Vinyl sound quality myth destroyed

Comments · 3.7K

• RO

  @robw3000 · 1 year ago · pinned

  Years ago I was at record industry (seen in the "footage from Holland"), and Rinus (man in the footage) let us compare the sound to the cutting head and the sound directly played from the lacquer with an Ortofon FX type of bonded elliptical stylus. No difference on Genelec monitors.

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• DA

  @dacasman · 1 year ago

  What makes vinyl enjoyable to me is not the fact that it sounds better or even different, it&apos;s the fact Im listening to music that comes from wiggly grooves cut into a plastic disc. It&apos;s just cool. <br>Same reason why I think mechanical watches are cool. Yeah they don&apos;t keep time very well and you have to wind them all the time, but there&apos;s just something cool about a tiny analog machine that keeps time on your wrist.

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• MA

  @mattytwohatsmusic · 1 year ago

  I still prefer the sound of vinyl flooring although many people say carpet is even warmer.

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• KL

  @klatenist · 10 months ago (edited)

  Playing LPs feels like an occasion for me. Being a dad with little kids, I cherish this little nuggets of time where I can sit down and listen to my favorite albums.

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• RH

  @rhodaborrocks1654 · 1 year ago

  The thing I appreciate most about vinyl is sitting down and listening to a whole record, instead of being tempted to skip tracks or cherry pick a single track and moving on, we&apos;ve forgotten how to do that in the digital age and are thus missing out on the possibility that a track you initially don&apos;t like might grow on you and end up being your favourite track.

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• AV

  @AvithOrtega · 1 year ago (edited)

