Digital vs Analog

Hi
Can you review these sounds?
i think we can compare digital sound with analog sound and review them.
help if you can
thanks

 

personally i've never been convinced of 'massive and obvious' differences between the two. it all depends on the music, equipment, room and ears being used.
ime the bass on vinyl is a little fruitier and the treble on cd is a little cleaner but it's easy to say that for one bit of music and then have it totally reversed on a different recording.
controversially i would have to say that digital is for people who love music and analogue is for those that love kit. vinyl spinners are much sexier than cd players or a music server and you have all that ritualistic nonsense of cleaning it - fiddling with your tracking and protractory alignement, then there's all the agonising over phono stages, arm cables, cartridges, arms, ac vs dc motors, etc.
with digital you have a bit of that but it's no-where near as obsessive (although some have found a way with various anti jitter gizmos and such but they've fallen out of favour now) with most having an integrated player or simple transport / dac.
oh dear here kitty kitty leave those pigeons alone now.....

 

i don't agree
i think analog stage, texture and high is better than digital

 

New vinyl releases will be dead in ten years, give or take, as china and india will have used all the economically viable oil. Then you'll have some watermaked low res digital ****e to look forward to. Sell the TT's and get an ipod.

 

How would I play my (large) record collection without a record player?

Format wars are boring. If you have records, play them, if you don't, forget about it.

-- Ian

 

totally agree, records can be distingished in sound very easy to sound better than digital sources, lazzyness makes cd's make believe the sound is better, however there are cd's players that can sound very musical , it's up to the individual to decide witch they prefer, personally i love my wax but also have a large collection of cd's

 

Conversely, it might be said that digital is for people who don't love the sound of their music enough to be arsed with faffing about with all the abovementioned vinyl gubbins. I can't STAND all that fiddly, tweaky crap but I put up with it for the sheer joy that the sound of vinyl brings.

Oh, and one major major benefit of vinyl to the music-lover is of course the vast untold back catalogue that exists on no other medium and which can often be had by the bucket load for a couple quid apiece.

Dunc

 

yes - if you like music from the 50s 60s 70s and 80s.

If you like dance music like Julian then it would be mostly a waste of time, apart from the odd twelve inch or whatever.

 

there's nothing to stop you ripping your lps and storing them on a server then storing the originals. i've heard analogue sound wonderful, and i've heard it sound crap, i've also heard digital sound wonderful and / or crap so really do not think there's much of a difference. if anything any differences (imo) are more down to mastering, riaa filtering and 'nice' distortions rathere than inherent superiority if either format. having heard the same tune synchronised on both cd and lp and switching between them with very little / no differences heard (and yes the system was good - very good i'd say) i, presonally, would put the differences in the same camp as cables, demagnetisers and green pens. yes there is possibly somethign there but it's so variable and nebulous that it's nothing really worth getting worked up about.

 

Hi Chris,

Not true. In a golden age of dance music, mid to late 80s to mid/ late 90s, vinyl was king. Even into this century, dance music on vinyl has been common. Dance music helped to save vinyl. There
are loads of quality dance stuff on vinyl. Nowadays, more & more djs are using cd, laptops etc but a fair number still use the vinyl.

Dance vinyl sales have been dipping most of this century. One reason for this has been the rise in guitar based indie/rock music. Indie/rock music has seen the huge rise in the 7" vinyl single in recent times.

In the 90s, turntables were outselling guitars. Everybody wanted to be a dj. Sales of Technics SL1200/1210 went through the roof.

Nowadays, there are alot of labels releasing dance tunes old and new on cd and other digital formats. But there are still the market for vinyl. Alot of the new tunes do still come out on vinyl but less places are selling them.

The good thing is that you can get old 12" vinyl dance music vinyl cheap. 12" mixes can be awesome.

SCIDB

 

Dean - I'll take your word for it! - in your position you would know much better than me!

I figured that modern dance music would be available on cd and Lp - but maybe I got that wrong?

Quite possibly!

 

One problem with buying second hand dance music on vinyl though, is the fact that quite often the discs are scratched to hell from years of abuse at the hands of DJs and their unforgiving styli...

Dunc

 

They often don't bother to release CD singles, a lot of acts only release the odd 12" so it never makes it to a long player (record or CD). Have a look in your local record shop at the dance vinyl selection, tonnes of it. Very little available on CD, particularly if your after the full length version rather than mixed and fiddled with.

 

Once its done, its done. The only thing you can say for sure is its pretty silly to make any generalizations about whether people are into music or kit based on what format they choose to listen to

 

amirs question was whether one could compare digital and analogue sound.

This has nothing to do with cd or vinyl so I don't know why you are all comparing vinyl to cd.

The answer is no.
Analogue is superior to digital. There is no comparison.

 

johnney,

wtf??? cd and vinyl are the most popular carriers of analogue and digital music (ok you could argue a case for fm and dab/ freeview but neither are really hi-fi).

if we are talking purely about storage methods then there is no difference between a digital signal and the analogue 'original' as long as certain rules are observed (the maximum frequency you wish to capture is 1/2 the sampling rate) if you start on about gaps or missing bits between the samples then you should go and read up on the subject as you don;t understand it.
the whole analogue vs digital (mass)debate is about whether 22.1khz is a high enough frequency to capture all of the music - some say yes, others no. dvd-a and sacd were attempts to remedy this with much higher sample rates. personally i think the output stage of a cd player is more important to the sound than the dac or sample rate (but that's just me i guess).
cheers


julian.

 

FM not really hifi!

I do hope you are joking.

Having looked at the equipment you list as using I would suggest that nothing you have will come even close to what a decent tuner can do with a live broadcast.

DAB, I would agree, is not Hifi.

rgs,

Murray

 

murray,
some here would argue that digital is not 'hi-fi' with it's cut off at 22.1khz iirc fm is chopped at 50hz and 15khz so is even worse than cd or even some lossy codecs. to me the loss of frequencies below 50hz is especially damning but then if you only have tiddy little bookshelf speakers you don;t miss what you never had.
unfortunately most live broadcasts are of classical or 'rawk' music so i've not been inclined to blow 2k on a naim or magnum dynalab.
also i believe that most live broadcasts go through various stages of digitisation compression and decompression to enable the signal to get from the venue to 'central control'. if you choose to believe that this process is transparent then fine but i for one think not and believe that fm is a fair way down the list of 'best' sources.

 

Hi Julian,

You don't need to spend 2K on a tuner. You can buy something like a Leak troughline for £30, put up a half reasonable aerial and it will sound far more convincing as a source with live concerts than almost any TT or CD player. There is a fair bit of live Jazz from time to time on R3 as well.

The process certainly is transparent enough.

I can't say any more than that. You need to listen to one and hear it for yourself.

With regard to the loudspeakers, for what its worth, the ones I use are considerably larger than those in your picture. I don't have any LF shortfall.

 

Went into HMV and Virgin in Oxford Street at the weekend for the first time in over a year and was shocked to find the vinyl sections in both shops had shrunk to virtually nothing! I wouldnt be surprised if they are both gone completely in the not too distant future.

With the dj/dance sector shrinking it appears that vinyl is going down with it.

Could anyone name some decent mail order vinyl retailers, as this is something I'm going to have to use a lot more?