Your bass is only as good as your source

[chrisbee]

Mar 8, 2009 15:35:21 GMT -7 tvrgeek said:

COMPRESSION on CD? Heck even my best Shefield LP's only had about 65 dB dynamic range.

I have noted that, on vinyl, swell on pipe organ sounds like a considerable increase in loudness and musical emotion compared with CD.

CD seems to completely gloss over swell. It wasn't until I started listening to organ vinyl again quite recently that I immediately recognised what was missing. It came as quite a shock to hear the same music gaining much greater emphasis.

CD also seems to gloss over the variations in loudness of lead electric guitar which vinyl reproduces with effortless clarity. I call such variations microdynamics. Putting it simply: No two notes on vinyl are ever reproduced with exactly the same loudness. This makes the playing much more lifelike and with far greater artistic expression.

CD sounds more like a machine is making the notes. Which is why card reading fair organs and robot musicians aren't much fun to listen to once the initial curiosity wears off. The same goes for thrash metal I suppose. There is no contrast in dynamic range and the mind switches off through boredom with listening to the same signal.

The overall, theoretical, dynamic range might be in favour of CD but it goes almost unnoticed compared with vinyl's more obvious variations in loudness of the instruments involved.

In both cases I'm talking about older recordings from the 70s and 80s.

[carvernut]

ok, your leaving me in the LP tech talk ;D i'm not as in the know yet on on all the variations... but i'm learning as much i can absorb at a time..

my listening opinions are based on these facts, i've been a CD child, i grew up on them really... but now i'm listening to them on my system i've taken time and a fair amount of money to put together... and they (to me) sound so dull when compaired to a record that is of good recording quality and cut.

for example: I have a CD of E Power Biggs playing Bach Organ music and tacata and fugue in D minor, i also have that same exact album from the late 80's... as close as i have found they were both taken from the same master tapes... The record wins hands down... it's full of life, power and imperfections... just like how the orignal recording was.

as was stated earlier... almost all cd's now are done on a computer and mastered and mixed to where they are sonicly perfect as much as can be done. This means that all the little details and variations are removed and sonically enhanced. This also doesn't even take into acount the subtle details removed from sampling conversion of analog-to-digital.

from someone who grew up listening to CD's... i think the best thing would be for cd's to just suddenly burst into flames around the world ;D

[jimcant]

Dave,

Thanks for starting this thread
It seems to have taken on a life of its own of late, but has been very thought provoking.

It seems to me, that we all come from different audio backgrounds and our expectations are just as varied.

From my perspective, growing up in an era of turntables and LP records and having a DIY bent, meant building ever larger speaker boxes, in the neverending search for that elusive bass content

When one got closer to that goal, feedback reared its ugly head
But then Compact Cassettes came along to save the day, and my LP's were transferred to them.
Whilst they allowed higher listening levels, sound quality was often not the best, but they were convenient.

The introduction of CD's seemed like a godsend to me.
Huge dynamic range and no feedback.

But, I would have to say that the biggest impact on my audio journey, was finding this place and building an IB, and I am eternally grateful to Thomas W for that
He has given me the listening experience I have been searching for, for the last 35 years.

Media, will come and go, and will hopefully keep on improving.
I think IB will continue to do justice to that material for some considerable period of time.

Cheers,
Jim.