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

[HenrySalayne]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

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. 

The CD is an exact copy of what the audio engineer listened to. Vinyl is not natural, it's augmented. The signal on vinyl has to be distorted to overcome the most problematic aspects of the format. The phono preamp will try to straighten it out again. That's not only limiting the dynamic range and headroom of some frequency bands (HF roll-off), it also rarely leads to reproducible results. And then you have wow and flutter and the record as well as the stylus are degrading over time.

If it sounds better to your ears, that's fine. But it's not an intrinsic characteristic of the format, it might just be the by-product of its limitations.

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

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)

No, that's definitely a myth. Converting something to MP3 does not change "the sound". Music will sound shitty and you will hear compression artefacts with lower bitrates, but you cannot change that by different mixing or mastering.

Just to make this clear: I'm not trying to bad-mouth vinyl. But over the years record players have gained all kinds of magical attributes that simply don't reflect the reality. It's a a heavily compromised format; it's cool technology, but it's not the audio fidelity king.
 

[dogwitch]

52 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

The CD is an exact copy of what the audio engineer listened to. Vinyl is not natural, it's augmented. The signal on vinyl has to be distorted to overcome the most problematic aspects of the format. The phono preamp will try to straighten it out again. That's not only limiting the dynamic range and headroom of some frequency bands (HF roll-off), it also rarely leads to reproducible results. And then you have wow and flutter and the record as well as the stylus are degrading over time.

If it sounds better to your ears, that's fine. But it's not an intrinsic characteristic of the format, it might just be the by-product of its limitations.

No, that's definitely a myth. Converting something to MP3 does not change "the sound". Music will sound shitty and you will hear compression artefacts with lower bitrates, but you cannot change that by different mixing or mastering.

Just to make this clear: I'm not trying to bad-mouth vinyl. But over the years record players have gained all kinds of magical attributes that simply don't reflect the reality. It's a a heavily compromised format; it's cool technology, but it's not the audio fidelity king.
 

your not wrong what so ever

[Stahlmann]

On 3/12/2023 at 4:35 AM, 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

I spent a lot of money over the years getting better audio gear, but a year ago i did a blind test. In >80% of all the tracks in the test i could geniunely hear no difference between a compressed MP3 and a lossless FLAC file. And in the ones where i could reliably tell, it was only when listening to it very closely, so basically not how i'd listen to music anyway. In just a few minutes i completely stopped caring about lossless audio. As long as it sounds subjectively good, i don't care about anything else anymore.

[porina]

6 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

As long as it sounds subjectively good, i don't care about anything else anymore.

I think this is the key point for most people, myself included. Is it good enough? If yes, done. If not, you can throw money at it. I recognise a difference between mainstream consumers and those seeking high end. Those seeking the ultimate can still do what they want.

 

I haven't done it in many years. When MP3 players started to become a thing (yes, that long ago!) I compared 128k mp3 to CD. Obvious difference. 256k+ mp3 to CD? Yes, but only if I really listen for it. That was my "good enough" point and I stopped caring about getting more. Modern codecs should be even better at comparable bitrates. I gave away my separates system and now use whatever computer speaker system lying around, or decent headphones if I want better. On that note, headphone choice matters a lot more to me than the source material. Can't stand bass boosted headphones and in seconds I can tell if it is for me or not.

[mr moose]

17 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

the loudness war is what drove me to vinyl.

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

The loudness war started in the 40's and was well in effect when vinyl was in it's first hay day.

 

7 hours ago, KTown said:

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.

You will find that often vinyl was heavily compressed in order to get it louder and oft times to get more content into the album.    The funny thing when people talk about this stuff is that there are no limitations to runtime on CD so dynamic range can literally be high low or moderate and the only thing that people might notice overall is the average levels. 

 

 

[HenrySalayne]

25 minutes ago, porina said:

I haven't done it in many years. When MP3 players started to become a thing (yes, that long ago!) I compared 128k mp3 to CD. Obvious difference. 256k+ mp3 to CD? Yes, but only if I really listen for it. That was my "good enough" point and I stopped caring about getting more. Modern codecs should be even better at comparable bitrates. I gave away my separates system and now use whatever computer speaker system lying around, or decent headphones if I want better. On that note, headphone choice matters a lot more to me than the source material. Can't stand bass boosted headphones and in seconds I can tell if it is for me or not.

I created a short WAV sample to compare different lossy codecs some time ago. It's simply the original audio track minus the audio after running it through the codec. It is the differential signal and should illustrate what you are "losing" with compressed files. MP3 might sound worse than it actually is because the method is not perfect. Nevertheless, the second generation codecs are so good, I don't think with auditory masking in mind that anyone would be able to distinguish between the original and the compressed file. 

