LP Records

Welcome to the world of vinyl!

Indeed, records offer analog audio. It's warm, organic, and when there is a little tiny bit of dust, it adds some character.

Lots of electronic music (the stuff I usually listen to) is still pressed on vinyl records as well, but since many club DJ's still spin vinyl, and the production numbers are limited, the records I'd really like to buy are kind of pricey, often times 10-19 USD per LP.

My family has some classics, though. Among my favorites are Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon and Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells. My parents have some really eclectic stuff from the 70's and early 80's, but not much after that since they were early adopters of Compact Disc.

My parents' collection is a generation behind yours. They have a lot of Beatles, Joan Baez and eclectic folk (Cathy Fink and Duck Donald).

. . . you need to light a strobe candle to do justice to that one!

jt ;-D

I've always dismissed these sorts of "vinyl is God" type claims as audiophile nonsense... but I'd be interested in hearing how you quantify claims like this... I know from my own experiences of comparing vinyl LPs to a CD that you sure do get "more" in the sound - notably extra hissing, crackling and popping noises

It's been a good fifteen years since I've used or listened to a vinyl record. The tactile elements, as well as the ability to see more of what's going on tend to make it a more enjoyable experience. I think I'll have to find myself some LPs and a record player when I get around to putting together that component stereo system I've been meaning to since 2001.

Clean records and a new needle don't crack and hiss. I think it it's logical that an analog recording could store more information than a digital recording. From http://www.mio.co.za/article.php?id=152:

I think the appreciation for vinyl is like the appreciation for film over digital photography. All those little imperfections, and most importantly that slight softening that comes from an analog medium, create a 'warmer' product that may play on our emotions more than a digital reproduction. The better sound is perceptual, not factual.

Given that vinyl's frequency response is hindered by its very nature of being analog (ie - it's lossy, and each copy from original taping to mixdown, to vinyl master, to LP loses information, plus raises the signal-to-noise ratio) it does hold more information, but that is not the same as saying it offers a better reproduction.

I've still got all my vinyl, and in 20-30 years when my CDs are deteriorating to an unplayable state, I'll likely still have all my vinyl.

Vinyl hits higher highs, and lower lows. And from what I hear, if you were able to boost the sound enough, you could hear a fly on the wall in another room. Plus, if you got one of those $30k+ Laser Vinyl machines (uses lasers to read the tracks) it's better than CDs. Of course, it is only as good as your speakers

In 28 years of classical music broadcasting, necessarily beginning with vinyl only, and in 52 years of owning, using and (recently) transcribing mono and stereo LPs, I have never seen the faintest evidence in favour of either of these assertions. Assertions, because neither is demonstrable. Certainly not more in quantity. Equally certainly not more in frequency range. Absolutely certainly not more in fidelity to original sound.

Even careful, meticulous preparation—using professional disc-cleaning equipment—of vinyl for broadcast from high-quality turntables equipped with professional-grade styli and electronics cannot eliminate spurious signal arising from anti-skate forces, intermodulation between grooves, regelation effects, and mismatch of equalization during recording and playback. To those, then add noise from the inevitable residual detritus in the groove.

As for the likelihood that a vinyl master could be, even if the cutter could accurately reproduce sounds from 0.1Hz to 44kHz, relied on to reproduce the original sound frequencies and amplitudes by a stamping process, of what musical value are rumble, friction noise and intermodulation products? By contrast, a CD can be engineered to reproduce all frequencies as faithfully as microphones permit, at accurate relative levels, if anyone were mad enough to do it. For whom? For the delectation of termites and bats? But, of course, all things are possible to the audiophiles who can hear adventitious oxygen molecules in metallic copper wires ...

The author of the quoted piece might have appeared to be better-informed about the nature and utility of frequency range in sound recordings if he had read more and written less.

de

I would suggest reading the writeup at http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1543016. I cannot fairly comment on the sound quality, because I have a fairly good CD system, while the only vinyl system I've heard recently is a tacky combo cd/cassette/vinyl player. It is my opinion that CD is almost always good enough, and DVD-Audio is certainly much better than any record ever made. Of course, this is meaningless when the music you want only comes on LP, like my beloved SOHODOLLS.

