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As Robert Pirsig suggested, "Quality is what you like" (but not necessarily "... just what you like")
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
That's more likely to be down to the cd not being mixed properly I'd have thought?
A lot of early cd's don't seem to sound as good as more recent ones. Perhaps they're just better at mixing for the medium?
When CD sounds good, it's almost as good as vinyl
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
Often better, in smaller form factor and less pops and crackles
pops & crackles are things you get when you don't look after your vinyl properly
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
So i'm a member of the church of good digital, in theory.
All the audiophile arguments about the ultrasonic stuff being important are nice but misguided. IMO of course! If harmonics over 20k are loud enough to be modulating and producing beat frequencies in the audible range which are significant, then as a recorder, mixer or mastering engineer I'd question what's gone wrong with the audio! The signals up there are far more likely to be undetected electrical oscillations or switching noise from power supplies, and I'm happy to leave them out of the end product.
A CD can accurately encode the information at 20k with no distortion. A tape machine, even a high quality one, exhibits progressively higher distortion at higher frequencies, and depending on the tape formulation, record speed and how well maintained it all is might be anywhere from flat to barely capturing any 20k in the first place. Meanwhile, a well pressed vinyl might be 10dB down by 20khz with more added distortion, so for this reason too I don't buy the argument that people enjoying vinyl do so because of the ultrasonic information.
Of course, the implementation of digital is where they getcha.
Converting to digital, involves an A/D converter, and there's plenty of ways they can screw things up subtly from cheap analogue front end op-amps to lack of headroom, poor power and jitter in the digital clock. It's the same on the way back to analogue. In the '80s there were plenty of bad converters around that really did sound bad, and engineers had to unlearn the standard practice the analogue world had taught them - even basic stuff like knowing that it was better to be a bit too bright, because the vinyl would smooth that out nicely, and the same with transients like loud snares.
So to begin with, people weren't comparing like for like. The whole record creation process had learned how to make music that worked with the limitations of analogue, and that meant the Digital masters often sounded worse because they weren't doing what the production team were expecting. Then at the final stage of the process, mastering engineers were working with top of the line analogue mastering gear alongside first generation A/D converters that weren't quite delivering the goods.
So it's no surprise that people who cared about sound quality found CDs lacking.
However, by the early '90s things were shifting in the right direction, and I think CDs from that era are often fantastic sounding, and easily trounce the vinyl versions where those exist. Because production teams had learned how to use it, and the technology was living up to the theory. Go and listen to the dynamic range, clarity and punch of, say, Nirvana, or Pearl Jam's Ten, or U2's Achtung Baby, or Rage Against the Machine's Self-Titled Debut. These are fantastic sounding releases that I'm happy to listen to over any good system and enjoy the sonics as works of art.
Then the loudness wars kicked in, and suddenly there was a new reason to hate CDs - the medium was being abused for the sake of loudness, with detrimental effects on the records coming out. For artistic reasons, of course - the slamming, in your face brickwalled sound worked for some styles, but there are plenty of acts that suffered in the quest for volume. I don't think it helped that by the late '90s people were taking CDs that were clipping at 0dBfs (the maximum allowable sample value in digital) and encoding them to MP3 causing even more clipping (mp3 converters often, almost always, create peaks that are higher than the source file)
So what's my point, besides proving that I like rabbiting about this stuff?
Just that 44.1k/16 bit digital can sound *fantastic*, unless it's being messed up somewhere.
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al
You could take a technically more accurate and less coloured modern cd player and dac but it just doesn't sound as good, it's too clean, too polished and sterile by comparison, maybe it's tube deficiencies that just sound better.
And without wishing to derail the thread, Greeny (I assume it was Greeny) sounded epic. Good to see it out there being played, not tucked away in a vault somewhere.
As for "when am I ready?" You'll never be ready. It works in reverse, you become ready by doing it. - pmbomb
Helix/axe fx good for both.
As for ss? No idea. But my old bandit 112s was decent and perfect for the punk I was playing at the time.
I'm a recent convert to digital.
Have always had valve amps and pedals, from a Boss BE-5 and a Marshall Guvn'r into a Jubilee stack onwards.
(That's the sound I'm always trying to simulate BTW - until I tried the Jubilee re-issue and realised I'd romanticised the memory).
Then I got a Helix, which didn't last long - because I also got a Fractal.
Yesterday I was playing the AX8 loud! Into Tannoy Reveal Monitors, so nothing too esoteric or high end, and also quite small speakers.
The Plexi, AC30 and JCM800 sounds are all just wonderful, responsive, lots of bottom end, controllable high-end etc.
I really couldn't be happier with the sound, and by comparison my very expensive valve amp (Carr) sounds not quite so good.
Reason for that is it actually sounds like my romanticised view, the Plexi sounds like (not identical to) a Plexi I could never play.
Is it exact?
I think it's now at a point when it's absolutely close enough just to move on and embrace. All previous versions were missing in that regard - classic point I made about earlier Line 6 products, the TS sounded like a TS, the JCM sounded like a JCM.
But the TS into a JCM was miles off accurate.
That's changed.
So I now have a set-up where the volume knob is really just that, it makes things louder - ok my perception because of volume change is different, but everything else is fundamentally the same - I love that. How many times with valve amps, I'd get an amazing sound at one volume, and change things very slightly and it's all changed. Or the voltage drops a bit and somehow something is different.
People have been talking about CDs, I remember when they first came in - and have read up enough about how they were mastered. Reality is when it was a niche medium it was just awful, there are even stories of people playing a record into convertors.
Now that's not the case, and they sound much better.
People underestimate the impact of A/D convertors - both in the process of making the CD and also playing it, reality is - cost effective A/D or D/A conversion is so much better in retail level equipment compared to 20 years ago. And you can see that in guitar pedals too - I really can't hear it now, but listen to a Line 6 DM4 or the same era TC stuff and it's obvious
I think we're absolutely entering a golden age as guitarists, Line 6, Kemper, Fractal - wow!
Have you seen "Some Kind of Monster"?
Feedback
I accept these are exagerated generalisations to illustrate a point, but while there are lots of guitarists these days, few have gigged much and of them only a small proportion know the joy/pain of a valve amp.
In addition as time has gone on the S/S amp has become part of our musical heritage, bands like foreigner had massive success and therefore influence with clipped transitors.