david morley wrote:
james wrote:
A $30 CD player sounds so much better than any $30 record player
ever did. That's the comparison that matters to the rest of the
world, fortunately or unfortunately.
damn, are we really spending the price of 1.5 CD's to listen to our
music on?
I got my turntable for $350 and it had a list of a couple of
thousand
dollars
I have an audio alchemy CD player that had a list of $5000 or
something absurd (i got it cheap don't worry)
I still prefer the turntable despite the CD sounding as good as I
have
heard CD's sound..

Frankly by getting hornswaggeled into the expensive esoteric CD player
trap which is a well-known fraud, you've destroyed your credibilty as
an objective listener.

"david morley" wrote in message

OK OK A $50 CD PLAYER MAY SOUND BETTER THAN A ****TY TURNTABLE.

You missed my point. I say a $50 CD player (not ALL) can sound better that
an excellent turntable/cartridge/phono-pre.

geoff

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:

I'm already making recordings of everything from keys jangling to
fireworks (and hopefully this fall, a regional symphony orchestra)
and let me tell you, there is NO noise and much of what's recorded
falls outside of human hearing. The keys, for instance, have
harmonics up to 45KHz, on the FFT analysis.


Here's the recordings and ana analysis of my keys jangling:

http://www.pcabx.com/technical/sample_rates/index.htm

How do they compare?

;-)


24/96 is a wonderful
thing. More than 114dB s/n ratio and ultrawideband response.

Too bad you have to hook that idealistic 24/96 up to real-world mics
in a real-world room.

Arny Krueger wrote:
david morley wrote:

james wrote:

A $30 CD player sounds so much better than any $30 record player
ever did. That's the comparison that matters to the rest of the
world, fortunately or unfortunately.

damn, are we really spending the price of 1.5 CD's to listen to our
music on?
I got my turntable for $350 and it had a list of a couple of

thousand

dollars
I have an audio alchemy CD player that had a list of $5000 or
something absurd (i got it cheap don't worry)
I still prefer the turntable despite the CD sounding as good as I

have

heard CD's sound..


Frankly by getting hornswaggeled into the expensive esoteric CD player
trap which is a well-known fraud, you've destroyed your credibilty as
an objective listener.


LOL
really?
You are saying esoteric? It cost me a few notes (seeing as most people
think a DVD player is fine for playing CD's they are junking this
"esoteric" junk), but has a great set of external convertors. You know
those things that make a difference to digital sound...

Are you saying a cheapo CD player is fine to your ears?
I think you have been hornswaggeled into thinking because you can't hear
it, no one can.

My father had an old sony CD player that died and replaced it with a new
one. He figured, like you, that it don't make no difference.
The low end was lacking compared to his older player. Enough that a 65
economist with no "esoteric" thoughts asked me what was wrong. If he can
hear it, believe me most people can.

No, not scientific, but enough proof to my poor soul that cheap is cheap
and in digital, cheap can be terrible. I just avoid cheap.

The dumb thing about this is that I really don't care. I listen gladly
to both formats, I produce music for both formats and it all sounds good
to me. I prefer vinyl because my tastes lie in music that was made for
vinyl.
What I do care about is people saying vinyl loses compared to CD because
a CD sounds better when using a ****ty turntable or a ****ty CD player.

Jonny Durango wrote:

Don't mean to rehash this old debate, but to capture that 45k would
require a specialized mic

Not a lot of choices - either one of the small DPA measurement omnis
or Sennheiser's ultrasonic-baiting cardioid. Either run about $2k
each. I'm waiting to win the lottery which seems unlikely as I never
play it!

The main reason I'm excited about higher sample rate recordings is
that it will allow more headroom

I think you want to reword that because higher sample rates have zero
benefits in terms of dynamic range. You need more precise samples, not
necessarily more of them, to get better dynamic range.

and a larger rolloff Q for anti-aliasing filters,

I think you mean smaller rolloff Q.

david morley wrote:

OK A $50 CD PLAYER MAY SOUND BETTER THAN A ****TY TURNTABLE.

