What is everyone's opinions on the sound quality of vinyl?
I understand the collectibility of physical media, and the novelty of owning a vinyl and the machine that plays them. The large art piece that is the case (and often the disc itself). Showing support for your favorite artists by owning physical media from them.
Those are great reasons to collect vinyl.
But a lot of my friends claim vinly is of higher audio quality than anything else, period. This is provably false, but it seems to be a common opinion.
How often have you seen this and what are your thoughts on it?
For me, the imperfect sound is what makes a nicer experience. Slight hum, little pop once in a while, teensy skip, etc.
Not to mention that I'm far more inclined to listen to an entire album because of the need to interact with the vinyl to set the needle and flip sides.
At the risk of sounding critical of your hobby, to argue the imperfections improve the experience sounds somewhat culty.
I understand there is something akin to "character" which you don't get from something highly polished. I know when things sound too clean it can feel sterile.
I accept vinyl has a collectors value, but anything claims regarding preference come across as either pretentious or deluded (to me, as someone who probably can't tell the difference).
Not an audiophile, but had experience with vinyl and CDs while growing up in the 90s and imo vinyl COULD sound better if you spent a lot of money on high end equipment. But with the equipment us normies had, the cds sounded much better. It had a much lower barrier if you didn't have a large amount of time and money to invest. I'd suspect things are similar now.
Vinyl has a slow progression in quality degradation due to friction that creates a certain kind of sound warmth that is pleasing to our ears. This can also be relicated digitally, but the imperfections and feelings associated with the physical ritual actions of loading a record can't.
Vinyl just has more engagement going on despite the sound quality being lower. Kind of like how some people have fondness for fireplaces despite central heating being technically better at maintaining a warm temperature.
Some people confuse the extra engagement with sound quality because a lot of people just don't think things through.
You could get engagement through digital audio files too, though.
But I'd argue that it doesn't affect the sound quality, but the enjoyment of the sound. The sound waves themselves don't actually change because we're actively engaging.
Vinyl has a slow progression in quality degradation due to friction
With conventional record players with a mechanical head. I suppose that you could probably use an optical one -- I remember reading about that being used by archivists.
The IRENE system uses a high-powered confocal microscope that follows the groove path as the disc or cylinder (i.e. phonograph cylinder) rotates underneath it, thereby obtaining detailed images of the audio information.[9] Depending on whether the groove is cut laterally, vertically, or in a V-shape, the system may make use of tracking lasers or different lighting strategies to make the groove visible to the camera. The resulting images are then processed with software that converts the movement of the groove into a digital audio file.[10]
An advantage of the system over traditional stylus playback is that it is contactless, and so avoids damaging the audio carrier or wearing out the groove during playback.[1] It also allows for the reconstruction of already broken or damaged media such as cracked cylinders or delaminating lacquer discs, which cannot be played with a stylus. Media played on machines which are no longer produced can also be recovered.[6] Many skips or damaged areas can be reconstituted by IRENE without the noises that would be created by stylus playback.[5] However, it can also result in the reproduction of more noise, as imperfections in the groove are also more finely captured than with a stylus.
considers
If you can get multiple physical copies of an analog recording, you could probably scan them and use statistical analysis to combine information from the physical copies, eliminate damage from any one copy.
Yes, I was referring to the most common way of playing vinyl records with a physical needle.
Combining multiple records could give you an average, but it would both lose the things that make vinyl and experience like pops from dust specs and imperfections. Plus a cleaner copy could be had from the masters used to press the vinyl records. You know, the same master that is used to make exact duplicates for CDs.
Recreating an approximation of a lost master recording from multiple vinyl records with voice reduction on the imperfections would be an interesting idea, so my guess is someone has already done that 😉
Technically CD quality digital is superior, but the recording and mixing can have a lot to do with it. For example, it could be that an decades old Dark Side Of The Moon on vinyl (played on proper equipment) could sound better than a modern remastered CD with maximized loudness (See the "loudness wars").
It's not impossible, although the loudness wars are pretty much over nowadays. All major music services and players have volume normalisation, many by default, so there's not much point to it any longer.
Also it's pretty tough to find a decades old record still in mint condition, and the sound quality of vinyl gets worse every time you play it.
and the sound quality of vinyl gets worse every time you play it.
If you handle them correctly, it will not happen to any noticeable degree in any of our lifetimes or the following generations. It is durable material.
The best explanation I've seen is that music is mixed differently for CD/streaming and vinyl.
For mass market, the move has been to mix for louder bass and similar things. The idea being that it makes the music more popular. But it also makes it difficult to appreciate anything but the bass.
On vinyl, you can't max out bass like that, it won't work on the format. So they have to give it a normal mix instead, making it sound better. In theory CDs should sound better than vinyl, but because of the music production trends, it doesn't currently.
I like this take. it's probably also why I'm gravitating towards cassettes now, you don't need a special mix but you also can't just max the volume because magnetic media saturates and distorts quite quickly.
I read somewhere that about 50% of vinyl owners don't have a player. Presumably that 50% only have very few records and bought them for the looks, but still.
I enjoy the warmer sound of vinyl but I buy the albums I love on it because of the lack o convenience. I can't shuffle and I have to actually interact with it every 20ish minutes to flip or change discs. It makes me actually listen to music, track order, mix, and properly enjoy the work that went into the whole album making process.
So I use streaming when I just want something on in the background and vinyl when I want to properly listen to an album.
CD sound is better. But I like how big the pictures of the albums are with vinyl. Vinyl is more about the ritual though. With all the pop sounds and stuff I wouldn't prefer it over CD.
Either 0 difference from digital or worse due to skipping/bad record quality. Rap records are especially bad and I stopped buying them.
Personally, I buy them because my internet is unreliable, it makes for some nice decoration and it's nice to actually own something in 2024 (especially since Spotify keeps deleting random artists/songs from my playlists).
Higher audio quality than CD? No, that is demonstrably false.
More pleasant to listen to than CD or other digital formats? Yes, that I agree with. It's entirely subjective, but I'm definitely not alone in the feeling. The fact it is hard to quantify is why lots of people don't "get" vinyl until they've sat and heard it on a decent system. Something about it is pleasing. As another commenter mentioned, it might just be the imperfections.
