Hmm..

[stereoman]

http://www.laweekly.com/music/why-cds-may-actually-sound-better-than-vinyl-5352162

 

[emcc_3]

Yeah I have read this as well.

Unfortunately the music industry have pretty much ruined the CD and digital with the loudness war.

Instead of exploiting digital for the potential to have more dynamic recordings producers (egged on by recording artists as well) have used the ability of digital to allow them to equalise all parts of the music to make everything on a track seem louder. This in effect strips the dynamic range from the music.

Ironically the limitations in vinyl i.e. being unable to compress the hell out of the master to up the anti in the loudness war, mean it is now the go to format for the more dynamic versions of new music.

Also it is a more satisfying format to own as each record feels like art and you have to take care of records by cleaning them etc...

Personally I have also liked analogy sound over digital as it sounds like listening to a live band whereas digital sounds like listening to a band in a studio.

I know digital is technically superior but it removes an edginess from the recording I like. This coupled with the loudness war makes vinyl my favourite format.

 

[stereoman]

Also it is a more satisfying format to own as each record feels like art

plus Bob Ludwig knows what he says. But indeed Vinyl is a bit like smoking cigar vs smoking cigarette...

 

[emcc_3]

He does indeed. A pity the go to producers in the industry, such as Rick Rubin, don't share his belief in allowing a recording sound natural with a proper dynamic range to the music.

 

[QuestForThe13thNote]

Interesting read. I’ve always thought the source is not as important as amps and speakers with most sources decent nowadays. All this speculation of what’s great in this format or not in another is ironically and unwittingly deriding the hi Fi experience, and alienating those that would want to get into hi Fi for making it more ‘expert’ than it need be with slightly pretentious articles like this, and this taking matters away from the music as the differences in sources can always be relatively slight. It’s clearly easy to move up from an all in one speaker to decent separates and amps, and then go even better in upgrades, with big steps in sound quality in these jumps, whilst the source is often always a small part in this (assuming it’s ok, which it mostly is). That’s really why I don’t get vinyl for all its old fashioness, expense in reaching same quality as cd, and lack of availability of music, not to mention cost. A digital world is what we live in.

 

[Gazzip]

Unfortunately all sources aren't the same. Different masters are used for different formats. Take the latest war on drugs. The CD and lossless version have been compressed and made loud. The vinyl version has less compression and the recording is more dynamic as a consequence.

When they do this with digital music it can end up giving you a headache when listening to the music. It also makes the recording sound like it has been recorded with the whole band cramped into a small bathroom.

This compression is more noticeable the better the kit you have. The main reason the industry do it is because the majority of the public use poor equipment for listening to music.

http://dynamicrangeday.co.uk/about/

The vinyl version has less frequency range, mono low frequency, the medium will degrade every time it is played (as will the hardware playing it), is badly effected by dirt/tiny scratches and if bought today costs many, many times more than the CD (again as will the hardware playing it). However live and let live, so I hope you enjoy your inaudible improvement in dynamic range.

 

[davidf]

Interesting read. I’ve always thought the source is not as important as amps and speakers with most sources decent nowadays. All this speculation of what’s great in this format or not in another is ironically and unwittingly deriding the hi Fi experience, and alienating those that would want to get into hi Fi for making it more ‘expert’ than it need be with slightly pretentious articles like this, and this taking matters away from the music as the differences in sources can always be relatively slight.

Agreed. There’s too much, “this is superior”, “that’s flawed” etc etc. If someone chooses vinyl as their main or only source, leave them to it. It’s almost like someone auditioning two pairs of speakers - one they like which is coloured, and one they don’t, which is flat and faithful. You can argue with him all day long that his choice is wrong, but he’ll just end up leaving because you’re not allowing him to buy what he wants.

That’s really why I don’t get vinyl for all its old fashioness, expense in reaching same quality as cd, and lack of availability of music, not to mention cost. A digital world is what we live in.

