The main thing I like about CD's is no surface noise, pops or scratches. The thing I like about albums, is the artwork. So I would rather listen to the CD while looking at the album. (lol)
@murafskis Provided they use the original uncompressed source ie brick walled ... I have an album they used to master the digital copy designed for CD and the same brick walled view in my sound editor (Cool Edit) shows the same pattern observed on the CD version wave form
Noise on vinyl is due to debris in the tracks. and static electricity both things can be removed. CX discs that existed in the early 80's did not have the sound problems. and the dynamic was 90 decibels unfortunately you had to have a CX decoder
They are compressed digital formats in a physical copy, the same as what you get streaming, easier to scratch, and mass produced. While some vinyl are digital imprints, most are mixed and mastered for a better depth and analog sound. Also, the reason why you are paying more for vinyl is because their worth is higher from a collectors point of view. Believe it or not, some vinyl do actually sound better, especially on original pressings. You can easily and cheaply make a mass production of cds vs. vinyl. Though not knocking CD collecting at all, there are some great cds out there and to each their own.
With cd u r getting an analog tube recorded AAD cd disc, means its only half digital. With cd u r getting a worn out master tape from an older lp recorded from a new master tape. In other words, if u have an old album put on a cd, u have terrible sound.
I grew up with cassettes, vinyl and then CD. And i gotta say the CD is clearly the best and most convenient physical format there is, pretty much a near perfect invention.
Streaming offers unparalleled convenience compared to any physical format, with the sound quality on leading platforms being virtually indistinguishable from that of a CD. Buying a physical copy of an album today is primarily motivated by an appreciation for the music-inspired "artwork." In this context, the expansive 12" album jacket and detailed liner notes accompanying a vinyl LP offer a richer tactile and visual experience than the little 5" plastic jewel you get with a CD. Therefore, vinyl is "the best" physical format on the market today, which explains why record sales have now surpassed CD sales for the first time since the late 1980s.
@@TheMydoorbell half the pop record labels decided to store the records between two sheets of sandpaper. If you buy secondhand, you have no control of previous owner care, so most must be thoroughly cleaned. Can’t count how many LPs were partially warped by previous owners, negating the point of the purchase.
They never went away. I however see blurays taking a phaseout. I would like cd's to be playable inside a jewel case like the old floppies were. No more scratches.
Sadly, the younger generation is the target audience for all types of products. They were brought up on streaming, and I fear at some point, most forms of physical media will disappear. I will never stream music. I do buy a lot of digital music now, because much of it is available in higher than cd quality, and frankly, it is much more convenient.
Thank you for explaining in layman's terms the fundamental differences between vinyl and CD. The only way vinyl sounds better than CD is if it was better mastered and/or without compression of the dynamic range or "brickwalling". However, when two identically mastered formats are compared side by side, CDs are the clear winner for sound quality.
Cds better sound quality u own the music and there cheaper than records and really small and more easy to take care of and take up less space on bookshelves
Vinyl does sound better than CD, sometimes. Cassette sounds better than CD too, sometimes. CD sounds better than both of them, sometimes. "Better" isn't objective and can't be measured - it's dependent on the preference of the individual listener at any given time. More often than not, I'm in the mood for the "flawed" sonic characteristics of vinyl or cassette over the more "perfectly accurate" sonic characteristics of CD.
I think records can sound great for analog recordings, but CD is better for digital usually, if you have a cassette that sounds better than a CD your CD is crap
@@fclefjefff4041 But, since CDs sound neutral (flat), I bet you can equalise them to make them sound exactly like records. Or you could add a hiss in the background and make them sound like tapes, the opposite isn't possible though.
CDs don't have clicks and pops. That said CDs are worse sounding because they compress them to fit them in the space. Among other things, you lose the overtone series that help give something its sound. SACD was a lot better but it died. Funny part is these days,with ppl listening to mp3 and other lossy compressed digital sound, they don't hear the difference.
@@rijjhb9467 not exactly, while CD is better in many aspects, there is one aspect where CD isn't superior. If the master is a tape, means analogue, then vinyl is better than CD since the groove is analogue too, CD isn't, means the digital signal is just a finite number of snapshots of an analogue signal. However, when the master is digital too, then that advantage is gone, of course
What I think is the most sophisticated thing about CDs is the reed-solomon-code. It corrects a high amount of bit errors thus the contained data stays the same until a certain threshold. For that, the amount of data is slightly increased. QR-Codes make use of the same technique to ensure data integrity. Pretty amazing engineering!
CD technology involves two levels of error correction; the first is the EFM (eight-to-forteen bit modulation) which allows for exact byte reconstruction if some bits are unreadable as well as making sure there are always _some_ pits to form a continuously trackable track). Then there is the CIRC (Cross-Interleaved Reed-Solomon Code) which allows for both sample error correction as well as missing sample interpolation ensuring that the missing samples are distributed rather than adjacent. It all works remarkably well indeed.
I love vinyl, I own hundreds of records and 3 turntables and yes vinyl can sound great but this video is spot on. As much as I love vinyl I don't pretend that it sounds as good as CD.
The debate continues LOL whom ever can spend more money on such systems more power to them ... I absolutely CAN NOT see spending the money on a turntable than a home (and that doesn't include the tone arm or cartridge) 50 to 60 thousand smackers Ohhhh Nooo no way
Also the minor compression issues with CD are way less of a factor than crackling and popping . When the band was originally recording music , the music didn't crackle and pop !!! Crackling and popping isn't pure sound :p . Id rather have very minute compression issues with a CD that are literally unnoticeable than crackling and popping.....think about it. I love both forms but CD is better...hell I still listen to tapes.
The saphire stylus sounds bad, big suprise.😄 If you only heard a conical or eliptical, especially a budget set up, then your not qualified to speak on which is better nor have knowledge of what sounds good.
Confirmation, with facts, of what I've known all along. CDs are the best consumer audio format we ever had. I lived through the change from vinyl to CD and, as much as I love the mystique of the older format, there never was any contest sound wise. I don't buy much music anymore, but when I do, its on CD
Yes. CDs allow for a wider dynamic range compared to LP, especially inner grooves. When people say “vinyl sounds better” they really mean to say “the original master sounds better.” Most of these people just have issues with modern mastering techniques, myself included. That being said, I collect LPs and listen to them. They are more fun than CDs. I have a few CDs, but I usually don’t buy them unless a specific album I want to own is not readily and affordably available on LP. Other than that I ☠️download☠️ 96k 24bit FLAC versions of albums that appearently sound better than 44k 16bit CDs. I can’t tell the difference, lol. And yes, my DAC supports that resolution and it is properly set in Windows.
Did you hear the latest from NASA? Aliens finally found the golden record on Voyager I. But, they got into an argument about whether to build the player using analog or digital technology and killed each other with ray guns, and they accidentally melted the record.
It's a no-brainer, CD sounds better. Scientifically proven. Putting aside price and durability, CD sounds better. A great recording will always sound better on CD than Vinyl, simple. People who are used to Vinyl does not mean they "hear better" they just like that sound.
I have the Portishead 1997 album on original Cd and on vinyl. The Cd sounds terrible and the vinyl sounds awesome. Also most of my 1990 bought cd´s have turned gold color and are ruined while all my records work fine after some cleaning. There is a explanation for the sound quality issues with Cd´s why they sound horrible. the loudness wars ruined the Cd format while vinyl wasn´t as affected so all the technology that can make the CD a great format got thrown out the window by the music industry.
This is the most comprehensive explanation I could have asked for. I’ve been buying CDs up out of a desire to own the music I love, and I have to admit that I felt a little bit left out not wishing to spend a tremendous amount of money on a turntable and 3x+ the cost of the same CD on record. I’ve been finding some gems at thrift stores and yard sales, and using eBay for the more obscure albums. Thanks for the crazy in-depth explanation!
I'm glad to see people who know what they're talking about give CDs the respect they deserve. The rush back to vinyl always seemed to me to be a trend like any other. I never believed the nonsense (taken as the gospel by some) that vinyl sounds better than CD. First off, there are too many variables other than the format itself that affect quality of playback. So universal claims that vinyl sounds better are complicated by the initial quality of the recording, the mastering, playback equipment, room dynamics, etc. etc. etc. The main selling points for CDs are greater dynamic range and no snap, crackle, pop, which is so distracting to my ear that it makes listening to vinyl painful at times. Furthermore, the get a good 180 gram vinyl nowadays will set you back $50 or more. You can find awesome sounding CDs online for as little as $2 a piece. Like Brad Allison says, it's pretty tough to argue with that.
But you don't understand the point why people rush to vinyls, it's not because CD as medium is bad, it's becuase of loudness war, generally all modern CDs and digital records sound terrible because of loudness war, while on vinyl and MC cassettes, they use better master with high dynamic range, that's why it sounds better and that's why people download vinyl rips even when they have original CDs, it's ridiculous, but it's sad reality. We've just bought vinyl player and it sounds much better than modern CDs, noise and cracking sounds are lesser evel than dynamic range 5 like on modern CDs, on vinyl, it has like 10-13 dynamic range. Download it into computer and look at it in audacity and you will see what I am talking about, today CDs and other digital sources are not listenable, it's made for mobile zombies who want just noise. Unfortunatelly even modern concerts and festivals are like that, terrible sound everywhere.
I love both records & cd’s, but as far as the cd’s go, I’m glad they’re making a comeback, because there are CD players that have pitch controls, which I personally love.
Back in the 1980s, a lot of albums that were put on record in the past were put on CD with the same mastering as the LP. You can always tell which ones are remastered or re-issues by the date on the CD. If it has only the original release date, it's a re-issue of the original master. If it has multiple dates, it's a remaster. I save a lot of money by buying re-issues on CD rather than original vinyl, and the sound quality is overall better too.
@StringerNews1 in the beginning they used vinyl masters for cd of certain titles I think. Especially the 'budget titles' or smaller labels. Not all early digital masters sounded good. Remasters can be an improvement (sometimes). Depends what the label and / or artists ask for.... natural or extremely loud :) I am aware of an indie band... they invested in two seperate masterings for digital and vinyl. The label accidently used the digital mastering for vinyl as well, which made the record skip. Reaction from the label: no repress, no sorry .... but 'don't worry, 99% of the people won't notice this'. Labels these days don't care about quality of their products, just about making money in the short term.
CD technology beats vinyl 100-0. Unfortunately, since the 90s, record companies have not used CD features to their advantage. What I mean by this is that the sound dynamics of CD recordings have been very bad since the 90s. (except in classical music). The music is loud and has no "airiness". (Loudness war).
They both definitely sound great, but CDs and digital always sound flat compared to vinyl. Vinyl shows off the texture of the instruments and is more accurate to how they sound live.
@@stretch90 IMO digital sounds better in totality, but HQ digital streaming sounds exactly the same to me as CD so if I’m going to take up space in my house for anything physical I’ll go with vinyl because of its artwork and its analog sound signature that can’t be replicated with digitally.
Of course if the mastering is bad, it won’t matter if its vinyl or CD. It doesn’t seem very debatable that if you hold mastering (and mixing) as a constant, CD sounds better than vinyl.
Very good analysis and review. Although I like many things about LPs, in real life music listening I listen to CDs about 50% of the time, cassette tapes 25%, LPs about 15%, UA-cam videos, downloaded MP3s, and FM radio 10%. The biggest frustration for CD collectors is, quoting from another commenter, "...proper implementation is key....mastering has a big impact on the final sound quality and can diminish the pro's of the CD format...which is not uncommon. Brickwalling is a common practice when mastering music for a digital format. With vinyl that's not an issue, since vinyl can't really be brickwalled due to its low dynamic range. Also vinyl is considered a premium format nowadays, so its not uncommon that the mastering for vinyl is done with more care than its digital counterpart." In many but not all cases, CDs released during the earliest years of the format (1982 through 1994) are mastered with very little dynamic range compression or frequency response limiting. Unfortunately, a few of those early CDs were mastered using third-generation tape copies as source material or other engineering faults like unintended brickwalling (technicians were still learning how to properly engineer and master material for CD), providing a stale or even overly-bright sound and giving the format a bad rap. Having said that, the majority of early-generation CDs were designed to demonstrate the format's superior frequency response, dynamic range and lack of distortion compared to the corresponding LP and cassette editions. Starting in the 1990s, with LPs almost extinct and cassettes starting to fade from the mass market, the emphasis was on making most CDs LOUD at the expense of accurate so an album would sound good on a CD boombox or car stereo, rather than on high-quality home audio gear.
Actually it's probably a no-brainer that most vinyl pressed out now is garbage is because they know it's for the spurtyphi gen/future where they know it's all ear buds and Bluetooth and the punters actually have no concept of quality sound
A better cartridge can usually help with that. I have the ortofon 2m blue and it’s greatly reduced it from the previous one i had. I’ve read the 2m black reduces it even more. But then again most people don’t have $700 to spend on a cartridge lol
An AT-VM95ML cartridge is currently the cheapest with a Microlinear stylus, which is the thinnest stylus type you can commonly buy. Unless the LP is badly mastered or badly pressed, that cartridge will sort out your inner groove distortion problems. If you own the VM95E with the green elliptical stylus, you are in luck. Just buy the red ML stylus and swap it for the green. BOOM - instant upgrade. If you want a slightly silkier, less CD like sound, get the brown Shibata stylus. While technically not a good as the red stylus from a tracking standpoint, it's still a very good tracker, with a lot of folk appreciating the fuller bodied sound.
This was a good overall presentation, with a glaring error at the beginning. There is no centrifugal force on the stylus, because it is virtually stationary. The imbalance is caused by drag on the stylus as the record turns, and the tone arm geometry is such that the stylus force is greater toward the inside of the groove, just the opposite of what he said. Good turntables have a compensator of some sort to balance out this force.
Not only that, but your explanation of lossy compression is completely wrong. It has nothing to do with frequencies outside the range of human hearing, since digital encoding includes anti-aliasing filters to get rid of any material higher than the Nyquist frequency. The psychoacoustic model relates to the ear’s inability to hear details which are lower in level to others of similar pitch. This is a phonomenon called masking. An algorithm is used to detect and remove this information, and only encodes the sound the ear can hear, resulting in a reduction in bit rate. More advanced codecs, such as AAC, go further. These use something called SBR (Spectral Band Replication), which cuts off treble frequencies, and encodes these as a kind of ‘waveform description’. The decoder reforms the higher frequencies using this waveform descriptor information, and adds these to the lower frequencies which were encoded conventionally.
@@davba2 I was wondering, if I am the only one who found few mistakes in those explanations. So I agree with you. Interestingly lot of commenters feels explanations clear despite misconceptions:-)
Porque o gira discos de vinil, seria muito mau. Se fosse um ótimo gira discos e não de plástico, com uma moving coil elíptica, queria ver se o cd soava melhor, ainda por cima em 1989, que já haviam gira discos da marca britânica, Rega Reserch, como os rega planar 1, 2, e 3. Atualmente há o planar p6, p8 p10 e o Naia, um dos melhores gira discos de vinil do mundo. Só ganha o cd, por ser mais prático, quanto a ter prazer absoluto no som, só com vinil, mas com um gira discos à altura e não "caixotes de sabão".
