Why do classical fans seem to hate vinyl so much?

IME there is plenty to know when buying either LP or CD. Heck if you randomly go out and buy Decca CDs you might not ever know how good their recordings actually were. So many of the early Decca CDs were horrible. Take either of the RCA CD box sets. Great value but not good sound at all. OTOH the SACDs have been quite good. IMO better than many shaded dog LPs (which are their own mine field) although it does involve certain trade offs. Then if you consider the offerings from AP, Chesky and Classics on 45 rpm the game changes again very much in favor of those LPs when it comes to the RCAs. IMO the Decca label is even more complex. It's a mine field with both media and there is a lot to know if you don't want to constantly step and explode. Hence one of the real virtues of this forum. It offers a broad and deep, all be it noisy, knowledge base when it comes to such matters.

 

I keep waiting for a good mastering of the 'Phase 4' Stokowski/LSO Beethoven "Chorale" Symphony. The original LP was okay, but obviously compromised by 'virtue' of getting it all on a single LP. And the best thing about the recording—a performance of the adagio that rivals Bruno Walter's—is split in two to fit on the LP. I know there must be better source material out there then what Deeca came up with when reissuing the recording on CD. Two LPs worth of that recording, all analog? I'd buy that.

 

The main article refutes this comment so you're kind of arguing the point against yourself here. The article I pointed to agrees with what you're saying!

 

I'm sorry, might have miscommunicated. I know that LPs can be compressed as much as CDs, it's all in the mastering. I'm agreeing with the author. I'm agreeing in saying that the notion that LPs have a wider potential dynamic range than a recording in a digital format is a myth.

 

Indeed and yet some people including our host are unhappy with those who suggest that CD has a wider frequency range, dynamics and higher S/N ratio to vinyl. I'm glad I own both and can listen to both. That way I don;t have to worry about the arguments over which medium is superior. There are titles where either format can sound superior over the other. A lot of what makes the sound "quality" is the mastering itself.

 

I thought it was a clear answer. And I do not care for your tone. I have been more than willing to acknowledge that others may find vinyl preferable to digital; even gone so far in this thread to state that if the quality of vinyl were of a consistently higher standard, I might not have made the switch. But it is not, and a good turntable and cartridge, while certainly improving the sound, did not make the clicks and pops that annoy me vanish.

Unless and until you have my ears, you should not be so ready to judge my perceptions and priorities, just as I have not judged yours.

 

It may be the case that our host was unhappy not so much with your assertion regarding certain specs, but with your larger conclusions---"from an audiophile technical standpoint CD's trump vinyl in every single way" and "Bless the little digital blighters, they are so much better"---which cannot be derived solely from those specs and are therefore questionable.

 

In hunting for used classical vinyl, I tend to label shop more than other genres. I'm more liable to grab a Philips or pre-digital DG even if I'm not all that familiar with the music or performers.

Occasionally, I'll grab an Angel clunker for the music and put up with the pressing. Even if it's quiet, it sounds worse than its European counterparts as I've had some HMV and Angel records of the same performance back in the 70s to compare.

 

Can you please expand on this? You lost me, if I'm honest. Are you saying that the better, and not realistically up for argument, specs. of CD alone cannot be sole reason for a CD being better than its LP equivalent ie. the mastering is also an important factor OR are you saying that a "broad" statement I made about ALL CD's automatically being better technically than LP's is "questionable" because in reality not many "popular recordings" do actually sound better than the LP equivalents? If so, I agree with both those assertions anyway and I've already made that case elsewhere.

If not, I'd simply question why something which is scientifically and technically proven to be superior in sound reproduction capability cannot be described as better from an audiophile or technical standpoint?

 

I'm saying what my original post said: your larger conclusions---"from an audiophile technical standpoint CD's trump vinyl in every single way" and "Bless the little digital blighters, they are so much better"---cannot be derived solely from the specs you cite and are therefore questionable. If your conclusions (quoted above) regarding the relative merits of CDs and LPs were based in part on other considerations, that was not clear, as you did not present those other considerations.

Because the specs you cited in your previous post do not constitute a valid argument that CDs are "scientifically and technically proven to be superior in sound reproduction capability" to LPs.

 

Great post that mirrors my thoughts exactly. Thank you for putting it so succinctly.

Vinyl folks- some classical listeners generally prefer CDs over vinyl for any number of reasons. Get over it.

 

I used to listen to some Bach and Vivaldi and remember favouring cassette releases over lps, esp after my mom borrowed my stereo to listen to listen to some Chopin and it was more of a firecracker festival than a piano suite. Tape hiss was at least even.

 

Might be worth sending an email to ORG. They are reissuing many Decca titles and their versions are absolutely state of the art.

