I totally agree with you that cd sounds better than vinyl, which is incredibly overrated! And I grew up with it in the 60s & 70s! Cd replay has actually come along way since the early days---Denon for example, with their creditable Alpha Processing! DSP room correction has been the game changer, certainly the modern processors available today, allowing you to finally achieve high quality sound in your living room.--- Definitely a route to go down if you have older quality equipment is to have it serviced, and better components fitted inside at the same time. A cost-effective way to hang onto your cherished equipment and to improve the sound of it as well.
Well said sir.
Well said also! Those early Philips cd players were good! Happy memories of my cd104 and 960 players.--- My biggest criticism of today's loudspeakers on the market are the aesthetics, until you really go into the higher price brackets. They just lack that quality look! (Cheap materials maybe). Regarding cables, some of the prices out there are insane! I love my DNM cables (Dennis Morecroft) with their sensible design at sensible prices.
A decent streaming source and a decent record deck far surpass the sound quality of a CD. Looked after older vinyl is far better than the new vinyl of today. The LP is now this largest selling physical media in the UK and the USA in both volume and value. Indeed, the record is now used in the measurement of the UK inflation figures.
Absolute nonsense. CD has better sound quality than vinyl could ever achieve. We have a vinyl revival because people tend to reject new technology, even if CD is 42 years old, because they don't understand it and it's suddenly trendy to buy an ancient format. This is the Luddite mentality which still thinks an ancient format is the last word in quality, when every technical specification of CD utterly trounces those of vinyl. Do you really think Philips and Sony spent years and milllions of pounds inventing a new sound format to make it sound worse than vinyl? The resolution of vinyl is far lower than CD, so it flatters poor recordings, while CD has higher resolution and will reveal poor recordings. Don't blame the resolution of CD making your crappy poor recordings sound dreadful. If you don't like the sound of CD, you are listening to poor recordings, flattered by vinyl for decades. Also, any streaming service using the masters used for CD production will have the same quality as CD. If Tidal masters are 16 bit at 44.1 kHz, then they will be bit for bit identical to CD and therefore sound exactly the same as CD.
Sorry, what has the selling of vinyl and UK inflation figures got to do with sound quality? I was in HMV Bond Street the other day-- the price of Vinyl was insane! Nobody was buying it! There were plenty of people buying cds though.
Not at all. I was around at the move from vinyl to CD in the eighties and it was a revelation, especially as discs went from AAD to DDD. Ink black background and open, uncompressed sound. I have never looked back. I do occasionally listen to my 1970's vinyl, but with a DBX unit to open up the sound, it's the same as those used in recording studios to compress sound for vinyl, vinyl is so noisy and flat due to the technical limitations of the media.
Exactly what I've thought for years. Vinyl lovers prefer the flat, inoffensive low res sound of vinyl. They don't seem to appreciate the ruthlessly revealing sound of CD. Modern high res recordings require a modern (42 year old) format. Perhaps if many older recordings were better quality, vinyl lovers would migrate to CD and finally hear what they've been missing. Vinyl has zero sonic advantages over CD and certainly no practical ones. As I said above, try buying all the new music you want on vinyl, at stupid prices because they saw you coming and then build an extension to store it.
Absolutely! The only good vinyl record would be one that's never been played. Just one play and there's wear. --- The very first cd I purchased back in 85' is now 40 years old, and sounds as good and exactly the same as the day I bought it. --- Steve Miller Band-- Italian XRays one of the first DDD recordings.
I am still using my Mission Cyrus 1 (serial 100084!) and it remains great compared to amps I have auditioned recently. Even for speakers, I auditioned KEF R3Meta and was underwhelmed compared to my 80s Missions, finding them unengaging . I think the front end has moved on much further (of course CDs are better than vinyl, although I get the enthusiasts who are taken by vinyl in the same way as Rolexes are prized much more than quartz watches despite the latter being 100 fold cheaper and more accurate).
I am still using my original Audiomaster ( KJ Leisuresound's in-house brand) LS3/5A's albeit with a Bel Canto pre-amp and monoblock power combination. They still sound great after 50 years of hard use ( Pretty much non stop Heavy Metal through the Eighties). They are now in the kitchen and are used for more easy listening ( Melody Gardot etc) but every now and then they get a blast of Judas Priest and the like where they definitely come up short !! I haven't heard one of the new pairs of LS3/5As but I imagine they would also sound great but not substantially different. They weren't the best choice of speakers for a youung Heavy Metal fan but they have served me well and I won't be parting with them any day soon.
Analogue audio is increasingly being matched by digital, although there are aspects that have improved enormously. Especially the dynamics 24 bit means from -144dB to 0dB. Although 144dB sound pressure is far above the pain threshold. Unfortunately, the dynamics are not applied correctly. Even on an album LP or CD the differences in volume are enormous. First you have to turn up the volume and the next track is way too loud. Often the microphones are not positioned correctly, causing the acoustics to disappear. 54 years ago I listened to a demonstration of the ESL 57. I did not understand that my ears saw what was hidden from the eyes. Sounds strange, but even then it was possible to position the musicians with electrostatic speakers. There was no coloration, it sounded perfect. Only the lower frequencies and the volume were not at the desired level. And that has now been resolved, now there is equipment that, if it has been recorded properly, absolutely no shortcomings. It sounds analog without background noise. Yes Hi-Fi has become much better.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram