[judgmentday]

   
 
Vinyl is a constant signal, transistors are turning on and off devices that only translate 0s and 1s in analog signal to give an idea of real music.
 
Sorry, judge, but statements like that blur your credibility
 
Guess what reproduces the better sound?
 
In your opinion!  Perhaps someone else thought that the CD sounds more like the original master, whereas the record adds euphonic coloration.
 
LP is already an analog signal just needs the right amplification,
 
Both analog and digital music go through massive amounts of processing between the time the musicians played it in the studio and your speakers play it in your home.  Both processes include phase and time-delay shifting equalization, and compression.  Processing for records includes manipulating low frequencies towards the center, equalizing to and from RIAA standards, and compressing peaks so as not to send the stylus into the air.  Digital processing includes ADC-DAC conversions, high-frequency filters, bass boost, treble boost and volume boost "just because we can!"

Enlighten me if I'm wrong. I do really appreciate your knowledge.  Let me ask you this:  If the same master is dumped in the two formats, (CD & LP) should not the sound be exactly the same, minus the background noise or physical limitations of the turntable/LP?  If the mastering is exactly the same, I can understand why you like more the CD.  Obviously you are not going to hear a needle ha, ha, ha.  I don't know the technicalities about mastering and recording but so far, when I compared the same performance on LP vs. CD, it was very clear to me that the LP sounded much better.  Now I ask you, why the LP is $70.00 and the CD is only $7.00?

 

[jnorris]

 
Enlighten me if I'm wrong. I do really appreciate your knowledge.  Let me ask you this:  If the same master is dumped in the two formats, (CD & LP) should not the sound be exactly the same, minus the background noise or physical limitations of the turntable/LP?  If the mastering is exactly the same, I can understand why you like more the CD.  Obviously you are not going to hear a needle ha, ha, ha.  I don't know the technicalities about mastering and recording but so far, when I compared the same performance on LP vs. CD, it was very clear to me that the LP sounded much better.  Now I ask you, why the LP is $70.00 and the CD is only $7.00?

 
Let's assume the master is done on 30ips tape just for giggles.  To get a master CD, that analog tape has to pass through an ADC and a low-pass filter to remove high frequencies above 20K or so.  Once digitized to 44.1/16 (which is the last step of multiple conversions), it remains in that format untouched until your CD player reads the bits and passes them to your DAC and on to the preamp, amp and speakers.  For an LP master, the music must first pass a step that will "mono-ize" low frequencies so that they don't cause wildly different left-right deflections of the stylus.  The music is then stripped of low frequencies according to the RIAA equalization curve, compressed so that it doesn't exceed the physical capabilities of a reasonable tonearm/cartridge combo, then scratched into a metal master.  At this point you have your two points of comparison - the metal master and the digital 44.1/16 tape.  Played through perfect reproduction systems I'll bet you'll hear a difference at this point, but the one you perceive as "better" probably has nothing to do with tonal accuracy - it's just your perception.  But don't forget that at home the miniscule wiggles of the needle must be amplified and equalized by a phono stage (which may or may not be a cheap op-amp and some low quality capacitors and resistors) before it's finally passed on to the pre-amp and the CD/LP paths converge.
 
As for the price differential, CDs are generally not $7.00, they are more like $15.00 and may be put on sale for various discounts.  Dealers know people will pay a premium for vinyl (because "vinyl is better") and they charge premium prices - and never put them on sale.  Back in the '70s and '80s records cost as much as CDs do now, and the heavy, high quality vinyl discs, the Direct-to-Disc records, the Half-Speed Masters cost upwards of $40.00.  Maybe it's just inflation - with a little help from greed.

 

[arnyk]

 
Enlighten me if I'm wrong. I do really appreciate your knowledge.  Let me ask you this:  If the same master is dumped in the two formats, (CD & LP) should not the sound be exactly the same, minus the background noise or physical limitations of the turntable/LP? 

 
The audible degradation that is inherent in converting any high quality analog tape or digital masters to the LP format is so severe that the results would be anything but "Sound exactly the same".

 

[dazzerfong]

 
Interesting! You cannot stand the pops, needle drop and background noise of a LP in no so good shape, but you can stand the brightness, no space, bad separation, loudness and thin sound of the CD?
I'll take the needle drop and background noise any day, but I'll be listening to the closest and faithful live music performance available (if well mastered & recorded), enjoying: bigger piano notes, cymbal sound with extension, real presence of claves, conga drums, bass drum, snare, very well-tuned drums, bigger vocals, a tenor sax sounds like a tenor sax and not like a sopranino sax or an alto sax, better presence of the background of violins, violas, harp, cello, double bass, xylophone, chimes, etc.
To each its own, not too many people are good musicians and much less not everybody has a great set of trained ears.  For a meticulous audiophile with a two channels home stereo in the thousands of dollars, vinyl is still king. For most people a 128kb mp3 sounds good enough, ha, ha, ha

The AMG Viella 12 turntable $16K
 
Have you listened to something like this baby?
You will burn all your cds after you listen to this music experience
Read about it here:
http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/amg-viella-12-turntable-and-tonearm/
HD & 24bit/96kHz are put to shame compared to this baby. Ha, ha, ha.

