How Good Can Digital Get?

Lazurus,"...the surface noise of vinyl obscures the details of a recording..."
I looked at your system post. Do you use a record cleaning machine like vpi? While it will not remove scratches, it virtually elimnates surface noise.

gregadd - back when i had a vinyl setup (it was a Teres 265, an SME V arm and a Van den Hul Colibri Cartridge) i used a nitty gritty (which i still have) and borrowed a vpi for a while.

and they certainly helped, but they didn't eliminate the surface noise, unfortunately.

even pristine pressings were noisy - not distractingly so necessarily, but noisier than cd, anyway. and it obscures fine detail only in the same way that a fan buzzing in the room will, or the hum of an ac vent. it's not huge - just a bit perceptible and distracting.

oddly enough, though - tape hiss doesn't bother me nearly as much.

go figure.

:-)

I really find this back and forth with Lazarus28 to be very interesting indeed. It seems he owns the very digital gear I find so damn good. The thing that perplexes and troubles me is he HAD a 265 that seems not to have competed with the EMM Labs gear. HMMMM. I've listened to Rockports, Walkers and VPI TNT's and know that any digital I've heard to date can be bettered by these machines. The system that my friend has the Meitner gear in also has a 265 with battery power supply/Illustrious/901 and it too doesn't seem to compete. Is the Teres table over rated? I'm beginning to think so. Uh Oh! I'm in deep doo doo here at Audiogon for saying that.

Again, I love the Meitner gear and wish I owned it but even if I did I'd still have analog because of the many great performances you can only get on vinyl. For me it's more about the music than the gear but hey, keep in mind that a poor man WOULD make that kind of statement.

Best to all and Merry Christmas.

Lugnut - the teres rocked! it really did. we all just have different things that distract from and/or draw us into a recording.

noise distracts me. i haven't heard a rockport or walker, so i can't say what they're capable of.

and, as far as software goes, it's much easier to find what i like on cd. cheaper, too and in better condition.

and i'd say that were i a classical music junkie, i'd keep the vinyl around, but that's not true, either. SACD has so many classical titles, that i still couldn't justify it.

plus, i should also mention this taboo - i have a high-res mltichannel setup and vinyl don't do surround. (and i ain't buying the 70's equipment for quad, either) cd doesn't, either, but SACD does. and the few times a multichannel recording is done properly - YOWZA!

see:
peter gabriel - up
roxy music - avalon
pink floyd - dark side of the moon
nine inch nails - the downward spiral

these are all, to me, so superior to the 2-channel versions such that i hate listening to them in stereo afterwards.

of course, this isn't to say that they're all good. some music just shouldn't be done multichannel.
see:
nick drake - a treasury
beck - sea change
james taylor - everything

and some music could have been good, but is ruined by a lousy multichannel mix
see:
bowie - all of the MC sacds. i haven't heard "heathen" in multichannel yet, but i do have high-hopes for it. it could be really good - that music lends itself to great MC done right.
t-rex - electric warrior

and merry x-mas back to yaz!

Lazarus28:
Well, I’m a psychiatrist, so I suppose I should never object to someone introducing the possibility of psychology influencing audio perceptions, which it of course does. But I must say, having some basic understanding of my own inner workings, your explanation of my experience the other day doesn’t resonate at all. The fact is that what I heard initially that day sounded good, but it improved greatly once the change was made to vinyl (on an excellent turntable, tonearm, etc.). It is true I knew that this would happen, but not from some irrational attachment to vinyl, but from repeated past experience. I would be quite frankly surprised if anyone posting here could not have easily heard the improvement in the room that day – it was not subtle.

I know there are many overly zealous vinyl advocates, but I don’t feel comfortable in that camp. As I said, I really enjoy my CD player, and I have no problem with someone preferring digital. In fact, my wife strongly does, though I must say even she thinks good vinyl sounds substantially better. She just isn’t convinced that the difference is worth the effort and inconvenience. I think that is a reasonable position - just not one that I share.