ERRATA - The video mentions tracking error where a typical tonearm is correctly aligned at only one point on the record. In fact it is correctly aligned at two points. At all other points on the record there is tracking error in varying amounts. Also, a 33.3 rpm record rotates once in 1.8 seconds, not 1.8 times per second, which was my verbal typo. It took a year for someone to notice that. DM
@@jagmarc No, the point of a linear tracking arm is the tonearm is always aligned perfectly perpendicular to the groove. sadly they cost a bomb to make well and are hard to make follow the record perfectly, but just about every record lathe uses one. But it will then ofc be misaligned slightly everywhere as theres no way your hand set angle is gonna exactly match the cutting lathe lol.
Two points? You mean one point per side of the record? I think I assumed that. Also, given that 99% of people listened to records using record players that had rotating tone arms, why weren't the mastering lathes designed to slightly rotate their cutting stylus in some standardised way so that it came close to the way home tone arms operated?
Mr. Masterclass, I hope you get to read this before my post gets buried. To get right to it, do you realize what digitizing an analog signal does? First process, the signal HAS to start as analog. Then to digitize, (no matter how many times you sample it, unless you are almost back to analog, defeating the purpose) it causes detrimental losses. THEN the signal HAS to be converted BACK to analog or your system will sound something like a fax machine and will probably ruin your speakers IN WHICH MORE LOSSES are imposed. Well ok, you say the losses can be premped or reinserted digitally? That is not true audio my friend. It is a REPRESENTATION of audio or synthesization. Get the wrong number on your cell phone and you can hear what that's all about. Ok, so most people say the ADA conversions happen so fast that you don't hear them? Ok then now getting into turntable and CD comparisons. My first CD player was a present to me. An early version made by Phillips and right off the bat I could hear the difference when I connected it to the aux port of my Marantz 2270 receiver. At that point they were still selling LP's so I kept buying them until vinyl was being phased out. So I bought the top of the line Pioneer CD player with a 6 CD changer/remote and loaded them up with the same albums I was going to execute on my turntable. I compared the LP's on my Pioneer PL-516 TURNTABLE with 1.5 grams tracking, anti skate adjust as per specs recommendations, + -- pitch control strobe setting (so no drag surface noise etc.) with my top of the line Pioneer CD player, (equalizations set the same...Marantz 2270 has 3 EQ settings...Bass, Mid, Treb) cranked them both on at the same time and switched my phono and aux selector switch back and forth to hear the difference with my OWN ears. The sound level or volume was pretty much the same (didn't have a watt meter to compare the output levels but pretty sure that the inputs from the phono and the aux have to be ballpark closely match). All in all, the turntable (analog) had a much brighter sound. For some, they might like a duller type sound. Maybe it's all in the individual's preference. Now, I will have to say that some of my albums were not recorded properly and I do hear surface noise at quiet points in the recordings but honestly not for the most part. When I overdrive my amp to concert level past 70 RMS per channel (my amps specs) then yes, all kinds of noise and distortion will start falling into place. Also the 70 W RMS was into 8 ohm speakers. I had Klipsch's (4 ohms) so I had a little more efficiency. I don't know what they rate amps these days but the RMS value is (Root Mean Square or DC equivalent or continuous level). In other words, if your amp is rated at 70 watts PEAK per channel, that would be a lower rating. Take 0.707 multiplied by your peak rating will give the the RMS value. Back to LP's. Most of my albums are from the 1970's to mid to late 1980's. NONE OF THEM ARE REMASTERED..REPEAT
@@nolaserv Read up on sampling theory, particularly the Nyquist limit. You don't have to sample a band-limited waveform at every instant in order to reproduce it fully.
As a vinyl collector, a lot of the appeal is the ritual of putting on a record. Physically choosing a record from a shelf, looking at the artwork, taking it out of its sleeve and putting it on...the warm crackle, the anticipation of waiting for the record to start. It makes a contrast from spotify etc...which I also use everyday...but there's something about the physical record. It's big, it's an event. I love it, regardless of sound issues.
This is the first time I''ve seen someone say this instead of some nonsense about "natural sound waves" or "better mid-range". I see the appeal, but it's definitely not worth $30 per album.
Agree. Although I have not listened to vinyl for quite sometime, I used to have a record with some damage that mad a certain noise at a point in one song. I got so used to hearing that noise at that point in time, that when i heard the same song on the radio, I would anticipate the noise that never came. It was weird hearing a clean version. I do on occasion threaten to dust on my Sony, and Technics, turn tables. If I ever do, America-America, Or BTO-Not Fragile will get the first spins. - Cheers
You’ve missed out the process of tracking down hard to find records, and the stories you have about eventually finding and purchasing the LP, EP, etc. also the packaging, opening sealed records, not opening some! The linear notes, tons of stuff that you never get from digital media. As for the sound quality of vinyl, it may well be that digital sound is sonically superior, but those of us who have grown up with vinyl and continued to collect, the imperfections are actually welcome (not all of them of course). Some genres of digitally produced music even incorporate the sonic imperfections of both cassette and vinyl (think of the chewed tape effect, and vinyl crackle for example). Much of what is reported in this video is not easily heard on even regular hi-fi equipment which I would assume is what people who still play vinyl have. Also, whilst I appreciate what is being communicated in this video highlights the limits of vinyl as a music medium, I’m from a culture where playing vinyl on sound systems (at incredibly loud levels) is a tradition which embraces the imperfections of vinyl. Arguably dubplates are inferior to regular commercial vinyl (in fact they are inferior as they have less playing hours as opposed to commercially released records), but this tradition has been maintained despite the sonic tradeoffs. I say this as a collector with around 5000 records in my collection (a baby amount by pro collectors standards), and I still buy vinyl, much of which is second hand. As an investment it’s good to know that some of what you purchase has increased in value many times over, even relatively new releases are becoming highly sought due to limited pressings. Interesting video nonetheless 👍🏾
The worst thing about vinyl is cleaning the damn things and when the record skips. The best thing about vinyl is the album artwork and watching the record spin on the turntable.
Reading / looking at the artwork was always part of the experience. We lost that when the CD came along. Part of listening to music for me, ELP, YES, PF, was that sleeve and what is said. By myself, I’d sit there with the cover, reading it. I remember on programs when the cd was introduced as virtually indestructible, could be affected by scratches? Well, we all found out that was not true- but in my case too late as I gave about 50 on my old vinyls away, only to find myself buying them back off eBay 50 years later….
@@adotopp1865 Ned from sunny Spain and a massive vinyl lover and agree with Ado 100%. If the CD skips or the various digital files are mastered horribly it gets tossed in the effing bin. This guy is full of BS, typical Brit know it all jack ass, vinyl rules forever
You are probably aware of Rudy Van Gelder, the legendary recording engineer, and I'll share some of his comments which I believe to my core at age 75 and having been an audio enthusiast for going on 60 years now, owning untold pieces of audio gear during that time. Rudolph Van Gelder (November 2, 1924 - August 25, 2016) was an American recording engineer who specialized in jazz. Over more than half a century, he recorded several thousand sessions, with musicians including Booker Ervin, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Horace Silver, Herbie Hancock, Grant Green and George Benson. He worked with many different record companies, and recorded ALMOST EVERY SESSION on Blue Note Records from 1953 to 1967. He worked on albums including John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, Miles Davis's Walkin', Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage, Sonny Rollins's Saxophone Colossus, and Horace Silver's Song for My Father. He is regarded as one of the most influential engineers in jazz. From 1999, he remastered the analog Blue Note recordings he made several decades earlier into 24-bit digital recordings in it's RVG Edition series. He was positive about the switch from analog to digital technology he told Audio magazine. From an interview with Rudy: "The BIGGEST DISTORTER is the LP itself. I've made thousands of LP masters. I used to make 17 a day, with two lathes going simultaneously, and I'm glad to see the LP go. As far as I'm concerned, good riddance. It was a constant battle to try to make that music sound the way it should. It was never any good. And if people don't like what they hear in digital, they should BLAME THE ENGINEER who did it. Blame the mastering house. Blame the mixing engineer. That's why some digital recordings sound terrible, and I'm not denying that they do, but DON"T BLAME THE MEDIUM".
Rudy forgot that not everyone had headaches mastering like he did.He is after all one man with one opinion.Equipment is way better now than when he mastered.Vinyl will always sound better because of the distortions that are actually pleasing to the human ear.Your tympanic membrane is an analogue device not digital.And your brain processes in a cellular electric field.God bless third order harmonic distortion.
A digital master is always converted to an analog signal along the path to you ears otherwise your ears would not be able to hear it, I'm pretty sure you already know this. Vinyl just adds more problems like loss of stylus to groove contact in complex passages causing a lot of distortion, tracking error, inevitable groove wear the more it is played, imperfections in the vinyl adding annoying tick and pops not to mention a wide variability of the vinyl's quality, slight off center pressing causing wow, the need to add quite a lot of frequency curve manipulation via the RIAA equalization network, peak limiting and compression of the signal so as not to cause even more mistracking of the stylus, wide variability in pickup and stylus quality, etc. Trying to force a mechanical system to produce sound is fraught with these and more problems. I'll take a properly mastered CD any day.
@@brucegelman5582 "Vinyl will always sound better because of the distortions that are actually pleasing to the human ear" People like you are just a lost cause. Coping so hard with the fact that vinyl is an inferior medium. What sounds pleasing to my human ear is to hear the music as it was intended to sound, not with some random distortions.
As a vinyl sentimentalist and fan, congratulations on your informative and entertaining video. Vinyl is like your old favorite uncle: old fashioned, makes funny noises at times, unsophisticated and a relic. But the warm memories, smiles, and joy they conjure can't be beat. Especially for an old timer like me. I like digital, but I love vinyl.
This is a very interesting comment and touches on something that I would dwell on. Years ago, I had a vinyl copy of Daft Punk's Around The World. At about 1m42 there's a pop that I got used to hearing. To this day, 25 years later, I still anticipate that pop on digital and when I don't hear it, seems like somethings missing. In the end, each copy no matter how exact it may be to the next will take on characters that are unique to it from normal use which give it a one of a kind sound. I guess you can say that vinyl is a good metaphor to life in general where as Digital is something that you can only take something away from. I believe that if we measure vynil on paper against Digital, there's no comparison. Digital will always win but on a less mathematical level, vinyl will always mix with our own memories to take us somewhere beyond the air molecules being pushed into our earholes.
@@traxonwax I see digital as close to perfect as possible, perhaps too much so. I've pondered what it is about digital that although technically superior always leaves me somewhat unsatisfied with the listening experience. I've analyzed the situation, and I've come up with the following: when I was a teen to young adult, in the 70s through 80s I purchased lots of albums. The experience was much more than a listening one then. First the excitement of hearing that certain band or artist had released a new album. Then driving to the record shop, The Wherehouse, or Tower records among others. The thrill of walking into the store and viewing the thousands of LPS and getting hit with the smell of the wrapping and cardboard, along with the giant cut outs of artists advertising their latest lp. The excitement of holding the new lp in my hands and looking over the artwork, or photographs of the band on said lp. Some of the lp covers were intricate, novel, humorous, scary, intimate, etc. Once I arrived home, it was such an exciting experience to tear the plastic cover and listening to the crackel of the plastic as I tore it away. Finally, the new album was uncovered and with great anticipation, I pulled the lp out. Some albums had colorful labels on the LPS themselves and some unfolded with gatefolds. Finally, placing the album on the turntable, dropping the needle and listening for the first time the new music. The totality of the experience involved the senses, emotions and imprinted those wonderful memories that come roaring back when I pull out one of those LPS now, dust it off and drop the needle on that beautiful round platter once again.
Bingo! That's exactly the sentiment I have towards records. I have thousands of sources for music (and books, podcasts, etc) but when I want to just chill and listen I'll throw an album on and just zone out. We have numerous music systems in the house and I leave the one with the turntable in the basement to play fairly loud...mainly because my wife has a "tin ear" and can't distinguish the difference between a decent Bluetooth device and a pair of $2000 speakers. I'm old and like a lot of folks I let my early record collection go in the early 80's in favor of CD's. A friend gifted me a very nice Denon table and I've recently bought a few dozen albums that mean something to me and I couldn't be happier. I still buy CD's and subscribe to Apple Music and feel everybody should enjoy sound however they prefer.
I bet you really cling to that poetic comfort in the face of the reality of the wasted money - on vinyl. there is no charm or poetry or love in vinyl. Every single musician that made that music desperately wanted their recordings to sound as best as they could. The engineers and the many tracks and all the tech - from the Beatles to Tool - all in the effort to make the music sound good - and then some lunatic hipster bored with a lot of money starts a vinyl movement - and the cattle moo'd
For me vinyl is the cure for this generations millisecond attentionspan, where i can sometimes find it hard to sit through just one song without doing something else in the meanwhile. Vinyl forces you to respect the album and give it time and patience, it transforms the listening experience completely, thats why i listen to vinyl
Oh, just brilliant! "The medium should force you to do something you otherwise wouldn't"? Now how about that listening experience?! Mind you, haven't you noticed that there's absolutely no way to hear the whole album on a record as opposed to a CD? If your laziness is what makes you not skip a song you don't like, perhaps not consider yourself such a big admirer of music?
I think this is the most deluded reason for praising records. The fact that kids have short attention span will in no way be affected by records. It can only drive them away since sitting and listening is not a part of their lives anymore. Patience is not something a certain material gives to a musical album. Patience is a human trait. Also it makes absolutely no sense for YOU to listen to records (it's not vinyl, it's records), because YOUNG people have short attention span. Whatever you choose to do want affect them. You can hardly defend the notion of "respect for the album" if it was recorded onto an inferior sounding medium, since albums are about sound, while a superior medium is available. Remember, you have to flip records. So there is actually only one way to listen to an entire album without interruptions and it's digital. I hope I helped.
Leaving aside my joke, which nobody understood, I agree with your point that what mr_sandman chooses to do will not affect what generation spotify does, but I have to question the attitude that a re-release on CD is necessarily superior. Albums were recorded within the limitations of the technology of their time and the mixing took into account the volume headroom of the medium. If we take the song 'Twist and Shout' from The Beatles' first album and listen to a polished up remaster, the sound may sound technically superior, but it sounds very different from the vinyl record which probably drove the high volume sections to distortion from the first playing. Obviously modern audiences may react differently from contemporary ones and instead of thinking it is hip and transgressive might just think it is a bad recording. Indeed, they may also wonder why follow such a crowd-pleaser with the much calmer 'Love me do', which makes less sense without the inevitable intermission due to the need to flip the disc. What I found interesting was the reaction of someone who recently purchased The Beatles' white album (I think it was) on CD but who remembered listening to LP and who stated 'This is NOT the same album I heard back in the day : it shouldn't even have the same title'. Obviously it _must_ be the same music, but the album was a collaboration of the post-recording technicians of the day AND the band and perhaps the remastering for CD means that the product of the work of the technicians of the 60s is no longer in the CD album. Viewed as a collaborative effort, it probably IS a different album, even if it is based on the same master tapes. In that sense, had CDs existed in 1968, the original album might have been produced very differently. So, in that sense, the only way to listen to the original album is to listen to the original album, and perhaps on typical turntables of the time. Obviously that makes the album extinct; so what do we do? We re-release it and mix it for CD. It's obvious that we can never hear it with the same ears that first heard the original album in 1968 even if we did listen to an old LP on an old turntable, but we may well still appreciate the music. @@cubemerula5264
When nostalgia strikes you play records. You don't just listen to music but you look through the years and see your yesterdays. You go through the rituals and the emotions that were familiar to your younger self. That's what playing records means to me these days.
Yes, music always brings memories, it’s beautiful in that way, if I have to play vinyl all I get is frustration and rage at how bad it sounds, and memories of frustration and rage from long ago, yes, the rituals and emotions of virtually shampooing albums before attempting to play them🙂
My first LP was "Wednesday Morning: 3 AM." Monoaural, because in those days stereo disks cost more, as did all of the playback hardware. POS system and speaker in my frat house bedroom. I have my own home now, and a decent mid-level system, but what being a late teen in the mid 1960's comes back when I play the first LP I ever bought.
"Ah, that shows you the power of music, that magician of magician, who lifts his wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh." - Mark Twain
Jack White always does cool stuff with records. One of his records has two parallel grooves at the start. If the needle lands in one groove, you hear an acoustic intro to the song. If the needle lands in the other groove, you hear an electric intro. It's like magic.
Monty Python did the same thing on their "Matching Tie & Handkerchief" album. Side two had two different routines - you never knew which one would be playing.
it´s done in a lot of records ,like in a LP live of Ella Fitzsgerald ,only two songs but if the nedle goes to the second groove it´s a total diferent recording ,it´s more usual now to record with parallel grooves
As a trained sound engineer, I can agree with everything you say, yet Iam an avid vinyl collector. Nothing replaces the physical format, the whole process of listening to vinyl ( I can choose between all streaming platforms or my vinyl collection on my system, …. I love digging thru my collection and getting inspired by the covers)
I've had too many songs vanish from the internet. Videos too. After the 20th one or so, physical mediums are more about resisting propaganda and brainwashing than anything else. Additionally, there are literally millions of songs that only exist in physical format, never were converted to digital, and never will be. So, you can say what you will but I'd rather explore than become a living Spotify playlist, curated by others. Cheers.
@@robmurphy82 Medium has several definitions. In art it refers to the type of materials used in the creative process of a physical piece, but could be applied to music as well.
I've collected records since I was a kid in the seventies. I have over two thousand. A lot of them from local bands that never got released on another format. Plus I get the unique album art. Your explanation is great, I can't disagree with the technical aspects, but the experience of listening to a new record on my old Technics linear tracking turntable that still works after forty two years will always win against another medium. Rock on
I don't mind idiots like this guy crapping on vinyl. I makes more of the "Grail" records out there available for people that still enjoy music on the best format... vinyl. Hopefully he will convince his viewers to sell all their records really cheap like idiots.
Same. I have no prejudice against digital, but when the only easily available source for digital is ripping vinyl, I'd prefer vinyl. A lot of content was never digitized professionally, or the CDs were pressed in vanishingly low numbers compared to still-available vinyl. As for the seven sins of vinyl listed by our host, they do exist but I can live with them and some, like vibration, are almost nonexistent in my setup).
@@Erlewyn Very right, and such experience carries a whole Freudian connotation which is quite meaningful in itself, and in spite of my being an audiophile and searching for perfection, we're in fact addicted to the romantic way vinyl sounds.
The appeal of vinyl is not in the sound quality or the reliability of vinyl records, but in the ritual of putting on a record, not to mention that you get to admire the art on the cover and read the lyrics while you listen to it. It is like a form of meditation, a momentary escape from our increasingly busy lives to just take a step back and enjoy something. Listening to the music becomes more of an experience rather than a utility, and that is what people desire. These days, when (almost) every song every is just a click away, and you can hear it in perfect digital clarity, it devalues the experience. It comes back to the simple econonics principle of supply and demand, and when there isn't a whole lot of demand but instant and infinite supply, it's made music really devalued. Not to mention exclusivity and scarcity- because vinyls are fairly expensive, you can only really have a certain amount, and for many (me included) there is something more enjoyable about having a physical library of albums to browse through rather than various playlists on spotify or folders on your computer storing the data. It's extremely hard for musicians to make money with the digital system unless you are getting millions of streams, but vinyl (and cassette and CD) gives artists other physical avenues to sell their music.
I agree! When an artistic media like music and film becomes almost free it becomes throwaway. That's why I dislike streaming. I will continue to buy and enjoy LP's, CD's and DVD's. For the chance to pass them on to future generations!
The thing about the resurgence of vinyl, and the same can be said about CDs, is that they are physical things you can own. Do not underestimate the importance of this. Also, the music fan must plunk down some money for these things, some of which actually goes to the artist. Wow, what a concept!!!! I'm all for it!
If you really need to have physical medium, that doesn't suck.. maybe get bunch of sd cards, I recommend the full size over the micro sd, unless you intend to play these on your phone too(alternatively you can get usb flash drives, but these are rather bulky, on plus side they don't need a card reader to work).. they are very cheap at smallest capacity they sell which is probably 8gb.. more than enough. Copy your existing digital files, mp3s or flacs to the medium(or if you have it on a cd, rip it). Use the thicc cardboard to make the insert for the sd card(alternatively you could 3d print these). Scan the artwork of the cd cover and print it out(or find scans online)... I recommend making it all smaller, so it takes less space. There you go.
That's exactly why I DON'T like CD's and Vinyl. I grew up with a huge vinyl and cd collection and when I was a kid I used to dream of being able to access any song I wanted at any time on something that didn't skip or having to carry some huge stupid box in my pocket that needed batteries to be replaced constantly. (charging is NOT as bad...lol). While I did enjoy parts of the vinyl experience, taking records to friends houses, the "ritual" of it, etc....none of that is good enough to ever make me want to go back to that. It's SOOOO much better today. I don't care about the "physical" thing at all. Just stuff that takes up too much space. It's a good point about making sure artists get paid for their work though.
