I had a large Vinyl collection that my ex-wife made dissappear (as my photo equipment, my scuba gear etc...) to spite me. Surprisingly, my sound equipment and cd collection, and VHS were spared.
I have moved from a house to a small appartment, and have to materially downsize drastically.
I pretty much have all my collection in high bitrate MP3's and Flacs, in three separate media, so the CDs are basically redundant.
Would you get rid of them?
This is so bizarre. CDs replaced vinyl because the sound quality was off the charts better. People who prefer the sound of vinyl are actually preferring the slight hum and crackle that is added by the needle interacting with the record. Or they're preferring the necessary sound compression that makes the loud parts less loud and the soft parts less soft.
False.. about almost everything. Vinyl has a distortion present that adds warmth.. the 'necessary' compression is not necessary because that is one of the points of hi fi vinyl, it has dynamic range. And the crackle from dust on your record is not desirable hence why you actually brush the dust off and store them in anti-static sleeves ;)
I agree with most of what you're saying but one of the places CDs actually do improve upon vinyl is dynamic range. CDs do, as a fact, have more dynamic range potential than vinyl. A vinyl record's dynamic range is determined by the difference between its shallowest and deepest part of a groove. So its limited by how deeply you can cut the groove into the master lacquer. Since its a physical medium there is a limitation of dynamic range based on how deep you can cut groove before meeting in the middle from the other side or compromising structural integrity. Your statements and illustrations about bit & sample rate are still valid and an argument for why vinyl, despite its limited dynamic range, can still be a high quality alternative to CD.
LOL ok. Distortion is desirable. Got it. Look, I could take state of the art sound equipment and make a recording of a vinyl LP. I could then play back the LP itself and the digital recording for you in an audiophile listening room. You would not be able to tell the difference. If distortion is desirable for "warmth", distortion can be added to a digital recording. Most people know better than to desire that.
Well, if someone prefers vinyl because of the warmth it's the natural distortion of the Format. So yes I find it desirable. Keep speaking from ignorance ;)
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lol you are so impassioned about this, but tell me, what is the bitrate of tape or vinyl?
Analog media is not directly comparable to digital formats, and in a sense all digital formats are lossy by comparison. Just as film (read: tape; analog) can be used to produce 4k versions of film (state of the art digital format) where as DVD (old digital; highly compressed; lossy) cannot, tape can be used to produce the highest possible quality transfer to CDs (old digital; lossy but usually acceptable/inaudible) and even higher bitrate formats; or vinyl. Vinyl does have distortion, and particularly it can degrade over time, but any digital transfer was lossy (in a different way; it is subtractive) to begin with.
And yes, any additive modification of the source audio by the media itself is basically a form of distortion, but people have long preferred tube amps due to their distortion properties, which are frequently very pleasing even on settings that sound very "clean". It simply adds character--but if you want to be more of an engineer about it, it adds characteristics to the wave forms it produces or records.
So anyway, I'm not really persuaded by your "audio quality is objective" argument. Resolution is objective, but not always comparable between media... so not a very good way of comparing things, obviously.
In conclusion, there were some very good machines which we now consider old. They are still very good, especially in certain aesthetic ways.
Do I own a record player? No. It's expensive and wasteful and silly in my opinion. But there are differences and I wouldn't begrudge anyone that hobby if they have the time and money for it.
>all digital formats are lossy by comparison
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem
Digital isn't lossy within the Nyquist bandwidth, it's mathematically provable. CDs do not utilize lossy compression algorithms like DVDs do.
That's really interesting, but is that the same as saying audio "quality" won't benefit from a higher sample rate? I actually can't tell from reading it. It seems like it establishes a minimum sample rate sufficient for reproduction of the wave form, but there is still interpolation occurring in the process, which seems to imply higher rates may impact the result to me.
My point was that analog media are not constructed of data points at all, which remains true, but I'm interested to understand more, as you are correct that CDs are *not* directly comparable to DVDs in terms of using lossy compression.
A higher sampling rate will capture a larger frequency range, but it won't improve the sound quality within that range.
The interpolation you mention is called quantization error, caused by having to use discrete steps rather than an infinitely analog level. Quantization error effects the maximum dynamic range of the recording. A 16-bit CD has a dynamic range of 96dB vs about 70dB for vinyl.
Analog media does have it's own "data points" as well. The size of the magnetic particles on tape or the size of vinyl that is required to still be strong enough to not break when in contact with the stylus. It's harder to measure but it's there.
Regarding compression, CDs do not use lossy compression whereas DVDs use MPEG2 lossy compression.
>Analog media does have it's own "data points" as well. The size of the magnetic particles on tape or the size of vinyl that is required to still be strong enough to not break when in contact with the stylus. It's harder to measure but it's there.
Do you know if it tends to be more or less information than a digital transfer of the same material on CD?
Half-baked thought: I wonder if there is any audible characteristic to regularity/irregularity of information density on a media. Like I assume CDs would be very regular, where as tape may actually be inconsistent in this respect.
