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In Reply to: Re: semantics in action posted by kerr on May 18, 2007 at 04:36:06:
of someone who apparently forgives all sin if it involves a vinyl LP.Vinyl LP records are an engineering compromise. They have some advantages and some disadvantages. There are some fine examples of the audio quality that can be achieved with this system (and lots of fine music on them) and there are plenty of poor examples that reveal those disadvantages when one or more people in the chain of production don't take the care they should. In fact, the inability of the industry to produce a consistently good product is one of the disadvantages. Poor quality vinyl, too many records made from one stamper, master tapes at the production plant that were really later generation masters and other issues were and are just too prevalent.
Even the modern "audiophile" LP industry has a hard time getting it right and that is from people who supposedly are pulling out all the stops to get it right.
To the discussion at hand, physical wear due to friction exists whenever two materials come into contact with each other. That is one of the disadvantages inherent in the LP system. Sure, good tonearm and cartridge design can reduce that wear and may well do it to the point that it is more than acceptable to you, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
And, while LPs are durable in some ways, they are quite fragile in others. A little heat, a bit of mold, a careless slip and you have a permanently damaged product. Even in this area, vinyl has it's strengths, and it's weaknesses. Easy duplicate copies for backups, which happens to be a strength of digital, is a weakness for LP material.
Likewise, digital formats are also a series of engineering compromises and we are left to work within the limitations of decisions made years ago (an example being the case of the CD format) In spite of those limitations, some fine music has been beautifully recorded in digital format. And, there have been plenty of horrid specimens.
I happen to love the music I have on LPs. I happen to be frustrated when the recording is poor or I have a poor quality pressing. I can say the same thing about the good - and poor - examples of music I have on CD. Neither has a lock on the music I have in my life. I don't gloss over the limitations of either format. They exist, along with the good points of each system.
Follow Ups:
...if you're now exhausted by that leap to a conclusion! :)
The truth is that I have a lot of LP's and a lot of CD's and I love them all. Granted, the best sound I have ever heard comes from an LP but also the worst sound I have ever heard comes from one. I was simply pointing out a fallacy in The Audio Critic.
You're still confusing "wear" with "wear out". An example of the difference is that I'm 50 years old - worn but not dead. At some point I will be worn out. LP's, too, might wear out someday. But neither Tom Nousaine nor the LP itself has been around long enough to know when that point is. To state it like a fact simply proves the kind of dishonest journalism that TAC is all about. This is not about which one is "better" or even which one I like better. I like them both but I honestly believe that any well cared for LP will outlast any well cared for CD.
> You're still confusing "wear" with "wear out"
And you're still debating semantics.
If a CD "wore" with each play, you'd have a lot of people in the audio world all high and mighty about this "unacceptable" compromise and there is no doubt in my mind that they'd hear the loss of every hertz or every hundredth of a decibel increase in the noise floor with each play.
When we are fond of something, we tend to be more forgiving of it's faults than something we are less attached to. I don't think it is much more complicated than that. For me, LP records have one set of compromises and CD disks have a different set.
So the difference between aging and dying is simple semantics? Well, I did come to PHP to learn new things!
Don't think I'll share that one, though. :)
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