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Vinyl records outsell CDs for the second year running
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this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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What is everyone's opinions on the sound quality of vinyl?
I understand the collectibility of physical media, and the novelty of owning a vinyl and the machine that plays them. The large art piece that is the case (and often the disc itself). Showing support for your favorite artists by owning physical media from them.
Those are great reasons to collect vinyl.
But a lot of my friends claim vinly is of higher audio quality than anything else, period. This is provably false, but it seems to be a common opinion.
How often have you seen this and what are your thoughts on it?
Technically CD quality digital is superior, but the recording and mixing can have a lot to do with it. For example, it could be that an decades old Dark Side Of The Moon on vinyl (played on proper equipment) could sound better than a modern remastered CD with maximized loudness (See the "loudness wars").
It's not impossible, although the loudness wars are pretty much over nowadays. All major music services and players have volume normalisation, many by default, so there's not much point to it any longer.
Also it's pretty tough to find a decades old record still in mint condition, and the sound quality of vinyl gets worse every time you play it.
If you handle them correctly, it will not happen to any noticeable degree in any of our lifetimes or the following generations. It is durable material.
Higher audio quality than CD? No, that is demonstrably false.
More pleasant to listen to than CD or other digital formats? Yes, that I agree with. It's entirely subjective, but I'm definitely not alone in the feeling. The fact it is hard to quantify is why lots of people don't "get" vinyl until they've sat and heard it on a decent system. Something about it is pleasing. As another commenter mentioned, it might just be the imperfections.
So I guess it's a bit of a philosophical question. If CDs technically sound better, but vinyl sounds more pleasing: does the vinyl then sound better? People tend to chase pleasure, and in the time it takes someone to explain how much lower the noise floor is on CD or how we can only perceive so many samples, etc, etc -- you could have been chilling with multiple records and had a great listening experience.
If it was just about the sound, then you could get the exact same results by recording the vinyl player directly to a lossless format and playing that back, but it wouldn't be quite the same. Big part of it is just the fact that you are using a vinyl player and these huge fragile disks that makes it an enjoyable experience by itself.
Of course. There is no doubt that the ritual of handling the record and playing it on the turntable is a huge part of it. Personally it makes me appreciate the music more because it is kind of an effort to get it playing in the first place, and you just want to listen to the record in a session, instead of just having it as a backdrop which so much streamed music is.
Yes, totally agree. Vinyl rips still lack something. A lot of it is about practice, which makes it harder to quantify.
IMO is just placebo effect. In a blind experiment, all else being equal, I doubt you would be able to tell the difference between a vinyl and a CD. That's my two cents
I know for a fact I would hear the difference -- but primarily because of the imperfections in the vinyl, as well as the different bass response. I can rule out placebo.
I think it's the slight hissing sound you hear as the needle drags. That faint, slightly pink noise isn't dissimilar from white noise people use to go to sleep, and I think human brains like that sort of sound.
I know it's not highest quality.
For me, the imperfect sound is what makes a nicer experience. Slight hum, little pop once in a while, teensy skip, etc.
Not to mention that I'm far more inclined to listen to an entire album because of the need to interact with the vinyl to set the needle and flip sides.
At the risk of sounding critical of your hobby, to argue the imperfections improve the experience sounds somewhat culty.
I understand there is something akin to "character" which you don't get from something highly polished. I know when things sound too clean it can feel sterile.
I accept vinyl has a collectors value, but anything claims regarding preference come across as either pretentious or deluded (to me, as someone who probably can't tell the difference).
I don't proclaim that vinyl is superior or something everyone should listen to.
Just trying to convey how I hear it.
98% of my listening is my MP3 playing from my phone's Bluetooth.
Vinyl has a slow progression in quality degradation due to friction that creates a certain kind of sound warmth that is pleasing to our ears. This can also be relicated digitally, but the imperfections and feelings associated with the physical ritual actions of loading a record can't.
Vinyl just has more engagement going on despite the sound quality being lower. Kind of like how some people have fondness for fireplaces despite central heating being technically better at maintaining a warm temperature.
Some people confuse the extra engagement with sound quality because a lot of people just don't think things through.
With conventional record players with a mechanical head. I suppose that you could probably use an optical one -- I remember reading about that being used by archivists.
google
Yeah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable
The thing I think I remember reading about was apparently this related thing:
IRENE
considers
If you can get multiple physical copies of an analog recording, you could probably scan them and use statistical analysis to combine information from the physical copies, eliminate damage from any one copy.
Yes, I was referring to the most common way of playing vinyl records with a physical needle.
Combining multiple records could give you an average, but it would both lose the things that make vinyl and experience like pops from dust specs and imperfections. Plus a cleaner copy could be had from the masters used to press the vinyl records. You know, the same master that is used to make exact duplicates for CDs.
Recreating an approximation of a lost master recording from multiple vinyl records with voice reduction on the imperfections would be an interesting idea, so my guess is someone has already done that 😉
that engagement materially impacts sound quality because you're actively listening.
It impacts the perception of sound quality, not the actual sound quality.
You could get engagement through digital audio files too, though.
But I'd argue that it doesn't affect the sound quality, but the enjoyment of the sound. The sound waves themselves don't actually change because we're actively engaging.
The best explanation I've seen is that music is mixed differently for CD/streaming and vinyl.
