If Your Music Collection Could Only Be Vinyl or CD, Which Would You Choose?

[blue2blue]

Somehow I don't see myself surviving a societal collapse so extreme that I'll be reduced to spinning my records on a stick by hand and listening via a cactus needle attached to a paper cone. (I'll worry about where to get the paper for the cone after the collapse.)

 

If it gets to that point, I suspect I'll be more involved in trying to get proper strings for whatever surviving guitars I have... canned music is nice, one of the great pleasures of my life, no question... but first and foremost comes playing. (No matter how shabby I may be at it. Ultimately, it's between me and the guitar.)

[dboomer]

You know the typical commercial LP is 4 generations down from the 2tk master ( no matter if it is a digital or analog in form). and typically the lows below 50HZ are attenuated in the mastering process.

[MikeRivers]

Somehow I don't see myself surviving a societal collapse so extreme that I'll be reduced to spinning my records on a stick by hand and listening via a cactus needle attached to a paper cone.

 

I don't see either of us being in that position. I know the original question was about our personal collections, so to me, the media is irrelevant as long as I enjoy the music.

 

I CAN stand to listen to MP3s, and do all the time, though I don't collect them other than temporarily until I get around to listening to the radio programs that I record off the Internet that way.

 

My actual collection is made up of commercial phonograph records (33, 45 and 78 RPM), commercial CDs, home made CDs, reel and cassette tape, DAT (for which I presently don't have a working player), PCM-F1 on Beta video tape (for which I think I still have a working player), CD and "CD quality" PCM on DVD or hard drive.

 

However, it's nice to think that my collection will survive me for a few generations, that someone will be interested in at least parts of it. It would be nice for it to be playable after I'm gone.

 

And, no, I'm not going to transfer all of my tapes to vinyl.

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1216161

[Vito Corleone]

I haven't heard complaints of vinyl releases, particularly new releases (not previously released in a digital format) sounding like loudness-enhanced CDs.

 

 

 

It just depends. A lot of the brickwalling takes place in the mixing process, so while the LPs might be marginally better than the CDs, they are still often pretty bad.

 

Also, there are lot of complaints among the LP fans about the inconsistency of the pressings. A lot of the vinyl is noisy even though you're paying top dollar for "audiophile mastering" on "180 gram vinyl".

 

I've seen a lot of vinyl fans announce that they are jumping off the bandwagon because they don't feel they are getting their moneys worth out of the new vinyl products.

 

 

[Vito Corleone]

If he's getting a bigger kick out of listening to vinyl than from listening to CDs, it's because of the source material, not the playback system. He might be wowed further if he heard a really top dollar audiophile system, but he knows he could never afford it.

 

 

Some are "wowed" by the vinyl experience. They think its cool to listen to vinyl and, while there is nothing wrong with that, it's not really about either the music or the sound quality. Although some may transfer the experience and believe they are hearing a better sound.

 

I, too, like the tactile experience of playing records and the larger cover art. Some of that is nostalgic in my case, since I have so many great memories of that in my youth imbedded in my psyche. I suspect that, for newer fans, that that stuff will wear out for them though. And if they don't actually hear a better sound quality from the vinyl, they'll easily move on to other delivery systems.

[Ernest Buckley]

If you asked me this question 3 years ago, I would have said vinyl.

 

At that point, I was really tired of overly compressed CDs and starting to purchase vinyl. Then Super Storm Sandy hit and I lost just about everything. Thanks to years of burnings CDs to my hard drive, I still had the music but the CDs and vinyl were all gone. But there were a good 150 CDs I never burnt so those were lost and I wasn`t about to re-purchase them so I decided to no longer purchase CD or vinyl.

 

Every record I have purchased since November 2012 has been from iTunes. And I don`t plan on changing this strategy. So I`ve given up audio fidelity for convenience…

[Beck]

Vinyl... if I had to choose. There's just something about it... easy on the ears I suppose. No matter how much I crank it up it rocks without aural pain I get with CD. I have plenty CDs, some good, some not so good. I have many of the same albums on vinyl and CD. For the most part vinyl makes me happy. And I still have a cassette player in my car, and a CD player too. So I pretty much do what I always did... make cassette copies from vinyl for the car. Many CDs I have don't sound so bad. One example... I have Boston's debut album on an early CD and had it on vinyl years before that. Some of the early CD releases sounded pretty bad, but the Boston debut album sounds pretty damn good. Still... IMO the vinyl that I've had since high school sounds better. Same with Heart Little Queen and all my Beach boy vinyl albums... and you name it I've got it. I bought a new unopened Boston debut album a few years ago, and I finally broke down and opened it. Brand spanking new old stock. Talk about aural heaven! Way more than a feeling...