Wow, I've not heard this subject for a while!

I have never liked the sound on CDs -- while it's definitely cleaner and better after heavy use than vinyl (worn recods sound horrible), it is in fact a completely different recording system.

All audio has been compressed for recording and decompressed for playback since the electronics were invented for it in the 1920s (which is why 78's sound so much better than wax cylinders). However, the geniuses who developed "digital CD recording" had to re-invent the compression alogrithms (not just digitally reproduce the older analog ones), and they missed badly. Originally, CDs sounded much like listening to a cheap infinite baffle car radio speaker through a paper towel tube. Truely horrible. Newer systems are better, but still lack both dynamic range (problems with the 50kHz sampling rate -- nothing higher than 20kHz can be recorded at all, and they are mostly clipped to less than 16kHz because "no one can hear it anyway -- not true, I can hear at least 22kHz, or used to be able to). Lower frequence is usually clipped pretty badly because "systems cannot reproduce it" to limit the dynamic range to what the CD can actually record.

The result is a very flat, overly bass emphasized drony sound quality -- almost too "clean", if you will. It could be better, but nearly all reproduction systems these days are crappy plastic infinite baffle cheesy things, so it doesn't matter. Blown out ears make it impossible to tell the difference, too.

Vinyl, on the other hand, with a decent cartridge (and there are still a few out there -- Stanton 880 I think, Shure V15, and the Japanese one I forget -- been made for 40 years now anyway) reproduce linear output from 20 hz to 30,000 hz, and if you have a decent system (ha, who makes one anymore?), you get true to recording output, plus the noise from dirt, scratches, etc.

Note that a good vinyl system takes MUCH more maintenance.....

If you have never heard it, it's worth your time to find a good setup with clean records and a good linear motor drive table -- the difference may knock you over. You must have a system that produces linear output from 20 to 50,000 Hz, though, and speakers with a very flat output of similar range, otherwise it all sounds like a plastic box.

If you have been listening to hard rock on your iPod, you won't be able to hear police sirens, let alone sound quality.

I had fun with a friend up in Canada about 15 years ago -- he was astonished that the specs on my then 15 year old equipment (mostly Kenwood) were not really different than the best new stuff. I mean, really, is there an audible difference between 0.05% THD and 0.025%? Probably not!

Peter

Mike Oldfield! I still have the Tublular Bells LP that my sister was going to throw out back in the late '70's, and pull it out every now & then. A couple of years ago I digitized the album & put it on a CD (and an mp3 in iTunes), but the digital version just doesn't carry the warmth or depth of the LP. That's with it recorded at 24bits and 96kHz sampling.

Eeun's comparison of digital recording & digital photography is valid; the analog medium is able to store a lot more information that digital. With digital audio you can increase the sampling rate & size with a corresponding cost in file size. I just did an experiment with a four-minute song that was recorded live at 24bits and 96kHz. The file size for the original was about 133MB. Save that back to a more reasonable 16bits and 44.1kHz rate and the file size drops to about 40MB. The higher bit & sampling rates just make sure that you capture more of the "inbetween" sounds that analog recording naturally picks up. It's all about compromises.

I'm not one of those that will fight tooth & nail saying that analog is better than digital. In fact 99 percent of the people that listen to the recording I mentioned above wouldn't be able to perceive a difference between the two. And the vast majority of people would be perfectly happy with a decent mp3 saved from a 16bit 44.1kHz aiff file (which is the default importing a commercial CD into iTunes.)

I work with the stuff all the time and even I'd be hard pressed to hear a difference between a 24bit 96kHz and a 16bit 44.1kHz on most playback equipment. The main determinants should be the content of the recording, what the end use is going to be, and whether the user's experience will be any different with a higher or lower sampling rate. I do audio engineering on a volunteer basis for my church, and how I handle a file depends entirely on those three factors. If it's a recording of spoken word that will likely be played back on a $25 CD player, or played via QuickTime from our website on cheesy computer speakers, that requires a much lower level of quality than a recording of an orchestra that's going to be played back by our music director on high end stereo equipment. You gear the recording to the highest level of quality that you'll want or need on the back end; as long as you start out at a higher level of quality, you can downsample to a a level of quality and file size that's geared to the end user.

