CDs are in every way better than vinyl records. They are smaller, much higher quality audio, lower noise floor and don’t wear out by being played. The fact that CD sales are behind vinyl is a sign that the world has gone mad. The fact you can rip and stream your own CD media is fantastic because generally remasters are not good and streaming services typically only have remastered versions, not originals. You have no control on streaming services about what version of an album you’re served or whether it’ll still be there tomorrow. Not an issue with physical media.
The vast majority of people listen to music using equipment that produces audio of poor quality, especially those that stream using ear buds. It makes me very sad when people don’t care that what they’re listening to could sound so much better, especially if played through a hifi from a CD player, or using half decent (not beats) headphones.
There’s plenty of good sounding and well produced music out there, but it’s typically played back through the equivalent of two cans and some string. I’m not sure people remember how good good music can sound when played back through good kit.
Vinyl is the best at being vinyl, and if you value that CD’s don’t work for you. If you value CD’s for audio quality, you may as well just get the music digitally. There is no advantage to listening to a CD over the digital file that would be burned on said CD. If you’re into jewel cases/inserts/using CD players then you do you, some folks just enjoy that!
Vinyl is a multiple-step experience that some people value. It’s more visual, takes more time and care, and is overall just a more comprehensive hobby. For some people this is just work, so to them I say “don’t buy vinyl,” because it’s not for them.
Anyone who argues about “quality” and holds vinyl at the top is ignorant about file formats. But vinyl has a distinct sound and process that is unique to the medium. You can’t duplicate it, it has to be vinyl to experience it.
Want me to really piss everyone in this thread off? Any time I get a new record, I clean it thoroughly and then digitize it. I then cut it into “sides“ to host on my Plex server so I can listen to my records in my car/on the move in general.
If it’s a matter of ownership, CDs physically smaller and less fragile, but the digital bits seem to rot over time… does vinyl have a similar problem with longevity if stored properly?
CDs are better than vinyl in the same exact way reddit is better than lemmy: cheap, easier to manage, mainstream content. If you look for a sound that’s not strictly higher quality but that gives you a more authentic vibe, vinyl is the way
“Authentic vibe” is a coping mechanism to justify spending more for less.
Well maybe, I think it might be an acquired taste: all the little imperfections derived by the industrial technique in which a vinyl is made make it sound a little weirder but that’s the main reason you start to like it. Imperfection is something that might grow on you if yoh give it a chance
Post your system or stfu.
Native headphone jack on laptop. The power supply noise is just awful for everything, except it’s the native and approximate era-appropriate sound for late 1990’s low bitrate MP3 files.
My hifi is: Audiolab 6000A integrated amp Second hand NAD C541i CD player Wharfedale Pacific Evo 40 floor standers I’ve had 20 years
Connected to my PC I have a studio monitor setup, but that’s mostly as I run my guitar though it. Prior to that I had a second hand NAD C320 amp and Wharfedale 9.1 bookshelf speakers. All bought for about £165 and sounded fantastic.
that’s a little under two grand to listen to cds in one room for anyone playing along at home.
what version of The Well Tuned Piano do you think is best?
Too rich for you?
The CD part is just one component. Swap in a Wiim instead of the CD player for an excellent streaming setup. It also functions as the amp and speakers for the TV.
For something 20 years in the making it’s not bad and I bet better systems can be had for less. Certainly my first system cost almost nothing but still sounded fantastic. My recently departed second setup cost £165 all in and in many ways was just as good as my main system.
The point is not my exact setup, but that it is any kind of a hifi at all.
Nah, but it’s important that people understand the degree of brandy snifter shit we’re talking about. On some level price is a valid measurement.
So what’s your favorite well tuned piano?
I have optical out from my pc to my vanatoo speakers ❤️
Have you not heard of FLAC? You can get files at higher bit rates and sampling frequencies than CDs. That being said I much prefer vinyl collecting. No it doesn’t always sound the best but I feel more in touch with the album. No ability to skip tracks, having to flip it over or change disks is more engaging than just pressing play.
You can still choose your tracks on vinyl, it’s just more manual.
Look at the grooves, and in-between them there’d be thin almost ungrooved flat lines going into the centre: those are the track separators. Hover the tonearm above those and drop it in to play the track you want.
I used to do this with some records I wouldn’t have a big care about with preservation (compilations such as Now That’s What I Call Music!), since it would mean those tracks would have more wear than the record as a whole.
There’s also funfactor in having physical media and limited choice. A phone with an entire collection on it is just. . plain. standard. even boring. And the handicapped phone UI ruins the rest of the smartphone experience if you wanna do other things with the phone other than listen to music.
