Vinyl records outsell CDs for the second year running
Vinyl records outsell CDs for the second year running
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Vinyl records outsell CDs for the second year running
297 comments
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What is everyone's opinions on the sound quality of vinyl?
I understand the collectibility of physical media, and the novelty of owning a vinyl and the machine that plays them. The large art piece that is the case (and often the disc itself). Showing support for your favorite artists by owning physical media from them.
Those are great reasons to collect vinyl.
But a lot of my friends claim vinly is of higher audio quality than anything else, period. This is provably false, but it seems to be a common opinion.
How often have you seen this and what are your thoughts on it?
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Technically CD quality digital is superior, but the recording and mixing can have a lot to do with it. For example, it could be that an decades old Dark Side Of The Moon on vinyl (played on proper equipment) could sound better than a modern remastered CD with maximized loudness (See the "loudness wars").
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It's not impossible, although the loudness wars are pretty much over nowadays. All major music services and players have volume normalisation, many by default, so there's not much point to it any longer.
Also it's pretty tough to find a decades old record still in mint condition, and the sound quality of vinyl gets worse every time you play it.
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Higher audio quality than CD? No, that is demonstrably false.
More pleasant to listen to than CD or other digital formats? Yes, that I agree with. It's entirely subjective, but I'm definitely not alone in the feeling. The fact it is hard to quantify is why lots of people don't "get" vinyl until they've sat and heard it on a decent system. Something about it is pleasing. As another commenter mentioned, it might just be the imperfections.
So I guess it's a bit of a philosophical question. If CDs technically sound better, but vinyl sounds more pleasing: does the vinyl then sound better? People tend to chase pleasure, and in the time it takes someone to explain how much lower the noise floor is on CD or how we can only perceive so many samples, etc, etc -- you could have been chilling with multiple records and had a great listening experience.
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IMO is just placebo effect. In a blind experiment, all else being equal, I doubt you would be able to tell the difference between a vinyl and a CD. That's my two cents
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If it was just about the sound, then you could get the exact same results by recording the vinyl player directly to a lossless format and playing that back, but it wouldn't be quite the same. Big part of it is just the fact that you are using a vinyl player and these huge fragile disks that makes it an enjoyable experience by itself.
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Something about it is pleasing. As another commenter mentioned, it might just be the imperfections.
I think it's the slight hissing sound you hear as the needle drags. That faint, slightly pink noise isn't dissimilar from white noise people use to go to sleep, and I think human brains like that sort of sound.
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I know it's not highest quality.
For me, the imperfect sound is what makes a nicer experience. Slight hum, little pop once in a while, teensy skip, etc.
Not to mention that I'm far more inclined to listen to an entire album because of the need to interact with the vinyl to set the needle and flip sides.
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At the risk of sounding critical of your hobby, to argue the imperfections improve the experience sounds somewhat culty.
I understand there is something akin to "character" which you don't get from something highly polished. I know when things sound too clean it can feel sterile.
I accept vinyl has a collectors value, but anything claims regarding preference come across as either pretentious or deluded (to me, as someone who probably can't tell the difference).
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Vinyl has a slow progression in quality degradation due to friction that creates a certain kind of sound warmth that is pleasing to our ears. This can also be relicated digitally, but the imperfections and feelings associated with the physical ritual actions of loading a record can't.
Vinyl just has more engagement going on despite the sound quality being lower. Kind of like how some people have fondness for fireplaces despite central heating being technically better at maintaining a warm temperature.
Some people confuse the extra engagement with sound quality because a lot of people just don't think things through.
