The RIAA curve?
2007-04-13 11:42:14
Hello HA, I was recently perusing an electronics catalog for components and came across the amplifier kit section that praised its own amps for properly implementing the "RIAA curve" for phonograph input. Has anyone ever heard of this? According to the description in the catalog (I'll have to paraphrase a little), modern amplifiers playing vinyl sound dull and flat because of their flat frequency response -- that's because vinyl is (purposely?) not encoded with the extreme highs and lows of the audio spectrum. So, their pitch for selling their amps is taking into account this so-called RIAA curve. In a way, it makes sense. If the intention was to maximize the fidelity of audio on vinyl by limiting the amount of low and high frequencies, then the adjustment can be made through conventionalized hard EQ-settings. Now the world of phono preamps becomes more mystifying. The whole time I thought phono inputs were unique because of impedance-matching. Now it appears there are some preamps the adjust the EQ to a RIAA compiant standard. This brings up a lot of interesting questions about the quality of phono preamps, the vinyl mastering process, the argument of whether vinyl sounds better as a medium (without the EQ adjustment), the effective frequency response of vinyl vs. the optimal frequency response, etc. Let me rekindle the analog vs. digital debate by saying that any medium that gets an EQ adjustment will sound "better" to most listeners. Not to mention, at least the RIAA has a standard EQ for vinyl if not a standard of loudness for CD