Vinyl vs CD

Fitzcarraldo wrote: ...24-bit DVD Audio is supposed to be very good... It's like the difference between 16-bit pictures and 24-bit pictures - at certain resolutions they look more or less the same, but zoom in and the pixellations and other digitised artefacts are noticeable. With audio, that means turn it up a bit and the flat dynamics and audio artefacts can become apparent. MP3s are the best demonstration of this - many DVD players also play CDs with MP3s on - and the artefacts that are unnoticeable on your PC suddenly become far worse than the crackle of vinyl. What we need, in my opinion, is a completely new, static technology, i.e. no rotating discs, moving laser heads etc. that eventually go out of alignment or seize (as one of my CD players did), and no discs that can get scratched easily. We've already got that - solid state MP3 players are but the beginning of such technology. All we need is a device that will store and reproduce 24-bit 192Khz audio files, with a capacity equal to the average DVD (around 5Gb) that doesn't cost too much. 5Gb RAM is currently £1,000 or so, retail, and prices are dropping every year. I don't see why it shouldn't reach the consumer market in 2-3 years. In the meantime, I'm quite attracted to the mobile mp3 devices that have hard disks - up to 40Gb (maybe more!). 40Gb will store 8,000+ mp3s, which will sound OK on a portable player designed for the job (ie Creative or iPod). And while I'm on the subject of CDs, the person who designed the so-called Jewel Case cannot have been an engineer: the hinge lugs are so flimsy the darn things break very easily. It's a very poor design in my opinion. With all the money we're expected to pay for the things I totally agree! CDs cost a fraction of what it costs to produce vinyl LPs, so we should not be paying so much for them. When they introduced CDs in the 1980s, Vinyl LPs were around £5, and CDs were at least twice that. It costs less than 10p to produce a CD, excluding artwork and printing costs - so why didn't prices drop to reflect lowered production costs...

I'll still collect vinyl first and foremost for the warm sound and great artwork - it is possible to track down 2nd hand first-press copies that have had little play and still sound good - and then burn them to CDs. That way, if the CD dies, you just create another one - and you have the wonderful artwork that came with the vinyl into the bargain. It's quite a simple matter to run the recording through Goldwave first to remove the crackle before you burn the CD.

The other advantage is that when you upgrade a copy, your old copy can still fetch a nice amount on eBay, as there are many collectors out there!

Not only was stuff remastered to death, but then there was this "Direct Metal Mastering", as if that was supposed to be a good thing! The process involved creating the mother from a copper disk instead of a lacquer. The advantage is that the sound is clearer, and copper disks are much easier to make. The disadvantage is that the grooves aren't as deep, meaning a much less fat sound.

Creating lacquers is a real art, and there are certain engineers who have a high reputation. These guys often carved their names into their work - e.g. "A PORKY PRIME CUT". Got a Led Zep 1st pressing? It's a Porky! And you can tell - those Plum and Orange 1st presses are a great way to test your stereo to breaking point, especially Led Zep II. Later pressings were always on thinner, softer compounds - especially during the 1980s, where you could easily flex most LPs. Avoid those!

More recently the trend has been for 180 - 200g heavyweight vinyl, and the sound is better.

But I've yet to hear anything to compare to a late 1960s - early 1970's first pressing. I can recommend anything by the Beatles - especially if you can track down a "Near Mint" Mono version of Sgt Pepper. Should be around £50-£60, but it's worth it! The bass on that baby is awesome!! Led Zep III is another good bet - you can normally get a really nice Plum and Orange "Do What Thou Wilt - So Mote It Be" for £10-15 - same as a CD (the engineers often asked the bands if they wanted anything carved in the run-out groove at the end of the lacquer. Maybe they should have waited for Mr Page to come down a bit first...).

One of the best things about collecting vinyl is wandering into those old vinyl shops in back alleys or charity shops, then suddenly discovering a near-mint 1st press marked at 50p.

Beats collecting CDs, I'd say!

Certif1ed wrote: But I've yet to hear anything to compare to a late 1960s - early 1970's first pressing. I can recommend anything by the Beatles - especially if you can track down a "Near Mint" Mono version of Sgt Pepper. Should be around £50-£60, but it's worth it! The bass on that baby is awesome!!

I've got one! I've got one! I've got one! I've got one! I've got one! I've got one! I've got one!

bought it for 10 euro's.. A very mint copy!

Certif1ed wrote: 10 Euros? is it a UK copy? If so You lucky brd!!!!!! I bought my first for £45, then, because it was a really rare variant with wide spine and long flaps, tracked down a normal spine version for £12.50 (inc shipping) and thought I'd got a bargain. This latter had an unsplit "Fool on the Hill" inner as well as the proper dark green cutouts - and mother/stampers of 1 AG /1 AR - very early! I'll get my anorak...

