 6dB below where it clips you should get better results

You may have to play with the recording level on the computer settings

 

If I did that I'm afarid that I would feel guilty every time I sent one back. I would also have thought that if many people where doing it the market should be full of second hand, but nearly new carts. If it is I can not find them.

I may well be wrong, but I thought the 30 day thing was in its original condition. Once it has been used, its hardly that.

I have very little interest in buying a used cart, unless I am sure of where it has come from.

 

Needledrops I have done in the past certainly have enough resolution to enable people to hear the differences in the equipment as I hear them at home, albeit not quite as well. I'll do some new ones for ZG and post soon.

 

I gave you the answer and you have some sort of moral objections why, that is the law, no supplier can object and he should have built into his profit margins this state of affairs.

How can you test something without using it, yes you can use it *and* send it back. In my business I do this and I have *absolutely* no objection to people sending things back, sometimes they come back perfect but just a little run in which is an advantage to the next owner, or if they are marked in any way then they are sold as B stock with a sliding scale of 10 to 20% discount depending on marks.

 

24/192 is more than capable of capturing every nuance of a system, Richard. Hell, 16/44 makes a bloody good fist of it.

So, I am afraid I have to disagree with you, it is not a pointless exercise at all.

Chris

 

I use 16/44 and its certainly good enough for my purposes:-

1. For use on an iTouch after conversion to 256 AAC.

2. For use as a tool to hear differences between equipment, uncompressed WAV.

 

Works on all systems Richard. I'll happily demonstrate how transparent digital can be using any amp and speaker combo. A source direct v digital loop is easy to arrange with matched levels.

Us disagreeing has nothing to do with testing the forum.
You and anyone else can argue your point of view, but you'll get plenty of counter argument. Neither side will be censored.

 

But you are the moderator and you are expressing it as though I have no right to differ with you. Which I do very strongly, and as convinced as you are that you can prove anything so I am convinced that you haven't had a good enough system to hear what is going on - Quad amps

 

I agree.

It is interesting to play the same piece of music on a really good vinyl front end compared to the same on CD. Most audio enthusiasts will prefer the vinyl stating that it sounds more full bodied and real, that it times better and than it sounds less mechanical.
That's a typical reaction.

The interesting bit comes when you record that TT through a good sound card and then do the comparison again, using the digital copy in place of the CD. They sound very close now, proving that digital can capture whatever it is about vinyl that people find attractive.

Just cue them both up and do the Memorex test and my experience shows me that people are unable to tell real from the copy.

This tells me the process of digital recording and replay is excellent and people often have a downer on digital because of bad experience listening to CD. They should look to the CD mastering rather than blame the technology.

 

Too many assumptions there.

Where have i said that you cannot differ?
There are no moderated opinions here, only behaviour where it becomes extreme or where we get senseless arguments.

On the systems front, you assume that I only have a Quad amp and speakers here.
That's just the stuff I choose to use day to day. I have eight amplifiers here and ten pairs of speakers but would be equally happy showing the effect through any amp or system, yours included.

It could be that you haven't heard what modern converters can do.
I've about 30 needledrops from my P9 on the hard drive so you are welcome to listen to them at the dac bake-off through whichever dac you choose.
You can keep the files and try them at your leisure.

 

Richard you can disagree all you like, that's the point of the forum. All opinions are equally valid.

My experience with needle drops is that they are variable and some set-ups are much better than others at presenting the differences. An external soundcard is a must as is a low noise phonostage.

I've been able to quite clearly discern the differences between different mats on the same deck, and to pick out who's deck is who's in a blind test based on my previous experience of hearing one of the decks in the wild.

I wouldn't choose to use needle drops as one of my sources, no point adding digital nastiness to vinyl or adding vinyl roar and surface noise to digital. Good digital is no better than good vinyl, they both sound remarkably similar and unlike cheap digital.