Why CDs May Actually Sound Better Than Vinyl

Interesting article on CDs and why they may actually sound better than vinyl. Also, why 180 gram records are a ripoff and why high bit rate digital tracks may also be a ripoff.

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

(Moves to higher ground to avoid being trampled by stampede of angry vinyl junkies)

Fat Freddy wrote:

Moves to higher ground to avoid being trampled by stampede of angry vinyl junkies)

can we hide this from SD???

I have a nice collection of vinyl and I love collecting it.  I don't collect it for sound quality, instead I collect it for nostalgia.  I like LPs - the large artwork, liner notes, colored vinyl, gatefolds, picture discs, etc...  

I've never really bought in to the concept of vinyl sounding better, but I do love the whole ritual of listening to a vinyl record - taking it out of the sleeve, dusting it, putting it on the turntable and dropping the needle.

CDs have never really been as interesting from a visual standpoint for me.  The artwork was much smaller and the discs themselves were mostly boring silver circles with some black writing on them.

It's a good abbreviated article. Though there are so many variables to this topic that it's impossible to write an all-encompassing article on the subject. Far too many subjective elements at play.

There aren't any glaring errors but to really parse all the ground they try to cover would take a book.

The article does fail to discuss the primary difference between red book and high-res is the word length, not the sample rate.

i have found i convert most stuff now to mp3 so i dont even handle the cd much anymore.

I haven't bought a CD in months. I'm almost exclusively digital now.

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You know what I mean.

very interesting article. I know from my vinyl days many albums skipped on first play and after 15-20 listens, it was time to re-purchase. the pops and crackle go to be too much. My brother is a fanatical audiophile and swears by certain amps and will spend insane cash getting them reworked and restored. He has certain amp/speaker combinations for the various types of music and side by side comparisons, I agree with him. He has a specially built listening room in which he rotates his vintage amps and speakers. Needless to say, I love going to his house and hanging out. An extreme example of an audiophile I know, but I've heard the difference between a CD and vinyl on his equipment and I've heard how equalizing average playback equipment makes. I think the article highlights a very important part and that is the listeners experience. That personal interpretation makes all the difference. I love the warmth of vinyl, but there is no way that a sharp object being dragged across plastic can maintain the quality of sound, at least not without spending the cash to maintain that sound quality. All that to say, I think it comes down to the equipment used more so than the media type, but clearly I'm biased.

I started out with vinyl just like those of us of a certain age, and of course have gone through the cassette and cd changes. I like the CD. I'm not an audiophile, and although I can tell the difference a little, it doesn't impact me greatly. I will continue to buy CDs as long as they are offered.

I do have a collection of Lps that are "garage only" listens, and like mentioned, I like the ritual of listening to records. I like the sound, the so-called "warm" sound, and I also like the process.

I like the act of receiving, opening, looking at art and lyrics.

scottmitchell74 wrote:

I like the act of receiving, opening, looking at art and lyrics.

That was my line for the longest time but I think I've finally overcome it. Downloading a digital copy is A) faster, B) more readily lends itself to my current modes of listening to music and C) it's almost always cheaper. Plus my downloads are stored on the Amazon cloud so if something happens to my copy I can just download it again. If something happens to a CD I bought, I'm hosed.

Isn't the main benefit of 180-gram longevity/durability? At least that's what I've always heard.

The point of the article about 180 gram is they don't sound any better, which makes phrases like "180 gram audiophile pressing" nothing more than hollow marketing talk. They are less prone to warpage, but if you take care of your vinyl correctly that shouldn't be an issue anyway.

I've never preferred sound of vinyl recordings, and I've always said what's better is up to the listener. Many claim that MP3s ripped at 320kbps are far better than those ripped at 128kbps, but I can barely hear a difference outside of a very slight uptick in volume. And that difference certainly doesn't justify my wasting an addition 20MB per song or whatever.

Anyway, I like vinyl and CD and tape, whatever.

I'm on the fence with this, there are definitely some records that I think sound better on vinyl (Sabbath's latest for one) but I can't be sure that it's because it's vinyl or another reason of the many possibles. I like the sound of vinyl and I love the whole deal, it's probably nostalgia because I love the whole ritual but to be honest, on a day to day basis I listen to digital as it's neater and tidier than trawling through my collection. If I ever had to sell my vinyl, I think that I'd be just fine with downloads, I tend to go for flac as I do think that there is a big difference between that and 128kbps but it's purely a personal thing.

