You need an education regarding the sonic spectrum.

There is virtually NO acoustic audio content above 6Khz, and if there was you probably could not hear it. There is certainly nothing above 20 Khz, and that is why the 21 Khz cutoff of the CD format is considered very sufficient. Anything you see above 20 Khz is noise, not musical content.

As far as LPs are concerned, the lathe that cuts the LP master is not capable of recording anything over 20Khz, so anything higher than that on some record can only be random noise. In addition to that, filters remove anything higher that that before the signal even gets to the cutting lathe.

The average male can hear up to around 15 Khz when in his 20s, but most males over 50 hear very little above 10 Khz. In short, you are talking about frequencies that you cannot possibly hear. Go and have your hearing tested, and you will verify that this is true.

The highest frequency any orchestra instrument normally produces is the highest violin note; just above 4 Khz. Subjectively speaking, that is a painfully high squeaky little sound.

I have been present at a demonstration where music was played on a system capable of 20 Khz, and then it was played again with all content above 8 Khz filtered out. Even the females in the audience could not tell the difference, even though their hearing extended to above 15 Khz.

I suggest that you try filtering out everything above 10 Khz and see if you can hear the difference in a blind test; i will bet that you cannot tell which is which from a full-range to filtered.

I have been listening to audio gear for over 40 years, and IMO any capability of gear to reproduce above 15 Khz is nice, but completely wasted.

commsysman wrote:

You need an education regarding the sonic spectrum. There is virtually NO acoustic audio content above 6kHz...The highest frequency any orchestra instrument normally produces is the highest violin note; just above 4kHz.

With respect to the fundamental frequency, yes, but there are higher-frequency harmonics present that enable you still to identify the instrument as a violin. With some instruments, like a Harmon-muted trumpet, those harmonics extend up to 45kHz. See my spectral analysis of this sound as well as those of an orchestra and other sounds at www.stereophile.com/features/282/index.html. Even an electric guitar has harmonics that extend up to 20kHz.

commsysman wrote:

I have been present at a demonstration where music was played on a system capable of 20kHz, and then it was played again with all content above 8kHz filtered out. Even the females in the audience could not tell the difference, even though their hearing extended to above 15kHz.

Just another shell game pretending to be "scientific," I am afraid.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Can an LP master lathe put anything above 20 Khz on a master??

Is it normal for this to be done?

Can an LP master lathe put anything above 20 Khz on a master??

Is it normal for this to be done? Doesn't filtering limit what is fed to the lathe during cutting?

commsysman wrote:

Can an LP master lathe put anything above 20kHz on a master??

Yes. See fig.5 at the article I linked to, on the second page: www.stereophile.com/content/whats-going-there-page-2. You can see spectral content on this 40 year-old LP extending up to 40kHz, other than 3 record ticks all of it coming from cymbals and electric guitars.

commsysman wrote:

Is it normal for this to be done? Doesn't filtering limit what is fed to the lathe during cutting?

Not in my experience, though if an LP is cut from a CD master (more common than you might think these days, as evidenced by the top posting in this thread), there won't be any ultrasonic content above 22kHz.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

commsysman wrote:

You need an education regarding the sonic spectrum.

There is virtually NO acoustic audio content above 6Khz, and if there was you probably could not hear it.

I can speak as a longtime audiophile and the son of a respected hearing specialist and I must disagree with your basic premise. While there may not be alot of musical energy above 6Khz relative to lower frequencies, there is plenty of critical audio detail from 6Khz to 20Khz that can make a huge difference in an individual's listening experience. Whether or not one can hear these frequencies at a particular volume is another matter and unique for each person. I believe this range is what alot of people are referring to when they talk about spatial cues, sibilance, or airyness. It's what makes brushes on cymbals sound crisp and light, what gives stereo images an airy 3-dimensional quality, or gives certain presence to 'S' & 'T' sounds. For critical listening, and especially when using headphones, the presence or lack of the 6Khz to 20Khz range (to those who can hear it) is dramatic. As Mr. Akinson indicated, high frequency information is very present in musical instruments (and many other things), which can be scientifically measured and illustrated.