So I guess it's a bit of a philosophical question. If CDs technically sound better, but vinyl sounds more pleasing: does the vinyl then sound better? People tend to chase pleasure, and in the time it takes someone to explain how much lower the noise floor is on CD or how we can only perceive so many samples, etc, etc -- you could have been chilling with multiple records and had a great listening experience.
If it was just about the sound, then you could get the exact same results by recording the vinyl player directly to a lossless format and playing that back, but it wouldn't be quite the same. Big part of it is just the fact that you are using a vinyl player and these huge fragile disks that makes it an enjoyable experience by itself.
Of course. There is no doubt that the ritual of handling the record and playing it on the turntable is a huge part of it. Personally it makes me appreciate the music more because it is kind of an effort to get it playing in the first place, and you just want to listen to the record in a session, instead of just having it as a backdrop which so much streamed music is.
IMO is just placebo effect. In a blind experiment, all else being equal, I doubt you would be able to tell the difference between a vinyl and a CD. That's my two cents
I know for a fact I would hear the difference -- but primarily because of the imperfections in the vinyl, as well as the different bass response. I can rule out placebo.
Something about it is pleasing. As another commenter mentioned, it might just be the imperfections.
I think it's the slight hissing sound you hear as the needle drags. That faint, slightly pink noise isn't dissimilar from white noise people use to go to sleep, and I think human brains like that sort of sound.
A new record sounds pretty good when played on a good turntable with a good cartridge, but it's not as good as a properly mixed CD or lossless audio file. A worn or dirty record sounds like crap. A cheap turntable will also sound like crap and a ceramic cartridge wears out records fairly quickly.
With a CD, there is very little difference in sound quality between the cheapest player you can find and a high end player. The CD will always sound the same until it's too worn out to play at all.
The main reason I buy vinyl is for the other reasons you mentioned, but the imperfections of vinyl gives it a less robotic and sterile feel. It’s like listening to digital drums vs acoustic drums.
There’s also the ritual of playing vinyl that’s real satisfying
I like to buy older albums that were mastered for vinyl, like Steely Dan, some prog rock like Yes or Pink Floyd. It gets a lot closer to listening to how the artists would have been hearing their product
Vinyl sounds good, but has too much noise to be the best. Although that could just be my cat's fault, realistically - i spend a lot time removing hair from records.
Too much noise? Older records sure. But new stuff? On mine you can't tell the difference. There's no hum, no crackling, no noise. It is recommended to brush your records before playing though. Perhaps that's the problem?
The records are new, and I brush them before each use. I've used different carts so that's probably not the issue either. Maybe I just got all bad records.. Maybe I could hear a difference on yours. Who knows at this point
Vinyl records sounds great despite their technical inferiority to CDs and streaming (with the right equipment of course, but that applies to all formats). They do not necessarily sound better, but there is an element of customisation with them which you can't get with CDs or streaming. Most importantly the cartridge on your turntable. Different cartridges have different soundscapes. There is of course an element of quality connected to price of cartridge, but over a certain price you are not necessarily buying a better sound but a different sound. Many vinyl record listeners, especially audiophiles, have different cartridges which they can switch out on their turntable, based on which kind of sound you want coming out of your system.
I know it may be difficult to comprehend for people who haven't personally listened to such differences themselves, but I assure you it is not audiophile snake oil, it is a very noticeable phenomenon. That is a pretty unique capability of vinyl which I can't really compare to anything with other formats.
First problem would be defining what "quality" means. On one hand vynil just has a continuous grove which needle follows. For this reason it's infinitely precise, as there's no interpolation or sample frequency. But on the other hand if master was digital and of shit quality, then benefits of analog mean nothing. Also widely used 44KHz sample rate is no accident, it's exactly double of what human hearing can perceive. So even if you go higher, average listener wouldn't be able to hear the difference.
Music is also mastered differently for vynil. Base is centered and audio is processed to reduce chances of skipping tracks. This is why decent phono amplifier is needed to revert those changes. Digital stays good or shitty no matter how many times you copy the file.
Overall sound quality is good, in both digital world and analogue. I have both high quality FLACs and some really great records which people would struggle to figure out if the sound they are hearing is digital or not. Personally I prefer vynil because the centered base. It makes other instruments more pronounced and you get to experience same music in a bit of a different way. Vynil being manual as it is also forces you to listen to entire side since it's not easy to change tracks and authors by clicking next.
Can’t beat analog audio. A lot of newer releases are mastered digitally anyways so sometimes it’s not worth buying those on vinyl. I prefer to get some older albums on vinyl because there’s some shit you can’t hear in the streaming versions of certain tracks. CDs are a pass for me, they are basically just flat USB drives.
Anyone who says vinyl is better is really just enjoying the experience. And you know what? That's fine. The problem is, some of them do a terrible job of explaining that it's not actually about the audio quality. When it is actually about the audio quality, vinyl is worse, but some people enjoy that aspect too.
I picked up a little bit on the "audiophile" hobby in the last few years because I was bored and was tired of listening to crappy sound systems with tinny speakers and wanted something a little more premium.
In the "audiophile" community there is all kinds of stuff being marketed mostly to those with more money than brains trying to eek more quality out of their vinyl setups using $10,000 "cartridges" and "record cleaning machines" and the like. I have no idea what these people are thinking because a much easier path to getting quality music to your speakers is to use a digital source.
However, I don't know who at this point would use CDs either. CDs are obviously better quality than vinyl, 8-track, or cassette, but these days you can get CD quality (or even better, master quality from the mixing boards) digitally and losslessly via the Internet and save yourself the collecting of disks.
