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Poll: Vinyl or CD?
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Here is a read about the difference but it's kind of more pro-vinly
http://www.decware.com/paper20.htm
http://www.decware.com/paper20.htm
yea I've heard tubes are really good for a warm sound
-----------------quoted from slashdot
Are those vaccuum tubes worth the extra price? This paper, a transcript of a speech to the Audio Engineering Society of New York, indicates so, though the reason is surprising: Overloaded tubes behave better. While the speech itself is from the early 70's, the paper takes on new importance with the recent trend in louder is better music."
-------------------------------------------
http://www.milbert.com/tstxt.htm <---------The paper
louder is better articles
http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/8A133F52D0FD71AB86256C2E005DAF1C
http://www.homerecordingconnection.com/news.php?action=view_story&id=188
http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/851/
Good vinyl dusts even the best CD's. Long discussion, but it's not just subjective. There's solid science behind it. OTOH, the very best that can be achieved on audio only DVD's will challenge the best of vinyl.
No time to search for it, now, but if anyone's interested, I'll dig up a very long post I did on this.
No time to search for it, now, but if anyone's interested, I'll dig up a very long post I did on this.
thomsbrain
Lifer
a good vinyl recording is far superior in terms of sound quality. CD's have extremely limited dynamic range and their reproduction of high frequencies is very poor. what CD's do well is play the same thing, over and over, forever, and they are harder to damage. Also, CD's are better than poor quality vinyl pressings by a long shot, since they are perfect replicas of their masters, whereas a bad pressing of vinyl will sound worse than the master it came from. but just in terms of a raw sound quality comparison between two exellent masters and pressings, analog kicks the living crap out of the 16/44.1 digital format of CD's, especially for the complicated high frequency waves like cymbals.
to top it off, many new CD's are being mastered so loud that they clip into digital distortion, which is far harsher than analog distortion. that's like a double shot of crap going straight into your eardrums. also keep in mind that while D/A convertors create a wave, everything that happened in the original waveform that happened between samples is now gone from the reproduced wave. i can clearly hear the difference taking source material from 96k to 44.1k, for instance, even on less than stellar speakers. the recording loses life and the high end goes to crap. when down-converting a recent recording my band made to 16/44.1k, my bassist (not an audiophile or techie by any means) came into the room and said "what the hell happened to it? it doesn't sound right anymore." i couldn't have agreed with him more. this is evidence of what happens when you start losing that extra wave information.
glen, i have a feeling you are comparing old recordings to new recordings, not an apples-to-apples comparison. keep in mind that even the CD version of old albums have all been remastered to sound more "modern." these days people like more bass, more highs, and less dynamic range, and both new and remastered albums reflect that. but compare a modern album on CD to vinyl (assuming it's a decent pressing of the vinyl) and you will quickly reverse your opinion.
you can't compare some old beach boys piece-of-crap thin-ass record that sounded like crap (or at least totally different than we like stuff to sound these days) from the start of the recording process to the latest rock CD that was recorded with modern equipment (and a modern band). the beach boys record will have no low end because the beach boys had no low end, not because vinyl has no low end. conversely, i have both the CD and vinyl versions of smashing pumpkin's siamese dream, an album with so much low end that i have to readjust my stereos just to play it. the vinyl version has around 3-4 more db of low end on top of the already boomy CD. and the cymbals are so much more clean and clear and natural than the CD. yes, the CD is more "crisp" but the crispness is an illusion caused by inadequate reproduction. it's not actually crisp, it's just distorted. you really start to notice this the louder you listen. you can crank a record through the roof and it will just sound better and better as more and more subtle details of the tones and performances are revealed. but crank a CD and all you get is louder crap.
and you guys don't know the meaning of the word "slam" until you've heard a modern analog recording that hasn't been raped by the digital mastering process yet. slam comes from something called "headroom," something CD's have very little of. listen to a mix played back through a million-dollar analog console while recording it to CD, then play back the CD, and you will be a believer in the power of analog.
