Cds have more dynamic range than vinyl?

Er, NO.

With a proper digital system, dither enables some amount of "resolution" around the last bit. And sorry, but this "analog has no resolution limit"
that so many parrot is simply nonsense. Analog DOES have a resolution limit. Eventually, tape is limited by the size of the magnetic domains…and the vinyl is limited by the tape it is made from (or if direct-to-disc then eventually by the stiction of the stylus moving across the vinyl).

It is like analog photography versus digital. The digital has resolution constrained by how many pixels are captured and the color space/dynamic range whatever they are capturing-all in a grid array. But the analog also has resolution constrained by the crystals/grain on the film stock, and the chemistry which limits the color space/dynamic range-all in a non-grid, somewhat random array.

Digital tends to suffer from:
- Poor mastering (wrong choice of masters, i.e. vinyl EQ'd masters used to press CDs in the early days; dynamic range compression)
- Time-related errors (pre-ringing etc)
- Distortions uncorrelated to the music

Vinyl suffers from a long host of distortions, wow and flutter, and I guess a higher noise floor* although a good pressing can be pretty quiet. Vinyl also suffers in that a really top playback system can become very expensive and still have way more distortion and wow/flutter than a cheap CD player. And many pressings back in the day sucked especially towards the "end" of vinyl.

So they are just different technologies, I think. Either can sound very nice, or awful.


*someone on the Audio Asylum, maybe Christine Tham, had a thread purporting that in some frequency ranges vinyl had a wider dynamic range than CD. I am not equipped to make measurements to verify or disprove that.

 

I havent heard any wow or flutter in any of my records. Zero Ziltch Nada. Get a resonable cartridge and table and these are non issues for the most part. Surface noise, I can cop a bit of that no big deal for me.
If your getting wow and flutter, your doing it wrong.

 

I own the complete "Ring" on CD... Listening to the whole thing front to back on LP requires a hair shirt...

 

Long trips in the car, vacation, truckdrivers, I put earplugs in: at arrival I'm fresh as a chicken, no trace of tiredness of whatever kind.Noise causes (listening) fatigue, distorted music, loudness CD's is noise.

 

Nice comparison.
Are you refering to 35 mm film ? Or glassplates ?
Just listen to some 78's in mint condition, indeed some noise, but ( I ) hear MUSIC with a natural sound of vocals/instruments. Reissues on CD sound death and sharp, and not because they fiddled with postprocessing. That is an ultimate comparison.

 

Wow and flutter? Unless we are including eccentric records, no high end TT should have wow or flutter at any audible levels. Same with rumble

 

Depends how much you spend! And I guess I was conflating somewhat to analog cassette.

I don't remember them all, but some luminary had a long list of vinyl ills. I think it is like cars: an SUV may not handle as well as a little convertible, however, the convertible is much less desirable for a camping trip.

The care taken throughout the recording/mixing/mastering chain I feel matters a lot more than whether the final carrier is vinyl or CD. And if we move past CD to DVD and Blu-ray and so on, there are a LOT of bits to describe the signal, although practical equipment does not hit the 144 dB theoretical limit.

 

I'm thinking of film in various sizes. I don't recall offhand the chemistry of glass plates.

If I listen to old 78s which were my grandpa's, they are fun but I hear NOISE. It really depends what your brain focuses on. I cannot "listen through" noise like a former coworker. The noise just bugs me. Doesn't mean I can listen to, say, a distant radio station, but the noise colors the sound very negatively for me.

 

Trying to find a link to the particular 20LP box set. Didn't listen to it all thanks to various issues with some of the albums. Think I'd said it was a 10LP set, but it had to be 20. I probably bought it around 2008-09. Ended up buying the Bohm/Bayreuth 14CD set instead.

I have seen one version of the Ring when Scottish Opera did each segment between 2000-2003. Missed the first year (Das Ring...) but did see Die Walkyrie, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung from 2001-2003. They also did the full Ring in 2003. Impressive opera - but not sure I'd choose to sit through the whole thing again (the three I did see came in at around 14 hours)! Scottish Opera later won a South Bank Show Award (UK arts programme) for Best Opera in 2004.

 

Is listening to the Ring on vinyl while wearing a hair shirt what is referred to as ring wear?

