Re: CD's vs LP's (here we go!)

["Kevin Winn" <kwinn@chrome.com>]

Ian writes:
>What do you think?  Using Leeds as an example, do you find it to 
>have a warm or cold sound?  The biggest knock against CD's is that 
>they never give a warm ambience.  I disagree.  For example I just 
>bought Dizzy Gillespie's RCA Collection and there is NO comparison 
>to the LP and the CD.  Not only can you hear instruments never 
>heard before but it does achieve that "warm feeling".  BTW these 
>are recordings made between 1945-1949.

For me, the sound quality improvements are worth any loss in "warmth" 
(whatever that is).  Actually, I think the feeling of "warmth" on a record 
is from the white noise produced from the stylus rubbing against the 
grooves (similar to tape hiss).  If that's the sound that I lose with a CD, 
I'm quite happy.  I would rather hear the click of Coltrane's spit against 
the reed of his sax than the click that reflects one careless friend who 
borrowed my record.  I'd rather hear the hum of Hiwatts bouncing around the 
Leeds room than the stylus rubbing the vinyl.  Because that's what you'd 
have heard if you were there.

I've never bought the argument that the sampling rate is not high enough.  
I don't think the human ear is capable of discerning the differences in 
sampling rates much higher than are being used now.

I think that something that is overlooked is the quality of the equipment 
through which people play their music.  Not necesarily the cost, but the 
ability of the equipment to reproduce what is on the media without coloring 
or influencing the sound.  My attitude has always been that artists and 
engineers and producers spend a hell of a lot of time setting levels and 
getting sounds _just right_ during recording, and that the job of the home 
stereo is to reproduce that sound as accurately as possible.  Thus, my amp 
has an on/off switch, balance control and input selector and that's it.  My 
speakers have a frequency response curve that looks like an elevation map 
of a pool table.  Most people have all manner of bass-boosting/loudness 
switches/equalizers blah, blah, blah, that adds so much artificial stuff to 
the recording that the artists could have just turned on a mini-cassette 
recorder in the garage and it would sound the same.

When these systems get ahold of the precision of a CD (more importantly, 
one that was _recorded_ digitally),  it's no wonder that the sound seems to 
lack something.

Speaking as a record nut from the early seventies (when albums really 
started taking off), I've never looked back from the CD revolution.  I have 
replaced most of my album collection with CD's, keeping only those LP's 
with sentimental (my first Who albums) or collector (first editions, ltd 
editions, etc.) value.


LONG LIVE DIGITAL RECORDING!


OK,
KLW