Collecting vinyl is just fun. The record stores, the hunt, having a tangible piece of art, and listening to an album all the way through is such a lost practice. I love it.
Weirdly enough, the inconvenience really plays a big part why I like vinyl. I enjoy the convenience of streaming music, for example in my car or if I just want some background music. But the "inconvenient" procedure of selecting a record, putting it on and not being able to skip songs puts me in a different mindset. I find that I listen to vinyl records in a more attentive, intense way and generally, enjoy the music more because I am more invested in it.
@@nerigalvb8779 I'm similar but with my minidisk collection (although obviously I can still easily skip tracks). I've just started buying some vinyl because the artwork on some albums just shines on the larger format. I'll eventually get to listening to them when I buy a player....
@@nerigalvb8779 I don't like a wireless frequency going crazy around me to stream (I know there are many frequencies all around, but I don't want to direvtly add to it), and having a monitor open around me all the time just to listen to music is really getting old. Vinyl is not digital and that feels so good.
as a Gen Z kid, having grown up with technology at a click of a button, a computer in the house, UA-cam etc. and entering my teenagedom with a phone in hand therefore having access to countless videos and music in less than a second, getting my first record player around 3 days ago was another level of joy. the feeling of physically having a copy of a beloved song just hits differently, and i couldn't give less shits about whether it's as "high quality" as the Spotify version, watching a physical and real record spin and the stylus sliding in the grooves physically picking up sound is just such another level of musical experience. digital versions of music is still overpowering analog in my life since i always have my earbuds in when i'm out of the house going somewhere, but analog is much more deeply appreciated by me. this is before having watched the video, i'm interested to learn! :D
As a gen z kid too, I whole heartily agree. There's just something magical about being able to listen to your favourite tunes play live from a simple disc, and it blasting out of your speakers. I got a few Pink Floyd albums for Christmas and now I play each of them nearly everyday (not just because they're amazing albums) but because there's just a novelty and beauty to them that is hard to replicate for me
@0rgaSMM sadly 😥, u need a nice turntable, reciever to get good sound. These budget USB turntables are laughable. I have a decent audia technica, 350 bucks. I want to upgrade someday
Sometimes I feel like it would have been fun to grow up in a time period when vinyl records, or other physical copies of music like 8-track tapes or cassettes, were the predominant form of collecting music. It seems like it would have been a really cool experience when your favorite band releases a new album and you and your friends can go down to the record store and see all the other people who are fans of the same band, looking to get their hands on the new album. But I probably only think that because I didn't grow up in that time period. It seems desirable because it's not mandatory. Having unlimited access to basically the entire discography of any band or any artist to listen to anywhere and anytime I want to, FOR FREE, is a modern luxury that cannot be overstated. Having a limited supply of physical copies of music, each one only containing one album or a certain number of tracks, and having to pay money for them is not nearly as fun when it's your only option.
I've actually conducted research on digital sampling rate, and that project followed the standards for A/D and D/A audio signal processing that requires anti-aliasing filters. In preparation of that study we monitored wave-forms side by side on a dual channel scope as we processed pure sine waves from 20Hz to 20Khz. While that step-like effect you depict can exist without the filter it is completely removed by the RLC circuit (resistor -inductor-capacitor circuit) of the filter. Across all frequencies the perfect sinusoidal waveform was recreated to perfection. There is absolutely no step like effect on the recreated signal. The real differences between analog and digital recording is that 16 bit amplitude coding, at 6dB per bit yields 96 dB range while the best full track 1/4" professional tape can only yield 60 dB. So actually the vinyl record process is forced to compress the dynamic range. More perceptually important, the instantaneous rise-time of certain musical sounds cannot be reproduced on a record. Neither the lathe cutter nor the playback stylus can reproduce a rise-time equivalent to a gunshot (or a cymbal or rim shot) but digital sampling can. The potential problem with digital processing is that it reveals recording flaws like phase cancellation between multi-miked instruments that were previously masked by analog recorders. It's like having poor eyesight, finally getting a pair of glasses and seeing all that dust! You could go slightly into "the red" with analog recording, in digital that is the horrible sound of chopping the tops off wave forms (clipping). That "warmer" sound on vinyl is not how it sounded to the musicians in the studio.