but don't get me wrong. i think for 95% of the people out there, CD's are a better medium. and with DVD-audio and SACD increasing the resolution and dynamic range of digital to analog-class levels (with less noise and all the durability benefits of CD's), vinyl's days are numbered. but if you're just comparing vinyl and CD's, the choice is clear (pardon the pun).
to top it off, many new CD's are being mastered so loud that they clip into digital distortion, which is far harsher than analog distortion. that's like a double shot of crap going straight into your eardrums. also keep in mind that while D/A convertors create a wave, everything that happened in the original waveform that happened between samples is now gone from the reproduced wave. i can clearly hear the difference taking source material from 96k to 44.1k, for instance, even on less than stellar speakers. the recording loses life and the high end goes to crap. when down-converting a recent recording my band made to 16/44.1k, my bassist (not an audiophile or techie by any means) came into the room and said "what the hell happened to it? it doesn't sound right anymore." i couldn't have agreed with him more. this is evidence of what happens when you start losing that extra wave information.
glen, i have a feeling you are comparing old recordings to new recordings, not an apples-to-apples comparison. keep in mind that even the CD version of old albums have all been remastered to sound more "modern." these days people like more bass, more highs, and less dynamic range, and both new and remastered albums reflect that. but compare a modern album on CD to vinyl (assuming it's a decent pressing of the vinyl) and you will quickly reverse your opinion.
you can't compare some old beach boys piece-of-crap thin-ass record that sounded like crap (or at least totally different than we like stuff to sound these days) from the start of the recording process to the latest rock CD that was recorded with modern equipment (and a modern band). the beach boys record will have no low end because the beach boys had no low end, not because vinyl has no low end. conversely, i have both the CD and vinyl versions of smashing pumpkin's siamese dream, an album with so much low end that i have to readjust my stereos just to play it. the vinyl version has around 3-4 more db of low end on top of the already boomy CD. and the cymbals are so much more clean and clear and natural than the CD. yes, the CD is more "crisp" but the crispness is an illusion caused by inadequate reproduction. it's not actually crisp, it's just distorted. you really start to notice this the louder you listen. you can crank a record through the roof and it will just sound better and better as more and more subtle details of the tones and performances are revealed. but crank a CD and all you get is louder crap.
and you guys don't know the meaning of the word "slam" until you've heard a modern analog recording that hasn't been raped by the digital mastering process yet. slam comes from something called "headroom," something CD's have very little of. listen to a mix played back through a million-dollar analog console while recording it to CD, then play back the CD, and you will be a believer in the power of analog.
but don't get me wrong. i think for 95% of the people out there, CD's are a better medium. and with DVD-audio and SACD increasing the resolution and dynamic range of digital to analog-class levels (with less noise and all the durability benefits of CD's), vinyl's days are numbered. but if you're just comparing vinyl and CD's, the choice is clear (pardon the pun).
konakona
Diamond Member
i havnt heard any vynil, so i cant give my opinion on the OP's question. one thing i would like to note tho : as far as headphone amps go, tubes are generally known to be more lush and warm, but not always. there are lushier solid states and harsher and more dynamic tubes as well, yet generally better (or more expensive) amps tend to be tubes. the idea i got from reading various posts was it wasnt necessarily due to accuracy or purity of sound; rather certain type of euphonic distortion seemed to be favored by the majority (and thus the whole thing about tube rolling for colored sound that suits the listener's taste)
I prefer old CD, vinyl then new CD.
The new stuff produced today is just so damned compressed that we're losing alot of the dynamics and slight nuinces that makes music so enjoyable. When CD was first introduced, it was pushed as an audiophile media and was engineered as such. Today, its engineered for the lowest common denominator. Which means they engineer it to sound good on those 50 dollar shelf systems. CD has went from an audiophile media to a "noise" media, where the only goal is to make the music LOUD. And in doing so they lose the dynamics of the music.
They've stolen the soul from it, and as far as I'm concerned its a criminal act IMO.
