Is There Any Reason to Archive Vinyl at 24 bits Instead of 16?

[Anderton]

Given the typical dynamic range of LPs (55 to 65 dB), it seems that 16 bits is really all you need, so you don't need to use up an extra 50% of storage for 24 bits. Thoughts?

[Mike Kent]

16 bits certainly seems okay. In fact, I would even say that a lossy compressed audio format is sufficient, although you could argue you are introducing new artifacts to the sound. My vinyl collection is pretty old and worn and so is my turntable. The fidelity of my old vinyl records is generally below the fidelity of MP3. So digital considerations are not the weak link.  In most cases, great music is still great with lesser sound quality. For songs/albums that are important to me, I have rebought them in digital format anyway and a bought file is going to sound better than a digital copy recorded from vinyl.

 

That said, if you have good preamps, good a/D, and good recording techniques, 16-bit audio sounds great, whether from vinyl or any other source. 

[Anderton]

Thanks Mike! Fortunately my records are in good shape and I just splurged on a new turntable, but it does seem to me that going above 16 bits is overkill. With FLAC I'm using up about 300 MB of storage per album, which isn't bad.

 

I must admit I'd forgotten how much I dislike surface noise. Even with records in good shape, and cleaning them off religiously before playing, there are little clicks and noises that seem an inalterable part of the sound. 99% of the time the music masks them, but for quiet fadeouts and classical music with wide dynamics, surface noise and cheap vinyl remains my #1 reason for loving digital audio

[analogika]

The point of 24 bits, as I understand, is not so much the total dynamic range, but having the detail within the particular range you're using. 

Not having to hit 0dB digitally (and risk clipping), while still maintaining enough dynamic resolution to have processing freedom and a workable dynamic range, is the goal, no? 

 

FWIW, the annoyance of surface noise and crackling are directly related to quality of the turntable and tonearm assembly, beyond the obvious effects of the medium itself.  

[Anderton]

3 hours ago, analogika said:

The point of 24 bits, as I understand, is not so much the total dynamic range, but having the detail within the particular range you're using. 

 

Once within the DAW, that's the case. My thought is that with vinyl's 60 dB dynamic range, the 24-bit A/D converter in my interface is only capturing 10 "real" bits of audio (assuming 6 dB resolution per bit). So, my thinking (please correct me if I'm wrong!) is that regardless of what's happening in the DAW, it can't give more resolution to what was already captured. It also occurred to me that the surface noise is a primitive form of dither

 

3 hours ago, analogika said:

FWIW, the annoyance of surface noise and crackling are directly related to quality of the turntable and tonearm assembly, beyond the obvious effects of the medium itself.

 

The turntable is a Fluance RT84 with a Nagaoka MP-110 stylus, so that's probably about as good as I'm going to get without spending thousands of dollars. I think the issue is that vinyl is just inherently noisy, which I'd pretty much forgotten about because I haven't listened to vinyl in so long. You can even hear the difference between cheap vinyl from the 80s and the higher-quality vinyl from older records.

 

Getting every molecule of dust off the record prior to playing is tough. I use a carbon-fiber brush and have also tried velvet. But I think ultimately, I'll need to blow compressed air over the surface just before recording the vinyl. Fortunately it's usually humid in Tennessee, so at least static electricity isn't as much of a problem as it is elsewhere.

 

 

[Sundown]

My ears aren’t very sensitive to sample rate, but they are to bit depth. 24-bit recordings have a depth to them that I’ve never heard 16-bit match, independent of source material.

 

To me, disk space is cheap and 24-bit would give me long-range piece of mind.

 

Todd

[Anderton]

I wanted to do some actual testing, so I rendered several records at 16-bit depth and 24-bit depth (both lossless FLAC format, because that's what I'll be using). Then, I "unzipped" them to WAV files and brought them into Studio One to do a null test. At "much-louder-than-comfortable-but-almost bearable" listening levels, it initially sounded like dead silence. If I turned the level way up (as in way too loud to even think of listening at that level), I could evenutally hear a super-low level hiss.

 

The 16-bit version was 2/3 the size of the 24-bit version, as expected. I estimate that I have around 1500 records. So assuming 300 MB average for 16-bit and 450 MB for 24-bit, that's 450 GB for 16-bit and 675 GB for 24-bit. Those estimates are a little on the low side, but they're close enough.

 

From an audio standpoint, I think the difference between the two is essentially undetectable. But Sundown's logic makes sense - it can't hurt to do 24-bit, because in either case the collection is going to fit on a terabyte drive. The only disadvantage I can think of with 24-bit is taking longer to back up, but that's not enough of a concern to go with 16 bits.

