Years ago I was at record industry (seen in the "footage from Holland"), and Rinus (man in the footage) let us compare the sound to the cutting head and the sound directly played from the lacquer with an Ortofon FX type of bonded elliptical stylus. No difference on Genelec monitors.
This sounds like a flawed test since you can't hear anything accurately on Genelecs with their nasty ports. Try again with some NS10 or Auratones. Ideally you should be building your own monitoring system, I know where you can get some plans.
@@jeffsymons7084 I used Auratones to hear what the mix would sound like on crappy car speakers. The NS10s were used to see what it would sound like on typical home speakers. That’s what you think is better?
@@jeffsymons7084 How would ns10,'s or auratones be better for this type of comparison? They're generally for focusing on the mid range and are used for seeing if a mix will sound good on poor quality speakers. For such a comparison wouldn't you'd want the highest fidelity speaker with the flattest frequency response? Unless the test is that the difference is so obvious that even low quality speakers would pick it up.
What makes vinyl enjoyable to me is not the fact that it sounds better or even different, it's the fact Im listening to music that comes from wiggly grooves cut into a plastic disc. It's just cool. Same reason why I think mechanical watches are cool. Yeah they don't keep time very well and you have to wind them all the time, but there's just something cool about a tiny analog machine that keeps time on your wrist.
Absolutely agree- this bloke came in with an attitude against records- if you call it vinyl you are new to it and need to spend several years listening to records and reading the lovely big sleeve notes and lyrics… it’s physical, emotional and ownership joy
As a producer, to me, the ideal medium is one where I can hear, at a consumer level, what I’m hearing in the control room as I mix. In other words, I’m hearing what I’ve put on the medium, not the medium itself. Am I hearing that on CD? Pretty darn close. 21st century formats are High-Res downloads (24-bit depth, 96 or 192 kHz sample rate) in FLAC or ALAC. With Vinyl, I am NOT hearing back what I strived to do when mixing. That medium is marred with flaws: - Quality that changes depending whether you’re close to the outer edge, or inner radius (CD or MP3 does not change) --- less dynamic range close to inner radius --- less HF close to inner radius --- Ever wonder why the last song on each side of albums from the ’60s and ’70s were ballads? --- Artists such as Peter Gabriel have complained that they couldn’t sequence the songs the way they liked, because of the medium’s flaws - THD up to 1.5%. That’s not what I’m hearing through the control room speakers. - Appalling L/R channel separation: 30 dB at best. That’s NOT what I’m hearing in the control room, and I actually have to change my mix because of the medium’s flaws. I prefer doing it myself as I have more control at the mixing stage, than at the mastering/lathe cutting stage. - 65 dB of dynamic range at best (see inner radius above as well), and that’s on limited run pressings of 1,000 or less. So I can kiss that super quiet intro or beautiful reverb tail goodbye. - Measurable wow & flutter: 0.05% at best. Those intricate triangle resonances are just going to sound great once passed through that grinder! - Frequency range is decent, but again, only on limited run pressings of 1,000 or less: 30 Hz - 20 kHz. - How about a medium which deteriorates every time you play it? You’re effectively shaving off HF content at every pass. - Snap crackle and pop. I am NOT hearing that in the control room speakers as I mix. (I hope you like my Rice Crispies commercial reference here, which summarises all the clicks and crackles due to dust and other particles contaminating the medium’s surface, the deformities/scratches inevitably induced by the user on playback, and the imperfections that were already there from the moulding process). - Tone arm resonance. I am NOT hearing that in the control room speakers as I mix. - Having to manually “wing it” if I want to locate the start of a song. No, you don’t wind an audiophile turntable backwards to cue a song start (you’d wreck the cartridge - bending its stylus right out)! - I almost forgot: you can’t have your low frequencies too loud or too wide, so let’s restrict our mixes’ creative potential because of the medium, shall we? What I love about vinyl? - The artwork. That’s never been matched, even with foldouts on some CD releases. . Other than the wear mentioned above, can withstand time quite well. MP3 at 320 kbps. On rock/pop, you really need a darn good system to be able to tell the difference with a 16-bit/44.1 kHz CD-DA file. Why has CD gotten such a bad rap then? Because people have amalgamated what’s been put on it, instead of understanding the quality of the medium itself. So let’s first list a compact disc’s characteristics (by extension, any uncompressed 16-bit 44.1 kHz audio file): - Frequency response is 20 - 20 kHz, no matter whether it’s the first, or last second of the 74 min album. I am almost hearing what I’m hearing on the control room speakers when I’m mixing. With higher sample rates, such as on the SACD, DVD-Audio or on High-Res downloads, I am finally hearing the same thing as what I’m hearing on the control room speakers when I’m mixing, as the frequency response goes far beyond that of human hearing. - Dynamic range is 82 dB without dither (albums released up to the early ‘90s) and can exceed 100 dB with dither (albums released later on). I am almost hearing what I’m hearing on the control room speakers when I’m mixing. With 24-bit High-Res downloads, and its 122 dBs or so of dynamic range, not only am I finally hearing the same thing as what I’m hearing on the control room speakers when I’m mixing… I’m actually not able to hear the noise floor as it exceeds human hearing (hence why dither in 24-bit is an idiocy if you handle your gain structure properly). - Channel separation is equivalent to the dynamic range. If on a CD, I want to pan a snare drum full left, full blast (hitting 0 FS), … I can. None of it will ever appear on the right channel (perhaps a bit of crosstalk can happen in cheap CD DACs, but it’s still close to the initial 16-bit range). On vinyl, in the best scenario, it’s also going to be on the right channel, 30 dBs quieter. That is NOT what I wanted, when mixing in the control room. - Wow & flutter: non-measurable. “OK, but I heard about this thing called jitter”. In the 21st Century, properly designed DACs reject jitter to non-measurable outcomes on the reconstructed audio signal. - THD: less than 0.001%. - Won’t wear out if you take good care when manipulating it BUT, unfortunately, has a shelf-life of about 10 years. Look up CD Rot or Disc Rot (see pictures below added in March 2020). Which is why these media belong in the 20th Century. Why are we seeing all those posts about vinyl sounding better than CD then? Short answer: because a CD has virtually no limitations, with audio quality 100% of what it can be within just 0.1 dB of its maximum admissible levels, unscrupulous record labels have played a stupid game of cramming as much RMS (perceived volume) as possible onto the CD medium: - sacrificing transients (micro dynamics). Snare drums sound like a wet fart on a plastic tarp (loosely quoting the greatest mastering engineer of all time - Sir Bob Ludwig). - sacrificing overall dynamic range (macro dynamics). The chorus isn’t louder than the verses, or the intro, because everything else is already louder than everything else. - introducing distortion. We’ve reached the supreme level of crass idiocy, as there comes a point where to be 0.5 dB louder than everyone else, you just end up distorting the audio signal. Guess what everyone else then does? Look up “CD Loudness War” for a developed explanation. You cannot do that on vinyl, even though there was a loudness war in the ’50s with jukeboxes; you cannot push a vinyl’s limitations nearly as far. You have to mix/master conservatively for vinyl, respecting a whole bunch of technical rules so that things translate well to the medium. Does the vinyl medium sound better than the CD medium? I hope I made my point that it doesn’t. Does an album mastered for loudness on CD sound better on its vinyl release? Most likely yes, as it won’t have the living daylights crammed out of it at the mastering stage. Does a properly mixed/mastered album (conservative dynamic range - i.e., not giving in to the Loudness War) released on CD sound better than the same album released on vinyl? Oh yes. By far. So what about MP3? Well, depending on everything explained above, it can sit anywhere between “slightly better than vinyl” to “worse than vinyl”. Can’t beat an uncompressed 16-bit 44.1kHz WAV or FLAC audio file. Even more so, a 24-bit 96kHz file. * From the Quora user Philippe Chambin, but is the best answer I have seen regarding to this topic.
@@leroilightning4458 Apple Music is the only music playback software I am aware of in 2025 that refuses to play FLAC files. ALAC works on Linux, Windows and Android as well as Mac OS - your choice.
The thing I appreciate most about vinyl is sitting down and listening to a whole record, instead of being tempted to skip tracks or cherry pick a single track and moving on, we've forgotten how to do that in the digital age and are thus missing out on the possibility that a track you initially don't like might grow on you and end up being your favourite track.
I was born in the late '60s and got into music when I was eleven. I loved Blondie, Boomtown Rats, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, etc. etc. etc. I used to borrow and sometimes buy 45s and albums, and because my family had a Ferguson music centre, I could tape stuff. The point is this: The compilation tape was a thing. Filleting albums was the order of the day. What would now probably be called "playlists" were something everyone did. So please don't think there was this age, a pre-digital age, a pre-streaming age, etc. - when we used to all just sit back and listen with reverence to a whole album. More often than not we'd gut the f***er, merrily hacking away at filler, discarding anything that lacked immediacy. We regarded those who chin-stroked their way through an album as passive, slavish duffers who lacked the wherewithal to make listening a more involving and active pass-time.
Well half the tracks you mean as you have to turn it over... but I know what you mean I'm the same with CD's I like to listen to the album all the way through, although I rarely play CD's I stream the flacs I've ripped I still like to listen to the whole album. I just eq until I get the sound I like... not very audiophile I know but it works for me 😀 Great video though it reinforced to me that so much is in all in the mix, and I learnt loads...
@@Unfunny_Username_389 So, true. I spent a good part of my free time as a youth back in the day making Mixtapes of select songs onto compact cassette from all of my vinyl albums, and sometimes mixing the LPs with music from CDs when they were first released as well. I had a decent Concord AM/FM Cassette Stereo in my car, as well as the tiny portable Sony Walkman WM-101 auto-reverse cassette player with Dolby NR that was barely larger than a plastic cassette case and was powered by a single AA alkaline battery. It could fit in any of my regular clothes pockets just like a smartphone does now.
Remember the asbestos fibers in the old hard vinyl industrial flooring add a little bit of excitement to your life every time you scuff them. Cancer anyone?
Fun Fact, warm sound = distortion, good sound reproduction is supposed to be as flat as possible, which is something vinyl can never achieve, this fact alone proves "audiophiles" to be douchebags
It's vinyl mastering people like. Vinyl is actually quite a limited medium, so for it to work properly, you need a pretty extreme EQ curve going in and out, compression, and some mid-side processing. it's where mastering came from in the first place . Just master like that and you'll get the sound
This is what he doesn't take into account. And where it gets confusing is that not all albums are remastered for vinyl, they're just digital records that sound bad. A fully analog remaster sounds completely different. Check out Bernie Grundman mastering and they will tell you as much.
@APMastering This can be why vinyl can sound better as well. Some of the recent Depeche Mode re masters are so damn loud that you bought the vinyl to get the no so slammed versions.
@@CaptainProton1 We also got companies that are solely catering to us like Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, Acoustic Sounds, and PS Audio's Octave Records. I personally don't mind that the original master tapes are being stored in the digital domain on a hard drive because the reels tend to deteriorate overtime and become a gooey sticky mess
Are you getting material for mastering that still has mix bus processing on it? I disable that for you folks, though might send a ref with processing if the client or you want that.
If the music was recorded onto a digital format to begin with, a.k.a., if it was never analog to begin with, then cutting onto a record can only degrade the sound quality, correct?
Actually yes. But there could be a catch. Ideally it could require additional mastering to fit LP limits. And in some cases it could make overall sound better. But you still could achieve this without LP just via proper mastring.
The thing that I've never been able to get over in regards to vinyl is just how good it can sound for what it is. It's not perfect and there are so many variables that can cause negative effects. Nonetheless it's a fun experience and it never really gets old for me.
yeah if you think about all the different factors at play and the precision required for it its kind of crazy how the magic wigglepin gives you such good sound.
@@TalesofWiltshire it's not perfect in the sense of care and ware, but it smashes the granny out of any other technology for sound quality as far as I'm concerned....
I've always preferred the sound of reel-to-reel, but while vinyl gets pops, crackles and static, tape loses its top end with each pass. HQ Digital enters the chat,
It’s a subjective battle, like tubes vs SS. How do you define better, more accurate or what sounds more pleasing to the ear? I know science says SS is less distortion but I’ll take a good tube amp anyday over SS because to my ears it sounds more natural. Others would disagree.
@@themotownboy1 - I've...for a long time...held the opinion that, the only thing that should exist digitally - is a watch. Advancing Technology is ruinous to the mechanical form. Ai is already taking over, and it won't be long before the physical realm is completely taken away from us. Humanity is sleepwalking into transhumanism 😩
@davidhilton8680 there is hope, I saw Kodak is doubling their analog film production due to rising demand, even disposable cameras making a bit of a comeback. I don’t know if it will be full on Butlerian J1hod but I bet we see something of a return to tradition among a segment of the population.
The cartridge design also makes a considerable difference, besides the stylus shape (moving coil, moving magnet, high vs. low compliance etc.) These are complex electro-mechanical systems which interact with the mass of the tone arm in producing a unique frequency response, even if the subsequent electrical RIAA equalization is perfect.
Back in 1974, I was in quality control at a Philips Deutsche Grammophon pressing plant, and we had around 6 to 8 testers on every shift. (BTW, an eccentric hole has a small amount of inaudable tolerance before Wow is heard ) Does this also happen today? I have returned some modern pressings due to bad surface noise that should have been picked up in the early stages of a pressing run, if anyone was checking. Also, what is this obsession with 180 gram? More vinyl does not make a better pressing.
when I did the QC I used to accept 0,8 mm on drums and 0,4 mm for anything containing pianos. the biggest problem where the records which sampled piano chords or loop FROM off-centred records - you could fiddle with the stamper for 4 hrs, make it sit perfectly on centre, and then the record still moaned terribly ;)
ina pressing plant everybody knows it: the thinner the disc - the better 125-130 g is the goal BUT these are difficult to make and stabilize, it's WAAAY easier to press a 250g brick of plastic to avoid later deformations so the 180g is just another bullshit invented to make the labels PAY for the excess plastic that is used ONLY to make the pressing plants' life easier.
@@BigYouDog Thanks for mentioning about 180gm vinyl, I was thinking I was missing something on this, and surely only as much vinyl is needed to make sure there's decent clearance between the grooves on both sides. My only thought was it might be less likely to warp, but couldn't see how the quality would improve.
