How Science Got Sound Wrong

I think sounds are like words not only some external social communicating tools... Animals communicate... Sounds and words are together programming technology of the highest order between the brain-body and the growing self...

They program through the use of the body-brain the consciousness itself, unbeknownst to the "conscious ego" of the children or the adult who listen or speak the words or the music....It is for this reason that I distinguish ego or self and brain...If not we are in the muddy waters of ignorance, be it even enlighten by some ocean of technological information or not ...


But words and sounds are like nuts that people perceived ready made by the tree like only an end result ( be it the brain-tree or the engineered system-tree) without seeing the potential complex growing of the seeds inside...

Records were a very good innovation for delivering sound as accurately as possible with the technology available in the 1950s, almost 70 years ago.

Lots has been done to squeeze the most possible out of that inherently old technology since resulting in very expensive players that go to great ends to manage the faults and inaccuracies inherent in the system. Meanwhile quality of vinyl records continues to vary widely as it always has, but cost more than ever.

Regarding accuracy, modern digital streaming is leaps and bounds beyond that. Way more people have access to very accurate sound these days, more accurate than most anyone would ever need, than ever for very modest cost.

What sounds best to each individual is still as always up in the air, what sounds good to someone is not the same as what is accurate.

Thank you science and technology!

mapman

Lots has been done to squeeze the most possible out of that inherently old technology since resulting in very expensive players ...

Quite so!

Way more people have access to very accurate sound these days, more accurate than most anyone would ever need, than ever for very modest cost.

Agreed!

Thank you science and technology!

Right - science and technology have made these improvements possible in both analog and digital formats.

It’s not very difficult to find a vinyl system that’s better than the average CD system. But it’s very hard to find a CD system that is better than the average vinyl system. Of course, if you can stand the blandness and boredom of CDs you’re one up on me.

geoffkait

... it’s very hard to find a CD system that is better than the average vinyl system ...

I don’t know whether that’s true or not. It certainly wasn’t true when CD first debuted. It was the proliferation of cheap turntables and tonearms that helped fuel the rise of the CD. When users found a medium with no pops and clicks, no feedback, no skips, no risk of damage to fragile styli, they jumped right in. For them, the CD was a huge, genuine step forward. Many of those with better turntable systems heard the CD’s deficiencies immediately and were more cautious.

The whole LP/digital debate is really a silly one today. If you build a fairly neutral system around neutral speakers and amplifiers, and you then use any of today’s better analog and digital equipment, the qualities of LP and CD are remarkably similar.

There are a few noisy advocates on either end of the CD and LP preference spectrum that would have you believe one is substantially superior to the other. They’re both wrong.

If I were starting an audio system today from a completely blank sheet of paper, I’d frankly never get into LP. It’s just too much of a nuisance. But I acquired many LPs in the pre-digital era and - because their master tapes have degraded over time - even the best digital transfer of these albums pale compared to a good LP copy. (The Mercury Living Presence recordings are a good example of that.)

Oddly, the highest quality pressings of many releases today are often the LP, because the CDs tend to be more compressed.