Of course, Big Music wants to retain profits and maximize them.
I'd recommend buying used CDs while they are still plentiful and cheap.
I'm getting older (39) and have lost interest in most new popular music. Maybe I'm getting crusty, want the kids off my lawn and have an onion on my belt (which is a dated reference, too) but I'm not seeing much artistic merit in today's popular music.
So I'm shoring up a collection of music I like. I won't be at the mercy of a subscription service and I hope that classical and jazz will still release hi-rez physical recordings.
I'm getting older (39) and have lost interest in most new popular music. Maybe I'm getting crusty, want the kids off my lawn and have an onion on my belt (which is a dated reference, too) but I'm not seeing much artistic merit in today's popular music.
You bring up an interesting point. Historically the model has been that we buy records because we admire the skill of the musicians and/or we identify with the artistic content. That model has changed somewhat for some modern genres of pop music. Computer technology and cheap or cracked audio software, virtual instruments and samples means that just about any kid who wants to can create music products for virtually no outlay beyond the cost of a computer. Many consumers of some of these modern genres identify far more with the actual music creation process, while "artistic merit" of a musical performance is of a lower priority or even of no interest at all.
I don't think vinyl is superior to digital. Look at dynamic range. Vinyl, at best, gives you about 75dB. CDs are 96dB, SACD is 120dB, and the human ear can pick up 130dB. I also think vinyl is flawed because it cuts off the bottom end which has to be put back in with a phonostage, needles wear, LPs wear, and you also have to clean them. I always buy SACD when it has the recording I want. You don't find compression on the clasiscal and jazz discs - I was just spinning some Wes Montgomery on SACD and it sounded amazing.
That being said, vinyl sounds very good when done right. Plenty good for enjoying the recording.
Quoted to emphasize Uncle Erik's point. I used to be on a full vinyl setup, and would buy dozens of LPs a month across many genres. I'm fully digital now (though I occasionally pick up an LP if it's a single or album I really like).
What most important thing is how well the album was mastered for the specific medium. Some redbook CDs will sound better than vinyl and vice versa. Vinyl doesn't have a great dynamic range, which means that while you might get a detail, the loudness is inferior. This is not ideal for some genres. I'm not fond of rock/metal on vinyl. It's fine for electronica and some classical.
There are a lot of quality of life downsides to a vinyl setup:
- Pops/crackles are annoying.
- Every time you play a record, you permanently damage it ever so slightly, like a VHS tape. It adds up significantly over time, particularly noticeable by those with a golden ear.
- Vinyl is /heavy/. Every try picking up a crate with 50-100 records?
- Archiving (remembering) what you have is a inconvenience.
- You need to regularly clean the lint off your records, as any lint in the grooves will really physically tear the record up.
- Way more stuff comes out in digital than vinyl, and a lot of vinyl now are limited runs. Even if you find vinyl on eBay, Gemm, etc., it's probably used with audible wear and tear.
- You need to keep your listening area well-dusted and vacuumed regularly.
- Pain to port across different mediums.
- Vinyl does a lot better on speakers than headphones.
- A lot of older vinyl (particularly classical and jazz) sound terrible in the detailing category compared to digital, particularly gramophone releases (IMO, anyway. Older people will probably disagree).
- The hardware takes up a lot of physical space.
- To get the most out of the vinyl experience, you need to live in close proximity to record shops which have workers who know what they're talking about, a huge rotating stock of vinyl, and open listening stations (like Davis/Sacramento, Berkeley (Telegraph), and San Francisco (Haight) in California).
I'll probably go back to some degree of vinyl someday, but it doesn't fit my current living arrangement. You really need to listen to vinyl and see if you like it. I think digital has gotten to the point where vinyl doesn't make sense for 99% of people.
Anyway, the thing to remember is that it really depends on the specific album version. Some vinyl will blow away a $14.95 CD release, but you'll run across just as many CDs that sound much better than the 12". I like the option when I'm dealing with a favorite artist, when there's an album which I know inside and out, but convenience usually wins out for 99%+ of cases.
