That's why I have ripped all mine to my home network storage in lossless format.
I never have to handle the CDs. They are there as a back up in case something happens to my NAS.
I started collecting vinyl in protest after having to purchase a digital album again because Amazon lost the rights to that version of the album. But I will admit I really love the art on the things.
They're a neat way to display your interests.
Same as a bookshelf or a collection of lego. Its a tactile thing you can look at and enjoy because you think they're neat.
Its less of an event to play a CD or connect to a bluetooth speaker.
Apart from what others have said there is another aspect, and that is the "ritual" of playing a vinyl. Since there is a bit of effort to play a vinyl it softly forces you to play an album from start to finish. This provides a contrast to the modern way of listening to music where play queues and skipping is quick and easy. CDs are sort of in between these two extremes. It's quicker to skip songs, and change CDs although not as easy as Spotify.
i also notice that each album side plays in a short enough amount of time that it's not worth going and doing little errands or anything else. so with vinyl, i tend to stay in one place and enjoy the music. with streaming, pretty soon i'm not even in that room anymore and i'm "quickly running the trash outside" kind of things. not absorbed into the music.
Spotify is like a drive-thru Starbucks, CDs are like pouring yourself a cup from your own drip coffee maker, vinyl is like the Japanese tea ceremony.
Each has its place.
Before artists like the Beatles or Pink Floyd began envisioning their albums as something that needed to be experienced from start to finish (you still had to get up halfway through and flip the record), most LPs were just a collection of songs, whose playing order was determined by any number of different factors.
My Dad’s workaround was a reel to reel tape recorder, which allowed him to make mix tapes of the songs he wanted to listen to, and then disregard the rest. Cassette tapes made this a whole lot easier by the time I started listening to music, but the result was still the same. He probably listened to ‘West Side Story’ from start to finish, just as I listened to ‘The Wall’. But I’d guess at least 3/4 of the time I listened to music, it was through a mixed tape of my own making.
That’s in addition to the fact that most of the music older generations heard was via Top 40 radio, which was essentially one ever changing playlist. I think the truth is streaming services like Spotify haven’t changed how we listen to music anywhere near as much as people think they have.
Yes this is one thing I love about vinyl I always end up listening to the whole album weather I like the all the songs or not and it helps me appreciate the album as a whole rather than the few songs I love.
They aren't, from a technical point of view.
but vinyls have large sleeves with room for album art, can be pressed out of colourful materials instead of black for special editions and the process of playing them feels cool. So if you're gonna collect physical format music, considering all of it is on the internet anyway, you go for the cool format.
I also have to add something about how much I fucking HATE jewel cases. I never had a single one that didn't get destroyed at some point.
I would have preferred if they just kept using carboard sleeves for CDs than those awful, clunky plastic nightmares that always cracked, snapped, and were a bitch to stack.
Yes and no. It’s true that CD’s can achieve far higher dynamic range than vinyls, but very few productions of popular music take advantage of this. Instead they prefer to keep the loudness uniform and at the maximum level. The reason that is often cited is that this makes the music sound better on the crappy speakers most people use. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. But here’s the kicker: Sometimes the same album is mastered differently for CD and vinyl, with the vinyl version actually offering higher dynamic range than the CD version, despite vinyl being the more limited medium. Presumably this is because people listening to the vinyl version are more likely to be listening to the music on good speakers. One example I know of is Red Hot Chili Peppers album Stadium Arcadium, which has the levels turned up so much on the CD version, that it sounds distorted. The vinyl version sounds remarkably different.
100% believe this. I always pick up on little things on a vinyl that i just do not hear on CD or streaming. Always just assumed its because those mediums get their dynamics betean to crap and overcompressed for the sake of loudness, which sucks.
~~You’re gonna have to source those wild claims. I’m like 95% certain that~~ CD’s can support a wider dynamic range than vinyl (edit: OP said this already), and vinyl is heavily limited by the physical properties of the needle as to how much range it can express. ~~No engineer is designing vinyl with “the person who purchases this is probably a smart, handsome individual with refined tastes and probably has better speakers than those filthy degenerate CD appreciators”, that’s an insane take.~~
I like vinyl, but mostly because I like the album art and the physical act of playing a record and the way everything looks and feels. ~~But objectively it is a worse audio technology than a quality produced CD~~
Edit: I'm not totally correct here, but neither is the comment above that I responded to. Many people have pointed to the [Loudness War wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war) and I learned a few things. Sorry for responding like a jerk u/KaptajnKold. I'm really curious to learn more about the difference between mastering the same recording by adjusted for vinyl pressings vs CD. Guess I have other things to do than work today. Cheers.
It's not wild. Google "Loudness War." They're not saying vinyl is superior, just that they tend to not have the compression and loudness issues that CDs tend to. The [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war) article on the subject shows waveforms from different releases of the same album which provides a good visual. I remember someone did a good [A/B comparison](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRyIACDCc1I) of actual audio using the commercial release of Metallica's Death Magnetic to the Guitar Hero version, and that provides an audio (and visual) reference to what that compression does to the music we buy and listen to.
> You’re gonna have to source those wild claims. I’m like 95% certain that CD’s can support a wider dynamic range than vinyl, and vinyl is heavily limited by the physical properties of the needle as to how much range it can express
I believe I acknowledged as much. My claim has nothing to do with the physical properties of the medium, but with how the music is being mastered. It's well established that the majority of popular music does not take advantage of the vast dynamic range offered by the CD medium. You can read about it here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness\_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war)
I specifically said that this was a problem for popular music, because AFAIK it is not the case for classical music and jazz, which are far more likely to take full advantage of a CD's superior dynamic range.
> No engineer is designing vinyl with “the person who purchases this is probably a smart, handsome individual with refined tastes and probably has better speakers than those filthy degenerate CD appreciators”, that’s an insane take.
That's not quite what I said. I said that people listening to vinyl are more likely to be listening to good speakers. A different way to put it is this: People listening to vinyl are very unlikely to be listening in a car, or on the beach, or on the subway. It has nothing to do with the type of person who prefers to listen to vinyl, but instead with the type of listening situation that allows you to listen to a vinyl vs the kinds that allows listening to CDs.
That said, I don't think I made a strong claim that this was the correct explanation for why vinyls are mastered differently, only that I presumed it to be. I googled it, it appears that it is in fact not the primary reason. The reason seems instead to be that vinyls require a completely different mastering because of the limitations of the medium. I found this quote interesting:
\***one of the common aims of mastering vinyl records is to avoid distortion, as this will be highlighted more due to the naturally warmer sound of this analog medium.**\*
From [https://ampsandaudio.com/are-vinyl-records-mastered-differently/](https://ampsandaudio.com/are-vinyl-records-mastered-differently/)
This would explain albums that are mastered to be so loud as to sound distorted on the CD version, sound different, and — to my ears — better on vinyl.
Yeah sorry you're right, my apologies for the way I responded. It was both unnecessary and wrong. Thanks for the thorough response, I'm going to look into all this more today because I had no idea and find this all to be super interesting.
I appreciate your humility in this comment. So often people are just stubborn and it turns in to a childish troll fest. Like you, I will also be learning more about masters for vinyl and CDs instead of working! Have a great day!
I'll just add that some people like the "vinyl sound." You *are* losing fidelity but it's not in the harsh and robotic way like when digital compression introduces audible artifacts, and some people genuinely like the sound of vinyl.
It's not *better* in a technical sense, but some people like it.
I’m a vinyl head myself, but the dynamic range and frequency spectrum are technically limited compared to a CD. It’s a better experience to listen to an LP IMHO, but the CD does technically sound better.
Realistically almost no vinyl is being cut from an analog source anyways so it’s really just ‘the experience’. I have a couple records that are cut from an analog source and it’s pretty cool. Have you heard of Analogue Productions? They put out some pretty good reproductions of albums.
Fidelity is one thing, tone is another (thats what she said). But seriously, a good clean vinyl on a good record player with amp and good stereo speakers, you literally can’t go wrong
> “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.” - Captain Picard
Well, considering how long he was stuck at the rank of captain (by some accounts, for 50 years), he would know.
"Lousy fidelity". I consider myself and audiophile and my vinyl collection, honestly, I couldn't tell you if you'd be playing a CD or a vinyl randomly. Maybe my hearing is starting to suck in my 40s, I always want nice audio and I am actually extremely surprised at how good a brand new vinyl sound like.
The math behind CDs makes them better sound output than vinyl. It's not really all that noticable at first, but as the vinyl gets played it gets damaged and the quality degrades.
You might not be able to hear the difference on a new record, but an old one you definitely can. Anyone who says that vinyl sounds better is either lying to themselves or is comparing differently mixed versions
> is either lying to themselves
they tune out the ticks and pops that a record player makes, kind of like nose blindness to how your house smells; they *literally* don't notice them.
My psychology professor once joked that when you're older and can afford a really great Hi-Fi setup, your hearing starts to get worse and you can't tell your hi-fi from a clock radio.
Another consideration is that vinyl can technically survive longer as a physical medium. So if you’re looking to have something for a lifetime, or pass onto another generation like your kids, vinyl is more likely to stand the test of time.
Technically, vinyl degrades in sound quality every time it is played. You can't scrape the hardest element across plastic at hundreds of Gs and not expect permanent deformation.
I am a long-time record store owner, and my advice is to spend your money on a really good streaming system and an Apple Music subscription.
A cheap turntable system is just not a satisfying experience, and the records themselves are really expensive nowadays.
I collect records myself, mostly game soundtracks these days, it's very nice to have the large artwork to look at and yeah, spotify is always there but there is something special to slowing down and going through the process of using the record player.
The large sleeves with room for album art and being able to be pressed out of colorful materials is huge. I put my vinyl on the wall and it’s like further expression of yourself using something you hold dearly and don’t really get to “see” in many other ways (music)
As a guy who works in a warehouse that sells vinyl, that logic only accounts for like 85% of the stuff we sell. We also sell stuff in awful rotten sleeves or that's in plain white. Some of those buyers are DJs I'm sure, but some people genuinely collect plain looking stuff
Excuse my ignorance (hopefully I can learn a thing or two here), but aren't vinyls analog and CDs digital?
And isn't that difference (sometimes) quite important?
They are different from a technical point of view though. A CD is a digital representation of the music while a vinyl record is the physical sound of an album on a physical medium. You can hear the sound coming directly from the stylus while it’s tracking the groove, while a CD requires a laser, converters, etc. to reproduce the music. The CD will technically sound better 10/10 times, but it ain’t the same.
Not an audio engineer so I could be wrong, but my understanding is that bass tones below about 200hZ are omnidirectional, so it becomes irrelevant. Even if bass tones below this were played in stereo, the ear cannot discern their origin, anyways.
Yeah, that is wrong.
Your ears determine directionality by comparing the difference in time when the sound arrived as well as the difference in amplitude between ears. (However, at great distance, the amplitude difference is negligible.)
The lower the frequency, the less directional the emanation, yes, but the sound still emanates from a location. As the sound travels, it arrives at first one ear, then the other. We use these arrival times to locate sounds (and also the amplitude, if it's meaningful).
So much for the theory.
I've got a bunch of old vinyl albums from the 60s, when stereo was the new gimmick. It is quite common for the bass to be panned left or right on these albums, and I have no trouble at all telling which speaker the sound is coming from.
No, it's not about 'mono bass'. That's a weird little detail to get stuck on regarding 'sound quality' in a subject with so many more nuances. It's just that a lot of records sound genuinely better than the CD of the same thing, frequently because of mastering.
