Why do records sound so much better than digital?

[Mart68]

it is a very good turntable for the money and still what I recommend to people looking to start out in vinyl on budget.

I got to the point where I was going to spend a grand on putting a better arm on it, but after considering it for a long time I decided to go all digital instead.

 

[DSJR]

Why I keep banging on about the SL1500C as being a good lower cost contender for international markets. In vinyl terms, £900 in UK 'HiFi' currency is little more than 'posh-beer' money and it comes with 2M Red cartridge (stylus easily upgraded to one more refined up top) and an RIAA stage built in for that money! Site it carefully and remove lid when playing (as I'd suggest for the older 1200's too) and you should be good to go!

 

[Wombat]

I started an entire thread for posting of releases of LPs that sound better than a CD or file - very few examples were posted.

If that is a good sample, then yes, the instances are rare.

Who can tell if the masters are the same? How many members go to the trouble of objectively comparing LP to CD?

I think you may have got an answer in the response to your thread.

 

[Severian]

I am not, at all, a fan of vinyl. It's expensive, I have no interest in fussing with turntable setup, and I find the noise and all of the other issues inherent to the medium irritating. I have collected vinyl in the past and understand why people enjoy it, but I long ago stopped myself.

THAT SAID, I do think it's undeniable that vinyl playback can frequently sound more pleasing than digital, if you are just focusing on the the tonality of the music and ignoring the noise and limited dynamic range. I think this can be particularly true in the context of, say, a serious vinyl enthusiast who cares about their equipment but isn't necessarily a full-on audiophile dork obsessed with EQ and speaker performance and all that. I'm hard-pressed to tell people like this that they're wrong when they say vinyl sounds better on their system than the same music played on Spotify. In many cases, I've heard it side-by-side on their gear and would tend to agree.

The most identifiable and generalizable character that vinyl has, to me, is that it tends to be warmer and punchier in the bass than digital music. This seems to defy the technical limitations of the medium in the lower frequencies.

My theory is that this may be due to the summing of bass frequencies in vinyl masters, and - crucially - that this tends to sound better on the typical stereo system.

Take my own system, for example. My mains are relatively bass-limited two-way speakers. I have two subwoofers (well, actually eight subwoofers split into stacks of four) that flank the mains, with the crossover implemented with DSP. When I run the subwoofers as two separate channels, each getting the left or right bass frequencies, it does not sound good. The bass is very anemic and it seems to exacerbate all of my room issues. On the other hand, when I run the subwoofers as a single channel getting the summed bass frequencies from the left and right channels, it sounds fantastic.

A person whose system consists of full-range speakers in stereo, with no fancy DSP, has no such ability to sum the bass frequencies and is stuck with the bass as-mastered. If the vinyl master has summed bass frequencies while the digital master does not, then it's easy for me to see how the vinyl could be perceived to have superior bass and an overall warmer tonal balance. What I don't know is how mastering engineers approach mixing bass frequencies for digital masters - is it common to mix them in mono or are they more often left in stereo? I imagine this is also genre-specific, e.g., I'm sure much electronic music has bass in mono whereas more acoustic music may have a wider stereo mix.

 

[Wes]

Who can tell if the masters are the same? How many members go to the trouble of objectively comparing LP to CD?

I think you may have got an answer in the response to your thread.

That thread is a lot better than mere speculation.

I know of several people who compare mastering releases objectively.

 

[Frgirard]

I am not, at all, a fan of vinyl. It's expensive, I have no interest in fussing with turntable setup, and I find the noise and all of the other issues inherent to the medium irritating. I have collected vinyl in the past and understand why people enjoy it, but I long ago stopped myself.

THAT SAID, I do think it's undeniable that vinyl playback can frequently sound more pleasing than digital, if you are just focusing on the the tonality of the music and ignoring the noise and limited dynamic range. I think this can be particularly true in the context of, say, a serious vinyl enthusiast who cares about their equipment but isn't necessarily a full-on audiophile dork obsessed with EQ and speaker performance and all that. I'm hard-pressed to tell people like this that they're wrong when they say vinyl sounds better on their system than the same music played on Spotify. In many cases, I've heard it side-by-side on their gear and would tend to agree.

The most identifiable and generalizable character that vinyl has, to me, is that it tends to be warmer and punchier in the bass than digital music. This seems to defy the technical limitations of the medium in the lower frequencies.

My theory is that this may be due to the summing of bass frequencies in vinyl masters, and - crucially - that this tends to sound better on the typical stereo system.

