[Willakan]

Regardless of how good a vinyl deck can subjectively sound, declaring it better than CD because it's analog, as some people do, is incorrect on many levels (not least when faced with the idea that continuous=/ perfect)

 

[MZ Lab]

In theory all looks great...but let's check the reality.  Unless a CD master is encoded with HDCD the actual bit depth is only 14 bit that is the reality .  Not to many CDs are HDCD and not to many players are capable of playing HDCD. 
And what about the steep filter @20k it is the most unnatural thing ever happened to the human ear. 
Let's say we are all mastering  engineers and we are going to cut Vinyl and a CD from a Rudy Van Gelder tape from the sixties.  Vinyl mastering will be 45 rpm - the only thing you have to do is just find out how loud it can be in order to fit on each side, apply some EQ if needed.  The transfer is made and you can see the actual wave form is printed on the master.
Now the CD - the signal goes through an AD converter in best case scenario with HDCD encoding, to the work station, then a track editing, then you burn the the master, check it for errors, send it to the plant etc.  Believe me by the time you put the CD in the player and you hear music, many zeros became ones and many ones became zeros and this is not just a distortion it is a different  music. 
 
Now a days when the master source is digital and if is hi res (24/88.2) the CD may sound very good.  The mastering will be kept in digital domain, down sampled to 44.1 and send to the plant.  You would not believe what the difference is between the master and the consumer ready CD. The Vinyl master would only depend on how good your DA convertor is.  And when sent to a nice plant there is almost no difference between the test pressing and the master.
 
 
I can see some people wouldn't care about Blue Note Jazz or Classical Music they listen the latest pop or rock album.  Well congratulations to all of them they just listen digital distortion or the old nice square waves.

 

[leeperry]

In theory all looks great...but let's check the reality.  Unless a CD master is encoded with HDCD the actual bit depth is only 14 bit that is the reality .  Not to many CDs are HDCD and not to many players are capable of playing HDCD. 
And what about the steep filter @20k it is the most unnatural thing ever happened to the human ear.

14bit? since when?
 
I agree about the 20kHz steep filter, but whether this data is any useful is open for debate...especially when most ppl can't hear anything >16kHz. I believe there have been DBT's w/ a low pass filter at 16kHz, and hardly anyone could detect it.
 
I'm sure all those ppl w/ crummy sounding vinyl decks in the 60's/70's would have been delighted to have crappy sounding CD's instead

 

[jack black]

Is CDs were so inferior, why they took over then?
I had a vinyl collection at late 70's/early 80's and I hated the hiss and cracks from dust.
I always felt trebles sounded unnatural in CDs, but it was a lesser evil.

 

[Head Injury]

Quote:

Is CDs were so inferior, why they took over then?

I'd refrain from using this as an argument for CDs. MP3s are inferior to CDs, but they're taking over. Some online distributors are wising up and offering lossless, at least.

 

[jack black]

Quote:

I'd refrain from using this as an argument for CDs. MP3s are inferior to CDs, but they're taking over. Some online distributors are wising up and offering lossless, at least.

Not really. MP3 at a decent bitrate are indistinguishible from CD: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Transparency
 
Yet, they offer very easy storage compared to PCM. Thus, they are better for consumers. This is why they take over.
 

 

[jcx]

you are a little behind on the technology - HDCD arguably was an improvement because of its early use of dither  - the compression/expansion really doesn't add as much S/N as modern noise shaped dither, particularly the newer ones that rely on psychoacoustic masking to hide the dither noise - also its likely that HDCD equipment was only bought, used by people committed to superior mastering practice from the beginning
 
your 14 bit comment is silly as well - not even true for flat S/N with TPDF dither (= 93.3 dB S/N gives 15.2 ENOB ) - way not true for perceptual weighted S/N with shaped dither - for "fair" comparison to vinyl I would even claim that CD should use the pre-emphasis and a dither algorithm tuned to take advantage of it  
 
as I mentioned last page, Nick Charles keeps pointing out, it isn't unambiguously established that content above 20 KHz can be reliably distinguished in music recording playback - if the distinction was "night and day" for any substantial fraction of the population we would have multiple, replicated, peer reviewed positive double blind results
 
if a audio CD doesn't have the same bits on it that you delivered to the plant then you have recourse - don't accept the shipment, don't pay - unless they were authorized to scan for, "fix" "digital overs", level gains, adjust inter track gaps... 
 
the implication of superior vinyl reproduction technical accuracy is laughable - every step of the cutting, replicating, pressing, playback of vinyl has well documented error mechanisms causing objectively measurable differences well above the -16 bit level, try reading some 60-70's JAES or industry articles on the process

 

[Head Injury]

Quote:

Not really. MP3 at a decent bitrate are indistinguishible from CD: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Transparency
 
Yet, they offer very easy storage compared to PCM. Thus, they are better for consumers. This is why they take over.