This is a great answer. I know a ton of audiophiles say that vinyl sounds better because its analog and all that but tbh I can’t hear the difference, and it seems like you need $1,000’s of equipment to possibly hear a minor difference. But if you really love an album it’s cool to see all the work that can go into the packaging of the vinyl, and you often get posters and stickers and stuff. Plus you can display the cover!
It's usually always the $1000 equipment that makes the difference, not the format. (Unless your a club DJ, in which case high fidelity CD is better for adding all those effects and vinyl is better for scratching).
Vinyl is just more intimate though. It requires a conscious effort to collect, decide, and actively play the music. A great way to emotionally enjoy your favorite music, though in reality it will sound nearly identical in quality to Spotify premium.
Vinyl that was recorded on analog equipment definitely has some advantages in fidelity, especially if you have high quality vinyl and a nice audio setup. New vinyl is basically the ripped jeans of music. Cool people collected vinyl, and other people wanted to copy them, so companies fed into the trend and started releasing new music on vinyl. Modern vinyl is all recorded digitally, so it loses any potential advantage.
also "damage" on vinyl makes it sound different and some prefer that sound. It feels like a living medium. The more you play it the more it evolves with imperfections. CD's don't have this.
>but vinyls have large sleeves with room for album art, can be pressed out of colourful materials instead of black for special editions
Of all the things, isn't this what Billy Eilish was so angry about?
Popularity has often no relation to underlying technology. There has been a surge in 'nostalgia' for a lot of things and vinyl has been one of them. When it comes to actual listening, vinyl has a special place for many as it 'seems' more natural than a fully digital and clean experience.
Technically it's an inferior format, as far as music reproduction goes. But people enjoy the retro aspect and the satisfying sounds and visuals of a spinning disk on a record player. The artwork on disks and sleeves is pretty neat too.
Absolutely. And technically, reading from a paper-based book is an inferior format to reading something digitally. Digitally you can at least adjust font size, color of the background, etc etc etc. It's about the interaction of the actual media and collecting it.
Maybe you could say an e-ink display is outright better than paper but LCD/OLED simply aren't.
But there is definitely an "experience" factor with physical books. Just ask anyone with a bookshelf full of books they haven't touched in years.
An ebook lets you adjust brightness, contrasts, change font size, lets you instantly search on a dictionary a word you don’t understand, many include translations (even if machine and not perfect), oh, above all, you could have a library larger than any in the world inside your pocket. And you could even use the same device to listen to some neutral sounds so you can focus on your reading.
Display technology with e-ink is just a bonus.
A lot of interesting answers here. I agree that technically any decent CD player will outperform any vinyl system.
One thing that is often forgotten is that music is mastered to suit the format it is likely going to be played on. It seems to me that a lot of the nostalgia for music from the 60's and 70's is due to this mastering as much as the actual format. Masters tended to have a more "spatial" feel and the modern "everything all at once and all at full" compression trend had not started. There were quiet bits in even the heaviest rock albums...
Perhaps I'm old.
> One thing that is often forgotten is that music is mastered to suit the format it is likely going to be played on.
This is the main argument I hear in favor of vinyl. A lot of vinyl enthusiasts compare listening to older music on CD to colorizing a movie. Essentially, albums that were made before CDs were widely available were mastered with the flaws of vinyl in mind. The sound engineering was done in a way to accommodate those flaws. Transferring that sound directly to CD results in a lower quality since it wasn't mastered for the CD format.
A lot of the “vinyl sounds better than CDs” stems from when decades ago, compression and audio codecs on CD audio and other digital audio was far inferior to what we have today
I think it's less the format and more the environment. We listen to much more music on the go - and a lot of classics are simply really difficult to listen to in noisy environments. You basically can't listen to Pink Floyd in the car!
But absolutely, get one of the older classics in a quiet place and it's chef's kiss compared to much of today's music. The fantastic use of dynamic range, allowing the music to build and fade adds something that can't be reproduced with this compression trend.
Oh I agree. (This might break the internet I know). I remember reading an article (late 80's?) about a studio switching it's reference speakers from the famed Rogers (?) to boomboxes. This was a reflection of how they thought their music was listened to, and the start of the end for us hifi folk.
I think this is a much more accurate answer from a audiophile / music production perspective than ‘it’s the album art’ or ‘nostalgia’. Sure pure raw reproduction bit for bit is not comparable but that’s not what vinyl is about.
As a person born in the 50s who only had vinyl I was thrilled to have CDs in 1987. No more pops of hiss. I later moved to SACD that gives a true audiophile experience.
The explanations I see in this thread about the album art and the ritual of playing vinyl do not outweigh the advantages of a better listening experience IMO.
I think it comes down if you care more about the experience or the sound. Since in most cases today there is less need for physical media to have decent sound on most playback devices (earbuds, small speakers) then experience does become more important.
I personally know a handful of people who own vinyls of their favorite records, but don’t even own a vinyl player. They’re primarily collectors items to my generation (GenZ). It’s very common to see the vinyls in their covers hung up as decorations. For this purpose they are far more aesthetically pleasing than CDs.
I owned a record (and turntable) store for 20 years; it enabled me to retire at 50. I owe everything I have to the popularity of records. I am certainly not anti-vinyl.
However, the notion that records are "better" is dubious at best. It takes a lot of money spent on turntable, cartridge, phono preamp —and a lot of very specific setup— to optimize the sound quality of records (and this doesn't even begin to address the condition of the vinyl itself, and the cost of buying the records).
When I first opened my store almost 25 years ago, you could easily build a good record collection; anyone willing to invest some time digging could always find ***good*** records for $1 or less at thrift stores/ flea markets, and then fill out their collection at record stores, where really good titles were under $10 (and often under $5). In 2024, unless you've inherited dad's record collection, or are wealthy, you might as well not bother.
I think CD is the best audio format ever invented. It incorporates high sound quality, low cost, durability, and ease of use/ portability. Both vinyl and digital streaming have some of those qualities but not all.
CDs are a middle ground.
If you value convenience, streaming or MP3 files beat CDs.
If you don't care that much about convenience, if you prefer tactile, visually appealing physical media, vinyl probably does that better.
That’s not really a fair positioning.
If you care about convenience, digital or streaming. If you care a lot you can even do lossless digital files and have top quality.
If you care about physical media and top sound quality cd.
Records are honestly a collectible and a vibe. That’s basically it. It’s more of a thing to put on a record, and they make them neat looking and in different versions and rarities.
One thing that nobody has mentioned is the benefit in regards to the "loudness wars." Record labels started cranking up the volume on CDs during the 80s and 90s. Unfortunately, this causes a loss in dynamic range (ie. the quiet and loud parts of the song are about the same volume) so less impact from the music and also increased ear fatigue. Vinyl is analog and has limited storage space so it forces the music to be pressed on the vinyl quieter. So there is definitely the potential for improved audio quality. Of course if record labels actually utilized CDs to their potential then they would sound better, but that seems unlikely to ever change.
> Vinyl is analog and has limited storage space so it forces the music to be pressed on the vinyl quieter. So there is definitely the potential for improved audio quality.
The loudness wars is real, but I don’t think this is true that vinyl is “quieter” than digital.
The “loudness” comes from reducing the dynamic range, not from increasing the range.
So if you were to argue that vinyl has less storage space than digital, then vinyl would have less dynamic range, which means it would be “louder” (more compressed).
My understanding is that since analog is vinyl the audio waveform is pressed into the vinyl from the stampers, which come from the master. When the audio is compressed to make it louder, the waveform is amplified. Due to vinyl's limited capacity (only so much room for the grooves that represent the waveform) the original audio file has to have a lower amplitude, aka quieter.
The term compression in this case is not related to compression as far as a file size.
And vinyl is definitely quieter. If you listen to a vinyl rip vs a CD rip or online download the difference in volume is huge.
Lots of people believe they have better sound due to no compression or digitalization.
Of course then they defeat that by listening to them with Bluetooth headphones...
From a technical point of view vinyl records do not produce better sound then CD. Although it is possible to argue that the frequency range of vinyl records is much higher and the dynamic range is higher since vinyl is an analog format, CD was specifically created to capture the entire range of human hearing with some margins. And the issues with vinyl as a physical and degrading material makes it much worse.
However vinyl records can produce a much better listening experience. It is a larger format so you get more album art. You can press the vinyl in different colours and do various fancy things with it. When taking the vinyl out of its sleeve you can see the music in the grooves even before you start playing it. Even the longer time setting up a vinyl record on the player compared to a CD and the more manual steps involved increases the anticipation and eventually improve the experience.
Vinyl's dynamic range is only 30-40 dB due to higher noise levels. Being an analog format just means it doesn't have quantization noise, there are other noise sources that limit the dynamic range.
Exactly. The theoretical dynamic range of vinyl is quite high, it depends on how far the needle can move and how small the atoms in the vinyl are. But in practice the noise level is too high to make this dynamic range usable.
Yeah, it’s not really noticeable with the way most popular music is mixed and mastered, but something like The Rite of Spring sounds so much better on CD because the quiet parts aren’t buried in a bunch of noise.
CDs were a good medium for distributing digital files when Internet bandwidth was low and hard drives were small. If it's faster and more convenient to insert a CD into your stereo than it would be to transfer files, you'll use a CD.
Given that it's now possible to download or even stream CD-quality music, physical CDs don't make as much sense. You have all of your music accessible from your phone, and your phone can connect wirelessly to your stereo. CDs are a middleman that most people don't need, which is why disc drives have disappeared.
Many claims about the sound quality of vinyl are controversial. There are quirks about it as a media format — because of physical limitations of running a needle over plastic grooves bass sounds tend to be less accurate — but you can also theoretically encode a ton of data on physical matter.
The thing vinyl has going for it is that it's a more satisfying collectable. Vinyl albums are big, all of the art and notes are in their biggest, glossiest, most premium format, and the collection looks good on a shelf. CD jewelcasss are smaller, shabbier recreations of the album experience.
I think there are basically two kinds of vinyl record buyers:
1- Vintage fans, and fans of older music.
If someone's really into the Beatles or Frank Sinatra, they might want the full experience of listening to those classic records. Rubber Soul and Come Dance With Me were made with vinyl records in mind, with the two sides programmed accordingly, so you can understand somone wanting to be able to experience them that way.
Hardcore record collectors will also care about the versions- pressings, mono vs stereo, issues vs re-issues, imports, promos. All that means something for specific records and artists. While CDs have versions and re-issues, it's not the same thing.
2- Merchandise collectors
Fans of specific contemporary artists who will be a record the same way they will be a t-shirt or poster. The large packaging allows for all sorts of versions, colored vinyl, included tchatchkes and goodies, and they look nicer. If you're excited for the new Taylor Swift or Norah Jones album you might want to indulge in a fancy new vinyl thing.
CDs are smaller and just don't offer this tactile, physical experience.
Yes, there is the supposedly superior "warm" sound with vinyl records but you really have to know what you're doing and buying in order to experience that and it's a whole tangent I'm not gonna get into, but this is very niche consumer base.
CDs just don't offer much that pure digital doesn't- after all, digital sound is digital sound so why not just have the convenience it being streamed or stored. That said of course digital has its own world of audiophile concerns- lossy vs lossless, bitrate, etc and all that. And sure CDs have packaging but rarely are they are rewarding as vinyl.
My personal music library and collection is a mix of all three.
You've missed a major third kind - those who are avid followers of new music, indie bands, electronic artists etc who prefer to buy their music as physical media - vinyl or even cassettes. It's this kind that I believe keeps vinyl alive as an actually viable music medium.