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Vinyl has a slow progression in quality degradation due to friction
With conventional record players with a mechanical head. I suppose that you could probably use an optical one -- I remember reading about that being used by archivists.
google
Yeah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable
The thing I think I remember reading about was apparently this related thing:
The IRENE system uses a high-powered confocal microscope that follows the groove path as the disc or cylinder (i.e. phonograph cylinder) rotates underneath it, thereby obtaining detailed images of the audio information.[9] Depending on whether the groove is cut laterally, vertically, or in a V-shape, the system may make use of tracking lasers or different lighting strategies to make the groove visible to the camera. The resulting images are then processed with software that converts the movement of the groove into a digital audio file.[10]
An advantage of the system over traditional stylus playback is that it is contactless, and so avoids damaging the audio carrier or wearing out the groove during playback.[1] It also allows for the reconstruction of already broken or damaged media such as cracked cylinders or delaminating lacquer discs, which cannot be played with a stylus. Media played on machines which are no longer produced can also be recovered.[6] Many skips or damaged areas can be reconstituted by IRENE without the noises that would be created by stylus playback.[5] However, it can also result in the reproduction of more noise, as imperfections in the groove are also more finely captured than with a stylus.
considers
If you can get multiple physical copies of an analog recording, you could probably scan them and use statistical analysis to combine information from the physical copies, eliminate damage from any one copy.
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The best explanation I've seen is that music is mixed differently for CD/streaming and vinyl.
For mass market, the move has been to mix for louder bass and similar things. The idea being that it makes the music more popular. But it also makes it difficult to appreciate anything but the bass.
On vinyl, you can't max out bass like that, it won't work on the format. So they have to give it a normal mix instead, making it sound better. In theory CDs should sound better than vinyl, but because of the music production trends, it doesn't currently.
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CD sound is better. But I like how big the pictures of the albums are with vinyl. Vinyl is more about the ritual though. With all the pop sounds and stuff I wouldn't prefer it over CD.
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Vinyl is worse quality, the vinyl disk's height is a physical constraint that CDs / DVDs do not have.
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I like to buy older albums that were mastered for vinyl, like Steely Dan, some prog rock like Yes or Pink Floyd. It gets a lot closer to listening to how the artists would have been hearing their product
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A new record sounds pretty good when played on a good turntable with a good cartridge, but it's not as good as a properly mixed CD or lossless audio file. A worn or dirty record sounds like crap. A cheap turntable will also sound like crap and a ceramic cartridge wears out records fairly quickly.
With a CD, there is very little difference in sound quality between the cheapest player you can find and a high end player. The CD will always sound the same until it's too worn out to play at all.
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Either 0 difference from digital or worse due to skipping/bad record quality. Rap records are especially bad and I stopped buying them.
Personally, I buy them because my internet is unreliable, it makes for some nice decoration and it's nice to actually own something in 2024 (especially since Spotify keeps deleting random artists/songs from my playlists).
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Vinyl sounds good, but has too much noise to be the best. Although that could just be my cat's fault, realistically - i spend a lot time removing hair from records.
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I enjoy the warmer sound of vinyl but I buy the albums I love on it because of the lack o convenience. I can't shuffle and I have to actually interact with it every 20ish minutes to flip or change discs. It makes me actually listen to music, track order, mix, and properly enjoy the work that went into the whole album making process.
So I use streaming when I just want something on in the background and vinyl when I want to properly listen to an album.
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Not an audiophile, but had experience with vinyl and CDs while growing up in the 90s and imo vinyl COULD sound better if you spent a lot of money on high end equipment. But with the equipment us normies had, the cds sounded much better. It had a much lower barrier if you didn't have a large amount of time and money to invest. I'd suspect things are similar now.
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I read somewhere that about 50% of vinyl owners don't have a player. Presumably that 50% only have very few records and bought them for the looks, but still.
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It’s good.
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Vinyl records sounds great despite their technical inferiority to CDs and streaming (with the right equipment of course, but that applies to all formats). They do not necessarily sound better, but there is an element of customisation with them which you can't get with CDs or streaming. Most importantly the cartridge on your turntable. Different cartridges have different soundscapes. There is of course an element of quality connected to price of cartridge, but over a certain price you are not necessarily buying a better sound but a different sound. Many vinyl record listeners, especially audiophiles, have different cartridges which they can switch out on their turntable, based on which kind of sound you want coming out of your system.
I know it may be difficult to comprehend for people who haven't personally listened to such differences themselves, but I assure you it is not audiophile snake oil, it is a very noticeable phenomenon. That is a pretty unique capability of vinyl which I can't really compare to anything with other formats.
