[wuwhere]

I like both.

 

[BigTony]

Generally its much more expensive to get a great vinyl system, and then theres always the problem of the lps themselves.
As for mastering, well lots of modern lps and cds are poorly mastered, nothing we can do about it, apart from not buy it!
Also, one point to note, lps are not cut they are stamped.

 

[derekbmn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by linuxworks /img/forum/go_quote.gif puts it back? please explain. once data is lost you can't re-create it.

I would explain it to you...but apparently you wouldn't be able to see it. (or this for that matter)

Here you go anyway...no data is lost...just decreased(low freq) an increased(high freq), and then returned.
This will explain in in far more detail than I could or will. Vinyl RIAA explanation

 

[Publius]

Quote:

Originally Posted by derekbmn /img/forum/go_quote.gif One can argue about measurements until they are blue in the face and still get nowhere. You seem to be hung up on them. Can you tell me your experiences with a decent and well setup vinyl rig with properly cleaned records ?

A decent and well setup vinyl rig playing properly cleaned, mint records will still have numerous pops and ticks.

Whether the listener is patient and exacting enough to notice them, and if the music has a sufficient dynamic range to illustrate them, is a different matter entirely.

 

[Lazarus Short]

This vinyl lover has actually heard a CD best an LP, but only once. It happens on those loud, sustained music passages where the phono stylus is about to jump the microgroove. Then the CD rules, otherwise not. I have put a lot more bucks into my digital rig than my analog rig, but it does sound good now. Doubters should buy transport, DAC, tube buffer, pre, power, speakers, cables, and good ones at that. CD's do not need to have that music-box thing going on.

We all know, don't we, that the CD took over for it's convenience, not it's SQ?

Laz

 

[DrBenway]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PowderLegend /img/forum/go_quote.gif This debate has raged since CDs were invented

When CDs were first available, most of them sounder HORRIBLE. This, however, was not related to the potential of the medium. It was the result of incompetant remastering of previous recordings that were optimized for vinyl. Recording and (especially) mastering engineers were not yet familiar with the lay of the land. They applied the processing at their disposal to assumptions that were based on their experience with vinyl. Thing is, vinyl is not CD.

In the mean time, CDs, well-recorded, well-mastered, and played on a decent deck, have gotten to be truly hi fidelity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PowderLegend /img/forum/go_quote.gif (and before that with tapes...)

Do you mean reel to reel? Do you mean cassette? Big difference. Reel to reel was a true Hi-Fi medium. Cassettes were, and still are, garbage. Aside from the hiss inherant in R t R recordings, the sound was exemplary. Cassettes were created for guys with mullets and muscle cars. So which do you mean?

 

[derekbmn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Publius /img/forum/go_quote.gif A decent and well setup vinyl rig playing properly cleaned, mint records will still have numerous pops and ticks. Whether the listener is patient and exacting enough to notice them, and if the music has a sufficient dynamic range to illustrate them, is a different matter entirely.

I have numerous records that have virtually no pops and ticks. These are generally new ones, but I do have some old "diamonds in the rough" that have after several scrubbings and vacuumings become noise free.

As always there are loads of factors that come in to play besides the condition of the records themselves. Stylus profile, cantilever material, and the list could go on and on. Even the design of the turntable itself has an effect ,with the best results for me being with suspended designs when it comes to supressing surface noise,pops,ticks and clicks. (not to mention their sound)

In the end a well setup vinyl rig should put any "noises" in another sonic plane from the music.

 

[Sherwood]

I love my vinyl rig, but I'm not interested in debating which is technically superior.

Much like TimJo, the only reason I'm interested in vinyl is because of the mastering.

LinuxWorks, I like you, and I'll happily give you the benefit of the doubt on this point. The reality of the music business is that many artists have little control over how their material is mastered. I don't need to summarize the loudness war here, as I know you're plenty capable of researching it should you care to, but suffice it to say that the dynamic compression happening in many recent CD's is not subtle, and it sounds horrible.

Now, if those same masters were simply pressed on vinyl, they would sound no better, and quite possibly worse. The reality is, though, that often the vinyl pressing is a different master. Since vinyl is a niche format, it has also become kind of a catch-all format for people who care about the limits of sound quality.

I agree that vinyl is inherently flawed in many ways, and that digital addresses many of these flaws. I like vinyl because it allows me access to a wealth of recorded music, both old and new, that is unavailable otherwise.

I have a thread in the music forums titled "The Best In-Production Vinyl". There is a comparison of a vinyl master vs. a cd master in there. Go listen for yourself, and tell me if you can hear the difference.

