"Dave" wrote in message
news:hOwCj.108382$C61.35398@edtnps89...
"jamesgangnc" wrote in message
...
Usually nostalgia.
Nolstalgia? I'm in the camp that just wants my audio system to as
accurately as possible recreate the sound of the live performance. But
to each their own.
There is an arguement that the CD sampling rate of 44.1KHz does not
provide enough bandwidth for truly perfect sound reproduction. Sound is
an analog signal. To convert analog to digital, samples are taken, in
this case 44,100 times per second, and a digital representation is made of
each sample. A CD player contains a digital to analog converter which
reverses the process. Problem is, you can't reproduce a sound wave, which
is a curve, from discrete digital samples, you can only approximate it.
The more samples, the better the approximation. Remember that the CD
standard sample rate was adopted in the 80's, when PC's didn't exist and
the fastest processor ran at 8 or 16MHz.
Absloutely not! For any band-limited signal, provided you sample at more
than twice the highest frequency, you recreate *exactly* (to the limits of
noise) the original signal. Mr Nyquist showed this very many years ago.
There is a contingent of the population, and I'll grant you that it's a
small contingent when compared to the general population, that believes
that LP's _CAN_ sound better than CD's. Granted, LP's come with their own
set of issues as far as perfect sound reprodution, but they are a true
analog medium and can, POTENTIALLY, deliver truer sound than can a CD. If
you've ever heard a really really good vinyl system playing a really
really well-mastered album, you'll know what I mean.
Also not true. LPs *cannot* deliver a truer sound than CD. They have
massively higher distortion, noise and frequency response errors than CD.
That some people *prefer* the sound if vinyl is a subjective issue, more to
do with those people, but under any objective measure CD is vastly better in
performance. Sadly these days, many CDs are mastered with excessive
compression, limiting and even clipping in an attempt to impress the
punters, but that's got nothing to do with the capability of CD.
The popularity of CD's is due to a number of factors, but a real big one
is that for a tiny fraction of the cost of an awesome turntable, you can
get a CD player with 95% of the sound quality.
With 150% I'd say.....
With the advent of the computer age, CD's offer transferability that vinyl
cannot. Things like music distribution evolve with technology, but
remember that just because it's newer doesn't always mean it's better.
Also, better for one person doesn't always equal better for all. I'll take
a well-mastered LP over some piece of crap 128kbps-encoded mp3 any day of
the week, but a VAST VAST majority of music purchasers (who are, btw,
mainly kids) are perfectly happy with the highly compressed format and
accompanying loss of sound quality
But then I'm old....
Dave
So am I....
S.
--
http://audiopages.googlepages.com