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Its worse in the best way IMO.
The main reason I buy vinyl is for the other reasons you mentioned, but the imperfections of vinyl gives it a less robotic and sterile feel. It’s like listening to digital drums vs acoustic drums.
There’s also the ritual of playing vinyl that’s real satisfying
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And I bet horse carriages outsold the Ford Model-T this year too
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i wouldnt say vinyl is comparable to horse drawn carriages.
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I think of this clip every single time Chris Pirillo pops up in pop culture somewhere.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Just waiting for wax cylinders to come back
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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I knew piracy was eating into music sales but poor artists and distributors only generating less than $2 of revenue in the US per year? That’s like 1 CD in a clearance sale. They should start a charity.
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If you’re curious, nearly half a million cassettes sold last year, too, according to Billboard.
I'm more curious about who's still selling music on cassette and who's willing to buy it.
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Prisoners.
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Someone else told me that. What bullshit. "You can't have audio technology that was developed in the 1980s" is a fucking stupid punishment. Why not just make them listen to Edison cylinders?
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I've seen a few bands release a limited number of cassettes recently. For example, Rancid is selling Honor Is All We Know on cassette.
https://rancid.store/product/17864/honor-is-all-we-know-cassette
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I guess it's just a promotional thing then. That makes sense.
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I think there was a 99% invisible podcast episode about that, it's prison inmates. For some never-changed rule they are only allowed music on cassettes, so they are probably the target audience mainly.
Just a few years ago I had an old car with a cassette player/radio, and from time to time I enjoyed the cassette player with some leftover stuff, but in most cases I just used an FM transmitter
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The prison system sucks in so many ways. Legal slavery with archaic rules that would be considered hate crimes or human rights violations if they happened to people in the U.S. who aren't incarcerated.
As far as old cars with cassette players. Like you said, you can use an FM transmitter, but I also remember having a fake cassette with an aux cable so you could plug it into a CD player headphone jack. I would bet they have a bluetooth version these days, so you don't have to listen to cassettes even in those cars.
That reminds me of something though. When I was a kid, we had a Toyota Corona station wagon with an 8-track player. My father had this converter device that you plugged into the 8-track and it had a little tray that you laid a cassette into so you could play it. I don't remember if the sound quality was worse than playing a cassette in a player designed for it.
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some bands, and their fans. you can make a cassette look pretty dope.
and i've heard prisoners often only have access to cassettes.
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I want to know what “other” is that is also clobbering CDs. Can’t say it’s streaming because it’s physical media. The article mentions that half a million cassettes were sold, but that doesn’t really answer the question. That “other” takes up a lot of space relative to CDs so I’m pretty curious.
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I dug into the RIAA Source PDF the article references for what "other" means:
"Includes CD Singles, Cassettes, Vinyl Singles, DVD Audio, SACD"
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Ahh, perfect, thanks, I genuinely appreciate it. I should have done that myself, shouldn’t I?
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Not something I follow, but I recall reading that SACD is favored as being the highest-fidelity format generally available today (well, physical format...if you get something online, could be at whatever resolution you want).
I also recall reading -- probably a more-meaningful factor than the actual physical constraints -- that because the people who were buying them were rabid about audio quality and were annoyed by dynamic range compression, that the people mastering didn't make hot recordings, so the media format avoided the "loudness war".
googles
Hmm. Apparently not any more, at least not always:
At least for a little while SACD/DSD/24bit 96k releases were immune to loudness wars. However over the last 5 years or so I'm noticing a lot of high res releases, either remasters, remixes or new releases in high res have become victims of the loudness wars. The latest release of Electric Lady land is a prime example, horrible clipping and single digit DR ratings.
Why? These releases are not meant for portable headphone consumption why are they doing this? Why are supposedly trained audio engineers going along with this? Clipping and low DR ranges is a quantifineable error. People that buy high res releases will want full DR to play on their home audio system.
Why has this horrible practice infected what should be audiophile class recordings?
Honestly, digital music vendors should just include a dynamic range metric. Hell, let artists sell different versions of a song if they want. MP3 and I think all other popular formats have ReplayGain or equivalent, so one should be able to optimize the recording for reproduction accuracy rather than to just achieve a desired volume.
