Thriller Vinyl vs CD

[Dopamine]

I have a very basic turntable (Numark TTX w/ Ortofon needle). In most cases CDs--and even mp3's-- sound better that my aging vinyl.

However Thriller on Vinyl ROCKS, and blows away the CD (remastered version from HIStory). Everything (especially the snare and bass) is thicker and RAW.

Anyone else compare these?

[Teddy Ray]

look at the graphics on the left side of this link.

ACOUSENCE records - ARTISTIC FIDELITY | REFERENCE RECORDING - background

[AZeitung]

I suspect there's a bit of wu involved in those pictures.

1) I doubt that vinyl can actually reproduce 96 khz with anything even resembling accuracy. You have a finite needle width on both cutting and playback, and it seems awfully suspicious that there are peaks that seem to go up to 72 khz that the record is supposedly reproducing.

2) You can't localize a frequency to a single point in time (i.e. you can't define a sine wave by one point) so I wonder how exactly the audio was windowed to produce a time vs. frequency chart. Windowing introduces/removes frequencies.

3) Notice how EVERYTHING in the 0-20khz range is WHITE on the picture. That means that even things that are very soft appear as white, and anything NOT white on that graph is so soft as to be inaudible. In fact, much of what IS white must be so quiet as to be inaudible.

4) CDs only record up to 22 khz, but notice how there's a sharp cutoff on that graph above 22 khz? I would think that whatever they used to make the graph would record some noise or something above that point, or that the output filter on the DA converter wouldn't filter everything out perfectly above that point (unfiltered, there would be frequencies present above 22 khz on conversion to analog, but they would not accurately represent what was recorded). It's like someone took an eraser and perfectly chopped off everything exactly above 22 khz. Maybe the graph hasn't been edited. Just something seems fishy to me.

In fact SACD should only reproduce frequencies up to 50 khz, and yet there's noise on their picture above 50 khz, as I suspect there should be on the SACD picture, and yet with the regular CD there's a SHARP cutoff at 22 khz, no noise, no unfiltered sound.

5) There's no evidence to support the idea that anything above 20 khz affects what we hear, anyway.

[ThetaAlpha970]

Vinyl slays cd on well recorded material, almost always. "Off The Wall" vinyl slays "Thriller" vinyl...oh man, I can't believe he's gone.

[Teddy Ray]

Originally Posted by AZeitung

I suspect there's a bit of wu involved in those pictures.

1) I doubt that vinyl can actually reproduce 96 khz with anything even resembling accuracy. You have a finite needle width on both cutting and playback, and it seems awfully suspicious that there are peaks that seem to go up to 72 khz that the record is supposedly reproducing.

2) You can't localize a frequency to a single point in time (i.e. you can't define a sine wave by one point) so I wonder how exactly the audio was windowed to produce a time vs. frequency chart. Windowing introduces/removes frequencies.

3) Notice how EVERYTHING in the 0-20khz range is WHITE on the picture. That means that even things that are very soft appear as white, and anything NOT white on that graph is so soft as to be inaudible. In fact, much of what IS white must be so quiet as to be inaudible.

4) CDs only record up to 22 khz, but notice how there's a sharp cutoff on that graph above 22 khz? I would think that whatever they used to make the graph would record some noise or something above that point, or that the output filter on the DA converter wouldn't filter everything out perfectly above that point (unfiltered, there would be frequencies present above 22 khz on conversion to analog, but they would not accurately represent what was recorded). It's like someone took an eraser and perfectly chopped off everything exactly above 22 khz. Maybe the graph hasn't been edited. Just something seems fishy to me.

In fact SACD should only reproduce frequencies up to 50 khz, and yet there's noise on their picture above 50 khz, as I suspect there should be on the SACD picture, and yet with the regular CD there's a SHARP cutoff at 22 khz, no noise, no unfiltered sound.

5) There's no evidence to support the idea that anything above 20 khz affects what we hear, anyway.

ask him...as a native , you should be able to sprach the sprech with him, yes? he seems like a nice guy.