Discussion on Vinyl and digital

[mbhangui]

So, what does this mean to you? Probably nothing. What did it mean to me? I found it interesting. The CD playback had more accurate tonality than the DSD/SACD playback. The DSD playback had more front to back resolution than the CD playback. The tape copy sounded slightly lackluster. The acetate record playback beat them all in terms of resolution, tonal accuracy and everything else when compared directly with the analog master in playback. This is not wonderful news in a certain sense; vinyl playback is sometimes a pain in the butt and knowing that CD's are not capturing everything in perfect resolution drives me bonkers.

Regarding the lowly phonograph record:

We know that records have their problems (could be noisy, warped, bad cutting, etc.) as well but for the most part they will be a damn miraculous representation of the actual master recording for not much money.

The lowly phonograph indeed makes many uncomfortable as can be seen in these dicussions

Your comments are welcome.

Please remember, the above is just my OPINION but I found it interesting. I love my compact discs but I realize they are not the last word in resolution; they are damn fine though and when listening for pleasure I play CDs and records, with CDs getting the most play. My Sony and Living Stereo SACDs are never far away from me either. If you disagree with me, that's cool. It's all fun, or should be.

Personally I use digital as my main system. I have few LPs, where the mastering is so perfect that I haven't seen that in any of the CDs that I own. And I don't have a single CD that has even one song that can beat the crap out of those few LPs from the 50s, 60s and the 70s. My guess is that I haven't yet purchased a CD that has been mastered well enough. When it comes to bollywood music, my cutoff date is the 80s. I don't listen to any songs after that period. The lyrics just don't cut it for me and neither the music. So I tend to listen to old songs and probably they are better on vinyl than on digital platform. As far as Jazz is concerned I have high resolution recordings in DSD and they are definitely better than the vinyl records for the same recording that I have in my possesion.

 

[Bloom@83]

. As far as Jazz is concerned I have high resolution recordings in DSD and they are definitely better than the vinyl records for the same recording that I have in my possesion.

And again that’s because of two factors : jazz CDs specially from the fifties and sixties have been mastered without applying high gain , compression etc, and also the original tapes have been preserved with much care , unlike most of classic rock.

Having said that , jazz reissues on vinyls from audiophile labels such as Analog Productions , MFSL , Blue Note- Tone Poet series (all very expensive ) , Classic Records , MoV as well as traditional labels like Columbia , Impulse etc are painstakingly done from uncorrupted tapes by some of the best mastering engineers in the world & are reference quality sound.Whether DSD is better than them I can’t say , never had a chance to compare on the same setup.

Although I grew up in the nineties , I hardly listen to any music after 1990s , not unlike you - and here unquestionably even a moderate vinyl setup trumps 10x pricier digital rigs.