Vinyl has the advantage of playing records at the wrong speed, which is awesome.
I have over 200 vinyl records, many more CDs, and even more mp3s. Very simply put, I love vinyl, but it is not the method of the gods. When ever I get a new vinyl record, I spin it, clean it as best I can, dust it, and record it on to my computer. Vinyl does have a certain feel, a sound to it that I love, but they are such a bitch to clean and keep dust free, every single piece of dust is a pop in the sound. There are so many ways to muddle and mess up the sound with vinyl, it's depressing. Grounding the turntable drives me fucking batty. There is a natural distortion that a lot of people mistake as being a fatter, richer sound. It isn't, it's all about what you are use to. Digital IS superior, no way around it. It's clearer, more durable, and much more manipulable. Now CD quality sound is not as good as digital audio can get, remember. 24 and 32 bit sound codes exist. I use 24 bit WAVs to record my vinyl records--I'd like to see someone tell the difference. Each music file takes up about 300mbs of space though.
It also has a lot to do with what it was recorded in. If you listened to that beetles album a hundred times in analog, it's not going to sound anything like a digitally cleaned up CD. In the 1980s when CDs were first coming out, the re-recording technology was so shitty, CDs got a pretty bad rap. Bottom line is--with new songs, that are recorded in digital recording studios with digital sound equipment, you really are not going to hear the difference between a CD and a vinyl.
The only difference you could really hear there is just in the way the songs are mixed. You could for example take the original vinyl recordings and put them on a CD, and they would sound exactly the same to the human ear.
The human ear is incapable of picking up the differences between analogue and digital audio, as long as both are from the same mix (of course the quality of a vinyl recording will degrade after being played so then a difference may become noticable :v: )
[QUOTE=TheGuru;20989491]You could for example take the original vinyl recordings and put them on a CD, and they would sound exactly the same to the human ear.[/QUOTE]
you would have to compress them into digital... so that argument is a failed one
ownership of vinyls are much cooler than a bit of scratched up broken plastic cased cd albums :]
[QUOTE=sloppy_joes;20977442]Over compressed Mp3s sound like shit, but FLACs are the real deal.
Most of my music is 320 kb/s or FLAC.[/QUOTE]
I know I'm really fucking late on this but you piss me off with this.
The most you'd ever need bitrate-wise is 260 unless you have really fucking expensive speakers.
There is no point in having 320 kb/s mp3's/FLAC files taking up so much more space when you can just have 260 kb/s and not be able to tell the difference of anything past it.
[editline]09:42AM[/editline]
Cosmic duck even wrote a survey about it.
Digital is way more practical, Vinyl might give a small improvement but it isn't remotely worth it.
I've never used vinyl, but I really don't give two shits about minute differences in the audio
I'm thinking about getting vinyl just for the fun of it, but i'm not gonna stop using mp3s
wav is still the real deal
Even though I honestly can't tell a difference between mp3s and Vinyl, Vinyl had the advantage of me being able to scratch the record while pretending I'm a DJ.
[editline]10:15AM[/editline]
I'm begging to think the reason people get FLACs are because they like to show it off to raise their e-peen.
My Dad was a DJ, we have a garage full of old motown and disco vinyls... I've spent hours just sorting through them... easy to get lost in. Great sound too. I love CD's as well, I never DL my music, support the industry and that since i want to go into it. I prefer to have something to look at with my music, not just pixels and data
[QUOTE=winsanity;20977343]Short and simple - mp3's kill music quality.[/QUOTE]
God damn it the first page is full of idiots who think this is true
If only most people read past the first 40 posts
I hate it when people say Vinyls have better [I]quality[/I]
I mean what the fuck
It sounds warmer/whatever, but the quality isn't better bro.
[QUOTE=bigdoggie;20991867]I hate it when people say Vinyls have better [I]quality[/I]
I mean what the fuck
It sounds warmer/whatever, but the quality isn't better bro.[/QUOTE]
also it's good to note that warmer sound is actually distortion and lost frequencies
Protip: get some decent audio hardware if you're listening to flac rather than 320kbps mp3.
Michael Jackson's Thriller actually does thrill when played on vinyl...
320Kbps mp3 is the way
[QUOTE=winsanity;20977343]Short and simple - mp3's kill music quality.[/QUOTE]
CD's use WAV, not mp3.
I'm ordering Stadium arcadium on 4-vinyl set because the CD version was mastered awfully. (A different mastering engineer did the vinyl) [b]It has nothing to do with the medium in this case[/b]
Now if only they'd re-master Californication - That album is RUINED by the loudness war.
Just to note, has it been mentioned that CD is AIFF at [b]16Bit[/b] 44,100hz.
Pisses me off because I am capable of exporting 196Khz masters at 32bit.
I hate people who argue over this. Let me set this straight. In terms of you hearing exactly what the musicians recorded down to the smallest detail, digital is best.
Analogue is better if it's what you're used to, or if you enjoy that "warm" sound. The warm sound comes from imperfections in the vinyl, not some snake oil sound improvement.
To clear one more thing up because there's a lot of confusion, .wav and .flac files are the equivalent to a few files on your computer and a .rar/.zip/.7z of those files. It still contains all the same information, but is compressed down to a smaller size.