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Vinyl, which tends to be pricier than the newer format, also far outstripped CDs in actual money made, raking in $1.4 billion compared to $537 million from CDs.
Vinyl is definitely overpriced these days. I do love all the art and care that artists seem to put into their vinyl releases, but typically I'm spending $30-$50 on a new vinyl release. But what am I going to do? Not buy that limited edition colored vinyl gatefold with art and lyric pages?
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I buy mine from the merch stand at the artist's show, they usually go for 20€-30€, even the limited edition ones.
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Wow. What is that ‘other’ physical medium? Is MiniDisc also coming back and beating CDs?
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Some artists in the punk scene are putting out cassettes.
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One of my favorite things about vinyl is having to flip the record over. I think it demands more active and respectful listening.
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Many albums, especially comedy albums, relied on you flipping over the record. They would have jokes that talked about things on the other side. There's a Firesign Theater album where one of the characters says, "wait a minute, didn't I say that on the other side of the record?" There's a Monty Python album with a locked groove that says, "oh sorry, squire. I scratched the record." Which is brilliant.
Edit: There's another Monty Python album that has two sets of grooves and what you hear depends on which groove the needle hits first. Again, absolutely brilliant.
More famously, the end of the Beatles' peak album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band contains a locked groove which was snippets of recordings mashed-up in a bit of short multi-track recording experimentation. The CD only repeats it 2 or 3 times. The record was designed to play indefinitely.
So yeah, CDs took that away from recordings, but on the other hand, it's a lot harder to damage a CD and get an unintentional looping segment.
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I love that on the CD version of Full Moon Fever they added a bit to the end of Running Down a Dream telling CD listeners they're going to take a break so that people on vinyl and cassette can switch to the other side.
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A whole $1.91!! Wow!
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I was thinking about investing in a vinyl player recently and was really sad to learn Vinyl is actually worse for audio quality. The standard thickness of the disk is a physical limitation for frequencies which means the sound gets "squished."
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There's nothing stopping you still! I find the ritual of placing the disc and needle and turning it over halfway through is quite satisfying. It really makes me feel as though the music is more valuable and I'll be more likely to actively listen rather than if I just put it on my phone with the tap of a button
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Not only that, but all the "better sound" arguments are just about all the mistakes in the audio, like scratches and bumps.
Digital has no mistakes, it will always sound the way it is intended.
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But of course some times "the way it is intended" is not the preferable way (see my other comment to OP).
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Yeah, vinyl is more about the haptic experience of putting that giant black disc onto the player and watching the needle slowly scrape away that 30-40 dollar item. It's not about the sound quality. I think with listening to vinyl listening to music becomes more of an experience, because of all the manual steps involved. And with albums these days artists seem to put more effort into them then at the time the CD came around.
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It is true that vinyl records have a smaller dynamic range than CDs and digital streaming, but it can also be a blessing in disguise on account of the loudness wars. A lot of modern digital music since the 90s have been brickwall mixed so they can be played on devices with inferior speakers or headphones and still sound loud and punchy, but that same music will sound awful and distorted on proper hifi systems.
Because vinyl records have a (slightly) smaller dynamic range they have to be mixed and mastered separately from CDs and streaming, and some times that means the vinyl edition has the only properly mixed sound. And even if the vinyl version gets a brickwalled mix, then it is still slightly better than the brickwalled CD or stream versions simply because the dynamic range capability is lower, so the brickwall is smaller so to speak.
Anyway, even compared to non-brickwalled CDs or streaming, vinyl still holds it own on proper hifi systems, there is nothing wrong with the sound experience under the right circumstances, and it is that combined with the physicality which is the draw for most vinyl collectors I think. It is inconvenient, expensive and often times inferior (especially if you find scratched up used copies), but that is exactly the attraction. It makes listening to the music an event.
Most vinyl record collectors still listens to other formats, because of course in the car or some other place you are forced to, so it is not an either/or situation either.