There is nowhere near enough headroom on a vinyl record to be able to get that kind of detail -- the noise floor is much too high. Even with a CD or SACD that would be unlikely, as noise from the recording equipment would mask out that kind of detail.

I'm with grannysmith on this one. Yes, vinyl has a "warmer" sound to it, but doesn't contain any more sonic information than a CD does -- and probably less. The signal-to-noise ratio is terrible, and the slightest speck of dust on a record can be clearly heard. Even brand new records don't sound better than CDs; I transferred a brand new record to CD the other day, and it still had pops and clicks. It was the first time that record had ever been removed from its sealed sleeve and played.

Those who claim records are more accurate sonically need to look more closely at the physics of how records work. You have tiny grooves in a piece of vinyl -- grooves so small you need a microscope to see the information they contain -- that a stylus rides around in. That stylus undergoes some serious preamplification, and the entire time you're relying on the turntable motor to be stable enough to produce no wow or flutter. On the other hand, if recorded, mixed and mastered digitally, the only time the audio from a CD hits the analog domain is at the D/A converter in the player -- it stays digital from the source mic preamp onward. There's digital error correction built into CD players to prevent pops and clicks, and wow and flutter does not exist.

And to address the "higher highs and lower lows" bit, yes, it's technically possible that records could contain extended sonic information. However, it's a moot point, as human hearing isn't able to hear outside of 20Hz-20KHz and most speakers, even expensive ones, can't reproduce outside that range. There's no use in being able to record something at 50KHz if the speakers -- and the ears -- max out at 20KHz.

. . . I'm an old fart and probably never could hear the difference. IMHO, the vinyl user interface is much more satisfying and there's no comparison in terms of cover art, but I'm kinda likin' my 100 CD changer too.

Since my ex took my 200+ LP collection as a settlement, I've not been able to really enjoy the experience. There is a new cafe here in J'Ville, though, that plays vinyl, and while it isn't as "clear" as CD, it is certainly warmer.
Still, one of the biggest gripes I hear about vinyl are scratches and skips. For what it's worth, nothing beats CD's when they go bad. Let's face it... when CD's skip, they do it oh so much better... nothing like listening to zydeco suddenly go techno....

Peace,
Rob

Another good point about LP's; the cover art became a medium unto itself, and while it's been mimicked to some extent with CD jewel case inserts, nothing beats the the size of the canvas they had to work with on an LP jacket. Some of the memorable cover art from the LP's glory days; The Eagles, The Doobie Brothers, Mike Oldfield, Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, Boston, Led Zeppelin, Rush... Who did I miss?

The Beatles: Abbey Road, Revolver, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Fleetwood Mac: Rumours, Mirage, Fleetwood Mac, Mystery To Me
Mott the Hoople: Mad Shadows, Mott the Hoople, Rock & Roll Queen
The Cars: Candy-O, Heartbeat City, The Cars
Styx: The Grand Illusion, Crystal Ball, Pieces of Eight
The Alan Parsons Project: Eve, I Robot, Tales of Mystery and Imagination
Chicago: Chicago Transit Authority; Chicago II, IV, VI, VIII, X, 13, XIV, and 16

Just from a quick peek at my record collection ... many, many more great LP covers ...

My feeling about vinyl is that

1) it's a good bargain. It used to be more so back when there weren't cheap CDs. Back in '90 when CDs were really taking off, the cheapest CDs were still $16, but the used record stores were dumping LPs for $2-3. Since I was a student and had no money, it was perfect timing, and a great way to build up a music collection cheaply. I still cart all those LPs around, much to the consternation of my wife.

In the decade since, library sales have also been a great place to pick up interesting LPs, often for a quarter. Which leads me to-

Thought #2)that it's a shame that so many records have been dumped and destroyed just because the medium is obselete and deteriorates. The performances on them can still be enjoyed, even at inferior fidelity. A lot of classical LPs haven't been reissued, and when the library decides it's getting rid of those bulky records, that's it, they're gone. You'll never be able to hear them again, because they were sold or junked. Maybe there is a glut of classical recordings out there, but if I want to hear how a particular performer or ensemble played a piece before the 80s, I have to hope it's been reissued.

