Sound reproduction and playback

[David Horn]

(09-11-2016, 12:40 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: My problem with vinyl was that it degraded over time, and I could hear that. Original vinyl sounded every bit as good as a compact disc, but expose it to several years of thermal flux inside a house (let alone a storage shed), and the sound quality deteriorates even with excellent playback. . After two years the CD was better in sound quality than a vinyl disc. The solution of buying replacement discs might offer itself, but if one has a large collection, then compact discs make more sense... Whoa! I have some thirty-year-old compact discs, still very playable and as good as new. Maybe that killed the recording industry for classical music; people replaced their vinyl discs with CDs and never had to buy another recording of this every ten years or so:

It's not only classical music. Such albums were likely to have repeat customers when vinyl records were the only means of their availability. With compact discs, it is one time and done, with the CD that a 50-year old bought being passed on to an heir thirty years later or donated to a thrift shop.

There's not much distinction in quality, so far as I can tell, between playback devices for compact discs except for what they connect to. I now use an old DVD player exclusively for playback of CDs ... which may sound like a heresy to audiophiles, but it is now difficult to find new equipment exclusively for CDs that one can use in a hi-fi system. Huge distinctions apply to vinyl playback. When I relied upon vinyl I often had phono cartridges more expensive than my turntable. One retailer that sells the disks in stores also sells 'retro' phonographs for them, but I would not have used anything with less than a full-sized turntable for a cherished long-play vinyl record.

Lossless? I recall the argument... a CD is not as perfect as a vinyl disc, but one would have to be a cat (the sort that one can never trust with the safety of any small animal except for its kittens,  a dog, or an infant) to hear the difference. (An aside: my cat loved classical music, but my dogs apparently don't). After about ten years, the deterioration of the disk even with meticulous care was quite audible to me.

I am tempted to believe that much top-end audio has the description as a Veblen good, an object cherished by people because it is expensive as a signal of their class. But if one can tell the difference, the spending might be well worth it.

Vinyl had the benefit of time coherency, which is critical for imaging.  Most stereo equipment setups are incapable of good imaging, so that was a wasted feature for most people.  You're right that the quality degrades with time, and digital sources are much better in that regard.  Still, they have great virtues, if you are willing to replace old records when they get hissy.  Special releases were and still are created for the high end market that are particularly good: half-speed masters pressed on pure virgin vinyl or direct-to-disk masters that are then pressed on virgin vinyl and destroyed after a certain number of records are pressed. 

Then again, few people have ears good enough to benefit, and the cost is far from trivial.