 

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it

 

[ProfD]

5 hours ago, Anderton said:

The 16-bit version was 2/3 the size of the 24-bit version, as expected. I estimate that I have around 1500 records. So assuming 300 MB average for 16-bit and 450 MB for 24-bit, that's 450 GB for 16-bit and 675 GB for 24-bit. Those estimates are a little on the low side, but they're close enough.

 

...it can't hurt to do 24-bit, because in either case the collection is going to fit on a terabyte drive.

 

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it

 

Having done the listening test and math, I type go for it at 24-bit.😁

 

Glad to know of someone who's actually getting started with the process of digitizing a record collection.☺️ 

 

Maybe I'll plunge into a similar project during the winter of 2024.😎

[jerrythek]

3 hours ago, ProfD said:

Having done the listening test and math, I type go for it at 24-bit.😁

 

Glad to know of someone who's actually getting started with the process of digitizing a record collection.☺️ 

 

Maybe I'll plunge into a similar project during the winter of 2024.😎

I did the process around 13 years ago. Many of my older albums had suffered being played on a less-than-audiophile systems, so the inevitable pops/clicks/etc were there in all their annoying glory. I did a LOT of clean-up, using Sound Soap (sadly long gone) and some other restoration tools, and then a LOT of hand editing to remove the most egregious clicks left (as I didn't want to run the de-noising software set too high, for the artifacts that it would add). I assumed that I would often be listening to the  music on headphones and really wanted to get it as clean as possible. In the end I have to wonder if all the work/time was worth it, compared to just rebuying the music, but I did have a lot of older/rarer jazz and such that was not easy to find. Of course, this was all before streaming came along and resuscitated a lot of titles.

 

Back then I chose 16-bits, as the cost of tech was higher. I think that today, I would certainly go for 24-bits so that the quiet end of the files could be as clear and noise-less as possible.

 

And I will admit that I am a (usually) quiet, but militant advocate of digital over vinyl. Vinyl is such an inferior format for storing and reproducing audio. The limited dynamic range, the fact that the fidelity worsens as you move towards the inner bands of the disc, the fact that you cannot increase the bass too much or the needle might jump out of the grooves. The surface noise, and the likelihood of pops ad clicks on older, much-played albums. And so on and on and on. I see no scientific reason that a well-mastered digital file wouldn't have all the same warmth and other positive descriptions given to vinyl. I often wonder if the the vinyl enthusiasts trumpet the sonic benefits because they have bought great gear for playing/listening to their music, versus how people often listen to music. But I cannot fathom ANY reason that vinyl would sound better than a well-curated digital file. Am I wrong?

 

 

[Anderton]

4 minutes ago, jerrythek said:

But I cannot fathom ANY reason that vinyl would sound better than a well-curated digital file. Am I wrong?

 

No. It's been instructive looking at the files. They look like waveforms, not sausages. The highs aren't super-hyped. There aren't imaging plugins that do weird things to the phase. But I also think a lot of why people like the "sound" of vinyl better isn't about the sound at all, but the performances done by musicians playing in a room together, as they record material honed by months and years on the road.

 

I've often said consumers listen to music, engineers listen to sound. The older music-making process fostered something that you rarely find in modern processes, and I think that's what consumers are picking up on with vinyl.

 

10 minutes ago, jerrythek said:

In the end I have to wonder if all the work/time was worth it, compared to just rebuying the music, but I did have a lot of older/rarer jazz and such that was not easy to find. Of course, this was all before streaming came along and resuscitated a lot of titles.

 

Yeah, I hear you on that. But a lot of the music I have isn't readily available. And I'm not going to digitize my entire collection, just the stuff I know I'll listen to. One advantage of digitizing as opposed to re-buying is that I have the recordings as intended, not as "remastered, new & improved" versions that sound like chalk on a blackboard.

[ProfD]

1 minute ago, Anderton said:

But I also think a lot of why people like the "sound" of vinyl better isn't about the sound at all, but the performances done by musicians playing in a room together, as they record material honed by months and years on the road.

 

I've often said consumers listen to music, engineers listen to sound. The older music-making process fostered something that you rarely find in modern processes, and I think that's what consumers are picking up on with vinyl.

Agreed.  Vinyl has a vibe that transcends the technology used to produce it.

 

Otherwise, IMO, *good* music cuts through regardless of physical media or virtual and listening format.