Huge vinyl fan and collector and I fully agree with you. I love collecting records because they feel more “real” there’s a certain connection to the music they provide that I cannot get in the digital/streaming form. The whole ritual is something I don’t want to put aside and it forces me to listen to an album in its entirety. Having said that, the clarity and detail offered by a well recorded and produced album in digital (uncompressed) form is something that cannot be replicated by any analogue means, especially not LP.
am I missing something. you mention 1/4 inch professional tape, my understanding is that pro tape can be 2 inches wide running at 30 inches per second.
@KoivuTheHab Thank you, I spend too much time correcting others and should tend to my own garden more often, but I love that you pointed this out because it shows that you care. Warm wishes.
Sorry Yeah I liked the picture as did most other people I was making a point. It is surprising what makes people buy things, often it is a simple logo or endorsement by a celebrity. Next time you watch a sports event turn the volume off and you will understand that is as much the atmosphere and commentary as the sport itself. @KoivuTheHab
Never bought any records. I bought a tape recorder and later a cassette recorder and recorded the music off the radio or borrowed the records and taped them.@KoivuTheHab
People think vinyl is better because almost everything digital is released at 16 bit/44.1kHz. The noise floor on 16 bit isn't low enough, it induces audible distortion at low levels. 44.1kHz is just barely passable at high frequencies, 14k upward, turn into saw waves. Everything should be mastered at higher than 32/192k and released at 32/96k. It should also be mastered in 5.1 instead of stereo.
@@NeolithGrey the noise floor on a CD is a hell of a lot lower than vinyl. I have transferred enough of it to digital to know. 80% of the signal coming from vinyl is noise. Vinyl is a plastic disc where a needle gets dragged along. This generates rumbling, hiss and rice crispy noises. The best way to listen to analog would be magnetic tape. Hence I'm only half joking in my previous post. If I took a vinyl and digitally recorded it and played both through a good stereo, the vinyl and the digital file, no one (and I bet any money) will be able to tell the difference in a blind test.
@@jochenstacker7448 I never said the vinyl noise floor was better than CD. 16 bit isn't good enough for low volume because there's audible distortion. Turn the volume up as music fades out, that fizzle you hear is distortion. In 24 bit it's almost nonexistent, in 32 bit it's not there at all. I'm just saying that 24/96k is slightly better than analog tape and 32/192k is far superior. The digital transfers will still be around 100 years from now, the analog tape will have long since disintegrated.
@I've bobbed mi sen Sometimes. If it wasn't too bad, I left it as is. The problem with running the snap, crackle and pop filter, is that you sometimes remove something you don't want to remove.
THIS is the biggest loss to music, in my opinion. Of course, without smaller physical media formats (or digital) we wouldn't have all this great portability. But all those great album covers and liner notes..? (Sniff)
No way. Literally nobody misses looking at porn on a foldout magazine or on fuzzy low def VHS. I can appreciate album artwork even more. Best part it it isn’t constrained by a physical media anymore. Remember cassette artwork? It was crap for the most part and full of micro print lyrics that Spotify can read for us now.
@@dabcorn while ur right I also have to say ur wrong since we're taking physical media that is personalized/dedicated to albums and collections of officially released music
As an "old guy", I grew up with vinyl and the never-ending pursuit of improving my stereo system. Still buy records and play both my old classics and newer versions, but I like CDs and streaming as well. While I have friends and family members who insist the sound is better on vinyl, I honestly can not tell the difference. Some say vinyl has a "warmer", more natural sound. Maybe, but I have never been able to discern it. It's all good when you are playing a great song.
I too collected records since I was 13, and have 500 or 600 albums all together, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t a large collection. But I still have them, and they still play well, and I have no intentions of throwing them out. I too have spent all these years improving my system, and have what I think is a fairly impressive set up. I’ve got about $3500 invested in my vinyl playback setup and I also have a Cary CD player that sold for near $6,000 when new. They both sound great! But what I find, when listening to the CD player I enjoy playing one, maybe two, and I’m done. But when I play vinyl records, one leads to another, and another, and before I know it, it’s 3am and I’ve lost track of time! That is why I think vinyl is better than CD. It somehow pulls me into the music, I have a greater emotional response, and it leaves me wanting more. I can’t say any particular part sounds better, but the proof is in the listening.
Hey, I like your comment. I compared a lot of different sources on many different components. To me and my HiFi-friends it seems to be a way better sound while listening to digital music. But this will of course just show up if you use a good DAC, with a good clock and if possible a good streamer. And obviously a high resolution streaming service. We like the sound of Qobuz the most. Spacial information is better on digital music, detail is better, it sounds more neutral so more natural. But for "feeling" you would maybe want to listen to some music like buena vista social club still on vinyl. Maybe this is some shared impression that makes you try out new things in your music hobby. But I am so glad to read your last sentence: it´s about the music, not about equipment. We sometimes lose this perspective.