It’s the era of vinyl that was never sent through an analog to digital converter that sounds different (1970s). Vinyl from the 1980s sounds different because it introduced a digital stage into the recording process. You must agree that music that was never ran through a A/D converter sounds different then music that was.
although in the 80s there were some terrible A/D convertors, I can't agree nowadays because its essentially impossible to "hear" good convertors. There is no sound to them. Like none.
Part of the problem is that the CD format actually ALLOWS for greater levels of loudness war brickwalling that you simply can't do with vinyl. Vinyl sort of "forces" a certain level of decency when it comes to mastering. Of course this doesn't apply if the music was already mastered digitally and then just transferred to vinyl, which as I understand happens more often than it should. 🤷
You can basically make a CD recording of a vinyl record and get the "vinyl sound" on a CD. It's basically recording the flaws of one format onto a flawless format.
so essentially the vinyl version of an album is mastered with more dynamic range than the aggressive limiting and compression that digital mastering lets engineers or record companies get away with? Hence why people preach about vinyl having “superior sound” since what they really are hearing is just their more preferred mastering of the source material.
That’s the only reason I buy records, for better dynamic range than CDs. If the CD or BluRay audio has good dynamic range I buy that every time. Sadly the loudness war continues and spoils the sound of most CD and digital releases, but there are a few CDs with acceptable mastering and Atmos seems unaffected.
An intended vinyl version may be mastered to be more dynamic, but the vinyl media (number of grooves on an LP) mean that any recording is compromised before it's committed to vinyl. My knowledge is limited but i understand that a micro-groove LP cannot reproduce deep base tones because it would limit the number of grooves on the record. So the bass is reduced on the actual LP and artificially 'added' by your hi-fi amp when you play the LP. It's called the 'RIAA effect' . Amplifiers have circuits to 'correct' the shortcomings in vinyl. Or something like that......
Back when I was a kid there was no debate about "the sound of vinyl" lol. Everyone agreed vinyl was acceptable but could be scratchy, skippy, glitchy and hissy depending on the state of the record, the needle and the turntable. When CDs came out (I heard my first in 1984) they totally blew vinyl out of the water, it was like someone had turned the lights on, CD was amazing and we all couldn't wait to get hold of one (which was sadly years later in 1990 for me when they finally became affordable). Am I nostalgic for vinyl? Some days yea. Do I think they sound better than digital? No way.
From timeline pov you’re right, but the issues of vinyl you mentioned were mainly ‘cause of bad setup and low quality equipments, similar things could happen to CDs as well, probably in other form like thin, bright, scream/ear bleeding sound etc Now it’s 2025, with all different technologies put on the table, vinyl is full of fun, full of room for tweaking and stuff, while for precision, for convenience brought by modern technology, as well as copyrights respect, streaming is the way to go. CDs are in the midway house unfortunately.
Totally agree, I had hundreds of vinyl albums of varying quality and the nosie, pops, hiss, whatever and it drove me crazy. Digital makes more sense and is consistent.
@@owenjnelson-fb9mgOk but I've got CDs made in the 1980s, transcribed direct from the master tapes, no remastering and they still play fine and sound just fine & worth more & more as original transcriptions become harder to find. Sold one for $280 last year.
Vinyl sounds OK on the first play. But for any long term use, forget it. Not sure about CD rot. I have owned many CD players over the years. Got my first one in 1986. Bought my first CD which was new music at the time so it was mastered for CD. Masters for vinyl have to be equalized to compensate for the format's flaws, especially the bass, they cannot make the grooves in the record big enough for low end bass. This CD sounded great in 1986 and it sounds exactly the same today, since it has been properly cared for in 2025, almost 40 years of perfect music playback. Vinyl recordings have always been and still are an inferior music playback format for hearing quality sound. Which to me is what matters most. I am glad CDs are hidden away when the play, safe and free from collecting dust and dirt etc.
Can't argue with that at all, I have Adventures of Stevie V on Vinyl and CD the Vinyl is of the best I have, virtually no crackles, sound is clean and I can't tell any difference in high end but it has more punchy bass over CD, When I get my SLP-1200 working I'll properly test both with SL-1210mk2
I think the "sound of the vinyl" is more like the style of mixing/mastering of the 70s and 80s. The lack of overused multiband compressors targeting -6dBFS.
To me in the 80s most LPs sounded a bit brighter than the CD counterpart of its time. But now I do not hear any real difference in the sound quality. The days of over compressing audio into a solid brick I think is over. When an LP is pressed now they are starting from the same source and virtually sound the same.
@@Albee213 I disagree with "solid brick is over" at least for "contemporary" music. Listen to any pop, rock, hip hop and they're all pushed trough a brick limiter. Exceptions may occur and some genres might be affected less than others. The "loudness war" may have reached it's peak (literally) however allegedly "loud" still sells better, so if you look at current audio wave forms it's all still very much compressed into lifeless bricks.
When you A/B switch for the purpose of making auditory perception comparisons between the two, you should always try to avoid switching at the beginnings and ends of measures and phrases in the music (e.g., on the downbeat of the first beat of a measure). Instead, make the switches in the middle of measures and phrases when the music itself is not changing by period inherently. This will maximize your ability to discern a difference in sounds like those being tested here. Melodic, harmonic, chordal, and rhythm changes are most highly correlated with the beginnings and ends of measures and phrases in music, so these changes in the music are systematically confounded with what you're trying to test perceptually and can mask the psychophysical detection of acoustic differences. There are many published papers on this in auditory perceptual science. Cheers.
Thats what I was thinking when listening to those tests. I was waiting for those loud drums to be played back on the eliptical stylus, but they never managed to appear...
Vinyl's "sound" is dependent on the production of the vinyl and supporting gear. If you recorded your album in analog, using analog instruments. Use an analog delay circuit in the vinyl cutting machine, instead of a digital one. Played said album on an all analog turntable, using a decent analog phono preamp. Then, YES, yes your vinyl will sound warm and entirely different than spotify. That's usually not the case though. Most people don't even know how the machines that cut vinyl work.
It is not (only) the quality of the preamp (more precisely, its RIAA eq curve), but the combination of the capacitance of the preamp (and the cables) and the inductance of the cartridge that determines much of the sound. MM cartridges have a high frequency resonance at the end of the audible spectrum, or closely above it. The position and strength of this resonance strongly influence the frequency curve in the audible range.
I assume that all the albums you played were recorded digitally. I believe comparing a digital source to a vinyl record cut from a digital master is pointless. Instead, you should compare a digital transfer to a vinyl record cut or remastered directly from the original analogue tapes to determine if there are any differences. Any vinyl record produced before 1980 is analogue, or you can choose a vinyl record from Analogue Productions.
You are absolutely correct, the test carried out makes no sense. Because the source is digital and you will have to make an additional conversation for the vinyl, degrading the audio quality.
Well technically a vinyl record does have a particular sound. Thump a vinyl record and thump a cd and they both have a completely different sound even if both are blank. Seriously though you are correct in that it is the process chain of any format that matters the most. The thing with vinyl record playback is that the end consumer has a significant influence on the reproduction of the recording beyond just buying equipment. Well except for people that pay others to setup the tracking geometry and force of the stylus to grove. Also, cleaning vinyl records and lowering static charge build up can make a major difference. One aspect that will always ensure that vinyl record playback will be apparent is in the silence because the stylus to moving groove relationship will always create perceptible sound.
You make some really excellent points. If a lacquer disc cut from a master tape is virtually indistinguishable from the master, then the so-called "sound of vinyl" actually comes from factors down the line, from the disc manufacturing process to the playback system. Very informative.
I have over 1500 cassettes, each with two albums on them. Mostly classical and jazz, even some 78s. We ran the turntable through a parametric EO, notch filter, and an ancient tube preamp into an HK tape deck using type II cassettes. To me they sound amazing on anything from a boom box to my elaborate home stereo system.
If the album has been specially remastered to go on vinyl. Then the Vinyl sounds great. I've heard some heavily compressed songs on Spotify. And they sound 'Sh*t House' ColdPlay's 'Moon Music' on vinyl - sounds bloody 'awesome' The proof is in the pudding.
in comparing conical & elliptical, you need to select the same sample, you tested elliptical as the composition went into higher scale -- of course it will sound brighter
"The sound of vinyl" to me always meant those added/emphasized mids to any transient, be it kick or snare, the hard-panning crosstalk where the opposite channel seems to almost crackle the closer you get to the end of an album, the subtle 'S' sound distortion and the rumble. And GOSH DARN I LIKE IT. IN THIS HOUSE VINYL IS A HERO END OF STORY.
Just a word in defense of those of us with "a bunch of wax stuck in our ears". It's important to remember that some of us older people have naturally restricted frequency sensitivity. It's not that we don't want to hear it, or that we wouldn't have heard it twenty years ago. It's simply one of the joys of getting old. For example, that stylus test. I really could hear no difference. That's why I get my daughter to check my mixes!
I’m 34 and the only time I heard any sort of difference regarding the types of needles was that track at 11:22, and neither sounded better or worse to me, just different. SLIGHTLY different. Not even the masters sounded different from the needles on the other tracks. I know he was being sarcastic about the ear wax, but I not only ace my hearing tests for work and protect my hearing when needed, but I even HAD the wax cleaned out of my ears at my last doctor’s visit 😂
I remember in the 90’s when I was young and had good hearing, some CD’s I had had weird noise and high frequency whining mistakes in them. I used to imagine it was an older me producing the CD, having reduced hearing. 😂 I was working with a 65 year old woman once. Occasionally old CRT screens could have real nasty whining, like ‘EEEeeeEEE’ constantly. She was working in front of one such screen. I once asked If she could hear it. She said ‘no’. It was like seriously loud and fairly down in the frequency spectrum. I would guess around 12kHz or something. In a not too distant future that will be me. How time flies…
@@periurban also were listening to it on a RUclips video that has its own processing and compression applied and then played back on whatever device you own (I’m not going to hear a difference on my iPad!)
@@lanceolson5988 Yes, after I left my comment I DID hear a difference on the later comparisons. My hearing is now down to 9kHz, so there's that. I've never had wax!
@@roygalaasen There's an audio joke on Can's Tago Mago album. At one point during one of the tracks a dog barks. On the original CD and vinyl master there seems to be no reason why the dog would bark. But shortly after the bark a high pitched sine wave appears, descending from the upper regions of the audio. I was so impressed by the remaster that I wanted to see what had been done and how the waveforms compared. So I ripped both. Two elements were immediately visible on the spectrograph. On the original master there is a high pitched constant tone around 16kHz, which I know from experience came from a CRT somewhere in the audio chain. And on the new master the dog bark was explained. The high pitched descending sine wave comes in from ABOVE 20kHz, and the dog is barking in response! Just the kind of "joke" that Holger Czukay would have left for future generations. The sine wave at 16kHz, must have been added accidentally during the original mastering process.
people also underestimate the surface noise from static... if there's too little carbon in the vinyl (what makes it black, so, coloured vinyl can have this problem) they can seem to have a lot of surface noise. proper earthing, mat, and anti-static brush (earthed to you) can fix this problem
@APMastering It should be around +20dB at 20Hz, and -20dB at 20kHz, but few dB mismatch in between can totally changes tonal balance. For example, at 8kHz it should be -12dB, and you have around -7dB, and that is not a small difference. Same problem for lower frequencies, 125 Hz should be around +12 not +8, this is why sound is thin and completely different
Most people listen to music on "tin boxes" and think the sound is great, but they do not realize they are listening to a "tin box" until they hear the same music on a high end quality system. I agree that every single component matters to get the sound from the vinyl or whatever medium to your ears, but if you listen to crap music with little or no musical aesthetics there is really no point carrying on about it because it will always sound like crap no matter what. Unless you have a shock absorber on your tone arm, for instance the hydraulic bath on an Infinity Black Widow tone arm, your stylus will either skip in the vinyl groove or require to much pressure that will eventually wear down the groove and muddy the original recording. When shopping for a new audio system at your local , (but disappearing ), audio equipment store, don't just look at the equipment on display. Go behind the scene and look at what they are using to put the sound to your ears, what system they use to pipe all those on display through. Preamps, Power Amps, cabling, Parametric equalizers, speakers, etc. Most audio equipment stores have a lot better system running behind the scenes than what they are pushing you to purchase lining the shelves of their store.
@2:35 -- Although it is a pre-amp (that it is "pre"vious to the power amps), it is not normally referred to as a pre-amp. It is a phono amp. The reason the above distinction is important, is because there are actual pre-amps that have no relation to phono (no RIAA circuitry). @4:58 -- It is not a needle. It is a stylus. Please note that aside from setting the tracking force, the following settings must all be set, with precision. If not, you will not hear all of the information in the groove, and you will get noise and distortion (even if you do not think that you have noise and distortion, you do, if the following are not set with precision): -- the effective length of the tone-arm -- the cartridge's weight -- the vertical tracking alignment / rake angle -- the anti-skating -- the overhang -- the offset -- the zenith angle -- the cartridge's azimuth. The stylus is a microphone. It must rub exactly where it should rub. It must not rub anywhere else. When dialed in with precision, your records will sound like your stereo just tripled in price. Unfortunately, finding someone that "really" knows how to set all of the above is daunting. You can learn the steps, if you are prepared to spend many days and long hours training. it takes a professional 90 minutes to get it right. So a newbie has their work cut out for them. And it takes specialized tools. Setting the azimuth requires a scope and a special record designed for exactly that purpose. Cheers!
What equipment are you using to setup your cartridge? I use the DB protractor which takes care of everything but the vertical tracking. I’ve been trying to do that by ear but I’m wondering if there’s a better way.
@@minkwelder I wish I knew how to set up my turntable. I know what needs to be done, but do not know how to do it, and I do not own the tools. Fortunately, the store where I purchased my turntable employs an expert. I learned a lot from him about the overall steps (which is different than actually performing the steps), and also from watching videos from Michael Fremer. If I had to repeat the setup on a regular basis, then I would have purchased the tools, and learned to use them myself. A few of the steps are simple. But other steps are a pain, because changing one setting puts some other setting out of alignment. So it is a back-and-forth effort, until you get everything right. Your DB protractor probably cannot set the azimuth. A popular tool set for setting up a turntable is Wally Tools. But even that toolkit (as far as I know) does not include a way to set the azimuth.