The vinyl version of Black Sabbath's 13 sounds better because it's not nearly as compressed and has twice the dynamic range of the CD version.

CD = 5db of dynamic range
LP = 10db of dynamic range

Only sacred vynals ist tr00. CDs ist not krieg. Ehehehehe

I have been struggling with making the jump to buying albums on a weekly basis as it appears that every time I visit the local record store there is more and more vinyl and less Cd's. I know that FF mentioned in one of his Hubpages the cassette to CD change was forced upon him; as it was for many of us. I want to do it, but I have the feeling of "been there and done that" as many of us did back in the day. My next thought is usually to only buy new releases so I am not doubling up and wasting my small weekly music budget. It ultimately comes down to money, and I can't repurchase my 1,500+ favorites of the 3,000+ CD's I already own. I know the vinyl prices are relative (as I think Witchfinder posted in another thread) to when we were all in junior high, but I am too cheap to pay $30+ for the new Bob Seger when I bought the deluxe edition on CD for less than $12.

When it comes to this debate, there's this reliance on terms like "sounds better" or "sounds worse." Those are really crap terms because, are we talking about "it sounds better to me," which is subjective; or "it technically IS better," which is not.

You read articles like this or get into debate on it and the two points get kind of twisted together, which is pretty crap.

On a technical level, all sound is analog - just big wavy sine waves...which are wavy. That's how our meat ears pick it up and what our meat brains decode. So, no matter what, when you're talking about the act of LISTENING TO MUSIC (DA DA DUM), you're always going to be contending with the hardware receiving the stuff.

So, what's the big crackup between digital and analog? Well, in analog, what you're hearing is a sound wave that begins and ends as a sound wave. It may not be an exact replica of the original sound that was captured, but there are considerably fewer "steps" between the original and what you're hearing in most cases. In digital, by contrast, you have an original sound wave captured, converted into zeroes and ones, and then decoded BACK into an approximation of a wave form. Problem is, zeroes and ones will always be blocky. You're getting a step pyramid, not a hill. So, if handled wrong or encoded/decoded by a bad system, you're getting a really bad MS Paint version of Van Gogh's Sunflowers that looks like someone's kid drew it. Exaggeration, yeah, but it makes the point.

When it comes down to hi-def and the increasing availability of hi-def digital, you get such TINY steps in that pyramid that, as far as our "meat" is concerned, it IS a curve unless you zoom in beyond our ability to discern the difference just by listening. So yeah, I'd accept the notion that hi-def could go to a point where all but the most sensitive of ears could never tell that they'd upgraded their last version of a recording. That said, I don't really think we've hit that ceiling yet.

There's also a LOT to be said about the methods and quality of recording and mixing here. When I made the jump to FLAC and ALAC from 320 MP3, I wasn't expecting to hear any real difference. My first test track was a Tangerine Dream track from the 70s. Dudes and dudettes, there were NOTES MISSING in the MP3 version and I never knew because I'd ripped the CD and put it on the shelf. Seriously, whole harmonics and parts of chords were just lopped off even at the highest resolution MP3 was capable of. Total rubbish. Now, on the other hand, when I did the same comparison with a more recent, almost totally digital album like Devin Townsend's Ki, there was a little more definition to the bass and a WEE tiny bit of extra room reverb on the drums that FLAC revealed. That's it. Not as impressive.

So, from my perspective, I think digital CAN do better than vinyl (though I enjoy vinyl) and I also think hi-def is awesome if it gives extra clarity to music I already dig, but you've got to consider the source material in any debate on the topic.

And yes, I referenced meat far more times in this reply than is probably healthy.

Great post, Runicen. Thanks for the information and the compare contrast. A well thought out post as always. And don't worry about the meat reference, there's far more meat here than is healthy for any of us

I pretty much have all my music ripped to my desktop (which is where I am now) and have a cheap center channel and speakers. That being said, another thing I struggle with is having to spend copious amounts of money to procure a proper turntable and speakers to reap the "benefits" (if there are any, not arguing or looking for a debate with anyone, just sayin') of 180 gram vinyl. I wonder if a great pair of headphones would do the trick and bring out the things never heard before?

Another thing I wonder ( and this is just sentinel speculation as I drift of to sleep each night, not trying to pick a fight or harsh anyone' s mellow, but how much of the vinyl "revolution" is bandwagon and how much is sincere? Is it real or a fad? It reminds me a lot of the comic book scene 20 years ago when everything came with a chromium foil wraparound variant cover and was limited or the 1 of 1's and low numbered sports cards. I can't help but be reminded of this each time I see a Newbury Comics Exclusive release or purple splatter exclusive numbered out of 500.