In a sense, the arrival of CDs was wonderful, but I think it partially distracted from the actual performances; suddenly having a "DDD" recording was just as important as the performance itself, at least to some people. Lord knows there was a flurry of recording activity to get digital product out on the shelves, and not all of it was great. Thankfully, I think that the novelty has worn off, and it isn't really an issue anymore.

Speaking of album covers, I had a look though this site of Roger Dean's work for various artists.

Incredible stuff. A lot of it shows up elsewhere in pop art books, sci-fi book covers, and there's a slew of rip-offs out there too.

But will you still have, or be able to get, the equipment to reproduce satisfactory sound from them? What this thread has shown is that many people prefer the sound that they recover from vinyl. They are at perfect liberty to do so. Their emotional responses to their music require no defence. What is not intellectually defensible is then to ascribe technical or æsthetic superiority to the chain of events—all the way between performer and listener—of which vinyl is an important, but not solitary component.

Microphones and loudspeakers plague storage and reproduction of music in the digital domain also. But be in no doubt that it is possible to record sound more accurately with digital means, with greater headroom and fewer mechanical hindrances to recording and reproduction quality. If any person has come to prefer the imperfections of the whole vinyl experience, just let him not pretend that that is anything but personal preference. It is not physical reality.

de

is there any way to record on a blank vinyl record, use it instead of tapes for my apple iie.

There used to be such things as phonograph lathes, and in fact I have a few blanks in my collection just for novelty's sake. But I'm sure they were as rare as hen's teeth even back in the day. Good luck finding one 40 years after the fact.

. . . I think eeun's right about the photography comparison in more ways than one. When I want to do photography, I love film and my collection of classic interchangeable lens rangefinder gear or the Nikon F bag full of fixed focal length lenses. All of the above are battery free and require the use of hand held meters, separate flash units etc. When I just want to snap a piccie or two, the digital camera with zoom lens and built in flash is the only way to go.

When I want to really listen to music, it's usually the LPs I grab, when I just want some background music, I hit the random button on the CD changer.

jt

nothign beats naustalgia like a Victrola system. THAT is what I like. Call me a sucker, but i just LOVE old technology, Old Computers, Old electronics, old Music system, even the Great Oldies music. But the victrola takes me back further than I was born. (like about 70 years before) and I can imagine my mom's family listening to that thing. When my grandfather died, we got the O scale train set, and the victrola (and a few other things) and the thing I enjoy most, is the victrola. Which nothing beats the high pitch sounds.

And the Scratchs, Pops and hisses from the records make it feel more authentic. I don't think CD's can appropriatly reproduce the way the old systems are like. Forgive me for thinking this, but I HARDLY doubt that the next generation are going to view CDs like I view my Record players. I just think CDs are for portability, and the records make better home systems for Stereos.

One thing, I doubt that the CD stuff will be around in the next 50 years, as the components they are made of are crap. That even goes to the best system.

We have a bose system, and we have had to have the main console replaced for logic board failure, and the Subwoofer had a capacitor leak that disabled it. And all we had to pay for this was $4000!

I am sickened that even the BEST stuff is just components. People don't value quality these days. This nation is becoming a disposable society. I think i will keep hold of my analog systems. They seem to be more reliable.

For the record, Bose isn't "the best stuff". I find Bose to overemphasize the bass, but they are good little speakers. I would say that B&O is the best system setup, but you can get more value for your money with some more obscure brands.

Bose EQs the hell out of their systems. I've worked with a lot of Bose stuff, and from experience the only time they're useful is for sound reinforcement in a very reverberant environment. For home speakers, you can do much better for much less money.

This would be why Applefritter is great.

I've had opportunity to listen to some very nice equipment on both sides of the fence. My system used to be pretty decent on the digital side, and my neighbor was old school with a very nice vinyl-centric system, and some great LP's to go with it. Indeed vinyl has a different sort of texture to my ears, and a likeable one, but you'd be hard pressed to convince me that I can't get a more faithful playback out of digital means.

