Music Used To Sound Good, Then It Took An Arrow Through The Knee

The vinyl mastering will normally sound better, because in theory only people who care about the music will buy the vinyl.

If they ruined the CD, try the vinyl. Vinyl isn't 'purer', it's dirty and warm. 

The 'vinyl is a better experience' pretense rings true when it comes to enjoying or emmersing yourself in an album, just not where fidelity is concerned. 'Vinyl is an experience', is a more suitable and pretentious way of describing it. Wouldn't bother with modern recordings when it comes to needledrops/vinyl rips.

Worrying about what the evil producers may or may not have done is like planing what you'd do if you had a time machine. It's time wasted on thoughts that will never be of any consequence. 

There are paths that worrying about this sort of thing can you lead you down that get in the way. Like measuring the dynamic range of every release, checking for clipping and making forum posts accordingly. Just rip the CD with EAC/dBPowerAmp and be done with it. There are guides everywhere telling you how to do it properly (and thoroughly).

You'll be in for a lot of work if you want to track down the "best" version of a given album and can't hire someone else to do it for you.

As you've discovered, the most import factor in SQ is the recording and mixing, not the format.  A well mastered  track compressed to 128kbps with LAME will be much more pleasant to listen to than the same recording loudness warred to hell but put on an SACD, DVDA, or 24/192 FLAC download.

If you really wanted to you could ask around on music forums and find out if releases of an album on different formats or released at different times are different masters and which one is considered the best.  Then you'd have to track it down and rip it which gets a little harder formats like SACD and what not since they're uncommon.  I'm not sure where to start with those, but it shouldn't cost you any extra money once you've bought the disc.

Ripping vinyl can get expensive if you're building from scratch.  Besides the stuff you'd need to just to play records normally you'll probably want a nice 24 bit ADC with as much dynamic range as you can afford.  Even though you don't need the final product to be encoded at 24 bits you'll want plenty of headroom so you don't have to play the record twice to record it, once to find the peak level to calibrate the gain and the other to actually record it.  With enough headroom in the ADC you can set the gain well under any likely peaks, record in one pass, and still get a full 16 bits of dynamic range without any clipping.  That's more than most vinyl will have anyway but it lets you save a lot of time and the first play will be the cleanest too.

After recording you've still got to cut the single file up into separate tracks and get them tagged.  Some software can do the cutting automatically but it won't be much good unless its absolutely perfect because double cheeking its work probably won't take a whole lot longer than doing it all yourself.

In short, its ton of work.  I probably wouldn't bother except for your favorite albums.  I'd lose my mind if I tried to do that with all my music...

Speaking of saving time when ripping vinyl, couldn't you rip an LP at 45 rpm at a 96 kHz, correct the sampling rate for the 45 RPM speed you ripped at, and for the final stage downsample it to 44.1 kHz?  That'd stack up to be a whole lot of time saved if you're doing a whole lot of albums, although it'd be some work to set up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackbeardBen 

Speaking of saving time when ripping vinyl, couldn't you rip an LP at 45 rpm at a 96 kHz, correct the sampling rate for the 45 RPM speed you ripped at, and for the final stage downsample it to 44.1 kHz?  That'd stack up to be a whole lot of time saved if you're doing a whole lot of albums, although it'd be some work to set up.

Hmm...

That's a good idea.  You might have to some research to find a transparent algorithm to both resample and adjust the pitch since its probably not very common.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackbeardBen 

Speaking of saving time when ripping vinyl, couldn't you rip an LP at 45 rpm at a 96 kHz, correct the sampling rate for the 45 RPM speed you ripped at, and for the final stage downsample it to 44.1 kHz?  That'd stack up to be a whole lot of time saved if you're doing a whole lot of albums, although it'd be some work to set up.

Bad idea. The needle won't have the proper amount of time to track the information correctly.

A better option is to play a 45RPM at 33.3RPM and adjust the speed back up to 45RPM. When I have had to transfer horrendous vinyl, I usually play it at half speed when recording and fixing and sample it up back to its normal speed. The results are spectacular but there isn't really a fast way out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by maverickronin 

Hmm...

 

That's a good idea.  You might have to some research to find a transparent algorithm to both resample and adjust the pitch since its probably not very common.

