Just bought a Linn LP12 and it's everything they say it is.

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by MLipton:
Durability is also an issue. CDs, unlike LPs or disk drives, often have relatively short shelf lives, especially if they're not carefully stored. Ripping them does offer the possibility of longer-term storage, though that requires diligent backup of your storage medium.

Mark Lipton
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When I used to play LPs, they had a very short shelf life. Now I was never that careful with them, but others who were more careful still, like all of us then, took snaps, crackles and pops as the cost f doing business. I'm sure all you guys with very high end vinyl systems, have ways of making them last now, but surely it isn't easier than what one might need to do to maintain CDs. My CD collection has many fewer problems than I had with LPs, and I'm hardly careful.
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A wee comment about this. My first decent turntables were a Dual 1019 and a Yamaha P200 (70s and 80s) with if I remember right decent but woolly cartridges. When you move up the TT/cartridge food chain, all the noise associated with vinyl drops way, way off. High end cartridges do an amazing job at leaving that stuff in the background, and even entry level audiophile cartridges like the Denon DL103 or 110 are very quiet (they were, after all, developed as broadcast cartridges for use by radio stations). Those of us growing up with basic, decent Japanese TT's typically are in for a real treat with higher end vinyl reproduction as the crackles and pops recede into the background. Furthermore, with record cleaners like the Okki Nokki, a lot of the source of that noise can simply be removed.

I still do find certain records (DG classical records being a main culprit) to be problematic but they are the minority.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
I have my entire collection backed up on Google Drive! If there is a nuclear winter and Google goes down I won't be playing vinyl, either.
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No need to go that far into the absurd. They'll just change the business model someday.
 
So, on my last trip I picked up a bluetooth-enabled Tivoli Audio System Two without the CD player (hoping to get the same benefit by hooking up an external CD drive). I am pleased with the unit (thanks BJ), which has decent enough bass response for the size, but what has surprised me is the relatively poor quality of the music when I use bluetooth as the source. If I take an album purchased through iTunes and therefore available on my iPhone, it sounds much better if I cut a CD-R on my laptop and play it using the external CD drive than if I transmit the same album to the unit via bluetooth. Does that compute? If I bought the official CD, would it sound even better?
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
So, on my last trip I picked up a bluetooth-enabled Tivoli Audio System Two without the CD player (hoping to get the same benefit by hooking up an external CD drive). I am pleased with the unit (thanks BJ), which has decent enough bass response for the size, but what has surprised me is the relatively poor quality of the music when I use bluetooth as the source. If I take an album purchased through iTunes and therefore available on my iPhone, it sounds much better if I cut a CD-R on my laptop and play it using the external CD drive than if I transmit the same album to the unit via bluetooth. Does that compute? If I bought the official CD, would it sound even better?
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Hmmm....I'm confused. What are the exact systems you're comparing? iTunes album in iPhone via bluetooth to Tivoli vs. ripped CD-R in wired CD drive?
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
So, on my last trip I picked up a bluetooth-enabled Tivoli Audio System Two without the CD player (hoping to get the same benefit by hooking up an external CD drive). I am pleased with the unit (thanks BJ), which has decent enough bass response for the size, but what has surprised me is the relatively poor quality of the music when I use bluetooth as the source. If I take an album purchased through iTunes and therefore available on my iPhone, it sounds much better if I cut a CD-R on my laptop and play it using the external CD drive than if I transmit the same album to the unit via bluetooth. Does that compute? If I bought the official CD, would it sound even better?
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I'll leave the judgment call to BJ. I can offer a techie tidbit: BlueTooth was not created to carry music so it compresses its signal. Modern versions of BlueTooth use better codecs -- and compress less -- but you have to check that both your sending device and your receiving device use the same codec.

