In reply to:

OK, I will. That's nice information and I appreciate it from a learning standpoint but listening has nothing to do with waveforms.

Meaning what... it has more to do with the psychological effect of listening to an analog source - analog is inherently smoother, right?

A waveform is the visualization of the voltage used to create the sound wave - listening has everything to do with waveforms... that's what any player - vinyl, CD, cassette, reel-to-reel - is doing, rebuilding the waveform from the recorded information. Unless you've got the original chanteuse in the room with you moving air with her lungs and vocal chords, you need a representation of that to send to your speakers. This is a waveform.

CD players rebuild it at 44,100 times a second with 65,536 different amplitude levels by reading data off a disc with a laser. Record players do it by running a needle attached to a magnet (talking moving magnet cartridges here - what you'll often find in home electronics) through a groove cut in a record... little bumps on the inside of the grooves vibrate the needle back and forth, which causes the magnet, suspended between two coils to disrupt the energy flow through the coils, causing DC voltage to be produced. I forget the exact voltage range - been a while since I needed to know this... but it's a lot lower than line level, which is why there are phono preamps.

So as you see, all any player does is recreates the original waveform.

In reply to:

Besides, most recording folks, esp in rock, are disgusted at how their music comes across on cd.

I will agree with this. Most old-school engineers don't understand digital and can't mix well for it. And the young ones compress the hell out of everything for that massive wall-of-sound, louder=better sound that's prevalent on new CDs.

Technically, vinyl can record more minute changes (nearly an infinite amount of resolution - there are more than 65,536 physical sizes of these bumps on the inside grooves on a record) but by the time you factor in the pressing process, in which a lot of the fine detail is lost, and the fact that vinyl is a sacrificial medium - with a stylus tip exerting 2 tons of tracking force into the groove, it breaks down with every play.

In reply to:

If people spent more time listening to the actual bands/producers/engineers instead of scientists, more people would be aware instead lps remain a niche market, enjoyed by musicians, engineers, poor students, and audiophiles.

How many engineers actually record in an analog state now, anyway? It looks like the A-D codes on CDs are no longer used that often (anyone remember the first time they bought a CD with a (DDD) code on it? Digital recording, Digital mastering, Digital delivery?) If they were still used, I'm not sure there would still be a lot of AADs out there. Even for the engineers, flying faders, if nothing else, have made the move to digital very appealing. One touch and all the faders zip to the last preset position for that track.

I remember vinyl. I remember pops, clicks, fights about how best to store vinyl (like glass - it's just a very slow moving liquid - stand it up on end, it gets ripples, lay it down, the grooves flatten out), the magic touch of setting all the balance controls on the tone arm until you had the needle riding in the track just perfectly - for that one recording. The high fidelity EPs at 45RPM on a 12" platter. I remember all that, as a piece of history.

Bren R.