Too much frustration with lp's, everytime I ordered a special collector's edition the records arrived damaged due to poor packaging... poor pressings at a premium price ... warped records ... Never again! Collecting vinyl was more frustration than fun.
I have an audiophile grade CD player and turntable. I find the sound to be engaging and musical on both components. I have far more LPs than CDs, but I prefer CDs. CD players have a remote control to play or skip specific tracks, they play both sides of the LP without flipping them, they don’t have to be cleaned every use, you don’t have to put them away right after use to avoid dust, they don’t pop and crackle, and I can store them in a sleeved CD storage book. The negative I have is that I do have some CDs that have been scratched, and my specific player will at times not be able to play some of the tracks.
The reason CDs have a bad reputation amongst audiophiles is because of mastering techniques common in the CDs heyday. THEY HAD TO BE LOUUUUD. Even though the CD had a greater frequency response than the LP, the producers wanted music compressed and loud, negating all dynamic range benefits the CD provided.
I use both formats. I've always been sympathetic toward the digital argument, but, while records are certainly not perfect, there does seem to be something to them as an "audiophile" format. Regardless of what the technical reason might be, people are getting incredible listening experiences out of their records that are different, and some would say better, than what CDs offer, and that interests me.
I grew up with records cassette and 8 track tape and when cds came out I bought my first cd player and hooked it to my stereo and the audio on the cd was amazing i switched my whole record collection to cd and sold all my records we used to compare the difference best quality sound was DDD, some were ADD and some were AAD
Vinyl has a certain charm; story-telling, maybe it's like books. And there is a difference in sound because there are more variables - the record itself, the needle/cartridge, the EQ, etc. Sound even emits from the record/needle even with no speakers attached. Some people prefer this sound, even if it may not be as high fidelity. I'd probably use vinyl or tapes if I wanted to be "retro"
If there were no Loudness War Compression on 90% of CD Releases you would be correct. LPs however are EQed to be musical to have Dynamic Range that CDs (If properly mixed at the studio) would have in abundance however the over Compression (by record producers and Sound engineers) has destroyed all Dynamic Range on CDs.
@@mdluk199 The loudness war in this instance refers specifically to flattening the peaks in digital audio to allow the levels to be boosted. The process has come to be referred to in slang terms as "brickwalling". Not quite the same loudness war as when vinyl mastering engineers used compression to make loud sounding vinyl (a la George "Porky" Peckham, Bob Ludwig, to name a couple).
What I like about cd’s: No surface noise and do not have costly maintenance. What I like about vinyl: The artwork of the album is such an aestethic which can be displayed.
Another advantage of cds is that they don't degrade or wear with use, vinyls have a physical contact and friction going on at the needle meaning the sound slowly changes over time as it wears, obviously you would need to play it quite alot to wear out a vinyl but the factor is still there.
As a teen in the 80’s, I’ve lived through vinyl, tape, cd, minidisk & streaming. I’ve resisted the vinyl revival for as long as possible but ultimately gave in about a year ago now. I purchased a Sony deck and, on the same shopping trip, picked up a few vinyl albums to listen to when I got it home. You do get hit by the ‘warmth’ of the sound but understanding what that ‘warmth’ is is enlightening (thanks to this video). More recently, we purchased a new Lexus hybrid car and they are still fitting cd players in their cars, my wife and I were both hit by how good a cd sounded in the car. All that said, the format I’m enjoying the most right now is minidisk. I know ATRAC is a lossy compression but to my fifty + year old ears it sounds good enough and I love the form factor.
It all really depends on usage. Vinyl can sound amazing, but you have to have some good hardware to get the most out of it. CD has the advantage of pretty much always getting the same result regardless of the player. It also does come down to mastering. Most songs that were released in the vinyl era were mastered to specifically cater to the strengths of the format. Some early CDs lazily used the vinyl master for the CD. The final issue is being able to play the darn things. It's easier to find a decent quality record player than its CD counterpart. Unfortunately CD became popular in the late 80s/ early 90s and that's also when the trend of more disposable electronics began. A lot of CD players are pretty much impossible to repair if something goes wrong. In contrast the record player (besides the cheap ones) was made far more modular with fairly universal replaceable components. This is all before you get into things like not all DACs being equal. Honestly if you're going purely by audio quality reel to reel beats them both, but the limited library of music released for it holds it back.
An interesting presentation. Personally, I think the cd/vinyl debate is getting rather old. I was born and raised with vinyl so I naturally gravitate in that direction. I simply enjoy the overall vinyl experience and the vinyl resurgence has been a big kick for me. But, at the same time, I have absolutely nothing against cd’s and continue to purchase them on occasion.
Me either. I’m 60 and have no intentions, and never did, with replacing all my vinyl with CDs. However I do buy CDs, especially used CDs, still. Actually getting ahold of a used Pioneer DVD player recently I’ve become reacquainted with listening to them again besides in the car while driving.
Ah yes, the never ending debate of almost every YT audio\music channel and online audio\music forum on the net. The reality is both formats have their drawbacks or flaws. The reality is I have NEVER heard one person say I completely stopped using either format because of seeing or hearing this debate. It all misses the point of what music listening it about. Which is just to enjoy the music itself.
CDs are a medium with better S/N and dynamic range, but you're not allowed to talk about CDs reproducing audio better because people have spent 10s of thousands of dollars to revive old tape and vinyl. Curious, can anyone hear the different between CD and SACD?
It took about 40 years but now cds are priced correctly vs vinyl. They were cheaper to manufacture when first introduced but the industry decided to screw the customer over yet again. Now they have dropped to realistic prices. And in the second hand stores! They're still 50 cents each in my area. I've had to buy extra cd racks but they're practically giving those away too.
The reasons people say that vinyl is inferior to CDs are the exact reason I love vinyl...it's imperfections. Vinyl is a process you enjoy, the slowing down and manually going through the process. I certainly don't do it for "the best sound quality". That said, I appreciate quality and just physical/tangible products more and more in today's cloud society so I will be acquiring a CD player as well.
THANK YOU for explaining this for people who just parrot what they've heard about the supposedly superior sound of vinyl over cds, without understanding anything technical about it. Just a couple of points, though- a stylus does not experience centrifugal force, because it's not spinning; it's just being oscillated by the groove undulations that it's riding. Also, practically *nobody* can hear 20,000 hz- that's pretty much dog territory, human hearing can reach maybe 16,000 Hz for a child, and probably only to about maybe 12000 -14000 Hz for an older adult. No biggie. Some people also complain about a certain harshness in the higher frequencies (due to the 44.1 hz sampling rate). THAT's where having a good DAC comes into play.
Trouble is CDs are selling less now so things are less likely to be available on CD than they were and it's partly driven by mistaken ideas of sound quality.
@@keriford54 as a CD collector. Can confirm some albums can be really hard to get, especially when it's a more unknown band that doesn't sell CDs of their own albums. But when I do get it I listen to it like 10 times in a row lol
@@keriford54 but there are still plenty of albums you can het on CD that is not on vinyl. Vinyl is a type.. I bought all the Ministry discography on CD , for what i would have paid for two vinyl..
I get LPs to put on frame and hang on wall, and just have a collection while sometimes dropping the needle. I listen to files I ripped from my cds 99% of times
My 67-years-old ears still prefer the sound of vinyl. As long as LP's and 45's are kept clean and handled properly, their sound quality doesn't degrade with time. And my ears pick up nuances on the vinyl recordings that the CD's tend to miss. Both, however, are great formats for musical media. The one source that tried for many years to keep up with first vinyl, then later, CD's, was the cassette tape. My cassette collection's sound quality ranges from average to very good, depending on the age and type of magnetic tape used, but I still enjoy listening to them. But they could never compete with directly with the sound of vinyl or CD's. I have around 400 LP's, 300 45's, 350 cassettes, and close to 600 CD's. Just fyi
It sounds better because of loudness war, not because of it's better or analog, but a lot of people don't know about this problem, which is sad, we should push at music industry to stop loudness war, but it looks like it's more like getting worse and worse. Old CDs from around 1990 sound great, it's not problem of CD technology.
load up on your CDs while they are cheap and complete that collection because its only a matter of time before they too make a big comeback, possibly costing more than they originally did.
Abbreviation for kilohertz is kHz. Capital H, because the guy had a name! Abbreviation for decibel is dB. Capital B because Alexander Graham Bell had a name, too! OCD now sorted, and those nitpicks aside, nice video!
I grew up with vinyl and switched to cd in my 20's. I got back into vinyl a couple Christmas' ago when I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to listen to Christmas music on vinyl. I've bought some vinyl since. But, because vinyl costs 2-4x as much as a cd, I usually buy cd's. The exception, again, is nostalgia.
The issue with left/right imbalance is correct, but your explanation is wrong. There is no centrifugal force to the outside of the record actually, as the tonearm is not suspended on the rotating element. There is a force, but it actually goes towards the center of the disk (skating force, due to the angled cartridge/needle), and the anti-skating system that most turntables have, will counter that force (anti-skating force points towards the outside of the record, such that the overall radial force is ideally zero).
Among other things, many people stuck on vinyl, claim that a cd record will have problems after 5 years or so. I have been collecting cds since 1991. After 30 years, even the first cd i ever bought, sounds (and looks) just like new. Needless to say of course, that i always handled my cds with the outmost care, just like i do with my vinyl records which i stopped collecting and listening, about 20 years ago. I only sell them to viny lovers now and i wish them to have fun with them. But for me, the cd is such a superior means of storing and listening to music, in every way. Just don't maltreat them !
Have you ever had a CD deteriorate internally? In other words, have holes formed in between the outer layers of plastic where the digital information is contained? I’ve notice in a few if mine after having them for about 20-25 years. Granted, it has only been a few, but it does happen.
I have both formats. I can confirm, CDs produce much nicer audio than vinyl records! No static pops and snaps, and they do not deteriorate with repeated plays! CDs for the win!
true that by Nyquist's theorem 44.1 kHz sampling is more than enough (assuming human hearing stops at a dead 20 kHz). However, anti-aliasing filters with a sharp cutoff frequence of 44.1 kHz are not easy to design and can affect the sound the worse the filters are. Here comes hi-res. Sampling at 24bit/96kHz gives more room for cheap low pass filters to do their job without altering the sound. It also stores more information beyond 20 kHz. Who knows if there are humans who can hear beyond 20 kHz.
I still have happy memories of vinyl when I was a lot younger but I don't play them now. Sadly, my hearing isn't what it used to be but CDs still sound pretty good
Years ago, I was told that CDs are Full of sound gaps .... thousands per second, as you so adroitly point out .... But our human ears can Not hear those gaps because the gaps are so small and short ... and yet the gaps are there. We just can't hear 'em. You did a great job explaining that! I felt like I should have been taking notes, like there was going to be a test at the end of the period! ;-)
"I was told that CDs are Full of sound gaps .... thousands per second" That is completely wrong. Digital captures the ENTIRE waveform. There is nothing missing at all. This is proven by the Nyquist Theorem.
Per a video by Monty Montgomery, the gaps between the samples are filled in by calculation. There's only one wave form that will correctly pass through the sample points, so that will accurately fill in the gaps between the samples.
yeah, me too, i did solder a bluetoothmodule csr8645 to my original car stereos board (as you can see on my youtube site) and i also have casette and cd´s on board - i absolutly love it, want to upgrade to csr8675 as bluetooth kepps getting better with LDAC Codec up to 900kbit´s
Actually, a stylus experiences centripetal force, not centrifugal, which is why the anti-skating control actually pushes the tonearm toward the outside of the record to counter that force. This by the way does not apply to linear-tracking tonearms. This is only because of the pivot style tonearms that most turntables use.
You keep talking about the peaks and valleys of a sine wave as the highest & lowest frequencies, but the height of a wave has nothing to do with frequency. The height is its amplitude (aka volume when the wave represents sound); the frequency is how close together/far apart the peaks are.
Truth. Records are fun and quaint and the cover art is amazing, but the sound is decidedly inferior to a well-mastered CD. On my pretty nice sound system, CDs sound WAY better than records. My turntable, cats and stylus are top notch, but the sound has to be cranked to come close to CDs and even then, records sound more compressed, distorted, and lack the dynamic range. I think modern LPs would be much better if we had an update for turntable preamps to give us a better dynamic range for the format.
Wrong. AAD on a cd tells u that the cd was copied off analog vinyl from 1971 & before. Arguing that cd is better is wrong, because old cds r off old TUBE RECORDE vinyl, there were NO DIGITASL TRANSISTORS IN THE OLD DAYS. in the old days. I copy $10,000 turntable youtube mp3 to cd & it sounds much better than store bought cds. I get the benefit of vinyl on cd that dont wear out. Some will disagree with me that lack understanding to know how to do or even hear it. The first link is cd. Click links to show vinyl blows cd away. ua-cam.com/video/J7ATTjg7tpE/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/GOmkv9qsS1o/v-deo.html
I deleted the repeats of this post but allowed this one. Totally fine with your disagreement with me - no problem. I would point out however that AAD absolutely does not mean the cd is from a vinyl record. The first A means that the source recording was analog which would have been 1/2” 3 track tape running 15ips in most cases. The second A refers to the fact that the album was mastered in analog (multitrack tape) and the last letter D refers to the fact that the disc you are holding is obviously digital. Old CD’s like cassettes and vinyl were mastered from 1/2” ‘album reel’ dubs on reel to reel tape.
@@Recordology U r right, & I am right on this post. One "A" means it was analog tube recorded to vinyl, this A was sent to vinyl or cd. Therefore cds that are not pure transistor digital as some believe, have got part of the analog process that was made years back into vinyl. Years back there wasnt much transistors, it was tubes. These old recordings put on cds has some of the Analog tube effect. In 1972 some digital was added. I love old albums put on cds. I hate new vinyl & cds copied digitally. I cant tell a new vinyl from a new cd. Cassette dolby noise reduction removed hiss & hurt the sound, the same goes for cds removing the hiss. I actually store bought a cd with hiss on it & I like it. Some new cds are tube remastered. Google direct to disc albums, they were really the best. Quadrophonic had trouble on vinyl with 2 different formats. Google Cx discs & DBX records. I wonder how analog lazer music discs sound. Brothers in arms, Alan Parsons- I Robot, & Yes- Close to the Edge were wonderful albums with some digital added on vinyl. Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, & Pink Floyd are not completely analog as they claim, they can be remastered a hundred times, I dont like their sound, whether remastered or not.
