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Originally Posted by TwoTrack /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Several misunderstandings here:
Modern vinyl and analog rigs don't really have pops and clicks. I have a VPI record cleaner and that really keeps the LPs quiet. A good cartridge helps. I have a Grado Sonata which I really like-great sound and terrific tracking.
Vinyl has more resolution than 16/44.1. You hear more detail, things like reverb in the studio and the like. It's really on par with hirez digital either in PCM or DSD form.
Record wear is minimal as long as you use a good stylus and clean the record and stylus properly. LPs have many hundreds of plays in them before they degrade.
Most old classic rock and jazz albums were recorded on analog tape. Vinyl masterings can keep (and the best ones do) the music entirely in the analog domain. No A to D and D to A conversions like CD. Those conversions degrade the sound quality.
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From my experience, a listen to vinyl from my friend's house, with new LP he bought, I still hear noises and sometimes clicks. No different from a nearby hi-fi store with really stunning setup (by the way, that Sonata you mention alone, I believe, costs 600$.)
And your merely saying "Vinyl has more resolution than 16/44.1" does not answer my serious question about the process. (nevermind about all of noise problems and distortion problems already degrade the resolution to irreversible level) There is no way information from master can survive without butchered and massacred by mechanical faults/imperfections on all stages of the manufacturing. With such process it is rather silly to say all of high-frequency information of vinyl is coming from record.
Even further, after being delivered to the house, already altered information on this black disk meets even more mechanical imperfections and faults from turntable because so many components are moving mechanical components, everywhere. And then, another possible alternation occurs on phono stage.
In contrast, manufactured disks can be checked to see if there is error on information contained unlike Vinyl pressing process (even before mentioning that the whole process for CD has fewer faults thanks to advance in Chemical engineering.) This ensures the integrity of the information inside of the CD, which analog just cannot do.
And that's assuming that human being us can hear such high frequency sound, which we don't in reality.
After CD is inserted, a mechanical device (and only mechanical device on digital path) will read the information. Good thing is that any error possibly occurred by mechanical faults can be corrected with various methods. Jitter can be avoided by reading entire disk in one swoop, which all of modern CD-drives do. And then, it goes to DAC which will add errors from quantization and filters. For me, analog path is much more complicated and open to many imperfections and faults, from manufacturing to end-user playback.
But, the most annoying thing for me in analog is that there is NO WAY to check to see if the format (say LP, tape) has been altered/degraded/broken, nor to correct mistakes if happened to be discovered, ensuring that the signal I receive is never be even near perfect to original (or information intended to), while there are some ways to fix this problem in digital path. I assume there will be a lot of data loss already occurring during recording/mixing. Do we need to lose further during distribution and end-user playback?
I want "accurate": intended sound, not just "good" sound. And analog is the worst way to get "accurate", and even "good" is debatable.
I listen music everyday, and with my listening habit (listening same song over and over again sometimes) there is little doubt that LP will degrade rather quick IMO.