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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!pyramid!hplabs!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!pixar!good
From: good@pixar.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.audio,net.rumor
Subject: CD vs vinyl (long, sorry)
Message-ID: <2679@pixar.pixar>
Date: Sat, 19-Apr-86 17:36:16 EST
Article-I.D.: pixar.2679
Posted: Sat Apr 19 17:36:16 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 23-Apr-86 11:37:31 EST
Organization: Pixar -- Marin County, California
Lines: 127
Xref: watmath net.audio:8285 net.rumor:1974


	I'm not sure what I did to deserve this kind of flame.  You'd think
I had insulted this person's lineage or something in my original net.rumor
posting regarding album washing. 

> From: pixar!ucsfcgl!floyd!clyde!watmath!utzoo!utcsri!koko%uthub 
> To: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!pixar!good%utcsri
> Subject: Re: Washing albums
> References: <782@ihlpl.UUCP> <3447@sun.uucp> <279@uthub.UUCP> <3484@sun.uucp>, <2660@pixar.pixar>

> SINCE WHEN ARE COMPACT DISKS "INHERENTLY INFERIOR IN MANY AREAS ESSENTIAL TO
> HIGH FIDELITY!!!?"  Give me examples of such areas.  It is obvious that either
> you have NEVER heard a compact disk, or that you are a disgruntled audiophile
>who is upset that these simple, neat and easy-to-use devices are rendering your
> $2000 turntable worthless.  I, for one, hate to have to keep records as
> dust-free as possible, and to have to go through many intricate steps to
> get music out of a record.  Here are some "inherent inferiorities" of records:
> 
> - need to keep as clean as possible
> - wear out with use
> - deteriorate with age
> - easily scratched
> - turntable cartridges tend to be microphonic (i.e. pick up the sound of a bus
>     going by on the street outside)
> - some turntables need special preamps and prepreamps
> - records tend to be large, clumsy and delicate
> - surface noise is inherent
> - the operation of a turntable, even an automatic one, can be frustrating,
>     especially when an accidently misplaced tone arm puts a gouge in your
>     new import record for which you paid and arm and a leg and waited for
>     since the dinosaur age
> 
> Now look at the benefits of compact disks:
> 
> - will tolerate fingerprints and mild scratches (provided they are not
>     excessive)
> - never wear out
> - completely insensitive to ambient vibration
> - no special amplification required -- line-level outputs are standard
> - small, portable and conveniently transported, even in large numbers
> - immeasurable (and therefore undetectable) inherent noise in the medium
> - no anomalies in frequency response -- almost perfectly flat response
> - no measurable wow or flutter
> - disk players are easy to operate -- just slip the disk in and press
>     a button (this is very important for users who are not technically
>     oriented or who do not have the steadiness of hand that a brain
>     surgeon has)
> - no need to select cartridges
> - no need to periodically replace needles
> 
> So next time you try to flame me on the net, bucko, you better back
> up your statements!  (And please -- no myths about weird distortions
> to the sound caused by the compact-disk technology.)  Remember -- those
> who resisted technical progress ALWAYS lose their battle.  This is
> a proven historical fact -- e.g.: the industrial revolution, automation,
> robotics and computers.
> 
> And one more thing.  Tell your other friends who are clogging up my
> mailbox with similar bullshit to stop, as I am sure you will do after
> reading this.  I have more important things to do than educate ignorant
> people.

	Needless to say I'm somewhat taken aback by all this.  I promise this
person that I have not sent one byte to his mailbox, nor have any of my friends.
I think his wild, emotional response and faulty logic rather speak for
themselves, but since he did ask I'll address a few of his points.

	It is not at all obvious that I haven't heard a CD.  I've heard some
of the best.  The author's references to needles and automatic turntables,
on the other hand, seem to indicate a certain lack of experience with the
state of the turntable art since the mid 1970's or so.

	Since when have CDs been inherently inferior in areas essential to
high-fidelity?  Since their inception, I'm afraid.  The people designing and
selling digital audio are clinging slavishly to the idea that all the bandwidth
you need is 20 KHz.  This is based on steady-state tone tests done in the 1940's
for crying out loud.  Recent tests run on modern equipment in Europe have
indicated that many people under many conditions can hear sine waves into the
40 KHz range.  But even that is irrelevant to a point.  The human auditory
system is very sensitive to slew rate, or transient response.  The steepness
of the leading edge of a pulse is very easy to discern.

	When you translate the transient response needed to reproduce sounds
found in real, acoustic music such as bells, plucked strings and other
percussive instruments into a sine wave type bandwidth you get numbers way the
heck up in the many hundreds of KHz.  CD players are falling apart well below
20 KHz, and they rapidly fall into the mush above that figure.  Finer phono
cartridges behave quite reasonably up to the 500 KHz region in this respect.

	Also, for what ever reason, when you compare a CD to a good phono
reproduction chain the CD sounds very dynamically compressed: dynamics in
the music are simply lost.  Please don't flame about "96 db dynamic range".
For one thing, that is the S/N, not the dynamic range (we aren't talking math,
we're talking music, remember).  For another, useful information is available
deep into the noise floor of an analog system, so the dynamic range can be
greater than 100 db without much trouble.

	As for un-measurable equating to un-audible, this is pure hokum.  For
years and years new measurements have been coming along and identifying
previously audible phenomena.  It is still possible to hear things you can't
measure.  Unless you take an oscilliscope with you to the symphony you should
prioritize that which you can hear above that which you can measure.  This
doesn't mean that measurements aren't an extremely valuable thing.

	Many of the points made by the above author are quite valid, and I
never said they weren't.  But most of them indicate that the CD player is
a better consumer product than the turntable.  No big argument there.  CDs do
now represent a good value as a convenience medium, and their longetivity is
truly one of ther greatest assets.  I only object to people touting them as
state of the art in audio reproduction, because they just aren't.  They are
simply an alternative which has both advantages and disadvantages compared to a
competing technology.  It is sad that the Japanese industrial complex has
succeeded in evoking such a religiously zealous devotion to their marketing
efforts.

	If you are spending under half a kilobuck or so on a signal source they
are an extremely attractive alternative.  If you can afford more money and more
hassle you can musically blow them out of the water, surface noise and all,
with a costlier turntable system.  Ferrari's have always been more of a bother
than Datsuns.

	I respectfully request now that the mail I recieve be of a more
civil tone, or I will probably not take the time to answer.  Thank you for
your time and consideration,

		--Craig
		...ucbvax!pixar!good