LP's vs CD's

Donny said:
It was 15 years since I heard a record again and now I have to say I prefer cd's I tryed a new un opened lp on a player that has had less then 30mins of use (I just made sure it worked back in 1989) it sounded really bad I had humm and little bass :(


Well if you had hum and little bass then something is amiss. On a proper setup you'll normally get much better bottom end from vinyl than CD. The fact you have hum tells me the table isn't grounded properly or the cartridge wires are fudged.

Mike
 
it's a 1989 magnavox rack system it's in good shape well cared for but I guess time could have taken it's toll by now :( I'll still keep an eye out for me a good tt and I have one unopened record left for testing but the mag is the only tt I've got
 
yea...

I've done a bunch.
As a child of the LP age, I have many duplicates on CD.
It's always fun to compare them...and unles the LP is in really crappy shape, it's always a clear winner.
 
Even an average CD player crushes any 'table I've ever heard. I realize this site is largely "old school," and that's cool. But to my ears good digital smokes vinyl, badly. LP is just too mechanical sounding for me. Of course, it is mechanical, so that explains it! :lmao:

For my money, though, DVD-A is the way to go. Much better than CD or LP, especially with good MC recordings. It's sad to see neither of new hi rez digital formats is getting much love, but you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him buy music instead of downloading mp3s.
 
Ditto...

Not anything decent to be sure.
Mine is no high grade, but as for sound quality...no comparison..Lp all the way.

See, the process involves 'cleaning up' a recording to put it on a CD, in the cleaning there is always some quality lost.
Its like saying you like the radio more than the band live.
 
Considerering I had hundreds and hundeds of tapes & LPs before anyone ever dreamed of optical playback, it's safe to say it's in the hundreds. Even as a relatively early adopter I suffered thru decades of vinyl.
 
Rob Babcock said:
Considerering I had hundreds and hundeds of tapes & LPs before anyone ever dreamed of optical playback
That should make you close to 100.
Myself, I was in my early 20's when I bought my first CD player. By that time, I had over 500 LP's and over 300 cassettes...45's not counted.
I thought it was the way to go.
LP's are proof I was wrong.
The only way to suffer through an LP is to have either one in terrible shape or a system of the same condition.
 
Okay, I guess I don't know when the first guy "dreamed" of optical playback. But I myself didn't have a CD player til '86, and it was a while before any of my friend knew what one was. By then I had a load of LPs, and I embraced tape early on for the convenience (and of course for "pirating" friends LPs, although we didn't think of it as such back then). I didn't totally give up the LP ghost til sometime around the early 90's.

Not everyone can appreciate good sound. For those who can't there's always vinyl! :D Just kidding- I'm fine with whatever you like. Even good vinyl playback can't cut it for me, but that's just my opinion, not Holy Writ. It'd be boring if we all liked the same thing, and hopefully we can disagree about what's best without stooping to name calling and innuendo. Surely not every single person who disagrees must be deaf or ignorant, must they? :sigh:
 
cd vs vinyl...

i can understand those who prefer cd's to vinyl...after years of being used to hiss..clicks and pops...from even brand new vinyl..the clinically clean sound of cd's can seem light years away in terms of fidelity..especially for music recorded during the whole digital revolution...and yet...when i first auditioned a pair of grado sr60's on a high end linn cd player in a very audiophile orientated shop here in the uk...playing an album i was very familiar with on vinyl but not on cd.. i ended up not buying the headphones i was that disappointed with the sound...especially at £90 :yikes:
cue forward a few weeks and i've read every review on these grado can's i can find on the web...and i was confused as to how they could have sounded so lifeless to my ears...and yet have such glowing reviews all over the world...had i gone deaf ?..
about this time my borthday was looming near and i actually got a pair of grado cans as a birthday present... :sigh: ..oh dear..i just hoped the receipt was still in the bag...and yet...the first thing i did was plug them into my system and play the exact album i had listened to in the shop on my humble and trusty 17 year old ariston turntable with 'cheap as chips' practically bottom of the range audio technica at95e cartridge ( with new stylus i might add )...
the result ? :scratch2:
..i actually went out and bought another pair of grado sr60's in case they stop making them :D
if a high end linn cd player and supposedly audiophile grade cd can't sell me a pair of grados with their sound...then i guess i'm vinyl man till they stop making cartridges... :thmbsp:..
having said that i've heard some good cd players that without an a-b comparison sound great..but with the price of cd's nowadays, free mp3s available of practically all the music i like and a healthy collection of music already on black plastic...i doubt i'll need another format for the forseeable future
 
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I can tell you for a fact that Vinyl does sound better then a "Redbook" CD, but there are alot of factors involved......
1. You need a fairly good analog section (TT, Cart., phono pre-amp) and
does not come cheap.
2. You "HAVE" to have a way to make sure the LP is very clean and
that is not easy or cheap.
3. The LP it self has to be of a good quality, alot of them are not up to
standards, cheap grade (noisy) vinyl, poor manufacturing process....
4. If all your ducks are in line still alot of care needs to be taken in the
handling of the LP so it does not get scratched......
5. Making sure no vibrations get through the tone arm while said LP is
being played (use of isolation products).

So as you can see it takes alot but it is well worth the effort if you do want the best in audio re-production......as for SACD and DVDA well I have not yet had the chance to compare a SACD and an LP of the same title but hopefully in the next month I will (just purchased a SACD player), and after I do I will post a note about the effort........

CD's do have thier place though, easy to use, very durable and they do sound very good and lots of them..every where.............

