Why do records sound so much better than digital?

[Rock Rabbit]

It could be explained by a number of things other than simplistic 'vinyl vs digital'. You simply don't know what was done during the sourcing and mastering of each release.

Info based on https://gearspace.com/board/so-much...but-album-vocal-guitar-recording-methods.html
Microphone technique, models, comb effect, EQ chain and gear

Classic Track: ‘Fast Car,’ Tracy Chapman

When stars align and the right producer hears an artist, gets excited and shares a vision—even helps shape that vision—magic is often the result. It sure worked with David Kershenbaum and Tracy Chapman in 1987. Kershenbaum says it’s all about the emotional attachment a person makes to the art...

www.mixonline.com

16 bits recording gear, 2 tracks master.
To my understanding there's no vinyl mastering nowadays only the lathe master compression that if used adequately makes no difference in dynamic range or FR

 

[krabapple]

Info based on https://gearspace.com/board/so-much...but-album-vocal-guitar-recording-methods.html
Microphone technique, models, comb effect, EQ chain and gear

Classic Track: ‘Fast Car,’ Tracy Chapman

When stars align and the right producer hears an artist, gets excited and shares a vision—even helps shape that vision—magic is often the result. It sure worked with David Kershenbaum and Tracy Chapman in 1987. Kershenbaum says it’s all about the emotional attachment a person makes to the art...

www.mixonline.com

16 bits recording gear, 2 tracks master.
To my understanding there's no vinyl mastering nowadays only the lathe master compression that if used adequately makes no difference in dynamic range or FR

I was referring the to the America example you cited.

 

[Rock Rabbit]

I was referring the to the America example you cited.

Oh...hdtracks 2013 24/192 not remastered

 

[krabapple]

Oh...hdtracks 2013 24/192 not remastered

How can you know? Or, how can you know whether or not the HDtracks is a flat transfer, while the LP has been mastered to boost treble?

 

[Leporello]

Precisely.

That's why it would be a misreading to attribute those audiophile's behavior to "nostalgia" or "hipster (or audiophile) cred." Whatever the explanation for their perception (including delusion), they are motivated by what they think to be better sound.

(My point, again, isn't about the verity of all the beliefs, but accurately accounting for the motivations one often finds underlying the newfound enthusiasm in the vinyl resurgence).

But this experience of "better sound" and the whole vinyl epiphany is dictated by the hipster fad. You are supposed to experience those things and tell about it with predetermined vocabulary.

 

[Vacceo]

One of the first things I did when the lockdown finished over here was taking my two copies of several records to a friend´s studio. I took Blasphemy´s Fallen Angel of Doom, Slayer´s Reign in Blood and Motörhead´s Rock´n Roll. The vynils were super old (particularly Motörhead´s album) and the CD´s were remasters.

The amount of distortion found on vynils was perfectly coincident with the questionable recording methods, particularly in the case of Blasphemy. The vynil just added to the extra noise, grinding and dirty sound. Better sounding? Subjectively yes! I mean, we´re talking about bands who played loud above all else and getting even further extra mess added to the listening. But let´s be honest, it was distortion and there´s nothing wrong with liking distortion.

 

[bkdc]

I have yet to hear a modern well recorded and mastered in 192/24 or 96/24 sound better on vinyl than digital. (I'm talking records from audiophile labels like Stockfisch Records or Chesky that go above and beyond in recording and mastering)...

And for everything else.... what's the point anyway..... Audio engineers know that most people listen to music in their cars or on the go (lots of background noise) and thus the dynamic range of any pop song is limited to 30 or 40 dB. Aah the cynic in me.....

There is nothing wrong with liking distortion. It's true. It does help to distort a crappy engineered song rather than wince at every audible flaw and edit

 

[Rock Rabbit]

How can you know? Or, how can you know whether or not the HDtracks is a flat transfer, while the LP has been mastered to boost treble?

From hdtracks
Only Ventura highway is RM2006. The general idea is a flat transfer to any media. CD and Audio Fidelity CD (RM2015) are identical at FFT FR. The only possible discrepancy is a non flat transfer or pressing in vinyl (is a 1972 one!)..so I'm in the process of measuring MM cartridges. To have a very tight reference, but original idea is still the same...to compare editions at coarse level FFT (global FR tilt).
Wait for cartridge FR.. but the mastering couldn't rise the treble cause the master tape is 70s technology with clearly hearable hiss and PS noise. Treble boost is not observed in hiss floor noise... I'm gonna post the measurements too, as a preview the master is not better than 14 bits ...

 

[charleski]

What a music journalist with loads of LPs thinks of Vinyl Bores:

I love an LP, but spare me the Vinyl Snob going on like a broken record | Barbara Ellen

Just what is it about a day celebrating music stores that sets off those who fetishise format over pleasure?

www.theguardian.com

 

[freemansteve]

Get a decent digital system and bin the vinyl - nothing natural about listening to your Rice Crispies mixed in with an FM radio.

It is true however that a LOT of earlier CDs were really badly mixed for that medium. Not so these days. Mostly.

 

[sq225917]

@ rocktabbit didn't the Abbey Road guys say they did 3 masters, cd, vinyl and radio, where appropriate?