The new stuff produced today is just so damned compressed that we're losing alot of the dynamics and slight nuinces that makes music so enjoyable. When CD was first introduced, it was pushed as an audiophile media and was engineered as such. Today, its engineered for the lowest common denominator. Which means they engineer it to sound good on those 50 dollar shelf systems. CD has went from an audiophile media to a "noise" media, where the only goal is to make the music LOUD. And in doing so they lose the dynamics of the music.
They've stolen the soul from it, and as far as I'm concerned its a criminal act IMO.
Disgusting :roll:
SS is the cleanest amp topology buddy. And you said ti best what tube amps do. Distort the sound. For the purest "original' sound go SS all the way. It may not be warm and fuzzy like a tube, but its also not distorting the sound either.
Hell, best of both worlds. Buy the cheper SS's and modify it to have that tube sound. Best of both worlds for you right there. 🙂
Zenmervolt
Elite member
Yes, the output is a waveform, but the accuracy of that waveform is limited to the abilities of the D/A and the stepped digital input. While one cannot "hear the steps" because of the continuity of the waveform output, one _can_ hear the difference in the output waveform that comes from the discontinuous input.
ZV
Not really. I end up posting about this about every six months. I hope you're in the mood for a read. 🙂
Anyone who has seen my previous posts knows I think CD's suck compared to original sounds for two reasons -- 16 bits just aren't enough, and the sampling rate (44 KHz) is way too low.
16 Bit Quantization
The encoding scheme is linear PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) which quantizes levels as a linear function (bits per volt) while your ear perceives sound as a log function (decibels = dB). As the signal level gets lower, you have fewer bits to resolve the details of the sonic image, so the distortion rises as the level goes down. Meanwhile, human beings tend to tolerate more distortion at higher levels and to be more sensitive to distortion at lower levels, because that is what happens with both your own ears and most real world sound generators like instruments, speakers and amps. In other words, when it's full bore blowing your own ears into distortion, it's as clean as it's going to get. In a moderately soft passage, where your ears are more sensitive to distortion, CD's are glad to give you lots more distortion.
It's like dot matrix lithography without enough dots per square inch (the equivalent of frequency response) or a good enough grey scale (the equivalent of dynamic range). A young man can get off single handed if the image is up to Playboy centerfold standards 😉, but IMHO, 16 bits x 44 KHz is the equivalent of crude newsprint.
If the system encoded the signal as bits per dB, the distortion would be constant. However, that is a much more difficult system to build. Furthermore, the current system is already in place, and it would still require more bits to achieve acceptable results.
44 KHz Sampling Rate
44 KHz is an inadequate sample rate. This sampling rate was chosen based on Nyquist's theorem, which states that, to recover a given frequency, you must sample the information slightly more than twice the highest frequency. The problem is that Nyquist wasn't a musician. As you get closer to the high end of the audio spectrum, this theorem is only valid for a single, steady state tone. If you change the conditions to allow for a second tone, or to modulate the amplitude (volume) of the sine wave while it is being sampled, you have created a condition where there are literally an infinite number of possible outputs for a given sample.
As a designer of analog gear, when people ask me how many bits I want, I always answer, All of them! 🙂 No matter how many they have, I have more. 😀
More Problems
Another problem is, the inherant distortion in CD's is non-harmonic. That means, unlike harmonic distortion (THD), the distortion products are out of tune with the music, which, in turn, means that human beings are far more sensitive to this kind of distortion. That is why I said that, to some extent, the inherent distortion of most analog systems is more tolerable than typical distortion found in PCM systems.
As I said, I used to be a professional musician, too. Music (and any art form, for that matter) transcends the medium. It isn't just counting to four and getting the notes in the right place. The subtle undertextures of a musical performance are part of the "magic" that moves your soul. When I turn off the scopes and meters and just kick back to play or listen, CD's don't cut it. I have CDR's in my machines, but I don't own a CD player.