@@NoEgg4u The DB protractor leaves a lot to be desired and I feel it gets me "close enough" but you can really drive yourself nuts trying to get it perfect. The DB has a grid that is intended to help align the cartridge body but the cantilever isn't necessarily parallel to the body and the body doesn't always have straight sides. It's actually the cantilever that is supposed to be tangent to the groove at the null points. This is a sort of moving target too because the skating force flexes the cantilever. At one time, I did some research to try and determine which protractor I thought would do the job without costing an arm and a leg or drive me to drink....uh...more... and I never decided on one. I think one of the mirrored ones would probably help a lot. I set vertical tracking angle first by eyeballing the top of the cartridge parallel with the record surface while it's playing and then listen to it while adjusting. If the bass seems weak, I'll lower the tonearm base, etc. The frustrating thing is that I never feel confident that I've achieved the goal.
If you like to listen music then buy cd. If you like to“ feel“ the music, look at the artwork, support the artists... Then buy records. Its not the same. I have cd's but i like the freeling of the record. Its much expensive but if you look at it that way then you should only listen ti Tidal, Spotify... Etc
Some older vinyl records varied alot in sound quality, mainly due to the generation of the master tapes and how the vinyl itself was mastered. OTOH, I sometimes question the accuracy of some modern digital remasters on CD compared to early recordings.
something you haven't mentioned is the difference in cutting equipment in the past vs. today. Audiophile records cut today are meant to reproduce what's on the tape as accurately as possible. Older recordings cut analog from tape through tube/valve equipment are naturally going to add coloration to the sound. Vinyl sounding "warm" tends to refer to older pressings, rather than newer pressings. In which case there are even more extraneous factors in the cutting process.
I’m glad someone mentioned this as all he’s doing is comparing digitally mastered vs digitally mastered, suits his argument rather well unsurprisingly.
Vinyl only sounds better because the format that had the superior potential was being used for its cheapness. We're experiencing the audio equivalent of VHS being the hi-def option while Blu-Ray is offered in 480p.
I think the difference is about how the music was mixed and mastered (mainly). If you listen to record vinyls of the 70s and 80s say "Dark Side of the Moon" from 1973 will show a substantial difference with newer remastered versions of the album. Also, sound trends change from time to time, technology and equipment have changed and it keeps doin it. All of these particularities lead to subjetivities if not described from a scientific base.
@@cheapbounds3689 Would have to agree here! Fully analogue recordings from a reel to reel tape to a Vinyl LP are the ones that sounds warmer and a more full sound. Listen to anything from the Polydor label from the late 60’s /early 70’s. Any modern LP recorded from a digital source defeats the purpose of what analogue sound is supposed to be and will always sounds tinny and harsh. My philosophy is buy secondhand older LPs up to about 1985,anything released after that buy on CDs
And don't forget the sound quality changed as the needle moved closer to the middle. Literally there is no "vinyl sound"...ie which part? The beginning or the last track?
I remember a specialist music shop in Liverpool UK back in 1973 that sold a "direct pressing" of dark side of the moon which was very expensive compared to standard vinyl . Maybe my memory of this is a bit confused as it was over 50 years ago.
It's so obvious that vinyl is inferior in sound quality compared to the lossless WAV files recordings of today. When I'm listening to vinyl I usually catch myself wondering how impressive it is to a needle scratch in wax to have such quality, yet worse than other sources I listen to. There's a nice video here on VWestLife's youtube channel pointing out that vinyl is actually digital, it's basically transfering the digital files to a physical form, losing some of it details in the process.
Apart from your barbarian music taste, the bass under a certain frequency ~150 Hz it gets mastered to mono on vinyl. You can't really spatially place bass frequencies due to the human hearing, so that is not an argument against vinyl.
Very informative this one, really enjoyed it. I can remember every crackle, pop and jump on my records. It still throws me off if I hear the songs on the radio without them.
The fun of vinyl, to me is the interaction with the room, not the supposed pristine quality of its sound or the expanded dynamic range of some vinyl masters. It’s fun to see people of various audio disciplines discuss the format, and your work here really stands out.🙌
I do not think that a thing like "vinyl sound" exists. I have thousands of LPs and they can sound hugely different (also depending on the system on which they are played), and sound quality wise I have heard everything from breathtaking to absolute crap on vinyl, but they all look like a LP. So one cannot say that LPs are a consistent format with a specific sound.
@@markusberzborn6346 Yes!! You are correct. As a “boomer” with a large collection of LPs, my enthusiasm for the format has led diehard proponents of digital to assume that I consider it superior. I bought two LP copies of Fleetwood Mac’s Future Games trying to find one that didn’t sound muddy and rolled off on the high end. I thought maybe the LP master or stamper may be to blame so I bought a CD copy, thinking it may have been mastered better. It wasn’t and I figured it was simply a poor recording. Years later, I found a used, white label promo LP copy at a record show and BINGO, I finally had the copy I was looking for. I would have been just as happy if it had been the CD.
The fact that each vinyl sounds different is why I love this medium, or more precisely it is the reason why I hate CDs, they all sound the same to me: flat and cold. The music has lost its soul.
Vinyl sound is obviously less accurate. There's poorer signal separation, lower signal to noise ratio, more distortion and surface noise, there's wow and flutter, less dynamic range, less potential bass, etc. It's just a real shame that most of today's CD's are mastered so shitty and not taking advantage of the incredible dynamic range they are capable of. Why people love vinyl I don't think has anything to do with how they sound, it's just the attraction of having sound created mechanically. It would not be difficult to digitally modify a cd's sound to replicate typical vinyl but some people would still prefer actual vinyl. I would love to see some actual double blind listening tests and see how the different sources would fare. BTW, I bought the FIRST digitally recorded LP when it came out in '79 - Ry Cooder's Bop Till You Drop. The vinyl record sounded very clean and almost clinical but I really liked it. We've come a long ways since.
@@mikemcguinness1304 Você não entendeu que replicar uma onda de forma analogica envolve uma infinidade de variáveis que levam à distorção. O formato digital é muito eficiente para sons graves, pois a taxa de amostragem é muito maior que a frequencia do som.
@@mikemcguinness1304 LOL you think recording a musical instrument through a microphone onto tape, mastering it & then cutting into a metal master plate to press hot vinyl into records that then require a diamond tipped stylus to bounce around in the grooves to reproduce sound is accurate.
Funny though how they don't take advantage of that 'great dynamic range' of the CDs. They all prefer to cram all the signal into the top 3 dB of that 'great dynamic range'.
I agree about blind tests, but you can't double blind with vinyl. The experiment setter will make a hell of a mess! Also I'm pretty sure the feel of the record in their hands will be a bit of a give-away.
I recently changed cartridges on my Audio Technica AT-LPGO-BT (Wal-Mart AT-LP60XBT). This was the first time an eliptical stylus cartidge was even available for this model. It did fill out the sound better than before. You're right! It's not enough to say this is how a song sounds on vinyl records.
If my ears can't hear the difference, I don't care. I own vinyls, CD's and also stream. Some vinyls sound better at least to my ears on my equipment than the CD version. I really don't care what measuring instruments show. I just trust my ears.
I love this video. I can tell you personally that I grew up in the 70s listening to scratchy vinyl on crappy stereos with cheap styli. So when I hear crappy vinyl on a cheap player, it takes me back in time and THAT is the appeal to me. I think the best part of records isn't the sound, it's the jacket and liner notes and the hanging out!
@ronallen2458 I'm so glad that even as a teenager that I looked after and treasured my LPs. 55 years later I still listen to those non scratchy, non crackly records because I l looked after them. It's about ownership and having a physical medium
When they introduced CDs, they should have taken this into account and created a large sleeve for the artwork, and not used those stupid, easily broken, plastic cases.
Did you master those records on digitally on a computer? If you did I think you may be missing the point. It's not the vinyl sound that many enthousiast are after... It's the analog sound. Vinyl allows you to play back that analog signal without introducing anything digital into the pathway but... It only will matter if the original track was recorded and produced without anything digital in that chain. This is also why master tapes are so expensive... it gets you closer to the original analog recording. Hope that makes sense.
No, it doesn't make sense at all. You're confusing recording and mixing quality (which 85%+ is horrible to acceptable) and the media itself. Basic undergrad level knowledge in electrical engineering. The analog degrades the signal in many ways: Poor separation, high noise floor, distortion, wow/flutter, lower dynamic range, low / high frequency limitation, etc. The engineers squeezed all they could out of the poor analog media. There's nothing to beat digital when done right. Today, a 200$ quality DAC easily beat any analog gear, including analog master tapes (which is max 13 bits equivalent with all enhancements enabled) at any price point. And it's easy to understand why if you have basic knowledge in sound reproduction technologies. One of the problem we unfortunately have is the horrendous "loudness war" that plagues so many recordings... The analog media being limited, it can be less abused than its digital counterpart and yes, sometimes analog sounds better. But with quality recording and mixing done by competent people, poor 'ol analog isn't even close...
@@guyboisvert66 I'm not mixing anything up... Your missing the point if you are taking digitally recorded music and playing back on analog formats expecting it to be better.... From my understanding it looked like this is what you are testing.... 100% vintage analog master tape has a higher dynamic range than their rereleased cd or lossless file equivalent. But only if recorded and mixed through a 100% analog pathway. Now if you record digitally or mix your analog recording digitally than digital playback is probably the way to go... It's pretty simple
@@lllllREDACTEDlllll Not at all if the person who does the job doesn't compress (destroy!) the sound of the master tape. This person has now the opposite possibility: Compress less and put more bass, get better separation, etc. On top of that, you can use DSP to fix some problems of the master tape.
@@guyboisvert66 You completely missed... everything. You're talking about some technicality, and not about the music. And music should be what we listen, not "... separation, noise floor, distortion, wow/flutter, lower dynamic range, frequency limitation"... Music may have warmth, soul, human touch, some technical data may not. Yes, if anywhere in some music production chain is a digital link, that is not analog recording anymore, and you know it if you know the difference between digital and analog. If your choice is to listen to noise, frequency response and other blah blahs, that's fine, it is your choice, but in terms of judging music and warmth of it, it is completely wrong approach. "Warmth" of sound is not a "temperature" and could not be measured, it must be felt.
Some vinyl does sound much better than any digitally media. But it’s not because it’s vinyl. It’s all in the master. Some can argue that you can master a record digitally much better to make it sound more dynamic then vinyl. but the mastering is the key element. some mix engineers could butcher a great recording song in digital. but again. some prefer recording on microphone and not directly to a digital cable.
I question using a DJ turntable for sound comparison... But I personally, who have listened to vinyl for over 4 decades, it does have a sound... Mathematically it may not.. but your ears don't lie. And I would also add that getting that vinyl onto a Reel to reel tape that's 6db hot, will absolutely capture that sound and create quite the listening experience if you have proper gear.
I was totally CD, then totally digital for a long time in expensive systems. To me the digital has come to sound dead. In the past 5 years I have mostly listened to AAA vinyl. It has so much more warmth and life to the music. I don't enjoy most digital music anymore mostly due to the compression.
@@Bandit400VCsometimes that's right. Other times, that's wrong. Some CD mastering is done with very little compression. Great sounding vinyl pressings typically have very little to no compression, which displays the dynamic range to levels that can be awesome.
I grew up with vinyl and cassette in the late 70’s and early 80’s, never sold any of it and still enjoy listening to it. I also have a lot of CD’s and a streamer. The quality of vinyl I find to be more consistently enjoyable in that CD or Streamed can often be too bass heavy OR too bright. That said room modes make a huge difference. I listen through a late 70’s JVC A-X5 and vintage speakers using an Audio Technica microline stylus. I almost never listen with tone controls flat and find a touch of bass lift dials in the sound. The mastering is just a baseline. It never fails to amaze me how great a sound is produced by dragging a needle over a piece of plastic….it’s alchemy!
This is a very interesting video, even though I don't fully agree with the conclusion. As you mentioned, the sound of vinyl depends on many factors, so the results of tests can vary significantly depending on the setup. I've compared many digital and vinyl versions, and generally, the vinyl versions sound warmer. I used one of the most popular cartridges, the Ortofon Red. For me, there are three main factors that make vinyl sound different from digital: First, the warmth of vinyl comes mainly from the fact that the high-mid frequencies are slightly less defined and a bit "dirtier" than on digital recordings. This can be clearly identified with the snare drum. On digital, you can hear it perfectly defined; on vinyl, it's more blended with the other instruments. This creates a warmer sound, but you also lose some definition. Second, there's the "breath" of vinyl. This comes from the fact that the low-mid frequencies are lower than on digital, and dynamic compression is less present on vinyl. Third, there's harmonic saturation in the treble, which can make the sound a bit brighter and works very well with female vocals. These characteristics make vinyl work very well for genres like jazz and folk, but even for power rock. For example, Nirvana's Nevermind or Offspring's Smash sound noticeably better on vinyl. On some recordings, the differences are very subtle; it really depends. In my opinion, if you ask someone to choose between digital and vinyl in a quick A/B comparison, most people will choose digital because it sounds more "in your face," compressed, with lots of bass and very defined sounds. But after listening to a few songs, they might find it a bit fatiguing. Therefore, both digital and vinyl are interesting formats, and we're lucky to be able to enjoy both.
To me, the biggest difference in vinyl sound is toward the 'inner grooves' where there's a lot more distortion. This is where conical and elliptical styli start to show their weakness, while the fancier tip cuts sound much better.
What made vinyl records sound great in the day were the huge tube driven stereo systems behind them, those that looked like pieces of furniture in the 50's 60's and 70's that had turntables but tube driven power amps/ pre-amps built with low noise vacuum tubes. i think the whole vinyl thing is misguided ...it wasn't strictly vinyl at the root of "that sound", they were paired with what would be today very expensive sound systems.
What made vinyl the best platform was the cost of production. Tape if far superior to vinyl, not cassette tape but real to real tape. The only problem is real to real tape does not scale and costs too much; where as one record stamper could produced well over 1k records. Vinyl had the best sound quality one could get at affordable prices. When CDs came out, vinyl still sounded better as CD players has issues with brick wall filters. And once the players improved; they crushed the dynamic range of CD's to win the loudness wars. Vinyl, because of its limitations could not be mastered in the same way as CDs were; so once again, vinyl sounded better. Given the best mastering; digital is going to sound better on quality equipment. Even today some music is still mastered hot...
The surface noise/cracking from the vinyl evokes a nostalgic feeling which many people interpret as "warm". So you are still doing the clickbait thing. But this was a well presented and researched video so I gave it a thumbs up! More of this pls!