But as the article mentions, on the whole, vinyl sounds more dynamic than CD, despite that aspect being one of its supposed flaws, and some people hold dynamics as an important part of music. Buy what you want, ignore the detractors, and sit back and enjoy your music.

 

[Gazzip]

Interesting read. I’ve always thought the source is not as important as amps and speakers with most sources decent nowadays. All this speculation of what’s great in this format or not in another is ironically and unwittingly deriding the hi Fi experience, and alienating those that would want to get into hi Fi for making it more ‘expert’ than it need be with slightly pretentious articles like this, and this taking matters away from the music as the differences in sources can always be relatively slight.

Agreed. There’s too much, “this is superior”, “that’s flawed” etc etc. If someone chooses vinyl as their main or only source, leave them to it. It’s almost like someone auditioning two pairs of speakers - one they like which is coloured, and one they don’t, which is flat and faithful. You can argue with him all day long that his choice is wrong, but he’ll just end up leaving because you’re not allowing him to buy what he wants.

That’s really why I don’t get vinyl for all its old fashioness, expense in reaching same quality as cd, and lack of availability of music, not to mention cost. A digital world is what we live in.

But as the article mentions, on the whole, vinyl sounds more dynamic than CD, despite that aspect being one of its supposed flaws, and some people hold dynamics as an important part of music. Buy what you want, ignore the detractors, and sit back and enjoy your music.

Hi David, live and let live I agree, and personally I don’t really care either way as I am very happy with digital as a source and didn’t particularly get on with vinyl. However I do find it interesting that defending/promoting the attributes of a particular cable will get a forum member digitally eviscerated, but peddling identical subjectivity and pseudoscience in respect of vinyl somehow makes one a true audiophile. Bonkers.

 

[andyjm]

Interesting read. I’ve always thought the source is not as important as amps and speakers with most sources decent nowadays. All this speculation of what’s great in this format or not in another is ironically and unwittingly deriding the hi Fi experience, and alienating those that would want to get into hi Fi for making it more ‘expert’ than it need be with slightly pretentious articles like this, and this taking matters away from the music as the differences in sources can always be relatively slight.

Agreed. There’s too much, “this is superior”, “that’s flawed” etc etc. If someone chooses vinyl as their main or only source, leave them to it. It’s almost like someone auditioning two pairs of speakers - one they like which is coloured, and one they don’t, which is flat and faithful. You can argue with him all day long that his choice is wrong, but he’ll just end up leaving because you’re not allowing him to buy what he wants.

That’s really why I don’t get vinyl for all its old fashioness, expense in reaching same quality as cd, and lack of availability of music, not to mention cost. A digital world is what we live in.

But as the article mentions, on the whole, vinyl sounds more dynamic than CD, despite that aspect being one of its supposed flaws, and some people hold dynamics as an important part of music. Buy what you want, ignore the detractors, and sit back and enjoy your music.

There are of course absolutes in the technical performance of systems. There are no 'supposed flaws' of vinyl vs CD when it comes to dynamic range - CD is technically head and shoulders above vinyl. Whether music producers choose to use the range is of course another matter.

 

[emcc_3]

Unfortunately all sources aren't the same. Different masters are used for different formats. Take the latest war on drugs. The CD and lossless version have been compressed and made loud.

The vinyl version, has less compression and the recording is more dynamic as a consequence. This is due to the fact that there is a ceiling to how much wave compression you can apply to vinyl masters as too much means the record will be unable to track.

When they do this with digital music it can end up giving you a headache when listening to the music. It also makes the recording sound like it has been recorded with the whole band cramped into a small bathroom.

This compression is more noticeable the better the kit you have. The main reason the industry do it is because the majority of the public use poor equipment for listening to music.

http://dynamicrangeday.co.uk/about/

Only the recording industry could take a technical superior format in digital and through bad practice make it worse than the format it was supposed to supersede. We as consumers should be pressurissing them to stop this and give us proper recordings of the music we pay good money for.

