"Scott Lurndal" wrote in message
...
"Robert Green" writes:
Turntables produce better quality audio,
Using what _objective_ criteria? What does "better" mean? How do
you measure it?
Listening to music is a very subjective experience. While it's quite
possible to speak of it in scientific terms of compression, dynamic range,
etc. the final arbiter of "better or worse" is in the ear of the listener.
Obviously people are spending increasing amounts of $ on LPs and turntables
and justify that spending because they perceive a better listening
experience.
My early comparisons were with high-end analog gear, a fairly early version
of a Sony CD player and ears that were not yet suffering from HF hearing
loss. I noticed quite a difference in the sound of very quite passages like
the beginning of Beethoven's Ninth. Would I notice a difference now?
Probably not because ADC-DAC's have gone through tremendous improvements and
my hearing has degraded.
However, even if I COULD still detect a difference, I would opt for CDs or
an MP3 player because of the convenience of having every recording I own
able to fit on a TF card that's smaller than a postage stamp.
Even in the old days I would be more likely to listen to cassettes with
their markedly inferior performance because of the ease of listening. On
cassettes, listening to the Ninth would almost certainly reveal
print-through on the tape where you could hear an upcoming loud passage
playing faintly over the current quiet one.
The biggest difference these days, and why I would NOT choose LPs over
CDs/MP3s is that LPs are born to die. They degrade with each play as the
diamond needle rides over the vinyl, dust settles into the grooves,
fingerprints begin to appear, etc. On the other hand, I've had very badly
scraped up CD's play without incident. And, of course, you can copy digital
music without flaw to the target. You can sort, filter, create playlists
and do all sorts of things well beyond the capacity of LPs.
I won't go further into the CD-VINYL debate but anyone caring to read up can
try:
https://londonjazzcollector.wordpres...s/cd-or-vinyl/
http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)
http://www.wired.com/2015/03/hot-stampers/
To ensure the best sound quality, some boutique companies that press heavy
vinyl today limit their stampers to 1,000 pressings. In contrast, during the
peak of the vinyl boom, major labels churned out as many as 10,000 copies on
a single stamper. It's preferable to have a record pressed early in a
production run, before the metal exhibits signs of wear, rather than toward
the end, right before a fresh stamper is slapped on. . . Scott Hull, a
recording engineer who owns Masterdisk, one of the world's premier mastering
facilities, compares producing a vinyl record to making wine. "Each pressing
of the grape, and each pressing of the disc, is unique," Hull says.
"Hundreds of subtle things contribute to each pressing being different.
Everything matters, from plating the lacquers to various molding issues to
the quality of the vinyl pellets."
So if the great debate interests you, there are credible claims for both
sides:
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/10/146697...than-cd-or-not
says: "Well, first of all, when CD first came out, a lot of the CDs that
were released were actually recordings made for vinyl. And those master
tapes, rather than remastering, they just made them into CDs. So a lot of
the, you know, objectionable sounds of CD was actually because the record
companies didn't bother to remaster these old recordings. And this is
something that I learned from Phil Ramone, who admitted this that, you know,
there was a reason why these bad CDs first sounded bad, but it had nothing
to do with the medium. And it was the actual recordings.
--
Bobby G.