View Full Version : Audiophiles!
Right, I am starting this thread as an off-shoot of the F+F thread which briefly got steered away on to the subject of hi end hi-fi.
I feel that I must state (at the risk of getting shot to pieces!),that vinyl knocks cd's into a cocked hat when it comes to sound quality. I have just spent the last 2 hours listening to one of my fave "old" albums on vinyl, Simple Minds "Sparkle in the rain."The clarity and warmth of the music really is quite staggering. It is the first time in a long time that I have used my hi-fi turntable instead of my cd player or my decks and the difference is stunning. Yeah I know cd's are a much more user friendly format and don't have back ground noise and loads of other reasonable arguments but even so I love vinyl. :)
Ahh .... I cant get over the background noise hiss **** for me .... doesnt make any difference on Guns and Roses or AC DC LPs but ... classical music .... that hiss gets right on my tits ...... so my vote goes to the CD.
briefly steered it off topic, it totally anhialated it, it was wiped off the face of the earth, there were only half a dozen replies that had anything to do with it, thats not bad for a total of 37. but i dont care coz it was a bit poo. ;)
Oh yeah, vinyl rocks.
And if you don't beleive us, get something intricate - like Rhayder Goes To Town by Camel - play CD then LP back2back.
And you'll see we are right!!!
Even my dear nearly tone deaf mother noticed the improvement over CD!!!
Isn't this a bit of a digital vs analogue argument though?
Originally posted by andyf:
<STRONG>Isn't this a bit of a digital vs analogue argument though?</STRONG>
I totally agree Andy.
I think cd quality is much better, but what u have to remember about the older stuff is that when u get it on cd now, its usually "digitally re-mastered" (fecked about with, cos someone thought it sounded better their way) so it wont sound exactly like the original.
Its also been taken from analogue and turned to digital.
An arguement ive heard b4 is that taking away the backgroung hiss from the song, somehow loses a bit of the atmosphere (cant think of the right word).
Problem with cd's and digital in general is that u cant have as much variation as u can have with analogue.
eg. if u have an old analogue volume control, u have complete control over ur volume.
But if u have a digital volume control then u can only set it to one of the 30 or 40 increments that someone else has decided on.
Ok, im obviously up tooo late, im goin to bed now
Kev
The digital v. anaolgue debate comes up all the time at work. One day last week one of the new reporters was looking for a mindisc recorder that worked (BBC been buying crap little Sony domestic jobs with no durability whatsoever) and couldn't find one. So we dug her out one of the old quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape jobs we were using until maybe three years ago. Had to show her how to work it, 'cos most of the newcomers have never touched tape, and when she got back she had to dub it off the old fashioned way onto the computer to edit it. She came out of the studio in raptures about how brilliant the tape quality was compared to the minidiscs.
And me too...well looked afer vinyl on a half decent turntable every time over CD please. (to the point where I've started buying secnd hand vinyl again after getting rid of most of my stuff years ago).
[ 17-02-2002: Message edited by: Dodger ]
And as an aside to that: speaker cable. I've tried perhaps eight or nine different types of (sometimes) ludicrously expensive cable, bi-wiring, and all sorts of other crap to get a better signal to the speakers over the years. UNTIL - last year a BBC engineer of my aquaintance suggested I tried some good ol' humble domestic 15amp 3-core cable. One core to send to the speakers and the other two to return. Absolutely brill - and dirt cheap too.
Jezz_S13
17-02-2002, 08:52
Audiophiles where? I was expencting to find comprimising pictures of baby Hi-Fi. :(
Vinyl! Deffo.
Besides it sounding fuller and richer there is something about getting this great big bit of plastic out of it huge wrapper.
I've been buying bits of vinyl, lately last week in fact, The Hives, White Stripes, Atari Teenage Riot....
I have to say though that a combination of my laziness and the sheer convenience of a CD, CD's usual get played.
Oh and you can't copy records and d'load them off the web. ;)
Jezz.
I saw the light when I moved house and finally had the room to buy a grown up system.
Previously I just had a portable stereo thingy which on reflection was absolute pish!
I went off to Richer Sounds in Romford (Top place by the way) and got myself a basic Denon amp, Sony CD player and some wee Mordaunt-Short bookshelf speakers and.....FECK ME! what a difference, I must've listened to my entire CD collection in the space of a few days.
Currently toying with the idea of buying a pair of floor standers, but it's that or a blitz induction kit(or paying off my credit card) decisions decisions!! :rolleyes:
Dave
One of the major gripes people have about 16bit cd is that it sounds "clinical", due to the limited sampling rate of 48Khz.
Am interested to hear SACD and DVD-Audio to see if the hike in Sampling rate to 96Khz (or higher) makes much differnce.
I have got a few 24Bit DTS CD's and they sound fab, but then DTS does anyway and you can hardly call it purist now can you.
