Walt wrote:
Arny Krueger wrote:
Chris Hornbeck wrote:

Within the last few years [ ... ] I've found that I can
make a transfer from vinyl to CDR that I can't really
tell from the original, other than the cleaning rituals
[ ... ]

Chris, I just would like to say that you've come up with
the most (perhaps only) meaningful, realistic, practical
comparison method between LP and CD that I've ever heard
of.


I beg to differ. I don't think this really demonstrates a comparrison
between the two media at all - if the CD copy sounds just like the vinyl
it just means that the CD is a very good storage media where you get out
(almost) exactly what you put in.

Imagine going the other way - take a CD and press a vinyl record from it
(going through all the mother/master/stamping steps). Do you think that
the end result would be inidistinguishable?

Or to put a finer point on it, imagine the third generation cassette
copy of "Abba's greatest hits" that spent the summer on the back
dashboard of my car. Transfer it to CD, and you'll find that the CD
sounds just like the third-generation sun-damaged Sweedish crooning on
the tape. What conclusions would you draw from that fact?

//Walt


I think your example of the Abba tape illustrates the point perfectly:-

A CD copy of an LP or cassette will sound like the LP or cassette to the
limits of the A-D conversion process, which today can be of a VERY high
order. In practical terms, I would say that a CD copy is sonically
identical to the analogue source.

The converse is not true:- An LP cut from a CD will not sound identical,
whatever mastering it has gone through. There are those who think the LP
will sound better, that's fine as their opinion, but the fact that it
*is* different means that CD is a transparent medium (what you put in
you get out) whilst LP is not.

S.