Actually, with the right recording, a good $50 DVD player sounds as
good if not better than any turntable ever made. Look at it this way,
if you have a great LP you can always transcribe it to digital with
perfect sonic transparency, and then play it on a good $50 DVD player
which will itself be sonically transparent.

I'd like to think people like yourself are listening to music on
decent systems.

One of the ironies of life is that digital now has such excellent
price performance that you could plug a good $50 DVD player into a
megabuck audio system without compromising its sonics.

Does that upset you? Live with it!

Logan Shaw wrote:
playon wrote:
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:20:39 -0400, Codifus
wrote:

OK, vinyl does sound better. You see, let's take a church organ
playing a 20 Hz tone at 80 Decibels. Recorded on CD, it will
deliver that tone to you (if your speaker and amp can handle it)
in
all its brutal reality. Recorded on vinyl, it will mix in nicely
with the rumble, not to mention step down the dynamics somewhat
because there's only so much bass energy you can fit in a groove.

I don't know about everyone else, but I rarely listen to recordings
of church organs or bats.

Well, actually, the last thing I listened to before I sat down at
the computer was Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (BWV 542),
which
has this nice sustained low note that goes on for measure after
measure after measure.

Of course, I was listening in the car, so I couldn't hear the low
bass tones there.

That's just a failing of your car audio system to be up to the SOTA.
Deep bass is easier in cars than big rooms.

Geoff Wood wrote:
"Joe Sensor" wrote in message
...
Geoff Wood wrote:

What you are hearing and evidently preferring is distortion and
bandwidth limitation.

You sure about that?

After over 30 years with vinyl and 5 or 6 with 'good' digital, yes .

My current situation is more like 48 years with vinyl and 24 years
with good digital. I'll still take the good digital over the best
vinyl, any day of the week.

Geoff Wood wrote:
"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message news:d40q2c$rf2
CD and you'd dislike it as much as a CD that was made last week.

Well, that's another advantage for the LP... you just cannot be as
abusive with LP mastering as you can with CD. Limit the crap out
of
everything on an LP, and you don't get any more loudness, you just
get more tracking distortion. The medium makes it harder to get
away with stupid things.


I kind of like to be able to have the amount of bass in my
recordings
that I want there, rather that have a medium dictate it.

That's one of the good news aspects of digital.

The bad news is that digital's wide power bandwidth has enabled many
forms of ear and taste abuse that would make vinyl technology collapse
before the product got out of the factory.

vinyl believer wrote:
Arny Krueger wrote:

The first problem I see is the implicit claim by "vinyl believer"
that one can so easily characterize all CDs and all LPs in terms of
a vague parameter like presence.


Sorry to confuse you with fancy technical terms like "presence"
Arny.


Bite me. ;-(

To further confuse and clarify my personal sonic impressions of CDs
compared to vinyl I'll quote Gertrude Stein's observations about
Oakland....."There's no there there" ..... ie, no presence. Not
satisfying. Life a cup of decaf.

As I stated, you don't just hear sound. You also feel it and
experience the presence of sound. You can't technically measure
presence but it is an important part of the listening
experience...... Presence is the feeling of realism but not to the
degree of total sonic accuracy.

I find "presence" especially evident in things that actually
physically produce sound such as microphones and speakers and
noticing their presence is useful in judging the sound quality of
these items

Vinyl on a turntable is the only listening medium that physically
re-creates a sound which partially explains to me why vinyl has a
realism (though certainly not sonic accuracy) that is
appealing......But as with everything we experience, it's all very
personal.

This is absolute BS, technically speaking. Since you're so deep into
your true beliefs, I won't try to confuse you with the facts.

Zigakly wrote:
Quick poll - who here gives a flying **** how their mixes translate
over vinyl?

Point well taken.

**** this thread.

Point doubly well taken.

Arny Krueger wrote:
david morley wrote:


OK A $50 CD PLAYER MAY SOUND BETTER THAN A ****TY TURNTABLE.


Actually, with the right recording, a good $50 DVD player sounds as
good if not better than any turntable ever made. Look at it this way,
if you have a great LP you can always transcribe it to digital with
perfect sonic transparency, and then play it on a good $50 DVD player
which will itself be sonically transparent.


