Comparing quality on vinyl with Digital

Yup!

 

Agreed. I just read an interesting "paper" by Charles Hansen on Ayre on these very points regarding the brickwall filters that are applied to the vast majority of PCM encoded recordings.

 

All I know is that I prefer lp/analog -to my ears...I'll take that over any link, post, or thread positing that I am hearing things.

 

Duly noted, and no offense intended Kevintomb. Just a little wisecrack

 

Have you tried a blind test?

 

Have you? Please post your setup, data, and methodology.

 

No, the NFL would not lend us the refs from Chargers-Chiefs game.

 

Every day for 25 yrs I recorded to analogue tape ,mostly a Nagra, and very lovely it was ,in all sorts of climatic and arduous physical conditions
Everyday I applied zero level tone to Agfa PER 368 or some equivalent and every time even the sublime Nagra transport responded with an imperfect rendition of that pure sine wave.
Moving to DAT in the late 80s was an unlovely experience ergonomically, however laying down line up tone on the comically small DAT cassettes was a revelation
It came back exactly as it went on.
Moving onto file recording to Compact Flash in the early 00s was the epiphany , at last a mirror of your recording without artefact.
I still drag out my Nagra IV and wonder at its mechanical brilliance,however compared to my Nagra VI with no moving parts its just a museum piece.

 

Still a better choice than digital fatigue + its 'razors-on-eardrums' effect.

 

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For my 2 cents, I would agree.

 

This is what logically makes sense to me too, so I would agree. I just always think that a well done analog mastering of an analog recording/mix (AAA) is the best sound. People can pull out all the numbers they want but my ears love the sound of well mastered vinyl. This is not to say the others, including 16/44, can't sound amazing.

 

I know digital recordings are becoming better and better but from my research, many great musicians still prefer the benefits of analog recording. Some of the modern analog lps mastered from tape sound stunning.

 

How many oranges equal the taste of an apple?

 

See what Alan Shaw has to say about analogue on his very informative Harbeth Forum.

 

CD quality is good enough to my ears. No surface noises. Lasts a long time. Everything can play it.

 

Always nice to see that digital finally escaped from being labeled with the same old ear bleeder comments, it gives me fatigue after 90 seconds and the like...

Seriously, what kind of crapola disc spinners do some of you people have?!?

 

..... there's a thread there titled ..... An honest appraisal of vinyl v. digital - romance v. reality ....... interesting stuff.

 

......Then why does digital sound Great to someone that is anti-digital, when they are not aware it is in fact digital?

 

Yeah, I can never understand what people are doing (or not doing) to experience the trauma of "digital fatigue" ..... it's kinda funny.

 

What confuses me, is that almost all sound today, is digital of some kind, TV sound, Blu ray, stuff we hear in stores, literally everwhere we go, we are hearing digital.

How are people fine with hearing that, if it is such an "Ear bleeding thing"?

 

great post!

Yes I have read stuff Alan has said before, and it is at odds with what some in our forum think.

I believe what Mr. Shaw says, about digital being an impediment in "theory", but in practice on real music, the recording itself is always the bottleneck or more exactly the tape hiss or noise of the electronics to make the recording end up being louder than any "Extremely low level sounds" will ever be.

Hence, if we are talking extremely low level sounds on a recording, (( such as -110 to even say up to -80 db )) which are very very rare to begin with, the master tape hiss, will often be at -70 to -55 db or so, and completely limit what the lowest recorded sound is.

 

Here is an interesting experiment.

http://matrixhifi.com/ENG_contenedor_art_cd_vinilo.htm

 

It's all about personal preference . It's pretty close to an even split at are audio club , about half prefer digital .
One thing we do agree on is to respect each others choices and preferences , if we didn't we'd be a bunch of narrow minded clowns .

 

It depends completely on the quality of mastering. Theory and numbers do not match up with individual differences in hearing and individual preferences in sound. Fans of LPs will tell you that CDs are not up to the task, fans of CDs will tell you it's impossible to get the kind of speed accuracy and bass impact with LPs as with CDs. You won't get a straight answer, there isn't one. In part it's because each of the responders have already demonstrated their preferences with their wallets. It's very rare to encounter people who have state of the art CD and LP playback, not to mention all the high rez digital options. The review of the Vivaldi Stack of Digital playback gear from DCS in the recent Stereophile from Michael Fremer indicates some of the challenges. Fremer is famously pro-analog. He thinks the DCS stack is probably SOTA for digital, but . . .

http://www.stereophile.com/content/dcs-vivaldi-digital-playback-system

A number of people at this forum will say Digital beats Analog all the time. Individual preference rules.