Why CD's May Actually Sound Better Than Vinyl

I don't think most of the opinions expressed in this article will be welcomed on today's audiophile Web sites :P
 
Mike said:
This is a great, historical read.

http://www.laweekly.com/music/why-cds-may-actually-sound-better-than-vinyl-5352162
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That's a bummer Mike. Couldn't you have shared the article a week earlier? Now I just got into vinyl only to learn it was all in vain, as CD is better after all :D.

Besides now knowing the truth, I am still totally stunned how real and unbelievably good Jimi's guitars and the Ludwig drums sound through an analogue record player and a tube phono-pre.


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Although I got in to hi-fi in the days when vinyl and tape were the ONLY media, I am today perplexed by the supposed resurgence of vinyl.

I think vinyl does "sound better" to people with a certain musical taste, but they tend to be the same sort, in general, who like tube/valve equipment. WHY? Because that medium and those reproduction technologies FILTER the sound in a pleasant-sounding (euphonic) way -- by no means because they support more accurate reproduction.

I'll grant that my very first CD player, circa 1985, didn't sound so great; specifically (as I recall) the top-end was bright and harsh. I agree then that the CD did not sound better than LP -- but that was then. Even my next CDP, circa 1991, sounded much better and my digital equipment today is far better again. The problems of digital jitter and filtering that seriously hampered digital sound have largely been eliminated today. Meanwhile the problems of vinyl playback remain basically the same.

Furthermore I listen almost exclusively to Classical music and the the selection on LP is ridiculously small compared to what is available on CD or even SACD. I know there was an era when may LPs in good condition were available for cheap, but I missed out on that era on account of personal circumstance, so today my listening collection is entirely CD, SACD, or digital download, and I have no inclination to change that.

In any case the essential fact is that the particular medium is typically much less important to the overall sound than the music that is recorded on it. Individual recordings can sound good, mediocre, or frankly bad regardless of the medium.
 
Kuoppis said:
That's a bummer Mike. Couldn't you have shared the article a week earlier? Now I just got into vinyl only to learn it was all in vain, as CD is better after all :D.

Besides now knowing the truth, I am still totally stunned how real and unbelievably good Jimi's guitars and the Ludwig drums sound through an analogue record player and a tube phono-pre.


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Ha! Don't worry. Enjoy your vinyl. I'm willing to be you find yourself much more involved in the music and as time goes on, really enjoying the benefits of alternate sources. Next we will see you with a Studer A810!

I'm still one who believes, at a psychoacoustic level, that we prefer analog over digital for not what the brain has to filter out, but for what it has to fill in.

That being said, there are some wonderful digital products on the market today which are very engaging.

I for one enjoy having source options.


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Another them vs us article filled with half-truths and misinformation. It comes down to who's 'expert' opinion you're seeking and if its relevant to what you know to sound right.
 
Mike.......Thanks for the link. It was an interesting article. In fact, it reiterated what I have commented on many times through the years. Just enjoy what you like. There is absolutely no purpose in trying to convince someone else that your choice of pleasure will be or should be theirs. What a waste of time. Play the music you like with the format you choose and be happy. Unless you are listening to a live performance, all the rest is a reproduction, a copy, not live. No matter what format is selected, none can create a live performance.
 
Mike.......Thanks for the link. It was an interesting article. In fact, it reiterated what I have commented on many times through the years. Just enjoy what you like. There is absolutely no purpose in trying to convince someone else that your choice of pleasure will be or should be theirs. What a waste of time. Play the music you like with the format you choose and be happy. Unless you are listening to a live performance, all the rest is a reproduction, a copy, not live. No matter what format is selected, none can create a live performance. Close, but no cigar.
 
puroagave said:
Another them vs us article filled with half-truths and misinformation. It comes down to who's 'expert' opinion you're seeking and if its relevant to what you know to sound right.
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Got that right, just like Chevy vs Ford :D

This author spoke about "big names" and what they or he perceived what they had wrote or said but he never mentioned his own test and his gear to support his own theory.
 
Pick one and listen!

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Almost thought it was April already.:disbelief:
Heaven forbid one just enjoy the music, not the type of plastic....
 