I'd like to think people like yourself are listening to music on
decent systems.


One of the ironies of life is that digital now has such excellent
price performance that you could plug a good $50 DVD player into a
megabuck audio system without compromising its sonics.

Does that upset you? Live with it!




Ok , I'll just give in
You are right and I am a loony for absurdly prefering the sound I get
from my Vinyl to the sound I get from the same music on CD.

I also have the same problem in that I prefer Gibsons to Fenders.
Damn, I need help.

By the way, stating that a $50 DVD player will beat or equal any
turntable is just wrong. Sorry.

As it stands, I am getting out of this argument as it's taking up bandwidth.

Arnie is wrong.
I am wrong.

One of the ironies of life is that digital now has such excellent
price performance that you could plug a good $50 DVD player into a
megabuck audio system without compromising its sonics.

Does that upset you? Live with it!




If it were true I'd be overjoyed

"playon" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 00:22:29 -0700, "LawsonE"
wrote:


"Geoff Wood" wrote in message
...

"LawsonE" wrote in message
news:ckM8e.15144$%c1.12270@fed1read05...

"vinyl believer" wrote in message
[...]
In defense of digital let me state that the problem seems in most part
the resolution of CDs, 16bit/44khz. I record a lot at 24/96 and it's
worlds better than CD. But vinyl still has a presence that's hard to
beat.

The old TM guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, won't allow vedic pundit's
chanting to be distributed on CD because the subtleties of the human
voice are lost, in his opinion. Since his belief-system says that the
effect of Vedic chanting is due to the phsyical effect of the sound,
rather than due to some undetectable mystical thingie , this is an
important issue.

Yes, there is a huge level of mystic/que involved in vinyl. The
definition is so superior to digital that the mystics are preserved
through the whole production chain. It even survives the reduced s/n,
rediced dynamic range, higher distortion, and multitude of mechanical
and
electrical variables in the listeners' replay chains.


Apparently, with instrumental music, the issue isn't as important,
because you CAN purchase sitar, etc., music on CDs via his
organization.
For Vedic hymns, audio-tapes only are allowed.

Yes, the harmonic range and nuances of instruments are nowhere near as
demanding for instruments as for the human voice. Yeah, right.


Most musicians DO consider the human voice to be the ultimate musical
instrument, in my opinion.

Most lead singers do, at any rate...

Well, hmmm... How many musical instruments have the ability to play human
language?

Which is a more complicated wave-form, a phoneme or the output from a
non-electronic instrument?

david morley wrote:
Arny Krueger wrote:
david morley wrote:


OK A $50 CD PLAYER MAY SOUND BETTER THAN A ****TY TURNTABLE.


Actually, with the right recording, a good $50 DVD player sounds as
good if not better than any turntable ever made. Look at it this
way,
if you have a great LP you can always transcribe it to digital with
perfect sonic transparency, and then play it on a good $50 DVD
player
which will itself be sonically transparent.

By the way, stating that a $50 DVD player will beat or equal any
turntable is just wrong. Sorry.

Like Scotty used to say on the old Star Trek:

"Captain, I canna change the laws of physics".

rny Krueger wrote:

Sorry to confuse you with fancy technical terms like "presence"
Arny.


Bite me. ;-(

Arny, open your mind and your ass will follow.


This is absolute BS, technically speaking.

hehe.... can I quote you on that?

I won't try to confuse you with the facts.

And don't confuse yourself either.

VB

Arny Krueger wrote:
The main reason I'm excited about higher sample rate recordings is
that it will allow more headroom


I think you want to reword that because higher sample rates have zero
benefits in terms of dynamic range. You need more precise samples, not
necessarily more of them, to get better dynamic range.

I said the larger bit depth would increase the size of the dynamic
range, not sample rate.



and a larger rolloff Q for anti-aliasing filters,


I think you mean smaller rolloff Q.



Yep, thanks for the correction...smaller Q, larger bandwidth.

