Quote Originally Posted by Kaboom
If you look at the graph u'll see above the 10khz range the CD does a pretty lousy job of sampling the signal. This means that trumpets, cymbals and in general all metal instruments will have a part of their harmonics reproduced incorrectly

Ok CD-lovers, let the flaming start...
And I don't feel I'm missing anything. On the contrary, I've been replacing a lot my old vinyl with DVD-Audio disks, and am hearing things I've never heard before on these tracks. Of course it could be that they are going back to the master tapes to make the DVD-Audio pressings, but I've never heard YES, the Eagles, or even the Doors sound so good.

The link to the "how stuff works" site is nice, but a look at it shows that's it's graph is misleading. The Waveform of a CD recording is not a truncated square wave like the graph shows when it reaches your preamp. The A/D converter of your CD player decodes the waveform from the digital PCM. It doesn't look like the graph after this is done. A good CD player will show a perfect 10khz waveform with the corresponding PCM signal.

The one test that phono looses, and it's a big one, is in the signal to noise ratio. Even the best cartridges have ratings up in the 60's, while the best CD player approach 100db or better. This does not mean the vinyl doesn't sound good, it just means that all things being equal CD's can be better.

The real problem that I've found with CDs is that the quality of the Recordings can be very poor. A lot of recorded music has been purposely mixed for cars & or clubs, and is NOT of high quality. Audiophile quality CDs can be very expensive too, so your not likely to see them in your local music store. JVC, Telarc, and a few others make these, and they are quite a revelation if you ever have a chance to sample one with a good CD player.

I've also replaced my FM tuner with the Digital music channels that come in with my digital cable. They are of much higher quality than I've been able to get with FM, and some of the Jazz recordings even rival CD. I'm using an Scientific Atlanta HD cable box, and I'm pretty sure it's got 192khz/24bit decoders in it.

Oh, there's not going to be any flame wars here either, I assure you!