The value of vinyl for me is a way around all those CD's that were rushed out the door at the dawn of digital audio before the engineers had a chance to become comfortable with the medium. So many albums were utterly ruined in their CD release by the labels frenzy to get everything in their catalog out the door on CD. To this day, the only good copy of these albums that you can buy is the vinyl version -- not because vinyl is superior, but because a good vinyl release beats a poorly done CD any day.
although I 100% agree that rushing production can lead to poor results, the opposite is often true.... digital has extremely quick lead times and vinyl has months and months long lead times, so often vinyl is the thing which gets rushed
@APMastering I mean back in the 80's when no one knew what they were doing with digital yet. A lot of labels back then wanted their whole catalog on CD immediately from engineers who'd never done digital before.
Quite often, these cd issues were made from the wrong master tapes, even ones made from discarded mixes! Unfortunately, many of these cd's are now what's being offered from streaming platforms.
The problem is very simple with people who dont have much knowledge about equipments and then ofcourse analog can sound bad. But even a bad pair of headphones will sound bad. Playing record without proper equipments is where they actually go wrong.
2 points I'd like to make. When you were screwing around with the deck tracking weight in the earlier part of the video you were NOT adjusting the lateral ( side pull ) ( anti skating ) of the stylus experienced in the groove to compensate the weight in the groove favouring one wall of the record ?. Why ? Do you know what you are doing when setting up an arm/stylus ? Secondly I would argue that vinyl recordings / music in general from back in the 60s 70s 80s had much more dynamics going on within the music, i.e loud/ quiet passages as opposed to todays war of compression and everything as loud as possible. Older recordings on vinyl are a completely different things to todays product. There were even different versions issued of most classic albums over the decades with different thicknesses of vinyl, different vinyl. There is no way to compare really, all subjective. The vinyl of the 70s , the amplifiers available, the speaker available, the cables available. many things have changed from all analog / valve amp / speaker enclosure combinations to mostly digital recording and playback nowadays. There is no myth, only quality.
But you are talking about digitally recorded files mastered for and pressed onto vinyl. The reason old guys like me think vinyl sounds different is the material we listen to was recorded on analog tape....that tape saturation on vinyl is intoxicating. Or do you believe something different?
I watched that video. The guy used a sound burger to play his vinyl. My pickup cartridge cost more than a sound burger. Vinyl is not warmer, in fact using a decent turntable and cartridge it is extremely dynamic. I amaze visitors when I play vinyl on my system, they are usually blown away with the sound quality. Also cassette can sound excellent using the right tape and machine.
Ironically, everything you list as contributing to vinyl not having a sound is proof that their are more variables surrounding the medium of vinyl, leading to the playback demonstrating less consistent results when compared to digital.
Was there really ever a myth saying vinyl (as such) sounds "better"? It quite obviously sounds different, since it is a different medium. At least in a setting where the music is played out loud, like in a club. Not all sound systems appear to be able to reproduce music from a turntable as good as others. There are also other factors involved since the stylus is actually a microphone - i.e. feedback will alter the reproduced sound to a varying degree. So in my view there's really no necessity for debunking anything, rather than just explaining the differences. And of course there is also the most vital thing - the quality of the recording itself.
You're technically correct, and yet this won't change that most listeners will get a "warmer" sound by listening through average quality equipement than listening to a normalized version of the track in Spotify and most digital distribution services. What will usually happen to the average vinyl listener it's they'll get a dirtier sound, often with softened transients thus being under the impression than the sound is "warmer". Only with CD's and orignial wav masters would they get the actual sound. So you're right, vinyl doesn't have a sound per se, but music is not experienced or heard in a vacum, so most people will get a more inaccurate and "warmer" listening experience with vinyl records.
@@elhatarolodohod2040 that's because it does sound better. I found a link on audio science review to a study a while ago now. To break it down a group of people were taken into a room and with a vynl player, and a CD player but the players were visible to the listener. They played each person some music and asked which one sounded better. Everyone picked the vynl. Next they are taken into another room and played the same music but this time they were told what format they were listening to but couldn't see which player and again they all picked the vynl player. The final test was completely blind, they were simply asked what format they think sounded the best. Without knowing what they were listening to they all unknowingly picked the CD player!
Yeah, didn't you find it a bit tiring compared with vinyl tho? The earlier cd player sound was like being assaulted with a titanium baseball bat 😂 .. was nice to get away from crackles tho.
If CDS had been more secure and Napster and all the copying didn't happen we wouldn't even be talking about vinyl. It was mainly manipulation by the recording industry to make money, conning the kids back into paying exorbitant amounts to purchase music.
It’s impossible to evaluate your music selections because you are using electronic sounds. If you were making your point by using acoustic instruments, ie: piano which is a string and a percussion instrument, we could judge your point much easier. Electronic noise with digital samples can’t be identified to a real instrument.
That’s a great album and if you want to hear dynamics on this album I recommend saving up for the Analogue Productions UHQR version. Sure it’s fearsomely expensive and it’s only the second one I’ve personally purchased but it’s worth it!
@@onefatstratcat my favorite vinyl pressing is actually the cisco one from the early 2000s. Mad dynamics and bass, It's so fun. That being said, the original Steve Hoffman MCA CD is no slouch at all. It's my favorite digital version, and I've had the opportunity to try out the original AB-whatever vinyl pressing, the 90s remastered MCA, MFSL CD, Japanese SACD as well as the new AP SACD. None of them come close to cisco and the original CD.
The biggest point being overlooked is a turntable is microphonic. With a really good system and the equipment in the proper placement at threshold volume the turntable if queued would begin to feedback in the low end frequencies so when you do have a high-quality press being played at threshold volume the sound does interact with the stylus adding warmth and dimension where digital will never do that.
how does that change the fact that you're comparing audio in a compressed YT video. Nobody compares receivers, speakers, or any audio equipment this way
@@whatsthis217suggest you watch videos like Starskys, he blows this YT compression myth away. It’s only used by people hurt feelings and no real difference
When people talk about the vinyl sound they refer to vinyl playback, it’s the system as a whole, as you described, not specifically the record. Analogue mastering sounds different again and original pressings vs current reissues theres clear differences.
@@musikkluvelectrobanger weaver's main channel is great for what it is, but the reaction streams are basically 2-person word salad because he's too ADHDish to refrain from hitting pause so he can process a complete statement in context. like dude chill, we aren't about to forget that we are watching YOUR channel while the other guy talks for a second. also: i'm sorry but a lot of independent producers have cope and arrogance about how we finalize our master mixes (not) being the same as professional mastering just because we acquired a few of the same tools and crossover information. maybe it's fine for our own music and we don't Need that professional touch, but i simply can't do the same thing without real facilities for it, as opposed to just my cool synth-sampler studio that was built prioritizing totally different stages of music creation while on a budget in a prebuilt domestic home. it's just banging your head into a wall to keep kneejerk reacting to a mastering engineer for months as if he's just a fellow beatmaker with Ozone or whatever being arbitrarily snobby.
The ritual of playing stuff in vinyl gives you the impression of a better sound maybe because you are putting more attention to it.. and because you dont wanna feel like you wasted your money
Vinyl records and styluses wear out. Every listening session reduces the sound quality for the next one. Ironically, the best way to preserve vinyl records is to avoid playing them altogether.
I saw the video you talked about, and I immediately guessed the vinyl track he was playing. It was waaaaaaay off in the bass and my thoughts went to how the RIAA curve was applied. Something was clearly wrong. So thank you very much for this awesome video. Much respect to getting all these facts communicated in such a clear way, I never thought about the tracking weight causing distortion but it makes sense since the coils and magnets aren't lined up correctly in the cartridge. I also discovered that stereo separation is not very good on vinyl, 24 dB maybe. In your video I could finally hear the difference @ 6:13. I really appreciate the work you put into making this video.
Vinyl is fun and big and tactile. It's also a pain in the ass to put on and change sides and keep from scratching. When it was all we had it was fine but I'm lazy and want to listen to music from my phone. I can't tell the difference because my ears are whacked from loud live music before I had the sense to use ear plugs consistently.
This was by far and away the most exemplary explanation and "test" of this subject I've ever seen - and Im middle aged! Absolutely stellar video in every single respect. I'm gonna reference this for time immemorial. Subscribed sir!
Isn't the audiophile world all about the quest for the best sound reproduction by experimentation with equipment, (and its personally subjective) Seeking out records at record fairs with specific pressing qualities. Ultimately its a hobby/interest that many find a great deal of enjoyment from and can share with a community.
That can’t be right you boomer. You just prefer the ritual of your big black discs. Just kidding. For a moment I thought I was a modern, scientific kid with earbuds.
@@rickewilde Well I am a 73 year old boomer who used to sell records at the shows and, after being into the record scene so long, I am somewhat familiar with some of the differences between pressings. Not all pressings of the same record sound the same but many people don’t know that also goes for the CDs.
The "vax in your ears" sample sounded like the turntable just got messed up or some weird-ass EQ setting got applied. And I don't know why the guy chose some really muddy bass-focused track to show difference in treble reproduction.
Small remark: AT cartridges generally have a brighter sound, regardless of the stylus. It's even a bit brighter than the original master. It would be better to compare different styli on the same cartridge. (Other than that: great no nonsense video)
Oh my, you're a stubborn opinionated guy, aren't you? Just listen to some top-tiered vinyl rips, made from world class analog rigs, and tell for your self... Michael Fremer uploaded once a hi-res excerpt from "The Little Hut On Chicken's Legs", from Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an exhibition", made on his Calliburn fortress, with the first SAT arm and Lyra Atlas SL, feeding his Ύψιλον tubed phono stage, the whole gear is at $230K... I listened through my Sony MDR-7605 headphones-iFi Zen Dac V2 and I couldn't believe, the subterranean bass, resonating in my guts, the spacious music hall with such ambience and the golden hues of the orchestra, unbelievable!!!!!
Wrong. RUclips audio is up to 20khz now, I have spectral analysis reports to prove it. And I'm talking about grabbing via direct 'what-u-hear' recording not using YT audio ripping websites to create fake 320 MP3's.
@@han-dell No official link that I know of, but I have taken rips from some HIFI vinyl channels and was pleased to see the full frequency spectrum as it used to be cutoff as you say. Older videos seem to still be poor but later uploads take advantage. Of course it also depends on the uploader's source material!
Years ago I was at record industry (seen in the "footage from Holland"), and Rinus (man in the footage) let us compare the sound to the cutting head and the sound directly played from the lacquer with an Ortofon FX type of bonded elliptical stylus. No difference on Genelec monitors.
cool comment, will pin
This sounds like a flawed test since you can't hear anything accurately on Genelecs with their nasty ports. Try again with some NS10 or Auratones. Ideally you should be building your own monitoring system, I know where you can get some plans.
Genelec ain't good
@@jeffsymons7084 I used Auratones to hear what the mix would sound like on crappy car speakers. The NS10s were used to see what it would sound like on typical home speakers. That’s what you think is better?
@@jeffsymons7084 How would ns10,'s or auratones be better for this type of comparison? They're generally for focusing on the mid range and are used for seeing if a mix will sound good on poor quality speakers. For such a comparison wouldn't you'd want the highest fidelity speaker with the flattest frequency response? Unless the test is that the difference is so obvious that even low quality speakers would pick it up.
What makes vinyl enjoyable to me is not the fact that it sounds better or even different, it's the fact Im listening to music that comes from wiggly grooves cut into a plastic disc. It's just cool.
Same reason why I think mechanical watches are cool. Yeah they don't keep time very well and you have to wind them all the time, but there's just something cool about a tiny analog machine that keeps time on your wrist.
agree
I totally agree!
Vinyl for when i can be arsed with the ceremomy, cd for when i just want to listen to something.
Absolutely agree- this bloke came in with an attitude against records- if you call it vinyl you are new to it and need to spend several years listening to records and reading the lovely big sleeve notes and lyrics… it’s physical, emotional and ownership joy
Agreed. It all clicked when I got my first retro turntable. It's just something to awe at, it's so frikkin cool from a mechanical perspective.
Exactly. Let everyone have their personal preference. I do dislike 'vinyl-only' releases though.
As a producer, to me, the ideal medium is one where I can hear, at a consumer level, what I’m hearing in the control room as I mix. In other words, I’m hearing what I’ve put on the medium, not the medium itself.
Am I hearing that on CD? Pretty darn close. 21st century formats are High-Res downloads (24-bit depth, 96 or 192 kHz sample rate) in FLAC or ALAC.
With Vinyl, I am NOT hearing back what I strived to do when mixing. That medium is marred with flaws:
- Quality that changes depending whether you’re close to the outer edge, or inner radius (CD or MP3 does not change)
--- less dynamic range close to inner radius
--- less HF close to inner radius
--- Ever wonder why the last song on each side of albums from the ’60s and ’70s were ballads?
--- Artists such as Peter Gabriel have complained that they couldn’t sequence the songs the way they liked, because of the medium’s flaws
- THD up to 1.5%. That’s not what I’m hearing through the control room speakers.
- Appalling L/R channel separation: 30 dB at best. That’s NOT what I’m hearing in the control room, and I actually have to change my mix because of the medium’s flaws. I prefer doing it myself as I have more control at the mixing stage, than at the mastering/lathe cutting stage.
- 65 dB of dynamic range at best (see inner radius above as well), and that’s on limited run pressings of 1,000 or less. So I can kiss that super quiet intro or beautiful reverb tail goodbye.
- Measurable wow & flutter: 0.05% at best. Those intricate triangle resonances are just going to sound great once passed through that grinder!
- Frequency range is decent, but again, only on limited run pressings of 1,000 or less: 30 Hz - 20 kHz.
- How about a medium which deteriorates every time you play it? You’re effectively shaving off HF content at every pass.
- Snap crackle and pop. I am NOT hearing that in the control room speakers as I mix. (I hope you like my Rice Crispies commercial reference here, which summarises all the clicks and crackles due to dust and other particles contaminating the medium’s surface, the deformities/scratches inevitably induced by the user on playback, and the imperfections that were already there from the moulding process).
- Tone arm resonance. I am NOT hearing that in the control room speakers as I mix.
- Having to manually “wing it” if I want to locate the start of a song. No, you don’t wind an audiophile turntable backwards to cue a song start (you’d wreck the cartridge - bending its stylus right out)!
- I almost forgot: you can’t have your low frequencies too loud or too wide, so let’s restrict our mixes’ creative potential because of the medium, shall we?
What I love about vinyl?
- The artwork. That’s never been matched, even with foldouts on some CD releases.