Jonny Durango

Jonny Durango wrote:

Arny Krueger wrote:

Jonny Durango wrote:

The main reason I'm excited about higher sample rate recordings is
that it will allow more headroom

I think you want to reword that because higher sample rates have
zero
benefits in terms of dynamic range. You need more precise samples,
not necessarily more of them, to get better dynamic range.

I said the larger bit depth would increase the size of the dynamic
range, not sample rate.

So the text I quoted where you attributed more headroom to a higher
sample rate is a figment of my imagination? Or, don't you see any
relationship between dynamic range and headroom?

Based on some the CDs I've heard lately it seems nobody gives a FF
about how their mixes translate over that format either.

Announcer

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:

I have a little side business restoring old recordings, and one of the
tricks in my technique is to put the LP/78/45 on a spindle, spray it with an
organic cleaner solution and run 70ºF water into the grooves at a shallow
angle. It makes a night & day difference and enables me to start with a
better sounding master before I apply digital cleanup tools.

Wet playing also causes surface microcracking and increases the noise
floor for future plays. And the only reason it really keeps the noise
floor down on the wet play is because it keeps all the filth on the
surface in solution. PLEASE get a vacuum mnachine and a dunk tank for
proper cleaning and stop damaging records.

There was a master's thesis on wet playing done at Georgia Tech in the
late 1970s, with electron micrographs of the surface damage. The author
surmised it was caused by rapid cooling on the trailing edge of the
stylus. I will see if I can dig up a full citation.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Jonny Durango wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:

For the most part, I think a lot of what you are hearing is the terrible
remastering job that has been done to a lot of old material. For example,
if you want to listen to the Eagle's _Hotel California_, you can either
get the older CD issue that was made on a PCM 1610 machine, or the newer
one that is compressed to hell and back. Needless to say, the LP sounds
a whole lot better.

Also, most of those full remastering jobs are done by baking the
original tape and transfering it to digital for mixing. Whether or not
you think baking has an effect, there's also the fact that tape that's
been sitting around since the 60's is likely chalk full of print through
and other types of noise.

I'm not so sure about that at all.

Drop by some time and I will play for you a 1936 master tape, recorded
on an AEG Magnetophon. It sounds pretty amazing. Certainly a lot better
than most current CD issues. (The band isn't bad either).

I regularly work with stuff from the sixties and seventies that sounds a
whole lot better on the monitors here than it ever did on the monitors
of the sixties and seventies....
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Doc wrote:
Cleaning the records with a vacuum irrigation system makes a huge
difference, but when you say "alcohol", I hope you aren't referring to plain
old rubbing alcohol. Alky leaches plasticizers from the records. There are
various cleaning solutions that use high grade alcohol as part of the
formula. I use Disc Doctor solution myself along with distilled water
rinses. I've also tried using a commercial, ammonia-free vinyl cleaner that
seems to work about as well. I have a homemade vacuum rig to suck it all up
with.

Yes, a record cleaning solution with aboout 25% isopropanol is a good idea,
and removes a lot more gunk than a water/surfactant mix. I'd check to
see if the Disk Doctor solution doesn't have some alcohol in it already.

Yes, it does leach plasticizers from the surface, but it's only on there
for a very short time, and it's not a phenomenally strong solution. If
you soak the record in isopropanol for a day, you'll wreck it. But it
isn't on there all day.

(This doesn't apply to lacquers.... acetates will be totally destroyed by
a 25% alcohol solution. But then, they'll be destroyed by most vacuum
machines too, which will tear the lacquer right off the base).

The guy that sells the Disc Doctor solution and brushes feels that simply
mopping it up with paper is fine, but it seems to me that method is going to
reintroduce contaminants to the surface. Of course, just being in ambient
room air with the zillions of dust particles means you can never truly have
the record "clean" unless you set up some kind of dust-free clean room to
clean, store and play your records in.

Right. The whole notion of the vacuum machine is that the fluid is only
briefly on the surface, and is removed rapidly and completely. This takes
the residue in solution off.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Zigakly wrote:
Quick poll - who here gives a flying **** how their mixes translate over
vinyl?

I do.

