The Vinyl nail in CD's coffin?

Some light reading...

 

Snoo,
Another strong case towards the superiority of vinyl. I am not surprised to read that the musicians themselves, you know the people who are PLAYING the music and not audiophileslistening to the music have this opinion.
We could argue all day long which format is most desireable, nice to have the band chirp in.
Nice find, this should stir it up a bit.


rollo

 

Yeah it's a fun read. I think the idea of selling vinyl with a coupon for an MP3 is a good one. The main drive for digital music is laziness and convenience. I think that adds a nice tie up with the classic feel of owning a tune with artwork and what not.. Though vinyl is pretty much a format that rides on trends. It can tread water better than other formats just down to the fact it's a little bit special. It's never going to be a huge format again, and will probably just be rolled out as a fad to make people a few extra bob everytime the cycle comes around. But since turntables are by far the coolest bit of Hi-Fi kit around, that's fine by me.

 

Yeah but the main reason for this is that CDs are often mastered differently to sound loud, whereas vinyl is usually mastered properly. If they mastered CDs properly there wouldnt be this situation.

 

I disagree actually. That bug bear is more in these circles than the mass music buying public. I can't really see DVD-A and SACD catching on in wild numbers with the current iPod generation. It may have helped CD back when it was first released and saved it from such a sledging. But these days the emphasis has shifted slightly.

 

No I really think it's down to the mastering. The reason SACD didn't take off is it really doesn't sound much better than CD if the CD is mastered properly, espesially on high end players - you really don't notice the difference.

 

One other reason, To get the best you need a lot more hardware. 5 speakers at least. It is expensive, cumbersome and quite frankly modern UK houses cant cope well with requirement.

 

top post
more care is taken when mastering vinyl -compare the CD and LP of RHCPs Arcadia Fire for the proof

 

SACD and DVD-A didn't catch on for two main reasons:
1. To the vast majority of people they brought no advantages in sound quality.
2. They came out at a time when the idea of digital music distributed via a physical disk was on it's way to becoming obsolete because of advances in broadband speeds and hard disk sizes.

Point 2 is also why CD is on it's way out. It only really made sense when transmitting 700Mb of data by other means was unfeasable. These days what's the point?

That's possibly why vinyl is making a comeback. If people want to have their music in a 'tangible' form then vinyl is the obvious choice. Issues like robustness and portability don't come into it, you have MP3s for that.

Despite what many audiophiles might like to think I really doubt that sound quality or the quality of the mastering come into it. Ask Joe Public about the "loudness war" in CDs or quality of mastering and they wouldn't know what you were on about.

Michael.

 

It's a nice idea to think that more care is taken when mastering vinyl but the truth is that it's got nothing to do with caring, it's becuase you simply cannot make vinyl "clip" like you can CD.

Michael.

 

Which is exactly why Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are doomed to failure. With the rise of HD on-demand services in most of the developed world, and the rise of streaming internet tv (lower quality, but like mp3s, people don't care - good enough), no one (to within 0.1% error) will want the faff of a physical format.

 

Interesting, but as a nearly 100% classical listener, I'd never return to vinyl. With CD, I get at least equal sound quality, no clicks and pops, more convenience and easier storage. The only reason I have any vinyl is that I'm so ancient that I precede CD and I still have all my records from that time. I keep them largely out of misplaced feelings of nostalgia. Had I started collecting after the arrival of CD, I'd never have touched vinyl with the proverbial sterilised bargepole.

 

Good post but its hardly new...

people have been banging on for years that lps sound better ...
and some people still don't get it.

That said I swapped to cd for convenience and sacrificed the extra dynamics etc of the black disc.

 

With reference to what Tones said, I too listen mainly to classical music, and think cd is an improvement. I would have to admit though that it has been some time since I last had a working TT. I do remember that the amount of surface noise on an averagely used record always used to seem intrusive to me on really quiet passages in orchestral music, and pretty well the whole time in chamber music. This is quite apart from the fact that many symphonic movements, let alone pieces, exceed the length of an LP side.
The point which I would wish to throw in to the ring is that I often read Gramophone and BBC music magazine and regularly use the Penguin Guide to compact discs to check out which version of a particular work is recommended. I also listen to CD review on Saturday mornings on R3.The reviews frequently refer to the improvement shown in CD reissues over the old vinyl version particularly as regards detail.
I have only very occasionally seen any comments that a Cd release version is inferior to the old vinyl (usually saying it is a bit bright).
These reviewers are absolutely passionate and very knowledgeable about music. They clearly consider sound quality to be important as it is frequently referred to in the reviews (comparing one version with another and comparing SACD with Cd or even comparing a reissued Cd with the original issue). They are also frequently mind-bendingly pedantic and trenchant in their views about the relative merits of recordings. Although opinions vary, it is noticeable that they frequently (probably usually) mention in reviews of new cds that they are not as good as the performances recorded in "the golden age" (roughly mid 50s to late 70s).
I have *never* heard it said that they regard CDs as inferior to vinyl (although I might have missed it), even though they frequently express the view that other aspects of the recording industry are not as good as they were in the old days.
In short it is surprising to me that it should have escaped the classical music reviewing industry as a whole that vinyl is vastly superior to CD, if indeed this is the case.

I am not really touting this about as a knock down argument, but it is something I find very difficult to explain away

 

Classical music CDs don't suffer from the "loudness war" butchering that rock/pop CDs do and classical music also benefits a lot from the increased dynamic range and duration of CD in ways that rock music generally doesn't.