I don't know for sure... I can only mark the "1967", It is printed in the netherlands tough

It's a gatefold sleeve, with this with it:


So ehm yeah.. well it will never be a bad album

Fitzcarraldo,

I can spend hours, even days explaining the concepts of digital recording techniques, but that would get very booring very soon. Also explaining the "hype" about "everything digital" is a chapter in itself. To make a long story short, "24 bit encoding" does not mean the actual CD has 24 bits. The CD format has never been and will never be more than 16 bits PERIOD. The Redbook format (an industry standard) dictates 16 bits and the show ends there and then. Recording a project in 24 bit is possible ('though it is very hard to actually use all of the 24 bits, as it was in the early days of 16 bit ADC's and DAC's) mixing and mastering is also possible in 24 bits, but then comes the kicker. In order to make this signal ready for CD one can ignore the 8 extra bits (called truncating them) or one can use a scheme called dithering. Truncating is thank goodness not in use (anymore). The dithering process recalculates the 24 bit signal into a 16 bit signal and according to the hype: "preserving the dynamics and precision of the 24 bit signal". Granted, a dithered 24 bit signal sounds better than a straight recorded 16 bit signal, theoretically it has to, but a 16 bit signal can NEVER "preserve the dynamics" of the original 24 bit master, because it is a pure matter of mathematics. So anything on a regular CD that says "recorded in 20 or 24 bit" means simply everything BEFORE the pressing of the CD was in the higher bit rate, the CD will still be just 16 bittaroos.

BTW the number of bits has a direct relation to the dynamic range, for 16 bits theoretically 96 dB and for 24 bit 144 dB. This wide dynamic range has no real meaning, because if you stand direct behind a jet taking off, the difference of that noise with total silence (0dB) is around 120 db and that is so loud, it could damage your inner ears. The average dynamic range of the average pop record is (GET THIS) no more than 15 dB!!! So some sceptics have asked the question, why do we need all these super audio formats (like SACD and DVDA) when most people listen to crappy (meaning: dynamically compressed) recordings anyway............ good question! Besides, we have now the so called digitally compressed formats like MP3 that reduce the dynamic range even more, let alone diminish other "digital precision"; why bother recording in 24 bits?........another good question. At least the record companies have accomplished what they had in the pre-digital era, a master of a higher standard than what Joe Schmoe listens to in his car, on his iPod or in his home (if at all).

Both Philips and Sony were working on digital formats in the mid and late seventies. To avoid diferent formats and format wars these companies decided to work together and release the CD as we know it. All other formats like CD-R, CD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-Video and others are a progression of the original CD format. It's all "just zero's and one's on a piece of plastic".

Easy comparison:

Any of the 1st 3 Marillion CDs were re-released as 24-Bit Remastered versions. And they seem to have a much wider dynamic range whatever trickery is used!

mimusica

Great to have someone aboard who knows this stuff in some depth!

Which side of the *opinion" do you take - does vinyl sound better than CD to you?

100% Vinyl, totally.

Technically, yes, but they use an algorithm to calculate how to convert from digital to analogue. That means an amount of guessing to fill in the gaps that digital necessarily leaves.

It's been argued that this is imperceptible to the human ear - but sound doesn't only affect the ears, even if you do completely buy that argument!

Maybe my ears are somewhat jaded, because I really don't mind the distortion in the inner grooves or the pops and crackles - it's all part of the vinyl listening experience to me! Makes it all the better when I head into the studio to record stuff - I don't mind background noise, rather I try to encourage some, as I've never been to a gig where I haven't been aware of the noise from the equipment at some point. To my ears, it's all authentic sound and is ambient.

I know I'm not alone in this, because that's one of the points behind 4'33" by John Cage. There's no music for that period of time and one of the ideas is that you listen to the ambient sounds in the auditorium (and pray that no-one has a hacking cough or bad digestion - or that they do, depending on how evil you feel!).

Just got my vinyl copy of "Outside Inside" by Blue Cheer today. There's so much equipment noise on that it'd sound horrible if it was ever cleaned up!

Hello,

Someone wrotes:

"When talking about vinyl sounding better than the CD keep in mind that during the 80's and certainly toward the end of the LP era, most pop and 99% of all classical recordings were done digitally. So if you had an LP of let's say The Boston Pops playing "Jukebox" tunes, these recordings were done on 24 track digital machines, mixed and mastered in the digital domain and then released on vinyl as well as on CD. Claiming the LP sounded better than the CD in this case was a bit silly, right? However, some audiophiles fell in this trap. "

Analog is another world compared to numeric.

Even "digital" vynil are often better than the latest CD version( on a good system of course)

It's the same when you copy a cd to a k7 with a good deck (like nakamichi 1000 or even a pionner ctf 1000, for example) the k7 sounds much better than the CD!