So I think CDs are kinda stuck in no man's land. Vinyl enthusiasts are in a few groups: loony tunes buying $10k cartridges for their record players, people who like the "aesthetic" of vinyl and don't really care about the quality, people who sample / mix / DJ from vinyl...and the overlap between those groups....CD enthusiasts are people who....like the quality of a digital format but want to still....collect things? Dislike convenience? I'm not sure.
long tangent
I am probably at the exact right age and demographic to be a CD enthusiast (it was my primary listening method in my early to late teens so that should trigger nostalgia, I'm a big music fan, and I was one of the few people dorky / techy enough to make "mix CDs") and I cannot imagine ever wanting to go back to CDs...digital files overtook all other source types for me less than a decade after I started having a substantial CD collection. I ripped all of my CDs to digital files at one point and tried to go get some money for a large CD collection I had and watched as the music store guy went over every single (working) CD with a fine tooth comb and explained why I could get $0 for basically all of them at the farmer's market. I wound up dropping the entire box of CDs in a visible place in the store parking lot so someone else could get them for free and then I drove off.
Then there's everyone else...if you are OK with digital formats (like most people) you're probably already on a streaming service. CDs provide quality but little else. They're fussy, they require a physical collection, they're easily damaged, they skip, etc. etc.
I would not be surprised if at some point cassette tape sales rebound and overtake CD sales because I think cassettes sit in similar nostalgic / aesthetic territory to vinyl.
As it is, I don't even know what device I would use to play a CD if I bought one. Maybe my PS5?
The funny thing here is that vinyls have everything you’re complaining about CDs, but worse.
True enough, but vinyl has its own kind of aesthetic because they were original form of distributed recordings. There is also a good reason they are used for DJing and sampling, you can run turntables off of them and do the sampling live in something approaching an "analog" way. There's a huge amount of rap and hip-hop culture around working turntables this way, and prior to the creation of rap, party DJs would do this exclusively live.
I can see CDs going the vinyl route in terms of enthusiasm in a couple of decades.
We're both just trend forecasting here, and either one of us (or neither one of us) could be right.
But as far as unique advantages and tactile feel go, cassettes seem much more likely to eventually be re-introduced. There is something awesome about being able to record on the fly with them, even if they aren't the best quality...and I, looking back as a person with a large CD collection that only used tapes in my very early youth for listening, genuinely like the cassette format better.
CDs uniquely suck as a portable digital format for listening. I could see some audiophiles continuing to buy expensive "CD transports" or whatever, but it seems much more niche, and much less retro-cool than vinyl or even cassettes do to me.
You completely missed the point of what you are replying to. The point isn't that you SHOULD buy music from online sources instead of CDs. The point is that CDs aren't "the only way to buy a digital popular music in most countries." They are directly contradicting a point someone else made by saying CDs are not the only way to buy digital popular music in most countries. They even specifically said popular music, not whatever niche music some random person is into. They also mentioned iTunes because it services 119 markets, which directly counterpoints the statement about being available in most countries. They never advocated for iTunes like you imply.
It's almost like you lack reading comprehension. "Soms people here on Lemmy are even more insufferable than any other social media."
I think you can use iTunes as a catch all for sales of digital files, including bandcamp. As opposed to a physical disc or a subscription. FWIW I was just looking this up on the RIAA website and you can run reports by year or year over year comparing media options. It’s really interesting to see which year each format peaked. Eg 8track 1978, cassette 1989, CD 2000, digital file 2012. It doesn’t include limewire /napster (non-revenue) so the unit counts are a bit depressed. I wish it included pre-iPod mp3 players and blank CD sales.
Yes, but this is about what is available in most countries, not what is available in all countries. That still leaves 119 markets and 80% of the world's population being available. Pretty sure that counts as "most."
Also, the point isn't about iTunes, it's about alternatives to CDs for digital music. China likely has some online store to buy music, but I have no idea.
To make the claim 80% of population has it you have to have the numbers, since South Korea doesn't have it, a lot of African countries (just going down the list, Algeria, Angola, Benin, etc) don't have it
It looks like half of the world doesn't have iTunes music purchases
You don't own the music you buy on a CD either. You are buying a license to the music and physical storage of it. If you want you can burn your iTunes songs on a CD and you're in the same situation.
Even a human with very good hearing and knowledge of how a song is supposed to sound cannot tell the difference between CD quality audio and 256k AAC like iTunes uses.
Don't believe all the nonsense audiophiles keep spewing out. Human ears suck. If we hadn't had our giant brains to compensate, we'd be practically deaf.
This. People assume that because it's "compressed" it must sound flatter, less dynamic, or just vaguely worse than uncompressed audio, despite the fact that audio compression specifically uses psychoacoustic models to remove the bits of data that our human ears and brains cannot hear to begin with.
FLAC is compressed, but unlike lossy codecs like AAC and MP3, FLAC is fully lossless. Lossy codecs delete information the authors believe you won’t notice, lossless compression keeps all the data and just tries to fit it in a smaller space. The original recording can be perfectly reproduced (taking into account sample rate and depth).
Sometimes they mess up. Actually only ever noticed it once and that was years ago CD vs. ogg vorbis at full quality level, this track. Youtube version is even worse, it seems (from memory): The guitars kicking in around 30 seconds should be harsh and noisy as fuck like nothing you've ever heard, they're merely distorted on youtube.
Then lossy codecs are a bad idea for archival reasons as you can't recode them without incurring additive losses -- each codec has a different psychoacoustic model, each deletes different stuff. Thus, FLAC definitely has a place.
Killer samples do happen, sure but vorbis at Q9? I'm highly dubious. That track in particular just sounds badly recorded to begin with. If you have that same version in FLAC i would be interested to see some ABX test results or test it myself.
For archival purposes, though, I agree FLAC is the way to go.
Killer samples do happen, sure but vorbis at Q9? I’m highly dubious.
Back in 2004, when the album released, the encoder was barely past version 1.0. Though after 20 years I could misremember "full quality" as "whatever people said wouldn't degrade quality".
That track in particular just sounds badly recorded to begin with.
Heresy. Next thing you're going to tell me is that Sunn O))) should move the mics away from the amps so the sound is cleaner. Granted, though, Sunn O))) does that live, blackmail live is quite different because they can't layer a gazillion tracks for the mix. But yes the deliberateness of just how much noise is in those guitars doesn't get conveyed after getting mangled by ten year old youtube compression.
