oedipus said:
PeteH said:
FWIW here's what Ivan March, editor of the Penguin Guide, has to say on the subject: "When the digital compact disc arrived in 1983, it was obviously far superior to any previous sound-carrier.... Music-lovers began to replace their collections with CDs... The superiority of the CD as a music carrier was quickly established." Rob Cowan, of Radio 3 and The Independent amongst others, notes in the introduction to the Guinness Classical 1000 that CD "has the potential to reproduce a lifelike dynamic range with maximum clarity but no tape hiss". Incidentally, in that book he always offers a digitally recorded alternative on the grounds of sound quality if his primary CD recommendation on artistic grounds derives from an analogue master.sideshowbob said:
Neither Gramophone nor Penguin is a recording industry publication - both are independent consumer publications which review recorded music, and to suggest that either of them has a vested interest in one format over another is a bit silly, frankly. Rob Cowan likewise is a music journalist, and presents 'CD Review' - not, you'll note, 'CD and Vinyl Review' - on Radio 3. He's employed by the BBC and some of the English newspapers to review recorded music - not by the RIAA, or whoever it is you seem to believe is pulling his strings.dunkyboy said:
Ivan March was writing retrospectively in 2005 and Rob Cowan in 1998 - rather too late to be pushing a brand-new format onto an unsuspecting public, though I'm sure they were saying similar things at the time. The reviews in Gramophone from the early 80s were conducting head-to-head comparisons between the LP, cassette and CD versions of the same recordings, and as I've pointed out they had no vested interest in any format.dunkyboy said:
It's almost as if the hifi industry had something to gain by conditioning audiophiles to buy expensive, fiddly, tweakable record players - oh wait, they did...dunkyboy said:
PeteH said:
PeteH said:
I agree absolutely, and in any case I think that if you've got a good deck and a first-class vinyl specimen, there's sometimes not much to be gained in changing to the corresponding CD that your speakers won't mangle out of recognition anyway. In that position I'd buy a new recording rather than a CD I already knew - though as Ivan March pointed out, a lot of people felt otherwise and did set about replacing their collections with CD.sideshowbob said:
Amen to that. I have no objection to anybody's personal preference, only to spurious arguments raised in justification of something that shouldn't need justifying.sideshowbob said:
True - but when he does play a vinyl recording he only does so because it hasn't been issued on CD, and he never misses the opportunity to complain about it!Coda II said:
PeteH said:
True, and Gramophone now covers downloaded music. However, the difference when CDs became available was that (for a few years at least) they directly compared the CD and LP versions of the same recording, and without fail the CD always sounded better as far as they were concerned. If they talk about the sound quality of downloaded music at Gramophone it's in terms of whether or not it's noticeably worse than the equivalent CD if available.JackOTrades said:
Nor do I. I just think it's worth pointing out that what's frequently presented in hifi circles as "the music lover's point of view" - ie. that digital 'kills the music', or whatever - is not shared by those primarily interested in recorded music rather than hifi, in particular the classical audience (which I'd suggest is by a long way the fussiest and most demanding WRT the quality of recorded sound, partly because there's an obvious standard of reference, ie. the piano in your front room or the orchestra in your local concert hall).JackOTrades said:
I don't think it's just the fact that classical is a niche, and vinyl is a niche, therefore classical vinyl is an unviable niche squared - as you've pointed out, other non-mainstream music is still released on vinyl. As I said above, the advantages of CD over vinyl are best exhibited by the wide-bandwidth, wide-dynamic-range material common in classical recordings - hence innumerable "demonstration" recordings of the 1812 Overture and Saint-Saëns' Organ Symphony. This combined with the classical audience's concern with sonic fidelity resulted in the market's migration to CD almost immediately it became available, and it hasn't ever looked back.JackOTrades said:
It probably ought to look back, because vinyl replay has advanced hugely since the 1980s. I listen to a lot of "classical" music, and I prefer vinyl, in general.PeteH said:
The Devil said:
oedipus said:
