[pinnahertz]

My self-confidence is gone…

Google is your friend...just make sure what you get is authoritative. Or check those of us who have actually had our hands-on.

By curiosity phase shifts between L&R are kept under which value, 90 degrees?
Some studies dealing with sound localization cues often provide IPD=90 as Interaural Phase Difference boundary, at least at around f=850Hz single tone or signal envelope (ITD...Burghera & al 2013).

"Phase shift", as a figure, needs more information with it, in particular a frequency or group. 90 degrees at 850 would be a gigantic amount for interchannel phase in any recording system, completely unacceptable, because the electronic path of recording channel should match almost perfectly, the physical aspects of interchannel timing produce time misalignment, which results in variable phase shift with frequency, but never to that degree. Electrical crosstalk in cartridges and heads may include some phase shift, but really not much, certainly nothing like 90 @ 850Hz.

A poorly guided 1/4" tape path might exhibit wandering channel phase of +/- 45 degrees at 15kHz, or that same degree of change offset to a range of 0 to 90 degrees lead or lag, but that's not enough to shift image. Unfortunately that kind of physical alignment problem is usually accompanied by HF response problems, which can shift image.

Some of the worst tape guidance in the pro audio world was found in stereo broadcast tape cartridges. The big concern was mono sum (compatibility), and you could get 180 degrees at 3kHz on the bad ones. As that format moved on the issues were largely fixed, and at sunset of the format stereo broadcast carts were as good as average reel-to-reel.

For vinyl, no there would never been even close to that much without something being broken. +/- 30 degrees at 20kHz would be well below average.

Interchannel phase for all digital recording formats was/is 0 degrees and stable throughout the pass band.

 

[71 dB]

Nope. That's not what happens, and that is completely wrong. If that were true there would be almost no channel separation at all.

I gave what you say here a though, but frankly I don't know why you say this. L+R being lateral instead of vertical doesn't affect my claim. The needle on the disc must experience lateral and vertical directions differently because it is a disc. The difference is probably very small, but it is there.

What you say about channel separation makes no sense. L-R having different distortion than L+R doesn't make it zero!

Again...your "elliptic filtering" is largely myth, probably comes from a rather poorly researched wiki article. An elliptic filter is simply a type of filter, just like a Chebyshev or Butterworth filter, but has little to do with the actual mechanism of bass summing. The function with the legend "elliptic filter" appeared on a mastering console or two, and has been absorbed into audio mythology as something standard. It's not, it wasn't, it isn't.

I'm sorry about my research skills. I wish I was the best in the world in everything, but the reality is I am just a normal dude. Maybe it's just a myth, but my personal experience is vinyl has very little channel separation on low frequencies (I have some music both on CD and vinyl so I can compare). Vinyls sound almost spatial distortion free.

And since the issue is that vertical modulation has hard limits of the aluminum substrate of the lacquer and the top surface of the lacquer, vertical modulation must be more controlled, which is why it's used for L-R in the first place. However, there is no independent vertical/l-r processing in mastering, and the use of elliptic filter is completely incidental to the process anyway. Low frequency summing is not done in mastering, it's done in the mix, and typically not done by summing, just done by panning bass-heavy modulation tracks to the center.

Panning is essentially summing, what else and at playback it doesn't matter when channel difference reduction was done. Mastering or mix, who cares?

No, reduced separation doesn't benefit imaging. Channel separation in vinyl is frequency dependant...highly. Mostly it's pretty bad especially at the high end.

I'm fed up fighting your besserwisser opinions. If separation is too high and it is reduced properly, yes imaging can benefit significantly. Disagree if you want, I don't care.

Vinyl doesn't have better imaging in and of itself. Any perception of that comes from either specific mastering choices or the extremely powerful expectation bias coupled with the owning, handling and playing of vinyl.

"Better imaging" is an illusion as I said, but with headphones vinyl seems to benefit from reduced spatial distortion. At least that is my experience and I am the first person to say vinyl is a historic inferior format.

 

[71 dB]

Google is your friend...just make sure what you get is authoritative. Or check those of us who have actually had our hands-on.

See my response

You haven't introduced yourself to me so how can I know what you have actually had your hands-on. Not every person on this planet can work as a vinyl maker as fun as that probably could be.

