"the vinyl has been replaced by the CD, largely inferior in quality"

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

Either way vinyl is unnecessary.

 
And what exactly is necessary about audio in general?
 
Nothing.
 
So what's your point?
 
se
 
 
 
 
 

 

[maverickronin]

Its unnecessary because you can achieve identical ends through other means.

 

[leeperry]

 

Its unnecessary because you can achieve identical ends through other means.

 
Well, back in the days vinyl was better than a crappy Ferro Type I cassette for sure....some ppl still buy vinyl due to the object itself(big front cover) and to that sweet distorted sound that reminds them of the good ole times...but I humbly believe that the best you can get is a 1:1 copy of the mastertape using some high grade dithering...no stubborn mastering engineering clipping the music to death, no click/crackle/pop feast...anyway, each to his own! I've tried a tube headamp and was shocked at how distorted it was sounding, I'll stick to my high grade opamps...and JMJ is mixing personal preferences and facts. It is DEFINITELY not a fact that CD is "largely inferior in quality" to vinyl.
 
Personally I'm a U87 whore, to me nothing sounds better than a U87 through a vintage preamp....I guess some ppl might find its sound too warm and too colored, so I guess it all boils down to personal preferences.

 

[nick_charles]

My benchmark for this is to listen to the opening bars of Mahler's 1st, on CD you get a lovely quiet background with the music gradually emerging at least with a decent mastering, with vinyl, even well-cared for vinyl on a good TT you get a low level but quite audible set of noises added to it, this was true in 1984 when I went from a Rega to a 14 bit (x4) Marantz and is just as true now, listening on headphones the noise is more pronounced
 
The CD is limited by Information Theory constraints, vinyl is limited by the laws of physics.
 
Sadly neither often deliver all they are actually capable of, for different reasons.
 
[1] In the 80s Ivor (I'll never make a CD player) Tiefenbrun of Linn was unable to detect the presence of a Sony PCM-F1 a nominally 16 bit converter placed after the analog out from a Linn system and others (MatrixHifi - spanish vinyl lovers) have repeated the same test blind with better gear, so the digitization process itself does not appear to be overly audibly degrading.
 
That said there is something about vinyl that is very seductive and I see a gap between my Delta 70s big enough for a Turntable stand and my Rotel amp has a phono stage, part of me still wants to fill that gap though I know it is irrational, expensive and full of fiddle (record cleaners, new sleeves, static treatements...) but I grew up with vinyl in the 60s/70s/80s and some things are hard to shake off, I still have a box of Lps in an attic in Nuneaton.
 
But superior ? rationally LP is only *potentially* superior on a few parameters but see [1]

 

[p a t r i c k]

Vinyl vs CD arguments make me nostalgic 

 
Today I listen to CDs and in fact I'm in the process of getting my Mac Pro to be a source with the Meier-Audio StageDAC, initial experience of this is very good.
 
I had my first hi fi in the 70s and that, of course, was vinyl. Amazingly I still have that first turntable and here it is:
 

 
It is not look too bad for its age!
 
I am preparing if for eBay sale but not for a while so please don't ask about it.
 
In the pic of course it doesn't have an arm but that is being sold separately.
 
With SME arm and the Ortofon MM cartridge I use it does sound absolutely fabulous.
 
With regard to the bigger question of whether vinyl is better in absolute terms than digital or vice versa, personally I don't know. I do know that either can sound great. I think prefer good digital reproduction personally.

 

[leeperry]

 

My benchmark for this is to listen to the opening bars of Mahler's 1st, on CD you get a lovely quiet background with the music gradually emerging at least with a decent mastering, with vinyl, even well-cared for vinyl on a good TT you get a low level but quite audible set of noises added to it

That's the thing....vinyl can be good for "loud" music as it will harmonically distort it w/ a somewhat "euphonic" color, but any music requiring a dead quiet background(jazz/classical) is completely ruined by the background noise...to my ears at least.

 

[nick_charles]

 
Quote:

Vinyl vs CD arguments make me nostalgic 

 
Today I listen to CDs and in fact I'm in the process of getting my Mac Pro to be a source with the Meier-Audio StageDAC, initial experience of this is very good.
 
I had my first hi fi in the 70s and that, of course, was vinyl. Amazingly I still have that first turntable and here it is:
 

 
It is not look too bad for its age!
 
I am preparing if for eBay sale but not for a while so please don't ask about it.
 
In the pic of course it doesn't have an arm but that is being sold separately.
 
With SME arm and the Ortofon MM cartridge I use it does sound absolutely fabulous.
 
With regard to the bigger question of whether vinyl is better in absolute terms than digital or vice versa, personally I don't know. I do know that either can sound great. I think prefer good digital reproduction personally.

 
HA ! - I had a Transcriptors once, but the Saturn. Heath-Robinson meets Dr Who.

 

 

[SP Wild]

When I'm done tweaking my digital setup and when I have spare cash...I wouldn't mind getting a decent turntable and some LPs...I feel I'm missing out on this retro nostalgic fashionable thing, snap crackle and pop!
 
I'll reserve my judgement until the day I hear a hi-end turntable.  But seeing how tube amps tickle my fancy - perhaps the vinyl might do the same.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

Its unnecessary because you can achieve identical ends through other means.