That doesn't, however, mean that there isn't a place for vinyl. I've got some neat stuff on vinyl (and no turntable right now), and long for the experience of looking at the cover art, carefully taking out the record, cleaning it, and gently setting it on that Rega Planar III or B&O I'll get from eBay someday. For me it's the whole package- thinking about what I was doing the last time I took this record out, the fact that my parents used to play it, the fact that I scored this copy of Iron Butterfly from the Goodwill pile, and the pops and stuff. I don't get hung up on the Ford and Chevy part- 'cause I can't afford to.

It's kinda like my love of shortwave radio. Talk about old school. Shouldn't the net be a better way to get music and news from anywhere on the planet? Sure. But the experience of cajoling a 50 year old tube radio that started out life in the Korean War into playing music and such from some backwater in Africa cannot be duplicated by any other means. Same thing with me playing a 30 year old John Prine LP.

my $0.02.

Enjoy your records, if nothing else it's fun- scratches, pops, and all.

Mike

Mostly because of price. Labels like Dischord Records are still putting out new vinyl and it tended to be cheaper than CD's. Then again their CD's are almost always $8-$9 a piece so maybe that isn't a good comparison. But for the most part I've found new vinyl to usually be cheaper. But then again they usually come from smaller labels. Really the analog v. digital debate is just like the Mac v PC...apples and oranges in my opinion...whatever it takes for you to rock is fine by me.

... on what is wrong with digital photo, at least B&W.

As far as the whole vinyl/CD thing goes:
They each have thier own strengths and weakneses. For me vinyl usually wins the coin toss for three reasons;
1. Nobody is going to steal it.
2. To me It sounds the same as a CD, if not better.
3. 1970's Genesis collection on vinyl ~$20, on CD $150+.

Older stereo components were of better build quality. The components were spaced further apart on the circut boards, and as a result you had less cross talk. Also the switches, pots, and transformers were generally of better quality. Of course you also need to take into account the manufacturer. The absolute best fisher will never sound as good as the worst McIntosh(not an Apple).

As far as turntables go you can still get a decent model new without breaking the bank. How? DJ tables, that's how. My turntable was $150 brand new from a local music(guitar type) store, and is of FAR superior quality than the $125 wonder at best buy. Adjustable everything, everything that should be metal is, I can get repair parts for it easily, etc.
The best buy wonder on the other hand? once it breaks, it's done. go buy a new one. My only suggestion would be if you buy any turntable that you get a good cartridge and needle to go with it. And saphire needles are easier on your vinyl than daimond ones.

BTW, digital photography will never be able to do what B&W film can. It is an inherent limitation in digital technology.

"I never saw a gold miracle of science that didn't go from a blessing to a curse" -by Sting

Wow! A huge discussion!

Notice I not once said one is higher fidelity or higher quality than the other.

The wonderful thing about being an audiophyle is that you have your own taste. Cigar afficionados will never agree on "the best cigar ever made", zymurgists will never agree on the perfect winemaking process, and in any given group of fine arts zealots, you'd be hard-pressed to find 100% agreement as to who the best sculptor of the 18th century was.

Vinyl to me sounds more organic and warm similar to Film Vs. Digital Photography as mentioned above. Regardless of which one is capable of producing sound that's more true to the live performance, there will always be people on both side of the fence as to which is more pleasing to the ear. It's always going to be a matter of personal taste.

It's been said before, but this is the most simple. There are techincal reason both pro and con for each. In the end, none of it matters to anyone why someone likes one better than the other.

Of course there are the ego-stoking goals of audio reproduction "perfection" on both sides that are so wrong headed to the way the universe operates I can hardly begin to form coherent arguments without a lot of back pedaling to all the inherent flaws of even attempting to perfectly reproduce audio.