 

Again, that's why folks are just as fine listening to *crappy* mp3 as we were with mono AM radios, crackling vinyl and walkmans.😁 

 

It's all about the music.😎

[jerrythek]

6 minutes ago, Anderton said:

But I also think a lot of why people like the "sound" of vinyl better isn't about the sound at all, but the performances done by musicians playing in a room together, as they record material honed by months and years on the road.

That's certainly true, but vinyl became a "fad" a number of years ago, and people are releasing music on vinyl to get some of that action. I get that holding an album in your hand, and seeing larger artwork, and especially liner notes and credits (that old eyes can actually read!) is all part of the experience, and digital files don't give that. I am certainly of the age that I remember bringing an album home, and pouring over the text etc. while listening - it was great to focus so completely on that.

 

9 minutes ago, Anderton said:

One advantage of digitizing as opposed to re-buying is that I have the recordings as intended, not as "remastered, new & improved" versions that sound like chalk on a blackboard.

That's an important aspect I hadn't considered! 

[jerrythek]

Just now, ProfD said:

Agreed.  Vinyl has a vibe that transcends the technology used to produce it.

I get that, but my point is that it doesn't have the audio quality, even though a lot of people like to claim that it does. I'm not saying that people are wrong to enjoy their experience, but side-by-side I can't believe that it would win over well-prepared digital files.

[Anderton]

13 minutes ago, jerrythek said:

I get that, but my point is that it doesn't have the audio quality, even though a lot of people like to claim that it does. I'm not saying that people are wrong to enjoy their experience, but side-by-side I can't believe that it would win over well-prepared digital files.

 

People enjoy the ritual. I also think part of it is people listen to vinyl over speakers that move air, instead of earbuds. 

 

One problem with vinyl that I rarely see mentioned is the RIAA curve. There's 20 dB of treble boost and bass cut going in, and 20 dB of treble cut and bass boost on playback, done with analog filters. There's no way the tolerances are going to add up in a happy direction, and of course, there's phase shift involved too. 

 

I seriously wonder whether people would detect the same "warmth" if the RIAA filtering process used linear-phase EQ. Many engineers prefer using digital emulations of analog gear compared to linear-phase EQ, which doesn't introduce inherent phase changes. They talk about the "warmth" of the analog emulations.  

 

Hmmm...maybe it's time for a "Vinylizer" product. It inserts between the preamp and power amp, and uses two analog filters in series that re-create the effect of audio going into, and coming out of, the RIAA filters - phase shifts and all. 

[George Toledo]

It’s pedantic, but it occurs to me that the question isn’t the dynamic range of the vinyl itself, but the dynamic range of the chain.

 

Surface noise and any resulting harmonic distortion might increase the actual dynamic range of the signal being captured.

 

Enough to need more than 16 bits? I think probably not, but it’s something I would keep in mind.

 

[Anderton]

1 hour ago, George Toledo said:

Surface noise and any resulting harmonic distortion might increase the actual dynamic range of the signal being captured.

 

Yes, it does - the low-level hiss really is a primitive form of dithering. But, at least based on my null test, the dynamic range is sufficiently under 80 dB or so that 16 or 24-bit resolution captures all but the parts that are essentially inaudible anyway.

[Sundown]

By using a high bit depth and sampling rate, I figure it gives you the best results with plugins. One might say “why would I want to use plugins on digitized vinyl?”, but I could think of many applications depending on the quality of the source material. Maybe you want to apply some de-clicking / de-crackling. Maybe you want to raise the gain to more modern levels (short of limiting). Maybe you’re like me and you have a high sensitivity to mud, and you want to dip-out a bit of 300-400 Hz for your personal liking with a mastering EQ. 

 

Any way you slice it, absent the file size penalty, it gives you the most long term options to record it with 24 bit A/D and a good sampling rate.

 

Todd

[Anderton]

2 hours ago, Sundown said:

By using a high bit depth and sampling rate, I figure it gives you the best results with plugins.

 

Actually, I'm not sure that's an issue. The DAW's audio engine is what maintains accuracy over multiple operations. It won't alter the resolution of the original material, whether it was captured at 16 or 24 bits. This is because of the dichotomy where in the real world, audio passes through hardware to do digitization and hardware has very inflexible rules about dynamic range. Once it's in the software, the dynamic range is for all practical purposes as much as you could ever need.

 

But I'm still recording at 24 bits for the reasons you mentioned previously. I file it under "can't hurt, could help."

[jazzpiano88]

I think people have touched on the topic of definition of dynamic range.   

