70s prog on vinyl

^ the sound quality of vinyls also heavily depends on how often they were played ... even with a perfectly aligned stylus and proper care/handling a vinyl disc degrades each time you listen to it. 

The ageless discussion ... for more than 20 years people have argued about this and the battle continues. To those of you who are sure that vinyl is superior to CD: Why then is CD today the standard format even for those genres which are far from mainstream and where most of the fans (customers) are audiophiles ... such as classical and jazz? If vinyl was so obviously superior to CD none of them would have purchased CDs ... but they did.

I don't think that vinyl is in any way superior to CD ... on the contrary, it's inferior in almost every way, you just have to look at the technical specifications. But of course this does not imply that CDs sound better than vinyls ... as many others have said it really depends on the mix/mastering.

Last year I bought a record player and started to acquire records ... some used ones from the 70s, but also many new ones with recent music - yes, many artists/labels still release vinyls, especially in the prog/metal/independent genres. I must say that the records really sound differently compared to the CD - but I wouldn't necessarily say that they sound warmer or less "numerical".


Edited by MikeEnRegalia - September 09 2007 at 02:14

CDs technically have a better dynamic range than vinyls, but they often tend to be overcompressed, especially a lot of remasters. That's not really a prog-problem though, as prog albums tend to be mastered and remastered by non-senseless engineers.

I agree with your last sentence.

jammun wrote: It occurs to me I may have been a bit harsh with regard to the good points of vinyl.  For my collection, at least, yes the sound quality is no longer what it once was, though it remains, for lack of a better term, more "organic."

This is a good word to define the analog sound: it has flesh, mateer, opposed to the thin, edgy numeric sound.

Edited by oliverstoned - August 27 2007 at 15:51

Dick Heath wrote: Tapfret wrote: I re-record all of my CD's with pops, hisses, scratches and compress the dynamic range before I convert to MP3 so they all sound more like vinyl. Forgive me asking, but why? They didn't recorded it like that, they wouldn't have played it live like that. As written elsewhere, compression is means of fitting more than 15 minutes per side, in the form of a mechanical analogue signal - i.e. the groove on each side of the LP. The sub-30 minute, early  Beach Boys LPs weren't normally compressed since there was little  need. The 12" singles tended to have the best audio range if a tune was about  4 minutes or less - unless compressed for radio broadcast purposes (e.g. for stations with AM  or poor quality FM).

jammun wrote: I own many LP's (vinyl) of the classic 70's stuff (ELP, Crimson, Yes, you name it), bought back in the day when they were released.  I also own the CD's of same, which I listen to when I want more pristine sound.  Agreed the LP's sound better, but there's one huge problem:   In spite of judicious use of Diskkeeper, replacing paper sleeves with plastic, etc., many times we were chemically altered while listening to this stuff and didn't necessarily treat them well.  We were teenagers and didn't keep our needles replaced as recommended, or we had too high a tracking weight on the turntable which has unfortunately worn out some of the nuances.  The high end equipment was not within our reach, and the LP's suffered.  In short,  the LP's are not always in that great of shape and don't sound anywhere near as good as they once did.  Not that there are skips or other huge flaws, but there's a lot of extraneous noise due to sloppy treatment.   I guess I could sell my LP's on ebay, but the buyer is not going to get the original experience.   (Let me know if your interested ), now that you know the TRUTH.

Very important point, and unfortunately one that seems to be forgotten or ignored in most of these discussions.

I prefer vinyls by far.  

I have a decent amount of prog LPs, my most recent acquisitions include Gentle Giant's Playing The Fool and Steve Hackett's Voyage of the Acolyte.

I LOVE vinyl.

I have only just started to collect it, but the sound is much warmer and less metallic and digital than CDs. I would take a record over a CD of the same album any day.

Tapfret wrote: I re-record all of my CD's with pops, hisses, scratches and compress the dynamic range before I convert to MP3 so they all sound more like vinyl.

Forgive me asking, but why? They didn't recorded it like that, they wouldn't have played it live like that.

As written elsewhere, compression is means of fitting more than 15 minutes per side, in the form of a mechanical analogue signal - i.e. the groove on each side of the LP. The sub-30 minute, early  Beach Boys LPs weren't normally compressed since there was little  need. The 12" singles tended to have the best audio range if a tune was about  4 minutes or less - unless compressed for radio broadcast purposes (e.g. for stations with AM  or poor quality FM).