In the comment I posted, I touched on the defensive nature of vinyl purists. Looks like we're witnessing a small example judging from the admonishment that you received here in your thread. LOL 😂 Calm down Vitor. It's not that critical. 😁
Thanks for saying this. The happiest day of my life is when I gave away my extensive vinyl collection in the 80s and didn't look back. I did the same for my cassettes. Now I have a couple of dozen CDs and a streaming service and couldn't be happier. I stream music I would never have purchased (or otherwise obtained). Internet radio is where I discover new music. Radio Paradise is the best thing since sliced bread; curated by humans for humans.
I bought my first CD player in 1985. My first play back, plugged into my cheap KLH receiver and a set of Advent speakers (pedestrian, I know) was so wonderful, I had no interest in ever going back to vinyl. No clicks, no hiss, no pops, no skips. Plus the extra beauty of being able to play an album straight through without a break to flip the album. The first straight listen of DSOM was mind blowing, no interruption. No looking back.
Well put! Here's another thing that I think about when I listen to Bach Organ Works. Back in the old days, it wasn't an issue to have low frequencies in mono...that sound is omnidirectional, right? Well...now that we have stereo subwoofers, you can actually hear the low frequencies going from side to side, etc. As Mr. Mellor points out, mastering engineers have to make compromises due to limitations. So, a mastering trick that I've read about was to make the lower frequencies mono, so guess what? With stereo subwoofers, you wouldn't hear any panning of the lower frequencies. CDs have NO SUCH limitation. And if you haven't heard the DSOTM 5.1 mix or a good stereo downmix (I think the 50th anniversary is a downmix of the 5.1, but I can't confirm this - the drums do sound much crisper like the 5.1 mix), you're in for a treat! It makes the old DSOTM versions sound muddy, in my opinion, because they were 2nd and 3rd generation tape. Oh, but that makes it sound warmer! ha ha The sound of the warmth that people hear is likely just distortion or noise. No looking back indeed! And I don't have $80,000 for a fancy turntable.
you should have bought a turntable not a click, hiss,pops or skip machnine ,skip do happens more on cds ,in vinyl skips are at least for me never heard.
Yep, bought my first CD player in '85 as well. I still had all my vinyl and cassettes of course, and a lot of expensive gear to play them on, but the writing was on the wall. I feel the vinyl revival makes about as much sense as a VHS revival when we have Blu-ray and streaming.
@@GazzaBoo correct but in this situation the vinyl is the blue-ray and vhs the cd, but not all had good turntables and the 80´s models were not so well fabricated as the 70´s ones allthough when working new they did had a very good sound but i remenber when buying a complete ES system the turntqble i had from 74 ,a belt driven pioneer from the ES-2000 system hyuad much better sound than at the time sony ES cd player, but the sound on cds is to bleme and tye opnes who were not used tolisten to records can´t notice the diference which is huge from vinyl to cd ,80´s turntables not all were good ,kind of today´s turntables sound and most of them for beeing made mostly of plastic didn´t arrive to today´s with perfect working , but remenber that every brand had a good turntable but as i said plastic didn´t aged well while 60´s and 70´s turntables atill work perfect troday if well taken care off ,it´s not being dighital the problem but the format it self, developed in the 70´s by philips than teamed up with sony
Your talk took me back to the time when I first heard mention about the development of CD technology --- around 1982 or 1983, when I was in junior high school. My friend Mitch told me about "a record player they invented that uses a laser, so the needle doesn't touch the grooves, and can even read through scratches." Yes, we thought it would still be a vinyl record being read by a laser. The actual CD, when it came out, was even more impressive. The first time I realized something was being lost was when my older brother's friend came by for his first listen to a CD. He was impressed, but then he looked at the packaging and said: "It's too bad the cover is so small. When you buy a record, you're also buying a piece of art." I later reacquired SOME of my old vinyl titles through collectors shops, and I enjoy finding rare pressings or foreign versions of old Beatle records. Vinyl for all its faults is still fun to listen to, and the physics of the technology still amaze me. Dropping a needle onto the groove brings such warm feelings. Then there's the case of Abbey Road. Side One finishes with "I Want You (She's So Heavy)." You know how that song ends --- Abruptly. The swampy, portentous guitars grow louder and louder, with a wooshing wind sound effect creeping up in volume. Just before the blowing gust becomes overwhelming, the sound cuts off! The sudden silence is jarring, and that finale to Side 1 requires a long silent pause to contemplate the moment. It says: "Are you ready for Side 2? Not yet? That's okay. Take a break before you flip the record over." But when listening on CD or other digital format, the first gentle guitar lines of "Here Comes the Sun" begin a few seconds after that monster of a song pushes the listener off a cliff. It's just so wrong! As McLuhan said, the medium is the message!
That's a really interesting example you brought up from Abbey Road. I saw a comment recently in a modern listener's review of that album who clearly had only experienced the digital version. They said something along the lines of "the guitar intro to Here Comes the Sun immediately following the end of I Want You (She's So Heavy) is the greatest transition in music history." It was a very hyperbolic line, but clearly that experience of the album had a profound effect on them, and it can only be heard on a digital version of the album. I've also only ever heard the digital version myself, as my parents played Abbey Road on CD a lot when I was a kid. Now I'm imagining the vinyl experience where side A ends with the gargantuan wall of sound before cutting to silence, and that does seem like the been the way it was intended to be heard. Not sure which way I prefer.
@@rainor771 the original version is how they intended to record those songs that weren´t finished but each had parts of songs and they choose to recorded them as they were ,this was the only album to be released in stereo at the time ,4 tracks ,i own a version bought when it came out in south africa, early 70´s or late 60´s, the problem here is not being digital or analog ,is the limitations of the compact disc developed in the 70´s,we are in the 2020´s it should have been released a more evolved format, as an exaample when in 87 i had my first DAT deck ,i couldn´t believe it´s quality ,it was close to the reels deck ,i even tried to record with success some demos for bands of highschool students that i recorded in my fathers home studio, nothing related with the sound of cd ,the guitars sounded perfect ,which doesn´t happen in cd recordings at least till late 90´s, there are exceptions ,like the first rage against the machine album or the corrosion of conformity 90´s new style "Albatross"
Beatles are the best advocates of vinyl. I listened to my Revolver LP from 1966, the sound was magical almost unreal. This band must be heard on vinyl.
For me, I always tried to record the vinyl on to cassette during the first play. I would then put the vinyl away and only listen to the cassette. When needed, I would then pull the vinyl out and record again. This always kept my vinyl in fantastic condition.
@@andrewguthrie2 I don't know, but it could be to save money. Let's say (just picking numbers at random) the record quality degrades below an acceptable level at 20 plays, and each cassette likewise after 20 plays. With this scheme you get to listen to it 400 times for the cost of just the one LP plus the blank cassette(s).
It does sound better though. It DOESN'T sound more accurate. But more accurate doesn't mean better. Music is for humans and human ears like certain sounds better than others. And they don't like accuracy. If they did, people would use studio monitor speakers for entertainment, and they don't. Because accurate studio monitors sound like crap.
i can assure you that sounds so much better that you can´t compare it , one sounds like the band is playing in your living room other sounds like a bad cassette recorded in a bad cassette deck, digital is not the problem ,the format developed in the 70´s known as compact disc is destroying music, no wonder kids don´t like old bands they are only hearing 50 % of the sound
As a fellow pro audio engineer and record collector of 40+ years, I'm going to have to politely disagree. It's fairly easy to use discogs nowadays to find out which are the best pressings of your favourite records and even new releases. Silent surface, no inner groove distortion/sibilance, good dynamic range, well-centred... job done. A well maintained record (wet cleaned regularly, discharged of static and brushed pre/post every play and stored using anti-static rice paper inner sleeves and polyprop double pocket outers) on a decent turntable, through a decent amp into decent speakers is an experience of tangible connection to the piece of work that just doesn't exist within the digital realm. The physical process of listening to records almost certainly slows down our activity to create an environment in which we are a far more captive and perceptively engaged listener. Also, you can't hug a FLAC
Yeah most vinyl lovers hate digital but not realizing their source is also digital haha. Check your records after 1980 and guess all will say PCM recorded. And a record can sound better but not because it is analog but just better mastered.
@@timschutte3961you are not completely correct nor completely wrong. The source is analog, but they convert the source to digital before converting it to analog again to press the vinyl. And that "digital file" is completely different from any file from streaming source. So vinyl is still better than listening to music using any streaming services.
@@CarlVallory Artists in the early 80's say recordings in digital or analog was a difference between day and night and digital was off course way better and truly recorded what they played. And so recordings also on vinyl are recorded digital and then put on a analog source where a lot of information is lost and not with digital.
To me, vinyl is like my Japanese Sand Garden. I do not listen to my vinyl all the time, when I do, I am taking out a vintage disc, carefully inspecting and cleaning it, then I match the vinyl to a particular turntable and stylus combo (I have several vintage). Then I will finally play the album and enjoy the entire experience for what it was...an homage to an era and an afternoon of thought and memory designed to embrace my past.
Interesting comment. I have plenty of CD’s including some SACD’s and HDCD’s. I have Joni Mitchell’s “ Court and Spark on HDCD and Neil Young’s “ Harvest Moon”. My family bought me a new version of Who’s next. I have a CD copy and a original vinyl copy. I was very disappointed in the new mix. In turn I did not listen to the new court and spark figuring it would suck. I put it on a couple of weeks ago and my mind was blown. The version was superb. The same with Harvest moon. My best recording is an original audiophile copy of the girl from ipanema. Now I have excellent TT’s
@@Gnofg I agree. I own mostly first pressings. There is something about a first pressing. Even the house that pressed the disc can impact the quality. I have gigabytes of flac files from high quality sources and to be honest, there are some vinyl first pressings that make the flac file sound lame and distorted. I have several vintage TT's. Dual, Thorens, AR, Audio Technica, Yamaha...all with their own set of styli. Like I mentioned, to me, listening to vinyl is meant to evoke a memory and a time when music was simply at its best when played on vinyl. Has technology advanced and improved the sound stage, yes. But that is like saying the digital picture of the Mona Lisa is better that viewing the original. There is no comparison to be made.
@@z3r0w1ng I have a systemdek iix with a Sumiko bluepoint and also a AR XB with a Pickering XSV -3000 with a stereohedron stylus. It is the same as a Stanton 881. Fantastic cartridges. Dave at Vinyl Nirvana has one too.
I was converted to digital way back in the 80s. Dynamic range seemed off the charts, and of course, it was. Being at the time a recording musician to some degree, I found it disturbing to learn how the final mix with all the dynamics present at that point of listening and then pressed into vinyl, turned out just vaguely similar to that what we had just heard. Digital indeed changed that for the better.
@@1ochotnik until you get someone who knows what they are doing. Interestingly, quite a few of those brickwalled CDs have much more nuanced mixes on vinyl.
I sold high end HiFi back in the ‘70s and was thrilled when CDs came around. They are still subject to lousy mixing and mastering, but it’s a vastly superior format than vinyl. I always thought the vinyl revival was ridiculous, as well as the resurgence of analogue recording studios that use tape machines, yet still do all the editing in Protools. If more ‘recording studio engineers’ were actual engineers, we’d have even more spectacular quality in the digital format.
As an audio profesional I don't mind the surface noise on vinyl! As others have said here the joy of vinyl is the theatre of playing it, and you sit and you listen which is something I can't often do when streaming.
Why does vinyl sound more soothing to the human senses and seems to have a warmer sound? I am not an audio expert, not even close. It is just something I have personally come to realize. The more analog the sound the more soothing it seems to be, at least to me. I grew up with a grandfather who played with many great musicians and every weekend I would here the bands play live performances. It was not about the most perfect sound as it was not a recording studio in most cases. Often dance halls, with some less then desirable acoustics to the large rooms. But the sound was more soothing and seemed to have a therapeutic effect on my senses. The closest I have been able to re-experience those moments of live music when I was young is by listening to vinyl's today. I actually prefer digital music for a number of reasons, like for convince, it's ability to preserve perfect playback over time and for environmental reasons and also ease of storage of large volumes of music on tiny devices. Reasons I do not enjoy vinyl's are because they are clumsy and take a lot of care and are expensive both to maintain and to purchase. And yet the sound from them seems more authentic and warm to my human senses for some reason.
I have vinyl records over 60 years old that still sound great. CDs that I purchased in the 90s have yellowed over time and can't be played now. Vinyl records offer one thing above all other formats: they broaden your musical appreciation. Here's how: put on a record and sit on the couch. Soon you hear the song that made you buy the record, followed by a song you don't really like. If you want to skip that song, you must levitate off the couch, and lift the needle out of the groove, and place it (skillfully) where you want it to be. Way too much effort for most of us. Over time, the new song grows on you so much you like it more than your original favorite. With CDs and MP3s, the listener is endlessly advancing to the next best song, never learning the beauty of the other songs.
You're right. But then, being a Beatles-fan all my life, I probably played Revolution #9 from the White album only a few times. When I got the album in 1968 I skipped it everytime I played that side. It annoyed me, both the "song" and the skipping. Never got to like it! On Cd I can skip it. BTW, I have this friend who's a true musiclover. However, when he's enthousiastic he often only plays the intros of his 45's... He's got thoussands of them. Funny, but very tiring... 😁
@@UCS0608 in a record you can also skip just put the needle in the next song, it´s easy, have you heard the original white album ,i have also the cd but never heard it, sounds really bad, also have the stereo version in vinyl but one gets used to listen to what one´s got at home ,if i started to listen to the beatles in cd ,maybe i never enjoyed what they say it´s their sound
I’m holding out for the wax cylinder revival 😊. I believe for the reasons you point out, Vinyl is more about emotional appeal. I just can’t justify spending gobs of money to compensate for the technical shortcomings. Great explanation!
Interesting you say that. Several years ago I discovered old time radio broadcasts. It's interesting to listen to these recordings as you can sometimes hear the clicks as the cylinder is turning.
Scratches and Surface Noise are seldom heard on my system. The reason is my records are clean, the stylus is clean, the TT is well set up (Azimuth, VTA, tracking force etc) and a good quality cartridge. The stylus plays well into the groove away from damage and detritus. I counter vibration by a combination of mass (granite slab), springs (mini trampolines actually) on one TT and Maglev footers on another, and a multiple of damping materials. These are Epoxy, Butyl, and Sorbothane. Also I polish the spindle and use a custom material for the thrustpad. It is PEEK, the hardest form of Teflon which is one of the most slippery materials on the planet. This all goes to reduce friction. The spindle is lubricated (I have a Sleeve Bearing). These materials are used on the arm, the TT body, the bearing housing, and even the platter. Finally I use Ebony where I can. The idea is that whatever remaining noise there is, it is ameliorated by my attempt to tune that sound to the same materials from which they make clarinets, oboes, and piano keys. I use Ebony for the headshells, armboards, and record stabilisers. A lot of work I hear you say? Well yes, but it is a labour of love. It saved a ton of dosh, and it enables me to play music that is not available digitally. It also saves my ears from those dreadful 'remasterings'.
Yep, I'm the same - and another benefit is being able to duke it out with another guy on some forum about the best way to keep records clean, or recover fidelity from old liquorice pizzas you got from a record fair. Is it vacuum, is it water , is it glue etc etc. And actually, whatever your favourite method, there is little more satisfying than buying a shi77y old filthy Beatles or Beach Boys album that's been to about 300 parties and getting it playing like new again.
It was so fun saving up my money and going to the record store, flipping through the albums, from A-Z. Like a mini art gallery. Bringing your purchase home, putting it on your shitty record playing, and digging into the artwork and lyrics. 12" x 12" artwork, sometimes so detailed you could spend an hour looking at it. And lyrics of every song printed out so you could read along. Albums had a lot of personality in that format. It wasn't just something you listened to, it was something you experienced, like reading a book. Times change, I know, but I feel bad for the Spotify generation that only gets to hear disembodied music.
THIS THIS THIS! Digital music is obviously the better format but with records every new album is an experience especially when your a thrift store collector like I was. Bringing home a bunch of random records and going through them made me appreciate the music in a way that hitting play on Spotify doesn't.
I’ve been having a hell of a time switching back to vinyl from CDs. I’ve been re-collecting all the albums I got rid of over the years. It’s been awesome! I love vinyl!
@@jorgejaime4325 not the fountain of youth but music played correctelly not a mufled sound with guitars sounding like nothing, and i have nothing against digital just against it´s 70´s format ,the CD
@@RUfromthe40s I think you really don't understand how it works. Than that sound is the producer's choice, not the cd-format! You really think that that would sound better on vinyl? Yeah right.
@@UCS0608 if you think the producer produces the sound of the cd ,you don´t know how this works ,when in a studio he produces the sources recorded ,after being masterized he don´t know how´s going to sound in cd or any other source,it´s not his job ,if you knew something about sound you would understand my coment i´m sure you don´t have 1/3 of the cds i have neither the records(vinyl) or cassettes or reels maybe you never listened to a vinyl record in a decent record player, normally today to match mid 70´s quality one spends over 10.000€ in a turntable but with the same sound quality one can spend 160€ in a mid 70´s technics turntable , a original one including cartridge will do the same, better will sound the same
@@UCS0608 so it´s the producer choice to make the guitars sound like electric heaters static not like guitars and in the 90´s why producers ,etc. record all in analog AAD(D for compact disc) ,this talking about every rock band known at the time, but i mainly refer to older LP´s that in cd they sound terrible, just listen and compare . Or you never touched a electric guitar conected to a amp.?
I kept all my vinyl from 1964 onwards and although most of the older 45 rpm singles and EP's are a bit worn, it still makes me happy to find a record and place it on my turntable and play it. A decent turntable and cartridge helps a lot to providing a nice clear sound. I can't say an analog record sounds better than a CD, but it can sound nice. I even have quite a few records with picture cover sleeves and of course most albums have interesting photo's and often the lyrics of each song. Long live vinyl!!
I am happy for anyone who finds enjoyment from playing music on vinyl records. More power to them, as long as that power doesn't include telling me or others that it is factually the superior playback method, that it gives a "warmer" sound and those who disagree are ignorant. I was thrilled in the eighties to immediately switch to CD as my format of choice which I still do today. I have re-purchased a huge number of albums to have the longer-lasting and, to my ear, near-perfect reproduction. Enjoy your records and I'll enjoy my CDs.
@@JohnSmith-of4vh : Agreed, but honestly, cd's do skip horribly and many of the cd's I have bought over the last 25+ years have skipped after a few plays in a vehicle's cd player for instance. Same thing goes with average cd stereos; especially ones equipped with a shuffling disc tray. I'm sorry, I can't be bothered and shouldn't be bothered to have to upgrade to a high quality car cd player or expensive stereo equipment to purportedly avoid such damage and scratching (yes scratching). In the late 80's throughout the early 90's, I bought cassettes, because all I had to play music was a cassette stereo. Around '94, I started buying CD's exclusively into the early 00's until I got a turntable for Christmas and began collecting records. My experience is that if you have a decent turntable and know how to calibrate the tonearm so that the stylus won't rest too heavily on the vinyl, your vinyl should preserve fine. ¿ Do I have vinyls that are in somewhat bad shape ? ¡ Yes , of course ! Vinyl listening for me though as life gets busy is to cherish on certain occasions. With a fairly big record collection, I can't even get to all the ones I have, so overall, the records I have get occasional plays. There are certainly some records I have that have gotten multiple plays and for a few like The Clash's 'Sandinista' album, I play the rougher Epic (American pressing) and keep the UK CBS Records playing in reserve. At the end of the day, for me, vinyl is more hobby than justifying or making spurious claims on audio superiority as the real catch is the ritual involved and the mystique that the album cover and vinyl smelling record itself hold. In my personal experience, CD's are my least favorite format. I even prefer cassettes to them as I feel they are more resistant and in some cases have more longevity. The reality is that my 21 year old cd/dual cassette stereo's CD shuffler has long since stopped working, so if I do feel like listening to CD's; I usually do it in my car, whose Bluetooth works inadequately, but that romance is short lived as most of the cd's I run through eventually start skipping after multiple listens on the road.
CDs don't skip unless extensive, deep scratches or foreign substance is blocking the disc from being read. I started collecting CDs in the eighties, and not one of them has deteriorated in any way.....not one! The only reason your CDs, if in good condition, would skip is if your player is malfunctioning.
Music recorded on analog instruments onto analog tape and pressed on an analog medium will always sound superior to anything that was digitized, period, end of story
For me, it isn't about fidelity, it's legacy. I feel that vinyl is still the best way for your children or grandchildren to one day get to knw you through your record collection. I recall borrowing albums from my mom and listening to them, wondering about the girl who had origianlly purchased them. I find it impossible to believe that your grandchildren are going to go through your Spotify playlists, or even flip through the plastic-y clitter-clatter of your CD collection to look at the tiny booklets. Leafing through a crate of vinyl is satisfying, and provides a real experience to get to know the person who bought these albums.
