Vinyl versus CD

[spam]

Originally posted by picanin
Spam here is a scientific question for you? Do you listen to music with scientific measuring instruments or with your ears? At the end of the day no matter how good specs might look it is the way something sounds to the ear that decides its clarity and quality. No scientific measuring device can tell you what is good or not in terms of sound quality . Only your own ears can. Go take alisten yourself to a vinyl based system costing around £1000 and a CD based one and you will hear the difference in quality. Ditto on a £500 system. Even into stratospheric prices CD is still the poorer software medium. HAve you ever listened to players by companies like Krell or Jeff Rowland or Linn? Your experience of decent quality vinyl equipment is obviously as limited as mine is of amateur radio equipment. Once you have listened to the equipment then come back and tell me that vinyl is the poor relative.

But you are not asking a scientific question, and therein you have made my argument...if you wish to compare the quality you have to do it scientifically and with repeatable accuracy. My hearing compared to yours is no basis for a proper evaluation. It is like stating a sylus can reproduce 10Hz to 25 Khz...big deal....most people start losing audio perception between 18-30 KHz, few would even hear 25. Normal speech is a mere .3-3.4 Khz....
You are stating that vinyl is better to YOUR ears...and you are also using audio equipment outside the financial realms of most. A comparable amount of money spent on digital would give better results. What sound good to you will probably not even begin to sound good to others, furthermore you are comparing CD sound of the early days, sample rates have increased as well as the recording technology. As an example, you go and stand close to a musical instrument being played and then go and stand further away, you will find that it sounds better some distance away....original CD recordings were made with microphones close up to the source and were detecting sounds and harshness not detectable further away. Hence the same effect being passed onto the recording...that is all changed...

Bottom line, if digital was so bad, then the massive change to digital would not be happening...digital signals easily match the range of analogue and more, are far more easily manipulated, are virtually immune to hiss, scratch and rumble, have a far superior S/N ratio.....and therefore general acceptance by recording industries, broadcasters etc world wide.