Oh *that* process! Why didn't you say?!
Sorry, I quite misunderstood you. Of course it's a devastating argument. Unspoken, and yet it speaks to us all on so many levels. So simple, and yet so sophisticated. Praise be.
Jan,
I had originally mentioned that, but actually went and deleted it before posting, as many here evidently don't realize that LP manufacturing is the result of a mature technology.
Best Regards,
TerryO
And yet, anyone who looks at uncorrected errors (i.e., errors where interpolation is needed) on actual commercial discs being played on actual commercial players will see that if there's two or three on a disc, that's a LOT. It's pretty rare to see more than one. And even in that case, that's three errors, each lasting 1/44,000 of a second, over a 70 minute period.
I'll take that.
Terry, are you saying that what you say above ("will never rise to the level of displacing good Vinyl LPs") is not equally an opinion in your mind? If you feel it's a fact, can you substantiate it?
jan
OK, please allow me a pedantic moment before I have to get back to work.
When you go to the store or click online to buy a CD, what do you get? Just some numbers? No, you get a shiny round thing with a case and some printing. Until lately you played it back on a CD player. That's what a CD is to the vast majority of people - me included.
Are you buying a printout of the numbers? No. Are you buying a recording that you made yourself from vinyl or tape then transfered to CD? No. You are buying an optical disc that someone else has recorded, mastered, manipulated, transfered, pressed, manufactured. It is not some PCM device inserted into an analog signal path. A Compact Disc, to the vast majority of us, is not something you ripped off vinyl, tape or live. It's prerecorded music on a shiny disc that you have only a vague notion of how it got to you.
Let's not confuse a "Compact Disc" with the digital music format. They are not the same thing. (I told you this would be pedantic).
When someone says "I don't like the sound of CDs" are they talking about a careful, straightforward recording they made at home from a cherished analog source? No. If they were, the debate not even happen. What most folks think of as bad CD sound (or bad digital) comes from CDs that aren't all that great. And perhaps thru no fault of the CD itself or the format it contains. Just thru the fault of bad implementation. For years I've felt that CDs get a bad rap, just because so many are not great. They can be quite wonderful, IMO.
Is it silly to make the distinction between Digital and Compact Disc? I don't think so. Proving that 44.1/16 is capable of being transparent under good conditions proves only that. It does not prove that "CDs sound good." Only that the format can sound good. The format and the things you buy at the store are not the same thing.
There is a whole process of getting music on and off a CD that the AD conversion is only a part of. I think that CDs have been getting much better. Has the format changed? No, only the implementation. The tools are much better now than they used to be. Maybe the engineering is too, I can't say. (We'll discount all that over-compressed pop and rock that sells so well).
So unless you are going to buy only top recording quality CDs, or record your own, you have to deal with what recordings on CD really are. Many thru the years were not great, some were. It's the bad ones we tend to remember. And to many ears, the faults of vinyl are not as offensive as those of the CD.
We can argue the merits of the digital format until we're blue in the face but its possibilities don't trump its day to day reality. There are reasons that CDs can sound bad, just like any other format. There are also a lot of reasons why they can sound good.
A digital recording is not a CD.
disclaimer: If you've read some of my other posts over the past few years, you'll know I'm not a digi-nervous sort of guy. Bit perfect is easy to achieve, jitter can easily be reduced to inaudible, DACs can sound good, etc.
So, why do I find all these horrible sounding LPs in the shops then?
I also find horrible sounding CDs, to be honest, as well. Another 'mature technology'. These are all irrelevant anecdotes of course.
jan
How do we determine accuracy ?
Doug obvious you have no experience about what you speak ( CD's) .. Regardless of the science applied in the end it has to pass the human subjective test and subjectively analog is superior to digital formats 16/44, 24/96, 24/192.
Now 24/192 has shortened the gap IMO and i now believe that the higher 32bit format and beyond might just put analog to bed, just not yet ...
You should get out and listen to a good analog rig and guess what my 700.00 analog rig sounds more natural and better than my 5K digital rig with 16/44 a bit closer on 24/192 and I'm sure if you where exposed to this in the same way , you would have the same conclusion ..
regards,
I see. Can't say I disagree. But the same arguments can be made for any medium, CD, LP, SACD, what have you.
The comparison is only fair if you compare the best instance of a technology to the best of another. Level field and all that.
jan
Well put Pano , personally and for the record i have and use both formats ....
We are discussing in absolute terms , best of the best software .....
If only life were so easy. But I have to take the state of CDs as I find them - unless I want to severely limit my music collection. That's what CDs are. What I wish them to be, even within their limits, is not what they are. That's the playing field we have.
