How better is a Turntable compared to a CD?

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#462
sandyK said:
That is definitely NOT my experience. Reduce "Jitter"and the soundstage improves, you lose the hard edge of many recordings, and female voices typically sound sweeter.You can also then turn up the volume another notch or 2 without the sound being fatigueing.
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As always, I'm curious - to learn what examples you compared of high/low jitter? Mine was with the same DAC, fed either from a QA550 .wav player over I2S or via SPDIF through a jittery DIR9001. In neither case fatiguing/harsh but with improved soundstage over I2S for sure.
 
#467
Often, when I listen to CD (‘Accurately’ ripped to HDD) I hear what I’d call graininess, the kind I never encounter on LP rips. I have no explanation why that is but its sure very annoying when present. I could perhaps best describe it as the sound of a LP that is starting to wear out a little, just a little of course. 🙂
 
#472
it just falls short in different, less nice ways. Mostly because its inability to produce 10k or so pulse waves,
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I doubt an LP (or even analog tape) will reproduce a 10k square wave very closely, and why should it, youd need a BW of a coulpe hundred khz and that would only cover the first 4 or 5 harmonics, which no one will hear anyway.
 
#475
boconnor said:
The ISO 10149 standard is for optical discs not the CD audio Red Book standard – so how is the ISO 10149 relevant for CD audio?
Also I didn’t know what BLER was so I found some text from Frequently Asked Questions About Compact Discs:

BLER is an abbreviation of BLock Error Rate, but really represents frame error rate. One frame represents the smallest integral data package, and contains 24 bytes of data along with sync, subcode, Q parity, and P parity. Data is read from a CD at the rate of 7350 frames per second in a 1X player. After alternate bytes are delayed by one frame, BLER measures the rate of bad frames that contain one or more read errors. If one percent of the frames contain errors, then BLER will be 73.5 per second at 1X.​

More:

The weakness of BLER is that it counts error frames, not bad bits or bytes.​

So, to what extent are these errors corrected by the error correction algorithms? And are errors within the Red Book ISO standard audible?
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Sorry to take so long, I've been pretty busy since yesterday (Water Main blew out, the crew is still finishing up and it's been nearly a 30 hour day for them).

The ISO 10149 is definately not a Redbook Spec, it is however an industry standard for optical discs, and applys to all of them, including CD, CD-R or those used for SACD, etc.

Much has been made of the fact that Vinyl has physical (mechanical) problems and it has been implied that digital doesn't, which is absolutely true as long as it remains digital data, but when it's transferred to a physical media such as a CD disc, then the possiblity of errors and other problems can occur. Let's also remember that it then requires an electro-mechanical process to spin the disc, read it and output the results.

If Red Book standards, were the be-all and end-all of digital playback, then why has the Industry been seeking to elevate the level of performance? As this thread is concerned in part with CDs, I have tried to show that not all is well with the ordinary CD, and that it's no secret among those in the Industry.

Best Regards,
TerryO
 
#476
Too many pages to go trough so again whats the best way to copy CD?? It's been ages since I bought any (I'm only buying vinyl these days🙂 but my friend who has a nice collection is moving out and I may want to copy some .I have some old Apple I-mac with burner and some new laptop crap around but never used that junk to copy a CD before. Should I use particular brand CDR? Since some mentioned that copies may be better than originals I may invest some time and money.
Regards, L
 
#477
sandyK said:
That is definitely NOT my experience. Reduce "Jitter"and the soundstage improves, you lose the hard edge of many recordings, and female voices typically sound sweeter.You can also then turn up the volume another notch or 2 without the sound being fatigueing. In fact, a well recorded CD can sound very analogue like. Actually, the big surprise is the improvement at the low end !
Good night Gents,
It's approaching midnight Downunder.
SandyK
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I completely agree and as SandyK knows, there are a lot of factors and techniques that can improve the sound of an ordinary CD, some have been mentioned here and some have been mentioned elsewhere by either SandyK or myself.
Commercial Redbook Cds are pretty Lo-Fi compared to many other formats, digital and analog.