Take my own system, for example. My mains are relatively bass-limited two-way speakers. I have two subwoofers (well, actually eight subwoofers split into stacks of four) that flank the mains, with the crossover implemented with DSP. When I run the subwoofers as two separate channels, each getting the left or right bass frequencies, it does not sound good. The bass is very anemic and it seems to exacerbate all of my room issues. On the other hand, when I run the subwoofers as a single channel getting the summed bass frequencies from the left and right channels, it sounds fantastic.

A person whose system consists of full-range speakers in stereo, with no fancy DSP, has no such ability to sum the bass frequencies and is stuck with the bass as-mastered. If the vinyl master has summed bass frequencies while the digital master does not, then it's easy for me to see how the vinyl could be perceived to have superior bass and an overall warmer tonal balance. What I don't know is how mastering engineers approach mixing bass frequencies for digital masters - is it common to mix them in mono or are they more often left in stereo? I imagine this is also genre-specific, e.g., I'm sure much electronic music has bass in mono whereas more acoustic music may have a wider stereo mix.

The summing of bass stereo in mono occurs an electronic comb filtering.
You find this better?
The bass are cut at 50 Hz on the vinyl.
The Vinyl digitalized has the same sound than the vinyl, i never find the bass on the vinyl are beautiful.

 

[Frgirard]

Who can tell if the masters are the same? How many members go to the trouble of objectively comparing LP to CD?

I think you may have got an answer in the response to your thread.

The Vinyl mastering is different of the digital mastering.
You can not apply the loudness war practices. The mechanical reading won't be able to take it.

 

[Robin L]

It's not that digital gear is no maintenance. I've been through several CD players that were troublesome, or were made in a way that was sure to become troublesome.

But that doesn't undermine your point, which I agree with, particularly with that "on a budget" statement. I didn't spend nearly as much as a lot of people have, but I wasn't a newbie, either. And I still have bits of work to do to make it as perfect as it can get.

I've had profound listening experiences with vinyl records, and also with CD's. Even listening to FM radio. There is no question that CD's are technically superior, and no question that recording engineers compress music to fit in the narrower dynamic range of LPs. Would I buy LPs if I was just starting out? Nope. But do I seek out CD versions of the LPs in my collection? Only in rare cases. The only case where I can think of where I was hoping the CD version would be more dynamic was Rick Wakeman's The Six Wives of Henry VIII. It wasn't, but it was cleaner and didn't suffer from groove noise so that's what I used for playback. But most of the time I'm okay with what I hear from the LP--groove noise gets masked by the music or by environmental noise sufficiently to avoid distraction.

Rick "who owns records never rereleased on CD, also" Denney

When I'm talking about "no maintenance digital" I'm not talking about CD players, though they nearly qualify. With most post 2000 electronics/digital devices, there is nothing to be done if the equipment fails. It becomes electronic waste, for the most part. There's no set-up ritual for digital devices but if a turntable is slightly off in any number of directions, performance is drastically reduced This simply doesn't happen with digital gear. Maybe if a cd player isn't properly level it could stop functioning [theoretically, depends on the specific player], but the failure to operate at all will happen much sooner with an analog turntable than any CD player.

In any case, almost all of my music listening now is coming from files, either ripped from my CDs, or streaming, either via my computer, my DAP or my smartphone. There really isn't anything I could do to alter the sound save playing with the EQ---I have to with the Drop 6XX, so that's always via my computer through Topping E/L 30. But there is nothing to "tune", to align, to periodically inspect in order to maintain full performance.

In that sense, no maintenance.

 

[Robin L]

The Vinyl mastering is different of the digital mastering.
You can not apply the loudness war practices. The mechanical reading won't be able to take it.

The transfer that requires limitations of bandwidth and dynamics is the LP. CDs can have wide dynamics or narrow dynamics, anything in between. Brickwalling a CD is a production choice, not a necessity. Limiting dynamics, cutting bass levels, de-essing the treble, summing bass to mono is required with LP mastering. Perhaps the dynamically limited LP is a little more rounded off, but most LP masterings of recent material have sounded pretty much like a transfer from a CD mastering without the impact of the CD.

 

[MattHooper]

The summing of bass stereo in mono occurs an electronic comb filtering.
You find this better?
The bass are cut at 50 Hz on the vinyl.
The Vinyl digitalized has the same sound than the vinyl, i never find the bass on the vinyl are beautiful.

I love the bass I hear from many vinyl records! Nice and punchy. I love kick drums especially. To each his own

 

[Frgirard]

The transfer that requires limitations of bandwidth and dynamics is the LP. CDs can have wide dynamics or narrow dynamics, anything in between. Brickwalling a CD is a production choice, not a necessity. Limiting dynamics, cutting bass levels, de-essing the treble, summing bass to mono is required with LP mastering. Perhaps the dynamically limited LP is a little more rounded off, but most LP masterings of recent material have sounded pretty much like a transfer from a CD mastering without the impact of the CD.

