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In Reply to: RE: Messrs. Atkinson and Fremer are mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore! posted by regmac on January 26, 2008 at 12:44:36
at $6.00.
(I really have to renew my subscription.)
And your point is?
Surely you are not going to argue that MP3s are indistinguishable from RBCD in any half-decent playback system.
And perhaps you didn't see a recent article by a non-audiophile in an non-audiophile publication that mentioned that JA and, IIRC, WP distinguished between two cables in an SBT, even though many of the run-of-the-show people were less successful in doing so.
Having now read both pieces (Atkinson's and Fremer's), I think it's fair to say that their basic point is that people need to be reminded of what music really sounds like, and it's disappointing (to say the least) when people who listen to music seriously (like Teachout) promote the notion that playback quality doesn't matter (or doesn't matter very much).
The only gripe that I have is about Fremer's analogy between "old" music and old technology (like vinyl). Of course no one would seriously argue that "old" music is worse than "new" music; it's just different. But, in the world of technology "new" is often -- but not always -- better. So -- picking up on Fremer's analogy -- while it is ridiculous to say that 1950s jazz is inferior, that fact does not make it equally ridiculous to say that 1950s audio playback technology is inferior.
In fact, for those who've been around long enough to know, today's vinyl playback system is not "your father's" vinyl playback system of the 1950s. It is better. Vinyl is an old technology, but that doesn't mean that it's not susceptible to improvements. The reason that CD looked so good at first is that it does solve the identified problems with vinyl: pitch instability, low-frequency noise, harmonic distortion, dynamic range.
However, CD brings with it a whole new set of problems, unknown to vinyl. It's just that those problems are "invisible" to the metrics traditionally applied to vinyl playback.
Meanwhile, with a lot of diligence, the magnitude of vinyl's problems has certainly been reduced over the past 40 years.
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