[SageRaven]

For shits and giggles, I snagged a vinyl rip of Simon and Garfunkle's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" in 24-bit 96KHz FLAC format online, just to see what all the fuss was about. Some guys who do serious vinyl rips spare no expense, using pristine vinyl on high-end rigs, washing the disk before the first play, etc.. I don't pretend to understand all the jargon.

Now I obviously couldn't perform scientifically sound listening tests on my own. But I did do repeated back-to-back plays (of snippets and whole song) comparing the 16-bit 44.1 KHz FLAC rip I performed on my S&G's "Greatest Hits" CD to the 24-bit vinyl rip. And as skeptical as I was, the sound is a little warmer and seems to have more spacial volume (I'm no audiophile, so my terms are probably making people wince) on vinyl than on the CD. I am using a low-end $60 Sony head-set and all audio from my PC competes with background clicks and chirps from my built-in audio jack due to bad poor grounding in the motherboard (I assume).

I can think of 3 reasons the vinyl rip sounded better to me: 1) It is, in fact, a better sound; 2) The master used to produce the vinyl source was better than the one used for the CD I have; or 3) It's all in my head.

I mostly ruled out #3 because I snagged a few more 24-bit vinyl rips to see if they were any better then my CD sources, but I deleted them due to poor sound.

That all said, regardless of the technical details, I am quite fond of my new 24-bit 96KHz copy of "The Boxer". This song is amazing in its musical layering and depth, and the ever-so-slight improvements I personally hear from the new rip was well worth the bother.

[jff]

Put several instances of each song into a playlist and hit "shuffle". Try to identify which is which. That's the best way to make sure it's a real difference, not just your head playing tricks.

[glomph]

Agreed. Blind tests are the only reliable way. If nothing else tests in this area have managed to show is that people are not good at judging without bias if they know which is which.