I know much less about the science and engineering of this subject than most of the excellent posters in this thread, but I feel the point I made above merits further exploration. Tom (Macrojack), your response, which is essentially that problems with the CD format obscure the big payoff it delivers in speed stability, is certainly credible, but I'm not willing to let it go at that.
What are the sonic benefits people ascribe to DD and IW? Better PRaT? What else? If this were due to better speed stability alone, surely we would hear at least some of this benefit from CDs. Do we? As piano is the reference standard for hearing pitch stability, shouldn't this be obvious from CD? (Some people think it is, but not all of us.)
My layman's hypothesis is that average speed variation from the reference (33 1/3) is more significant to sonics (and more widespread) than the very tiny moment-to-moment stability issues that are being argued about in this discussion. Rega tables run fast and -- guess what? -- they have great PRaT.
And let me toss out another idea. How stable, moment-to-moment, was the cutting lathe? And how close to perfect 33 1/3 was it? These issues confer obvious and huge advantages to digtial recording and playback, certainly on paper (listen up, Miss Pickler), but in actual practice they do not seem to be as significant as one would have thought. Ditto with inner groove distortion, the crude way in which stereo is extracted from vinyl (see an earlier thread about mono cartridges), and numerous other shortcomings of the vinyl medium.
What are the sonic benefits people ascribe to DD and IW? Better PRaT? What else? If this were due to better speed stability alone, surely we would hear at least some of this benefit from CDs. Do we? As piano is the reference standard for hearing pitch stability, shouldn't this be obvious from CD? (Some people think it is, but not all of us.)
My layman's hypothesis is that average speed variation from the reference (33 1/3) is more significant to sonics (and more widespread) than the very tiny moment-to-moment stability issues that are being argued about in this discussion. Rega tables run fast and -- guess what? -- they have great PRaT.
And let me toss out another idea. How stable, moment-to-moment, was the cutting lathe? And how close to perfect 33 1/3 was it? These issues confer obvious and huge advantages to digtial recording and playback, certainly on paper (listen up, Miss Pickler), but in actual practice they do not seem to be as significant as one would have thought. Ditto with inner groove distortion, the crude way in which stereo is extracted from vinyl (see an earlier thread about mono cartridges), and numerous other shortcomings of the vinyl medium.