I mostly use CDs or Tidal but I have a turntable and tape deck too. I gotta say, I like the dynamic of certain songs on certain formats. Vaporwave/synthwave sounds best recorded to a blank cassette because of the saturation and flutter, 70s music sounds best on vinyl because of the warm sound, and the pops/clicks add some ambiance. Sometimes "quality" and listenability are unrelated.
it is very sad that the so called LOUDNESS WAR (dynamic compression, overuse of no noise filters..) has given cd's a bad name. a good mastered cd can sound as good as a good mastered lp, or even better!
so true my friend i used to buy records then turned to CD in 84 never bought a record since ive bought some crappy cds and crappy records .i'm so used to cds now i would never go back to records 😊😊😊
Those bad sounding records sound very often bad on vinyl either. Some amps / streamers and cd-players do a good job on those poorly mastered albums. With my old Marantz-amp many late 90s early 00s cd's sounded unbearable. With my Hegel H360-amp they are listenable. On the 'budget side', a pair of Sonos Fives do a decent job (streaming my lossless cd-rips from a NAS)...
The Main thing bad about CDs is that should they refuse to play at the start of the CD run or anywhere along further in they can jam up and prevent you from skipping pass any recorded track, whereby unlike on a Vinyl Record you can just lift the needle over onto the next track by-passing any looping. This is the biggest drawback to using The CD format and no amount of saying how good the recordings are will improve this situation. So on this count CDs are a worse format than Vinyl Records. The Question around how clearer the sound is with listening to a CD in its Digitised Format is really a Question of personal choice and taste that suits your own ears for what might sound good to one person does not mean it will suit the taste of someone else. Having experimented with just about every from of recording types from Reel to Reel, Cassette, Vinyl, and CD the best is actually Reel to Reel Magnetic Tapes followed by Vinyl, Cassette and lastly Pre-Recorded CDs with the exception of CD-Rom's that I use for transferring all the other Formats onto to play in The CD Format whereby you can get around 20-30 Tracks or so onto them depending upon the length of any recorded Tracks. This is how I was taught to use recorded formats by my Cousin who was a Recording Engineer who worked for PYE Electronics of Cambridge UK who Mastered PYE Records onto Vinyl back in the 1960's and was the first person I knew who had a Cassette Player/Recorder in his Home Studio whereby he would buy back then New Vinyl Records and then enhance his Vinyl LPs and re-record them onto Metal Cassette Tape and then store away his Vinyl for safe keeping if case he would need to make another copy later. With todays Computer technology plus added along with older Analogue technologies there are no limits to the amount of enhancements you can today do to remove any Pops and Clicks from Vinyl Recording before transferring any past Recording Formats onto CD-Rom's thereby creating a product that will suit your own taste that is right for you, and if you buy some of those crappy high-end Pre-Recorded CD's that have little in the way of "Warm Sounding" Vinyl, then you can make any needed adjustments to the Sound Stage by re-mixing before transferring over to CD Playable CD-Rom's or you can put your recording onto Mini-Disc which in my view should make a comeback as this format is MORE safer from being damaged then are CDs themselves.
A few notes: -The Left and Right channels aren't determined by the left and right sides of the groove. One channel is determined by the left and right vibrations and the other is determined by the up and down vibrations. -The inner vs outer groove issue was usually solved by putting the softer songs from an album at the end of each side so that the waves weren't as pronounced and clustered next to each other. -The thing you didn't cover regarding Lossy and Lossless compression is the use of codecs. A codec in Lossy simply takes out a range of data, often random but some more advanced ones can identify the right places to remove data in order to decrease storage. On Lossless, the codecs are advanced enough to recognise patterns and simplifications, like if it sees a pattern of 111000 or whatever it's programmed to identify, it subtracts those portions and replaces it with a similar code that's smaller in storage but means the same information. -There should be a distinction between File Compression and Audio Compression. The former, as mentioned, deals with the binary code and patterns, whereas the latter deals with the highs and lows of dynamic range, boosting the quieter portions while levelling the louder ones. Analog compression has been adapted to Digital mediums like Pro Tools and Logic, but it's the same idea. File and Audio compression are two very different concepts. -Your argument that higher bit depth = better quality isn't quite fair because for one, you're comparing Digital, something that is built on Bit rates and depths, and Analog, something that is not. You said that converting analog to digital removes noise but that's really not true. As long as the source signal is a pure waveform, digital does little to change the analog signal, or at least what's audible to the human ear. -The misconception that the highest and lowest frequencies can't be heard on Vinyl isn't true. They are there but they are so quietly included on the pressing but just enough to where the built-in equaliser in the record player itself picks it up and amplifies it. If you have a good quality record player with a great equaliser, then you can get those highs and lows. My ION ITTUSB picks up these frequencies amazingly. As for what is considered "better quality" is entirely subjective to the listener. Vinyl and CDs are both great quality, but what you haven't mentioned yet is the fact that they sound completely different. Not just about what the bits and frequency ranges are, but the fact that the master recordings are completely different. CDs are mastered much safer and can include all the big bass booms and compression which some people love but some people also really hate, if the loudness wars of the 90s-2000s was any evidence of this. Vinyl, however, is very tricky to mix for and you have to be a pro to mix it properly. You can't over-compress master recordings like you can on CDs, and this happens all the time because it's perceived to be a louder and more pronounced sound, but the downside is that the dynamic range is heavily reduced and the flow is more inconsistent between the more compressed and less compressed portions. On Vinyl, this kind of master medling isn't possible because over-compressed grooves on a record sound like shit. The grooves thrive on the range of dynamics and the flow of the waveform, which is completely destroyed when you over-compress. Because of this, the Vinyl master is always different from the Digital/CD masters and that's what people love. It's a good alternative to guarantee that the recording isn't going to have over-compression because it's simply too expensive for the mastering engineer to get wrong, so he has too put as much care and precision into the mastering. If you have a good mastering engineer, then you got a great-sounding record with a smooth flow and a unique leveling. My copy of Images & Words by Dream Theater, pressed by Music On Vinyl, is probably the best version of the album I've ever heard because of its precise mixing and smooth range. Compared to the digital recording, it's so much easier on the ears for all these reasons. I even did a side by side listening between the two and I was shocked at how much better the Vinyl version was.
Thank you for your polite and detailed comment. However there are some inaccuracies that I want to address. First, the left channel right channel - one being horizontal movement, one being vertical - completely inaccurate. As I stated, the left and right walls define the channel - there is a great RCA film on this with animations…there is vertical movement WITH the lateral on a stereo record. Next, on digital compression: In the digital domain EVERYTHING is binary data. In lossy compression, a very deliberate schema (psychoacoustics) intelligently deletes compromised frequencies and repeated notes etc. It’s the same principal (and science) with high and low lossy compression - just a matter of how much compression is done, or in other words, what the compression ratio is.
@@Recordology In regards to the stereo information on the grooves, in a way, we're both right. The information is translated from each Vinyl wall, correct, but it is also being translated in perpendicular fashion as would an up/down and left/right motion would (in this case a duel diagonal perpendicular motion). As for lossy, what you explained in this comment is more accurate than what you explained in the video. You portrayed it as if the lossy compression would simply take out different instrument parts if they weren't loud enough behind a drum hit. That is a bit of an over simplification that implies that the algorithm is advanced to remix the song itself. What it does is reduce the volume of the louder moments and closens the stereo field during points where the audio is identical. These algorithms are often imperfect which is why they're deemed lossy, whereas lossless compression is more advanced in its use of codecs that recognise complex patterns of binary data and replaces them with simpler patterns that get uncompressed when read by the device that plays it.
The point I was making was that psychoacoustics/lossy compression will not replicate sounds that are masked by other sounds. In other words, if there is a loud blast that covers up the sound of a softer instrument… The softer instrument will be deleted. Also, it’s important to understand that lossy compression is not poor quality compression/low quality codec implementation… It is simply a type of compression that has a purpose… A time and a place. It is not a malfunction, or a poor design, in fact, it is more complex than a lossless compression due to the fact that it is re-creating, an analog wave form that is recognizable, although much much smaller in size. Some codecs operate within wrappers, but that is another subject for another day.
@@Recordology Again, that's implying that the lossy codec can detect each instrument track and remix it when needed. A digital audio track only reads information by the level of voltage per sample. There's no other information heald in those waveforms other than the level of voltage. A typical audio codec isn't intelligent enough to know what each instrument is. The closest to what you're implying is traditional analog compression, which digital compression also tends to mimick, where the loud moment is reduced in volume and thus everything else at that moment is quieter too.
Pros and cons for both, whether it be technical or nostalgic reasons. Not all past recordings have been transferred to CD and many CDs don't have a vinyl version. Many CDs for nostalgic and technical reasons have been issued as the original vinyl, this can't be said for vinyl. I love them both. One thing I like about CD's is you can make your own compilations with home equipment with very satisfying results.
Yes, by the numbers, CDs certainly outperform vinyl from that standpoint. Keep in mind, however, that when the original research for the digital representation of music began in around the mid sixties, researchers were looking for a way to play music repeatedly without the medium wearing out. That was the true goal. It wasn't really about improving the quality of the sound, but rather preventing the degradation of recorded sound.
I recently bought 2 Bowie records, and a record player Changes Two Bowie - £10 Space Oddity (1972 re-issue) - £15 + £4.69 delivery = £19.69 Fenton suitcase style record player - £10 + £6.50 delivery = £16.50 total = £35 + £11.19 delivery = £46.19 Not the cheapest hobby, but what I like about my records is the fun factor. I'm 16, I haven't had records present in my life time (only once my mum played some of her old Polish records), but I have had CDs in my childhood. I like CDs, but they're slightly mode boring - all digital and perfect - still more fun than streaming online. But records bring the fun up to another level. Every time you play it, it will sound slightly different, also you can play them at the wrong speed, which is always interesting. I also love the start up and slow down sounds of records. The crackles and pops give it a certain charm. In the last song of side one on Space Oddity, Cygnet Committee, you can hear the quality gradually decrease, and crackles and pops increasing. Interesting. All these artifacts, I find interesting. I am fascinated that the sound is comming from a moving disk. You can also hear the sound physically comming from the record, but quietly. Basically, I am only interested in records because of the imperfections. I also like experiencing the songs as people in the 70s would have. Basically, the journey to get the sound is what fascinates me, and the legacy, not the obviously worse quality. Saying all this, I do want to experience sound from a tape.
CDs aren't better than vinyl, they are simply another way of listening to music. Some folks like me prefer the sound of vinyl and some folks prefer the sound of CDs. Such is life.
Have been buying CDs since 1985. First one was Bowie’s Let’s Dance. Couldn’t believe how powerful and clear it sounded. I was an instant convert. Over the years, CDs have stayed the same, but the mastering process has been terrible since the 90s. Modern, ‘loud’ CDs are blamed on the format when it’s how it’s mastered that’s the problem! I will admit that vinyl is warmer sounding.. Even the best CDs and SACDs struggle to replicate that, but I can’t go back to the crackles and pop, the IGD and general wear and tear, of vinyl. Had my fill of that in the 70s and 80s.😁
BOBBY1976100 I think a lot of people forgot why we all switched over to CDs in the first place. Also, I agree about the loudness war over compassion mastering, and I think it likely has a lot to do with the decline of CDs. It’s not the formats fault, it’s poor mastering. I have a couple CDs I can’t even listen to because they are so squashed they hurt my ears. Luckily, some, maybe most, CDs are mastered properly.
BOBBY1976100 I think a lot of people forgot why we all switched over to CDs in the first place. Also, I agree about the loudness war over compassion mastering, and I think it likely has a lot to do with the decline of CDs. It’s not the formats fault, it’s poor mastering. I have a couple CDs I can’t even listen to because they are so squashed they hurt my ears. Luckily, some, maybe most, CDs are mastered properly.
BOBBY1976100 I think a lot of people forgot why we all switched over to CDs in the first place. Also, I agree about the loudness war, over compassion mastering, and I think it likely has a lot to do with the decline of CDs. It’s not the formats fault, it’s poor mastering. I have a couple CDs I can’t even listen to because they are so squashed they hurt my ears. Luckily, some, maybe most, CDs are mastered properly.
Excellent! Someone who's not bullshitting me about how incredible vinyl allegedly is. I would pull you up on the tape calculations though. A typical Type I cassette tape has around 56dB of dynamic range, not 40. Throw in Dolby C which DOES work properly on a correctly calibrated deck and that's up to around 80dB. There's the added advantage of spectral skewing with Dolby C that largely combats tape saturation and can reach a full 20kHz bandwidth at 0dB on a good deck. That's 16dB worse than CD, so that's around 13-bit equivalent, not 6-bit. As no cassette decks worth buying came without Dolby C, I think that's worth factoring in although, in reality, it's still around 9-bit equivalent without it.
Personally I just like that I can get more stuff in the CD booklet, and sometimes hidden stuff in the case like with the Atlantic Record's re-release of Kid A by Radiohead
After the MoFi records debacle, there's no contest anymore. The only problem with new CD albums it's *LOUDNESS WAR,* other than that, I still buy (old) CD's.
I love records, CD's, cassettes, reel to reel and 8 Track, minidiscs...and Spotify. All of these formats have benefits and limitations. I'm thankful for the ability to enjoy prerecorded music regardless of the medium on which it's reproduced. Yes I think CD's sound better in some respects. In other ways vinyl sounds superior. Both can coexist and be equally enjoyed. As another of my favorite UA-camrs says, "The only person who has to enjoy how your system sounds is you."
That same line of logic can be the answer for CD vs Vinyl vs Analog tape (R to R or cassette) Whatever sounds the best is a matter of the listeners preference
CD's in technicality are better sounding. But there's something about the sound of a record and watching it spin that I love. But I'll always buy a CD over a record if it's cheaper.
I’ve never been one for watching a record spin. Once the music is on I’d rather read, look at pictures, or close my eyes and let my mind get lost in the music.
Some people prefer CD's and some people prefer vinyl. I'm O.K. with that. I go to thrift stores, Goodwill, Salvation Army and the like. They have old records which are not available on CD. Artie Shaw Plays Cole Porter (1950). The Hit Makers (Tony Bennett, Jerry Vale, Doris Day and other such artists) (1960). Swing and Sway with Sammy Kaye (Columbia Dance Party Series) (1954). I appreciate those recordings and listen to them often. One thing I do, is wet clean my records before I put them on my TT. It makes a great deal of difference and with records that are over 60 years old they need it! Stay safe.
I have records that I bought back in the 1970’s. I clean them meticulously and they sound amazing to this day. If they ever have a pop is far and few in between. Many of them not even that. But I do not treat my vinyl like this guys does. I mean he is talking to you and he drops the record on the kitchen counter where his parrot walks. He has an Ortofon monaural 78RPM cartridge from which he truncated the cantilever of! Compare that with the fact that I even wear disposable medical gloves to handle my records and use a cavitation machine regularly to clean my lp’s. To be a serious record collector/enjoyer is tantamount to handling a musical instrument. They are not pieces o f PVC for heaven’s sake. He even says that a ceramic cartridge sound and a moving magnet or moving coil does not necessarily make a difference in the quality of sound according to his ears! Who is this person? I know that I have a modest 10,000 dollars sound system consisting of a cd player, a turntable, two loudspeakers and an integrated amp. So I don’t own a Crosley with a 150 amp, but I not a millionaire either. This is my only hobby. But I take it seriously because it is about one of the, if not the, most magical prodigy in life, MUSIC! You don’t pee at one of the legs of a grand piano, not even the side of an upright piano. This guy is all about I don’t know what.
