A Device to take vinyl to digital format..ie MP3 or CD's - Page 2

I prefer recording 1-bit DSD because it provides flexibility for converting cleanly to other resolutions / bit rates. This - and my preference for hi-res audio - are key considerations for me.

Has anyone had experience with the Tascam DV-RA1000HD recording 1-bit to its hard drive (then sending the files to computer or DAW for finessing)? I have Korg's freeware Audiogate, which does rate & resolution conversions simply. I'm also interested in opinions/recommendations on editing software as well as click/pop cleanup software for archiving vinyl.

Regarding recording - I do not like the prospects of starting off at 16/44.1 then trying to convert up. I already recorded much of my LP collection using Tascam CDRW700 at 16bit/44.1, but as good a job that has done, I'd like to do better. And it won't work for live music recording.

In reply to Arnold - I was quoting the "mind-blowing" comment by Conjure1 (above) - but that was a reference to converting vinyl to digital, not live recording. I'm looking for good hardware chain to accomplish the fidelity he says he has captured in the conversion of vinyl to digital.

Frankly, my ears hear the inadequacy of 44.1 redbook, I never liked it, sounds false, unnatural and harsh to me. If there's consensus that 98% can't tell the difference between a good 16-bit/44.1 recording and hi-res DSD, as experiments and a few salesmen I know suggest, there's still that 2% who CAN tell and I'm squarely in that group. I'm not sure it is a blessing or curse. A local audiophile shop owner tried to prove me wrong by a blind A/B demonstration, but I could tell the difference pretty easily.

Anyway, even if most can't tell the best redbook from DSD, recording in DSD provides endless options for conversion, including converting down to 16/44.1 if you like. So, I'd be happy to hear of other 1-bit recording options for a home recording environment that will do double-duty to digitize LPs. Including using computer. Open to suggestions.

If anyone has experience recording 1-bit DSD to the Tascam DV-RA1000HD hard drive, then moving the files by USB to a computer or other DAW, I'd like to hear if that is 1) possible, and 2) simple enough to do routinely. Thank you!
Edited by Jess Sayin - 12/13/12 at 6:10pm

The alleged superiority of DSD is an example of an audiophile myth that was fabricated to obtain a technically-impossible commercial advantage.

Science says that the only relevant quality properties of signal are bandwidth and dynamic range. If you increase either you increase information transfer and if you increase neither then you have no effect on information transfer.

Once a signal is put into the digital domain it will not pick up distortion or noise of any kind unless it is intentionally added.

Both DSD and PCM signals with comparable bandwidth and dynamic range convey the same amount of information. Neither signal has an inherent advantage for information transfer as such. However there are significant technical issues with DSD - it is harder to encode and most commonly-used signal processing operations remain technical mysteries. As a consequence, most DSD encoders are at least partially PCM, an embarassing fact that was admitted by Sony at an AES meeting once the inherent problems with encodeing DSD were revealed in another paper presented at that meeting.

If you have it in your mind that something won't work, it can never work for you.

There is one big simple fact about 16/44 that is easy to demonstrate with a good technical demonstration: Nobody has ever found that interposing a 16/44 segment into a clean real world audio chain, no matter how high the sample rate, no matter how long the data words, no matter high quality the associated analog equipment, has any audible effect.


The most audibly significant part of a hardware chain to convert vinyl to digital are the analog components - the turntable, arm, cartridge, RIAA preamp.Analog to digital conversion has become so good, so cost effective that even inexpensive components for doing this part of the conversion are readily available for a reasonable cost.

What you need is to personally engage in a blind test showing the audible effects of 44/16 encoding on any audio signal that you choose.

Or, you can read about some gentlemen who did the same - professional journal, peer-reviewed, and all that:

http://www.drewdaniels.com/audible.pdf

"Claims both published and anecdotal are regularly made for audibly superior sound quality
for two-channel audio encoded with longer word lengths and/or at higher sampling rates than
the 16-bit/44.1-kHz CD standard. The authors report on a series of double-blind tests comparing the analog output of high-resolution players playing high-resolution recordings with
the same signal passed through a 16-bit/44.1-kHz “bottleneck.” The tests were conducted for
over a year using different systems and a variety of subjects. The systems included expensive
professional monitors and one high-end system with electrostatic loudspeakers and expensive
components and cables. The subjects included professional recording engineers, students in
a university recording program, and dedicated audiophiles. The test results show that the
CD-quality A/D/A loop was undetectable at normal-to-loud listening levels, by any of the
subjects, on any of the playback systems. The noise of the CD-quality loop was audible only
at very elevated levels.


The current box score for that is 0.0 percent.

I'd still like to know whether or not the Tascam can record 1-bit to its hard drive and easily transfer the file to computer for conversion, editing etc. That's my question and if you don't know the answer, fine, I'd like to know if someone familiar with the Tascam can reply. Thank you.

