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Vinyl Asylum Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ. |
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Vinyl Asylum Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ. |
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In Reply to: Vinyl Vs CD posted by John-from Seattle on October 14, 2006 at 18:46:59:
Perhaps the main reason why I still enjoy vinyl after all these years has actually little to do with music or sound quality (although both are very welcome advantages over CD). I presume it has more to do with the notion that I find vinyl to be a much more enjoyable format than CDs when it comes to the whole music listening experience. Even TT setup and record cleaning, tedious as these tasks may be to some, can be part of the allure. It definitely isn't about format convenience - even CD's aren't all that convenient or hassle-free these days, if you want/need the ultimate in convenience, get an iPod.Real truth is, even though the LP is incredibly capable of an amazingly broad dynamic range in hands of a competent mastering engineer, its main allure certainly isn't true-to-life reproduction - it just won't be 100% there, ever. We can pretend it to be there, but what we hear on an LP are, for the most part, the sonic artifacts that give LPs that enjoyable warmth and roundness feeling to most any recording that get to be printed in that format, from analog sources or otherwise. (even much-maligned early digital recordings on LP benefit a lot of the inherent warm sonic signature of the format). Is this really a problem? Only if you are too anal to care more about the "truth-to-lifeness" ratio than for the music itself. Suffice it to say live performances (specially from acoustic ensembles, orchestras and folk bands) share a level of inmediacy, warmth and soundstage that is often more evident on vinyl than on CD. If we are going to deceive ourselves sonically, at least we should do so in a fancy and fashionable manner. At least it works wonders with small ensembles.. :D
An aspect I found positive of my trip to HE2006 some months ago was being able to solve this dilemma for once and all. Got the chance to listen to some master tapes in straight form for the first time, and nothing in the show, or before that, compared to it in terms of absoute realism, soundstage and dynamics. No LP or CD I've ever heard -in my nice but rather modest system- has ever sounded this real, this close (and we're talking about recordings I've heard dozens of times before).
The only digital system that I heard there that could be both more enjoyable and convenient than vinyl wasn't even for sale. It was a room demo by Ray Kimber and his experimental IsoMike recordings, consisting of pure DSD recordings with no limiting, no compression and no EQ played through a $200.000 system consisting of big Pass Labs X350.5 monoblocks, B&W 800D loudspeakers and, of course, Kimber interconnects and speaker cable. It took that kind and level of gear, technology and money to find something that could definitely surpass the level of realism, soundstage and overall goosebump-inducing enjoyment I get with vinyl from my system (40 times cheaper), and it isn't even comercially available yet. So it's easy to see why the closest alternative looks so attractive for some of us...
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Follow Ups
- "Better" is a terribly relative term when it comes to vinyl (long) - beto 22:22:03 10/14/06 (2)
- Re: "Better" is a terribly relative term when it comes to vinyl (long) - John-from Seattle 08:51:47 10/15/06 (0)
- actually it is commercially available - tunenut 23:15:31 10/14/06 (0)
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