You know the old saying John, one never more on point than it is today with the vinyl fad,
A Fool And His Money Are Soon Parted.
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Turntables - help me understand the appeal?
- Thread starter dkinric
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A Fool And His Money Are Soon Parted.
BillG
Major Contributor
I've not purchased vinyl since I was a teenager, some 40 years ago now. And I've not purchased a CD in 20+ years I don't think, even though I've a large suitcase full of them that moved internationally with me when I immigrated to New Zealand from the US.
The convenience of digital audio hard drive based playback has essentially made other physical media all but irrelevant for me.
The convenience of digital audio hard drive based playback has essentially made other physical media all but irrelevant for me.
The market in southern California for both CD's and LP's to me seems excellent. Lots of outlets from thrifts to rare record shops and everything in between. With streaming services taking over and many long time collectors passing away or moving into nursing homes a large supply of excellent condition and desirable titles are hitting the market every week. If you enjoy hunting you can find what you want for $1.00 to $5.00 .... CD's or vinyl. While many look back to other times saying they were "better" from my perspective now is a great time to collect and enjoy physical media... Combined with Tidal for new music or exploring I think now is the best of times for recorded music enthusiasts.
Hypnotoad
Active Member
Me too, I would buy some Cd's if they were cheap enough though just to rip to the Hdd.
Sounds like the place to be, I remember one person who lived in Denver said the thrift stores there were a treasure trove of audio goodies. When I lived in Houston they were full of VCR's and old golf clubs.
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I just have no time for CDs. I mean that in the pejorative way.
As physical objects I thought they were pretty awful, the cases cracked, snapped and malfunctioned so easily. They were just carries for 1s and 0s - for the music I wanted to get off of them. Still, before ripping/streaming became a thing, like many I acquired many CDs - about 600 I think it was.
Ripping those damned things, tagging etc, was just about the most laborious "hobby" I've ever done. Just dreadfully slow. Months and months.
I finally gave up, had something like 2 or 3 hundred left to do (including a bunch of classical) and I had a local ripping-service rip them to lossless for me. The service was advertised as being particularly conscientious in terms of getting the tagging right, even for difficult genres. So I paid quite a sum. Got them back....and have notices as I've played the files over the years that the tagging is just crap. Stuck with it.
My CDs are stored in a closet in the basement. I haven't brought myself to get rid of or sell them because of the old "what if you loose everything on your hard drives" and the niggling conscience that once you don't own the CD it's not kosher to actually own the files (so I've read).
But, boy o boy, dealing with CDs is not something I miss!
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That's not my experience.
But the problem tends to hide in claims like "there is no comparison." That's a pretty mushy metric to do on, and seems very subjective, particularly when it comes to individual perception of the sound. I find the claim to be exaggerated.
As I've been at pains to point out, I'm not in the "vinyl is superior" camp. More in the "vinyl generally tends to sound different in some ways that I often enjoy" camp.
But, as I have said earlier, though we can point to technical advantages in digital over vinyl in terms of lower distortion and accuracy, in practical "how do they actually sound?" terms, I find that really good analog/vinyl can sound very competitive with digital. I've compared some vinyl and CDs that came from the same master; in some cases the vinyl departed more, some cases less. In some cases the vinyl sounded very much like the digital version and to my ears matched it in "sound quality" note for note. Yes, there was a slight departure in sound, a bit of the "vinyl signature" in the vinyl, but it in no way could I ever agree with an assessment that there was "no comparison" between the digital and vinyl. To me they sounded equally great, just a tiny bit different, and often I actually preferred that difference in favour of vinyl (a bit more "textural presence" that made it sound a little more "believable' to me, e.g. the sound of drums being a bit more convincing).
I have some soundtracks on vinyl that I've compared to their digital counterparts - that includes comparing original vinyl from the analog master and the CD version, and also newer vinyl releases of soundtracks where both the vinyl and CD came from the same new digital re-master.
Do the digital versions smoke the vinyl versions? Hell no! Not to my ears. I've been listening to the digital version of, for instance, Star Trek The Motion picture for many years but I recently got a sealed copy of the original '79 vinyl and it sounds GLORIOUS! Warm, present, strings have that silky "real strings" quality vs the CD sounding more canned and sampled-strings-like. I find a smaller, but somewhat similar difference between the re-mastered version of this score, which was recently released on CD and vinyl from the same digital master. Does the vinyl version depart to some degree from pure technical accuracy? No doubt, it sounds a bit different for various reasons. The end result is that, while the digital version sounds a tiny bit more "pure" in terms of low distortion, the vinyl version to my ears has other aspects that "sound great" - e.g. strings seem to sound slightly more organic, silky, present and "real" to me.
If we were listening to the same comparisons I can imagine you might disagree and prefer the digital versions. But you'd have a very hard time making the case to me that what I was hearing from the digital sounds so much better "there is no comparison." Vinyl is one kludge after another, but wow can it ever sound good despite...or sometimes because?...of those kludges.
I had no problem with CDs themselves but the cretin who designed the standard packaging should be put in front of a firing squad (joke).
It was a pitifully poor design in every way, from material choice to the way the booklet was retained which was both inconvenient and easily damaged the booklet too. Truly one of the worst pieces of design ever.
I have about 7000 and I hate the cases with a burning intensity.
Me too.