Great video. Everything you brought out lines up with everything I have ever been taught on this subject. I rip my CDs to FLAC and put on my server the store away the CD. I bought my first CD player in the early eighties... have not bought another LP since. I have a 40+ year old Technics SL-1500 turntable to play the LPs I do have. But, can't remember the last time I did ;) I even still have my old Teac reel-to-reel. I guess I just like looking at the stuff. I hear the part about having the big album covers, the art work and all that stuff... and that warm (distortion) sound... but that is not my cup of tea. I have noticed that several of the re-mastered CDs I have bought do seem to sound better than the older ones. I understand that has to do with improvements with the technology involved in mastering over the years.
I've been told SO many times that vinyl records sound better than CD's. And I always think those people are crazy when they say that. On a record player/turntable, you can hear static, hissing, and the sound of the needle rubbing on the record. You don't hear any of those things on a CD (unless it was recorded poorly). Not to mention, the fact that most CD players have a remote control that allows you to switch tracks etc. makes CD's even better. I noticed that video game companies these days keep releasing game soundtracks on vinyl records instead of CD's. And that frustrates me to no end. Makes no sense. I may have a bit of nostalgia for records, since that's the era I was born in. But I have good enough hearing to know that CD's sound way better. Not to mention, records gets scratched and broken (or in some cases, warped from heat) way easier than CD's.
Vinyl sounds better than CD because they are not capped at 44.1 KHz, they capture beyond the sound spectrum. A Hi-Res Audio or DSD file would blow Vinyl out of the water.
This is one of the best videos I've seen on the subject. There is a relevant question on the quality of the mastering used on some CDs, especially early in the format's life and as loudness became "attractive" and reissues brought a lot of clipping in remasters - but that's not on the format at all. There are still a few records only available as butchered remasters in CDs, which are in fact inferior to original LPs because of this - still, Great content all around.
That's why there's SACD. This format is VERY good. When they are mastered properly, it's the next best thing to listening the master recording at the studio.
@ReaktorLeak They say the bit depth has more impact on sound quality than the sample rate. They both matter, but to different extents. Listen to the standard 44.1khz at 16 Bit (Redbook CD) then check the same recording at 44.1khz at 32 bit floating point. You may hear a difference on a very accurate pair of headphones or speakers. There is even 64 bit floating point, but I haven't listened to that. Some DAWs support 64 bit. Steinberg Cubase is one of them.
Higher Sample Rates, at least for reproducing music, doesn't make much difference at all. 1) In first place, all ultrassonic frequencies (above 20kHz) cannot be heard by humans (and no, "absolute ears" cannot hear more than the 20Hz-20kHz human audible frequency range), in second place the oversampling process in the recording ambient is a good practice for a extended Headroom on the Frequency Range of the recording, that is done in order for avoid the "Aliasing" artifact at any cost during the editing, mixing, and other processing tasks at the Studio. That's the real benefit of recording with higher Sample Rates. 2) Higher Bit-Depths than 16-bit are useful for editing and processing audio too (and that's the main purpose for 24-bit audio, for example), but are also interesting (and, in some cases, desirable) for reproducing audio too. As one previous comment said, higher Bit-Depths have a bigger impact on the audio than higher Sample Rates, it's kinda subjective but it's true.
In my opinion Vinyl has a lot of nostalgia and romanticism about it. And that is great and logical - it was the first "real" music format that was good and has become a "symbol of music" (Yes I know there were shellack discs before and Edison cylinders, but I am talking about the format "disc" aka "record", not the material). I remember how proud I was when I put on a vinyl record on a manual turntable without something going wrong for the first time as a child with my little hands - those discs are massive. The distortions can sound soothing, like ASMR, maybe that is why people unconciously like vinyl better. I grew up with CDs and tapes. I usually buy digital albums nowadays, because of space reasons, but I still buy CDs sometimes - like when I want to support an artist especially or it has such a nice design that I want to own it physically. Collecting vinyl is not possible for me because of space reasons so I stick to CDs and I really, really hope they will not go away! Imagine a world where there is only digital or vinyl. Nothing physical at all or a giant shelf-space-hog. I don't want that - I want the golden middle and I want to have the choice ^^
@Recordology I guess so. I have tapes as well lol. I lived through the 80s and never had LPs/records or a turntable except for some awful hand me down early 70s thing I had about 1980. Most of the decade I spent listening to tapes and I was more than happy with them, then went into CDs about the mid 90s.
This is most comprehensive video I stumbled into regarding cd vs. vinyl. I got rid of the vinyl that was converted and released in cd format and kept the ones that didn't come out on cd.
I am grateful to Recordology for preparing this video evaluation. I experience joy listening to music from both formats, and I have some really nice turntables, but in real life 75% of my music listening is via CDs.
The LP and the CD at first sounded nearly alike. But over time, vinyl LP's stretched and shrank with temperature changes. In a very sunny place like Dallas that will wear a vinyl LP as if you were playing it. Then add that you might not change your stylus often enough or get the dust off your LP, or you fell asleep after it stopped playing, you might wake up to find your precious LP in direct sunlight in the morning. I have CD's nearly 40 years old and they sound pretty damn good...
Well any cd is going to be infinitely more durable than a vinyl record. You don’t need to buy special inner sleeves for them, their sound quality lasts longer and they are harder to scratch to the point of it not playing or skipping I have a ton of CDs from when they first came out (back when it had “compact disc” printed on the front) which still sound flawless despite countless listens, compare that to some records I have from that era which have definitely lost a lot of their sound
I'd say right from the begging the sound differences were pronounced. The master goes through RIAA equalization, then reversed upon playback (which will never match the equalizer used during mastering) and further colored by the cartridge and stylus of your choice. And to further complicate things, by the time CDs came out most professional large scale studios were recording and mastering digitally!
Technically, yes CD's are better, and on a lot of peoples systems may sound better. BUT with just a moderately good turntable and a CLEAN record, records sound better. Compare cymbals on identical performances on both. On CD they seem brighter, louder, but on record are more harmonically rich sounding. More real sounding. On CD the sound comes from your speakers, Record it sounds like it's coming thru and from around the speakers. Some people base good sound on more boom-chi. Even Mo-Fi say's their engineers can get more sonic information on a record, and they make both. I have many records that play all the way without one pop or tick.
“Technically, yes CD's are better” Then they ARE better. End of story. “with just a moderately good turntable and a CLEAN record, records sound better” That’s a PURELY subjective claim not backed up by ANY objective technical criteria. “Compare cymbals on identical performances on both. On CD they seem brighter, louder, but on record are more harmonically rich sounding. More real sounding.” Cymbals on CD are reproduced more accurately. That is an objective fact. “On CD the sound comes from your speakers, Record it sounds like it's coming thru and from around the speakers.” ALL sound comes from the speakers. You’re describing phasing effects which you may like, but are not accurate. “I have many records that play all the way without one pop or tick.” I never played a record without a tick.
As a DJ I've also been able to compare the different mediums. Starting out, me and my fellow DJ buds, even mixed cassette tapes! We then went on to mix vinyl. Then CDs. Then MP3s. Each with their advantages and disadvantages. Which runs the gamut all the way down from cost up through technique.
the interesting thing that i have noticed is that while crackles and pops are fairly present on a home setup, they are not in a club enviroment with huge speakers. then again something i feel is not talked about a lot is that one of the main reason is why vinyl records are still a thing is becuase of electronic music and djs. while little commercial stuff and pop was produced rarely oroduced on vinyls during the first part of the 2000s, djs had no other way of mixing than records. its an ironic thought that the first music released on cds, and much of a reason why they became a thing was classical music, while electronic music was the last to abandon it (techno, especially the germans never abandoned it)
I have thousands of records and thousands of cds The CD format blows records away. But like you I love both. But now days I collect cds. Especially classical which sounds excellent on cd. Good research.
I absolutely concur. I have not bought an LP in years, mainly due to all the fuss and woo attendant to caring for them to get an optimal reading from the recording from one audition to the next. Meanwhile, I can pop in a CD, and the earliest ones I bought in 1985 play the same for me as ones I got last month.
Outstanding video I must say. Yes they would call it "inner groove distortion" towards the end of records lol.. But Real Mastering engineers are aware of that and work around it case by case. I would like to argue a good handful of times the vinyl records sound better simply because the transfer process is not ever always done right to CDs. In my cases with the Fania Records catalogue, they did horrific releases of CDs in the 90s and they were worse sounding than the original pressings. It has to be done right straight from the reel to reel studio tapes. To support vinyl records and appreciate them nowadays, the common consumers/retailers has got to stop buying/selling crosley, victorola, and anything ceramic on the stylus turntables and really do their research on sound equipment setups. Studio monitor speakers is what did it for me.
To be fair both Crosley and Victrola have a ton of affordable mid range equipment with magnetic cartridges these days. The notion of bad Victrola and Crosley equipment is pretty much outdated at this point.
@@Recordology Hmm didnt see that applied to any black friday 2019 brick and motar stores. They are still bad by reputation regardless what they attempt to regroup as now.
I was in the audio business when the CD came out - the sound was DRAMATICLY better. It is in no way as romantic as turntables, cartridges, tonearms and LP's.
Everytime i had to choose cd or vinyl rip when comparing dynamics , sound stage and clarity, Vinyl 24/96 early releases 1st print always was clear winner. Do it yourself instead of trashing vinyl . Vinyls do have hype, great artwork, when you play it it's more special moment than putting on digital cd . I like to put CD's when im too lazy to stick a vinyl especially if theres many songs and im too busy doing fun activity tho I prefer cassettes. For best sound there's only one solution a RIP from reel to reel tape / rare or mofi Vinyl or physical bluray 5.1 discs but either of these have different vibe PS listen to vinyl on good system or atleast compare cd rip of good mastering like Pink Floyd with vinyl and look for spacy sound stage, echos, dynamics. Sure there are mofi cd releases which have better dynamics, but they so expensive that better investment would be saCD, which is also worse than Vinyl when i compare dynamics of it
6:15 You are mistaking frequency and amplitude of a wave. The line you drew represents the wave height, 2x the amplitude since amplitude is measured from the center. Amplitude/height would be the volume. Frequency would be represented by the length of the wave (crest to crest). Also your argument would be a lot stronger if you included a bit in Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem. As it stands, you make a weak case with technical explanations that are either lacking information or incorrectly explained like the frequency example above. I'm not saying that you are wrong, just that your lack of technical knowledge undermines your argument.
True higher frequency would show tighter modulation, I needed to come up with a diagram that would illustrate both a sound wave and the spectrum of audio for beginners. As it was it was really hard to keep this video under 30 minutes LOL
@@Recordology Longer videos with more in-depth info are good, because those are rare on UA-cam! I like it that you took the effort to explain all these things and I encourage you to just take your time to do so. Don't pay attention to all those hasty people that need to watch the next video within 10 minutes, just take your time... quality over quantity 😉
The main thing I like about CD's is no surface noise, pops or scratches. The thing I like about albums, is the artwork. So I would rather listen to the CD while looking at the album. (lol)
Id buy an album with a CD inside a full cover. I agree
I made this exact point, recently. Vinyl record browsing is fun, largely because of the form-factor for the artwork.
@murafskis Provided they use the original uncompressed source ie brick walled ... I have an album they used to master the digital copy designed for CD and the same brick walled view in my sound editor (Cool Edit) shows the same pattern observed on the CD version wave form
the best vinyl records are considered to be those made before the 90s. when it comes to sound quality
Noise on vinyl is due to debris in the tracks. and static electricity both things can be removed. CX discs that existed in the early 80's did not have the sound problems. and the dynamic was 90 decibels unfortunately you had to have a CX decoder
Used CDs are a bargain right now!! 10x cheaper than the same album on vinyl. I sure love my vinyl but that is tough to argue with.
And now with the k7 revival i dare to say they're the cheapest of the 3 formats depending on where you live.
Its so true, they are the superior format and much cheaper
They are compressed digital formats in a physical copy, the same as what you get streaming, easier to scratch, and mass produced. While some vinyl are digital imprints, most are mixed and mastered for a better depth and analog sound. Also, the reason why you are paying more for vinyl is because their worth is higher from a collectors point of view. Believe it or not, some vinyl do actually sound better, especially on original pressings. You can easily and cheaply make a mass production of cds vs. vinyl. Though not knocking CD collecting at all, there are some great cds out there and to each their own.
@@JawsomeU2 cds are not compressed and the clear winner audio quality wise and price wise rewatch the video
With cd u r getting an analog tube recorded AAD cd disc, means its only half digital. With cd u r getting a worn out master tape from an older lp recorded from a new master tape. In other words, if u have an old album put on a cd, u have terrible sound.
I grew up with cassettes, vinyl and then CD. And i gotta say the CD is clearly the best and most convenient physical format there is, pretty much a near perfect invention.
They degrade over time (even if you take care of them), contrary to vinyl.
@@TheMydoorbell i have hundrets of CD's from the early and mid 80's and they don't show any signs of that
Streaming offers unparalleled convenience compared to any physical format, with the sound quality on leading platforms being virtually indistinguishable from that of a CD. Buying a physical copy of an album today is primarily motivated by an appreciation for the music-inspired "artwork." In this context, the expansive 12" album jacket and detailed liner notes accompanying a vinyl LP offer a richer tactile and visual experience than the little 5" plastic jewel you get with a CD. Therefore, vinyl is "the best" physical format on the market today, which explains why record sales have now surpassed CD sales for the first time since the late 1980s.
Cd 💿 is better then tapes and vinyls
@@TheMydoorbell half the pop record labels decided to store the records between two sheets of sandpaper. If you buy secondhand, you have no control of previous owner care, so most must be thoroughly cleaned. Can’t count how many LPs were partially warped by previous owners, negating the point of the purchase.
I predict a CD comeback. High quality sound will soon be in fashion again.
They never went away. I however see blurays taking a phaseout. I would like cd's to be playable inside a jewel case like the old floppies were. No more scratches.
Sadly, the younger generation is the target audience for all types of products. They were brought up on streaming, and I fear at some point, most forms of physical media will disappear. I will never stream music. I do buy a lot of digital music now, because much of it is available in higher than cd quality, and frankly, it is much more convenient.
@@batforjustice If you handle them carefully and take care of them, CDs won’t get scratched.
cds were Meant to be used on computers or gaming Systems like playstation 1 2 3 and xbox consoles.
