Should people with no turntable or reel to reel be considered audiophiles?

By the way, I almost forgot, I’ve had the opportunity on many occasions this past year to hear a big system, an evolved, grown-up system, for which the Reed Solomon error detection/correction codes were disabled on the CD player. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, is he insane?!

The codes can be disabled AFTER the scattered light problem is eliminated AND AFTER the fluttering disc problem is eliminated. It’s smooth sailing after that. The disc played on this system must be emmaculate, scratch, fingerprint and dust free obviously. It’s a whole new ballgame folks. Anyone in N. Va can go hear it for yourself. Trust me. You will be inclined to drive home as fast as you can and throw whatever system you’ve been ranting and raving about in the nearest lake.

Conclusion, for whatever reasons the Reed Solomon codes hurt the sound. The only reason they are there in the first place is because the whole digital playback system is on the very edge of failure so they threw everything but the kitchen sink at it so it would at least fly a little bit. Kinda like a kiwi bird.

That’s what a stereo system sounds like when it’s all grown up. 🤗

Within the range of human hearing, vinyl delivers a CONTINUOUS stream of sound.

And so is the output of a digital audio device. Within the limits of human hearing, a digital output is far more "continuous" than vinyl. Instead of repeating this statement, which shows you really don’t understand the underpinning of audio/digital audio, why not try to do some research and understand what is actually happening.

There is nothing truly "continuous" about vinyl. Once you throw in noise, the continuity is gone, period, and guess what, vinyl has a lot more noise than digital. Vinyl also has more speed issues (throwing away information), vinyl has very poor channel separation (throwing away lots more information), vinyl has RIAA issues (throwing away information), all added to the noise (throwing away information).

Yet vinyl still sounds good to many. Accuracy of sonic reproduction, and preference for sonic reproduction are not the same thing, but it is important to understand which is which. Some of those inaccuracies in vinyl, lets call them "analog signal processing", could even be good from a perspective of the brain either extracting information or creating a pleasurable but false outcome.

Who cares what Audiogoners believe on this question. It’s like asking people to put up their hand and declare they are a bigot. Is there a positive outcome in that?

Robertdid - I’m not creating a divide, just curious as to what Audiogoners believe.

Shhhh ... don't anyone tell Geoffkait, that rip and streaming eliminates real-time CD error correction from the process, and just as 1+1 = 2, if you are doing Reed-Solomon offline, and there are no uncorrectable errors, then it is impossible for it to make a difference in the sound quality, no matter what someone may convince themselves of.  We are not in the realm of personal preference here, we are in the realm of 1+1 = 2, and that does not change based on where the 1 came from.

Excellent examples of strawman arguments by Mr. Smarty Pants. Logical fallacies. As usual robberrttddidd is on my tail within seconds. Ouch! Very ouch!

God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason, robberrttddidd

OK, time out while robberrttddidd looks up strawman argument. 

Ah magic pebble man. Quick with the ad-homs, quick with the deflections, slow as as a dead tortoise at providing a reasoned argument.

So magic pebble man, if the CD is ripped offline, we know the following factually:

• Reed-solomon error coding will tell us within a bit grouping (hundred of bits) if there is an error for a given number of wrong bits, and if there are few enough wrong bits, how to correct them.
• The number of bits in a grouping is large enough (hundreds) that false error is virtually impossible
• That if the number of error bits is small enough, the correction will be perfect.  i.e. the data that comes out will be exactly what was intended to come out.
• On reasonable quality CDs, the number of bit errors that cannot be corrected is very small, i.e. a few per CD. (If you scratch your CD all bets are off).
• That if the CD is ripped offline, then any timing irregularities, power draw irregularities, etc. from the transport and ECC section that could impact the sound (in a poorly designed system) are eliminate.

So, given all those, please tell us magic pebble man, how your argument holds any water.

I don't really expect I will get a meaningful reply. I am sure whatever you respond back will be one of a) more insults, b) an answer that ignores all the points I raised, or c) something completely unrelated and probably coupled with an insult.  Of course, you may see that you were wrong (sort of like the RF frequency things and power) and just choose not to reply or admit your error.