@@jmdavison62 yeah but vinyl fanboys used to argue that it was. For years and years they did. Constantly. I know because I've been reading their BS on youtube comments boards for 20 years. I guess the information (which always existed) is finally getting through and they realize that argument was stupid.
Same thing for me. Once the CD came out, and the initial batch of machines came down by 50%, i bought one and a few CDs and was blown away by the increased sound quality, the definition of each individual instrument and the overall soundstage. Later i hopped on the Super Audio CD or SACD, and DVD-Audio, in 5+1, with a nice digital Pioneer amp and SACD player, good 5+1 loudspeakers. When the production and mix have been done right, this is something so immersive i laugh every time someone says or write that vinyl is better…
You're correct, of course, but there are no shortcomings of vinyl. If one is too lazy to take an album from a sleeve and put it on a turntable, as opposed to pushing a button on their phone like a trained monkey, then one is probably too lazy and stupid to appreciate vinyl anyway.
Dave you explained this in a nutshell! Other reasons are tactile nature, collectablility, a love for analog, nostalga and just the whole process of putting a record on!
Exactly! You cant slam it with compression when mastering for vinyl so that alone makes the music different than all of the super loud squashed mastering that is rife in the music industry these days.
i bought a cd player not long after cds became mainstream; i took it back to the shop as i thought there was something wrong with it; i was assured no it's supposed to sound like that. I cant quite put my finger on exactly what it is but something seems to be missing and no its not the crackles or the wobbling which i can certainly do without. I think it's something to do with the bass and something also to do with the sense of space or solidity of the image maybe.........
The one huge downside to only streaming music is often there are albums that are missing from many artist’s catalogue. With vinyl you can always listen to the album when you want rather than your music being controlled by streaming companies
You can quite easily build up music collections in digital by downloading it in 16 or 24 bit flac format and playing it back of your music streamer from an attached SSD drive. I have a raspberry pi2 with a hifiberry Dac HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) running Volumio. This can easily be controlled from your mobile phone over the network via WiFi with the Volumio android app. The sound off this thing is truly astonishing and i also have all my flac files burnt onto 50gb metal ablative blue ray discs to fully restore it if the SSD should fail. This set up is truly bomb proof.
@@UCS0608 saying that all we are talking about is sound is disingenuous. That’s like saying people should only read literature on a kindle and why are people even buying physical books anymore. Kind of ridiculous.
Thank you. I try to inform and amuse. I haven't made a playlist yet but you can find my other revival videos at ruclips.net/user/results?search_query=audio+masterclass+revival+-plugins I haven't finished yet, I have one more in the pipeline. Best wishes from the UK. DM
Nothing but a whining little bitch. Too stupid or too lazy to appreciate analog, as I appreciate both formats. But he wouldn't understand this. You don't have much time left, you wrinkled old coot, maybe you can someday grow up and appreciate what other people might see appealing in their hobbies, even through your ignorance. By the way, he's got the humor and personality of Joe Biden, that's about it.
I'm 50 years old and I started listening to music on 8 tracks when I was 5 and then got into vinyl. And then cassette. When cds came I thought they were awesome and bought them but In 2000 at 27 years old i started to dj and alot of the songs I wanted only came out on vinyl so I bought them. When flash drive mp3 era happened 10 years ago I jumped on board. I ripped all my vinyl and got rid of it😢. Said this is great I don't have to carry records to Manhattan. Every club got rid of turntables. And now 10 years later I regret it so i bought a turntable and I am buying back all my vinyl. There is nothing like the warmth and experience of the sound of vinyl and I just finished playing wav files in dark rooms in NYC for a decade and its blah. Now Every friday night my family comes to my house and I make pizza and we play records on a technic 1210 mk7, my studio monitors and sub. My nieces and nephews love it and get exposed to legendary stuff. Ppl should just play what they like. I'm going to keep buying vinyl. I love it and I love the technic 1200 it's a work of art. I have bought cassettes, cds , mp3s and wav files and vinyl is 3d to me while the others seem flat. Vinyl is alive. We dont fight over what cars we drive. Why are we insulting each other over how we prefer to listen to music?
"Why are we insulting each other over how we prefer to listen to music?" "But we are all that way: when we know a thing we have only scorn for other people who don't happen to know it." - Mark Twain
I had a similar experience. I used to DJ in the early 2000's on vinyl, saving up a whole year ($800) in high school to afford two Technics SL1200M3D. I stopped djing around 2005, and they collected dust in my parent's bedroom for years. In 2012, I needed the money, and sold the Technics for the same price I bought them for in 2000. I'm getting back into vinyl again -- I still have all my records -- but I wish I never sold those Technics. I'm looking to buy the new SL1200MK7, but I heard they aren't as good/robust as the old models, and they cost $1100 for one!
For me, the attraction of vinyl is that it makes you focus more on the listening experience as there's more of a ritual to it. Add to that the large format allowing more reasonable-sized artwork and lyrics (and credits) in a readable font size. Still, I have not played my records, or even connected the old turntable to my system for about 15-20 years, though I do sometimes miss "the old days" (just not the extra noise).
When I was a kid, we bought a record that came with a skip. We exchanged the record, and quickly learned that all of the copies they had at our record store had the same defect. To this day--40 years later--whenever I hear that song on the radio, I am astonished to hear the whole section of the song that I never heard when I was a kid. So, when CDs became affordable, I let vinyl go and never looked back.
It's funny because you get used to the skip or pop, I have some songs which I'm so used to listening with the pops that I kinda expect them when they're playing on digital media.
When we were kids we had a copy of "101 Dalmatians" that had a skip in a song so it would play "kick'in up highway dust, kick'in up highway dust, ...". We thought that was funny and listened to it just to hear the skip.
It sounds to me like the scratch on the record was from the damaged original master stamping applied to the hot vinyl at manufacture. all resulting copies will have a flaw in the LP at the same point in the music.....I hate vinyl!!!
Thank you so much for this! I grew up in the 70s listening to vinyl, my first album was the Chicago chocolate bar record. Anyway no matter how hard hard I tried to care for my albums they inevitably would develop scratches and the subsequent clicks and pops which would drive me crazy. Plus hauling records around was a pain for a guy like me whose only transport was a VW Rabbit. It was God send when CDs arrived and then HD streaming that I now have through Apple Music. I do miss the old album covers/art and inserts, but the trade off for the HD I can now stream to my headphones is well worth the trade off.
Amen, preach it! I love my old records and tapes, but only because I'm a sentimental nostalgic old sod. Digital is better in just about every way imaginable - the frequency bandwidth, dynamic range, stereo separation, signal to noise ratio, not to mention being compact and not wearing out over multiple plays. If people really think vinyl sounds better, it's probably because modern mastering techniques with all their compression sound bad compared to the oldschool way of mastering, or the inherent harmonic distortion in vinyl actually sounds pleasant - the "vinyl warmth" that people go on about. If the purpose of hifi is to perfectly reproduce in the speakers exactly what's on the media, then digital is the only way to go!
I agree with your points. The one thing I liked about vinyl records was the art work and information on the sleeves. It was fun to look at the artwork and imagine what they artist was thinking. Reading the sleeves was how we learned about the artist and their fellow musicians, where it was recorded, who produced it, etc. I am totally digital these days. It's just easier and I feel it has a higher overall quality. Cheers.
After endless tinkering with record players, tonearms, matching cartrides to preamps, finding the best pressings i arrived to a stage where vinyl sounds almost as good as an old cd player.
When I first heard my preferred music (jazz from the 50s and 60s) on CD in the late 80s, I was blown away by the clarity, the precision, and the sound stage. But after a few minutes, everything felt very cold. It was as if the music had been taken out of the refrigerator and was slowly defrosting but would never reach room temperature. Say what you will about it as a medium of imperfections and flaws, but vinyl never sounds cold. That’s why I will always, always prefer vinyl to CD or any other digital format. The imperfections and distortions wind up as textures along with the warmth and depth and presence, so much so that the qualities of the latter makes the former negligible.
This might be because your turntable was magnificent, and your cd player was ordinary. In the early days to get a cd player as good as say a rega you needed to spend 4 times as much! I tested that once at ‘Graham’s Hi Fi’. Just a thought!
Cogging resides in the motor, but the platter acts as a flywheel, smoothing out the variations in speed. How does it do this? A flywheel is effectively a low-pass filter. Its moment of inertia only allows very low frequency variations in speed… it physically cannot move fast enough to exhibit cogging. In a decent direct drive turntable, any residual low-frequency variations in the “pass band” are corrected for using what is called a phase-locked loop. Most modern vinyl cutting lathes use this type of motor+heavy platter combo, and they are extremely accurate. This can easily be tested by recording a sine wave whose frequency gives a whole number when multiplied by 1.8 (45hz for example). The waves line up perfectly across the entire disc (81 cycles per revolution in this example). Any deviation due to clogging or residual low frequency variations would be easily visible because the waveforms would misalign. Some old lathes used belt drive motors, and the results are much less accurate.
In the early days of the CD, my friend and I were talking about the new medium and for a lark he set up a record on the turntable and cued it to start about the same time as the same recording on the CD. Switching the receiver between the two sources gave a clear and convincing comparison between vinyl and digital for the same phrase of music. It was a clear and distinct sound with the CD while vinyl surprised us with a poor, muffled sound in this comparison. The dynamic range achievable by the CD was far superior and the sound was very clear. We were immediately convinced of the superior nature of the CD and digital recordings, hands down.
every play will wear the grooves. hardest substance known to man, vs .. one of the softest. will have to try that similar experience w/a couple vinyl freaks.
I can’t explain why but a record sucks me in to the music easier. You know, the place you want to be, just lovely. I’ve spent just as much time and money on the digital side of my system but it doesn’t get me there so deep. It’s a bugger. I wish it would.
In the 1970s and 1980s I had a device called the DiscWasher. It had a brush with a one-way fabric and a small bottle of solution. The brush would get into the grooves and the solution applied to the brush would help remove dirt and worn vinyl debris. The solution would also lubricate the stylus in the groove. It could significantly improve the sound of older and worn records.
I've my fair share of vinyl back in the day. I was even a DJ for a couple of years at a local disco. Then, in the early 90s, I've moved into CDs quite effortlessly for all the good reasons and another 20 years later, I've moved into streaming for just practicality. I still enjoy the purity of a good Hi-Fi from a digital source either CDs or FLACs (vinyl is fine, but I can't enjoy it because I can't forget its shortcomings), but I found out that streaming allow us to focus more on the music itself because we know streaming is flawed in the first place. ...another important reason: My ears are far from what they were 40 years ago.
Vinyl as format has so many shortcomings. 1. When they get original music from record labels they start to remove higher pitched sounds that the format don't support (so right out of the gate we are doing bad) 2. Cutting the groove on the lathe can only try to preserve the fidelity when it can't in any way improve the fidelity.. 3. Some track who is doing the plating, so it matter how much effect is applied initially when the lacquer is put in the bath. Low effect attract the smallest nickel particle and therefore fills the cutted grove tiniest modulation better. And when that is done we can increase the effect to attract the big particles as filler. So again just trying to make the leat harm to the fidelity.. 4. Depending on how many records is going to be made we take that plate (father) from the lacquer and then do it again! To get a mother metal part that can only be used to make yet another metal part (son) stamper... Anyone see the issue... 5. We make the son stampers so we can make maybe around 1000 or more LP records. When the son stamper is "worn out" and need to create another son stamper from the same mother.. that has done yet another son (stamper). Is the second son stamper as good as the first one? The clue is in no6 below. 6. When the worn stampers (a set A+B side) are making the last LP pressing before they are recycled. Is number 1000 as good as the first LP that those stampers did when they were fresh.. there is a reason why test pressings are sought after when they were done in a very limited small run and will be more guaranteed to be "fresh".. yeh sound fidelity is taking hits.. 7. What vinyl formula do they use? Is it virgin or as many of the pressing plants blend the virgin with you to 10% of recycled vinyl.. and some solve it in other ways. Nevertheless different vinyl and different results. And so on it goes. When you think about it it is actually surprising that LP can sound that nice as it does. But as we realize sound quality fidelity is reduced and we can never recover the lost and removed fidelity that we had got from the record labels. By digitize a LP that will sound worse than what we got from the record labels. In the data world we call that LP is a LOSSY format (data is lost and thrown away in the process and we can't restore what we originally had before we started to produce a LP) What else is lossy.. ..MP3 is lossy there they also throw away fidelity. And yet we have not mentioned all the clicks and pops that the LP format is adding that is NOT in the original source to begin with! Or ALL the issues regarding playback .. But I love my vinyl collection ❤ for other reasons.🎉
I never thought I'd say this, but I went from 8 track to cassettes to vinyl to open reel to CD. When I discovered CD's in the early 80's, I thought CDs would be the end of the road for me. As much as I avoided trying out a DAC because I saw it as just a new gimmick, I recently got my first DAC and I won't go back. I own more than my share of media in all the various formats and now see no need to ever buy any more. I am pretty much burned out on most of the music that I own. I am hooked on DAC. I have discovered more new music in a month than I could have discovered in years without it, and I don't have to clean any records or needles, demagnetize any tape heads, alphabetize any CD's, open any CD cases and put them away etc. I just click with a mouse and listen to studio quality audio without having to get out of my chair. How wonderful! :) To those out there defending vinyl like I used to do, don't let technology pass you by. With the right DAC you will hears music like you never have before.
So… just curious… when you say you dont have to alphabetize [your media], do you mean you buy the music online and it downloads into a folder on your computer where it will alphabetize itself automatically? Actually, I’m trying to figure out if you mean you only listen to digital audio streaamed or now that you have a DAC, you run all your optical discs and hard drive music through it for conversion first. Either way, all good… as long as you enjoy the music, i say. I was just trying to figure the meaning to your comment. (Me, I’m currently saving for my first DAC and Transport. I play SACDs, DADs, and CDs and sit down for listening sessions. Though, when I’m out of the house, i listen to downloaded music through my iPhone.) Thanks M
No. What I meant was that I don't have to physically put away CDs or records. I don't buy any media. The server keeps all of my music and playlists arranged and alphabetized for me. If I want, I can just record what I like onto a CD with a CD burner (a standalone unit) without any extra cost. I pay $10 per month for a 100 million song library. There is no need to download it, but the option to do that is also there.
@@ellaochomogo5154 - thats a music lover right there ! :) 100 mill song library!?! egads! how do you make a selection to listen too?...hahahahaha... just kiddin' that's like me and cable channels...2000 channels and cant decide what to watch. Thanks for the feedback. Sounds like a sweet deal at $10/m and able to burn what you like w/o extra cost. keep on enjoying, my friend.
To me the nicest thing about streaming is the artificial intelligence and how it helps you discover new music. If you play a song that you like AI automatically continues to play songs that you are likely to like, until you stop the process. If you end up getting a DAC I highly recommend that you use a laptop as your source and don't buy a streamer. Connect your laptop to the DAC and then to your audio system. You'll have a nice large keyboard and display to work with instead of the tiny screens found on streamers. By the way, the audio quality is great. It's studio quality (better than CD)! Take care...
I think people just miss holding real things that feel like a small piece of art. When Audiojelly went out of business I lost over a hundred digital tracks. I wish those had been vinyl.
I lived through years of vinyl. Given it was the best easily available music source I had, I put up with its shortcomings, and the arrival of the CD was fantastic for me. Took a while to afford a CD deck though and the utterly ripoff prices being charged for CD in the first decade of use just hacked me right off.
I would echo your statement completely. I turned to CDs as soon as I could afford them. The cost at the time was average $16 with a few at $10 on sale. That was in comparison to $3 to $6 for an LP. And the early Cds were not mastered the best either. I never want to return to vinyl and cannot understand the fanatics who are in pursuit of vinyl perfection.
I'm just one of these people who listen to vinyl because it's the only way to get me to consciously listen to a whole album. It's the whole ceremony of carefully getting the record, blowing the dust off, putting it on the turntable, handling the tone arm, ... By that time I've just put so much effort into the whole thing I can sit down and listen consciously. And at my age I don't hear that much of a difference to digital anymore anyways😂. Compare that to Spotify or even CDs where I can just slam in the disc in a second and then get distracted by something else.
You are so right...Vinyl is not convenient to get right and not nearly a perfect medium, yet the experience when done properly is stunning. The majority of your issues with vinyl playback can be mitigated to audible extinction. That's true of digital as well which has its own artifacts. I've yet to see digital really provide the secondary experience of lps visually and that is, oddly as it may seem, a very potent part of the LP experience. Fortunately we don't have to choose and beauty doesn't always have to be based on technical accuracy. If that were true, there would be no paintings in the world. If you realize there is no "absolute sound" to begin with, then you can start to understand how beauty in music is shifted through many lenses even before it gets to the listener. The LP, when done well, delivers beauty on many instinctual levels...simple as that. I've used many different tables over the years each with its own charms but now have a table with a superb 12" arm and a motor corrected, high mass platter that is belt driven and sits on a specialized isolation platform. I assure you it is transformative and is especially adept at capturing the natural tonal and dynamic qualities of instruments and spaces.
I like your phrase, “shifted through many lenses.” And yet at times, when we are ‘in the mood’ or ‘tuned in’ what we receive seems so perfect. Sound is complex, human hearing is (relatively) sensitive, and the mind-body-emotional-spiritual connection is mysterious. Bottom line: Sometimes we ‘get it,’ and sometimes we don’t. Poor sound can get in the way, especially when we know the cause of the distortion; and other times it doesn’t matter because the ‘content’ overwhelms our senses. I like the blues; can you tell?
I have to agree, having a player that will put you in the hi fi ball park is an unending pleasure. While there is no escaping the storage space required if your pleasure becomes expansive, at least all the heavy lifting can be left to the collectors who curate and sell at record shows, so you have to actually transport only a few records at a time .
There are ways to prevent vibrations from the floor from moving the turntable. That's easy. What's harder, but still solvable, is acoustic feedback through the air. You have to get the turntable as far away from the speakers as reasonably possible, and it can also help to have it off-axis or behind the plane of the speakers (unless your speakers are omnidirectional or dipoles, for example). It's not possible to get this 100% perfect, but it's certainly possible to get it good enough that the result is that vibrational interference is negligible. My turntable sits on a piece of granite left over from the kitchen counters being built, which sits on a heavy wooden end table, sitting on a concrete floor. I have no problem with footfalls or feedback. I also run long low-level wires to amps right by the speakers, so making them a bit longer doesn't make the sound worse like it does with long speaker wires. That way, I can have all the other equipment, including turntable, far from the speakers.
I gave up on vinyl back in 1984 and I have zero regrets. I have 40 year old CD's that sound exactly the same as they did when they were brand new and now they have thousands of plays on them. You can't say the same about vinyl.
i have records played a lot for 50 years or more and they sound better than any cd, noises or anyother static, is non existing and never cleaned one ,also they never leave my home if someone wanted to ,i could record into a cassette or reel but mainly the problem with records is changing hands ,turntables and other problems that made them sound bad . CDs if a risk is done in it´s table of contents not one track can be played ,a record if with a risk it´s a second of skiping one song
@@RUfromthe40s What a bunch of bull 💩. I have never had any of those problems with my CD's. 0 pops, 0 static and 0 noises. You did however perfectly describe why I left vinyl behind 40 years ago.
You can't say that about vinyl. The problem is, yes some of those CDs sound the same, but the sound is awful. Sometimes the vinyl version simply sounds better, even though it technically degrades slightly with each play. How many plays til you notice? Hard to say, but with care I have many vinyl albums that sound perfect.
@@spikeconley My CD's all sound excellent, some better than others and not a single one that sounds "Awful". I have had several vinyl albums that sounded awful though. CD's don't degrade with plays, vinyl does.
@@davidmorgan6896 it never was. AB’s that’s not the reason eggy people are going back to vinyl. It’s all because of sound quality. People tend to like warmer sounds. That’s why people like bass Real life instruments have a warm ness that cd can’t show because it’s mastered to be loud. Vinyl sounds more like when you go to a live concert. Cd sounds more flat and dull.
I understand completely with what you are saying and for the most part it's absolutely true. But I honesty believe, despite the crackles and pops, vinyl actually sounds better than digital recordings. The bass is tighter, the treble is crisper and drums sound more alive. CD'S by comparison are more of a warm mid range sound. Not a hi fi sound I care for. These days of AV receivers ect seem to suit digital more than the older 1970's amplifiers.
I have been buying vinyl since 1958 and I have never experienced my vinyl records becoming scratched, noisy and unlistenable. Of course some second hand vinyl has been ruuined at parties but you wouldn't buy that would you? . However if you are starting out collecting buy CD's. Charity shops have loads at £1 or thereabouts each and you can stock up for very little money. Whatever you do enjoy the music and don't get obsessed with the sound to the point of disappearing up your own bum. My best exeriences have been listening to Buddy Holly 78's on a dansette type portable record player. I had never heard of the word audio.