. Other than the wear mentioned above, can withstand time quite well.
MP3 at 320 kbps. On rock/pop, you really need a darn good system to be able to tell the difference with a 16-bit/44.1 kHz CD-DA file.
Why has CD gotten such a bad rap then?
Because people have amalgamated what’s been put on it, instead of understanding the quality of the medium itself.
So let’s first list a compact disc’s characteristics (by extension, any uncompressed 16-bit 44.1 kHz audio file):
- Frequency response is 20 - 20 kHz, no matter whether it’s the first, or last second of the 74 min album. I am almost hearing what I’m hearing on the control room speakers when I’m mixing. With higher sample rates, such as on the SACD, DVD-Audio or on High-Res downloads, I am finally hearing the same thing as what I’m hearing on the control room speakers when I’m mixing, as the frequency response goes far beyond that of human hearing.
- Dynamic range is 82 dB without dither (albums released up to the early ‘90s) and can exceed 100 dB with dither (albums released later on). I am almost hearing what I’m hearing on the control room speakers when I’m mixing. With 24-bit High-Res downloads, and its 122 dBs or so of dynamic range, not only am I finally hearing the same thing as what I’m hearing on the control room speakers when I’m mixing… I’m actually not able to hear the noise floor as it exceeds human hearing (hence why dither in 24-bit is an idiocy if you handle your gain structure properly).
- Channel separation is equivalent to the dynamic range. If on a CD, I want to pan a snare drum full left, full blast (hitting 0 FS), … I can. None of it will ever appear on the right channel (perhaps a bit of crosstalk can happen in cheap CD DACs, but it’s still close to the initial 16-bit range). On vinyl, in the best scenario, it’s also going to be on the right channel, 30 dBs quieter. That is NOT what I wanted, when mixing in the control room.
- Wow & flutter: non-measurable. “OK, but I heard about this thing called jitter”. In the 21st Century, properly designed DACs reject jitter to non-measurable outcomes on the reconstructed audio signal.
- THD: less than 0.001%.
- Won’t wear out if you take good care when manipulating it BUT, unfortunately, has a shelf-life of about 10 years. Look up CD Rot or Disc Rot (see pictures below added in March 2020). Which is why these media belong in the 20th Century.
Why are we seeing all those posts about vinyl sounding better than CD then?
Short answer: because a CD has virtually no limitations, with audio quality 100% of what it can be within just 0.1 dB of its maximum admissible levels, unscrupulous record labels have played a stupid game of cramming as much RMS (perceived volume) as possible onto the CD medium:
- sacrificing transients (micro dynamics). Snare drums sound like a wet fart on a plastic tarp (loosely quoting the greatest mastering engineer of all time - Sir Bob Ludwig).
- sacrificing overall dynamic range (macro dynamics). The chorus isn’t louder than the verses, or the intro, because everything else is already louder than everything else.
- introducing distortion. We’ve reached the supreme level of crass idiocy, as there comes a point where to be 0.5 dB louder than everyone else, you just end up distorting the audio signal. Guess what everyone else then does?
Look up “CD Loudness War” for a developed explanation.
You cannot do that on vinyl, even though there was a loudness war in the ’50s with jukeboxes; you cannot push a vinyl’s limitations nearly as far. You have to mix/master conservatively for vinyl, respecting a whole bunch of technical rules so that things translate well to the medium.
Does the vinyl medium sound better than the CD medium? I hope I made my point that it doesn’t.
Does an album mastered for loudness on CD sound better on its vinyl release? Most likely yes, as it won’t have the living daylights crammed out of it at the mastering stage.
Does a properly mixed/mastered album (conservative dynamic range - i.e., not giving in to the Loudness War) released on CD sound better than the same album released on vinyl? Oh yes. By far.
So what about MP3?
Well, depending on everything explained above, it can sit anywhere between “slightly better than vinyl” to “worse than vinyl”. Can’t beat an uncompressed 16-bit 44.1kHz WAV or FLAC audio file. Even more so, a 24-bit 96kHz file.
* From the Quora user Philippe Chambin, but is the best answer I have seen regarding to this topic.
That's a concise yet complete explanation. I agree.
I wish FLAC was the audio standard now. WAV wastes sooo much space.
@@leroilightning4458 Apple Music is the only music playback software I am aware of in 2025 that refuses to play FLAC files. ALAC works on Linux, Windows and Android as well as Mac OS - your choice.
THIS! - a hundred procent
On vinyl, the Frequency range is worse, no way 30 Hz - 20 kHz. It is approx 60Hz-12khz
The thing I appreciate most about vinyl is sitting down and listening to a whole record, instead of being tempted to skip tracks or cherry pick a single track and moving on, we've forgotten how to do that in the digital age and are thus missing out on the possibility that a track you initially don't like might grow on you and end up being your favourite track.
agree
I was born in the late '60s and got into music when I was eleven. I loved Blondie, Boomtown Rats, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, etc. etc. etc. I used to borrow and sometimes buy 45s and albums, and because my family had a Ferguson music centre, I could tape stuff. The point is this: The compilation tape was a thing. Filleting albums was the order of the day. What would now probably be called "playlists" were something everyone did.
So please don't think there was this age, a pre-digital age, a pre-streaming age, etc. - when we used to all just sit back and listen with reverence to a whole album. More often than not we'd gut the f***er, merrily hacking away at filler, discarding anything that lacked immediacy. We regarded those who chin-stroked their way through an album as passive, slavish duffers who lacked the wherewithal to make listening a more involving and active pass-time.
Vinyl ceremony. Like tea ceremony.
Well half the tracks you mean as you have to turn it over... but I know what you mean I'm the same with CD's I like to listen to the album all the way through, although I rarely play CD's I stream the flacs I've ripped I still like to listen to the whole album.
I just eq until I get the sound I like... not very audiophile I know but it works for me 😀
Great video though it reinforced to me that so much is in all in the mix, and I learnt loads...
@@Unfunny_Username_389
So, true. I spent a good part of my free time as a youth back in the day making Mixtapes of select songs onto compact cassette from all of my vinyl albums, and sometimes mixing the LPs with music from CDs when they were first released as well.
I had a decent Concord AM/FM Cassette Stereo in my car, as well as the tiny portable Sony Walkman WM-101 auto-reverse cassette player with Dolby NR that was barely larger than a plastic cassette case and was powered by a single AA alkaline battery.
It could fit in any of my regular clothes pockets just like a smartphone does now.
I still prefer the sound of vinyl flooring although many people say carpet is even warmer.
it sounds real ,no matter the style of music
The vintage linoleum sound is what I'm chasing now. Easy to clean also.
😜
🎵🎧🎸
Laminate floor sounds a bit hard and "cold", real wooden floor sounds warmer, but a bit "woody". I think I'll go for parquet....
Remember the asbestos fibers in the old hard vinyl industrial flooring add a little bit of excitement to your life every time you scuff them. Cancer anyone?
lol good one ☝️ 😂
Fun Fact, warm sound = distortion, good sound reproduction is supposed to be as flat as possible, which is something vinyl can never achieve, this fact alone proves "audiophiles" to be douchebags
Amen. The same douchebags who think they're tasting blueberries and Skittles when smoking weed.
Vinyl is a nostalgia more than a quality sound.
It's vinyl mastering people like. Vinyl is actually quite a limited medium, so for it to work properly, you need a pretty extreme EQ curve going in and out, compression, and some mid-side processing. it's where mastering came from in the first place . Just master like that and you'll get the sound
@@mirelchirila precisely
You're wrong. Actually you don't know much at all. Just saying.
This is what he doesn't take into account. And where it gets confusing is that not all albums are remastered for vinyl, they're just digital records that sound bad. A fully analog remaster sounds completely different. Check out Bernie Grundman mastering and they will tell you as much.
@@jmakc3541 Kevin Gray as well.
@@cjay2 can you explain WHY this person is wrong instead of "just saying" they don't know much at all?
Most modern masters are even dynamically over compressed due to the bloody loudness war
true for digital which is why most cutting engineers request no lim or reduced lim.
@APMastering This can be why vinyl can sound better as well. Some of the recent Depeche Mode re masters are so damn loud that you bought the vinyl to get the no so slammed versions.
@@CaptainProton1 We also got companies that are solely catering to us like Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, Acoustic Sounds, and PS Audio's Octave Records. I personally don't mind that the original master tapes are being stored in the digital domain on a hard drive because the reels tend to deteriorate overtime and become a gooey sticky mess
@@CaptainProton1 I have recently gotten into buying Music on Vinyl, SACD, DVD-A, and Blu-Ray High Fidelity Pure Audio
Are you getting material for mastering that still has mix bus processing on it?
I disable that for you folks, though might send a ref with processing if the client or you want that.
Vinyl does have a sound, it's snap, crackle and pop.
If the music was recorded onto a digital format to begin with, a.k.a., if it was never analog to begin with, then cutting onto a record can only degrade the sound quality, correct?
Technically, yes.
No, it can enhance it.
Actually yes. But there could be a catch. Ideally it could require additional mastering to fit LP limits. And in some cases it could make overall sound better. But you still could achieve this without LP just via proper mastring.
Yes, Analog Recording meant for Analog media. Digital recordings meant for Digital media.
@@Bandit400VC Digital storage could save full analog signal without issues. But it does not work in reverse.
The thing that I've never been able to get over in regards to vinyl is just how good it can sound for what it is. It's not perfect and there are so many variables that can cause negative effects. Nonetheless it's a fun experience and it never really gets old for me.
yeah if you think about all the different factors at play and the precision required for it its kind of crazy how the magic wigglepin gives you such good sound.
"it's not perfect... "
Whoops, you accidentally spoke the truth.
@TalesofWiltshire whoopsie!
@@TalesofWiltshire it's not perfect in the sense of care and ware, but it smashes the granny out of any other technology for sound quality as far as I'm concerned....
I've always preferred the sound of reel-to-reel, but while vinyl gets pops, crackles and static, tape loses its top end with each pass. HQ Digital enters the chat,
Analog vs digital is such a tired comparison. After four decades, it shouldn’t even be a controversial topic.
It’s a subjective battle, like tubes vs SS. How do you define better, more accurate or what sounds more pleasing to the ear? I know science says SS is less distortion but I’ll take a good tube amp anyday over SS because to my ears it sounds more natural. Others would disagree.
Yeah it's fucken tossers like this guy though that throw science in your face to prove his bias when it doesn't prove shit.
the fun part is he did not use analog source .. he made appels vs oranges and used 2 appels to compare but the orange lost .. this video is pointless
@@themotownboy1 - I've...for a long time...held the opinion that, the only thing that should exist digitally - is a watch.
Advancing Technology is ruinous to the mechanical form.
Ai is already taking over, and it won't be long before the physical realm is completely taken away from us.
Humanity is sleepwalking into transhumanism 😩
@davidhilton8680 there is hope, I saw Kodak is doubling their analog film production due to rising demand, even disposable cameras making a bit of a comeback. I don’t know if it will be full on Butlerian J1hod but I bet we see something of a return to tradition among a segment of the population.
The cartridge design also makes a considerable difference, besides the stylus shape (moving coil, moving magnet, high vs. low compliance etc.) These are complex electro-mechanical systems which interact with the mass of the tone arm in producing a unique frequency response, even if the subsequent electrical RIAA equalization is perfect.
100%
Back in 1974, I was in quality control at a Philips Deutsche Grammophon pressing plant, and we had around 6 to 8 testers on every shift. (BTW, an eccentric hole has a small amount of inaudable tolerance before Wow is heard ) Does this also happen today? I have returned some modern pressings due to bad surface noise that should have been picked up in the early stages of a pressing run, if anyone was checking.
Also, what is this obsession with 180 gram? More vinyl does not make a better pressing.
In most minds it is simply more is better, no deep thinking required.
when I did the QC I used to accept 0,8 mm on drums and 0,4 mm for anything containing pianos.
the biggest problem where the records which sampled piano chords or loop FROM off-centred records - you could fiddle with the stamper for 4 hrs, make it sit perfectly on centre, and then the record still moaned terribly ;)
ina pressing plant everybody knows it: the thinner the disc - the better 125-130 g is the goal BUT these are difficult to make and stabilize, it's WAAAY easier to press a 250g brick of plastic to avoid later deformations so the 180g is just another bullshit invented to make the labels PAY for the excess plastic that is used ONLY to make the pressing plants' life easier.
@@BigYouDog Thanks for mentioning about 180gm vinyl, I was thinking I was missing something on this, and surely only as much vinyl is needed to make sure there's decent clearance between the grooves on both sides. My only thought was it might be less likely to warp, but couldn't see how the quality would improve.
6-8 testers for how many presses?
Vinyl sounds warm like a fire with its crackling sounds.
I agree
I own that one!!!
Cassette is better.
@jaisonsiqueira reel-to-reel
is good, too!
It’s the era of vinyl that was never sent through an analog to digital converter that sounds different (1970s). Vinyl from the 1980s sounds different because it introduced a digital stage into the recording process. You must agree that music that was never ran through a A/D converter sounds different then music that was.
although in the 80s there were some terrible A/D convertors, I can't agree nowadays because its essentially impossible to "hear" good convertors. There is no sound to them. Like none.
the only time vinyl sounds best is when the digital formats are mixed terribly on a given album, which makes sense because of the 'loudness war'.
offen the vinyl version is no lim or lim turned down a few db
Part of the problem is that the CD format actually ALLOWS for greater levels of loudness war brickwalling that you simply can't do with vinyl. Vinyl sort of "forces" a certain level of decency when it comes to mastering.
Of course this doesn't apply if the music was already mastered digitally and then just transferred to vinyl, which as I understand happens more often than it should. 🤷
Hmm. This is a reverse way of saying " vinyl has a sound".
@@tommyheron464 no lim has nothing to do with vinyl
You can basically make a CD recording of a vinyl record and get the "vinyl sound" on a CD.
It's basically recording the flaws of one format onto a flawless format.
so essentially the vinyl version of an album is mastered with more dynamic range than the aggressive limiting and compression that digital mastering lets engineers or record companies get away with? Hence why people preach about vinyl having “superior sound” since what they really are hearing is just their more preferred mastering of the source material.
exactly. ill talk about this more in a follow up
@APMastering awesome! Looking forward to it.
That’s the only reason I buy records, for better dynamic range than CDs.
If the CD or BluRay audio has good dynamic range I buy that every time.
