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Why does Vinyl sound so much more alive than CD Audio?

S

steve42

New Member
I think back to the 80's when the CD revolution kicked off. We were all going to want to throw out our albums and buy CDs of our favorite recordings, after all.

Many of us did just that and we weren't fulfilled.

Then they remastered the discs, and we upgraded to those, and still were left empty.

Now they have the Super Audio CD and DVD-Audio formats, and still, nothing.

So why does vinyl sound so much better to me?

Steve
 
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It doesn't always.

I just listened to my new 180g copy of Little Feat's "Feat Don't Fail Me Now" and I'm very disappointed in this pressing. The CD sounds much better.
 
One thing about analog media that I think is pretty cool if you think about it is that the signal is directly traceable back to the artist who sang/played the music. The artists voice may have been turned into an AC current in the microphone, amplified, equalized, compressed, echoed, etc in the electronics, recorded magnetically, transferred by a lathe to a master, and pressed into vinyl... but all through the path the signal can be traced back to the artist. The essential vibrations of the artist's vocal cords are the basis for what is in the vinyl groove.

Compare that with the digital domain where the artist's performance is quickly transformed into a string of 1s and 0s that are then manipulated in a domain that has no physical connection to the artist. At the very end of the chain the 1s and 0s are re-transformed into an AC signal that ultimately turns into sound waves in the speaker. I know that there are mathematical theories that "prove" that the digital transformation and inverse transformation to analog is lossless. Perhaps that is true. Nonetheless, when I play an analog recording I feel that I have a direct connection to the artist that hasn't been interrupted by various computer algorithms and mathematical transforms. The essence of the artist is still right there in those grooves.
 
I was never impressed with vinyl. Too much hassle and too tempermental. Cds sound awesome irregardless and like tapes and vinyl, there are good recordings and bad. Vinyl sounds great the first few times, and then you can start to hear the sound quality go down hill, just like with tapes.
 
I have a mixture of vinyl and CD and Itunes purchased music on my Ipod and the vintage vinyl i uploaded to my computer then downloaded to my Ipod sounds simply amazing compared to the other two formats.I really notice a difference when it goes from a vinyl song next to a CD song.

I never tossed my vinyl, i just added CD's to my music mix and now am reverting back to purchasing strictly vinyl.
 
Marantz7t15 said:
I was never impressed with vinyl. Too much hassle and too tempermental. Cds sound awesome irregardless and like tapes and vinyl, there are good recordings and bad. Vinyl sounds great the first few times, and then you can start to hear the sound quality go down hill, just like with tapes.
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Not true.

As you said, CD's can suck too, but take care of your vinyl and it lasts a lifetime.

I never got into tapes, but I've had plenty more of bad sounding recordings on CD, than vinyl. It is more dependent on the recording engineer than the medium.
 
It depends

specialidiot said:
It doesn't always.
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Agreed. I have CD's that sound great and CD's that sound lame. Same with LP's.

Also have a few SACD's and it looks like I'll be able to say the same for them, but I havn't had enough time to really check them out yet.
 
mid-fi-ry said:
I wonder how many times this topic has been beaten to death with a leather whip on this forum.
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I agree. It simply boils down to your opinion. Some people get all hackled up about their opinions and it's all good, but you just need to believe what's best for you! I just happen to believe CDs sound better, but I respect the Vinyl following also. Peace all!:thmbsp:
 
mcmurma said:
Also have a few SACD's and it looks like I'll be able to say the same for them, but I havn't had enough time to really check them out yet.
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I have several XRCDs from the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio via Three Blind Mice record company that are just astonishing. I had the "Midnight Sugar" album on a few days ago, and I swear on all that is holy that at one point, I absentmindedly looked up to see if there was a piano standing in my room. It seemed to be coming from behind the speakers.
 