 

[71 dB]

So is it that the one stylus is being compromised through trying to track both L and R channels which causes phase shifting between the channels? That could explain the illusion of a wider sound stage.

I noticed something similar when playing my Moody Blues Days of the Future Past CD the other night. There is one part on The Night (nights in white satin) track where for a split second a sound seems to float past the right hand wall. Sounds impressive but in this case, given it is a CD, I think it is a glitch in the recording.

Mono (L+R) and Side (L-R) signals aren't "pure", so mono becomes mostly mono + somewhat side and vice versa.

 

[pinnahertz]

I gave what you say here a though, but frankly I don't know why you say this. L+R being lateral instead of vertical doesn't affect my claim. The needle on the disc must experience lateral and vertical directions differently because it is a disc. The difference is probably very small, but it is there.

What you say about channel separation makes no sense. L-R having different distortion than L+R doesn't make it zero!

Unless L+R and L-R have the same gain, response, and at least similar distortion over a usable level, what will drop first is separation. Separation drops from the mid 40dBs to the 20dB area really quickly when those things aren't identical. If L+R and L-R were radically different that would show you that separation is also poor.

I'm sorry about my research skills. I wish I was the best in the world in everything, but the reality is I am just a normal dude. Maybe it's just a myth, but my personal experience is vinyl has very little channel separation on low frequencies (I have some music both on CD and vinyl so I can compare).

You've attributed a mastering technique to the vinyl medium. That would be incorrect. Vinyl does not have poor bass separation, and if you look around you will even find recordings with widely separated bass content. It's not endemic to the medium or the mastering process, it's a choice that has some advantages sometimes.

Vinyls sound almost spatial distortion free.

Glad you like it. Separation ain't great, though.

Panning is essentially summing, what else and at playback it doesn't matter when channel difference reduction was done. Mastering or mix, who cares?

Well, apparently, you do. You keep referencing the elliptic filter as if it's a built in part of the chain. It's not. It's a function found on a few mastering consoles. Bass summing can be done a number of ways, but it's not even always necessary, certainly not required.

I'm fed up fighting your besserwisser opinions.

Sorry. I get fed up with inaccurate and misleading information firmly stated as fact. We're even then.

If separation is too high and it is reduced properly, yes imaging can benefit significantly. Disagree if you want, I don't care.

Separation too high? That's a very odd concept. Reducing separation in and of itself doesn't help your image unless the process includes consideration of the psychoacoustic factors (you know, like your favorite cross-feed thingy). However, if something was mixed in a way that is no longer relevant (like the ping-pong early Beatles stereo mixes), then sure, go nuts, reduce separation all the way to mono if you like.

"Better imaging" is an illusion as I said, but with headphones vinyl seems to benefit from reduced spatial distortion. At least that is my experience and I am the first person to say vinyl is a historic inferior format.

There's nothing about vinyl that would reduce "spatial distortion", sorry. Thats just simple technical fact. If you like how it sounds, fine. But you're including the entire chain in that, including mixing and mastering decisions. Vinyl itself does very little, and if carefully mastered, is shockingly transparent, lacking any real "vinyl sound". But since those conditions hardly ever exist, and it's all about deliberate audible change, you'll never understand why I say that, and probably won't agree. I made several recordings that I supervised all the way from original mix to release. We did CD and vinyl. It was one of the few times in history that one person oversaw the entire process. What I ended up with is vinyl that sounds just like the CD, and vice-versa, except for a bit of distortion, noise, and eventual groove wear. When you study the technology of both mediums in depth you can understand why this works. When you study the culture of commercial music release, you understand why vinyl sounds different. It's not as much a technical issue as an artistic one.

 

[pinnahertz]

See my response

You haven't introduced yourself to me so how can I know what you have actually had your hands-on. Not every person on this planet can work as a vinyl maker as fun as that probably could be.

Perhaps you might begin to tell from what I post that I have a little experience.

 

[pinnahertz]

Mono (L+R) and Side (L-R) signals aren't "pure", so mono becomes mostly mono + somewhat side and vice versa.

Well...sort of....kinda...not exactly.....

But why fight about the details.

 

[pinnahertz]

BTW, 71, when you reply to a post everyone subscribed gets your original post by email before you completely re-edit it. So even though the post ends up completely different, we still get the first version. Just FYI.

