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digital vs vinyl thoughts

i suspect i have been comparing apples and oranges. i just bought a project debut 111 with a shure m97x and after a month have been less than overwhelmed. when i go back to my emotiva cd/musical fidelity v-dac the performance just blows the table away. i have checked everything several times. i have concluded that due to using power cords and ics[all morrow audio] on my set up that each equals the price of the table i was expecting too much from an entry level table. the vinyl reproduction is not distorted, seems to be tracking ok, is set up with good isolation, and after a month of use...broke in. but the fact that the project has a hard wired ac cord and less than stellar phono wires and a inexpensive cartridge must be the reason. the rest of the system is emotiva usp-1 pre and xpa-2 power with mmgs. any ideas? thanks john
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Showing 5 responses by mapman

mapman's avatar
mapman
21,888 posts
 
Entry level always infers less than ideal.

Digital vs vinyl thoughts?

Two different means to an end.

Other than that, at this point, meh!
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,888 posts
 
"Digital always sounds less "real" for this reason"

An absolute statement that is simply not true in my experience.

Digital often sounds more real to me.

Just my opinion....
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,888 posts
 
Agree with Almarg.

The intent of the "sampling" with digital audio is to sample in a manner that does capture all the relevant information. How well any particular digital format like redbook CD actually accomplishes this in practice is debatable but the intent is to quantify the analog signal sufficently to capture all the relevant information present.

Sampling, or digital quantification of an analog signal in digital signal processing is apples and pranges different than sampling in statistical theory where a relatively small representative sample is used to statistically represent a population as a whole.

I think the overloading of the term "sampling" and how it is different in the context of digital signal processing theory compared to statistical theory is a cause of misunderstanding and confusion in many cases.
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,888 posts
 
"I think I feel that it is still so recording dependent."

IF both your digital and vinyl sound are good to start, no doubt how individual recordings are made is without doubt the biggest factor by far in comparing. ITs like a major league baseball season. One format may dominate depending on a lot of factors, but neither is likely to go 164-0.
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,888 posts
 
"Digital is an approximation" of the analog signal"

So is a record. Different means to the same end.
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