From: Humphreys, David (URB) (david.humphreys_at_honeywell.com)
Date: Tue Feb 17 2004 - 10:13:59 PST
Been watching this thread for a bit.
Here is my 2c.
CD's store digital information, Vinyl stores analog information.
OK.
Let's start with CD's.
Information is stored on a CD in the form of 'pits and lands' in the case of commercial disks and dye changes in the
case of recordable media.
Either way, the information is extracted as a digital stream by the player.
Realizing that errors might occur when reading back such a tiny area, a very robust error correction scheme was put in
place. 17 bits of ECC is added. The data streaming off the disk is constantly checked using these ECC's. Even if the
data has multiple errors the ECC ensures that they are corrected as they stream off the disk.
Unless the disk is totally trashed, what you put in is what you get out.
But that's the real issue isn't it? Garbage in, garbage out. CD's themselves, have changed very little since 1982. The
manufacturing has probably gotten better but that's it.
Could it be then that the music being recorded in the early eighties came from analog sources and didn't (couldn't) take
advantage of CDs' wider dynamic range? I think so. Check out albums from that period and listen to the noise floor
(hiss).
It could be argued on an academic level that digitizing a source chops it up into little bits and you lose the events in
between.
I liken this to television: sit far enough back and you don't see the dots.
16 bits gives you 65536 different levels and you get 44100 of these samples every second.
That's a tad over 22uS/sample. If you can discern this level of resolution you really should phone the Guinness book of
records! For every one else, this is as real as it gets.
Also, being an optical, non-contact medium means that, all things being equal, it never wears out.
Ok. Now Vinyl.
The very first time you play your album you have destroyed it. It will never sound quite the same again. Why? well
because the needle needs to be in physical contact with the groove it will, to a greater or lesser degree, change the
physical characteristics of said groove, thus distorting the original sound.
Also, due to the physical limitation of the adjacent spiral groove and the need to fit more and more on the disk, there
is only so much physical displacement that can occur without banging into the next spiral groove.
Not only that, but the content is recorded with treble boosted using a RIAA filter and needs to be de-RIAAed after
extraction. This is all stuff that is messing with the original content.
Not to mention static and dust.
I was very happy when commercial cassette tapes appeared around 1964.
Now the crackles and pops disappeared (to be replaced by background hiss but at least that was constant and could be
filtered).
I have no doubt that there are some people that still swear that Vinyl is best but that is probably proportional to how
much they have invested in their equipment.
The better medium at the moment is CD (until something else comes along to supplant it).
The subjective part is more to do with content and equipment used to source and play the material.
The storage medium doesn't affect this (except under laboratory conditions)
Have fun and play your albums only once. Record them to CD at that time and protect your investment.
Regards,
PCBman
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