[blue2blue]

 

Well usually one or the other sounds better .

Some LPs sound better.

Some CDs sound better.

 

My choice would be the ones that sound better.

Wisdom.

[blue2blue]

You know the typical commercial LP is 4 generations down from the 2tk master ( no matter if it is a digital or analog in form). and typically the lows below 50HZ are attenuated in the mastering process.

AND a huge number of the vinyl records out there had their signals go through a 14 to 16 bit digital lookahead process on their way to the cutting head. That started in the early 70s and still dominates record cutting rooms. The alternative is extremely expensive mastering tape decks with at least 54" of extra tape path to give the proper amount of lookahead.

 

 

[EDIT: as Mike adds below, the lookahead signal is analog, coming from the repro head of the source tape deck, and the signal reaching the cutting head is the digitally delayed signal. I assumed that was obvious, but, of course, nothing is obvious to those unfamiliar with a given concept. And if I've learned one thing, it's that many people involved in recording have a strange resistance to following basic logic. ]

[blue2blue]

With regard to some folks' claim to be able to tell the difference between 'high rez' and CD, I suggest those who are convinced they can should volunteer for human perceptual testing, since, if they can, they would appear to be perceptual outliers of a decidedly rare nature.

 

http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=14195

 

The Emperor's New Sampling Rate

 

A certain contingent within audiophile community has been having a field day with laughable 'debunkings' of this study, concocting elaborate rationales as to why the experiment was 'compromised' -- but if one investigates those supposed debunkings, one finds they are the typical straw-grasping, hot-air blowing, nonsense-promoting pseudoscience so typical of top dollar snake oil merchants and desperate true believers.

[MikeRivers]

With regard to some folks' claim to be able to tell the difference between 'high rez' and CD' date=' I suggest those who are convinced they can should volunteer for human perceptual testing, since, if they can, they would appear to be perceptual outliers of a decidedly rare nature.[/quote']

 

The only proven reliable audio testing has been with actual trained listeners, not people who swear they can tell the difference between digital and analog processes. People who have learned to recognize specific characteristics can pick them out in program material more accurately than by chance. Untrained listeners sometimes get lucky, but can be fooled by certain material.

 

However, that some people can tell analog from digital processes doesn't mean that one is better than the other. And ultimately, what goes into the microphones and what goes into our ears is analog. Either way, there are lots of ways to screw it up.

 

Oh, and using a digital delay for cutting? The weren't your off the shelf guitar delay pedals, they were really, really expensive and really, really transparent. Actually, the look-ahead is analog. That's what the lathe computer uses to determine the groove spacing. After the cutter is positioned, then the digitally delayed audio comes along and wiggles the stylus.

 

 

[blue2blue]

 

The only proven reliable audio testing has been with actual trained listeners, not people who swear they can tell the difference between digital and analog processes. People who have learned to recognize specific characteristics can pick them out in program material more accurately than by chance. Untrained listeners sometimes get lucky, but can be fooled by certain material.

 

However, that some people can tell analog from digital processes doesn't mean that one is better than the other. And ultimately, what goes into the microphones and what goes into our ears is analog. Either way, there are lots of ways to screw it up.

 

Oh, and using a digital delay for cutting? The weren't your off the shelf guitar delay pedals, they were really, really expensive and really, really transparent. Actually, the look-ahead is analog. That's what the lathe computer uses to determine the groove spacing. After the cutter is positioned, then the digitally delayed audio comes along and wiggles the stylus.

 

Not sure where you're going with the first paragraph, but physiologists who study the limits of human perception tend to focus their efforts on random sample pools, not self-selected or supposedly expert listeners. But, of course, as part of any ABX testing regime, it's accepted practice to 'train' the listener briefly on how to proceed through testing, sometimes giving him/her specific aspects to pay attention and the like.

 

That said, with situationally/self-selected test populations like those involved with the Meyer-Moran study, where we are not probing average capabilities but, rather, the suitability of a given medium, using a population we suspect may have 'advanced abilities' isn't a deal-breaker, by any means.

 

I think it's often not that hard to differentiate the effects of analog storage media from digital, particularly as the quality level goes down. I'm less certain there are many who can tell live analog signal from high quality digital signal.

 

With regard to the cutter delays, we'd certainly LIKE to think they were state of the art. And, certainly, AD/DA in the 1970s was pretty strictly 'high end' by economic definition, if nothing else. There were no cheap, quality audio converters in the era. That said, we also know that, while Nyquist/Shannon remains essentially immutable (being mathematics), that implementations of newer technologies that only became possible with faster processing (like multi-bit oversampling) have greatly improved the implementation of digital audio.

