Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry.

---

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Critic's Corner ]

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

RE: Vinyl Revival Causes Discord

Posted by DrChaos (A) on May 1, 2012 at 22:59:40

In Reply to: Vinyl Revival Causes Discord posted by samtellig on May 1, 2012 at 17:11:00:

My reaction: Was the author drunk? What is his point? Vinyl is silly? Maybe but who cares?

"Digital did to music what Photoshop did to photography."

As far as I can tell, what Photoshop did to photography was get rid of needless chemical production. Other than that....photography is good and bad depending on the brain behind and in front of the camera.

Does a Dremel tool ruin sculpture? What would Michelangelo say? He'd ask for a dozen.

If people want to buy classical records on vinyl, let them, even if it's dumb. Just the fact that they are being bought by ANYBODY is a good thing.

And I personally think that 256kbps VBR AAC from iTunes is transparent and indistinguishable for virtually all needs from 16/44.1. No it probably wouldn't be indistinguishable from 48/24 5 channel but nobody records that anyway for music.

(note I didn't say 128kbps or MP3 or constant bit rate, and I mean it).

I personally believe that the author's apparent presumption that "CD-quality", i.e. uncompressed 16/44 is so much better than iTunes plus is actually quite a bit more irrational than the vinyl lovers. Obviously vinyl certainly sounds different, and you get a large tactile and physical object. If you like that, then go for it. It doesn't pop my toast (I don't want to bother with cleaning records or needles or changing sides after 25 minutes or any of that) but if you don't mind, and you like the other intentional differences, then why not?

By contrast the difference between the AAC format and uncompressed digital of the same input is extremely small perceptually. (modern VBR AAC codecs are very aggressive on dynamically allocating bit rate for appropriate complexity, I've seen instantaneous bit rates over 350kbps towards beginning of classical tracks).

I've subscribed to MOG. I can listen to 5 different recordings of exactly the same piece, changing within seconds. The audio experience is very different from one another. After a few months my conclusion is that recording quality comes from good engineering and maybe luck during the recording, everything else after that is pretty minor.

Edits: 05/01/12

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Parts Connexion

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---