Does Rock Music Sound Better On Vinyl?

OutlawPete

Only a few hours left of The Classic Rock Forum, so ...

Just one more question to be asked:

Does Rock Music Sound Better On Vinyl? or are CDs better?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmiHgxipykI

egan007

These are all in wav

Paul McCartney was asked once if he preferred the original vinyl recordings of the Beetles or the new 'digitally remastered'. He said that when they recorded it in a very expensive studio the sound was perfect so that's the way he prefers to listen to it - thought that was a very good point.

I think what's more important then the media is the quality of the playback device and speakers.

Mushy

From recent experience of Them CrookedVultures...yes, yes it does. Feel the bass!

MaybeLogic

Gramaphone is where it's at.
Vinyl is best though,has a tangible feel to the sound.

OutlawPete

egan007 wrote: »

These are all in wav

These vids are just to listen to as you ponder the thread and also so that the kids can see what Vinyl looks like

AnonoBoy

Personally I'm all about the phonautograph myself.

Beasty

Vinyl is better, but only if you have decent turntable and amp.

Tom-eg

Vinyl has a very good bass response compared to cd's so provided that you have a good system set up and every link in the chain is strong, vinyl will sound better.

By the way them videos are not in .wav format. Everything on the internet is compressed. Mp3's are compressed as well. I can't understand why mp3's are so popular. There is, on average, about a tenth of the data in an mp3 file compared to if it was uncompressed. They are clever and they do trick the ear so that it percieves good quality but they just don't cut it for me. There is too much left out of mp3's for me to enjoy them.

I don't use vinyl but i do enjoy good quality. I have a nice set up with my computer. I use .flac files for music (full quality files) and i have a nice soundcard and high quality monitors. Whatever about vinyl you can still get great sound. I'd stay away from mp3's if you're looking for good quality though. Stick with cd's or rip them as .flac files (you may need a special media player to play them). Vinyl is great but you can still get good quality music other ways. Just stay away from mp3's :P

Run_to_da_hills

Beasty wrote: »

Vinyl is better, but only if you have decent turntable and amp.

Technics 1210's MK2's all the way.

Magic Eight Ball

At least with vinyl you feel like your getting something for your money. CD's are poxy & besides, analog just sounds better.

topper75

Analog v digital - it's like the Mona Lisa versus a digital photo of the Mona Lisa. Vinyl is worth it.

Don't sample (or worse - compress) my waves!

mike65

Vinyl always sounds better, the problem apart from the quality of the gear is the thickness of the pressing. Anyone who stayed loyal to LPs will know how from the late 80s/early 90s the vinyl got progressivly thinner as the albums were getting longer. A double whammy of badness robbing the music of the sonic depth and loudness.

I'm guessing that as LPs and singles are now a boutique product the quality is now actually much better.

Wazdakka

Beasty wrote: »

Vinyl is better, but only if you have decent turntable and amp.

So true..
I stuck together my old modular hifi system again a few weeks back and thought I'd get the turntable working on it.

I've got a fairly good quality amp and speakers but still..
:eek:
War of the worlds blows me away every time.
It sounds wayyyy better on vinyl.

bnt

None of the above. Record an album through valve processors and an old Neve console to multitrack tape, mix it to stereo 1/2 inch tape at 30 inches/second, then send me the master, if you don't mind? :cool:

biko

Grew up on vinyl but must say I prefer CDs, sound is crisp and none of the "extra" vinyl sounds at the start or the end.
Also, I can just wipe the CDs off after a party rather than trying to get all kinds of **** off with a rag from the vinyl.
Actually now it's all mp3s (I progress).

komodosp

I think it depends on the music... For mellow music like Pink Floyd or Mike Oldfield, I would prefer vynil, has a warmer feel to it... This feeling you would want to avoid, however, if you're listening to hard-hitting music like Guns N Roses or Sepultura or someone.

Problem with vynil is that it takes very little to ruin them... And you have to get up to change the side... And any bit of dancing at all (e.g. at a party) and the needle jumps.

Anyway, AFAIK, for any extra quality there might be in the vynil record over a CD, the human ear isn't capable of hearing it anyway... Dogs might prefer vynil. But for we humans, it's like complaining about the pixelisation of a digital photo over a film one, even though the pixels are way to small to see.

Run_to_da_hills

Use Serato Scratch Live. and have the best of both worlds.

Ciaran500

Mushy wrote: »

From recent experience of Them CrookedVultures...yes, yes it does. Feel the bass!

Alot of the times the mix on the vinyl is different to the CD mix so the vinyl might sound better just cause of that. Especially considering it was probably recorded digitally anyway.

