Digital reproduction of sound produces artifacts.

Analog reproduction of sound produces artifacts.

A “square wave” has infinite frequency so those frequencies have to be filtered off when converting the digital signal to analog.

CDs can be subject to bad filtering. The best case is to listen to a CD of piano music on a number of CD players. You’ll be shocked at how bad some of them sound. Whenever I buy a CD player, I always brings some sort of piano music to the store to listen to. If I do that, $ for $, a digital system will outperform the equivalent analog system.

The key component is that all digital systems need some analog filtering, because our ears “ring” in the same way that analog filters “ring”, so we don’t hear that filtering. Too many CD player designers have overdone the digital filtering thing, so you end up with digital ringing, which can be quite cold, annoying and distinctive.

Analog reproduction of sound has its own problems, and its own filtering.

Same thing with tubes vs. transistors. Its not that transistors don’t distort when amplifying, its that they don’t distort in the right “pleasant” ways. So guitar players have to buy vacuum tubes made in Russia.

So weirdly, most guitar amps these days have tubes for “color”, then transistors for volume…

You did mention that there are other factors that contribute to CDs sounding lousy, which is certainly true. All I really know is that I have a modestly priced record player and CD player, and the records are much more pleasing to listen to.

Incidentally, if “BS” stands for what I assume it does, you are being too cutting about some of those products in my opinion. Of those listed, the only items I consider to be bullsh*t are the Shakti electromagnetic stabilizer and the cable supports, which are indeed complete garbage. The Clearaudio and Judy Spotheim turntables are ludicrous in terms of appearance and cost, but undoubtedly produce highly impressive sound – all completely free of aliasing. :)

Daniel said: “So a digital recording doesn’t capture the whole sound wave; it approximates it with a series of steps. Sounds with quick transitions, like a human voice or a trumpet, are distorted because they change too quickly for the sample rate.”

I’m sorry, but you have been misinformed. While it is true that digital recordings are approximations of the original, so to are the “moving” images you see in film and television merely an illusion of motion. The fact that they are approximations does not, in itself, imply a limitation.

The bandwidth of a CD is approximately 20 kHz (with a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz), which is also the approximate bandwidth of human hearing. This means the CD will capture content throughout the whole range of human hearing. There is no issue with the CD’s sampling rate being incapable of reacting fast enough to transients that may be present in the human voice or a trumpet, or anything else for that matter. Anything you are physically capable of hearing, including transients, falls within that 20 kHz bandwidth and is therefore reproduceable on a CD. The science behind that is extremely clear and widely accepted. If you believe, however, that information above 20 kHz is important, then CD’s will not deliver what you want. That is another issue entirely, anyway.

A real issue with digital technology, however, is the effective design and implementation of the circuits so that nonlinearities are kept at a minimum. Aliasing, for example, sounds very unpleasant and is still a reality with many (most?) modern digital devices. That, I suspect, is what most people hear when they complain about digital. However, it is not the principles behind digital technology that are the problem, nor are there problems inherent in the sampling rate of CD’s.

Best regards,
Brad

I do consider vinyl to be superior to CD audio. The difference is that vinyl records are analogue recordings, and CDs are digital. A digital recording takes snapshots of the analogue signal at a certain rate (44 kHz for CDs) and measures each snapshot with a certain accuracy (for CDs it is 16-bit, which means the value must be one of 65,536 possible values.) So a digital recording doesn’t capture the whole sound wave; it approximates it with a series of steps. Sounds with quick transitions, like a human voice or a trumpet, are distorted because they change too quickly for the sample rate. On the other hand, a record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original soundwave, so no information is lost and you get a natural sound.

As for the equipment, obviously your remarks were in jest, but several of those products aren’t that ridiculous. I think using conical feet to stop vibrations reaching audio equipment is fairly standard practice – if you check the underside of your own hi-fi, I wouldn’t be surprised if you discover a few magical cones. The same applies for the other damping devices (the black checkers.) Record clamps (white checkers) are relatively new: they flattens out warps, and couple LPs tightly to the platter to reduce resonance and susceptibility to ticks and pops, and are pretty common amongst vinyl fans. Damping electromagnetic interference also sounds a reasonable proposition, but I admit that the hunk of very expensive metal probably offers quite limited benefits.

You’ve spotted that it’s possible to buy extremely expensive and ludicrous record players; I wouldn’t argue with that. I think that as you move up the audio equipment price range, the improvement in sound quality is ever more marginal. Upgrading your £200 micro system to a decent £1k hi-fi is well worth the investment if you like music. But it does seem to become an addiction for some people, who will fork out huge volumes of cash for a change in sound that almost nobody can detect. But then, for nearly every consumer item you can think of, from toothbrushes to automobiles, there is an ultra-expensive version of it for rich people. So I think I’d put put audiophiles into the same category as people who drive Maybach cars, and sit in avant-garde furniture/clothes. Sometimes rich people simply don’t want to own the same products that the masses do.