We're both old enough to remember all the bad vinyl of the 1970s. It was a big deal, people complained a lot about the quality of vinyl used to make LPs. Much of it was crap. The CD may have come as quite a relief for that, much easier to be consistent, as the format allows that. Much of the vinyl on the market today is really better, because it's a specialty item. Ditto SACDs and such.
It would be great if all these formats lived up to their potential. Even the humble cassette tape is capable of rather good recordings. The trouble is, they don't live up to their potential. The faults of some formats annoy different people more than others. That is were part of the difference of opinion comes in.
Translation:
"42 inch plasma TVs you say, sonny? They're all right I suppose, but they made some cracking programmes in the 1970s, and I watched them all on a 12 inch black and white portable, which I still use sometimes. And that's why I keep my Philips 2000 VCR and tape collection. Too much trouble to transfer them to those new fangled DVDs, so I just keep the old machine going from scrap parts. And I've still got my 16 mm film projector you know. It's no trouble to clear the living room and put up the screen now and again. Not that I've got anything against DVDs, of course, but they're so small I keep losing them... "
etc.
etc.
(posted in a well intended, good natured spirit...!)
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You don't get it. One one needs to do is analyze the waveform of the electrical signal being stored and compare it to the electrical signal retrieved. The difference is the distortion the system introduces. The question then becomes whether or not that level and type of distortion is audible. The conclusions of real experts, not audiophiles is that it is not.
That the system is used carelessly, inexpertly, differently from the way the vinyl system was used, that it is used to store signals from sources such as old master tapes that have deteriorated does not condemn the system, it condemns those who have abused it or judged it for what it and nothing else can do, make a bad recording engineer sound like a good one. Quite the opposite, it revels their flaws as well as the rest of the equipment it is used with.
How important is it? How important when listening intently to a Chopin Etude or a Debussy Arabesque is the lack of pops, clicks, and surface noise? It makes all of the difference in the world between enjoying the sensation the composer and artist are trying to create and destroying it. How important is lack of dynamic compression and tracking distortion in an orchestral crecendo say in the third movement of the Tchaikowsky fifth symphony? It makes all of the difference in the world between getting the full impact of the music and not getting even half of it. How much does it matter when you can not only hear but feel the pedal notes in the Bach Pasacaglia or the Toccata and Fugue in D minor without acoustic feedback or mistracking? All of the difference between hearing what the composer wanted to convey and not hearing it at all. What difference does it make when listening to the Grateful Dead? I don't know, I never listened to them. An occasional passing exposure to them at a distance was sufficient to send me screaming into the night 😀
Soundminded.
You must be listening to some awful vinyl. I own some, so I know where you're coming from. But most of it is not like that. And listening to a decent playback system, those flaws you mention just aren't that bad - they don't get in the way. Back a few pages TerryO posted about one of their recent club meets that was all vinyl and he didn't many (if any) clicks or pops.
But remember, the flaws of some formats bother us more than the flaws of others. I don't like the clicks, pops, mistracking, etc. either. But on good playback they are so minor as not to interfere.
I don't what you vinyl haters listen to, but when I go to audio shows (RMAF, LSAF, CES, THE Show, Montreal) or to visit friends (many here on this forum) I don't hear all this terrible vinyl playback. Most of it sounds darn nice. For practical reasons I won't give up digital, but it's not the SQ that would keep me away from vinyl.
Coppertop.
I see that there isn't much I can do to get the point across to you. Your reply was good and funny, but has nothing at all to do with what I said. Sorry. 🙁
You must be listening to some awful vinyl. I own some, so I know where you're coming from. But most of it is not like that. And listening to a decent playback system, those flaws you mention just aren't that bad - they don't get in the way. Back a few pages TerryO posted about one of their recent club meets that was all vinyl and he didn't many (if any) clicks or pops.
But remember, the flaws of some formats bother us more than the flaws of others. I don't like the clicks, pops, mistracking, etc. either. But on good playback they are so minor as not to interfere.
I don't what you vinyl haters listen to, but when I go to audio shows (RMAF, LSAF, CES, THE Show, Montreal) or to visit friends (many here on this forum) I don't hear all this terrible vinyl playback. Most of it sounds darn nice. For practical reasons I won't give up digital, but it's not the SQ that would keep me away from vinyl.
Coppertop.
I see that there isn't much I can do to get the point across to you. Your reply was good and funny, but has nothing at all to do with what I said. Sorry. 🙁
We should not have to go looking for quality playback, 99.9% of the population is not going anywhere to look for "Vinyl listening clubs". It should simply exist and that is one of the main reasons the LP technology died in the common market place.
btw, nothing wrong with any listening clubs for someone that might like that sort of thing but it should not be a requirement to have quality playback.
btw, nothing wrong with any listening clubs for someone that might like that sort of thing but it should not be a requirement to have quality playback.
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