 

[deltaydeltax]

It might be interesting to find out how many studios still have an analog setup. Have a good percentage of the major studios gone digital? So, a singers voice is being picked up by an analog microphone, run through some ADCs into a mixing board, then stored on digital media such as a PC?

If so, then aren't all of our records now "digital" in a sense?

I like vinyl more than anything else, records coming out now may not actually be a true analog source though. Does anyone have any definitive proof of this? I lost my contacts in the recording world a long time ago as I lost interest in recording.

 

[Publius]

Stan Ricker (a quite legendary vinyl mastering engineer) does all his lacquer cutting from digital nowadays. And if it's good enough for Stan...

RTI and (IIRC) Abbey Road are believed to have all-analog cutting facilities available.

 

[Meliboeus]

i have some lps mastered in the late '80s and they are probably made from digital, for example my copy of "The eternal Idol" by Black Sabbath features "A digital recording" clearly printed on the rear cover....

 

[Publius]

Quote:

Originally Posted by derekbmn /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have numerous records that have virtually no pops and ticks. These are generally new ones, but I do have some old "diamonds in the rough" that have after several scrubbings and vacuumings become noise free.

As do I, although my experience is that even an immaculately cleaned record is still going to have a considerable amount of pops and ticks.

Quote:

In the end a well setup vinyl rig should put any "noises" in another sonic plane from the music.

Which is dandy - I listen to noisy vinyl all the time and it usually does not distract me. But I wouldn't for a moment doubt that, on strictly format grounds, redbook still delivers the goods better - even against my most minty records.

Moreover, none of this has anything to do with one's equipment, regardless of how much you'd like to point out how much better your rig is than everybody else's. People catch the vinyl bug all the time on $10 rat trap tables that haven't had their cartridges changed in 30 years. Many other people choose to spend thousands on their vinyl setup (myself included) and are under no such illusions.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrBenway /img/forum/go_quote.gif When CDs were first available, most of them sounder HORRIBLE. This, however, was not related to the potential of the medium. It was the result of incompetant remastering of previous recordings that were optimized for vinyl. In the mean time, CDs, well-recorded, well-mastered, and played on a decent deck, have gotten to be truly hi fidelity.

This IS amusing. Apologists for CD often claim it wasn't the format but the incompetant mastering engineers back in the early days.

But nowadays many claim that they are seeking out those exact same early pressings to get away from the over compressed CDs you hear today from the latest generation of incompetant mastering engineers.

mmm....so by this logic when exactly were CDs any good? and has anyone ever met a competant mastering engineer? I mean logically they must exist right?

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrBenway /img/forum/go_quote.gif Do you mean reel to reel? Do you mean cassette? Big difference. Reel to reel was a true Hi-Fi medium. Cassettes were, and still are, garbage. Aside from the hiss inherant in R t R recordings, the sound was exemplary. Cassettes were created for guys with mullets and muscle cars. So which do you mean?

So you've obviously never heard a Nakamichi, Tandberg, Revox, Studer or top B&O cassette deck which have superior bandwidth to redbook? not nearly as good as reel to reel agreed, but you'd need to be using DSD or top spec PCM , leaving the matter of distortion aside, to equal that right?

 

[Publius]

Going back on topic, it is a common myth that digital audio is composed of a "series of steps" as the OP linked to. The plot itself is in fact fallacious - no real audio DAC (save NOS filterless ones) ever outputs such signals, because the output is very clearly not brickwalled and not oversampled.

Measuring a real DAC will very clearly show that they can reproduce 10khz sine waves just fine. Not only that, they can reproduce them at any amount of phase or delay or amplitude, as bounded by 0dbFS and the dithered noise floor.

Long story short, that HowStuffWorks article is crap, and you should look for other sources.

 

[Uncle Erik]

I have some records that are virtually noise free. Clean records and good gear push the noise down where it's almost unnoticeable.

You do have to invest in vinyl to get the best, but the tradeoff is cheap music. Vinyl is trendy in hi-fi, but the public is (at best) several years away from re-acceptance. So there's a ton of cheap vinyl out there. If you like to explore music, nothing touches vinyl. There's still lots of music not available digitally, too. Eventually, the used vinyl supply will dry up, more (expensive) vinyl will be released, and needledrops from hobbyists will cover almost all of the good stuff in the public domain.

As for digital, I sure enjoy not flipping it over every 18 minutes and cleaning it with Windex and a paper towel. They're a whole lot easier to store and I can put them in the car's stereo. If you don't like the way most CDs are mastered, think about SACD if you like classical and jazz. SACD is usually mastered for audiophiles. There is debate over whether the format is better, but no one denies that good ones sound terrific.