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

[mr moose]

10 hours ago, Kisai said:

 The LP spins at a constant rate, so the grooves "go faster" at the edge.

 

Vinyl only has one groove per side.

 

 

 

Fun fact, "getting groovy" and "in the groove" both came from when the recording studio would place the recording needle down and then tell the band that they "are now in the groove", meaning "we are recording do your best".

 

 

[Needfuldoer]

7 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Vinyl only has one groove per side.

Um, actshewally... 

 

https://www.discogs.com/lists/Vinyl-releases-with-dualparallelconcentric-grooves/500784

[mr moose]

Just now, Needfuldoer said:

Um, actshewally... 

 

https://www.discogs.com/lists/Vinyl-releases-with-dualparallelconcentric-grooves/500784

my record player only has one needle, sounds like a snake oil gimmik 

[Needfuldoer]

Just now, mr moose said:

my record player only has one needle, sounds like a snake oil gimmik 

How else are you supposed to get a random novelty every time you drop the needle?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python's_Previous_Record

[mr moose]

3 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

How else are you supposed to get a random novelty every time you drop the needle?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python's_Previous_Record

You'll have to ask the Swedish prime minister.

 

[jagdtigger]

7 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

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.

Because real explosions and gunshots are that louder than anything else? A movie would be pretty boring if everything had the same loudness as someone speaking.....

[Kisai]

10 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

 

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.

 

It matters because that needle doesn't move in a way that allows for high variance in the volume of the record. That's "dynamic range".

 

You may not realize this, but you can actually listen to the record without anything.

If you play a record player without the audio output plugged in, you can clearly hear the audio come from the needle area.

 

Audio with good dymanic range actually sounds like you're sitting in a theatre's orchestra pit. Because a lot of music since the CD is mastered to be loud on CD, and normalized across the entire CD which comes to something like -9LUFS. Spotify and youtube are -11 to -15LUFS.

https://www.masteringthemix.com/blogs/learn/song-mastering-for-cd-club-play-and-streaming

 

Like the interesting thing you might find is that ONLY the CD mastering is "loud" where as everything else wants a less-loud master due to the digital file compression.

 

Anyway I feel we are veering off the topic. The point being is comparing the audio quality of a LP and a MP3 is silly and comparing the audio quality of an analog source like an LP to a digital source like a CD is also silly, but for more specific reasons specific to the mastering itself.

 

 

[HenrySalayne]

31 minutes ago, Kisai said:

If you play a record player without the audio output plugged in, you can clearly hear the audio come from the needle area.

 

Audio with good dymanic range actually sounds like you're sitting in a theatre's orchestra pit. Because a lot of music since the CD is mastered to be loud on CD, and normalized across the entire CD which comes to something like -9LUFS. Spotify and youtube are -11 to -15LUFS.

https://www.masteringthemix.com/blogs/learn/song-mastering-for-cd-club-play-and-streaming

 

Like the interesting thing you might find is that ONLY the CD mastering is "loud" where as everything else wants a less-loud master due to the digital file compression.

 

Anyway I feel we are veering off the topic. The point being is comparing the audio quality of a LP and a MP3 is silly and comparing the audio quality of an analog source like an LP to a digital source like a CD is also silly, but for more specific reasons specific to the mastering itself.

Ok, you are throwing way too many things around that don't belong together. Dynamic range and crest factor are two different things. When people are talking about "loudness", they generally talk about the crest factor, because even the very first CDs were mastered to 0 dB FS and had little dynamic range. So to make something "louder" (increasing the LUFS) you need to add spectral energy (since the amplitude is already maxed out) and you do this basically by adding harmonics (or more other frequencies but generally harmonics).

But you cannot add too much harmonics on a vinyl because the HF frequency range is already artificially boosted to improve the SNR. That's the reason some LPs are mastered with a lower crest factor - because they need to be or it wouldn't work.

 

But this all doesn't matter because there is still some confusion about the differences between vinyl and CDs.

tl;dr

CDs offer way better audio quality (fact).

The audio that is put onto a CD might be worse than the audio that is put onto vinyl, but that's not a "feature" or "characteristic" of the respective format (I cannot stress this enough).