"Audiophiles" tend to irk me with what they can try to convince others of anything that their superstitions of playback can achieve. The old "better ears" argument has some merit but, if it's to that point, the arument is moot for anyone that doesn't have *those* ears.

the thing about all recording is you lose something some times a lot
(tapes and 8-tracks)and sometimes less (like cds and records) the reson I like records more is the fact that the sound reprodution is
better becouese the song is recorded right to the groves of thr record
but cd change all the sound into 1 and 0 and you lose more but it is not a big deal not many can tell the diffence in sound and besides records ware out and the neetle can get old fast these are the resons the cd got so popular and records fell back in sales plus most lissoners like the smaller size so it makes sence to use cds but most
pros still like records

The sound may be "in the grooves," but every time you play the dang thing, it gets ground down a bit more and you lose sound. With digital, nothing gets lost on repeated playback unless there is damage to the surface. it's entirely possible to keep CDs for decades and they will still sound perfect. I've still got some of the first CDs I ever bought, over 10 years ago, and many don't have a single scratch of any significance. Play a record many times a week for a decade and you get a nearly worthless piece of vinyl.

The basic design of a record is an inherent flaw in it's reproduction capabilities. Every time after the first playing gets worse and worse. Period.

And just how may songs do you play many times a week for a decade?

Jon wrote:

... Play a record many times a week for a decade and you get a nearly worthless piece of vinyl.

The basic design of a record is an inherent flaw in it's reproduction capabilities. Every time after the first playing gets worse and worse. Period.

All right. A teensy-weensy bit overstated, at a conservative 3,650 plays. But Jon's point still holds. At the tip pressure involved, the vinyl melts, and solidifies more-or-less in its former groove pattern as soon as the stylus passes. The 'regelation' mentioned above. If the vinyl doesn't melt, it will be abraded through lack of lubrication between itself and a hard, hard stylus. Either way, the groove wall and valley—stereo requires side-to-side and hill-and-dale modulation—is a big ask for any mechanical contraption to follow with absolute fidelity, time after time, without degrading the original. And it does degrade the original.

None of this need dampen anyone's enthusiasm for the resulting sound quality, if it please them. However, awareness of the physics of sound recording and playback should lessen anyone's willingness to claim greater fidelity for vinyl. It simply ain't greater.

de

Until I got an iBook in mid-late 2002 and iPod for Christmas in 2003 I had used a CD changer. That is a solid decade of use for a few CDs, such as my copy of STPs "Core," which was one of the first 3 CDEs I ever bought. STP is still one of my favs. It was in my changer for quite some time. Then the iBook came along and the iTunes ripping started, slowly. Then the ipod came along and I really just ripped everything I cared to listen to and loaded it on there. I haven't played CDs much in the last 2 years or so, unless I'm in a car with a CD player and no iPod at hand.

Maybe I should take a pic of the surface of the STP CD... It's a kinda rare no label disc.

ax0n asserts that...

Zymurgists will never agree on the perfect BEER making process.

ENOLOGISTS will never agree on the perfect winemaking process.

(And, for the record -- no pun intended -- viticulturalists will never agree on the perfect vineyard practice.) (But your point is well-taken and duly noted!)

I do notice one very amusing characteristic of older analog recordings re-released on compact disc. You can HEAR the processing at work. You can HEAR the compression and limiting on the vocals, the drums and other transients...the Fairchilds and the Altecs pumping and sucking. You can HEAR the analog technology compensating for the limited dynamic range of the original source material (tape) and final destination (vinyl). You can HEAR the characteristic distortion of a too-loud sound oversaturating the recording tape.

With the dynamic range available in the digital domain and the instantaneous "moving fader" options available during mixdown, it's hard to imagine ever needing that kind of limiting or compression anymore.

tony b.

I’m not sure where this thread got lost but going back to the original post, I have to point out that vinyl is a medium and CD is a medium—nothing more than that. The problem is sound mixing. I personally and strongly prefer an LP mix to CD because they screw around with the mix and it becomes an issue of rendition and not of quality. CD as a music medium and so much better than cassette and 8-track (yes I’m that old) for listening to in the car, which is the only time where I can actually appreciate all the subtle nuances of the piece). I have to believe that there are very few CD mixings that are any good at all (notable exceptions being some Eagles and Steve Miller) where I actually preferred the CD and the CD was even faithful to the original mix.

I didn’t really get into the LP to CD thing until a few years ago. Before that time I had always just used cassette tapes to copy LPs (bad bad). It does seem to me that the computer capture and editing software are only a smaller part of the whole picture and that the original song quality remains with the LP.