Lol, I'm not saying that brickwalling the mix to achieve a certain effect isn't a thing, but at the extreme levels of compression and clipping apparent on that track, it's unlikely that a FLAC would sound even remotely different. Apparently the band agreed - in 2020 they issued a remaster which seems noticeably less crushed:
I would guess that the fact that people aren't all using some kind of standard-response reference headphones is probably going to have a considerably-larger impact on the human-perceivable fidelity of the audio reproduction than any other factor.
Would really depend on the version of MP3. The first versions had some major issues with artifacts being introduced. People probably listened to that and concluded all compressed music must be shit. Later versions were much better, even though I would think 128k is probably too low and would be noticeable with some effort. I agree, starting at 192k and people can't tell anymore.
Does anybody use MP3 anymore? I don't really know to be honest.
I don’t agree. It depends how the song was ripped and how the original was mastered. I did so much A/B testing at the time and found I couldn’t tell the difference between VBR 256 AAC and the CD. 128k mp3 sounded worse, 320k mp3 is pretty safe, but there were a lot of improvements to LAME over the years so newer files sound better. The biggest difference is the mastering. Generally 1980s reissues of 1970s analog masters sound worst, 1990s is best, 2000s everything got remastered to make it loud and crush dynamic range. The only real innovation since is Dolby Atmos on Apple Music which really brings alive the promise of 1970s quadraphonic.
Bandcamp was bought by Epic Games, who fired half the staff and sold off the remainder to some kind of nebulous music licencing platform. I wouldn't cheer them on much longer, I see dark days ahead.
I'm glad I saved my CDs, as I was able to rerip them to FLAC and undo the mistake my juvenile self made of ripping to WMA. I still keep the CDs to play in my car from time to time
Vinyls break easily and sound kinda meh, even with decent equipment. CDs have fairly good quality and are easy to store and handle. Honestly I get why people like vinyl, big discs are fun and tinkering with analog stuff is its own hobby, but when it comes to collecting I prefer CDs.
vinyl is cool, but cd is the digital recording, mastered in a known manner, to a high degree. It's the most consistent form of product you will get from music. Plus it's a physically collectable thing. And it's cheap.
If you're going for quality, you'd just buy the flac file though
Audio CDs are also lossless, often cheaper than buying the FLAC files, and can be extracted to FLAC files. Only reason to buy FLAC is if you want the convenience of not buying a physical product and the quality of said physical product.
Maybe I should have written a longer comment to elaborate on what I meant. What I meant to say is that if your primary concern is sound quality rather than the experience physical media gives you, I would assume a flac file would be a more popular option due to its convenience.
CDs often ship WAV audio to my knowledge. Doesnt really make sense to encode anything down anyway. Unless you're shipping a box set in a CD maybe? Even then 320kb MP3 is basically imperceptible to even the most astute listeners.
I didn't mean to imply CD stores sounds files of worse quality, only that if you aren't after the experience vinyl provides, digital files is a more convenient form of media.
i mean yeah. But if you're buying an album already. CDs are really easy to find used for like 10 bucks or so. You can buy them new for only a few bucks more than the digital price. It's a great option if you want something physical.
You can still rip CDs straight to wav and dump em to a media player in like 12 minutes though. It's basically free.
No, a CD that carries the actual CD logo cannot have DRM. It is true that the music industry has often pushed 'enhanced' formats that look like CDs that do; SACD, for example.
Ownership is different to possession, and I want to actually own my music, not just possess the files.
No, a CD that carries the actual CD logo cannot have DRM.
Is this true? If so, I'm guessing it's purely due to limitations in the hardware, rather than lack of will? I can't imagine CDs coming out these days and not having some sort of DRM.
Nintendo was able to figure it out with GameCube games...
You can definitely put DRM-protected content onto the physical CD media - that is exactly what SACD is. But then it isn't an audio CD, even if it will play on a regular CD player. Search for "nonstandard or corrupted" on the Wikipedia page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_Digital_Audio .
It's my understanding that only conforming CDs can carry the CD logo. It's usually on the case, not the disc itself, and it isn't always there, particularly when the case isn't a jewel case. All the same, I think that most things that look like CDs are conformant.
Yeah, but I imagine that CD logo is a "stamp of quality" of sorts that tells you that the disc inside fits an agreed upon, unified set of standards. And one of those standards is "no DRM."
Point was, if that standard was created or updated today, there's no shot that they wouldn't require DRM.
Maybe I'm wrong though and that's not at all what the CD logo means.
That's true, but they did already try it and it didn't catch on. There's a section about it on the Wikipedia page ("Copy protection").
That section also mentions that Philips stated that these discs couldn't have the CD logo on them. Since Philips was behind SACD, together with Sony, you'd think they wouldn't have imposed that restriction on themselves if they had the choice.
I know GameCube discs had a sort of copy protection built in (don't remember exactly how it worked, but it was pretty creative if I recall). I don't think they had the CD logo on them though.
There certainly are some services where you can legally download MP3 and FLAC files. Bandcamp, for example. If you download your music like that then, yes, you do own it.
But I'm not aware of anywhere you can get music from the major music labels nowadays (Amazon used to sell MP3s and so did Google Play Music, but neither does any more). If you do, I'd love to know.
On the other hand, you can still - although it's getting harder - buy CDs for major label artists and then you own the music (that copy of it).
True, CDs are the most reliable way to get the digital file.
7digital is a site where I've bought major label music and get the files. If it's not on bandcamp it's often on 7digital. They don't have everything though.
Thanks for the tip - they do seem to have a lot. I had assumed that the labels had made it unprofitable for that type of service to exist. I guess maybe it's simply that there is more money to be made from streaming.
Amazon does still sell digital music files, you just need to find the "digital music" section in Movies, Music and Games if that link doesn't work for you.
But you're right about google music, it got turned into youtube music and I'm pretty sure it doesn't allow purchasing and downloads. I'd imagine apple also still lets you buy music, but I've never actually used them before and don't plan to start now.
In theory, yes. I've never actually plugged it into a computer. It's a Sony PS-LX300USB. Looks like you can pick one up used for less than $100. Might be worth it if you're currently buying everything twice.
I have a audio technica AT-LP120-USB and it shows up in Audacity as an input source. my good speakers are hooked up to my livingroom PC + TV anyway, so playing back \ recording through audacity is the only way I've ever used the player.
