Vinyl records outsell CDs for the first time in decades by over 5 million

[suicidalfranco]

the loudness war is what drove me to vinyl.

The limits off analogue media are giving a rebirth to music production

[Embattled]

51 minutes ago, Caroline said:

heh, good thing our ancient gramophone still works. The vinyls we have sound terrible though.

Didn't think I would see another Kino fan here, not a vinyl guy but it would be cool to have an OG record from them.

[Uttamattamakin]

17 hours ago, leadeater said:

The feel of the music is lost in digital formats and digital conversion. 100% analogue is the only pure way to hear the real sounds

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

This is physically true most of the time.  Most digital music is compressed and compressed and reconstructed and reconstructed.  If that is not done right it can degrade in a noticeable way.  THEN there is also the fact that you don't really own digital music.  Potentially even a CD or DVD format could be locked by DRM.

  While a record can encode both analog and digital information.  In a way that aliens could hypothetically figure out.  

Check it out. 
 

All of that is stored on a record.

Which leads me to this. 

 

6 hours ago, porina said:

I find the LD reference confusing, as it is primarily an analog video format. Its applicability to music is kinda like buying a video of music, rather than for music itself. Don't know what the quality of it is supposed to be in absolute terms but I don't recall music being a major selling point of the format. I actually still own a player and some LDs. Wonder what condition they're in, as haven't used in a while. BTW When it comes to video formats, I probably have as much "music" on VHS as I do LD. Maybe more in DVD era but Blu-ray era was already past peak.

 

As for vinyl overtaking CDs, not too surprising. Vinyl as a mainstream format came and died. CDs came and died. Let's see what happens to streaming. The difference is Vinyl as a format is more interesting as a collectable. You have a large surface area to show artwork. A CD case isn't close, unless you put it in a much bigger box than needed. Without doing any research on it, so no evidence to back my statement, I'd guess most vinyl sales are driven as collectables rather than something that would be regularly used.

I think the collectable issue is what points to what could bring Vinyl recording back as a format for music or even for data.  (As NASA showed in the 70's).  Information stored in that format could be read for as long as the roughedness of the recording medium would allow.   Encode the digital information in an audio format that works similar to how old modems did and key documents, audio, images, (video?) could possibly be stored.  So yeah if you want to hear 2020 music in 2077 might have to go to a record store. 

[Taf the Ghost]

I've had a lot of fun with this topic in discussions for a couple of years now. This actually isn't a surprising trend. And it comes down to firstly the Buy Physical Media trend & the effect of ownership has upon a product. But it also goes back to Sound Quality. It was only a few years ago I had a great interaction with someone in the HIgh End  audio space that was around in the 80s when the Japanese HiFi stuff came in. And, by "came in", I mean they sold 65% of the quality for about 50% of the price of the bouquet and regional producers across most of the major economies, wiping them out. It kicked off a trend a radically lowering sound quality that lasted until somewhere around 2010. A solid 40 years of everyone listening to music in worse & worse quality.

 

Thus, the move to Vinyl requires at least an Amp and proper speakers. We've suddenly seen a renaissance of small audio companies making bookshelf speakers. As modern music has just become background noise (as I was marveling just today at a Japanese restaurant with a weirdly 90s EDM sound track playing), a premium market has taken hold for the top of the top quality products. It helps that you can put together a fairly brilliant audio setup for reasonable prices. (Especially by historical standards.)

[SeriousDad69]

This is pretty simple to me. People that like vinyl like it because it's classic, and might even prefer the analog sound. People that like CDs don't care about format at all and are more than served just looking songs up on YouTube or listening to a streaming service.

[HenrySalayne]

7 minutes ago, SeriousDad69 said:

This is pretty simple to me. People that like vinyl like it because it's classic, and might even prefer the analog sound. People that like CDs don't care about format at all and are more than served just looking songs up on YouTube or listening to a streaming service.

People seem to forget they could simply record their vinyl off the record player if they prefer the sound. Any CD could sound like vinyl, but vinyl cannot physically sound like a CD.

[Bitter]

I stream my vinyl records over my audiophile network switch with real crystals so I get the true analog sound through my ethernet.

