Diff in recording/reproduction in Analog/CD/SACD

Agreed,

I actually have a few 15 IPS safeties, and yes they beat the crap out of every other piece of software I have.

Albertporter....You know how I feel about vinyl surface noise :-)

Tape "Hiss" also annoys me. On many of my older LPs it is evident that even the master tape has hiss, because you can hear it cut in before the music. This problem was largely eliminated by DBX processing of master tapes, and Dolby in home playback systems. Are your 15"/sec tapes DBX? If not, is there hiss?

Eldartford, there is hiss if you turn the volume up enough between cuts and listen for it.

At maximum playback levels I can tolerate (about 95 DB, there is no noticeable noise or hiss. The tapes I have are not encoded with any type of noise reduction. In fact, several are so old they preclude that technology.

Oddly enough, those very old ones sound the best, especially "Ellington Indigo" and my Faron Young safeties which were done on tube recording gear and (likely) tube microphones at 15 or 30 IPS.

As for surface noise, I have more now that I had with my old Koetsu Rosewood, single VTL 750 amp and Sound-Lab speakers. I think the much higher efficiency of the Dali, combined with ultra response high frequencies via their ribbon, shows flaws more easily.

That being said, I can still go most of the nights listening session with maybe three or four moments where a pop or click shows up on an LP. I am crazy about music and much of my software is very old. It's a non issue on new pressings (DEAD quiet with zero clicks or noise) but old LP's such as the Louis Prima (Mono from 1959) have been in others hands far too long to have survived with zero damage.

Still, they sound wonderful and for our group, a pop or click two or three times on an LP that's nearly 50 years old is acceptable, particularly when the musicality of the LP exceeds the modern CD version.

I could still choose a few hundred LP's and listen for days on end with no noise. Those would have to be "hot rod" pressings such as Classic Records, Speaker Corner, DCC and other heavy pressings with virgin vinyl. These cost more and represent state of the art for LP reproduction. Wish they could all be this way and fortunately a good many are being repressed each month.

Albert!!! We have a truce, or at least a cease fire, about LP surface noise :-)

Evidently your tapes are better than many, because the tape hiss that I hear on some old (pre DBX) LPs is obvious at playback levels well below 95dB (peak). Of course it is masked when the music is loud. Only with classical music in very quiet passages is the tape hiss audible while the music is playing.

16-bit 44.1 KHz digital is like low-resolution video.

Comparing Digital audio with low resolution Digital video is another audio myth. Let me clarify why this statement can be misleading:

Our eyes can clearly detect much greater pixel video resolution than mainstream digital video formats and therefore higher pixel resolution (HDTV) is still a worthwhile pursuit in video reproduction (although a much higher frame rate than 30 fps is not generally worthwhile as our eyes do not perceive this benefit). Since we do not hear much if anything above 20KHz, there is actually very limited benefit to seeking significantly higher sampling resolution in audio reproduction than we already have today with CD reproduction...except perhaps in a recording studio where a higher bandwidth may provide greater flexibility and allow for optimal bandpass filtering when mixing/mastering (same goes for using 20 bit or higher resolution for studio digital applications).

For those interested, there are some experts who are actually willing to state their position about the sample rate myths and other well propagated myths of Analog versus Digital, including other audio tweaks. I will not claim to be an expert or to have 'golden ears' but I think this link presents a useful. "down-to-earth" viewpoint to audiogoners, even if many will disagree, at least it can act as a rudimentary guide of where to spend the majority of our $$$ in audio equipment and maybe act as a warning against high $$$ "to good to be true equipment claims";

See

http://signal.ece.utexas.edu/seminars/dsp_seminars/01fall/AudioMyths.pdf