Vinyl Vs Download

Former_MSE_Andrea

Vinyl vs download?

Which is the best balance of value for money vs sound quality?

We've just been discussing this in MSE Towers and thought we'd get your specialist thoughts!


Related guides:

Free Music Online

jamesperrett

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

dlusman

Sound quality will depend very much on what you play it on , rather than the format

pogofish

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

That way you have the best of both worlds.

I think a decent quality cutter can be had for £15-18K

esuhl

I'd prefer to buy my music on CD. It has much better audio quality than either vinyl or a compressed audio file, but you still get the artwork and can rip the tracks to a lossless audio file. 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.

It's an absolute joke.

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.

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

parking_question_chap

dlusman wrote: »

Sound quality will depend very much on what you play it on , rather than the format

Not totally accurate.

A good copy played through a rubbish system will sound rubbish.

A bad copy played through the best system in the would will also sound rubbish.

A good system doesnt necesarily make music sound better. It just more accurately reproduces the source.

Voyager2002

Sound quality will depend on two things: the quality of the source (essentially the volume of information per second and the absence of defects) and the quality of the system on which it is played. Thus, the highest sound quality available to those of us who are not particularly wealthy is a combination of vinyl (which stores far more information than any digital format) with a decent system: at a minimum a Linn Sonndek an Naim pre- and power-amplifier. Attempting to use vinyl with a significantly lower-spec system than this will produce poor results, while most digital formats (including CD) do not convey sufficient information to provide satisfying music.

High-quality vinyl is often very affordable from charity shops, but obviously not for modern music.

esuhl

Voyager2002 wrote: »

Thus, the highest sound quality available to those of us who are not particularly wealthy is a combination of vinyl (which stores far more information than any digital format) with a decent system...

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.

Former_MSE_Matt

parking_question_chap wrote: »

Not totally accurate.

A good copy played through a rubbish system will sound rubbish.

A bad copy played through the best system in the would will also sound rubbish.

A good system doesnt necesarily make music sound better. It just more accurately reproduces the source.

Agree - this is golden advice.

Voyager2002

esuhl wrote: »

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.

See this discussion, particularly the sixth post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/27zksf/theoretically_what_is_the_data_capacity_of_a/

esuhl

Voyager2002 wrote: »

See this discussion, particularly the sixth post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/27zksf/theoretically_what_is_the_data_capacity_of_a/

But... that's about storing digital information on an analogue medium. When you play a record, none of the information is digitised so there will always be noise in the signal. It's just not comparable.