Dravokivich

Got found memories of listening to the "Bat out of Hell" album on Vinyl as a kid...

adds a bit of character alright to it alright...

- Drav!

OutlawPete

Dravokivich wrote: »

Got found memories of listening to the "Bat out of Hell" album on Vinyl as a kid...

adds a bit of character alright to it alright...

- Drav!

Did you sit on the edge of your bed pretending to rev a motorbike??

Just me then

Dravokivich

OutlawPete wrote: »

Did you sit on the edge of your bed pretending to rev a motorbike??

Just me then

Who ever didn't should be shot on site man! :pac:

- Drav!

Herbal Deity

Tom-eg wrote: »

By the way them videos are not in .wav format. Everything on the internet is compressed. Mp3's are compressed as well. I can't understand why mp3's are so popular. There is, on average, about a tenth of the data in an mp3 file compared to if it was uncompressed. They are clever and they do trick the ear so that it percieves good quality but they just don't cut it for me. There is too much left out of mp3's for me to enjoy them.

Are you even aware that the word "mp3" tells you nothing about the quality of the file?

Are you also aware that the amount of data in a file tells you nothing about its quality either?

Ever heard of v0 VBR mp3s?

Too much effort to bother explaining...

The only use for FLAC these days is for archiving purposes.

Dravokivich

Herbal Deity wrote: »

Are you even aware that the word "mp3" tells you nothing about the quality of the file?

Are you also aware that the amount of data in a file tells you nothing about its quality either?

Ever heard of v0 VBR mp3s?

Too much effort to bother explaining...

The only use for FLAC these days is for archiving purposes.

Do you know about the Hz sample rates for CD's?

you can record harmonics of higher frequencies on Analogue / Vinyl that just gets chopped out on Digital / CD...

this can be proven by recording a dog whistle in both analogue and digital.

You won't get as effective playback on a CD.

And even though you don't really hear it Conciously.. you are aware of those high end harmonics... they do be missed

- Drav!

Ciaran500

Dravokivich wrote: »

And even though you don't really hear it Conciously.. you are aware of those high end harmonics... they do be missed

So you don't hear them, but you do really?

Herbal Deity

Dravokivich wrote: »

Do you know about the Hz sample rates for CD's?

you can record harmonics of higher frequencies on Analogue / Vinyl that just gets chopped out on Digital / CD...

this can be proven by recording a dog whistle in both analogue and digital.

You won't get as effective playback on a CD.

And even though you don't really hear it Conciously.. you are aware of those high end harmonics... they do be missed

- Drav!

But I wasn't talking about CD vs Vinyl...

Dravokivich

Herbal Deity wrote: »

But I wasn't talking about CD vs Vinyl...

But you are talking about MP3's which are ripped from CD's... you can't get higher resolution then the source...

- Drav!

Herbal Deity

FLACs are ripped from CDs too...

I was responding to someone who claimed that mp3s were never good quality.

re: vinyl, I'm undecided. I really think that a lot of the "higher quality" is a case of "Emperor's New Clothes". I've always liked listening to things on vinyl, but I reckon most people with vinyl players also happen to have very fine tuned sound systems which sound awesome, because that's what they're into. I don't think the fact that the medium is vinyl has much to do with it.

Executive Steve

Doesn't really matter much for rock music since most of it is just a whole heap of distorted mid-range and drums really... Anything with big heavy basslines and sparse percussion sounds much better on vinyl, it's no accident that any reggae sound system you see will be using records, nor that the dubstep community and the drum & bass community are still very much vinyl based, and that's before you even consider the more tactile level of control you get with a record based interface.

On the other hand, the number of venues you go to where the management spend enough time and money maintaining the record players and the signal paths to the speakers as well as they look after the (far less maintenance-intensive) CD turntables is shrinking by the day...

mambo

Ciaran500 wrote: »

Alot of the times the mix on the vinyl is different to the CD mix so the vinyl might sound better just cause of that. Especially considering it was probably recorded digitally anyway.

Indeed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war for example...

Patricide

When I was doing a sound engineering course they brought in one song on various different formats.

96kbps mp3, 320kbps mp3, A Cassette, A CD, and a 180 gram vinyl. The difference was shocking. The amount of bass and clarity the vinyl had over pretty much any of them was hugely noticeable.

