Quote Originally Posted by Hyfi
First of all, the CD format still does not equal the sound (forget about snap crackle pop or tape hiss) of an Album or a good Cassette recording of an album due to the square sound wave of digital. Yes some are better than others and the way in which some labels like Maple Shade and Chesky record CDs do sound stellar.

I have 20 year old cassette recordings of my old albums that have much more emotion and lifelike sound than the same CD. The analog sound wave lets you hear a cymbal crash from start to end, not just half of it and then a quick dropoff.

99% of the time the artist does not have much control over the engineer that super compresses the CD so it will play loud on the radio.

When reviewers talk about the sound, think about sitting next to someone playing an acoustic bass. You hear the notes resonate, you hear the artists breath, his fingers sliding up and down the neck. You can tell it is a hollow bodied upright bass. If you don't hear all the same from one pc of gear but do from another, you have your answer as to which pc of gear is truer to life and the tone and timber of an instrument sounds like it would if in the room.

Now play the same recording on a mass market receiver or HT system and tell me if it sounds the same as playing it thru equipment like you see in my signature.
I do agree that they do compress some CD's to the point that some of the original sounds are lost in transmission. I will say there are also some disks out there that the studio or the artist put the time in and made sure that this did not happen to that level. Every time you take a analog format or original cut and put it to digital you have some loss. It the master is in digital then the losses are in the digital to analog transmission. But the compact disk format as a whole has higher signal to noise levels and with the proper playback equipment such as a good quality CD deck and DAC the losses are at a minimum. the main reason the cassette died is also the same as the vhs video tape. Every time you play the tape there is tape head contact and wear. After numerous playbacks the quality will start to suffer from this.

I too have made recordings to cassette that amazed people to what can be done with cassettes even seeing the fact that this format losses its ability to have much information below around the 35 to 40 hz range and above 10 to 15 khz. I know people will debate this but from what I have seen this is true. I have even made audio only recordings on VHS tapes using the hifi sound tracking of the HiFI vcrs with awesome results. Most people don't realize how good vhs HiFi tracking can be for audio recording but I have done it.

Now vinyl does have a definite advantage over cd in the fact that the frequency range is just as good with good equipment. There is no fomat converting to degrade the signal. So I do see the advantage to vinyl. It does have a more natural response and with good enough playback equipment the difference in the smoothness and overall audio information that can be drawn is definitely apparent.

I will add that out of everyone in this forum that I have seen I have yet to see a person with a equipment list in their signature that still has a tape deck listed. I do see the draw to vinyl. But cassettes to me have more downsides than upsides and thats why my higher end Yamaha tape deck that I used to use is know in a closet stored away.