Sorry, intended to agree with you about CDs/DVDs using compression/not using compression. Edited my previous post to fix the typo.
In terms of capture, missing a frequency range sounds like it compromises 'fidelity' in some audible sense if those ranges are indeed audible--all of this as compared with analog media.
Simply asked: Is it possible that someone could hear and prefer/dislike the sound of audio recorded at above the threshold described by the nyquist theorem?
What measures of "higher audio quality" are you choosing to make this determination? Because in some ways vinyl is absolutely higher quality (the fact that digital creates non-perfect approximations of an analog source and is then limited by a bit and sample rate, a lowly 16bit 44.1kHz for CD) and in other ways CD is higher (dynamic range potential). A lossless digital file played through a high quality DAC has the dynamic range advantage with digital coding that is a much closer representation of an analog source than a CD.
Is a JPEG or a PNG ~less~ of a Static Visual Image than something like an old-school Polaroid Picture??? One is digital, the other is traditional / analogue. But both are "images."
Why did Captain Sisko even WANT the stupid old baseball, when he could have just told the Replicator to make him one just as easily as it was making Picard's Earl Gray Tea, or Janeway's coffee????
Assuming you mean to say "less quality" rather than just "less of a static visual image" (since something is either a static image or is not so cannot be less or more without introducing a measure of quality), you haven't provided enough information to answer this question. Which signals to me you don't understand the technology well enough to hold this conversation in an intelligent way.
Is a digital picture not a picture because it's digital????
If you have a fancy digital camera that's rated for a crazy amount of Mega Pixels, you would still prefer an analogue camera from the 70s or 80s????
You keep coming so close to the point without even realizing it only to set up some other random unrelated thought full of a whole new set of problems.
Yeah. It's called ADHD.
HOLY SHIT, LOOK AT THAT SQUIRREL!!! I'M GUNNA CHASE IT UP THAT TREE!! YUH-HUH, YUH-HUH!!! YUP!!! IMA GUNNA GIT'EM!!!
Do you prefer your movies to be on old-school 8mm Film?
Is DVD or Blue Ray just too mainstream and plebeian for you??
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I have a degree in audio engineering and have worked in recording studios and live sound reinforcement for decades. Sorry if “do your own Google research” doesn’t cut it for me.
It is a fact, which you can Google if you’d like, that digital audio (CD) is an approximation of an analog source. The quality of that approximation is most often determined and measured in bit rate and sample rate. The higher the bit and sample rate the higher quality and closer it gets to its analog source which has no such limitation. By that measure, vinyl can be higher quality. It is a more exact representation of the source.
It is also a fact, again goggleable, that CD’s dynamic range potential is higher than vinyl. In that measure, CDs can be higher quality.
Which is why I asked what measure you were using to make your case. Unfortunately, you can’t answer with anything but “google it”.
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Never, in the history of recorded music, has it been commonplace to make original recordings on vinyl. Again, you have no clue what you’re talking about.
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No dude, tiny metal needles are MUCH more sensitive than the lasers /s 😆🤣😂😆😂
Hi! I'm an audiophile that's been breaking/repairing guitars and amps for over 15 years, and studied recording technology for 2 years.
In science terms, what is "warmth" if not distortion? I'm serious. Define warmth as logically as possible.
CDs have not only more dynamic range, they have more frequency range as well.
Optical lasers and microscopic nano dots are more precise than mechanical metal and vinyl. Moisture and airborne particulate can alter the tonal "flavor" of your vinyl as it effects the response of the needle on a journey through a soft vinyl valley. It will not effect a CD.
Play that vinyl 500 times, it will wear the groves and change the tone. That CD can be played non stop for 20 years and nothing will change.
I don't doubt you like it, I just doubt it's better.
THE ONLY thing that vinyl does that CDs do not do is reproduce sine wave forms. Digital mediums are chopped up into tiny square waves. But those square waves are so tiny your brain will not register them. Just like frames in a movie. Literally EVERYTHING else is more precise and more dynamic because....lasers. they do things tiny needles just can't do.
If you don't believe me, buy an oscilloscope or put a frequency spectrum analyzer on your audio signal and compare CD data with vinyl data.
Bonus point: 45s have better sound quality than 33s anyway. Slower record speeds provide less time/space for the needle to travel. That extra 12 revolutions per minute translates to more "information" etched into the vinyl that moves the needle, almost like a bit rate for digital. So I hope you are at least thinking of 45s when you talk about hi fidelity audio.
Cheers!
AHHHHKSHUALLLLY
-You in this thread
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"This is so bizarre. CDs replaced vinyl because the sound quality was off the charts better. People who prefer the sound of vinyl are actually preferring the slight hum and crackle that is added by the needle interacting with the record."
Which is easy to add back in with a VST like RC20.
Exactly! A CD can sound exactly like an LP. An LP lacks the physical capability to give you all the sound that a CD can.
What people actually like about Vinyl Records (besides the Collectible Aspect and the HUGE album art) is the subtle harmonic distortion, the wobble caused by the non-perfect spinning speed of the turntable, and just the general imperfection that comes with an analogue medium.