@@rtblues styles change. If you notice how records are treated in old black and white movies, they were considered disposable, stacked on top or rubbed against one another, held like playing cards, because playback quality was so primitive, record condition wasn't really important and record shops were a feature of every Main Street, because the equipment wore out the records so quickly, you normally just bought and valued new ones , Such treatment is almost unthinkable today, and the old catalogue is now important sources of revenue, when back then in the days of sapphire needles, old records, and the material on them, held little value. with a lot of the more desirable records today commonly costing around forty dollars, or having limited run distinctive vinyl colors for even lower priced records , you are not going to see records handled as they were when people just threw them around until they felt like putting them back in the storage sleeves .
Tape stores sounds with a magnetic pattern; disks store it on a physical track using a directional modulation. Until you can show that the entirely different data storage technologies can be reduced to "inches per second," you are comparing oranges to apples.
There is the similarity in that cycles per second are translated into cycles per inch, which I see as relevant. As I mentioned, there is the difference is that vinyl is mechanical and tape is magnetic. This is background to the fact that the linear speed of vinyl decreases as the side plays through and thus the audio quality degrades, which is not the case with tape or cassette. DM
My father used to take me to grandpa’s house with a pile of my children’s records. We took turns listening to our favorite song looking at the covers, the lyrics, the pictures, the art… from the afternoon until the evening… People had a different relationship with music. We used to listen and re-listen to the same albums. We digested each one, finding delight on every note and instrument... every word and art cover. It used to be a ritual with different kinds of perceptions… also often a moment of socialization. There is no doubt the new era has better technical quality… But it has made us lose the quality to enjoy simple moments, better music and spend time with people.
I was happy to put vinyl behind me in 1985. I miss the shopping, the art, the covers and the liner notes, but digital was waaaaay better for someone who listened to music constantly, and usually while doing other things. CDs were perfect, especially after getting multi-CD players... I don't like streaming as much as CDs, but it'll do in a pinch. Not interested in going back to vinyl.
70 years old, I started out with vinyl like everybody else and chased every format that came along, buying the same music over and over. Digital is and always will be KING.
you´re right is more afordable ,in my country almost no one had a decent turntable in the 80´s for themit was a step up but for those who knew about hi-fi components,it was a decrease in hi-fi starting in 1980 when brands released most of their components all made of plastic with a very low quality, ended up with the cd , i remenber thinking that cds were an improvement but how wrong was i ,i remenber going to stores and buying cds from LP´s i already had this to arrive home and never listen to them again ,the sound was really bad this with what was considered a good cd player
The bottom line is the audio files with the most experience (like decades worth ) listening to all kinds of gear. Agree that vinyl sounds better than digital.
Bravo. I remember to this day the first time I heard DSOTM on CD. I got real baked with a dear friend , and we listened to the whole thing WITHOUT having to turn it over. Since there was so little noise it made my system play much more loud.
I inherited my late fathers huge record collection and I absolutely love playing these records. These records are 50 years old and played many times over and still sound beautiful. It’s about the nostalgia
"We steeped our thirsty souls in the reviving wine of the past, the pathetic past, the beautiful past, the dear and lamented past; we uttered the names that had been silent upon our lips for fifty years, and it was as if they were made of music; with reverent hands we unburied our dead, the mates of our youth, and caressed them with our speech; we searched the dusty chambers of our memories and dragged forth incident after incident, episode after episode, folly after folly, and laughed such good laughs over them, with the tears running down ..." - Mark Twain
I once bought a vinyl copy of Elvis Costello's Get Happy when it came out in 1980. Twenty-six minutes on one side. Nick Lowe produced it and addressed the "groove cramming" as inconsequential to the listening experience. I would agree. Excellent album. Then again, I was stoned many of the times I listened to it.
I grew up with vinyl, I still have all my LPs. As soon as CDs came out I switched. People say Vinyl is “warm”. I call that noise. It was so awesome to hear music without scratches.
No. Warm is a recording style and often an analog byproduct. Noise is noise. I have many many vinyl releases that are dead silent and outrageously detailed in the high end. I also have those warmer sounding records that are dead quiet and still very detailed. Warmth isn't noise.
@@M_C79 Also something to note is that as soon as they realized digital was a little too ‘exact’ in reproduction, many started to compensate. A good mixer would then smooth the edges of the recording, w/saturation, etc., whereas this wasn’t necessary in tape/vinyl as it was a byproduct. Like adding gain to overdrive an amp recreating what was originally an accident/limitation. Judging cds by the first ones you listened to, might have sold the medium short as far as sound preference. It changed.
I mostly collect CDs and some Vinyl, you're absolutely right about all the practical problems. For me it's just about going to the record store and all the albums one by one, and finding a rare record that I love or maybe a new one I don't know. And then also the ritual of physically taking it out of the shelf, the nice big artwork and listening to the whole damn thing. It's a more mindful form of listening that is getting increasingly lost in the internet era.
Hi there Don't know if you will read this, being that your post is 2 years old. I do not know where you live, but if you are not to far away, I can easily demonstrate that vinyl is still miles ahead of any type of digital streaming, or digital playback medium, unfortunately so because it can be quite expensive, I have what I would call a moderate system record deck, but this still easily demonstrates the superior quality of a good vinyl record, I say good because many pressings can be poor, if you are in central UK, let me know, and I will change your mind, Best regards Jez
I think there is room for both as they both offer playback strengths and weaknesses unique to one another. Both are dependent on mastering, both are improving. Vinyl production mastering and pressing at least in the High Quality products sector is all being improved and opimized as is the playback ability of Turntables Cartidges and arms as well as the excellence in the electronic design and build of Phono stages. Red Book CD for me still offers the possibility of some astonishingly good playback without resorting to the extremities of DSD 512 and its never ending and futile quest to produce a perfect analogue wave form. DSD is a great way of preserving precious recordings from fragile and life limited master tapes but does it really bring anything new to the human listening experience that properly recorded and mastered CD and top quality vinyl already does. Why is it that even DSD recordings mastered to vinyl and played back fully analogue produces a more powerful emotional response in the listener than raw DSD file playback. Don't get me started on DAC'S at the moment, the world has gone mad, tripping back to the future with ladder resistors, again the analogue sound quest! Vs Delta Sigma trying to kill your hearing with detail. It's a world of hurt out there for audiophiles and Music lovers alike but also a world of opportunities to enhance all our experiences of recorded music. I won't touch on Streaming as it's a grave yard of recorded music for the most part. Super convenient for good reasons and bad. So many people I know with streamers never listen to a full album and do something akin to remote control hell, not unlike channel hoping. Which brings me back to why I love vinyl playback. It relaxes you into the experience of just listening to great music. CD has it a little also but not in the way Vinyl immerses you. It makes you change pace and it also makes for uncannily long listening sessions.
I bought my first record in 1977 and I'm using the same turntable that I bought in 1979, a high-end Technics that what's quite expensive, especially for a high school student. I'm still using that, but with a $500 Ortofon cartridge. It takes time to pull out the record, clean it and play it, but it's what I've done for 46 years, and I love the sound.
I listen to used 1960s jazz vocal records (Nancy Wilson, Sarah Vaughn, Ernestine Anderson, etc.) on a beautiful high-quality turntable made in 1967. Hearing that music in the way it was played in the '60s, handling the old album covers, and watching the old turntable spin; these things create a sonic and visual experience that digital can't give me. And the sound quality is pleasing to me, even if it's not as good as the best digital.
Years ago I picked up some "back on black" Jazz re-issues and was so disappointed of the quality. Vinyl produced from the 60s to the mid 80s are still of a better quality of most of what is produced today. Exception is still Japanese pressed vinyl - but that also cost "slightly" more than the normal stuff.
I've found that it's impossible to discuss with high fidelity enthusiasts, they have found their way and do not listen to music but to their equipment. I love music and music which sounds nice just sound nice. I must say that a good turntable does sound nice, but unfortunately it will cost serious money, but for me generally (there are excpetions) vinyl produce after the mid 80s isn't that great ... Therefor I buy CDs...
Interesting video. My love for vinyl comes from collecting pieces of history that forwarded the culture of listening to music in a meaningful way. I appreciate that I’m listening Deep Purple’s Machine Head the same way someone did back when it came out. Back when the only way to hear it on demand was where a record player was. I think this is where the ritualistic aspect that people enjoy comes in to play. It’s not about pure fidelity, but listening through rose colored glasses while reminiscing about a past that you may or may not have experienced. Just my thoughts tho I do appreciate your video a lot.
This is an easy call for me. Since I own lots of “albums” in multiple formats, I needed only to listen to the same recording (say, The Beatles’ “Revolver”) on vinyl, then CD, then streaming to come to the conclusion that I prefer the sound of vinyl. Yes, there can be surface noise, but even with that as a given, the sound of an LP is vastly richer, warmer, more natural sounding to my ears than any other format.
you know i listened to vinyl for so many years just because i am old. Really was mesmerized by the spinning record . Imagine all that amazing sound coming from a spinning piece of plastic. I had a marantz console amp, a dual turntable and a pair of klipsch kornerhorns. People would come to my house and i would put on an album they were familiar with and i would watch their mouth open with a" wow" expression.......this was the 70's and 80's. we did not have a remote control....no cell phones or wifi.... no streaming.....In other words we just didn't put on music and let it be there......we listened to the album and usually the entire album.. yes all the songs on that album, not just the ones we heard on the radio.....we heard a lot of good music......if want to listen to digital call up any company you are dealing with and you can listen to their robot for the first 5 minutes!!
I'm so glad you mentioned the extremely variable bandwidth of vinyl (in terms of playback speed in inches per second) between the first outer groove and the innermost groove. By the time the record has finished playing it's *dropped to 38%* of its initial value! That fact, by itself, makes a mockery of vinyl as a plausible audio reproduction technology. Even CDs don't suffer from this because the data rate is constant, because the rotational speed changes.
Back at some point in the late 70s/early 80s, Audio magazine had an article that shared insight into exactly what happens as a vinyl record is played. Audio-Technical provided much of the technical measurements/data. One thing that stuck with me for a long while is how a stylus tracking at 2 grams exerts enough pressure (yes, they had that figure which I’ve forgotten) to raise the temperature of the vinyl itself to where it actually softens. It softens enough to the point that ANY foreign ‘debris’ on the records surface gets pushed into the walls of the groove permanently thereby making the record more noisy than it was previously. To your point, that’s why the first play is usually the cleanest and quietest (you did clean the surface before playing, didn’t you?) you’ll ever get. I got to the point I recorded the record on first play and listened to the tape thereafter (talk about compromise). Quite enjoyed your comments. Still have all my vinyl, but always listen digitally as it sounds better than a noisy vinyl record, less prep needed (you did clean the records surface right?), and consistent quality on each play. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Any shortcomings of digital audio are negated by deteriorating hearing as we age. I've often thought it ironic that the people that can best afford a high-end sound system are most likely to be the ones that extract the least enjoyment out of it as their sensitivity to higher frequencies disappears. That said, most of the annoying noises associated with vinyl are still audible even at our age.
I'm primarily into vinyl for the collecting aspect of it. Artwork, rare editions, limited pressings. Also, just the act of removing a record from it's sleeve and putting it on to a turntable and the experience of reading the inserts is... Enjoyable lol. I find I connect with what I'm listening to more that way and tend to remember more about the albums. Digital music is so easy to come by, and I do listen to plenty of music that way, but it doesn't seem to mean as much to me.
I am 67 and when I was young, "clean distortion free" music was aspirational. Now we have people who proclaim that clean, distortion free music is "sterile". The new word for distortion is "warm". The TRUE virtue of vinal and tape is that our generation grew up with this and loved it. It is fun to look at the art and play with the records, make backup tapes etc. I will never argue that looking at a digital playlist is as much fun as going through stacks of albums and the cover art, but PLEASE don't try to make a case for analog when no case can be made. Digital is CLEARLY a superior medium to listen to recorded music. The sky will always be blue, even if you would like it to be pink. Alas as we get older our ability to hear distortion is deminished and "vinal sounds even better".
John Peel: "Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don't have any surface noise. I said, 'Listen, mate, life has surface noise."
Vinyl records suffer from surface noise, distortion, vibration, rumble, and rapid deterioration. If my life had any of those issues, I'd have already made an appointment with my audiologist.
@@guillermogranados7738 Analog. Imperfect. I've never experienced great hifi ever in a home and I bet many here haven't either so we've got little or no basis of comparison for 'warmth' and all it cousins. However to get to the heart of the matter I find that imperfection in so much music I listen to; voices especially and strings of all sorts, and reed instruments, it is imperfection which is the source of beauty. There is beauty in imperfection. Especially voices, but I repeat. So imperfection in hifi, no problem. Nothing is perfect. Embrace imperfection. Its the same with musicians.. Those that make errors/mistakes are playing on the "edge" and that's where the magic happens...Those playing everything "note perfect" are playing well within their limits and that's often when the music sounds contrived. ( having an unnatural or false appearance or quality: artificial, labored, boring, unrealistic). Me?..A professional musician.
@@lucullus6127 Digital music in this context, refers to how music is stored, not it's nature. Music stored and reproduced in digital media is usually played by human musicians, and thus also imperfect as you mention. Even as you may know as a musician, best practice when recording music is to take it from ambient. What it was being tried to stablish is that analog media for store and reproduce music adds imperfections from the media itself, not from the music. It is still another way to hear/feel/experience your favorite music, yes! but some prefer to hear the music as close as It was played, an that's by digital HiFi. By the way, do you know that most masters for modern vinyl pressings are HiFi digital? And that those HiFI sources have to be frecuency cut (digitally processed) to fit on vinyl?
For me the greatest thing on vinyl is the fact that you can bring it to your favourite artist after the concert you've just visited and then getting it signed, what makes it a unique piece. Back at home you stick it to the wall and watch the beautiful artwork while listening to the flawless FLACs you've downloaded via the code on the vinyl. ;)
I used vinyl as my main source of music for many years and owned some high quality equipment. I gradually moved to CD in the early 90s mainly due to availability - vinyl was disappearing. I haven’t owned a vinyl player for over a decade but I do miss it sometimes for the reasons mentioned by others here. I may buy a turntable just to listen to the small collection of records that I still have. I definitely won’t get involved in buying new vinyl at its ridiculous price. When I was still buying vinyl a new release was about £7 and the CD was around £15. How things have changed 😮 Interestingly my son and daughter both have vinyl players and I am into streaming 😅 Best wishes to everyone who enjoys music regardless of the medium ❤
For me, the fact that such good sound is possible with vinyl, is part of the appeal. Yes, it has issues but I have done a fair amount of A/B testing between digital and analog versions of songs and I'm still continually impressed with vinyl. Nostalgia and owning a physical manifestation of your favourite band, can't be beat.
David, I feel the same way about Vinyl. I have a technics SL110 turntable with an SME arm and Shure V15 type iii cartridge. I converted to CD's in the 80's and bought CD versions of my favorite recordings. I too noticed the short comings of later CD releases. My first speakers were a pair of B&W DM2a's bought at Mr. Wilkins Worthing store. My dad was friends with John Bowers, who he used to remember building his first speakers in his kitchen. Dad worked for B&W for a short while before moving on to the Mullard research laboratories. I have the Dire Straits Brothers in Arms CD, which was recorded at the AIR studios on Montserrat. Have you visited the Island? The recording brings back fond memory's for us of the Island before the eruption.
I enjoy listening to vinyl once in a while, mostly because it reminds me of my father - and have great affection for the format. Even with a good phono rig, 95% of my listening is via Tidal/Roon. It’s just a better listening experience on so many levels
@Law of Perspective Exactly, one set of rules for them, a different set of rules for us. Because how can they feel special if we're not oppressed? #dark_triads
I have 2 turntables now and had 3 at one time. There are multiple issues that can cause clearly audible distortion. There are many more issues than the 7 mentioned here. It may be fun to grab that round disk and place it on the turntable but sounds quality is not really the best ever in the most expensive setups. CDs can have issues as well but getting very good sound at very reasonable prices for the playback gear is now fairly easy to achieve.
![Jack Harlow - Hello Miss Johnson [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q86_nlRoIGw/mqdefault.jpg)
ERRATA - The video mentions tracking error where a typical tonearm is correctly aligned at only one point on the record. In fact it is correctly aligned at two points. At all other points on the record there is tracking error in varying amounts. Also, a 33.3 rpm record rotates once in 1.8 seconds, not 1.8 times per second, which was my verbal typo. It took a year for someone to notice that. DM
I suppose that may mean then "Linear Tracking" turntables are incorrectly aligned everywhere except for at two points.
@@jagmarc No, the point of a linear tracking arm is the tonearm is always aligned perfectly perpendicular to the groove. sadly they cost a bomb to make well and are hard to make follow the record perfectly, but just about every record lathe uses one. But it will then ofc be misaligned slightly everywhere as theres no way your hand set angle is gonna exactly match the cutting lathe lol.
Two points? You mean one point per side of the record? I think I assumed that.
Also, given that 99% of people listened to records using record players that had rotating tone arms, why weren't the mastering lathes designed to slightly rotate their cutting stylus in some standardised way so that it came close to the way home tone arms operated?
Mr. Masterclass, I hope you get to read this before my post gets buried. To get right to it, do you realize what digitizing an analog signal does? First process, the signal HAS to start as analog. Then to digitize, (no matter how many times you sample it, unless you are almost back to analog, defeating the purpose) it causes detrimental losses. THEN the signal HAS to be converted BACK to analog or your system will sound something like a fax machine and will probably ruin your speakers IN WHICH MORE LOSSES are imposed. Well ok, you say the losses can be premped or reinserted digitally? That is not true audio my friend. It is a REPRESENTATION of audio or synthesization. Get the wrong number on your cell phone and you can hear what that's all about. Ok, so most people say the ADA conversions happen so fast that you don't hear them? Ok then now getting into turntable and CD comparisons. My first CD player was a present to me. An early version made by Phillips and right off the bat I could hear the difference when I connected it to the aux port of my Marantz 2270 receiver. At that point they were still selling LP's so I kept buying them until vinyl was being phased out. So I bought the top of the line Pioneer CD player with a 6 CD changer/remote and loaded them up with the same albums I was going to execute on my turntable. I compared the LP's on my Pioneer PL-516 TURNTABLE with 1.5 grams tracking, anti skate adjust as per specs recommendations, + -- pitch control strobe setting (so no drag surface noise etc.) with my top of the line Pioneer CD player, (equalizations set the same...Marantz 2270 has 3 EQ settings...Bass, Mid, Treb) cranked them both on at the same time and switched my phono and aux selector switch back and forth to hear the difference with my OWN ears. The sound level or volume was pretty much the same (didn't have a watt meter to compare the output levels but pretty sure that the inputs from the phono and the aux have to be ballpark closely match). All in all, the turntable (analog) had a much brighter sound. For some, they might like a duller type sound. Maybe it's all in the individual's preference. Now, I will have to say that some of my albums were not recorded properly and I do hear surface noise at quiet points in the recordings but honestly not for the most part. When I overdrive my amp to concert level past 70 RMS per channel (my amps specs) then yes, all kinds of noise and distortion will start falling into place. Also the 70 W RMS was into 8 ohm speakers. I had Klipsch's (4 ohms) so I had a little more efficiency. I don't know what they rate amps these days but the RMS value is (Root Mean Square or DC equivalent or continuous level). In other words, if your amp is rated at 70 watts PEAK per channel, that would be a lower rating. Take 0.707 multiplied by your peak rating will give the the RMS value. Back to LP's. Most of my albums are from the 1970's to mid to late 1980's. NONE OF THEM ARE REMASTERED..REPEAT
@@nolaserv Read up on sampling theory, particularly the Nyquist limit. You don't have to sample a band-limited waveform at every instant in order to reproduce it fully.
As a vinyl collector, a lot of the appeal is the ritual of putting on a record. Physically choosing a record from a shelf, looking at the artwork, taking it out of its sleeve and putting it on...the warm crackle, the anticipation of waiting for the record to start. It makes a contrast from spotify etc...which I also use everyday...but there's something about the physical record. It's big, it's an event. I love it, regardless of sound issues.
A bit like making tea in a pot...
Rather than just chucking a bag into a mug....🤣
This is the first time I''ve seen someone say this instead of some nonsense about "natural sound waves" or "better mid-range". I see the appeal, but it's definitely not worth $30 per album.
Agree. Although I have not listened to vinyl for quite sometime, I used to have a record with some damage that mad a certain noise at a point in one song.
I got so used to hearing that noise at that point in time, that when i heard the same song on the radio, I would anticipate the noise that never came. It was weird hearing a clean version.
I do on occasion threaten to dust on my Sony, and Technics, turn tables. If I ever do, America-America, Or BTO-Not Fragile will get the first spins. - Cheers
You’ve missed out the process of tracking down hard to find records, and the stories you have about eventually finding and purchasing the LP, EP, etc. also the packaging, opening sealed records, not opening some! The linear notes, tons of stuff that you never get from digital media. As for the sound quality of vinyl, it may well be that digital sound is sonically superior, but those of us who have grown up with vinyl and continued to collect, the imperfections are actually welcome (not all of them of course). Some genres of digitally produced music even incorporate the sonic imperfections of both cassette and vinyl (think of the chewed tape effect, and vinyl crackle for example).