@@CalikoTube if you don’t take care of you vinyl, that’ll happen. I’ve got albums I’ve had since I was 13, I’m now 60, and they do not pop and crackle. It does require more care than CD’s, and record cleaning machines are expensive.
First, if the CD to which you're listening has an "A" in the format, it is just as much shit as the vinyl or tape onto which it was mastered. There are very few CD recordings available which are "DDD". Therefore, you won't hear any difference because there is none. If you want to hear impressive CDs, check out Telarc! They have really nice samplers plus hundreds of true audiophile selections where you CAN hear the difference. Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" is also a "DDD" (not from Telarc). You have never heard "Money for Nothing" sound so wonderful. Warm sound, cold sound, bullshit sound! Try to imagine over 96 dB of dynamic headroom bearing in mind that every 3 dB is twice as much power where tapes, at BEST, make around 52-55 dB. Wanna know why your CDs sound just like the f***king vinyl. Because they were recorded in analog!
@Jimmy Gibbs people buy vinyl they also like digital idk. i listen to digital even though i love my vinyl i just listen to digital more because im lazy and forget i even own vinyl.
Honestly, I'm just a fan of their analog nature. I like the idea of the sound literally being encoded in such a way that running a needle through the grooves recreates the song!
@@svenlima CDs store music digitally though. Not the same thing. If I run a little needle along the tracks of a music record, the needle will vibrate to recreate the music. Your light saber would not make sound if it could read a CD, you would have to process the data somehow to get music back.
@@klausstock8020 That is unfortunate to learn. I used to keep a list of all the songs I liked on youtube, but after 7 years over half of the playlist was removed.
@@kjl3080 Actually, CDs do have booklets! I mean, they're not guaranteed to have extensive liner notes, but a lyrics booklet at least is always there. But yeah, not as nice looking for sure
For me, listening to a record is an experience. When I listen to a record, I go to my living room, I look through all the vinyls there with all the pretty artwork, each one conjuring memories of where the record came from or of times I have listened to it in the past. Then I find a record, I carefully place it on the turntable, gently place the needle and I sit down on the living room couch without a phone, or a book, or a tablet and I listen to the entire album. I just sit and listen to art. Its a process, its something you do with intent. We've become so accustomed to streaming music that its not something you really do with intent anymore. Its a background task. Its something you do while you do something more important, like read emails or surf facebook, and the music is relegated to background noise, barely listened to. I find myself listening to random songs, but I may become interested in something else and may stop randomly after 2 or 3 songs. I never sit and listen to an album, start to finish. I have some very high resolution audio files, I think that is probably the highest quality audio I own, not my vinyls, but even these, there is not so much intent. It does not engage the mind and memory in the same way. I often dont listen to a full album on my digital files, but I almost always do with a vinyl. Perhaps these are just my peculiarities, but I think there is something to this. Its not the sound quality that I keep going to vinyl for, its for the experience of listening to a vinyl record that I keep coming back to.
You can replace the word vinyl with CD in what you just wrote and you would have the same end result. You don't need vinyl to be able to enjoy an album. It's all on your head. What you're really saying is you don't have the discipline to just sit down and listen to music. You need to artificially limit yourself.
@@Wordsalad69420 Youre absolutely right about not needing vinyl to enjoy an album, and I totally recognized that in my post. As I said, my best quality audio is in my high quality digital files, particularly the DSD ones, not my vinyl. So you clearly dont need to have vinyl to listen to nice music (you dont need DSD files to enjoy listening to music either). I also said that these may just be my own proclivities. My point is only that, for some people, it is the process of listening to a record and yes, the "romance" of it. This is what draws us, and I think that very subjective, purely psychological, benefit can result in something that actually DOES improve the listening experience.
I relate to that. I really love the ritual of finding one of my records and putting it on for a spin. It's the ritual that attracts me. I also listen to tons of music from digital files from my own collection on hard disk, mostly while working and I stream lots as well, but the experience of really choosing a record to put on makes it more special in a way.