**** this thread.

Incidentally, I still have a crate of the RAP LP compilations in storage
here. Get one for a mere $10 and find out how your friends' mixes translate
to vinyl.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

playon wrote:

Basically a tub of water that you put a small amount of detergent
into, that then vibrates the water like crazy... same principal as the
Sonicare toothbrush but more powerful. Using one of these machines
properly you can get damn near every molecule of crap out of the
grooves, the difference in sound was staggering. It works for LPs
too, if you can afford the larger size that a 12" record can fit into
($800 and up).

The ultrasonic "dunk tank" is also a very handy thing to have, and it
takes particulate matter off very well. BUT, it doesn't do as good a
job for some kinds of surface crud like mold release compounds. And
it costs more than the vacuum machine.

One of the real big deals is that you can use the dunk tank on lacquers
without fear of wrecking them. I have a big one for 16" transcription
discs here, and it's just been wonderful. But for the most part, the
Nitty Gritty Record Doctor is probably the best bang for the buck.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Bob Cain wrote:

What I'm pretty sure of is that I can record that vinyl at 16/44.1 and
no one would be able to tell the digital recording from the original.
The usual caveats WRT the quality of the converters but they don't have
to be all that.


Hasn't been my experience.

Geoff Wood wrote:

That some CAN sound better on CD indicates somethng , no ?

Better? To who? Could that be any more subjective?

Zigakly wrote:

Quick poll - who here gives a flying **** how their mixes translate over
vinyl?

Somebody must. There is still a huge vinyl market.


**** this thread.

So why are you in it?

Arny Krueger wrote:
Jonny Durango wrote:

Don't mean to rehash this old debate, but to capture that 45k would
require a specialized mic

Not a lot of choices - either one of the small DPA measurement omnis
or Sennheiser's ultrasonic-baiting cardioid. Either run about $2k
each. I'm waiting to win the lottery which seems unlikely as I never
play it!

No, there are lots of companies that make mikes that are basically
designed around the DPA measuremnent mike model (which itself was
designed after the Western Electric 640AA). Some folks are Aco,
Larson-Davis, Norsonics, and Microtech Gefell. BSWA is now making
some considerably cheaper clones in Beijing.

The main reason I'm excited about higher sample rate recordings is
that it will allow more headroom

I think you want to reword that because higher sample rates have zero
benefits in terms of dynamic range. You need more precise samples, not
necessarily more of them, to get better dynamic range.

Right. And 16 bits is sure a whole lot of headroom as it is. High
sampling rates do nothing to improve dynamic range.

and a larger rolloff Q for anti-aliasing filters,

I think you mean smaller rolloff Q.

It's academic anyway, since we are in the new millennium and anti-aliasing
filter problems were solved in the eighties for the most part. Oversampling
is a wonderful thing.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Arny Krueger wrote:


I suggest that you consider the meaning of S/N. The basic noise level
of a phono preamp and coils of a cartridge eliminates any possibility
of both tracking a groove and having S/N much greater than 80 dB.


And you have a room where you could appreciate even 80 db? I doubt it.

Geoff Wood wrote:

You missed my point. I say a $50 CD player (not ALL) can sound better that
an excellent turntable/cartridge/phono-pre.

TO WHOM?

Arny Krueger wrote:

Actually, with the right recording, a good $50 DVD player sounds as
good if not better than any turntable ever made.

TO WHOM?

Arny Krueger wrote:

Zigakly wrote:

Quick poll - who here gives a flying **** how their mixes translate
over vinyl?


Point well taken.


**** this thread.


Point doubly well taken.


Somebody forcing you here?

Announcer wrote:

Based on some the CDs I've heard lately it seems nobody gives a FF
about how their mixes translate over that format either.

You got that right!

playon wrote:
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:20:39 -0400, Codifus
wrote:


Joe Sensor wrote:


Geoff Wood wrote:


What you are hearing and evidently preferring is distortion and
bandwidth limitation.


You sure about that?