Much of what is reported in this video is not easily heard on even regular hi-fi equipment which I would assume is what people who still play vinyl have. Also, whilst I appreciate what is being communicated in this video highlights the limits of vinyl as a music medium, I’m from a culture where playing vinyl on sound systems (at incredibly loud levels) is a tradition which embraces the imperfections of vinyl. Arguably dubplates are inferior to regular commercial vinyl (in fact they are inferior as they have less playing hours as opposed to commercially released records), but this tradition has been maintained despite the sonic tradeoffs.
I say this as a collector with around 5000 records in my collection (a baby amount by pro collectors standards), and I still buy vinyl, much of which is second hand. As an investment it’s good to know that some of what you purchase has increased in value many times over, even relatively new releases are becoming highly sought due to limited pressings.
Interesting video nonetheless 👍🏾
@@vibez_kru01 didnt read it all, but agree with the stories and the physicality of albums, yes!
The worst thing about vinyl is cleaning the damn things and when the record skips. The best thing about vinyl is the album artwork and watching the record spin on the turntable.
The records won't skip if the turntable is playing properly
Reading / looking at the artwork was always part of the experience. We lost that when the CD came along. Part of listening to music for me, ELP, YES, PF, was that sleeve and what is said. By myself, I’d sit there with the cover, reading it. I remember on programs when the cd was introduced as virtually indestructible, could be affected by scratches? Well, we all found out that was not true- but in my case too late as I gave about 50 on my old vinyls away, only to find myself buying them back off eBay 50 years later….
@@adotopp1865 Ned from sunny Spain and a massive vinyl lover and agree with Ado 100%. If the CD skips or the various digital files are mastered horribly it gets tossed in the effing bin. This guy is full of BS, typical Brit know it all jack ass, vinyl rules forever
@@brewstergallery thanks Janet from Ado in Yorkshire
Wasn't it always maddening when you just slightly damage the record and the needle sticks and keeps playing the same thing over and over?
You are probably aware of Rudy Van Gelder, the legendary recording engineer, and I'll share some of his comments which I believe to my core at age 75 and having been an audio enthusiast for going on 60 years now, owning untold pieces of audio gear during that time.
Rudolph Van Gelder (November 2, 1924 - August 25, 2016) was an American recording engineer who specialized in jazz. Over more than half a century, he recorded several thousand sessions, with musicians including Booker Ervin, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Horace Silver, Herbie Hancock, Grant Green and George Benson. He worked with many different record companies, and recorded ALMOST EVERY SESSION on Blue Note Records from 1953 to 1967. He worked on albums including John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, Miles Davis's Walkin', Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage, Sonny Rollins's Saxophone Colossus, and Horace Silver's Song for My Father. He is regarded as one of the most influential engineers in jazz.
From 1999, he remastered the analog Blue Note recordings he made several decades earlier into 24-bit digital recordings in it's RVG Edition series. He was positive about the switch from analog to digital technology he told Audio magazine.
From an interview with Rudy: "The BIGGEST DISTORTER is the LP itself. I've made thousands of LP masters. I used to make 17 a day, with two lathes going simultaneously, and I'm glad to see the LP go. As far as I'm concerned, good riddance. It was a constant battle to try to make that music sound the way it should. It was never any good. And if people don't like what they hear in digital, they should BLAME THE ENGINEER who did it. Blame the mastering house. Blame the mixing engineer. That's why some digital recordings sound terrible, and I'm not denying that they do, but DON"T BLAME THE MEDIUM".
Very much agreed.
very interesting.
Rudy forgot that not everyone had headaches mastering like he did.He is after all one man with one opinion.Equipment is way better now than when he mastered.Vinyl will always sound better because of the distortions that are actually pleasing to the human ear.Your tympanic membrane is an analogue device not digital.And your brain processes in a cellular electric field.God bless third order harmonic distortion.
A digital master is always converted to an analog signal along the path to you ears otherwise your ears would not be able to hear it, I'm pretty sure you already know this. Vinyl just adds more problems like loss of stylus to groove contact in complex passages causing a lot of distortion, tracking error, inevitable groove wear the more it is played, imperfections in the vinyl adding annoying tick and pops not to mention a wide variability of the vinyl's quality, slight off center pressing causing wow, the need to add quite a lot of frequency curve manipulation via the RIAA equalization network, peak limiting and compression of the signal so as not to cause even more mistracking of the stylus, wide variability in pickup and stylus quality, etc. Trying to force a mechanical system to produce sound is fraught with these and more problems. I'll take a properly mastered CD any day.
@@brucegelman5582 "Vinyl will always sound better because of the distortions that are actually pleasing to the human ear"
People like you are just a lost cause. Coping so hard with the fact that vinyl is an inferior medium. What sounds pleasing to my human ear is to hear the music as it was intended to sound, not with some random distortions.
As a vinyl sentimentalist and fan, congratulations on your informative and entertaining video. Vinyl is like your old favorite uncle: old fashioned, makes funny noises at times, unsophisticated and a relic. But the warm memories, smiles, and joy they conjure can't be beat. Especially for an old timer like me. I like digital, but I love vinyl.
This is a very interesting comment and touches on something that I would dwell on. Years ago, I had a vinyl copy of Daft Punk's Around The World. At about 1m42 there's a pop that I got used to hearing. To this day, 25 years later, I still anticipate that pop on digital and when I don't hear it, seems like somethings missing. In the end, each copy no matter how exact it may be to the next will take on characters that are unique to it from normal use which give it a one of a kind sound. I guess you can say that vinyl is a good metaphor to life in general where as Digital is something that you can only take something away from. I believe that if we measure vynil on paper against Digital, there's no comparison. Digital will always win but on a less mathematical level, vinyl will always mix with our own memories to take us somewhere beyond the air molecules being pushed into our earholes.
@@traxonwax I see digital as close to perfect as possible, perhaps too much so. I've pondered what it is about digital that although technically superior always leaves me somewhat unsatisfied with the listening experience. I've analyzed the situation, and I've come up with the following: when I was a teen to young adult, in the 70s through 80s I purchased lots of albums. The experience was much more than a listening one then. First the excitement of hearing that certain band or artist had released a new album. Then driving to the record shop, The Wherehouse, or Tower records among others. The thrill of walking into the store and viewing the thousands of LPS and getting hit with the smell of the wrapping and cardboard, along with the giant cut outs of artists advertising their latest lp. The excitement of holding the new lp in my hands and looking over the artwork, or photographs of the band on said lp. Some of the lp covers were intricate, novel, humorous, scary, intimate, etc. Once I arrived home, it was such an exciting experience to tear the plastic cover and listening to the crackel of the plastic as I tore it away. Finally, the new album was uncovered and with great anticipation, I pulled the lp out. Some albums had colorful labels on the LPS themselves and some unfolded with gatefolds. Finally, placing the album on the turntable, dropping the needle and listening for the first time the new music. The totality of the experience involved the senses, emotions and imprinted those wonderful memories that come roaring back when I pull out one of those LPS now, dust it off and drop the needle on that beautiful round platter once again.
@@eltatoyo9211 Nostalgia is the word you’re looking for. 😃
Bingo! That's exactly the sentiment I have towards records. I have thousands of sources for music (and books, podcasts, etc) but when I want to just chill and listen I'll throw an album on and just zone out. We have numerous music systems in the house and I leave the one with the turntable in the basement to play fairly loud...mainly because my wife has a "tin ear" and can't distinguish the difference between a decent Bluetooth device and a pair of $2000 speakers. I'm old and like a lot of folks I let my early record collection go in the early 80's in favor of CD's. A friend gifted me a very nice Denon table and I've recently bought a few dozen albums that mean something to me and I couldn't be happier. I still buy CD's and subscribe to Apple Music and feel everybody should enjoy sound however they prefer.
I bet you really cling to that poetic comfort in the face of the reality of the wasted money - on vinyl. there is no charm or poetry or love in vinyl. Every single musician that made that music desperately wanted their recordings to sound as best as they could. The engineers and the many tracks and all the tech - from the Beatles to Tool - all in the effort to make the music sound good - and then some lunatic hipster bored with a lot of money starts a vinyl movement - and the cattle moo'd
For me vinyl is the cure for this generations millisecond attentionspan, where i can sometimes find it hard to sit through just one song without doing something else in the meanwhile. Vinyl forces you to respect the album and give it time and patience, it transforms the listening experience completely, thats why i listen to vinyl
You, sir, are correct!
Oh, just brilliant! "The medium should force you to do something you otherwise wouldn't"? Now how about that listening experience?! Mind you, haven't you noticed that there's absolutely no way to hear the whole album on a record as opposed to a CD?
If your laziness is what makes you not skip a song you don't like, perhaps not consider yourself such a big admirer of music?
I only read the first three words of what you said but I totally agree.
I think this is the most deluded reason for praising records. The fact that kids have short attention span will in no way be affected by records. It can only drive them away since sitting and listening is not a part of their lives anymore. Patience is not something a certain material gives to a musical album. Patience is a human trait.
Also it makes absolutely no sense for YOU to listen to records (it's not vinyl, it's records), because YOUNG people have short attention span. Whatever you choose to do want affect them.
You can hardly defend the notion of "respect for the album" if it was recorded onto an inferior sounding medium, since albums are about sound, while a superior medium is available.
Remember, you have to flip records. So there is actually only one way to listen to an entire album without interruptions and it's digital.
I hope I helped.
Leaving aside my joke, which nobody understood, I agree with your point that what mr_sandman chooses to do will not affect what generation spotify does, but I have to question the attitude that a re-release on CD is necessarily superior.
Albums were recorded within the limitations of the technology of their time and the mixing took into account the volume headroom of the medium. If we take the song 'Twist and Shout' from The Beatles' first album and listen to a polished up remaster, the sound may sound technically superior, but it sounds very different from the vinyl record which probably drove the high volume sections to distortion from the first playing.
Obviously modern audiences may react differently from contemporary ones and instead of thinking it is hip and transgressive might just think it is a bad recording. Indeed, they may also wonder why follow such a crowd-pleaser with the much calmer 'Love me do', which makes less sense without the inevitable intermission due to the need to flip the disc.
What I found interesting was the reaction of someone who recently purchased The Beatles' white album (I think it was) on CD but who remembered listening to LP and who stated 'This is NOT the same album I heard back in the day : it shouldn't even have the same title'. Obviously it _must_ be the same music, but the album was a collaboration of the post-recording technicians of the day AND the band and perhaps the remastering for CD means that the product of the work of the technicians of the 60s is no longer in the CD album.
Viewed as a collaborative effort, it probably IS a different album, even if it is based on the same master tapes. In that sense, had CDs existed in 1968, the original album might have been produced very differently. So, in that sense, the only way to listen to the original album is to listen to the original album, and perhaps on typical turntables of the time.
Obviously that makes the album extinct; so what do we do? We re-release it and mix it for CD. It's obvious that we can never hear it with the same ears that first heard the original album in 1968 even if we did listen to an old LP on an old turntable, but we may well still appreciate the music. @@cubemerula5264
When nostalgia strikes you play records. You don't just listen to music but you look through the years and see your yesterdays. You go through the rituals and the emotions that were familiar to your younger self. That's what playing records means to me these days.
These Gen z frauds were born 10 years after mp3s were invented. They have no business being "nostalgic" about anything
Yes, music always brings memories, it’s beautiful in that way, if I have to play vinyl all I get is frustration and rage at how bad it sounds, and memories of frustration and rage from long ago, yes, the rituals and emotions of virtually shampooing albums before attempting to play them🙂
My first LP was "Wednesday Morning: 3 AM." Monoaural, because in those days stereo disks cost more, as did all of the playback hardware. POS system and speaker in my frat house bedroom. I have my own home now, and a decent mid-level system, but what being a late teen in the mid 1960's comes back when I play the first LP I ever bought.
Great album, and all the albums they made after that, 🙂@@frequentlycynical642
"Ah, that shows you the power of music, that magician of magician, who lifts his wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh."
- Mark Twain
Jack White always does cool stuff with records. One of his records has two parallel grooves at the start. If the needle lands in one groove, you hear an acoustic intro to the song. If the needle lands in the other groove, you hear an electric intro. It's like magic.
Monty Python did the same thing on their "Matching Tie & Handkerchief" album. Side two had two different routines - you never knew which one would be playing.
@@richisaacs8135 Ah, yes... The famous three-sided record.
@@richisaacs8135 I had that album! The first time I stumbled on the "third" side, I was shocked!
it´s done in a lot of records ,like in a LP live of Ella Fitzsgerald ,only two songs but if the nedle goes to the second groove it´s a total diferent recording ,it´s more usual now to record with parallel grooves
Does it ever skip between the electric and acoustic sides? haha
As a trained sound engineer, I can agree with everything you say, yet Iam an avid vinyl collector. Nothing replaces the physical format, the whole process of listening to vinyl ( I can choose between all streaming platforms or my vinyl collection on my system, …. I love digging thru my collection and getting inspired by the covers)
I love all formats but as long as I can enjoy the music,that's good enough for me.
See... there used to be this thing called CDs... 😃
Yeah the experience is similar with CDs and the sound is pristine... So why tape or vinyl?@@emmcee2953
Not to rain on your parade in particular, but aren't the people that set up music concerts audio engineers?
@@TomJones-tx7pb i guess a concert promoter sets up music concerts...what is the context with listening to vinyl?
I've had too many songs vanish from the internet. Videos too.
After the 20th one or so, physical mediums are more about resisting propaganda and brainwashing than anything else.
Additionally, there are literally millions of songs that only exist in physical format, never were converted to digital, and never will be. So, you can say what you will but I'd rather explore than become a living Spotify playlist, curated by others.
Cheers.
Can't put a number on the amount of movies and TV comedies that were never released on DVD.
“Mediums” refers to people talking to ghosts. “Media” refers to multiple formats.
@@robmurphy82 So you don't understand the origin of the term then?
Don't let 'em get to your bodily fluids either! They are precious.
@@robmurphy82 Medium has several definitions. In art it refers to the type of materials used in the creative process of a physical piece, but could be applied to music as well.
I've collected records since I was a kid in the seventies. I have over two thousand. A lot of them from local bands that never got released on another format. Plus I get the unique album art. Your explanation is great, I can't disagree with the technical aspects, but the experience of listening to a new record on my old Technics linear tracking turntable that still works after forty two years will always win against another medium.
Rock on
Yes, that's the whole point. You're not listening to music, you're listening to your childhood. Nothing can beat that.
I don't mind idiots like this guy crapping on vinyl. I makes more of the "Grail" records out there available for people that still enjoy music on the best format... vinyl. Hopefully he will convince his viewers to sell all their records really cheap like idiots.
... and for the best experience you'll need an tube amplifier. Kills any digital medium instantly!
Same. I have no prejudice against digital, but when the only easily available source for digital is ripping vinyl, I'd prefer vinyl. A lot of content was never digitized professionally, or the CDs were pressed in vanishingly low numbers compared to still-available vinyl. As for the seven sins of vinyl listed by our host, they do exist but I can live with them and some, like vibration, are almost nonexistent in my setup).
@@Erlewyn Very right, and such experience carries a whole Freudian connotation which is quite meaningful in itself, and in spite of my being an audiophile and searching for perfection, we're in fact addicted to the romantic way vinyl sounds.
The appeal of vinyl is not in the sound quality or the reliability of vinyl records, but in the ritual of putting on a record, not to mention that you get to admire the art on the cover and read the lyrics while you listen to it. It is like a form of meditation, a momentary escape from our increasingly busy lives to just take a step back and enjoy something.
Listening to the music becomes more of an experience rather than a utility, and that is what people desire.
These days, when (almost) every song every is just a click away, and you can hear it in perfect digital clarity, it devalues the experience. It comes back to the simple econonics principle of supply and demand, and when there isn't a whole lot of demand but instant and infinite supply, it's made music really devalued.
Not to mention exclusivity and scarcity- because vinyls are fairly expensive, you can only really have a certain amount, and for many (me included) there is something more enjoyable about having a physical library of albums to browse through rather than various playlists on spotify or folders on your computer storing the data.
It's extremely hard for musicians to make money with the digital system unless you are getting millions of streams, but vinyl (and cassette and CD) gives artists other physical avenues to sell their music.
I couldn’t agree more
I agree! When an artistic media like music and film becomes almost free it becomes throwaway. That's why I dislike streaming. I will continue to buy and enjoy LP's, CD's and DVD's. For the chance to pass them on to future generations!
well said i totally agree
The thing about the resurgence of vinyl, and the same can be said about CDs, is that they are physical things you can own. Do not underestimate the importance of this. Also, the music fan must plunk down some money for these things, some of which actually goes to the artist. Wow, what a concept!!!! I'm all for it!
Yes and cds can now be sometimes bought now for under 50p. They were £14 in the mid 80s which was an incredible amount of money.
If you really need to have physical medium, that doesn't suck.. maybe get bunch of sd cards, I recommend the full size over the micro sd, unless you intend to play these on your phone too(alternatively you can get usb flash drives, but these are rather bulky, on plus side they don't need a card reader to work).. they are very cheap at smallest capacity they sell which is probably 8gb.. more than enough. Copy your existing digital files, mp3s or flacs to the medium(or if you have it on a cd, rip it). Use the thicc cardboard to make the insert for the sd card(alternatively you could 3d print these). Scan the artwork of the cd cover and print it out(or find scans online)... I recommend making it all smaller, so it takes less space. There you go.
@@beardsntools as a response to the original comment - your reply has more in common with making popcorn🤣
Still have all my records from the 80s...as well as JBL speakers and Sansui AU amp. Fun to listen to from time to time.
That's exactly why I DON'T like CD's and Vinyl. I grew up with a huge vinyl and cd collection and when I was a kid I used to dream of being able to access any song I wanted at any time on something that didn't skip or having to carry some huge stupid box in my pocket that needed batteries to be replaced constantly. (charging is NOT as bad...lol).
While I did enjoy parts of the vinyl experience, taking records to friends houses, the "ritual" of it, etc....none of that is good enough to ever make me want to go back to that. It's SOOOO much better today. I don't care about the "physical" thing at all. Just stuff that takes up too much space.
It's a good point about making sure artists get paid for their work though.
Enjoying music played on vinyl makes no logical sense, that's why we love it so much.
Makes no sense to you. Don’t generalize.
In the comment I posted, I touched on the defensive nature of vinyl purists. Looks like we're witnessing a small example judging from the admonishment that you received here in your thread. LOL 😂
Calm down Vitor. It's not that critical. 😁
Thanks for saying this. The happiest day of my life is when I gave away my extensive vinyl collection in the 80s and didn't look back. I did the same for my cassettes. Now I have a couple of dozen CDs and a streaming service and couldn't be happier. I stream music I would never have purchased (or otherwise obtained). Internet radio is where I discover new music. Radio Paradise is the best thing since sliced bread; curated by humans for humans.
Some people never found out that there’s a place in your cheek for your tongue
@Kabob Hope you don't have to ONLY listen to vinyl. Just listen to your favorite music as a way to support the artist or just have a collection.
I bought my first CD player in 1985. My first play back, plugged into my cheap KLH receiver and a set of Advent speakers (pedestrian, I know) was so wonderful, I had no interest in ever going back to vinyl. No clicks, no hiss, no pops, no skips. Plus the extra beauty of being able to play an album straight through without a break to flip the album. The first straight listen of DSOM was mind blowing, no interruption. No looking back.
Well put! Here's another thing that I think about when I listen to Bach Organ Works. Back in the old days, it wasn't an issue to have low frequencies in mono...that sound is omnidirectional, right?
Well...now that we have stereo subwoofers, you can actually hear the low frequencies going from side to side, etc.
As Mr. Mellor points out, mastering engineers have to make compromises due to limitations. So, a mastering trick that I've read about was to make the lower frequencies mono, so guess what?
With stereo subwoofers, you wouldn't hear any panning of the lower frequencies.
CDs have NO SUCH limitation.
And if you haven't heard the DSOTM 5.1 mix or a good stereo downmix (I think the 50th anniversary is a downmix of the 5.1, but I can't confirm this - the drums do sound much crisper like the 5.1 mix), you're in for a treat!
It makes the old DSOTM versions sound muddy, in my opinion, because they were 2nd and 3rd generation tape.
Oh, but that makes it sound warmer! ha ha The sound of the warmth that people hear is likely just distortion or noise.
No looking back indeed! And I don't have $80,000 for a fancy turntable.
you should have bought a turntable not a click, hiss,pops or skip machnine ,skip do happens more on cds ,in vinyl skips are at least for me never heard.
Yep, bought my first CD player in '85 as well. I still had all my vinyl and cassettes of course, and a lot of expensive gear to play them on, but the writing was on the wall. I feel the vinyl revival makes about as much sense as a VHS revival when we have Blu-ray and streaming.
