Vinyl vs CD - what's your experience?

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I'd like to hear from those who have compared vinyl vs CD. What differences did you notice and what was your preference?

Of course, this means comparing with everything the same, except the source - the same track on CD then vinyl. As soon as you compare with different speakers or tracks, or different sound systems on different occasions, it's not really a comparison.

I had a chance to compare in this way when invited for a demo by another enthusiast in a dedicated room with a high end setup. To my ears there was definitely a difference and I felt at the time it was in favour of vinyl. It was enough to get my attention and want to experience this more.

Of course, with vinyl there is extra expense and inconvenience, but I'm not considering this here. There are also issues like the little pop noises, but I'm not so concerned with them either. Sound quality. Which is more enjoyable to listen to? Which captures music better? Yes, I'm after subjective opinions!
 
The problem is, you're not comparing like with like. The mix, processing, and often source tape for each are generally different. Just curious, do you think you hear an advantage to vinyl when listening to recordings that had any digital handling in the signal chain?

I personally enjoy both vinyl and CD; I suspect a well-made CD is truer to the master than any vinyl playback, but so much of the music I love has not made the transition to digits very well. And not all masters are terrific, either.
 
Sy, I can't really answer that as they were not my CDs or records, and I didn't really know much about them.

The problem is, you're not comparing like with like.

I see your point, but in the context of forming a preference, does it matter? You can't separate the medium from the process necessary to create it, but that's an abstract distinction that isn't really necessary when it comes down to which you actually prefer.

I realise I mentioned "comparing with everything the same" but I was referring to the playback system. If you compare system A with tube amps, horns and a turntable and then a month later another system with a CD (different artist) on a solid state system with hifi floorstanders in a different room ... there are so many things that are different that you can't hope to compare just one aspect of the system!

If CD vs vinyl involved no differences at all in their sound, vinyl would almost be extinct, except for the nostalgia and perhaps the visual/methanical appeal. And perhaps a little hifi mythology.
 
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AX tech editor
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I just happen to have a CD and LP from exactly the same master track - in fact they have serial numbers that differ by just 1.
The CD sounds cleaner, clearer, much more balanced overall.

It's like SY says, its pretty much impossible to compare like with like. Many re-issues of LP onto CD are 'improved' meaning some more bass, a bit (or a lot) of extra compression, more extreme placement to left and right, etc. No wonder the LP sounds better in these cases. It's often the technology that gets blamed for messing up the process.

jd
 
A point worth bearing in mind is that older...and I mean older than both SY and Janneman ...music enthusiasts more usually have good collections of vinyl recordings and had already amassed the basis of their collections prior to the introduction of CDs. Early CD recordings were almost all remastered from analogue tapes. The record companies were perhaps a bit too 'on the ball' in transferring their back-catalogue to digital. There was a race to see which company would have the largest CD catalogue. Much of this work was out-sourced!

The result was that many budget remastering suites were set-up in a hurry and producers - who were too often second class - had a short field day, whilst the engineers and tech guys were so often unemployable in a more stable studio employment marketplace.

The consequence was that many early CDs were very bad examples of a media which had a far higher potential than was all too often realized.

Concurrent with this was a fast rise in affordable mini multi-track machines from the likes of Akai. Many record companies - because of the race to increase their CD marketshare - encouraged the 'home-recording- industry...it freed-up recording budgets, post-production suites and staff to accelerate back-catalogue digital transfer. In my view this was the time at which so much rubbish music was being plugged and a terrible disservice to music was committed. The new music of the period has produced a few artists who have stayed the course, but vast numbers were five minute wonders.:rolleyes:

For my part, being older than the previous posters and even older than John Curl, I have a few thousand good vinyl recordings and not more than a hundred CDs and am only now getting into sorting out a reasonable digital replay set-up. I have chosen a DAC from China and a transformer (filtered) output in place of the poor on-board analogue output stage. My old Philips 850 Mk11 still spins the discs. I have a some early digital sampler discs from music magazine covers. The early ones which are transfers, for the most-part, sound absolutely dreadful , whereas those recorded in the digital domain, in the recent past, really are usually very good.

But my analogue system is in another category and still has quite an edge of advantage despite being a little less quite. To replace this front end with today's equivalent would cost a frightening amount of money! So I will say that an indifferent front end, analogue or digital, cannot be compared with a a top end player of the opposite media. I suspect that the best of digital will now equal the best of analogue provided that the discs are of high quality.