Vinyl Dust and the other traits are to Music what Scanlines on a CRT is to Retro Gamers. CD is obviously better -- it's a cleaner sound, and playing your 8bit & 16bit games on a high quality HD TV is better, but the nostalgic feeling is from the Imperfections.
Old Vinyl Records make crackly noises.
Old CRT TVs make everything fuzzy.
But software options are getting better and better at replicating those traits.
Go state this in r/vinyl and see if "what people actually like about vinyl records...is the general imperfection". You're just wrong.
If this was an argument about Religion, I might feel compelled to engage in some battle.
But this is about Music, which is subjective. Preferences are preferences. Some people think you should be crucified if you like Ham & Pineapple on your Pizza. I couldn't give a shxt -- Pizza is Pizza. It all tastes the same anyway. Lol.
Some people think you should be tortured to death if you play a 4:3 Aspect Ratio game in forced 16:9....
I say: let people like what they like. If some guy out there likes Mini-Disc, let him listen to Mini-Disc.
If some guy wants to play Super Mario World in 16:9 Aspect Ratio, let him. I don't care enough to argue with them and tell them they're "enjoying the game wrong."
My preference to listen to Music in a digital form is not going to magically make all the Vinyl records in the world disappear.
My preference to play Retro Games emulated is not going to magically make all the physical game carts and cartridges in the world disappear.
You will still have your precious jewel hoard, okay Smaug? Nobody is trying to take your stash. (Even though I can just copy it... Lol.)
You made a statement about what other people prefer. I'm telling you that statement is wrong and giving you a way to get the correct information. If you don't care to be corrected or find the correct information then I have nothing more to offer you. You are remaining willfully ignorant.
The only aspect I like about Vinyl is sometimes finding cool and unique stuff to sample. (YouTube is a frigging gold mine of potential samples). And samples don't need to be 100% perfect --- even the old-school Akai MPC 2000 did not have a "perfect" sound quality. But people still used it and made some amazing beats with it.
DJ Premier made the "Nas Is Like" beat on it and that's one of the nicest Boom Bap beats I've ever heard.
Music is subjective. You may ~hate~ the stuff that I like. But I don't care. I'm still gunna like it, whether you approve or not.
Is a Playboi Carti fan going to care that I ~hate~ Trap / Mumble Rap and stop listening to what they like because I personally dislike it??? Probably not.
They're just gunna say "Fug-Off, you grouchy Old Head!"
How does it lack the physical capability? It’s analog (physical) vs. digital. Digital mimics analog and is dependent on its ability to convert and write data as a close approximation of the analog (vinyl). A CD is limited to 16bit 44.1kHz which is lower than most streaming services that offer 24bit playback. A vinyl record is not limited by bit or sample rate at all. That’s not to say that modern digital conversion is poor but even taking a high quality digital recording of a vinyl record and burning it to a standard CD inherently decreases quality because of the 16/44.1 limitation. You’re making it pretty obvious that you don’t know what you’re talking about below a surface level.
The real question is --- Do I care???
Do I ~care~ enough to spend $300 on a fancy Vacuum Tube amp???
Do I ~care~ enough to buy a subscription to Tidal so I can stream FLAC files???
Music isn't about ~perfection~
It's about having fun and enjoying the art.
Playing Retro Games isn't about ~perfection~
It's about having fun playing the game and just enjoying it for what it is.
What difference does it make whether I play Secret of Mana on a Real SNES with an old CRT for the "Authentic Experience™" or whether I play it on a hacked Nintendo Wii, or whether I play it on a PC using Retro Arch or ZSNES???? It's still Secret of Mana. That's the only part of it that matters ~TO ME~
I can listen to D12 & Eminem in FLAC or MP3 @ 320 KBPS, or even ATRAC on my Sony D-NE320 CD Player, and it's still gunna be the same songs with the same lyrics.
I don't care about "purity"
I only care about my own personal pleasure. And for me, some cheap Skull Candy Ink Plus earbuds or One Odio A71 Over Ear Cup Headphones is juuuuuust fiiiiiine.
I am not an Elitist (except when it comes to lyrics, you won't catch me bumping any of that Psychedelic Mumble Mess).
That’s great for you. I don’t know how it applies to the conversation at hand though.
What you are really after is a reason to feel smug. Oooh, look at me, I'm the big fancy audiophile, I have perfect hearing like a Canine. Ohhhh, look at me -- I'm a Vegan and I don't eat meat. Whoopidy freekin' doo. LAH-DEE-GAWD-DAMN DAHHH!!!
~is trying to do a Chris Farley voice~
I have offered no information about my personal preference. You know, because nobody asked. I know that might seem foreign to you. I’m offering facts that answer a specific question and resulting conversation.
"You’re making it pretty obvious that you don’t know what you’re talking about below a surface level."
You're right because I absolutely do not give a shit -- if other people wanna judge me for liking "Lower Quality Files" let them. I don't care. If you can tell the difference between a FLAC and a 320kbps MP3 - great! Good for you. But I can't. I failed ~most~ of these.