For mass market, the move has been to mix for louder bass and similar things. The idea being that it makes the music more popular. But it also makes it difficult to appreciate anything but the bass.
On vinyl, you can't max out bass like that, it won't work on the format. So they have to give it a normal mix instead, making it sound better. In theory CDs should sound better than vinyl, but because of the music production trends, it doesn't currently.
This is correct, although it's not the bass that is limited on vinyl; it's the dynamic range compression (or 'loudness') in general.
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So you have to fiddle with the volume less on vinyl?
That's the one good selling point I've heard for vinyl so far.
I like this take. it's probably also why I'm gravitating towards cassettes now, you don't need a special mix but you also can't just max the volume because magnetic media saturates and distorts quite quickly.
A new record sounds pretty good when played on a good turntable with a good cartridge, but it's not as good as a properly mixed CD or lossless audio file. A worn or dirty record sounds like crap. A cheap turntable will also sound like crap and a ceramic cartridge wears out records fairly quickly.
With a CD, there is very little difference in sound quality between the cheapest player you can find and a high end player. The CD will always sound the same until it's too worn out to play at all.
I like to buy older albums that were mastered for vinyl, like Steely Dan, some prog rock like Yes or Pink Floyd. It gets a lot closer to listening to how the artists would have been hearing their product
CD sound is better. But I like how big the pictures of the albums are with vinyl. Vinyl is more about the ritual though. With all the pop sounds and stuff I wouldn't prefer it over CD.
Either 0 difference from digital or worse due to skipping/bad record quality. Rap records are especially bad and I stopped buying them.
Personally, I buy them because my internet is unreliable, it makes for some nice decoration and it's nice to actually own something in 2024 (especially since Spotify keeps deleting random artists/songs from my playlists).
I enjoy the warmer sound of vinyl but I buy the albums I love on it because of the lack o convenience. I can't shuffle and I have to actually interact with it every 20ish minutes to flip or change discs. It makes me actually listen to music, track order, mix, and properly enjoy the work that went into the whole album making process.
So I use streaming when I just want something on in the background and vinyl when I want to properly listen to an album.
Vinyl is worse quality, the vinyl disk's height is a physical constraint that CDs / DVDs do not have.
Define quality.
Vinyl sounds good, but has too much noise to be the best. Although that could just be my cat's fault, realistically - i spend a lot time removing hair from records.
Too much noise? Older records sure. But new stuff? On mine you can't tell the difference. There's no hum, no crackling, no noise. It is recommended to brush your records before playing though. Perhaps that's the problem?
The records are new, and I brush them before each use. I've used different carts so that's probably not the issue either. Maybe I just got all bad records.. Maybe I could hear a difference on yours. Who knows at this point
Odd. But yeah, many factors.
Not an audiophile, but had experience with vinyl and CDs while growing up in the 90s and imo vinyl COULD sound better if you spent a lot of money on high end equipment. But with the equipment us normies had, the cds sounded much better. It had a much lower barrier if you didn't have a large amount of time and money to invest. I'd suspect things are similar now.
First problem would be defining what "quality" means. On one hand vynil just has a continuous grove which needle follows. For this reason it's infinitely precise, as there's no interpolation or sample frequency. But on the other hand if master was digital and of shit quality, then benefits of analog mean nothing. Also widely used 44KHz sample rate is no accident, it's exactly double of what human hearing can perceive. So even if you go higher, average listener wouldn't be able to hear the difference.
Music is also mastered differently for vynil. Base is centered and audio is processed to reduce chances of skipping tracks. This is why decent phono amplifier is needed to revert those changes. Digital stays good or shitty no matter how many times you copy the file.
Overall sound quality is good, in both digital world and analogue. I have both high quality FLACs and some really great records which people would struggle to figure out if the sound they are hearing is digital or not. Personally I prefer vynil because the centered base. It makes other instruments more pronounced and you get to experience same music in a bit of a different way. Vynil being manual as it is also forces you to listen to entire side since it's not easy to change tracks and authors by clicking next.
I read somewhere that about 50% of vinyl owners don't have a player. Presumably that 50% only have very few records and bought them for the looks, but still.
Vinyl records sounds great despite their technical inferiority to CDs and streaming (with the right equipment of course, but that applies to all formats). They do not necessarily sound better, but there is an element of customisation with them which you can't get with CDs or streaming. Most importantly the cartridge on your turntable. Different cartridges have different soundscapes. There is of course an element of quality connected to price of cartridge, but over a certain price you are not necessarily buying a better sound but a different sound. Many vinyl record listeners, especially audiophiles, have different cartridges which they can switch out on their turntable, based on which kind of sound you want coming out of your system.
I know it may be difficult to comprehend for people who haven't personally listened to such differences themselves, but I assure you it is not audiophile snake oil, it is a very noticeable phenomenon. That is a pretty unique capability of vinyl which I can't really compare to anything with other formats.
people are idiots, possibly from inhaling the toxic fumes of unregulated PVC
Excellent point!
As Ben Jordan says, it really is well past the time when we should be making records from stuff that's regulated.
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Its worse in the best way IMO.
The main reason I buy vinyl is for the other reasons you mentioned, but the imperfections of vinyl gives it a less robotic and sterile feel. It’s like listening to digital drums vs acoustic drums.
There’s also the ritual of playing vinyl that’s real satisfying
It’s good.