Mike said:
Ha! Don't worry. Enjoy your vinyl. I'm willing to be you find yourself much more involved in the music and as time goes on, really enjoying the benefits of alternate sources. Next we will see you with a Studer A810!

I'm still one who believes, at a psychoacoustic level, that we prefer analog over digital for not what the brain has to filter out, but for what it has to fill in.

That being said, there are some wonderful digital products on the market today which are very engaging.

I for one enjoy having source options.


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Well, let's see whether the Studer will come or not, but currently I really enjoy vinyl. This one article you shared, as basic as it was, pretty much nails the fun of it.

Any statements about what is accurate or not are relative to one's set of experiences and the frames of reference available to us. The right tones, correct pitch, the right rhythm, all possible details (never available in a recording) and so on. My company is specialized in quality management, so what do we do? We measure - that's exactly what a recording engineer does. That does however not mean the engineer necessarily has the best idea of how to get a nice sound out of a sax or what a nice sax sound is for that matter. How does he then determine what is accurate? Well, by pitch measurement etc. According to that logic a singer should then leave intonation and interpretation aside to be 'correct'.

I for my part do play guitar for the better part of 40 years now, of which a little more than 30 years electronic. During this time I have been looking for the sound I like for myself, as a combination of amps, guitars, pick-ups and effects. It took me 15 years to perfect it, to get the harmonics right the way I want them. Thus, I studied the sound of electric guitars quite intensively with a very broad range of gear. One very clear conclusion from that experiment was that transistor amplification does not produce harmonics the same way as tubes do, whether distorted or not.

I was nevertheless quite surprised to discover, when I listened to Jimi Hendrix earlier today, that having added a tube phono-pre to my otherwise transistor based system, the system now re-produces these amplified guitar harmonics better, than my system did before. I do not have any deeper experience with other instruments otherwise, but I also have the impression that sax and piano harmonics are now better reproduced as well, i.e. with vinyl + tube phono pre.

For classical music I actually so far prefer DSD.



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Double-D said:
Mike.......Thanks for the link. It was an interesting article. In fact, it reiterated what I have commented on many times through the years. Just enjoy what you like. There is absolutely no purpose in trying to convince someone else that your choice of pleasure will be or should be theirs. What a waste of time. Play the music you like with the format you choose and be happy. Unless you are listening to a live performance, all the rest is a reproduction, a copy, not live. No matter what format is selected, none can create a live performance.
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Smart man.


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That was a good article; thanks for linking it.

Grew up with vinyl, still have some vintage albums and a newer turntable, but almost all my listening uses the digital part of my system which sounds great to me. Also, never did like having to clean vinyl.

The younger people into the vinyl resurgence are reacting against what they grew up with (CDs). The turntables / systems they use are generally not high quality. Nostalgia for a time before your own seems to be a common human trait.
 
Double-D said:
Mike.......Thanks for the link. It was an interesting article. In fact, it reiterated what I have commented on many times through the years. Just enjoy what you like. There is absolutely no purpose in trying to convince someone else that your choice of pleasure will be or should be theirs. What a waste of time. Play the music you like with the format you choose and be happy. Unless you are listening to a live performance, all the rest is a reproduction, a copy, not live. No matter what format is selected, none can create a live performance. Close, but no cigar.
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Well crap, what did I join all these forums for then??
 
On a more serious note, IMO the superiority of analog (be it tape, vinyl or live music) is all about the time domain not, as the article indicates, dynamic range or resolution (at which digital is indeed objectively superior). No matter how good the clocks get digital is a reconstruction, as Neil says in the article, and the human mind has spent the last 40 million years evolving around and being emotionally impacted by analog sounds in nature. Any variation in the time domain is a perturbation to many. I find the stuff about liking it because all the work "is a ritual we grew up with" just silly. Analog is a pain in the arse but we suffer it because it is "better" IMO for the reason above.


Chip-less DSD, which so many analogphiles love, gets as close to analog as digital can because the bit depth is 1 and those bits are simply streamed and filtered (with no reconstruction via chips and clocks) which keeps keeping the timing intact. I am not sure there is a better evidence in support of the time domain theory than what is happening in DSD.
 
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