wrote in message
This is a continuation of a topic that has split off from
another thread. i thought it may benefit from having it's
own thread. On that thread there have been assertions
about inherent euphonic colorations of vinyl.
"You haven't noticed 'the' superior quality, you've noticed a
quality that you consider to sound superior. This could
be the different mastering used for LPs compared to CDs,
or it could be inherent sound qualities added by the
vinyl medium and playback devices, or it could be both."
I'll vote for both. The fact of the matter is that just about everybody has
abandoned vinyl but a few. The preference has to be based on the
perception of a desired sound quality, not better sonic accuracy.
"For live recordings, a 'clean' digital 2-channel
recording will capture the original 'ambience' as well as
the master tape did (which is to say, only moderately
well, given the limits of 2-channel) -- but transcribing
that to LP will actually ADD some spurious, if pleasing
to some, 'ambience' of its own, via euphonic distortion
inherent in vinyl playback."
I do a ton of digital 2-channel live recording using a good-quality
coincident pair. It works.
And those assertions have been challenged.
Of course! ;-)
"Please tell us how you know about this distortion that
is "inherent" in LP playback.
Please compare
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/image...raph-large.gif
Note that this graphic shows a 1 KHz tone, with the second harmonic about 20
dB down, which I call 10% second harmonic nonlinear distortion. 10%
distortion is a lot of distortion by any standard.
to:
http://www.pcavtech.com/play-rec/rega-2/grado-SNR.gif
Note that this graphic shows a 300 Hz tone, with the second and third
harmonics each 40-45 dB down, which I call less than one percent second and
third harmonic distortion.
What playback equipment
have you used to determine this?
Looking at the two examples, it appears that we have quite a range of
equipment.
The PCAVTech equipment is obviously very humble - Turntable was a Rega
Planar 2 with RB-100 Tone Arm. Test media was the HFN Test LP . Preamp was a
Conrad Johnson CJ-2. The cartridge was either a Shure M44-7 or a Rega
Silver. Kinda doesn't matter, their performance is not that dissimilar.
The hometheaterhifi.com equipment a McIntosh MT10 Turntable with factory
cartridge (made by Clearaudio), seems to be very elegant. It seems to have
been set up with great care.
Please be specific:
turntables, pickup arms, phono cartridges, phono
preamplifiers. Because you claim this playback
characteristic is "inherent," you must have experimented
with more than one playback system. Did you conduct any
measurements which document your claim?
I've done this kind of test many times over the decades, and the results I
posted at
http://www.pcavtech.com/play-rec/rega-2/index.htm are very
typical of a wide range of equipment. I don't think I could get as good
performance out of a $100 plastic USB turntable/arm/cartrdige, but maybe I'm
saying that in a state of ignorace and negative prejudice. ;-)
The real surprise is the seemingly poor performance posted at
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/image...raph-large.gif
I call that really poor performance, and we don't even have a frequency
response curve that actually involves playing vinyl.
IME you don't get 7-10% THD by accident - that equipment had to be
intentionally designed to perform that poorly.