@@onomehtenialb there are a few minor inaccuracies with some of what you said, and as for whether we can tell differences in sound at a subconscious level, that's not something I could address one way or the other. And in either case I haven't the energy to argue. One thing I am fairly certain of with audio equipment (not necessarily audio recordings though) is that while it does introduce noise and inaccuracies to an extent, our imperfect human ears like some kinds of inaccuracies. A perfectly reproduced, flat response curve sound tends to be quite harsh. Thats why you mostly only see flat response equipment in the recording and sound engineering industries. So while a tube amplifier may actually reproduce sound less accurately, it introduces the sorts of inaccuracies we find pleasing. In any case, I am merely glad you are enjoying your recordings. Sounds like you have some good ones to enjoy! I sadly don't have any of my nice listening equipment out yet as we just recently moved and reintroducing that equipment to its new home will take some effort (and also money). Instead I have opted for the opposite, and occupied myself with the creating and recording of music! Enjoy those recordings, and keep those old pieces of equipment fresh!
This is 100% why I've just started to buy my top 100 albums on vinyl. I still stream music but I don't feel I have any ownership of tha music. It's just instant gratification. You see the album art as a thumbnail. With vinyl you get to experience the artwork in all it's glory. The artist has likely chosen that artwork to greater enhance their creative vision for the music. Sure, CDs are sort of able to also do this but having a 12" artwork to look at far exceeds a CD inlay. There's also something to be said about the physical nature of placing a needle carefully at the start of a track you want to hear. There's a bit more connection with the album structure than pressing a few buttons on a CD player. It's an experience and you do feel a lot more engaged with the process as an event. A few months ago I had zero albums on vinyl and hundreds of albums saved in my music streaming apps. More than I can remember, yet now I can list the 40 or so albums I own physically and I think this helps me to identify to myself my music tastes and what genres and artists are my favourites. It feels more focussed. This may change a little as my collection grows but I feel a lot more connected to my music now I physically own this music. I also like that vinyl comes in recyclable cardboard and it feels a lot more wasteful that the plastic used for CD cases.
As a sound engineer, I have always had a problem with most of the digital v analogue argument, and that is the listeners involved have never heard the master tape - especially when we worked in analogue - so are making the wrong comparison. How close is what you are hearing to the original recording. We often mixed down to tape running at 30 inches per second - normally 1/4 inch tape, but 1/2 inch in some studios. While still being analogue, these were incredibly high-quality recordings. But the resultant vinyl pressings were always disappointing. As you pointed out, they could not reproduce the frequency response of the master, and to that was added increased cross-talk between left and right channels, effectively narrowing our lovely stereo field. And then there was noise. Every time the audio signal passed through another set of amps, the signal to noise ratio became that little bit worse. Add dust, and the final playout via an over-compressed radio station was depressing. When we first heard digital, especially CDs, it was wonderful! It wasn't completely like the master because the master was played through professional amps and speakers, and home gear (even the so-called high end domestic gear sold at rip off prices) came nowhere close. But it was so much closer than analogue. Vinyl is fun, it has its own characteristics which are lovely in itself, but it isn't as close to the original as is digital. And for the engineer or producer, that is important too.
That's why the Sennheiser HD 280 Pro studio monitor headphones I use regularly are a mixed blessing. I can hear how incredible a well mastered CD sounds, and how lousy the same music sounds on vinyl. I really wish people could get the ridiculous notion out of their heads that vinyl is in any way superior to CD.
I agree with everything you say there, other than the bit about when we first heard CDs. I first heard them as a teen in the late 80s and knew there was something very wrong with the sound. I later found out it was jitter causing that flawed sound. Although CDs are every bit as good potentially as vinyl, it took so long for affordable dacs to sound good and the jitter to be reduced enough to not degrade sound, that streaming was just around the corner and cd development was no longer viable.
Quadro could never work satisfying on records. The attempt to record and play ultrasonic to encode the additional channels, resulted in records with very fragile quadro information. The other matrix encoded systems has the problem, that channel separation isn't good enough, therefore you won't find Dolby Surround on vinyl records.
