Posted on 08/29/2015 1:06:53 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
JOHN DANKOSKY, HOST:
Up next: how to tell your CD from your MP3, from your AAC. But first, let's start with the LP. When I was a kid, music took up a lot of room - not in your hard drive, but in your life. Being an audiophile meant devoting shelves and shelves and shelves and shelves to your album collection. And when you moved out of your parents' house, out of your first apartment, you hauled milk crates filled with your music collection onto your next life. And these days, most of us probably get our music in the form of downloads - no heavy boxes, but no fancy cover art, either.
Lots of audiophiles say that when it comes to sound quality, nothing beats vinyl. These purists wonder if digital files can really give you that analog sound of our youth. For the rest of this hour, we'll be talking about the science of audio, what all those bit rates and sample frequency terms mean, and we'll find out how your perceptions could affect what you hear.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
I prefer wax cylinders myself but no one seems to be putting those out, anymore.
;D
I agree. Vinyl does sound better with the right equipment, and now that we are old enough to take care of the albums.
I can live with CD technology, because I can equalize most of the imperfections out.
The one thing I won’t compromise on is music compression. A part of the actual recording is lost in compression. You don’t really notice it on a 1” phone speaker, or ear buds.
On Klipcsh Chorus II, or 4’ tall 100lb each Infinity Floor standing speakers, you notice.
If I ever had the money to buy the equipment I really want ($100,000 approx) It would be 100% analog for music, with a separate Digital system for home theater.
In the time frame just before the CD takeover, vinyl records were thin which caused them to warp very easily. Now the old vinyl that was thick were better. Keeping them free of dust in the grooves was the key though.
I'm trying to remember what I used, back in the day (goodness, it must have been pre-1985!) It was a contoured wooden block, with a velvet or microfiber like pad, and a solution in a bottle... Disc Washer, I think?
I had a very nice Dual belt drive turntable, with a Dual-Ortofon cartridge (Ultra-light?)
My memory of it isn't that great, but I had a terrific album collection.
Mark
Had?
I have ended up with LPs from different family member’s estates plus I have the LPs that I bought from the 60’s up til they started making CDs and I switched to them. I still have a turntable and speakers (which aren’t the best). I drug them out a while back and have been listening and sorting everything by genre. I’ll admit that I enjoy my record listening time, cracks, pops and all. Plus the record covers are fun. CD cases never had the character that LP record covers had plus the inserts that came with some. I will probably start selling them once I get through them all. Have sold a few already.
Micro-fiber cleaning cloth work well for getting dust off. But not so much for deleting records off your server.
Those record-club albums seemed to be the worst. They're nothing like the real good, thick vinyl, whose creation is an art form.
I still have my vinyl collection. I was fortunate to acquire some real high quality albums from broken-up DJ collections in the '90s. Some of my collection is my original albums, some abandoned collections of others, some is careful purchases on the used market. Recent acquisitions are what's being produced now, but of older music. A lot of it is real high-quality, authentic production.
I've always heard a difference. I'll agree with what was stated in that discussion, that the early CDs are just awful and the newer ones are better for the sound. To me, it still isn't the same. It's like I don't hear in 3-D unless the music is live or vinyl with speakers set up for best sound delivery.
The vinyl record album is a total experience. The music, usually a sensible, logical collection that as an album tells a story. The quality, there really is a difference in the way that sound from vinyl brings me in so the music is experiences, not background noise. The poetry, artwork, photos, information create a total wonderful immersion into the artistry that has been created.
What I do to enjoy my collection is to about twice a year cull what's on the shelf, so my selection is about 75 albums at any given time. Currently, I'm favoring Elvis, Rick Nelson, Buffy StMarie, Boston, Stevie Nicks, of course some MoodyBlues.
It's that totally experience that's missing with modern music. Who ever spent a few hours kicking back and enjoying their favorite CD or MP3 or whatever?
But I love her.
Yep, that was the tool to use to clean them. I had a linear tracking turntable, can’t remember the brand now but it was expensive back in the day. At least to me, LOL.
File compression only trims upper frequencies, in the case of digital, around 44.1khz. Audio compression is almost unavoidable.
The only way to get truly uncompressed music is to have all analogue instruments played directly to your ears with no speakers or electronics in the path. Sadly though, our ear drums compress what is too loud.
PCM digital is inherently flawed. The brickwall anti-aliasing filters introduce pre-ringing and other unnatural artifacts. The conversions back and forth are riddled with rounding errors.
However, if you listen to pure DSD digital, or even better, double DSD or DSD256, you will hear music that is comparable in quality to vinyl. However, very few engineers and companies are recording in pure DSD. Commercial SACDs may be recorded in DSD, but they are converted to 24/384 PCM for editing, and then converted back. I have listened to the raw, unedited DSD masters, and they have all the qualities you would find in a great analogue recording.
1. An improperly adjusted tonearm can cause mistracking, which results in unpleasant distortion.
2. Off-center records can result in unpleasant "wow" sound.
3. LP's do warp, and that can also result in an unpleasant sound.
4. You have to deal with turntable rumble unless the turntable platter is really heavy.
5. Because there is physical contact, both the record and record needle will eventually wear out.
6. You're limited to around 22 to 25 minutes playback time per side of a disc.
Pity we never decided between the Super Audio CD and DVD Audio formats. If we had settled that back in the early 2000's, we could have a digital audio format using DVD-density discs that would have blown away LP's once and for all.
Some factories also resorted to the odious practice of using "regrind" as a stretcher in the vinyl mixture. Albums made this way would quickly wear out.
Higher sample rate/bit rate digital music available here...(i.e. 385 mb for a 6 minute song): https://www.hdtracks.com
Nonsense! Find a person who can hear a 20,000-cycle tone and can afford the electronics necessary to reproduce it. Then find another. I would guess that finding two in the same week would be difficult.
Perfection is the enemy of good enough.
First off CDs are an old format and little used now a days. I currently buy music and download it from Amazon and iTunes. I don’t have the patience, time, or money to play with vinyl (I have hundreds of LPs gathering dust as I replaced my favorites with digital). And 1s and 0s sound a lot better than snap crackle or pops. And considering my 66 year old ears...subjected for decades to high speed centrifuges, firearms, and power tools....the difference with the various formats, in perfect condition, is a wash.
” In the time frame just before the CD takeover, vinyl records were thin “
Made in USA records were thin and crap vinyl was used . UK and Japanese pressings were far superior .
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