In short, if you cut off everything above 6Khz, it's like switching from an FM to an AM radio transmission on the same station. While much of the 50+ crowd may have a harder time discerning the difference, I'm fairly certain that many of us under 50 with normal hearing would hear a significant difference between the AM and FM broadcast curve of the same signal. I know I can and I don't even have perfect hearing. Sad to think how many young people have damaged their high frequency discernment by listening to their iPods at crazy levels.

I've done extensive frequency tests with music and speech using a popular audio app on my PC. Some years ago I also had access to a clinical audiometer where I was able to test my own hearing out to 20Khz. At the time, I concluded that my hearing was basically flat to 8Khz and extended to about 17 or 18Khz at a moderate level. But even now, at age 41, cutting off the frequencies of musical pieces at 12Khz on my computer makes some difference in how they sound to me. It reminds me of the days of cassettes when using different Dolby NR settings on non-Dolby tapes (or tapes from other decks) could significantly affect playback. I would go so far as to say that even in speech reproduction, there is appreciable audio information above 6Khz.

Case in point - I used to listen to an AM radio program that interspersed monologue and music. I recorded some of these programs onto DAT which I now have on my computer. Then in more recent years, I was able to get full-range MP3's of those same programs which were made from the broadcast masters. The difference is night and day. Not so much in the quality, but the frequency response. Even the way the elderly gentleman's voice sounds is so much different when you bring in the 6Khz+ detail. And to prove it to myself, I tried cutting off everything above 6Khz on the MP3 files. And Voila! With a little dynamics compression, I was able to re-create the old limited high frequency AM sound of my DAT recordings.

But as to whether or not albums need to contain audio detail above 20Khz? I would say go have your hearing checked and see if you can actually hear those frequencies at listening levels. If you can (and I really doubt it) then I would say you have a reason to be concerned.

~David L.

I would say if your observations are true to you, than so be it. You also claim there is no difference in cables, provided they are of reasonably low impedance and capacitance. Since very few people in the audio community agree with you and there is increasingly (as much as I can guess from looking through magazines and what not, giving I am not a performing or recording musician) an acceptance that the quality and construction of cables matter in the excruciatingly flat earth professional musician world.

Understand it may very well be that you just don't hear very well. And that's okay. My wife is a terrible singer, but she can get my toddler to sleep at night, so she sings beautifully to him. But don't make these absolutist claims that if many people hear a difference and people who like JA who are inclined to measure things measure a difference that because those observations don't jive with your opinions makes them less valid.

If you walk into a room and 2 or three people are lunatics, maybe you are right. If you walk into a stadium and they are all lunatics, maybe you should consider the common denominator in the situations.

Whether there is no musical information over 22kHz or we cannot hear it, it's still irrelevant! The only relevant thing is we are paying for high-res and are simply getting the run-of-the-mill CD issue (upsampled to fool the customer). And this stinks!

Folks, listen to what JA is saying, and if you can get your mind around this and learn how to tune those harmonics in (at whatever range) your going to experience a far more realistic and involving performance.

Don't kill sound, use it. Get Tuned!

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

Michael,
Are you or others advocating that somehow digital records pressed on vinyl are superior to their CD counterparts? Seems kinda hard to imaging that being the case.

Secondly, I agree with others that there is no audible information at 22Khz. There is a huge difference in cutting something off at 6khz and 22khz. The S, F and TH sounds are just under 8Khz. So to say there is no acoustic information above 6Khz is false. There is speech information above 6Khz so there is certainly musical information above this threshold.

It seems no one has really address the poster's original answer which is--should we buy digital music pressed on vinyl.

spiritmachine wrote:

Michael,
Are you or others advocating that somehow digital records pressed on vinyl are superior to their CD counterparts? Seems kinda hard to imaging that being the case.

Secondly, I agree with others that there is no audible information at 22Khz. There is a huge difference in cutting something off at 6khz and 22khz. The S, F and TH sounds are just under 8Khz. So to say there is no acoustic information above 6Khz is false. There is speech information above 6Khz so there is certainly musical information above this threshold.

It seems no one has really address the poster's original answer which is--should we buy digital music pressed on vinyl.