Another thing is that I think the praise for 24/96 and 24/192 rips is silly. These rips sound nowhere near as good as putting a 12" down if you have a proper setup, and those rips actually really annoy me because I'm used to being able to tweak my setup in real-time to adjust the sound in a way I like. I rarely like listening to a recording on its own, and need to tweak to get it to sound nicer than the digital release. A functionally powerful mixer is really nice for this. 24/96 and 24/192 vinyl rips remind me of an MP3 dressing up in an analog suit and pretending that they're just as good. If you get a nice vinyl setup, you'll probably empathize with what I'm getting at.
Finally, hardware (including headphones) which sound good with a digital setup will not necessarily sound good with analog. You will likely need an entirely separate set of hardware, and a large area to keep it in.
Agreed. I'm not as passionate about vinyl as I used to be. I can't bring myself to get rid of the deck and still enjoy it, but I don't eagerly wash records like I did.
Good records are getting harder to find in the wild or are increasingly expensive. I also dislike the explosion of "limited" editions and collector versions of vinyl. They'll want $50 for the 200g pressing while selling the SACD for $30 or a good CD for $20. I'll take digital.
Oddly, the one genre where vinyl still makes a lot of sense is country. I'm a big fan of classic country, which seems ignored by audiophiles and vinyl hipsters. Good. I can find great music, cheap, that often didn't make it to digital.
Well I still prefer my Vinyl system over my computer based system just about every time, for weekend listening... Granted My Turntable rig was set up and my phono pre-amp a (Chris Ivan, custom Tube unit) was built for the two cartridges I use for LP's, helps. Many know that your equipment that follows your source, even down to the phono cable makes all the difference in the world when you're playing vinyl...The sound of a good recorded and mastered vinyl Lp is hard to beat to my ears, but as Uncle Erik said the price of new vinyl or the remastered Lp's is steadily going up and up.....They'll milk that dry you wait and see... The record cleaning and getting up to change sides or Lp's hasn't bothered me enough to give it up, but when Bubu1 helped me put together a computer based system (iMac into a John Kenny Hi-Face followed by my modded Eastern Electric Dac) the high res. downloads from HD Tracks come pretty **** close to the vinyl sound..... Now then you factor in the outstanding sound plus the convenience's of being able to browse your files with your iPhone from the sweet spot sure makes the playing field shrink....... Maybe it's my age and the fact that I grew up holding and listening to the "vinyl records" and also the fact that my Lp collection has many titles that haven't be available on disc or downloads makes a huge difference to me also. I will say that a year ago before Tom, took me to the "dark side" of computer tunes, I never would have believed that I'd be really enjoying playing computer music through my main system... So see, you can teach an old dog new tricks! But for my serious listening sessions I'll take my LP's any day over anything digital.....
Of course, Big Music wants to retain profits and maximize them.
I'd recommend buying used CDs while they are still plentiful and cheap.
I'm getting older (39) and have lost interest in most new popular music. Maybe I'm getting crusty, want the kids off my lawn and have an onion on my belt (which is a dated reference, too) but I'm not seeing much artistic merit in today's popular music.
So I'm shoring up a collection of music I like. I won't be at the mercy of a subscription service and I hope that classical and jazz will still release hi-rez physical recordings.
I'm not even 20 and have no interest in most new popular music. It's not just you or your age UE.
I'm just now getting in to vinyl. Where I'm at vinyl is the clear winner. From a price point on the equipment alone, to get something that I feel completely blows my TT and preamp away, I know I'd be spending considerably more than I did on my vinyl setup. A decent SACD player is still highly expensive, and a modestly priced CDP usually has a weak DAC in my experience, leading to spending a minimum of another $100 for a new outboard DAC, and if the CDP was actually decent, the $100 DAC is probably not going to improve it that much.
The price of both CDs and LPs are a bit much. I don't want to spend $50 in a reissue LP, but I also don't want to spend $15 for a 5 track CD or $30 for a SACD. I honestly think that convenience is taking over in general, and the physical copy will end up being the purchase of the eccentric old man at some point because the whole internet download, digital copy convenience thing dumbing people down to the point of following whatever they are shown by somebody of some importance.
I'm not even 20 and have no interest in most new popular music. It's not just you or your age UE.