@@GazzaBoo correct but in this situation the vinyl is the blue-ray and vhs the cd, but not all had good turntables and the 80´s models were not so well fabricated as the 70´s ones allthough when working new they did had a very good sound but i remenber when buying a complete ES system the turntqble i had from 74 ,a belt driven pioneer from the ES-2000 system hyuad much better sound than at the time sony ES cd player, but the sound on cds is to bleme and tye opnes who were not used tolisten to records can´t notice the diference which is huge from vinyl to cd ,80´s turntables not all were good ,kind of today´s turntables sound and most of them for beeing made mostly of plastic didn´t arrive to today´s with perfect working , but remenber that every brand had a good turntable but as i said plastic didn´t aged well while 60´s and 70´s turntables atill work perfect troday if well taken care off ,it´s not being dighital the problem but the format it self, developed in the 70´s by philips than teamed up with sony
Advent speakers, were NOT pedestrian. I wish I hadn't sold mine.
Your talk took me back to the time when I first heard mention about the development of CD technology --- around 1982 or 1983, when I was in junior high school. My friend Mitch told me about "a record player they invented that uses a laser, so the needle doesn't touch the grooves, and can even read through scratches." Yes, we thought it would still be a vinyl record being read by a laser. The actual CD, when it came out, was even more impressive.
The first time I realized something was being lost was when my older brother's friend came by for his first listen to a CD. He was impressed, but then he looked at the packaging and said: "It's too bad the cover is so small. When you buy a record, you're also buying a piece of art."
I later reacquired SOME of my old vinyl titles through collectors shops, and I enjoy finding rare pressings or foreign versions of old Beatle records. Vinyl for all its faults is still fun to listen to, and the physics of the technology still amaze me. Dropping a needle onto the groove brings such warm feelings.
Then there's the case of Abbey Road. Side One finishes with "I Want You (She's So Heavy)." You know how that song ends --- Abruptly. The swampy, portentous guitars grow louder and louder, with a wooshing wind sound effect creeping up in volume. Just before the blowing gust becomes overwhelming, the sound cuts off! The sudden silence is jarring, and that finale to Side 1 requires a long silent pause to contemplate the moment. It says: "Are you ready for Side 2? Not yet? That's okay. Take a break before you flip the record over." But when listening on CD or other digital format, the first gentle guitar lines of "Here Comes the Sun" begin a few seconds after that monster of a song pushes the listener off a cliff. It's just so wrong!
As McLuhan said, the medium is the message!
Good point. I never considered this but I completely agree.
in the 70´s i already knew the cd or Compact Disc a digital format created by Philips, in 82/83 already existed standart size CD player Philps/Sony
That's a really interesting example you brought up from Abbey Road. I saw a comment recently in a modern listener's review of that album who clearly had only experienced the digital version. They said something along the lines of "the guitar intro to Here Comes the Sun immediately following the end of I Want You (She's So Heavy) is the greatest transition in music history." It was a very hyperbolic line, but clearly that experience of the album had a profound effect on them, and it can only be heard on a digital version of the album.
I've also only ever heard the digital version myself, as my parents played Abbey Road on CD a lot when I was a kid. Now I'm imagining the vinyl experience where side A ends with the gargantuan wall of sound before cutting to silence, and that does seem like the been the way it was intended to be heard. Not sure which way I prefer.
@@rainor771 the original version is how they intended to record those songs that weren´t finished but each had parts of songs and they choose to recorded them as they were ,this was the only album to be released in stereo at the time ,4 tracks ,i own a version bought when it came out in south africa, early 70´s or late 60´s, the problem here is not being digital or analog ,is the limitations of the compact disc developed in the 70´s,we are in the 2020´s it should have been released a more evolved format, as an exaample when in 87 i had my first DAT deck ,i couldn´t believe it´s quality ,it was close to the reels deck ,i even tried to record with success some demos for bands of highschool students that i recorded in my fathers home studio, nothing related with the sound of cd ,the guitars sounded perfect ,which doesn´t happen in cd recordings at least till late 90´s, there are exceptions ,like the first rage against the machine album or the corrosion of conformity 90´s new style "Albatross"
Beatles are the best advocates of vinyl. I listened to my Revolver LP from 1966, the sound was magical almost unreal. This band must be heard on vinyl.
For me, I always tried to record the vinyl on to cassette during the first play. I would then put the vinyl away and only listen to the cassette. When needed, I would then pull the vinyl out and record again. This always kept my vinyl in fantastic condition.
Fantastic condition, but for no discernible reason if you never listen to it.
@@andrewguthrie2 Presumably the reason was to re-record to cassette when the previous cassette copy had degraded.
@@kennethconnally4356 But if you only ever listen to it on tape, and a copy at that, what's the point of buying vinyl in the first place?
@@andrewguthrie2 I don't know, but it could be to save money. Let's say (just picking numbers at random) the record quality degrades below an acceptable level at 20 plays, and each cassette likewise after 20 plays. With this scheme you get to listen to it 400 times for the cost of just the one LP plus the blank cassette(s).
This comment perfectly encapsulates how awful analog audio media are.
For me, it is simply the ritual and the physical format. It is purely a nostalgic thing for me. I know it doesn't sound better, but I love it.
I think yours is the right perspective.
It does sound better though. It DOESN'T sound more accurate. But more accurate doesn't mean better. Music is for humans and human ears like certain sounds better than others. And they don't like accuracy. If they did, people would use studio monitor speakers for entertainment, and they don't. Because accurate studio monitors sound like crap.
@@thehmc hey, if it makes you happy, all good.
It does sound better.
i can assure you that sounds so much better that you can´t compare it , one sounds like the band is playing in your living room other sounds like a bad cassette recorded in a bad cassette deck, digital is not the problem ,the format developed in the 70´s known as compact disc is destroying music, no wonder kids don´t like old bands they are only hearing 50 % of the sound
As a fellow pro audio engineer and record collector of 40+ years, I'm going to have to politely disagree. It's fairly easy to use discogs nowadays to find out which are the best pressings of your favourite records and even new releases. Silent surface, no inner groove distortion/sibilance, good dynamic range, well-centred... job done.
A well maintained record (wet cleaned regularly, discharged of static and brushed pre/post every play and stored using anti-static rice paper inner sleeves and polyprop double pocket outers) on a decent turntable, through a decent amp into decent speakers is an experience of tangible connection to the piece of work that just doesn't exist within the digital realm. The physical process of listening to records almost certainly slows down our activity to create an environment in which we are a far more captive and perceptively engaged listener.
Also, you can't hug a FLAC
Yeah most vinyl lovers hate digital but not realizing their source is also digital haha. Check your records after 1980 and guess all will say PCM recorded. And a record can sound better but not because it is analog but just better mastered.
@@timschutte3961you are not completely correct nor completely wrong. The source is analog, but they convert the source to digital before converting it to analog again to press the vinyl. And that "digital file" is completely different from any file from streaming source.
So vinyl is still better than listening to music using any streaming services.
@@CarlVallory Artists in the early 80's say recordings in digital or analog was a difference between day and night and digital was off course way better and truly recorded what they played. And so recordings also on vinyl are recorded digital and then put on a analog source where a lot of information is lost and not with digital.
@@timschutte3961 How about our records before 1980.. a nice porky cut from the 70s will DESTROY any other form of the album guaranteed.
amen!!
To me, vinyl is like my Japanese Sand Garden. I do not listen to my vinyl all the time, when I do, I am taking out a vintage disc, carefully inspecting and cleaning it, then I match the vinyl to a particular turntable and stylus combo (I have several vintage). Then I will finally play the album and enjoy the entire experience for what it was...an homage to an era and an afternoon of thought and memory designed to embrace my past.
Beautifully put.....
Interesting comment. I have plenty of CD’s including some SACD’s and HDCD’s. I have Joni Mitchell’s “ Court and Spark on HDCD and Neil Young’s “ Harvest Moon”.
My family bought me a new version of Who’s next. I have a CD copy and a original vinyl copy. I was very disappointed in the new mix. In turn I did not listen to the new court and spark figuring it would suck. I put it on a couple of weeks ago and my mind was blown. The version was superb. The same with Harvest moon.
My best recording is an original audiophile copy of the girl from ipanema.
Now I have excellent TT’s
@@Gnofg I agree. I own mostly first pressings. There is something about a first pressing. Even the house that pressed the disc can impact the quality. I have gigabytes of flac files from high quality sources and to be honest, there are some vinyl first pressings that make the flac file sound lame and distorted.
I have several vintage TT's. Dual, Thorens, AR, Audio Technica, Yamaha...all with their own set of styli. Like I mentioned, to me, listening to vinyl is meant to evoke a memory and a time when music was simply at its best when played on vinyl.
Has technology advanced and improved the sound stage, yes. But that is like saying the digital picture of the Mona Lisa is better that viewing the original. There is no comparison to be made.
@@z3r0w1ng I have a systemdek iix with a Sumiko bluepoint and also a AR XB with a Pickering XSV -3000 with a stereohedron stylus. It is the same as a Stanton 881. Fantastic cartridges. Dave at Vinyl Nirvana has one too.
@@Gnofg Sumiko bluepoint is a very likeable high output moving coil cartridge with an emphasis on real life reproduction. Sit back & enjoy.
I was converted to digital way back in the 80s. Dynamic range seemed off the charts, and of course, it was. Being at the time a recording musician to some degree, I found it disturbing to learn how the final mix with all the dynamics present at that point of listening and then pressed into vinyl, turned out just vaguely similar to that what we had just heard. Digital indeed changed that for the better.
Except that they then started the ‘loudness war’ and made it much worse than any vinyl master ever before. 😂🤦♂️
@@MacXpert74 And now the "loudnes war" style mastered albums are pressed onto fresh vinyls. How the tables have turned!
@@1ochotnik until you get someone who knows what they are doing. Interestingly, quite a few of those brickwalled CDs have much more nuanced mixes on vinyl.
Right, being a recordproducer/musician/studio-owner for 40 years I can only say "Amen" to this!!!!
I sold high end HiFi back in the ‘70s and was thrilled when CDs came around. They are still subject to lousy mixing and mastering, but it’s a vastly superior format than vinyl. I always thought the vinyl revival was ridiculous, as well as the resurgence of analogue recording studios that use tape machines, yet still do all the editing in Protools. If more ‘recording studio engineers’ were actual engineers, we’d have even more spectacular quality in the digital format.
As an audio profesional I don't mind the surface noise on vinyl! As others have said here the joy of vinyl is the theatre of playing it, and you sit and you listen which is something I can't often do when streaming.
Agreed
I'm a CD man all day long. I just love the music and don't want to get stuck in a place where you need £25 to buy an album.
But everyone's doing it. 25 pounds or dollars says that YOU are a real music lover. Even better if you get the mug and artist's wine product.
@@ColtraneTaylor Especially when you never play the record and just pin it on your wall.
@@jamesbedford3774 You got it!
bro no one buys music anymore never mind spending £25 on albums lol
@@WookieWarriorz I find that sad, but each to their own.
CDs are criminally underrated
I hope they stay that way! I like paying less for them!
Criminally loud is more like it.
@@Billfish57 that's on the mastering, has nothing to do with the format.
then floppy disc is criminally underrated too! And DVD with its crappy SD resolution.
This is one more audio myth.
Why does vinyl sound more soothing to the human senses and seems to have a warmer sound?
I am not an audio expert, not even close. It is just something I have personally come to realize.
The more analog the sound the more soothing it seems to be, at least to me.
I grew up with a grandfather who played with many great musicians and every weekend I would here the bands play live performances.
It was not about the most perfect sound as it was not a recording studio in most cases. Often dance halls, with some less then desirable acoustics to the large rooms. But the sound was more soothing and seemed to have a therapeutic effect on my senses. The closest I have been able to re-experience those moments of live music when I was young is by listening to vinyl's today.
I actually prefer digital music for a number of reasons, like for convince, it's ability to preserve perfect playback over time and for environmental reasons and also ease of storage of large volumes of music on tiny devices.
Reasons I do not enjoy vinyl's are because they are clumsy and take a lot of care and are expensive both to maintain and to purchase. And yet the sound from them seems more authentic and warm to my human senses for some reason.
I have vinyl records over 60 years old that still sound great. CDs that I purchased in the 90s have yellowed over time and can't be played now. Vinyl records offer one thing above all other formats: they broaden your musical appreciation. Here's how: put on a record and sit on the couch. Soon you hear the song that made you buy the record, followed by a song you don't really like. If you want to skip that song, you must levitate off the couch, and lift the needle out of the groove, and place it (skillfully) where you want it to be. Way too much effort for most of us. Over time, the new song grows on you so much you like it more than your original favorite. With CDs and MP3s, the listener is endlessly advancing to the next best song, never learning the beauty of the other songs.
you can also see in the grooves, where diferent sonding parts of the song are, as an example guitar solos
Preach it brother. Spot on analysis. Digital listeners often skip 4 tracks to every one that they listen to.
Not gonna lie, I've learned to loved some albums for just that reason, too lazy to get my a#s off the couch.
You're right. But then, being a Beatles-fan all my life, I probably played Revolution #9 from the White album only a few times. When I got the album in 1968 I skipped it everytime I played that side. It annoyed me, both the "song" and the skipping. Never got to like it! On Cd I can skip it.
BTW, I have this friend who's a true musiclover. However, when he's enthousiastic he often only plays the intros of his 45's... He's got thoussands of them. Funny, but very tiring... 😁
@@UCS0608 in a record you can also skip just put the needle in the next song, it´s easy, have you heard the original white album ,i have also the cd but never heard it, sounds really bad, also have the stereo version in vinyl but one gets used to listen to what one´s got at home ,if i started to listen to the beatles in cd ,maybe i never enjoyed what they say it´s their sound
I’m holding out for the wax cylinder revival 😊. I believe for the reasons you point out, Vinyl is more about emotional appeal. I just can’t justify spending gobs of money to compensate for the technical shortcomings. Great explanation!
Vinyl is superior to digital. ruclips.net/video/bBR3kS4e_wk/видео.html
The cylinder revival has already started, so jump on! You can purchase new releases on cylinders now.
Interesting you say that. Several years ago I discovered old time radio broadcasts. It's interesting to listen to these recordings as you can sometimes hear the clicks as the cylinder is turning.
Yeah. I'm breeding beetles to make more shellac. With you.
What's 10 grand between friends
Scratches and Surface Noise are seldom heard on my system. The reason is my records are clean, the stylus is clean, the TT is well set up (Azimuth, VTA, tracking force etc) and a good quality cartridge. The stylus plays well into the groove away from damage and detritus. I counter vibration by a combination of mass (granite slab), springs (mini trampolines actually) on one TT and Maglev footers on another, and a multiple of damping materials. These are Epoxy, Butyl, and Sorbothane. Also I polish the spindle and use a custom material for the thrustpad. It is PEEK, the hardest form of Teflon which is one of the most slippery materials on the planet. This all goes to reduce friction. The spindle is lubricated (I have a Sleeve Bearing). These materials are used on the arm, the TT body, the bearing housing, and even the platter. Finally I use Ebony where I can. The idea is that whatever remaining noise there is, it is ameliorated by my attempt to tune that sound to the same materials from which they make clarinets, oboes, and piano keys. I use Ebony for the headshells, armboards, and record stabilisers.
A lot of work I hear you say? Well yes, but it is a labour of love. It saved a ton of dosh, and it enables me to play music that is not available digitally. It also saves my ears from those dreadful 'remasterings'.
Yep, I'm the same - and another benefit is being able to duke it out with another guy on some forum about the best way to keep records clean, or recover fidelity from old liquorice pizzas you got from a record fair. Is it vacuum, is it water , is it glue etc etc. And actually, whatever your favourite method, there is little more satisfying than buying a shi77y old filthy Beatles or Beach Boys album that's been to about 300 parties and getting it playing like new again.
It was so fun saving up my money and going to the record store, flipping through the albums, from A-Z. Like a mini art gallery. Bringing your purchase home, putting it on your shitty record playing, and digging into the artwork and lyrics. 12" x 12" artwork, sometimes so detailed you could spend an hour looking at it. And lyrics of every song printed out so you could read along. Albums had a lot of personality in that format. It wasn't just something you listened to, it was something you experienced, like reading a book. Times change, I know, but I feel bad for the Spotify generation that only gets to hear disembodied music.
THIS THIS THIS!
Digital music is obviously the better format but with records every new album is an experience especially when your a thrift store collector like I was. Bringing home a bunch of random records and going through them made me appreciate the music in a way that hitting play on Spotify doesn't.
A record store is a magical place.
I’ve been having a hell of a time switching back to vinyl from CDs. I’ve been re-collecting all the albums I got rid of over the years. It’s been awesome! I love vinyl!
Some of us look for the fountain of youth in different ways
@@jorgejaime4325 not the fountain of youth but music played correctelly not a mufled sound with guitars sounding like nothing, and i have nothing against digital just against it´s 70´s format ,the CD
@@RUfromthe40s I think you really don't understand how it works. Than that sound is the producer's choice, not the cd-format! You really think that that would sound better on vinyl? Yeah right.
@@UCS0608 if you think the producer produces the sound of the cd ,you don´t know how this works ,when in a studio he produces the sources recorded ,after being masterized he don´t know how´s going to sound in cd or any other source,it´s not his job ,if you knew something about sound you would understand my coment i´m sure you don´t have 1/3 of the cds i have neither the records(vinyl) or cassettes or reels maybe you never listened to a vinyl record in a decent record player, normally today to match mid 70´s quality one spends over 10.000€ in a turntable but with the same sound quality one can spend 160€ in a mid 70´s technics turntable , a original one including cartridge will do the same, better will sound the same
@@UCS0608 so it´s the producer choice to make the guitars sound like electric heaters static not like guitars and in the 90´s why producers ,etc. record all in analog AAD(D for compact disc) ,this talking about every rock band known at the time, but i mainly refer to older LP´s that in cd they sound terrible, just listen and compare . Or you never touched a electric guitar conected to a amp.?
I kept all my vinyl from 1964 onwards and although most of the older 45 rpm singles and EP's are a bit worn, it still makes me happy to find a record and place it on my turntable and play it. A decent turntable and cartridge helps a lot to providing a nice clear sound. I can't say an analog record sounds better than a CD, but it can sound nice. I even have quite a few records with picture cover sleeves and of course most albums have interesting photo's and often the lyrics of each song. Long live vinyl!!
I am happy for anyone who finds enjoyment from playing music on vinyl records. More power to them, as long as that power doesn't include telling me or others that it is factually the superior playback method, that it gives a "warmer" sound and those who disagree are ignorant. I was thrilled in the eighties to immediately switch to CD as my format of choice which I still do today. I have re-purchased a huge number of albums to have the longer-lasting and, to my ear, near-perfect reproduction. Enjoy your records and I'll enjoy my CDs.
CD'S are not going away. Even if they stopped making them there are millions in circulation & if looked after they do not wear like a vinyl LP.
@@JohnSmith-of4vh : Agreed, but honestly, cd's do skip horribly and many of the cd's I have bought over the last 25+ years have skipped after a few plays in a vehicle's cd player for instance. Same thing goes with average cd stereos; especially ones equipped with a shuffling disc tray. I'm sorry, I can't be bothered and shouldn't be bothered to have to upgrade to a high quality car cd player or expensive stereo equipment to purportedly avoid such damage and scratching (yes scratching). In the late 80's throughout the early 90's, I bought cassettes, because all I had to play music was a cassette stereo. Around '94, I started buying CD's exclusively into the early 00's until I got a turntable for Christmas and began collecting records. My experience is that if you have a decent turntable and know how to calibrate the tonearm so that the stylus won't rest too heavily on the vinyl, your vinyl should preserve fine. ¿ Do I have vinyls that are in somewhat bad shape ? ¡ Yes , of course ! Vinyl listening for me though as life gets busy is to cherish on certain occasions. With a fairly big record collection, I can't even get to all the ones I have, so overall, the records I have get occasional plays. There are certainly some records I have that have gotten multiple plays and for a few like The Clash's 'Sandinista' album, I play the rougher Epic (American pressing) and keep the UK CBS Records playing in reserve. At the end of the day, for me, vinyl is more hobby than justifying or making spurious claims on audio superiority as the real catch is the ritual involved and the mystique that the album cover and vinyl smelling record itself hold. In my personal experience, CD's are my least favorite format. I even prefer cassettes to them as I feel they are more resistant and in some cases have more longevity. The reality is that my 21 year old cd/dual cassette stereo's CD shuffler has long since stopped working, so if I do feel like listening to CD's; I usually do it in my car, whose Bluetooth works inadequately, but that romance is short lived as most of the cd's I run through eventually start skipping after multiple listens on the road.
CDs don't skip unless extensive, deep scratches or foreign substance is blocking the disc from being read. I started collecting CDs in the eighties, and not one of them has deteriorated in any way.....not one! The only reason your CDs, if in good condition, would skip is if your player is malfunctioning.
