Are records really better than CD's?

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

"skirming" - what does that mean?

It is a slang word for a person who tries to equalize something that is not really equal. You do that a lot my friend.

How many times must I say this... Vinyl is not perfect, digital is not perfect.

This is skirming. You are trying to equalize something by pointing out something obvious. Sure neither is perfect, but vinyl is far LESS perfect than even the CD. Doug Sax, Bob Katz, Bernie Grundman, Bob Ludwig, Wilma Cozart Fine and Steve Hoffman have all gone on the record(no pun intended) as saying so. Bob Ludwig stated that if you wanted accuracy and trueness to the original master, don't listen to vinyl. I have heard it for myself when doing a concert project for my church that Doug Sax mastered and cut the vinyl on. I HAVE ACTUALLY MADE THE COMPARISON, so my opinion is not made in a vaccum like yours is. Wilma Fine stated it this way - "Yes my husbands says the CD sample rate is too low, but the CD's are closer to the masters than the LP is. She was speaking of the living presence collection.

Analog is a technology past it's prime and digital will supplant it entirely at some point in the future, but it's not going to be today, not with redbook as the standard for the average consumer.

The Redbook standard is in decline, and has been for years. Even high end CD players no longer conform to the standard, as they are upconverting and upsamping the audio. CD sales have been dropping by 6-10% year over year every since 2003. Audiophiles have moved on to high resolution disc or downloads, and the general public towards MP3.


Copied from another site...

.a digital recording is not capturing the complete sound wave. It is approximating it with a series of steps. Some sounds that have very quick transitions, such as a drum beat or a trumpet's tone, will be distorted because they change too quickly for the sample rate....

...A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform. This means that no information is lost....

...This means that the waveforms from a vinyl recording can be much more accurate, and that can be heard in the richness of the sound...

...CD quality audio does not do a very good job of replicating the original signal. The main ways to improve the quality of a digital recording are to increase the sampling rate and to increase the accuracy of the sampling...

Whoever wrote this does not have a great understanding of PCM audio. The reconstruction filter combines the individual samples into a singular waveform so that it conforms to the orignal waveform. It is much like a interlaced video being processed into a progressive video format. Each interlaced field is combined to create a single field of video information. Both processes are invisible to the ears and eyes. CD does an excellent job of replicating the original until it gets to 10khz.Above that is where CD has its problems. How much above 10khz can you hear Steve?

At least the person who wrote this comment got the last sentence right, even if he failed on all the rest.

That is the crux of the problem, CD's and MP3's are what is being fed to the public. - As E-Stat has mentioned more than once.

Let's bring a little context to Ralph's comments. He is referring to the kind of music HE LIKES. He does not like classical or jazz, and aside from that, there is not much to choose from in high resolution. If you like classical and jazz, there is a ton of high resolution music out there for the picking. I have a 10 terabyte raid drive full of high resolution music, and another one on the way into my system.

Nobody is being fed anything, it is what you seek out. Seek and ye shall find. If you don't seek, you will find nothing. If you want high resolution music of your liking, you can probably find it these days. HDtracks has Jazz, rock, electronic classical, country and bluegrass, gospel, hip hop and rap, and quite a few subgenre's of the Blues. They have New age, R&B, pop, raggae, soundtracks, and world music. You have to look for them Steve, it is not going to drop in your lap.