Digital or analog? Breuninger says... and asks what says you?

[NorthStar]

Only if you store them in a moist, damp location which means you aren't listening to them anyway. I don't own any records that have mold on them.

-----Mark, do you own/ed LPs for like 45 years or so?
...Your own ones, not from your Dad or Grand Dad.

You always been lucky in life? >>> Like no rain, no storage issue, no basement flooding, no friend's issues, etc.? Your original albums from the sixties and seventies and eighties; they all sound good to you? And you still play them right?
...Or do you buy the latest remasters from the greatest music recording engineers of today, and at prices that you are satisfy to pay for?

 

[MylesBAstor]

mep - did you download the rip of the various vinyl versions I did some time ago? it might be interesting to compare to the Hi-Rez file to those. I love Cat Stevens and grew up on his music, but unfortunately most of the CD's I've bought have not been good.

I won't say that I am either A or D - I am M. When I find something I like, I will try to buy both formats. Because of different mastering for analog and for digital, many times even if it is the same issue, they will sound different. I enjoy both, and will also admit to enjoying mp3, youtube and Pandora.

Is M kinda like Metrosexual Gary?

 

[MylesBAstor]

-----Another reality check here; the time lost cleaning, adjusting, and all that Jazz your TT rig,
is tenfold gained listening to music from CDs (SACDs). :b

...And that is extremely valuable in musical discovery of the NEW artists out there.
Try to do dat nowadays with LPs. Ha! :b

* Spinning albums is like going back in time in rediscovering the old Jazz era. :b
...Some Blues & Classical too.

1. People do all kinds of tweaks, cleaning, etc. to their CDs too.

2. There's plenty of music on LP that will never see the light of day on CDs, etc.

 

[Andre Marc]

I don't doubt with great care and commitment LP's can remain close to pristine and can outlive you.

But I can tell you that I was able to hear noise on every LP I heard at CES and both Newport shows even ultra SOTA systems.

But that being said, I get your point.

On the Perfect Sound Forever thing, I just don't get why some CD detractors drag that tag line 25 years after the fact when in reality, it was a VERY briefly used marketing line. It probably had a shelf life of 12 months, yet people like Mikey Fremer, and I love Mikey, use it to slag CD as if it is a current
slogan.

Andre,

making the commitment to the whole vinyl thing is a big deal, and i respect your various rationalizations as to why it's not for you. if a friend asked me whether it's worth it compared to digital....we would end up having a long conversation with me asking many questions before i would answer him/her.

all that said; your point about.....


......is simply wrong. sure, in a theoretical sense Lp surfaces deterioriate. but in practice this turns out to not be an issue. i have many Lps where i've played them literally thousands of times......without a difference. it does require respect for keeping things clean and such.....having good equipment properly set-up....and all that. might hundreds or thousands of plays add a 'tick' or two? maybe. but if a tick or two screwed your head up, then vinyl is not for you anyway.

i don't have one Lp which i've switched out of my use due to wear. i've bought back up copies of many Lps mostly in case one gets scratched, or anticipating increased value, not wear. and i've yet to break the seal on any of them. playing an Lp on a damaged or mis-aligned cartridge can hurt them and i do 'occasionally' find used Lps like that.

in fact, compared to the supposed 'perfect sound forever' CD's, Lps are indestructable. i'll agree that digital files have advantages in storage and should not be vulnerable to the ravenges of time, but like MEP infers, so what?

ease of use is one big reason i listen to digital, along with access to music i don't have on analog. and those are very important issues. and i agree digital can sound very very good.

 

[Andre Marc]

Hey mep:

You are certainly entitled to your opinion, and no need to apologize for it. I will give it a good listen tonight myself.

I agree that HDTracks is a crap shoot.

And the press is not helping. Alan Taffel, an otherwise pretty good reviewer, called the Nirvana Nevermind and Rolling Stones Some Girls downloads as "definitive" and "the ones to get" when in reality they are total and utter sonic dreck. It destroys his credibility in my book. Too bad.

