Back to the Future - The return of Vinyl records

[darkswordsman17]

Originally posted by: CKent
Steve Hoffman, a legend in the field of audio engineering, has said that the outer third of a vinyl recording can't be matched by digital (CD) audio, which is actually lossy (though for digital audio purposes it's considered lossless). I'd assume that this is because in a given amount of time, the needle on a record player covers a greater physical distance on the record during the outer third, which can therefore hold more information. He hosts a surprisingly busy audiophile forum with a lot of good information to be found, though the demographic there is older than AT and most of the music they enjoy is 60s-70s stuff, so YMMV. Not to say they aren't with the times; the horrendous quality of Metallica's Death Magnetic sparked such a long thread there it had to be closed and continued in a part 2 (whch itself is a megathread already).

While I agree with him conceptually, I think the vast majority of the problem with modern music stems not from the digital format, but the bad mixing & mastering which has become so prevalent in the past two decades. I've heard CDs which raise the hairs on my neck... AiC Unplugged (and for that matter, all the "Unlplugged" CDs have excellent sound quality, proving that even MTV can't do everything wrong)... Pink Floyd's The Wall MFSL remaster makes my fucking nipples hard, it's amazing... as are most MFSL (aka MoFi) remasters. DCC and other Steve Hoffman remasters sound great as well. The famous 'black triangle' pressing of Abbey Road is similarly impressive, though the actual recording could be better imo, probably due to the fact analog recording hadn't come into its own until a good 5-10 years later. On the other hand, I found the Black Triangle Dark Side of the Moon a bit sterile in comaparison to the lush MFSL version, though many people disagree.

FWIW, Monster Cables and Bose are jokes among the audiophile community. To say that "audiophiles" are silly for purchasing these subpar and overpriced products is misinformed, to say the least.

Anyway, sorry to necro this thread, though 2 months isn't really -that- bad, and I'd have felt silly starting a new one.

I completely agree about people's opinions of CDs, I think its swayed because the quality of recordings being put on them has gone down. I think vinyl versions, due to the low production numbers and being mostly bought by audiophiles for so long there, tend to be not screwed with as much. Seems that this has changed as vinyl rose in popularity again (being bought by "hipster doofuses"). CDs can sound plenty good, and as has been proven time and again, a good recording that has been mastered/mixed well will beat one that's been thoroughly molested even if its on an inferior medium.

A while back I posted some trial clips from a company that sells audiophile recordings. One of them was like a 32khz 56kbps WMA file and the quality of it was actually very good (although the higher bitrate/sampling rate versions did sound better).

There's be nothing wrong with digital either if we could get it in consistently good quality. With modern equipment we could feasibly have all the technical merit of digital audio with the smoothness and musicality of tubes, but unfortunately the music industry doesn't think we should be able to.

Something that bugs the crap out of me with a lot of newer music (I refer to it as indie although it really isn't, but it sounds like a lot of indie music for a while there) is that it lacks subtle details and nuance. There's nothing wrong with a good solid simple piece, but when thats all you do, it becomes boring. Granted most people don't notice because a lot of equipment can't resolve it all that well, but when I had W5000s it was like being slapped in the face going from something like Pink Floyd to that. It was like there was entire parts of the music missing. I'm not saying everyone should just start throwing in random little extra sound effects, but compare some older recordings that are just the band and instruments and there's still a lot of extra sound that just is much more appealing.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

The NostroDAVEus stuff aside, there is some interesting info, so good thread.

 

[BUTCH1]

Originally posted by: spacejamz

Originally posted by: spacejamz

Originally posted by: BUTCH1
Cool, now it's time too drag out that giant box of LP's in my closet and sell 'em on E-gay!!.

I have these two pieces of vinyl in my collection, but they sure as hell aren't going on egay...

Text

Text

couple of more items..

Text

Yea, I'd hang on to those too..

 

[BUTCH1]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Lanyap

Originally posted by: Don Vito Corleone
Much as I hate to interfere with Dave's sense of omniscience, no commercially available compact disc player existed in 1981.

He was close. Maybe he was a beta tester?

The CD, available on the market since late 1982...

You're right, I forgot it was test unit.

That's why it had the bulky negative and positive power supply.

It came with a case of all kinds of CD's in various formats of music.

I had to keep spraying the track that the CD lens would track back and forth because it would get stuck.

Power supply's are built into the unit itself and ones that can generate B+ and B- voltage have been around forever. Even vintage electronics didn't need a separate bulky power supply and a CD player's laser is semiconductor based.

