Can CDR's capture everything vinyl has to offer?

Oh my. We're not having this conversation, are we? If people would only listen. Hey Grant, one question: How come most people will say that 24/96 processing sounds better than 16/44kHz processing???

In my Opinion, the answer is one of HIGHER RESOLUTION. The 16 Bit cd (based on my ears and the $3000 cd system I once owned) CANNOT give you the resolution that good analog can give you. And I heard the difference with an old Thorens turntable.

Go ask Doug Sax. He'll tell you how something is "LOST" in the transfer from analog tapes to digital. The vinyl always captures more of what is on the master tape. Maybe that will change someday. But as of today, ALL my vinyl records sound much more natural than the cd counterparts.

Hey Tom Port! How did you get to be a "Senior Member" already. Man, get your name on the back of one album and your a star. lol.
By the way Tom, your replies above really say it all.

 

I am very familliar with Doug Sax's essay on all things digital, as I am many other mastering engineer's views. Interesting no one around here ever mentions Roger Nichlos. Is that because he is a digital advocate?

Again, I work with this stuff every day. I am a lifeling "recordist". And I am a very critical listener. I have better hearing than most people my age and younger.

But, I will never be the hard-core vinyl-lover most of you are, so...

 

Lukpac....
I did not say I did not like digital BECAUSE it is stored aa 1's and 0's! I said digital was harsh and less airythan analog. My ears tell me what sounds good, and only my ears. I just beleive the 1's and 0's are one of the flaws of digital that creates the harsher sound.
I went without a turntable for about 3 years, and I have put another anoalog setup together about 4 months ago. I didn't realize how bad digital was until I started listening to vinyl again. What a breath of fresh air. And my analog setup is not as Auiophile quality as the CD player. We would all still be listening to LP's if the powers that be cared about sound, and not which format has a better bottom line...(not bottom end)


Ray

 

Am I implying it, or are you inferring it? I said no such thing.

I hear things that people say they don't hear on these forums. Steve does too. Whose fault is that? You think we're hallucinating?

You may hear better than me. Listen more critically. Have a better stereo too. I'm not saying you don't. But if you think CDRs are identical to the source used to make them you don't. That's what this thread is about, not me, and not you.

I run into this all day long. If you think you can't learn a thing or two, fine by me.

If you think you have something to teach me, bring it on. Tell me something I don't know. I'm all ears. I learn new things every day.

As as for SACD, it's better for me not to go there. If you can't hear what's wrong, what do I care?

This argument is like a million others in audio. Like Bob says, most likely you'll go your way and I'll go mine. If you want to infer a tone to my posts that I bend over backwards to avoid, stop reading them.

Unlike you, I'm not just opining.

I don't see where criticizing me adds any practical information of value to anyone.

I've gone to great lengths to provide experiments you can do at home to verify the truth of my remarks. Do them. Start with Blue. Don't just talk a good game. Back it up. Do the work.

Then you may actually develop opinions that can help people.

Like me. Hey, it's my job. I get people the good stuff. People vote me an authority with their pocketbooks all day, every day, to the tune of $250,000 a year.

How many votes do you get a day?

Now that IS condescending! Sorry. I take it back.



Regards,
TP

 

Friends in high places. And bribery. Just like the music business. It's who you know and who you... Well, it's who you know.

 

My system sounds a lot better after half a bottle of Port. I’ll have to take a pass on the Port tonight when I open up the new Classic version of Folk Singer. I might even make a CDR of it. Then maybe I’ll figure out what every one is talking about.

 

Tom,
I hope you don't take this as a personal attack. I do not know you, I have never seen you, I don't know your political or religious beliefs, if any. All I know about you is what you say in your posts.

Now let's say I stated categorically that Japanese pressings are the ultimate, and that if you don't agree, it is because 1) you can't hear, 2) you're not trained to hear their superiority, or 3) your system isn't good enough. That would be pretty ridiculous, wouldn't it? But guess what? You are saying it about American pressings.

What if I said, mysteriously, that there was something really bad about LPs, but that I didn't want to discuss it? And that I have lots of clever friends who agree with me wholeheartedly. Pretty ridiculous, eh? But that's your argument in a nutshell about SACD.

I'm not sure why you can't grasp what is clear in the tone of your posts: You have the best ears in the world, you have the best equipment in the world, and if we pay attention and learn from you, we will enjoy our music more.

Yes, I can ignore you. But I can also register my disagreement.

 

And another thing Humorem...

Since everyone's piling it on, I don't like your icon, Tom. It started out in analog and got lost in the translation to digital.

 

C'ept I'm not sure if it can be faithfully shunken. Maybe we should all hunt for a new Avitar for Homorem?

 

This is a ridiculous statement. So there's something wrong with SACD, but you're the only one talented enough to hear it? Then when pressed, you retreat, falling back on the superior hearing ability of you and your impressive friends.

So please, tell us once and for all...what's so wrong about SACD? Are you going to quote Vanderkooy and Lipschitz, because that's already been explained away by Sony, Philips, and other engineers like Ed Meitner.

So is it simply the noise-shaping? Or is it the non-linearity of a 1-bit DSD system? Which argument are you going to choose?

Or is there something else that's wrong with SACD that only you and your comrades are capable of hearing?

 

I have a new one coming that I hope will do justice to the trouble I am stirring up on this forum. It will push a lot of buttons, not that I want to do that for the sake of doing it, but because the image I believe is too funny to pass up.

TP

 

I miss your old one...

 

I have a statement to make regarding any new digital formats with four letters in them.

I respectfully take the fifth.

