Which is best - vinyl or CD ?

MikeEnRegalia wrote: oliverstoned wrote: There's really an improvment with 20/24 bits technology, but as you point out, the remastering work, which suppose a lot of steps, must be done very carefully. Here, Bob Ludwig expose briefly some tools he uses: http://www.soundstage.com/music/features/interview_bob_ludwi g.htm  sounds/reads impressive ... but you should remember that whatever they do to the source, in the end it is converted to 16bit/44.1khz. so even if they used 24bit/192khz, that would in the end have to be downsampled.

It sounds like that what you're saying is it comes down to the type of player used. My Sony unit has 64X sampling. Does that make a difference?

goose wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: goose wrote: How do you mean false issue? I'm talking about 24-track tape used for recording, not DAT tape - I realise of course that the information stored on DAT is basically the same as any other PCM digital format. My point is this: Because of the way analogue magnetic tape works (not records or wax cylinders or any other analogue format I can think of, but specifically magnetic ones), it would be possible to create a digital format that lost less information than tape - I have no idea about the figures, but something ridiculous like 2,048-bit and a 10GHz sample-rate would almost certainly do it. Of course that's clearly not feasible or even desirable...  I know what you mean. But it's really not necessary to use that much precision, because the human ear itself has limited capabilities. Any dog has a much better ear than any human ... and any cat has much better eyes than any human. Still audiophiles continue to claim that analoge tape has unlimited resolution and that that is absolutely necessary to ensure the perfect listening experience. Bullcrap! Nonsense!   Oh, I agree entirely that that much precision is useless; I'm only pointing out that any argument saying that digital systems can't possibly sound so good as analogue ones because they throw out information is flawed, because tape does exactly the same thing! Thus, to avoid losing any information we must record directly onto vinyl, or wax cylinders .

Yes, you're right. Any transfer from a studio session to a master tape and then to a "mother" acetate is going to result in some loss of information. Either loss or an accumulation of noise in the process. But these losses in analogue are different from digital losses where digital you get dropout or "holes" as opposed to analogue you lose nuance.

Either way, both are not perfect!

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ what do you mean by dropouts or "holes"?

Basically the same reference I was making earlier about how digital audio is riveted as opposed to analogue is welded. No matter how many numerics there are in a digital signal, there is still going to be some dead air between the numerics, I guess. I don't know! I'm not an engineer but this is the hub-bub I've heard over the years from some recording engineers I've met. I'm only going with layman's terms here. As for analogue losses, they seem to be more of a result in hiss or noise accumulation in the transfers. Things like cymbals not splashing as bright or high violins not jumping out at you as much.

But you're right to some extent, the human ear can only go so far. But sometimes it's not just the ear you would have to notice these differences, but a feel for the sound as well. Sorry, I can't really describe it but maybe there's more to sound detection in the human body than just the ear. I know it sounds silly, but we detect vibrations all over our bodies as opposed to just our ears.

Whew! I getting off on a tangent here. Time for another beer!

MikeEnRegalia wrote: But some people are convinced that there are huge quality differences between CD players ... well, whatever a player does, it can't extract more info than what's stored on the disc: No.  But it can certainly extract less.  Cheap CD players miss whole groups of samples, due mostly to poor mechanical construction, and then guess what should have been there.  Also poor D to A converters introduce noise and distortion.       Analog signal -> 24bit/96khz digital master -> 16bit/44.1khz CD -> Analog Hi-Fi system See? The analog signal is compressed to 16bit/44.1khz no matter what is done during mastering. No technical gadget whatsoever can recover the lost information ... it is not stored on the disc. So all the "musical" CD players can do is to simulate the lost information - that is called "interpolation" and "upsampling". Surely the result sounds better than the unchanged 16bit/44.1khz signal, but it is not a more accurate reproduction of the original signal. You are correct that some information is lost from the 96KHz master but the CD player doesn't try to simulate the lost information; it doesn't even know that it existed.  The reason that 24bit (and above) is used in mastering is because digital mixing requires more headroom.  (Add two 16 bit numbers and you'll get a 17 bit one etc. etc.).  A faster sampling rate is used to avoid audible aliasing between mixed signals.  When the final master is produced you can happily throw away the eight least significant bits as they represent sound quieter than the human ear can detect compared to the more significant bits.  (It's not exactly like that, you throw away some of the most significant bits instead  if the audio level doesn't use them).   16bit 44.1KHz decoded by a decent CD player gives a far more accurate analogue waveform when directly compared to the original sound than any vinyl reproduction.   44.1KHz is historic and comes from an era before DAT tapes when Sony Betamax tapes and PCM 601/701 codecs were used and 44.1KHz stereo neatly fitted into a video frame space on the tapes.

Edited by Heavyfreight - October 06 2006 at 09:45

^ you know that I recently bought some vinyls ... I still think that the accuracy of the reproduction is not better than that of the CD. Nevertheless I think there are certain signals which can sound much better on vinyl ... the new Opeth album for example. In fact I think that all heavily distorted styles of music *can* sound better on vinyl (if they're recorded/pressed properly), because they contain very complex waveforms.


Edited by MikeEnRegalia - October 06 2006 at 11:16

Vinyl <3



but i use digi a LOT more for convenience, like iPod and such.

You have a turnatable as poor as your CD source, so you don't hear analog's potential.
    

Edited by oliverstoned - October 06 2006 at 15:12

...if your CD is better than your vynil, your turntable must be a ridiculous plastic toy!

OK, so that's normal.

This really is a pointless arguement with a lot of nonsense being talked, along with some very interesting points.  The truth of the matter is that neither system gives a faithful reproduction of the original.  Very expensive mics with the A to D converter built in going through top quality digital equipment and being fed to an excellent speaker/amp combo with built in D to A will give the closest reproduction to the original sound.  There is no scientific doubt about that.  However it might not be the sound that you like personally.  All this talk about vinyl giving a better representation is just total tosh.  Any analogue recording system is inherently imperfect, this is purely down to physics.  All analogue systems suffer from poor performance diminishing to no performance at all at the lower and upper frequency limits.  These are compensated for by electronic filters at the recording stage and also at the playback stage (which are also imperfect and add their signatures to the signal).  You can spend more and more money on better and better analogue electronics to try and improve the linearity of the system (and you will get some improvement) but it follows the law of diminishing returns.  The advantage of the CD format is that the quality of the output starts off as good as most people will ever want.  Yes you can sometimes hear faults if you are very discerning and obviously if the mastering is rubbish then the CD will reproduce that rubbish.

Edited by Heavyfreight - October 10 2006 at 11:58