Quote:
Originally Posted by Tony Wilkins 99 /t/1520843/confused-about-music-formats/0_100#post_24435096
... I've read that vinyl is still the king for real music reproduction. ...
You have been reading a good deal of nonsense. Take some time reading this article:
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/technical-articles-and-editorials/technical-articles-and-editorials/a-secrets-technical-article63.html
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/technical-articles-and-editorials/technical-articles-and-editorials/a-secrets-technical-article64.html
Pay particular attention to Part 7, and keep in mind, that the high distortion is with great equipment carefully set up. Most people will have worse.
See also:
http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/explanation.htm
http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/abx_testing2.htm
Those two demonstrate running audio through a conversion to CD quality does not audibly degrade sound.
That should be enough to tell you that you don't need higher resolution, but one more article:
http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
Now, there are cases when an LP can sound better than a CD, and that is when a poor master is used for the CD and a good one is used for the LP. Basically, if crap is put on a disc, crap is what you have. There are more cases of this than you might think, because the original master tapes for some old recordings no longer exist and consequently a substandard source must then be used for new releases. And, any time anything is remastered, it can be made better, worse, or just different.
Also, multichannel will sound different than stereo, and so there is a reason to go with SACD or DVD-Audio or music on a BD. But for the multichannel sound to do you good, you need to play it on a multichannel system, properly set up. Additionally, of course, a better master might be used on one format and that can make a difference even for the stereo version, without the
format being responsible for the better sound.
So, what you should get in the future depends on several things, such as whether you want multichannel audio or not. If so, you want things like SACD, DVD-Audio, audio on BDs. You might also be able to get some lossless multichannel downloads, but the lossless file would need to be made from a good lossless source or you would not be getting what you might expect to get.
For stereo, CD is fine. You can also get some lossless downloads, but, again, you need to be careful about what you are buying online.
Basically, with digital files, given that hard drive space is cheap these days, you should only be dealing with lossless files, not the old MP3s, though high data MP3s done right
can sound fine.
My personal favorite format is hybrid SACD. This is a disc with both an SACD layer and a CD layer. Such a disc can be played on an SACD player for multichannel sound (if it is a multichannel SACD), and the CD layer can be played on any CD player, which makes it very versatile and compatible with many systems. Unfortunately, not much is released on this format. The vast majority of the music I buy is on CD.