For anyone who thinks that mp3's are just as good try that test and come back to me. Vinyl is the past, but also the future. Its making a pretty big comeback I think. The only problem is finding a decent player these days, I know you can get dj decks and a a power amp speaker combination but if theres any hope of a vinyl comeback there will have to be decent players readily available for the masses.

topper75

Patricide wrote: »

if theres any hope of a vinyl comeback there will have to be decent players readily available for the masses.

great point

It's not easy locating a good player in provincial Ireland these days.

One thing potentially holding back vinyl's resurgence is those nasty cheap plastic turntables. Forget about them - spend another 100 or 150 to get something like a Debut Project III.

Cloney's in Blackrock Dublin and Munster Sounds in Cork seem to be the only stockists in the south.

The Pontiac

It was only before Christmas that I hooked up a turntable to my amp. I was just testing it for someone else. The sound is definitely a lot warmer alright. I only had three records at my disposal so I can't really make a better comparison. My amp has a phono input so it's only a matter of getting myself a turntable. I'm still considering make the purchase but records are so bloody delicate that I'm not sure. Like it's easy enough to buy them secondhand on ebay, but any scratch at all and it will easily be heard though any half decent system. Most new releases can now be bought on vinyl but are fairly expensive at around €20 each.

There's just no comparison between cd v's mp3, especially if you've got a good dedicated cd player. MP3 players are only convenience items IMO, that should only be used going for a walk or a run. I've got thousands of songs on my laptop in MP3 format and I can easily hook it up to my amp but the sound is dreadful compared to cds. I only buy cds secondhand anyway for around €4 and they're usually like new and I like having the physical item and the artwork.

Music had taken a huge step backwards in how it's listened to nowadays. It's all about who's got the mp3 player with the biggest disk space etc. The 'getto blaster' or the 'mini hifi system' was bad enough with all your essential components crammed into one box, but the mp3 player is even worse. You'll never get a better sound than a proper seperates system. It's the way music should be listened to.

Patricide

<Ollie> wrote: »

It was only before Christmas that I hooked up a turntable to my amp. I was just testing it for someone else. The sound is definitely a lot warmer alright. I only had three records at my disposal so I can't really make a better comparison. My amp has a phono input so it's only a matter of getting myself a turntable. I'm still considering make the purchase but records are so bloody delicate that I'm not sure. Like it's easy enough to buy them secondhand on ebay, but any scratch at all and it will easily be heard though any half decent system. Most new releases can now be bought on vinyl but are fairly expensive at around €20 each.

There's just no comparison between cd v's mp3, especially if you've got a good dedicated cd player. MP3 players are only convenience items IMO, that should only be used going for a walk or a run. I've got thousands of songs on my laptop in MP3 format and I can easily hook it up to my amp but the sound is dreadful compared to cds. I only buy cds secondhand anyway for around €4 and they're usually like new and I like having the physical item and the artwork.

Music had taken a huge step backwards in how it's listened to nowadays. It's all about who's got the mp3 player with the biggest disk space etc. The 'getto blaster' or the 'mini hifi system' was bad enough with all your essential components crammed into one box, but the mp3 player is even worse. You'll never get a better sound than a proper seperates system. It's the way music should be listened to.

So true. Especially the part about mp3's being convenience items. Handy yes, the way forward...i should hope not! Maybe eventually therel be players big enough to keep all the files at wav so at least then it wouldnt be too bad. The only way it would be practical for stores like itunes however would be if internet speeds rose to match.

Mike 1972

The "vinyl is better" argument in relation to any music recorded after the mid 1980's is pretty laughable given that such music will almost certainely have been recorded digitally in the first place.

Of course its possible to get pretty impressive sound from vinyl if one spends hundreds/thousands on a system (and stores/plays all their vinyl in a cleanroom environment) but then again if one spend similar money on a CD based system it would probably sound pretty good too.

As for all those claims about being able to hear the alleged limitations of 16 bit sound and 44.1 KHz sampling rates the wierd thing is that several attempts have been made to bring out digital audio formats with higher bitrates and none of them ever caught on.

Capt'n Midnight

The difference is down to how they mess with the sound. They don't record the same on to CD's and Vinyl. When CD's first came out they tweaked the crap out of them to sound "better".


Have a read of this and then you will understand why old vinyl sounds better than it should
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

topper75

Mike 1972 wrote: »

The "vinyl is better" argument in relation to any music recorded after the mid 1980's is pretty laughable given that such music will almost certainely have been recorded digitally in the first place.

I have a vinyl fetish, but this is an important point that I must concede. Digital recording? then vinyl can't do it's thing.

Mike 1972 wrote: »

As for all those claims about being able to hear the alleged limitations of 16 bit sound and 44.1 KHz sampling rates the wierd thing is that several attempts have been made to bring out digital audio formats with higher bitrates and none of them ever caught on.