If only they would treat compressors with a lighter hand!!
 
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[I agreed to all that was here!]If only they would treat compressors with a lighter hand!!

Yes, true. But it also had to do with the need to become louder and louder and attention-getting. I actually looked into this a bit, and I found a certain track that had been re-issued 4 or 5 times between 1984 and 2007. Each later re-issue was louder, had less dynamic range and sounded worse than the previous. I could just play them at random and accurately put them in sequence of re-issue. That practise did a lot of damage to CD music quality.

Recently, the trend seems to reverse. My opinion is that the very good sound quality of SACD stems more from the care that goes in the recording and mastering and not so much from the technology. A top-notch CD recording sounds as good as anything else, but its not easy to find them.

PS I'm sure you are older than that youngster SY, but are you sure you are older than me??
I was my last year in high school when JFK was shot.

jd
 
Yes, true. But it also had to do with the need to become louder and louder and attention-getting. I actually looked into this a bit, and I found a certain track that had been re-issued 4 or 5 times between 1984 and 2007. Each later re-issue was louder, had less dynamic range and sounded worse than the previous. I could just play them at random and accurately put them in sequence of re-issue. That practise did a lot of damage to CD music quality.

Totally accept this and agree!

Recently, the trend seems to reverse. My opinion is that the very good sound quality of SACD stems more from the care that goes in the recording and mastering and not so much from the technology. A top-notch CD recording sounds as good as anything else, but its not easy to find them.

Of course when digital recording first started every engineer had a toolbox of experience of analogue techniques....everyone had to learn the new technology and then develop and apply new skills. I cannot but believe that the search for a good CD is easier than looking for a flat record to play an ADC 25/26 cartridge at 0.75 gms TW!!

PS I'm sure you are older than that youngster SY, but are you sure you are older than me??
I was my last year in high school when JFK was shot.

And I saw JFK whilst he and I were in Dublin on the same day ... I was there for interviews to be accepted for University!!!! Sounds that you were a very slow learner if still at high school and older than me.:D I was born in April 1942.:rolleyes:

jd
 
Brian, it should also be noted that many of the CD masterings were done with 2nd or 3rd generation tapes. And that many of the 1st generation tapes had certainly deteriorated with age. One more reason to use older vinyl releases to archive valued music.

Agree totally. A friend in NY had organized a reissue of the Beatles covers - the "World War 11" album - produced by Lou Reitzner of Beatles' covers various artists such as the Stones, Bee Gees, Rod Stewart et al. I heard this information after the re-mastering had been done (from multi-generation tapes found in Germany.) I had, and still have, the original Ist generation copy 1/4" masters in my roof storage thyey are marked as 'copy 2'!!! I have played them a couple of times on an old Philips 2 track Pro machine (Tubed). The dynamics on a horn system poked up by a good VT4c amp are (as they say) 'mind-blowing'. (My tapes have the original Olympic Studios Barnes labels and basic info. The tapes are the old BASF yellow tapes with exceptional dynamics, but they are very rough on heads!!

But back to the topic, those and other tapes which I have are simply in a totally different league to any retailed media form. A little hiss perhaps but that is that...and no print-through.
 
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I say vinyl. The only one in common I have is the Dire Straits - Money for Nothing album.

I'd say the novelty of using vinyl for me (I'm 15!) is a big part, but, when I plug a record deck and my CD player into the same amp and speakers, the vinyl sounds more... just better, really... I actually like the pops and crackles - they remind me that I'm listening to music that was created before my time, which makes me feel part of something special...

Chris
 
The problem with a question like this is on the vinyl playback side. Turntables are finickey things and every different cartridge / phono stage will have a different response.. Most CD decks will have similar response at least. Therefore if an album is a bit 'harsh' then a turntable with a 'mellow' cartridge will sound nicer than the CD. If the master is 'warm' then the CD may sound better and more 'detailed'....


Personally I love my record deck (LP12 ) but if I'd have known that in the near future I could load up all my music onto a hard drive and have my entire (uncompressed) music collection at my fingertips I would never have kept on buying vinyl. As it stands I still have more vinyl than CD's..

And I can't stand clicks and pops...... (Have bought some albums 3 or 4 times due to noise..)

Rob.
 
cd VS vinyl, again?

