"Sam Byrams" wrote in message
om...
"Mark D. Zacharias" wrote in message
...
This one has been beaten to death. Vinyl is so flawed and inconsistent a
medium that it doesn't even belong in the same discussion as properly
implemented CD technology.

CDs are flawed as well in several other ways.

Of course, but better than really necessary, and FAR better than vinyl..

Our ears are analog however,
So are our voices, our musical instruments, and all our other senses.

And so is the output from any CD player DAC. Your point is?

1. The vinyl was usually mastered from 2 track mixdown on tapes that
were recently recorded and not very old. The CD may have been mastered
ten, twenty, fifty years later. Some vintages of tape have not aged
well-particularly from the mid-70s to the mid-80s.

Yes, CD has a much better chance of lasting a lot longer. And can be copied
as many times as necessary WITHOUT any loss of data (unlike tape or vinyl)

2. The vinyl was mastered by people that in most cases knew what they
were doing on a technology that was at or close to its zenith. The CD
may have been mastered by people that did not understand the CD
process very well, on bad-sounding ADCs, or people that were simply
inept or unconcerned.

Yes for all media types.

3.Albums recorded in the "vinyl era" were engineered, produced, mixed
down and mastered by people who understood the record-making process
quite well and made a lot of decisions on the basis of what they
figured would work well and not well on the finished vinyl product.
It's like printing Ansel Adams photos via offset litho-Adams
understood his films and papers intimately and you are reproducing
them in a different medium. Inherently, something is lost.

Ansel used the tools he had at the time. I can well imagine a digitally
scanned print copy from one of his plates being superior to an old, torn,
water stained etc. print. And certainly better than a new photo taken of the
old print.

4. In some cases, the material is only available on vinyl, or the
available CD is made from-believe it or not-playing the extant vinyl.

Yep, and have often improved such copies over the original vinyl. If the
original master tapes no longer exist, how can you compare CD with them?

5. Finally, although vinyl is good for a finite number of plays, its
shelf life is effectively infinite if properly stored. CDs are not
affected by playing but they are probably good only for 50 years at
the most. Many early CDs are apparently now unplayable, especially in
their outer tracks.

I have hundreds from the early eighties, NONE are unplayable in any way. (OK
one had errors when bought, so did ALL of my viny records)
Your proof of life span is where?
Both formats can probably outlast the ability to play them, however digital
can be transferred without loss to any new format as desired. Not so vinyl
or analog tape.

The record industry would have been better served by an analog
optical format, and probably audiophiles as well.

Only the morons, which is probably quite a few I admit.

TonyP.