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Vinyl To Signal the End for CDs?
PJ1216 writes to mention that vinyl seems poised to make a comeback in the music industry. Some are even predicting that this comeback coupled with the surge in digital music sales could possibly close the door on CDs. "Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they're right about one thing: Records can sound better than CDs. Although CDs have a wider dynamic range, mastering houses are often encouraged to compress the audio on CDs to make it as loud as possible: It's the so-called loudness war. Since the audio on vinyl can't be compressed to such extremes, records generally offer a more nuanced sound. Another reason for vinyl's sonic superiority is that no matter how high a sampling rate is, it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove, Nyquist's theorem to the contrary."
Vinyl is better than CDs because the lack of technology and features means that the people who make 'em can't fuck 'em up as much?
And they say technology can't solve social problems. Or, in this case, lack of technology...
-F
Since the audio on vinyl can't be compressed to such extremes...
This guy doesn't know what he is talking about.
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
People don't want vinyl. There's a tiny subset in the audiophille market who do. The vast majority of people don't care. Just look at the victory of mp3 in the marketplace, and the lack of demand for high quality encodings- convenience beats quality, every single time. Vinyls are not, and never will be convenient. You may see CDs phased out in a decade or two as music goes purely digital, but you won't see CDs giving way to vinyl. No portable players, no players in cars, no way to play it at a friend's house (since they won't likely have a vinyl player). Its DOA.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
... but a resurgance in vinyl would be a good thing. For DJ's like myself, it never left. I can still usually buy the latest dance and hip hop on vinyl, and software like Serato Scratch and Traktor Scratch allow one to manipulate mp3's just like vinyl through the use of a special interface and timecoded records. Buying pop is a CD only affair. Sucks, but record companies make the bulk of their money from CD sales.
Sure, most of your top-40 DJ's use CD's, and that's not a bad thing, but DJ purists still prefer vinyl.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
Ah yes, the centre groove.....
More important though, there is one thing that vinyl lacks - error correction. A couple of scratches on a CD don't make that much difference usually because the CD player will compensate, but once you've gouged a vinyl record that pop or click is there forever.
Three Squirrels
It's true that a digital recording can never contain the amount of data in a vinyl groove, but who is saying that all the data in a vinyl groove is more of an accurate representation of all the data extant in the original sound wave than a digitally sampled recording?
... it will wear on the groove.
Not to mention data degradation as the needle passes over the groove for the hundredth time
The other advantage of a CD is that the data on a CD is precise, an exact copy of the original, and any functioning CD player will interpret the CD identically. Analog information on a vinyl LP, on the other hand, is subject to an analog input system (the needle) which will vary from player to player as to its mechanical properties, which will influence the sound it picks up from the record.
Audiophiles are the only people on the planet that wish Macs were MORE expensive.
Of course, if you use crap speakers, this is all irrelevant anyway.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
"Nyquist's theorem to the contrary."
Damm right my ears are so good that I can toss out the cornerstone of DSP!
Vinyl doesn't have an infinite resolution anymore than a photograph does. You can not keep blowing up a photograph even though it is an analog recording medium. Vinyl does have a finite resolution just like digital methods.
And guess what? They will still use digital equipment in the studios because there is no quality loss when making copies! They will just move the DAC stage from your receiver to the cutting head for the record.
Nope your as wrong as any creationist and showing just as deep an understanding of science.
Yes the loudness wars are making CDs crap but that has nothing to do with digital vs analog.
I hate to sound like a member of the tin hat bunch but I have to wonder if this isn't a brilliant plan by the music companies to sell you the same music yet again! It is a lot harder to rip a record and put it on your ipod than a CD. So they sell you the "Better sounding" record for your home stereo and then the digital download full of DRM for your music player.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
Although a digital representation cannot completely represent an analogue waveform, it is true that it can:
- produce an approximation that differs from the original by less than can be detected by the human ear, which does have its limits
- produce an approximation that is BETTER than a recording made in a physical medium.
The issue with recording on a physical medium - irrespective of type or method, is that the stylus (whatever it may be) has mass. As such it is subject to Newton's first law and will resist changes to its momentum. This will have the audio effect of diminishing the frequency response in proportion to the frequency. This attenuation of the high end of the audio spectrum is what gives vinyl its 'richer' sound - NOT that it is more faithfully approximating the original sound wave.
Remember EVERYTHING is an approximation - including the pressure wave in the air that was the original transcription from the instrument.
Whilst that is true, the problem is that a typical CD recording available today will be overcompressed whereas a typical vinyl recording won't be. Thus if I want to buy a decent recording, it may well be that the vinyl version is better than the CD version despite what the technical capabilities of the two media may be. That said, if vinyl sales rocket and CD sales plummet, we will most likely see a change in how CDs are mastered -- I expect both media to be around for a long time yet.