I guarantee you that you won't find anyone who can distinguish high quality streaming from a CD or any other lossless audio source.
Thank you for explaining in layman's terms the fundamental differences between vinyl and CD.
The only way vinyl sounds better than CD is if it was better mastered and/or without compression of the dynamic range or "brickwalling".
However, when two identically mastered formats are compared side by side, CDs are the clear winner for sound quality.
I agree 100% I grow up buying l.p s / singles ,but as a collecter for over 45 years it has to be CDs .
Hi
Cds better sound quality u own the music and there cheaper than records and really small and more easy to take care of and take up less space on bookshelves
Being someone who grew up with records, tapes and CD's, nobody can tell me that vinyl sounds better than CD
Vinyl does sound better than CD, sometimes. Cassette sounds better than CD too, sometimes. CD sounds better than both of them, sometimes. "Better" isn't objective and can't be measured - it's dependent on the preference of the individual listener at any given time. More often than not, I'm in the mood for the "flawed" sonic characteristics of vinyl or cassette over the more "perfectly accurate" sonic characteristics of CD.
I think records can sound great for analog recordings, but CD is better for digital usually, if you have a cassette that sounds better than a CD your CD is crap
@@fclefjefff4041 But, since CDs sound neutral (flat), I bet you can equalise them to make them sound exactly like records. Or you could add a hiss in the background and make them sound like tapes, the opposite isn't possible though.
CDs don't have clicks and pops. That said CDs are worse sounding because they compress them to fit them in the space. Among other things, you lose the overtone series that help give something its sound.
SACD was a lot better but it died. Funny part is these days,with ppl listening to mp3 and other lossy compressed digital sound, they don't hear the difference.
@@rijjhb9467 not exactly, while CD is better in many aspects, there is one aspect where CD isn't superior. If the master is a tape, means analogue, then vinyl is better than CD since the groove is analogue too, CD isn't, means the digital signal is just a finite number of snapshots of an analogue signal. However, when the master is digital too, then that advantage is gone, of course
What I think is the most sophisticated thing about CDs is the reed-solomon-code. It corrects a high amount of bit errors thus the contained data stays the same until a certain threshold. For that, the amount of data is slightly increased. QR-Codes make use of the same technique to ensure data integrity. Pretty amazing engineering!
CD technology involves two levels of error correction; the first is the EFM (eight-to-forteen bit modulation) which allows for exact byte reconstruction if some bits are unreadable as well as making sure there are always _some_ pits to form a continuously trackable track). Then there is the CIRC (Cross-Interleaved Reed-Solomon Code) which allows for both sample error correction as well as missing sample interpolation ensuring that the missing samples are distributed rather than adjacent. It all works remarkably well indeed.
Some of us have both a turntable and CD player.
They also make record players with CD players on them.
Like me-and guess which one I use always anymore....???!!!
@@7JANEWAY which
I have a turn table, CD player, and a cassette deck.
@@jasontscott-west6037 Same here
No one thought records were superior to CD's in 1982.
This.
I love vinyl, I own hundreds of records and 3 turntables and yes vinyl can sound great but this video is spot on. As much as I love vinyl I don't pretend that it sounds as good as CD.
The debate continues LOL whom ever can spend more money on such systems more power to them ... I absolutely CAN NOT see spending the money on a turntable than a home (and that doesn't include the tone arm or cartridge) 50 to 60 thousand smackers Ohhhh Nooo no way
@@tobymummert3035 Agreed. If you listen to little $50 record players, they're sure to sound like shit no matter what.
To say it doesnt sound as good as cd shows you've heard only substandard record setups.
Also the minor compression issues with CD are way less of a factor than crackling and popping . When the band was originally recording music , the music didn't crackle and pop !!! Crackling and popping isn't pure sound :p . Id rather have very minute compression issues with a CD that are literally unnoticeable than crackling and popping.....think about it.
I love both forms but CD is better...hell I still listen to tapes.
The saphire stylus sounds bad, big suprise.😄
If you only heard a conical or eliptical, especially a budget set up, then your not qualified to speak on which is better nor have knowledge of what sounds good.
Confirmation, with facts, of what I've known all along. CDs are the best consumer audio format we ever had. I lived through the change from vinyl to CD and, as much as I love the mystique of the older format, there never was any contest sound wise.
I don't buy much music anymore, but when I do, its on CD
mini disc actually. which have superior playback and don't skip. but it didn't market well
Yes. CDs allow for a wider dynamic range compared to LP, especially inner grooves. When people say “vinyl sounds better” they really mean to say “the original master sounds better.” Most of these people just have issues with modern mastering techniques, myself included.
That being said, I collect LPs and listen to them. They are more fun than CDs. I have a few CDs, but I usually don’t buy them unless a specific album I want to own is not readily and affordably available on LP. Other than that I ☠️download☠️ 96k 24bit FLAC versions of albums that appearently sound better than 44k 16bit CDs. I can’t tell the difference, lol. And yes, my DAC supports that resolution and it is properly set in Windows.
@@dallassegno MD has lower resolution than CD.
@@SPAZZOID100 and they're compressed
Yep! Sony used the ATRAC compression format for that, and it took _years_ for them to introduce the lossless version.
Did you hear the latest from NASA? Aliens finally found the golden record on Voyager I. But, they got into an argument about whether to build the player using analog or digital technology and killed each other with ray guns, and they accidentally melted the record.
It's a no-brainer, CD sounds better. Scientifically proven. Putting aside price and durability, CD sounds better. A great recording will always sound better on CD than Vinyl, simple. People who are used to Vinyl does not mean they "hear better" they just like that sound.
I have the Portishead 1997 album on original Cd and on vinyl. The Cd sounds terrible and the vinyl sounds awesome. Also most of my 1990 bought cd´s have turned gold color and are ruined while all my records work fine after some cleaning. There is a explanation for the sound quality issues with Cd´s why they sound horrible. the loudness wars ruined the Cd format while vinyl wasn´t as affected so all the technology that can make the CD a great format got thrown out the window by the music industry.
This is the most comprehensive explanation I could have asked for. I’ve been buying CDs up out of a desire to own the music I love, and I have to admit that I felt a little bit left out not wishing to spend a tremendous amount of money on a turntable and 3x+ the cost of the same CD on record. I’ve been finding some gems at thrift stores and yard sales, and using eBay for the more obscure albums. Thanks for the crazy in-depth explanation!
I'm glad to see people who know what they're talking about give CDs the respect they deserve. The rush back to vinyl always seemed to me to be a trend like any other. I never believed the nonsense (taken as the gospel by some) that vinyl sounds better than CD. First off, there are too many variables other than the format itself that affect quality of playback. So universal claims that vinyl sounds better are complicated by the initial quality of the recording, the mastering, playback equipment, room dynamics, etc. etc. etc. The main selling points for CDs are greater dynamic range and no snap, crackle, pop, which is so distracting to my ear that it makes listening to vinyl painful at times. Furthermore, the get a good 180 gram vinyl nowadays will set you back $50 or more. You can find awesome sounding CDs online for as little as $2 a piece. Like Brad Allison says, it's pretty tough to argue with that.
2$ plus shipping that is more expensive than the cd itself
But you don't understand the point why people rush to vinyls, it's not because CD as medium is bad, it's becuase of loudness war, generally all modern CDs and digital records sound terrible because of loudness war, while on vinyl and MC cassettes, they use better master with high dynamic range, that's why it sounds better and that's why people download vinyl rips even when they have original CDs, it's ridiculous, but it's sad reality. We've just bought vinyl player and it sounds much better than modern CDs, noise and cracking sounds are lesser evel than dynamic range 5 like on modern CDs, on vinyl, it has like 10-13 dynamic range. Download it into computer and look at it in audacity and you will see what I am talking about, today CDs and other digital sources are not listenable, it's made for mobile zombies who want just noise. Unfortunatelly even modern concerts and festivals are like that, terrible sound everywhere.
I love both records & cd’s, but as far as the cd’s go, I’m glad they’re making a comeback, because there are CD players that have pitch controls, which I personally love.
There are turntables with pitch control out there.
They're really speed controls. Changing pitch without changing tempo usually requires a computer and it doesn't sound that great most of the time ;p
pitch controls are way more fun on a turntable than a cd player
Back in the 1980s, a lot of albums that were put on record in the past were put on CD with the same mastering as the LP. You can always tell which ones are remastered or re-issues by the date on the CD. If it has only the original release date, it's a re-issue of the original master. If it has multiple dates, it's a remaster. I save a lot of money by buying re-issues on CD rather than original vinyl, and the sound quality is overall better too.
@StringerNews1 in the beginning they used vinyl masters for cd of certain titles I think. Especially the 'budget titles' or smaller labels. Not all early digital masters sounded good. Remasters can be an improvement (sometimes). Depends what the label and / or artists ask for.... natural or extremely loud :) I am aware of an indie band... they invested in two seperate masterings for digital and vinyl. The label accidently used the digital mastering for vinyl as well, which made the record skip. Reaction from the label: no repress, no sorry .... but 'don't worry, 99% of the people won't notice this'. Labels these days don't care about quality of their products, just about making money in the short term.
CD technology beats vinyl 100-0. Unfortunately, since the 90s, record companies have not used CD features to their advantage. What I mean by this is that the sound dynamics of CD recordings have been very bad since the 90s. (except in classical music). The music is loud and has no "airiness". (Loudness war).
Both formats can sound great. The quality of the recording and mastering is what really matters.
They both definitely sound great, but CDs and digital always sound flat compared to vinyl. Vinyl shows off the texture of the instruments and is more accurate to how they sound live.
@@stretch90 IMO digital sounds better in totality, but HQ digital streaming sounds exactly the same to me as CD so if I’m going to take up space in my house for anything physical I’ll go with vinyl because of its artwork and its analog sound signature that can’t be replicated with digitally.
@@stretch90 What if the music has been digitally mastered before being put onto Vinyl.
Of course if the mastering is bad, it won’t matter if its vinyl or CD. It doesn’t seem very debatable that if you hold mastering (and mixing) as a constant, CD sounds better than vinyl.
@@stephenmatthews5437 This. Not only digitally mastered, but digitally recorded
Very good analysis and review. Although I like many things about LPs, in real life music listening I listen to CDs about 50% of the time, cassette tapes 25%, LPs about 15%, UA-cam videos, downloaded MP3s, and FM radio 10%. The biggest frustration for CD collectors is, quoting from another commenter, "...proper implementation is key....mastering has a big impact on the final sound quality and can diminish the pro's of the CD format...which is not uncommon. Brickwalling is a common practice when mastering music for a digital format. With vinyl that's not an issue, since vinyl can't really be brickwalled due to its low dynamic range. Also vinyl is considered a premium format nowadays, so its not uncommon that the mastering for vinyl is done with more care than its digital counterpart." In many but not all cases, CDs released during the earliest years of the format (1982 through 1994) are mastered with very little dynamic range compression or frequency response limiting. Unfortunately, a few of those early CDs were mastered using third-generation tape copies as source material or other engineering faults like unintended brickwalling (technicians were still learning how to properly engineer and master material for CD), providing a stale or even overly-bright sound and giving the format a bad rap. Having said that, the majority of early-generation CDs were designed to demonstrate the format's superior frequency response, dynamic range and lack of distortion compared to the corresponding LP and cassette editions. Starting in the 1990s, with LPs almost extinct and cassettes starting to fade from the mass market, the emphasis was on making most CDs LOUD at the expense of accurate so an album would sound good on a CD boombox or car stereo, rather than on high-quality home audio gear.
The common consumer vinyl is cheaply pumped out garbage in HiFi terms
CD blows them out of the water
Actually it's probably a no-brainer that most vinyl pressed out now is garbage is because they know it's for the spurtyphi gen/future where they know it's all ear buds and Bluetooth and the punters actually have no concept of quality sound
so basically cd would be the better more reliable format, if only it was properly mastered
What made me give up on vinyl is inner groove distortion switched back to cds and haven’t looked back.
thats whats always bothered me , but I changed my TT and its mostsly gone.
A better cartridge can usually help with that. I have the ortofon 2m blue and it’s greatly reduced it from the previous one i had. I’ve read the 2m black reduces it even more. But then again most people don’t have $700 to spend on a cartridge lol
An AT-VM95ML cartridge is currently the cheapest with a Microlinear stylus, which is the thinnest stylus type you can commonly buy. Unless the LP is badly mastered or badly pressed, that cartridge will sort out your inner groove distortion problems.
If you own the VM95E with the green elliptical stylus, you are in luck. Just buy the red ML stylus and swap it for the green. BOOM - instant upgrade. If you want a slightly silkier, less CD like sound, get the brown Shibata stylus. While technically not a good as the red stylus from a tracking standpoint, it's still a very good tracker, with a lot of folk appreciating the fuller bodied sound.
This was a good overall presentation, with a glaring error at the beginning. There is no centrifugal force on the stylus, because it is virtually stationary. The imbalance is caused by drag on the stylus as the record turns, and the tone arm geometry is such that the stylus force is greater toward the inside of the groove, just the opposite of what he said. Good turntables have a compensator of some sort to balance out this force.
Right the anti-skate setting..... about the centrifugal force..... VERY good point!!!!!! I need to think on that!
Not only that, but your explanation of lossy compression is completely wrong. It has nothing to do with frequencies outside the range of human hearing, since digital encoding includes anti-aliasing filters to get rid of any material higher than the Nyquist frequency.
The psychoacoustic model relates to the ear’s inability to hear details which are lower in level to others of similar pitch. This is a phonomenon called masking. An algorithm is used to detect and remove this information, and only encodes the sound the ear can hear, resulting in a reduction in bit rate.
More advanced codecs, such as AAC, go further. These use something called SBR (Spectral Band Replication), which cuts off treble frequencies, and encodes these as a kind of ‘waveform description’. The decoder reforms the higher frequencies using this waveform descriptor information, and adds these to the lower frequencies which were encoded conventionally.
@@davba2 I was wondering, if I am the only one who found few mistakes in those explanations. So I agree with you. Interestingly lot of commenters feels explanations clear despite misconceptions:-)
I remember listening to my first CD in 1989, Roxette's "Look Sharp". It was amazing! The LP wasn't even close in sound quality.
Porque o gira discos de vinil, seria muito mau. Se fosse um ótimo gira discos e não de plástico, com uma moving coil elíptica, queria ver se o cd soava melhor, ainda por cima em 1989, que já haviam gira discos da marca britânica, Rega Reserch, como os rega planar 1, 2, e 3. Atualmente há o planar p6, p8 p10 e o Naia, um dos melhores gira discos de vinil do mundo. Só ganha o cd, por ser mais prático, quanto a ter prazer absoluto no som, só com vinil, mas com um gira discos à altura e não "caixotes de sabão".
Too much frustration with lp's, everytime I ordered a special collector's edition the records arrived damaged due to poor packaging... poor pressings at a premium price ... warped records ... Never again! Collecting vinyl was more frustration than fun.