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
Is analogue better because it can have more "organic subtlety in the waveform" or whatever??? I guess??? Probably????
I don't really care. I personally cannot hear those "organic subtleties." And I'm not going to go to bed angry about it. I like what ~I~ like. If I wanna play an 8bit or 16bit game with a 2xSAI pixel smoothing filter. I WILL.
If I wanna play it stretched out of its natural 4:3 Aspect Ratio and FORCE it into 16:9 so that it fills out edge to edge. I WILL.
AND NOBODY CAN STOP ME.
BUWAHAHAHAH!!!!!
Exactly! A CD can sound exactly like an LP. An LP lacks the physical capability to give you all the sound that a CD can.
It can if I process it with RC20 VST.
I can add crackle-pops. Tape Hiss. "Worn Spots" where the tape audio drops out. I can add Harmonic Distortion like a Tube Amp. I can muck about with the audio any way I want. You want "Warm?" I can ~make~ it Warm. You want "Wide?" I can ~make~ it Wide.
Holy shit are you really claiming Analogue hi fi is inferior to a limited Bitrate Digital Format? Sadface
Am I really claiming that high quality analogue is better than low quality digital? No. Am I really claiming that the best digital is capable of more faithful sound reproduction than the best analogue? Of course. That's a measurable fact. At the most, you can claim that very expensive analogue can be as good as relatively affordable digital. But a $1000 record player can't reproduce sound more faithfully than a $30 CD player.
Nobody that’s serious about vinyl as a high quality playback medium prefers hum, crackle, or compression. How was CD sound quality “off the charts better”? Especially when they first came out and digital recording was relatively new?
No distortion. Wow and flutter listed as "below measurable limits". Look, all of us who were alive and purchasing for the transition IMMEDIATELY recognized how much better the CD sounded. It wasn't even close. The so-called "golden ears" of the industry confirmed it. Why do you think we switched? Why do you think we bought $500 CD players and started buying recordings--even recordings we already owned on LP--for $14.99 when they were $7.99 on LP? This was not a mass delusion causing us to prefer a sonically inferior medium.
Convenience. That’s all. Same reason people switched to lower quality (at the time) MP3s from CD.
Dude, did you read what I wrote? CDs were not "convenient". They were expensive. And the equipment was expensive. We didn't go to all that trouble for convenience. I'm telling you, as a witness from that time, we did it because the sound was NOTICEABLY superior. I remember one classical DJ calling CDs "the silver drug". A friend called them "audio crack". It was hard to keep from buying more BECAUSE THEY SOUNDED SO MUCH BETTER THAN WHAT WE'D BEEN ABLE TO GET BEFORE.
This was nothing like the later switch to low-quality MP3s. That was a different generation of listeners who did prioritize convenience over audio quality.
What are you going on about? CDs were an order of magnitude more convenient, and using them in your car is a prime reason to make the switch.
No. Almost nobody had a car CD player. Too expensive. If we wanted to listen to a CD in the car, we usually recorded it onto a cassette. There was also this thing that plugged into the cassette deck and to your portable CD player's headphone jack. Those worked but they were a little bit fussy and your CD player had to be portable. Not at all convenient. Convenience was 100% NOT the reason we switched. We switched because CDs sounded better. Ask anyone who remembers the transition.
I... am... someone who remembers. And CDs in cars were rad.
When was this? I didn't get a CD player in the car until the 2000s. In 1987 almost no one had one. This was NOT what drove the switch. If you remember the transition during the 80s, you remember that.
I mean the late 80s I guess is what I'm talking about. *Shrug*
Let's be reasonable though--CD players were always small (compact disk) and portability was very much the point as much as anything. They really were alternatives to tapes more in my mind I think in that regard. There were also those weird tapes with aux cables.
Portables were fine as competition to the Walkman, but they weren't more convenient on that front. You couldn't go jogging with them. Even your car hitting a bump in the road could derail your listening experience in a situation where the cassette would just keep chugging along. Nevertheless, the sound was so much better that many people made the switch.
However, I don't think it was portables that drove the sales. Maybe I'm wrong, but my impression is that most people were buying full sized players for their home audio systems. Home audio was a much bigger deal back then and everybody wanted a good stereo system.
>You couldn't go jogging with them
Loolllll man, takes me back. They were really fine in cars though in the 80s (unless you hit a bumpy patch, it would for sure skip lol). Honestly and truly, the few people who I knew back then who were obsessed with audio were still clutching vinyls and eyeing CDs with suspicion. I honestly do remember there being multiple camps on this topic back then though, so the discrepancy in our recollection is frankly unsurprising.
Yeah, I remember the holdouts who claimed that vinyl sounded "warmer". I also remember the articles in magazines like Stereo Review where the audio engineers were proving objectively that the CD was delivering more and more accurate sound information to your earballs. They said the "warmth" you were hearing in the LP was an artifact of deficiencies in the recording and playback process and meant that you were hearing sound that was somewhat different from the sounds that had been recorded.
