The fact is digital is the future, and when the recording industry and the playback industry get together and finally sort it out, then we will will have something that continually surpasses vinyl. At the moment, the best of digital recording techniques, combined with the best of digital playback techniques are much more accurate and transperant than vinyl, BUT it is rare to get both techniques working in unison and producing a reproduction better then what was available from a tape transferred to vinyl back in the 60's.
I've got some wonderful sounding vinyl records in my collection, a couple of really good turntables, 5 fantastic tone arms and about a dozen moving coil cartridges, and it is quite easy to pull a record out of my collection and get exceptional sound from any of my vinyl rigs. With digital, it is a different story-all my CD's have been transferred to flac and aiff , and including downloads I have many thousands of digital files, but sadly very few of them are what I would call state of the art, but there are maybe a couple of hundred where the recording technique is sota , the transfer to digital has been done properly and with good digital equipment, the result surpasses vinyl in just about every aspect, as exemplified in a 352khz wav master file of a symphony chamber orchestra I have. Previously I've blogged about the disappointment of hearing a symphonic chamber group playing live in a small church where I sat about 2 metres from the band, and then listening to the CD on my stereo. The afore mentioned 352 KHz wav digital recording is the only recording I've ever heard, digital or vinyl that comes close to re-creating the ambience and realism of such a live performance. It's just a shame that there are so very few good digital recordings and most people have never heard the real potentional of digital, WHEN IT IS DONE PROPERLY.
I have some vinyl I've had for a very long time, and they reflect periods of my life, and have great meaning and significance , and like wise there have been some great digital recordings that invoke the same emotional responses; digital or vinyl , it essentially comes comes down to how well the recording was done, I suspect it is a lot harder to do a great digital master than it is to do an analogue master.
Damien Rice's first album "0" became a cult classic, home made and recorded on tape it had an immediciacy and vibrancy that made him a reluctant superstar, and the CD had very good sound, with sales high enough for his record company to give his second CD a higher budget with "proper" recording and engineering. You can guess that the next CD had quite woeful sound with the compression so commonly used with modern engineers.
Sound quality, whether it is vinyl or digital based depends far more on the quality of the recording and engineering techniques than the actual equipment we use to play them.
It is true that a $1000 vinyl system will often sound better than a $10,000 digital system, but the simple reason is that the majority of vinyl recordings sound so much better than the majority of digital recordings.
The very few digital recordings that are done with no expense spared or compromise to sound sound far superior to vinyl, but very few artists or companies have the knowledge or desire to produce these masterpieces.
I love my music in analogue or digital form , and being an obsessive perfectionist when it comes to my playback equipment, I have the very best I can build. There is no doubt in my mind that digital is the "best" , but for the majority of recordings available at present analogue/vinyl still rules. There is a better alternative to the throne, but at the moment it doesn't have the numbers to claim the title.
Which provides a good excuse to talk about one of my tonearm/cartridge combinations.
I have owned a Dynavector DV-505 tonearm for quite a while now, you can see from the pix that it is a big bulky arm designed specifically for low compliance moving coil cartridges. The interesting thing about this arm, apart from it's sheer weight, is the use of two damping arrangements- this from the 505 manual:
- electro magnetic damper
This damper applies effect of eddy current, which is generated when conductor moves in magnetic field, and which obstructs conductor in motion. It has almost no damping effect on motion of non-vibrating tone arm, but is highly effective to vibration of arm, such as arm resonance. - Inertia controlled dynamic damper
This damper, incorporated into main arm, consists of a pair of spring and mass, each of these constituents having a carefully selected constant. This spring mass oscillation system oscillates only horizontally as main arm resonance occurs, and causes resonance peak to dip.
Phase lag in one oscillation system relative to another is effectively applied in this damper, which functions only in response to arm resonance.
In combination with the bi-axis tracking system, these design features makes for a very well damped arm, coloration is very low and the arm almost sounds "dead" . It does tend to take some of the life out of the typical moving coil cartridges used with this arm.
Whether this is good or bad is subjective, but I always struggled to find a cartridge I liked with this arm.
Another famous analogue product is the Ortofon SPU cartridge. Weighing in at up to 30 grams it is a monster MC cartridge with a scary 3.5-5.0 grams tracking weight. Finding a tonearm to suit this heavyweight is a difficult task.
I liked the SPU as soon as I heard it, but the unit I was given had unknown hours on it, and I was frightened that a worn needle at those tracking weights could be doing ir-repairable damage to my vinyl records, so I only listened to it briefly.
I have had very good results having MC cartridges re-tipped by Expert Stylus in London. They can achieve these results by replacing good tips with even better diamonds and I was very happy with the resultant increase in performance with Denon, Ortofon, Accuphase, FR and Dynavector cartridges.
They cleaned the SPU and replaced the tip with a diamond that could be played at a lower tracking weight of 2.5 grams.
When I received the cartridge back from Expert I was very keen to put it straight into the DV-505 tonearm, for if there was ever a tonearm and cartridge designed for each other, then surely this match was it. Two big bruisers, masculine and a bit punch-drunk, could they work together to overcome the lack of finesse and charm that individually they had?
Thankfully, this exactly what I got, strong tuneful bass, very accurate mids and highs, with openness and musicality, but is not coloured to the extant that so many vinyl based systems are, the similarity between the sound and very high quality digital as discussed above is pleasing.