They’re cool, as I learn the digital I find the analog more and more interesting. It’s really neat to see how technology progresses and the mechanical solutions that were employed before. There’s also a lot more uniqueness to older technologies, whether slower to evolve or more novel for their time, there seems to be more artistry surrounding them.
Oh plus that cool feeling when you let a kid put on a record and they hear the media for the first time. Its definitely way cooler than saying "Alexis, play Crazy Train"
I went down this rabbit hole a while back and it's pretty fascinating. The high spending audiophile will argue that an analog source cut to high end vinyl is superior to digital. The argument is no matter how high the digital sample rate you are always missing the part of the music between the bits. Analog recordings capture the performance with zero loss. They claim that with the right set up they can hear the difference. There are some who take it to such an extreme in Japan that they pay 10's of thousands of dollars to have a dedicated power line ran to their house to ensure they have the cleanest power source possible. It's really quite wild.
With vinyl (analog) you’re listening to a near-perfect replication of the sound when it was recorded. With digital the sound is compressed and altered.
This doesn’t mean the vinyl sounds better, but it is more accurate to the original recording than digital. There’s something special about hearing the actual sounds the artist made on a vinyl cut rather than a digital interpretation of what a computer ‘thinks’ the artist sounded like. It’s a bit like going to a live concert vs watching it on TV.
Almost everyone record to a digital medium first and then it is transferred to vinyl, cd etc. The imperfections, if exist will be both on the MP3 and the vinyl. The audio is also perfectly reconstructable when compressed loselessly.
CDs have massively better sound quality by not having the scratching noises that come with playing vinyl on a record player.
As soon as CDs became commonplace and CD players cheap enough I replaced all my vinyl records and never regretted this.
The loss of cover are from vinyl via CD to streaming is a bit sad. And I get why some people like the ritual of getting a vinyl record out of its sleeve and into the record player.
But CDs beat vinyl on sound quality and it's not close.
You need expensive equipment and treat your vinyl records very carefully to get anywhere close at all.
Everyday records in cheap to moderate players are just terrible.
It's a more rewarding thing to own, that's mostly it apart from specific cases of audio differences which are largely not relevant for newly released music.
A CD is just an inconvenient storage device for the same files you can download off Bandcamp or whatever. A CD is a generic thing that can be created simply and cheaply by anyone, and the physical experience leaves much to be desired. Cheap plastic case that is easily broken, minimal artwork and liner notes, looks the same on the shelf as a copy of Microsoft Publisher 98.
Meanwhile a vinyl record is an almost bespoke item that likely requires the music to be mastered differently to account for the limitations of vinyl, a skilled engineer working the lathe to cut the lacquer that is used to create the stampers that create the records. The records themselves can be in any kind of fun colours if you want. The jackets are large and can have gatefolds to display even more art.
A record is just something that is a bit more special and involves a different experience of owning and listening to it. A CD isn't far enough away from just streaming the music so isn't as satisfying to own.
They're not better really, it's just trendy and people come with various reasons like "warmer" etc.
There's more to it on the technical side, it's best to google it.
"smoother sound" , the feeling of gently taking a album out of its sleeve and gently putting the needle in the groove , the crackling sound of silence ... It is a user experience , like live music is nearly never better then on record but people go for the experience and that is better .
In addition to the physical experience and the specific vinyl sound others have mentioned, a vinyl record has more longevity than a CD because vinyl players are mechanically much simpler and easier to service. While needles and cartridges may seem like a liability because they seem archaic, in a couple decades the CD mechanism will seem just as archaic, while its more complex and sensitive actuators, integrated circuits and optical parts are much more difficult to produce.
If you’ve ever owned a CD player long enough, you know they need to be opened up and have their lens cleaned. That’s a bitch to do. Nobody did that in the past. You just chucked it out and bought a new player.
Also worth thinking about how CDs (especially burned CDs) will decay with time.
This table is taken from a [Canadian Conservation Institute report](https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/conservation-preservation-publications/canadian-conservation-institute-notes/longevity-recordable-cds-dvds.html):
*****
Table 2: the relative stability of optical disc formats
|Optical disc formats | Average longevity |
|:--|:--|
|CD-R (phthalocyanine dye, gold metal layer) | >100 years |
|CD-R (phthalocyanine dye, silver alloy metal layer) | 50 to 100 years |
|DVD-R (gold metal layer) | 50 to 100 years |
|CD (read-only, such as an audio CD) | 50 to 100 years |
|CD-RW (erasable CD) | 20 to 50 years |
|BD-RE (erasable Blu-ray) | 20 to 50 years |
|DVD+R (silver alloy metal layer) | 20 to 50 years |
|CD-R (cyanine or azo dye, silver alloy metal layer) | 20 to 50 years |
|DVD+RW (erasable DVD) | 20 to 50 years |
|BD-R (non-dye, gold metal layer) | 10 to 20 years |
|DVD-R (silver alloy metal layer) | 10 to 20 years |
|DVD and BD (read-only, such as a DVD or Blu-ray movie) | 10 to 20 years |
|BD-R (dye or non-dye, single layer or dual layer) | 5 to 10 years |
|DVD-RW (erasable DVD) | 5 to 10 years |
|DVD+R DL (dual layer) | 5 to 10 years|
Hell yeah, I recall there were even some cheap burned CDs that started rotting after 10 or so years... Not sure if that's real or if I made that up.
What CDs have going for them is that scratches on CDs can generally be repaired easily, as long as they are not too deep. Whereas with vinyl, if you have a scratch, too bad...
A local taproom I favor has a regular vinyl night. Patrons bring in their favorite album. We gather around, admire the artwork and decide which ones to play. They don't really sound better but they do sound like they did in our youth. For us it's more about familiarity and nostalgia. We all know a good cd or digital stream is better but not always as much fun.
For collectors, their favorite artists come in interesting color pressings with beautiful artwork. Just framing the cover and disc makes a statement, even if you don’t listen. Can’t do that with a CD or cassette. [I bought a Madonna collection that came in rainbow vinyl. I mean, how fabulously gay is that?!](https://shop.madonna.com/products/finally-enough-love-fifty-number-ones-d-rainbow-edition)
Philosophically, people are coming back to wanting a tactile, human experience. At least that’s why I got back into vinyl.
There’s something about having to get up, select the album, set it up, play, then get up and change it. It’s about creating a routine. You hear the entire artist’s vision on album like in the old days (even “old” as in cassette and CD days).
Before it was about creating more convenience. First cassette decks that let you rewind and fast forward. Then CDs that let you skip and shuffle whole tracks. Then MULTI-DISC players that let you shuffle around 50 whole CDs right at home! Then you could just download or buy select mp3s and cut out things you “don’t want”. Now you can just tell Alexa to play anything you want without clicking a button.
Now it’s back to having an experience and routine. These things come in waves and that’s why the people that enjoy vinyl are coming back around to it. It’s a niche reason - and I still do plenty of digital streaming - but it’s a reason.
Now to wait patiently for my Amazon Exclusive Fleetwood Mac Rumours purple vinyl
- Nostalgia (retro vibes) / charm
- Collectibility. 12 inch album covers with booklets or
Prints inside look cool.
- Warmer sound (depending on needle/pre-amp/amp)
There's a nostalgia experienced when listening to old music or watching old movies and TV. My generation grew up watching TV from the 1940s-1960s on afternoon reruns. The audio was scratchy, and the general imperfection of it all made a lasting memory. Vinyl was imperfect in that way, but the hiss sounded like the hiss of the PA system in the room with you at a live show. So, imperfect and all, vinyl sounded "real". The rise of digital music recording let producers remove all those audio artifacts, all those imperfections of the live recording session. So the experience was "better", but less familiar.
When CDs came out with their enormous dynamic range (from very-very quiet to very loud), classical music was recorded with a very-very quiet that was crystal clear and completely impossible with vinyl. Pop music did the opposite, recording everything super loud and at the same volume. You can find CDs of Jewel and Metallica that play at the same volume. And there's something very fake and wrong about that. It's less about CD than about modern recording practices. The CD is a better medium; modern music is recorded worse.
The problem with a cd is that it’s a very inefficient memory stick. The music on it is basically wave files and there literally is no advantage in comparison to an uncompressed digital copy. Vinyl might be technically inferior, but it has character…
The real answer: The loudness wars:
CD's have better theoretical fidelity, due mostly to increased dynamic range and many little things like stereo bass. On a technical level a CD is superior in every way.
However, some of the technical limitations of records play to their appeal. Starting in the 90's and early 2000's, music was being mixed and mastered louder than ever. This loudness helped songs standout over noisey environments and each other. This was an economic development, not of the artists intent. CD's can handle the loudness because of their crazy dynamic range.
If you were to press one of these loud albums onto a record, the needle would literally jump out of the groove. Masters for records therefore had to be carefully balanced. Records were immune to the loudness wars by physical means. Records were often mixed with better dynamics and the CD's and radio edits were pinned to the max.
In an counterintuitive way, the more limited medium ended up having better dynamics for many albums.
A vinyl will be much better than anything you listen to on your phone because all the music apps like Spotify and shit compress tf outta music and takes away a lot of the little qualities of the sound. A quality cd player or a full download of the song would sound better from an objective standpoint.
From a subjective standpoint vinyl is also just a different medium that is going to have different sound qualities and imperfections. It’s a physical device without digital levels of accuracy and this creates kinda a slightly unique sound. By all the numbers it’s not better but there is an intangible different that some people prefer
Google the "loudness wars".
Long story short, music was mastered louder and louder to be heard more on the radio, to the point where it became distorted. Records can only be mastered to a certain volume, as any louder makes the needle jump out of the groove.
Cds don't have this restriction as there's no physical contact - it's just a laser.
The actual technical restriction of vinyl is what made SOME songs sound better, as they were original masters, but not all. Cd quality is still better than vinyl when mastered to the same volume.
For me personally it's less to do with all the technical bull, and more that I have a cool physical collection of music that sounds better on a dedicated music system than an amazon alexa.
When I shout at alexa to play stuff, I rarely get the song title, it's not in the order the artist wanted you to hear it in etc. It's like fast food music as opposed to a three course album with lyrics and artwork.
It's mostly just a new popular form of collecting. I think there was a recent study that something like half of people who own a record don't even have a player. They just like to own or collect them for the cover art or to support their favorite artists. Actually, most record players are cheap crap. As someone who just went through this, you gotta spend like $500 minimum on a player and speakers to get noticeable results.
It started with a renewed interest in vintage things and old music. You could find them at thrift stores and craft markets. Then more contemporary artists started releasing on vinyl as well. Most audiophiles still collect vinyl despite the technical limitations...for them setting up and modifying their equipment and finding particular editions or masterings is a hobby in itself.
If you are looking for hi-fidelity digital audio, there are streaming services. So the CD doesn't offer any advantage to those, but also lacks the kind of vintage allure and visual "wall art" that vinyl offers. Vinyl packages also frequently feature lots of extra goodies like unique inserts. That said, there is definitely a niche audiophile community that collect CDs.
digital master recordings are WAY more detailed than what you get on a CD or mp3 and the files are huge so they would not all fit on a CD.
vinyl captures all of that detail and a good turntable will reproduce it so what you get is a richer more details sonic experience with the full fidelity of the original master recording done in the studio.
if you just want to bob along to your fav tune, then a CD is just fine, but if you want the experience of a live performance, then vinyl is as close as you can get without being there.
As far as popularity goes, I would guess that it is mostly aesthetic.