The difference between .flac and .mp3, which is also a compressed file, is that .flac still contains all the same information, and can be "turned back" into a .wav file, while a .mp3 file is achieved by cutting out parts of the audio that generally can't be heard.
If you like saving space, and don't care about those tiny tiny details in your music, stick with .mp3. A good 192kbps bitrate is enough to sound exactly the same as the cd to most people, go higher if you want. If you like that warm sound, or feel the imperfections in the music make it better or unique, stick to vinyl.
For those wondering, I buy CDs, not vinyl, and keep my files in 320kbps for listening on the go, with a .flac back up, just in case those CDs crap out on me.
[QUOTE=Solstix;20999464]
Analogue is better if it's what you're used to, or if you enjoy that "warm" sound. The warm sound comes from imperfections in the vinyl, not some snake oil sound improvement.
[/QUOTE]
bollox, its due to a better bass response and a bigger response to higher frequencies, I don't even understand this "warm" sound people talk about
[QUOTE=Tezza1234;20999364]I'm ordering Stadium arcadium on 4-vinyl set because the CD version was mastered awfully. (A different mastering engineer did the vinyl) [b]It has nothing to do with the medium in this case[/b]
Now if only they'd re-master Californication - That album is RUINED by the loudness war.
Just to note, has it been mentioned that CD is AIFF at [b]16Bit[/b] 44,100hz.
Pisses me off because I am capable of exporting 196Khz masters at 32bit.[/QUOTE]
This is a very good point. The mastering on most CDs sucks. If you get old CDs that were mastered before the loudness war, they sound amazing. Relics by Pink Floyd is amazing, as well as any Alan Parsons CD (he does his own mastering and engineering).
[QUOTE=Akayz;20999689]bollox, its due to a better bass response and a bigger response to higher frequencies[/QUOTE]
No it isn't. You're making shit up.
[QUOTE=Akayz;20999689]I don't even understand this "warm" sound people talk about[/QUOTE]
So despite not knowing what someone means, you feel like contesting them? Stop talking about shit that's infinitely over your head.
You're confusing a set of worn records and the character of your sound system for a "quality" boost that isn't actually present in the audio.
You can't have it all
gotta choose between quality and quantity
[QUOTE=Akayz;20999689]bollox[/QUOTE]
bollox?
[QUOTE=Akayz;20999689]bollox, its due to a better bass response and a bigger response to higher frequencies, I don't even understand this "warm" sound people talk about[/QUOTE]
You are aware vinyl has LESS bass response than other formats for the simple fact of physics? - Did you know McCartney wanted his bass louder on many Beatles records but they couldn't because of the limitations of vinyl?
That's why the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization]RIAA Equalisation curve[/url] and subharmonic synthesizers are used - Look it up.
I have Nevermind on CD and I just compared what it sounds like to the supposed "CD Version" on the youtube video. The actual CD sounds much fuller than the proclaimed "CD Version" and closer to the "vinyl" version.
Therefore I rule that this youtube test is moot, and the sound samples were intentionally modified to make one sound better than the other according to the bias of the person who created the test.
I still buy vinal. A lot of bands around here print vinals because its cheaper. no preference my dad swears on vinal but I am fine with my entire music collection right on my Ipod that i can have at any time without having to dig through albums.
[QUOTE=Dr Pepper;20977971]WAV has good quality but the file size gets huge.[/QUOTE]
Take WAV at a sampling-rate of 16 kHz and a bit-depth of 8 bit and it sounds like shit.
It all depends on the sampling-rate and especially bit-depth - And for lossy compression on their algorithms for it.
Lossless compressed 192 kHz sampling-rate at 24 bit sounds brilliant, if recorded correctly (and if your sound-device can play it at these settings).
Holy shit, the first video I could hear a massive difference... it sounded like the CD rip had just been put through a compressor and lost a couple of decibels...
Oh, as for FLAC rips - most of the time they're from CDs, so the quality's going to be however good 1,400kbps at 44100Hz sample rate and a 24-bit depth sounds. So it's kinda' redundant to rip a CD to flac files at 96,000 Hz and 65,536kbps and 32-bit. From my experience FLAC stores the audio from sub-bass frequencies... listening to .flac rips of Alabama 3 made my headphones shake. They don't do that with my mp3s :3
Yeah I suppose flac and vinyl and hifis made of quartz will never take off, and we'll continue to produce audio designed to sound good on shitty ipod earphones, but fuck it, if you want to hear music the best, go to a festival :v:
EDIT: and if I could afford to, I'd totally get a pair of magnetic decks and buy all my drum & bass/dubstep/hendrix collection on vinyl. Had so much fun in my old school when my mate brought his decks in and we mixed a record called "Classical music for tots" with Granite by Pendulum :v: it was great hearing "the cat leapt out of the long grass" during the drop in the song. That's why vinyl is great. You can have fun with vinyl; you have this tangible, physical object to play with which alters the music you're listening to... it takes so much more effort to mix two mp3s together, and you can't really scratch with them either :v:
I listen primarily to vinyl records and cassette tapes, but most of the arguments are moot, because they've been digitally mixed before printed onto vinyl.
[editline]01:32PM[/editline]
Now 'a days that is.
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