Modern CD players also read newer formats, unlike the old-stock CD players off of ebay from 30+ years ago that only read raw CDA tracks
Apologies in advance for a long, perhaps boring, old man story. Feel free to skip it if you’d like.
Somehow, I mostly bypassed the vinyl era—not on purpose, just by how timing worked out. My parents and older siblings had vinyl records, which I found fascinating and played whenever I could. We also had a few 8-track tapes, but like many, we quickly realized they were not great and stopped using them.
When I was old enough to buy my own music with my fast-food job earnings, cassette tapes were the go-to choice. I wanted to listen to music on my Sony Walkman or the cassette player in my hand-me-down car, so cassettes made the most sense. My friends and I would drive around, wasting gas but having a blast singing along to our favorite tunes and bonding over our shared love of music.
I ended up with about 25 or 30 cassette tapes. When CDs came out, they were a game-changer. They were superior in almost every way, so I replaced most of my tapes with CDs and expanded my collection to about 300 at its peak. I enjoyed my CDs for years, often playing them when we had friends over for dinner and drinks.
Then came the mp3 revolution. I painstakingly ripped my entire CD collection to mp3 format, which took ages, but I kept the CDs for a while, much to my wife’s annoyance, before donating them to a local charity.
These days, I sometimes find music on YouTube, but I’ve never let go of my personal mp3 library. I have multiple copies on SSDs for safety and occasionally add new tracks, though my taste in music is mostly set. I’m not very interested in new releases, not because they’re bad, but they’re just not to my taste. I might make an exception for a movie or game soundtrack or if a younger friend recommends something.
When vinyl made its big comeback, it seemed bizarre to me. I couldn’t understand the appeal of going backward. But as it persisted, I began to get it. With so much content digital and cloud-stored, it can feel ephemeral. Streaming services can disappear or change, leaving you with nothing. Owning a physical object with your favorite music makes sense; it’s something tangible, something truly yours. Though I stick with my mp3s, I understand the allure of vinyl now.
There’s also something to be said about the quirks and flaws of older technology. The grain of film, the pops of a record player, or the imperfections of an analog guitar amp become endearing over time. When a perfect digital replacement comes along, it can feel “cold” to those accustomed to the imperfections. There’s an entire industry dedicated to reintroducing those analog quirks into the digital realm, recreating that familiar, comforting imperfection.
I kept the CDs for a while, much to my wife’s annoyance, before donating them to a local charity
I took them out of the jewel cases and put them into a binder, 4 CDs per page. It hasn’t exactly been a burden to carry it around for the last 20 years.
I couldn’t tell you how old my oldest MP3s are, except to say that a significant portion of my music library consists of MP3s I made myself with the Fraunhofer DOS command line encoder, and the Cassady & Green SoundJam software for MacOS. Of course, SoundJam is the software that Apple purchased and re-badged it “iTunes”.
Right…I also have feelings on making music absurdly perfect when recording…I feel it becomes too sterile.
People who listen to vinyl enjoy the sounds of distortion and static. It’s a much “warmer” sound, they claim. They are buffoons. Lossless audio files are the best way to ensure a quality, clean audio source.
How about using both? I have a vinyl collection AND a FLAC one I play on my iPod classic. I still like buying and playing vinyl.
Amen
The Library of Congress prefers vinyl because CD’s don’t last as long (with proper care).
At best a CD will remain uncorrupted for 20-30 years. In a climate controlled space-station like environment, maybe 100 years, but unlikely. Then it’s gone.
I have many 30 year old CDs. They’re fine. They’ve just been kept in a typical home storage environment. I just ripped a Toad the Wet Sprocket CD I bought in 93.
You claim induced me to do a little tidying on my CD collection. I just copied the oldest data CD that I own: the Hugo & Nebula Anthology 1993. It copied & verified no problem.
Unfortunately, that’s probably the oldest proper test I can do. Although I was using CD-ROMs as early as 1986, e.g. in libraries, I didn’t own any music or data CDs until about 1990. I could re-rip some of those old music CDs, I suppose, but I’m not sure it would tell us much as I’m not sure how to do a bit-for-bit comparison and I certainly don’t want to listen to the files.
Same. I recently fucked up a server migration and lost my entire digital library, so I’m going through my CD collection and re-ripping them. Haven’t had a single problem, and many are over 20 years old.
Very good - the stamped ones should last longer. Most of my cd-roms from that era are showing some bit rot.
So I’m getting a bit fascinated by this question, because I can do practical tests – I’ve owned CD-Rs since the format was invented w/ the original Pinnacle SCSI CD writers circa 1994.
I don’t think I have any CD-Rs that old any more, but I definitely have many from that era. Just for the heck of it, I popped an azo CD-R in my drive that I wrote in 1998, and I happen to have a hard drive copy of these files that I’ve carried forward on hard disks since that time as well (the CD-R was a backup).