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I expect artists to record the media as they intended it to be heard, idgaf if you think it sounds better after you cut the limbs off of it.
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This is dumb. Just going to be used for collectors editions with different songs and shit.
To each their own I guess.
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I don't really buy vinyl to listen to it, but for the larger cover art and liner notes
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That is definitely something I loved about LPs. I used to have a big book of album cover art. I have no idea what happened to it unfortunately, but I used to pore over it. Liner notes are less of an issue with the internet, but the shrinking of art was a very unfortunate result of CDs.
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I wanna go even further than retro. Gimme the hottest new single on wax cylinder for my phonograph..
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I could get back into cassette tapes.
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I love cassette tapes. I bought a bible on cassette at a resale store. Great way to get cheap tapes for recording over with music
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I never purchased a single cassette the entire time they were popular. I would buy records and tape them ( I was a Maxell person but did have some TDK) so that I could listen in the car or in my giant boombox that had APLD which was skip to next song.
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Not me, I don't miss rewinding them shits. CDs are still good though, I still buy those because you can't go wrong by having it on the most highly-detailed and durable medium.
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A few of the artists I follow put their new releases on cassette.
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I'm fairly certain most people who likes vinyl is because of the collection aspect. The leaflets and photos are nice to look at while you're listening.
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That's something with vinyl records is that they come in big sleeves with nice big prints of the album art and such. That's great stuff for a music buff to enjoy.
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When my dad died, I told my brother, who is very difficult to deal with, to just take whatever he wanted from my dad's vast collection of things and I'd deal with the rest. One of the things he took was an original Edison cylinder phonograph with a bunch of cylinders. I was okay with him taking it since I gave him permission, but what annoys me is that the phonograph was missing the stylus and he has never replaced it. It's inside a wooden case with a lid, which he keeps closed, and the cylinders and the horn just sit next to it.
Why the fuck did he take it?
I don't even have room for it, but if he's not going to even display it properly, let alone get a single part that is needed for it to work, what's the point? Just sell it if you're not going to do anything with it.
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Hipsters paying 2-3x as much for a vinyl LP which objectively has worse audio quality than a CD.
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Most CDs pressed after the mid-90's are audiological garbage not worth paying for.
If the waveform looks like this, I ain't buying it:
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They usually have a higher bitrate than you can get from streaming. There's not one CD I have that I immediately tell the difference in quality of I switch between streaming (or even a standard mp3 actually) and a CD. CD wins every time.
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So you have a crap master. Compare the same master between compact disc and vinyl when making your judgments.
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alot of people dont work with audio, but i actually have, you may be downvoted, but you are correct.
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Most of the records I buy come with bandcamp codes. I can play the flac files if I want digital audio, physical media for me is about the thing itself. Often get full sized posters and patches. Shit I'll buy a tape over the cd too
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Vinyls are great, but I can't copy them to my phone so I still have to buy a CD with it.
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As someone who used to be a member of what.cd, and still has a bunch of incredible sounding FLAC vinyl rips of albums, this definitely is not true.
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I still reminisce about my Oink ratio. Seeded Rosetta Stone on a university connection. Access to the school's radio station's library.
Probably the closest I'll come to generational wealth, my grandchildren could have leeched music on my account and I'd still be positive.
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Man do I miss what cd. I love RED. But what will always have a special place. I still have tons of merch I bought from what. T-shirts, coffee mug, koozie and so many rippy stickers. I still wear the shirts in my regular rotation
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It's not true that I cannot copy my vinyls to my computer? Okay how do I do that then? It just has the red and white left and right cables going to an amp, and then my receiver. Kinda new to vinyls over here
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Such an amazing resource that was, not only did it have the albums available, but several different pressings, source media, and versions of each one. Something no commercial entity can come close to offering at any price.
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I own a USB turntable with an ADC in it. It's got a USB cable sticking out the back. I can rip vinyl to whatever digital format you want.
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ION TT-USB master race!
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Only a few more years now till the retro sound of CDs comes back into style. I realize vinyl is a great and unique user experience with a specific timber, and more enjoyable to collect.