 

[SludgeFactory]

Vinyl will live on for a long time, in spite of the inconveniences -- it's got nostalgia on its side.

Also it gets tricky doing home comparisons of vinyl to CD purely on the technical merits of the formats, especially with recent releases. Like HendrixFan pointed out, the mastering is usually different, so you're comparing apples to oranges. That pesky vinyl, being physically limited in how much you can destroy the music in mastering, since the needle will actually jump out of the groove if the music is mega-compressed.

Steve Hoffman's forums are a good resource. He made his name mastering audiophile stuff for DCC, doesn't get heavyhanded and has chosen to stay out of the loudness wars, and is evidently in a position now where he picks and chooses what he masters. He's done a few vinyl remasters of recent releases with less compression than their CD counterparts, notably Stadium Arcadium. It would be nice if this became a big-time trend, but yeah, fat chance of that happening. The membership at his forum is definitely skewed toward baby boomers, and the general disdain for anything new gets tiresome, but you can pick up a lot of knowledge (and hopefully not the OCD habits of some of them).

DVD-A and SACD are dead, for pop/rock anyway. No one cared. Vinyl is going to survive as a boutique format for a while. Long live the hyper-compressed MP3, perfect for club/noisy car/workout/Fisher-Price-boom-box listening situations, where you can't hear details anyway. After all, who would be stupid enough in 2008 to want to sit in their home with a modest system, turn off the TV, turn off the computer, and just kick back and enjoy some decently mastered music?

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: BUTCH1

Originally posted by: spacejamz

Originally posted by: spacejamz

Originally posted by: BUTCH1
Cool, now it's time too drag out that giant box of LP's in my closet and sell 'em on E-gay!!.

I have these two pieces of vinyl in my collection, but they sure as hell aren't going on egay...

Text

Text

couple of more items..

Text

Yea, I'd hang on to those too..

Hell fuckin' yeah.

You have no idea how insanely jealous I am of the Metallica vinyl.

*drool*

 

[alkemyst]

Those metallica albums would be awesome to have.

Most of the problem in this is companies want to sell shit. Most people just want the song, they don't really care about fidelity nor have the equipment to reproduce it anyway.

The DVD-A and SACD formats > vinyl. However, there is a ton of vinyl out there that due to only remastering being available is much better than it's 'copy'.

 

[Eeezee]

What's wrong with DVD-A?

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: Eeezee
What's wrong with DVD-A?

Too much crossing of the streams.

No seriously, 5.1 just doesn't work for music IMO. What you want is a soundstage, and this is best done with 2 speakers and a quality recording.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Originally posted by: CKent

Originally posted by: Eeezee
What's wrong with DVD-A?

Too much crossing of the streams.

No seriously, 5.1 just doesn't work for music IMO. What you want is a soundstage, and this is best done with 2 speakers and a quality recording.

Yep. If people knew the immersion possible with good binaural recordings, people wouldn't even bother with surround sound. It'd be fine with speakers as well, you'd just need to position them on complete opposites.

 

[rocadelpunk]

I collect vinyls/cds. Vinyls since 1-2 yrs ago.

The difference in listening is quite less than people would have you believe. Separation/distinctness of instruments might be better, it's been a while since I've done a comparison. I'm buying vinyls because of the package...the artwork, booklets, and that physical connection of putting the needle down.

I'll tell you what has made the BIGGEST and most enjoyable difference in listening to music...it was a switch in receivers. I had an onkyo 5.1 something or other and my friend had a $1000 Yamaha.

I inherited and restored my father's marantz 2245 (from 1970s). Listening to music is such a pleasure I didn't sleep for the first 2 weeks I was just constantly listening to records and cds. Nowadays receivers have to have all the thx/5.1 yada yada , back then it was just an amp and a tuner meant for music. I would have never described music as having warmth until I had this receiver, now I get it.

With a decent set of cans/speakers I can make out every instrument and pluck of a string. It's awesome to hear things in the background that I never knew were there. It's even weirder when you can clearly hear the singer's breathing.

Go vintage for your electronics : )

 

[RichardE]

Originally posted by: Dari
Why vinyl? Why not just come out with a new audio format? Oh, that's right, they did. But people were too consumed in nostalgia to give it a chance and it failed. Now we hear about 12" disks making a comeback? Talk about going backwards.

Would digital be that new audio format? Do you understand the differences between the two?

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: rocadelpunk
It's even weirder when you can clearly hear the singer's breathing.

Tay Zonday moves away from the mic so you can't hear him breathing.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: CKent

Originally posted by: Eeezee
What's wrong with DVD-A?

