Why Purchase Vinyl?

[Mr Skills]

As far as the vinyl/CD thing goes, CDs are capable in every way of reproducing the original recording more accurately than vinyl. However:
1) Accuracy isn't everything - some of the imperfections of vinyl may sound better to some people
2) There is not the temptation on vinyl to do the aggressive style of mastering that is nearly ubiquitous on CDs, because you simply can't

 

[Killyp]

Well I say 'never', I'm talking from a technical aspect. Hard-panning defeats the point in how a pair of speakers create a stereo image.

Your brain has two ways of constructing a stereo image, one is phase/timing differences and the other is volume differences (although the latter kind of relies on the other). The stereo image produced by two speakers is created by volume differences between them, and this is how your brain interprets it. However, when you hard-pan a sound fully left or right, it's interpreted by the timing difference when the sound reaches each ear.

I would go into detail if I knew much more about this, or if I was clever enough to understand it all, but I've had it explained to me enough times to know that it's something I'll never understand fully.

Either way, it's been shown that a ~12dB drop in one channel is enough to cause it to sound as though it's all off to one side...

 

[Mr Skills]

Well I say 'never', I'm talking from a technical aspect. Hard-panning defeats the point in how a pair of speakers create a stereo image.

Your brain has two ways of constructing a stereo image, one is phase/timing differences and the other is volume differences (although the latter kind of relies on the other). The stereo image produced by two speakers is created by volume differences between them, and this is how your brain interprets it. However, when you hard-pan a sound fully left or right, it's interpreted by the timing difference when the sound reaches each ear.

I would go into detail if I knew much more about this, or if I was clever enough to understand it all, but I've had it explained to me enough times to know that it's something I'll never understand fully.

Either way, it's been shown that a ~12dB drop in one channel is enough to cause it to sound as though it's all off to one side...

Beware of basing your mixing decisions too much on technical theory. It is in the nature of scientific testing to measure one thing at a time which, whilst it might produce a result which is essentially true, is often significantly altered once the massive complexities and infinite variables of the real world are taken into account.

To give an extremely simplistic example: if I pan a guitar all the way to the left, that guitar may sound exactly the same as if I had panned it only half way. But by hard-panning it, I might be reducing its interference with a keyboard that is panned to the right. Panning is not just about where you perceive something in the stereo field.

 

[Yr Blues]

I disagree with that analogy. it's not the same amount of information, one photo has 2 inches of vision cropped from the bottom and top of the photo. it's then blown up/stretched to cover the missing area.

give me the whole picture please, regardless of perceived quality difference

I didn't say same amount of information. I said...same amount of information goes in...but what comes out is totally different. I would rather have a 6 color print than a plasma-screen representation any day.