[Happy Camper]

Is it possible?

What would it take to get there?

 

[jp11801]

$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

 

[Jon L]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jp11801 /img/forum/go_quote.gif $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?

 

[mark_h]

Not really, vinyl is vinyl. The early meridian stuff is nice and smooth?

 

[jp11801]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon L /img/forum/go_quote.gif 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.

 

[obobskivich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Happy Camper /img/forum/go_quote.gif 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"

 

[jcx]

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

 

[panda]

closest way to get there is to burn vinyl rips onto cd and play via naim cds3, very organic sound much like vinyl.

 

[edstrelow]

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.

 

[mark_h]

/\ What's that talk show phrase? "Oh no he didn't!"

 

[jp11801]

Quote:

Originally Posted by edstrelow /img/forum/go_quote.gif 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.

 

[Rob N]

Quote:

Originally Posted by panda /img/forum/go_quote.gif 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

 

[TheAttorney]

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.

 

[hybris]

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

 

[Skylab]

Quote:

Originally Posted by edstrelow /img/forum/go_quote.gif 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.