Sadly the loudness war continues and spoils the sound of most CD and digital releases, but there are a few CDs with acceptable mastering and Atmos seems unaffected.
@APMastering I would love to hear more about this.
An intended vinyl version may be mastered to be more dynamic, but the vinyl media (number of grooves on an LP) mean that any recording is compromised before it's committed to vinyl. My knowledge is limited but i understand that a micro-groove LP cannot reproduce deep base tones because it would limit the number of grooves on the record. So the bass is reduced on the actual LP and artificially 'added' by your hi-fi amp when you play the LP. It's called the 'RIAA effect' . Amplifiers have circuits to 'correct' the shortcomings in vinyl. Or something like that......
Back when I was a kid there was no debate about "the sound of vinyl" lol. Everyone agreed vinyl was acceptable but could be scratchy, skippy, glitchy and hissy depending on the state of the record, the needle and the turntable. When CDs came out (I heard my first in 1984) they totally blew vinyl out of the water, it was like someone had turned the lights on, CD was amazing and we all couldn't wait to get hold of one (which was sadly years later in 1990 for me when they finally became affordable). Am I nostalgic for vinyl? Some days yea. Do I think they sound better than digital? No way.
From timeline pov you’re right, but the issues of vinyl you mentioned were mainly ‘cause of bad setup and low quality equipments, similar things could happen to CDs as well, probably in other form like thin, bright, scream/ear bleeding sound etc
Now it’s 2025, with all different technologies put on the table, vinyl is full of fun, full of room for tweaking and stuff, while for precision, for convenience brought by modern technology, as well as copyrights respect, streaming is the way to go. CDs are in the midway house unfortunately.
Totally agree, I had hundreds of vinyl albums of varying quality and the nosie, pops, hiss, whatever and it drove me crazy. Digital makes more sense and is consistent.
The first CD's sounded like absolute garbage. And most of them have decomposed now they don't even play....
@@owenjnelson-fb9mgOk but I've got CDs made in the 1980s, transcribed direct from the master tapes, no remastering and they still play fine and sound just fine & worth more & more as original transcriptions become harder to find. Sold one for $280 last year.
Vinyl sounds OK on the first play. But for any long term use, forget it. Not sure about CD rot. I have owned many CD players over the years. Got my first one in 1986. Bought my first CD which was new music at the time so it was mastered for CD. Masters for vinyl have to be equalized to compensate for the format's flaws, especially the bass, they cannot make the grooves in the record big enough for low end bass. This CD sounded great in 1986 and it sounds exactly the same today, since it has been properly cared for in 2025, almost 40 years of perfect music playback. Vinyl recordings have always been and still are an inferior music playback format for hearing quality sound. Which to me is what matters most. I am glad CDs are hidden away when the play, safe and free from collecting dust and dirt etc.
I collect vinyls and CDs and the sound is great on both of them. CDs is more cleaner sound but Vinyl is little warmer and little more bass.
Can't argue with that at all, I have Adventures of Stevie V on Vinyl and CD the Vinyl is of the best I have, virtually no crackles, sound is clean and I can't tell any difference in high end but it has more punchy bass over CD, When I get my SLP-1200 working I'll properly test both with SL-1210mk2
I think the "sound of the vinyl" is more like the style of mixing/mastering of the 70s and 80s. The lack of overused multiband compressors targeting -6dBFS.
lol maybe
To me in the 80s most LPs sounded a bit brighter than the CD counterpart of its time. But now I do not hear any real difference in the sound quality. The days of over compressing audio into a solid brick I think is over. When an LP is pressed now they are starting from the same source and virtually sound the same.
@@Albee213 I disagree with "solid brick is over" at least for "contemporary" music. Listen to any pop, rock, hip hop and they're all pushed trough a brick limiter. Exceptions may occur and some genres might be affected less than others.
The "loudness war" may have reached it's peak (literally) however allegedly "loud" still sells better, so if you look at current audio wave forms it's all still very much compressed into lifeless bricks.
@@Albee213take a look at the pop and country charts, its louder noe than ever before
@@youkenez Very good point! 😎🪩
When you A/B switch for the purpose of making auditory perception comparisons between the two, you should always try to avoid switching at the beginnings and ends of measures and phrases in the music (e.g., on the downbeat of the first beat of a measure). Instead, make the switches in the middle of measures and phrases when the music itself is not changing by period inherently. This will maximize your ability to discern a difference in sounds like those being tested here. Melodic, harmonic, chordal, and rhythm changes are most highly correlated with the beginnings and ends of measures and phrases in music, so these changes in the music are systematically confounded with what you're trying to test perceptually and can mask the psychophysical detection of acoustic differences. There are many published papers on this in auditory perceptual science. Cheers.
Thats what I was thinking when listening to those tests. I was waiting for those loud drums to be played back on the eliptical stylus, but they never managed to appear...
Vinyl's "sound" is dependent on the production of the vinyl and supporting gear. If you recorded your album in analog, using analog instruments. Use an analog delay circuit in the vinyl cutting machine, instead of a digital one. Played said album on an all analog turntable, using a decent analog phono preamp. Then, YES, yes your vinyl will sound warm and entirely different than spotify. That's usually not the case though. Most people don't even know how the machines that cut vinyl work.
It is not (only) the quality of the preamp (more precisely, its RIAA eq curve), but the combination of the capacitance of the preamp (and the cables) and the inductance of the cartridge that determines much of the sound. MM cartridges have a high frequency resonance at the end of the audible spectrum, or closely above it. The position and strength of this resonance strongly influence the frequency curve in the audible range.
I assume that all the albums you played were recorded digitally. I believe comparing a digital source to a vinyl record cut from a digital master is pointless. Instead, you should compare a digital transfer to a vinyl record cut or remastered directly from the original analogue tapes to determine if there are any differences. Any vinyl record produced before 1980 is analogue, or you can choose a vinyl record from Analogue Productions.
fantastic post.
AAA vinyl, yer only man!
@@kingofskateop 🎯🎯🎯
@@kingofskateop
Exactly!
You are absolutely correct, the test carried out makes no sense. Because the source is digital and you will have to make an additional conversation for the vinyl, degrading the audio quality.
Well technically a vinyl record does have a particular sound. Thump a vinyl record and thump a cd and they both have a completely different sound even if both are blank. Seriously though you are correct in that it is the process chain of any format that matters the most. The thing with vinyl record playback is that the end consumer has a significant influence on the reproduction of the recording beyond just buying equipment. Well except for people that pay others to setup the tracking geometry and force of the stylus to grove.
Also, cleaning vinyl records and lowering static charge build up can make a major difference. One aspect that will always ensure that vinyl record playback will be apparent is in the silence because the stylus to moving groove relationship will always create perceptible sound.
lol. 100% agree with your comment!
You make some really excellent points. If a lacquer disc cut from a master tape is virtually indistinguishable from the master, then the so-called "sound of vinyl" actually comes from factors down the line, from the disc manufacturing process to the playback system. Very informative.
I have over 1500 cassettes, each with two albums on them. Mostly classical and jazz, even some 78s. We ran the turntable through a parametric EO, notch filter, and an ancient tube preamp into an HK tape deck using type II cassettes.
To me they sound amazing on anything from a boom box to my elaborate home stereo system.
If the album has been specially remastered to go on vinyl. Then the Vinyl sounds great.
I've heard some heavily compressed songs on Spotify. And they sound 'Sh*t House'
ColdPlay's 'Moon Music' on vinyl - sounds bloody 'awesome'
The proof is in the pudding.
in comparing conical & elliptical, you need to select the same sample, you tested elliptical as the composition went into higher scale -- of course it will sound brighter
"The sound of vinyl" to me always meant those added/emphasized mids to any transient, be it kick or snare, the hard-panning crosstalk where the opposite channel seems to almost crackle the closer you get to the end of an album, the subtle 'S' sound distortion and the rumble. And GOSH DARN I LIKE IT. IN THIS HOUSE VINYL IS A HERO END OF STORY.
Those things were not in the room at the time of recording. Its fine that you like it, but it was not in the room.
thats like saying you prefer the sound of mp3 because it sounds like distorted sh*t
@@ukspizzaman "Those things were not in the room at the time of recording" who gives a shit? They add to the experience nonetheless
@@DoesNotInhale it's like saying you prefer a woman to masturbating
Agreed@@foljs5858
Such an intensely mechanical format. Ridiculously so, but it is amazing that we can get as much fidelity out of it as we do.
agree
Just a word in defense of those of us with "a bunch of wax stuck in our ears".
It's important to remember that some of us older people have naturally restricted frequency sensitivity. It's not that we don't want to hear it, or that we wouldn't have heard it twenty years ago. It's simply one of the joys of getting old. For example, that stylus test. I really could hear no difference.
That's why I get my daughter to check my mixes!
I’m 34 and the only time I heard any sort of difference regarding the types of needles was that track at 11:22, and neither sounded better or worse to me, just different. SLIGHTLY different. Not even the masters sounded different from the needles on the other tracks. I know he was being sarcastic about the ear wax, but I not only ace my hearing tests for work and protect my hearing when needed, but I even HAD the wax cleaned out of my ears at my last doctor’s visit 😂
I remember in the 90’s when I was young and had good hearing, some CD’s I had had weird noise and high frequency whining mistakes in them. I used to imagine it was an older me producing the CD, having reduced hearing. 😂
I was working with a 65 year old woman once. Occasionally old CRT screens could have real nasty whining, like ‘EEEeeeEEE’ constantly. She was working in front of one such screen. I once asked If she could hear it. She said ‘no’. It was like seriously loud and fairly down in the frequency spectrum. I would guess around 12kHz or something.
In a not too distant future that will be me. How time flies…
@@periurban also were listening to it on a RUclips video that has its own processing and compression applied and then played back on whatever device you own (I’m not going to hear a difference on my iPad!)
@@lanceolson5988 Yes, after I left my comment I DID hear a difference on the later comparisons. My hearing is now down to 9kHz, so there's that. I've never had wax!
@@roygalaasen There's an audio joke on Can's Tago Mago album.
At one point during one of the tracks a dog barks. On the original CD and vinyl master there seems to be no reason why the dog would bark. But shortly after the bark a high pitched sine wave appears, descending from the upper regions of the audio.
I was so impressed by the remaster that I wanted to see what had been done and how the waveforms compared. So I ripped both.
Two elements were immediately visible on the spectrograph. On the original master there is a high pitched constant tone around 16kHz, which I know from experience came from a CRT somewhere in the audio chain.
And on the new master the dog bark was explained. The high pitched descending sine wave comes in from ABOVE 20kHz, and the dog is barking in response!
Just the kind of "joke" that Holger Czukay would have left for future generations.
The sine wave at 16kHz, must have been added accidentally during the original mastering process.
people also underestimate the surface noise from static... if there's too little carbon in the vinyl (what makes it black, so, coloured vinyl can have this problem) they can seem to have a lot of surface noise. proper earthing, mat, and anti-static brush (earthed to you) can fix this problem
3:27 this is not RIAA curve, not even close
the curve is an analog spec. i might have not got it bang on but it's not completely different
@APMastering It should be around +20dB at 20Hz, and -20dB at 20kHz, but few dB mismatch in between can totally changes tonal balance. For example, at 8kHz it should be -12dB, and you have around -7dB, and that is not a small difference. Same problem for lower frequencies, 125 Hz should be around +12 not +8, this is why sound is thin and completely different
Most people listen to music on "tin boxes" and think the sound is great, but they do not realize they are listening to a "tin box" until they hear the same music on a high end quality system.
I agree that every single component matters to get the sound from the vinyl or whatever medium to your ears, but if you listen to crap music with little or no musical aesthetics there is really no point carrying on about it because it will always sound like crap no matter what. Unless you have a shock absorber on your tone arm, for instance the hydraulic bath on an Infinity Black Widow tone arm, your stylus will either skip in the vinyl groove or require to much pressure that will eventually wear down the groove and muddy the original recording.
When shopping for a new audio system at your local , (but disappearing ), audio equipment store, don't just look at the equipment on display. Go behind the scene and look at what they are using to put the sound to your ears, what system they use to pipe all those on display through. Preamps, Power Amps, cabling, Parametric equalizers, speakers, etc. Most audio equipment stores have a lot better system running behind the scenes than what they are pushing you to purchase lining the shelves of their store.
@2:35 -- Although it is a pre-amp (that it is "pre"vious to the power amps), it is not normally referred to as a pre-amp.
It is a phono amp.
The reason the above distinction is important, is because there are actual pre-amps that have no relation to phono (no RIAA circuitry).
@4:58 -- It is not a needle. It is a stylus.
Please note that aside from setting the tracking force, the following settings must all be set, with precision. If not, you will not hear all of the information in the groove, and you will get noise and distortion (even if you do not think that you have noise and distortion, you do, if the following are not set with precision):
-- the effective length of the tone-arm
-- the cartridge's weight
-- the vertical tracking alignment / rake angle
-- the anti-skating
-- the overhang
-- the offset
-- the zenith angle
-- the cartridge's azimuth.
The stylus is a microphone. It must rub exactly where it should rub. It must not rub anywhere else. When dialed in with precision, your records will sound like your stereo just tripled in price. Unfortunately, finding someone that "really" knows how to set all of the above is daunting. You can learn the steps, if you are prepared to spend many days and long hours training. it takes a professional 90 minutes to get it right. So a newbie has their work cut out for them. And it takes specialized tools. Setting the azimuth requires a scope and a special record designed for exactly that purpose.
Cheers!
What equipment are you using to setup your cartridge? I use the DB protractor which takes care of everything but the vertical tracking. I’ve been trying to do that by ear but I’m wondering if there’s a better way.
@@minkwelder I wish I knew how to set up my turntable. I know what needs to be done, but do not know how to do it, and I do not own the tools.
Fortunately, the store where I purchased my turntable employs an expert. I learned a lot from him about the overall steps (which is different than actually performing the steps), and also from watching videos from Michael Fremer.
If I had to repeat the setup on a regular basis, then I would have purchased the tools, and learned to use them myself. A few of the steps are simple. But other steps are a pain, because changing one setting puts some other setting out of alignment. So it is a back-and-forth effort, until you get everything right.
Your DB protractor probably cannot set the azimuth.
A popular tool set for setting up a turntable is Wally Tools. But even that toolkit (as far as I know) does not include a way to set the azimuth.
