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Great article on LP versus Digital

amirm

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TBone

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"Young articulated this sentiment earlier this month at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where he told Rolling Stone's Nathan Brackett that the vinyl resurgence is due to the fact that "[vinyl is] the only place people can go where they can really hear ..."

... the music with it's original dynamic content intact.

Neil has always advocated higher resolution w/any format. I've been monitoring his Pono releases, and he's delivering as promised there 2 ...
 

NorthSky

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It's not just about sound quality, it is also about different turntables, tonearms, cartridges, isolation platforms, album cleaning machines, album (LP) remastering, quality vinyl, jazz, selective music, repertoire, all the traditions, the process, the rituals, the physical contact, the interaction, the music connection, the love, the passion, the soul, the essence...including the tics and pops and grooves...the needles, diamonds, ...

...Tapes too, with reel-to-reel tape decks.

...And digital audio music servers, hi-res digital audio files, SACD, DSD, sampling, upsampling, zeros and ones, dither, jitter, ...all that blues...

Good sound is from quality music recordings, and from well manufactured music mediums...regardless of analog or digital.
All turntables sound different, the cartridges, the all parts of an analog rig including the phono preamp.
In the digital world that distinction is less expanded. ...The differences more closer together than an analog world...I think.
 

TBone

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Yeah because his rock music desperately needs wider dynamic range and lower noise floor than Redbook can provide.

Well, in terms of DR capability, some of his CDs measure just fine.
 

NorthSky

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I only read what the pro audio experts are saying...quite interesting:
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?20436-Why-CDs-May-Actually-Sound-Better-Than-Vinyl

If my non-pro audio/music listening opinion had some value, I would have said that LPs are more visual in their overall sexy music euphony delivery,
and that CDs are more immersing auditory.

Also, I never experienced Quad LPs, only Stereo and Mono.
But I have experienced multichannel digital music delivery from many mediums, including CDs (dts 5.1). And I found it just more "immersive" overall.
...More precise too, from the best multichannel music recordings.

I love LPs and turntables, much more than CD players and CDs...as audio gear, and TTs are way more sexier than CD players, even the the top loader ones with a clamp you put over them.

And sound wise, very secondary for real audiophiles, I just briefly described above.
I am not an audiophile, I prefer sex.

But that's just my opinion. And what a beautiful blue planet we all live on ... :)
 

TBone

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I love LPs and turntables, much more than CD players and CDs...as audio gear, and TTs are way more sexier than CD players, even the the top loader ones with a clamp you put over them.

I do as well, from stylus profiles to bearing oils, and everything in between. Absolutely love the level of engineering required to attain the final result. But that said, without digital intervention, the sound of my turntable(s) would have remained stagnant. It's far better today than 3/5/10 years ago and it was very good then, but strange as it may sound ... every improvement tilted the sound more "digital".

I am not an audiophile, I prefer sex.

Have you tried mixing the two?
 

Fitzcaraldo215

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I am not an audiophile, I prefer sex.

Trying to do both, I was so emotionally moved by the music that I tried being physically intimate with a very curvaceous, port loaded speaker once or twice. But, they were too heavy and awkward to get into bed with me, and, frankly, rather cold and hard to the touch. But, talk about wife acceptance factor. It is a darned good thing she never found out, otherwise I might be limited to just sealed enclosure speakers.
 

fas42

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It's far better today than 3/5/10 years ago and it was very good then, but strange as it may sound ... every improvement tilted the sound more "digital".
Interesting anecdote from listening to that local audio friend's gear. He used to favour his extensively tweaked LP - he's essentially completely stripped the TT into component bits, and reassembled them to be a far more stable; I had the CD of a Beethoven piece, the same one as on my YouTube channel, and he had the LP; played the latter, and it was quite 'wrong', the tonality was not there. We did a number of experiments with alignment and damping the TT platter, etc, and lo and behold out popped the sound as I knew it - there was now an excellent subjective match between the two different media.
 

