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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."
obviously this is slow news day. can we mark a whole thread useless? geez!
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Has no one noticed that human ears have an upper (and lower) limit of frequencies they can hear? People who say they can tell the difference between music sampled at 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz are either liars or a new breed of super-hearers. Who cares about the frequencies we can't here?
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Vinyl is damaged quite easily. Damage is just tolerated better (a scratch comes out as a pop/hiss which may even be hidden by the underlying hiss of the record so you just don't notice it.) CD scratches, OTOH, can make a disk not play. However, if a CD is repaired (which they can be as long as it's only the plastic that's scratched) you'll get perfect sound back out of it.
I have quite a few CDs that are 23 years old, and I have LPs that date back at least 40 years. The LPs, without a single exception, all sound pretty badly compared to CD sound: the baseline noise is audible, there's constant hiss, the highs are muted, and just generally everything sounds like it's being listened to through one of those furry mikes in the wind (you know, like on news casts during storms where the ambient sound deadening microphone cover actually adds to the background noise?) Just in case you're thinking cheap record player: it's a Pioneer 450 DL with a new Shure Type IV cartridge, and I have a replacement new Shure Type IV sitting in the closet. So no, I won't buy the "it's your equipment". It's also been played through both a mid-level Denon 3803 AV system and a high end "old" Pioneer Receiver and a Sansui 5100, all with 0.05% THDs.
The truth is: LPs sound like crap. The pressing process invariably leaves irregularities in the grooves that cause "noise". There are those that prefer the distortion caused by LPs. I have one acquaintance who loves the "warm" LP sound. He also has segmented hearing loss and can't hear the higher pitched hiss, and listens at significantly louder levels than I do. This is relevant because Higher volumes tend to wash out the ability to hear the noise, sort of like strobe/flood lights wash out subtle variations in color.
If a CD sounds "worse" than an LP, then that can be attributed solely to the lack of skill of those creating the master. I have several examples of CDs where the masters were created to compensate for LPs lower ability to recreate highs, and they sound tinny as hell on CD as they weren't remastered for digital media. It's the one time where my graphic equalizer settings actually look like a terraced hill from left to right.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.