CD vs. Vinyl

I'm a bit of a novice audiophile and to be completely honest, my interest in audio is as much about the technology as it is the actual music. I'd compare my facination with speakers producing music to airplanes flying. It's simply amazing how it works.

In that context, I'm just interested in learning more about vinyl and what makes it different since I'm young enough that it's never been anything that I've been around.

Here's an interesting perspective, related to digital vs. analog, from my EE friend. As I've said on other threads, we discuss these topics and many more at work.

"Everything you hear ultimately is traduced through the fully analog mediums of speaker cones and air movement. Because of this, the ultimate audible result of a digital signal is a fairly smooth analog wave. Even if you have only 3 points to determine your wave versus 20 on an SACD or "infinite" on a record, how different will those representations be if you are at the upper frequency limits of the transducing surface? The surface of the speaker cannot instantly transition from full excursion in a positive direction to full excursion in a negative direction, so at some point, because time and motion are involved, the speaker produces the exact same waveform from a three point digital reference as a full analog signal. This would effectively be a "distortion" of sorts with the ironic result of being closer to the original signal.

A vinyl record effectively contains "infinite" data points, which is obviously more information than can possibly be contained by any digital medium. However, at some sample rate (it would depend on your D/A converter and amplifier), the analog output from the amplifier will be identical regardless of whether or not you use the record or the digital recording (assuming that your components are so well designed that they don't individually "color" the analog outputs as you suggest they may).

The ultimate result we are comparing is the audible output from the speakers, and while the D/A converter, amplifier, and speakers may all carry through some of the reduced resolution of a CD recording, there is a point in the digital realm (possibly SACD) where the end result reproduced by the equipment will not differ one iota."

To put my spin on it, at what level does the digital signal become close enough to the analog that the physical restriction of the speakers themselves are the limitation.

I have a difficult time believing that the groove in a record can really contain the same level of detail as a CD or certainly an SACD and that a mechanical needle can track this level of fidelity. So is it really a case of the digial signal actually containing more information than the analog and the analog is "smoothing" things in the digital signal that the speaker is having difficulty reproducing?

I ran my lastest theory by my friend and was shot down. His response was that test have showed that high quality cartridges can track in the range of 50khz which is significantly outside of the range of audio relevance.

He did say that the effect might happen with very mismatched systems like a $20,000 turntable and $200 speakers. Also, a cheap cartridge could have the potential to be the limiting factor with a nice set of speakers.

Physics accounts for much of the difference in sound.

A stylus tracking a record has mass and is hampered by inertia as it tracks a record and modulates to produce a signal. High frequency transients, if even present in the recording to start with, are essentially filtered and come across smoother as a result. It is a challenge for an amp to handle high frequency transients well. As a result, the micro dynamics produced from vinyl is less challenging to amplify accurately and the results are considered "smoother" and more pleasant by many as a result.

With digital, there is no mass or inertia at play. There can be jitter and other imperfections in the D to A process that affects the shape of the resulting waveform when samples are not converted properly at precisely the right time. The extent to which this occurs largely impacts the clarity of the resulting sound but the nature of the distortion is inherently different from that involved with records. When digital is done well, transients and microdynamics are more challenging for amps to reproduce accurately. When all this works well though the overall dynamics of the resulting sound is more vivid and lifelike than vinyl in general, IMHO.