If I may humbly suggest:

Some hints and ideas about LP to CD transfer.

http://dvautier.home.comcast.net/audio/audio.htm

And some personal thoughts:

http://dvautier.home.comcast.net/lp/lp.htm

And capturing old records:

http://dvautier.home.comcast.net/records/records.htm

Hey,

In the world of audio and audiophiles (and everything else) there are always distinctions being made about sound quality and one mode versus another. It reaches its hair-splitting, nit-picking zenith with the collectors of early Beatles LPs who insist on the mono rather than the stereo versions. In this case, the collectors point out that George Martin and the Beatles actually supervised the mix for the mono records and the stereo mix may have been done by "outside" engineers at the record label. My beef with CDs and DVDs is that they seem to scratch more than vinyl and are less dependable than tape. But yeah, there's nothing like that sound of a needle dropping on to wax.

William

www.williamahearn.com

Just as digital video is less than film, Analog sound recordings will always kick digital's butt in sound quality.

Sure CD's usually sound cleaner but that's because parts of the recording have been cleaned up ie:removed. As mentioned with a good stylus and clean album it will be clear. The only recorded music I have ever heard sound better than vinyl is a reel to reel recording.

Hey,

Always is a long time. As for film, I watch more flicks than more than most people and I still love the real black & white film stock used in cinema noir and the French new wave among others. It's only a matter of time until digital reaches the complexity of analog. They said digital cameras would always be dinky devices and they have a long way to go before they rival the prints of Ansel Adams or Steiglitz but it's not beyond belief that they will get there. In the last five years they've come a long way . . .

William

www.williamahearn.com

They seem to be crisp, and able to bring out a surreal effect to them. I recently put a couple of LPs to CD, and found that it still didn't quite capture it right. Even if I played it back on the same stereo that the record is hooked up to, i still can't make it play back right in the digital form. The pops and hiss make it fun to listen to, even if it is hindering what the LP sounds like a bit, it still makes it fascinating to listen to.
I have said on another forum about how I had recently gotten a Denon Record Player, and how my whole family fell all over it. We still use it every day, and have never tired of it.
Another thing I find, as you mentioned, that the CDs don't stay true to the LP. Things like how tracks merge, what order they appear in, or worse, where they will take off part of it to fit it in a certain beat. I am quite disgusted that they would adultor the way the original LP was setup. I have noticed on several records I have vs. the Actual cd, there is stuff missing out of the cd that was in the record. Things like song order changes, or they added or subtracted time. This makes it hard to listen to after hearing the original. It's kinda like listening to a bad band, do a really bad remix of a song you love. It drives you mad.
Anyways, all asides, i would rather have my LP Records compared to CDs or digital music. Since I have heard the LPs, i now notice small glitches in stuff like MP3s, even at the 160-192Kb/s bit range. It just bugs me now. And i wasn't like that before I heard music on my new turntable

http://paia.com/proddetail.asp?prod=9802K

http://www.reprise.com/host/circuits/riaa_preamp.asp

Why did no one address the fact that what the average person uses to record LP's is the wrong impedance, the wrong preamp, the wrong EQ settings (see above for the proper RIAA [not the evil branch-the engineering branch] compensated preamp.

The average sound card is garbage for recording and worse for recording LP's.

This site has a GREAT explanation

http://www.platenspeler.com/background/riaa/uk_riaa_background_1.html

Address those issues, then do a side by side comparison.

Don't forget that some LPs were setup the way they were due to the limitations of the LP. They may not have been as the artist wanted them to be due to the time per side, etc. With a CD it is easier to fit things in a particular order as you have only the total time to worry about, not the time per side. A CD remaster may end up being more as an artist envisioned than the original LP was. Ordering may also reflect what the production company felt was a more "sellable" album at the time and set the order to fit "better" tracks at the start of each side, regardless of how the artist envisioned the album.

I agree with what William has to say. Vinyl has different EQ than CD audio, and will therefore sound different. Some people will prefer it and some people won't like it.

What about a quality comparison between vinyl and SACD? DVD-Audio? How does a format with vastly improved quality compared to vinyl and CD sound to audiophiles?