What used to have staff picks where the download amount wouldn't count negatively towards your ratio, but the upload amount would. When the Beatles remasters came out in 2008 or 2009, they put the entire collection on there, including the FLAC version. It was like 9+ gb I think, all of which was free in terms download amount. All it took was uploading for a few hours and I got my ratio into double digits. Basically made it so I never had to worry about it ever again.
It's not true that I cannot copy my vinyls to my computer? Okay how do I do that then? It just has the red and white left and right cables going to an amp, and then my receiver. Kinda new to vinyls over here
Maybe try Google? As I said, I downloaded them I didn't rip them myself. There was this person with the username "PBTHAL" that always had to best lossless vinyl rips, if you do a search that includes that name, you might find alternate download sources for them. I think they ran their own site where they posted all of their rips outside of what, but don't know if it's still there. They were also very thorough while explaining the process, equipment, cables, etc. for each and every rip. This person was really a perfectionist, and boy did it show. There were albums that they ripped and then refused to upload because they didn't feel their rip was perfect enough.
Absolute fucking legend.
I even have FLACs of reel-to-reel versions of all Zeppelin albums, as well as, Bowie, Dylan, et. al. and they sound fantastic. Don't ask me how it's done. And given the pedigree of that website, these people took the ripping process incredibly seriously.
Haha nice, that's an area of music collection as a hobby that I've never explored., and I can really appreciate that level of dedicstion. Thanks for letting me know, I'll see if I can even find my type of metal on there
You might be able to find some dedicated metalheads ripping vinyl, but my experience was that it seemed to be done more with albums that were released prior to the rise of digital music. I feel like it makes more sense when the album was written and recorded with vinyl in mind, otherwise you're taking a digital recording and putting it on a record so I'm not sure you're going to get anything that sounds better by ripping the vinyl over just ripping the CD. If that makes sense.
Yeah, and with the style of the few albums I do have on vinyl, the vinyl rexord sound kinda goes with the sound of their subgenre so I do enjoy the vinyl listening experience there, and they do sound different than on Spotify.
But when I own my own copy of an album, I want to remove it from Spotify and have my own copy of it on my own device. So if I'm just doing it to be able to listen to music that I paid for on vinyl on my phone when I'm not home in front of the turntable, then that's good enough.
I notice now, some new vinyls on Bandcamp come with digital download, which is cool, but not if I bought it at a show.
There are usb turntables that let you rip your vinyl, but theyre usually not the highest quality turn tables. I like vintage tables because it adds to the atmosphere and there were fewer corners cut. You could probably get some separate equipment that would let your turn table talk to your computer.
TIL, thanks for pointing out the thing about quality. The table I've currently got sounds pretty nice (for never really having used anything else), so maybe I'll check out ones with USB and at least keep it around for copying!
Such an amazing resource that was, not only did it have the albums available, but several different pressings, source media, and versions of each one. Something no commercial entity can come close to offering at any price.
Well, there's still RED and it has almost has vinyl rip for every famous album. I wasn't a what cd member but RED has a huge collection. If you aren't in music trackers anymore you should checkout RED
Yeah but it's members only right? Frankly, I'm just too old and lazy and don't care enough about that stuff anymore to go through a whole interview process and shit.
Do they have PBTHAL vinyl rips? Those were my favorite by far. That person really knew WTF they were doing.
I'm just too old and lazy and don't care enough about that stuff anymore to go through a whole interview process and shit.
Well, considering you were a what cd user, I think you can easily clear that, the wait for the interview is ridiculously annoying though. I had to wait for weeks for that.
Do they have PBTHAL vinyl rips?
I don't know, have to check. I am just tired of the grind these days and just visit it when my friend asks for an album's flac, or if I get freeleech tokens.
Yeah but I would need to "prove" I was a member, and it's not like I still have any kind of evidence. In fact, I got super lucky to get into what in the first place as I just happened to have a screenshot of my OiNK title bar/ratio because I was messing with different CSS themes months/years prior. So when OiNK died, I was able to get into what pretty easily by showing that screenshot.
Right. I was able to skip the interview process for What because I was a member of OiNK and got lucky enough to find someone on reddit to send me an invite. The whole idea of interviewing to join a torrent site rubs me the wrong way and as I said above, I don't really care about that stuff enough anymore to go through the hassle.
Yeah. I've still got my massive music collection from those private trackers backed up on a couple external drives, so I already have most of what I want/need stored in a couple different locations. And you can find 320kbps rips of stuff on public trackers these days. Might not has the same pedigree as someone on a private tracker using EAC and making sure everything runs perfectly, but it's good enough for me.
Yeah, plus every indie band/artist these days have their own bandcamp page. There's always flac available on public trackers for mainstream artist/band. You might not be missing anything.
Man do I miss what cd. I love RED. But what will always have a special place. I still have tons of merch I bought from what. T-shirts, coffee mug, koozie and so many rippy stickers. I still wear the shirts in my regular rotation
you could get the vinyl rip, and listen them on your phone. idk whether it might sound the same like the exact vinyl but it's better than Spotify if you have a decent headphones.
Vylin is mixed differently. Base Bass is usually centered instead of leaning on any channel at a time. This is to reduce chances of skipping. I personally prefer my music that way because drums and bass always feel in the middle leaving room for other instruments to expand on the side.
Ahh, I see. Setting sail to get something I've legitimately paid for IS an option. I'd still rather do it myself now that I'm finding out it's an option with the right equipment
Poeple jerking off CDs here dont understand down sampling and the average quality of CDS. they think that just because it is digitally mastered that it therefore must be the master that is put on CDS, its not.
I can't hear anything above 20 kHz, and neither can most people. CD audio is passed through a 20 kHz lowpass filter. It is then sampled at 44 kHz. Due to the Nyquist Shannon Spamling Theorum, when sound is digitally sampled at just above twice the rate of the source audio, converting it back to analog perfectly reproduces the original waveform. And I do mean perfectly. The exact same waveform. (The extra 4 kHz is to prevent artifacts in frequencies very close to 20 kHz.)
