B
billisa
New member
some thoughts
one aspect of the digital/analogue debate is envy and insecurity. in home audio, it used to be that one would have to spend hundreds/thousands for good source equipment -- cartridge/turntable. this meant that some who made this investment could feel as though great sound was their personal possession. cd's changed all that in the sense that now extremely good sound can be had by the masses -- not just the few.
yet now, if you check, you'll notice that in many "high-end" magazines they sell accessories (like cable @ $100./ft.) to reassert the belief that only expensive equipment can make good sound. from cd disk enhancers, to vacuum turntables, there are a ton of manufacturers selling material that i doubt would ever stand up to a double-blind listening test.
i'm not knocking analogue, nor the need for quality products, but i think for some people, the need to proclaim analogue as better than digital is more emotional than scientific. i would love to see a double-blind test using a $100. APEX cd player versus a $10,000 turntable (with all other components being the same).
a recent experience for me was very informative. a good friend of mine is a world-class sound engineer who swears by analogue. now as it happens, i remember paul mccartney's "ram" from it's first release. i also have the newest remasters of the same material. so, when my friend put the lp version of "ram" on his system, i couldn't get over how it sounded so "narrow" (that's the best word i can come up with). compacted more than compressed.
we can complain all we want about 16bit sound (and sure there are some weak digital recordings out there), but overall, i believe digital has been a tremendous blessing for most people in a myriad of ways...
Michael Jones said:
one aspect of the digital/analogue debate is envy and insecurity. in home audio, it used to be that one would have to spend hundreds/thousands for good source equipment -- cartridge/turntable. this meant that some who made this investment could feel as though great sound was their personal possession. cd's changed all that in the sense that now extremely good sound can be had by the masses -- not just the few.
yet now, if you check, you'll notice that in many "high-end" magazines they sell accessories (like cable @ $100./ft.) to reassert the belief that only expensive equipment can make good sound. from cd disk enhancers, to vacuum turntables, there are a ton of manufacturers selling material that i doubt would ever stand up to a double-blind listening test.
i'm not knocking analogue, nor the need for quality products, but i think for some people, the need to proclaim analogue as better than digital is more emotional than scientific. i would love to see a double-blind test using a $100. APEX cd player versus a $10,000 turntable (with all other components being the same).
a recent experience for me was very informative. a good friend of mine is a world-class sound engineer who swears by analogue. now as it happens, i remember paul mccartney's "ram" from it's first release. i also have the newest remasters of the same material. so, when my friend put the lp version of "ram" on his system, i couldn't get over how it sounded so "narrow" (that's the best word i can come up with). compacted more than compressed.
we can complain all we want about 16bit sound (and sure there are some weak digital recordings out there), but overall, i believe digital has been a tremendous blessing for most people in a myriad of ways...
... it might cost a bit more but here again i think it's a matter of settings techinque and soft/hardware...