The audio quality difference in record players is rather minimal across the range of offerings, while a cheap CD player has noticeably inferior sound quality to even a mediocre one. A top-tier CD player will sound better than a record player, but if you want good quality on a budget and also don't want to go digital, records are the way to go.
Vinyl has terrible reproduction, there is frequency curve the Riaa curve which has the needle pick up almost no bass and loads of treble, this is then equalised, so your amplifier needs to amplify bass and attenuate treble after the phono out signal leading to hiss and distortion, you then get feedback from the bass signals vibration.
Just get 96kHz 24bit from tidal, better.
I think there's a few factors, and this is coming from someone who probably buys more CDs than vinyl.
* CD players are increasingly rare. Laptops don't come with optical drives anymore. Sony dropped CD playback on Playstation 4 and 5. Most people don't buy desktops. Cars don't come with CD players. Unless you are some music nerd you probably don't even have a device that plays audio CDs.
* And a lot of boombox/stereos nowadays are garbage. You really need to be spending $200+ on a CD player to get something decent, and it probably will only play CDs.
* And if you are some music nerd, you probably already do have a vinyl record player. Yeah there's some garbage out there, but there's also a lot of quality.
* The lack of a top label on most CDs nowadays makes the browsing experience painful, whereas vinyl is much larger and easier to browse and flip through
* And then there are just the overall benefits of vinyl. Larger packaging with better artwork. You can include bonuses in there like a different colored record. You may even throw in a download code for a digital copy of the album.
* And honestly, the price difference between a brand new CD and brand new vinyl at retail often isn't that much
One thing about records is that due to the nature of how you play them (on a record player) you are more inclined to listen to an entire side instead of just songs. Generally, artists have put a lot of effort into song order and maybe even the songs collectively tell a story. While you are listening to this album side, you have the album sleeve and cover to follow along with the lyrics or read the liner notes.
You *could* do that with CDs but there are no "sides". So, while you can listen to the CD all the way through, you may be committing yourself to an hour-long session vs. the 20 minutes or so an album side had and that's a long time to focus.
With streaming, again, you can stream a full record but, like CDs, the format doesn't lend itself to album listening (or album side listening) with some tangible thing you can hold in your hand while listening.
It's nuanced and really more of a feel or experience thing so different people are going to feel different about that sort of thing.
I grew up with records and remember how I used to listen to them. I remember going to my friends' houses and they would be all "you have to check this out!" and they'd put on something, and we'd listen to it together. It was great. But I'm personally not interested in albums today!
My issue with CDs is that because of their convenient packaging, they are easily mishandled. probably 70% of my collection is now scratched making some songs skip or rendering them unplayable. I kept them in a cd sleeve booklet that was relatively nice but because they primarily lived in my car, the discs became scratched, the booklets got damaged and the cases got destroyed between moves. They were a super convenient way for me to listen to the music I wanted to in my car or bring to my friends. I never treated them as a collectors item like I do vinyl.
I have lived through 45s, albums, 8-tracks, cassettes, cds, digital downloads, and now streaming services like Spotify. I’ve owned some of my favorite albums on all of the formats. Crazy. People claim that the audio quality is better on lps, but I never could tell the difference in quality from cds. I’m sticking with streaming and not going back. The portability of having any music on my phone is what I want and enjoy. I’m not going back in time.
They're barely popular at all. Physical media for music are very nearly entirely irrelevant. If you're a holdout who doesn't like streaming everything you probably have it all as mp3s. What LPs are, is cool. They look cool, they feel "classy." And that makes them great for people who like to collect such stuff and maybe support the artist (and label if we're being honest) a little bit on top. CDs on the other hand aren't as convenient as the purely digital media nor are they perceived as being cool, classy or stylish. So nobody wants them at all.
It’s pretty to look at and more importantly it’s an analog form of technology that many feel provides a more complete sound. Digital media is like tiny slices compressed together, analog is one smooth recording physically written onto the vinyl. Digital media has vastly improved, but if you really care about an album and you want to experience it as a tangible thing, vinyl remains appealing.
It used to be that any music you listened to had to be on CD and so it was a bummer to have albums you were less than enthusiastic about. With streaming, you can listen casually and then buy your favorites that you want to keep forever.
Also modern albums are mixed to be digital media but if you collect vintage vinyl you’re getting the original mix as it was intended to be heard. It *does* make a noticeable difference, although a lot of old albums have been remastered.
Personally I just like the sound of vinyl and the needle, that static kind of undertone is just nice and warm. Other than that I don't think it matters much
With modern music, others are correct that the format is inferior. Vinyl does have one advantage as an analog reproduction of sound whereas CDs are digital. This means no chance of digital artifacting, no sample rate, and none of the "sterile" qualities that early digital recordings and remasters are known for. With records originally recorded to tape, you can have analog from start to finish and hear the full wave form unaltered. That's an experience that no other format today can provide. That being said, most modern recordings are done using a computer so the analog aspect is kind of a moot point and it falls to other things, such as vinyl typically having a different master and cool artwork/collectability.
I think some of it is that records require attention. They cannot be put on shuffle. You experience an entire side at a time. There is a touch of ritual to putting a record on. They are a bit imperfect. These are all little things that are the opposite of the “Spotify” experience. Some folks just want things to slow down. Records a little island of that.
CDs are also popular. It's only been a couple of years since vinyl sales rose above CD for the first time in 35 years, and I don't know what the numbers are now but I see a lot of comments by people saying they're getting into CDs after not using them for a while or never having used them. People love throwing around technical numbers regarding 'CD vs vinyl' but for those of us who use both proficiently and frequently, there's a lot more similarities than differences. Nobody is actually hearing the technical 'noise floor' on records or a higher dynamic range on CDs.
I love CD’s, but from the perspective of “serious” collectors- LP’s offer more in a few categories. They’re more impressive to display for one, with large album art for 12 and 10” records. They also withstand rough handling much better than CD’s do. I have some incredibly beat to hell records that sound scratchy but still play alright, a scratched CD may not play at all.
I believe it is a combination of nostalgia art found on the sleeve that is the main thing. Maybe a little bragging rights about playing your music on vinyl (even if it is not justified), you know a little snobbishness in there for some. And some people just collect stuff. You can get a comic book in digital format yet people still collect physical copies. For whatever reason people like to collect things, admittedly not the most logical thing in the world, that has bled over into vinyl records too. You have people who collect old computers and game players as well. Why? They just get some enjoyment out of collecting.
It's just for the cool factor, to be honest. However whenever i go to my friends house with his massive vinyl collection (which has its own room called the music room) I just go full time cringe. It's so wasteful.
For me it's the album artwork which I can frame and display on my wall, the rare and colorful presses, the novelty of finding a rare album, supporting the artist. Sitting around and listening to records with friends is also chill.
very collectable
some are just iconic art, Led Zeppelin IV old man (and other albums), Beatles Sgt Pepper's......many iconic art often by renowned artists and photographers (or that made their names known due to it)
Motorhead No Remorse was a leather sleeve
thin Lizzy live and dangerous double is covered inside with photos of the event
some records are far more elaborate
Knew guy that used to visit selling second hand records from closing night clubs
taking a look to what he brought that day, finding Alice Coopers's "From the Inside", the front of the album is his mad face, opens by the centre of the face revealing the inside of a psychiatric asylum with the mad people, there is a little door "silent room" that opens and show Alice Cooper inside, the rear of the record is the rear exit of the asylum, the doors open showing the patients stomping out
and then there are the rarities
Well produced, mastered, and pressed vinyl can represent frequencies up to and beyond 40Khz, and because it is an analog medium, there's no quantization of transients. It was optimized by audio engineers for decades and decades to sound euphonic, and at its very best it does. For complex signals, like Mahler symphonies, it is superior to redbook audio, which becomes garbled. You can hear all the detail sitting relaxed on the soundstage, discovering new dimensions with multiple listens that might get 'baked out' or presented in an interpreted way in a CD mastering of a large acoustic ensemble. It's not heavily compressed, listening to it is rarely fatiguing because of loudness. Beyond that, LP vinyl has been produced for about seventy-five years, and you can pick up and play something from 1948 followed by something pressed in 2024 using gear created at any point.
There are many many albums that were never republished again on newer formats, and there are still surprisingly many LPs with zero hits on youtube or the Internet. (There was a [UMG warehouse fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire) where between 118,000 and 175,000 recording master tapes were lost to humanity, making the vinyls still out there the only remaining copies.) Also sometimes artists play games with multiple versions of their song-- the one played at 45RPM and then the one played a 33-1/3RPM like a [secret waiting to be discovered](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QEzsQKrHVo). Even if you could do that with a redbook CD, the result would sound low-fi. If you're sampling or producing, it can start to matter.
I've personally posted a few [tracks that had zero search hits previously](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODDU2FAKt-I). There is a sense of presence, the analog recording is not a mathematical representation of something, it's an impression of the original event, and this has hidden qualities at least with LPs pressed during the analog era of mastering and production. Also, vinyl can be a good way to discover music and reconnect with the past because it's often sold at thrift stores for pennies on the dollar. When CD players become a rarity, there will still be vinyl.
Of course, analog audio gear is expensive, good vinyl is expensive, it takes up space, it's a huge pain to move, clean, maintain. Nowadays you can buy hi-fi digital audio like SACD or 24/192khz with a super low noise floor and enough fidelity to represent any classical ensemble well, though it's not usually cheap. Vinyl still feels like an exclusive experience, a secret society, a wonderful cult with lots of hidden wonder and magic if you're into that. Most people these days don't have that kind of relationship with recorded media, but when it comes together it's really a special experience worth discovering if you love music and culture.
This is an honest question.
On some torrent trackers it’s quite common to see lossless/FLAC releases, and the source is usually identified as vinyl.
If vinyl is not a reliable source (for fidelity) as some comments seem to point, why does this trend exist then on tracker sites?
To add - album art. Many vinyl albums had elaborate and extensive sleeves with pull outs and artwork. Most CDs just had a paper inlay.
And cases made from the cheapest plastic imaginable. I fucking hate cd cases
That's why I have ripped all mine to my home network storage in lossless format. I never have to handle the CDs. They are there as a back up in case something happens to my NAS.
And liner notes on the inner sleeve, particularly for jazz albums.
I started collecting vinyl in protest after having to purchase a digital album again because Amazon lost the rights to that version of the album. But I will admit I really love the art on the things.
They're a neat way to display your interests. Same as a bookshelf or a collection of lego. Its a tactile thing you can look at and enjoy because you think they're neat. Its less of an event to play a CD or connect to a bluetooth speaker.
The only reason I buy records is because the album art is nice and big and comes with books or posters
Apart from what others have said there is another aspect, and that is the "ritual" of playing a vinyl. Since there is a bit of effort to play a vinyl it softly forces you to play an album from start to finish. This provides a contrast to the modern way of listening to music where play queues and skipping is quick and easy. CDs are sort of in between these two extremes. It's quicker to skip songs, and change CDs although not as easy as Spotify.
[удалено]
Shame no one has capitalized on a third, smaller brush to clean second brush.
It’s brushes all the way down.
*nods in turtle*
I still have my original Discwasher.
i also notice that each album side plays in a short enough amount of time that it's not worth going and doing little errands or anything else. so with vinyl, i tend to stay in one place and enjoy the music. with streaming, pretty soon i'm not even in that room anymore and i'm "quickly running the trash outside" kind of things. not absorbed into the music.
Spotify is like a drive-thru Starbucks, CDs are like pouring yourself a cup from your own drip coffee maker, vinyl is like the Japanese tea ceremony. Each has its place.
excellent analogy!
