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Sorry Frank, I believed what you believed too, but....

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In Reply to: lo-res vinyl???? Vinyl on a great turntable is the highest resolution of all. posted by Teresa on February 16, 2006 at 14:22:31:

I've had a VPI Scoutmaster turntable for about a year now, and there is no contest between CD and Lp's, at least with Deccas, EMI's, and most Philips. The textural differntiation--esp. in the bass, (the individual timres of bassoon, low harp, plucked bass, tympani, etc.,) are so much clearer. Bass is faster. Soundstage and depth is far better than even surround SACD. I hadn't owned a turntable in 25 years, and my experience back then with Lps was only Columbia, RCA and Angel--the worst of the Classical pressing and recordings. It's no wonder I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the turntable room at the store, but one note practically was all it took to realize....
Hold the phone though: I've discovered that digital Lps are far better than their CD counterparts as well, suggesting that digital may not be the problem, it may be the CD or CD player issues.
Keep up bad Lp press though, prices on lps go up every day unfortunately.

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There's nothing wrong.. - Frank.. 00:08:24 02/20/06 (0)
by being seduced by the easy going sound of lp's. It can sound quite good.
As you indicate the problem is not digital technology.
There are several reasons why many prefer lp shortcomings over digital shortcomings.
Digital shortcomings are nasty but
Digital done right and it's no contest.

99.9% of lp produced over the last 30 years came from a digital master or went through a digital chain anyway.
Frank
"Hold the phone" - Christine Tham 13:47:52 02/17/06 (3)
You said:
*** I've discovered that digital Lps are far better than their CD counterparts as well, suggesting that digital may not be the problem, it may be the CD or CD player issues. ***
I think you are absolutely spot on on this. It's the only explanation that fits the multitude of conflicting information on digital.
Consider this, when CDs first came out, we had lots of musicians and recording engineerings extolling the virtues of digital, and yet lots of audiophiles were complaining how bad CDs sound.
Can both be right?
I believe so. And a simple experiment convinced me. Record something at 44.1/16 using a high quality ADC. You will notice how good and transparent it sounds, even at so called "low res" (actually, adequate res). Now burn it on a CD-R. You will notice the CD-R does not sound (in many cases) as good as the source or even the digital recording on your hard drive. Amazing, but true (at least, in my experience).
I then did a LOT of research into trying to understand why this might be (after all, bits are bits, right?). I learnt a lot about jitter, and audible effects induced from PLL correction.
I ended up designing and building my own CD player that tries to replicate the kind of jitter performance you get from hard disk playback, and it does work.
The album that started me on this journey is James Newton Howard and Friends - a Sheffield Labs title that sounds great on LP but muddy and confused on CD. Well, when you rip that CD to the hard disk, you get a sound that's very similar to the LP - all the clarity in the high frequencies, and the subtlety and "speed" of the dynamics are restored.
PS - if anyone is interested, I have made a CD-R recording of Sting's "... Nothing Like the Sun" LP - which is a digital recording. If you compare it to the actual CD version of the album, you will notice the CD-R exhibits much better dynamics, soundstage, depth (of course, you also get scratches and surface noise, and a bit of groove distortion - can't win them all). If anyone is interested do their own comparison, I can mail them a copy of the CD-R (provided you can prove you have a copy of the album).
- What about 44.1/16 on DVD-A - The Sound Guy 21:08:12 02/17/06 (1)
  Does that sound better than a CD? DVDs use superior error correction and are physically encoded differently.
  - DVD players have their own issues - Christine Tham 23:12:34 02/18/06 (0)
    Mainly due to need to synchronize audio and video. The earliest players featured separate clocks for audio and video, but the problem was a tendency for A/V to go out of sync.
    Newer designs force synchronization by regenerating the audio clock from the video clock via a PLL circuit. Unfortunately, this results in inherent jitter.
- When I look at an old 20 year old Lp, it's easy to be Frank - jdaniel 15:01:08 02/17/06 (0)
  You've got the lp, the needle vibrating in it, the restored equalization in the phono stage...I tell myself the sound I'm hearing just shouldn't *be*!
  I wanted to mention digital lps just to be fair to PCM as it may sound on the master tape at least. ALSO: I wouldn't have a contest between lp and digital on any typical American pressing, or Columbia recording, for the most part.

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