The order is:

Original - MP3 128 kbit/s - MP3 256 kbit/s - OGG 128 kbit/s - OGG 256 kbit/s - AAC 128 kbit/s - AAC 256 kbit/s

 

 

[mr moose]

 

6 hours 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/

 

 

I think people are confusing what compression means,  in digital storage realms (any file you want to make smaller), well we all know what that is,  just an algorithm that you run over the file to make it smaller.    Where as in Audio compression has nothing to do with the size of the file*.  The fact that the audio is recorded digitally also has nothing to do with compression.  Compression is used to tame live audio, it's used to unify stage audio and recorded information, it's used to increase the overall loudness to the maximum any medium can accommodate and it's used to create a uniform level for mixing when instruments vary to widely in their dynamic range.

 

*it kinda does with vinyl, but that occurs because more dynamic range makes the groove wider not longer. 

11 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

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)

 

I don't understand, DAT is digital and has the same sample rate and bit depth as CD, so long as you have a decent player the signal will be exactly the same.  Are you comparing a commercial DAT unit with a domestic Computer CD drive?

 

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Compression is used to tame live audio, it's used to unify stage audio and recorded information, it's used to increase the overall loudness to the maximum any medium can accommodate and it's used to create a uniform level for mixing when instruments vary to widely in their dynamic range.

Not just live though, it's used in recording studio. That link explains why quite well. But it's not used to make things sound worse, unless the engineer is doing something dumb heh

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Not just live though, it's used in recording studio. That link explains why quite well. But it's not used to make things sound worse, unless the engineer is doing something dumb heh

The last two examples occur both in a studio and in stage production. 

 

A lot of people may not know this, but nearly every single band they see live has had some sort of compression used in the mixing chain, The only time I know of that compression has not been used is when I mix bands live, because sometimes people want to hear a good performance rather than a loud one.  And I don't mean that as compression ruins the performance, I mean that without it (if you can manage the room and FOH) you can get a performance where the drummer can lean into chorus with a heavy build up and the compressors won't just push him back behind the guitars.  

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

The last two examples occur both in a studio and in stage production. 

Ah, I just don't think I read that well 

[suicidalfranco]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

The loudness war started in the 40's and was well in effect when vinyl was in it's first hay day.

But it was contained in the limits that the medium allowed them to do so, i.e. before the needle starts jumping wildly on your turntable.

CDs and everything after removed those barriers.

 

[Taf the Ghost]

As a technical point, part of the issue with CDs was, while it is a lossy compression of an already slightly lossy original reel format, actually extracting the fully quality available on a CD takes just as much as a it does off Vinyl. You still need good quality audio gear to get the sound out. And there's always been issues with CD Audio's base specs. And it lead to things like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Definition_Compatible_Digital & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD . Mastering Violins for CD is always something of a dark art.

[HenrySalayne]

1 hour ago, Taf the Ghost said:

As a technical point, part of the issue with CDs was, while it is a lossy compression of an already slightly lossy original reel format, actually extracting the fully quality available on a CD takes just as much as a it does off Vinyl. You still need good quality audio gear to get the sound out. And there's always been issues with CD Audio's base specs.

A Compact Disc doesn't use any compression nor is it a "lossy" format. It's literally a raw PCM data stream (not physically on the CD for several reasons but the output of a CD is a PCM data stream). You could argue that some information is lost in quantization - which is correct - but for CD or any 16 bit coding you have 96 dB of dynamic range (if your peak sample is at 0 dBFS). Our good buddy Nyquist has shown that we can easily reproduce frequencies up to 22 kHz with 44.1 kHz of sample rate; which should be plenty for human hearing.

And while it might have been tricky to get a good CD player back in the 80s, 40 years later it's probably harder to find a bad one (this might have changed - as it did for vinyl and cassette, because nobody spends a lot of money on a player for an obsolete media format, so you end up with just the cheapest and worst players still in production).

The CD spec is and always will be enough to distribute processed audio, our hearing is not getting better.

 

[cmndr]

On 3/11/2023 at 5:34 PM, williamcll said:

My thoughts

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

There's no technical reasons to think that vinyl is better than lossless digital with the SAME mastering. 

Masterings can vary. The mastering is what matters. Vinyl is non-conducive to dynamic range compression. 

[Ripred]

I think there little to do with sound like alot of people argue and its more of the tactile feel, slipping out the vinyl placing it on the mat, dropping the needle, it makes the listening experience more intimate 

[Bitter]

Each time you play a record you degrade it's audio quality, the needle literally does damage over time, records wear out. CD's don't, it's the same sound now and will be the same sound in 20 years even if it plays in a loop for 20 years. CD's also don't suffer bit rot like files stored on a hard drive or nand flash can suffer.