Therefore CD audio is perfect unless you think you can hear above 20 kHz. (Spoiler: you can't) There are a few good YouTube videos on this topic, and the best ones are very mathy.
Is there something I'm missing? Do I need to educate myself some more?
I don't know shit about fuck, but you explanation seems correct.
I do remember hearing that precisely because of the limitations of vinyl compared to CD, music is mastered differently for each medium. So the CD master of a certain song might be more compressed (dynamic compression, not digital compression) to make it sound "louder", while the vinyl release has a wider dynamic range. So some people might prefer the vinyl version because it actually does sound different to the CD version.
Keep in mind tho, I might be spreading misinformation here.
The loudness wars were definitely a thing; you are correct. But that was a choice and not a limitation of the medium. Plenty of CDs were not produced that way. But that's not what the OC was talking about. They were talking about down sampling, not dynamic range compression.
You are correct, CDs can reproduce the human audio spectrum perfectly, IF AND ONLY IF certain rules are followed, and I think that's why earlier CDs sounded weird. For example: how good were low pass filters when digital sound first arrived?
Keep kidding yourself that you can hear the difference.
Vinyls have their appeal but they get dusty, scratched, they skip etc. Only snobs truly think that they sound better.
Digital music can be taken as easily as it can be given.
CDs are the best compromise. They have sound quality as good as digital but you also get the lyrics and artwork that come with a vinyl, they're also much easier to store. The best thing though, is that if I get bored of a CD, I can sell it or even just give it away for free, you can't do that with digital music.
Digital music can be taken as easily as it can be given.
Digital does not always mean DRM. You can pry my bandcamp FLACs from my cold dead hands. Physical media nowadays is more about the experience than functionality. Maybe there are snobs who claim that vinyls are somehow functionally superior, but generally the people who use vinyls or CDs or tapes instead of digital are really just looking for that physical experience in a highly digitalized world.
They have sound quality as good as digital
CD quality is actually superior to streaming services like spotify (I personally can't tell the difference tho).
I'm a (former) audio engineer and I can't tell the difference. My professors used to laugh at audiophiles who spent hundreds or even thousands of dollars for stereo equipment because we were taught to mix things so that they sound good in a car as well as a perfectly quiet room. In fact, we were told that after we finished a master, we should test it by putting it in our car and driving around to make sure the mix was audible in the ways you and the band wanted.
I still really like vinyl because I like the ritual of the whole thing, but I don't spend money on it because it's way too expensive and everything you hear is almost certainly mastered digitally and likely recorded and mixed digitally, negating the whole "warmth" factor.
It's why I use a dedicated music tracker for my music. I own it. I get the exact quality and version I want, and no one can take it from me.
I've had a lot of physical media stolen from me, and I would never try replacing it with more purchased media, because of the he cost and potential for damage and chance it might get stolen again.
I'm a music collector and saw this coming. "Music" went from a product you buy, into a service you pay to gain access to. You don't pay for music, you pay daddy Spotify for access to HIS music.
Vinyl has turned back into the only form of physical music collection.
I don't buy vinyl, but I do buy CDs for albums I want. I have (what I believe are well-founded) trust issues with services supplying digital copies.
I will say I have bought some nice, normal mp3s in the past from Amazon. Those are fine. But generally I want the discs. I'm going to rip them immediately to mp3, and store the discs away, but I still want them.
I did recently buy a favorite band's entire back catalog on CD, because I want to own a non-revocable copy of their work. Plus it felt pretty good "I give you money, you give me music on CD" felt way less icky than "I watch commercials for fraudulent products and services chosen by a nakedly hostile algorithm, evil megacorporation optionally pays you."
I tried Spotify but it only has about 70% of the albums in my collection. I used to love google play music because you could upload your media and it would be included in your library.
Edit: It needed me to sign up with an email address and I saw it had in app purchases that put me off a bit. But when looking for that app I found Musicolet which looks pretty perfect, just a simple ad free music playing app without all the bollocks!
the in app purchases are mainly if you want to buy PlexPass which unlocks additional features. I bought the lifetime pass years ago when it was on sale for $75 so I can't quite remember which features require plex pass. Its primarily for video but the music section with Plexamp on my phone and laptop is a nice little bonus.
I've heard and discussed with artists who mentioned that producing vinyl was very expensive compared to cassettes, which are cheap and easy to DIY.
Then I'd add that cassettes have a retro appeal nowadays. Lastly, they are an analog format, opposite to the CD which is the 1:1 copy of the downloaded FLAC album downloaded from Bandcamp.
Analog, sure, but very low quality. 1/8" tape is not enough to reproduce sound accurately and there's a lot of tape hiss. There's a reason why professional analog multitrack studios use 1" tape.
Ehh, all those 1” tape machines are 8-tracks and designed for editing, not playback. Magnetic tape fidelity has a lot more to do with medium, bias and processing than the width of the tape itself.
Hell, plenty of analog shops use four and eight track machines that run 1/4” tape!
Compact cassette also has the potential to sound very good. If you would like a demonstration, look up the vwestlife yt channel or listen to a good tape on a good tape deck.
I think there was a 99% invisible podcast episode about that, it's prison inmates. For some never-changed rule they are only allowed music on cassettes, so they are probably the target audience mainly.
Just a few years ago I had an old car with a cassette player/radio, and from time to time I enjoyed the cassette player with some leftover stuff, but in most cases I just used an FM transmitter
The prison system sucks in so many ways. Legal slavery with archaic rules that would be considered hate crimes or human rights violations if they happened to people in the U.S. who aren't incarcerated.
As far as old cars with cassette players. Like you said, you can use an FM transmitter, but I also remember having a fake cassette with an aux cable so you could plug it into a CD player headphone jack. I would bet they have a bluetooth version these days, so you don't have to listen to cassettes even in those cars.
That reminds me of something though. When I was a kid, we had a Toyota Corona station wagon with an 8-track player. My father had this converter device that you plugged into the 8-track and it had a little tray that you laid a cassette into so you could play it. I don't remember if the sound quality was worse than playing a cassette in a player designed for it.
