Def or Not? That is the question

 

Don't worry about it.Oh you know it's rude to point!

 

 

No wonder, if you let that stupid cat in your signature  screw around with your turntable....

 

I actually do not have an issue with standard CD audio - it works just fine, most of my vinyl sits unplayed, slowly accruing value...

 

I do have an issue with lossy formats like mp3 that deliberately throw away information - now that disc storage is no longer at a premium we really don't need mp3 (at all, ever) - let me buy FLAC or wav-files, I've got the bandwidth and a Terabyte of disc space; my iPod is only 3/4 full and I'll happily dump a couple of Arch Enemy albums to make space for few Floyd tracks

 

Most of the arguments between CD and Vinyl boil down to the equipment used to play them rather than the formats themselves. No one can seriously say a CD played on a PC is superior to a vinyl played on a medium priced HiFi (yet they try); and to buy a CD transport that is on par with a £200 turntable you could end up paying 5 times that. A £500 CD transport will last 2 years before the bearings dry-out and the laser-tracking begins to stick and jump, (what the hell is Error 6??? - I've got two players that regularily come up with that message), yet a 40 year-old turntable still plays perfectly. At the end of the day - the CD is convenient up to a point, but vinyl still "sounds better" to me.

 

I do, however, question some of the claims made for CD audio - if it were as perfect as some people make out then there would be no need for the higher bit-counts, faster sampling-rates and wider frequency ranges that are now available within the various high definition audio formats - yet they all exist and the list is growing.

 

Truth is the audio signal starts and ends in the analogue-domain - inbetween it is convolved into the digital-domain and back again and in doing that some information is lost; it bggers off into infinity in both directions and you cannot get it back - that's physics and you cannot change it - the real question is can you hear it?

 

In 1984 we where told you cannot hear a difference - but we could, so they added loads of filtering and 18 times over-sampling, and some people could still tell the difference. Now we have SACD, but no one is buying it; and we will soon have Blu Ray audio and no one will buy that either. Sony et al must be spending this development money for a reason, but I cannot fathom what that reason really is if 99% of the buying public are happy with mp3 downloads at over-inflated prices.

 

What I would like to see is more money spent on developing new pure analogue formats. A 'vinyl' that doesn't scrach or warp, one that is immune to dust and wear. On that doesn't need RIAA equalisation to minimise groove width. A affordable turntable that doesn't rely on physical contact. Then the value of my vinyl collection will really skyrocket

 

(now you wish you hadn't started this topic )