I think the files are still in perfect condition – was able to copy w/ verify all 360MB of MP3s (and yes, before you ask, I was making MP3s in 1998 using the Fraunhofer DOS command-line encoder), and compare them to my hard drive copies which show matching SHA512 hashes.
If I’m still around 25 years from now, I’ll try again :-)
On one hand, it’s not a question of “if”, right, it’s only a question of “when”. Same for hard drives. The failure rate is 100%, eventually.
With analog media, one of the trade-offs is so long as the physical media is maintained, the information will be maintained. (Such as it is - another trade off is analog isn’t bit-for-bit true-to-source.)
Storage mediums like crystal and DNA are fascinating for that reason as well. A “permanent” digital storage doesn’t exist afaik.
MP3 is lossy, WAV is not. And that “warmth” you get with vinyl is just because analog sounds fuzzy.
The Bowers & Wilkins PI7 in my ears says you’re wrong.
Hello there, most people
My library of tracks I personally encoded from lossless to v0 says you’re most people.
Yes and you can get all your calories and nutrients from a processed paste, that’s much more dense than regular food so you don’t need to eat as much and can fit into a small tube so is much more convenient than regular food.
The fact people prefer normal food to Hugh density nutrition paste is proof the world has gone mad.
I don’t think that’s a good example.
The answer is simple: there is no “correct” way to enjoy art. Anyone saying vinyl is higher quality than digital is deluding themselves, but that doesn’t make vinyl a worse way to listen to music.
It’s more convenient to beat a video game on easy, and yet, many people find greater satisfaction in playing harder difficulties. It depends on how you would rather spend your time.
The fact that CD sales are behind vinyl is a sign that the world has gone mad.
Not really. It’s a sign that Vinyl has turned into a symbol of support for the creative ideals of musicians and romance for a bygone era, while CDs, superior as they are (except in the case of records in good repair being played on high quality turntables), are “just” things that hold digital music. They sold in insane numbers because they were the standard format until streaming truly took over. Sure, Vinyl sales are up to 40 million or so in the US, but the bigger thing is that the 37 million CD sales are down from almost a billion in each of 1999 and 2000.
Vinils also have huge art that look good as decoration.
I like vinyls because they’re basically posters that I can listen to
This is why when I want to support an artist I purchase vinyl. I get better art than the CD and it looks better on a shelf than a CD. Vinyl isn’t about audio quality. It’s about collecting, supporting the artist, and the experience.
symbol of support for the creative ideals of musicians and romance for a bygone era
i think this is happening to CDs as we speak.
see: op
I see your point, but I don’t think you’re going to see quite the same reverence, precisely because it doesn’t have that visceral connection to the music and its creation that vinyl does. There has to be computing technology as an intermediary to get sound waves onto CDs, so at that point why not skip the middle man? Vinyl is also a more tactilely “old” technology, that’s still modern enough to have a practical setup around it. Think fountain pens or muscle cars with carburetors and no electronics. Then, there’s the fact that it’s deeply connected even to the terminology of the music industry. “Record,” “album,” “track,” even “single” all come from vinyl itself. The cultural cachet is unmatched.
People switched to CDs en masse because they were easier to live with than vinyl and a huge improvement over cassettes in every way (except height and width, LOL), but it was very transactional, so CDs were always apt to being replaced again if something even more convenient came along. Even in their heyday, there were people pining for the days of vinyl, and it’s the spiritual descendants of that crew that are keeping records alive. CDs will not disappear, and there will be a certain crew that appreciates all the things that made them a good mass market distribution medium, but I don’t think they’re going to inspire tastemakers the same way vinyl does.
I am getting old now, and I could be wrong, but it’s fun to predict. :-)
As a vinyl dork who a huge music fan, it’s definitely a way to support artists but let’s not pretend that vinyl sound better, technically CDs will always be more clear, but I happen to enjoy the warmth of vinyl even if it’s not as perfect as CD audio.
Like watching a recording of a play and the play itself.
The recording won’t ever miss a line, is clean, a known quantity.
A play is great but also potentially imperfect which is possibly part of the experience some people look for.
Some might argue that both are recordings so why not get the cleaner one, LOL. ;-)
That said, I don’t really collect my music in any meaningful way, but I can still see the appeal of vinyl. The actual soundwaves from your favorite artist (theoretically… digital masters? What? :-) ) actually moved a membrane that was amplified to move a needle to cut a master, that was copied by mushing something hot and squishy until it had an imprint of those same actual soundwaves. It’s all very tactile and dramatic and connected. Like going to Grauman’s theater and seeing the stars’ handprints.