I'm just now getting in to vinyl. Where I'm at vinyl is the clear winner. From a price point on the equipment alone, to get something that I feel completely blows my TT and preamp away, I know I'd be spending considerably more than I did on my vinyl setup. A decent SACD player is still highly expensive, and a modestly priced CDP usually has a weak DAC in my experience, leading to spending a minimum of another $100 for a new outboard DAC, and if the CDP was actually decent, the $100 DAC is probably not going to improve it that much.
The price of both CDs and LPs are a bit much. I don't want to spend $50 in a reissue LP, but I also don't want to spend $15 for a 5 track CD or $30 for a SACD. I honestly think that convenience is taking over in general, and the physical copy will end up being the purchase of the eccentric old man at some point because the whole internet download, digital copy convenience thing dumbing people down to the point of following whatever they are shown by somebody of some importance.
CDs when they were introduced were given the description " Perfect Sound Forever ". They didn't have many of the issues records did. If you don't store your records correctly they warp and it is very hard to get them back, they are never the same. You also had a song skip on cheep turntables and if it was bad even an expensive one, where the needle would never go farther than being locked into a single groove until someone moved the needle along to a farther groove in the record.
If you had a cheep turntable in 1989 then even on a mid/fi system CDs had a clear and bright sound. You had no surface noise and the noise floor stayed dead quiet always. You have to remember most turntables were not as good as they are now. There was great turntables but they were really expensive. The main goal of consumerism is that things improve with technology and this went along too with the music that was popular and the overall sound of the era. You had reverbed horns coming from side to side and Yamaha DX7 sweeps which sounded new and good off a CD.
Huge audiophile groups are still doing head spins wondering how they fell heads over heals in love with digital. Absolute Sound is still wondering why and how vinyl has made a come back and so many folks are putting down digital. They write things which almost make it look like the audiophile community was completely brain washed about CDs. This would not be the first time the human race has had a slanted view of reality.
As a lover of vinyl the sheer amount of 20 years of record collecting can be bewildering when it is time to move. 65 boxs of records at 60lbs a box is typical of the total volume of a normal collection. It does seem like a big difference but 3000 CDs don't nearly cause so much trouble.
A turntable has to be level, a turntable has to be away from bass tones feeding back. The records find themselves in a very hard to find order where the names are small and sometimes worn off. They are sometimes pushed back and lost in between two records. Even after finding one the record then needs to be cleaned, dusted off, some people use a device to rid the static off.
They are placed on the turntable correct if you even found the right side as double albums have eight sides and the writing is hard to read in listening light. You then have to screw the record clamp down and get the needle at the perfect edge.
Any dropping of the needle can cause a permanent scratch to the record. After all this work the side is only going to play for 15 minutes so don't get to comfy. Still with all this work the vinyl experience gets the music individual very close to the emotion of the music. There is a natural tone that people who are really into vinyl really start to hear and understand. There is a way to learn to listen where even the placement of instruments starts to feel correct. A really good turntable will have less ground hum. All turntables have an amount of ground hum. The other amazing thing is many are amazed how clear a good turntable makes the music as the needle now tracks and falls deep down into the groove which cuts down on the playback of surface noise and somehow much of the pops go away because the music is coming from down in the groove. The pops may be at the top of the groove near the surface.
There is also a connection which takes place when you can play an original LP from 1969 and know that it sounds exactly like it sounded the day it came out. I have become almost completely mezmerised by playing my original copy of It's a Beautiful Day's White Bird on San Francisco Records.The Beatles White Album original numbered pressing and hearing the warmth of the vocals and the human character of the vocals. This music has given me an experience I have never been given by the clinical effect of digital.
So it's these end experiences which change the quality of peoples lives and give them a lifestyle which they feel is amazingly special. It's the inner connection with the music and the stir of the heart that makes a place in vinyl which is very hard to comeback from. The day HIRez can give us this connection is the day that they will gladly come over as it must be easer to work with and more time saving.
There is also a connection which takes place when you can play an original LP from 1969 and know that it sounds exactly like it sounded the day it came out. I have become almost completely mesmerized by playing my original copy of It's a Beautiful Day's White Bird on San Francisco Records.The Beatles White Album original numbered pressing and hearing the warmth of the vocals and the human character of the vocals. This music has given me an experience I have never been given by the clinical effect of digital.
