Vinyl vs. Digital

[electra225]

I saw this and thought I'd share it. What are your thoughts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzRvSWPZQYk

[chazglenn3]

Interesting. I still enjoy listening to music on vinyl. I also enjoy listening to music via streaming, it's just so convenient.

[19&41]

Nice presentation. It's refreshing to see simple fact being discussed as opposed to emotion, which seems to rule many discourses.

[TC Chris]

I'm an old guy. Males tend to lose high frequency hearing with age. I'm pretty sure I have. When I pay test recordings, it's probably not my equipment that makes the highest frequencies disappear.

That said, I'm willing to consider the claims of "golden ears" that they can hear differences between CD-quality recordings and analog. CDs are 44.1 mHz/16-bit recordings, as I recall, and there are higher-quality formats that careful listeners prefer and that seem to equal the best analog.

A lot of old LPs were poorly recorded. Simply being "analog" and "vinyl" doesn't rescue them. They just don't sound very good. It's a question of engineering. Modern CDs almost always sound pretty good to me, as do the highest-quality LPs.

The YouTube piece at least addressed the "loudness wars," the tendency to compress heavily to sound loud on the radio (loud stations attract people tuning across the dial, in theory). There's a discussion of the phenomenon here:
https://www.soundguys.com/the-loudness-war-51513/

And here's a very short, effective demonstration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

Chris Campbell

[electra225]

The simple program I use to process analog material to digital can and does clean up records, and to a lesser degree, tape. It removes click and pop from records and hiss from tape. This procedure is not necessary when ripping a CD.

[hermitcrab]

It's all a matter of preference ... I myself like to see that spinning record , or the reels on a R2R moving...it gives me some sort of satisfaction ... digital sounds great , but once it's playing . there is zero interaction needed by the user, which to me makes it seem cold and distant .... IMO...

[electra225]

Good point!

[19&41]

For me, it's the message, not the medium. I don't have to dust and clean the grooves and during the winter months, discharge the static buildup. I gladly go through the motions on a disc when it's the only source I have of a particular performer. Other than that, the enjoyment I get from playing music is what's on it, not what it's on.

[electra225]

Another good point!

[TC Chris]

For me, it's the message, not the medium. I don't have to dust and clean the grooves and during the winter months, discharge the static buildup. I gladly go through the motions on a disc when it's the only source I have of a particular performer. Other than that, the enjoyment I get from playing music is what's on it, not what it's on.

Agreed. In the last week I've played cassettes, CDs, LPs, 78s, and the radio (AM and FM).

Chris Campbell