Too much crossing of the streams.

No seriously, 5.1 just doesn't work for music IMO. What you want is a soundstage, and this is best done with 2 speakers and a quality recording.

2 channel is also on the DVD-A, most of the time.

Unfortunately dvd-a and sacd are basically dead.

 

[skace]

Vinyl sounds like a step backwards, shouldn't we be moving to something like FLAC?

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: rocadelpunk
I collect vinyls/cds. Vinyls since 1-2 yrs ago.

The difference in listening is quite less than people would have you believe. Separation/distinctness of instruments might be better, it's been a while since I've done a comparison. I'm buying vinyls because of the package...the artwork, booklets, and that physical connection of putting the needle down.

I'll tell you what has made the BIGGEST and most enjoyable difference in listening to music...it was a switch in receivers. I had an onkyo 5.1 something or other and my friend had a $1000 Yamaha.

I inherited and restored my father's marantz 2245 (from 1970s). Listening to music is such a pleasure I didn't sleep for the first 2 weeks I was just constantly listening to records and cds. Nowadays receivers have to have all the thx/5.1 yada yada , back then it was just an amp and a tuner meant for music. I would have never described music as having warmth until I had this receiver, now I get it.

With a decent set of cans/speakers I can make out every instrument and pluck of a string. It's awesome to hear things in the background that I never knew were there. It's even weirder when you can clearly hear the singer's breathing.

Go vintage for your electronics : )

i agree

also go tubes, i love my tubes

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: rocadelpunk
I collect vinyls/cds. Vinyls since 1-2 yrs ago.

The difference in listening is quite less than people would have you believe. Separation/distinctness of instruments might be better, it's been a while since I've done a comparison. I'm buying vinyls because of the package...the artwork, booklets, and that physical connection of putting the needle down.

I'll tell you what has made the BIGGEST and most enjoyable difference in listening to music...it was a switch in receivers. I had an onkyo 5.1 something or other and my friend had a $1000 Yamaha.

I inherited and restored my father's marantz 2245 (from 1970s). Listening to music is such a pleasure I didn't sleep for the first 2 weeks I was just constantly listening to records and cds. Nowadays receivers have to have all the thx/5.1 yada yada , back then it was just an amp and a tuner meant for music. I would have never described music as having warmth until I had this receiver, now I get it.

With a decent set of cans/speakers I can make out every instrument and pluck of a string. It's awesome to hear things in the background that I never knew were there. It's even weirder when you can clearly hear the singer's breathing.

Go vintage for your electronics : )

QFT!!

I had some hand me down Fisher 100WPC receiver from the 80s, and I thought it was pretty good.

Then I got a Dynaco SCA-80Q, rated at 40WPC. Night and fucking day difference. With the same speakers. Unbelievable. I was shocked, and vowed to never buy a modern consumer level receiver again.

:thumbsup:

 

[Homerboy]

Originally posted by: skace
Vinyl sounds like a step backwards, shouldn't we be moving to something like FLAC?

from what source? The shitty CD you purchased?

 

[Muadib]

Originally posted by: Eli

Originally posted by: rocadelpunk
I collect vinyls/cds. Vinyls since 1-2 yrs ago.

The difference in listening is quite less than people would have you believe. Separation/distinctness of instruments might be better, it's been a while since I've done a comparison. I'm buying vinyls because of the package...the artwork, booklets, and that physical connection of putting the needle down.

I'll tell you what has made the BIGGEST and most enjoyable difference in listening to music...it was a switch in receivers. I had an onkyo 5.1 something or other and my friend had a $1000 Yamaha.

I inherited and restored my father's marantz 2245 (from 1970s). Listening to music is such a pleasure I didn't sleep for the first 2 weeks I was just constantly listening to records and cds. Nowadays receivers have to have all the thx/5.1 yada yada , back then it was just an amp and a tuner meant for music. I would have never described music as having warmth until I had this receiver, now I get it.

With a decent set of cans/speakers I can make out every instrument and pluck of a string. It's awesome to hear things in the background that I never knew were there. It's even weirder when you can clearly hear the singer's breathing.

Go vintage for your electronics : )

QFT!!

I had some hand me down Fisher 100WPC receiver from the 80s, and I thought it was pretty good.

Then I got a Dynaco SCA-80Q, rated at 40WPC. Night and fucking day difference. With the same speakers. Unbelievable. I was shocked, and vowed to never buy a modern consumer level receiver again.

:thumbsup:

Eli, please tell me you were joking. Sorry, but I really can't tell.....