OK, vinyl does sound better. You see, let's take a church organ playing
a 20 Hz tone at 80 Decibels. Recorded on CD, it will deliver that tone
to you (if your speaker and amp can handle it) in all its brutal
reality. Recorded on vinyl, it will mix in nicely with the rumble, not
to mention step down the dynamics somewhat because there's only so much
bass energy you can fit in a groove. So the vinyl recording will have
smoother interpretation of that organ playing that note.
Now, let's take high frequency sounds, like thousands of bats suddenly
flying out of a cave. Here, on the record, with its reduced top end
response and gently rolled of eq, will play those sounds back to you in
a much more pleasant audible experiecne. The CD will play those sounds
back to you like bats out of hell, and we don't want that! So unpleasant

CD


I don't know about everyone else, but I rarely listen to recordings of
church organs or bats.

Al
My point was that vinyl's limitations take the harshness out of sounds.
The bats and organ were extreme examples of where vinyl would really
soften the sound. Yeah, the vinyl verison of these recording would sound
better, as in more pleasant, but they wouldn't sound as real, or
accurate as an audio CD could reproduce. Audio CD gives you everything,
warts and all.

CD

Geoff Wood wrote:

You missed my point. I say a $50 CD player (not ALL) can sound better that
an excellent turntable/cartridge/phono-pre.

I disagree strongly. Not that I think the best of vinyl is all that
wonderful, merely that I think $50 CD players are pretty awful.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Perhaps I'm the only one who tends to not take newsgroup posts made
through Google at face value, especially when a free email address is
involved. This particular addy, 'vinylbeliever', appears
custom-generated for this post. The worst part is it brings back
memories of the song "Daydream Believer" (not The Monkees version, the
Anne Murray version).
Is this just the common anonymous troll, or is the poster a
recognizable name to RAP readers?

On 17 Apr 2005 23:29:23 -0700, "vinyl believer"
wrote:

Path: news02.roc.ny!news-feed01.roc.ny.frontiernet.net!nntp.frontiernet.net !news.glorb.com!postnews.google.com!f14g2000cwb.go oglegroups.com!not-for-mail
From: "vinyl believer"
Newsgroups: rec.audio.pro
Subject: Vinyl is Still the Best Listening Medium?
Date: 17 Apr 2005 23:29:23 -0700
Organization: http://groups.google.com
Lines: 34
Message-ID: .com
NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.99.212.162
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
X-Trace: posting.google.com 1113805774 9360 127.0.0.1 (18 Apr 2005 06:29:34 GMT)
X-Complaints-To:
NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 06:29:34 +0000 (UTC)
User-Agent: G2/0.2
Complaints-To:
Injection-Info: f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com; posting-host=68.99.212.162;
posting-account=h8XMlg0AAABCaQRxpeYw3Y0sv3tYZmU5
Xref: news-feed01.roc.ny.frontiernet.net rec.audio.pro:890440
X-Received-Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 06:29:34 UTC (news02.roc.ny)


-----
http://mindspring.com/~benbradley

Codifus wrote:

My point was that vinyl's limitations take the harshness out of sounds.

Not necessarily. Listen to some of the early Police albums.

It _is_ harder to make screechy and exaggerated top ends on vinyl, but
it's still possible to do it if you are strongly dedicated to making
things sound bad.

With CD, you can just crank the EQ on the top end as much as you want
without fear. With CD you can make things sound as bad as you care to.
But don't think the LP makes it impossible.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Joe Sensor wrote:
Geoff Wood wrote:

You missed my point. I say a $50 CD player (not ALL) can sound
better that an excellent turntable/cartridge/phono-pre.

TO WHOM?

Anybody interested in sonically transparent reproduction of music and
voice.

Joe Sensor wrote:
Arny Krueger wrote:

Actually, with the right recording, a good $50 DVD player sounds as
good if not better than any turntable ever made.

TO WHOM?

Anybody who is interested in faithfulness to the origional recording.

Joe Sensor wrote:
Bob Cain wrote:

What I'm pretty sure of is that I can record that vinyl at 16/44.1
and no one would be able to tell the digital recording from the
original. The usual caveats WRT the quality of the converters but
they don't have to be all that.


Hasn't been my experience.

Which was???