 

[davidf]

There are of course absolutes in the technical performance of systems. There are no 'supposed flaws' of vinyl vs CD when it comes to dynamic range - CD is technically head and shoulders above vinyl. Whether music producers choose to use the range is of course another matter.

But 99 items out of 100, they don’t. If we were getting everything that was promised of CD, and exploiting its full capabilities, I doubt hi-res would even be heard of right now. Although, I’m still dubious about the ability of CD to convey everything that was originally captured, and the ability to capture it “as is” in the first place. And I still think there’s something that digital misses, as some albums sound blatantly better on vinyl, making the CD version sound flat (and I’m not talking about any coloration).

 

[emcc_3]

Think you might be misunderstanding me here. I am not a format zealot.

Digital has the capability to capture more frequency range than vinyl but the way recordings are being made this advantage is not being used.

Instead we are getting producers and engineers using the capabilities of digital to create wholly unnatural recordings.

 

[davedotco]

Think you might be misunderstanding me here. I am not a format zealot.

Digital has the capability to capture more frequency range than vinyl but the way recordings are being made this advantage is not being used.

Instead we are getting producers and engineers using the capabilities of digital to create wholly unnatural recordings.

Despite davdf's reservations, digital recording, usually 24/96 or better, is perfectly capable of accurately capturing a musical event.

Down sample to CD standard and we still have an accurate reproduction which is proved by the existance of some truly great recordings in this format. The fact that all CD issues are not to that standard is down to 'production standards' touched on in the above posts.

Most popular music recordings are 'unnatural', they are artificial constructs produced for effect and are part of the 'artistic' process that produces popular music CDs. This is fine, the listener can make his/her own judgement on whether this results in a good CD or not, it is a matter of taste.

What is not fine or a matter of taste is the modern technique of dynamic range compression that simply turns everything up as high as possible so that the signal level is close to maximum 0dBFS at all times. If peaks try and push beyond maximum 0dBFS, they are simply chopped off (no headroom in a digital system), the kind of hard clipping that makes so many pop recordings unlistenable. To my ears, this kind of clipping is most objectionable, far more so than a simple curtailing of dynamic range.

Compare that to analogue setup where VU (average) meters are the norm, max level 0dBu, is usually set at -20 or -24dbu below clipping which gives sufficiant headroom, even if the system is pushed hard, +4dBu say, there is still headroom available and any clipping is usually softer and much less objectionable than the hard clipping in digital systems detailed above.

So, two issues here, dynamic range compression which can be considered as a legitimate 'artistic' choice and clipping, a result of poor recording practice which sound far worse in a digital system than an analogue one.

Of course most classical, jazz and other non pop/rock recodings are not driving into clip when recorded and mastered digitally, which is why they usually sound great and often beter than the vinyl version.

 

[Gazzip]

Think you might be misunderstanding me here. I am not a format zealot.

Digital has the capability to capture more frequency range than vinyl but the way recordings are being made this advantage is not being used.

Instead we are getting producers and engineers using the capabilities of digital to create wholly unnatural recordings.

Yes, but music produced and mastered for CD is no more “wholly unnatural” than music produced and mastered for vinyl. Nothing natural about fundamentally changing the low frequencies from stereo to mono. Nothing natural about having to limit dynamic range to protect the vinyl cutting head coils from physically burning up due to the associated, extremely large/fast cutting head excursions required to deliver a precicision of cut which could in turn deliver that range.

I don’t dispute that different masters are sometimes used for vinyl and CD production, but I’m afraid that I personally consider it to be technically meaningless marketing used to sell the gullible an expensive and outdated medium.

 

[QuestForThe13thNote]

Interesting read. I’ve always thought the source is not as important as amps and speakers with most sources decent nowadays. All this speculation of what’s great in this format or not in another is ironically and unwittingly deriding the hi Fi experience, and alienating those that would want to get into hi Fi for making it more ‘expert’ than it need be with slightly pretentious articles like this, and this taking matters away from the music as the differences in sources can always be relatively slight.