Inaudible differences, but still technically inferior.
 
My point is, even if CDs were inferior to vinyl (they aren't) they still could have "taken over" because of convenience, like the MP3 is now. Consumers don't really care about technical superiority. So using the argument that CDs took over as a medium because they are technically superior isn't a great idea.

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

In theory all looks great...but let's check the reality.  Unless a CD master is encoded with HDCD the actual bit depth is only 14 bit that is the reality . 
 
Citation  ?
 
Vinyl mastering will be 45 rpm - the only thing you have to do is just find out how loud it can be in order to fit on each side, apply some EQ if needed. 
 
You omit to mention the absolutely required RIAA EQ 
 
The transfer is made and you can see the actual wave form is printed on the master.
 
Actually there are a few more steps before it gets to your turntable which you omit to mention
 
Now the CD - the signal goes through an AD converter in best case scenario with HDCD encoding, to the work station, then a track editing, then you burn the the master, check it for errors, send it to the plant etc.  Believe me by the time you put the CD in the player and you hear music, many zeros became ones and many ones became zeros and this is not just a distortion it is a different  music. 
 
Citation ? - oh and utter nonsense,  if high order bits were routinely swapping values uncorrected the music would just be a completely random mess - BER on modern CD players is vanishingly small
 

 
Vinyl is measurably worse than CD in most departments - noise, distortion , crosstalk, linearity,  speed stability, all verifiably worse - a good LP at best will have a dynamic range of maybe 70db,  a half speed master maybe a touch better but still under 13 bits and that only till you get towards the label when tracking issues become more serious.
 
As for the brick-wall filter - there is genuinely (and I have researched this extensively)  no credible evidence that frequencies above 20K have any material impact on perception of sound ( TERUO MURAOKA, YOSHlHlKO YAMADA, AND MASAMI YAMAZAKI  1978, and others) . One study (Oohashi) appeared to provide evidence but it turned out to be IMD from the drivers used (Ashihara) .
 
This is also an interesting explanation of the physics of LP playback
 
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/iandm/part12/page2.html
 
 
 

 

[MZ Lab]

I think by the time the CD is totally extinct Vinyl will be still sold in stores or online.
 
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/retail/radiohead-drive-55-rise-in-u-k-vinyl-sales-1005295802.story
 
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/commentary/listeningpost/2007/10/listeningpost_1029
 
http://www.shelleysstereo.com/blog/index.php/2010/03/19/vinyl-record-sales-rise-why/
 
http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/music/headlines/20100218-Vinyl-record-sales-are-surging-5090.ece
 
http://jasonkeath.com/vinyl-album-sales-are-up-25-in-2011/

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

I think by the time the CD is totally extinct Vinyl will be still sold in stores or online.

Yep, and for pretty much the same reason people collect antiques...

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

I think by the time the CD is totally extinct Vinyl will be still sold in stores or online.
 
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/retail/radiohead-drive-55-rise-in-u-k-vinyl-sales-1005295802.story
 
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/commentary/listeningpost/2007/10/listeningpost_1029
 
http://www.shelleysstereo.com/blog/index.php/2010/03/19/vinyl-record-sales-rise-why/
 
http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/music/headlines/20100218-Vinyl-record-sales-are-surging-5090.ece
 
http://jasonkeath.com/vinyl-album-sales-are-up-25-in-2011/

1. So what ?
2. Wake me when sales get to 10 million LPs per year , if I live that long...last year US CD sales were  326.2 million "albums"

 

[Head Injury]

Quote:

I think by the time the CD is totally extinct Vinyl will be still sold in stores or online.

That's because vinyl is hip right now, not because it offers any actual benefit in performance or convenience.

 

[jack black]

 
Quote:

I think by the time the CD is totally extinct Vinyl will be still sold in stores or online.

I'm sure they will be if there a market for those.
 
Apparently there is a market for $500 speaker cables too.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

the implication of superior vinyl reproduction technical accuracy is laughable - every step of the cutting, replicating, pressing, playback of vinyl has well documented error mechanisms causing objectively measurable differences well above the -16 bit level, try reading some 60-70's JAES or industry articles on the process

And lest we not forget, unless you're talking about direct to disc recording (very rare), you've got a magnetic tape recorder between the microphone and the cutting lathe and all of its effects on the signal.
 
se