When you first heard CDs in the 1980s (like me), Phase Locked-Loop technology (PLL) was already installed even on domestic equipment. Jitter couldn't be heard even way back then because it was removed completely by simple buffers, filters and a highly accurate oscillator. Some of the crappy sound released on CD in the 80s was because Mastering Engineers were still getting to grips with the massively extended Dynamic Range, very accurate Frequency Response, and ultra low noise floor of the IEC 60908 Red Book Standard digital data available to them. Mastering for vinyl often left CDs lacking midrange and bass components; sounding "tinny" as a consequence. This was not a sonic artefact introduced by a flaw in the encoding or reproduction technology, just people learning how to do something new. Worse problems were evident in many legacy recordings that were being transferred to CD. Errors throughout the recording, mastering, and pressing processes that had been masked by the much lower fidelity vinyl reproduction equipment were now being revealed everywhere. The industry realised that this could cause a problem that might be blamed on the new technology, and many labels included a disclaimer on CDs pointing out that previously inaudible tape hiss, wow, flutter and harmonic distortion could now clearly be heard on domestic systems. CDs did not sound potentially as good as vinyl - they were orders of magnitude better in every measurable respect. They are only surpassed by 24-bit Lossless signals.@@kieranhynes9072
As a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s, coming home from a store with a new album was exciting. Looking at the album art, reading liner notes, etc, was a treat. I have tonnes of CDs, but today I still enjoy the tactile ritual of removing vinyl from its inner sleeve, placing it gently on the platter, and carefully lowering the tone arm and making sure the stylus is lined up properly to land in the groove at the right place. Then waiting for the music to begin... To me that’s part of the whole at home music listening experience.
@Focal Point Images To me? digital music formats is like having sex in the missionary position every single day. Analog is like picking up a copy of the Kama Sutra. it's different every single time. adding tubes to your system is kind of like doing LSD but since I've never done drugs I can only speculate :-)
Something not so well known is that since the 1980s, most vinyl has been cut using a digital delay in the signal path, to allow the equipment to adjust the groove pitch dynamically. Even if the album was recorded and mixed using analogue equipment (reel to reel and mixing desk etc.) it will still be turned into a digital signal before and back before it gets onto the record itself.
This, i wanted to search for this info online and i couldn't find it. Your comment is a godsend. I forgot the exact reason why they wrote the signal in digital and you helped me remember!
Yes you can. Listen to the vinyl and the digital side by side. Not saying one is better than the other but im 100% sure you'll be able to hear the difference
I have figured out that people have very strong feelings about vinyl vs digital and I would like to clarify this was a joke and not serious although the spinny part is cool
There's one more physical issue overlooked here:: The linear speed (speed of the groove past the needle) is much slower towards the center of the disk vs the edge. Which means that the waves get smaller as the record plays, while the size of the stylus remains the same. This results in diminished audio quality at the end of the record. Recording engineers knew this and often placed the more demanding cuts first because they would be at the edge of the record.
A lot of the bad reputation that early digital got was about it's hardness and harshness. This was because Master Mixdowns that had been created in the era of vinyl were simply put onto CD exactly as they were originally mixed. The process of creating a vinyl record involves several transfers and quality can easily be lost during these processes, especially for high-end detail. Skilled Mixing and Mastering engineers allowed for this in creating their mixes so that at the end of the chain of manufacturing processes the final result would be bright enough and detailed enough in the high end. Taking those vinyl intended mixes and simply digitizing them resulted in a sound on CD which was harsh and toppy. To do the job properly, the original multitrack master-tapes need to be remixed with digital in mind. Criticism from respected audio engineers and the recorded artistes themselves soon ended the practice of just burning the original vinyl intended mix onto CD. But the echos of that initial problem linger still. - further waffle which may or may not interest you :-) In the late 70's and the 80's I ran a small studio, mostly doing demos but we did make four - perhaps five - LP's so I had to learn what was required so that the Cutting Engineer did not need to correct my mistakes. I went down to CBS in London for the cutting and spent the time chatting with the engineer and learning what I could so that I could do better on any future projects. Because the engineer needs to play through every track and make adjustments if needed and then make the actual cut in real-time, it's not a rapid process. We got there at 10am and left at 5.30pm as I recall which is quite a long time considering that the LP overall was about 50 minutes long. Back in the day, you took your 2-track master tape (stereo mixdown from mutitrack tape) to a cutting engineer who cut a master called a laquer. A laquer can be played but it is so soft that it quickly degenerates if you keep playing it. Several processes were required to turn that laquere into a Stamper suitable for mass reproduction by pressing it into hot vinyl. Once the Stamper was made, a couple of test-pressing were made so that the producer, artist and record company could check that the end result was good enough. If it was not then the entire process of cutting a new Acetate and turning it into a