I never thought this thread was about the music. It seems that the point about vinyal is that equipment makes it or breaks it. While there is signficiantly more room for error when setting up a decent CD playback.

 

except that isn't how it is. Any half-assed rig will give good results with vinyl. You don't need a $1200 turntable, and anyone who thinks you do is more in love with the equipment, and the music is entirely secondary to their fetish. That's fine, but that attitude identifies the snob. If you are looking for better sound from music, records are the way to go, IMHO. If you are looking for something to brag about, spend all your money on equipment and don't even bother buying any records, because you won't actually listen to them anyway.

There is this perception that a CD sounds *exactly* like something, and it sounds inherently better than a record. This idea is argued over, propogated on the internet, and causes great rifts among friends. But the reality is, they both are merely interpretations of something else, and neither reproduce anything exactly as it happened. Some people just like the sound of records better than the sound of CDs. It has nothing to do with mechanical differences, or esoteric physics discussions, it has to do with the way the sound is captured and played back, and how that affects the music. Anyone who spends anytime arguing one way or another about which sounds better technically has missed the point. It is about how they sound different, and personal preference, not some abstract technical merit.

If your goal is to spend money until your records sound like CD's, you are an idiot. Just buy a cheap CD player, and plop in your favorite CD, and call it a day, already. If, on the other hand, you prefer the sound of records, and tube amps, and enjoy the ways they are different than CD's, you can spend a whole crap-ton of cash, or not. Just go buy a record player, hook it up to whatever you have, and enjoy. If you want a tube amp, or simply more volume and better sound, spend some money on preamps/amps, speakers, turntables, tone arms, styli, whatever you want to get into. But pretending that music isn't worth listening to on any system costing less than a new Mercedes is just personal snobbery, and needless self-denial. Anyone who has actually heard a record knows they sound different than CDs at any price level. If you only like the sound of records on super-high end equipment, you don't like the sound of records, you like the smell of money. And that is something entirely different than the sound of records.

 

[QUOTE=no_really,Feb 15 2006, 07:44 PM]except that isn't how it is.

 

it's not really a question of whether CDs sound better, it is a question of whether you enjoy the sound of records. And if you enjoy the sound of records, you can enjoy that sound at any price level, same as with CDs.

Kind of like whether you enjoy driving RWD cars over FWD. If you enjoy RWD, you can certainly distinguish between RWD cars, but that doesn't mean you'd refuse to buy any RWD car that didn't cost less than $125K, or try to argue that any RWD car that costs less is not worth owning because it doesn't drive like a supercar.

You'd laugh at someone driving a FWD econobox who goes on and on about how great RWD was, but refused to buy a RWD car unless it was a new Ferrari. Same goes for people who refuse to buy a record player just because it cost less than a grand, but insist records are "better." And you'd be laughing because they are denying themselves the experience of what they profess to enjoy, out of a misguided belief that only those things they can't have are worth having.

Consider the person who says they love wine, but won't drink it out of anything but expensive crystal they can't afford, justifying their position with the excuse that wine out of a cheaper glass "just isn't the same."

 

Importsport is far from a snob, he just knows what he's talking about.

 

I think it's hard to truely define becuase of the differing media, recording techniques, mastering techniques, etc.

My referance cd, and one of my favourites as well is the Tchaykovski's 1812 Overture recored by Erich Kunzel and the Cincinati orchestra.

It is a Telarc disc, I don't have it handy, but I believe it was recorderd, mixed, and mastered completely digital.

The sound quality of this disc is freakin outstanding on even the crappiest system, so here'e were the differance comes in then I suppose.

I have a rotel CD player, and a marantz record player.

I have both the CD and Record of the above recording.

When I listen to the CD, I think to myself, nothing could ever be more musical, more beautiful then this. If I put the record in, I think to myself, there is no better sounding thing in the world ( Save for Eliza Dushku saying "do me Mikey")

To sum up, same music, different medium, equivilent sources, net result? I'd be a moron if I sat there trying to figure out which was best. I'll split your argument and say with out good source material none of this matters.

 

PS. 80% of my music listening is done on my Marantz 5 disk changer

 

I don't think he is a snob, I just don't agree that the equipment "makes it or breaks it." Any record player will give you the sound of a record. Any CD player will give you the sound of a CD. The amount you spend on the various pieces of equipment is not important from that standpoint.

If you like the particular esthetic of records, an old record player/8-track/am/fm stereo playing a good record through 70's speakers still sounds good. Not as good as any high-end system, for sure. But definitely listenable, and definitely identifiable as a record playing. By the same token, a CD played through a system sounds only as good as the system, but if that's all you got, and you got it for the music, it works. You upgrade as you go, you don't tend to go without until you can buy what you have heard was the best, unless your only interest is in having the best, not in playing records.

When the equipment becomes more important to you than the music, then it isn't the record you love, it is the gadgets. Not that there's anything wrong with that

And who said you couldn't play records in a car?

 

Except, of course, the microphones. I guess they could have mics with digital output, but they would still need an internal ADC.

Its funny, but it seems that only 5% or so of CDs seem to be quality recordings. One of the best sounding CDs I have is Willie Nelson's Stardust album. Not my favorite artist, but I listen to it because it just sounds good.

 

What happens when you hit a bump?