Need to get a Rega Planer 3 myself, have got a fair bit of vinyl but no way of playing it at the mo :(
Jezz_S13
17-02-2002, 12:38
Originally posted by JohnD76:
<STRONG>
Need to get a Rega Planer 3 myself, have got a fair bit of vinyl but no way of playing it at the mo :(</STRONG>
Beautiful decks, I swapped my old Technics SL-1200 for a brand new Rega P3 a few years back. Best deal I've had, ever.
Those new project Debut's are pretty good too though, esp for only £120
Jezz.
Originally posted by Kevs 200sx:
<STRONG>
An arguement ive heard b4 is that taking away the backgroung hiss from the song, somehow loses a bit of the atmosphere (cant think of the right word).
</STRONG>
Ambience?
Originally posted by Dodger:
<STRONG>She came out of the studio in raptures about how brilliant the tape quality was compared to the minidiscs.
And me too...well looked afer vinyl on a half decent turntable every time over CD please. (to the point where I've started buying secnd hand vinyl again after getting rid of most of my stuff years ago).
</STRONG>
Well I have an issue with minidisc anyway as it uses a compressed format yet they still claim "better than CD"... well I'd like an uncompressed format and medium please.
Not experienced much vinyl... My dad had a really old turntable but when I was about 5 or 6 (so I've been told) I smeared it all with jam and broke it and my dad was a bit cross. Oh well.. :D
Originally posted by andyf:
<STRONG>
Ambience?</STRONG>
Thats a better word Andy, but not quite the word i mean.
It will come to me (in about a week)
Kev
Ah andyf, I also have an issue with minidisc quality. I reckon that minidisc is like best quality cassette inasmuch as it always sounds best played back off the machine it was recorded on (and that shouldn't be the case with minidisc). It's beyond me why (other than for reasons of compactness and speed of access of tracks for dubbing and editing) broadcasters went for minidisc over DAT. Sound quality should be the priority of course. To bore the arse off all of you minidisc uses a compression called ATRAC - Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding. It lets you store 74 minutes of (allegedly) CD quality music, speech or whatever, in the amount of space it would take a CD to store 15 minutes. Just about all the speech (other than live of course) that you hear on the radio now - ie news reports and so on - has been recorded on minidisc, and converted to MP3 or other compression formats used by the welter of digital editing/playout systems on the go these days. To bore you doubly stupid, the system that's becoming BBC standard is called Radioman, and it's been sold to us by a firm called Jutel from Finland. Nobody who has to work with it is simply indifferent to it - it is either loved or hated. And none of the systems sound as good on air as analogue quarter- inch tape. Rant over.
Tricky-Ricky
17-02-2002, 21:29
Well i think my hearing must be fcuked beacause i quite like mini disc! use it at home and in the car! but i must admit to thinking about changing car MD to Mp3! anyone want to buy a Sony MD head unit with DSP ???
Daniel san
17-02-2002, 21:59
Vinyl generally does sound better due to the greater bandwith allowed for recording. The Rega decks are very good, specially as they won't break the bank too. :)
CD is compressed. MD is more so compressed.
Dolby Digital 5.1 uses around 16:1 compression.
DTS 5.1 uses around 4:1 and therefore sounds better.
Guys,
Minidisc has never been touted as better than CD quality, or if it has it has been done by a complete twonk. I was a very early adopter of minidisc since tapes are poo, unless you have a Nak Dragon of course. Minidisc is so conveniant and doesn't get eaten by cheap car players either. I was using a dolby S deck before but with Thats Metal tapes, but MD beats this sound hands down. ATRAC has come a long way but will never sound as good as CD, mainly due to Minidisc only being about 60MB in size.
I have got Minidisc in the car, with a CD changer in the boot, well nearly in the boot, still in box infact :( All my MD are copies, and hence I don't mind losing them if some c**t breaks into the car. Would be a lot more plssed if I lost the same amount of oringinal CD's. I know I could copy them, but most people just don't do that. MD I find is also less succeptable to skip, re-recordable, edittable, amd small :)
As Dan said, DTS uses twice the amount of storage space as DD, hence it sounds a a lot better, if encoded well. But still disposes of 80% of the sound/noise and only keeps 20%. Scary.
Hey John, I used to use "THATS" metal tapes but found that they degraded too quickly if you played them a lot. I went over to Maxell XLII chromes and found them to be much more reliable with a negligable, if any loss of sound quality.
They weighted a tonne too.
Also found that the transport in the THATS tapes wasn't the best, even after rewinding and fastwording in the deck before recording.
My incar cassetter deck still used to eat them :(
Hence the move to MD.
Any of you guys tried the Musical Fidelity X series? Like the X10D "missing link" or phono stage X-LP? Or X-Cans headphone amp? Have got an X10D and always use it, sounds good with my Pioneer CD player. Will go for an X-LP when I get my Planer 3 too.
[ 18-02-2002: Message edited by: JohnD76 ]
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