jeffmeh wrote: >> I think that regarding the general theme, however, we're in agreement. >> Someone who prefers vinyl may actually be preferring quality mastering. >> Nothing about vinyl is inherently better.
Most vinyl was mastered before the damn loudness wars. Or is mastered now, for the niche audiophile market. > Well, I would think that one could argue that vinyl is inherently > better in that analog reproduction is not limited to 44,100 samples per > second. At a high enough sampling rate though, the argument falls > apart, since there must be some sampling rate that is beyond human > auditory perception (even through golden ears). It is generally admitted that 44.1kHz was a good but not great choice for a sampling rate. Serious pro audio guys (I think Bob Katz) say that 20 bits and 60kHz would have made all the difference. But 44.1kHz was picked for other reasons, just like 16 bits. No one believed that Red Book audio would be alive this long. RedBook would be gone if the idiots didn't start another format war. There is some good reason to expect that vinyl could have slightly better top end, and that could help hold down intermodulation distortion. But, and this is something that most vinyl lovers forget, very few cartridges can track even 20kHz. And the next set of high end cartridges shear off the plus 20kHz signal as they attempt to play it. This is a case where heavier tracking forces actually save your vinyl, as mistracking trashes the record itself very quickly. Vinyl mastering was and is an art. It is very interesting what they had to do. For example, songs with lots of bass had to have larger spacing between tracks, so you could not get as much music on a side. And if the levels were too aggressive, the cutter (let alone a playback cartridge) would jump out of the groove. The RIAA curve raises the gain of low frequency signals to compensate, but that increases the level of rumble, bearing noise, etc. Back then, the tradeoffs were well known to everyone associated, now we have loudness wars and clearly audible compression artifacts. -- Pat http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimserver/slimsoftware.html _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