If you want to hear the difference, get ahold of an old LP in good condition of something that was recorded analog, and a CD re-issue of the same thing. Cue them up so they are in sync, and switch between them. LP's win every time. Good examples would be Eagles, James Taylor, older Steely Dan and anything else with good air space in the recording.
It could be worse. MP3's suck even more than CD's. :Q MP3 is an example of a "lossy" system that discards information some machine "thinks" you can't hear. PKZIP is an example of a lossless system. The data storage footprint is compressed, but you get all the data back when it is decompressed. The information lost in lossy compression is usually subtle stuff, but I have participated in experiments that prove you definitely can hear the difference.
There is hope on the horizon. The highest standard for the new audio only DVD is two channels of 24 bit data @ 192 KHz with only lossless compression. At that sampling rate, it will once again matter if the analog electronics I design can do a good job of reproducing the signal. 🙂
Don't worry. It's a multi-format standard that is compatible back to current CD's, so you'll still be able to play them. Of course, once you hear the new stuff on a good system, you may not want to, anymore. We may finally be about to come out of the Audio Dark Ages[/b]. 😀
Goosemaster
Lifer
I am by no means an "expert" as it seems Harvey is, but here i go:
The amount of analog information on optimally produced Vinyls is quite a bit greater than on CD or even SACD etc. This means that if that information were to extracted in an optimal fashion, the vinyl would prove superior in producing an output with the greatest accuracy. Of course since the system is analog, it is also susceptible to the know challanges of setting up an analog system, so unless you invest effectively and many times heavily(they go hand in hand), you will not be able to optimally extract and present the information the LP.
With digital, at least when it comes to available mass-produced media, CDs are a digital representation of the analog information to AN EXTENT. This results in a summurization of the analog information, and not a mirror image of it. Of course people listen to music for a variety of reasons, so this might now matter to the general public, but interms of accuracy, CDs do not match nalog recordings.
You are talking about the infinite vs that which is transposed at a limit of 44.1khz sampling and at a representation limit of 1544kbits/sec.
Even with SACD's 100kHz+ or DVD's 192khz sampling rates, you will still fall short of equalling the sampling rate of the analog. Does it matter? Probably not. Most people don't bother to train their ears to be so precise, and in fact, many physically cannpt ehar the difference, so in the end, it is an argument of numbers.
Obviously, music is not all figures as it is usually a medium of entertainment, but if it is numbers you want, then analog takes the cake.
The amount of analog information on optimally produced Vinyls is quite a bit greater than on CD or even SACD etc. This means that if that information were to extracted in an optimal fashion, the vinyl would prove superior in producing an output with the greatest accuracy. Of course since the system is analog, it is also susceptible to the know challanges of setting up an analog system, so unless you invest effectively and many times heavily(they go hand in hand), you will not be able to optimally extract and present the information the LP.
With digital, at least when it comes to available mass-produced media, CDs are a digital representation of the analog information to AN EXTENT. This results in a summurization of the analog information, and not a mirror image of it. Of course people listen to music for a variety of reasons, so this might now matter to the general public, but interms of accuracy, CDs do not match nalog recordings.
You are talking about the infinite vs that which is transposed at a limit of 44.1khz sampling and at a representation limit of 1544kbits/sec.
Even with SACD's 100kHz+ or DVD's 192khz sampling rates, you will still fall short of equalling the sampling rate of the analog. Does it matter? Probably not. Most people don't bother to train their ears to be so precise, and in fact, many physically cannpt ehar the difference, so in the end, it is an argument of numbers.
Obviously, music is not all figures as it is usually a medium of entertainment, but if it is numbers you want, then analog takes the cake.
yukichigai
Diamond Member
Clothing made of vinyl goes "crinkle crinkle".
Clothing made of CDs goes "crunch bounce tink shatter STAB".
I'm going with the Vinyl. 😀
Clothing made of CDs goes "crunch bounce tink shatter STAB".
I'm going with the Vinyl. 😀
Goosemaster
Lifer
😕
"Perplexed" doesn't even begin to descibe the expression/emoticon that has been fused into my face jsut now...
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