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Topic: [OFF-TOPIC] From: Double-blind test of SACD and DVD-A vs. Redbook 16/4 (Read 690 times) previous topic - next topic
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[OFF-TOPIC] From: Double-blind test of SACD and DVD-A vs. Redbook 16/4

Re: vinyl and CDs...

I enjoy both, and have over the years collected many recordings on vinyl. Most are in very good condition, and in some cases made better by cleaning. Much of this is unavailable on digital; and in any case the cost of duplicating generally is now prohibitive for me. Of course the LP is a fragile medium.

My observation is that a large orchestra's dynamic range is too great for comfortable playback in the home (hearing the Rite of Spring or Daphnis and Chloe live -- wow), and part of mastering the LP (and heeding its limitations) can be a service to the listener, to limit the dynamic range to 'fit' in the home. Of course the same is possible with digital media including the CD, but without the same dynamic restrictions, it would be up to the mastering engineer to tailor the dynamic range to 'fit' for reasons other than constraints of the medium itself. How much compression is right? I don't claim to know. Even the dynamic range of an LP can elicit strongly worded requests from my wife to "turn it down". 

My own experience in recording LPs to CDRs (via a Yamaha CDR-1000 w/ UV22) is that I cannot reliably distinguish one from the other. That home-brew experiment has made me wonder about higher resolution formats for music delivery, and the results of the experiment are not surprising to me. As I would like to archive many of these vinyl recordings, choosing an appropriate format is something I've been thinking about. Redbook seems fine for my purposes, but it is rather clunky to have to record to CDR and rip it rather than recording directly to a hard drive.

Jeff