Vinyl Vs Download

Gloomendoom · 19 January 2017 at 7:21PM

jamesperrett wrote: »

For best sound quality buy the CD (or an uncompressed download). Vinyl distorts the sound - but in a way that some people find pleasant.

I think you may have that the wrong way around. The sound recorded on a CD is clipped to reduce the bandwidth. It isn't on a vinyl record.

ThemeOne · 19 January 2017 at 7:42PM

It's such an individual thing - some people really don't care much about audio quality in music, so are quite happy with a low rate MP3 played on some cheap equipment.

I never heard about vinyl distorting the sound, I thought that was the various digital formats.

Having said that my vinyl from the 70s doesn't sound great even on a decent system, and never did. Someone told me it was because there was a vinyl shortage in the 70s but don't know if that's an old wives' tale.

jamesperrett · 27 January 2017 at 5:55PM

Gloomendoom wrote: »

I think you may have that the wrong way around. The sound recorded on a CD is clipped to reduce the bandwidth. It isn't on a vinyl record.

The bandwidth that can be accommodated on vinyl is much the same as on a CD unless you happen to have a special cutting stylus and a Shibata playback stylus that were developed for JVC's CD-4 quadraphonic system in the 70's. The lowest usable frequency is determined by the available area on the disc - if you try to put too much low end on a disc you will either end up with a short disc that is unplayable on many players or a quiet disc. In addition, if your vinyl playing system has an extended low frequency bandwidth you end up trying to reproduce all sorts of rubbish like turntable rumble and any warping on the disc.

The dynamic range of the disc (the difference between the loudest sound and the quietest) is also limited by surface noise and turntable rumble. A decent turntable should give around 70dB dynamic range while a cheap turntable may only give 30-40dB of dynamic range. CD's give you 96dB of dynamic range.

If you want better than CD sound quality then you're looking at audiophile DVD's which have been encoded at 96kHz sampling rate with 24 bit resolution. However, you should make sure that the whole signal chain from mic to DVD has used the higher resolution - plenty of these discs are just for pure marketing with no improvement on the equivalent CD.

Gloomendoom · 28 January 2017 at 2:16PM

^^^^ Well that told me. I have to admit that I switched to CD almost as soon as they came out. I prefer the sound.

I have Systemdek turntable somewhere that the current interest in vinyl prompted me to resurrect. Vinyl is/was such a faff though.

Monika333 · 15 September 2017 at 7:20PM

I should say, I have the same quantity of CDs like Vinyl. Maybe CDs have a high quality, but like the idea of Vinyl.

almillar · 3 November 2017 at 3:58PM

You could buy yourself a disc cutter and transfer all your downloads to vinyl.

Apart from the big cost, this would, of course, still be the lower quality format, recorded onto the higher quality one, you can't improve it, so it's even more pointless than you thought!

Of course, the law sensibly determines that to be illegal now, which means you're better off pirating music since that's no more illegal and cheaper.

I rip all my CDs for my own personal use and consider it much less illegal than downloading without paying. Haven't heard of any rippers that still own the CDs being prosecuted either.

I find it incredible that TVs have moved from SD to HD to 4K in a few years -- a dramatic increase in resolution... while music has moved from CD to MP3... a horrible retrograde step that offends anyone with ears.

Yes, CD took a backward step to MP3, but in a very similar way to SD to HD, codecs have moved on. AAC (let's call it MP4 for simplicity) has, or should have, replaced MP3 by now and, whilst still lossy, is a vast improvement over MP3 in terms of quality per kbps.
Generally, MP3 codec is in DVD, SD TV, DAB, MP4 is in HD, DAB+, iTunes.

Why aren't FLAC files the industry standard by now? Why do downloadable files often cost the same as the CD version?

There are places you can buy FLAC, but they charge a premium. People seem happy to pay for the convenience of downloading, companies are happy to charge them for it!

I'm not sure how you'd measure the amount of information in an analogue system. What kind of metric could you use? It's not really comparable to digital encoding.

That's the whole problem, it's difficult to measure, and put a number on. It's also subjective, so just because you like the sound, doesn't mean I will.

David_Aston · 3 November 2017 at 4:15PM

Nice reply to an oldish thread almillar.
I rather like voyagers slightly snobbish mention of the blessed Naim.
Discovering popular music on a very dodgy medium wave radio Luxembourg, all those years ago, any music reproduction since has been, just wonderful!

20aday · 7 November 2017 at 3:43PM

Places like Amazon offer you digital downloads when you purchase vinyl items; granted there are many factors which will affect sound quality etc but when it comes to vinyl itself there are some great 12" extended mixes out there which you don't get with the likes of MP3s.

Broadwood · 8 November 2017 at 6:27PM

Voyager2002 wrote: »

.......... while most digital formats (including CD) do not convey sufficient information to provide satisfying music.

That's absolute rubbish. :rotfl:

ChrisK....._3 · 16 February 2019 at 12:41PM

FACT!!!!! Digital data is several million times more accurate than analogue data. Of course, "better" is subject to taste (and not FACT). There are some elitist that prefer to BELIEVE that greater expense = better quality, it justifies them spending a lot of money just to say that they are better than you. Probably the same people that buy black truffles and claim elitness, when in fact black truffles smell and taste like dog sheet.

I personally don't like, and don't own any digital media, and prefer vinyl and DVDs and CDs, because these are tangable and define who I am

Vinyl Vs Download

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