Agreed. There’s too much, “this is superior”, “that’s flawed” etc etc. If someone chooses vinyl as their main or only source, leave them to it. It’s almost like someone auditioning two pairs of speakers - one they like which is coloured, and one they don’t, which is flat and faithful. You can argue with him all day long that his choice is wrong, but he’ll just end up leaving because you’re not allowing him to buy what he wants.

That’s really why I don’t get vinyl for all its old fashioness, expense in reaching same quality as cd, and lack of availability of music, not to mention cost. A digital world is what we live in.

But as the article mentions, on the whole, vinyl sounds more dynamic than CD, despite that aspect being one of its supposed flaws, and some people hold dynamics as an important part of music. Buy what you want, ignore the detractors, and sit back and enjoy your music.

Hi David, live and let live I agree, and personally I don’t really care either way as I am very happy with digital as a source and didn’t particularly get on with vinyl. However I do find it interesting that defending/promoting the attributes of a particular cable will get a forum member digitally eviscerated, but peddling identical subjectivity and pseudoscience in respect of vinyl somehow makes one a true audiophile. Bonkers.

i think the cable allows the system to perform well, kind of like the groundwork to do so, and is objective to the listener in their system, but the source as a good one, is not the be all in a modern context, for reasons I said. So it’s possible to believe in benefits of cables but not be too bothered about the source, be it vinyl or cd etc, so long as it’s a good one and matched quality wise with the system.

 

[davidf]

A bit ironic that those buying back into vinyl via cheapo Crosleys and hipsters who are buying into vinyl because they think it's cool are actually buying, for the most part, better versions of the albums! Not that they're in any position to exploit a fraction of vinyl's potential, of course.

If only a fraction of the above knew...

 

[davidf]

I think a little too much is made of the "mono bass" on vinyl records. Why? Bass is generally considered to be omnidirectional, and for multi-channel movies, the .1 sub channel contains 1-120Hz. We usually set our crossover points between 80-100Hz for our home theatre systems (as well as cinemas), and some people choose to have their bass reproduced by a single (mono) subwoofer anything up to 200Hz, and no one bats an eyelid. But of course, it's a flaw/limitation when it comes to vinyl, just because CD doesn't do it.

Maybe that's another thing that sound more natural when listening to vinyl? A little bit like the recent remaster of Sgt. Pepper, where the vocals were mixed more centrally rather than eminating from a single speaker off to one side - that certainly does sound more natural. Having sound flying around the room isn't, and when we see a band perform live, we generally expect mono,

 

[MajorFubar]

Digital sources are measurably lightyears ahead of vinyl in terms of faithfulness to the master. Most masters these days have only ever existed digitally to start with so there is no loss converting from an old analog tape, and identical-sounding carriers (CDs, downloads etc) can be replicated indefinitely. What we all moan about is the fact you all too often have to buy an album on what many believe to be an inferior-quality carrier (vinyl LP) in order to get hold of the best-sounding master. It's like having to choose between a rock and hard place and is very frustrating.

 

[BigH]

Depends how far back from the stage you are, I generally prefer stereo, if you take jazz then you can have them positioned across the stage, say drums on the left, sax centre left, bass centre right and piano right. Mono everything is in the centre, ok this is better than 2 out of left and 2 out of right speaker and nothing in the centre. Some early stereo was very poor.

 

[Gazzip]

I think a little too much is made of the "mono bass" on vinyl records. Why? Bass is generally considered to be omnidirectional, and for multi-channel movies, the .1 sub channel contains 1-120Hz. We usually set our crossover points between 80-100Hz for our home theatre systems (as well as cinemas), and some people choose to have their bass reproduced by a single (mono) subwoofer anything up to 200Hz, and no one bats an eyelid. But of course, it's a flaw/limitation when it comes to vinyl, just because CD doesn't do it.

