why bother with all this $$$ equipment?

You haven't listed any of the equipment that you heard. I haven't heard a speaker sound as good to me as a Stax Omega 2 system, but that's largely due to preferences.

22Khrz is basically the mosquito tone and anything higher. I'm not sure why you're so concerned about that... Those frequencies mean nothing to the production of music and I'm sure no musician cares about those frequencies. I can hear up to 21K but I honestly couldn't care less if all my music didn't have 17k-22k frequencies. If you can hear 22k, then I congratulate you anyways.

Edit: On second read I see that this is about vinyl vs. CD. Nevermind.

jojoarmina,   Everything has It's flaws, Be it High Dollar Equipment, SACD, DVD-Audio, and yes some vinyl, hell even reel to reel tape playback is not without fault.... You must choose what makes you happy, and be satisfied with that Hi-Fi Equipment.......Some, like headphones best, I love my headphone system, but it can't hold a candle to my main system,as far as Imaging, sound stage and that "reach out and touch the musicians" etc.etc. But I think we mostly agree that headphones/portable "Tunes" have a place, A very big place in today's Hi-Fi market...One must remember the outstanding "BANG for YOUR BUCK" with headphone systems.......The biggest advantage over a main system is the fact that Headphones take the room out of the equation.....But If I were you and IMO, you should collect the most music that you enjoy on the many different mediums that are out there today........You can always change your gear, but it's the music you/we love that will be hard to find in the future..........JMO......

Quote:

Originally Posted by infinitesymphony 

Edit: On second read I see that this is about vinyl vs. CD. Nevermind.

I liked your previous comment. =) 

The thing we are missing in this discussion is that, even though we may not hear above around 20KHz, the sampling rate at 44.1KHz is 3 samples at best (more likely 2) of the waveform at 20KHz.

At 10KHZ the max is 5 sample points.

Since the timbre of a note is the resultant waveform of numerous tones added together, the sound reproduced can only approximate and not duplicate the original note.

It's the timbre that makes a note (eg middle c) sound different from different instruments.

Vinyl, being analog has a far greater ability to reproduce the original tone and hence sounds richer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wink 

Vinyl, being analog has a far greater ability to reproduce the original tone and hence sounds richer.

The CD format is superior to vinyl in all areas that count, and particularly in its ability to represent the original sound more accurately:

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)

 I know some people prefer the sound of vinyl to CD for various reasons, but more accurate reproduction isn't really a valid reason because in reality CD is more accurate than vinyl (assuming good mastering).

Quote:

Originally Posted by visualguy 

 

The CD format is superior to vinyl in all areas that count, and particularly in its ability to represent the original sound more accurately:

 

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)

 I know some people prefer the sound of vinyl to CD for various reasons, but more accurate reproduction isn't really a valid reason because in reality CD is more accurate than vinyl (assuming good mastering).

 

 

Thanks for the link visualguy. Very insightful and it'll be my weekend read.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by wink 

The thing we are missing in this discussion is that, even though we may not hear above around 20KHz, the sampling rate at 44.1KHz is 3 samples at best (more likely 2) of the waveform at 20KHz.

At 10KHZ the max is 5 sample points.

Two words: reconstruction filter.  A perfectly smooth waveform is indeed reconstructed from the digital signal in d-a conversion from as few as two samples.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by wink 

Since the timbre of a note is the resultant waveform of numerous tones added together, the sound reproduced can only approximate and not duplicate the original note.

It's the timbre that makes a note (eg middle c) sound different from different instruments.

Vinyl, being analog has a far greater ability to reproduce the original tone and hence sounds richer.

Another two words: Fourier transform.  Any waveform, however complex can be decomposed, encoded and reconstructed from a sum of single frequencies.  This 'numerous tones added together' is the very stuff of digital music encoding.  Welcome to 1822. 

Quote:

To Each Their own, That's what makes our recorded musical world full of "playback" music (in all medium forms)..SPECIAL!  We have choices that fit each of our likings!  I guess you'd think the guys who are getting back into Mono are "out of their minds" ??.Have you ever heard a well recorded mono version of a song played back on top shelf "MONO" equipment? Don't pigeon hole your thoughts and believers on someone Else's opinions........So visualguy and the others,  If CD's are more accurate then Vinyl, "as you say and must believe" where and why are so many people down loading High Res. tracks of tunes off of the special Internet "music sites"... Most of them swear  "that's what's best" when in fact it's each persons preference, Right?  So I love vinyl, with all of it's faults, but I also appreciate CD, SACD, DVD-Audio disc and yes a good original mono recording, be it on vinyl or Disc........It's all good if you listen to the music and not the hype that some people believe is the best medium at how  music is recorded. ....... Like the pied piper, let's see who will follow me????  At my age and knowledge,of recorded music, I listen to what I like, and even that changes when "all things are taken into consideration"! This many times depends on when, how and who recorded each musical piece....Now this just MO...... But remember it's each of our choices, to choose what we prefer....and.....sounds best to our ears.....


