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Glathannus · 2007.04.12, 07:59 PM

I already knew most everything there, and there's a couple of other things I thought I'd point out.

bebio is speaking from a white paper "this is how these products officially are" standpoint, but in reality, the one that's better, depends upon which product was based on the other, and it doesn't always go one way. Sometimes the vinyl is better than the digital, and sometimes the digital is better than the vinyl. It also depends on your turntable, because the cheaper your turntable is, the more tempting that the 'cleaner' sound of CDs will be.

I like buying vinyls, and recording them in 192kHz with an overkill turntable. It's hard to hear the difference, and you get the convenience and durability of digital, but you lose the advantage over CD if you're not playing back those files on a 192kHz soundcard with an unforgiving set of speakers or headphones. Those files also take up a lot of space (at least six times as much as CD - depending upon whether you use Floating Point or not), and WavPack is the only feasible lossless format to compress them, while most/all other lossless formats specialize in 44.1kHz/16bit (standard CD resolution audio).

I'd say that with extremely high-end digital (whether you're talking about audio or photos), the only thing you lose is the warmth of analog. It's just something you can't capture or convey with digital. You can just mask it with tubes or other expensive go-between pieces of audio equipment.

2007.04.12, 07:59 PM	#20
Glathannus True Final Boss Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: United States Posts: 2,423	I already knew most everything there, and there's a couple of other things I thought I'd point out. bebio is speaking from a white paper "this is how these products officially are" standpoint, but in reality, the one that's better, depends upon which product was based on the other, and it doesn't always go one way. Sometimes the vinyl is better than the digital, and sometimes the digital is better than the vinyl. It also depends on your turntable, because the cheaper your turntable is, the more tempting that the 'cleaner' sound of CDs will be. I like buying vinyls, and recording them in 192kHz with an overkill turntable. It's hard to hear the difference, and you get the convenience and durability of digital, but you lose the advantage over CD if you're not playing back those files on a 192kHz soundcard with an unforgiving set of speakers or headphones. Those files also take up a lot of space (at least six times as much as CD - depending upon whether you use Floating Point or not), and WavPack is the only feasible lossless format to compress them, while most/all other lossless formats specialize in 44.1kHz/16bit (standard CD resolution audio). I'd say that with extremely high-end digital (whether you're talking about audio or photos), the only thing you lose is the warmth of analog. It's just something you can't capture or convey with digital. You can just mask it with tubes or other expensive go-between pieces of audio equipment.