 

There's some pretty crappy sounding George Szell CDs out there. Not the luckiest as regards tape to digits transfers. On the other hand, a lot of Epic originals are off-center. You pays yer money and youze make yer choices. Will say the newish CD transfer I've got of Szell/Cleveland S.O. performing Dvorak's 'New World' compares favorably with the originals, which are pretty nice.

 

My first [and so far last] attempt involved the Fonit Cetra Furtwängker/La Scala Ring. Gave away the records soon thereafter to a group of dedicated advocates of Northern European traditions and lore.

 

The importance of dynamic range does depend on the music. As I explained in my post earlier, it is clearly evident that modern music is compressed to within an inch of it's life in many cases due to the "Loudness wars", therefore the dynamic range capability of the format becomes totally irrelevant. Furthermore what I found interesting is that in my Vinyl/CD comparisons for which I did about 7, all of which were mastered in the digital domain, the Vinyl clearly had more dynamic range than the CD. This would indicate that the vinyl master is produced separately with less contraints than the CD version, at least in the instances I tried.

Digital masters are not always an evil thing to do even with remastering although it can be a matter of huge debate (such as the Pink Floyd remasters from 2012). Most digital masters are done at 192 or 384kHz and 24 bit, which means that some of what is being discussed (resolution at lower input volume) is significantly reduced. This also means that the vinyl version will not suffer any "debatable" audible loss due to the conversion to 44.1/16-bit.

However, classical music in general has a much much wider dynamic range requirement than modern pop music. What I have found amongst friends is that those with keen classical listening preferences, tended towards CD due , whereas those into more popular music tended towards vinyl. The reason classical lovers tended towards CD was the lack of clicks/pops etc that intruded on very quiet passages and the lesser impact of large crescendos (due to dynamic range constraints or simply the effect of the noise floor). I know there are many classical vinyl advocates here, so I am not typecasting, just stating an observation and feedback amongst my circle of friends.

 

Never bothered in the end; too many of the discs were nacked. The only hair shirts in hifi that I know of tend to be worn by beard stroking audiotypes that make the odd outdated proclamation about "what great audio is". Thankfully, they're going the way of the dodo, or work for magazine with vastly shrinking circulations!

The Bohm set is rather impressive, but never listened in one sitting, not least as it'd take the best part of a day (and that much Wagner at once isn't exactly hairshirt stuff)!

EDIT: And one other thing, there's things in life we should probably all experience at least once, and a great opera - take your pick, there's enough of them - is probably one of those things.

Whether or not you then like it is another matter of course, but it is one of the great experiences; to go to a venue, preferably one of the great opera houses if you can, and see and hear a full orchestra with the greatest singers is something you will never get close to in any other kind of musical work. Utterly unique and I can understand why people travel the globe to see such performances.

 

I guess 'shouldn´t have' is not the same as 'haven´t'. And what is audible levels? You can only hear these issues if you are comparing before and after not having them.

 

Picking ones poison.

 

Stop spreading this misinformation!

 

Classical music + vinyl surface noise in quiet passages is a no sell for me. There are tons of wonderful sounding classical CDs & SACDs out there. Well recorded & mastered solo instrumentation in a quiet digital space...nothing can compare.

 

The thresholds of audibility of wow and flutter have been thoroughly researched and established. It's not that hard to find high end TTs with measured wow and flutter well below those thresholds. So if some one is hearing wow or flutter when playing records it was either cut into the records or the TT is simply inadequate in it's performance when it comes to speed stability.

 

So what You basically are saying is that digital will always suffer from low resolution never mind the bits that are used.

 

Personally those "quiet digital spaces" which I also hear on many many classical CDs are very problematic and unnatural sounding to my ears. Classical music at it's best unfortunately comes with a lot more noise than you will ever hear on good vinyl. But that is the subject of a different thread.

 

It´s not that easy at all. Normal arms cause freq modulations in the same way as platter W&F does. At least if the arm isn´t critically damped, which very few are.

 

It's the nature of the beast that any given digital format has a discrete number of bits of information and there are **fewer bits of information** in a signal with less level. That will always be true in any digital format that has a set number of bits. It's just math.

 

Hold on here. Please define "normal arm" The fact is if an arm/ cartridge is introducing audible wow then it is definitely either a poorly designed arm or a mismatch with the cartridge. You may consider that "normal." I sure don't. I consider it broken. It is hardly a rare thing to find a tonearm/cartridge combo that is not introducing audible wow in the world of high end audio. It really is all that easy.