Meanwhile, the so-called "golden ears" of the industry were confirming subjectively that what they were hearing from the CD was closer to hearing a live performance than anything they'd heard out of an LP.
So I figured, yeah, go with the experts and go with what my ears were telling me.
Warmth really just means "Extra Midrange Presence" and "Less Sharp Treble."
Very easy to simulate "Warmth" and even "Extra Stereo Separation" by using the RC20 VST.
That thing has MANY options.
Wow, Flutter, Wobble, Crackle, Distortion.
If you wanna make a digital recording ripped from a CD sound like it was recorded from a Vinyl, you totally can.
Home Stereos. Even the goofy Wal-Mart systems with the big gaudy speakers that looked like something out of a sci-fi fever dream -- were a BIG business market back in the late 90s and early 2000s.
The ones with the 6 tray Automatic CD Changers. And later they compacted that into a Cartridge form.
The technology has also gotten much much much better.
When I was 12 years old and I had a Koss PP125 little Auto Reverse cassette player, I had cheap drugstore headphones! Those things probably sounded like shxt, but did I even care at the time??? Nope! All I cared about was jamming to my Duran Duran tapes I found at the Junk Yard when I was scrounging with my Dad! (mutual benefit, I helped him take off parts, he let me dig for tapes). Those tapes were probably moisture damaged all to hell from sitting in wrecked cars, but I didn't care.
All of my school friends were into 2pac & Biggie and my wierd goofy ass was gushing over 80s Synth Rock. (I didn't get into Rap til way way way later).
Then CD came around and I remember getting a ton of those through BMG or Columbia House Records or whatever. The "Get 10 CDs for a Penny" deal, remember that one??? I got Prince Greatest Hits for my mom and Duran Duran -- Decade for myself. And it sounded way better than any tape I had (but like I said, my tapes were dug out of junked cars at my dad's work!).
Technology improved. Things got cheaper. And my hearing -- admittedly -- probably got crappier! I don't have the same ears as 12 year old me. But even back then I don't think I cared. I don't care now either!
MP3 320 KBPS, FLAC, ATRAC. It all sounds pretty much the same to my ears.
The purity isn't all that important to me -- the important part is to just enjoy the music. If I play an old Nintendo game --- it doesn't matter to me if it's a real cartridge on real hardware, or if it's playing off a hacked Wii with an SD card, or a hacked SNES Classic Edition, or an Emulator on Windows PC.
To me, it's still the same game.
> MP3 320 KBPS, FLAC, ATRAC. It all sounds pretty much the same to my ears.
FLAC and ATRAC should be sonically identical to what the original CD puts out. Those formats are lossless. They compress the CD info but they don't lose any of it. They're like audio ZIP files. All the info is there and it all gets played back. Anyone who claims to hear a difference is high on something and wouldn't be able to pass a blind test to identify which is which.
The MP3 is "lossy". Some information does get discarded in order to save space. The goal is to discard information that you wouldn't really hear anyway. And at 320 kpbs, that goal is easily met. You shouldn't hear any difference between an MP3 at that bitrate and the CD it was ripped from. MAYBE on a state of the art sound system some people could hear a tiny difference if they knew what to listen for. I doubt I'm one of those people.
The difference between CDs and LPs, on the other hand, ANYONE can hear. We all heard it in the 80s and made the switch as soon as we could afford to. The only problem in the early days was the recording engineers didn't always know how to use the new technology. They'd put the mics too close or something. I've got a recording of Vaughan-Williams' oboe concerto that is both breathtaking and maddening. The sound is crystal clear... and I can hear every single click and clack of the oboe's keys. It's like I'm sitting on stage instead of a few rows back in the audience.
Mixing & Engineering definitely plays a factor. There is an ELO's greatest hits CD (that I also had on tape as a kid -- it's the one with the Military Medal on the cover) that sounds ~nearly~ monophonic, whoever mixed that compilation did it very weirdly.
But the "Light Years" 2 Disc compilation has MUCH better mixing, it doesn't sound anywhere near as "narrow" as the old War Medal version.
The first MP3s were usually all 128 KBPS (at least, that was commonly what Napster and other P2P clients had).... Which is honestly not great. Then as the format grew it got better over time. Also the individual person's hearing plays a lot into it. And then there's the Device playing the files, what kind of Headphones or Speakers etc.
Just out of curiosity, I ripped a CD to FLAC & 320kbps MP3, and even though it goes against what most of the internet believes --- I can't even perceive a difference or benefit.
What I ~CAN~ do is run quieter mixed albums like say: Pretty Hate Machine or License to Ill through RC20 to help bring them up a little and add more "richness" (better Midrange Presence).
That is something I ~CAN~ perceive. I can A-B it (turn the effect On & Off). I can't really do that with a format or Bit-Rate. I don't have a magic green button in Adobe Audition that will let me flip between FLAC & MP3, all I got for that is good ole Winamp.... (it really whips the Lamma's ass!) And even with playing two copies of the same song -- one in FLAC & one in MP3 320kbps, ~I~ personally can't perceive a difference.