Music recorded on analog instruments onto analog tape and pressed on an analog medium will always sound superior to anything that was digitized, period, end of story
For me, it isn't about fidelity, it's legacy. I feel that vinyl is still the best way for your children or grandchildren to one day get to knw you through your record collection. I recall borrowing albums from my mom and listening to them, wondering about the girl who had origianlly purchased them. I find it impossible to believe that your grandchildren are going to go through your Spotify playlists, or even flip through the plastic-y clitter-clatter of your CD collection to look at the tiny booklets. Leafing through a crate of vinyl is satisfying, and provides a real experience to get to know the person who bought these albums.
Exactly, If one prefers vinyl, it obviously isn't about fidelity.
@@jmdavison62 yeah but vinyl fanboys used to argue that it was. For years and years they did. Constantly. I know because I've been reading their BS on youtube comments boards for 20 years. I guess the information (which always existed) is finally getting through and they realize that argument was stupid.
Tracking error on a record is negligible. It exists, but it won't affect what you hear.
Same thing for me. Once the CD came out, and the initial batch of machines came down by 50%, i bought one and a few CDs and was blown away by the increased sound quality, the definition of each individual instrument and the overall soundstage. Later i hopped on the Super Audio CD or SACD, and DVD-Audio, in 5+1, with a nice digital Pioneer amp and SACD player, good 5+1 loudspeakers. When the production and mix have been done right, this is something so immersive i laugh every time someone says or write that vinyl is better…
We suffer the shortcomings of vinyl records because the mastering needed to make them sound good, sounds good.
You're correct, of course, but there are no shortcomings of vinyl. If one is too lazy to take an album from a sleeve and put it on a turntable, as opposed to pushing a button on their phone like a trained monkey, then one is probably too lazy and stupid to appreciate vinyl anyway.
Dave you explained this in a nutshell! Other reasons are tactile nature, collectablility, a love for analog, nostalga and just the whole process of putting a record on!
Exactly! You cant slam it with compression when mastering for vinyl so that alone makes the music different than all of the super loud squashed mastering that is rife in the music industry these days.
@Nick Haldin Where do you think they got the ideas to do to CDs what they do? It wasn't a new idea.
i bought a cd player not long after cds became mainstream; i took it back to the shop as i thought there was something wrong with it; i was assured no it's supposed to sound like that. I cant quite put my finger on exactly what it is but something seems to be missing and no its not the crackles or the wobbling which i can certainly do without. I think it's something to do with the bass and something also to do with the sense of space or solidity of the image maybe.........
The one huge downside to only streaming music is often there are albums that are missing from many artist’s catalogue. With vinyl you can always listen to the album when you want rather than your music being controlled by streaming companies
You can quite easily build up music collections in digital by downloading it in 16 or 24 bit flac format and playing it back of your music streamer from an attached SSD drive.
I have a raspberry pi2 with a hifiberry Dac HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) running Volumio. This can easily be controlled from your mobile phone over the network via WiFi with the Volumio android app.
The sound off this thing is truly astonishing and i also have all my flac files burnt onto 50gb metal ablative blue ray discs to fully restore it if the SSD should fail. This set up is truly bomb proof.
True, but we are talking "sound" here....😉
@@UCS0608 what are you referring to by 'sound' here are we speaking modern day or legacy vinyl?
@@UCS0608 saying that all we are talking about is sound is disingenuous. That’s like saying people should only read literature on a kindle and why are people even buying physical books anymore. Kind of ridiculous.
I write this as a fan of vinyl records: this is a great video. It's full of knowledge, humor and personality. Greetings from Germany.
Thank you. I try to inform and amuse. I haven't made a playlist yet but you can find my other revival videos at ruclips.net/user/results?search_query=audio+masterclass+revival+-plugins I haven't finished yet, I have one more in the pipeline. Best wishes from the UK. DM
@@AudioMasterclassyou succeeded in both aspects, to amuse and to inform. I subscribed yesterday, very informative Chanel.
Nothing but a whining little bitch. Too stupid or too lazy to appreciate analog, as I appreciate both formats. But he wouldn't understand this. You don't have much time left, you wrinkled old coot, maybe you can someday grow up and appreciate what other people might see appealing in their hobbies, even through your ignorance. By the way, he's got the humor and personality of Joe Biden, that's about it.
I'm 50 years old and I started listening to music on 8 tracks when I was 5 and then got into vinyl. And then cassette. When cds came I thought they were awesome and bought them but In 2000 at 27 years old i started to dj and alot of the songs I wanted only came out on vinyl so I bought them. When flash drive mp3 era happened 10 years ago I jumped on board. I ripped all my vinyl and got rid of it😢. Said this is great I don't have to carry records to Manhattan. Every club got rid of turntables. And now 10 years later I regret it so i bought a turntable and I am buying back all my vinyl. There is nothing like the warmth and experience of the sound of vinyl and I just finished playing wav files in dark rooms in NYC for a decade and its blah. Now Every friday night my family comes to my house and I make pizza and we play records on a technic 1210 mk7, my studio monitors and sub. My nieces and nephews love it and get exposed to legendary stuff. Ppl should just play what they like. I'm going to keep buying vinyl. I love it and I love the technic 1200 it's a work of art. I have bought cassettes, cds , mp3s and wav files and vinyl is 3d to me while the others seem flat. Vinyl is alive. We dont fight over what cars we drive. Why are we insulting each other over how we prefer to listen to music?
"Why are we insulting each other over how we prefer to listen to music?"
"But we are all that way: when we know a thing we have only scorn for other people who don't happen to know it."
- Mark Twain
I still anticipate the KERCHUNK sound on digital versions of what I used to listen to on 8 track.
I had a similar experience. I used to DJ in the early 2000's on vinyl, saving up a whole year ($800) in high school to afford two Technics SL1200M3D. I stopped djing around 2005, and they collected dust in my parent's bedroom for years. In 2012, I needed the money, and sold the Technics for the same price I bought them for in 2000. I'm getting back into vinyl again -- I still have all my records -- but I wish I never sold those Technics. I'm looking to buy the new SL1200MK7, but I heard they aren't as good/robust as the old models, and they cost $1100 for one!
For me, the attraction of vinyl is that it makes you focus more on the listening experience as there's more of a ritual to it. Add to that the large format allowing more reasonable-sized artwork and lyrics (and credits) in a readable font size.
Still, I have not played my records, or even connected the old turntable to my system for about 15-20 years, though I do sometimes miss "the old days" (just not the extra noise).
When I was a kid, we bought a record that came with a skip. We exchanged the record, and quickly learned that all of the copies they had at our record store had the same defect. To this day--40 years later--whenever I hear that song on the radio, I am astonished to hear the whole section of the song that I never heard when I was a kid. So, when CDs became affordable, I let vinyl go and never looked back.
It's funny because you get used to the skip or pop, I have some songs which I'm so used to listening with the pops that I kinda expect them when they're playing on digital media.
😂😂😂😂 same here!!
When we were kids we had a copy of "101 Dalmatians" that had a skip in a song so it would play "kick'in up highway dust, kick'in up highway dust, ...". We thought that was funny and listened to it just to hear the skip.
It sounds to me like the scratch on the record was from the damaged original master stamping applied to the hot vinyl at manufacture. all resulting copies will have a flaw in the LP at the same point in the music.....I hate vinyl!!!
Everything sounds "wrong" on my turntables because I miss the fade out, "CLICK", and fade in of the cassette tape's big brother. (8-Track)
Thank you so much for this! I grew up in the 70s listening to vinyl, my first album was the Chicago chocolate bar record. Anyway no matter how hard hard I tried to care for my albums they inevitably would develop scratches and the subsequent clicks and pops which would drive me crazy. Plus hauling records around was a pain for a guy like me whose only transport was a VW Rabbit. It was God send when CDs arrived and then HD streaming that I now have through Apple Music. I do miss the old album covers/art and inserts, but the trade off for the HD I can now stream to my headphones is well worth the trade off.
Amen, preach it! I love my old records and tapes, but only because I'm a sentimental nostalgic old sod. Digital is better in just about every way imaginable - the frequency bandwidth, dynamic range, stereo separation, signal to noise ratio, not to mention being compact and not wearing out over multiple plays. If people really think vinyl sounds better, it's probably because modern mastering techniques with all their compression sound bad compared to the oldschool way of mastering, or the inherent harmonic distortion in vinyl actually sounds pleasant - the "vinyl warmth" that people go on about. If the purpose of hifi is to perfectly reproduce in the speakers exactly what's on the media, then digital is the only way to go!
Digital audio takes samples from a sine wave, not the entire spectrum of the analog wave. I think its 48K per samples per second.
I agree. CD’s were a great improvement in audio quality, clarity, durably. The only perk of vinyls is the album artwork.
Good point!
You nailed it
I agree with your points. The one thing I liked about vinyl records was the art work and information on the sleeves. It was fun to look at the artwork and imagine what they artist was thinking. Reading the sleeves was how we learned about the artist and their fellow musicians, where it was recorded, who produced it, etc. I am totally digital these days. It's just easier and I feel it has a higher overall quality. Cheers.
After endless tinkering with record players, tonearms, matching cartrides to preamps, finding the best pressings i arrived to a stage where vinyl sounds almost as good as an old cd player.
When I first heard my preferred music (jazz from the 50s and 60s) on CD in the late 80s, I was blown away by the clarity, the precision, and the sound stage. But after a few minutes, everything felt very cold. It was as if the music had been taken out of the refrigerator and was slowly defrosting but would never reach room temperature. Say what you will about it as a medium of imperfections and flaws, but vinyl never sounds cold. That’s why I will always, always prefer vinyl to CD or any other digital format. The imperfections and distortions wind up as textures along with the warmth and depth and presence, so much so that the qualities of the latter makes the former negligible.
thats just your perception and suggestion from everybody that talks about it.
This might be because your turntable was magnificent, and your cd player was ordinary. In the early days to get a cd player as good as say a rega you needed to spend 4 times as much! I tested that once at ‘Graham’s Hi Fi’. Just a thought!
Cogging resides in the motor, but the platter acts as a flywheel, smoothing out the variations in speed. How does it do this? A flywheel is effectively a low-pass filter. Its moment of inertia only allows very low frequency variations in speed… it physically cannot move fast enough to exhibit cogging. In a decent direct drive turntable, any residual low-frequency variations in the “pass band” are corrected for using what is called a phase-locked loop. Most modern vinyl cutting lathes use this type of motor+heavy platter combo, and they are extremely accurate. This can easily be tested by recording a sine wave whose frequency gives a whole number when multiplied by 1.8 (45hz for example). The waves line up perfectly across the entire disc (81 cycles per revolution in this example). Any deviation due to clogging or residual low frequency variations would be easily visible because the waveforms would misalign. Some old lathes used belt drive motors, and the results are much less accurate.
In the early days of the CD, my friend and I were talking about the new medium and for a lark he set up a record on the turntable and cued it to start about the same time as the same recording on the CD. Switching the receiver between the two sources gave a clear and convincing comparison between vinyl and digital for the same phrase of music. It was a clear and distinct sound with the CD while vinyl surprised us with a poor, muffled sound in this comparison. The dynamic range achievable by the CD was far superior and the sound was very clear. We were immediately convinced of the superior nature of the CD and digital recordings, hands down.
every play will wear the grooves. hardest substance known to man, vs .. one of the softest. will have to try that similar experience w/a couple vinyl freaks.
I can’t explain why but a record sucks me in to the music easier. You know, the place you want to be, just lovely. I’ve spent just as much time and money on the digital side of my system but it doesn’t get me there so deep. It’s a bugger. I wish it would.
In the 1970s and 1980s I had a device called the DiscWasher. It had a brush with a one-way fabric and a small bottle of solution. The brush would get into the grooves and the solution applied to the brush would help remove dirt and worn vinyl debris. The solution would also lubricate the stylus in the groove. It could significantly improve the sound of older and worn records.
I've my fair share of vinyl back in the day. I was even a DJ for a couple of years at a local disco.
Then, in the early 90s, I've moved into CDs quite effortlessly for all the good reasons and another 20 years later, I've moved into streaming for just practicality. I still enjoy the purity of a good Hi-Fi from a digital source either CDs or FLACs (vinyl is fine, but I can't enjoy it because I can't forget its shortcomings), but I found out that streaming allow us to focus more on the music itself because we know streaming is flawed in the first place. ...another important reason: My ears are far from what they were 40 years ago.
Vinyl as format has so many shortcomings.
1. When they get original music from record labels they start to remove higher pitched sounds that the format don't support (so right out of the gate we are doing bad)
2. Cutting the groove on the lathe can only try to preserve the fidelity when it can't in any way improve the fidelity..
3. Some track who is doing the plating, so it matter how much effect is applied initially when the lacquer is put in the bath. Low effect attract the smallest nickel particle and therefore fills the cutted grove tiniest modulation better. And when that is done we can increase the effect to attract the big particles as filler.
So again just trying to make the leat harm to the fidelity..
4. Depending on how many records is going to be made we take that plate (father) from the lacquer and then do it again! To get a mother metal part that can only be used to make yet another metal part (son) stamper... Anyone see the issue...
5. We make the son stampers so we can make maybe around 1000 or more LP records. When the son stamper is "worn out" and need to create another son stamper from the same mother.. that has done yet another son (stamper). Is the second son stamper as good as the first one? The clue is in no6 below.
6. When the worn stampers (a set A+B side) are making the last LP pressing before they are recycled. Is number 1000 as good as the first LP that those stampers did when they were fresh.. there is a reason why test pressings are sought after when they were done in a very limited small run and will be more guaranteed to be "fresh".. yeh sound fidelity is taking hits..
7. What vinyl formula do they use? Is it virgin or as many of the pressing plants blend the virgin with you to 10% of recycled vinyl.. and some solve it in other ways. Nevertheless different vinyl and different results.
And so on it goes. When you think about it it is actually surprising that LP can sound that nice as it does.
But as we realize sound quality fidelity is reduced and we can never recover the lost and removed fidelity that we had got from the record labels. By digitize a LP that will sound worse than what we got from the record labels.
In the data world we call that LP is a LOSSY format (data is lost and thrown away in the process and we can't restore what we originally had before we started to produce a LP)
What else is lossy.. ..MP3 is lossy there they also throw away fidelity.
And yet we have not mentioned all the clicks and pops that the LP format is adding that is NOT in the original source to begin with!
Or ALL the issues regarding playback ..
But I love my vinyl collection ❤ for other reasons.🎉
I never thought I'd say this, but I went from 8 track to cassettes to vinyl to open reel to CD. When I discovered CD's in the early 80's, I thought CDs would be the end of the road for me. As much as I avoided trying out a DAC because I saw it as just a new gimmick, I recently got my first DAC and I won't go back. I own more than my share of media in all the various formats and now see no need to ever buy any more. I am pretty much burned out on most of the music that I own. I am hooked on DAC. I have discovered more new music in a month than I could have discovered in years without it, and I don't have to clean any records or needles, demagnetize any tape heads, alphabetize any CD's, open any CD cases and put them away etc. I just click with a mouse and listen to studio quality audio without having to get out of my chair. How wonderful! :) To those out there defending vinyl like I used to do, don't let technology pass you by. With the right DAC you will hears music like you never have before.
So… just curious… when you say you dont have to alphabetize [your media], do you mean you buy the music online and it downloads into a folder on your computer where it will alphabetize itself automatically?
Actually, I’m trying to figure out if you mean you only listen to digital audio streaamed or now that you have a DAC, you run all your optical discs and hard drive music through it for conversion first.
Either way, all good… as long as you enjoy the music, i say. I was just trying to figure the meaning to your comment.
(Me, I’m currently saving for my first DAC and Transport. I play SACDs, DADs, and CDs and sit down for listening sessions. Though, when I’m out of the house, i listen to downloaded music through my iPhone.)
Thanks
M
No. What I meant was that I don't have to physically put away CDs or records. I don't buy any media. The server keeps all of my music and playlists arranged and alphabetized for me. If I want, I can just record what I like onto a CD with a CD burner (a standalone unit) without any extra cost. I pay $10 per month for a 100 million song library. There is no need to download it, but the option to do that is also there.
@@ellaochomogo5154 - thats a music lover right there ! :) 100 mill song library!?! egads! how do you make a selection to listen too?...hahahahaha... just kiddin' that's like me and cable channels...2000 channels and cant decide what to watch.
Thanks for the feedback. Sounds like a sweet deal at $10/m and able to burn what you like w/o extra cost.
keep on enjoying, my friend.
To me the nicest thing about streaming is the artificial intelligence and how it helps you discover new music. If you play a song that you like AI automatically continues to play songs that you are likely to like, until you stop the process. If you end up getting a DAC I highly recommend that you use a laptop as your source and don't buy a streamer. Connect your laptop to the DAC and then to your audio system. You'll have a nice large keyboard and display to work with instead of the tiny screens found on streamers. By the way, the audio quality is great. It's studio quality (better than CD)! Take care...
I think people just miss holding real things that feel like a small piece of art. When Audiojelly went out of business I lost over a hundred digital tracks. I wish those had been vinyl.
This is that point when someone gets way too nitpicky on something and people start walking away slowly lol
And go buy more records. 😄
Lol this guy is chat
I lived through years of vinyl. Given it was the best easily available music source I had, I put up with its shortcomings, and the arrival of the CD was fantastic for me. Took a while to afford a CD deck though and the utterly ripoff prices being charged for CD in the first decade of use just hacked me right off.
I would echo your statement completely. I turned to CDs as soon as I could afford them. The cost at the time was average $16 with a few at $10 on sale. That was in comparison to $3 to $6 for an LP. And the early Cds were not mastered the best either. I never want to return to vinyl and cannot understand the fanatics who are in pursuit of vinyl perfection.
Nowadays you can buy secondhand CD's and DVD's for typically under $10.
I'm just one of these people who listen to vinyl because it's the only way to get me to consciously listen to a whole album. It's the whole ceremony of carefully getting the record, blowing the dust off, putting it on the turntable, handling the tone arm, ... By that time I've just put so much effort into the whole thing I can sit down and listen consciously. And at my age I don't hear that much of a difference to digital anymore anyways😂. Compare that to Spotify or even CDs where I can just slam in the disc in a second and then get distracted by something else.
You are so right...Vinyl is not convenient to get right and not nearly a perfect medium, yet the experience when done properly is stunning. The majority of your issues with vinyl playback can be mitigated to audible extinction. That's true of digital as well which has its own artifacts.
I've yet to see digital really provide the secondary experience of lps visually and that is, oddly as it may seem, a very potent part of the LP experience. Fortunately we don't have to choose and beauty doesn't always have to be based on technical accuracy. If that were true, there would be no paintings in the world. If you realize there is no "absolute sound" to begin with, then you can start to understand how beauty in music is shifted through many lenses even before it gets to the listener. The LP, when done well, delivers beauty on many instinctual levels...simple as that.
I've used many different tables over the years each with its own charms but now have a table with a superb 12" arm and a motor corrected, high mass platter that is belt driven and sits on a specialized isolation platform. I assure you it is transformative and is especially adept at capturing the natural tonal and dynamic qualities of instruments and spaces.
Beautiful, is reale.
I like your phrase, “shifted through many lenses.” And yet at times, when we are ‘in the mood’ or ‘tuned in’ what we receive seems so perfect. Sound is complex, human hearing is (relatively) sensitive, and the mind-body-emotional-spiritual connection is mysterious. Bottom line: Sometimes we ‘get it,’ and sometimes we don’t. Poor sound can get in the way, especially when we know the cause of the distortion; and other times it doesn’t matter because the ‘content’ overwhelms our senses. I like the blues; can you tell?
I think the opinion of airwatersun is what defines me.
I have to agree, having a player that will put you in the hi fi ball park is an unending pleasure. While there is no escaping the storage space required if your pleasure becomes expansive, at least all the heavy lifting can be left to the collectors who curate and sell at record shows, so you have to actually transport only a few records at a time .
Agreed. Please add my comment (somewhere in this stream) to this.
There are ways to prevent vibrations from the floor from moving the turntable. That's easy. What's harder, but still solvable, is acoustic feedback through the air. You have to get the turntable as far away from the speakers as reasonably possible, and it can also help to have it off-axis or behind the plane of the speakers (unless your speakers are omnidirectional or dipoles, for example). It's not possible to get this 100% perfect, but it's certainly possible to get it good enough that the result is that vibrational interference is negligible.
My turntable sits on a piece of granite left over from the kitchen counters being built, which sits on a heavy wooden end table, sitting on a concrete floor. I have no problem with footfalls or feedback. I also run long low-level wires to amps right by the speakers, so making them a bit longer doesn't make the sound worse like it does with long speaker wires. That way, I can have all the other equipment, including turntable, far from the speakers.
I gave up on vinyl back in 1984 and I have zero regrets. I have 40 year old CD's that sound exactly the same as they did when they were brand new and now they have thousands of plays on them. You can't say the same about vinyl.
i have records played a lot for 50 years or more and they sound better than any cd, noises or anyother static, is non existing and never cleaned one ,also they never leave my home if someone wanted to ,i could record into a cassette or reel but mainly the problem with records is changing hands ,turntables and other problems that made them sound bad . CDs if a risk is done in it´s table of contents not one track can be played ,a record if with a risk it´s a second of skiping one song
@@RUfromthe40s What a bunch of bull 💩. I have never had any of those problems with my CD's. 0 pops, 0 static and 0 noises. You did however perfectly describe why I left vinyl behind 40 years ago.