The dynamic limited on the LP in the real life is not an issue.
The 40 dB of dynamics IRL doesn't exist. 30 dB in few classical recordings and CD produced before the loudness war.
The lp can not reproduce a piano. The pitch can not be constant.

 

[Frgirard]

I love the bass I hear from many vinyl records! Nice and punchy. I love kick drums especially. To each his own

I love green banana.

 

[LTig]

I love the bass I hear from many vinyl records! Nice and punchy. I love kick drums especially. To each his own

So do I with some records compared to the CD, both pop/rock and classical. However listening analytically it's always clear to me that the bass on the CD is more accurate as I can hear more details. So its just a preference for a different kind of bass (which is fine of course) but it should not be mistaken for accuracy.

 

[boselover61]

The day cd music came out i cried and tossed out all my vinyls to goodwill. Havent looked back

 

[MattHooper]

I love green banana.

Aaagh! My wife likes green bananas but I love ripe bananas! But she's always buying them green so I have to waaaaait until I can eat them (and hope she hasn't eaten them all before then).

 

[DSJR]

My ex-mastering engineer friend's now retired boss told me once that when he mastered analogue tapes for CD release, he lifted the 40Hz levels just a little to emulate more the response of many vinyl players, which back then had a downtilted response to hf, albeit gentle in the best ones. I have a Camel album he did and his mastering is ever so subtly more 'wholesome' than the later mastering done by one of his es-staff. So many vinyl era masters lack bass anyway, either because the monitors used were big and boomy (?) or because th emix was deliberately done bass light or upper mid forward (I haven't worked it out yet). Also, many early CD masters were monitored on the UK using B&W 801's. Balance to those without knowing them intimately and the end result is terrible I was told.. The fruitboxes currently in my sitting room don't have an issue and positively thrive on brightly lit digital productions, one example (The Fixx 'Phantoms') either taking fillings out or sounding lively and crsip depending on the boxes it's heard through There's a rhythmic 15kHz tone even on the vinyl as a part of one track (Less Cities, More Moving People) which a spectrum graphic shows is still there, but I can't hear or feel it at all now sadly when once I could I shouldn't admit it, but a single B side I love from 1966 has a struck triangle or similar at the beginning of the song with fundamental at 11kHz which again is there on the digital transfer, but I can't hear that either (damned Tinnitus and old age)

 

[MattHooper]

I have one of my favorite soundtracks, Taxi Driver, on CD and Vinyl. There are two tracks which begin with a drummer slowly tapping cymbals and then quietly hitting a really big kick or bass drum. It's really deep, low bass. On the CD version the drums are placed hard right, so cymbals and drum coming out of a single speaker. On the vinyl version that deep drum has been moved more towards the center of the soundstage. I presume this is a concession made due to issues of placing deep bass in a single channel for vinyl.

 

[Wes]

I love green banana.

I like the yellow vinyl banana I got with my Velvet Underground boxed set.

 

[don'ttrustauthority]

I was there when CD first came out in the 80s. Initial take up was slow. Records still ruled. But I couldn’t help noticing who jumped off the LP bandwagon first. It was the classical music recording industry. They couldn’t leave LP behind quickly enough. I think it was because they had standards, and so did some of their customers, and their product, classical music, suffered more if the medium was prone to production issues like ticks and wow. I remember later reading an article by the Nimbus LP engineers and owners on their move to CD. They said how very obvious it was to their customers that the inside track of an LP sounded lower quality than the first track. That was a perpetual issue with LP, and CD solved it, stone cold dead.

Don't forget classical was constrained by the lp with regards to playing time. Dynamic range also increased as interest in the wide dynamic range available led to some new recordings just for digital to be made.

 

[Mountain Goat]

The day cd music came out i cried and tossed out all my vinyls to goodwill. Havent looked back

I still remember the first time I heard a CD. I was in college, and a German friend brought a little Technics portable CD player back from Christmas, along with Bob Marley "Legend" on disc. My NAD-based stereo was the best anybody we knew had, so we hooked it up to my system. Hearing that album I wore out on vinyl with no pops, scratches, and with awesome extended range was life-changing. I bought a portable Toshiba player days later. Still have it. Still have all the records I bought before that day, but I've got hundreds more CDs.

I don't know why I still keep hundreds of CDs. Sentimentality, I guess. And the wall of them behind the system make a decent baffle with the spines staggered.