I use digital as a reference: so far, what I'm hearing is that it's warmer but not as details (probably because it's warmer). And if I have to pay $16k just to fix the pops and crackles up, I think I'll be fine. I have to affirm that I also went to an audiophile shop (more speakers than headphones), and even their records + turntable had the pop and crackle.
 
Maybe it's the recordings I heard on a vinyl (all Mozart piano concertos, since I practically know a few off by heart), and the ones I've heard on vinyl are either shreaky and lack body or have a flabby body and no extension. That being said, the same problems also apply to some on digital, but there are a few digital masters of the songs that are IMO just perfect.
 
Remember, what you may like, others might not. And I better hope after listening to that $16k turntable that I hate all my digital songs, because otherwise I just got ripped $16k listening to an inferior format.

 

[arnyk]

 
You cannot stand the pops, needle drop and background noise of a LP in no so good shape, 
 
 
but you can stand the brightness, no space, bad separation, loudness and thin sound of the CD?

 
The question is not whether the many inherent audible deficiencies of the LP format can be tolerated under duress, but rather why bother to do so?
 
I suggest that you upgrade your digital playback facility or just simply open your ears to good sound uncorrupted by analog media,  because things like  brightness, no space, bad separation, loudness and thin sound are not inherent in the CD.  They are either products of personal bias or really bad playback gear.

 

[jnorris]

The equipment listed in judgementday's tag is some excellent stuff, so I don't think it's at fault for his perceptions of digital audio.  I think he just prefers the characteristics, real or imagined, of vinyl.  I have to say that the process of playing vinyl is very involving and sometimes I feel it brings you closer to and helps you to focus on the music.  And I do have some LPs that sound much better than their CD counterparts.  To each his own.

 

[cjl]

Let's address these one at a time, shall we...
 
Quote:

 
...but you can stand the brightness

CDs have a flatter frequency response through the entire frequency range than LPs, with the one caveat that under perfectly ideal conditions, an LP might have slightly higher extension into ultrasonics than CD. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that a lack of ultrasonic extension causes a "bright" sound, so I'll chalk this one as a win for the CD. Score: CD 1, LP 0
 
 
Quote:

  no space

This one is hard to quantify (deliberately, which is why it's a favorite of many audiophiles). However, CDs have much, much lower noise floor, maintain perfect stereo separation across their whole frequency range, and have better response in the 12-20kHz range than the vast majority of records and turntables. This all seems like it should lead to CDs having a better overall sensation of "space", by any normal interpretation of the term. Score: CD 2, LP 0
 
Quote:

  bad separation

A CD has 2 entirely separate channels. There is absolutely zero crosstalk inherent to the format, and a really good DAC has crosstalk levels more than a hundred dB below full scale. LPs have channel separation of -20 to -40dB (I can't find any measurements better than about -36dB, but if you have some, I'd love to hear about them). This means that an LP has 70dB worse separation than a CD. Score: CD 3, LP 0
 
Quote:

   loudness

This is really up to your amp and speakers. Both can get equally loud. If you're talking dynamic range, the CD wins in theory, but this has been somewhat hurt in a lot of recent albums by mastering designed to squeeze as much sound as possible into the top few dB of dynamic range on the CD. This isn't a format limitation though, this is a case where it really all depends on the mastering. I'll consider this one a tie (even though the CD has substantially better dynamic range and a lower noise floor). Score: CD 4, LP 1
 
 
Quote:

  and thin sound of the CD?

Again, the CD has better bass response than the LP, as well as maintaining channel separation all the way down to infrasonic levels. Digital has no inherent thin sound.
 
Final score:
CD 5
LP 1
 
 
I would also be willing to bet that if a 16 bit, 44.1kHz, unity gain A-D-A loop were added to your LP playback chain, you would never be able to notice the difference, even though that would effectively add all of the limitations of CD to your record playback system.

 

[nick_charles]

 
I would also be willing to bet that if a 16 bit, 44.1kHz, unity gain A-D-A loop were added to your LP playback chain, you would never be able to notice the difference, even though that would effectively add all of the limitations of CD to your record playback system.