 

[watchnerd]

What a music journalist with loads of LPs thinks of Vinyl Bores:

I love an LP, but spare me the Vinyl Snob going on like a broken record | Barbara Ellen

Just what is it about a day celebrating music stores that sets off those who fetishise format over pleasure?

www.theguardian.com

I love my LP collection and collecting, but I agree with her assessment of vinyl supremacists.

Besides, reel to reel is where the real elites hang.

 

[mightycicadalord]

What a music journalist with loads of LPs thinks of Vinyl Bores:

I love an LP, but spare me the Vinyl Snob going on like a broken record | Barbara Ellen

Just what is it about a day celebrating music stores that sets off those who fetishise format over pleasure?

www.theguardian.com

"should a musical format matter that much – more than the actual music?"

This why I can't stand any debate over formats and can't stand people who care, they don't care about the music.

 

[Robin L]

I love my LP collection and collecting, but I agree with her assessment of vinyl supremacists.

Besides, reel to reel is where the real elites hang.

I thought it was wax cylinders.

 

[watchnerd]

I thought it was wax cylinders.

Shhh, still trying to corner the market.

 

[egellings]

This is an audio tech rather than an artistic music site, so the equipment is what's likely to get discussed the most.

 

[Hugo9000]

(You're all wrong, cognoscenti prize the Telegraphone above all other formats! <3 )

At the Copenhagen Telegraph Company, in 1898 Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen (1869–1942) recorded his voice by feeding a telephone microphone signal to an electromagnet that he moved along a steel piano wire. In 1899 he filed a patent and founded a company to build the Telegraphone, a pioneering telephone answering machine. A simple version stored 2 minutes of audio on 130 mm (5 inch) diameter steel disks. A recording medium of steel wire wound around a cylinder held up to 30 minutes of audio. Poulsen’s associate Peder Oluf Pedersen (1874 - 1941) patented electroplating disks with different magnetizable materials. The Telegraphone received a Grand Prix at the 1900 Paris World Exhibition where it recorded Emperor Franz Josef of Austria.

Let me offer an "audiophile" "theory" on why it's the best: see in the above, what material Poulsen chose for the recording medium? A piano wire! Yes, the recording medium itself was taken from the second greatest instrument ever created (the organ is the King of Instruments, as everyone knows, so the piano is surely second). This of course is consistent with the color/material schools of thought on sound (silver is bright, copper is warm, silk dome tweeters are soft and organic, beryllium tweeters are brittle and cold and metallic, blah blah blah), but in this case the steel piano wire's color is less relevant to its musicality and transparency into the event than its use in the great musical instrument.

And just look at the inventor: reassuringly scientific in his lab coat, but look how he's dressed underneath—a refined gentleman, through and through, and note the magnificent-yet-not-ostentatious moustache!

 

[levimax]

It is true however that a LOT of earlier CDs were really badly mixed for that medium. Not so these days. Mostly.

Interesting perspective, I actually seek out original older CD's because of their more dynamic mastering. Some of the original Japanese manufactured CD's, even though they were often times using the LP mix as a tape source, sound much better to me than later compressed and EQ'd digital versions. Sometimes you get the best of all worlds with these original CD's, the care and ear of a "master" mastering engineer (True to the master tape is not always the best sound) and digital sound quality i.e. no surface noise.

I have not heard a modern popular music CD, either new music or remastered old music, that was not overly compressed and often times strangely EQ'd (if you are used to the original mix).

This whole format debate is kind of silly, there is more difference between the sound of mastering's than there is between formats, not sure why anyone would feel compelled to "chose" between formats and then try to convince someone else that they are making a foolish choice if they didn't chose the same. Some of the "ex- vinyl" comments remind me of "ex-smokers" , insufferably intolerant of others now that they have seen the light.

 

[Brinkman]

What a music journalist with loads of LPs thinks of Vinyl Bores:

I love an LP, but spare me the Vinyl Snob going on like a broken record | Barbara Ellen

Just what is it about a day celebrating music stores that sets off those who fetishise format over pleasure?

www.theguardian.com

I dunno, this just reads like a insecure person inventing people to be mad at. Like, I might roll my eyes at a flock of dudes queued outside a record store on RSD but I see no reason to assume the worst about them, especially if name-dropping Jesus and Mary Chain in an op-Ed makes me look just as guilty.

 

[mhardy6647]

(You're all wrong, cognoscenti prize the Telegraphone above all other formats! <3 )

View attachment 202105



Let me offer an "audiophile" "theory" on why it's the best: see in the above, what material Poulsen chose for the recording medium? A piano wire! Yes, the recording medium itself was taken from the second greatest instrument ever created (the organ is the King of Instruments, as everyone knows, so the piano is surely second). This of course is consistent with the color/material schools of thought on sound (silver is bright, copper is warm, silk dome tweeters are soft and organic, beryllium tweeters are brittle and cold and metallic, blah blah blah), but in this case the steel piano wire's color is less relevant to its musicality and transparency into the event than its use in the great musical instrument.

And just look at the inventor: reassuringly scientific in his lab coat, but look how he's dressed underneath—a refined gentleman, through and through, and note the magnificent-yet-not-ostentatious moustache!

ooops, sorry.
my mistake.
carry on.