minn_male42 Posted January 26, 2004 Share Posted January 26, 2004 what do you feel is your best source of music... cd, sacd, dvd-audio, or vinyl??? bang for the buck??? i realize that a $25,000 vinyl setup will (should) sound better than a $200 cd player..... but all things being equal.... same amount spent on a new turntable/tone arm/cartidge and digital source (cd, sacd, or dvd-audio).... which will give you a better sound for the dollar??? we are assuming that everthing else in your system stays the same.... preamps, amps, interconnects, and speakers.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WMcD Posted January 27, 2004 Share Posted January 27, 2004 Let me come out and say that I can not agree with my buddies that there is any magic to vinyl. Gosh, I grew up with vinyl and some left over shellac. It is not for lack of experience. I loved the music and the music of the times (as much as it deservers it.) Nonetheless, it gets contaminatied by dust, scratches. You certainly can't play it on the bus. Bandwidth is limited, separation is limited. Every engineering spec says it is inferior to CD. And that is true. I cast myself as the little boy who says the King has no clothes on. I j-u-s-t d-o-n-t g-e-t i-t. Granted, there are some bad transfers. None the less, the ordinary CD is a wonderful work of art. I peg things to 1970 which is freshman year of college for me. Slide rules, mainframes with Fortran were the norm. In contrast to those days we've now digital sound, some decade old and honed very well. I look forward to having a SADC system. Will the Who's 'Tommy' sound better? I think so. (Though it hard to believe it gets better than the CDl or even the vinyl in college times.) So should any complex music like Beethoven, Vivaldi, and Mozart. And maybe P. Glass too. Smile. We live in such wonderful times. Gazzilion of computer operations to make good music reproduction. And you can buy this stuff at Walgreens. Best, Gil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minn_male42 Posted January 27, 2004 Author Share Posted January 27, 2004 actually... the Who's, Tommy is out on sacd..... it is on my list to buy..... i haven't got yet.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parrot Posted January 27, 2004 Share Posted January 27, 2004 Tommy is excellent on multi channel SACD. Pete Townshend remixed the stereo layer too. Purists always object to any "tampering," any change from the first LP release, even when the guy who wrote all the songs makes the changes. I myself like change and there are millions of used Tommy LPs out there for people who prefer it that way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garymd Posted January 27, 2004 Share Posted January 27, 2004 I enjoy both. They both sound great but different. I have some lps that sound soooo much better than the cd counterpart and vice versa. I can't give the edge to one or the other but I do like my SACD better than my regular CD and there's no denying that an original blue note deep groove lp in mint condition will sound better than the cd version. No correct answer to this question. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wrench_peddler Posted January 27, 2004 Share Posted January 27, 2004 If I remember correctly, I read on the back of an album cover that vinyl is embossed with 16-40,000hz information. If I can get it off the album and into my amp, how does that compare to what is encoded to a cd? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Griffinator Posted January 27, 2004 Share Posted January 27, 2004 ---------------- On 1/27/2004 12:57:17 PM wrench_peddler wrote: If I remember correctly, I read on the back of an album cover that vinyl is embossed with 16-40,000hz information. If I can get it off the album and into my amp, how does that compare to what is encoded to a cd? ---------------- If that is really how much they captured (which seems unlikely to me, since even current microphone technology would be hard-pressed to capture 40Khz content, despite the existence of mixing boards like Neve's that can operate in that frequency range) then it would be far superior to CD, since CD is limited to 20-22.05Khz. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
itsmyforte Posted January 27, 2004 Share Posted January 27, 2004 even if they could reproduce 40k, no one here can hear it. i need to get my TT going so i can spin the black circle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoggy Posted January 27, 2004 Share Posted January 27, 2004 I agree with Gary. Sometimes the cd does sound better but mostly I still enjoy the LP more. LPs that were engineered poorly sound horrible on the better equiptment. Than again you cannot beat a good LP. In fact most of the CD's I own were bought to replace those badly mixed/mastered LP's. hoggy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fish Posted January 27, 2004 Share Posted January 27, 2004 The best bang for a few bucks would have to be the cd.It "can" offer outstanding sound quality,easy to use,durable,portable,easily recordable,quality players at low prices etc....The dvda and sacd format are really the best value.For about the price of a newly released cd you get a product that can make your system really shine.Whether you prefer 2 ch or multi ch the hi rez formats are superior to ANY other formats I've heard in 30 yrs of listening. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfogg Posted January 28, 2004 Share Posted January 28, 2004 ", I read on the back of an album cover that vinyl is embossed with 16-40,000hz information. If I can get it off the album and into my amp, how does that compare to what is encoded to a cd?" Not in any typical useage. Vinyls useful top end is around 16k. It has output above that but it is mostly noise and there is more and more phase shift between the channels (which is some of what gives vinyl its sound) the high up you go. Also the first thing to go when an album (or stylus) wears is the high end. One of the quad formats used a very special cartridge to get around a 40kHz carrier to encode audio in (sort of like AM encoding as I recall) but it was very tricky to setup and with any wear on the vinyl pretty much killed the information. As far as bang for the buck in the hardware department CD/DVD-A/SACD is far far cheaper to get a decent setup out of then vinyl. For software though hitting up the vinyl sections of Salvation Army stores (and the like) and getting albums at $0.25 each is pretty hard to beat. Shawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marksdad Posted January 28, 2004 Share Posted January 28, 2004 i have all formats in your question, and to me dvd-a sacd and vinyl are all great, but bang for the buck???? vinyl. hands down. if you have a good vinyl rig you can pick up on new/used lp's for as little as .50, i have in the past 2 months spent about 250 on vinyl and have about 100 lp's, try that with sacd or dvd-a. so bang for the buck, you decide Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minn_male42 Posted February 5, 2004 Author Share Posted February 5, 2004 ---------------- On 1/28/2004 7:22:41 AM marksdad wrote: i have all formats in your question, and to me dvd-a sacd and vinyl are all great, but bang for the buck???? vinyl. hands down. if you have a good vinyl rig you can pick up on new/used lp's for as little as .50, i have in the past 2 months spent about 250 on vinyl and have about 100 lp's, try that with sacd or dvd-a. so bang for the buck, you decide ---------------- if you read the original post...i was referring to the cost of the equipment... not the software..... but since you brought it up... used vinyl with it's defects.... even virgin vinyl has noise problems... vs. brand new sacd/dvd-audio...super low noise floor and noise noise artifacts...... every time you play your vinyl it wears out slightly.... simple physics... direct contact - stylus against vinyl.... any optical medium... no degradation ever..... your $.50 deal on used vinyl suddenly looks like a "consumable item"...like clothes, food, or anything else that wears out.... back to the original question.... you can get a universal player that plays sacd's and dvd-audio's for under $200..... it is not the best...but it is obviously better in sound than standard cd's to even the casual listener.... my original premise was and still is that this entry level sacd/dvd-audio player can provide higher resolution/better sound to the listener than the same amount spent on a vinyl/turntable setup..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strabo Posted February 7, 2004 Share Posted February 7, 2004 From my experience I'm going to say that they are the same bang for the buck. I have about 4X invested in my vinyl over digital and I think it beats out the entry level SACD/CD. If you spent the same on both I bet they would sound fairly close. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marksdad Posted February 8, 2004 Share Posted February 8, 2004 consumable item? hmmmm. i have found that the most expensive part of my system to be the music itself. i purchased a floor model rotel rcd 991 for 700, one of the best they ever put out, and shortly therafter i had triple the cost in cd's, and i found them to be unsatisfactory, not because of the machine, but because of the poor quality of the recordings i was looking for, so i went to the denon 2900, a step up not in machine, but in sound quality, or i should say more natural recordings, but again the price of the media was climbing dvd-a, sacd, dvd, all great, all pretty equal in price, but the tt rig once the initial investment was done has proven to be a savings, plus for the buck the sound coming out of my tt rig equals the other formats, but i cant get decent recordings on some of my older titles. yes you are correct. the vinyl has its imperfections hiss here pop there, but, and its a big but, the nostalgia factor here is soooo cool,it adds its own ambience to the listening experience. i used to run my system in the early morning hours, lights out, it helped to eliminate outside stimuli (its a great free tweak), but now i do the same and have included a nice spot to light my tt as it spins, its so cool to watch the tt create sound, and the sound, wow!!!!, so for now, when i consider monetary output i consider everything, plus consumable, this is also not very true, many many people dont even have thier tt rig anymore, but still own the lps, if well taken care of the lps will survive for a very long time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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