Vinyl Vs CD!

It requires high-end equipement.
if you take your father's old turntable, you would'nt
hear what i told you.
But there are economic solutions, like a rega planar3 turntable, with a good cartridge, good cables and vibration cancellers:

About 1000 dollars for the whole.
and it will beat 10x times more expensive numeric sources...

oliverstoned wrote: It requires high-end equipement. if you take your father's old turntable, you would'nt hear what i told you. But there are economic solutions, like a rega planar3 turntable, with a good cartridge, good cables and vibration cancellers: About 1000 dollars for the whole. and it will beat 10x times more expensive numeric sources...

That sounds like a lot of effort... I will try that one day, but right now I'm happy with playing CDs through my discman on a good pair of headphones. Maybe it's because I haven't heard the best sound, but the quality is fine for me. At least with that setup I can listen and go for a walk at the same time hehe.

Fact is that Vinyl has a superior sound range as you'll get the full spectrum on the frequency scale. Digital sound on the contrary is "chopped" at the high frequencies peaks, leaving a "flat - near empty" output at the extremes of the full range. The final result is a "pasteurized" sound sometimes too sterile for the human ear. The maintenance of Vinyl is scary and has to be performed quite frequently where as CD takes less general cares. CD will occupy less space on your shelves.

As TF's points out...the art work on vinyl was fantastic and you could actually read the credits and lyrics. On CD you have to get the "other glasss" for reading and then reach for headache pills for later.

 

__________

Lunar 

Karnevil9 wrote: Story goes like this...I sold my Prog collection on vinyl a few years ago for CD replacements...Big mistake how shocking do these old albums sound on CD....Yes you all guesed im desperatly trying to get my vinyl collection back....NO excuses British top notch ARCAM CD player & Sugden class 'A' amplification.

What is the model of your arcam's player?
Unfortunatly, Sudgen is NOT top notch amplifier!
Sold it and buy a tube amp like a "Jolida 302" instead !
Here's the REAL deal, my friend!

Lunarscape wrote: Fact is that Vinyl has a superior sound range as you'll get the full spectrum on the frequency scale. Digital sound on the contrary is "chopped" at the high frequencies peaks, leaving a "flat - near empty" output at the extremes of the full range. The final result is a "pasteurized" sound sometimes too sterile for the human ear. The maintenance of Vinyl is scary and has to be performed quite frequently where as CD takes less general cares. CD will occupy less space on your shelves. As TF's points out...the art work on vinyl was fantastic and you could actually read the credits and lyrics. On CD you have to get the "other glasss" for reading and then reach for headache pills for later. __________ Lunar

Yes, cause your brain has to reconstitute the missing informations and your ears have to stand the bad added "informations", which are actually impair harmonics from
16khz to 40 khz!

With vinyl you have a classic case of 'rubbish in, rubbish out'. Bad pressings, and the hiss and crackle are exaggerated - boy for example, did Decca and Deram press up some sloppy quality rock, blues and prog albums at the end of the 60's/early 70's? There wasa significant likelyhood record pressers would squeeze out several more percentage of albums from sub-masters in moulds, already showing deterioration and wear - especially the better selling albums, when they thought they could get away with it  (and they did). And worst because the sound is encoded  mechanically inside the groove on each side of the album (NOTE: one of Monty Pythons albums - Contractual Obligation Album or Matching Tie & Hankichief??? - had three grooves on one side to confuse their listeners), the longer the album the more the audio range got clipped (i.e. removal of top and bottom end frequencies). The mechanical movement of the styllus produced  two effects:

a) volume reduction because there was less styllus movement - so turn up the volume, and turn up the back group noise.

b) increased wear, because the microgroove was finer in detail and more prone to abrasion and clagging up with muck.

If you find the LP of Todd Rundgren's Initiation album, there are instructions on the sleeve to record the album asap on to tape, because with 30 minute plus a side, styllus wear on smaller than normal microgrooves would cause lost of sound quality. Many of the Gabriel period Genesis LPs were fairly generous in  length - but it wasn't until I got CDs versions I could hear the ring of Phil Collins' cymbals (part of the top end frequencies clipped). The first CD version of Jean Luc Ponty's Enigmatic Oceans, sounded like the drums and especially the cymbals have been especially mixed forward (cf. the LP version), but in reality the LP had been originally mixed on the basis of the top frequency clipping and there was a deliberate  over-emphasis of the percussion to compensate (which they forget to de-compensate for when transferring from the original master tape for CD production). One of many thing remastering does to a CD is rebalance the sound according the artist's original intentions. And of course one thing remastering shows, is that the original recordings with limited multi-track facilities meant recording tape hiss became exaggerated - compare the Deep Purple In Rock album recording on the original LP and the remastered CD. (I would nominate Roger Glover's remastering of In Rock, as measure of what can done in greatly improved audio quality - likewise the recent early Caravan remasters).