What I was thinking that if you just redefine the sample rate to what it should be, you wouldn't have to adjust the pitch seperately at all.  So if you record at 96 kHz and 45 rpm for a 33 1/3 rpm LP, you keep all the data the same, just arbitrarily re-define the sampling rate to 96 kHz x (33+1/3)/45 = 71.111 kHz.  No re-sampling other than the final re-sample to 44.1 kHz.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFF 

Bad idea. The needle won't have the proper amount of time to track the information correctly.

 

A better option is to play a 45RPM at 33.3RPM and adjust the speed back up to 45RPM. When I have had to transfer horrendous vinyl, I usually play it at half speed when recording and fixing and sample it up back to its normal speed. The results are spectacular but there isn't really a fast way out.

 

So because of the physical limitations of the analog side you'd be increasing distortion then.  Not surprising, I guess, although with the high frequency handling of properly set up turntables and records I would not have thought that to be a limiting factor.  I suppose if the distortion above 20 kHz (even 16-17 kHz) is horrible, it wouldn't matter because we can't hear the difference.

I sympathise. My vinyl rig is much more immersive. It's totally kinesthetic. But holy crap, it cost tens of times more than my more recent digital set up. And if you think digital progress encourages endless tweaking.... 

I did try ripping my vinyl to digital before good quality rips were available and because I objected to paying the whole price of a CD for an album I'd already bought on vinyl. I'm like that. But you're right: it was a nightmare. Yes, the results were great - I happened to have a studio with particularly good 24/192 rack units - but it took forever. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that if you want it to sound like vinyl, put the darn record on the turntable and play it. If you want portability, digital rules ok. Accept that it sounds different, and put it in your pocket. Come on, it's better than a cassette walkman.

I do hate the brickwalled recordings these days; I know it was to sell singles on radio when sandwiched between brickwalled adverts, but the album doesn't have to sound like that. Do you find that modern vinyl releases are mastered differently to the CD version? 

But then listening habits have changed radically over the years, too. When I was falling in love with music we'd sit around in silence taking it all in, the only activity being the rolling of a 'cigarette'. I don't know anyone who literally sits and listens to music without doing something else now - it's just accompaniment, soundtrack. Maybe the changes reflect that?

Some good points, I'd just like to chime in some additional info..

- radio stations apply limiters to music anyway, so there is really no reason for a loudness war... I guess producers just believe they can brickwall a track better than a radio station can.

- at least to some extent, vinyl isnt as brickwalled due to its physical limitations. With this said, there is no rule in place that vinyl always sounds better, it just means that it might 
sound better than a brickwalled digital master of the same material. So if you find a digital recording that is terribly brickwalled, getting the vinyl might solve that, but then again it might not. Naturally, you still have to live with the limitations of vinyl.

- music is a lot easier to get these days, so I think people do in fact take it for granted and often listen to it with less attention. This is actually part of the reason for the loudness war - the louder something is, the more attention-grabbing it is. This is all just my guess though, as I have no data to back this claim up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by elektrikgypsy 

I sympathise. My vinyl rig is much more immersive. It's totally kinesthetic. But holy crap, it cost tens of times more than my more recent digital set up. And if you think digital progress encourages endless tweaking.... 

 

I did try ripping my vinyl to digital before good quality rips were available and because I objected to paying the whole price of a CD for an album I'd already bought on vinyl. I'm like that. But you're right: it was a nightmare. Yes, the results were great - I happened to have a studio with particularly good 24/192 rack units - but it took forever. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that if you want it to sound like vinyl, put the darn record on the turntable and play it. If you want portability, digital rules ok. Accept that it sounds different, and put it in your pocket. Come on, it's better than a cassette walkman.

 

I do hate the brickwalled recordings these days; I know it was to sell singles on radio when sandwiched between brickwalled adverts, but the album doesn't have to sound like that. Do you find that modern vinyl releases are mastered differently to the CD version? 

 

But then listening habits have changed radically over the years, too. When I was falling in love with music we'd sit around in silence taking it all in, the only activity being the rolling of a 'cigarette'. I don't know anyone who literally sits and listens to music without doing something else now - it's just accompaniment, soundtrack. Maybe the changes reflect that?

if you turn the average level down heavy dynamic range compression can have the opposite effect - allows for listening at background levels without attention grabbing dynamics, gives a more constant "masking" of environment noise

Just dropping in to give you props for the Skyrim reference.