geoffkait
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A Veritable Who's Woo of Audio
Freako
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Quote:
"There exists an inverted class of audiophiles who claim that the sound of vinyl, i.e. records played with a contact stylus, is superior to the sound of compact discs or other digital music - a interesting school of thought given the analogue/digital audio debate.

An anonymous wag, in the tradition of The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, once defined such an audiophile as someone who listens to the stereo, not the music. Indeed, there are even people who collect and assemble such systems with no goal of even listening to music!"

Rational Wiki Audio Woo

Vinyl sound is often said to have more "life" and dynamics than digital sounds. I tend to agree, but after changing to better interconnects between my CDP and AMP, it's no longer the case with my stereo. Having a super record player will IMHO in many cases raise the quality of the sound over the sound from digital equipment.

The collector's syndrome can not qualify as a true hifi interest. It's more like an interest for collecting stuff, for boasting or other egoistic purposes. Maybe I am wrong, but that's how I see it. Music should always be the main interest triggering a need to make it sound as true as possible, at least if you got the genuine "HiFidelitis". Have a nice day

rvance
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"Cognative disonance???" It's hard to enthuse about a "rationalist" that manages to repeatedly misspell BOTH words of his philosophical reference. What a maroon!

geoffkait
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Quote:
"Cognative disonance???" It's hard to enthuse about a "rationalist" that manages to repeatedly misspell BOTH words of his philosophical reference. What a maroon!

Yes, cyberspace skeptics and protectors of gullible audiophiles often reveal themselves to be uneducated, superstitious and dull-witted.

Jim Tavegia
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A find at the used record and cd show in Atl Sunday was a "remastered" version of Vladimir Horowitz at the Met. I had forgotten that I owned the RCA Red Seal LP version of this concert that I enjoyed in the past.

On the remastered Cd that was first converted to 2496 from the mastertapes, there is a quote from "Stereophile" about the high quality of the disc. It is far and away better than the lp, but I will admit that I do not have a class A tt rig in my home. Although the performance is a little bass shy on both the disc and LP, the performance is excellent.

I still contend that if any of us are to do well with vinyl you must spend upwards of $1500 to begin to get there. A big part of that must be a good phono stage and I am beginning to think that the phono stage in my Yamaha CX-2 preamp is just acceptable and maybe not much more. I must admit that David Benoit's This Side Up and my recent buy of The Jeff Lorber Fusion both have great bass extension, as do many other discs I own, just not this Horowitz or a another RCA Red Seal disc I own of Artur Rubenstein of Chopin works. The SACD remaster of that is much better.

It may be that my first upgrade must be to a good cart that is at least Phile class B. I have some lps that do sound great, but the ones in which I have the CD = are still not quite there. There are just too much mechanical issues to overcome with the rigs that I own. My old refurbished Dual 502 is about to get a Rega 301 arm. It has a Stanton 881S on it now. My Yamaha 550 has an Ortofon OM 40, and my wife's Sony PSLX-5 we use mostly for Chrismas music in the livingroom has a Shure M91ED that I am almost embarrassed to admit at least should be upgraded to a M97XE.

I do enjoy spinning vinyl just the same. It really is remarkable that it sounds a good as it does.

geoffkait
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Judging from what I hear from folks out there with both digital and analog systems, it's about a 50-50 split, some report their analog rig is superior to their digital rig, some report the opposite. Re Artur Rubenstein, one of my favs: Some of his greatest recordings were on RCA LIving Stereo, of course, and the digital remastering of them was very good indeed.

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