John_Chalisque
But the FA is missing one REALLY HUGE point:
Most people don't "listen" to music. They use it as a soundtrack to their sad pathetic lives as they schlep their bodies to and from work, or put it on as background during dinner, or an ambient enhancement while reading or cruising the web, or as something to hide the sounds of bedsprings while they fuck their paramour du jour.
But VERY FEW people sit and listen to music with the attention one would need to bother with discerning the subtleties between different recording principles. Music is under competition from a thousand different directions, and people's lives are so busy, that sitting around in a comfy chair with a nice drink and listening, being MOVED by music, being swet away by something that matters, is an increasingly rare event.
I consider this a sad thing, but not unexpected, given the circumstances. There is no urge toward quality. fuck - if there was, then I wouldn't have 160 gigs of 192bps mp3 files. WHY do I, as a lover of fine audio, have so much mp3? Because I can't fit my stereo system into my office, and I like working to music. I am not uncommon. I know MANY people with extensive record and CD collections who have huge mp3 selections. And I also know many people who have huge mp3 collections and very few CDs and no vinyl records at all. They are perfectly good people who CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE. They are not deaf - they just don't care. And more and more people are like that.
So, in short, I think vinyl will NEVER replace CDs. CDs and vinyl will be replaced by high quality digital audio downloads and digital/cable/internet radio. I love my vinyl, but I'm not stupid about it.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Yes, I have noticed that. No matter how much I strain, I cannot hear the background on CDs. No hiss, no pops, no crackle, no distortion... nothing that wasn't in the original music.
OTOH, on CDs I can hear some unwanted background noise that I cannot hear in vinyl, for instance in classical music recordings there's the faint paper rustle when the musicians turn the pages in the score. That sound is very clearly heard in some CDs, but completely masked by the background noise in vinyl.
Well, if you have one of these I can see why. I savage a beautiful Philips turntable from a flea market, built it a new walnut base so it wouldn't look shabby, and gave it the love and care it needed. Along with a proper phono pre-amp it does a fine job of reproducing music. I also keep my records clean and unscratched, so no clicks, pops or anything else. Long ago I figured if I was going to have hundreds of $ in vinyl I'd best take care of the collection. CDs are convenient that you can play carpet hockey with them and still get a reasonable output, but that "error correction" is just approximating and filling gaps.
Worst is so many recordings which originated on vinyl never will be released on CD as they weren't popular enough. Other albums have had songs trimmed to fit on CD, for whatever rationale the musica company had for editing. Last, the crummy "remastering" -- the first Dire Straits, Sultans of Swing was trimmed at the end for CD, eventually restored to its full on a later "greatest hits" release. Wow. One Chicago collection CD was clearly taken from some media in distress, perhaps old master tapes or even copied from cassettes. Terrible.
Music captured as digital and given good treatment, as Telarc do, is a fine thing on CD, but some of the old stuff just never had a fair day in court when converted -- or was initially released as a jobber recording, to be followed by Re-Master, 20 bit, 24 bit, SACD, etc. to garner money over and over again for the same recording.
I keep both, but don't expect much from CDs. When they are good, that's fine, when they aren't, meh.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
[quote]I beg to differ. While I agree with the statement that it's a comment on postprocessing, it is a valid reason for superiority of vinyl over CDs. Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way, shape, or form a vinyl fanboi, but vinyl is a medium which prevents postprocessing compression. And it's these record producers that are making the bulk of CDs, which are giving the entire medium a bad name.[/quote]
Who says they can't do EXACTLY the same compression on the audio before mastering it to vinyl? Unless vinyl was used to master the audio in the first place and all subsequent copies were made off that, it's ridiculous to suggest that the same processing can't occur before you press the vinyl disc.
It's purely the vinyl 'purists' trying to invent a reason to suggest that vinyl is better.
It's not, end of story, no arguments can be entered into. Vinyl has nowhere near the sonic range, nowhere near the durability, nowhere near the error correction (read, none), it's just not as good.
If the author is trying to suggest that vinyl will replace anything due to any sort of sonic improvement, then why didn't SACD or DVD Audio take off? They both have higher sampling rates and even broader frequency response than CD, and yet they've pretty much disappeared. The masses don't give a shit about audio fidelity. Hence why MP3s are so popular and Home Theatre In A Box's sell in such huge numbers... the majority of people can't hear the difference, and are purely concerned about CONVENIENCE and vinyl is in NO WAY CONVENIENT... No way at all, they're huge, easy to break, wear out VERY quickly and you now need stupidly expensive turntables to get any sort of reasonable sound out of them.
