a well presented argument that didnt do anything to alter my view on the subject. i thought it was a good read, but i didnt find any of the points raised to be important to me.
'Perfect sound forever' lives on! Yet another article extolling the technical superiority of the CD. The technical superiority of CD has rarely been questioned. I think it fair to say that all of us, from the very beginning, hoped and expected that CD would better vinyl. The disappointment with CD was subjective, not objective. Something just wasn't right about the sound of CD. We now know that technical factors unique to digital audio, such as jitter, are largely to blame. So, finally, after 30 years, the subjective sound quality gap between CD and vinyl has greatly closed, IMHO.
Both vinyl and digital have their places, the same with DSD and PCM in high rez audio. For me, I prefer high rez digital vs. LPs, provided they are well mastered. lets hope that the record companies continue to put out releases in all formats so that you can choose what you prefer. However, the handwriting is on the wall for CDs as I can forsee a day in the next couple of years when downloads, whether MP3, PCM or DSD will be all that is available outside of LPs. LPs will continue to be a small section of the market for recorded music.
The thing that I get a kick out of is that many of us that have good LP setups also have good digital setups and listen to both regularly. We know the differences we hear between the formats and if we thought that CDs sounded better than our LPs we would have all given up long ago on LPs. I can and do listen for hours sometimes to my DSD files, but I can't say the same about PCM no matter if it's hi-rez or not. The point is that we haven't come to the conclusions we have blindly.
I have a LampizatOr Level 4 DAC coming in for review and it may be here tomorrow. This should be a higher quality DAC than my Mytek Stereo 192 which I think sounds fabulous with DSD material. We will see if my opinions change about PCM with this DAC.
People preferred digital to second generation cassette Dolby B tapes obtained from a master Dolby B cassette in ambiguous playback conditions. IMHO it does not represent professional CD versus vinyl.
I have now read the original paper published at the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education. IMHO the use of this paper to support this article about vinyl is clearly abusive, particularly considering the issues the authors themselves raise about the interpretations of their work, as quoted in the attached excerpt. http://www.jstor.org/stable/i40013263
However, the handwriting is on the wall for CDs as I can forsee a day in the next couple of years when downloads, whether MP3, PCM or DSD will be all that is available outside of LPs. LPs will continue to be a small section of the market for recorded music.
I am less pessimistic. CD's are still the dominant media. If anything, I see cd's diversifying and improving, not dying out. New formats such as Platinum-SHM and Blue-spec are emerging, and new high resolution cutting methods. And there are billions of cd's in circulations. Me? I like to touch my media, read the artist's often moving and artistic liner notes & have an automatic archive copy sitting in a plastic sleeve. I'm more than happy to continue to collect high quality cd's, though eventually I will eventually transfer my library onto some kind of server for convenience.
From the quote in the post right above yours, it appears they were tapes made by the researchers, on a Nak DR-3 deck with Dolby B, of the music students also taking part in the listening tests. But I haven't read the paper so I may not have the exact info.
The thing that I get a kick out of is that many of us that have good LP setups also have good digital setups and listen to both regularly. We know the differences we hear between the formats and if we thought that CDs sounded better than our LPs we would have all given up long ago on LPs. I can and do listen for hours sometimes to my DSD files, but I can't say the same about PCM no matter if it's hi-rez or not. The point is that we haven't come to the conclusions we have blindly.
I have a LampizatOr Level 4 DAC coming in for review and it may be here tomorrow. This should be a higher quality DAC than my Mytek Stereo 192 which I think sounds fabulous with DSD material. We will see if my opinions change about PCM with this DAC.
From the quote in the post right above yours, it appears they were tapes made by the researchers, on a Nak DR-3 deck with Dolby B, of the music students also taking part in the listening tests. But I haven't read the paper so I may not have the exact info.