The vinyl resurgence is mostly fueled by two things - nostalgia and trendiness.  There's nothing inherently wrong with either of those things.  I am nostalgic for the vinyl experience of my youth and thus I like collecting it.  I also enjoy collecting vinyl for aesthetic reasons.  The recent trendiness of vinyl has made it more widely available which is good for me.  I couldn't care less for the sincerity of fads or trends, and such a notion doesn't factor in to what I enjoy or purchase.

I am no audiophile and I am not interested in becoming one.  I will not spend vast quantities of money on components in an effort to gain infinitesimal improvements in sonic quality.  I also don't believe that vinyl sounds inherently better than a digital source.  However, plenty of people do and they pursue it as a hobby so that's cool for them and more power to them.

Sentinel - CDs will be become rarer, but they will remain the dominant physical media for many, many years.  CDs are extremely cost effective at this point - most new releases are $10 or less - and I would stick with that format if I were you.  Frankly, if I weren't a collector type who enjoys the process of hunting down albums and acquiring them, I would have moved to a completely MP3 collection a long time ago.  The vast majority of my listening is done on my computer or phone with MP3s and headphones.  I listen to vinyl occasionally, but my lifestyle won't allow me to listen to it frequently.

Witchfinder wrote:

 

Sentinel - CDs will be become rarer, but they will remain the dominant physical media for many, many years.  CDs are extremely cost effective at this point - most new releases are $10 or less - and I would stick with that format if I were you.  Frankly, if I weren't a collector type who enjoys the process of hunting down albums and acquiring them, I would have moved to a completely MP3 collection a long time ago.  The vast majority of my listening is done on my computer or phone with MP3s and headphones.  I listen to vinyl occasionally, but my lifestyle won't allow me to listen to it frequently.

I'm not so sure, vinyl will definitely not start selling in the huge quantities that they did when we were kids but it will outlive CDs which are on the way out. Kids I know don't really care out collections and stuff like that, they want a choice of a million different songs accessed by their phone.The more nerdy collector types will go for vinyl or as seems to be the case at the moment cassettes!!

I don't mind the 'trendiness' factor, it's always been a part of the music scene.

Don't give me too much credit for deep thoughts. I saved up all my cerebral energy during the month or so I wasn't posting and that was all of it. I think I'm tapped and will soon revert to stomping and grunting.

The only part of the "fad" observation that worries me is that the biggest area where you can see the more superficial side of the vinyl resurgence is that there's really hit and miss QA on a lot of pressings. Hell, I even splurged on that big Beatles Mono set only to find that my Sgt. Pepper was slightly warped. Granted, it plays without issue and it's the only one; but apparently a LOT of people got copies of this not exactly cheap vinyl set with all manner of crap wrong with it. I apparently got lucky with mine - which is not something you want for something in the $300 range.

So, if the vinyl production plants (which are, understandably, stretched to capacity and past) don't get that under control, people will ditch on vinyl as an unreliable and "crap" medium and then we're back to MP3 and spotify, which would suck tremendously. Anything that encourages new generations of listeners to actually SIT and LISTEN to an album or an extended piece of music without ADDing out is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

As for not being sure about wanting an audiophile rig, why start with one? Seriously, there's all kinds of places to get cheap, used stuff and you can decide if you like storing, playing and messing with records at all or if it's a neat idea that just doesn't fit your lifestyle. I have a friend who is a huge collector who still uses one of those Crosley all in one deals at home to listen to his records. It's not out of disrespect for the vinyl or anything. He's just not listening to records for hi-def. He'd tell you to listen to a CD if that was what you were after. Vinyl just has... something else. You know, meat and all that.

There's that damn meat again...

Aesthetics are a big pull for me too, as, after all, we are men and we are visual ( be it a Derek Riggs album cover or Mila Kunis) we can enjoy the "wow" factor of the exterior. I fight though against the urge to be a collector and have every version possible just cause it's out there and I have a shot at getting it. I spent nearly half my life (1989 - 2011) collecting sports cards (mostly Football) and now they sit in boxes at my parent's house and take up space. I have been steadily selling off stuff the last few years to finance my music (easier now that the Pats are SB champs again) and for general lack of interest in watching sports anymore. Thanks for the input guys.