So it's these end experiences which change the quality of peoples lives and give them a lifestyle which they feel is amazingly special. It's the inner connection with the music and the stir of the heart that makes a place in vinyl which is very hard to comeback from. The day HIRez can give us this connection is the day that they will gladly come over as it must be easier to work with and more time saving.
OH So True Redcarmoose I just wonder if some of these younger guys or even the "Vinyl's such a hassle" guys have really heard a really nice turntable, arm and cartridge rig, that are matched to each other to hear what many of us are lusting about????? By the way I love your example of the Beatles "White Album"........My wish would be that many digital listeners could experience the thrill that you and some of us are talking about......I had a good friend who helped me set up my computer music system say after listening to my vinyl rig say "This sounds so much more organic or it's like I'm in the audience".... That just about says it all!
I never had the luck of hearing any vinyl recordings on a good system but i find that most digital recordings are poorly mastered. HDtracks had some nice classical tracks that has different loudness levels at different parts of the song and is much more enjoyable to listen compared to some of the more common stuff today, where everything sounds the same. If I had the skills I'd go make some nicely mastered electronic recordings. Since vinyls are often made before all these loudness war crap started so I guess thats something that makes them superior
I suppose it is largely dependent on what you listen to. I agree with Uncle Eric that in my experience hi-res jazz/classical recordings tend to be mastered rather well, but when it comes to other genres I end up searching for older CDs simply to escape the awful "remastered" versions that replace them - sometimes they don't have much dynamic range to start with, but after "remastering"...
never had the luck of hearing any vinyl recordings on a good system but i find that most digital recordings are poorly mastered. HDtracks had some nice classical tracks that has different loudness levels at different parts of the song and is much more enjoyable to listen compared to some of the more common stuff today, where everything sounds the same. If I had the skills I'd go make some nicely mastered electronic recordings. Since vinyls are often made before all these loudness war crap started so I guess thats something that makes them superior
The loudness wars started well before CDs were available. It has been on going for over 30 years. Modern computer power and more evolved software allows contemporary digital compressors to apply way more compression than was even dreamed with old analogue compressors. If digital audio had never been invented then far more money would have been ploughed into the development of analogue compressors over the last 20 years and my guess is that the loudness war would still be in exactly the same place it is today.
Not quite sure why you'd want to base a whole post around a mis-quote! What I actually said was: "Obviously the implementation of digital audio was considerably less accurate than it is today but nevertheless a large part of the reason for early CD harshness and what some call “digitis” was not due to the CD format or in fact digital audio at all!
I was not in any way blaming it on the the CD format itself. I was only pointing out that most of the early players & possibly some of the early ADC's were not very good at all & was equally responsable for the poor sound early CD's as poor mastering. I did not discount that poor mastering had anything to do with that at all but much of what I heard on early players was as much or more the fault of the playrers themselves.Many of these same CD's sounded much improved the later players with improved DAC's and analog sections.Poor implementation at any level in the chain contributed to the digititus us early adopters heard of which I was one, that includes poor mastering & recording practices that inspite of early CD players poor performance could still reveal in some cases.
Also much of what is called digititus cannot be caused by poor recording or mastering unless poor ADC's were used or the use of digital mixers that did not have floating point volume controls were used then they decide to reboost the volume level of some of the tracks after the file had been saved in an altered state assuming that would be the final mix causing a loss of bits to that track or tracks. Some even amature mixer programs now can save track volume information in floating point format for later remixing without bit loss.
The high frequency boost of a LP master is plain & obvious to hear & I do not count that as digitius but poor mastering on the part of those making the CD master. A perfect example of that that I have is Supertramps Breakfast in America CD. This recording is searing hot high frequencies. The early CD sound that I was calling digititus was not hot sounding at all in most cases just oddly mechanical sounding in some players & lifeless sounding in others. This depended of where the distortions were coming from, poor linearity (mechanical sounding) or lifeless (poor analog filtering section).
...digital mixers that did not have floating point volume controls were used then they decide to reboost the volume level of some of the tracks after the file had been saved in an altered state assuming that would be the final mix causing a loss of bits to that track or tracks. Some even amature mixer programs now can save track volume information in floating point format for later remixing without bit loss.
Thanks Germanium, I think in general we are singing from the same hymn sheet.