I had a friend with the cassette adapter for his 8 track player. I just brought my boombox with me in high school. It sounded better than the shitty stereo that came with my dad's 1972 Mercury Capri.
Sure, there are transmitters without Bluetooth. I somehow preferred the SD card, as it would hold a few Gb of music and needed no internet connection. The only downside was if I was driving short trips only for a while, and it stuck with a 20-min long Deep Purple concert track every time :)
Someone else told me that. What bullshit. "You can't have audio technology that was developed in the 1980s" is a fucking stupid punishment. Why not just make them listen to Edison cylinders?
Not me, I don't miss rewinding them shits. CDs are still good though, I still buy those because you can't go wrong by having it on the most highly-detailed and durable medium.
My first CD I bought in the mid 80's still plays fine. The selection of CDs was paltry and the only thing I could find at my parent's town that I was remotely interested in was ZZ Top's Eliminator.
I never purchased a single cassette the entire time they were popular. I would buy records and tape them ( I was a Maxell person but did have some TDK) so that I could listen in the car or in my giant boombox that had APLD which was skip to next song.
I'm fairly certain most people who likes vinyl is because of the collection aspect. The leaflets and photos are nice to look at while you're listening.
That's something with vinyl records is that they come in big sleeves with nice big prints of the album art and such. That's great stuff for a music buff to enjoy.
When my dad died, I told my brother, who is very difficult to deal with, to just take whatever he wanted from my dad's vast collection of things and I'd deal with the rest. One of the things he took was an original Edison cylinder phonograph with a bunch of cylinders. I was okay with him taking it since I gave him permission, but what annoys me is that the phonograph was missing the stylus and he has never replaced it. It's inside a wooden case with a lid, which he keeps closed, and the cylinders and the horn just sit next to it.
Why the fuck did he take it?
I don't even have room for it, but if he's not going to even display it properly, let alone get a single part that is needed for it to work, what's the point? Just sell it if you're not going to do anything with it.
I always thought it had more to do with the aesthetic of vinyls rather than any sort of ownership dilemma. A good chunk of my friends own multiple vinyl records but no record player. I also wonder what the production rates are like for vinyls vs CDs, are we producing about the same quantity of them?
For some people it’s definitely the aesthetic/collectible nature of vinyl. Anecdotally, for me, it’s for the listening pleasure. I’m no audiophile. I’m listening on potato speakers on a sub par turntable, but I like listening to records like I did when I was younger.
I do also love the much larger album sleeve artwork, but my primary drive in purchasing an album is to listen to it on my turntable.
Legit didn't know people still bought music. CDs though? How does anyone still have cd players, and why. Vinyl is a hipster fad now so I guess that explains records.
Audiophiles is why. Why CDs? Because the music in a CD is raw uncompressed. So if you got a good amp and speakers, earphones or IEMs you can hear the musicians scratch their beards while playing jazz, or maybe you can hear the sound of dacer's boobies rubbing against the spandex or clapping harmoniously. LOL 😂, the rest of us will tin can and string headphones, we make due with mp3s.
Hey now you know how the Spanish do their cevillana clapping trick!... You can imagine how their guys do it. Yes it's painful at first but it gets them ready for war once them clapping things go numb.
My car has a CD player. It sounds a lot better than the radio or any streaming service's compressed audio. I used to have a SiriusXM subscription and their audio quality was absolute garbage. I don't pay for any streaming music services now, and have no plans to ever do so.
I buy CDs of every band I like, because I know that music will last in its perfect quality form for decades and nobody but burglars can take it from me. I use my blu-ray burner to rip them to high-bitrate MP3s for phone and Plex library usage.
I also have a pile of records that I don't listen to because I don't have room to set up my record player right now.
I have an external CD/DVD player that is used solely to rip CDs and add to my media server. I abhor renting music and ripping a CD gives me the format and quality I like (!1000kbps flac) and future proofs me if tech limits change down the road. I used to rip to ogg but a few years ago I reripped about 500 CDs to flac.
yup, sadly many of the bands/artists i listen to don't really offer their music as physicals, but there's also no way i'm gonna spend 20 bucks on an album just to listen to like 3 of the songs ever.
I don't think it's a hipster thing anymore, I understand why: aesthetically vinyl are nicer than cds. You have a large cardboard with artworks. I might buy one from an artist whom art I like, and never actually play it.
Unless you really want them, make sure you let your dad know that you don't want it to be your responsibility to deal with them after he dies. My dad had a huge LP and CD collection. Like a wall of LPs and a wall of CDs. It was mostly things I didn't want and I had a lot of trouble selling them off. A lot of them ended up either with friends or, at last resort, Goodwill.
I agreed to take care of getting rid of it all after he died and it was a huge mistake.
I don’t think vinyls are hipster. In the age of music digitalization, it is nice to own a physical piece of media, in addition to being able to support your artist more directly. Also it looks nice.
Only a few more years now till the retro sound of CDs comes back into style. I realize vinyl is a great and unique user experience with a specific timber, and more enjoyable to collect.
It's kind of funny when you hear about the "analog warmth" when albums were being digitally mastered as early as the late 70s... And pretty much all re-releases are digitally remastered.
Only a few more years now till the retro sound of CDs comes back into style.
I liked the artwork on the disks themselves, and the feeling of opening a box, taking the disk out with that cracking sound, pushing a button on the drive and seeing and hearing it open, and then the sound of spinning when it's being read.
Every bit as "warm" as vinyl in my opinion (born in 1996, so of course it is).
Your mistake is equivocating digital with analog. There is nothing "retro sounding" about CDs, you can download lossless digital versions of albums that are identical to what you'll find on a CD.
That's technically true, but it is entirely possible CDs come back as a retro meat-space alternative to the corporate streaming dystopia we're headed towards, or using CDs as a secondary retro proxy to feed nostalgia for production mastering trends of the 1990s-2000s era.
They already are! Some young artists are already doing those 2000s nostalgia CD releases for the kicks of having a physical medium.
However a big part of the marketing for vinyl has historically been "the sound is warm/high definition/whatever audiophile bullshit". Anyone can achieve the same "warmth" with an EQ and some crackle/white noise (it works so well it's a whole genre called lofi...), but the "vinyl sounds better" crowd will make the unfalsifiable claim that "it's not the same".