Maybe that's another thing that sound more natural when listening to vinyl? A little bit like the recent remaster of Sgt. Pepper, where the vocals were mixed more centrally rather than eminating from a single speaker off to one side - that certainly does sound more natural. Having sound flying around the room isn't, and when we see a band perform live, we generally expect mono,

I tend to agree with you regarding the mono bass issue. The compressed dynamics and frequency range on vinyl are however still a significant area where CD has the edge.

 

[Gaz37]

Let me start by saying that I've never listened to a decent vinyl based system, the "best" I've heard was an LP12 through Quad 30/33 into Quad electrostatics & cant say I was impressed, it sounded somehow dull & lifeless, not to mention the crackles & rumble

My question is, are there bad vinyl recordings?
We're always hearing about loudness wars, compression etc on digital formats compared to the "more dynamic" quality of vinyl but does that mean all vinyl recordings are perfect?

 

[emcc_3]

.

 

[stereoman]

There are actualy 2 things that make Vinyl cool. I think people buy it for the enlarged Artwork and the second thing is for so called "lively, sparkling sound of Vinyl". Actually, the second thing is the most important. I personally do not mind any pops and crackling sounds because this is the beauty of it. What I mind is this special analogue upbeat sound of Vinyl - BUT this is the point now...it does not happen at any time. Recently I popped into a second hand Vinyl shop in Berlin and the guys had two decks with average speakers and amps but good Ortofon carts. They were playing Alphaville from Vinyl - the sound was beautiful. Lively, upbeat and so on. Actually it strongly depends on the cartridge and needle. You can only achieve this with a good cart and a good deck. In any other cases this magic of Vinyl will sound so dull that it won't make any point to buy it - if only for Art. So summing up - good Vinyl sound means good "hardware" to my opinion. Once someone here stated something interesting. He said he was a Vinyl man generation. He gave up on it long time ago when CD format turned up. He said that he does not understand this Vinyl hype now and it is simply an industry gimmick. Actually he prefers CDs. It is also true that we live in a digital era but still - there is something so peculiarly fascinating about Vinyl. Good needle, good cart - then you can enjoy it....

Not speaking about my system but generally - I strongly believe that 99% of Vinyl sound is not better than from good CD players.

 

[davedotco]

In never having heard good vinyl playback, so few people have.

What most people hear, and apparently like, is the sound of cheap record player, by that I mean that the dominant sound 'character' is of the player itself, not the vinyl record. This characteristic is variously described as 'fat', 'warm', 'organic' or similar and is the dominant sound of modest players such as poular models by pro-ject or rega.

Really good players are a whole different ball game, their defining characteristic is not any of those mentioned above, but a sense of transparency, the ability to be able to see and hear into the music in all it's many respects.

This requires a pretty exacting player, not just the cartridge but phono stage, arm and turntable too, everything matters and sadly is pretty expensive. To my mind the entry level for serious players is now pushing £2k, more if you add in a decent phono stage and a lot more if you want something really outstanding.

Hearing such players, other than at shows, is now very rare for most enthusiasts, which is a pity I think.

 

[stereoman]

In never having heard good vinyl playback, so few people have.

What most people hear, and apparently like, is the sound of cheap record player, by that I mean that the dominant sound 'character' is of the player itself, not the vinyl record. This characteristic is variously described as 'fat', 'warm', 'organic' or similar and is the dominant sound of modest players such as poular models by pro-ject or rega.

Really good players are a whole different ball game, their defining characteristic is not any of those mentioned above, but a sense of transparency, the ability to be able to see and hear into the music in all it's many respects.

This requires a pretty exacting player, not just the cartridge but phono stage, arm and turntable too, everything matters and sadly is pretty expensive. To my mind the entry level for serious players is now pushing £2k, more if you add in a decent phono stage and a lot more if you want something really outstanding.

Hearing such players, other than at shows, is now very rare for most enthusiasts, which is a pity I think.

Yes and in the end of the day - are the expenses worthy of the sound results ? For some they are...and for some it's too much to invest in Vinyl. I prefer a mediocre approach with Vinyl.