It's kind of funny when you hear about the "analog warmth" when albums were being digitally mastered as early as the late 70s... And pretty much all re-releases are digitally remastered.
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Exactly, although CD isn't so much "retro" as it is a high frequency, high dynamic range audio recording. The only reason vinyl sounds "warm" is because their dynamic range & frequency is compressed so the needle doesn't bounce out of its groove.
While it's possible for a CD to receive a terrible master, if the mastering across formats is the same and other biases are eliminated (i.e. proper A/B testing) then CD will be objectively better sounding every single time.
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the retro sound of CDs
Your mistake is equivocating digital with analog. There is nothing "retro sounding" about CDs, you can download lossless digital versions of albums that are identical to what you'll find on a CD.
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I'm a professional audio engineer for a living, with a masters in the subject, it was sarcasm lol...
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CDs are already showing signs of a comeback! https://www.axios.com/2024/01/06/gen-z-cds-buying-collection
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Lol, knew it was coming!
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I'm a music collector and saw this coming. "Music" went from a product you buy, into a service you pay to gain access to. You don't pay for music, you pay daddy Spotify for access to HIS music.
Vinyl has turned back into the only form of physical music collection.
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Depends what you're into. CD sales are more than alive and well in the kpop/jpop circles and there isn't a lot of vinyl to find there.
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I don't buy vinyl, but I do buy CDs for albums I want. I have (what I believe are well-founded) trust issues with services supplying digital copies.
I will say I have bought some nice, normal mp3s in the past from Amazon. Those are fine. But generally I want the discs. I'm going to rip them immediately to mp3, and store the discs away, but I still want them.
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Ever since the RIAA went after consumers with hefty lawsuits in the early 2000s, I didn't buy music ever again.
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This is only new vinyl, right? In my town, used records are king, by far. In fact, I probably buy 10+ used records for every new record.
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I wish this was true for me, but I only have one record shop within 45-minute drive of my house (and their prices and selection are far from competitive), so I wind up buying pretty much all my records online through Discogs. Frequently, the new represses are just flat-out cheaper than the vintage vinyl, especially for a lot of the more esoteric albums I buy. For instance, even though they're not really hard to find, for Black Sabbath's first four albums I paid just as much for mediocre, water-damaged copies of Sabbath and Volume 4 as I did for brand-new represses of Paranoid and Master of Reality. If you actually buy your vinyl to listen to, buying used online can be a pretty big gamble as far as quality, so for the same price, I frequently wind up consciously choosing the new vinyl over the used copy.
Even though I do frequently manage to package one or two cheap used albums with each new album purchased to take advantage of that sweet "media mail" shipping, it's not even close to a 10:1 used:new ratio.
Edit: I suppose now that I think about it, I'm starting from a pretty decent used vinyl collection from my days in the early 2000's as a hipster music snob before used vinyl got nearly so expensive, so my collection overall has much more used vinyl than my current buying habits would indicate (I probably have 200 albums, of which 30-40 were purchased new in the past 3-4 years)
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Legit didn't know people still bought music. CDs though? How does anyone still have cd players, and why. Vinyl is a hipster fad now so I guess that explains records.
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My car has a CD player. It sounds a lot better than the radio or any streaming service's compressed audio. I used to have a SiriusXM subscription and their audio quality was absolute garbage. I don't pay for any streaming music services now, and have no plans to ever do so.
I buy CDs of every band I like, because I know that music will last in its perfect quality form for decades and nobody but burglars can take it from me. I use my blu-ray burner to rip them to high-bitrate MP3s for phone and Plex library usage.
I also have a pile of records that I don't listen to because I don't have room to set up my record player right now.
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Audiophiles is why. Why CDs? Because the music in a CD is raw uncompressed. So if you got a good amp and speakers, earphones or IEMs you can hear the musicians scratch their beards while playing jazz, or maybe you can hear the sound of dacer's boobies rubbing against the spandex or clapping harmoniously. LOL 😂, the rest of us will tin can and string headphones, we make due with mp3s.
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I have an external CD/DVD player that is used solely to rip CDs and add to my media server. I abhor renting music and ripping a CD gives me the format and quality I like (!1000kbps flac) and future proofs me if tech limits change down the road. I used to rip to ogg but a few years ago I reripped about 500 CDs to flac.