 

[Ronm1]

I don't doubt with great care and commitment LP's can remain close to pristine and can outlive you.

But I can tell you that I was able to hear noise on every LP I heard at CES and both Newport shows even ultra SOTA systems.

Andre, I know exactly where you are coming from on this. I'm just about the only one in my audio group that has not gone back to vinyl. Tried and failed. I hear that groove noise on all their uber tables and it drives me nuts. They hear nothing. Any perceived music enjoyment is more than neutered to my ears.

 

[mep]

-----Mark, do you own/ed LPs for like 45 years or so?
...Your own ones, not from your Dad or Grand Dad.

You always been lucky in life? >>> Like no rain, no storage issue, no basement flooding, no friend's issues, etc.? Your original albums from the sixties and seventies and eighties; they all sound good to you? And you still play them right?
...Or do you buy the latest remasters from the greatest music recording engineers of today, and at prices that you are satisfy to pay for?

I don’t know where “45 years” came from. I’m 56 soon to be 57 so saying I have owned my LPs for 45 years would be a bit of a stretch. My original record collection and stereo system was stolen from me when I was in the military. My current listening room flooded with 4” of water due to a design defect in the perimeter drain that has since been corrected. I was home when it happened and I carried every one of my LPs out before they got wet. The only thing that was ruined was my pad, carpeting, and my pair of transmission line subs I had at the time.

I have plenty of LPs that have corners eaten off them from a dog that has long since passed on, but the LPs are still mint. I remember Jason every time I play one of these LPs.

I bought my Beatles BC-13 LP collection sometime in the early 1980s and I have played these LPs more times than I could possibly remember and they still sound fantastic. Much better than the remastered CD collection and the limited edition USB green apple version (and I have both and the remastered mono collection).

So I guess the bottom line is that I have LPs that I have owned for many years and I'm still buying new LPs as well as digital music.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

I don’t know where “45 years” came from. I’m 56 soon to be 57 so saying I have owned my LPs for 45 years would be a bit of a stretch.

Not really a stretch Mark.! That almost didn;t sound right...haha.

I'll be 59 in less than 2 months and bought my first LP in 1967, so for me it's 45 years. Like you I also have several hundred LP's that suffered water damage during a period whereby they were in storage. I've gone through most of them and cleaned them with my old Nitty Gritty, and luckily no damage to the vinyl, but it still upsets me that it happened. I'll never be able to replace all of the jackets even if I tried.

 

[MrAcoustat]

I don't doubt with great care and commitment LP's can remain close to pristine and can outlive you.

But I can tell you that I was able to hear noise on every LP I heard at CES and both Newport shows even ultra SOTA systems.

But that being said, I get your point.

On the Perfect Sound Forever thing, I just don't get why some CD detractors drag that tag line 25 years after the fact when in reality, it was a VERY briefly used marketing line. It probably had a shelf life of 12 months, yet people like Mikey Fremer, and I love Mikey, use it to slag CD as if it is a current
slogan.

Andre Marc as a pro cd audiophile i'm not surprised one bit about your quote: ( But I can tell you that I was able to hear noise on every LP I heard at CES and both Newport shows even ultra SOTA systems ) some pro vinyl audiophiles will say that they don't get surface noise because of the great care they take of their albums, when what they should say is that they have very little surface noise, now that i would believe, for me ALL those rituals around the turntable - tiptoing - the million bristles Decca brush - the Target special shelf on the wall - the cover removal for better sound - the frequent visits to the record store for warped records - ect ect ect - as been over since 1983, that is almost 30 years ago and back then i owned a very good analog source Oracle Delphi turntable - Stax UA9N tonearm - and Grace F-9R cartridge, it was very good but even with regular maintenance I DID HAVE SURFACE NOISE at least i could hear some and it realy realy bothered me so i switch to noise free cdp.