@@NoEgg4u The DB protractor leaves a lot to be desired and I feel it gets me "close enough" but you can really drive yourself nuts trying to get it perfect. The DB has a grid that is intended to help align the cartridge body but the cantilever isn't necessarily parallel to the body and the body doesn't always have straight sides. It's actually the cantilever that is supposed to be tangent to the groove at the null points. This is a sort of moving target too because the skating force flexes the cantilever.
At one time, I did some research to try and determine which protractor I thought would do the job without costing an arm and a leg or drive me to drink....uh...more... and I never decided on one. I think one of the mirrored ones would probably help a lot. I set vertical tracking angle first by eyeballing the top of the cartridge parallel with the record surface while it's playing and then listen to it while adjusting. If the bass seems weak, I'll lower the tonearm base, etc. The frustrating thing is that I never feel confident that I've achieved the goal.
Yeah, I'll just put a CD on thanks. :)
Possibly the main thing vinyl has over digital is nostalgia.
BINGO!!!! This is the correct answer.
and it sounds better
If you like to listen music then buy cd. If you like to“ feel“ the music, look at the artwork, support the artists... Then buy records. Its not the same. I have cd's but i like the freeling of the record. Its much expensive but if you look at it that way then you should only listen ti Tidal, Spotify... Etc
Some older vinyl records varied alot in sound quality, mainly due to the generation of the master tapes and how the vinyl itself was mastered. OTOH, I sometimes question the accuracy of some modern digital remasters on CD compared to early recordings.
Depends on a lot of factors. Mastering, etc. Cartridges, amps speakers.pressings.
something you haven't mentioned is the difference in cutting equipment in the past vs. today. Audiophile records cut today are meant to reproduce what's on the tape as accurately as possible. Older recordings cut analog from tape through tube/valve equipment are naturally going to add coloration to the sound. Vinyl sounding "warm" tends to refer to older pressings, rather than newer pressings. In which case there are even more extraneous factors in the cutting process.
Great point!!
I’m glad someone mentioned this as all he’s doing is comparing digitally mastered vs digitally mastered, suits his argument rather well unsurprisingly.
Vinyl only sounds better because the format that had the superior potential was being used for its cheapness. We're experiencing the audio equivalent of VHS being the hi-def option while Blu-Ray is offered in 480p.
I tested about 50 speakers and amps to find the set that sounded the best with my record player.
There are so many variables that change the sound.
The irony here is these are sound comparisons uploaded to RUclips which even at 1080p HD still uses compression to deliver the audio effectively.
sure but you can still hear most of the difference even despite the compression. most people's hearing rolls off below YT
I think the difference is about how the music was mixed and mastered (mainly). If you listen to record vinyls of the 70s and 80s say "Dark Side of the Moon" from 1973 will show a substantial difference with newer remastered versions of the album. Also, sound trends change from time to time, technology and equipment have changed and it keeps doin it. All of these particularities lead to subjetivities if not described from a scientific base.
I've got dark side on vinyl
@@cheapbounds3689 Would have to agree here! Fully analogue recordings from a reel to reel tape to a Vinyl LP are the ones that sounds warmer and a more full sound. Listen to anything from the Polydor label from the late 60’s /early 70’s.
Any modern LP recorded from a digital source defeats the purpose of what analogue sound is supposed to be and will always sounds tinny and harsh. My philosophy is buy secondhand older LPs up to about 1985,anything released after that buy on CDs
And don't forget the sound quality changed as the needle moved closer to the middle. Literally there is no "vinyl sound"...ie which part? The beginning or the last track?
I remember a specialist music shop in Liverpool UK back in 1973 that sold a "direct pressing" of
dark side of the moon which was very expensive compared to standard vinyl .
Maybe my memory of this is a bit confused as it was over 50 years ago.
@ probably DMM
It's so obvious that vinyl is inferior in sound quality compared to the lossless WAV files recordings of today. When I'm listening to vinyl I usually catch myself wondering how impressive it is to a needle scratch in wax to have such quality, yet worse than other sources I listen to. There's a nice video here on VWestLife's youtube channel pointing out that vinyl is actually digital, it's basically transfering the digital files to a physical form, losing some of it details in the process.
Apart from your barbarian music taste, the bass under a certain frequency ~150 Hz it gets mastered to mono on vinyl. You can't really spatially place bass frequencies due to the human hearing, so that is not an argument against vinyl.
bass is not always mono on vinyl
Vinyl has kind of a 'live' feedback that adds texture really nicely when sampling. Other than that, it's just nostalgia and nerdiness.
Very informative this one, really enjoyed it. I can remember every crackle, pop and jump on my records. It still throws me off if I hear the songs on the radio without them.
The fun of vinyl, to me is the interaction with the room, not the supposed pristine quality of its sound or the expanded dynamic range of some vinyl masters. It’s fun to see people of various audio disciplines discuss the format, and your work here really stands out.🙌
I do not think that a thing like "vinyl sound" exists. I have thousands of LPs and they can sound hugely different (also depending on the system on which they are played), and sound quality wise I have heard everything from breathtaking to absolute crap on vinyl, but they all look like a LP. So one cannot say that LPs are a consistent format with a specific sound.
exactly!
@@markusberzborn6346 Yes!! You are correct. As a “boomer” with a large collection of LPs, my enthusiasm for the format has led diehard proponents of digital to assume that I consider it superior.
I bought two LP copies of Fleetwood Mac’s Future Games trying to find one that didn’t sound muddy and rolled off on the high end. I thought maybe the LP master or stamper may be to blame so I bought a CD copy, thinking it may have been mastered better. It wasn’t and I figured it was simply a poor recording. Years later, I found a used, white label promo LP copy at a record show and BINGO, I finally had the copy I was looking for. I would have been just as happy if it had been the CD.
The fact that each vinyl sounds different is why I love this medium, or more precisely it is the reason why I hate CDs, they all sound the same to me: flat and cold. The music has lost its soul.
@@gism1789🎯🎯
Different engineers,different studios,different consoles,different tape machines etc. Yes there will be a difference.
Vinyl sound is obviously less accurate. There's poorer signal separation, lower signal to noise ratio, more distortion and surface noise, there's wow and flutter, less dynamic range, less potential bass, etc. It's just a real shame that most of today's CD's are mastered so shitty and not taking advantage of the incredible dynamic range they are capable of. Why people love vinyl I don't think has anything to do with how they sound, it's just the attraction of having sound created mechanically. It would not be difficult to digitally modify a cd's sound to replicate typical vinyl but some people would still prefer actual vinyl. I would love to see some actual double blind listening tests and see how the different sources would fare. BTW, I bought the FIRST digitally recorded LP when it came out in '79 - Ry Cooder's Bop Till You Drop. The vinyl record sounded very clean and almost clinical but I really liked it. We've come a long ways since.
Wrong , there's more bass on record , and from an analogue source, it's as accurate as it can be because it's an analogue waveform
@@mikemcguinness1304 Você não entendeu que replicar uma onda de forma analogica envolve uma infinidade de variáveis que levam à distorção. O formato digital é muito eficiente para sons graves, pois a taxa de amostragem é muito maior que a frequencia do som.
@@mikemcguinness1304 LOL you think recording a musical instrument through a microphone onto tape, mastering it & then cutting into a metal master plate to press hot vinyl into records that then require a diamond tipped stylus to bounce around in the grooves to reproduce sound is accurate.
Funny though how they don't take advantage of that 'great dynamic range' of the CDs. They all prefer to cram all the signal into the top 3 dB of that 'great dynamic range'.
I agree about blind tests, but you can't double blind with vinyl. The experiment setter will make a hell of a mess! Also I'm pretty sure the feel of the record in their hands will be a bit of a give-away.
I simply enjoy playing records at times, especially those from my childhood. I do not expect better sound.
I recently changed cartridges on my Audio Technica AT-LPGO-BT (Wal-Mart AT-LP60XBT). This was the first time an eliptical stylus cartidge was even available for this model. It did fill out the sound better than before. You're right! It's not enough to say this is how a song sounds on vinyl records.
If my ears can't hear the difference, I don't care. I own vinyls, CD's and also stream. Some vinyls sound better at least to my ears on my equipment than the CD version. I really don't care what measuring instruments show. I just trust my ears.
I love this video. I can tell you personally that I grew up in the 70s listening to scratchy vinyl on crappy stereos with cheap styli. So when I hear crappy vinyl on a cheap player, it takes me back in time and THAT is the appeal to me. I think the best part of records isn't the sound, it's the jacket and liner notes and the hanging out!
@ronallen2458 I'm so glad that even as a teenager that I looked after and treasured my LPs. 55 years later I still listen to those non scratchy, non crackly records because I l looked after them.
It's about ownership and having a physical medium
When they introduced CDs, they should have taken this into account and created a large sleeve for the artwork, and not used those stupid, easily broken, plastic cases.
Did you master those records on digitally on a computer?
If you did I think you may be missing the point.
It's not the vinyl sound that many enthousiast are after... It's the analog sound.
Vinyl allows you to play back that analog signal without introducing anything digital into the pathway but... It only will matter if the original track was recorded and produced without anything digital in that chain.
This is also why master tapes are so expensive... it gets you closer to the original analog recording.
Hope that makes sense.
No, it doesn't make sense at all. You're confusing recording and mixing quality (which 85%+ is horrible to acceptable) and the media itself. Basic undergrad level knowledge in electrical engineering.
The analog degrades the signal in many ways: Poor separation, high noise floor, distortion, wow/flutter, lower dynamic range, low / high frequency limitation, etc. The engineers squeezed all they could out of the poor analog media.
There's nothing to beat digital when done right. Today, a 200$ quality DAC easily beat any analog gear, including analog master tapes (which is max 13 bits equivalent with all enhancements enabled) at any price point. And it's easy to understand why if you have basic knowledge in sound reproduction technologies.
One of the problem we unfortunately have is the horrendous "loudness war" that plagues so many recordings... The analog media being limited, it can be less abused than its digital counterpart and yes, sometimes analog sounds better. But with quality recording and mixing done by competent people, poor 'ol analog isn't even close...
@@guyboisvert66 I'm not mixing anything up...
Your missing the point if you are taking digitally recorded music and playing back on analog formats expecting it to be better.... From my understanding it looked like this is what you are testing....
100% vintage analog master tape has a higher dynamic range than their rereleased cd or lossless file equivalent. But only if recorded and mixed through a 100% analog pathway.
Now if you record digitally or mix your analog recording digitally than digital playback is probably the way to go...
It's pretty simple
@@lllllREDACTEDlllll Not at all if the person who does the job doesn't compress (destroy!) the sound of the master tape. This person has now the opposite possibility: Compress less and put more bass, get better separation, etc. On top of that, you can use DSP to fix some problems of the master tape.
@@guyboisvert66 You completely missed... everything. You're talking about some technicality, and not about the music. And music should be what we listen, not "... separation, noise floor, distortion, wow/flutter, lower dynamic range, frequency limitation"... Music may have warmth, soul, human touch, some technical data may not. Yes, if anywhere in some music production chain is a digital link, that is not analog recording anymore, and you know it if you know the difference between digital and analog. If your choice is to listen to noise, frequency response and other blah blahs, that's fine, it is your choice, but in terms of judging music and warmth of it, it is completely wrong approach. "Warmth" of sound is not a "temperature" and could not be measured, it must be felt.
@@Djole_NS246 Obviously you don't have a clue about engineering but that's OK. Customer is always right...
Some vinyl does sound much better than any digitally media. But it’s not because it’s vinyl. It’s all in the master. Some can argue that you can master a record digitally much better to make it sound more dynamic then vinyl. but the mastering is the key element. some mix engineers could butcher a great recording song in digital. but again. some prefer recording on microphone and not directly to a digital cable.
I question using a DJ turntable for sound comparison... But I personally, who have listened to vinyl for over 4 decades, it does have a sound... Mathematically it may not.. but your ears don't lie. And I would also add that getting that vinyl onto a Reel to reel tape that's 6db hot, will absolutely capture that sound and create quite the listening experience if you have proper gear.
I was totally CD, then totally digital for a long time in expensive systems. To me the digital has come to sound dead. In the past 5 years I have mostly listened to AAA vinyl. It has so much more warmth and life to the music. I don't enjoy most digital music anymore mostly due to the compression.
The so called "CD quality" (44.1kHz/16bit) has more compressed audio , huge loss in audio information and phase shift issues at high frequencies
@@Bandit400VCsometimes that's right. Other times, that's wrong. Some CD mastering is done with very little compression.
Great sounding vinyl pressings typically have very little to no compression, which displays the dynamic range to levels that can be awesome.
I grew up with vinyl and cassette in the late 70’s and early 80’s, never sold any of it and still enjoy listening to it. I also have a lot of CD’s and a streamer. The quality of vinyl I find to be more consistently enjoyable in that CD or Streamed can often be too bass heavy OR too bright. That said room modes make a huge difference. I listen through a late 70’s JVC A-X5 and vintage speakers using an Audio Technica microline stylus. I almost never listen with tone controls flat and find a touch of bass lift dials in the sound. The mastering is just a baseline. It never fails to amaze me how great a sound is produced by dragging a needle over a piece of plastic….it’s alchemy!
This is a very interesting video, even though I don't fully agree with the conclusion.
As you mentioned, the sound of vinyl depends on many factors, so the results of tests can vary significantly depending on the setup.
I've compared many digital and vinyl versions, and generally, the vinyl versions sound warmer. I used one of the most popular cartridges, the Ortofon Red.
For me, there are three main factors that make vinyl sound different from digital:
First, the warmth of vinyl comes mainly from the fact that the high-mid frequencies are slightly less defined and a bit "dirtier" than on digital recordings. This can be clearly identified with the snare drum. On digital, you can hear it perfectly defined; on vinyl, it's more blended with the other instruments. This creates a warmer sound, but you also lose some definition.
Second, there's the "breath" of vinyl. This comes from the fact that the low-mid frequencies are lower than on digital, and dynamic compression is less present on vinyl.
Third, there's harmonic saturation in the treble, which can make the sound a bit brighter and works very well with female vocals.
These characteristics make vinyl work very well for genres like jazz and folk, but even for power rock. For example, Nirvana's Nevermind or Offspring's Smash sound noticeably better on vinyl.
On some recordings, the differences are very subtle; it really depends.
In my opinion, if you ask someone to choose between digital and vinyl in a quick A/B comparison, most people will choose digital because it sounds more "in your face," compressed, with lots of bass and very defined sounds. But after listening to a few songs, they might find it a bit fatiguing.