You obviously won't believe me but I can hear the difference quite well between redbook and hi-res. A local audiophile shop owner here in Honolulu who dislikes DSD as you clearly do, tried to prove I couldn't tell redbook from hi-res "when the mastering is done right," and he played samples he thought would stump me but I could easily and accurately hear the difference, and that annoyed the audiophile shop owner because he, like you, could not hear it. Why he felt the need to prove nobody can hear it if he can't hear it was perhaps amusing, but it wasn't the information I was looking for.

Incidentally, I'm familiar with the study you cited and had that in mind when I commented. The flaw in the study is obvious, because it used average listeners (students and "audiophiles" not being defined by ability to hear critically). It should have limited the test group (except for a control group) to those who can hear critically, e.g. music composers and musicians, music teachers, piano tuners, people like me who can discern a well-played and well-tuned musical instrument (I've been a piano teacher, and I'm not an engineer). Not everyone can hear when the Steinway needs one of its middle-E strings adjusted. Random college students in some study telling the difference in that E string is not something I'd expect, unless they were experienced pianists or tuners. But that out-of-tune E string bugs me, and so does redbook.

Now, that Tascam? Anybody? Can it transfer DSD files (DSDIFF) from its hard drive conveniently for editing, converting, burning?

I just read the linked report study. I note the following quoted from it (your link, above, being the citation):

"The “best” listener score, achieved one
single time, was 8 for 10, still short of the desired 95%
confidence level. There were two 7/10 results. All other
trial totals were worse than 70% correct."

It discounted these as inconsistent with the predominantly random correct results close to 50% right by the majority of test takers.

What would be more revealing, given the sampling flaw, would be to see if the 3 "best" test subjects could consistently repeat a fairly high correct discernment. If so, they would have to be hearing something real and discernibly different between the redbook and the hi-res SACD materials. My hunch is that those who test as "best" listeners would be consistently best listeners.

In addition, the statements in the conclusion belie their bias, in their statement:
"There is always the remote possibility that a different system
or more finely attuned pair of ears would reveal a
difference. But we have gathered enough data, using sufficiently
varied and capable systems and listeners, to state
that the burden of proof has now shifted."

They admit to it being difficult to prove a negative. But I'd say the burden always was for the new hi-res technology to prove it was an improvement. Having heard the hi-res formats including (but not limited) to DSD, it is proven to my ears as far superior to redbook.

Furthermore, the result of the test show that the size of the sample of test-takers that can hear hi-res differences was NOT, as you put it, "0."

That suggests to me that the people who did this report are familiar with experimental design, probability and statistics.

Your hunch has been tested by other experimenters including myself. It is incorrect.

Every time a "golden ear" has been found in a test of many subjects, retesting that individual shows that they were randomly guessing all along, but just got lucky the times they were tested initially. The laws of statistics predict this will happen.

The hypothesis being tested has been tested many times over the past 20-30 years with consistent results. Anybody with a reasonable understanding of audio and psychoacoustics would have similar "biases" which are similar to my bias in believing that water predominately flows down hill everywhere on the planet Earth.

You may need some good blind tests to convince yourself.

That is hardly a news flash. Admitting that negative hypothesis is difficult or impossible is one of those things that one might learn in high school or middle school.

It is very interesting how many people hang so much on such primitive listening evaluations.

There is no technical reason why DSD should sound any different than PCM with the same effective sample rate and dynamic range.

If anything, DSD should sound worse than say 24/96 PCM because its dynamic range is so severely compromised above 20 KHz. However other studies show that within reason, a wide variety of apparent sins can be committed above 20 KHz, so DSD's implementation shortcomings usually have no audible consequences.


You appear to have failed to distinguish people who obtain a given result by simply rolling the dice enough times but not too many times, with those who actually reliably and repeatedly hear a difference.

I don't go to casinos and play and I don't play the lottery because I know that every game is designed and executed so that the house wins and I lose. YMMV. ;-)

I have raised many serious technical issues that you have sloughed. I've repeated some of them. You might open your mind to the possibility that science is actually right about DSD instead of grasping at these rhetorical straws.
Edited by arnyk - 12/17/12 at 8:18am

You have mischaracterised my outlook. I never claimed nor do I believe that DSD is different or better than PCM with the same effective sampling rate. Hi-res PCM sounds great. But redbook's 44.1 at 16 bit is not the same effective sampling rate.

Open my mind? Science is not about being right. There is no scientific consensus that DSD is equal to redbook. There are plenty of other technicians who choose to record DSD - I doubt they are all sell outs just because they disagree with the study you linked to. It is interesting that classical music is well represented in the DSD recording world, a genre that is not generally played casually as pop radio music or danced to, but is often demanding of a listener's attention to the musical virtuosity and expression of the musicians.

I work in the psychology / behavior science field professionally. While mathematical proofs or experiments with electricity can be fairly straight forward, it is far more difficult to control for human behavior and perception variables. The outcome of the experiment you linked to is not a mathematical or physics experiment, but a human experiment, and it is not a firm and final proof of anything. My skeptisism is not because I disrespect science - to the contrary, human behavioral studies need to be respected for their limitations as much as for the light they shed. It is hazardous to cling to a narrow conclusion and say a question of perception has been proved, and disregard all other evidence including testimony of those who contradict the conclusion.

