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To be clear, I'm not arguing vinyl is a superior format, personally I strongly believe a humble (and typical) 16bit 44.1 KHz "consumer cd" type ready for delivery digital file is for 99.9% of listener use cases completely fine, and in any case far superior over any practical analog medium including vinyl. This is why I added "perceived" to the supposed technical advantages of vinyl. From the audio quality point of view, to me there is no point to using vinyl even if the chain is fully analog. It's just a funny thought to me that whatever claims of analog superiority (however fake or misguided they may be) are undone anyway by the digital part of the chain.

Vinyl is analog, this means it has infinity SNR, the audio store salesman assured me this before I purchased a $20,000+ pickup. You do not understand music, my hdmi cables cost $1,000, so as you can see, I understand music.

~Gold~ plated HDMI cables?

I only accept gold plated optical cables...

Don’t forget the $10,000 silver power cable! https://liquidsound.ca/product/nordost-valhalla-2-power-cord...

Yes, that’s a real product.

"Unlike conventional power cables, which have propagation speeds that are less than 50% the speed of light, the Valhalla 2 Reference Power Cord has a speed of 91% the speed of light."

That's nothing compared to the Japanese audiophiles having their own personal power poles installed. https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-gift-for-music-lovers-who-hav...

I've always wanted to ask. Wouldn't putting a standard UPS between the outlet and the equipment solve the problem by powering the device from a battery?

For a sufficiently high quality UPS with sine wave output, yes, I suppose so.

You need these as well: https://highend-electronics.com/products/shun-mook-mpingo-di...

I always keep one on top of my Zune™

You see the same stupid "analog is better" shit among photographers, even today.

Digital SLRs (even APS-frame-size ones) surpassed the best 35mm film money could buy (retail or even "professional") in the mid 2000's in terms of resolution at a given ISO, dynamic range, and even focus (a digital sensor can be flatter than a piece of film ever could be, thus ensuring consistent focus across the entire film plane.) I'm sure the boys at the CIA and whatnot had much fancier film for their cameras, but even they went digital a long, long time ago.

Even back in the mid 2000's retail-available sensors were starting to approach theoretical quantum limits in efficiency of turning photons into a state change on the sensor well they strike. These days some cameras are just stunning with what they can do with the tiniest amount of available light.

Digital is cheaper past a fairly low number of photos, has no per-shot expenditure, you can store tens of thousands of photos on something the size of a thumbnail, you get instant review of things like exposure and "did anyone blink", you can instantly back up the photo to multiple sources (most mid to high level digital SLRs have provisions for mirroring photos to a second card), you can do focus stacking and HDR and panoramas so easily many cameras can do it internally, you can instantly transmit the photos around the world as many cameras have wifi built-in and apps for smartphones that work with it, film and print development is slow, cumbersome, very difficult to do consistently and usually involves pretty toxic chemicals and fair amount of dedicated space.

And yet there are still assholes, fifteen years after film was eclipsed, who will stroke their goatee and tell you why their Pentax K1000 with insert film you've never heard of is "better." I can make the stuff coming out of my digital camera look just like the shit coming out of their camera, only in a fraction of the time, for less cost.

Wow. That’s just laughable. There are some benefits to film, but digital can mimic them all.

With film you have to think about your pictures a little more because you can shoot 400 shots per role. Trivial to use a tiny memory card.

With film, you can put your negatives in a box and never lose them, compared to the hell of always managing digital storage. Surely you can get slides made from digital files.

With film, each type has its own characteristics, all of which are copyable in software.

Ah that reminds me of all the internet film experts in that time frame who would use desktop digital scanner as the last step.

Listen, I get techno Fetishism. If you say that shooting with film camera feels better for you, brilliant. If you claim you prefer vinyl, awesome.

It's when we start making claims of objective superiority that I lose respect and attention.

You'd have to get a pretty expensive digital camera to get as overall high quality photos as a nice medium format (not to mention large format) film camera, to be fair. But only a fool would use film instead of digital for this reason. I just like the hardware more and it's cheaper than an equivalent digital setup.

I think it's still important to distinguish are we discussing process, or end result.