 

SACDs make most CDs sound like 2nd or 3rd class sound, therefore CD leaves a lot to be desired.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rgs9200m 

SACDs make most CDs sound like 2nd or 3rd class sound, therefore CD leaves a lot to be desired.

CDs are capable of a more accurate representation of sound than vinyl - that's a matter of the properties of the technology, and isn't really debatable or a matter of opinion. Some people prefer the sound of vinyl in spite of this, but that doesn't change the fact that vinyl is not as good as CD in terms of how well it reproduces the original sound, and its deficiencies are actually audible and not just theoretical.

SACDs cannot be compared to vinyl. SACDs carry a lot more information about the sound than CDs, so they are "better" in some theoretical sense. This is unlike vinyl which carries less information than a CD, so vinyl is worse in that sense. Also, vinyl degrades, while SACDs don't.

By the way, I find well-mastered CDs to sound as good as well-mastered SACDs. Many SACDs have a well-mastered Redbook layer with a sound quality which is indistinguishable from the SACD layer. I certainly can't tell the difference even with very high-end equipment. I have discussed this multiple times with audiophiles and engaged in a number of listening tests with them. The bottom line is that neither I nor anyone that I know personally (including a recording engineer buddy) can hear the sound improvement of SACD when compared to CD. The only practical advantage of SACD that I see is that it offers multi-channel audio.

The same applies to high resolution (96/24, 192/24) vs. standard resolution (44.1/16). I've downsampled excellent hi-res recordings, and listened to both the original and the downsampled versions without noticing any difference whatsoever. Not even a tiny difference. This is using excellent DACs, amps, speakers, and headphones.

Even if there is some lucky person out there with such golden ears that they can hear some difference, the difference can't be significant or the rest of us would be able to hear it.

I have many SACD versions of CDs and the SACDs to my ears are whole different animals, without the "shout" factor in CDs and without piercing highs and much

more saturated and continuous notes, along with much better impact. The sound is much more natural, flowing, and MOST IMPORTANT is the overall sense of ease.

I have about 50 SACDs of popular music and the CD versions basically sound awful compared to the SACDs. There is no contest for me.

It is a crime that more SACDs of the great music of the last 60 years were not produced.

SACD is a glorious thing, a gift from the gods. They turn straw into gold to my ears.

True, some CDs come close, like the Beatles 2009 box set, which is an awesome remastering, very relaxed but vibrant and detailed, but these are rare exceptions.

While some SACDs are better than others, I have yet to hear a bad one, and most are a "10" in my book.

I urge anyone who likes whatever music is on SACD to try it for a real revelation. It cures many of the ills people are trying to cure with lots of new equipment.

It is amazing what SACDs will do with even modest equipment, and just plain awsome OMG on top-level equipment.

This is all from personal experience and the school of hard knocks with me. I'm just a plain old audiophile and not a dealer or anything, I just want to spread the word.

Highly dubious information here if I must say...CDs have dynamic range of 150db???  Redbook is 96db theoretical, period.  Also no mention of oversampling artifacts, low-pass filtering distortions, etc.  Additionally, one of the first points is that the cutting head cannot handle the high frequencies and must reduce the level to make a good cut.  This is blatantly untrue, to my knowledge, a vinyl cutter will be fed a high resolution master (same 24 bit that the CD is produced from) and cuts the master at low speed with RIAA eq applied.  I agree that deflection of the cutting head introduces errors, but the idea that the master must be degraded or reduced to transition to the media is preposterous.

just my 2 cents, a wiki on a site devoted to digital audio clearly has an agenda, no?

Quote:

Originally Posted by visualguy 

 

The CD format is superior to vinyl in all areas that count, and particularly in its ability to represent the original sound more accurately:

 

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)

 I know some people prefer the sound of vinyl to CD for various reasons, but more accurate reproduction isn't really a valid reason because in reality CD is more accurate than vinyl (assuming good mastering).