 

[rbbert]

Andre, I know exactly where you are coming from on this. I'm just about the only one in my audio group that has not gone back to vinyl. Tried and failed. I hear that groove noise on all their uber tables and it drives me nuts. They hear nothing. Any perceived music enjoyment is more than neutered to my ears.

I won't go so far as to say that groove noise "drives me nuts", but like you I always hear it. Vinylistas who talk about "silent pressings" mean only extraneous noise on top of this unavoidable groove noise (I think).

The sad thing about the 2011 remaster of Some Girls is that while it sounds terrible, the Japanese SACD sounds very good (which means the US release should have been able to sound good too).

 

[NorthStar]

1. People do all kinds of tweaks, cleaning, etc. to their CDs too.

2. There's plenty of music on LP that will never see the light of day on CDs, etc.

1. Personally, Myles, I don't tweak my CDs, and they require minimum fuss to clean (two seconds or so). And same for my various CD/SACD players.

2. Ditto vice versa. :b

 

[MylesBAstor]

1. Personally, Myles, I don't tweak my CDs, and they require minimum fuss to clean (two seconds or so). And same for my various CD/SACD players.

2. Ditto vice versa. :b

I was referring to historical recordings. Of course there's new stuff-but to be honest-there's not a whole I'm interested in.

 

[MylesBAstor]

I just don't get this groove noise thing. That to me means that the cartridge hasn't been aligned correctly or it's something else altogether.

 

[rbbert]

It's something else altogether. It's the sound you hear best where there is no recorded sound, but unfortunately once your perception is attuned to it you may hear it in fadeouts and even some quiet passages. As I and others have said, people who listen to LP's a lot seem to have developed a perceptual filter for it (or maybe have had that filter all along).

There are a heck of a lot of historic recordings, especially classical, that have seen the light of day only on digital.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

I know we have several digital-only fans here, and you know what....good for you. If you prefer squeeky-clean, no-hassle, instantaneous playback and no aversion to listener fatique...then continue to enjoy. I, OTOH, could not ever listen to digital exclusively. I don't get the same sense of involvement with the music as I do with vinyl, and that to me is a lot more important.

 

[rockitman]

I just don't get this groove noise thing. That to me means that the cartridge hasn't been aligned correctly or it's something else altogether.

agreed. If you maintain a clean Near Mint collection and a well sorted setup, there really isn't much noise...and I don't need a self-imposed/imagined noise filter either.

 

[NorthStar]

---Mark (Mep), I too own albums for 45 years.

And I too have been through all type of 'intemperies'. ...Lost many art jackets.

* I listen to my LPs as a special ritual when I want to take the time. And when I started 45 years ago, it was normal practice.

Today we have PCs, Macs, Internet, Music Servers, HD R.a.d.i.o., Analog/Digital r.a.d.i.o., Sirius r.a.d.i.o., XMHD r.a.d.i.o., and all type of other r.a.d.i.o.s, and from all over the world, and easily accessible.

TTs are a nostalgic thing, an ancient era that is still trying to survive (for the hard cores).
It is almost like the older porno films from the VHS and Beta era.
But with the Internet this has all changed; except that turntables and records are still being made; for the hard cores. The business is still viable because of people like you (Myles and the rest of the gang).

Fremer is having fun; he's a 'clown' if you know what I mean (humor and all that Jazz...).

$500,000 for a Turntable, and without a record cleaner!!! Yup, and right! Well, you know the road ...

'Et pourtant' I still have three turntables, and tons of albums (vinyls, records, LPs, 33 1/3s & 45s; no 78s though).

It is what it is ....

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

I pride myself on the fact I have great inner strength, and this thankfully holds me back from expressing what I truly feel about the above post.

 

[NorthStar]

---...And how many people can really adjust properly their cartridges? ...And which one is right for their arms?

I can write an encyclopedia about TTs & Records Ritual, but I won't! :b Just because!
And also because you guys know the score. :b

 

[NorthStar]

I pride myself on the fact I have great inner strength, and this thankfully holds me back from expressing what I truly feel about the above post.

Say all and anything you want John, but always with the utmost respect.