Interesting pics Jan. Is it answers on a postcard then
'cos 'dat there stylyeye is shtuck in da groove.
You only say that because you're incapable of love.
I'm still laughing my *** off at that one. Beyond parody.
Please tell me one good thing digital has given us, piracy, MP-3, better stereo. better artists..? .Fact is that we have spent the last 20 years paddling backwards, maybe the last period of vinyl comeback is a chance to get on the right track again. Cd was in all performance aspects a great u turn that Apart from being a much better source that unfortunately sound artificial and does not fit the system. It did offfer something free from maintenance, adjustments and was free from surface noise.
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I think that there was an aspect of unknown expectations and joy back in the days of vinyl for a few reasons besides the sound qualities of vinyl we should all remember. When you went to the record store if you remember those you had all these great album covers to look at and the price compared to a CD was much easier on the wallet. So you went in and found some new music from someone you never heard of before and took that home, looked at the cover, the inside artwork, could read the lyrics without needing a magnifying glass and there was the physical aspects also. You had to get up and put the album on the turntable and set the EQ as every album was so different we actually used tone controls. 22 1/2 minutes later you had to get up and turn that album over, it was just more involving to listen to music.
Now was the music better, no, was it sometimes really good, yes. As far as only looking at noise floor I think that our hearing is better at ignoring that background noise if it is constant and equal in level, it is the clicks and pops and even sometimes the Wow that would make you notice the noise, the momentary distraction is what would ruin the image, take you away from the music when you heard a pop.
So I think in many ways it is an apples to oranges comparison between the two mediums, one is just more involving in certain ways than the other and this distorts the argument about accurate sound.I don't find CD sterile, but I have as most others heard some atrociously recorder CD;s, that is as was said not the media but the material that is flawed.
Now was the music better, no, was it sometimes really good, yes. As far as only looking at noise floor I think that our hearing is better at ignoring that background noise if it is constant and equal in level, it is the clicks and pops and even sometimes the Wow that would make you notice the noise, the momentary distraction is what would ruin the image, take you away from the music when you heard a pop.
So I think in many ways it is an apples to oranges comparison between the two mediums, one is just more involving in certain ways than the other and this distorts the argument about accurate sound.I don't find CD sterile, but I have as most others heard some atrociously recorder CD;s, that is as was said not the media but the material that is flawed.
You must be kidding here to think that when digital is "right" someone like Muck or Reiner will appear to give yet another spectacular interpretation of Wagner or maybe another Pharaoh Sanders or Coltrain will feel compelled to take advantage of this new technology.
An unfortunate offshoot of making my system better has been the realization that some of my old "Impulse" jazz LP's are actually fairly poor technically, but in the end I don't care.
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FAR better capability to make good recordings, and ones that can be perfectly archived. Of course, I have actually bothered to compare my mike feeds to the recordings, both in my days taping and my current use of digital recording. I would never go back to those days of mediocre pitch stability, colored frequency response, and poor dynamics and distortion. If that's the sound that you or someone else prefer, fine. For myself, I prefer altering what comes out of the microphone as little as possible. YMMV.
I think that what MiiB is saying is, for all of it's objectively superior technical parameters, digital playback is often less satisfying to hear than is vinyl playback. This is a notion with which I tend to agree. The question which then would follow is, why such a discrepancy? Why would a medium with clearly superior objective performance often prove subjectively inferior to a lesser performing medium? The key word pointing to the answer is, I think, often. Often, digital playback sounds less satisfying, but not always. If just one digital playback system produces sound as, or even more satisfying than vinyl, that proves the medium is capable of doing so. It's like an old saying about photos of UFOs. If even just one photo is genuine, then UFOs exist.
Digital is, indeed, essentially perfect in theory, however, the devil appears in it's practice. The implementation details are the key to unlocking the music that's been jailed for so long on our CDs. The bad news is that important implementation details are usually overlooked in most consumer playback gear. One can tell that without seeing a schematic of such gear simply by their characteristically less than satisfying sound quality.
For those all too few playback units where all of the important implementation details have been properly addressed, one can hear what CD should have sounded like (and what we had expected it to sound like) from the beginning. I suspect that part of the reason it did not was because the robust nature of digital archiving and transmission created the familiar and once wide spread audio industry notion that bits are bits. If musically satisfying implementation were only so simple.
Digital is, indeed, essentially perfect in theory, however, the devil appears in it's practice. The implementation details are the key to unlocking the music that's been jailed for so long on our CDs. The bad news is that important implementation details are usually overlooked in most consumer playback gear. One can tell that without seeing a schematic of such gear simply by their characteristically less than satisfying sound quality.
For those all too few playback units where all of the important implementation details have been properly addressed, one can hear what CD should have sounded like (and what we had expected it to sound like) from the beginning. I suspect that part of the reason it did not was because the robust nature of digital archiving and transmission created the familiar and once wide spread audio industry notion that bits are bits. If musically satisfying implementation were only so simple.
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I don't think that CD is equal to the best vinyl even today, CD has too many tradeoffs, BUT advanced Digital playback schemes appear to be capable of more ideal playback fidelity. Let's hope that their playback potential is not compromised by the 'hear no difference' engineers who will not go all out to get the best 'fidelity', because they cannot measure any more differences with their existing test equipment.
That was an attempt to highlight a point using a little humor. I think it can be safely said that CD has passed the, um, UFO test.
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So you admit to being an audiophile, the odd sort who listens to equipment rather than music? You should try it the other way around. CD has bought forth a whole new paradigm in music production, with new ways to record and new distribution methods. There is more good music at our fingertips than ever before. Without digital there would have been no Naxos, which is one of the best labels in the last 40 years for shaking the industry up to record outside the 'std' repertoire.
I have the mercury living presence box set 2 on my shelf. If I bought mint LPs would have cost 500-1000, and for under 100 I have the set. That to me is progress. They sound great as well.
I can safely say I have a lot more 'bad' vinyl in terms of recording and pressing than I do bad digital.
No, I think the key issue is the difference between objective (what it is) and subjective (what we prefer). When FM radio was introduced people complained, as they didn't like its extended HF response ("shrill" was the word used); they much preferred old 'warm' AM. Some still do!Ken Newton said:
Some people prefer AM radio, 'tube sound' (only loosely connected with tube amplifiers), LP and/or tape. Note that all these have significant and audible problems when compared with better systems. They don't all have the same problems: FM is analogue too, 'tube sound' can be engineered in to an SS amp if required, LP has tracking and crackle problems, tape has flutter problems. If people often prefer the flawed medium, whatever the flaw happens to be, then we must suspect that what they dislike about the less flawed medium is precisely that: it has fewer flaws.
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