Therefore, both digital and vinyl are interesting formats, and we're lucky to be able to enjoy both.
To me, the biggest difference in vinyl sound is toward the 'inner grooves' where there's a lot more distortion. This is where conical and elliptical styli start to show their weakness, while the fancier tip cuts sound much better.
What made vinyl records sound great in the day were the huge tube driven stereo systems behind them, those that looked like pieces of furniture in the 50's 60's and 70's that had turntables but tube driven power amps/ pre-amps built with low noise vacuum tubes.
i think the whole vinyl thing is misguided ...it wasn't strictly vinyl at the root of "that sound", they were paired with what would be today very expensive sound systems.
What made vinyl the best platform was the cost of production. Tape if far superior to vinyl, not cassette tape but real to real tape. The only problem is real to real tape does not scale and costs too much; where as one record stamper could produced well over 1k records. Vinyl had the best sound quality one could get at affordable prices. When CDs came out, vinyl still sounded better as CD players has issues with brick wall filters. And once the players improved; they crushed the dynamic range of CD's to win the loudness wars. Vinyl, because of its limitations could not be mastered in the same way as CDs were; so once again, vinyl sounded better. Given the best mastering; digital is going to sound better on quality equipment. Even today some music is still mastered hot...
The surface noise/cracking from the vinyl evokes a nostalgic feeling which many people interpret as "warm". So you are still doing the clickbait thing. But this was a well presented and researched video so I gave it a thumbs up! More of this pls!
Does it make sense at all to listen digitally (via RUclips) to distinguish analog and digital sound?
The value of vinyl for me is a way around all those CD's that were rushed out the door at the dawn of digital audio before the engineers had a chance to become comfortable with the medium. So many albums were utterly ruined in their CD release by the labels frenzy to get everything in their catalog out the door on CD. To this day, the only good copy of these albums that you can buy is the vinyl version -- not because vinyl is superior, but because a good vinyl release beats a poorly done CD any day.
although I 100% agree that rushing production can lead to poor results, the opposite is often true.... digital has extremely quick lead times and vinyl has months and months long lead times, so often vinyl is the thing which gets rushed
@APMastering I mean back in the 80's when no one knew what they were doing with digital yet. A lot of labels back then wanted their whole catalog on CD immediately from engineers who'd never done digital before.
oh ok yeah back then there were genuine issues with convertors and digital as a format
Analog play back RTR and Vinyl just sounds better plan and simple.❤ Have a nice day @APMastering
Quite often, these cd issues were made from the wrong master tapes, even ones made from discarded mixes! Unfortunately, many of these cd's are now what's being offered from streaming platforms.
The problem is very simple with people who dont have much knowledge about equipments and then ofcourse analog can sound bad. But even a bad pair of headphones will sound bad. Playing record without proper equipments is where they actually go wrong.
2 points I'd like to make. When you were screwing around with the deck tracking weight in the earlier part of the video you were NOT adjusting the lateral ( side pull ) ( anti skating ) of the stylus experienced in the groove to compensate the weight in the groove favouring one wall of the record ?. Why ? Do you know what you are doing when setting up an arm/stylus ? Secondly I would argue that vinyl recordings / music in general from back in the 60s 70s 80s had much more dynamics going on within the music, i.e loud/ quiet passages as opposed to todays war of compression and everything as loud as possible. Older recordings on vinyl are a completely different things to todays product. There were even different versions issued of most classic albums over the decades with different thicknesses of vinyl, different vinyl. There is no way to compare really, all subjective. The vinyl of the 70s , the amplifiers available, the speaker available, the cables available. many things have changed from all analog / valve amp / speaker enclosure combinations to mostly digital recording and playback nowadays. There is no myth, only quality.
it makes almost no difference. more macro dynamics means more surface noise
Listening electronic music on vinyl is like running Doom on a cactus...
But you are talking about digitally recorded files mastered for and pressed onto vinyl. The reason old guys like me think vinyl sounds different is the material we listen to was recorded on analog tape....that tape saturation on vinyl is intoxicating. Or do you believe something different?
I watched that video. The guy used a sound burger to play his vinyl. My pickup cartridge cost more than a sound burger. Vinyl is not warmer, in fact using a decent turntable and cartridge it is extremely dynamic. I amaze visitors when I play vinyl on my system, they are usually blown away with the sound quality. Also cassette can sound excellent using the right tape and machine.
Ironically, everything you list as contributing to vinyl not having a sound is proof that their are more variables surrounding the medium of vinyl, leading to the playback demonstrating less consistent results when compared to digital.
Was there really ever a myth saying vinyl (as such) sounds "better"? It quite obviously sounds different, since it is a different medium. At least in a setting where the music is played out loud, like in a club. Not all sound systems appear to be able to reproduce music from a turntable as good as others. There are also other factors involved since the stylus is actually a microphone - i.e. feedback will alter the reproduced sound to a varying degree. So in my view there's really no necessity for debunking anything, rather than just explaining the differences. And of course there is also the most vital thing - the quality of the recording itself.
You're technically correct, and yet this won't change that most listeners will get a "warmer" sound by listening through average quality equipement than listening to a normalized version of the track in Spotify and most digital distribution services. What will usually happen to the average vinyl listener it's they'll get a dirtier sound, often with softened transients thus being under the impression than the sound is "warmer". Only with CD's and orignial wav masters would they get the actual sound. So you're right, vinyl doesn't have a sound per se, but music is not experienced or heard in a vacum, so most people will get a more inaccurate and "warmer" listening experience with vinyl records.
We bought our first cd player in the mid 90s and we were blown away by the quality it had over vinyl and casette.
@@elhatarolodohod2040 that's because it does sound better. I found a link on audio science review to a study a while ago now. To break it down a group of people were taken into a room and with a vynl player, and a CD player but the players were visible to the listener. They played each person some music and asked which one sounded better. Everyone picked the vynl. Next they are taken into another room and played the same music but this time they were told what format they were listening to but couldn't see which player and again they all picked the vynl player. The final test was completely blind, they were simply asked what format they think sounded the best. Without knowing what they were listening to they all unknowingly picked the CD player!
Yeah, didn't you find it a bit tiring compared with vinyl tho? The earlier cd player sound was like being assaulted with a titanium baseball bat 😂 .. was nice to get away from crackles tho.
People say this then I discover their CD player was 10x the cost of their turntable - usually integrated into a cheap midi system
@@elhatarolodohod2040 my reply got deleted again?
@@steveprice9737 No. You can just say you don't like clean, clear audio.
I'm so mad because I know I'll agree with him in the end despite disagreeing with the title
lol. i actually love vinyl btw
i only watch if i am in a certain "come at me bro, challange my long held opinions" mood
@APMasteringwhew!
@APMastering and now I don’t need to watch the video 😂
Whew! ❤@APMastering
If CDS had been more secure and Napster and all the copying didn't happen we wouldn't even be talking about vinyl. It was mainly manipulation by the recording industry to make money, conning the kids back into paying exorbitant amounts to purchase music.
It’s impossible to evaluate your music selections because you are using electronic sounds. If you were making your point by using acoustic instruments, ie: piano which is a string and a percussion instrument, we could judge your point much easier. Electronic noise with digital samples can’t be identified to a real instrument.
Congrats. One of the most informative videos on the factors that influence vinyl I've watched yet.
Hahahaha
I just listened to a near mint original Aja by Steely Dan, the dynamics are incredible. The Cd while a bit more clean is to damn compressed.
That’s a great album and if you want to hear dynamics on this album I recommend saving up for the Analogue Productions UHQR version. Sure it’s fearsomely expensive and it’s only the second one I’ve personally purchased but it’s worth it!
@@onefatstratcat my favorite vinyl pressing is actually the cisco one from the early 2000s. Mad dynamics and bass, It's so fun. That being said, the original Steve Hoffman MCA CD is no slouch at all. It's my favorite digital version, and I've had the opportunity to try out the original AB-whatever vinyl pressing, the 90s remastered MCA, MFSL CD, Japanese SACD as well as the new AP SACD. None of them come close to cisco and the original CD.
The biggest point being overlooked is a turntable is microphonic. With a really good system and the equipment in the proper placement at threshold volume the turntable if queued would begin to feedback in the low end frequencies so when you do have a high-quality press being played at threshold volume the sound does interact with the stylus adding warmth and dimension where digital will never do that.
@@ronnierobertsband Already works with a basic Ortofon 2M Red system.
Literally the entire point of vinyl and hi-fi is listening to it in person. Ever seen someone audition a pair of speakers over zoom?
you listen to a cd in person too
how does that change the fact that you're comparing audio in a compressed YT video. Nobody compares receivers, speakers, or any audio equipment this way
@@whatsthis217suggest you watch videos like Starskys, he blows this YT compression myth away. It’s only used by people hurt feelings and no real difference
@@whatsthis217 oh i get your point. well if you don't like online comparisons then that's fine
When people talk about the vinyl sound they refer to vinyl playback, it’s the system as a whole, as you described, not specifically the record. Analogue mastering sounds different again and original pressings vs current reissues theres clear differences.
hello weaver beats
😅
Not a fan of Weaver, AP is much better
@@musikkluvelectrobanger weaver is entertainement, AP is a professional
@@musikkluvelectrobanger weaver's main channel is great for what it is, but the reaction streams are basically 2-person word salad because he's too ADHDish to refrain from hitting pause so he can process a complete statement in context. like dude chill, we aren't about to forget that we are watching YOUR channel while the other guy talks for a second.
also: i'm sorry but a lot of independent producers have cope and arrogance about how we finalize our master mixes (not) being the same as professional mastering just because we acquired a few of the same tools and crossover information. maybe it's fine for our own music and we don't Need that professional touch, but i simply can't do the same thing without real facilities for it, as opposed to just my cool synth-sampler studio that was built prioritizing totally different stages of music creation while on a budget in a prebuilt domestic home. it's just banging your head into a wall to keep kneejerk reacting to a mastering engineer for months as if he's just a fellow beatmaker with Ozone or whatever being arbitrarily snobby.
Shoutout😂😂😂
The ritual of playing stuff in vinyl gives you the impression of a better sound maybe because you are putting more attention to it.. and because you dont wanna feel like you wasted your money
this.
vinyl albums look beautiful on bookshelves.
that was the whole idea behind the mind games 1000th re-release by Yoko and Sean
Yes and that's called coping.
The "vinyl sound" is mainly down to harmonic distortion. You can easily recreate it using a digital file and a suitable plugin.
Vinyl records and styluses wear out. Every listening session reduces the sound quality for the next one. Ironically, the best way to preserve vinyl records is to avoid playing them altogether.
I saw the video you talked about, and I immediately guessed the vinyl track he was playing. It was waaaaaaay off in the bass and my thoughts went to how the RIAA curve was applied. Something was clearly wrong. So thank you very much for this awesome video. Much respect to getting all these facts communicated in such a clear way, I never thought about the tracking weight causing distortion but it makes sense since the coils and magnets aren't lined up correctly in the cartridge.
I also discovered that stereo separation is not very good on vinyl, 24 dB maybe. In your video I could finally hear the difference @ 6:13. I really appreciate the work you put into making this video.
thanks! glad you got some value from the video!
Vinyl is fun and big and tactile. It's also a pain in the ass to put on and change sides and keep from scratching. When it was all we had it was fine but I'm lazy and want to listen to music from my phone. I can't tell the difference because my ears are whacked from loud live music before I had the sense to use ear plugs consistently.
One thing is for sure...the "music" selection in this video was not good.
This was by far and away the most exemplary explanation and "test" of this subject I've ever seen - and Im middle aged! Absolutely stellar video in every single respect. I'm gonna reference this for time immemorial. Subscribed sir!
thanks! i'll do even more examples in an upcoming video
Isn't the audiophile world all about the quest for the best sound reproduction by experimentation with equipment, (and its personally subjective) Seeking out records at record fairs with specific pressing qualities. Ultimately its a hobby/interest that many find a great deal of enjoyment from and can share with a community.
That can’t be right you boomer. You just prefer the ritual of your big black discs.
Just kidding. For a moment I thought I was a modern, scientific kid with earbuds.
@minkwelder 😂 I'm much younger than a Boomer
@@rickewilde Well I am a 73 year old boomer who used to sell records at the shows and, after being into the record scene so long, I am somewhat familiar with some of the differences between pressings. Not all pressings of the same record sound the same but many people don’t know that also goes for the CDs.
Bro picked the shittiest music to give examples with
The "vax in your ears" sample sounded like the turntable just got messed up or some weird-ass EQ setting got applied. And I don't know why the guy chose some really muddy bass-focused track to show difference in treble reproduction.
It is not Music but pure Noise (junk)!
Back in the day, mixing and mastering for vinyl was a musical art... Nowadays is not quite the same in my opinion!! Good comments though...👍👍👍👍
no shit. basically distorted noise tracks.
if u have shitty setup then you will get shitty results.
I think that's kind of obvious, LOL!
Small remark: AT cartridges generally have a brighter sound, regardless of the stylus. It's even a bit brighter than the original master. It would be better to compare different styli on the same cartridge. (Other than that: great no nonsense video)
Oh my, you're a stubborn opinionated guy, aren't you? Just listen to some top-tiered vinyl rips, made from world class analog rigs, and tell for your self... Michael Fremer uploaded once a hi-res excerpt from "The Little Hut On Chicken's Legs", from Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an exhibition", made on his Calliburn fortress, with the first SAT arm and Lyra Atlas SL, feeding his Ύψιλον tubed phono stage, the whole gear is at $230K... I listened through my Sony MDR-7605 headphones-iFi Zen Dac V2 and I couldn't believe, the subterranean bass, resonating in my guts, the spacious music hall with such ambience and the golden hues of the orchestra, unbelievable!!!!!
it's a shame a lot of the differences in this literally cannot be heard, due to youtube having that 15KHz cutoff at the top
Wrong. RUclips audio is up to 20khz now, I have spectral analysis reports to prove it. And I'm talking about grabbing via direct 'what-u-hear' recording not using YT audio ripping websites to create fake 320 MP3's.
@TheOptimod when did it change, have you got a link to something written about it
@@han-dell No official link that I know of, but I have taken rips from some HIFI vinyl channels and was pleased to see the full frequency spectrum as it used to be cutoff as you say. Older videos seem to still be poor but later uploads take advantage. Of course it also depends on the uploader's source material!
@TheOptimod I'm glad to know it's not much of an issue any more