CD vs Vinyl

[drumhobo]

Originally Posted by drumhobo

You know i have a Jolida CD player with a Tube at the out, and it really does smooth out the sound of the CD. But I also have a high end SACD player, it sounds like an LP, smooth, full, amazing. Then my CLearAudio Champion Limited Turntable with the Virtuoso Wood Stylus with a good LP, WOW!

I play all this though my Jolida Tube amp, and even though Jolida is a lower priced item, it really does sound amazing, and our ears are meant to hear in Analogue anyway, not digital.

One more point, and this to me is the most amazing, look at those of us into High End Audiophile equipment, we have these amazing set ups, great sound. And how do we listen, ALONE, with one chair in the middle of the room. Once and a while you will invite a friend to listen, but they have to sit to the side, not in the sweet spot. Think about this though, most my Audiophile friends all listen alone, I just find this funny.

[Celt16]

Originally Posted by mrmusic

... I'm in the process of getting everything digitized in near-lossless format, and then I can dump my 4,000 CDs as well. ...

Digitized to what, a music server? What make / model / capacity, etc? What do you use to play it all back? It seems to me that the quality of the playback and storage mechanisms are really key in a high quality sound system.

At what price-point is this possible?

If it is Sonos, Kaleidescope or something like it, I have to say it is REALLY slick, but at a 5-figure investment, it is WELL outside my affordability limits.

[dwwave]

I grew up LP (listeningto my Dad's LP's and using his stereo (he even had a 2 track tape reel to reel, some cool microphones and we made some fun stuff and recorded King Biscuit Flower Hour (tape was still easy to get and while it was FM to tape those concerts were so cool. He updated some and added a cassette (I had a 8 track player and a local air conditioning shop (for some reason) sold bootlegs for about 2 dollars and I found Led Zeppelin that way, then with my meager AM-FM with 8 track it had a option for a turntable and my LP collection started, I delivered newspapers and LP's did not cost that much and when ever I could I bought the latest Rock LP's and wandered in to progressive rock (Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Mike Oldfield) but Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin were my favorites and I still have most of my LP's (even to the point of U2) before changing to CD's (with a brief period of Cassettes (I view CD's as good for car listening but more often than not tune in college radio or NPR, I only gave away (most) of my Neil Young LP's (and it was a not well thought ot settlement deal as I paid for them and several are even out of print on CD and one was only released on LP, material things is the way I view them, though I keep a eye out for them at sales, online and a local LP shop(new and used) that also sells CD's and video games but has quite a following for LP's (Time Traveler in Cuyahoga Falls Ohio) cool shop and worth a plug for them, I doubt any one will 100% agree on format but (IMO) vinyl has that vibe especially with live music, once its to CD (that perfect Pro-tools no mistakes, never out of tune mentality took over and MP3's are further sound compressed and more sterile though nano technolgy I must admit is very cool and you can store alot of music on one of large Ipod (classic's) where the nano ones have less (but still huge) well all for now, my wife bought me a turntable, gosh over 15+ years ago, pieced a stereo together piece by piece as we were just starting out and kids and house payments came first, She had a all in one stereo(with 8 track too) and a turntable, and we added a CD player, then a AM-FM tuner and speakers, a dual cassette, then the magic turn table
(we hooked it all up in the Living room and had 4 speakers 2 front and 2 rear (cool with VHS tapes) now the stereo is in the basement and our kids dicovered our LP's and like them! we bought a DVD-R and a pair of Sennheiser Headphones for TV listening and movie watching and are doing just fine! Long Live The LP and I am so glad to get emails from shops selling new band releases on 180 gram vinyl!
Peace
dwwave

[paoloop]

Originally Posted by rbinck

First, welcome to the forum.

Not sure what is meant by and the real dynamics. The potential dynamic range of CDs is considerably better than LPs even though it is rarely used. But maybe you meant something else.

Yes, on paper CDs have more dynamics, most part going down because of lower noise floor; but if you get a modern/well recorded/pressed LP and a good prepre you have a comparable noisefloor (what reviewers call a 'black background'). Moreover there are two subjective components: microdynamics (you have more details at the lower end, so you feel like having also more macrodynamics) and more detailed transients: so going from a ppp to an fff on LPs you feel more dynamics. That's my impression, with my loudspeakers (but I didn't do any real measurement with my phonometer since I have to adjust the level by hand to compare-so it's not a real comparison); moreover a well recorded modern LP (let's say Beethoven 5th on Tacet) has much more high level dynamics than old LPs that were used to compare dynamics (remember they used to compress high dynamics because it used up too much space-DG was terrible for that).
The best recording medium is still master tape: for some time I worked for the Swiss Broadcasting co., and once I recorded with a very simple machine a concert by Leonhardt; one year later he recorded with a major, but my original recording was way better: just because there were just two mikes-nothing else-against 4 mikes, recording console, mixer,...every passage some information going away. That's the same with LPs against CDs: Cds have much less information-that is, more distortion (it may come as a surprise from such a rough mechanical system, but you can listen to it!). Of course it depends on your system, the way you listen, and so on-but you have to give it a try.

[rbinck]

Does not have anything to do with noise floor for the most part. It has to do with the ability of the two to record high volume or levels. Really good LPs are in the dynamic range of 58 db or so and CDs are in the dynamic range of 96 db or so. It is not the low volume that describes it, it is the high volume. LPs have to be compressed to the level of their physical abilities.

[paoloop]

Sorry, I don't agree: dynamics is the difference between minimum and maximum values; and minimum has a lot to do with noise floor-while it's true that LP's use(d) to have lower maxima, but...actually LPs get better 'real' dynamics: and for real I mean not simply the fact that you may output 124 dbs (once in your life...) but usually you don't listen to more than 50dbs of difference; but also the difference between avarage and peak levels in any given piece: and LP's are better in this.
You may find some measures on <http://www.audioholics.com/education/audio-formats-technology/dynamic-comparison-of-lps-vs-cds-part-4/dynamic-comparison-of-lps-vs-cds-part-4-page-2>, and I agree with their considerations...
But my real point is: the quality difference (dynamics included) is there to hear: just listen side by side;
so I would say: take any CD edition of Beethoven 5th, take the Tacet Lp of the same, and listen-intercalating the two.
When I did it I really was astonished, since I believed all the hype about CDs: so it would be nice to hear some comment on actual comparisons.