There are a zillion articles on the internet about this. Here's a representative one that is still fairly intelligible by non-engineers.
 
originally posted by BJ:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
So, on my last trip I picked up a bluetooth-enabled Tivoli Audio System Two without the CD player (hoping to get the same benefit by hooking up an external CD drive). I am pleased with the unit (thanks BJ), which has decent enough bass response for the size, but what has surprised me is the relatively poor quality of the music when I use bluetooth as the source. If I take an album purchased through iTunes and therefore available on my iPhone, it sounds much better if I cut a CD-R on my laptop and play it using the external CD drive than if I transmit the same album to the unit via bluetooth. Does that compute? If I bought the official CD, would it sound even better?
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Hmmm....I'm confused. What are the exact systems you're comparing? iTunes album in iPhone via bluetooth to Tivoli vs. ripped CD-R in wired CD drive?
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Yes, iTunes album in iPhone via bluetooth to Tivoli vs. ripped CD-R in wired CD drive to Tivoli. I would have expected them to be more or less the same, with the bluetooth perhaps better. Thanks, Jeff, perhaps it's the (deleterious effects of the) compression that I'm hearing.
 
I would expect the reverse. What sampling rate is the iPhone download? Probably not 16/44. Then you're getting that to the player via bluetooth. Why would you expect that to be better than the ripped CD?
 
originally posted by Cliff:
I would expect the reverse. What sampling rate is the iPhone download? Probably not 16/44. Then you're getting that to the player via bluetooth. Why would you expect that to be better than the ripped CD?
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Since both files come from iTunes, I expect the file in my iPhone to be the same fidelity as the file in my laptop's hard drive. Therefore, a direct transmission to the Tivoli via Bluetooth would be spared any degradation that comes from writing that file onto a CD-R and then playing it using a CD drive.
 
Ultimately, I agree that it likely makes little difference. You might still do marginally better with the disk, if you use a lossless format, while the bluetooth often leaves out a lot of information. I would use bluetooth just to avoid the pain of the disk in what is likely not to be a significant improvement, if it's an improvement at all.
 
But I've been finding the Bluetooth transmission to be worse, so there must be some compression going on. Will try to get an actual record company CD to compare.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
originally posted by Cliff:
I would expect the reverse. What sampling rate is the iPhone download? Probably not 16/44. Then you're getting that to the player via bluetooth. Why would you expect that to be better than the ripped CD?
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Since both files come from iTunes, I expect the file in my iPhone to be the same fidelity as the file in my laptop's hard drive. Therefore, a direct transmission to the Tivoli via Bluetooth would be spared any degradation that comes from writing that file onto a CD-R and then playing it using a CD drive.
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There's no degradation from writing a file onto a CD-R and playing it on a CD drive. It's just digital bits, same stuff wherever you put it (sure, digital gets converted to analogue as it's played, but that has to happen no matter what).
I don't have a good sense how Bluetooth works but I assume it entails some kind of compression, and compression is usually lossy compression. So, I would expect the CD-R to sound better.

One factor that might be in play here is that compressing a file that's already gone through a compression (like an iTunes file) is going to make it even worse - like a page that's been xeroxed multiple times. You lose something each time so the second compression might sound crappy even if the first one doesn't audibly diminish the source.
 
What type of files are you streaming? If they are MP3s they are much worse than the CD. Plus the bluetooth may dumb down further.

I am at the limits of my knowledge. Keep in mind the title of this post.
 
originally posted by BJ:
What type of files are you streaming? If they are MP3s they are much worse than the CD. Plus the bluetooth may dumb down further.

I am at the limits of my knowledge. Keep in mind the title of this post.
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I am streaming whatever iTunes deposits in my iPhone, which I had presumed would be identical to what is on my laptop before this talk of compression.
 
Probably MP3 files. They are very dumbed down. They reduce the file size so that people can fit more music in their little boxes.
 
In my laptop the file is MP4, so presumably the phone is the same (don't know how to check). Yet the MP4 cut to disk sounded palpably better than the phone file, so even further degrading must have happened.
 
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