Everyone have a good holiday................. :D
 
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soundhd said:
I can tell you for a fact that Vinyl does sound better then a "Redbook" CD...
Thank you soundhd for taking this from the world of personal opinion to verifiable facts. I'm interested in this 'fact' of the better sound of vinyl. But, first of all, could you share with us your definition, or criteria, for 'better sound' of vinyl? Does it have ANYTHING to do with spectral flatness? Does it have ANYTHING to do with distortion? Speaking of distortion, does better sound have anything to do with other additions to the signal, like noise (either completely random or signal correlated) or the lack thereof?

soundhd said:
1. You need a fairly good analog section (TT, Cart., phono pre-amp) and
does not come cheap.
5. Making sure no vibrations get through the tone arm while said LP is
being played (use of isolation products).
I noticed you didn't mention the cables between table and preamp. Doesn't this play into the equation because a huge amount of the capacitve load the cartridge sees comes from the cable? Or, are you assuming the cable is captive to the table, thus is not a user choice. If so, doesn't that imply that the "fairly good" preamp must have a variety of capacitance settings to get the load correct. Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself here, because I am assuming one of your definitions of good sound is a flat spectral balance. If flat spectral balance is not important, then who cares how the cartridge is loaded. That would then lead us to saying who cares about the RIAA equalization errors too.

Assuming I go to great lengths to isolate the table from floor/shelf vibrations, how to I keep out airborne vibrations since I like to listen to music as loud as THOR does? Not talking about out right feedback, but the general "muddying" of the sound when the volume goes up?

Since it is a fact that vinyl sounds better thAn CD, I'm curious as to what the facts say about the couple random points I bring up here.
 
In my experience, the only advantage a CD has over vinyl is that vinyl is far more labor intensive. It's simply more work to play a record than it is to play a CD.
Bill
 
I dunno, House de Kris- maybe none of these guys have heard a CD player or DAC that cost over $120. Doesn't sound like they're hearing what I hear from Redbook. I don't think you need a super steep rig to enjoy CD. But in my experience you need a really steep vinyl rig to make records worth listening to.

A patient soul with a lot of money and ambition can get pretty good sound out of those black plastic plates, but I haven't heard many I could listen to for long periods without the sound wearing on me. The songs on the beginning and middle of an LP can sound good, but it gets hairy towards the inside.

I'll admit I just can't bear the surface noise- everyone has his or her own audio fetish, and mine is noise. The pops, clicks and general noise drives me up the walls. No matter how clean you get the record you just can't kill all the surface noise and it shatters my suspension of disbelief.

I do think that CDs & CD players have gotten a lot better over the years. So many people heard early ones that really weren't well recorded or mastered and made their mind up they didn't like it. Old prejudices and wives tales die hard. Plus I imagine a lot of the superiority of CD is lost when played back on that vintage stuff.
 
full spectrum sound

digital music is sampled in tiny increments from source material. LPs have ALL the sound that was recorded. thats it in a nutshell. most any audio expert or engineer will verify the limitations of digital. it is also incorrect to assume that one needs to go over the deep end $$ to hear a significant difference. i recently did a blind test with my girlfriend switching from cd to lp on the same song, So Long Marrianne by Leonard Cohen. I was using a 1500 CDP and a Rega P3 with dynavector 10x5 cart (less than the price of the CDP). she could immediately tell the difference. she prefered the vinyl stating it was "smoother" and "mellower." all i was doing was switching source input on my preamp (which is unlighted) and the room was dark so she could not tell when i was dropping the tonearm and i made her close her eyes... certainly some recordings are better than others and this may have been a skewed example because i doubt much care was taken in the analogue to digital remaster, but there was an obvious audible difference. as to the time it takes... its kind of a fun ritual. i think vinyl is the best format but thatdoesnt mean that i listen to it most. i am currently streaming apple lossless encoded music to airtunes.... but for sheer sound quality LPs are SUPERIOR to cd. RTR is another question, and may too be better than the CD. but cds are easy in many ways and as long as you like what you're hearing it really doesn't matter. i love old am radio stations with crap sound quality too. but in the end, VINYL RULES!
:banana:
 
...theres something inexplicably satisfying about reaching for your miniature screwdrivers and spanners...fitting a brand new elliptical stylus to your cartridge...balancing the arm ever so carefully so it just hangs freely in mid air about a millimeter above the platter mat...then adjusting downforce till your within a 1/10 th of a gram of manufacturers optimum tracking force..then dialing in antiskate a rebellious 1/10 gram lower than your downforce just for kicks...a quick check on your alignment protractor for optimum lateral alignment of the stylus cantilever...then pulling your 'very infrequently' used..only played twice... copy of your favorite vinyl...then ceremoniously rolling up your sleeves to avoid any unnecessary contact :yikes: with that 'nude' elliptical diamond...cueing the stylus gingerly over the lead-in groove...set minidisk to [record]...slide grados earmuffs into place over aural canals...draw deep breath..and with extremely smug grin :D lower that cueing lever gently till your new elliptical diamond tip is home and dry...crack open a refridgerated beer complete with condensation dripping down the bottle...kicking back in your fave easy chair and after revelling in the glorious experience of analog musical versimilitude...mumble to oneself like a true luddite...
"who needs binary anyway ? "...
:lmao:

...to be continued no doubt :yes: ...heh heh
 
Love LP all you want, but it's flatly absurd to assert they contain "all the sound that was recorded." An LP cutting engineer could easily straighten you out on that score.

Be secure enough in what you like not to be defensive and critical of others opinions. This debate has raged for two decades with each side smugly certain they're right. I don't imagine we can argue each other into agreement, but we can at least behave with some respect.
 
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