Then there’s the fact that the record could theoretically have captured sound that the digital process intentionally discards as part of its encoding algorithm. Something about that possibility of being nearer to perfection has to hold some appeal as well.
Plus the covers are pretty.
Kind of late to the party here, but I’m going to offer my take anyway.
You’re right, and you’re wrong. CDs are better than vinyl records in terms of sound quality, but CDs are absolutely pointless. Instead of a CD, go to Bandcamp, send some money to your favorite artist, and download the audio files in FLAC format. You own the media (albeit digitally) and it can never be taken away from you as you make sure it’s saved to a safe location. You may even be getting better quality audio than you would on a CD.
On the other hand, while I recognize that CDs are better quality, I am an avid collector of vinyl records, at least for a few specific genres. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on my HiFi setup, built my own tube amplifier, and I can say as a point of pride that there are absolutely no solid-state components in the signal path between the record and my speakers. While owning your own media makes sense in the era of streaming, owning physical media is in no way practical, but it’s just fun. When I want to listen to a record, it’s an event. I’ll remove the record from its sleeve, maybe take it over to my record cleaner if it’s a bit dusty or has some static charge. At the same time, I’ve just switched on my isolation transformer, and the tubes in my preamp and power amp are warming up. Then I’ll place the record on the turntable, start the motor, drop the needle, and sit back in my recliner to enjoy the music.
If I’m sitting at my desk working, I’ll put on some bluetooth headphones and play some music from my phone. But I’m not listening to music, I’m working and putting on music to pass the time, help get me motivated, whatever. If I want to listen to music solely for the joy of listening to music, I’m going to play a record.
You may even be getting better quality audio than you would on a CD.
Not disagreeing, but “may” is the operative word here. But it’s always worthwhile to support your favorite artist when and where you can. :)
Here’s the rub: It’s possible to have way more lossless resolution than 44khz/16bit (CD audio) with FLAC, but that depends on what the artist is going to ship. And don’t forget that your playback device also matters - not everything has a DAC that natively supports higher resolution audio, forcing some loss to perform playback.
Yep. That’s exactly what I was referring to when I said “may.” In my experience, most artists release 44k/16 files, but I have some 24-bit versions.
I would venture a guess, though, that given the same audio hardware, no human being can tell the difference. I can hear differences between lossy compression at “moderate” nitrates and lossless audio, but I feel like anything over 256k MP3 is getting into placebo territory.
That doesn’t keep me from downloading 24-bit FLAC, though, because I’m s huge data hoarder.
I can easily get equal or higher quality than CDs online.
I’d rather support artists by buying a nice vinyl so I can appreciate the artwork.
Higher quality than CD is a pretty dubious claim. CD quality is so good, the industry had nothing better to throw into the market. As video went from VHS, to DVD, to Blu-ray, CD simply couldn’t be topped.
https://www.33rdsquare.com/do-cds-sound-better-than-spotify-yes-cds-still-provide-superior-fidelity/
CD is PCM audio of 16-bit samples at 44.1khz
I have many FLACs that came as downloadable versions with vinyl records funnily enough. Some stick to CD quality, many to go to 24-bit audio at 96khz, and I think I’ve got a couple of 24-bit/192khz albums knocking about.
Higher quality than CD has been around for a while, it’s just apart from that brief couple of years with SACD, it never made it onto physical media.
Edit: correct sample rate
41.1khz
44.1
Ah yeah, you’re right! I should double check before posting technical specs before my morning coffee
The main advantage of Blu-ray audio is supporting 7.1 surround, while a CD is limited to 2 channels. Unless you have the equipment to take advantage of that, though, it’s a moot point.
That’s not related to quality though. Perfectly possible to have 7.1 audio sound like a tin can. Surround CDs exist, just not common.
I was talking about visual quality for video media as compared to audio quality for CD medium.
Playing the devil’s advocate, why would you need 7 channels when you only have two ears?
While this is obviously a silly question on some scenarios, it’s quite valid for the headphone use case.
Your ears can tell if something is coming from:
In front
Behind
Front right
Back left
etcWe don’t just percieve audio from left right so with 7.1 support an artist can take advantage of it and make different sounds come from different areas for a more full listening experience (though i doubt many actually do that)
Even some headphones can emulate 3d audio pretty well so it’s not an exclusive use for surround sound speakers
Your ears can tell if something is coming from:
If course it can, and it can do better for certain frequencies than for others I think.
However, the point is that this is not because you have more than two “sensors” for sound, but rather because of some clever processing of the signals in the brain. The information that the brain uses however can be coded into the stereo signal, under the assumption that it will be listened to with a controlled setup like headphones.
Qobuz offers higher than CD quality, I think Tidal does too.
The difference isn’t as noticeable as video though, so I expect CDs were just good enough and not worth it to upgrade for a niche market.