 

 

[mr moose]

14 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

Ok, you are throwing way too many things around that don't belong together. Dynamic range and crest factor are two different things. When people are talking about "loudness", they generally talk about the crest factor, because even the very first CDs were mastered to 0 dB FS and had little dynamic range. So to make something "louder" (increasing the LUFS) you need to add spectral energy (since the amplitude is already maxed out) and you do this basically by adding harmonics (or more other frequencies but generally harmonics).

But you cannot add too much harmonics on a vinyl because the HF frequency range is already artificially boosted to improve the SNR. That's the reason some LPs are mastered with a lower crest factor - because they need to be or it wouldn't work.

 

But this all doesn't matter because there is still some confusion about the differences between vinyl and CDs.

tl;dr

CDs offer way better audio quality (fact).

The audio that is put onto a CD might be worse than the audio that is put onto vinyl, but that's not a "feature" or "characteristic" of the respective format (I cannot stress this enough).

 

 

At last, we agree on something.

[E-waste]

On 3/12/2023 at 1:43 AM, HenrySalayne said:

I don't think Laserdiscs were ever thought to replace vinyl. Video on vinyl was tried but didn't actually catch on.

 

BTW, vinyl is no longer a new trend it's already back in the mainstream. If you want to be on the frontier of trendiness get some cassette tapes and players RIGHT NOW. The next shitty format revival is already on the horizon.

Working on it!  Just need ideas on alternative material besides petroleum polymers for the tape, and a way to store the magnetic vibrations.

[E-waste]

On 3/12/2023 at 10:34 PM, Uttamattamakin said:

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

Good idea, old 78s (like 1920s old) were made of shellac, or squashed bugs heated on a fire.

 

Slightly Stoopid literally made two record pressings out of cannabis hash (that is, the trichomes, or tiny bits of the actually oils / cannabinoids, pressed down.  No sticks or stems, just those oil containing trichomes are shaken off and compressesd.

 

It is a novelty, but would make for a cleaner music record production vs poly-"vinyl" chloride. This is used to make records, since at least 1960s, up to today.

[Ydfhlx]

On 3/12/2023 at 4:55 PM, jagdtigger said:

It could only overtake it because now both obsolete..... (/joke, at least in case of the cd)

Why /s? That's literally the case. Almost anyone uses Spotify or something. Somebody has linked a graph of how CD usage has declined.

 

I'm actually one of the few who still buys CDs. The sound clarity is better than most sources on the internet (usually because companies save money on server costs); worst case it's comparable. I also like appeal of actually having music physically. And besides, you can rip the CD and still have it digitally.

[jagdtigger]

9 hours ago, Ydfhlx said:

you can rip the CD and still have it digitally

Pretty much why i buy them, no drm no problem .

[spartaman64]

fun fact the lacquer disks which are cut on a lathe to make the original copy of vinyl records are apparently made by an old japanese guy in his garage. there used to be a manufacturing plant in the US that produces them as well but after it burned down the old japanese guy is the only source of them left.

i wonder what would happen if they eventually retire but probably some other company will get formed to fill the market

[mr moose]

On 3/18/2023 at 2:09 AM, spartaman64 said:

fun fact the lacquer disks which are cut on a lathe to make the original copy of vinyl records are apparently made by an old japanese guy in his garage. there used to be a manufacturing plant in the US that produces them as well but after it burned down the old japanese guy is the only source of them left.

i wonder what would happen if they eventually retire but probably some other company will get formed to fill the market

He must be one really busy dude. If they are selling 30+million records a year then he is making something like 30,000 disks a year.  Lacquer masters are recorded in real time, so for an average record length of 12  minutes a side he is spending about 500 days a year just doing the recording part.

 

Napkin math of course, but I think he needs workers Union.

[wseaton]

I worked a summer in a high end audio shop and got to listen to all the over priced gear.

 

What I heard in regards to CD vs vinyl was more pragmatic. Digital sources have a defined sample space, and often the source master doesn't have the dynamics or resolution to take advantage of that sample space. The result is wasted bit depth that a DAC has to do something with, but from another perspective it allows for high compression. This is why audiophiles whine that CD sounds synthetic. 

 

Vinyl by its nature sets it own sample limit by the grooves in the medium. No zeroes to super sample or interpolate. The floor is the floor.

 

To my ears 1/4" reel to reel surpasses both. FYI, both vinyl and CD became popular because they were hysterically cheap to mass manufacture vs their competitors like reel to reel or cassette.