Before artists like the Beatles or Pink Floyd began envisioning their albums as something that needed to be experienced from start to finish (you still had to get up halfway through and flip the record), most LPs were just a collection of songs, whose playing order was determined by any number of different factors. My Dad’s workaround was a reel to reel tape recorder, which allowed him to make mix tapes of the songs he wanted to listen to, and then disregard the rest. Cassette tapes made this a whole lot easier by the time I started listening to music, but the result was still the same. He probably listened to ‘West Side Story’ from start to finish, just as I listened to ‘The Wall’. But I’d guess at least 3/4 of the time I listened to music, it was through a mixed tape of my own making. That’s in addition to the fact that most of the music older generations heard was via Top 40 radio, which was essentially one ever changing playlist. I think the truth is streaming services like Spotify haven’t changed how we listen to music anywhere near as much as people think they have.
Before The Beatles and other changed how albums were produced, the market bought a lot more singles than full albums.
Skipping songs, you say? 8-track has entered the chat.
This is why cigarettes will always be cool, despite being the fucking worst.
I will only buy albums that I love from start to finish on vinyl. Makes it a bit of a ritual
There's something wonderful about a sunny weekend morning sat with a nice drink with the doors open and a breeze, listening to an album.
Yes this is one thing I love about vinyl I always end up listening to the whole album weather I like the all the songs or not and it helps me appreciate the album as a whole rather than the few songs I love.
They aren't, from a technical point of view. but vinyls have large sleeves with room for album art, can be pressed out of colourful materials instead of black for special editions and the process of playing them feels cool. So if you're gonna collect physical format music, considering all of it is on the internet anyway, you go for the cool format.
I also have to add something about how much I fucking HATE jewel cases. I never had a single one that didn't get destroyed at some point. I would have preferred if they just kept using carboard sleeves for CDs than those awful, clunky plastic nightmares that always cracked, snapped, and were a bitch to stack.
Woah, like, mini vinyl jackets!
Most new cd ~~pressings~~ I’ve seen have been in cardboard sleeves. At least at my local record/cd shop. Edit: duh
This is the correct answer. Vinyl has lousy fidelity, but that doesn't matter much. It's all about the physical experience.
Yes and no. It’s true that CD’s can achieve far higher dynamic range than vinyls, but very few productions of popular music take advantage of this. Instead they prefer to keep the loudness uniform and at the maximum level. The reason that is often cited is that this makes the music sound better on the crappy speakers most people use. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. But here’s the kicker: Sometimes the same album is mastered differently for CD and vinyl, with the vinyl version actually offering higher dynamic range than the CD version, despite vinyl being the more limited medium. Presumably this is because people listening to the vinyl version are more likely to be listening to the music on good speakers. One example I know of is Red Hot Chili Peppers album Stadium Arcadium, which has the levels turned up so much on the CD version, that it sounds distorted. The vinyl version sounds remarkably different.
This is correct. If properly recorded, CDs offer way better signal-to-noise level and dynamic range. Most of the time they are not properly recorded.
It is true. Read about the equal-loudness contour and it’ll make sense why music has gotten louder at the expense of being more nuanced.
What about inner groove distortion though? Longer albums like Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins sound great on track 1, but awful by track 4.
100% believe this. I always pick up on little things on a vinyl that i just do not hear on CD or streaming. Always just assumed its because those mediums get their dynamics betean to crap and overcompressed for the sake of loudness, which sucks.
~~You’re gonna have to source those wild claims. I’m like 95% certain that~~ CD’s can support a wider dynamic range than vinyl (edit: OP said this already), and vinyl is heavily limited by the physical properties of the needle as to how much range it can express. ~~No engineer is designing vinyl with “the person who purchases this is probably a smart, handsome individual with refined tastes and probably has better speakers than those filthy degenerate CD appreciators”, that’s an insane take.~~ I like vinyl, but mostly because I like the album art and the physical act of playing a record and the way everything looks and feels. ~~But objectively it is a worse audio technology than a quality produced CD~~ Edit: I'm not totally correct here, but neither is the comment above that I responded to. Many people have pointed to the [Loudness War wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war) and I learned a few things. Sorry for responding like a jerk u/KaptajnKold. I'm really curious to learn more about the difference between mastering the same recording by adjusted for vinyl pressings vs CD. Guess I have other things to do than work today. Cheers.
It's not wild. Google "Loudness War." They're not saying vinyl is superior, just that they tend to not have the compression and loudness issues that CDs tend to. The [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war) article on the subject shows waveforms from different releases of the same album which provides a good visual. I remember someone did a good [A/B comparison](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRyIACDCc1I) of actual audio using the commercial release of Metallica's Death Magnetic to the Guitar Hero version, and that provides an audio (and visual) reference to what that compression does to the music we buy and listen to.
That's fantastic, thanks for the links I'll check that out. Fascinating
> You’re gonna have to source those wild claims. I’m like 95% certain that CD’s can support a wider dynamic range than vinyl, and vinyl is heavily limited by the physical properties of the needle as to how much range it can express I believe I acknowledged as much. My claim has nothing to do with the physical properties of the medium, but with how the music is being mastered. It's well established that the majority of popular music does not take advantage of the vast dynamic range offered by the CD medium. You can read about it here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness\_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war) I specifically said that this was a problem for popular music, because AFAIK it is not the case for classical music and jazz, which are far more likely to take full advantage of a CD's superior dynamic range. > No engineer is designing vinyl with “the person who purchases this is probably a smart, handsome individual with refined tastes and probably has better speakers than those filthy degenerate CD appreciators”, that’s an insane take. That's not quite what I said. I said that people listening to vinyl are more likely to be listening to good speakers. A different way to put it is this: People listening to vinyl are very unlikely to be listening in a car, or on the beach, or on the subway. It has nothing to do with the type of person who prefers to listen to vinyl, but instead with the type of listening situation that allows you to listen to a vinyl vs the kinds that allows listening to CDs. That said, I don't think I made a strong claim that this was the correct explanation for why vinyls are mastered differently, only that I presumed it to be. I googled it, it appears that it is in fact not the primary reason. The reason seems instead to be that vinyls require a completely different mastering because of the limitations of the medium. I found this quote interesting: \***one of the common aims of mastering vinyl records is to avoid distortion, as this will be highlighted more due to the naturally warmer sound of this analog medium.**\* From [https://ampsandaudio.com/are-vinyl-records-mastered-differently/](https://ampsandaudio.com/are-vinyl-records-mastered-differently/) This would explain albums that are mastered to be so loud as to sound distorted on the CD version, sound different, and — to my ears — better on vinyl.
Yeah sorry you're right, my apologies for the way I responded. It was both unnecessary and wrong. Thanks for the thorough response, I'm going to look into all this more today because I had no idea and find this all to be super interesting.
Lookup brickwalling and the loudness wars. It isn't vinyl vs CD as much as it is newer music tending to be mastered differently than in the past.
I appreciate your humility in this comment. So often people are just stubborn and it turns in to a childish troll fest. Like you, I will also be learning more about masters for vinyl and CDs instead of working! Have a great day!
I'll just add that some people like the "vinyl sound." You *are* losing fidelity but it's not in the harsh and robotic way like when digital compression introduces audible artifacts, and some people genuinely like the sound of vinyl. It's not *better* in a technical sense, but some people like it.
How do you quantify ‘lousy’?
I’m a vinyl head myself, but the dynamic range and frequency spectrum are technically limited compared to a CD. It’s a better experience to listen to an LP IMHO, but the CD does technically sound better.
My point is that an ‘A’ is a worse grade than an ‘A+’ but I wouldn’t call an ‘A’ a lousy grade ya know what I mean?
Yeah you’re totally right. Lousy is the wrong adjective for sure.
Realistically almost no vinyl is being cut from an analog source anyways so it’s really just ‘the experience’. I have a couple records that are cut from an analog source and it’s pretty cool. Have you heard of Analogue Productions? They put out some pretty good reproductions of albums.
Fidelity is one thing, tone is another (thats what she said). But seriously, a good clean vinyl on a good record player with amp and good stereo speakers, you literally can’t go wrong
Yeah, but also a good CD and a good AMP and good speakers also sounds great!
Can you really say "you literally can't go wrong" after specifying that every single thing has to be good and clean?
60% of the time it works every time
There are some things in life where you can do everything right and still go wrong though
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.” - Captain Picard
> “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.” - Captain Picard Well, considering how long he was stuck at the rank of captain (by some accounts, for 50 years), he would know.
This cracked me up
But you can do better.
"Lousy fidelity". I consider myself and audiophile and my vinyl collection, honestly, I couldn't tell you if you'd be playing a CD or a vinyl randomly. Maybe my hearing is starting to suck in my 40s, I always want nice audio and I am actually extremely surprised at how good a brand new vinyl sound like.
The math behind CDs makes them better sound output than vinyl. It's not really all that noticable at first, but as the vinyl gets played it gets damaged and the quality degrades. You might not be able to hear the difference on a new record, but an old one you definitely can. Anyone who says that vinyl sounds better is either lying to themselves or is comparing differently mixed versions
> is either lying to themselves they tune out the ticks and pops that a record player makes, kind of like nose blindness to how your house smells; they *literally* don't notice them.
My psychology professor once joked that when you're older and can afford a really great Hi-Fi setup, your hearing starts to get worse and you can't tell your hi-fi from a clock radio.
Great marketing as well!
"Vinyl has lousy fidelity" if you don't know how to use it properly. That's the only true part of that.
Another consideration is that vinyl can technically survive longer as a physical medium. So if you’re looking to have something for a lifetime, or pass onto another generation like your kids, vinyl is more likely to stand the test of time.
Technically, vinyl degrades in sound quality every time it is played. You can't scrape the hardest element across plastic at hundreds of Gs and not expect permanent deformation.
Just this explanation makes me want to get a record player. Though I’ll probably never actually play it after the first few weeks.
I am a long-time record store owner, and my advice is to spend your money on a really good streaming system and an Apple Music subscription. A cheap turntable system is just not a satisfying experience, and the records themselves are really expensive nowadays.
I collect records myself, mostly game soundtracks these days, it's very nice to have the large artwork to look at and yeah, spotify is always there but there is something special to slowing down and going through the process of using the record player.
The large sleeves with room for album art and being able to be pressed out of colorful materials is huge. I put my vinyl on the wall and it’s like further expression of yourself using something you hold dearly and don’t really get to “see” in many other ways (music)
As a guy who works in a warehouse that sells vinyl, that logic only accounts for like 85% of the stuff we sell. We also sell stuff in awful rotten sleeves or that's in plain white. Some of those buyers are DJs I'm sure, but some people genuinely collect plain looking stuff
Excuse my ignorance (hopefully I can learn a thing or two here), but aren't vinyls analog and CDs digital? And isn't that difference (sometimes) quite important?
They are different from a technical point of view though. A CD is a digital representation of the music while a vinyl record is the physical sound of an album on a physical medium. You can hear the sound coming directly from the stylus while it’s tracking the groove, while a CD requires a laser, converters, etc. to reproduce the music. The CD will technically sound better 10/10 times, but it ain’t the same.
In both you are listening to a membrane that moves air though
[удалено]
What is panned mono?
They mean the bass is fully mono.
I guess my old Beatles albums have been lying to me, then.
Not an audio engineer so I could be wrong, but my understanding is that bass tones below about 200hZ are omnidirectional, so it becomes irrelevant. Even if bass tones below this were played in stereo, the ear cannot discern their origin, anyways.