[Mark Kaine]

20 hours ago, williamcll said:

suppose the pursuit of the perfect audio quality means people needed to go back to analog for their audio source. 

ironically,  thats "DAT" (which is what most vinyl records, at least the around  ~2000 i own are usually mastered on - without the cracks, and other noise, as a bonus!) but vinyl is definitely the second best thing , then tapes/cds, and mp3 as a distant last place... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

 

7 hours ago, WereCat said:

I've got tired of putting vinyl audio crackle effect into my lossless .flac so I switched to vinyl completely. I've done the same with going with low quality D-SUB old CRT as some movies and games don't have film grain effect.

funnily that cartoon is spot on, its really the boxes , the whole "hifi" setup that makes good sound,  not just the source,  modern boxes and amplifiers are shite to put it mildly...

 

 

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

46 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

People seem to forget they could simply record their vinyl off the record player if they prefer the sound. Any CD could sound like vinyl, but vinyl cannot physically sound like a CD.

i mean thats just wrong because for example i have the original GNR album "LIES" on CD (original release) and on vinyl (original release) they both sound very similar but the vinyl has definitely more *oomph* (yes thats a thing!) so the CD simply can never ever sound the same it'll always be more "cleaner" and kinda thin, LP all the way sorry (well technically EP i guess)

[HenrySalayne]

1 minute ago, Mark Kaine said:

i mean thats just wrong because for example o have the original GNR album "LIES" on CD (original release) and vinyl (original release) they both sound very similar but the vinyl has definitely more *oomph* (yes thats a thing!) so the CD simply can never ever sound the same it'll always be more "cleaner" and kinda thin, LP all the way sorry (well technically EP i guess)

No, I did not mean the same album as a CD release. I meant recording the vinyl onto a CD. If you think the vinyl sounds better than the CD release, you can always just create a CD sounding like the vinyl. But the other way around doesn't work. Physical limitations of the format won't allow a vinyl disc to sound like a CD.

[Mark Kaine]

4 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

No, I did not mean the same album as a CD release. I meant recording the vinyl onto a CD. If you think the vinyl sounds better than the CD release, you can always just create a CD sounding like the vinyl. But the other way around doesn't work. Physical limitations of the format won't allow a vinyl disc to sound like a CD.

ah, ok, i misunderstood,  theoretically yes... but in my impression/ experience not really... its better to record the record onto tape or dat, it'll always sound more thin on CD, its weird, but it does lose that "oomph" not sure why, probably some conversion thing.

(cd is better for preservation,  as good as cassettes sound,  there's definitely lots of issues with them, and you need a tape deck in top condition which isnt really easy to come by or maintain tbh - unlike what yt videos try to make you believe lol)

[Kisai]

21 hours ago, BachChain said:

I'll never understand people who simultaneously obsess over audio quality while fawning for a (by definition lossy) analog format.

 

Technically the record isn't a "lossy" format, it's analog. However the actual mastering process today is. That "collectable" vinyl record is going to sound worse than the CD, because it came from the same mastering system as the CD.

 

 

20 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

as someone who bought 6 vinyl records and 0 CDs last year i guess im contributing to this

 

Nothing wrong with that as long as you are listening to them and not just sticking them in a box to support the artist.

 

20 hours ago, da na said:

I know 4 people who own vinyl records and 1 person who actually has a turntable. A not insignificant number of people buy vinyls for the artwork on the sleeve and never use the actual record.

That is part of it yeah.

 

I know of at least two people who have records and a record player, however I also know my mom has a record player and DOES NOT listen to it. It's just too much of a genuine pain to setup, and many current generation players require a vintage surround/stereo setup to actually use them. Otherwise you're going to be required to use massive headphones to have the right experience.

 

If someone says they have a record player and are listening to it with bluetooth or wireless headphones, that to me is like someone praising an emulator for how accurate it's CRT blur is (it never is.) Why would you want this? Why would you do this? If you want the vintage listening experience, play it on vintage analog equipment, you'll have a hard time finding it. Don't buy a record and then listen to it on your Dolby Atmos surround sound headphones. That is fundamentally changing the audio back into being cleaned up.

 

You can quite literately make the argument that current listening setups, be that a home theatre or your computer, is too "clean", and that is because everything is digital. It's supposed to be that way.

 

At any rate, I'm definitely someone who has no nostalgia for records, or the way CRT's looked. People praising them always come off as trolling others. Give me the clean, noise-free output, and I'm happy listening to it, even on my $20 earbuds. 

 

Personally I feel that record collecting right now is just about collecting a thing, and not actually about listening to the thing, and if you're not someone who likes to collect that thing, then it's not for you anyway.