Not because it incriminates me, but because it causes entirely too much blood to boil. As the saying goes, there's more heat than light being brought to bear on the subject.

And so, once and for all, I state plainly that I will never say another word about that four letter acronym on this forum. See? I'm not even using it!

Now everyone just go back to bashing me about other subjects. This one is closed, from my side anyway.

As always, yours truly,
TP

 

Okay, TP, as you wish. But if that's the way you want to handle it, then I'm not going to reveal what I have discovered concerning a serious fundamental flaw in LPs. It was so stunning that my jaw dropped open, but my finding was confirmed by 3 respected research scientists who, between them, are worth in excess of $10 million. It would not be fair of me to discuss it further though, because I am afraid that no one could enjoy his records ever again.

 

As the other saying goes...**** or get off the pot.

You have nothing of substance to back up your specious claims, so now you "take the fifth", how convenient.

Can you do me a favor Tom and the next time you have nothing of substance to back up wildly ludicrous claims....don't make them, ok?

P.S. Nobody cares how much money you make, it doesn't make you any smarter or add any validity whatsoever to any of your opinions, so it's basically irrelevant to the topic at hand. You don't see anyone else here using their income for "creds", even if it's higher than yours...so let's just leave that out of it ok?

Thanks.

 

Ok - I am just a newbie on this board, but I gotta say when I look at these posts, I gotta go back to where it looks like this TP bashing started.

I think he mentioned ears being "trained" to hear different things, and gets bashed as saying people ears aren't good. TOTALLY DIFFERENT. And once the bashing starts...WHEW !

Ears are TRAINED, Any musicians on the board? Piano tuners ? (the older ones who do it without a digital tuner) They hear harmonics. Do you? Probably but don't what to call them or how to explain them. How many of you understood Timbre prior to getting into hi fi?

Just sounds to this newbie that everyone has a favorite.

Now some things are based in fact, but our personal favs seldom allow us to believe facts that we are untrained in, and to the untrained are a little esoteric, hard to understand, or just don't see/hear.

We all have different systems, different sounds we like, but I am not going to argue which one sounds better to you any more than I would expect anyone to tell me what sounds better to me.

TP - don't stop talking about your OPINIONS on those four letter words. Some of us want all the info we can get.

 

Reminds me of the great line at the end of Touch of Evil, when somebody says to Marlene something about Orson Welles' character: "People will say he blah blah blah" and Marlene spits back "What does it matter what people say?" with all the contempt she can muster.

So true. Leave it to Orson to make it practically the last line in the movie, the one the audience goes home with still spinning in their heads.

Nothing anyone could ever say could change one note of what I hear, or ever will hear. One of the reasons so many people have gone back to vinyl is that despite what they read or heard, and what everybody knows to be true, when they played a record they seemed to actually enjoy it more.

They did what I recommend you all do: listen for yourselves. You say you do? Good! If you like what you're getting from your format of choice, more power to you.



Regards, TP

 

I still say every thing sounds better after a bottle of port.

 

TP,
I think we need to get this in perspective. There just aren't that many people who listen to records anymore. Since you sell records, you probably have a warped view of the market. I can think of only a couple people who listen to records, and even they aren't exclusive to it. OK, I don't know that many people and don't hobnob in audiophile circles. I am aware that there is kind of a renaissance going on in vinyl with high-end manufacturers. But this is small potatoes compared to the overall big picture of the music market.

Likewise, I don't know anyone personally who has an SACD or DVD-A player, nor anyone who wants one. It's a niche market with potential for growth. Its potential is vast compared to the LP's. The LP is never going to come back in big terms. It doesn't matter how great it sounds, it's not going to be like the old days. By the way, my guess is that a lot of the interest in vinyl that LP fans have is *nostalgia.* Nothing wrong with that.

So when you say the reason that people are going back to vinyl, etc., I counter with, Yeah, a few hundred people or a few thousand. That's it. The big market is for MP3s. I guarantee you way more people are concerned with whether a DVD player can play MP3s than whether it will play DVD-As.

 

I'll bet a lot of you make a lot more than I do. A lot more. You misunderstand. My point was that people pay me to do what I do: listen carefully, report my findings, and help them to acquire the records and CDs I determine are good.

Most people I deal with think I'm pretty good at it, or they wouldn't keep giving me their money.

But it's certainly no proof. A lot of people buy trash by Chesky and Audioquest and the like; they've voted with their pocketbooks very differently than I would.

Once I criticized Joe Harley's recordings for AQ, and he kindly wrote me back to say "Recording is hard; try it some time. Let's see how you do."

He has a point, even though I think the hundreds of recording engineers who've made albums over the years are the perfect criticism: none of their stuff sounds like his, and that's a good thing.

So RicP, put together 30 pages or so of recommended recordings (I do about 100 pages a year so that should be easy) and get a website and let's see what you got. It'll give you some credibility, at least in my eyes.

I write more, about more records, than anyone in my profession I am familiar with.

But I haven't had a chance yet to read your stuff. Maybe you really do know more than me. Let us see some of it so we can compare notes. How about it?

Respectfully as always,
TP

 

Ok everyone, please remember our newly minted forum rule:

No Personal Attacks Allowed



Tom is opinionated, true -- and he says as much. But so far he's been mostly steering clear of making personal attacks.

If you don't like what he has to say, ignore it. Or ask him questions to get him to clarify. But it's NOT OK to start calling him names.

Please send me mail if you have any questions about this.

HZ

 

NOW this thread has gotten way out of hand.

 

Agreed. Time to shut 'er down.