I have an audiophile grade CD player and turntable. I find the sound to be engaging and musical on both components. I have far more LPs than CDs, but I prefer CDs. CD players have a remote control to play or skip specific tracks, they play both sides of the LP without flipping them, they don’t have to be cleaned every use, you don’t have to put them away right after use to avoid dust, they don’t pop and crackle, and I can store them in a sleeved CD storage book.
The negative I have is that I do have some CDs that have been scratched, and my specific player will at times not be able to play some of the tracks.
The reason CDs have a bad reputation amongst audiophiles is because of mastering techniques common in the CDs heyday. THEY HAD TO BE LOUUUUD. Even though the CD had a greater frequency response than the LP, the producers wanted music compressed and loud, negating all dynamic range benefits the CD provided.
I use both formats. I've always been sympathetic toward the digital argument, but, while records are certainly not perfect, there does seem to be something to them as an "audiophile" format. Regardless of what the technical reason might be, people are getting incredible listening experiences out of their records that are different, and some would say better, than what CDs offer, and that interests me.
I grew up with records cassette and 8 track tape and when cds came out I bought my first cd player and hooked it to my stereo and the audio on the cd was amazing i switched my whole record collection to cd and sold all my records we used to compare the difference best quality sound was DDD, some were ADD and some were AAD
Vinyl doesn't come close, especially not in audiophile world
Vinyl has a certain charm; story-telling, maybe it's like books. And there is a difference in sound because there are more variables - the record itself, the needle/cartridge, the EQ, etc. Sound even emits from the record/needle even with no speakers attached. Some people prefer this sound, even if it may not be as high fidelity.
I'd probably use vinyl or tapes if I wanted to be "retro"
If there were no Loudness War Compression on 90% of CD Releases you would be correct. LPs however are EQed to be musical to have Dynamic Range that CDs (If properly mixed at the studio) would have in abundance however the over Compression (by record producers and Sound engineers) has destroyed all Dynamic Range on CDs.
The loudness wars started way before CDs came along. CDs sound better full stop.
@@mdluk199 The loudness war in this instance refers specifically to flattening the peaks in digital audio to allow the levels to be boosted. The process has come to be referred to in slang terms as "brickwalling".
Not quite the same loudness war as when vinyl mastering engineers used compression to make loud sounding vinyl (a la George "Porky" Peckham, Bob Ludwig, to name a couple).
If you know which CDs to look for I’d say 90% of the time the CD is going to have much more dynamic range than the LP.
CDs are way better. And cheaper. Also as an '80s and 90s kid rounding up CDs is very nostalgic.
I buy and listen to both records and compact discs. The humble CD does sound better, hands down.
What I like about cd’s: No surface noise and do not have costly maintenance.
What I like about vinyl: The artwork of the album is such an aestethic which can be displayed.
Another advantage of cds is that they don't degrade or wear with use, vinyls have a physical contact and friction going on at the needle meaning the sound slowly changes over time as it wears, obviously you would need to play it quite alot to wear out a vinyl but the factor is still there.
CDs can rot though.
CD's rot away, the audio is constantly degrading.
As a teen in the 80’s, I’ve lived through vinyl, tape, cd, minidisk & streaming. I’ve resisted the vinyl revival for as long as possible but ultimately gave in about a year ago now. I purchased a Sony deck and, on the same shopping trip, picked up a few vinyl albums to listen to when I got it home. You do get hit by the ‘warmth’ of the sound but understanding what that ‘warmth’ is is enlightening (thanks to this video). More recently, we purchased a new Lexus hybrid car and they are still fitting cd players in their cars, my wife and I were both hit by how good a cd sounded in the car. All that said, the format I’m enjoying the most right now is minidisk. I know ATRAC is a lossy compression but to my fifty + year old ears it sounds good enough and I love the form factor.
ATRAC is indeed amazing. Thanks for the great comment.
It all really depends on usage. Vinyl can sound amazing, but you have to have some good hardware to get the most out of it. CD has the advantage of pretty much always getting the same result regardless of the player. It also does come down to mastering. Most songs that were released in the vinyl era were mastered to specifically cater to the strengths of the format. Some early CDs lazily used the vinyl master for the CD. The final issue is being able to play the darn things. It's easier to find a decent quality record player than its CD counterpart. Unfortunately CD became popular in the late 80s/ early 90s and that's also when the trend of more disposable electronics began. A lot of CD players are pretty much impossible to repair if something goes wrong. In contrast the record player (besides the cheap ones) was made far more modular with fairly universal replaceable components. This is all before you get into things like not all DACs being equal. Honestly if you're going purely by audio quality reel to reel beats them both, but the limited library of music released for it holds it back.
An interesting presentation. Personally, I think the cd/vinyl debate is getting rather old. I was born and raised with vinyl so I naturally gravitate in that direction. I simply enjoy the overall vinyl experience and the vinyl resurgence has been a big kick for me. But, at the same time, I have absolutely nothing against cd’s and continue to purchase them on occasion.
Me either. I’m 60 and have no intentions, and never did, with replacing all my vinyl with CDs. However I do buy CDs, especially used CDs, still. Actually getting ahold of a used Pioneer DVD player recently I’ve become reacquainted with listening to them again besides in the car while driving.
I don’t care who prefers what, to be honest. I like CDs, I like LPs, and I like digital.
@@danielpatternson6149 I hate lossy audio files with a passion. I still don't understand why people stream or download low quality music.
Ah yes, the never ending debate of almost every YT audio\music channel and online audio\music forum on the net. The reality is both formats have their drawbacks or flaws. The reality is I have NEVER heard one person say I completely stopped using either format because of seeing or hearing this debate. It all misses the point of what music listening it about. Which is just to enjoy the music itself.
You are not wrong. CDs ARE better than vinyl.
CDs are a medium with better S/N and dynamic range, but you're not allowed to talk about CDs reproducing audio better because people have spent 10s of thousands of dollars to revive old tape and vinyl. Curious, can anyone hear the different between CD and SACD?
It took about 40 years but now cds are priced correctly vs vinyl. They were cheaper to manufacture when first introduced but the industry decided to screw the customer over yet again. Now they have dropped to realistic prices. And in the second hand stores! They're still 50 cents each in my area. I've had to buy extra cd racks but they're practically giving those away too.
Very educative video! I keep coming back because your videos are so nice to follow. Greetings from Belgium 🇧🇪
The reasons people say that vinyl is inferior to CDs are the exact reason I love vinyl...it's imperfections. Vinyl is a process you enjoy, the slowing down and manually going through the process. I certainly don't do it for "the best sound quality".
That said, I appreciate quality and just physical/tangible products more and more in today's cloud society so I will be acquiring a CD player as well.
I grew up with cassettes and it's nostalgic and emotionally connected to it however when I switched to CDs back in 94 I never looked back
cassettes are rare to found on internet nowdays
THANK YOU for explaining this for people who just parrot what they've heard about the supposedly superior sound of vinyl over cds, without understanding anything technical about it.
Just a couple of points, though- a stylus does not experience centrifugal force, because it's not spinning; it's just being oscillated by the groove undulations that it's riding. Also, practically *nobody* can hear 20,000 hz- that's pretty much dog territory, human hearing can reach maybe 16,000 Hz for a child, and probably only to about maybe 12000 -14000 Hz for an older adult. No biggie. Some people also complain about a certain harshness in the higher frequencies (due to the 44.1 hz sampling rate). THAT's where having a good DAC comes into play.
CD's are my favorite physical media source ..
But do whatever makes you happy, I say..as long as the music never stops.
Trouble is CDs are selling less now so things are less likely to be available on CD than they were and it's partly driven by mistaken ideas of sound quality.
@@keriford54 as a CD collector. Can confirm some albums can be really hard to get, especially when it's a more unknown band that doesn't sell CDs of their own albums. But when I do get it I listen to it like 10 times in a row lol
@@keriford54 but there are still plenty of albums you can het on CD that is not on vinyl.
Vinyl is a type.. I bought all the Ministry discography on CD , for what i would have paid for two vinyl..
thank god i grow up in the 90s with CDs that is superior to vinyl in everyway, still collect CDs never cared for vinyl. =)
I get LPs to put on frame and hang on wall, and just have a collection while sometimes dropping the needle. I listen to files I ripped from my cds 99% of times
My 67-years-old ears still prefer the sound of vinyl. As long as LP's and 45's are kept clean and handled properly, their sound quality doesn't degrade with time. And my ears pick up nuances on the vinyl recordings that the CD's tend to miss. Both, however, are great formats for musical media. The one source that tried for many years to keep up with first vinyl, then later, CD's, was the cassette tape. My cassette collection's sound quality ranges from average to very good, depending on the age and type of magnetic tape used, but I still enjoy listening to them. But they could never compete with directly with the sound of vinyl or CD's. I have around 400 LP's, 300 45's, 350 cassettes, and close to 600 CD's. Just fyi
It sounds better because of loudness war, not because of it's better or analog, but a lot of people don't know about this problem, which is sad, we should push at music industry to stop loudness war, but it looks like it's more like getting worse and worse. Old CDs from around 1990 sound great, it's not problem of CD technology.
load up on your CDs while they are cheap and complete that collection because its only a matter of time before they too make a big comeback, possibly costing more than they originally did.
Abbreviation for kilohertz is kHz. Capital H, because the guy had a name!
Abbreviation for decibel is dB. Capital B because Alexander Graham Bell had a name, too!
OCD now sorted, and those nitpicks aside, nice video!
I grew up with vinyl and switched to cd in my 20's.
I got back into vinyl a couple Christmas' ago when I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to listen to Christmas music on vinyl.
I've bought some vinyl since. But, because vinyl costs 2-4x as much as a cd, I usually buy cd's. The exception, again, is nostalgia.
Nothing wrong with that, its music, its meant to be enjoyable not practical.
The issue with left/right imbalance is correct, but your explanation is wrong. There is no centrifugal force to the outside of the record actually, as the tonearm is not suspended on the rotating element. There is a force, but it actually goes towards the center of the disk (skating force, due to the angled cartridge/needle), and the anti-skating system that most turntables have, will counter that force (anti-skating force points towards the outside of the record, such that the overall radial force is ideally zero).
Among other things, many people stuck on vinyl, claim that a cd record will have problems after 5 years or so. I have been collecting cds since 1991. After 30 years, even the first cd i ever bought, sounds (and looks) just like new. Needless to say of course, that i always handled my cds with the outmost care, just like i do with my vinyl records which i stopped collecting and listening, about 20 years ago. I only sell them to viny lovers now and i wish them to have fun with them. But for me, the cd is such a superior means of storing and listening to music, in every way. Just don't maltreat them !
best comment on here
Have you ever had a CD deteriorate internally? In other words, have holes formed in between the outer layers of plastic where the digital information is contained? I’ve notice in a few if mine after having them for about 20-25 years. Granted, it has only been a few, but it does happen.
I grew up on vinyl before the CD came out in 1982. You'r absolutely right, the CD beats vinyl, hands down, and vinyl has got too expensive.
I have both formats. I can confirm, CDs produce much nicer audio than vinyl records! No static pops and snaps, and they do not deteriorate with repeated plays! CDs for the win!
I wish this got more views. You explained everything so precisely. Thanks! 🙏
true that by Nyquist's theorem 44.1 kHz sampling is more than enough (assuming human hearing stops at a dead 20 kHz). However, anti-aliasing filters with a sharp cutoff frequence of 44.1 kHz are not easy to design and can affect the sound the worse the filters are. Here comes hi-res. Sampling at 24bit/96kHz gives more room for cheap low pass filters to do their job without altering the sound. It also stores more information beyond 20 kHz. Who knows if there are humans who can hear beyond 20 kHz.
I still have happy memories of vinyl when I was a lot younger but I don't play them now. Sadly, my hearing isn't what it used to be but CDs still sound pretty good
Years ago, I was told that CDs are Full of sound gaps .... thousands per second, as you so adroitly point out .... But our human ears can Not hear those gaps because the gaps are so small and short ... and yet the gaps are there. We just can't hear 'em. You did a great job explaining that! I felt like I should have been taking notes, like there was going to be a test at the end of the period! ;-)
"I was told that CDs are Full of sound gaps .... thousands per second"
That is completely wrong. Digital captures the ENTIRE waveform. There is nothing missing at all. This is proven by the Nyquist Theorem.
Per a video by Monty Montgomery, the gaps between the samples are filled in by calculation. There's only one wave form that will correctly pass through the sample points, so that will accurately fill in the gaps between the samples.
Even though I love my digital downloads especially while driving sometimes it's nice to pop in a cd, that or a cassette.
yeah, me too, i did solder a bluetoothmodule csr8645 to my original car stereos board (as you can see on my youtube site) and i also have casette and cd´s on board - i absolutly love it, want to upgrade to csr8675 as bluetooth kepps getting better with LDAC Codec up to 900kbit´s
Actually, a stylus experiences centripetal force, not centrifugal, which is why the anti-skating control actually pushes the tonearm toward the outside of the record to counter that force. This by the way does not apply to linear-tracking tonearms. This is only because of the pivot style tonearms that most turntables use.
Can't wait for the comments
Which is part of the entertainment here LOL
@@Recordology No kidding LOL
You keep talking about the peaks and valleys of a sine wave as the highest & lowest frequencies, but the height of a wave has nothing to do with frequency. The height is its amplitude (aka volume when the wave represents sound); the frequency is how close together/far apart the peaks are.
Truth. Records are fun and quaint and the cover art is amazing, but the sound is decidedly inferior to a well-mastered CD. On my pretty nice sound system, CDs sound WAY better than records. My turntable, cats and stylus are top notch, but the sound has to be cranked to come close to CDs and even then, records sound more compressed, distorted, and lack the dynamic range. I think modern LPs would be much better if we had an update for turntable preamps to give us a better dynamic range for the format.
It’s a shame dbx encoded vinyl records never really caught on.
Wrong. AAD on a cd tells u that the cd was copied off analog vinyl from 1971 & before. Arguing that cd is better is wrong, because old cds r off old TUBE RECORDE vinyl, there were NO DIGITASL TRANSISTORS IN THE OLD DAYS. in the old days. I copy $10,000 turntable youtube mp3 to cd & it sounds much better than store bought cds. I get the benefit of vinyl on cd that dont wear out. Some will disagree with me that lack understanding to know how to do or even hear it. The first link is cd. Click links to show vinyl blows cd away. ua-cam.com/video/J7ATTjg7tpE/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/GOmkv9qsS1o/v-deo.html
I deleted the repeats of this post but allowed this one. Totally fine with your disagreement with me - no problem. I would point out however that AAD absolutely does not mean the cd is from a vinyl record. The first A means that the source recording was analog which would have been 1/2” 3 track tape running 15ips in most cases. The second A refers to the fact that the album was mastered in analog (multitrack tape) and the last letter D refers to the fact that the disc you are holding is obviously digital. Old CD’s like cassettes and vinyl were mastered from 1/2” ‘album reel’ dubs on reel to reel tape.