There really is not much of a point. There are good re-issues and then there are really bad re-issues. With newly recorded music, I don't doubt that the differences are there as well. Remember we hear in analogue waves, not discrete digital ones.

Examples of good re-issues are the Hendrix LLC cds re-engineered by Eddie Cramer (the original engineer on almost all of Hendrix's records). Examples of poor or plain bad "re-engineered" cds are anything done prior to the LLC recordings (those made by MCA and MCA's well documented greed). Obviously there are differences in other recordings. I can say that I do enjoy Brothers in arms on digital and analogue, but they are completely different in their presentation. One must pay for convenience.

I say that, regardless of where you may sit on the fence with this one, there isn't a place on the fence to sit. Yes with newer, better techniques in digital recording, they are and have made great strides in the last few years. But all their strides have been towards the one thing they didn't have to---an analogue waveform. If this much time had been spent reducing vinyl's few flaws (background noise, occasional "pops and clicks"), I dare say that vinyl playback would have improved overall as well.

20 years + as a serious listener has convinced me of this.
 
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"little by little"...the last time I had a listening session with my Vinyl Player it was a year ago :p and what came to my ears was bliss when "set the controls for the heart of the sun" was playing . The long middle phrase
had no rivals , now I'm thinking that the song itself is a hymn to records !
Ciao!
 
Both have pretty good quality. I have a good CD player and a good LP player. Some recordings sound better on LP, and i bet this is because of mastering issues. For example my LP copy of "Jeff beck - Wired" is FAR, FAR better than the CD i bought.

But then i have some CDs that are simply impecable in terms of sound quality. For example: "Pat metheny - The way up". Although the cymbals are too strongly compressed on that one. But the sound is so good!! (It is a 24-bit recording BTW.)

On the other side i have some mono LP records by Deutsche Grammophon (classical music) that are so good you don't wish you had the CD.

People should not say "i like the crackles and pops" as an argument in favor of LPs, because a well cared and well cleaned LP is almost dead quiet.
 
Going back to the original post, I have about 20 records in both formats. There is no clear winner in terms of which technology sounds better. On older CDs, the transfers tend to sound worse than the LP. Newer stuff released in both formats is mostly audiophile material, and the CD or 24/96 download will usually have the edge due to quieter background, etc.

In the case of a few direct disk recordings, the LP is the winner because the LP was what the engineers and crew at the session were concentrating on. There was a tape deck running in the corner which nobody was watching closely, and CDs were made from those back-up tapes.

The older CDs will often perk up a bit if some of the stuff that was routinely done to master tapes to help out in vinyl cutting is undone, i.e. roll off the boosted top end and add a bit of low bass. LPs are limited in the extreme highs and can't tolerate stereo bass, so the producer generally boosted a couple dB at 10-12KHz, mixed bass to mono, boosted at 60-80Hz a couple of dB and rolled it off below 50Hz. If CDs were made from this same "master", they don't sound so hot. Or maybe they sound too hot. ;)

Modern recordings made on digital masters will sound closer to what the engineer and producer heard on a CD. Lest we forget; regardless how flat our DACs, cartridges, amps and speakers may be, the source material has been liberally seasoned with eq, compression, distortion, etc. in 99% of recordings. Any recording engineer will tell you that hearing an original session tape is ear-opening, but the commercial market demands cramming music into a form that can compete in the MP3 / car radio / boom box world.
 
I hope this should not be a new thread…

So both formats have excellent and poor material, and both formats have pluses and minuses.
Do others feel there is equal imaging and soundstage between the two formats?
As noted above, it is difficult to have truly the same material in both formats.
Phono cartridges do not have even half the channel separation of the CD format. Much of my vinyl seems to create a narrower sound stage, even though I may like other aspects of the vinyl better.
So even though we can measure channel separation, and given all the different source material, in general do the best phono systems equal the imaging and soundstage width of the CD?
 
diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
Hi,

The problem is, you're not comparing like with like. The mix, processing, and often source tape for each are generally different. Just curious, do you think you hear an advantage to vinyl when listening to recordings that had any digital handling in the signal chain?

I personally enjoy both vinyl and CD; I suspect a well-made CD is truer to the master than any vinyl playback, but so much of the music I love has not made the transition to digits very well. And not all masters are terrific, either.

Well put.
Recording is where it all starts and goes wrong.....

Cheers, ;)


P.S. Society is organic......
 
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