Conundrum: New vinyl or new CD ... which one?

If given an option to buy ( without the opportunity of hearing the album ) a re-issue of a 70's album that has been remastered and re-issued with bonus tracks in either vinyl form (with extra LP for the bonus material) or as a CD, which way would you jump? The is a little bit of cost saving via the CD method.

 

I am thinking of going vinyl for a couple of ablums with these options and was just seeking opinions from others who may have made a choice when confronted with this conundrum. ( I recently purchased Kraftwerk's Tour De France as a 2 LP set and was not disappointed. )

 

Cheers,

 

T.Rox

 

 

I think I will most likely err towards the vinyl but I am interested in what others have to say given the choice.

 

Personally over the years I have gone from vinyl, to nothing at all for a long time as CD's made their mark, to CD's exclusively, and now a mixture of vinyl and CD's ... though I have been trying to get vinyl whereever possible for the older items. I've gone nuts with Zappa, Gong and SBB vinyl of late, plus picked up a lot of old Aussie stuff too.

 

 

Vinyl LP'S (UK made) from the 60's are highly sought after as they were made from virgin vinyl -  those made in the 70's were made from recycled vinyl as raw materials such as oil were an issue in those days, and they were very thin, though i have some of these and they don't sound bad at all. With proper care and storage there should be no deterioration in sound quality at all, (a good stylus will cause very little wear at all, it is dust in the grooves that causes damage) no treble loss or any kind of distortion, played on  properly set up equipment of decent quality, especially the stylus/arm assembly which must be set up exactly right,  should present barely audible surface noise and no interference at all. Stylus technology has vastly improved since those early days - most of them didn't even fit the groove, today they are made to closely match the original master cutting styli. Many albums i have had from new, immaterial of age, are still of good quality and should remain so for the next 500 years - no pops, clicks....and better sound quality than CD - many of those old 60's albums are excellent , but not all - many were eq'd up, designed to be played on Dansettes, especially 45rpm singles .  Today vinyl LP's are made to very high standards and are highly sought after, especially the Japanese ones - but quality doesn't come cheap of course, most cost around £10 -£50+ according to their rarity.

 

The equipment we used in the 60's and 70's was  inferior to modern equipment, it was a miracle really that you could hear any music at all on those crappy music centres. Turntable technology was still being developed and in the 70's made great leaps in quality engineering and electronics, but maximum quality sitting in those grooves was still yet to be heard.  Turntable  technology  continued to improve, unbeknown to many, and today the most basic mid-fi turntable you can buy is light years ahead of the old ones.

 

When CD arrived in the 80's the technology was very basic and CD's sounded muddy - things have improved as all the major companies invested billions in improving the sound, as the "convenience"  of CD'S had caught on,  especially with DJ's - the easiest job in the world had become even easier!   they could throw records around, mis-handle them and pile them up on their desk  (and CD'S were cheap to post) -something they could never do with vinyl as they needed careful handling to maintain consistently good sound quality. Today with SACD and DVD Audio 24bit sound quality made from the master tapes digital has made huge leaps in quality, but they still need to be clean and need decent equipment to play them on. The future according to the "experts" lies in digital downloads which has a long long way to go to catch up as they sound awful,  but as usual in all things these days convenience rules over quality ...alternatively there is a whole new world of quality sound to be discovered ....if you can be bothered