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yup, sadly many of the bands/artists i listen to don't really offer their music as physicals, but there's also no way i'm gonna spend 20 bucks on an album just to listen to like 3 of the songs ever.
i have a weird way of listening to music.
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my dad has a huge collection of CDs he started in the 80s. and he's not gonna stop buying every single CD that his favourite bands release.
he rips them onto his ipod and his phone. great way to efficiently own music and get some pretty cool artwork.
so from what i can tell, no one (that i know of) buys CDs to play them out of a playback device, just to own your library.
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Unless you really want them, make sure you let your dad know that you don't want it to be your responsibility to deal with them after he dies. My dad had a huge LP and CD collection. Like a wall of LPs and a wall of CDs. It was mostly things I didn't want and I had a lot of trouble selling them off. A lot of them ended up either with friends or, at last resort, Goodwill.
I agreed to take care of getting rid of it all after he died and it was a huge mistake.
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I don’t think vinyls are hipster. In the age of music digitalization, it is nice to own a physical piece of media, in addition to being able to support your artist more directly. Also it looks nice.
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Vinyls are cool to display. Wouldn't be surprised if lots of people bought them only for display and kept listening the music on Spotify.
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Poeple jerking off CDs here dont understand down sampling and the average quality of CDS. they think that just because it is digitally mastered that it therefore must be the master that is put on CDS, its not.
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I can't hear anything above 20 kHz, and neither can most people. CD audio is passed through a 20 kHz lowpass filter. It is then sampled at 44 kHz. Due to the Nyquist Shannon Spamling Theorum, when sound is digitally sampled at just above twice the rate of the source audio, converting it back to analog perfectly reproduces the original waveform. And I do mean perfectly. The exact same waveform. (The extra 4 kHz is to prevent artifacts in frequencies very close to 20 kHz.)
Therefore CD audio is perfect unless you think you can hear above 20 kHz. (Spoiler: you can't) There are a few good YouTube videos on this topic, and the best ones are very mathy.
Is there something I'm missing? Do I need to educate myself some more?
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I don't know shit about fuck, but you explanation seems correct.
I do remember hearing that precisely because of the limitations of vinyl compared to CD, music is mastered differently for each medium. So the CD master of a certain song might be more compressed (dynamic compression, not digital compression) to make it sound "louder", while the vinyl release has a wider dynamic range. So some people might prefer the vinyl version because it actually does sound different to the CD version.
Keep in mind tho, I might be spreading misinformation here.
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You are correct, CDs can reproduce the human audio spectrum perfectly, IF AND ONLY IF certain rules are followed, and I think that's why earlier CDs sounded weird. For example: how good were low pass filters when digital sound first arrived?
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also the CDs dynamic range is far greater then that present in most music, so it makes little impact in practice. unless you intentionally utilize it.
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CD fans right now:
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Apparently CDs are trending up as a nostalgia format in some demographics! https://www.axios.com/2024/01/06/gen-z-cds-buying-collection
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I found this small community just a few days ago: !cd_collectors@lemmy.sdf.org Thought it was interesting, and curious. I did not know that CDs are considered by some as collectible.
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It's to bad there's no good record players made anymore. Or cassette decks. It's all the cheap bottom of the barrel mechanisms now. No quality Japanese equipment like there used to be.
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Reloop/pioneer/insert 100 other brands here: am I a joke to you
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Vinyls are purely treasured for their resell value.
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Not really though.
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Hm. "do you want 2 vinyl nuts" doesn't have the same ring to it.
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Okay, is it just me or is the total global revenue for physical media music less than $2 USD a year? I must be reading it wrong.
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It’s probably in billions.
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Nah, that's about right, I paid like maybe 20 cents for a cd collection on graigslist, don't know who bought all those vinyls though
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Something something piracy doesnt matter, something something make a good product at a fair price, something something provide convenience. What was i talking about again?
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I don't even know where to start with your comment.
- Digital mastering was already a thing when vinyl reigned.
