CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

draganm · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 8990 Location: Colorado

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 2:18 am Post subject:

km987654 · Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 2:51 am Post subject:

draganm · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 8990 Location: Colorado

Dave asked for proof and here it is. Three graphs on this page. The first is a very high sample rate digital master. Something not available to the consumer market and obviously not analog but check out what happens when it's transfered first to LP, then CD, and finally to SACD.
http://www.acousence.de/Seiten/arfi2_en.html

master file

LP

CD

WTS · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 1276 Location: Calgary

I'll have to agree with Dave on the CD vs Vinyl. I read a very technical article not that long ago(damned if I know where at the moment) but they had very good arguements, but in the end CD won out. Just think about it quickly for vinyl you have a needle pickup flailing around inside a double sided groove which is also trying to revolve at a constant speed. Just that in itself spells inaccuracies.

Those of you who say CD doesn't sound as good obviously haven't heard a good system which uses a CD transport. Yes I've had both and I might add that some of my equipment was some of the best you could buy at the time including the tube gear. Yes the vinyl coupled to tube gear sounded very sweet and was very easy to listen to and even to this day I can still real recall the sound of that system. But, it wasn't as accurate as my present CD/digital system.

A good friend of mine has a CD/digital system that will leave you in awe. To do a demo he'll first play you a piece on his 9' grand piano then play the same piece on his system and you'll be hard pressed to pick out faults in the playback and no golden ears here. Both are in the same 1000 sqft room with about a 16' ceiling.

I'd have to agree that most CD players in most systems probably don't sound as good as an equal cost vinyl system even through the same speakers. But that's not the fault of the technology just the poor playback equipment.

But this debate has been discussed to death over the last 2 decades, granted when it first came out the playback systems weren't that great and it does seem that they have taken a step or 2 backwards with the playback technology or at least the DACs.

blue_z · Joined: 27 Apr 2006 Posts: 63 Location: So Calif

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 4:51 am Post subject:

Mark_A_W · Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 5:31 am Post subject:

Oh god just shoot me now...

A CD versus vinyl debate...that's all we need..

jkruger · Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Posts: 2435 Location: Carlsbad, CA

CD, Vinyl... it's all just a plastic medium to deliver some reproduction of what we all should have in our lives... REAL LIVE MUSIC.

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 5:53 am Post subject:

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 5:55 am Post subject:

Dragan, not sure if I believe those graphs. The big selling point of CDs was dynamic range, and those graphs make it look like CD is all compressed and has no dynamic range at all.

Remember the CD 'Time Warp' where there were warnings all over the CD NOT TO CRANK IT as you could pop your speakers?

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 6:01 am Post subject:

VideoGrabber · Joined: 09 Apr 2006 Posts: 933 Location: Michigan

MAW commented:
> A CD versus vinyl debate...that's all we need. <

Yep. There goes world peace.

VideoGrabber · Joined: 09 Apr 2006 Posts: 933 Location: Michigan

BTW,

I think discussions on these topics could potentially be quite interesting, if both sides could admit the possibility that they might be (partially) wrong, and simply discuss various aspects with an open mind. Unfortunately, both sides are so sure of their opinions that they're not open to listening to opposing viewpoints, and deciding whether there is any merit to them. Instead, name-calling ensues, more heat than light is generated, and nothing is learned by either side.

Curt,
> not sure if I believe those graphs. The big selling point of CDs was dynamic range, and those graphs make it look like CD is all compressed and has no dynamic range at all. <

The hard cutoff isn't on the amplitude axis, it's frequency.

What Dragan was attempting to illustrate is that there are components present (some coherent, and some random, aka noise) that the LP recording captures and reproduces, and the CD recording simply discards. His position is that these components are important to reproducing an accurate listening experience. Not necessarily through direct perception (as Dave hostilly pointed out, we don't directly hear tones from 20-96 kHz), but perhaps through interactions, modulations and subtle phase relationships that determine the human psycho-acoustic perception, which we still don't completely understand.

Dave would claim that that's all hogwash, and nothing outside the range that CDs attempt to capture could possibly influence what we perceive inside that range. The place where Dave makes his biggest mistake, and it is a mistake, is in his steadfast belief that measurements tell the whole story. They never have, and possibly never will. What measurements do is extract a subset of elements for evaluation or comparison purposes, and one thing we've learned over the years is that they're usually oversimplified. When we discover that, we then extend and refine the measurements, but they still remain an approximation.