@@Recordology U r right, & I am right on this post. One "A" means it was analog tube recorded to vinyl, this A was sent to vinyl or cd. Therefore cds that are not pure transistor digital as some believe, have got part of the analog process that was made years back into vinyl. Years back there wasnt much transistors, it was tubes. These old recordings put on cds has some of the Analog tube effect. In 1972 some digital was added. I love old albums put on cds. I hate new vinyl & cds copied digitally. I cant tell a new vinyl from a new cd. Cassette dolby noise reduction removed hiss & hurt the sound, the same goes for cds removing the hiss. I actually store bought a cd with hiss on it & I like it. Some new cds are tube remastered. Google direct to disc albums, they were really the best. Quadrophonic had trouble on vinyl with 2 different formats. Google Cx discs & DBX records. I wonder how analog lazer music discs sound. Brothers in arms, Alan Parsons- I Robot, & Yes- Close to the Edge were wonderful albums with some digital added on vinyl. Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, & Pink Floyd are not completely analog as they claim, they can be remastered a hundred times, I dont like their sound, whether remastered or not.
I mostly use CDs or Tidal but I have a turntable and tape deck too. I gotta say, I like the dynamic of certain songs on certain formats. Vaporwave/synthwave sounds best recorded to a blank cassette because of the saturation and flutter, 70s music sounds best on vinyl because of the warm sound, and the pops/clicks add some ambiance. Sometimes "quality" and listenability are unrelated.
it is very sad that the so called LOUDNESS WAR (dynamic compression, overuse of no noise filters..) has given cd's a bad name.
a good mastered cd can sound as good as a good mastered lp, or even better!
Absolutely agree, people don't take that into consideration when condemning cds
I listen to a lit of early metal. It sounds amazing on CD. Transfered digitally directly from theazter tapes. Vinyl doesn't even come close.
so true my friend i used to buy records then turned to CD in 84 never bought a record since ive bought some crappy cds and crappy records .i'm so used to cds now i would never go back to records 😊😊😊
Those bad sounding records sound very often bad on vinyl either. Some amps / streamers and cd-players do a good job on those poorly mastered albums. With my old Marantz-amp many late 90s early 00s cd's sounded unbearable. With my Hegel H360-amp they are listenable. On the 'budget side', a pair of Sonos Fives do a decent job (streaming my lossless cd-rips from a NAS)...
The Main thing bad about CDs is that should they refuse to play at the start of the CD run or anywhere along further in they can jam up and prevent you from skipping pass any recorded track, whereby unlike on a Vinyl Record you can just lift the needle over onto the next track by-passing any looping. This is the biggest drawback to using The CD format and no amount of saying how good the recordings are will improve this situation. So on this count CDs are a worse format than Vinyl Records.
The Question around how clearer the sound is with listening to a CD in its Digitised Format is really a Question of personal choice and taste that suits your own ears for what might sound good to one person does not mean it will suit the taste of someone else.
Having experimented with just about every from of recording types from Reel to Reel, Cassette, Vinyl, and CD the best is actually Reel to Reel Magnetic Tapes followed by Vinyl, Cassette and lastly Pre-Recorded CDs with the exception of CD-Rom's that I use for transferring all the other Formats onto to play in The CD Format whereby you can get around 20-30 Tracks or so onto them depending upon the length of any recorded Tracks.
This is how I was taught to use recorded formats by my Cousin who was a Recording Engineer who worked for PYE Electronics of Cambridge UK who Mastered PYE Records onto Vinyl back in the 1960's and was the first person I knew who had a Cassette Player/Recorder in his Home Studio whereby he would buy back then New Vinyl Records and then enhance his Vinyl LPs and re-record them onto Metal Cassette Tape and then store away his Vinyl for safe keeping if case he would need to make another copy later.
With todays Computer technology plus added along with older Analogue technologies there are no limits to the amount of enhancements you can today do to remove any Pops and Clicks from Vinyl Recording before transferring any past Recording Formats onto CD-Rom's thereby creating a product that will suit your own taste that is right for you, and if you buy some of those crappy high-end Pre-Recorded CD's that have little in the way of "Warm Sounding" Vinyl, then you can make any needed adjustments to the Sound Stage by re-mixing before transferring over to CD Playable CD-Rom's or you can put your recording onto Mini-Disc which in my view should make a comeback as this format is MORE safer from being damaged then are CDs themselves.
A few notes:
-The Left and Right channels aren't determined by the left and right sides of the groove. One channel is determined by the left and right vibrations and the other is determined by the up and down vibrations.
-The inner vs outer groove issue was usually solved by putting the softer songs from an album at the end of each side so that the waves weren't as pronounced and clustered next to each other.
-The thing you didn't cover regarding Lossy and Lossless compression is the use of codecs. A codec in Lossy simply takes out a range of data, often random but some more advanced ones can identify the right places to remove data in order to decrease storage. On Lossless, the codecs are advanced enough to recognise patterns and simplifications, like if it sees a pattern of 111000 or whatever it's programmed to identify, it subtracts those portions and replaces it with a similar code that's smaller in storage but means the same information.
-There should be a distinction between File Compression and Audio Compression. The former, as mentioned, deals with the binary code and patterns, whereas the latter deals with the highs and lows of dynamic range, boosting the quieter portions while levelling the louder ones. Analog compression has been adapted to Digital mediums like Pro Tools and Logic, but it's the same idea. File and Audio compression are two very different concepts.
-Your argument that higher bit depth = better quality isn't quite fair because for one, you're comparing Digital, something that is built on Bit rates and depths, and Analog, something that is not. You said that converting analog to digital removes noise but that's really not true. As long as the source signal is a pure waveform, digital does little to change the analog signal, or at least what's audible to the human ear.
-The misconception that the highest and lowest frequencies can't be heard on Vinyl isn't true. They are there but they are so quietly included on the pressing but just enough to where the built-in equaliser in the record player itself picks it up and amplifies it. If you have a good quality record player with a great equaliser, then you can get those highs and lows. My ION ITTUSB picks up these frequencies amazingly.
As for what is considered "better quality" is entirely subjective to the listener. Vinyl and CDs are both great quality, but what you haven't mentioned yet is the fact that they sound completely different. Not just about what the bits and frequency ranges are, but the fact that the master recordings are completely different. CDs are mastered much safer and can include all the big bass booms and compression which some people love but some people also really hate, if the loudness wars of the 90s-2000s was any evidence of this. Vinyl, however, is very tricky to mix for and you have to be a pro to mix it properly. You can't over-compress master recordings like you can on CDs, and this happens all the time because it's perceived to be a louder and more pronounced sound, but the downside is that the dynamic range is heavily reduced and the flow is more inconsistent between the more compressed and less compressed portions.
On Vinyl, this kind of master medling isn't possible because over-compressed grooves on a record sound like shit. The grooves thrive on the range of dynamics and the flow of the waveform, which is completely destroyed when you over-compress. Because of this, the Vinyl master is always different from the Digital/CD masters and that's what people love. It's a good alternative to guarantee that the recording isn't going to have over-compression because it's simply too expensive for the mastering engineer to get wrong, so he has too put as much care and precision into the mastering. If you have a good mastering engineer, then you got a great-sounding record with a smooth flow and a unique leveling.
My copy of Images & Words by Dream Theater, pressed by Music On Vinyl, is probably the best version of the album I've ever heard because of its precise mixing and smooth range. Compared to the digital recording, it's so much easier on the ears for all these reasons. I even did a side by side listening between the two and I was shocked at how much better the Vinyl version was.
Thank you for your polite and detailed comment. However there are some inaccuracies that I want to address. First, the left channel right channel - one being horizontal movement, one being vertical - completely inaccurate. As I stated, the left and right walls define the channel - there is a great RCA film on this with animations…there is vertical movement WITH the lateral on a stereo record. Next, on digital compression: In the digital domain EVERYTHING is binary data. In lossy compression, a very deliberate schema (psychoacoustics) intelligently deletes compromised frequencies and repeated notes etc. It’s the same principal (and science) with high and low lossy compression - just a matter of how much compression is done, or in other words, what the compression ratio is.
@@Recordology In regards to the stereo information on the grooves, in a way, we're both right. The information is translated from each Vinyl wall, correct, but it is also being translated in perpendicular fashion as would an up/down and left/right motion would (in this case a duel diagonal perpendicular motion).
As for lossy, what you explained in this comment is more accurate than what you explained in the video. You portrayed it as if the lossy compression would simply take out different instrument parts if they weren't loud enough behind a drum hit. That is a bit of an over simplification that implies that the algorithm is advanced to remix the song itself. What it does is reduce the volume of the louder moments and closens the stereo field during points where the audio is identical. These algorithms are often imperfect which is why they're deemed lossy, whereas lossless compression is more advanced in its use of codecs that recognise complex patterns of binary data and replaces them with simpler patterns that get uncompressed when read by the device that plays it.
The point I was making was that psychoacoustics/lossy compression will not replicate sounds that are masked by other sounds. In other words, if there is a loud blast that covers up the sound of a softer instrument… The softer instrument will be deleted. Also, it’s important to understand that lossy compression is not poor quality compression/low quality codec implementation… It is simply a type of compression that has a purpose… A time and a place. It is not a malfunction, or a poor design, in fact, it is more complex than a lossless compression due to the fact that it is re-creating, an analog wave form that is recognizable, although much much smaller in size. Some codecs operate within wrappers, but that is another subject for another day.
@@Recordology Again, that's implying that the lossy codec can detect each instrument track and remix it when needed. A digital audio track only reads information by the level of voltage per sample. There's no other information heald in those waveforms other than the level of voltage. A typical audio codec isn't intelligent enough to know what each instrument is. The closest to what you're implying is traditional analog compression, which digital compression also tends to mimick, where the loud moment is reduced in volume and thus everything else at that moment is quieter too.
Pros and cons for both, whether it be technical or nostalgic reasons. Not all past recordings have been transferred to CD and many CDs don't have a vinyl version. Many CDs for nostalgic and technical reasons have been issued as the original vinyl, this can't be said for vinyl. I love them both.
One thing I like about CD's is you can make your own compilations with home equipment with very satisfying results.
Yes, by the numbers, CDs certainly outperform vinyl from that standpoint. Keep in mind, however, that when the original research for the digital representation of music began in around the mid sixties, researchers were looking for a way to play music repeatedly without the medium wearing out. That was the true goal. It wasn't really about improving the quality of the sound, but rather preventing the degradation of recorded sound.
That's a myth. CDs were designed to not degrade AND sound better.
I recently bought 2 Bowie records, and a record player
Changes Two Bowie - £10
Space Oddity (1972 re-issue) - £15 + £4.69 delivery = £19.69
Fenton suitcase style record player - £10 + £6.50 delivery = £16.50
total = £35 + £11.19 delivery = £46.19
Not the cheapest hobby, but what I like about my records is the fun factor. I'm 16, I haven't had records present in my life time (only once my mum played some of her old Polish records), but I have had CDs in my childhood. I like CDs, but they're slightly mode boring - all digital and perfect - still more fun than streaming online. But records bring the fun up to another level.
Every time you play it, it will sound slightly different, also you can play them at the wrong speed, which is always interesting. I also love the start up and slow down sounds of records. The crackles and pops give it a certain charm. In the last song of side one on Space Oddity, Cygnet Committee, you can hear the quality gradually decrease, and crackles and pops increasing. Interesting. All these artifacts, I find interesting. I am fascinated that the sound is comming from a moving disk. You can also hear the sound physically comming from the record, but quietly. Basically, I am only interested in records because of the imperfections. I also like experiencing the songs as people in the 70s would have.
Basically, the journey to get the sound is what fascinates me, and the legacy, not the obviously worse quality.
Saying all this, I do want to experience sound from a tape.
CDs aren't better than vinyl, they are simply another way of listening to music. Some folks like me prefer the sound of vinyl and some folks prefer the sound of CDs. Such is life.
Delusional "Golden ears"...🤣🤣🤣
dont matter cuz cds is cuz its cheap and easy for me to collect cuz vinly and music tapes are to expensive on amazon and ebay so cds for me
So, why does my turntable have a bigger soundstage than CD’s. For starters
Have been buying CDs since 1985. First one was Bowie’s Let’s Dance. Couldn’t believe how powerful and clear it sounded. I was an instant convert. Over the years, CDs have stayed the same, but the mastering process has been terrible since the 90s. Modern, ‘loud’ CDs are blamed on the format when it’s how it’s mastered that’s the problem! I will admit that vinyl is warmer sounding.. Even the best CDs and SACDs struggle to replicate that, but I can’t go back to the crackles and pop, the IGD and general wear and tear, of vinyl. Had my fill of that in the 70s and 80s.😁
BOBBY1976100 I think a lot of people forgot why we all switched over to CDs in the first place. Also, I agree about the loudness war over compassion mastering, and I think it likely has a lot to do with the decline of CDs. It’s not the formats fault, it’s poor mastering. I have a couple CDs I can’t even listen to because they are so squashed they hurt my ears. Luckily, some, maybe most, CDs are mastered properly.
BOBBY1976100 I think a lot of people forgot why we all switched over to CDs in the first place. Also, I agree about the loudness war over compassion mastering, and I think it likely has a lot to do with the decline of CDs. It’s not the formats fault, it’s poor mastering. I have a couple CDs I can’t even listen to because they are so squashed they hurt my ears. Luckily, some, maybe most, CDs are mastered properly.
BOBBY1976100 I think a lot of people forgot why we all switched over to CDs in the first place. Also, I agree about the loudness war, over compassion mastering, and I think it likely has a lot to do with the decline of CDs. It’s not the formats fault, it’s poor mastering. I have a couple CDs I can’t even listen to because they are so squashed they hurt my ears. Luckily, some, maybe most, CDs are mastered properly.
Excellent! Someone who's not bullshitting me about how incredible vinyl allegedly is.
I would pull you up on the tape calculations though. A typical Type I cassette tape has around 56dB of dynamic range, not 40. Throw in Dolby C which DOES work properly on a correctly calibrated deck and that's up to around 80dB. There's the added advantage of spectral skewing with Dolby C that largely combats tape saturation and can reach a full 20kHz bandwidth at 0dB on a good deck.
That's 16dB worse than CD, so that's around 13-bit equivalent, not 6-bit. As no cassette decks worth buying came without Dolby C, I think that's worth factoring in although, in reality, it's still around 9-bit equivalent without it.
Personally I just like that I can get more stuff in the CD booklet, and sometimes hidden stuff in the case like with the Atlantic Record's re-release of Kid A by Radiohead
LPs can contain books too - in a much bigger size.
@@errYuck Or you could just get a real book ;-)
After the MoFi records debacle, there's no contest anymore.