I sometimes buy digitally remastered analog music put onto audio cassettes. Sounds very good. Very clean, dynamic and analog like, more analog like than say CD, generally speaking. And what are we listening to when we listen to Classic Rock radio? Is that analog? Digital? Some combination of analog and digital? I have a sneaking suspicion they don't play 45s on the radio any more.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

It's in the harmonics.
I'd add the fact that your ears aren't the only part of the body that 'hears'.
Obviously, the way the brain interprets sound is another piece of the equation, but it doesn't stop there. Subsonic bass is felt, as are very high frequencies that stimulate us in ways we can perceive even if our ears don't notice them. That's common knowledge, of course, but it's the impact of music that we're talking about and those things exist there as well. You can shave off frequencies, but your brain and body honestly DO notice.
Most professional condenser mics go from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. That would seem, to most people a bit of overkill, as human ears supposedly can't hear those extremes. The truth is, we can!
Apologies for coming off as overly didactic. It's just that all that number crunching, graphs and specs often make us forget the basic mechanics of sound.

Nt

I made the same mistake. When I first bought my vinyl set up a year ago,I bought some new Beatle albums that were mastered from CD's. It even says so on the jacket. Don't know what I was thinking. The sound is lousy,no dynamic range at all. Real compressed. I wasted my money. Oh well.
I also have some new vinyl that sounds unbelievably good. One was mastered in 1992 and one in 2004, so I assume they were mastered from the original digital master tapes. Why they sound so good ,I'm guessing, is because they were mastered uncompressed, not because of any inherent inferiority of CD. In my experience, a CD is capable of excellent sound quality. It's just that most of them don't have it because of shitty mastering. They're mastered to sound like MP3,because thats what most people today are used to. Nobody much cares about audiophiles anymore.
The frequency response of CD is not a limiting factor for sound quality.Compression is.
I also found, on the shelf in a store, a brand new, unopened LP of "Ringo". It's all analog,from start to finish. Mastered in 1973.It sounds good,but not as good as the two newer LP's I mentioned above, made from digital masters.

Some reasons why vinyl sounds better than CD, generally speaking. Of course one can always find exceptions. There are exceptions to every rule.

CD players have chips inside that emit RFI/EMI, record players don't.
The ribbon connectors inside CD players are exposed to RFI/EMI as well as vibration and magnetic fields.
The circuit boards inside CD players are not isolated from vibration or from magnetic fields.
The fuse inside CD players degrades the sound.
Scattered CD laser light gets into the photodetector, degrading the sound.
CDs are frequently out of round, degrading the sound. It's because the laser reading process is nanoscale. LPs that are out of round don't degrade the sound since the stylus reads the grooves as a macro scale process.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
No Goats No Glory

iosiP wrote:

Whether there is no musical information over 22kHz or we cannot hear it, it's still irrelevant! The only relevant thing is we are paying for high-res and are simply getting the run-of-the-mill CD issue (upsampled to fool the customer). And this stinks!

I guess some people would demand 5 ashtrays in their new car, even if they don't know anyone who smokes.

It makes no sense to buy vinyl versions of music that was originally recorded digital - the digital copy is the best you gonna get. Now with the recent resurgence of vinyl, the quality of the offerings are a mixed bag. If you stick to MOFI or QQP you can expect a very good quality - everything else - meh!!

I bought a vinyl LP of the Beatles "Let it be" which was created from digital masters made from the original analog stereo master tapes. Like all Beatle music, it has no detail or dynamic range. Of course, the music is the best ever recorded with crappy sound quality.
The Beatles music is the best ever made,regardless of it's crummy sound quality. I only wish someone, back then,would have understood and appreciated sound quality,but, as my mother used to say,"if wishes were horses,beggars would ride"

These are the LPs and CDs with the highest dynamic range according to the Dynamic Range Database. There are three pages of listings for the Beatles. The rest of them were dynamically compressed sometimes to the point of ridiculousness.

Beatles

The Beatles Abbey Road 2012 13 11 15 lossless Vinyl

The Beatles Abbey Road [UK vinyl - 1st press] i 1969 13 11 15 lossless Unknown

The Beatles Please Please Me [MFSL vinyl] i 1986 12 11 13 lossless Unknown

The Beatles Rubber Soul i 1987 12 11 14 lossless Unknown

The Beatles Anthology 3 [Disc 2] 1997 12 11 15 lossless Unknown

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

I bought a new CD of "All things must pass"
It includes a note, written by Harrison,in which he laments Phil Specters "wall of sound" mastering of the album.
He says the technique in vogue at the time, but now sounds silly,and he wishes the songs could be freed from it.