CD VS VINYL
I think nowdays is heaven for vinyl ! excelent new turntables at reasonable prices ,tons of vinyl reisues ect....Its all a mater of taste.I love both.If i had to choose i d go for vinyl .analog is more human....like valves class A ....
I think nowdays is heaven for vinyl ! excelent new turntables at reasonable prices ,tons of vinyl reisues ect....Its all a mater of taste.I love both.If i had to choose i d go for vinyl .analog is more human....like valves class A ....
Yes, I searched and sure enough, that article's been mentioned many times before.
CDs don't have anything above 22kHz on them. So no perception of "hypersonic" frequencies is possible. Upsampling or oversampling won't bring them back, but seems to me to help in other ways. I think that because of this, CDs -- as good as they are -- will never be the end answer for a lot of people. SACD had a chance, but not enough people seem to care. Too bad, I like DSD, even if some quibble over it. DVD-A would have been OK, too, but that got less support than SACD did. The market truly doesn't care about hi-fi. Maybe the whole digital jukebox thing will allow regular folks who aren't computer geeks to be able to play 24-bit/192kHz or 24/96 on a regular basis. That certainly should be good enough. But 16-bit/44.1kHz?
The reason I think it's necessary to reproduce frequencies above 20kHz is that there are lots harmonics dancing around up there in music. It's my experience that extended high frequency response above 20kHz improves the reproduction below 20kHz...
If the question is analog vs. digital and budget is not an issue, then I think the outcome is 100% dependent on implementation. The best analog and the best digital sources all have their charms.
Way back when this thread started, the original post was about CD vs. LP. My 2 cents would be that if the budget is only $500 for a used turntable w/ tonearm, cartridge and RIAA preamp, then no way is that going to beat a really good $500 CD player. Take a decent CD player with a coaxial S/PDIF Out (let's say a $25 player from a thrift shop) and one of the new, affordable upsampling DACs ($500?) and you'll have yourself a really quite good player. For cheap, CD wins. But if you're obsessed... ?? That's a different story.
I've heard $2000 CD players. I've heard a $450 to $800 turntable with tonearm with a $200 cartridge into Hagerman Bugle RIAA preamp ($200 to build for yourself, equivalent to finished products of $1000 or so). For me (maybe not for everyone, but for me) the nod has to go to the LP, especially for well recorded acoustic music (for me that means jazz and classical, very little rock and pop). If you can build yourself an all-triode RIAA preamp, then you can get even farther along.
Of course I have a Nitty Gritty cleaning machine, squeeze bottles full of magic record cleaning liquids, a collection of cleaning brushes, an old DeStat gun, and a Denneson cartridge mounting protactor. CD sure does have its allure -- you just open the tray, drop in the disc, hit Play and let 'er spin. I definitely appreciate that.
I do not find myself spending a day spinning CD after CD, not able to drag myself away from the stereo. But on some lazy Sundays, when I get in the mood to clean a record and give it a spin, I find myself doing that over and over again, seeking that next surprise, that next musical turn of phrase.
I've noticed with CDs that there is a lack of texture to the sound. I've played music all my life, and I love the smallest little details of skin on steel string, stick on plastic film stretched over a birch plywood tub, old spruce vibrating a mahogany box, warm spit through brass tubes... A really good LP playback system has shocked me with the veracity of some of those details. CDs can give you stunningly good bass reproduction, but those midrange and higher details? I've never heard stuff like that from a CD. SACD, maybe. CD, no.
Who knows, maybe I'm kidding myself, I dunno...
-=|=-
No, I don't think you are kidding yourself. The lack of involvement that CDs bring is oft stated as a point in favor of vinyl. Michael Fremer (like him or not) talks about this often.
Digital, for whatever reason, is often less engaging. Kinda like my "Digital is Switzerland" quote. Many folks find vinyl much more fun and engaging. More life-like, despite its flaws.
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Digital, for whatever reason, is often less engaging. Kinda like my "Digital is Switzerland" quote. Many folks find vinyl much more fun and engaging. More life-like, despite its flaws.
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Vinyl may be better than CD at low level detail. However, CD isn't is good as digital gets. The sampling frequency needs to be higher. Whether it be disc-based or downloads we need another format.
A couple months back in Stereophile "As We See It", this was discussed. All the tweaks in the world aren't going to fix the limitations of CD. There just isn't enough data flow for higher frequency detail. No reason why high resolution digital recording can't smoke not only vinyl but analog altogther. I'm pretty sure it will in time.
A couple months back in Stereophile "As We See It", this was discussed. All the tweaks in the world aren't going to fix the limitations of CD. There just isn't enough data flow for higher frequency detail. No reason why high resolution digital recording can't smoke not only vinyl but analog altogther. I'm pretty sure it will in time.
Interesting comment ....
I had company this evening and they brought along one of their digital only nothing else works for him type friend and after playing a few CD's, he asked to hear my analog setup and surprise , surprise , he made the same comment and could not believe how much better it was, he was really shocked, especially as he was enjoying the digital before.
He is now looking into getting a table ........ 😀
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In the future Maybe, Today the difference is everywhere, I will admit digital smokes vinyl with convenience ..... Music ... nah .... !
I equate digital to fast food , convenient and available. You can drive around and search for the best tasting fast food, best of the best , but in the end it is still fast food, where as analog is home cooked, time is spent in preparing a meal , using the right ingredients , food cooked to perfection , more work and time involved .....
But whaaaa la !!!!!................
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So it seems to me, with my marketing hat on, that this niche market needs a digital format with all the interactive engagement of vinyl. Its teabags versus tea ceremony - I think Werner was saying something similar earlier on.
