Favorite type of music media

[Dukkha]

Currently I can play 7 of these. The bulk of my media is Red book CDs. IMO Vinyl is still king of pure audio fidelity. If mastered well, SACD and DVD-A can match it, and if you don't know what they are, get a player and start enjoying real hi-fi again. When you have a decent audiophile system you realize just how much MP3s suck. I won't wast a dime on an iPod or any other player like it. My DAT is only used for Pro Audio mix downs and transfers to digital mastering.

[seemunkee]

1. I'm with you

vinyl, two channels, tubes. Wish I could afford better equipment.

[Dukkha]

2. I do 4 channel

I wish I could afford tube amps but two stereo amps or 4 mono blocks are out of reach. I was using a Sansui quad receiver but it was showing it's age and would've cost $1500 to rebuild. Now I'm using a Denon with Tube EQs

[Nicole]

3. Vinyl

Here's some stuff I had out earlier today to listen to.

[IowaGuy]

4. Sorry, can't go along with you on the vinyl thing....

just plain technologically inferior to CD or DVD, )or DAT for that matter) - just plain incapable of containing the dynamic range of what the human ear can hear and the frequency range to a certain degree outside of the range of human heraring. Distortion at frequencies outside of the range can when mixed w/ frequencies within the audible spectrum create a cancelling effect, thus coloring the music, an example of this is the Dolby filter, it essentially creates a hisssing noise that is 180 degrees out of phase with what is produced by the noise of a tape passing the magnetic head, thus cancelling out the hiss.

Vinyl falls off too much on the top end and most amps (tube and otherwise) from that era distorted those frequency ranges and pushed their gain up in the upper frequency ranges to artificially "brighten" the sound of the music. Where a lot of people thought that CD's were not accurate was they were playing them through amp/speaker cfombinations that already artificially brightened that higher spectrum of frequencies thus making the sound seem too harsh and bright.

A well mastered and engineered CD, played on the proper amp/ speaker combination will always outshine a well mastered and engineered vinyl recording played on equipment appropriate to its genesis. Just because of the lack of dynamic range of vinyl it will sound like you are listening to the music through ear muffs in comparison.