Prove it.
 
se
 

 

[Anaxilus]

@leeperry
 
The only parameter of interest to me w/ respect to vinyl is preservation of a true analog waveform.  Perhaps I missed the discussion but how do you justify the digital sampling of an analog waveform to be better?  The fact of the matter is from a pure science and mathematics standpoint digital production results in lost data.  Isn't that just a fact?

 

[leeperry]

well, the crosstalk is as lousy as can get on vinyl...and there's many sampling theorems that tend to prove that 16/44.1 is plenty to recreate a perfect waveform of the encoded signal. Add noise shaping/dithering/oversampling/post-filtering, and the aliasing and edginess will be so minimal that any capable opamp will simply trump them on their way through. I believe the ppl who still buy LP's in 2010 do it for sheer nostalgia sake's.

 

[9pintube]

You may all believe what you want, But most of you haven't heard a well recorded Vinyl Lp on a perfectly matched (table, arm, cart. and most important the phono stage) that has been "Set Up" correctly..  I believe it's like everything else in the world today "We Want "IT" Now, RIGHT NOW! Hence the compact disc.......It's very satisfying to slip a disc in the player or hit play on your computer based system and be rewarded with "Tunes" NOW...I can understand that.......We live in a GO GO Go Go world, most of you know this! Instant gratification almost always leads to poor quality in many aspects and not just music......Look at fast food, It's FAST but mostly crap, right.. A well prepared meal that a chef prepares with "his talents" usually taste pretty damn good, right..... So back to Vinyl playback music, YOU MUST have all your musical ducks in a row "equipment wise" to get the sound that WE vinyl lovers insist sounds so superior to the compact disk.... We/I will be the first to say "that sounds like crap" as soon as the stylist hits the groove on records/recordings that ether have been played to death (happens) or was recorded poorly (happens)........ Did you anti-vinyl people know that if the VTA on your arm/ cartridge is off a degree or two makes a huge difference.........But here we are back to the "time thing" again.... You must not think it's that important or as I said above the "NOW FACTOR" takes over....I COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND your concern about "I'm waiting"!!!!    One last rant OK...During the listening session that I spoke about in my 1st post on this matter, Larry (owner) of this killer equipment asked us what we wanted to hear, so I'd just listened to Chicago's 1st LP the night before that was a Mo-FI copy, on my system and I wanted to hear the same song on his system....Are you with me so far?  I  said "just play the Beginnings Track" when it came to the end of the tune where the percussion takes over myself and another friend looked at each other with a disbelief about the sound Quality of the percussion instruments harshness or distortion to most ears!!!  Andre got up lifted the arm (TAKING TIME ONCE AGAIN) and adjusted the VTA (vertical tracking angle) and lowered the stylist back into the same (or close) spot. The difference was IMMEDIATELY Heard by all,  Clear as a bell/s, for those of you familiar with this track!!   So, Did "IT" take more TIME? YOU BET, was "IT" worth "IT",  do I really have to say, HELL YES!!!!!  So Do You Non- believer see what I mean???  Like I said, Is Vinyl play back the Tits,NO...Are Cd's the best, Depends(I say no)..Even Reel to Reel playback have their faults, so IMO it boils down to what you want to spend your TIME listening to......Really, music is all good!, Some just prefer better SQ in their play back gear......thanks, I'm finished...peace and happy listening........ 

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

@leeperry
 
The only parameter of interest to me w/ respect to vinyl is preservation of a true analog waveform.  Perhaps I missed the discussion but how do you justify the digital sampling of an analog waveform to be better?  The fact of the matter is from a pure science and mathematics standpoint digital production results in lost data.  Isn't that just a fact?

You may be assuming that the analog capture of a sound wave is perfect which it is not by definition. Analog capture or digital capture have measurable signal capture characteristics, analog capture while defined as continuous is not infinite or perfect, good digital capture is better than poor analog capture and vice versa.
 
The digital conversion of an analog capture is an appoximation but if you use a bandwidth limited signal the approximation can be very very good indeed, to the point where you cannot tell the original and capture apart. Not perfect but very good. If you do SNR addition on an analog signal and its digital rendering the digital rendering adds so little noise compared to the original as to be irrelevant. For instance if your analog signal has noise at -75 db (Good) an ADC that has noise at -96db is not a cause of worry.
 
Analog and digital consumer end products have measurable information characteristics, so vinyl has a poorer SNR than CD, a poorer dynamic range (over 20 - 20K) the equivalent of about 12 - 13 bits. Vinyl does have a theoretically better transient response and extension above 20K but it is less linear and suffers from huge variations in dynamic range on playback with groove position and frequency. Thus vinyl has less information overall than CD.
 
A good analog reel to reel tape might give you an SNR of 80db - trivial for even a 16 bit system to surpass. Even the uber analog tape machines you can find won't get above 100db which is a bit better than 16 bits but no match for a 24 bit digital recorder even on an off-day.
 

 

[HyperDuel]

leeperry never fails to amaze me.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

I believe the ppl who still buy LP's in 2010 do it for sheer nostalgia sake's.

No.
 
There are many who are buying vinyl in 2010 who never grew up with it and for whom there is no nostalgia. They buy it because in spite of what its technical faults may be, IT SOUNDS BETTER TO THEM.
 
Apparently that's a concept you simply can't wrap your mind around or are willing to accept.
 
se