DrTebi
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- Dec 8, 2018
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- #21
Thanks for your interesting comment. This was not really what I wanted to get into though...Vinyl is not about sound quality. People simply believe that - what they like - it also sounds good. It is somewhat simplified a kind of fetishism. It is about desire. And for musicians, it's a way to make some money. It's about being able to hold the vinyl, look at it, admire the envelope. Smell it. Vinyl is essentially a reaction to the fact that digital music is streamed today. Without streaming, no vinyl revival. If you want your music in a physical format, then most people probably feel that the CD is identical to what they stream anyway. Vinyl is different. Most vinyl buyers are not audiophiles. Most new vinyl enthusiasts have neither the money nor the interest in advanced and extremely expensive HiFi. (Really good new turntables are very expensive compared to a streamer and a DAC, although extreme premiums can be charged for the latter as well) They think vinyl is just plain fun but play their music on pretty crappy equipment. The real hi-fi geeks who spend big on turntables are middle-aged nerds with plenty of money.
This responds more to what I was asking about... and maybe I could have found the answer in previous posts, but a brief search revealed mostly the typical talk about why digital is better than vinyl etc.Different mastering (sometimes), cutting parameters being applied, RIAA curve differing on reproduction, cartridge/needle differences, cartridge load differences, arm/cantilever suspension differences, FR differences between cartridges... a fine mix of all these things + things that did not come to mind the moment this was typed but are also relevant.
Basically it is still amazing that the reproduced sound coming from a rock dragged through a trench can still sound good (ignoring ticks, cracks, noise and pops, wow and flutter).
Technically the digital recordings are closer to the waveforms that were coming from from the mastering source.
Vinyl can sound good and some may prefer it. That preference is what makes vinyl 'better' to some people. There is nothing objectively 'better' about vinyl.
This all has been discussed at nauseum in other threads.
Of course technically digital can go much further, but it is also about the whole mastering process...
Some of my vinyl may sound technically worse than what I hear on e.g. Tidal HiFi, but I still like that vinyl recording better. In other words, whoever mastered the vinyl did something that my ears prefer over what the digital mastering engineer did.
It's kind of like when someone dials in the bass and treble on an amplifier and tells you this sounds the best, but you prefer it dialed in differently... it's purely subjective.
That's all I am saying.
Best solution is maybe to just get a hold of all those master tapes and do my own digital mastering
Well I really don't think everybody quite understands this. Most often I only read comments about why the digital format is better (dynamic range blablabla), but people seldomly mention that the whole mastering process for vinyl vs. digital is completely different and can have a huge impact on the final sound.There is no big 'truth' being revealed here, it's all well known. Yet another 'vinyl and why some like it' thread.