However, good luck claiming that "CDs sound different from FLACs"!
In the end both vinyl and CD enjoyers are doing the same thing: enjoying music through personal and ritualistic manipulation of physical objects, that also come with nice album art. It's just that some vinyl enjoyers are attributing some of that enjoyment to a largely made-up supposed "superiority" of sound (yes there are edge cases like "bad" remasters of songs originally released on vinyl, but is that really why anyone buys a turntable? Be honest.).
Exactly, although CD isn't so much "retro" as it is a high frequency, high dynamic range audio recording. The only reason vinyl sounds "warm" is because their dynamic range & frequency is compressed so the needle doesn't bounce out of its groove.
While it's possible for a CD to receive a terrible master, if the mastering across formats is the same and other biases are eliminated (i.e. proper A/B testing) then CD will be objectively better sounding every single time.
Vynil is mixed differently. Base is much more centered to help prevent skipping tracks. This makes music sound a bit differently. Also, it's not easy to change track or author, so you usually end up listening to entire side or record. Overall it's a different experience.
I personally never liked CDs. They never lasted for me. Either the case breaks on the first wrong glance of it or the disk starts flaking or being scratched.
I think the mixing being different is likely dependent upon how good the engineer and mastering engineers are/were. I'd wager a fair number of bands releasing their albums to vinyl these days simply send over a very similar final master (maybe slightly less loud if you are lucky) to the vinyl cutting without much thought, because it's the hip thing to do.
You are accurate, that they should ensure that low frequencies are mono compatible, but it is likely less of an issue for the style of music most associated with vinyl releases (indi etc), as stylistically they don't tend to use stereo widening on low frequency instruments. Generally they have kick and bass down the center channel, or I suppose going mono style out of L/R if they are trying to be really old school, but that would likely take a completely different mix adding to production budget as I can't imagine if would work to well on phones etc, which a lof of music is mix for unfortunately.
None of the artists I produce or mix for have requested it yet, but if they did I would send them to Fuller Sound Mastering as Michael has been around for ages and knows how to handle masters for vinyl.
Vinyl cutting also has an EQ curve offset that is printed into the vinyl itself, cutting the bass and boosting the high frequency, which is then re-applied by the players preamp circuitry, I believe it's referred to as pre and de-emphasis. Funny enough my mastering DAC actually has this feature for some kind of old early CD technology for some lower resolution digital formats that had issues with noise and filtering and used a similar technology, I had never heard of this until I purchased this particular unit haha.
They sound exactly the same as the digital releases. Only audiophiles up there own arses believe that they can hear a difference. Vinyls sound different but for obvious reasons.
Edited to add: most CDs sound the same as their digital releases (assuming they had the same master which I've found isn't always true), but occasionally you can actually get higher resolution, up to 96k/24 bit, which do sound different depending on your playback device.
Most of the difference is likely due to the nature of the DA filter being applied during playback, as I certainly won't notice the noise floor between 16-24 bit, and any frequency difference is far far behind my range of hearing.
If you aren't familiar with what I'm referring too, different DA implementations use varying filtering techniques, some have a slight roll off in the upper frequency range to improve the accuracy of transient response, while others use a flatter frequency response sacrificing the transient. Newer DAs from some manufacturers allow you to select which option you prefer. At double and quad sample rates this can largely become a moot point as any sacrifice to the frequency response is far out of the range of human hearing.
Many albums, especially comedy albums, relied on you flipping over the record. They would have jokes that talked about things on the other side. There's a Firesign Theater album where one of the characters says, "wait a minute, didn't I say that on the other side of the record?" There's a Monty Python album with a locked groove that says, "oh sorry, squire. I scratched the record." Which is brilliant.
Edit: There's another Monty Python album that has two sets of grooves and what you hear depends on which groove the needle hits first. Again, absolutely brilliant.
More famously, the end of the Beatles' peak album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band contains a locked groove which was snippets of recordings mashed-up in a bit of short multi-track recording experimentation. The CD only repeats it 2 or 3 times. The record was designed to play indefinitely.
So yeah, CDs took that away from recordings, but on the other hand, it's a lot harder to damage a CD and get an unintentional looping segment.
I love that on the CD version of Full Moon Fever they added a bit to the end of Running Down a Dream telling CD listeners they're going to take a break so that people on vinyl and cassette can switch to the other side.
The only vinyls I buy are from charity shops or because I love an album so much that I want it as a collection (I'd also buy the CD to actually listen to)
Yeah, I haven't bought a new record in a long time, and one of my most prized albums is a 1970 radio-played copy of The Kinks "Lola vs. Powerman and the MoneygoRound" complete with the dates and times they played Lola."
That is definitely something I loved about LPs. I used to have a big book of album cover art. I have no idea what happened to it unfortunately, but I used to pore over it. Liner notes are less of an issue with the internet, but the shrinking of art was a very unfortunate result of CDs.
I remember getting a copy of Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" that came with a whole-ass newspaper they made folded into the liner with lyrics and pictures. That's something you can only do with vinyl.
They usually have a higher bitrate than you can get from streaming. There's not one CD I have that I immediately tell the difference in quality of I switch between streaming (or even a standard mp3 actually) and a CD. CD wins every time.
Most of the records I buy come with bandcamp codes. I can play the flac files if I want digital audio, physical media for me is about the thing itself. Often get full sized posters and patches. Shit I'll buy a tape over the cd too
Have you ever listened to records? "Objectively worse audio quality" is not what I'd call the experience. In fact I doubt you'd be able to tell the difference.
Absolutely you would for the reasons I mentioned. Vinyl is typically made from digital and the first step of mastering is altering it to remove sibilance, loudness and other things that either waste space, cause distortion or cause the needle to jump. It's already lossy and then as it is printed and played, more loss and distortion happens. Even playing the record causes it to wear and for dust to accumulate. While it is completely possible for a badly mastered CD to sound worse than a well mastered LP, the reality is if they are from the same master and other biases are eliminated (i.e. A/B testing) then the CD is going to win out since it has a higher dynamic range and frequency.