@@j.t.cooper2963 And playing the shiny discs on my new Rotel CD11 Tribute is a real pleasure.
You can't say that about vinyl. The problem is, yes some of those CDs sound the same, but the sound is awful. Sometimes the vinyl version simply sounds better, even though it technically degrades slightly with each play. How many plays til you notice? Hard to say, but with care I have many vinyl albums that sound perfect.
@@spikeconley My CD's all sound excellent, some better than others and not a single one that sounds "Awful". I have had several vinyl albums that sounded awful though. CD's don't degrade with plays, vinyl does.
No format is without fault. This includes CD's and digital files.
Is there a problem with 48khz 24bit wav file format?
@@EdwinDekker71 there is if the mastering was done with the loudness race in mind.
@@svenschwingel8632 then that's nothing to do with the distribution medium.
@@EdwinDekker71 yes. Loudness wars. Ear piercing highs
@@davidmorgan6896 it never was. AB’s that’s not the reason eggy people are going back to vinyl. It’s all because of sound quality. People tend to like warmer sounds. That’s why people like bass
Real life instruments have a warm ness that cd can’t show because it’s mastered to be loud. Vinyl sounds more like when you go to a live concert. Cd sounds more flat and dull.
I understand completely with what you are saying and for the most part it's absolutely true. But I honesty believe, despite the crackles and pops, vinyl actually sounds better than digital recordings. The bass is tighter, the treble is crisper and drums sound more alive. CD'S by comparison are more of a warm mid range sound. Not a hi fi sound I care for. These days of AV receivers ect seem to suit digital more than the older 1970's amplifiers.
I have been buying vinyl since 1958 and I have never experienced my vinyl records becoming scratched, noisy and unlistenable. Of course some second hand vinyl has been
ruuined at parties but you wouldn't buy that would you? . However if you are starting out collecting buy CD's. Charity shops have loads at £1 or thereabouts each and you can stock up for very little money. Whatever you do enjoy the music and don't get obsessed with the sound to the point of disappearing up your own bum. My best exeriences have been listening to Buddy Holly 78's on a dansette type portable record player. I had never heard of the word audio.
"I have never experienced my vinyl records becoming scratched, noisy and unlistenable"
You are in a very tiny minority Sir!
@@rtblues styles change. If you notice how records are treated in old black and white movies, they were considered disposable, stacked on top or rubbed against one another, held like playing cards, because playback quality was so primitive, record condition wasn't really important and record shops were a feature of every Main Street, because the equipment wore out the records so quickly, you normally just bought and valued new ones ,
Such treatment is almost unthinkable today, and the old catalogue is now important sources of revenue, when back then in the days of sapphire needles, old records, and the material on them, held little value.
with a lot of the more desirable records today commonly costing around forty dollars, or having limited run distinctive vinyl colors for even lower priced records , you are not going to see records handled as they were when people just threw them around until they felt like putting them back in the storage sleeves .
@@rtblues
I thought the same! :D
Don’t listen to this guy he’s either clueless or exaggerating to win his argument. A good sign of a RUclips I won’t be listening to for sure.
@@rtblues I never had a scratched record because I handled them properly and cleaned them.
What did you do? Chuck em about like frisbees probably
Tape stores sounds with a magnetic pattern; disks store it on a physical track using a directional modulation. Until you can show that the entirely different data storage technologies can be reduced to "inches per second," you are comparing oranges to apples.
There is the similarity in that cycles per second are translated into cycles per inch, which I see as relevant. As I mentioned, there is the difference is that vinyl is mechanical and tape is magnetic. This is background to the fact that the linear speed of vinyl decreases as the side plays through and thus the audio quality degrades, which is not the case with tape or cassette. DM
My father used to take me to grandpa’s house with a pile of my children’s records. We took turns listening to our favorite song looking at the covers, the lyrics, the pictures, the art… from the afternoon until the evening…
People had a different relationship with music. We used to listen and re-listen to the same albums. We digested each one, finding delight on every note and instrument... every word and art cover. It used to be a ritual with different kinds of perceptions… also often a moment of socialization.
There is no doubt the new era has better technical quality… But it has made us lose the quality to enjoy simple moments, better music and spend time with people.
I was happy to put vinyl behind me in 1985. I miss the shopping, the art, the covers and the liner notes, but digital was waaaaay better for someone who listened to music constantly, and usually while doing other things. CDs were perfect, especially after getting multi-CD players... I don't like streaming as much as CDs, but it'll do in a pinch. Not interested in going back to vinyl.
Same as.
After putting up with all the flaws of vinyl, I found CD to be a godsend.
70 years old, I started out with vinyl like everybody else and chased every format that came along, buying the same music over and over. Digital is and always will be KING.
.....from a guy with "Nutscrape" as his avatar?
you´re right is more afordable ,in my country almost no one had a decent turntable in the 80´s for themit was a step up but for those who knew about hi-fi components,it was a decrease in hi-fi starting in 1980 when brands released most of their components all made of plastic with a very low quality, ended up with the cd , i remenber thinking that cds were an improvement but how wrong was i ,i remenber going to stores and buying cds from LP´s i already had this to arrive home and never listen to them again ,the sound was really bad this with what was considered a good cd player
The only area for me (as I age) where digital is only a prince is how difficult it is to read the sleeve notes on a CD!
@@stevemawer848 I hear ya loud and clear, Brother.
The bottom line is the audio files with the most experience (like decades worth ) listening to all kinds of gear. Agree that vinyl sounds better than digital.
Bravo. I remember to this day the first time I heard DSOTM on CD. I got real baked with a dear friend , and we listened to the whole thing WITHOUT having to turn it over. Since there was so little noise it made my system play much more loud.
I inherited my late fathers huge record collection and I absolutely love playing these records. These records are 50 years old and played many times over and still sound beautiful. It’s about the nostalgia
"We steeped our thirsty souls in the reviving wine of the past, the pathetic past, the beautiful past, the dear and lamented past; we uttered the names that had been silent upon our lips for fifty years, and it was as if they were made of music; with reverent hands we unburied our dead, the mates of our youth, and caressed them with our speech; we searched the dusty chambers of our memories and dragged forth incident after incident, episode after episode, folly after folly, and laughed such good laughs over them, with the tears running down ..."
- Mark Twain
I'm sure they still sound absolutely beautiful. I'm also sure they sound nothing like what they did originally.
I once bought a vinyl copy of Elvis Costello's Get Happy when it came out in 1980. Twenty-six minutes on one side. Nick Lowe produced it and addressed the "groove cramming" as inconsequential to the listening experience. I would agree. Excellent album. Then again, I was stoned many of the times I listened to it.
I grew up with vinyl, I still have all my LPs. As soon as CDs came out I switched. People say Vinyl is “warm”. I call that noise. It was so awesome to hear music without scratches.
I hated the sound of CDs. Just sounded so cold, so shallow. Streaming is even worse.
No. Warm is a recording style and often an analog byproduct. Noise is noise. I have many many vinyl releases that are dead silent and outrageously detailed in the high end. I also have those warmer sounding records that are dead quiet and still very detailed. Warmth isn't noise.
@@M_C79 one man’s cold and shallow is another’s clear and clean.
@@beatmet2355 True, true. And we're all deaf now anyway ;-D
@@M_C79 Also something to note is that as soon as they realized digital was a little too ‘exact’ in reproduction, many started to compensate. A good mixer would then smooth the edges of the recording, w/saturation, etc., whereas this wasn’t necessary in tape/vinyl as it was a byproduct. Like adding gain to overdrive an amp recreating what was originally an accident/limitation.
Judging cds by the first ones you listened to, might have sold the medium short as far as sound preference. It changed.
Vinyl isn’t about listening to prefect music it’s about the feeling
My only gripe is that actual music stores are being replaced by overpriced, gentrified vinyl stores that cater to a select group of people.
I listen to CD’s LP’s and stream music. I enjoy them all.
Well said. Just listen and enjoy the music and if it by chance happens to be loud enough, your neighbors can enjoy it as well! 😉
I mostly collect CDs and some Vinyl, you're absolutely right about all the practical problems. For me it's just about going to the record store and all the albums one by one, and finding a rare record that I love or maybe a new one I don't know. And then also the ritual of physically taking it out of the shelf, the nice big artwork and listening to the whole damn thing. It's a more mindful form of listening that is getting increasingly lost in the internet era.
Hi there
Don't know if you will read this, being that your post is 2 years old.
I do not know where you live, but if you are not to far away, I can easily demonstrate that vinyl is still miles ahead of any type of digital streaming, or digital playback medium, unfortunately so because it can be quite expensive, I have what I would call a moderate system record deck, but this still easily demonstrates the superior quality of a good vinyl record, I say good because many pressings can be poor, if you are in central UK, let me know, and I will change your mind, Best regards Jez
I think there is room for both as they both offer playback strengths and weaknesses unique to one another. Both are dependent on mastering, both are improving. Vinyl production mastering and pressing at least in the High Quality products sector is all being improved and opimized as is the playback ability of Turntables Cartidges and arms as well as the excellence in the electronic design and build of Phono stages. Red Book CD for me still offers the possibility of some astonishingly good playback without resorting to the extremities of DSD 512 and its never ending and futile quest to produce a perfect analogue wave form. DSD is a great way of preserving precious recordings from fragile and life limited master tapes but does it really bring anything new to the human listening experience that properly recorded and mastered CD and top quality vinyl already does. Why is it that even DSD recordings mastered to vinyl and played back fully analogue produces a more powerful emotional response in the listener than raw DSD file playback. Don't get me started on DAC'S at the moment, the world has gone mad, tripping back to the future with ladder resistors, again the analogue sound quest! Vs Delta Sigma trying to kill your hearing with detail. It's a world of hurt out there for audiophiles and Music lovers alike but also a world of opportunities to enhance all our experiences of recorded music. I won't touch on Streaming as it's a grave yard of recorded music for the most part. Super convenient for good reasons and bad. So many people I know with streamers never listen to a full album and do something akin to remote control hell, not unlike channel hoping. Which brings me back to why I love vinyl playback. It relaxes you into the experience of just listening to great music. CD has it a little also but not in the way Vinyl immerses you. It makes you change pace and it also makes for uncannily long listening sessions.
Well said. Vinyl playback is more about emotion and awareness
@@stijnvanderlooy5311 awareness of what?
So glad to hear someone tell the truth about vinyl 👍😃
Amen!
I bought my first record in 1977 and I'm using the same turntable that I bought in 1979, a high-end Technics that what's quite expensive, especially for a high school student. I'm still using that, but with a $500 Ortofon cartridge.
It takes time to pull out the record, clean it and play it, but it's what I've done for 46 years, and I love the sound.
I listen to used 1960s jazz vocal records (Nancy Wilson, Sarah Vaughn, Ernestine Anderson, etc.) on a beautiful high-quality turntable made in 1967. Hearing that music in the way it was played in the '60s, handling the old album covers, and watching the old turntable spin; these things create a sonic and visual experience that digital can't give me. And the sound quality is pleasing to me, even if it's not as good as the best digital.
Years ago I picked up some "back on black" Jazz re-issues and was so disappointed of the quality. Vinyl produced from the 60s to the mid 80s are still of a better quality of most of what is produced today. Exception is still Japanese pressed vinyl - but that also cost "slightly" more than the normal stuff.
I've found that it's impossible to discuss with high fidelity enthusiasts, they have found their way and do not listen to music but to their equipment. I love music and music which sounds nice just sound nice. I must say that a good turntable does sound nice, but unfortunately it will cost serious money, but for me generally (there are excpetions) vinyl produce after the mid 80s isn't that great ... Therefor I buy CDs...
Interesting video. My love for vinyl comes from collecting pieces of history that forwarded the culture of listening to music in a meaningful way. I appreciate that I’m listening Deep Purple’s Machine Head the same way someone did back when it came out. Back when the only way to hear it on demand was where a record player was. I think this is where the ritualistic aspect that people enjoy comes in to play. It’s not about pure fidelity, but listening through rose colored glasses while reminiscing about a past that you may or may not have experienced. Just my thoughts tho I do appreciate your video a lot.
This is an easy call for me. Since I own lots of “albums” in multiple formats, I needed only to listen to the same recording (say, The Beatles’ “Revolver”) on vinyl, then CD, then streaming to come to the conclusion that I prefer the sound of vinyl. Yes, there can be surface noise, but even with that as a given, the sound of an LP is vastly richer, warmer, more natural sounding to my ears than any other format.
you know i listened to vinyl for so many years just because i am old. Really was mesmerized by the spinning record . Imagine all that amazing sound coming from a spinning piece of plastic. I had a marantz console amp, a dual turntable and a pair of klipsch kornerhorns. People would come to my house and i would put on an album they were familiar with and i would watch their mouth open with a" wow" expression.......this was the 70's and 80's. we did not have a remote control....no cell phones or wifi.... no streaming.....In other words we just didn't put on music and let it be there......we listened to the album and usually the entire album.. yes all the songs on that album, not just the ones we heard on the radio.....we heard a lot of good music......if want to listen to digital call up any company you are dealing with and you can listen to their robot for the first 5 minutes!!
I'm so glad you mentioned the extremely variable bandwidth of vinyl (in terms of playback speed in inches per second) between the first outer groove and the innermost groove. By the time the record has finished playing it's *dropped to 38%* of its initial value! That fact, by itself, makes a mockery of vinyl as a plausible audio reproduction technology. Even CDs don't suffer from this because the data rate is constant, because the rotational speed changes.
Get a life😂
There’s only one groove.
@@rstuartcpa There is only one groove under the sun.
Back at some point in the late 70s/early 80s, Audio magazine had an article that shared insight into exactly what happens as a vinyl record is played. Audio-Technical provided much of the technical measurements/data. One thing that stuck with me for a long while is how a stylus tracking at 2 grams exerts enough pressure (yes, they had that figure which I’ve forgotten) to raise the temperature of the vinyl itself to where it actually softens. It softens enough to the point that ANY foreign ‘debris’ on the records surface gets pushed into the walls of the groove permanently thereby making the record more noisy than it was previously. To your point, that’s why the first play is usually the cleanest and quietest (you did clean the surface before playing, didn’t you?) you’ll ever get. I got to the point I recorded the record on first play and listened to the tape thereafter (talk about compromise). Quite enjoyed your comments. Still have all my vinyl, but always listen digitally as it sounds better than a noisy vinyl record, less prep needed (you did clean the records surface right?), and consistent quality on each play. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Any shortcomings of digital audio are negated by deteriorating hearing as we age. I've often thought it ironic that the people that can best afford a high-end sound system are most likely to be the ones that extract the least enjoyment out of it as their sensitivity to higher frequencies disappears.
That said, most of the annoying noises associated with vinyl are still audible even at our age.
I'm sorry, what did you say?
@@dougmacmillan1712 half-past two
@@dougmacmillan1712 He said something about birds and the bees.
I'm primarily into vinyl for the collecting aspect of it. Artwork, rare editions, limited pressings. Also, just the act of removing a record from it's sleeve and putting it on to a turntable and the experience of reading the inserts is... Enjoyable lol. I find I connect with what I'm listening to more that way and tend to remember more about the albums. Digital music is so easy to come by, and I do listen to plenty of music that way, but it doesn't seem to mean as much to me.
DEAD MEDIA. I search for unopened VHS tapes
i listen to records because i like music not just hearing 50% of it,it´s hi-fi
@@darylarmentrout252 dead media? is there a format with the same quality of vinyl in the market ,or have you got something against guitars
@Rui Cameira you misunderstood.
Dead Media is obsolete formats like VHS and laserdisk. The quality isn't important just the condition
I am 67 and when I was young, "clean distortion free" music was aspirational. Now we have people who proclaim that clean, distortion free music is "sterile". The new word for distortion is "warm". The TRUE virtue of vinal and tape is that our generation grew up with this and loved it. It is fun to look at the art and play with the records, make backup tapes etc. I will never argue that looking at a digital playlist is as much fun as going through stacks of albums and the cover art, but PLEASE don't try to make a case for analog when no case can be made. Digital is CLEARLY a superior medium to listen to recorded music. The sky will always be blue, even if you would like it to be pink. Alas as we get older our ability to hear distortion is deminished and "vinal sounds even better".
John Peel: "Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don't have any surface noise. I said, 'Listen, mate, life has surface noise."
Vinyl records suffer from surface noise, distortion, vibration, rumble, and rapid deterioration. If my life had any of those issues, I'd have already made an appointment with my audiologist.
@@guillermogranados7738 Analog. Imperfect. I've never experienced great hifi ever in a home and I bet many here haven't either so we've got little or no basis of comparison for 'warmth' and all it cousins. However to get to the heart of the matter I find that imperfection in so much music I listen to; voices especially and strings of all sorts, and reed instruments, it is imperfection which is the source of beauty. There is beauty in imperfection. Especially voices, but I repeat. So imperfection in hifi, no problem. Nothing is perfect. Embrace imperfection. Its the same with musicians.. Those that make errors/mistakes are playing on the "edge" and that's where the magic happens...Those playing everything "note perfect" are playing well within their limits and that's often when the music sounds contrived. ( having an unnatural or false appearance or quality: artificial, labored, boring, unrealistic).
Me?..A professional musician.
@@lucullus6127 Digital music in this context, refers to how music is stored, not it's nature. Music stored and reproduced in digital media is usually played by human musicians, and thus also imperfect as you mention. Even as you may know as a musician, best practice when recording music is to take it from ambient.
What it was being tried to stablish is that analog media for store and reproduce music adds imperfections from the media itself, not from the music.
It is still another way to hear/feel/experience your favorite music, yes! but some prefer to hear the music as close as It was played, an that's by digital HiFi.
By the way, do you know that most masters for modern vinyl pressings are HiFi digital?
And that those HiFI sources have to be frecuency cut (digitally processed) to fit on vinyl?
For me the greatest thing on vinyl is the fact that you can bring it to your favourite artist after the concert you've just visited and then getting it signed, what makes it a unique piece. Back at home you stick it to the wall and watch the beautiful artwork while listening to the flawless FLACs you've downloaded via the code on the vinyl. ;)
I used vinyl as my main source of music for many years and owned some high quality equipment. I gradually moved to CD in the early 90s mainly due to availability - vinyl was disappearing. I haven’t owned a vinyl player for over a decade but I do miss it sometimes for the reasons mentioned by others here. I may buy a turntable just to listen to the small collection of records that I still have. I definitely won’t get involved in buying new vinyl at its ridiculous price.
When I was still buying vinyl a new release was about £7 and the CD was around £15. How things have changed 😮
Interestingly my son and daughter both have vinyl players and I am into streaming 😅
Best wishes to everyone who enjoys music regardless of the medium ❤
For me, the fact that such good sound is possible with vinyl, is part of the appeal. Yes, it has issues but I have done a fair amount of A/B testing between digital and analog versions of songs and I'm still continually impressed with vinyl. Nostalgia and owning a physical manifestation of your favourite band, can't be beat.
How do you test?
A well-serup TT, tone arm and cartridge can have amazing sound quality! That's why I still buy and listen to LP's.
I love the sound of vinyl. Thanks for the great video.
Now that I understand. As long as you don't say it sounds better! 😂
David, I feel the same way about Vinyl. I have a technics SL110 turntable with an SME arm and Shure V15 type iii cartridge. I converted to CD's in the 80's and bought CD versions of my favorite recordings. I too noticed the short comings of later CD releases. My first speakers were a pair of B&W DM2a's bought at Mr. Wilkins Worthing store. My dad was friends with John Bowers, who he used to remember building his first speakers in his kitchen. Dad worked for B&W for a short while before moving on to the Mullard research laboratories.
I have the Dire Straits Brothers in Arms CD, which was recorded at the AIR studios on Montserrat. Have you visited the Island? The recording brings back fond memory's for us of the Island before the eruption.
I enjoy listening to vinyl once in a while, mostly because it reminds me of my father - and have great affection for the format. Even with a good phono rig, 95% of my listening is via Tidal/Roon. It’s just a better listening experience on so many levels
Good for you. Seriously. Perfectly valid reason to have and play vinyl. So is just plain liking the sound better.
The only CDs I buy are those that are not streamed.
"In 2030 you'll own nothing, and be happy." -Klaus Schwab
@Law of Perspective Exactly, one set of rules for them, a different set of rules for us. Because how can they feel special if we're not oppressed? #dark_triads
@@MiamiVisor Nailed it. LOL You just summed up the human experience.
@Law of Perspective along with Soroz.
I have 2 turntables now and had 3 at one time. There are multiple issues that can cause clearly audible distortion. There are many more issues than the 7 mentioned here. It may be fun to grab that round disk and place it on the turntable but sounds quality is not really the best ever in the most expensive setups. CDs can have issues as well but getting very good sound at very reasonable prices for the playback gear is now fairly easy to achieve.
If only dbx vinyl had caught on!