Head-Fi.org › Forums › Summit-Fi (High-End Audio) › High-end Audio Forum › Can you get vinyl sound from digital with redbook cd?
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Can you get vinyl sound from digital with redbook cd?

post #1 of 34
3/28/09 at 6:33pm
Thread Starter 
Is it possible?

What would it take to get there?
Reply
post #2 of 34
3/28/09 at 7:44pm
$17,500 spent on a Spectral CDP, check out the SRD-4000 cd player. I had the chance to check this out the other day against the Berkeley Alpha DAC and damn it was sweet.

WELCOME to Spectral Audio'sHome Page
Reply
post #3 of 34
3/28/09 at 10:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jp11801 View Post
$17,500 spent on a Spectral CDP, check out the SRD-4000 cd player. I had the chance to check this out the other day against the Berkeley Alpha DAC and damn it was sweet.

WELCOME to Spectral Audio'sHome Page
So any more thoughts on Spectral vs. Berkeley, assuming using Spectral as transport?
Reply
post #4 of 34
3/28/09 at 10:29pm
Not really, vinyl is vinyl. The early meridian stuff is nice and smooth?
Reply
post #5 of 34
3/28/09 at 10:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon L View Post
So any more thoughts on Spectral vs. Berkeley, assuming using Spectral as transport?
The Spectral was game changing good and was in another league when compared to the Berkeley Alpha. The alpha was fed from an Ayre cdp and sounded great like exceptional digital. When we switched between the two the Alpha was the slightest bit hard and had a flatter soundstage compared to the Spectral.

Now with that said I would gladly take the Alpha dac and it was excellent but the spectral bowled me over. I really want to hear the spectral dac compared to the berkeley as $17500 is a number that is just never going to happen for me.
Reply
post #6 of 34
3/28/09 at 11:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Happy Camper View Post
Is it possible?

What would it take to get there?
not really, at least imho/ime

you can get a warm/smooth sound sure, but not "vinyl sounding"
Reply
post #7 of 34
3/29/09 at 12:16am
differences in production standards/media limitations result in differing mixes for vinyl than digital projects

no "magic" CD player is going to give the same sound as vinyl - the masters are different to start with

try a really good transfer from vinyl to digital to get close to vinyl sound
Reply
post #8 of 34
3/29/09 at 3:23pm
closest way to get there is to burn vinyl rips onto cd and play via naim cds3, very organic sound much like vinyl.
Reply
post #9 of 34
3/29/09 at 4:19pm
What part of vinyl sound do you want, the surface noise, or mistracking on volume climaxes? What always seems to be the case is that the vinyl fans are not headphone listeners but listen to speakers where the above problems are less noticeable.
Reply
post #10 of 34
3/29/09 at 4:26pm
/\ What's that talk show phrase? "Oh no he didn't!"
Reply
post #11 of 34
3/29/09 at 4:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by edstrelow View Post
What part of vinyl sound do you want, the surface noise, or mistracking on volume climaxes? What always seems to be the case is that the vinyl fans are not headphone listeners but listen to speakers where the above problems are less noticeable.
sounds like you have listened to vinyl that was set up by someone with no skills. While LPs will never have the silence of digital it can be very quiet and ultimately more dynamic (due to completely lame CD masterings).

Now before you hurt yourself with whipping out theoretical advantages remember I don't listen to theory I listen to music.
Reply
post #12 of 34
3/29/09 at 4:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by panda View Post
closest way to get there is to burn vinyl rips onto Cd
I agree

You cannot get a vinyl sound from CD.I have an AMR CD77 which gives a full weighty sound without the brittle top end to CD
Reply
post #13 of 34
3/29/09 at 4:53pm
I think you can get a high end CD player to overall equal a similarly priced vinyl setup. But it won't be the same sound - it will have different strengths and weaknesses.

I was a die hard vinyl man until about 4 years ago when I sold the lot - for practical reasons (travel a lot and I couldn't face packing up and moving all those heavy records yet again). But now I wouldn't go back - even for purely sound quality reasons. My Nagra CDC gives as good (not better) depth, dynamics and emotion as my last high end vinyl rig. And I'm sure the likes of Spectral, Zanden and other more expensive CDPs could be better still.

Yes some CDs are mastered so poorly that nothing can revive them. But, on balance, I'd rather suffer that than the clicks, static, occasional mistracking, etc as mentioned in a post above. These downsides to vinyl were more obvious on headphones and in the past they did partly spoil the otherwise wonderful sound that I got from vinyl.
Reply
post #14 of 34
3/29/09 at 5:09pm
Vinyl sounds great, but you don't need a high end CD player to get digital music to sound good. I really think you should give a NOS dac (like the D1 from Sigtone). It's cheap and has a natural, warm sound without digital "brittle". It's probably the right path to digital sound if you like the sound of vinyl.

Most NOS dacs will be less "correct" sounding than regular, oversampling dacs - but so is vinyl
Reply
post #15 of 34
3/29/09 at 11:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by edstrelow View Post
What part of vinyl sound do you want, the surface noise, or mistracking on volume climaxes? What always seems to be the case is that the vinyl fans are not headphone listeners but listen to speakers where the above problems are less noticeable.
Definitely not true for me - I listen to vinyl through headphones on a VERY regular basis, and it sounds great. And I absolutely do not have ANY mistracking, and very little surface noise. The fact that I wet-vacuum clean my records is the biggest reason for that, probably, although using a line-contact stylus low-output moving coil cartridge also helps, IMO.
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: High-end Audio Forum
Head-Fi.org › Forums › Summit-Fi (High-End Audio) › High-end Audio Forum › Can you get vinyl sound from digital with redbook cd?