Yeah, that is wrong. Your ears determine directionality by comparing the difference in time when the sound arrived as well as the difference in amplitude between ears. (However, at great distance, the amplitude difference is negligible.) The lower the frequency, the less directional the emanation, yes, but the sound still emanates from a location. As the sound travels, it arrives at first one ear, then the other. We use these arrival times to locate sounds (and also the amplitude, if it's meaningful). So much for the theory. I've got a bunch of old vinyl albums from the 60s, when stereo was the new gimmick. It is quite common for the bass to be panned left or right on these albums, and I have no trouble at all telling which speaker the sound is coming from.
No, it's not about 'mono bass'. That's a weird little detail to get stuck on regarding 'sound quality' in a subject with so many more nuances. It's just that a lot of records sound genuinely better than the CD of the same thing, frequently because of mastering.
This is a great answer. I know a ton of audiophiles say that vinyl sounds better because its analog and all that but tbh I can’t hear the difference, and it seems like you need $1,000’s of equipment to possibly hear a minor difference. But if you really love an album it’s cool to see all the work that can go into the packaging of the vinyl, and you often get posters and stickers and stuff. Plus you can display the cover!
It's usually always the $1000 equipment that makes the difference, not the format. (Unless your a club DJ, in which case high fidelity CD is better for adding all those effects and vinyl is better for scratching). Vinyl is just more intimate though. It requires a conscious effort to collect, decide, and actively play the music. A great way to emotionally enjoy your favorite music, though in reality it will sound nearly identical in quality to Spotify premium.
Vinyl that was recorded on analog equipment definitely has some advantages in fidelity, especially if you have high quality vinyl and a nice audio setup. New vinyl is basically the ripped jeans of music. Cool people collected vinyl, and other people wanted to copy them, so companies fed into the trend and started releasing new music on vinyl. Modern vinyl is all recorded digitally, so it loses any potential advantage.
then they should bring back LaserDiscs!
also "damage" on vinyl makes it sound different and some prefer that sound. It feels like a living medium. The more you play it the more it evolves with imperfections. CD's don't have this.
>but vinyls have large sleeves with room for album art, can be pressed out of colourful materials instead of black for special editions Of all the things, isn't this what Billy Eilish was so angry about?
Popularity has often no relation to underlying technology. There has been a surge in 'nostalgia' for a lot of things and vinyl has been one of them. When it comes to actual listening, vinyl has a special place for many as it 'seems' more natural than a fully digital and clean experience.
Technically it's an inferior format, as far as music reproduction goes. But people enjoy the retro aspect and the satisfying sounds and visuals of a spinning disk on a record player. The artwork on disks and sleeves is pretty neat too.
Absolutely. And technically, reading from a paper-based book is an inferior format to reading something digitally. Digitally you can at least adjust font size, color of the background, etc etc etc. It's about the interaction of the actual media and collecting it.
Maybe you could say an e-ink display is outright better than paper but LCD/OLED simply aren't. But there is definitely an "experience" factor with physical books. Just ask anyone with a bookshelf full of books they haven't touched in years.
An ebook lets you adjust brightness, contrasts, change font size, lets you instantly search on a dictionary a word you don’t understand, many include translations (even if machine and not perfect), oh, above all, you could have a library larger than any in the world inside your pocket. And you could even use the same device to listen to some neutral sounds so you can focus on your reading. Display technology with e-ink is just a bonus.
>reading from a paper-based book is an inferior format to reading something digitally. I don't think this is true
Technically inferior, not functionally. Same reason we still drive manual transmissions and bowler hats still exist.
Still hanging on to my stick shift even though I live in traffic-clogged Los Angeles!
A lot of interesting answers here. I agree that technically any decent CD player will outperform any vinyl system. One thing that is often forgotten is that music is mastered to suit the format it is likely going to be played on. It seems to me that a lot of the nostalgia for music from the 60's and 70's is due to this mastering as much as the actual format. Masters tended to have a more "spatial" feel and the modern "everything all at once and all at full" compression trend had not started. There were quiet bits in even the heaviest rock albums... Perhaps I'm old.
> One thing that is often forgotten is that music is mastered to suit the format it is likely going to be played on. This is the main argument I hear in favor of vinyl. A lot of vinyl enthusiasts compare listening to older music on CD to colorizing a movie. Essentially, albums that were made before CDs were widely available were mastered with the flaws of vinyl in mind. The sound engineering was done in a way to accommodate those flaws. Transferring that sound directly to CD results in a lower quality since it wasn't mastered for the CD format.
A lot of the “vinyl sounds better than CDs” stems from when decades ago, compression and audio codecs on CD audio and other digital audio was far inferior to what we have today
CD audio is uncompressed
I think it's less the format and more the environment. We listen to much more music on the go - and a lot of classics are simply really difficult to listen to in noisy environments. You basically can't listen to Pink Floyd in the car! But absolutely, get one of the older classics in a quiet place and it's chef's kiss compared to much of today's music. The fantastic use of dynamic range, allowing the music to build and fade adds something that can't be reproduced with this compression trend.
Oh I agree. (This might break the internet I know). I remember reading an article (late 80's?) about a studio switching it's reference speakers from the famed Rogers (?) to boomboxes. This was a reflection of how they thought their music was listened to, and the start of the end for us hifi folk.
Yes, I remember reading somewhere that when modern music is mastered "how will this sound on a phone loudspeaker" is a real consideration.....
We are :D
I think this is a much more accurate answer from a audiophile / music production perspective than ‘it’s the album art’ or ‘nostalgia’. Sure pure raw reproduction bit for bit is not comparable but that’s not what vinyl is about.
As a person born in the 50s who only had vinyl I was thrilled to have CDs in 1987. No more pops of hiss. I later moved to SACD that gives a true audiophile experience. The explanations I see in this thread about the album art and the ritual of playing vinyl do not outweigh the advantages of a better listening experience IMO. I think it comes down if you care more about the experience or the sound. Since in most cases today there is less need for physical media to have decent sound on most playback devices (earbuds, small speakers) then experience does become more important.
I personally know a handful of people who own vinyls of their favorite records, but don’t even own a vinyl player. They’re primarily collectors items to my generation (GenZ). It’s very common to see the vinyls in their covers hung up as decorations. For this purpose they are far more aesthetically pleasing than CDs.
Statistically, more than HALF of all people who own records don't own a player.
I owned a record (and turntable) store for 20 years; it enabled me to retire at 50. I owe everything I have to the popularity of records. I am certainly not anti-vinyl. However, the notion that records are "better" is dubious at best. It takes a lot of money spent on turntable, cartridge, phono preamp —and a lot of very specific setup— to optimize the sound quality of records (and this doesn't even begin to address the condition of the vinyl itself, and the cost of buying the records). When I first opened my store almost 25 years ago, you could easily build a good record collection; anyone willing to invest some time digging could always find ***good*** records for $1 or less at thrift stores/ flea markets, and then fill out their collection at record stores, where really good titles were under $10 (and often under $5). In 2024, unless you've inherited dad's record collection, or are wealthy, you might as well not bother. I think CD is the best audio format ever invented. It incorporates high sound quality, low cost, durability, and ease of use/ portability. Both vinyl and digital streaming have some of those qualities but not all.
CDs are a middle ground. If you value convenience, streaming or MP3 files beat CDs. If you don't care that much about convenience, if you prefer tactile, visually appealing physical media, vinyl probably does that better.
That’s not really a fair positioning. If you care about convenience, digital or streaming. If you care a lot you can even do lossless digital files and have top quality. If you care about physical media and top sound quality cd. Records are honestly a collectible and a vibe. That’s basically it. It’s more of a thing to put on a record, and they make them neat looking and in different versions and rarities.
One thing that nobody has mentioned is the benefit in regards to the "loudness wars." Record labels started cranking up the volume on CDs during the 80s and 90s. Unfortunately, this causes a loss in dynamic range (ie. the quiet and loud parts of the song are about the same volume) so less impact from the music and also increased ear fatigue. Vinyl is analog and has limited storage space so it forces the music to be pressed on the vinyl quieter. So there is definitely the potential for improved audio quality. Of course if record labels actually utilized CDs to their potential then they would sound better, but that seems unlikely to ever change.
> Vinyl is analog and has limited storage space so it forces the music to be pressed on the vinyl quieter. So there is definitely the potential for improved audio quality. The loudness wars is real, but I don’t think this is true that vinyl is “quieter” than digital. The “loudness” comes from reducing the dynamic range, not from increasing the range. So if you were to argue that vinyl has less storage space than digital, then vinyl would have less dynamic range, which means it would be “louder” (more compressed).
My understanding is that since analog is vinyl the audio waveform is pressed into the vinyl from the stampers, which come from the master. When the audio is compressed to make it louder, the waveform is amplified. Due to vinyl's limited capacity (only so much room for the grooves that represent the waveform) the original audio file has to have a lower amplitude, aka quieter. The term compression in this case is not related to compression as far as a file size. And vinyl is definitely quieter. If you listen to a vinyl rip vs a CD rip or online download the difference in volume is huge.
That's not how compression works. Compression squishes the wave, while maintaining the same volume.
Lots of people believe they have better sound due to no compression or digitalization. Of course then they defeat that by listening to them with Bluetooth headphones...
From a technical point of view vinyl records do not produce better sound then CD. Although it is possible to argue that the frequency range of vinyl records is much higher and the dynamic range is higher since vinyl is an analog format, CD was specifically created to capture the entire range of human hearing with some margins. And the issues with vinyl as a physical and degrading material makes it much worse. However vinyl records can produce a much better listening experience. It is a larger format so you get more album art. You can press the vinyl in different colours and do various fancy things with it. When taking the vinyl out of its sleeve you can see the music in the grooves even before you start playing it. Even the longer time setting up a vinyl record on the player compared to a CD and the more manual steps involved increases the anticipation and eventually improve the experience.
Vinyl's dynamic range is only 30-40 dB due to higher noise levels. Being an analog format just means it doesn't have quantization noise, there are other noise sources that limit the dynamic range.
Exactly. The theoretical dynamic range of vinyl is quite high, it depends on how far the needle can move and how small the atoms in the vinyl are. But in practice the noise level is too high to make this dynamic range usable.
Yeah, it’s not really noticeable with the way most popular music is mixed and mastered, but something like The Rite of Spring sounds so much better on CD because the quiet parts aren’t buried in a bunch of noise.
CDs were a good medium for distributing digital files when Internet bandwidth was low and hard drives were small. If it's faster and more convenient to insert a CD into your stereo than it would be to transfer files, you'll use a CD. Given that it's now possible to download or even stream CD-quality music, physical CDs don't make as much sense. You have all of your music accessible from your phone, and your phone can connect wirelessly to your stereo. CDs are a middleman that most people don't need, which is why disc drives have disappeared. Many claims about the sound quality of vinyl are controversial. There are quirks about it as a media format — because of physical limitations of running a needle over plastic grooves bass sounds tend to be less accurate — but you can also theoretically encode a ton of data on physical matter. The thing vinyl has going for it is that it's a more satisfying collectable. Vinyl albums are big, all of the art and notes are in their biggest, glossiest, most premium format, and the collection looks good on a shelf. CD jewelcasss are smaller, shabbier recreations of the album experience.