Best Regards,
TerryO
 
#478
limono said:
Too many pages to go trough so again whats the best way to copy CD?? It's been ages since I bought any (I'm only buying vinyl these days🙂 but my friend who has a nice collection is moving out and I may want to copy some .I have some old Apple I-mac with burner and some new laptop crap around but never used that junk to copy a CD before. Should I use particular brand CDR? Since some mentioned that copies may be better than originals I may invest some time and money.
Regards, L
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SandyK can chime in on this as well, but I'd recommend ripping the disk, run it through EAC, or an equivilant program to correct any read errors and then burn it off of a SSHD using a stand alone Blu-Ray burner on a vibration cancellation platform. There are all kind of additional techniques that can be used, such as a separate (outboard), precision Power Supply for the Blu-Ray burner.
The disc that you use for burning can make a lot of difference, and this is the significance of BLER testing, as you must have a very good disc. The question is how good and what do you want to spend. MAM-r Audio Gold Pro discs are excellent, but costly, and even they can use even additional tweaks to improve performance. A prewash with deIonized water, turning on a precision lathe, vibration damping compound applied to the non-data side and finally balancing the disc are all of some benefit. The discs that have this done will run in the neighborhood of $25 each and up.

These are just some of the things that help and we're still talking about a copy of a redbook CD, which seems a lot of bother and expense when there are a lot of better formats and even techniques available.

Best Regards,
TerryO
 
#479
Terry... alternatively you could...

get ye some yak urine and toss er over the shoulder, whilst 'olding yer head 90 degrees from it's "normal" orientation (that is put it into an alternate orthogonal axis)..then record the audio out to a vinyl cutting lathe n' get back some reality once you play it back on a turntable

Really Jim,.. for God's sake.

C'mon Terry, having been exposed to some good analog, I can't believe yer on a "pro" digital bandwagon. Yes, digital is more convenient. But accurate? I must say that by the time I'm too feeble to cue a tonearm up, I'll have procured a trained monkey to do it (or become the world's first Bionic Man...stronger...faster...nanananaaa)

Rather than suggest one is ultimately "better" recognize that in some instances digital can be better (like in a car for an example, as one has to over come road noise...), or where playing an LP is just not that practical (like in a car for example🙂, at least the one's in my potential price range)


geees, I even own an iPod.
 
#480
TerryO said:
Sorry to take so long
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No probs!

Much has been made of the fact that Vinyl has physical (mechanical) problems and it has been implied that digital doesn't, which is absolutely true as long as it remains digital data, but when it's transferred to a physical media such as a CD disc, then the possiblity of errors and other problems can occur. Let's also remember that it then requires an electro-mechanical process to spin the disc, read it and output the results.
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All true. But I thought the robustness of the CD format was due (in part) to the error correction algorithms that fix BLER and other errors (as others have pointed out).

If Red Book standards, were the be-all and end-all of digital playback, then why has the Industry been seeking to elevate the level of performance? As this thread is concerned in part with CDs, I have tried to show that not all is well with the ordinary CD, and that it's no secret among those in the Industry.
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Sometimes technical changes are marketing driven, not strictly for sonic improvement. There may be scope for improvement in the CD format, but I think on balance such improvement is likely to be inaudible. Just consider that compressed audio formats of sufficient data rate (> 200K bits per second) are normally indistinguishable from the PCM version in double blind tests. What chance that a super-duper CD format is going to provide audible improvements?

Remember that errors in the LP format can't be corrected, and of course the technical capabilities of the format are inferior to CD.

I think its fine for audiophiles to prefer the LP sound to the CD version - thats anyone's choice. I just don't buy it if such claims are based on reasons of superior accuracy eg. there's more information encoded in an LP, or less information lost in the LP format during playback compared with CD.

I wonder sometimes if we lose sight of the incredible advances the CD format created. Its a pretty cool device the engineers created: using knowledge from quantum physics (lasers), mathematics (information and sampling theory), computer science (error correction algorithms) and psychoacoustics (format specifications) to store music (of all things!).
 
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