 
 
Uncle Ivor (Tiefenbrun) of Linn did this back in the 80s and was a massive fail at it, ironically the experimenters (the BAS) noticed a slight switching noise that gave away when the A/D/A loop was in circuit so they could use the spurious artifact to ace the test but Ivor never detected this. Many folks in the NNTP Newsgroups days have done this A/D/A test with vinyl spinners as did the Spanish MatrixHifi bunch who are all vinyl lovers to date there are no credible examples of anyone reliably detecting the loop if the test used a competent A/D/A loop. There is some stuff about this on HydrogenAudio

 

[arnyk]

 
I would also be willing to bet that if a 16 bit, 44.1kHz, unity gain A-D-A loop were added to your LP playback chain, you would never be able to notice the difference, even though that would effectively add all of the limitations of CD to your record playback system.

 
 
That's true only if adding a CD format loop audibly limited the sound quality of LPs, which is known to be untrue based both on real world listening tests and also analysis of technical evaluations of the actual performance of the vinyl and CD formats.
 
 
In general if two channels are cascaded, and the second channel outperforms the first channel by 10 dB or more, the second channel does not significantly degrade the first channel.

 

[parbaked]

 

[cjl]

   
 
That's true only if adding a CD format loop audibly limited the sound quality of LPs, which is known to be untrue based both on real world listening tests and also analysis of technical evaluations of the actual performance of the vinyl and CD formats.
 
 
In general if two channels are cascaded, and the second channel outperforms the first channel by 10 dB or more, the second channel does not significantly degrade the first channel.

That's exactly what I said - I don't think he could detect a CD format A-D-A added into his playback chain.

 

[arnyk]

 
That's exactly what I said - I don't think he could detect a CD format A-D-A added into his playback chain.

 
Come on stop deflecting! You also said this:
 
"That would effectively add all of the limitations of CD to your record playback system."
 
I disagree because the only way that adding CD format A-D-A into his playback chain would add all of the limitations of CD to an playback system would be if the entire system from one end to the other were perfect.
 
However, real world audio systems are far from perfect, and very few of them are even vaguely close to being as perfect as the CD format when you include the entire system - the recorded music, the recording venue, the recording equipment, the production equipment, the playback equipment, the listener's ears and and the playback room.
 
For example, any music sourced from legacy analog media has serious imperfections that vastly exceed those of CD.
 
This is true to the extent that when you allegedly add all of the limitations of CD to a LP by doing a good job of transcribing a LP to CD format, many people say that their is no audible degradation at all, and a good technical analysis of the situation tends to bear this out.

 

[jnorris]

I regularly transfer LP to FLAC and hear no degradation at all. I do it with the speakers turned off so there is no airborne interaction with the turntable. When playing the FLAC back at a higher volume it does sound cleaner than the turntable due to the lack of that interaction.

 

[Roly1650]

That's exactly what I said - I don't think he could detect a CD format A-D-A added into his playback chain.

It's OK, I think anybody with half a brain knew exactly what you meant and had zero problem with the way you expressed it. Some just have an insatiable need to dazzle us with their brilliance at every opportunity, even disagreeing with someone they agree with, which is a really neat trick.

 

[judgmentday]

When you are not listening to a setup with is proper components the differences are minimal because you are listening to the same digital to analog signal.
Like in the case of some youtube videos where they compare an LP to a CD or SACD, the comparison is within the same digital format anyways.
 
If you are going to compare LP vs. Digital do it in real life to be fairly:
 
A complete LP setup with components suitable for LP:
 
1-)  with a decent turntable
2-)  A suitable cartridge
3-)  A decent tube amp
4-)  A decent tube preamp with a nice phone section
5-)  Some decent interconnects and speaker wire
6-)  Some speakers that are suitable for LP/Tube gear
7-)  A counterpart reference audiophile LP
  Good ears to discern or unbiased attitude
9-)  A decent audio room
 
A complete Digital setup with components suitable for Digital:
 
1-) A decent transport
2-) A decent DAC
3-) A decent solid state amp
4-) A decent solid state preamp
5-) Some decent interconnects and speaker wire
6-) Some Speakers suitable for solid state gear
7-) A counterpart reference audiophile CD or SACD
Good ears to discern or unbiased attitude
9-) A decent audio room
 
The jurors will be asked questions about each setup about what they listened or what they did not listen
 
I challenge you all of you guys to this:
Do you guys want to meet to do a real life auditioning for comparison?
 
A judge and a jury of 12 blinded guys with respected credentials to judge high end audio, no ipod/itunes lovers please.

 
But, after you are convinced I want you all of you CD audiophiles to be quieted and come here and post that you changed your mind.  Is that a deal?