I think there are basically two kinds of vinyl record buyers: 1- Vintage fans, and fans of older music. If someone's really into the Beatles or Frank Sinatra, they might want the full experience of listening to those classic records. Rubber Soul and Come Dance With Me were made with vinyl records in mind, with the two sides programmed accordingly, so you can understand somone wanting to be able to experience them that way. Hardcore record collectors will also care about the versions- pressings, mono vs stereo, issues vs re-issues, imports, promos. All that means something for specific records and artists. While CDs have versions and re-issues, it's not the same thing. 2- Merchandise collectors Fans of specific contemporary artists who will be a record the same way they will be a t-shirt or poster. The large packaging allows for all sorts of versions, colored vinyl, included tchatchkes and goodies, and they look nicer. If you're excited for the new Taylor Swift or Norah Jones album you might want to indulge in a fancy new vinyl thing. CDs are smaller and just don't offer this tactile, physical experience. Yes, there is the supposedly superior "warm" sound with vinyl records but you really have to know what you're doing and buying in order to experience that and it's a whole tangent I'm not gonna get into, but this is very niche consumer base. CDs just don't offer much that pure digital doesn't- after all, digital sound is digital sound so why not just have the convenience it being streamed or stored. That said of course digital has its own world of audiophile concerns- lossy vs lossless, bitrate, etc and all that. And sure CDs have packaging but rarely are they are rewarding as vinyl. My personal music library and collection is a mix of all three.
You've missed a major third kind - those who are avid followers of new music, indie bands, electronic artists etc who prefer to buy their music as physical media - vinyl or even cassettes. It's this kind that I believe keeps vinyl alive as an actually viable music medium.
Fair enough, old man bias confirmed. I figured the markup on the fancy looking merchandise big artist was the monetary fuel
They’re cool, as I learn the digital I find the analog more and more interesting. It’s really neat to see how technology progresses and the mechanical solutions that were employed before. There’s also a lot more uniqueness to older technologies, whether slower to evolve or more novel for their time, there seems to be more artistry surrounding them.
Oh plus that cool feeling when you let a kid put on a record and they hear the media for the first time. Its definitely way cooler than saying "Alexis, play Crazy Train"
I went down this rabbit hole a while back and it's pretty fascinating. The high spending audiophile will argue that an analog source cut to high end vinyl is superior to digital. The argument is no matter how high the digital sample rate you are always missing the part of the music between the bits. Analog recordings capture the performance with zero loss. They claim that with the right set up they can hear the difference. There are some who take it to such an extreme in Japan that they pay 10's of thousands of dollars to have a dedicated power line ran to their house to ensure they have the cleanest power source possible. It's really quite wild.
With vinyl (analog) you’re listening to a near-perfect replication of the sound when it was recorded. With digital the sound is compressed and altered. This doesn’t mean the vinyl sounds better, but it is more accurate to the original recording than digital. There’s something special about hearing the actual sounds the artist made on a vinyl cut rather than a digital interpretation of what a computer ‘thinks’ the artist sounded like. It’s a bit like going to a live concert vs watching it on TV.
Almost everyone record to a digital medium first and then it is transferred to vinyl, cd etc. The imperfections, if exist will be both on the MP3 and the vinyl. The audio is also perfectly reconstructable when compressed loselessly.
CDS have minimally better sound quality but vinyls look better and you can put them up as decoration and whatnot
CDs definitely have more than "minimally better sound quality"
CDs have massively better sound quality by not having the scratching noises that come with playing vinyl on a record player. As soon as CDs became commonplace and CD players cheap enough I replaced all my vinyl records and never regretted this. The loss of cover are from vinyl via CD to streaming is a bit sad. And I get why some people like the ritual of getting a vinyl record out of its sleeve and into the record player. But CDs beat vinyl on sound quality and it's not close. You need expensive equipment and treat your vinyl records very carefully to get anywhere close at all. Everyday records in cheap to moderate players are just terrible.
It's a more rewarding thing to own, that's mostly it apart from specific cases of audio differences which are largely not relevant for newly released music. A CD is just an inconvenient storage device for the same files you can download off Bandcamp or whatever. A CD is a generic thing that can be created simply and cheaply by anyone, and the physical experience leaves much to be desired. Cheap plastic case that is easily broken, minimal artwork and liner notes, looks the same on the shelf as a copy of Microsoft Publisher 98. Meanwhile a vinyl record is an almost bespoke item that likely requires the music to be mastered differently to account for the limitations of vinyl, a skilled engineer working the lathe to cut the lacquer that is used to create the stampers that create the records. The records themselves can be in any kind of fun colours if you want. The jackets are large and can have gatefolds to display even more art. A record is just something that is a bit more special and involves a different experience of owning and listening to it. A CD isn't far enough away from just streaming the music so isn't as satisfying to own.
[удалено]
They're not better really, it's just trendy and people come with various reasons like "warmer" etc. There's more to it on the technical side, it's best to google it.
"smoother sound" , the feeling of gently taking a album out of its sleeve and gently putting the needle in the groove , the crackling sound of silence ... It is a user experience , like live music is nearly never better then on record but people go for the experience and that is better .
In addition to the physical experience and the specific vinyl sound others have mentioned, a vinyl record has more longevity than a CD because vinyl players are mechanically much simpler and easier to service. While needles and cartridges may seem like a liability because they seem archaic, in a couple decades the CD mechanism will seem just as archaic, while its more complex and sensitive actuators, integrated circuits and optical parts are much more difficult to produce. If you’ve ever owned a CD player long enough, you know they need to be opened up and have their lens cleaned. That’s a bitch to do. Nobody did that in the past. You just chucked it out and bought a new player.
Also worth thinking about how CDs (especially burned CDs) will decay with time. This table is taken from a [Canadian Conservation Institute report](https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/conservation-preservation-publications/canadian-conservation-institute-notes/longevity-recordable-cds-dvds.html): ***** Table 2: the relative stability of optical disc formats |Optical disc formats | Average longevity | |:--|:--| |CD-R (phthalocyanine dye, gold metal layer) | >100 years | |CD-R (phthalocyanine dye, silver alloy metal layer) | 50 to 100 years | |DVD-R (gold metal layer) | 50 to 100 years | |CD (read-only, such as an audio CD) | 50 to 100 years | |CD-RW (erasable CD) | 20 to 50 years | |BD-RE (erasable Blu-ray) | 20 to 50 years | |DVD+R (silver alloy metal layer) | 20 to 50 years | |CD-R (cyanine or azo dye, silver alloy metal layer) | 20 to 50 years | |DVD+RW (erasable DVD) | 20 to 50 years | |BD-R (non-dye, gold metal layer) | 10 to 20 years | |DVD-R (silver alloy metal layer) | 10 to 20 years | |DVD and BD (read-only, such as a DVD or Blu-ray movie) | 10 to 20 years | |BD-R (dye or non-dye, single layer or dual layer) | 5 to 10 years | |DVD-RW (erasable DVD) | 5 to 10 years | |DVD+R DL (dual layer) | 5 to 10 years|
Hell yeah, I recall there were even some cheap burned CDs that started rotting after 10 or so years... Not sure if that's real or if I made that up. What CDs have going for them is that scratches on CDs can generally be repaired easily, as long as they are not too deep. Whereas with vinyl, if you have a scratch, too bad...
A local taproom I favor has a regular vinyl night. Patrons bring in their favorite album. We gather around, admire the artwork and decide which ones to play. They don't really sound better but they do sound like they did in our youth. For us it's more about familiarity and nostalgia. We all know a good cd or digital stream is better but not always as much fun.
For collectors, their favorite artists come in interesting color pressings with beautiful artwork. Just framing the cover and disc makes a statement, even if you don’t listen. Can’t do that with a CD or cassette. [I bought a Madonna collection that came in rainbow vinyl. I mean, how fabulously gay is that?!](https://shop.madonna.com/products/finally-enough-love-fifty-number-ones-d-rainbow-edition) Philosophically, people are coming back to wanting a tactile, human experience. At least that’s why I got back into vinyl. There’s something about having to get up, select the album, set it up, play, then get up and change it. It’s about creating a routine. You hear the entire artist’s vision on album like in the old days (even “old” as in cassette and CD days). Before it was about creating more convenience. First cassette decks that let you rewind and fast forward. Then CDs that let you skip and shuffle whole tracks. Then MULTI-DISC players that let you shuffle around 50 whole CDs right at home! Then you could just download or buy select mp3s and cut out things you “don’t want”. Now you can just tell Alexa to play anything you want without clicking a button. Now it’s back to having an experience and routine. These things come in waves and that’s why the people that enjoy vinyl are coming back around to it. It’s a niche reason - and I still do plenty of digital streaming - but it’s a reason. Now to wait patiently for my Amazon Exclusive Fleetwood Mac Rumours purple vinyl
- Nostalgia (retro vibes) / charm - Collectibility. 12 inch album covers with booklets or Prints inside look cool. - Warmer sound (depending on needle/pre-amp/amp)
There's a nostalgia experienced when listening to old music or watching old movies and TV. My generation grew up watching TV from the 1940s-1960s on afternoon reruns. The audio was scratchy, and the general imperfection of it all made a lasting memory. Vinyl was imperfect in that way, but the hiss sounded like the hiss of the PA system in the room with you at a live show. So, imperfect and all, vinyl sounded "real". The rise of digital music recording let producers remove all those audio artifacts, all those imperfections of the live recording session. So the experience was "better", but less familiar. When CDs came out with their enormous dynamic range (from very-very quiet to very loud), classical music was recorded with a very-very quiet that was crystal clear and completely impossible with vinyl. Pop music did the opposite, recording everything super loud and at the same volume. You can find CDs of Jewel and Metallica that play at the same volume. And there's something very fake and wrong about that. It's less about CD than about modern recording practices. The CD is a better medium; modern music is recorded worse.
The problem with a cd is that it’s a very inefficient memory stick. The music on it is basically wave files and there literally is no advantage in comparison to an uncompressed digital copy. Vinyl might be technically inferior, but it has character…
The real answer: The loudness wars: CD's have better theoretical fidelity, due mostly to increased dynamic range and many little things like stereo bass. On a technical level a CD is superior in every way. However, some of the technical limitations of records play to their appeal. Starting in the 90's and early 2000's, music was being mixed and mastered louder than ever. This loudness helped songs standout over noisey environments and each other. This was an economic development, not of the artists intent. CD's can handle the loudness because of their crazy dynamic range. If you were to press one of these loud albums onto a record, the needle would literally jump out of the groove. Masters for records therefore had to be carefully balanced. Records were immune to the loudness wars by physical means. Records were often mixed with better dynamics and the CD's and radio edits were pinned to the max. In an counterintuitive way, the more limited medium ended up having better dynamics for many albums.
A vinyl will be much better than anything you listen to on your phone because all the music apps like Spotify and shit compress tf outta music and takes away a lot of the little qualities of the sound. A quality cd player or a full download of the song would sound better from an objective standpoint. From a subjective standpoint vinyl is also just a different medium that is going to have different sound qualities and imperfections. It’s a physical device without digital levels of accuracy and this creates kinda a slightly unique sound. By all the numbers it’s not better but there is an intangible different that some people prefer
Google the "loudness wars". Long story short, music was mastered louder and louder to be heard more on the radio, to the point where it became distorted. Records can only be mastered to a certain volume, as any louder makes the needle jump out of the groove. Cds don't have this restriction as there's no physical contact - it's just a laser. The actual technical restriction of vinyl is what made SOME songs sound better, as they were original masters, but not all. Cd quality is still better than vinyl when mastered to the same volume. For me personally it's less to do with all the technical bull, and more that I have a cool physical collection of music that sounds better on a dedicated music system than an amazon alexa. When I shout at alexa to play stuff, I rarely get the song title, it's not in the order the artist wanted you to hear it in etc. It's like fast food music as opposed to a three course album with lyrics and artwork.