 

The dynamic range of either CD or LP is really rarely an issue with most recordings, even classical recordings. What one can't overlook though is the effect vinyl has on perceived dynamics. There are distrotions that happen in loud passages on vinyl that create an aural illusion of more loudness, body and harmonic complexity. This works well since this is something that suffers wehn comparing stereo recording and playback to live acoustic music. It technically isn't accurate but it helps create an illusion that seems more accurate to the real thing.

 

CD doesn't have a wider frequency range and the dynamic range is comparable when we deal with the real world implementation of the two media. And rarely is either a real issue when things are being done well. If we are going to get technical we may as well be accurate about it.

 

Right, the dynamic range of redbook CD cannot be wider than that of ordinary LP.

I read nearly ten years ago one Australian article the writer of it had made real world measurements with both CD's and LP's. The conclusion was that in practice the dynamic range was slightly better on CD's, but the question was whether it was noticeable while listening.

 

It wasn't clear to me.

What "tone?" You made a statement that struck me as odd and I asked for clarification. You never really clarified anything. I have no idea what tone you found objectionable. I thought I was being quite polite.

Well now you have actually finally answered my question. You originally said
"My last turntable and cartridge were certainly not state of the art, but they were respectable (Well-Tempered Record Player and a Grado cartridge). Didn't make any difference. I still moved to digital."

So I asked, politely, as a matter of clarification so I would understand what you meant..

"Didn't make "any" difference? As in all vinyl playback sounds the same to you? Am I understand you correctly?"

And you did not answer *that* question.

I never "judged" your perceptions or priorities. Nor did I judge your gear. You made an assertion "My last turntable and cartridge were certainly not state of the art, but they were respectable (Well-Tempered Record Player and a Grado cartridge). Didn't make any difference." Which looks to me on the surface that you were saying that gear sounded no different to you than any other vinyl playback gear. So I was just trying to figure out if what you said was what you meant. Now you have answered the question. "a good turntable and cartridge, while certainly improving the sound"

 

I would change that from ordinary to state of the art LP. But yeah

 

My bad, sorry!

I meant the frequency range, of course. The frequency range cannot be wider on redbook.

 

You can also apply this to High Res audio files, 24 bit / 192khz etc. I've read somewhere where a university conducted a survey with random ordinary members of the public and subjected them to a series of music listening tests whereby high resolution music files were randomly inserted into "ordinary" 16 bit /44.1khz CD playback to see if people could hear any difference between the two with the same identical mastering. The results were just a little under 50% correct answers which was put down to chance so they drew the conclusion that most people can't actually hear any difference.

 

Who here cares whether or not "ordinary people" can or can't hear a difference?

 

You should. That is unless you're super-human or something?

 

True. If the differences between redbook and hirez were overwhelming, only few people would stick to redbook. It's both an issue of education (who will teach to listen & who bothers to learn etc.) and of gear. Serious "high-end" is almost a necessity; some combination stereos from local department store won't do. I'm fine with my "mid-end" gear and I don't even imagine to buy 24/192 files: that would be pointless in my case.

Btw, I remember one German study, a diploma work on audio playback technology (or somesuch). I think he tried to compare redbook playback and hires playback. If I remember right, he didn't got any unambiguous results, except this: the secretary (who was in the same listening room with the "lab rats") of the lab listenings usually got a headache while the redbook was played...

 

I find this quite fascinating actually and I always wonder whether ANYTHING in HD can automatically be superior to something else SD even if the product quality is poor and cheaply made. A case in point is my current Krell DVD player. Most people would probably suggest that a $60 Sony Blu-ray player would be better simply because it's HD, but is this always true? I picked up a £60 Sony BDP the other day and it was a lightweight plastic box I could hold in one hand with little inside it. Can this beat a relatively high-end non Blu-ray player from a few years ago? I'm thinking about the quality of CD playback and DVD up-scaling rather than anything else, obviously. I don't have any HD formats at the moment, just CD, LP, DVD. No Blu, SACD or DVD-A.

Likewise, some people hear have seemed surprised that not everyone owns a SACD player and one person suggested that was all anyone needed - a $150 player from Walmart and you're done. But would a cheap SACD player reproduce better sound than a $20,000 CDP if the same music master was reproduced on both with the different respective layers? Or put another way, can a superior product with standard definition exceed the performance of a budget product with high definition capabilities.

Over here, not many Hi-Fi retailers appeared to be interested in HD digital audio and the take up of HD audio formats was very limited to say the least. I think the market for disc driven hardware has almost died now.

 

Your questions are rhetorical, I guess, at least I can't answer. Someone with solid training in engineering can. But I've learned a thing or two from those who know more. (1) No matter what chip is inside the player, if the analog out is poorly made (i.e. of poor quality) - you just won't get everything out of your discs. (2) Unfortunately the quality has something to do with the price, and vice versa. Already on that ground I would suspect that well-made CD player with high quality parts cannot be beated by those $150 players. Based on my own experiences with Denon & Marantz universal players, and good technical explanations I've heard, I tend to be sceptical with claims that one player does it all.