 

Analog audio like vinyl are a perfect example of memories feeling better than reality. A lot of old people remember how much they loved driving their old car. Toss them in one now, not as good as they remember. Using Windows XP isn't as good as I remember. Playing a game on my Ti-89 calculator isn't as good as I remember. Etc and so on. Nostalgia rarely lives up to what we think it does.

 

Also as mentioned mastering is HUGE. Early CD's were not mastered properly, they just reused the tapes that were mastered for vinyl or cassette. New CD's are most often mastered correctly AND so are new vinyl records being pressed because the cost of that mastering has dropped a lot and it's viable to do both well now since both are established mediums not just a fad. Listen to a correctly mastered CD and then the same correctly mastered vinyl record over the same amp and speakers and the CD will sound better, I guarantee it and it will continue to sound better for decades to come. 

[Needfuldoer]

You need to apply 100% pure vintage snake oil to get all the possible fidelity out of a vinyl record.

 

Seriously though, records are fun to play with but 99% of the time I'm listening to my ripped-from-CD MP3/FLAC collection.

[Senzelian]

I'm sure there will be a time in which CDs will be popular again, the same way vinyls are popular now. Possibly even cassettes.

 

I also collect CDs. Partially because I want to own the music that I listen to and not rely on a streaming service, but also because it feels familiar. I also have a few vinyls, but mostly just for their pretty covers and just for fun.

[Kisai]

People, please... I can't believe this has to be said on a tech forum.

 

"Compression" in an audio recording context refers to dynamic range compression, not data compression.

 

An LP dynamic range is about -70db, but usually set at 50db. A CD is -95db. Your sound card (assuming you're using good headphones and not the front-panel) is likely -115db. You know what else has -70db? Audio cassette tapes. You get even more dynamic range if you record to 20, 24, 30, 32, 36bit formats. But at some point you have to just say "we aren't mastering this for dogs and rats hearing."

 

When we talk about the actual audio format compression, eg MP3, AAC or OPUS, data is always thrown away. FLAC/ALAC no data is thrown away. Your typical CD is 44100 16-bit stereo. Your LP is equal to about 50,000hz. 

 

But here's the thing, again, those extra bits or sampling bits are not for your ears, they're for the mastering process. Even though a digital process is digital, there is still overhead in mixing, which is why any studio equipment worth using can do 24-bit/96khz. Good enough to mix without induced distortions.

 

But your LP? That has to be mastered on an analog process to get any benefit of being a LP. Simply taking your 96khz recording and slapping it on an LP with the CD dynamic range is going to sound kinda terrible.

[HenrySalayne]

53 minutes ago, Kisai said:

But your LP? That has to be mastered on an analog process to get any benefit of being a LP. Simply taking your 96khz recording and slapping it on an LP with the CD dynamic range is going to sound kinda terrible.

Ignore the "analogue process". You can do way more and better things in the digital domain without any degradation of sound quality. Every analogue device will add noise and might introduce hum or other unwanted external signals. There is no such thing in the digital domain. That audio for vinyl has to be mixed analogue to get a good LP is simply not true.

But I do agree that you cannot simply put anything on any format.

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

Your LP is equal to about 50,000hz.

Sampling rate?

 

 

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

Ignore the "analogue process". You can do way more and better things in the digital domain without any degradation of sound quality. Every analogue device will add noise and might introduce hum or other unwanted external signals. There is no such thing in the digital domain. That audio for vinyl has to be mixed analogue to get a good LP is simply not true.

But I do agree that you cannot simply put anything on any format.

Just to phrase that again, A LP produced in 1990+ is not the same as a LP produced before 1980. Before 1980 it was an Analog process, and there would be generational loss over time, as well as "defective" LP's from that process. The same with VHS tapes and audio cassettes. They wear. So a LP you got before 1980 was "unique" due to that process. 

 

A CD has zero "wear" due to how the digital systems correct errors. You can, yes get scratches and fingerprints on a CD, but a CD will usually notice a bit-error when there's 150,000 bits flying by every second. You have to damage the reflective layer before the CD is unable to be read, which is done when you try to write on it with a ball point pen.

 

3 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

Sampling rate?