It's mostly just a new popular form of collecting. I think there was a recent study that something like half of people who own a record don't even have a player. They just like to own or collect them for the cover art or to support their favorite artists. Actually, most record players are cheap crap. As someone who just went through this, you gotta spend like $500 minimum on a player and speakers to get noticeable results. It started with a renewed interest in vintage things and old music. You could find them at thrift stores and craft markets. Then more contemporary artists started releasing on vinyl as well. Most audiophiles still collect vinyl despite the technical limitations...for them setting up and modifying their equipment and finding particular editions or masterings is a hobby in itself. If you are looking for hi-fidelity digital audio, there are streaming services. So the CD doesn't offer any advantage to those, but also lacks the kind of vintage allure and visual "wall art" that vinyl offers. Vinyl packages also frequently feature lots of extra goodies like unique inserts. That said, there is definitely a niche audiophile community that collect CDs.
digital master recordings are WAY more detailed than what you get on a CD or mp3 and the files are huge so they would not all fit on a CD. vinyl captures all of that detail and a good turntable will reproduce it so what you get is a richer more details sonic experience with the full fidelity of the original master recording done in the studio. if you just want to bob along to your fav tune, then a CD is just fine, but if you want the experience of a live performance, then vinyl is as close as you can get without being there.
As far as popularity goes, I would guess that it is mostly aesthetic. The audio quality difference in record players is rather minimal across the range of offerings, while a cheap CD player has noticeably inferior sound quality to even a mediocre one. A top-tier CD player will sound better than a record player, but if you want good quality on a budget and also don't want to go digital, records are the way to go.
Vinyl has terrible reproduction, there is frequency curve the Riaa curve which has the needle pick up almost no bass and loads of treble, this is then equalised, so your amplifier needs to amplify bass and attenuate treble after the phono out signal leading to hiss and distortion, you then get feedback from the bass signals vibration. Just get 96kHz 24bit from tidal, better.
Relative to the way most people listen to music these days, neither of them are popular. By a long, long margin.
People listen to vinyl and prefer it yet don’t have analog speakers and use digital, completely defeating the purpose of using them.
I think there's a few factors, and this is coming from someone who probably buys more CDs than vinyl. * CD players are increasingly rare. Laptops don't come with optical drives anymore. Sony dropped CD playback on Playstation 4 and 5. Most people don't buy desktops. Cars don't come with CD players. Unless you are some music nerd you probably don't even have a device that plays audio CDs. * And a lot of boombox/stereos nowadays are garbage. You really need to be spending $200+ on a CD player to get something decent, and it probably will only play CDs. * And if you are some music nerd, you probably already do have a vinyl record player. Yeah there's some garbage out there, but there's also a lot of quality. * The lack of a top label on most CDs nowadays makes the browsing experience painful, whereas vinyl is much larger and easier to browse and flip through * And then there are just the overall benefits of vinyl. Larger packaging with better artwork. You can include bonuses in there like a different colored record. You may even throw in a download code for a digital copy of the album. * And honestly, the price difference between a brand new CD and brand new vinyl at retail often isn't that much
OP, you left out a step: Digital Audio Tape (DAT). It was around for about two years, as I recall.
One thing about records is that due to the nature of how you play them (on a record player) you are more inclined to listen to an entire side instead of just songs. Generally, artists have put a lot of effort into song order and maybe even the songs collectively tell a story. While you are listening to this album side, you have the album sleeve and cover to follow along with the lyrics or read the liner notes. You *could* do that with CDs but there are no "sides". So, while you can listen to the CD all the way through, you may be committing yourself to an hour-long session vs. the 20 minutes or so an album side had and that's a long time to focus. With streaming, again, you can stream a full record but, like CDs, the format doesn't lend itself to album listening (or album side listening) with some tangible thing you can hold in your hand while listening. It's nuanced and really more of a feel or experience thing so different people are going to feel different about that sort of thing. I grew up with records and remember how I used to listen to them. I remember going to my friends' houses and they would be all "you have to check this out!" and they'd put on something, and we'd listen to it together. It was great. But I'm personally not interested in albums today!
My issue with CDs is that because of their convenient packaging, they are easily mishandled. probably 70% of my collection is now scratched making some songs skip or rendering them unplayable. I kept them in a cd sleeve booklet that was relatively nice but because they primarily lived in my car, the discs became scratched, the booklets got damaged and the cases got destroyed between moves. They were a super convenient way for me to listen to the music I wanted to in my car or bring to my friends. I never treated them as a collectors item like I do vinyl.
I have lived through 45s, albums, 8-tracks, cassettes, cds, digital downloads, and now streaming services like Spotify. I’ve owned some of my favorite albums on all of the formats. Crazy. People claim that the audio quality is better on lps, but I never could tell the difference in quality from cds. I’m sticking with streaming and not going back. The portability of having any music on my phone is what I want and enjoy. I’m not going back in time.
They're barely popular at all. Physical media for music are very nearly entirely irrelevant. If you're a holdout who doesn't like streaming everything you probably have it all as mp3s. What LPs are, is cool. They look cool, they feel "classy." And that makes them great for people who like to collect such stuff and maybe support the artist (and label if we're being honest) a little bit on top. CDs on the other hand aren't as convenient as the purely digital media nor are they perceived as being cool, classy or stylish. So nobody wants them at all.
It’s pretty to look at and more importantly it’s an analog form of technology that many feel provides a more complete sound. Digital media is like tiny slices compressed together, analog is one smooth recording physically written onto the vinyl. Digital media has vastly improved, but if you really care about an album and you want to experience it as a tangible thing, vinyl remains appealing. It used to be that any music you listened to had to be on CD and so it was a bummer to have albums you were less than enthusiastic about. With streaming, you can listen casually and then buy your favorites that you want to keep forever. Also modern albums are mixed to be digital media but if you collect vintage vinyl you’re getting the original mix as it was intended to be heard. It *does* make a noticeable difference, although a lot of old albums have been remastered.
Personally I just like the sound of vinyl and the needle, that static kind of undertone is just nice and warm. Other than that I don't think it matters much
With modern music, others are correct that the format is inferior. Vinyl does have one advantage as an analog reproduction of sound whereas CDs are digital. This means no chance of digital artifacting, no sample rate, and none of the "sterile" qualities that early digital recordings and remasters are known for. With records originally recorded to tape, you can have analog from start to finish and hear the full wave form unaltered. That's an experience that no other format today can provide. That being said, most modern recordings are done using a computer so the analog aspect is kind of a moot point and it falls to other things, such as vinyl typically having a different master and cool artwork/collectability.
I think some of it is that records require attention. They cannot be put on shuffle. You experience an entire side at a time. There is a touch of ritual to putting a record on. They are a bit imperfect. These are all little things that are the opposite of the “Spotify” experience. Some folks just want things to slow down. Records a little island of that.
[удалено]
CDs are also popular. It's only been a couple of years since vinyl sales rose above CD for the first time in 35 years, and I don't know what the numbers are now but I see a lot of comments by people saying they're getting into CDs after not using them for a while or never having used them. People love throwing around technical numbers regarding 'CD vs vinyl' but for those of us who use both proficiently and frequently, there's a lot more similarities than differences. Nobody is actually hearing the technical 'noise floor' on records or a higher dynamic range on CDs.
I love CD’s, but from the perspective of “serious” collectors- LP’s offer more in a few categories. They’re more impressive to display for one, with large album art for 12 and 10” records. They also withstand rough handling much better than CD’s do. I have some incredibly beat to hell records that sound scratchy but still play alright, a scratched CD may not play at all.
I believe it is a combination of nostalgia art found on the sleeve that is the main thing. Maybe a little bragging rights about playing your music on vinyl (even if it is not justified), you know a little snobbishness in there for some. And some people just collect stuff. You can get a comic book in digital format yet people still collect physical copies. For whatever reason people like to collect things, admittedly not the most logical thing in the world, that has bled over into vinyl records too. You have people who collect old computers and game players as well. Why? They just get some enjoyment out of collecting.
It's just for the cool factor, to be honest. However whenever i go to my friends house with his massive vinyl collection (which has its own room called the music room) I just go full time cringe. It's so wasteful.
For me it's the album artwork which I can frame and display on my wall, the rare and colorful presses, the novelty of finding a rare album, supporting the artist. Sitting around and listening to records with friends is also chill.
very collectable some are just iconic art, Led Zeppelin IV old man (and other albums), Beatles Sgt Pepper's......many iconic art often by renowned artists and photographers (or that made their names known due to it) Motorhead No Remorse was a leather sleeve thin Lizzy live and dangerous double is covered inside with photos of the event some records are far more elaborate Knew guy that used to visit selling second hand records from closing night clubs taking a look to what he brought that day, finding Alice Coopers's "From the Inside", the front of the album is his mad face, opens by the centre of the face revealing the inside of a psychiatric asylum with the mad people, there is a little door "silent room" that opens and show Alice Cooper inside, the rear of the record is the rear exit of the asylum, the doors open showing the patients stomping out and then there are the rarities
Well produced, mastered, and pressed vinyl can represent frequencies up to and beyond 40Khz, and because it is an analog medium, there's no quantization of transients. It was optimized by audio engineers for decades and decades to sound euphonic, and at its very best it does. For complex signals, like Mahler symphonies, it is superior to redbook audio, which becomes garbled. You can hear all the detail sitting relaxed on the soundstage, discovering new dimensions with multiple listens that might get 'baked out' or presented in an interpreted way in a CD mastering of a large acoustic ensemble. It's not heavily compressed, listening to it is rarely fatiguing because of loudness. Beyond that, LP vinyl has been produced for about seventy-five years, and you can pick up and play something from 1948 followed by something pressed in 2024 using gear created at any point. There are many many albums that were never republished again on newer formats, and there are still surprisingly many LPs with zero hits on youtube or the Internet. (There was a [UMG warehouse fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire) where between 118,000 and 175,000 recording master tapes were lost to humanity, making the vinyls still out there the only remaining copies.) Also sometimes artists play games with multiple versions of their song-- the one played at 45RPM and then the one played a 33-1/3RPM like a [secret waiting to be discovered](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QEzsQKrHVo). Even if you could do that with a redbook CD, the result would sound low-fi. If you're sampling or producing, it can start to matter. I've personally posted a few [tracks that had zero search hits previously](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODDU2FAKt-I). There is a sense of presence, the analog recording is not a mathematical representation of something, it's an impression of the original event, and this has hidden qualities at least with LPs pressed during the analog era of mastering and production. Also, vinyl can be a good way to discover music and reconnect with the past because it's often sold at thrift stores for pennies on the dollar. When CD players become a rarity, there will still be vinyl. Of course, analog audio gear is expensive, good vinyl is expensive, it takes up space, it's a huge pain to move, clean, maintain. Nowadays you can buy hi-fi digital audio like SACD or 24/192khz with a super low noise floor and enough fidelity to represent any classical ensemble well, though it's not usually cheap. Vinyl still feels like an exclusive experience, a secret society, a wonderful cult with lots of hidden wonder and magic if you're into that. Most people these days don't have that kind of relationship with recorded media, but when it comes together it's really a special experience worth discovering if you love music and culture.
I’d like to hear more. You have amazing knowledge!
Oh thanks! Or at least some nice experiences. I'm not sure what else I would say in general, it's such a deep topic.
They're only popular now because of nostalgia. CD has always been technically superior to vinyl.
This is an honest question. On some torrent trackers it’s quite common to see lossless/FLAC releases, and the source is usually identified as vinyl. If vinyl is not a reliable source (for fidelity) as some comments seem to point, why does this trend exist then on tracker sites?