Objects which exist are constantly taking "damage". Entropy is real. Everything causes damage. Everything is constantly being hit by cosmic rays. Everything outside a strictly controlled environment is constantly being affected by temperature and humidity changes. Touching a vase to move it cause some slight damage. Dusting a table wears down the surface of the table. Walking across the floor or up and down stairs over years and years. Flipping a switch or adjusting a volume control. Everything causes wear.
Yes, and we would want to be clear about one format being highly sensitive to wear in terms of performance (if cosmic rays are wear, then so is static, and yet it is instantly audible on vinyl, not to mention how faint a scratch needs to be in order to practically ruin a record), whereas the other format is inherently designed to be
insensitive to wear in terms of performance (you actually have to change 1’s to 0’s or vice versa, and the reading surface is protected, and whole strings of 1’s or 0’s have to be changed, despite not being stored in consecutive order, plus two levels of correction or compensation needing to be exceeded before performance is audibly affected). So although everything causes wear, the level of sensitivity turns out to be the real issue.
What matters is the degree of damage although normal wear and tear might be a better concept. A decent turntable setup with a good stylus that is balanced correctly will not produce enough damage/wear and tear to make a noticeable difference for a long time / many plays.
Vinyl LPs are more fragile than CDs without a doubt, but they aren't fragile enough to be seriously damaged by playing them on a good system.
To an extent I agree, but one doesn’t want to understate it either. What you say, yes, should be true, but the reality of vinyl damage can be perplexingly capricious. I treat my vinyl in a sensibly careful manner: they live in the covers in antistatic sleeves, and go straight to the spindle, brush, play and reverse. But from time to time, rarely but not rarely enough, some little scratch turns up that wasn’t there last time. What the…? It’s perplexing and very disappointing when it happens. The fact that I can sometimes cause that with no awareness and constant care, is not cause for celebration…or deflection.
Playing them on a bad system like an old 78 player with a big thick stylus with a heavy tonearm would cause rapid and obvious damage. That would be like trying to play a CD with a high powered industrial laser cutter.
Argumentum ad absurdum? I get your point, but some people require authenticity of experience and that dictates that they use said equipment. But no CD is, or was, meant to be played with high powered industrial laser cutters.
That said, CDs are obviously a superior format to vinyl LPs and in general a well mastered recording on a CD can and will sound better than the vinyl LP version.
Yep.
Here comes the big BUT. Some CDs are not created using a well mastered recording. The vinyl LP version of the same album might be created with a better mastered recording giving it the potential to sound better than the CD.
Yep. This is typically agreed by all involved in every discussion of this kind of topic.
Me too. IMHO those
specific cases are the one situation that justifies the retention of a record player, even when the audiophile is format-agnostic and solely seeking the best replay of the best productions, and I have said as much in numerous such threads.
We also get those cases where
no good recording production is available for a treasured performance. Toole advocates the use of a well-implemented tone control for these situations. Make one’s system outstandingly true to the original production in order to capture the nuance and glory of benchmark productions, then when playing treasured performances on lesser productions, tweak the tone control to at least make it sonically bearable enough. Don’t grit one’s teeth and suffer it just because of some
purity principle.
I recently experienced this with the vinyl version of a new album sounding better than the CD and streaming version. That is rare in my experience at least with the type of music I prefer.
Thanks for the very balanced contribution. I could have written it meself!