Which sounds better records or CD?

[Coco Pops]

A few months back I found all of my old vinyl records and started transferring them to the computer via a turntable. I made an interesting discovery.

Most of them sounded great after a bit of cleaning up both physically and digitally.

In fact I'd go as far as to say for my experience that old fashioned records sound better then CDs.....

I love my CD collection.. BUT.......

Most of the time CDs have a harsh sound to them.. Sure the music is clear but it has a harsh edge to it.. All my old records most of which were duplicated on CD when CD came out sound better then their CD counterparts to me. They have a softer edge to the sound that falls off instead of just dropping off like the digital version if that makes sense to anyone.

And CDs on the whole still cost as much as when they first came out which to me is a rip off... I wish vinyl had never died.


Discuss........

[DigiFluid]

Records definitely.

For one, they're simply a much higher-quality medium for audio storage. There's a reason why DJs use them and audiophiles collect them

For another, album mixing/mastering has quickly become somewhat of a lost art. The drive to mix things so that they're just louder rather than mixed such that you can discern out individual sounds has become sadly prevalent. This has become even more the case with the rise of MP3 players and iPods, because most people use the standard earbuds which are really not very good at playing quality sound either. A perfect example of this is Metallica's Death Magnetic album: there were a huge number of complaints that the mixing was just awful, and the number of complaints went through the roof when people were able to hear the individual instruments on the Rock Band/Guitar Hero album release better than the album release proper.

And I grew up in the cassette/CD era

[Coco Pops]

Records definitely.

For one, they're simply a much higher-quality medium for audio storage. There's a reason why DJs use them and audiophiles collect them

For another, album mixing/mastering has quickly become somewhat of a lost art. The drive to mix things so that they're just louder rather than mixed such that you can discern out individual sounds has become sadly prevalent. This has become even more the case with the rise of MP3 players and iPods, because most people use the standard earbuds which are really not very good at playing quality sound either. A perfect example of this is Metallica's Death Magnetic album: there were a huge number of complaints that the mixing was just awful, and the number of complaints went through the roof when people were able to hear the individual instruments on the Rock Band/Guitar Hero album release better than the album release proper.

And I grew up in the cassette/CD era

Me too..... Hence why my little experiment has caused a desire to see vinyl come back..... Maybe in some other universe CD got killed off and vinyl reigns supreme....

[Skydiver]

it has been proven that vinyl is better sounding. but when cd's came out the record companies loved that they were cheaper, easier to produce, easier to ship, so people were told 'cd's are digital, digital is better' when it's not true. the forgiving nature of analog makes a better sounding song

[Mike.]

In theory CDs should be better than vinyl:
- an exact copy is made, there are no variations due to different chemical changes introduced in the manufacturing process
- every payback will be identical - a laser is much more precise than a needle that can skip, become dull or misread because of accumulated dust
- a digital copy can last forever - a backup on a HDD will always be unmodified and can never degrade as long as you copy it to a new HDD before the old one fails, a record will undoubtedly get damaged due to repeated playbacks, can be scratched (so can CD, this is where the HDD backup is superior).

I remember reading a while ago about a study where people said that 96-128 kbps mp3 was better than 256 or 360 kbps because they could hear the compression artifacts they were used to. Some of the love for vinyl is nostalgia. Some people like the little imperfections that occur with analog recordings, not because the music quality is better. Others like it just because it's different and get to buy overpriced cables that "align the electrons".

The main valid criticism I've heard for CD is that the volume is jacked up real high to make it seem "louder" and so losing a lot the lower frequencies. You can attribute this to an industry that likes to shot itself in the foot every chance it gets; along with supporting crappy commercial bands that only appeal to a certain audience that has no taste in music.

In conclusion, a digital copy > anything.

[Skydiver]

digital isn't always better

take here in the midwest, they did the digital conversion on the tv....a digital signal may be 'better' but it takes more power to get it out there, so while an analog station's signal might have covered 100 square miles, a digital signal may only cover 30. I know i used to be able to get the local abc, nbc, cbs and pbs off air...now i can ony get the digital signal of the pbs and kinda the nbc....i don't get the other two, because the digital signal isn't as strong or 'good' as the analog one.

we now have whole segments of our state that have no tv coverage at all without subscribing to cable or dish...so 'free' tv has been pushed off the air.

digital can be better for what you described, perfect replication, etc...but ti's also 1's and 0's, yes or no, black or white....there are no maybe's in digital. so you lose those 'maybe' nuances

(look at a video signal of the sky, and the various shades of blue...on analog you'd see a smooth transition and fading from one to the other. On digital??? pixelated bands of color. While the digital signal may be perfectly replicated, it's not as aesthetically pleasing as the analog one

[Supreme Commander Sil]

Records aren't digital and recreate the sounds with less cut off (distortion) . CD's of course are digital. If you compare accoustic and digital wave lengths... digital has two functions - on and off ... So think of a curve being diced into rectangles (like a graph) it is nowhere near as accurate as the original . They can get close, but the difference is audible . Records are an acoustic form of recording, so they are more accurate . But CDs are much easier to maintain, store etc .

[Coco Pops]

digital isn't always better

take here in the midwest, they did the digital conversion on the tv....a digital signal may be 'better' but it takes more power to get it out there, so while an analog station's signal might have covered 100 square miles, a digital signal may only cover 30. I know i used to be able to get the local abc, nbc, cbs and pbs off air...now i can ony get the digital signal of the pbs and kinda the nbc....i don't get the other two, because the digital signal isn't as strong or 'good' as the analog one.

we now have whole segments of our state that have no tv coverage at all without subscribing to cable or dish...so 'free' tv has been pushed off the air.

It's like mobile phones. Sure digital is better then the old analog mobiles that were around but to maintain a signal you need lots of towers and repeater stations... Same for digital TV which ends up making a simple system that worked for tons of years more complicated. There was no need at all for TV to go digital. I don't know why most countries are doing it but it's not needed. I think they see more money in using the old signal spectrum for other services...

[Skydiver]

in the case of the US, the govt wanted the broadcast frequencies back, so they mandated the conversion to digital

that was the only reason. the whole' digital pictures are better' was just spin to sell it

[Dr. Michael Benjamin]

What's a record?

[Coco Pops]

in the case of the US, the govt wanted the broadcast frequencies back, so they mandated the conversion to digital

that was the only reason. the whole' digital pictures are better' was just spin to sell it

I wonder what is going to happen to all those old broadcast frequencies?

[Coco Pops]

What's a record?

This is a record a round disk with grooves you put on a spinning turntable... you use a needle to run the grooves and it makes beautiful music.

[DigiFluid]

I think (hope) the question was in jest....

[Skydiver]

kinda like 'what is a typewriter'?

[Coco Pops]

I think (hope) the question was in jest....

]

As was my witty but dry answer young padawan.