If you have a good quality copy of the early Beach Boys albums on vinyl, (when you were lucky to get 25 minutes in total play) then you might get good audio - problem with Brian Wilson, was for him the stereo mix was an afterthought. But presumably if you can afford the decks, arms and stylus (what are you paying now 4 grand sterling minimum???) then you can afford the audiophile albums. (BTW I retired my Gerrald 401 deck with SME 3012 arm to the loft). A 300 quid CD player and lot more choice of albums will do me. However, although I'm with Three Fates about print size in the liner notes of CDs....................................

 

One final thought: considering the types of plastics available nowadays, the vinyl chloride-acetate copolymer used to rpess LPs is a poor choice of material - trouble you are stuck with it, because nobody is going to invest in new technology for a small market - but I have some serious suggestions if somebdy has some serious money

"One final thought: considering the types of plastics available nowadays, the vinyl chloride-acetate copolymer used to rpess LPs is a poor choice of material - trouble you are stuck with it, because nobody is going to invest in new technology for a small market - but I have some serious suggestions if somebdy has some serious moneyWink"

Me too
You have probably noticed that today vynil editions are mostly crap (i don't speak about special analog 180g editions).
Don't know if it's due to the plastic, or the lake of care. (or both)
Another thing about hifi:
Today, there's a new fashion of multi channel reproduction.
Last time i've been to the hifi contest, they were exposing a multi-channel system with 5 or 6 pairs of BW speakers.
These speakers are good, but to put 5 or 6 pairs is ridiculous (that's a rip-off)
The sound "image" was confuse, it was really bad.
Come to my home to listen to a mono recording of jazz guitarist Kenny burrel (1956!!!)
(early 80's japanese vynil edition)on a "classical" stereo setup with a good subwoofer, and you would be AMAZED by the dynamic, precense, etc...but overall IMAGE, tridimentional sound of that mono recording!!!
No one multi-channel setting can reach that!!
Because of that, there are even very big audiophiles who only buy mono records and own special mono cartridge...

Hi DICKHEATH

 

Yep what a pile of BS as usual...No wonder you had trouble Garrard '401' no doubt it wasnt in a specialised plinth so i guess all you trouble lies there for a start.

Hi OLIVERSTONED

As i have the Arcam 'CD92' player & you say that the Naim models might be better im not really bothered about the CD machines at all,to be frank i'd wish i'd never wasted the money on a player in general,i hate CD & vouch never to spin one again.

Here in the UK theres this cultish thing going on based around british specialist hi-fi..Linn/Naim which are the two brand names that are constantly drilled into your head both at a dealers residence and the press..both companies are in my view very highly overated indeed.

As for the Sugden i bought this as i like the sound of Mosfet/Class 'A' in which the 'A25' is.i was on a budget at the time & have been saving ever since for tube amplifiacation,theres a lot of good & crap tube amps out there...Gotta be careful most are just re-workings of old vintage circuits.

Please don't come with audio products in general like Mark levinson,krell,Bryston etc etc as these are massivly over priced high end items in this country which most are seriously bad sounding products.Armourplated junk..

 

Bysie

Karnevil9 wrote: Hi OLIVERSTONED As i have the Arcam 'CD92' player & you say that the Naim models might be better im not really bothered about the CD machines at all,to be frank i'd wish i'd never wasted the money on a player in general,i hate CD & vouch never to spin one again. Here in the UK theres this cultish thing going on based around british specialist hi-fi..Linn/Naim which are the two brand names that are constantly drilled into your head both at a dealers residence and the press..both companies are in my view very highly overated indeed. As for the Sugden i bought this as i like the sound of Mosfet/Class 'A' in which the 'A25' is.i was on a budget at the time & have been saving ever since for tube amplifiacation,theres a lot of good & crap tube amps out there...Gotta be careful most are just re-workings of old vintage circuits. Please don't come with audio products in general like Mark levinson,krell,Bryston etc etc as these are massivly over priced high end items in this country which most are seriously bad sounding products.Armourplated junk.. Bysie