NorthSky

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I think that when we start dampening the music around it sounds less wet...or is it less dry...

On another note; the involvement with analog LPs is like sex in itself; there is an active physical attraction that is not there with CDs.
CDs can sound superior, and they do to, I think (I'm no pro expert), in some cases, but the physical activity is passive.

Anyway, it made me think of this: Is the sex better when listening to LPs or CDs...in general?
Yes, it sounds like an amusing question, but it's an interesting question and for different people it can have various type of deep attractions...stimulating and spiritual devotions. And remember too, a LP last about 20 minutes on average (30 @ most, but very rare), some CDs can last 80 minutes.

The sound quality, just the sound quality, nothing else; close your eyes, don't look @ your LP spinning, forget the ritual of dropping the needle on the record, just sit down in your chair and use strictly your ears, not your eyes and no touching, sex included, and don't even think @ the total cost between an analog rig and a digital one...only one thing...the sound quality. I think it's almost even. But I'm not sure @ all because I'm not a pro expert and I have never experienced the ultimate in neither medium...read state-of-the-art LP and CD playback.
Only the ones who did have a better grip on the handle.

When we talk audio we can only talk about our own experience, in our own homes, @ friend's homes, @ audio shows and music concert venues where we have been. Some of us have more experience than others; me I have almost zero experience so I am mostly expressing an opinion based on that fact.
All the audio readings that I did; what they accumulated to? To not much more than what I'm listening to today (music) and from the audio gear I purchased.
Don't look @ the money audio investment, just look purely @ the sound quality of the music recordings being reproduced by your own audio gear in your own room.

Now, what are we here for? Exactly, to share our own accumulated experience with our own music we love listening to and from the gear we purchased.
...Our own experiences, including some measurements we performed and in always relation to what ultimately reaches our ears @ the end of that complex audio tunnel.

So, do CDs sound better than LPs? ...In my own minimal of no importance experience, it depends...of the music recordings themselves of these two mediums; one analog and the other digital.
Me I never experienced LPs sounding digital, just among the format itself some LPs recorded digitally sounds less involving to me.
So yes, that unique euphony I get from LP listening is pleasant in my personal experience, and what sound better quality wise is not necessarily accurate and measuring better for all people, I think, I only think because I cannot speak for other's ears, rooms, audio gear and emotions.

Some CDs sound awfully bad, excruciatingly bad, and others sublimely good, superlatively good.

Now, let's enter the financial investment into the equation; it's fun and it's fair too. ...And besides, we learn few things from it.
Then it's your turn to share, because I don't have that personal physical experience with state-of-the-art analog and digital audio rigs.
And I bet that measurements can also account to what relations they have with our listening music sessions from the audio gear reproducing it.
It's fun to read about articles like the one in the original post and read people's comments, it's fun and we learn some from it.

Us humans we are so fragile and easily disturbed emotionally when confronted with stress, pressure, contradiction and rejection.
We naturally, instinctively react to our environment, to words spoken and written...the language of audio communication...in some audio forums of the World Wide Web. We instinctively attribute our greater knowledge from experience in our lines of work and social status in life. Our ways to interact with each other reflect some of it too. What we think and how we perceive ourselves under solid light is deflected by our own audio experience to a certain extent.

I think it's not easy to detach our human emotions from audio science, because it involves sound perceptions, music involvement.
The analysis in acoustics and in better sound reproduction is our tool to higher music expansion on an emotional level.
Musicians in general don't have hi-end audio rigs. They are more into the sound of their own instruments then the ones reproducing them.
And like us they follow the trends...78s, open-reel-tape decks, LPs, CDs, hi-res audio music files.

Check you pro friend musicians, look @ their pro audio gear and their musical instruments. Look @ their home stereo hi-fi sound systems @ home.
See if you can spot a turntable first, and one that costs over ten grands...god lock. And it means nothing.

Do CDs sound better than LPs? ...It depends.
 
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