Analog vs Digital Confusion

Lowrider, I have a great many of the Telarc LP's from the 1980's, and yes, many of them are excellent. A few suffer from excessively swimmy acoustics, but that is clearly attributable to the mic techniques that were used on those particular recordings.

Concerning mastering, the following appears in the album notes in many cases:

During the recording of the digital masters and the subsequent transfer to disc, the audio chain was entirely transformerless. Neither was the signal passed through any processing devices (i.e., compressors, limiters, equalizers, etc.) at any step during production of the finished product.

Another factor which I suspect contributed to their good sonics was that although that was obviously prior to the advent of hi res digital recording as we know it today, the Soundstream digital recorder they used provided a sample rate of 50 kHz, in contrast to the 44.1 kHz rate of the CD format. That difference is, at least potentially, more significant than it may seem based on the numbers. The Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem defines the maximum signal frequency that can theoretically (but definitely not practically!) be perfectly recreated from samples taken at a given rate. Per that theory, 50 kHz can, under certain idealized and unattainable conditions, allow perfect recovery of signal frequencies up to 25 kHz, while the corresponding figure for redbook CD is 22.05 kHz. So the margin between those numbers (beyond which all signal frequencies must be filtered out before reaching the A/D converter, to prevent "aliasing") and the 20 kHz presumed upper limit of our hearing is nearly 2.5 times as great (25% vs. just over 10%) for the 50 kHz rate as for 44.1 kHz.

Regards,
-- Al

Al... Thank you for the info; I remember the Soundstream and the 3M. I'm not an EE, but worked in recording studios.
Todays digital vinyl quality is really hit or miss, but this new generation of record cutting is still in it's infancy.

One of the joys of vinyl for me is discovering, or rediscovering older records I own but either haven't listened to in decades or never knew I had. A few examples:
On my way to looking for something else, I found a very nice 6-eye of Take Five. I know it has been reissued recently, but this old Columbia record sounds amazing;
Blood, Sweat and Tears- standard issue Columbia from back in the day- amazing sonics and music.
I did break down and buy an OOP copy of 88 Basie St. on 45rpm. It is just a marvel.
I started acquiring records in the late 60's as a teen. Still have virtually all of them. I continued to buy in college, and law school and as I started working, though I had much less time to listen.
When CD entered and records were banished from the store shelves, I increased my record buying by a magnitude. Every town, city or country i visited involved buying records. And, working 6-7 days a week, I only had a chance to listen occasionally, to a limited number. After more than 40 years, I have accumulated a substantial collection- not all of it great, or super collectible (though some is). With a transition out of the fulltime practice of law after 32 years, I now have time to enjoy this collection, which continues to grow, selectively. (Of course, if someone offered a substantial collection to me today, I would buy it if it was priced appropriately). Not sure if this makes sense for someone just starting on vinyl, but there's still a ton out there, and if you are willing to take a chance, e-bay has a wealth of stuff- I'm not talking about the thousand dollar records, but the 8 and 10 dollar ones. With a good record cleaning machine, a willingness to take a chance and some research, you can probably have an even easier time of it today than I did, haunting dealers, searching through bins, and hauling records home on airplanes and in cabs. Granted, you have to trust a 'visual grade' and the seller's good faith, but you aren't going to be able to accomplish much more in a record store.

Al,
Well as usual, once again you present a very reasoned and compelling viewpoint.Both formats are capable of exceptional sound and both can sound very average.Much depends on the front end set up and of course quality of the particular components.Vinyl based systems are`nt by default always better than digital,it really depends on numerous factors.I`ve heard some analog record front ends sound disappointing and worse yet,uninvolving and flat.Some I`ve heard have been spectacular! But the same holds true for digital.There`re a lot of vinyl record pressings that just are`nt that good to begin with and no amount of analog system manipulation will change that fact(just as there`re poor CD examples).Both format can coexist and sound superb if the right choices are made.
Regards,

"Personally, I enjoy both formats, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the quality of the particular recording."

Al, that is very well said and I have recently adopted that philosophy.