As for water, it can go uphill, and often it does. Think waves against rocks, siphons, negative air pressure situations, kids with straws. Nevertheless, I get your point - direct observation is a solid starting point in understanding what might be true. I assume you base the water-going-downhill theory on your direct observation? I base my dissatisfaction with redbook based on my direct observation. I respect that you usually see water going downhill. It would be scientifically valid to respect that some people hear a difference, and others don't, and test for why that might be - rather than testing a negative (that it cannot be).

Do you know that some people see specific frequencies (notes as musicians might call them) as a color? That some such people literally see sound? Science actually is far more creative and colorful mind-expanding than holding fast to a few rigid facts and absolutes. Science explains how some hear sound profoundly differently than you or I hear. I don't see sound in colors, but that doesn't mean nobody sees sounds as colors.

Redbook is different from DSD, and DSD different from hi-res PCM. I assume you would concede that?

Then, given their actual differences, which are measurable in the physical world, and if some people can perceive sounds so radically differently that some hear a C note as the color aqua and a B-flat as pink, then perhaps one person exists who cannot hear differences that exist between DSD and redbook, and another person exists who can hear those differences.

Now, it would be nice to please let someone answer the question about how the Tascam functions, or to discuss devices to take vinyl to digital - which I believe is the title of this thread.

There is clearly an aspect of right and wrong about science. For example science basically says that perpetual motion is impossible and in fact no exceptions to that have ever been found or are expected to be found.


Depends on what you mean by "is equal".

If by equal you mean "is the same thing as", then the scientific consensus is indeed that they are not equal and can't be equal. They are not the same thing. One is PCM and the other is bitstream .

If by equal you mean "music coded that way can't be reliably distinguished from music that is identical in every way but coded some other way", then there is considerable scientific data and more than a few publications that say so.

If you are trying to make a scientific argument then you have missed the boat. Your statement is an attempt to reduce science to a popularity contest.

It's not just one study.

If you are trying to make a scientific argument then you have missed the boat. Your statement is an attempt to reduce science to an opinon survey .


It would appear that as far as experimental psychology goes, you need to hit the books.

That is exactly why carefully controlled listening tests have been used to study this question.

You appear to be confused about the basic nature of science because in science nothing is firm or final but all findings are provisional, subject to future experiments and investigations.


You seem to be confused about skepticism. The hypothesis at hand is that DSD has some unique sound quality benefits, and it is then I who is in the role of the skeptic. I am aware of many attempts to show that DSD has some sound quality benefit and any of them that have sufficient rigor fail to support the hypothesis that DSD or so called "Hi rez" formats make any audible difference at all in the roles that they were pushed forward about a decade ago.


You seem to want to deny that when water goes uphill it does so for a reason which is energy from an outside source, including energy from outside sources that are stored as kinetic energy in a moving mass.

The situation with water going uphill is so well known and accepted and the abuse of it above is so blatent that I see the discussion going downhill very fast.

Your direct observations seem to lack even basic experimental controls. I didn't think that they allowed people to get degrees in Psychology with at least 101 level classes in experimental design and statistics.

Denial isn't just a river in Egypt! ;-)

Unfortunately, this thread is unrecoverably hijacked with off-topic anti-DSD diatribe. If this argument is from someone on winter break from classes, it will be a relief when school is back in session in January.

I did not post here to read monotonously repeated biases against DSD - a format that sounds perfectly good to me. I would have liked to read even some little thing about the Tascam recorder I posted to ask about - or some information on digitizing LPs, which is the actual topic of this thread.

Opining pros and cons of DSD, is probably more appropriate in a theoretical thread. Avsforum would be a better resource for information if Special Members could address their replies to the information requested.

Since this thread is wrecked, I'm done with this.
Edited by Jess Sayin - 12/21/12 at 5:58am

You really don't know who you are talking down at, do you? ;-)

Of course not. Presumably you wanted to hear a recitation of the same-old same-old anti-science fairy tales from greedy vendors and high end ragazines.

Of course DSD sounds perfectly good. So does Redbook no matter what sort of biases you have against it.

I suspect that it is hard to find that much about it, given that it was based on the pseudo scientific idea that DSD sounds better or even different than PCM with the same bandwidth and dynamic range.

What is there to say about digitizing LPs that hasn't already been said a great many times? LPs are a legacy analog media with rather limited power bandwidth and dynamic range. Easy enough to accurately digitize with modest modern PCM equipment.

You made the false claims, and they were effectively rebutted. How can there be a problem with that?


It happened. Apparently you had an opportunity to learn more than you bargained for.


The only way this thread is wrecked if its origional purpose was to have a DSD love in. Reality can really suck, can't it? Live and learn!