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Does vinyl sound better?
- Thread starter Nowhere Man
- Start date
I have a question for all the vinyl fans out there.
Do you just totally ignore the pops clicks and pitch variation when considering the quality of your audio?
To me it's like the constant noise floor of a cassette tape and even reel to reel, those negatives just outweigh the cleanliness of digital IMHO.
Dirk
p.s. I'm not trying to troll here, I genuinely want to try an understand the vinyl fan mindset.
Do you just totally ignore the pops clicks and pitch variation when considering the quality of your audio?
To me it's like the constant noise floor of a cassette tape and even reel to reel, those negatives just outweigh the cleanliness of digital IMHO.
Dirk
p.s. I'm not trying to troll here, I genuinely want to try an understand the vinyl fan mindset.
Hi Dirk, I'm not sure what "pitch variation" you're talking about; my turntable spins at exactly 33 1/3 revolutions per minute, stroboscopically calibrated.
I agree that pops and noise can be a problem with vinyl in poor condition. In decent condition however a little bit of crackle is part of the charm. In fact I've heard a few digitally-recorded hip-hop/R&B songs where they've deliberately sampled record crackle to sound "old school"!
I disagree that a 0-decibel noise floor is necessary to enjoy music. I've been to concerts where I can barely hear the band over thousands of screaming fans but I've still have a blast!
I have the pleasure of listening to a very, very nice system on a routine basis. SACD sounds very good, I'd be content with it. CD sounds good for generally listening. But if I'm gonna sip a glass of scotch in the evening while listening to some old jazz, Vinyl is the only way to go.
I routinely observe 40db swings on the meter while listening to LPs, rarely do I observe CDs exceed 20db dynamic range. On occasion a really well mastered CD will swing the needles 30db. CDs may have an inherent greater dynamic range above the noise floor, but the engineers usually compress the hell out of them so they sound good on your car stereo or cheap headphones.
Cheers
I routinely observe 40db swings on the meter while listening to LPs, rarely do I observe CDs exceed 20db dynamic range. On occasion a really well mastered CD will swing the needles 30db. CDs may have an inherent greater dynamic range above the noise floor, but the engineers usually compress the hell out of them so they sound good on your car stereo or cheap headphones.
Cheers
I have some albums on both CD and vinyl: Dark Side of the Moon, Meddle, Aqualung, Vincebus Eruptum, several Beatles albums, and several Flaming Lips albums. They certainly sound different in part due to different mixes, but also the dynamics of the two media. There is typically far less compression on vinyl records. I definitely prefer vinyl if it's in good condition. The sound is glorious when listening with a high quality vacuum tube amp.
Part of the challenge with vinyl, though, is keeping the turntable away from the speakers when listening loud so that the speaker vibrations don't vibrate the stylus. I use some long cables and have the speakers in a separate room.
Part of the challenge with vinyl, though, is keeping the turntable away from the speakers when listening loud so that the speaker vibrations don't vibrate the stylus. I use some long cables and have the speakers in a separate room.
A properly maintained clean vinyl record will not have any of those problems.
I own about 3,000 cds and think they sound much better. There is more clarity. The highs are crisper and the lows cut through the mix much better. I hear things on cd that I never knew were in a song when all I listened to was vinyl. I also own about 500 albums on vinyl and even though I also have many of these on cd, I just can't seem to part with them and still play them occasionally.
I listen to the music. There is unwanted noise on plenty of CDs. I don't mind a certain amount of analog noise, sometimes I kind of like it. I enjoy listening to 78s. But with a clean well made record - as I diligently seek out - my system has very, very low noise.
My standard suggestion for people who want to understand the difference is to listen to "Rockers Meets King Tubbys in a Firehouse" by Augustus Pablo on a clean US or Canada pressed LP on Shanachie/Message vs the CD on the same amp and speakers. The difference in sound is like night and day.
I cannot imagine anyone preferring the CD, I think it sounds sad, detached, and strangely noisy in the high frequencies sort of like a TV left on in a room without being tuned to a channel (which I call the "electric shaver" sound) compared to the LP, but that comparison should make it clear which one suits you at this point... bearing in mind that our tastes can change dramatically over time depending on what we are exposed to.
It really comes down to the particular recording and mastering. If you compare "Tago Mago" by Can on CD (on Mute/Spoon) to LP, as a specific example, it's much easier to hear the notes being played on the bass in the first song on LP - even one of the new bootleg 2LPs which reproduce the UK cover. That's the only early Can record I didn't have on vinyl until a couple of years ago, and so I had heard it on CD probably a hundred times at least before I heard it on vinyl. I was shocked how much clearer the bass is on vinyl.
It may be counterintuitive, but the natural rolloff of extreme lows and highs (and the rolloff that is usually applied in mastering), and probably the subtle distortion added by my (tube) stereo amp, tend to enhance pitch clarity in lower notes.
In the early days of CDs there was quite a difference, mostly due to the limitations of the A/D and D/A converters of the time. I was able to compare high-end vinyl and CDs of the same recording on my high-end stereo system, and vinyl won hands down, even though the CD had a lower noise floor and higher frequency response. There is more to audio than that.
Although modern digital recording is much much better, there is still something that happens in the analog and vinyl domains that gives a pleasant result. There may be some creation of even-order harmonics that give it a warmth. There may still be some harshness in the digital world that our ears can perceive that we haven't learned how to measure yet. Our ears are analog and always will be.
Although modern digital recording is much much better, there is still something that happens in the analog and vinyl domains that gives a pleasant result. There may be some creation of even-order harmonics that give it a warmth. There may still be some harshness in the digital world that our ears can perceive that we haven't learned how to measure yet. Our ears are analog and always will be.
This is incorrect. The original signal can be recreated perfectly from samples up to a frequency of 1/2 of the sampling rate. So, for example, for a 44.1 kHz sampling rate (the CD standard), the original signal can be recreated up to 22.05 kHz.
See: Nyquist
That's not what he is referring to. And, "perfectly" is a matter of opinion.
Being able to reproduce sound at a high pitch so that you can hear it and it shows up in an analyzer is one thing. No one disputes that digital recordings are doing this. Nonetheless, when it comes to transients at high frequencies, capturing and reproducing those sounds are challenging both in the analog and digital worlds. Those sounds can change so quickly that they will be represented by relatively few samples at varying arbitrary points along the very front of the attack and they can sound smeared or muted as a result (the same thing can happen just due the presence of transformers or a slow slew rate in a signal amp anywhere in the analog path).
This is why engineers will often use something like car keys or a triangle to check a system. Higher sampling rates and bit depth are noticeably better at these tasks (when accuracy is the goal, which is not all the time), even though the sounds are undoubtedly within the range of lower sampling rates (44.1 kHz) according to the Nyquist theorem.
My problem with CDs isn't the format, it is the recordings. It seems producers seem to think they have to use *all* the extra headroom. So they compress the h*ll out of the songs just because they can 
All records have the bass frequencies centered, otherwise they are liable to knock the needle out of the groove, for exactly the same reason that a car running its tires over a high ramp on only one side will flip over.