But we don't listen to measurements... we listen to sound. Dave would claim that current sampling technology captures every important element and nuance of musical sound. Dragan would strongly disagree. And NOT because he thinks that analog is more "accurate" than Dave's digital variant (analog recordings have their own distortions, as was pointed out), but because analog is a continuous "sample", without the discrete points of quantization that are inherent in digital recordings. And that it captures more of the elusive elements of the original sounds that digital simply discards... because no one recognizes their importance... today.

Music isn't about a single tone, or a sample point. It's about a complex interaction between a multitude of tones, that are continuously and smoothly evolving. There's a temporal aspect, with phase relationships and intermodulations that are important to preserve. And it's necessary to make sure that the (digital) reproduction process does not introduce distortions of its own that degrade the perception of accuracy. Do digital recordings capture all this faithfully? Theoretically, it should be possible, but it was painfully obvious when "perfect" CDs first came out that they definitely hadn't perfected that process. If the sample-rates are fast enough, and you have enough bits per sample to capture both the high and low amplitudes to the degree than humans can perceive it, then you can at least get very close... and the enhanced digital systems do come a lot closer. Do they currently capture every nuance? For many listeners, yes. But not according to many other listeners who still feel that analog recordings are superior, and that digital still has some elements "missing", or something non-musical "added" that mars the experience.

Name-calling isn't going to do anything to change those perceptions, or increase anyone's understanding.

km987654 · Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 9:16 am Post subject:

The sound from Records and CDs is different because the technology that produces them is vastly different. You can argue one is better than another and perhaps demonstrate a technical advantage but that has no bearing on what people like or perceive. Some will simply like the sound from records.

CRT and Digitals are no different some people will always prefer the image from a crt projector and thats all that matters.

WanMan · Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 10270

Guys, these arguments are not really the material, but the method for which they wrote to the material. And this is no different for audio or video. Materials are just transport mechanisms. If the transport mechanism is limited then the content being transported will be abused to fit that transport. For instance, RGBhv is far superior to anything else in the analog world, but extremely few consumer electronic equipment not coming from the computer world offered RGBhv. Instead, the industry chose a color space they could abuse by compression.

I do not see this any different than when the common Compact Disk came into the industry. It had a fixed ability and they compressed the content to fit that transport. Part of the industry's need was to make for easier delivery to the consumer, add portability into the marketplace, etc., but its always been realized that CD could never be a lossless transport for anything.

Now, this isn't so much a digital vs. analog argument, and can only be IF its taken into the context of the transport mechanism. Any independent discussion would allow for extremely high bitrate sampling with zero compression. Can this be done today on the consumer playing field? Actually, it can. Can it be affordable? Not to the unwashed masses. So, compromise is a must.

But, getting back to the video aspects one still needs to recognize where a technology is still king, and that is in the area of the ability to not produce light when the need calls for it. I think until SED comes to fruition, analog just beats anything else hands down. And just like the video world, analog means nothing when you do not consider the entire chain for storage [of the content] to your clogged ears. Smile

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 2:47 pm Post subject:

draganm · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 8990 Location: Colorado

videograbber has made some of the most intelligent remarks so far, if there was a prize for best post in this thread he gets it.

draganm · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 8990 Location: Colorado

WTS · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 1276 Location: Calgary

Hi Draganm,

Again I'm not sure what CD equipment you're listening to but obviously it's flawed. I'm not saying all CD transports sound good because thats far from the truth, actually most of them do sound harsh. I've listened to the megabucks crap that the local hi end stores sell and I'd never be happy with that crap either.
As far as the equipment I'm referring to the CD transport/DAC etc is all custom designed/made, more so the electronics than the actual transport, which makes a huge difference.
I'm not defending the CD equipment available at whatever price I'm just stating that the CD format can be very good and of course just like vinyl it depends on the recording/mixing/pressing etc etc. I've had in the past numerous combinations of pickup/arm combinations/turntables and I can tell you they don't all sound the same either, some good some bad. So just buying a so called good turntable setup won't necessarliy going to get you great sound quality.

Yeah I can't believe we're debating this again. I still have fond memories of my turntable/ tube gear days but not the hassles of keeping it dialed in. Damn some day I might be saying that of my present tube gear - CRT.