Normally you use the noise floor of the system you are trying to digitize to define the bottom end of the dynamic range.  But what is the definition of the noise floor with Vinyl?   It’s one thing if you want to treat the vinyl noise as undesirable.  It’s another thing if you want to accurately capture the noise characteristics of vinyl.  

 

Quentin Tarantino in wanting to create the old time movie theater audio would go to great lengths to generating the snapping and crackling of the sound after a print would have been played hundreds of times, including the warbling of the audio from the worn out film audio track.  

[analogika]

One aspect of vinyl, as mentioned, is that it is the format whose limitations people had in mind when actually making records up until about forty years ago. So a whole lot of decisions, starting with the very arrangement of instrumentation over choice of gear, up to mixdown and mastering (of course), including sequencing of albums, were made specifically with vinyl reproduction in mind. 

"Remastering" The Wall made it sound like a mid-90s production. That's well and nice, but it doesn't fucking work, because The Wall is anything but a mid-90s production, neither in concept nor any other decision made in the process of creation. 

And extending that to today, productions are still made specifically with the medium in mind. Mastering will tailor to the different media to some extent, but "as intended" consumption will make for the best experience, even if the actual fidelity isn't mathematically the most accurate. 

Obviously, most stuff these days is produced with digital distribution in mind, but not all of it is* — and I still like to buy that on vinyl. 

 

And I'm not discounting the frustration of engineers at the time who actually wanted more than the available media had to offer, and who embraced every step towards actual higher fidelity as it happened. 

 

 

*) The Drawbars' One Finger Only, for example, or the stuff we recorded specifically for 7" release on Burning Sole records, as well as the entire Angels of Libra catalog so far. 

 

[Anderton]

2 hours ago, analogika said:

"Remastering" The Wall made it sound like a mid-90s production. That's well and nice, but it doesn't fucking work, because The Wall is anything but a mid-90s production, neither in concept nor any other decision made in the process of creation.

 

Bingo. You might enjoy my October column for Mix Magazine, So...Who Needs "New" Mixes? It must have struck a chord, it got a lot of responses.

 

2 hours ago, analogika said:

And extending that to today, productions are still made specifically with the medium in mind. Mastering will tailor to the different media to some extent, but "as intended" consumption will make for the best experience, even if the actual fidelity isn't mathematically the most accurate. 

 

What I find interesting is that if I mix for Atmos, its stereo renderer creates an excellent stereo version...at least as good, and perhaps better, than if I had done a stereo-only mix.

 

As far as "dressing up" old music goes, I'm remastering some of the albums I worked on in the 60s. What's a little different is that I was there for the recordings and mixes, =so I knew what compromises were made for the sake of the technology, gear, or budget. My goal is to make the albums sound like we wanted them to sound, not how they ended up. The differences are small, but when I played one of the remasters for the drummer, he flipped out because it was also the way he always wanted to hear the song.

 

So maybe the rule for remixes is to leave the damn music alone, unless the people who masterminded the original version are 100% involved..  

[jerrythek]

18 hours ago, analogika said:

One aspect of vinyl, as mentioned, is that it is the format whose limitations people had in mind when actually making records up until about forty years ago. So a whole lot of decisions, starting with the very arrangement of instrumentation over choice of gear, up to mixdown and mastering (of course), including sequencing of albums, were made specifically with vinyl reproduction in mind. 

"Remastering" The Wall made it sound like a mid-90s production. That's well and nice, but it doesn't fucking work, because The Wall is anything but a mid-90s production, neither in concept nor any other decision made in the process of creation. 

And extending that to today, productions are still made specifically with the medium in mind. Mastering will tailor to the different media to some extent, but "as intended" consumption will make for the best experience, even if the actual fidelity isn't mathematically the most accurate. 

Obviously, most stuff these days is produced with digital distribution in mind, but not all of it is* — and I still like to buy that on vinyl. 

 

And I'm not discounting the frustration of engineers at the time who actually wanted more than the available media had to offer, and who embraced every step towards actual higher fidelity as it happened. 

 

I get what you're saying - my initial post/opinion was about the delivery medium, and people's  preference for vinyl as a format, not specifically in remixing. I still argue (without anger/hostility etc) that vinyl brings nothing to the sonics that a well-mastered digital file can't deliver, sonically. So to me, even if the music was intended for vinyl (like the small trend towards cassette music, which I don't get at all!), a digital file still wold be superior, just for the fact that it won't degrade upon repeated plays etc.