- CDs have much more fidelity than vinyl, no matter what vinyl enthusiasts say.
- CDs being flat USB drives.... what does that even mean?
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Anyone who says vinyl is better is really just enjoying the experience. And you know what? That's fine. The problem is, some of them do a terrible job of explaining that it's not actually about the audio quality. When it is actually about the audio quality, vinyl is worse, but some people enjoy that aspect too.
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concidering walmart doesn't sell normal cd players in store but does sell record players, I'm not surprized.
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CDs are this odd junction between quality, inconvenience, and low cost, one that makes it niche. They are a physical product and thus higher quality, so to speak, than digital music. Yet vinyls are higher quality (in the hand) and more novel due to the design options. Then they are lossless but even personally ripping is far less convenient than digital music, much less inserting the disc with every use. The others combined— a vinyl copy for display and pirating/a lossless streaming service like Qobuz or Apple’s— costs more for what can be seen as a minimal improvement in the other categories.
So I’m not surprised. Vinyls are a neat little souvenir of songs or albums I enjoy, and though I’ve never actually played a single one, they’re still something I like to collect. Can’t say the same for CDs.
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Vinyl isn't lossless. First they start with a master - either analogue or digital, then they strip out high/low frequency and compress the dynamic range to make it fit the format, not waste space or jump tracks. Also, the act of pressing discs introduces errors, and the playing equipment can introduce noise like wow, flutter, hisses and pops. I bet some record players, especially ones with USB connections or equalizers probably toss in some adc / dac conversion in there too depending on how they do their thing. There are losses end to end in other words.
CDs are also downsampled from studio tracks, but the format has a higher frequency and dynamic range so providing a CD and vinyl record were from the same master you are going to get a truer, better quality audio from the CD every single time. Also, since it's digital (with error correction) you are getting EXACTLY what was put on the disc. You could rip it to FLAC or some other lossless format and it would be bit for bit identical.
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Oops, I was still talking about CDs in that sentence, I thought “disc” later in the sentence would get it across. My b
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checks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_audio_formats
So, vinyls were 1950.
Before we get to CDs, we gotta have the audio cassette and the 8-track.
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I have seen artists putting out cassette releases as well. I personally am happy to leave cassettes in the past
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I feel like I am the only person who still buys MP3 files direct.
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I get mine from Qobuz as DRM-free flac
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I do, from bandcamp (flac, not mp3)
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297 comments
CDs are just digital files plus waste. Vinyl is a musical ritual.
CD is still the only way to buy a digital popular music in most countries.
Don't forget digital music stores like Qobuz and www.bandcamp.com.
Artists get more money when you buy their music outright instead of stream it.
No it's not. The iTunes Music Store is available in the majority of countries in the world. Plus there are other services that cover some of the other countries. Vanishingly few people can choose only a CD.
Vinyls break easily and sound kinda meh, even with decent equipment. CDs have fairly good quality and are easy to store and handle. Honestly I get why people like vinyl, big discs are fun and tinkering with analog stuff is its own hobby, but when it comes to collecting I prefer CDs.
vinyl is cool, but cd is the digital recording, mastered in a known manner, to a high degree. It's the most consistent form of product you will get from music. Plus it's a physically collectable thing. And it's cheap.
I'm not made of money over here.
Capitalism: "Oh, yes, you are."
If you're going for quality, you'd just buy the flac file though
No one can take the music on your CD's from you. I bought loads if sings and albums from Google Music and they are all gone now
This is a reason to avoid DRM, not digital files in general.
(My condolences for being bitten, though.)
No one can take my flacs either. 🐷🧇
CDs are digital files plus ownership.
Once you download a music file, nobody is taking it away from you.
And CDs can have DRM just like any other digital media.
I download my MP3 and FLAC files and then I own them and play them on any device I want.
I'm glad I saved my CDs, as I was able to rerip them to FLAC and undo the mistake my juvenile self made of ripping to WMA. I still keep the CDs to play in my car from time to time
While I agree with you, I still want to be able to buy CDs.
I do miss caring about my CD collection. I still have them but I have nothing to play them on.