I'd like to correct a slight misconception in the paragraph I've quoted above, even though it's OT (sorry). Don't be mislead into thinking that 32bit float is superior to 24bit fixed point. In actual fact, they are both pretty much identical. Remember, of the 32 bits in a floating point "word" 7 of those bits are reserved for the mantissa, so the actual accuracy of the data stored in a 32bit float word is more or less identical to that of a 24bit integer word. Also consider that in a commercial release, maximum dynamic range is less than 65dB or in digital resolution terms 10bits (say for a symphony orchestra recording, which is the most dynamic music genre) and it is not uncommon in some genres for the dynamic range to be no more than 18dB or 3bits of resolution. In the example of the most extreme symphony recording, this means that at 24bit word length at least 14bits contain nothing but noise. Loosing a few bits is therefore irrelevant, it's even irrelevant loosing a few bits from a 16bit recording. In short, the only advantage of 32bit is in the work-flow when mixing in the studio, there are no resolution advantages, although there are in fact some disadvantages to 32bit float (compared to fixed point) when it comes to word length reduction for distribution.
Thanks Germanium, I think in general we are singing from the same hymn sheet.
I'd like to correct a slight misconception in the paragraph I've quoted above, even though it's OT (sorry). Don't be mislead into thinking that 32bit float is superior to 24bit fixed point. In actual fact, they are both pretty much identical. Remember, of the 32 bits in a floating point "word" 7 of those bits are reserved for the mantissa, so the actual accuracy of the data stored in a 32bit float word is more or less identical to that of a 24bit integer word. Also consider that in a commercial release, maximum dynamic range is less than 65dB or in digital resolution terms 10bits (say for a symphony orchestra recording, which is the most dynamic music genre) and it is not uncommon in some genres for the dynamic range to be no more than 18dB or 3bits of resolution. In the example of the most extreme symphony recording, this means that at 24bit word length at least 14bits contain nothing but noise. Loosing a few bits is therefore irrelevant, it's even irrelevant loosing a few bits from a 16bit recording. In short, the only advantage of 32bit is in the work-flow when mixing in the studio, there are no resolution advantages, although there are in fact some disadvantages to 32bit float (compared to fixed point) when it comes to word length reduction for distribution.
I never suggested that floating point was of any use in any other place than a studio setting whether it be a massive corperate studio or home studio. It is of no use to the consummer. However it is usefull in the studio for the purpose I mentioned as everyone knows mistakes do happen & the ability to recover from them is priceless & floating point does offer that to a degree that 24 bit integer doesn't.
Agreed that most of it is noise but there is musical cues that can be recovered out of the noise as humans can hear into the noise by as much as 20db which is why dither was developed. It was developed in order to encode sound below the theretical noise floor of CD but does add noise to make this possible. Without dither Digital goes deaf below -90db, This causes audible distortion products that are plainly audible in passages that are as high as -60db in level& subtly hearable at even higher levels on older DAC's, newer ones fare better as in some cases this distortion may not be clearly audible until you get to -80db as you go down in level . Adding dither noise at the -78db level allows them to encode audible sound to the -115db level if the dither is properly noise shaped so that most of the noise occures at the limits of human hearing. Even non noise shaped dither would allow encoding of hearable resolution to 104 db if dither is encoded at the -84db level. Noise shaped dither would however drive some people nuts though if they have really good hearing in the ultrasound reagon like some autistic people do.
Note that noise shaped dither should never be used except in the final release to the consummer as it can cause too many problems otherwise. Non noise shaped dither can be used at other stages though preferentially high bit depths should be used until finall mastering then dithered down to 16 bit to avoid additive noise problems.
By the way some mixer programs offer 64 bit floating point even at the semi pro level.
Agreed that all this really means nothing to a song that is compressed & limited to the hilt with some Ive seen with seemingle less than 10db dynamic range. I was outragiously appalled at the DVD audio release of Rush's Snakes & Arrows DVD-A disk as it was squashed all to hell in a hand basket so to speak It seemed like less than 10db dynamics though I may be exagerating to a very very slight degree. much to thier credit though it seems they did it without creating massive clipping type distortion unlike many such releases. Even so to me it is worthless to release such music on a high resolution format then not make use of any of it. Rush has a past of releasing very high grade music with resonably high dynamics for the genre music the play so this was a huge huge disapointment
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