You are implying that a sampling at a higher rate than 44.1 doesn't produce noticably better sound and that the market history validates this. Incorrect clearly. The CD format was decided on at a critical time and that became the standard. The same money wasn't put into launching these higher bitrate formats you refer to.

Snowie

vynal is the best as far as freqencey range and stuff goe's.
casetts next.
cds
mp3s well you can tell when you listen to them

Pygmalion

Herbal Deity wrote: »

Are you even aware that the word "mp3" tells you nothing about the quality of the file?

It tells you that it's in a format which will discard a lot of the sound data to make it easier to compress well.
That tells me that it's lower quality (even if it may not be noticable to me, or even possible to tell due to quality of the speakers) than a format which will keep all of this information intact.

Are you also aware that the amount of data in a file tells you nothing about its quality either?

For what definition of "data"?
Are you just talking about filesize, because that's mostly irrelevant since every format I can think of (bar WAV, but that's why formats like FLAC exist) is compressed?

Or are you saying that a format which will cut off all sounds above a certain frequency and then make subtle changes to the rest of them (hopefully not noticably) is the same quality as one which keeps every single piece of information intact (assuming no errors when ripping/converting obviously).

If so then your definition of quality is not the same as mine.

Ever heard of v0 VBR mp3s?

Too much effort to bother explaining...

They're fairly high quality MP3s which still don't come close to a lossless format, that wasn't so hard to explain.

The only use for FLAC these days is for archiving purposes.

And if MP3 was good enough for archiving purposes they wouldn't be necessary, but it's not, clearly that says something about the quality of the file.

novarock

Mike 1972 wrote: »

The "vinyl is better" argument in relation to any music recorded after the mid 1980's is pretty laughable given that such music will almost certainely have been recorded digitally in the first place.

Of course its possible to get pretty impressive sound from vinyl if one spends hundreds/thousands on a system (and stores/plays all their vinyl in a cleanroom environment) but then again if one spend similar money on a CD based system it would probably sound pretty good too.

As for all those claims about being able to hear the alleged limitations of 16 bit sound and 44.1 KHz sampling rates the wierd thing is that several attempts have been made to bring out digital audio formats with higher bitrates and none of them ever caught on.

True a lot of modern music is recorded digitally, but at some point in the chain a majority of good quality recordings will have passed through Analog equipment to warm the sound. Most big studios run Analog mixing desks, and it really makes a difference to the sound. Unfortunately then it has to go through the Analog/digital conversion and be wrecked.

To me vinyl has always sounded better. Someone mentioned the war of the worlds earlier, one of my earliest memories of music. Its just not the same anymore.

Capt'n Midnight

oddly enough one thing that doesn't sound better is using a Laser instead of a Stylus to playback records

stylus removes dust and it's weight provides some inertia to dampen some very high frequencies , laser just amplifies noise and stuff

nialljf

It's the artfulness to vinyl also that is appealing. mp3 inhibits the experience of listening to great music - it's passive. Whereas spinning the vinyl record is part of the experience, you're going to actively listen to the music - the way it should be listened to (not relevant to 'Pop' music). Of course, the average mp3 file is in no way equal to vinyl/CD in terms of quality.

Herbal Deity

Pygmalion wrote: »

It tells you that it's in a format which will discard a lot of the sound data to make it easier to compress well.
That tells me that it's lower quality (even if it may not be noticable to me, or even possible to tell due to quality of the speakers) than a format which will keep all of this information intact.

If the difference is not noticeable then it's not lower quality.

MP3 discards information about generally inaudiable to the vast majority of people. If the bitrate is set too low, this can begin to affect audiable frequencies also, which isn't good, but with either a high enough CBR or VBR, mp3s are very good replications of their source.

Pygmalion wrote: »

For what definition of "data"?
Are you just talking about filesize, because that's mostly irrelevant since every format I can think of (bar WAV, but that's why formats like FLAC exist) is compressed?

Yeah, I meant filesize.

Pygmalion wrote: »

They're fairly high quality MP3s which still don't come close to a lossless format, that wasn't so hard to explain.

They're very high quality MP3s which come very close to lossless. The majority of music encoded in this format would generally be very difficult to tell apart from lossless formats.

Pygmalion wrote: »

And if MP3 was good enough for archiving purposes they wouldn't be necessary, but it's not, clearly that says something about the quality of the file.

Not really. You always need a lossless format for archiving. What if you wanted the song in another format? Converting from lossy codec to another lossy codec is a bad idea.

