B&W and formats

[bigfish786]

So in a promotional B&W email I received, and I'm sure many others did too, they rank CD as the worst sounding format behind vinyl and high-res streaming.

So are they voicing their speakers toward vinyl and high-res streaming? I'm very curious of their opinion.

That’s a bit depressing isn’t it? Maybe their 8 track and cassette decks were high end.

 

[bigfish786]

To add to this, I was reading an article yesterday, by a reviewer (yeah, pinch of salt) but it was about different formats and price. Basically his point was that a high end quality red book cd player would outperform a lower budget sacd or hi res player. Which I can understand. It’s not just down to format. The quality of the playback machinery needs considering too.

 

[JDL]

The thing with CD players is they absolutely do not all sound the same.
So, if some people insist that vinyl records sound better to them than CDs that's fair enough. But...it depends what CD player the person is listening to CDs on before they can really say definitively, that LPs sound better than CD.
I would like to challenge anyone who makes this claim, to listen to some CDs on the right CD player, and then continue to claim that LPs sound better.
I think many of these folks would be surprised and maybe, just maybe, might have to change their minds.

 

[Fandango Andy]

The thing with CD players is they absolutely do not all sound the same.
So, if some people insist that vinyl records sound better to them than CDs that's fair enough. But...it depends what CD player the person is listening to CDs on before they can really say definitively, that LPs sound better than CD.
I would like to challenge anyone who makes this claim, to listen to some CDs on the right CD player, and then continue to claim that LPs sound better.
I think many of these folks would be surprised and maybe, just maybe, might have to change their minds.

"Better" is such a relative term, what does it mean? More detail, greater clarity? Or is it just down what the listener finds pleasing?

 

[Stuart83]

A

To add to this, I was reading an article yesterday, by a reviewer (yeah, pinch of salt) but it was about different formats and price. Basically his point was that a high end quality red book cd player would outperform a lower budget sacd or hi res player. Which I can understand. It’s not just down to format. The quality of the playback machinery needs considering too.

Without doubt I can see that being true as with everything else.
I'm trying to stay away from analogies with this one but it's hard 😊

I remember the "all in one" so called hi-fi's of yesteryear with all the mod cons such as graphic equaliser's, the dreaded high speed dubbing or as a kid I called the "the helium setting" which resulted in terribly dulled recordings, bass boost with rock, pop, and classical sound settings buttons of many and the crazy wattage claims therein.

I had many systems as a kid due to my father's hobby of repairing and collecting the older quality hifi people used to sell when replacing it with these late 80s and Early 90s sharp this and that systems.

I'm not on about the quality all in one stack systems by technics and the like.
I think people know the ones I'm talking of as most of us suffered them at one point.

I always remember the gargantuan difference in sound quality from the modest Philips CD player and sansui au-505 and mission 760i and a various tape decks my father would fix from Sony etc etc, even a nakamichi made it way to me at one point but all costing peanuts from bootsales etc apart from the mission speakers which at 12 were my first ever new set.

I always used to sit in disappointment after hearing the huge boasts prior at the performance of my various friends all in one systems as they cycled through the rock, pop, jazz and classical sound settings adding ever worsening distortion and hiss to boot.

They would pay a triple the price for these systems to hear a quality amp etc years the senior totally outperform them without all the bells and whistles, some detrimental others just plainly bad quality.

The same rule applies now, quality supersedes anything bad quality irrespective of format especially when it's poorly executed.

I don't find much difference at all regardless with HI-Res as per my prior posts I've just updated my main hifi and purchased a Marantz CD60 which plays HI-Res apparently very well via usb so as usual my analytical mind had me try it.

I must admit like most people who have a passion for hifi I'm more than open to an improvement so was keen to try "genuine" HI-Res yet again.
I found nothing much better sounding than the CD I was playing.
The only difference I could find is probably because I wanted to hear it.

Perhaps it's because the CD 60 is very good at what it does therefore the extra format isn't that big of an impact.

I don't want to go into the bitrate debates of what information (bits) is only better to a point and what after that is just "bloat" unless you're a bat or dog but to my ears CD remains king imo 😊

Here's the engineering perspective in a nutshell:

Human range of hearing extends from 20Hz - 20,000Hz

The sampling rate for CDs is sufficient to fully capture sound in this range.

After that it's all about the equipment one uses to hear it.