[Beck]

With regard to some folks' claim to be able to tell the difference between 'high rez' and CD, I suggest those who are convinced they can should volunteer for human perceptual testing, since, if they can, they would appear to be perceptual outliers of a decidedly rare nature.

 

http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=14195

 

The Emperor's New Sampling Rate

 

A certain contingent within audiophile community has been having a field day with laughable 'debunkings' of this study, concocting elaborate rationales as to why the experiment was 'compromised' -- but if one investigates those supposed debunkings, one finds they are the typical straw-grasping, hot-air blowing, nonsense-promoting pseudoscience so typical of top dollar snake oil merchants and desperate true believers.

 

With all due respect Blue, we need to put Meyer and Moran to rest once and for all. I was the first that I know of to thoroughly debunk their "Experiment." Others picked up on it and now it's out there more qualified minds than mine realizing the fatal flaw that would have the Meyer and Moran study thrown out of any court in the land if someone's guilt or innocence depended on it. . Some of the info I shared here and some on another site.

 

In a nutshell I own the HHB CDR-850, the same model they claim is a 16/44.1 bottleneck. It is nothing of the sort. It's a CD burner and a very good one, but they made an assumption that the input is converted to 16/44.1 through the 1-bit Delta-Sigma ADC before it goes to the DAC. It is not.

 

I spoke with a tech at HHB to verify what I could clearly see myself in the schematics and after researching the ADCs and DACs. According to HHB there is no direct comparison between the 1-bit ADCs on the CDR-850 and what we think of as a true 16-bit ADC, but the person I spoke with explained that they are comparable to 20-bit and the sampling rate through the initial conversion stage is 48 kHz.

 

The signal is only converted to 16/44.1 if and when it is written to CDR. Otherwise the signal passes through the unit as basically 20/48. No writing to disc, no 16/44.1 Red Book/Orange Book standard as Meyer and Moran claim. The experiment was fatally flawed. It cannot be redeemed as it stands.

 

The experiment was silly to me anyway. So many other things not considered that we should all know better when doing "Listening tests." This is another of those audio issues that is best left to real life experience over time, not a group of eggheads sitting in front of monitors.

 

Ok, now where were we? Oh yes, what formats we prefer and we don't have to prove why. We just prefer what we prefer.

[MikeRivers]

Not sure where you're going with the first paragraph, but physiologists who study the limits of human perception tend to focus their efforts on random sample pools, not self-selected or supposedly expert listeners. But, of course, as part of any ABX testing regime, it's accepted practice to 'train' the listener briefly on how to proceed through testing, sometimes giving him/her specific aspects to pay attention and the like.

 

Where I'm going with that is that audio testing doesn't work the same way as other testing. It depends on aural memory and that's too short for results to be significant. Gross problems such as restricted bandwidth and distortion greater than about 10% (depending on the content of that distortion) can be fairly consistenly differentiated, but not the things that we can only describe with terms such as "warm," "smooth," or "more analog-sounding."

 

If llstening tests really worked, we wouldn't be arguing about the results so much.

[MikeRivers]

 

With regard to the cutter delays, we'd certainly LIKE to think they were state of the art. And, certainly, AD/DA in the 1970s was pretty strictly 'high end' by economic definition, if nothing else. There were no cheap, quality audio converters in the era. That said, we also know that, while Nyquist/Shannon remains essentially immutable (being mathematics), that implementations of newer technologies that only became possible with faster processing (like multi-bit oversampling) have greatly improved the implementation of digital audio.

 

Remember that "State of the art" is the state of the art at the time you're trying to achieve it. Sure, state of the art today is better than it was in 1970. Apparently the combination of tradeoffs when digital delay became an option for disk cutting was worth the investment in the new technology and produced better results.

 

"Better" may have been "sounds just as good but we didn't have to do it over as often." I really don't know. But apparently the majority of those in the business didn't believe that they were doing any harm, giving where the digitized audio was going. It may have even contributed to making improvements at the cutter end of the chain.

[blue2blue]

 

With all due respect Blue, we need to put Meyer and Moran to rest once and for all. I was the first that I know of to thoroughly debunk their "Experiment." Others picked up on it and now it's out there more qualified minds than mine realizing the fatal flaw that would have the Meyer and Moran study thrown out of any court in the land if someone's guilt or innocence depended on it. . Some of the info I shared here and some on another site.