 

[jagdtigger]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

Technically the record isn't a "lossy" format, it's analog.

Only if you ignore the distortion caused by the fully analog path....

[Uttamattamakin]

13 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Only if you ignore the distortion caused by the fully analog path....

What path?   

All one needs to play a record is a no 2 pencil to spin it on, a sewing needle and a horn made of paper.   That's not a joke that's  really a thing I did.  Seriously though you are right.  If we consider that as a signal travels via wire it will experience degradation and pick up analog noise. To really truly be fully analog it would basically have to be like the original phonographs from the 1920's. 

[StDragon]

26 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

To really truly be fully analog it would basically have to be like the original phonographs from the 1920's. 

 Don't mention it or somehow someone will bring back the phonograph cylinder.

[jagdtigger]

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

To really truly be fully analog it would basically have to be like the original phonographs from the 1920's. 

That wouldnt help either, even the record itself, or should i say the production process with which it was made introduces distortions.

[Mark Kaine]

41 minutes ago, StDragon said:

 Don't mention it or somehow someone will bring back the phonograph cylinder.

Too late

 

 

[Uttamattamakin]

2 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Too late

 

Well now we need to master the music on  bees wax and the whole thing will be analog. 

[NF-A12x25]

23 hours ago, Eaglerino said:

How many of you who claim this would successfully pass a blind test? Because for the most part audiophiles always fail blind tests

it was a joke

[KTown]

Almost all music is recorded digitally (with the exception of a few studios recording to analog tape). The sound difference between CD's and LP's comes from the mastering process. The dynamic limitations of LPs tends to result on average in a lower compressed master resulting in greater dynamic range which appeals to some people. CD mastering tends to lien towards a more compressed format on average that results in lower dynamic range which also appeals to some people. Essentially which format you prefer comes down to the quality of the play back equipment, your hearing ability and the listening environment. Each format has many positives and negatives.

[jagdtigger]

26 minutes ago, KTown said:

CD mastering tends to lien towards a more compressed format

Thats funny, AFAIK audio CDs are always uncompressed.....

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

To really truly be fully analog it would basically have to be like the original phonographs from the 1920's. 

Wouldn't that be a live acoustic band? I'm pretty sure that is the most accurate and authentic analogue 

[leadeater]

19 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Thats funny, AFAIK audio CDs are always uncompressed.....

That gets tricky since it's an uncompressed data format however in the mastering process in the studio compression among other things is used.

 

https://blog.landr.com/how-to-use-a-compressor/

 

Quote

Compression is used in music to reduce the dynamic range of signals with loud and quiet elements so that both can be heard clearly.

 

Think of the difference between a soft sound like a whispered vocal and the aggressive crack of a snare. To make them both heard on a recording, the mix engineer has to manage the dynamics.

 

[Mark Kaine]

29 minutes ago, leadeater said:

That gets tricky since it's an uncompressed data format however in the mastering process in the studio compression among other things is used.

 

https://blog.landr.com/how-to-use-a-compressor/

 

 

yeah... gotta go back to my GNR LIES CD again... theres a pretty long text on how they mastered it for CD yada yada and it should sound "almost" the same as the vinyl record... however the vinyl still blows it completely out of the water imo, it just sounds warmer, grittier, exactly what that kind of music needs - and in no way the CD sounds bad, its just in direct comparison it sounds worse and a bit "thin" (idk if the vinyl is a different master,  but i suppose so)

 

ps: and its interesting because the EP is one side just acoustic guitars the other side live recordings and *both* sound better on vinyl. 

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, KTown said:

. The dynamic limitations of LPs tends to result on average in a lower compressed master resulting in greater dynamic range which appeals to some people. CD mastering tends to lien towards a more compressed format on average that results in lower dynamic range which also appeals to some people. Essentially which format you prefer comes down to the quality of the play back equipment, your hearing ability and the listening environment. Each format has many positives and negatives

i mean maybe there are people who prefer the "clean cold , kind of unlively" sound of CDs, but i think most people prefer a warmer, more "natural" sound IF , and thats a big if, they can even hear the differences, people's hearing is wildly different it would seem anyways. 

 

Also what i found interesting, many CDs are mastered / mixed to sound good when converted to MP3, and that results in these CDs being weirdly mixed and not sounding so great actually - idk if they still do this but it was a thing from ~2000 onwards... i got a few CDs that are basically un-listenable because of that (or some were "remastered' and sound awful now)