"Hi-Res" recordings... part 3 (the Vinyl revenge...)

Okay... so now it's time for the turn of the vinyl.  For a while my LynxTWO has been out of action (the input stage has failed multiple times over the past ~14 years, quite annoying on such an expensive card... it will eventually get fixed again one day when I can be bothered...), so I had to press the E-Mu 1820M into action instead.  The noise floor is slightly lower than the Lynx, but the distortion is slightly higher.  Still plenty good enough to be compared to the other sources, as it uses good quality AK5394A A/Ds.  I will be using my old John Linsley Hood shunt-feedback phono stage, powered off the original power supply.

For a while now I've been using a Lyra instead of the Shure V15VxMR with JICO SAS stylus... while the V15+SAS is a superb combination, as is often the way with audio, when you hear something slightly better, it's hard to go back.  The Lyra has a very wide frequency response as in common with most high performance Moving Coil cartridges... the distortion is also very low, I have measured it to be lower than the Shure, which is somewhat more unusual for a MC.

I recorded each track, and then resized as best I could, matching the RMS power to make it a representative test.

First up is the 4Beards reissue, 4M101...

You can immediately see that there is a lot more transient energy above 22K (as in, it actually has some) than with the HDTracks download.  The mix and sonic tone is very similar to the HDTracks... next I took out my early copy of the Atlantic LP, SD8139.  It isn't in perfect condition, but it's very hard to find a mint one these days... the cut is almost identical in loudness to the 4Beards reissue, but the band compression seems to be slightly different.  Big difference in frequency range...

Okay... that's a lot more going on at the top!  Mix isn't quite as spacious, but there's a bit more bite to it... I guess that's due to the extended top end.

Comparing all of them in the 10K-40K range across the whole track...

But it becomes most obvious when you zoom into a small space in the music....

... just how much information the so-called "Hi-Res" version of the music is lacking.

So all I can really say is, buyer beware... my own recommendation is that unless you can be certain of the provenance of the high resolution material, you are better off finding a good pressing of the vinyl.  If we consider the 4Beards reissue for a moment, for me it sounds better than the "Hi-Res" from HDtracks and is actually about the same price to buy.  And you get a real "thing", which you can keep or sell at your leisure.

So why bother with the download?  Good question.  Convenience might be a reason, but bear in mind that you can get a CD of this album which you can rip in a few minutes, and by all accounts will not be inferior to the 24/192 version - at the time of writing this, there's a copy for 3.46GBP on eBay.

I'm getting my hands on an early version of the CD and will compare it to the 24/192 HDTracks in due course, but I think we're done with the surprises for now... :)

Getting on with some vinyl...

Well, I've been a bit remiss in keeping the blog up to date, but I was spending quite a lot of time over the past few months on getting a Sunrise prototype ready.  When I came back from the meet, it reminded me that my own turntable was in need of a bit of work in order to be able to listen to vinyl and actually test Sunrise locally.

Our house isn't particularly large, so it is hard to find room for all the audio equipment, particularly the multiple amplifiers while having room for the television which sits on a separate stand... so I'd been putting it off.  But no longer...

The "bit of work" is a new tonearm for the Teres.  I'd bought a T3Pro tonearm to replace the old Origin Live'd RB250 arm that I'd used for so long.  It's a parallel tracking tonearm as opposed to the more usual tangential tracking arm that you usually find on turntables, mainly because inner groove distortion is something I find particularly unpleasant.

There is quite a lot of setup involved, I guess that is the case for any tonearm, but there a few more adjustments than usual to be made.  I've set it up first with a fairly inexpensive cartridge, the Nagaoka MP-100, in case any mistakes were made in the process - thankfully the cartridge seems to have come through unscathed!

Here's how it looks so far...

And a closer up of the wand...

While I have sound and what appears to be reliable tracking, there still seems to be a fair way to go with optimisation.  Sound is a bit sibilant and very much reminiscent of what I consider in my relatively limited experience to be a typical "moving magnet" cartridge sound.  It may well be user error, but we'll see...

Here's a good thing... the actual arm itself is essentially silent - this is different from any other air bearing arm I've encountered, which normally have a very audible hissing sound.  The air pump itself is designed for aquarium use, and while far from silent should not be too hard to quiet down in an appropriate foam-lined box.

So lots of work still to do on the turntable, more tweaking and alignment, more solid mountings for various things, but at least it can play now!