 

Remixing is another subject. If the original artist is involved I'm all for it. I would think (and I am projecting here) that given the chance to have a fuller bass response across the whole project, better separation of instruments, and increased dynamic range etc. that the artist/engineers would jump at the potential for improvements. As you mentioned above. 

[analogika]

On 11/25/2023 at 4:57 PM, jerrythek said:

(like the small trend towards cassette music, which I don't get at all!)

 

That's not a "trend", I think, just a super nerdy fad for a tiny market getting off on the sheer obscurity of it. 

You can't do the "yeah, I have a favourite band, but I don't think you've ever heard of it" thing in the age of fully digital distribution, so that personality trait has to be filled in a different way. 

[Philbo King]

My vinyl recording is

turntable -> mixconsole -> DAW 24 bit/44.1k (the turntable has line outs)

From there I mark out separate cuts, add metadata tags, and render to 320kb/s MP3 files.  I've found there are rare moments I can tell a difference between MP3 and 24 bit/44.1k audio, but nothing significant in a musical sense is lost.  Subtracting the original and the MP3 gives me a slight amount of hash below -90 dB. No use getting too precious about it, I'm not an archivist for the Library Of Congess...

[David Emm]

I'm the lo-fi barbarian in the room. In foodie terms, I'm the uncle who likes suspicious hot dogs with fake cheese in the middle.

 

I've slowly saved a fair pile of my old cassettes, featuring LPs that are long gone or those riveting ECM titles from John Surman. I feed them into a Sony boom box that reproduces them well. I run RCA lines from that into a Focusrite 2i2 and on into Logic. I put a small layer of compression on top and boost the high end gently. Even the fuzzier tapes yield the goods, with more air on top. I'm just a nostalgic listener in that case, so the MP3'd results work for me. When I'm composing, its easy to get the sparkling results for which Synth World is known. I have multi-mode ears, so 16 bits represent things to my satisfaction.

 

This is where I click over to 'Hang My Head In Shame' mode because I don't have more exacting standards. Sorry! 🙄

[Anderton]

2 hours ago, David Emm said:

This is where I click over to 'Hang My Head In Shame' mode because I don't have more exacting standards. Sorry!

 

No, this is where you say "Craig is right that music engineers care about sound, while music listeners care about music."

[analogika]

17 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

No, this is where you say "Craig is right that music engineers care about sound, while music listeners care about music."

there's considerable spillover in both directions. 

[Anderton]

5 hours ago, analogika said:

there's considerable spillover in both directions. 

 

Of course, it's a generalization. But it's one that's grounded in reality...

• Engineers and record companies pushed reel-to-reel over vinyl, but it never got traction.
• Engineers and record companies pushed Quad and SQ over stereo vinyl, but they never got traction.
• Sony pushed Minidisc as a higher-quality cassette replacement, but aside from broadcast journalism, it never got traction.
• Engineers and record companies pushed SACD, but it never got traction.
• Consumers were happy to replace CDs with MP3s that stream at 128 kbps.
• Engineers and record companies are pushing Atmos, but while it's getting traction for home theater, consumers aren't exactly flipping out with joy and making it the dominant music release form. It took 5 years between when the first Atmos media was released for home theater, to the time that REM released the first album in Atmos format. Atmos has always been about theater, not music. Read Speed Bumps in the Immersion Transition.

At some point, people will be dragged into higher sound quality with music because streaming services will offer higher resolution releases, smartphone DACs will be able to handle higher resolution, and Atmos will be their only option. Currently, any serious video buff knows that streamed video is not as good as 4K physical media. It will be a awhile before that kind of video fidelity becomes the norm for consumers, and ditto the audio equivalent.

 

Of course, I'm always chasing the highest quality possible in my work, even though I know it will be heard mostly on computer speakers and Apple earbuds (which have a more accurate frequency response than generic Beats headphones, but that's another story). 

 

[Thethirdapple]

Would "recording" at 24bits be similar to oversampling?

 

Providing some extra head room for post processing... wonder if there are tools to expand the encoded data and more easily "clean" noise and artifacts at certain frequencies?

 

This thread had me reaching for a good'ol book off the shelves to find: The Art of Digital Audio by John Watkinson.

A great dive into audio conversion and some early compression methods.

 

PEACE

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[Anderton]

7 hours ago, Thethirdapple said:

Providing some extra head room for post processing... wonder if there are tools to expand the encoded data and more easily "clean" noise and artifacts at certain frequencies?

 

It's possible that processing inside the computer would produce results with more than 16 bits cue to calculations being taken out to more places that 16 bits, but there's no way to get more than 16 bits of resolution out of the original audio...until someone figures out a way to do it