Basically it has a wider "sampling rate" when expressed as digital sampling rate, but that purely comes from how the record is mastered. The LP spins at a constant rate, so the grooves "go faster" at the edge.

https://www.wired.com/2003/02/press-scan-to-play-old-albums/

https://ofersp.github.io/digital_needle/

https://www.npr.org/2007/07/15/11851842/you-can-play-the-record-but-dont-touch

https://www.vinylrecorder.com/stereo.html

 

If it's mastered good enough, it survives, and has enough resolution to be recovered optically, rejecting errors like a cd player. If it's mastered poorly, it likely sounds fine on poor equipment, but the result will be worse than a CD listening experience.

 

Like if you've never had a vintage record player, you needed an "amplifier" with the "phono" input, because if you just connected your CD player to that, the gain would be massive and you'd probably hurt your ears. Likewise if you plugged a record player into the CD, line-level input, it would be super-quiet and you'd have to turn the volume up to the maximum to hear anything.

 

That "phono" input is a pre-amp circuit, because only modern LP players (eg built after 2000) have built in pre-amp. Your line level input is 0.316V, your Phono input is 0.0002V

 

At any rate, I repeat again, people like to treat LP's as being better than CD, but that only applies to vintage LP's which were mastered Analog. A digital master with the dynamic range of a CD is only going to sound good as a CD/FLAC track, it will not sound good as a LP. And I have my doubts that a certain kinds of modern media could ever sound good as a LP because they aren't a genre of music that can have that dynamic range. 

 

[SeriousDad69]

On 3/12/2023 at 3:58 PM, 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.

It's not just about listening to the music. it's the entire experience of setting everything up, placing the record, dropping the needle, etc. It's the same reason why people still play third to fifth gen games on real hardware even though emulators have been free, better, and easier for ages.

[HenrySalayne]

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

Basically it has a wider "sampling rate" when expressed as digital sampling rate, but that purely comes from how the record is mastered. The LP spins at a constant rate, so the grooves "go faster" at the edge.

https://www.wired.com/2003/02/press-scan-to-play-old-albums/

https://ofersp.github.io/digital_needle/

https://www.npr.org/2007/07/15/11851842/you-can-play-the-record-but-dont-touch

https://www.vinylrecorder.com/stereo.html

 

If it's mastered good enough, it survives, and has enough resolution to be recovered optically, rejecting errors like a cd player. If it's mastered poorly, it likely sounds fine on poor equipment, but the result will be worse than a CD listening experience.

[...]

At any rate, I repeat again, people like to treat LP's as being better than CD, but that only applies to vintage LP's which were mastered Analog. A digital master with the dynamic range of a CD is only going to sound good as a CD/FLAC track, it will not sound good as a LP. And I have my doubts that a certain kinds of modern media could ever sound good as a LP because they aren't a genre of music that can have that dynamic range. 

I still don't really understand what you are trying to say. I feel like there might be a misconception about dynamic range.

The dynamic range of a medium and the dynamic range of the audio on the medium are two different things. When hearing the term "dynamic range" most people think of (moving) pictures and "high" dynamic range. While pictures favour a wide range between the brightest and the darkest parts of an image, audio does not. Most modern music uses a dynamic range of less than 20 dB (mostly less than 10 dB), classical music might use 30 dB or a little bit more. Only the action film industry -  for unknown reasons - uses a high dynamic range for their audio. When the dialogue is set to a pleasant volume, the volume difference between dialogue and explosions or dialogue and gunshots or dialogue and music or dialogue and any other noise will mostly wake up people on the other side of town and permanently damage your hearing.

While a CD does support more than 90 dB of dynamic range and a vinyl might be able to give you 60 dB (depending on the frequency and playback system), that's not the range that is actually used by the recorded audio. If your piece of audio has a dynamic range of less than 20 dB (which most tracks have), vinyl and CDs are both suitable formats. It doesn't matter if the audio piece was created with a analogue recording, mixing or mastering process or if this was done digitally.

 

 

[leadeater]

21 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

Most modern music uses a dynamic range of less than 20 dB (mostly less than 10 dB), classical music might use 30 dB or a little bit more.

Just like to add that if some music has a range of 60 or 90 db then it's impossible to hear the quiet parts or your speakers just clipped so hard the drivers are embedded in the wall and the amp MOSFETs are in the roof. It wouldn't actually be possible to set a proper and comfortable volume level.

[mr moose]

21 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

But it was contained in the limits that the medium allowed them to do so, i.e. before the needle starts jumping wildly on your turntable.

CDs and everything after removed those barriers.

 

Nope, engineers were actually asked by producers and managers to make their albums louder than the last one, they had to pop for the radio station who was only going to select a handful of  songs from a large collection of material.

 

https://www.npr.org/2009/12/31/122114058/the-loudness-wars-why-music-sounds-worse

 

It has actually been going on since 45's, just because it cam to a head in the 2000's doesn't mean it wasn't bad at the start.