JonL said:
One thing about analog media that I think is pretty cool if you think about it is that the signal is directly traceable back to the artist who sang/played the music. The artists voice may have been turned into an AC current in the microphone, amplified, equalized, compressed, echoed, etc in the electronics, recorded magnetically, transferred by a lathe to a master, and pressed into vinyl... but all through the path the signal can be traced back to the artist. The essential vibrations of the artist's vocal cords are the basis for what is in the vinyl groove.
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I've never heard it put better! That simplicity is partly the reason records sound so much better than CDs. Also, from a collector's perspective, when you put on an Okeh 78 of Louis Armstrong and the Hot Seven, you are RIGHT THERE with these long-dead fascinating people!! It's really extraordinary. The CDs of Okeh recordings are just dead, the life and vibrancy of the small Okeh studio is lost, as is the connection with the artists.


CDs are a necessary evil designed to the standards available in the early 1980s of the PC XT with a 4 Megahertz clock. And with a LINEAR conversion standard (less music, fewer bits) From its inception Compact Disc was a severe compromise.

CDs CAN sound pretty good, I can name a few that are exceptional, including the 2009 Beatles issues and Loreena McKennitt, but everything from dithering and dynamic frequency shaping in the mastering to dynamic bandpass filtering and "vinylizing" the audio on the playback machine are attempts to overcome the shortcomings of the format itself.
 
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i prefer lp's, the whole involvement, imho vinyl is king. i have purchased hundreds of new pressings and have been very impressed.. two examples that blew me away on vinyl remaster would have to be : jeff buckley-grace and the mc5 -kick out the jams. the mc5 cd is harsh, distorted and unlistenable. the buckley lp has smooth extended highs, less hiss than the cd master and a sense of being there. it's all a matter of opinion. but when all is said and done, the vinyl lp format is what got the ball rolling..... and it is gaining more believers every day.
 
At this point in time for me, albums sound duller than cds of the same thing. I've got a couple of 45's that sound really good, but by in large my CDs sound better. But then again, my system is a mess and probably couldn't show much quality differences between any of the formats. We'll see what happs as i step it up over time. Either way, i have no plans to abandon digital disks for analog ones. Both are decent ways to listen to sound.
 
I kind of know what you mean. And I'm mostly talking jazz and classical here. But some of my CDs that are all digital in the recording chain have a sort of surreal lifelessness to them... to me it sounds like bright specs of sound coming out of the inky blackness of space, rather than being reminiscent of people playing instruments in a real venue or studio. Like the good sounding LPs.

BUT... I have some CDs that do have that sort of reminder of reality... and those discs are usually analog recordings and possibly masters. Like, Kind of Blue or Beecham conducting Peer Gynt on EMI.

I don't know why all this is, and I don't entirely buy into most of the typical explanations in these kinds of threads. I have been wondering for awhile now if it isn't simply the noise floor?! Maybe our brains don't believe there can be that much silence. :)

Michael
 
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shimniok said:
I kind of know what you mean. And I'm mostly talking jazz and classical here. But some of my CDs that are all digital in the recording chain have a sort of surreal lifelessness to them... to me it sounds like bright specs of sound coming out of the inky blackness of space, rather than being reminiscent of people playing instruments in a real venue or studio. Like the good sounding LPs.

BUT... I have some CDs that do have that sort of reminder of reality... and those discs are usually analog recordings and possibly masters. Like, Kind of Blue or Beecham conducting Peer Gynt on EMI.

I don't know why all this is, and I don't entirely buy into most of the explanations. I have to wonder if it isn't the noise floor?! Maybe our brains don't believe there can be that much silence. :)

Michael
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The ear does have "crossover" distortion, low level sounds are best heard if it's accompanied by a bit of noise to keep the middle ear bones loose. This is a medical fact, but it also happens to mean that the slight surface noise of a record helps us hear the music better.

In the real world, whatever we're listening to has a background of noise: wind, people talking, the fridge, cars driving by etc. A close-mic'd recording with a digital 100db noise floor means a lack of dithering, thus we don't hear low level subtleties, even if they exist on the CD due to proper use of bit dithering during mastering (By default. low-level subtle sounds are NOT preserved in digital recording.)
 
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