Compare for yourself: Vinyl vs. CD Options

[ff123]

This is from a message I just posted to uk.rec.audio and rec.audio.opinion:

On Thu, 27 Mar 2003 22:53:58 GMT, Moi <zis_guy@NOxSPAMMxhotmail.com>
wrote:

>This one is from Peter Kater's "Gateway" ca. 1988 (Gaia/Polygram
>Records). This one may in fact exist on CD, so somebody may be able
>to check perceived speed stability and etc. against the CD. The song
>is from side 1, track 2 titled "Talk Back."
>
>This one was also most likely recorded to digital before pressing the
>LP, and I'm not responsible for any possible digital ugliness you may
>hear ;-).
>
>Wish I could post longer samples, but space and downloading time
>constraints prevent it. As again, this one is about 3.5MB in size,
>and requires the LPAC decoder, available here:
>
>http://www.nue.tu-berlin.de/wer/liebchen/lpac.html
>
>The sample itself can be downloaded here:

http://ff123.net/export/pksample.pac

I changed the link to point to my server to remove the bandwidth load
from Moi's site.

Moi described his setup in an earlier message: TD-160/M97xE/Technics
SU-C01.

I purchased the 1988 CD version of this album (< $10 used) and ripped
the same section as Moi's sample.

http://ff123.net/export/pksamplecd.pac

I time aligned it as best I could. The sample is about 34 seconds
long. The vinyl version takes about 60 msec longer to complete than
the CD version, so the speed accuracy of the turntable is about 0.2%
on the slow side if the CD can be considered the reference.

I applied -0.43 dB to the left channel of the CD version, and +0.26 dB
to the right channel. The volume was compared with the vinyl version
via average RMS. WavGain (which uses David Robinson's replaygain
algorithm) gives about the same answer as average RMS.

I applied a linear fadeout to about the last 4 seconds of the sample
to approximate what Moi had done with his sample.

I won't say what I hear just yet. If you think the difference is
sufficiently subtle to warrant the use of a double-blind tool, visit
one of the following sites:

http://pcabx.com/
http://ff123.net/abchr/abchr.html
http://www.kikeg.arrakis.es/winabx/winabx.zip

ff123

Edit: Oops, I think I posted this to the wrong forum

This post has been edited by ff123: Apr 1 2003, 07:41

[KikeG]

Unlike digital, with analogue you can hear well below the noise floor.

That could be true, if you didn't use dither. Using dither, signal dissapears into noise floor just as in analogue. In fact, it's better, since you can control the shape the noise floor.

Appogee, pioneers in dither, ADC & DAC realised this when they first formulated the concept of dither in digital recordings.

IIRC dither was known and used in Bell Labs several decades ago. It is a fundamental part of digital, I don't think it is an invention of a particular brand. I've done some newsgroups research, and seems that Apogee just designed a particular type of dither that needs less noise. Still, noise-shaped dither is quite superior to this UV22 dither.

Digital just stops (distortion) at the noise floor.  Analogue fades naturally, well below hiss or crackle

Not if you use dither.