 

In a nutshell I own the HHB CDR-850, the same model they claim is a 16/44.1 bottleneck. It is nothing of the sort. It's a CD burner and a very good one, but they made an assumption that the input is converted to 16/44.1 through the 1-bit Delta-Sigma ADC before it goes to the DAC. It is not.

 

I spoke with a tech at HHB to verify what I could clearly see myself in the schematics and after researching the ADCs and DACs. According to HHB there is no direct comparison between the 1-bit ADCs on the CDR-850 and what we think of as a true 16-bit ADC, but the person I spoke with explained that they are comparable to 20-bit and the sampling rate through the initial conversion stage is 48 kHz.

 

The signal is only converted to 16/44.1 if and when it is written to CDR. Otherwise the signal passes through the unit as basically 20/48. No writing to disc, no 16/44.1 Red Book/Orange Book standard as Meyer and Moran claim. The experiment was fatally flawed. It cannot be redeemed as it stands.

 

The experiment was silly to me anyway. So many other things not considered that we should all know better when doing "Listening tests." This is another of those audio issues that is best left to real life experience over time, not a group of eggheads sitting in front of monitors.

 

Ok, now where were we? Oh yes, what formats we prefer and we don't have to prove why. We just prefer what we prefer.

Has the AES withdrawn publication and repudiated the study?

 

If not, then it comes down to a matter of relative credibility, doesn't it? I'll go with the AES.

 

 

By the way, I'm thinking there must have been some article somewhere that pushed this back into the zeitgeist, as a very similar discussion has been raging elsewhere.

[Iamthesky]

I remember a discussion about CD vs. vinyl when the former had just come out. I forget the words exactly, but it was along the lines of "Play a CD and add a little pink noise and you can fool anyone into thinking it's vinyl."

 

That may not be strictly true, of course, but it seems that what many people like about the sound of vinyl can be ascribed to the imperfections.

 

That and you get used to what you hear as being the norm. Nowadays with the proliferation of cellphones as a music device, people expect their music to be overcompressed with a narrow spectrum, no bass, and scratchy treble. That's what they think of as how music should sound. If you're used to vinyl, you hear what's different about CD and at a subconscious level think it's automatically bad.

 

And every time someone tries to play me a youtube song on a phone, I point out that if I had a transistor radio in the 60s that sounded that bad, I'd throw it out and buy a new one.

[blue2blue]

 

Where I'm going with that is that audio testing doesn't work the same way as other testing. It depends on aural memory and that's too short for results to be significant. Gross problems such as restricted bandwidth and distortion greater than about 10% (depending on the content of that distortion) can be fairly consistenly differentiated, but not the things that we can only describe with terms such as "warm," "smooth," or "more analog-sounding."

 

If llstening tests really worked, we wouldn't be arguing about the results so much.

As folks keep saying, there is nothing about the basic premises of ABX testing that precludes very long, extended trial periods. You could have a sequence of week long A period followed by a week long B periods if you wanted.

 

Ultimately, the bottom line remains, if one can hear a difference between two sources, one should be able to differentiate between them reliably.

 

The scientists who study human perception have refined the methodologies of perceptual testing over the last century. We've seen some extension of those methods with the use of brain scan technologies, although there have certainly been notable missteps in that effort, as well. As it stands, ABX test remains one of the most important ways we have of testing thresholds of typical human perception. And no solid science has caused us to doubt the already generally established band limits of human hearing.

 

And, beyond that, we have objective test measurements, of course, which often reveal deviations from accurate signal far, far too small to ever be detected by humans. (Not sure why I'm pointing THIS out to a guy who undoubtedly has a workshop full of such test gear. )

[blue2blue]

 

Remember that "State of the art" is the state of the art at the time you're trying to achieve it. Sure, state of the art today is better than it was in 1970. Apparently the combination of tradeoffs when digital delay became an option for disk cutting was worth the investment in the new technology and produced better results.

 

"Better" may have been "sounds just as good but we didn't have to do it over as often." I really don't know. But apparently the majority of those in the business didn't believe that they were doing any harm, giving where the digitized audio was going. It may have even contributed to making improvements at the cutter end of the chain.

Agreed in general.

 

My point was only that many of those who exalt vinyl sound as 'all analog' are, in many cases, exalting a signal chain that went through a then-state-of-the-art but nonetheless 'primitive' (vis a vis modern, multibit oversampling) AD/DA process on the way to the cutting head. Which certainly seems to cloud their golden-ear claims of the superiority of 'all-analog' vinyl.

[blue2blue]

I remember a discussion about CD vs. vinyl when the former had just come out. I forget the words exactly, but it was along the lines of "Play a CD and add a little pink noise and you can fool anyone into thinking it's vinyl."