The only problem with new CD albums it's *LOUDNESS WAR,* other than that, I still buy (old) CD's.
I love records, CD's, cassettes, reel to reel and 8 Track, minidiscs...and Spotify. All of these formats have benefits and limitations. I'm thankful for the ability to enjoy prerecorded music regardless of the medium on which it's reproduced. Yes I think CD's sound better in some respects. In other ways vinyl sounds superior. Both can coexist and be equally enjoyed. As another of my favorite UA-camrs says, "The only person who has to enjoy how your system sounds is you."
The best comment so far with arguments too :-)
That same line of logic can be the answer for CD vs Vinyl vs Analog tape (R to R or cassette)
Whatever sounds the best is a matter of the listeners preference
if you want music with 5.1 sound then sacd and DVD audio are valid as well as blu-ray audio
The range you drew represents the amplitude of the wave(volume), not the frequency, which was your intention.
CD's in technicality are better sounding. But there's something about the sound of a record and watching it spin that I love. But I'll always buy a CD over a record if it's cheaper.
Not even in technically. All being equal, you wouldnt be able to tell the difference between the two.
I’ve never been one for watching a record spin. Once the music is on I’d rather read, look at pictures, or close my eyes and let my mind get lost in the music.
Some people prefer CD's and some people prefer vinyl. I'm O.K. with that. I go to thrift stores, Goodwill, Salvation Army and the like. They have old records which are not available on CD. Artie Shaw Plays Cole Porter (1950). The Hit Makers (Tony Bennett, Jerry Vale, Doris Day and other such artists) (1960). Swing and Sway with Sammy Kaye (Columbia Dance Party Series) (1954). I appreciate those recordings and listen to them often. One thing I do, is wet clean my records before I put them on my TT. It makes a great deal of difference and with records that are over 60 years old they need it! Stay safe.
I have records that I bought back in the 1970’s. I clean them meticulously and they sound amazing to this day. If they ever have a pop is far and few in between. Many of them not even that. But I do not treat my vinyl like this guys does. I mean he is talking to you and he drops the record on the kitchen counter where his parrot walks. He has an Ortofon monaural 78RPM cartridge from which he truncated the cantilever of! Compare that with the fact that I even wear disposable medical gloves to handle my records and use a cavitation machine regularly to clean my lp’s. To be a serious record collector/enjoyer is tantamount to handling a musical instrument. They are not pieces o f PVC for heaven’s sake. He even says that a ceramic cartridge sound and a moving magnet or moving coil does not necessarily make a difference in the quality of sound according to his ears! Who is this person? I know that I have a modest 10,000 dollars sound system consisting of a cd player, a turntable, two loudspeakers and an integrated amp. So I don’t own a Crosley with a 150 amp, but I not a millionaire either. This is my only hobby. But I take it seriously because it is about one of the, if not the, most magical prodigy in life, MUSIC! You don’t pee at one of the legs of a grand piano, not even the side of an upright piano. This guy is all about I don’t know what.
Excellent comment
Great video. Everything you brought out lines up with everything I have ever been taught on this subject. I rip my CDs to FLAC and put on my server the store away the CD. I bought my first CD player in the early eighties... have not bought another LP since. I have a 40+ year old Technics SL-1500 turntable to play the LPs I do have. But, can't remember the last time I did ;) I even still have my old Teac reel-to-reel. I guess I just like looking at the stuff.
I hear the part about having the big album covers, the art work and all that stuff... and that warm (distortion) sound... but that is not my cup of tea. I have noticed that several of the re-mastered CDs I have bought do seem to sound better than the older ones. I understand that has to do with improvements with the technology involved in mastering over the years.
I've been told SO many times that vinyl records sound better than CD's. And I always think those people are crazy when they say that. On a record player/turntable, you can hear static, hissing, and the sound of the needle rubbing on the record. You don't hear any of those things on a CD (unless it was recorded poorly). Not to mention, the fact that most CD players have a remote control that allows you to switch tracks etc. makes CD's even better. I noticed that video game companies these days keep releasing game soundtracks on vinyl records instead of CD's. And that frustrates me to no end. Makes no sense. I may have a bit of nostalgia for records, since that's the era I was born in. But I have good enough hearing to know that CD's sound way better. Not to mention, records gets scratched and broken (or in some cases, warped from heat) way easier than CD's.
"Just get a better turntable bro!"
Vinyl sounds better than CD because they are not capped at 44.1 KHz, they capture beyond the sound spectrum. A Hi-Res Audio or DSD file would blow Vinyl out of the water.
This is one of the best videos I've seen on the subject. There is a relevant question on the quality of the mastering used on some CDs, especially early in the format's life and as loudness became "attractive" and reissues brought a lot of clipping in remasters - but that's not on the format at all. There are still a few records only available as butchered remasters in CDs, which are in fact inferior to original LPs because of this - still, Great content all around.
Professional studios will record audio at 192Khz or higher, so a CD is still missing a lot of data that was in the original recording.
I would argue you cant hear much difference between 44,100 samples per second vs 192,000.
That's why there's SACD. This format is VERY good. When they are mastered properly, it's the next best thing to listening the master recording at the studio.
@ReaktorLeak They say the bit depth has more impact on sound quality than the sample rate. They both matter, but to different extents. Listen to the standard 44.1khz at 16 Bit (Redbook CD) then check the same recording at 44.1khz at 32 bit floating point. You may hear a difference on a very accurate pair of headphones or speakers. There is even 64 bit floating point, but I haven't listened to that. Some DAWs support 64 bit. Steinberg Cubase is one of them.
Higher Sample Rates, at least for reproducing music, doesn't make much difference at all.
1) In first place, all ultrassonic frequencies (above 20kHz) cannot be heard by humans (and no, "absolute ears" cannot hear more than the 20Hz-20kHz human audible frequency range), in second place the oversampling process in the recording ambient is a good practice for a extended Headroom on the Frequency Range of the recording, that is done in order for avoid the "Aliasing" artifact at any cost during the editing, mixing, and other processing tasks at the Studio. That's the real benefit of recording with higher Sample Rates.
2) Higher Bit-Depths than 16-bit are useful for editing and processing audio too (and that's the main purpose for 24-bit audio, for example), but are also interesting (and, in some cases, desirable) for reproducing audio too. As one previous comment said, higher Bit-Depths have a bigger impact on the audio than higher Sample Rates, it's kinda subjective but it's true.
Loudness war destroys even theoretical differences in sound quality..
In my opinion Vinyl has a lot of nostalgia and romanticism about it. And that is great and logical - it was the first "real" music format that was good and has become a "symbol of music" (Yes I know there were shellack discs before and Edison cylinders, but I am talking about the format "disc" aka "record", not the material).
I remember how proud I was when I put on a vinyl record on a manual turntable without something going wrong for the first time as a child with my little hands - those discs are massive. The distortions can sound soothing, like ASMR, maybe that is why people unconciously like vinyl better. I grew up with CDs and tapes. I usually buy digital albums nowadays, because of space reasons, but I still buy CDs sometimes - like when I want to support an artist especially or it has such a nice design that I want to own it physically.
Collecting vinyl is not possible for me because of space reasons so I stick to CDs and I really, really hope they will not go away! Imagine a world where there is only digital or vinyl.
Nothing physical at all or a giant shelf-space-hog.
I don't want that - I want the golden middle and I want to have the choice ^^
Plus you don’t have to stand up to turn the bloody thing over to side B.
Damn, I just bought a turntable. Should have stuck with CDs.
Go for both!
@Recordology I guess so. I have tapes as well lol. I lived through the 80s and never had LPs/records or a turntable except for some awful hand me down early 70s thing I had about 1980. Most of the decade I spent listening to tapes and I was more than happy with them, then went into CDs about the mid 90s.
I mean vinyl has some really good quality and cds can have some really good quality as well
This is most comprehensive video I stumbled into regarding cd vs. vinyl. I got rid of the vinyl that was converted and released in cd format and kept the ones that didn't come out on cd.
I am grateful to Recordology for preparing this video evaluation. I experience joy listening to music from both formats, and I have some really nice turntables, but in real life 75% of my music listening is via CDs.
You did a Great job explaining this..... They ought to play the video in a college class......
Thank you
The LP and the CD at first sounded nearly alike. But over time, vinyl LP's stretched and shrank with temperature changes. In a very sunny place like Dallas that will wear a vinyl LP as if you were playing it. Then add that you might not change your stylus often enough or get the dust off your LP, or you fell asleep after it stopped playing, you might wake up to find your precious LP in direct sunlight in the morning. I have CD's nearly 40 years old and they sound pretty damn good...
LP stretching......interesting, never thought about that!
@@Recordology it happens if they’re stored improperly. I’ve got a few 45s that have had this happen and warped
Well any cd is going to be infinitely more durable than a vinyl record. You don’t need to buy special inner sleeves for them, their sound quality lasts longer and they are harder to scratch to the point of it not playing or skipping
I have a ton of CDs from when they first came out (back when it had “compact disc” printed on the front) which still sound flawless despite countless listens, compare that to some records I have from that era which have definitely lost a lot of their sound
I'd say right from the begging the sound differences were pronounced. The master goes through RIAA equalization, then reversed upon playback (which will never match the equalizer used during mastering) and further colored by the cartridge and stylus of your choice. And to further complicate things, by the time CDs came out most professional large scale studios were recording and mastering digitally!
Technically, yes CD's are better, and on a lot of peoples systems may sound better. BUT with just a moderately good turntable and a CLEAN record, records sound better. Compare cymbals on identical performances on both. On CD they seem brighter, louder, but on record are more harmonically rich sounding. More real sounding. On CD the sound comes from your speakers, Record it sounds like it's coming thru and from around the speakers. Some people base good sound on more boom-chi. Even Mo-Fi say's their engineers can get more sonic information on a record, and they make both. I have many records that play all the way without one pop or tick.
Mo-Fi masters from digital files. It's all about the distortion and coloring that vinyl playback causes.
“Technically, yes CD's are better”
Then they ARE better. End of story.
“with just a moderately good turntable and a CLEAN record, records sound better”
That’s a PURELY subjective claim not backed up by ANY objective technical criteria.
“Compare cymbals on identical performances on both. On CD they seem brighter, louder, but on record are more harmonically rich sounding. More real sounding.”
Cymbals on CD are reproduced more accurately. That is an objective fact.
“On CD the sound comes from your speakers, Record it sounds like it's coming thru and from around the speakers.”
ALL sound comes from the speakers. You’re describing phasing effects which you may like, but are not accurate.
“I have many records that play all the way without one pop or tick.”
I never played a record without a tick.
As a DJ I've also been able to compare the different mediums. Starting out, me and my fellow DJ buds, even mixed cassette tapes! We then went on to mix vinyl. Then CDs. Then MP3s. Each with their advantages and disadvantages. Which runs the gamut all the way down from cost up through technique.
the interesting thing that i have noticed is that while crackles and pops are fairly present on a home setup, they are not in a club enviroment with huge speakers. then again something i feel is not talked about a lot is that one of the main reason is why vinyl records are still a thing is becuase of electronic music and djs. while little commercial stuff and pop was produced rarely oroduced on vinyls during the first part of the 2000s, djs had no other way of mixing than records. its an ironic thought that the first music released on cds, and much of a reason why they became a thing was classical music, while electronic music was the last to abandon it (techno, especially the germans never abandoned it)
I agree with your statements. Lots of CD haters on here
I have thousands of records and thousands of cds The CD format blows records away. But like you I love both. But now days I collect cds. Especially classical which sounds excellent on cd. Good research.
I absolutely concur. I have not bought an LP in years, mainly due to all the fuss and woo attendant to caring for them to get an optimal reading from the recording from one audition to the next.
Meanwhile, I can pop in a CD, and the earliest ones I bought in 1985 play the same for me as ones I got last month.
Outstanding video I must say. Yes they would call it "inner groove distortion" towards the end of records lol.. But Real Mastering engineers are aware of that and work around it case by case. I would like to argue a good handful of times the vinyl records sound better simply because the transfer process is not ever always done right to CDs. In my cases with the Fania Records catalogue, they did horrific releases of CDs in the 90s and they were worse sounding than the original pressings. It has to be done right straight from the reel to reel studio tapes. To support vinyl records and appreciate them nowadays, the common consumers/retailers has got to stop buying/selling crosley, victorola, and anything ceramic on the stylus turntables and really do their research on sound equipment setups. Studio monitor speakers is what did it for me.
que bueno muchas gracias JRo I always new the cd's I bought that fania records remade never sounded that good to me I thought it was me
To be fair both Crosley and Victrola have a ton of affordable mid range equipment with magnetic cartridges these days. The notion of bad Victrola and Crosley equipment is pretty much outdated at this point.
@@Recordology Hmm didnt see that applied to any black friday 2019 brick and motar stores. They are still bad by reputation regardless what they attempt to regroup as now.
I love seeing UA-camrs A/V setups. I see you have other equipment in the background but thanks for showing some of your pieces.
I was in the audio business when the CD came out - the sound was DRAMATICLY better. It is in no way as romantic as turntables, cartridges, tonearms and LP's.
Everytime i had to choose cd or vinyl rip when comparing dynamics , sound stage and clarity, Vinyl 24/96 early releases 1st print always was clear winner.
Do it yourself instead of trashing vinyl . Vinyls do have hype, great artwork, when you play it it's more special moment than putting on digital cd .
I like to put CD's when im too lazy to stick a vinyl especially if theres many songs and im too busy doing fun activity tho I prefer cassettes.
For best sound there's only one solution a RIP from reel to reel tape / rare or mofi Vinyl or physical bluray 5.1 discs but either of these have different vibe
PS listen to vinyl on good system or atleast compare cd rip of good mastering like Pink Floyd with vinyl and look for spacy sound stage, echos, dynamics. Sure there are mofi cd releases which have better dynamics, but they so expensive that better investment would be saCD, which is also worse than Vinyl when i compare dynamics of it
6:15 You are mistaking frequency and amplitude of a wave. The line you drew represents the wave height, 2x the amplitude since amplitude is measured from the center. Amplitude/height would be the volume. Frequency would be represented by the length of the wave (crest to crest).
Also your argument would be a lot stronger if you included a bit in Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem. As it stands, you make a weak case with technical explanations that are either lacking information or incorrectly explained like the frequency example above. I'm not saying that you are wrong, just that your lack of technical knowledge undermines your argument.
True higher frequency would show tighter modulation, I needed to come up with a diagram that would illustrate both a sound wave and the spectrum of audio for beginners. As it was it was really hard to keep this video under 30 minutes LOL
@@Recordology Longer videos with more in-depth info are good, because those are rare on UA-cam! I like it that you took the effort to explain all these things and I encourage you to just take your time to do so.
Don't pay attention to all those hasty people that need to watch the next video within 10 minutes, just take your time... quality over quantity 😉
CDs are a great physical media. I keep CDs as masters [to support artists.] and rip them to mp3 for listening on the go.