Re: CD vs Vinyl
Hello Wilkinsb, OK, here is a puzzle that perhaps you can help me out with.
There is this performer I know, well, actualy I know quite a few but to keep it short the general gist is this.
On stage there is this electric guitar player. His rig and the way he plays produces this depth in his blues sound. It's full on and warm, rich in tombre. When the performance is recorded by taking a feed fom the PA to two machines, one is an open reel-reel, the other is a digital recorder and the sound is played back through the PA from the open reel after the show, it sounds more like the performance that has just happened, while the playback from the digital device does not. Over time different makes and models of recorder are used to record the show, some are analogue, some are digital. A pattern emerges where one of the two types of device scores consistantly over that of the other in producing an authentic playback of the concert. When enquirey is made, it is found that the analogue recorders that tend to produce the playback which is deemed to most accurately match that of the concert.
But this isn't the end of the puzzle, because the performer decides every now and then to make available to the public various records of his performances. In one case, he puts it out on vinyl and in another he puts it out on CD. There is a mix of tracks, some of which were recorded digitaly and some on the open reel, on both CD and vinyl issues. When he talks to his fans he hears comments that some of the tracks on his vinyl LPs sound more full on and real while others sound sonicaly incomplete. However, the feedback he gets about his CDs is that at all the tracks sound equal.
Now the question is this, which of the two types of system are feeding distortion into the signal chain? Is it the one that sounds most like the original gig because when all said and done an electric guitar through a tube amp is a mess of distortion anyway, or is it the digital devices, which when all said and done, clean up the sound and make it more authentic to how the musician would have sounded had he just fed his guitar directly into the mixing boards instead of miking it via his own combo unit and therefore revealing him to be the rotten musician that he is because he doesn't sound as good when he plugs his guitar directly into the desk?
Grtgrfx, having responded to Wilkinsb I shall now read your post and endeavour to respond.