 

That may not be strictly true, of course, but it seems that what many people like about the sound of vinyl can be ascribed to the imperfections.

 

That and you get used to what you hear as being the norm. Nowadays with the proliferation of cellphones as a music device, people expect their music to be overcompressed with a narrow spectrum, no bass, and scratchy treble. That's what they think of as how music should sound. If you're used to vinyl, you hear what's different about CD and at a subconscious level think it's automatically bad.

 

And every time someone tries to play me a youtube song on a phone, I point out that if I had a transistor radio in the 60s that sounded that bad, I'd throw it out and buy a new one.

My phone sounds better than my beloved shirtpocket transistor radio did. Not by a huge amount but it's certainly capable of repro up maybe to around 8 kHz or so. And the bass, while barely worthy of the term (ok, not worthy) is nonetheless FAR better and better defined than my pocket radio was. Also, the intermodulation distortion in that thing was NASTY...

 

 

I think where these things (or at least the mobiles I've had) really start disappointing is when you hook them up to a decent amp/speakers. And that goes for laptop and desktop onboard computer sound, as well, in my experience. Taking 'converter' to refer to the full path from analog to digital and the reverse, I don't think there's much question that the ADC and DAC in (most of) our mobiles and computers leaves a great deal to be desired.

 

(There may well be outliers. I've heard people go on and on about how good a given device sounds -- and then heard someone else dismiss the sound of the same device, so, you know; I know my devices. But I've now had a few smartphones, a tablet, and a number of laptops and mobo-sound computers, so I have something of a feel for the sector.)

[Folder]

Nowadays with the proliferation of cellphones as a music device, people expect their music to be overcompressed with a narrow spectrum, no bass, and scratchy treble. That's what they think of as how music should sound. If you're used to vinyl, you hear what's different about CD and at a subconscious level think it's automatically bad.

 

 

Not all CDs sound "overcompressed with a narrow spectrum, no bass, and scratchy treble". And vinyl doesn't automatically sound better than CDs. If vinyl is made from an "overcompressed with a narrow spectrum, no bass, and scratchy treble" master then chances are that's what it will sound like.

[Vito Corleone]

I remember a discussion about CD vs. vinyl when the former had just come out. I forget the words exactly, but it was along the lines of "Play a CD and add a little pink noise and you can fool anyone into thinking it's vinyl."

 

 

 

That may not be strictly true, of course, but it seems that what many people like about the sound of vinyl can be ascribed to the imperfections.

 

 

 

That and you get used to what you hear as being the norm. Nowadays with the proliferation of cellphones as a music device, people expect their music to be overcompressed with a narrow spectrum, no bass, and scratchy treble. That's what they think of as how music should sound. If you're used to vinyl, you hear what's different about CD and at a subconscious level think it's automatically bad.

 

 

 

And every time someone tries to play me a youtube song on a phone, I point out that if I had a transistor radio in the 60s that sounded that bad, I'd throw it out and buy a new one.

 

 

 

I think you've forgotten just how bad those transistor radios sounded! Especially since audio was all they did.

 

 

 

I actually am usually pretty impressed with how much sound manages to come out of whatever-it-is that passes for a "speaker" on my phone.

[WRGKMC]

One of my favorite mediums for listening to music was Short Wave Radio. I had an Uncle give me an old tube receiver with the electric eye tube, a Bogen Mono block amp with all the RIAA setting for different turntables and a Duplex speaker with the horn in the center.

 

I'd run a long antenna and pick up transmissions from around the world. Just hearing all those exotic form of music through that speaker conjured up all kinds of imagination of what those places might be like. Then you'd get the fading in and out of the signal and you'd envision the clouds passing by and blocking the signal bounce.

 

Even hearing the radio broadcasts from another country's perspective was quite enlightening for a kid growing up during the 60's. You'd compare that to the news you'd hear locally and you'd hear what was left out, and what was similar. Main thing is you'd use your imagination. Even AM radio was cool late at night. You'd get all kinds of stuff on there you didn't hear during the day. Now its so programed and predictable you know someone is just keying in the song lists off a computer into a time slot and there isn't even a DJ in the studio half the time. Maybe some engineers nodding off but its not like it used to be. Radio ruled for many decades and today its just a tape loop without the tape.

[blue2blue]

One of my favorite mediums for listening to music was Short Wave Radio.

You are an iconoclast among iconoclasts. I salute you!

 

[philboking]

I gotta go with vinyl (for my 2nd choice) on this one. Mostly because my all-time favorite music is all in my vinyl collection.

 

My first choice would be humans playing instruments and singing.