macdef wrote:
You make many valid points. but several statements that you made are not
accurate.
> Granted, you have to spend a LOT more money on a vinyl system, and put a LOT
> more care into it, to get sound comparable to a CD system, but that's
> another story.
You would have to spend so much money that it would not be practical for all but
the wealthiest people to afford it.
> Not at all; I have heard plenty of theories as to why vinyl can sound as
> good as CD, starting with the fact that CD is a digital representation of an
> analog signal, and because CD must go through A/D and D/A processing
With the possible exception of vintage studios, all recording studios today use
digital equipment and computers for recording. I know because my daughter is a
recording engineer. While she agrees that it is possible to make make a record
that sounds as good or better than a CD, the equipment needed all the way
through the chain and the care that would have to be take make it so
impractical.
Also, she states that analog tape has so many inherent problems that adversely
affect the final product. Your not really keeping the sound as sound. You are
converting waves to magnetic signals and there in lies your first road block.
If you could some how keep a perfect series of vibrations until the master is
cut that would be a different story.
But using tape is akin to converting to digital. Your just using more than ones
and zeros.
> Not at all -- vinyl and CD are both pressed from the same master.
If you are saying that vinyl and CD are made using the same "mold" that is not
correct. Digital is never stored on anything but some form of digital storage.
It may be tape, but the tape is recording ones and zeros. The master for a CD
is burned, usually from a DAT, on to a glass master.
> Vinyl is analog to analog.
Yes but the storage used to store the "analog" signal is magnetic, not physical
and converting vibrations to electricity causes a great deal of distortion.
> CD is analog -> A/D processor -> CD.
Yes but first of all, the high end converters that are used today are so good at
doing what they do that they can make a very accurate copy. Better than most
analog tapes.
> There is no objective evidence that CD is better,
There is. There is loads of objective evidence. All of those specifications.
But that doesn't mean that subjectively a CD will sound better.
> Larry. We could debate theories all day and no
> one would be right.
You are absolutely correct about that because what "sounds" better is so
subjective.
> The fact that so many people think vinyl is better --
> people who are knowledgeable about both audio and music -- tells me that
> vinyl can at *least* sound as good as CD given good equipment and care.
Also, today almost all studios use all digital storage. So unless you were
making a very special recording using the best vintage analog equipment you can
find, both vinyl and CDs both come from a digital storage source.
You mentioned that older vinyl recordings sound better to you. That may be
because you personally prefer the sound created from all analog. Newer
recordings may have already begun to use digital storage as far back as it was
available.
Even Lenny Kravits, who used to insist that everything be vintage and analog has
given up. Someone must have convinced him that it wasn't worth the hassle.
With computers digital recordings can be made to sound so close to analog that
you could not tell which is which.
The things that you can do to sound and video once you digitize them and put
them into a computer are so amazing that they can just about make you believe
anything you are seeing and hearing is real. I'm sure in the near future (if it
doesn't already exist) the qualifying statement "just about" will be able to be
left out of that sentence.
My daughter said, as she was laughing about your statements of having to spend a
lot of money to get the results, "That may be true in some analog utopia, but
not in the real world".
There are other things you said that are open for debate. Belts will wear and
stretch over time, thus affecting the accuracy of speed. Haven't you ever had
to retension a belt on your car because of this? Also, you did not mention the
degradation of the vinyl.
With each play you are adversely affecting the surface of the vinyl. If the
needle, which is made out of diamond will eventually wear out and have to be
replaced, imagine what it is doing to the vinyl.
But except for things that you can hear like ticks and pops, a vinyl recording
may very well sound subjectively better than a particular CD. There are so may
factors that have to be included.
The simplest way I can say it is, "a majority of CDs on the equipment available
today that a majority of the people can afford will sound better than vinyl on
the equipment that a majority of people can afford.
Conversely, a very small minority of people can afford the equipment necessary
to make a superior made record sound better than a majority of CDs.
If you can figure out what I just said, please explain it to me because I have
no idea what it means :).
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