Sounds right to me. I've always read that 320kpbs was plenty good enough for most systems and most ears. Maybe on a state of the art sound system in perfect conditions you'd hear the difference. But not on a home theater and definitely not on a pair of earbuds.
"Or they're preferring the necessary sound compression that makes the loud parts less loud and the soft parts less soft."
Brick-Wall / Pancake-ing didn't really take hold as a trend until maybe like, the early 90s?
(Would have to Google it)
But everything before then had that "Dynamic Range" but it also meant that Peak Volumes across different albums were varied.
Like, if you were to listen to NIN - The Fragile, then go all the way back to Pretty Hate Machine, PHM is going to sound RIDICULOUSLY QUIET.
Same issue if you were to listen to Beastie Boys -- Hello Nasty, then go all the way back to License to Ill. It's not gunna sound as loud as Hello Nasty, because when License to Ill was recorded and engineered, Brick Wall was not trendy yet.
As a pro audio engineer, this is very, very wrong. CDs fundamentally contain less information than a record does - it's a matter of convenience over sound quality, like streaming is following CDs.
Welp, you know more than all the pro audio engineers who contributed to extensive articles on the subject then. You know more than the so-called "golden ears" of the recording industry who listened and compared in carefully engineered rooms to get the full effect. And of course you know more than all of us who listened to a CD after having only heard LPs and instantly heard the difference.
Yes I do. You don't know what you're talking about. I've worked with top, top recording, mixing and mastering engineers across the country since the late '90s. I know what the fuck I'm talking about here. You do not.
I'm just telling you why everyone switched to CDs in the 80s. It was the sound quality. All the audio engineers at the time agreed. Every article said so. But most importantly, we HEARD it. Once you heard a CD, there was no going back to LP. Convenience had NOTHING to do with it. Zero. Zip. We switched because we couldn't imagine going back to the LP's inferior sound. A lot of us bought albums on CD that we already owned on LP. It was worth it.
You are incorrect, again. That's NOT why people switched to CDs - length of storage was a much bigger driver. You just don't know what you're talking about here. LPs in no way have an inferior sound, the technology of CDs requires audio data to be removed for 44.1 audio. Please understand that as an audio professional, this is just wildly wrong info you keep providing.
I don't know if you're an audio professional or not, but you're wrong. People did not switch to CDs so they could have both sides of an album on one CD. That is not why CDs were called "audio crack" and "the silver drug". That is not what the announcers on the classical stations talked about with awe in their voices. That was not what Charlie who ran the classical department at Tower Records talked about. That was not what the articles in Stereo Review and High Fidelity talked about. They all talked about the SOUND. The superior SOUND. And we heard it. So we paid almost twice as much for CDs as we would for an LP. Not so we wouldn't have to flip Abbey Road over in order to hear "Here Comes the Sun". I'm not making this up. I'm telling you what actually happened in the 80s and what we all said and heard.
I wonder if Elton John or Jeff Lynne or Geddy Lee ever thought that there would be people in the future arguing on the internet and making this big of a deal. Lol.
Back in the 70s, everyone was listening to AM Radio and everyone was happy and didn't give a shxt.
When we focus ~too much~ on this idea of "perfect" we miss the point -- the point is to just enjoy the music.
Rush & Queen & ELO & Elton John all sound the same on CD as it does on Vinyl, and they would probably be ashamed of us for arguing so aggressively over this shxt.
Who the bloody hell cares that CD is 16bit & 44khz. I don't hear whatever alleged difference the Canine-Eared audiophile snobs are hearing.
And if I want that "Warmth" that CD sound supposedly lacks (it's really just extra Midrange Presence & Harmonic Distortion), I can ~add~ it myself, using RC20 VST.
Radio Stations used to use Harmonic Exciters, like the Aphex Aural Exciter -- to make the music they broadcast sound more lively....
Ya know what I wish???? I wish that Sony wouldn't have kept ATRAC & the Mini-Disc Technology all to themselves.
It was a brilliant concept -- take a tiny version of a CD and stuff it inside a plastic casing with a little sliding window just like a Floppy Disk. That way the surface of the Disc doesn't have to be handled by human hands (unless you move the window aside and do it on purpose). Such a change could have worked out great for the entire Record Industry.
And the ATRAC Format itself was very interesting. But like anything Sony ever does, they wanted to keep it just for themselves.
They doomed this neat idea to failure by being too selfish with it. Mini-Disc could have revolutionized the entire market.
Nope. Nope. I'm not wrong in any way on this. You seriously have no idea what you're talking about here. I don't give a shit if you believe me, this is for anyone reading the thread, so they can see there's pushback to your fundamental misunderstanding of what you're talking about here. You have no idea what you're talking about.
You can say that all you want. I lived through it. I remember it. Ask anyone who was at least 18 in 1987.
I lived through it, too. That's meaningless. Living through it doesn't automatically make you an expert. I grew up on 8 tracks and LPs.
I didn't say I'm an expert. I said I remember the time well and the articles I read and the comments of the classical announcers and Charlie at Tower Records and everyone else. You can't hand wave that away by claiming to be an expert. If you have an article from a technical magazine from the time period claiming that CDs are inferior audio quality but people buy them because they're convenient, bring it on. You don't. That wasn't what happened.