If the end result is for photo to be viewed on monitor, phone, TV, photo album, or say 11x19 poster, I don't know if there's effective difference by the end between a 45MP FX digital, or a medium/large frame film.

The process though is largely different, including the approach and the sensation and the sense of handling. I fully recognize the important of joy of process.

(It's just that, if I swung that way, I'd go all the way and use the twin reflex film camera for a truly different experience :-D. )

I’ve shot medium format, had a lab at home, and now use a Sony a7R IV. The process of developing film was way more fun than my current use of Lightroom, but my $$ conscious self couldn’t stop thinking of how much practice cost. This thought process happened with my woodworking hobby as well :(.

That said, my Sony rivals a medium format in resolution.

If we take joy out of the equation, say we’re doing this as part of a business process, digital is better in all but a handful of cases.

Why are you so angry about this?

I enjoy shooting 4x5 black and white film because of the limitations of the format, not in spite of them. I use a DSLR for paid work. I like to think the time with the 4x5 makes me better at making photos with the DSLR. It doesn't matter if this is true or not.

I love tecnographers to tell me that I am an asshole.

Seriously. Film is a medium. Technical race is over. Digital coupled with algorithms for "ultimate" technical exposure is the winner. So what?

Film has a natural grain, grain emulation made digitally is obvious for a trained eye. Film has a chemically based development, you can alter exposure in different ways and produce different results. Shooting film makes you a better photographer. Why? Because to produce a decent photo you must know the exposure triangle and focus.

Focus, because there is no computer to help you and make you think that you are "the best" ever, and if you are not - you can always fix it in post. Learning to do all in camera is giving you advantage in expression.

Expression. This is the key word here. The world of humans has become so narrow, so predictable and binary, that we are fighting with our natural human psychology. Under the command of the technocratic elites moving us forward to the ultimate vision of AI overlords and never-ending cycle of unnecessary software and hardware updates. Don't let me start on security. Try to hack my Leica M3 - remotely.

Film is made for print. Printing has a value in itself. And the process requires more skill and knowledge than applying some LUTs or predefined filters.

1000 megapixel cameras with AI will not make you an artist. Connecting to a real human world and caring will make you one. Yes, you can express this with a smartphone camera without a doubt, but the choice of film is similar to the choice of oil painting as a medium.

Or should I be asshole again for not using digital painting as a medium of choice. You know, painting digitally is so technically superior. You have undo and redo. Layers and masks.

Why live in the past and not embrace the future? Why learn to play an instrument? The computers are so much better.

P.S.

I responded to your "emotionally" charged opinion with an equal reflection. The main point is that everything has a value as an experience, process and end result. To dismiss someone choices over "technical" logic is a false positive. Technically educated people can buy a vinyl record. For different reasons, aesthetically or experience based ones. Putting all the eggs in one basket is not a balanced approach at all.

Go away with your useless new technology and let people (aka "assholes", as you called them) use what they like.

It's worth noting that these numbers aren't great indicators of sound quality. A 70 dB SNR is perfectly fine for listening to music. Listening and recording environments often have a worse acoustic SNR than that. Instruments are often recorded with converters and digital/analog effects that have a < 100 dB SNR, and they're often further compressed/distorted.

Still, I agree that vinyl is nowhere close to ideal in terms of sound quality. I enjoy it in spite of that.

Yes, it's a garbage number, especially for recreational listening.

The typical home will have enough background noise (HVAC, traffic, wind, etc) that the noise floor isn't especially relevant, but things like a rich midrange and good dynamics certainly will be.

Also, "degrades on each play" is a real overbid these days. Maybe 50 years ago when people used crappy stylii with non-counterwighted tonearms, that was a problem... but a decent turntable with a good cartridge is quite safe. It would take hundreds of plays for noticeable degredation to occur. I might draw a parallel to home users worrying about SSD write cycles - it's much more of a theoretical issue than a practical one.

I mean these days aren't people listening on crappy Crosley record players?

And all that goes out the window when the dynamic range compression dial is turned to 11 at the final mastering step.

With dithering 16-bit improves to 112dB. No golden ear can hear that.