Fast food is, I believe, an American invention. Its my distinct impression though I'm no student of history, that the Chinese have always done their food fast, and that's considered gourmet. So its going to depend on the kind of food you want fast....
Not easy to get hands on a certified master file.
But I could do a comparison between an EAC-ripped version and a recording over SPDIF of the same disk played in a standard CD or DVD player.
The results will be highly dependent on the quality of both the CD/DVD Rom that is used for ripping, and the quality of the CD/DVD player that exports the file via SPDIF. It would more than likely be very hard to ensure that both files have the same checksums.This alone would make the comparisons null and void in the eyes of the Objectivists. I find it interesting that in the vast majority of cases, direct CD playback from the CD/DVD Rom, does not sound as good as the EAC rip created using the same CD/DVD Rom.
I have also found that when using EAC, that if the ripping speed of the writer dips very low quite often (e.g..1 x ) that although the checksums are correct according to a database,the result does not sound as good as a less paranoid setting of EAC at a higher and more constant rip speed,e.g 4 x, despite there being a few more errors, and checksums that no longer match the data base.
SandyK
A few CD players don't put out bit-accurate streams to SPDIF - they have a volume control stage in the way. But in my experience its not at all difficult to get a bit-accurate stream from the average DVD player on SPDIF.
This indeed is tricky, not because of the accuracy of the bits (they do come out accurately in the main) but rather because its a bit tedious to get the two files to be the same length. If they're trimmed differently, they'll have different checksums. With care in Audacity, I believe its possible though haven't attempted it myself as I'm convinced enough they'll be the same. I did do a similar test on my QA550 .wav player to verify it was putting out bit accurate streams over SPDIF - it was. Using Audacity its simple enough to compare files by time aligning them, inverting one and then summing.
cd vs vinyl
i think the post of rongon is in the heart of the issue. i agree with his perspective. the conclusions posted are the same as mine drawn after two decades of painfull recearch. keep up folcs! greedings...
i think the post of rongon is in the heart of the issue. i agree with his perspective. the conclusions posted are the same as mine drawn after two decades of painfull recearch. keep up folcs! greedings...
Now you are here.Marketing hat.It is time,at last,to understand that digital disc,was a purely marketing move by the music companies,'cause vinyl discs and cassetes sales,were drifting. Nothing more ,nothing less.And now some decades later,they will try to sell their vaults,in downloads and solid state.Nothing to do with sound quality.
As for the tea,let the garbage in the teabags,prevail. I do prefer my Lapsang Suchong,as a dried leaf format,in a box.
B.L
What extra effort is involved in playing an LP over playing a CD?
1. Remove the record from the sleeve
2. Place it on the turntable
3. Turn on the platter motor
4. Lower the cartridge to the record
1. Remove the CD from the case (sometimes it seems like it isn't going to come out without snapping in two)
2. Open the tray
3. Place the CD on the tray
4. Close the tray
5. Press play
John
For some reason my kids (4 and 6) can faultlessly perform sequence II, but not sequence I.
BTW, they run their own Denon/Rogers system.
BTW, they run their own Denon/Rogers system.
I don't know if this is germaine to the issue, but I once had the pleasure (or was that 'pressure') of mastering a small company's digital recording to a commercial CD. The recording was done in a small NYC studio, with a very nice set of outboard stuff, tube compressors and mic preamps, nice wiring, a nice analog console, down to Pro Tools tracks on a hard drive (AIFF, 24-bit/96kHz).
I got the files on a hard disk, imported them into the producer's studio PC running Samplitude on a Mixtreme setup (if I remember correctly). Mixing was done at 24/96.
We avoided any S/PDIF or ADAT Lightpipe transfers. We did not burn the files onto CD-R's to transport them. We had removable SCSI hard drives (big ones for the time) to move the project files around.
The mixdown was done from the original multitrack files to a stereo 24-bit/96kHz WAV file. My PC at the time was running Windows 2000 (it was new then) and an RME Digi96-PAD PCI card with its internal converters used for monitoring. I got the mixdowns and mastered them to a gold CD-R disc on my PC running WaveLab with the Waves Renaissance and Mastering plugins. Editing was kept to a minimum. Sample rate conversion was done with dithering and noise shaping in the Waves Mastering Limiter (L2).
(Incidentally, sample rate conversion from 24/96 down to 16/44.1 was easily noticeable no matter which software I used to perform it -- POW-r, WaveLab's internal conversion or Waves L2. I just chose the one I liked best.)
The actual pressing was done through Disc Makers in NYC. The master CD-R was a Red Book CD on a Mitsui Gold CD-R disc, layout created and burned in WaveLab. Disk Makers readily accepted the Red Book CD-R for the master disk. The master CD-R sounded very warm and rich, maybe overly so. I made it that way because I suspected the duplicates would sound thinner and more "CD-like."
When I got the actual CD's back, I noticed that yes indeed, they sounded less "fat" and "warm," with a sort of silvery glint to the high frequencies -- something I attribute to "CD sound." So it all worked out perfectly.
So what's my point? The point is that there was a noticeable, easily perceptible change in the sound from master to final product. Yet the master was absolutely the same format as the duplicates. Why did they sound different?
I don't know, but the experience definitely confirmed for me that bits ain't always bits. I have no clue what happened, but I suspect that this effect is repeated for every CD release -- the actual commercial product sounds a little different from the original master files, disc or tape.
-=|=-
Oh God, now you've done it.
At least three experts on here claim that CDs sound perfect and neither the 44.1kHz sampling rate, 16 level bits, or data transfer have any shortcomings, errors or problems at all!!
I gently suggested the 44.1kHz/16bit format and transport were imperfect and I'm still picking the stones off of me, so good luck in believing your own lying ears over the superior digital theories of others 😉
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