Okay. Let me reiterate that I've dealt with this for a living and know so much more about this than someone who wrote a story for Vox. I've worked with top engineers around the country. I've watched frequency responses on scopes. Vinyl is objectively better than cds, regardless as to what one story on the internet says for confirmation bias.
Have you taken a vinyl and a CD pressed from the same master recording and then mathematically compared the output waveforms with the waveform of the master?
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Some people do think that. I'm not saying I think it's better sound. I think it's definitely different. Warner is the best non audiophile word I can think of.
One of my favorite things is to find albums I like that are ripped / recorded from vinyl on YouTube. I've even converted some to mp3 and split into individual songs with cue splitter... Then add to my Plex library to listen to wherever with Plexamp
People think they get better sound quality out of a record than 36 wav files that hold each individual track, but I do think there's something to be said for records and the artists' listening experience. Nowadays everything has to be mixed for phone, surround sound, speaker system, standard car sets, and any decent enough record player will be comparable to what the artist heard when they were recording for record, or any analogue disc. It's not better. It is authentic where that applies though. Tons of bands re-release or put special editions on vinyl but it wasn't recorded for that and doesn't matter in that situation.
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I mean CDs have better quality than streaming. Obviously if you have a crappy player it won't sound good, but since the overwhelming majority of albums today are recorded digitally there's virtually no difference between vinyls and CDs.
How do you figure when CDs are limited to 16bit/44.1kHz and most streaming services offer 24bit/320kbps?
It can sound better, but often doesn’t. I love vinyl because I love gear, I love the ceremony of picking out a record and not being able to skip songs without getting up. When the sound is better, it’s way better, but that’s not all the time. I do most of my listening through streaming, but like anything else web based, I get really attention deficit and am all over the place. Records make me slow down and listen to the whole thing as it was intended.
CDs and vinyl sound exactly the same (assuming you are comparing similar quality players and sound systems). Vinyl are cool because they are big and nice looking. CDs came around because they are more convenient to use and store. CDs are replaced by streaming for the same reason. I don't think CDs will make a comeback because they are just the disadvantages of vinyl and streaming. They are inconvenient, like vinyl, without looking as cool as vinyl.
CDs .. were a cheap way to provide music. They were tout d as invincible. Scratch easy. They're cheaper to make and smaller than vinyl, but came out more expensive. Fidelity, not sure about the quality. There's nothing to miss about CDs. Oh and vinyl often gave you awesome inserts, lyrics, pictures etc. CDs often had barest minimum cardboard inserts.
> CDs .. were a cheap way to provide music.
Vinyl and cassette were much cheaper. When CDs came out in the mid-80s they sold for $14.99. LPs of the same albums sold for $7.99, sometimes $4.99. We bought CDs if we could afford them (sometimes even if we couldn't) because they sounded SO MUCH BETTER.
The vinyl albums that went all out to give you LP-sized inserts were definitely a treat. CDs cannot compete on that.
I love buying CDs. Listening to the artists work, in order, that they curated in the studio to provide a full album listening experience. You don't get that with streaming. CDs also provide the act of "intentional listening", which streaming doesn't. You have to pick out the CD, insert it into the player, and remove it when done. You don't get any connection to a streaming format. And lastly, I've discovered so many deep cuts while listening to CDs that streaming services would never feature in a playlist. I understand the convenience of streaming, and can appreciate why people listen to it, but it's physical media for me.
You know you can listen to the whole album with streaming right?
Yep
I used to have a literal wall of CDs. Think I was somewhere around 2500 when I started selling them off. Had a ton of bootlegs, imports and various rare recordings of all my favorite artists.
I kind of miss interacting with the physical product - the art work and reading the liner notes and what have you, but can't imagine going back. Streaming is crap, I still use high bit rate MP3s. Not losing that much in sound quality but it is a whole hell of a lot easier listening to exactly what I want when I want.
If you have lossless digital files and a good playback system then you’ve got more convenient storage AND better sound quality. No need to hang on to CDs. The argument was different in the earlier days of digital but it’s come a long way.
If you can find them on a streaming service then i'd go down that route. So much easier. Give Tidal a go!
I love having a physical library. After selling off CDs gradually over the years, I've come back around to having more of a definitive collection on the shelf. If you have the room, set it up~ but otherwise, selling them won't really get you much money in today's market.
It should not be about whether they will make a comeback or not. Because that is somewhat a form of external validation to feel better about your CD collection. The bottom line is how attached are you at your collection and also if you really listen to the music on that specific format.
I wouldnt toss any single CD because if I bought them it's because I do/did want to have the music.
Fuck no
CD or Record, the sound depends on the recording process. Recordings like Led Zeppelin- In through the Outdoor and Sting- Ten Summoners Tales sound great on either medium because the production and recording process was flawless. Now, recordings like Metallica- Master of Puppets and David Lee Roth- Eat em and Smile sound poor on both mediums. If CDs were to make a comeback, it would be something like selling CDs with a full size album jacket because some guy in a boardroom thought it was a good idea to increase profit margins.
