Digital Support

Robedk: I'm a little confused. Rcprince did a nice job of explaining what he saw as the virtues of vinyl, and described the ways he found to produce a good analog experience. He spent a bit of his time and energy to politely explain to you some benefits of vinyl that you might not have known about, and politely suggested that you try them out to see if they don’t improve the experience for you. Your response to this suggestion was to flatly refuse, and to reject outright the information he provided. Given the thoughtful nature of his post, this doesn’t seem like an appropriately considerate response.

I believe as metaphysics does that you started this thread to pick a fight and rally against analog media. Audio systems are composed of many types of equipment, both digital and analog, and each piece is chosen depending on the listener’s tastes. There is no need to defend one over the other, and you should not be offended by those who think differently than you. Choose what you like and enjoy the music and everyone else will do the same. Personally, however, I think that you're missing out on some great musical experiences by being too narrowly focused.

Ken

Umm...it sounds like there are personal issues here that go a bit beyond the discussion of analog vs. digital audio. I might suggest that a private conversation about this may be in order.

Gregm: My understanding of the encoding technology for CD's is that it does theoretically enable a precise extraction of the data from its encoded form, but because of the limitations of digital electronics, its extremely difficult, if not impossible to achieve. The newer formats presumably make attaining this goal easier given the known processing issues with DACs, but do not provide additional source information. Perhaps those folks better acquainted with digital electronics can chime in and correct me here.

Ken

I think you may be right about the limitations of analog media being somewhat more pronounced than digital. From my understanding however, and from what I've been able to hear, the real differences lie more in the extraction and reproduction of the sound rather than in the recording. Certainly, the potential of digital electronics to reproduce the sound better than analog sources is there. However, my experience has been that the very good analog sources I've listened to (mind you, its always a package with very good amplification and speakers) have provided a more enjoyable listening experience than their digital counterparts. Some of this may be the way LPs are equalized relative to CDs, and my preference may simply lean in that direction. Its hard to say. In my home I don't have an exceptionally high quality vinyl setup, so almost everything I listen to is on CD. Still, when I treat myself to an afternoon of window shopping at the local audio shops, I always end up saying "ahhh" when the platters are spun.

It would be very helpful for me to get a layperson's explanation of differences and advantages of the SACD and DVD-A formats over the standard CD format. Also, if anyone is familiar with the equalization used with LPs (RIAA?), it would be interesting to hear an explanation of how it differs from CD eq.

Cheers,
Ken