  As a producer, to me, the ideal medium is one where I can hear, at a consumer level, what I’m hearing in the control room as I mix. In other words, I’m hearing what I’ve put on the medium, not the medium itself. <br> <br>Am I hearing that on CD? Pretty darn close. 21st century formats are High-Res downloads (24-bit depth, 96 or 192 kHz sample rate) in FLAC or ALAC. <br> <br>With Vinyl, I am NOT hearing back what I strived to do when mixing. That medium is marred with flaws: <br> <br>- Quality that changes depending whether you’re close to the outer edge, or inner radius (CD or MP3 does not change) <br>--- less dynamic range close to inner radius <br>--- less HF close to inner radius <br>--- Ever wonder why the last song on each side of albums from the ’60s and ’70s were ballads? <br>--- Artists such as Peter Gabriel have complained that they couldn’t sequence the songs the way they liked, because of the medium’s flaws <br>- THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) up to 1.5%. That’s not what I’m hearing through the control room speakers. <br>- Appalling L/R channel separation: 30 dB at best. That’s NOT what I’m hearing in the control room, and I actually have to change my mix because of the medium’s flaws. I prefer doing it myself as I have more control at the mixing stage, than at the mastering/lathe cutting stage. <br>- 65 dB of dynamic range at best (see inner radius above as well), and that’s on limited run pressings of 1,000 or less. So I can kiss that super quiet intro or beautiful reverb tail goodbye. <br>- Measurable wow &amp; flutter: 0.05% at best. Those intricate triangle resonances are just going to sound great once passed through that grinder! <br>- Frequency range is decent, but again, only on limited run pressings of 1,000 or less: 30 Hz - 20 kHz. <br>- How about a medium which deteriorates every time you play it? You’re effectively shaving off HF content at every pass. <br>- Snap crackle and pop. I am NOT hearing that in the control room speakers as I mix. (I hope you like my Rice Crispies commercial reference here, which summarises all the clicks and crackles due to dust and other particles contaminating the medium’s surface, the deformities/scratches inevitably induced by the user on playback, and the imperfections that were already there from the moulding process). <br>- Tone arm resonance. I am NOT hearing that in the control room speakers as I mix. <br>- Having to manually “wing it” if I want to locate the start of a song. No, you don’t wind an audiophile turntable backwards to cue a song start (you’d wreck the cartridge - bending its stylus right out)! <br>- I almost forgot: you can’t have your low frequencies too loud or too wide, so let’s restrict our mixes’ creative potential because of the medium, shall we? <br><br>What I love about vinyl? <br> <br>- The artwork. That’s never been matched, even with foldouts on some CD releases. <br>. Other than the wear mentioned above, can withstand time quite well. <br>MP3 at 320 kbps. On rock/pop, you really need a darn good system to be able to tell the difference with a 16-bit/44.1 kHz CD-DA file. <br> <br>Why has CD gotten such a bad rap then? <br> <br>Because people have amalgamated what’s been put on it, instead of understanding the quality of the medium itself. <br> <br>So let’s first list a compact disc’s characteristics (by extension, any uncompressed 16-bit 44.1 kHz audio file): <br> <br>- Frequency response is 20 - 20 kHz, no matter whether it’s the first, or last second of the 74 min album. I am almost hearing what I’m hearing on the control room speakers when I’m mixing. With higher sample rates, such as on the SACD, DVD-Audio or on High-Res downloads, I am finally hearing the same thing as what I’m hearing on the control room speakers when I’m mixing, as the frequency response goes far beyond that of human hearing. <br>- Dynamic range is 82 dB without dither (albums released up to the early ‘90s) and can exceed 100 dB with dither (albums released later on). I am almost hearing what I’m hearing on the control room speakers when I’m mixing. With 24-bit High-Res downloads, and its 122 dBs or so of dynamic range, not only am I finally hearing the same thing as what I’m hearing on the control room speakers when I’m mixing… I’m actually not able to hear the noise floor as it exceeds human hearing (hence why dither in 24-bit is an idiocy if you handle your gain structure properly). <br>- Channel separation is equivalent to the dynamic range. If on a CD, I want to pan a snare drum full left, full blast (hitting 0 db Full Scale), … I can. None of it will ever appear on the right channel (perhaps a bit of crosstalk can happen in cheap CD DACs, but it’s still close to the initial 16-bit range). On vinyl, in the best scenario, it’s also going to be on the right channel, 30 dBs quieter. That is NOT what I wanted, when mixing in the control room. <br>- Wow &amp; flutter: non-measurable. “OK, but I heard about this thing called jitter”. In the 21st Century, properly designed DACs reject jitter to non-measurable outcomes on the reconstructed audio signal. <br>- THD: less than 0.001%. <br>- Won’t wear out if you take good care when manipulating it. Albeit there is still the possibility of some CDs to rot after 10 years, it&apos;s more common that they last many decades. <br><br>Why are we seeing all those posts about vinyl sounding better than CD then? <br> <br>Short answer: because a CD has virtually no limitations, with audio quality 100% of what it can be within just 0.1 dB of its maximum admissible levels, and, because the limitations are much more less, unscrupulous record labels have played a stupid game of cramming as much RMS (perceived volume) as possible onto the CD medium: <br> <br>- sacrificing transients (micro dynamics). Snare drums sound like a wet fart on a plastic tarp (loosely quoting the greatest mastering engineer of all time - Sir Bob Ludwig). <br>- sacrificing overall dynamic range (macro dynamics). The chorus isn’t louder than the verses, or the intro, because everything else is already louder than everything else. <br>- introducing distortion. We’ve reached the supreme level of crass idiocy, as there comes a point where to be 0.5 dB louder than everyone else, you just end up distorting the audio signal. Guess what everyone else then does?<br> <br>Look up “CD Loudness War” for a developed explanation. <br> <br>You cannot do that on vinyl, even though there was a loudness war in the ’50s with jukeboxes; you cannot push a vinyl’s limitations nearly as far. You have to mix/master conservatively for vinyl, respecting a whole bunch of technical rules so that things translate well to the medium. <br>Does the vinyl medium sound better than the CD medium? I hope I made my point that it doesn’t. <br>Does an album mastered for loudness on CD sound better on its vinyl release? Most likely yes, as it won’t have the living daylights crammed out of it at the mastering stage. <br>Does a properly mixed/mastered album (conservative dynamic range - i.e., not giving in to the Loudness War) released on CD sound better than the same album released on vinyl? Oh yes, BY FAR. <br> <br>So what about MP3? <br>Well, depending on everything explained above, it can sit anywhere between “slightly better than vinyl” to “worse than vinyl”. Can’t beat an uncompressed 16-bit 44.1kHz WAV or FLAC audio file. Even more so, a 24-bit 96kHz file.<br><br>* This post was taken from the Quora user Philippe Chambin (with some minor corrections), and is the best answer I have seen regarding to this topic :)

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• MR

  @mr_g_man · 8 months ago

  quality of media doesn&apos;t matter if the song is shit.

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• MI

  @mirelchirila · 1 year ago

  It&apos;s vinyl mastering people like. Vinyl is actually quite a limited medium, so for it to work properly, you need a pretty extreme EQ curve going in and out, compression, and some mid-side processing. it&apos;s where mastering came from in the first place . Just master like that and you&apos;ll get the sound

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• PH

  @PhiISmith · 1 year ago

  I work with a guy who buys everything on vinyl but then copies it to cassette using the same setup he used as a kid in the 80s. He then listens to the cassette on his original Sony Walkman or separates system, he says he loves the experience and the way it sounds. He&apos;s never claimed that the sound is the best, but that it&apos;s just his preference. It&apos;s good to read these comments and see most people talk about the experience or differences of vinyl without claiming it is superior, but it&apos;s just their preference.

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• 33

  @33and1third · 1 year ago

  thank you for not saying &quot;it depends on the power cables&quot;

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• AD

  @adamyelle4901 · 1 year ago

  The thing that I&apos;ve never been able to get over in regards to vinyl is just how good it can sound for what it is. It&apos;s not perfect and there are so many variables that can cause negative effects. Nonetheless it&apos;s a fun experience and it never really gets old for me.

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• NA

  @nathanielenochs1843 · 1 year ago

  Most modern masters are even dynamically over compressed due to the bloody loudness war

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