I've noticed more artists sell signed CDs. They're cheaper, easier to bring places, they take up less space, and they can be played in game systems and other things with disk readers. Every CD I've purchased has come with a booklet, sometimes with prints and posters, which I saw someone claim they don't. I collect CDs like someone would collect Vinyl. Vinyl are clearly gorgeous but CDs are a much cheaper collection for me!
Of course not.
u/scavengercat has blocked me so I can't respond directly. If anyone was following along, here's one article from a 1986 issue of Stereo Review that substantiates my recollection that CDs were presented as superior audio and that's why people bought them:
You'll have to scroll down to page 88 (or type 88 in the page selector) and look for the paragraph that begins: "And besides, whatever their original source, CD's simply sound better. Bob Ludwig of MasterDisk Corporation, who has mastered literally thousands of LP's, tells why."
So again, we didn't buy multi-hundred dollar CD players and buy CDs that cost almost twice as much as LPs or cassettes because it was convenient. That's a ludicrous and delusional assertion. We bought them because the sound was noticeably superior.
If anyone would care to pass this link on to u/scavengercat, I'm sure they'd be happy to learn.
Hey there. I'm just going to respectfully play devil's advocate: why then did all those first generation CDs get remastered 10-15 years later? (Because the technology took time to perfect. I think this is a completely subjective argument as I still enjoy CDs and Records)
That's one reason, and I agree. Sound engineers learned things as they went along that allowed them to more effectively exploit CD technology. There were a few CDs I bought in those early days that were just done wrong and were unpleasant to listen to. But even the ones that were done well might have benefited from a second look. My point is not that the CDs produced in the 80s were as good as they could be. I'm just saying they were good enough to be obviously superior to LPs, even to the casual listener. The article I link to explains why.
"obviously superior" is the subjective part. Nobody is agreeing that the Columbia Dylan CDs or Costello CDs from the 80's sound superior to a clean vinyl record. However the reissued later versions might be. (probably are) The exception may be in Classical which benefit from the reduction in the "warm tones" of vinyl. If you had the Bill the Cat flexi disc you would see that warm tone matters
"obviously superior" is the subjective part. Nobody is agreeing that the Columbia Dylan CDs or Costello CDs from the 80's sound superior to a clean vinyl record. However the reissued later versions might be. (probably are) The exception may be in Classical which benefit from the reduction in the "warm tones" of vinyl. If you had the Bill the Cat flexi disc you would see that warm tone matters.
> "obviously superior" is the subjective part.
Of course. And what I'm saying is that almost all of us heard it that way. No one's saying there weren't examples of poor CD transfers.
I do not see it happening. Vinyls have a warm sound and that helps the experience. CDs really do not have that.
I have both but the CDs are for audio quality. The vinyl is for tactile nostalgia.
Vinyl is all about the sound, cds were all about the convenience, but ever since the iPod there were more convenient ways to listen
If my significant other made my records disappear, id be smacking a bitch. Stealing someone’s records in like stealing part of their soul.
Short answer: No.
Vinyl is an analog format. This means it can store a near perfect representation of the sine wave recorded by the original recording equipment. CD is a digital format, meaning the analog signal from the audio equipment must be sampled from and stored as binary values. This sampling cannot ever perfectly recreate the sine wave that analog formats like a record have by default. You can think of the analog sine wave like a fractal that has an infinite amount of detail, while the digital format has to, at some point, round off the edges.
That's not to say that digital sampling can't get extremely close to the analog sine wave. However, it is an issue of diminishing returns. The more you sample of a sine wave, the less the audio is improved and the more space is taken up. Eventually, you need huge amounts of digital storage to store the most miniscule improvement in sampling. This is versus a single disk that has perfect sine wave recreation that will probably be a source of the digital sampling.
And if that wasn't enough, CD's are far from our best digital storage medium. The exact same data on a CD can be stored much cheaper now on a small flash drive or SD card. These devices have the added bonus of not being super fragile and susceptible to dust and scratches.
So no. There's no advantage to using a CD beyond pure nostalgia, which could easily be ruined by the smallest of scratches or dust.
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Over 40 million vinyl records were sold in 2021. Vinyl has had a huge resurgence and is still growing.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/188822/lp-album-sales-in-the-united-states-since-2009/
https://www.statista.com/chart/7699/lp-sales-in-the-united-states/
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You're saying 'not many', handful of people'.
In 2021 vinyl sales where equal in volume and double in revenue (1 billion dollars and that's just counting US sales) compared to CD's and this increased in 2022, while vinyl almost died out in the '90s, so say whatever you want, you can't argue the fact that that's a huge comeback.
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I found your comments a bit condescending and antagonizing towards the vinyl community, so just wanted to set things straight using facts. No need to get all emotional about it dude. chill..
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the_wkv t1_j1zbmdy wrote
I thought the main reason people loved vinyl is the sound quality being better. That’s not really a thing on CDs I don’t think.