This is a completely ridiculous article.
it does not prevent it, but it does discourage it. probably because an overcompression sounds even worse on vinyl, because the dynamic range is not a hard wall like on a CD (the limits of signed int16) but a soft one: the higher the level, the more likely you are to get all kinds of player-dependent distortion. at the same felt loudness making everything flat to a certain limit would likely sound worse than keeping some dynamics in the signal and have the peaks reach somewhat into the red zone while keeping the lower parts in the green.
the CD gets a perfect signal right until the brick wall, while the vinyl does not, result: high dynamics sound better on CD.
introduce loudness war: mastering engineers are tempted by the perfect representation of CD at max level, they remove all dynamics by compressing everything to max level. result: flat, dull sound on CD. vinyl stays imperfect in its representation of dynamics, but unlike CD it at least keeps any dynamics to represent.
[i have an opinion and i am not afraid to use it]
The latest toys for audiophiles:
Devices to demagnetize your CDs. Or your vinyl. Yes, demagnitize your plastic. (I predict that some dumbass will reply to this defending one or both of these devices, with a lot of technobabble they don't understand, because it doesn't actually mean anything.)
$100 speaker cables.
$8000 speaker cables. (Current flamewar going on between manufacturers of the two over which is the bigger pile of steaming shit.)
Tube amplifiers.
$485 wooden volume control knobs for your tube amplifiers.
Magic markers to color the edges of your audio CDs to improve the sound.
Magic laquer to paint on your transistors.
Note that any of these claimed miracles would easily qualify for the $1,000,000 JREF prize - if they worked. None of the manufacturers, or the reviewers or editors for various audiophile magazines, has the time - maybe half an hour - to win a $1,000,000, which they all confidently claim they could win. If only they had the time.
Audiophiles are idiots.
I'm very surprised to hear compression brought out as an advantage for vinyl. In practice, compression is an ever-present concern in playing records -- in order for the needle to get enough contact, it has to be compressed using the weight of the record player arm. This physical compression of the stylus translates into (directly proportional) compression of the audio signal since the travel of the needle is reduced. Any warping or scratch on record and more compression is needed so it doesn't skip.
dude if you have vinyl forget reel to reel. record to lossless audio format with no compression It will be as good as your reel to reel and you get the portability of modern stuff.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
And of course, it's a format that's easily damaged, and wears out just by listening to it [and yes, I know you can get very expensive record players that use laser's or some such thing instead of a needle].
I'm sorry, but there are just so many things wrong with that, that I have to reply.
Vinyl is not as easily damaged as one would think. I have a pretty big vinyl collection and a reasonably sized CD collection (about 180 of them) and guess which one's I'm having trouble listening to... I can't listen to my Deftones - Adrenaline CD, because it has a few minor scratches that mess up each and every track on the CD rendering it completely and utterly useless - and that CD is only about 10 years old. Now, I've got a vinyl in my collection that's about twice as old (an old Danish children's record) which I've "borrowed" from my dad. It has been handled a lot by myself and my 4 sisters back when we were kids but it plays fine. The jacket's all torn and I know for a fact that it's been treated really, really rough. Sure, there are the occasional pops and maybe a skip or two when it plays, but if I increase the weight of the needle just a little, it plays the record in its entirety without a single skip... Now, try to do that with my Deftones CD... (Though, I'm not really that keen on listening to it any longer.)
To reiterate:
Re your wearing out issue... If you adjust the weight of the needle right (and no, it's really not that hard) and use a decent one, then you'll be able to play your records for at least as long as your CDs. Remember, CDs deteriorate as well - they don't even have to be played to get all messed up! As long as you treat your LPs reasonably, they'll last for a loooong time - at least, I have some records that are way older than myself (26 yrs) and they play just fine. Besides, CDs can't be treated all that bad either, without rendering them unplayable...
As for the laser-thingy. I can't say much, as I have never actually seen (or heard) one, but from what I've heard people say about it, the sound isn't all that good and definitely not worth it. But as I said, I have no experience with it myself. Try googling it if your interested, that's where I found some reviews back when I was checking it out.
"Live free or don't."
Dude, it wasn't your discs - the Muppet Show itself was warped!
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Actually it's damaged much more easily than you think. That 2 grams or less of tracking force translates into tens of thousands of pounds per square inch and a lot of heat from friction because the contact area of the stylus with the groove wall is so very small.
When you play a record the area contacted by the stylus gets deformed because it is softened by the heat and squeezed by the pressure. The vinyl is supposed to have a "memory" and return to its original state after maybe an hour or so, but of course it doesn't recover absolutely completely, and this damage is cumulative. If you replay the record within a few minutes then the deformed area gets deformed even further and can't recover fully from both the deformation to the original deformation and the original deformation itself. Also any teeny little speck of dust gets "welded" into the groove wall by the stylus, further altering the wiggles in the groove from their original form.
The ability to hear this damage varies from one person to another.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.