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Does Anyone Think CD is Better Than Vinyl/Analog?"
Mkgus,
You do realize that the title of your thread is mistitled, right? I think everyone participating on it thus far understands that a more appropriate title, that would be much more honest and just cut to the chase already, would be:
" Does Anyone 'Like' CD Better Than Vinyl/Analog?
So, with your true inquiry and intent now more explicitly revealed, I'll continue to proceed down this more honest and constructive path. I think skyscraper made 7 good points about cd vs vinyl. The main points that I and probably numerous others consider, when deciding on their preferred source material and gear, are his following points:
1) The pops, clicks and and other surface noises of vinyl are too distracting and appear even on albums that look to be in perfect condition.
7) You can't beat the ease of use of CD's, and don't need a record cleaning machine for them like you should use with your records.
Many individuals choose and like cds and other digital sources, in other words, due to the lack of surface and background noise and the greater convenience with cds and digital in general. As I stated on my previous post, however, cds certainly do not represent 'perfect sound forever' mainly due to poor master/mixing decisions and the fact that they don't take advantage of the superior performance specs and capacities of cd technology.
I also believe that the viewpoint, that home audio enthusiasts are making a binary choice between digital cds or analog vinyl for their preferred playback sources. As many posters have mentioned, many utilize both playback formats.
But there are also many individuals, including myself, who realize the original high technical capacities and expectations of the digital cd format were sacrificed due to poor master mixing decisions (the loudness wars and uni-volume) and the inability to take advantage of the benefits of recording direct to digital. Many cds are just transfers of the original multi-track reel to reel tape master recordings to the cd format. These transfers result in zero sound quality improvements over the original rtr master version, but they are at least in a format less susceptible to degradation with each playing.
As a result many, including myself, have progressed beyond the use of just the compromised digital cd format to the use of higher resolution digital downloads that were recorded direct to digital.
It's very important to realize, however, that the recording of the music, whether played live at an event or in a studio, needs to be directly made to high resolution digital to capture the musical event in the clearly higher capacity and higher sound quality resolution.
Often, companies will advertise recordings as "remastered to high resolution digital" even though it is actually just a transfer of the original music event captured on rtr tape in the older, inferior and regular resolution format. But the original master recording is like a photograph, captured at the resolution the recording equipment was capable of.
Subsequent transfer to a higher resolution format does nothing to improve the sound quality of the original recording. This also explains why some people claim not to notice a difference between a cd and the same song/group "remastered to high resolution digital"; they're just comparing the original to a virtually identical copy/transfer of it.
Tim
Mkgus,
You do realize that the title of your thread is mistitled, right? I think everyone participating on it thus far understands that a more appropriate title, that would be much more honest and just cut to the chase already, would be:
" Does Anyone 'Like' CD Better Than Vinyl/Analog?
So, with your true inquiry and intent now more explicitly revealed, I'll continue to proceed down this more honest and constructive path. I think skyscraper made 7 good points about cd vs vinyl. The main points that I and probably numerous others consider, when deciding on their preferred source material and gear, are his following points:
1) The pops, clicks and and other surface noises of vinyl are too distracting and appear even on albums that look to be in perfect condition.
7) You can't beat the ease of use of CD's, and don't need a record cleaning machine for them like you should use with your records.
Many individuals choose and like cds and other digital sources, in other words, due to the lack of surface and background noise and the greater convenience with cds and digital in general. As I stated on my previous post, however, cds certainly do not represent 'perfect sound forever' mainly due to poor master/mixing decisions and the fact that they don't take advantage of the superior performance specs and capacities of cd technology.
I also believe that the viewpoint, that home audio enthusiasts are making a binary choice between digital cds or analog vinyl for their preferred playback sources. As many posters have mentioned, many utilize both playback formats.
But there are also many individuals, including myself, who realize the original high technical capacities and expectations of the digital cd format were sacrificed due to poor master mixing decisions (the loudness wars and uni-volume) and the inability to take advantage of the benefits of recording direct to digital. Many cds are just transfers of the original multi-track reel to reel tape master recordings to the cd format. These transfers result in zero sound quality improvements over the original rtr master version, but they are at least in a format less susceptible to degradation with each playing.
As a result many, including myself, have progressed beyond the use of just the compromised digital cd format to the use of higher resolution digital downloads that were recorded direct to digital.
It's very important to realize, however, that the recording of the music, whether played live at an event or in a studio, needs to be directly made to high resolution digital to capture the musical event in the clearly higher capacity and higher sound quality resolution.
Often, companies will advertise recordings as "remastered to high resolution digital" even though it is actually just a transfer of the original music event captured on rtr tape in the older, inferior and regular resolution format. But the original master recording is like a photograph, captured at the resolution the recording equipment was capable of.
Subsequent transfer to a higher resolution format does nothing to improve the sound quality of the original recording. This also explains why some people claim not to notice a difference between a cd and the same song/group "remastered to high resolution digital"; they're just comparing the original to a virtually identical copy/transfer of it.
Tim