I respectfully but STRONGLY disagree this assessment which is that good vinyl just is more distorted but euphonic than CD, modern, even some early, LP disc mastering (say within the last 40 years) hasn't needed nor does it produce any false or bad reproduction that needs precompensation to "sound right" in the final result. Yes, in the early days, sometimes the mastering "played games" in an attempt to make the sound better for crappy phono gear, but it was not the rule, it was the exception.
And you cant take medioocre 15/44.1 digital recording and "add artifacts" to them to make them sound as good as properly mastered and reproduced vinyl. The photographic analogy would be that vinyl is nothing more than a mediorce digital photograph with lots of sharpness processing and that CD is actually the higher and more accurate image. No, its more the other way 'round. Vinyl is more like an ultra large format film photography whereas CD is the low resolution digital image. -- J.C. O'Connell (mailto:[email protected]) Join the CD PLAYER & DISC Discussions : http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cdplayers/ http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/cdsound/ -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Sessoms Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 6:18 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: OT: Vinyl vs. Digital From: Tom C > I've never had an SACD, but it seems like technology is changing so > fast it's hard to keep up without pouring $$$ down the drain, > especially if the content is not there. We buy and spend like we live > forever, and both the stuff and us will last, but it doesn't. > I might have one. I think the Springsteen Seeger Sessions was one of those dual CD/SACD discs. I know it's a CD on one side and a DVD on the other side. > So here's a question. Why when CD's first came out did almost every > single one have a disclaimer that it might 'show up the faults of the > original recording', when in reality it probably was not as good as > the original... merely on the noise level? > That was what I was saying about early CD issues being just a straight analog to digital conversion of the tape masters. The tapes were originally mixed so they'd sound good on vinyl, but the reproduction characteristics of the CD are different. If I remember correctly, you have to boost the high frequencies a lot more on vinyl so they'll reproduce normally on playback. Take that analog master tape with the boosted high frequencies and rip it straight to CD and it'll come out with too much treble. > And one other ponderance. Can a digital recording, regardless of the > medium one is listening to, be as good as the analog recording? > Several more... and a digital recording pressed to a vinyl record, can > it be little more than a digital recording... and then of course an > analog recording (as in LP), is no more than an inferior copy of the > analog source. It depends on how you define "as good as". Might as well ask if a dog is "as good as" a cat? or vice versa. Think back to high school calculus classes. The smaller the increment you use to sample a curve, the more accurately you can approximate any point on the curve. Higher sampling rates can give more accurate reproduction. A vinyl LP doesn't accurately reproduce the recorded sound. But most of the kinds of artifacts it introduces are pleasant to the ear, so it "sounds good". And the engineers who created vinyl LPs knew what kind of artifacts vinyl introduced, like the roll off in the higher frequencies, and compensated for those that didn't "sound good". If you wanted to, you could add those same kind of "warm" vinyl inaccuracies to digital recordings so they'd be present in playback. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