Yes the distortion and crosstalk are much worse than CD but, speed fluctuation aside, I don't find the distortion offensive (It may even not be high enough for me to hear it).
Yes damaged records sound awful, the medium is not physically robust, but I enjoyed it for decades before CD. I do appreciate that CD is certainly audibly better for classical music but the SQ of the recording/mixing quality of a particular issue completely swamps the SQ difference between CD and LP so a good issue on LP will sound better than a poor one on CD.
One thing I am happily convinced about, based on my enjoyment of some superb LPs, is that obsessing over crosstalk, SNR better than 16 bit, etc. is completely pointless and whilst I can appreciate the engineering of DACs at the state of the art in distortion and noise, and clever software like HQplayer I don't believe that extreme of performance to be needed for listening to music, personally.
Hypnotoad
Active Member
Exactly, just because a CD is capable of better SQ doesn't make an album on CD automatically better than on Vinyl.
jsrtheta
Addicted to Fun and Learning
Right. Because the noise and inferior accuracy sound so much better. (I do agree that the loudness wars caused a lot of dreck on the market.)
But, if that floats your boat, I have a three-speed bicycle that will make you swear off cars. And a buggy whip. Lot of call for those today, because Stone Age technology is always so much better. (Props to Peter Aczel, RIP.)
Look, you are exaggerating to a ludicrous extent. The frequency response of LPs is not far from CD (theoretically better at hf but probably not realised in practice), the signal to noise ratio a bit less than CD but fine for pop music and the distortion levels less than most speakers. So a CD is better than LP but there is not much in it for the real dynamic range and frequency response of actual music in a domestic listening environment with speakers, as opposed to looking at the theoretical performance window.
I know CD is better and prefer it but this sort of rant is bonkers and more likely to alienate people from this site.
If you must use a transport analogy a car with carburettors compared to one with fuel injection would be more apt, but even then, the difference between those car technologies in driveability and fuel consumption is greater than the difference between CD and LP for listening to music.
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Love it! Along the same lines....
I'm going to offer one of my watch-loving friends a trade: my $10 Casio digital watch for their Breitling or Rolex watches. Keeps time better than that old stone age technology! They'll be stupid to refuse.
First I'm going to purge my movie collection of all the black and white classic films, and dump any paintings in the house so I can download images of them instead on to my iphone. Old movies and paintings are all so "yesterday" when we have Hi-Def color movies and I can carry around images on portable iphones....gotta dump the past as fast as I can.....
Hypnotoad
Active Member
QUOTE="jsrtheta, post: 175056, member: 2152"]Right. Because the noise and inferior accuracy sound so much better. (I do agree that the loudness wars caused a lot of dreck on the market.)[/QUOTE]
LOL, talk about missing the point completely and I notice your lap dog has agreed with you, go figure. Keep it up I take no offense and repeat I enjoy the banter.
Let them have their fun it keeps them off the streets.
We should also dump all the old analog master tapes as they will sound much better when upsampled to digital.
LOL, talk about missing the point completely and I notice your lap dog has agreed with you, go figure. Keep it up I take no offense and repeat I enjoy the banter.
Let them have their fun it keeps them off the streets.
We should also dump all the old analog master tapes as they will sound much better when upsampled to digital.
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BillG
Major Contributor
Wow! You guys can be real dicks sometimes. Hahahaha!
And I've thought that I was too direct on occasion! P. S. I'm not actually criticizing your response, as I find it quite amusing!
nscrivener
Member
I just had the opportunity to listen to a high-end system of a local distributor of acoustic treatment products. We listened to James Newton Howard & Friends on vinyl and on his digital system at 16 bit 44khz as a direct comparison. The vinyl was a revelation. I've never heard such lush, clear, dynamic sound before. The digital version sounded flat and grainy. This was not a small difference. Anyone could easily A/B this in a blind test. I'm prepared to accept that there could be any number of reasons why his digital chain didn't perform as well as could be achieved, but for now, vinyl is in the lead. Nothing else we listened to on his digital chain measured up either.
DKT88
Active Member
My 21 yr old son just ordered his first vinyl LP from the UK (hard to find here in Korea). He's never played an LP. I'll show him how to properly take it out of the sleeve and put it on the Clearaudio TT and que it up. That will be fun.
And that is why a certain demographic hated digital music, it demystified and democratised good sound reproduction.
I am one of those who still buys CDs, immediately rips them to FLAC and then archives the discs. This means that I have the convenience of computer audio in CD quality and if anything ever happens I still have the discs. Weirdly I have bought a few new CDs lately where it was cheaper to buy the disc than to buy the download.
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
So very true.
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While I believe I know why you would write that, I disagree. I don't think that correctly identifies the motivation. I suggest that's the type of motivation you are assigning from your viewpoint, because it fits with a narrative of the snobby audiophile which is fun to shoot down.
Yes, there is something deflating to the hobbyist when the object of the hobby become commoditized.
But I disagree that this is why a certain demographic claimed to "hate digital music." Pretty much the only people I've ever seen claim they hate digital music, are those who did not like how it sounded, and for instance preferred vinyl. They may have had some wonky ideas behind their subective evaluation, but in term of motivation, I see no reason to disbelieve that they *thought* digital music sounded worse. And on those grounds resented it becoming a de-facto standard. ( I'm looking at you, Michael Fremer!!).
