CDs Vs LPs

I started collecting vinyl in the 60’s. In the early 80’s I bought a Teac reel-to-reel, dbx 224 noise reduction unit, and dbx 3bx dynamic range expander. If you’ve never heard a good reel-to-reel recording, you are missing a real treat. My recorded vinyl sounded better than the original album, to me. Back then, I had about 10 cases of reels.

In the 80’s, I moved to CDs because they were supposed to better. My moderate collection of 1,200 vinyl albums went pretty much unplayed for a very long time. Between my CDs and reels, I had all the music I needed for a long time.

Recently, I purchased a Technics SL-1200G w/ Ortofon Black cartridge and a Zenith MKII CD ripper/streamer. I often play the same album on my turntable and a ripped CD on the Zenith, and switch back and forth between them to compare the music. Of course the Zenith has a little more dynamic range, the sound is clear and very musical, but I still prefer vinyl over CDs (ripped or not). Vinyl sounds more natural to me, and aside from an occasional pop or click, the vast majority of my albums are in mint or near mint condition - because I rarely played them once they were recorded. The SQ with the 1200G is really, really good.

In a dealer’s showroom, I heard a $25K turntable with $10K tonearm and $7K cartridge (all toll about a $250K system) that sounded better than ANYTHING I’ve ever heard before. When its all said and done, I’m thinking "better" in this case depends on the equipment used, and to a large degree is a personal preference.

No amount of money spend on beefy turntables and complex tonearms will produce the dynamic range of which the LP is incapable.

??

Signal to Noise Ratio: LP 50db, CD 90db
Frequency Response: LP 20-20kHz, CD 20-22kHz (a tie)
Total Harmonic Distortion: LP 1-2%, CD 0.003%
Stereo separation: LP 25db, CD 90db

This bit is inaccurate. So much depends on the actual recording!!
First- most CDs **including classical and jazz** are compressed, for the simple reason that they might be played in a car.

Second, I put that first quote up there for a reason. LPs are capable of much wider dynamic range and noise floor than presented here.  And the typical LP bandwidth extends to 40KHz in both record and playback, even though microphones, tape and digital don't. Our cutter head (Westerex 3D) was made in 1960 and our cutter electronics are bandwidth limited to 42KHz. We don't have any problems recording at 40KHz and playing back on a Technics SL1200 (an older one) with a Grado gold, through an H/K 430 receiver!  IOW the bandwidth thing is a myth, plain and simple- the bandwidth has been there in record since the 1950s and in playback since the 1970s (cartridges lagged well behind the capabilities of the cutters).

Regarding noise and dynamic range: when a lacquer is cut, if the mastering engineer did his setup homework, the lacquer is so quiet that when you play it back, the noise floor is that of the electronics, not the media. Quite literally the you wonder if the darn thing is on, then music blasts out of nowhere. This implies a noise floor in the neighborhood of -90db or better. The surface noise comes in during the pressing process, but at least one pressing plant, QRP (owned by Acoustic Sounds) has done something about that, by damping their pressing machines so they don't shake and vibrate during the pressing process. This results in a good 25 db improvement in the noise floor. Modern LPs can do quite a bit better than -55db!

The actual distortion is another misnomer. How was that measured? In all likelihood that number was taken from a website or older document in which the homework was not done. For example, if a high output cartridge was used, what sort of loading was applied? If a MM cartridge is used and it was not loaded, the distortion is quite a bit higher! That's not so much a problem with the media as it is the reproducer, and if you want to point an an analog problem:

The largest negative for vinyl is the equipment choice and setup. IF one has the skills, or a really good tech person to chose the right cart/arm combo, then set it up. At this point I would say almost no one has a person really skilled to do it. Most are half way guessing and klutzing to 'good enough'.

-then this is actually the biggest problem, although I disagree with the 'almost no one has a person really skilled to do it' bit, as I don't seem to have any troubles setting up an arm and yet no worries getting it to perform; I don't see myself as any arm setup expert...

IOW the distortion is not so much in the *media* as it is in the **playback**. This is quite the opposite of digital, where the distortion (aliasing; the digital industry does not like to call it by its name, but make no mistake, aliasing is distortion, known in the analog world as 'inharmonic distortion', which is a special form of IMD, which means its really audible) is built into the recording, brick wall filter notwithstanding. This is why digital still sounds bright, even when used with a super high end DAC. When the distortion is in playback as on the LP, it becomes solvable and one way to reduce it is to simply use a low output moving coil cartridge, since their distortion (caused by ringing) is so much lower. Or just get the MM cartridge loaded right...

But as I pointed out earlier, if digital was really bringing home the bacon, there wouldn't be any LPs being made. But there are- and pressing plants are 6 months backlogged. Maybe the next round of digital will be better, and the LP will finally go away. I'd love that- I have over 6000 titles and its a pain in the rear to store it and move it.

@atmasphere said:

Maybe the next round of digital will be better, and the LP will finally go away.

Ralph, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around DSD, but it’s not exactly “consumer-friendly”.  Do you see any improvements on that front? Do you think DSD will become the digital utopia that we wanted the CD to be?

This is why digital still sounds bright, even when used with a super high end DAC.

You need to add "to me" or "to vinyl afficianados" to make this statement correct.  To anyone with a decent system, digital no longer has to sound bright.  I strongly dislike overly bright sound and I listen to a lot of cds without problem.

The CD vs LP debate is about preference, not who's right or wrong.  I hope we can get past that old argument someday.  Both formats are capable of very good and very bad sound.

It’s more than just harshness in CD playback, it’s an unnatural aspect to the sound in general, including bass frequencies, that’s always evident in any CD system that hasn’t been carefully tweaked. Of course, room acoustics is a big subject and also contributes greatly to the sound so it’s difficult to separate variables. Nevertheless, the CD and treating the CD player can go a long way to getting the typical bland and irritating CD sound much more analog-like. A few examples: seismic isolation of the CD player, careful leveling of the transport/CD, dealing with background scattered laser light. Another big issue with CD playback is the worsening situation regarding overly aggressive dynamic range compression in CD mastering.