 

I use all three formats and for me CD is the weak link. I love MP3 because its so easy and I love vinyl because it sounds so good. CD is really neither.

However I have an AAD Bee Gee's greatest hits CD from the mid 80's and have a ADD one from the early 2000's, the older one sounds far better as it has not been digitaly remastered. Listening to it it does sound rather like vinyl.

The only CD's I buy these days are the £5 sale ones, if I am paying full price I will buy it on vinyl without a doubt. Maybe from a collectors point of view vinyl just feels so much more special too.

 

Agreed (Michaelab). I am contempating putting a post on the BBC website to see if any of the classical reviewers express an opinion. I would like to stress that i am not suggestign that classical music is "better" or the only medium in which to assess a component: it's just that I am aware that there is a very serious body of classical crtics who deal with the software (ie cds) rather than the hardware (hi fi equipment) and who do carefully consider the quality of the recordings.
I have not got much recent experience of the rock/pop press, but i do not remember them being particularly concerned with sound quality issues back in the 80s.
On slightly more dodgy ground, I would have to say that I have a somewhat higher regard for the professional integrity and intellectual honesty of music reviewers than I do for that of the Hi Fi press.

The Bee gees example is interesting. One other possible explanation for the superiority of the first version is that the pop music industry has got worse at dealing with recording quality -especially recording level. Strange though it may sound they frequently deliberately record at a level which necessarily involves high levels of distortion.

 

I'd pretty much go along with this, that and the fact that SACD and DVD-A didn't get anywhere near the same push in terms that CD got from the record companies. There was no CD format war either, which eased CD's way into the mainstream.

Irrespective of the vinyl v CD quality debate. in the mid 80s it was pretty irrelevant to Joe Public. It wasn't until CD players and CDs became reasonably affordable that LP finally got kicked into touch sales wise. For the average listener CD played on a cheapish CD player had and has clear advantages over LPs played on a cheap turntable. Chiefly a lack of ticks and pops - so what if a better deck helps this fact - they didn't care to buy a better deck. This and remote control were the perceived benefits and the only ones that really mattered. LP was helped along its way to a minority pursuit by the frankly shoddy product a lot of record companies were pushing out on vinyl by the late 80s (quite possibly deliberately), and also the perception then of CD as a high tech life style choice.

Get to the now and DVD-A/SACD addresses no issues that the majority of people perceive CD to have but downloads for the many do, whichis why one of the most popular music sources is iPod/MP3 player - a format incapable of taking advantage of any possible benefit the hi res formats could give.

In other words while CD addressed real issues a lot of customers perceived LP to have. Same with DVD Videos v VHS, real perceived benefits. The Hi Res formats address no real issues that most customers perceive CD to have. So why would anyone buy them?

For those people who want to own a physical thing, the vinyl is a much better proposition than a CD - they are undoubtedly nicer to own, especially if its coupled with a download as well, thus addressing all the customers needs, without needing to copy the vinyl.

The loudness war is a damnable thing, but the witterings of the audiophile few irrelevant to the market to a large extent. It was never really about sound quality, other than in the gross ticks and pops sense, not then and not now.

I like vinyl because I like records, don't mind the odd tick or pop, find it more listenable for long periods of time, actually like getting up every 15 to 20 minutes and am allergic to remote control. It can also sound pretty damned good . For me CD doesn't really have any advantage, but I recognise I'm very much in a minority and why. Its good to see that the minority seems to be growing though.

I wouldn't kid myself that its because vinyl is perceived to be better quality in any audiophile sense by the general public - if you read what people say if they state a preference for it sound wise its because its "warmer" - certainly no audiophile stuff about soundstaging or whatever - even if it is true . It is a "good thing" though, I think.

 

Adamea, I am ancient enough to remember the arrival of CD and who said what at the time. Herbert von Karajan famously said of CD that "all else is gaslight". OK, Herbie was known for his keenness for new toys, but the man was a musician's musician. Many other famous (classical) musicians at the time also praised the new format, and I don't think it was because their record companies told them to. And who said otherwise? The hi-fi manufacturers with vested interests in LPs and their lackeys in the hi-fi press. Ivor Tiefenbrun famously called Kiri te Kanawa a "cretin" for praising CD. (This was, of course, before the famous blind test, when it was shown that Ivor couldn't tell when something digital was put in the playback chain, at which point he shut up).

The major exception to the general hi-fi press anti-CD attitude was the classical-only "Gramophone", whose reviewers welcomed the new format. The then reviewers of "Gramophone", John Borwick, Geoffrey Horn et al, among the most learned, technologically knowledgeable and erudite of all, took to CD immediately. Moreover, the reviewers of "Gramophone", all music scholars and performers, also liked the format.

I personally suspect that most of the anti-CD folk are unhappy because the "play/tweak factor" has been taken away. Somehow it seems, well, so much more hi-fi to go through the ritual of playing a record, rather than simply shoving a little silver disc in a drawer and pushing a button. I suspect that these positive warm feelings often translate into a better hearing experience. I'm sure that a very good LP setup can sound superior to a CD player, but in over 40 years of listening to music, I've never heard it. I like my LP12 and I like my Meridian 588 - both are splendid instruments, but as someone who thinks the equipment should play, rather than I, it's the Meridian that gets the lion's share of the use.

 

Hear Hear. May I take this opportunity to agree with you wholeheartedly?