As I mentioned before, The Emperor's New Clothes story is very relevant to discussions about music quality.

Records in the 70s sound better than modern records because they put a lot more effort into the recording and didn't have volume levels too high which means no clipping like you hear on albums these days. It has feck all to do with the medium onto which they were recorded. There's a correlation between an era of good recording practice and the use of vinyl, and the more rushed, less attention to detail approach that correlated with the use of CDs.

Mike 1972

novarock wrote: »

True a lot of modern music is recorded digitally, but at some point in the chain a majority of good quality recordings will have passed through Analog equipment to warm the sound..

"Warm" = Distort

Of course you may be of the opinion that this distortion is actually a good thing. (If "good distortion" sounds like a strange concept bear in mind that tone/bass/treble/equaliser controls really just serve to distort sound as well, albeit in a manner that most listeners regard as beneficial) but at the end of the day such opinions can only ever be based on subjective judgment.

And while its not necessairly a bad thing to have a preference for artifically distorted music it is somewhat misleading to refer to the processes whereby such distortion occurs as "high fidelity"

topper75 wrote: »

You are implying that a sampling at a higher rate than 44.1 doesn't produce noticably better sound

No I didnt
However I do contend that the vast majority of people wouldnt have the sensory capability to discern any improvement. (Especially if they have listened to a lot of music at high volumes).

topper75 wrote: »

The same money wasn't put into launching these higher bitrate formats you refer to.

Odd though that they would spend money developing a format and then not market it ?

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

stylus removes dust

Or pushes it deeper into the groove ?

Herbal Deity wrote: »

Records in the 70s sound better than modern records because they put a lot more effort into the recording and didn't have volume levels too high which means no clipping like you hear on albums these days. It has feck all to do with the medium onto which they were recorded. There's a correlation between an era of good recording practice and the use of vinyl, and the more rushed, less attention to detail approach that correlated with the use of CDs.

True but ironic gven that CD's have (or should have) more dynamic range their introduction ought to have resulted in an improvment in recording practices given that any deficencies would have been (and are) more apparent.

Capt'n Midnight

Mike 1972 wrote: »

Or pushes it deeper into the groove ?

whatever , but unless there is a lot of dust it doesn't get converted to noise.

nlgbbbblth

mike65 wrote: »

Vinyl always sounds better, the problem apart from the quality of the gear is the thickness of the pressing. Anyone who stayed loyal to LPs will know how from the late 80s/early 90s the vinyl got progressivly thinner as the albums were getting longer. A double whammy of badness robbing the music of the sonic depth and loudness.

I'm guessing that as LPs and singles are now a boutique product the quality is now actually much better.

The 1989 - 1993 period represented the music industry's big push on CDs. LPs got short shrift. Some companies stopped doing vinyl returns which meant that shops would order less as they couldn't return unsold or damaged LPs. As Mike says, albums got louder so the quality suffered - check out any number of hip hop LPs from the period that suffer from too much music being packed into the grooves.

The solution would have been to release any album longer than 48 minutes as a double LP. This is the norm now but not back in those dark days of the early 1990s when the record companies did their utmost to kill off the format.

Thankfully they failed.

Vinyl sounds better in every case for me - I have been buying records practically every week for 29 years.
That said, I like CDs too. Never understood the hatred they got - that should be reserved for cassettes.

Original vinyl pressings are what I go for.
I am not a huge fan of vinyl reissues. I don't see any difference between a CD reissue or a vinyl reissue.

A lot of vinyl reissues sound pretty bad - take the Scott Walker LPs on Four Men With Beards. Going for 20 euro each. For an extra €5 - €10 you can find an original LP that sounds way better.

MP3s are convenient but are only tolerable at high encoding.
When I digitise LPs I rip them to 320kbps MP3s for upload and WAVs for burning CDRs.

OutlawPete

nlgbbbblth wrote: »

The 1989 - 1993 period represented the music industry's big push on CDs. LPs got short shrift. .

I remember being in school and an argument breaking out in the yard about whether or not you could damage one wth a hammer or not :rolleyes:

:pac:

Mike 1972

mike65 wrote: »

the problem apart from the quality of the gear is the thickness of the pressing. Anyone who stayed loyal to LPs will know how from the late 80s/early 90s the vinyl got progressivly thinner .

Actually the thinning of vinyl started in the early-mid seventies (around the time of the OPEC oil shocks)

Anyone with a vinyl collection spanning several decades will probably tell you that their records from the late 1950's/1960's/early 1970's are now in better condition (less wear/warping) then anything from the Eighties.

Later vinyl also seems to be more difficult to keep clean (static ???)