 

[bigshot]

Not every person on this planet can work as a vinyl maker as fun as that probably could be.

There are actually a few of us here who are ancient and decrepit enough to have worked on making LPs.

 

[71 dB]

There's nothing about vinyl that would reduce "spatial distortion", sorry.

Since you know so much about vinyls, please explain to me why vinyls sounds to me as if spatial distortion is reduced or why some people prefer vinyls sound?

 

[71 dB]

Let L = 1 and R = 0. We get L+R=1 and L-R = 1. Let's assume on vinyl playback the gain of L-R is 90 % of L+R (roughly -1 dB). So,

L' = L+R+0.9*L-0.9*R = 1.9*L+0.1*R = 1.9
R' = L+R-0.9*L+0.9*R = 0.1*L+1.9*R = 0.1

Separation is 20*log(1.9/0.1) = 25.6 dB

Yes, separation gets worse, but hardly zero.

There are actually a few of us here who are ancient and decrepit enough to have worked on making LPs.

Oh, of course, but I haven't. I don't even have a turntable, so I need to borrow my fathers turntable when transferring vinyls to digital form.

 

[71 dB]

I'm surprised to hear elliptic filtering is not a built-in part of vinyl chain. I read about this stuff a few years back, but must have misunderstood some things. My vinyls are mostly DJ stuff, techno, house etc. which is often "vinyl only". Maybe elliptic filtering is used on that kind of music? Strong bass and all, but other kind of music maybe not?

 

[pinnahertz]

Since you know so much about vinyls, please explain to me why vinyls sounds to me as if spatial distortion is reduced or why some people prefer vinyls sound?

I can't explain your opinion, and I'm not going to try.

I can discuss why some prefer vinyl, and I'm sorry to make you wait, but I just don't have much time this minute. The short story: the complete experience of owning, caring for, and playing vinyl encompases many sensory inputs that bias the perception of the reproduced audio. If you want accurate reproduction of the original signal, vinyl isn't the best, and is in fact seriously flawed. If you touch it, hold it, watch it, and absorb the 12" square artwork, and think about how it's a "pure analog signal" and hasn't been "chopped up into bits then reassembled", and your peers have told you with conviction that it's warm and musical, all of that combines into the total experience. And all of that is unavailable in the digital experience. Add in significantly and audibly different mastering, and bingo: you've got people liking vinyl better.

 

[pinnahertz]

I'm surprised to hear elliptic filtering is not a built-in part of vinyl chain. I read about this stuff a few years back, but must have misunderstood some things. My vinyls are mostly DJ stuff, techno, house etc. which is often "vinyl only". Maybe elliptic filtering is used on that kind of music? Strong bass and all, but other kind of music maybe not?

An elliptical filter is a particular filter type/topology that has a particular roll-off characteristic. That type of filter showed up in a mastering console made by Manley (I think) as a part of a bass-summing function. Bass summing is not mandatory, or a generic part of the vinyl mastering process. It's an option, and was adjustable anyway. Bass-summing could also be done with a Butterworth filter, or several others. Ultimately the results are subjective and applied as needed or desired to specific projects. Many, even most, need none. I've never used bass summing on any of my projects because of how they were originally mixed.

But...it's a tool that is used to increase bass and cut the record louder. That would make sense for your genres, though honestly, it's always a band-aid, as the best way to do the mono bass trick is in mixing. If that is done then no bass summing, elliptic or otherwise, is required or desired.

 

[bigshot]

I'll answer why people like vinyl... Because it's capable of sounding very very good. A well mastered and pressed LP can sound great, and the rolled off highs make it sound better on equipment that have frequency response imbalances in the upper frequencies (not uncommon). LPs also have nice big covers and readable liner notes, they look nice in stacks on the shelves, a lot of fantastic music is only available on LP- never re-released on CD, and you can get used LP records for a buck or two apiece at swap meets.

High end vinyl has a different appeal. Like most high end audio, it has less to do with sound quality than it does perception of quality. Collectors like the fetishistic washing procedures and routines to perform with each side played. There's an element of status associated with expensive audiophile pressings and the overpriced specialized equipment required to play it. Like I say, that end of it has less to do with sound quality and the music itself than it does the prestige factor.