Stamper had to be repeated. If you read interviews with bands and recording techs from that era you will find many instances of people saying things like "We had a fabulous mixdown sound in the studio and when the Test-Pressing came it sounded like a dinner-plate." The skill of the engineer who cut the Acetate was crucial. They had sophisticated EQ gadgets which altered the tonal balances without introducing any new phase anomolies as well as "transparent" compressors and limiters and they used them to tame any aspects which might cause a problem when cutting the Acetate. The laquer was a very thin aluminium disk coated on one side with laquer and the cutting lathe had a heated cutter which rather than being a needle was actually a "V" shape, so that it actually cut a channel into the laquer and the hair-thin thread of material it had cut out of the laquer surface had to be sucked away rapidly so that it did not foul the cutting head and spoil the cut. The biggest disaster you could have was loud out of phase bass - it made the cutting head drive vertically down into the laquer and in the worst cases right through it into the aluminium substrate which not only ruined the Cut you just made, but also destroyed the cutting head itself. Cutting heads were extremely expensive and getting the new one properly set up and aligned etc was a fiddly job. Each side of a vinyl record needed to be cut onto it's own laquer, so there needed to be two. Each laquer needed to be cut in one pass for the whole thing, so if you were making an LP with seven songs on a side, each song was audio adjusted/corrected by the cutting engineer and mixed to a new bit of tape. The songs were then edited together (stuck together with sticky-tape) to form one continuous tape which was the whole side of the record and this was then cut to an Acetate in one pass and in real-time. (so if you had a 25 minute side to an LP, it took 25 minutes to cut.) The width of the grooves depended on the frequency and volume of the music - a tom-tom fill under a microscope looks like a string of sausages and needs a wide groove. So cutting a track that was mostly quiet but had a loud bit in one place meant that you had to set the width of the grooves wide to accommodate that loud bit. The quiet bits of course were then spread out quite thin and widely spaced and it was a waste of space during all the quiet bits. Cutting lathe designers therefore came up with a solution. There was a "read-ahead" playback head on the cutting lathe which "saw" what was going to arrive at the cutting-head in a couple of seconds time and adjusted the width of the groove so that every part of it took up only the space that it needed. So quiet bits have smaller grooves which are closer together so no space was wasted and the cutting lathe would automatically adjust the spacing to widen out just before the loud bit got there and would close them up again as soon as it had passed. The spaces between songs that you can see on a vinyl record are where bit of non-magnetic tape (Leader tape) was inserted by the cutting engineer when he made his Cutting Master and stuck all the songs for that side of the record together so that it could be cut in one pass, as I explained above. I cannot recall whether the engineer physically pressed a button to spread the grooves out to create those visible "bands" between tracks or whether it was automated and driven from the "read-ahead" function which adjusted groove width.
@Freline Is this the reason as to why they stamp CDs with 3 letters "ADD" as oppose to "DDD"? A friend once told me ADD mean Analog Master to Digital Master to Digital Reproduction.
@StringerNews1 Hi The frequency response of vinyl changed greatly from it's beginnings. Early on apart from no treble there wasn't much bass either. quote - "Nobody did separate mixdowns for each medium....." but in the next lines quote "The RIAA equalization for records or pre-emphasis for magnetic tape is applied at the machine itself...." So you are saying right there that different equalisation curves were applied. Correct. "The Mixdown" i.e. the relative tones and balance of tracks was finalised in the studio and the two-track Master created. The cutting engineer re-processed that tape and created his own 2t-Master which was then used to cut one side of a record. As you correctly say, RIAA curve was then applied to that during the cut. If the recording was also going to be issuued on Compact Cassette or other medium then any appropriate curve e.g Dolby B would be applied. Production of cassettes was only done in Real Time in small studios such as mine. For Mass Production the duplication was done at high-speed. A 2-t Master needed to be made that contained multiple copies of the record/album. This was because cassettes were actually mass-produced by a machine which was loaded with a magazine of blank cassettes. These are merely shells and contain only leader tape, attached to both spools. The machine was loaded with a "pancake" of tape already recorded. This tape was cassette sized and 4-track with an entire reel of copies of the album one after another. (alternate stereo tracks plus another stereo pair recorded backwards so that it played correctly when the cassette was turned over) The cassette loading machine pulled the leader tape out of the blank cassette, cut it and spliced it to the start of one side of the album. The entire tape/album was wound into the cassette and the machine then spliced the end of the album onto the leader tape at the other end of the cassette. The "master" for creating the pancakes had to be created first and track order was often different to the order on a vinyl record. This Master for cassettes needed to have the 4 tracks on it, two forward and two backwards (the other side of the cassette) Once that Master was created it could then be duplicated at high-speed to produce the pancakes of cassette-sized tape to feed into the cassette loading machine. For a good while, two actual mixdowns from multitrack were made, one Stereo and one Mono - you can find lots of comment about this with regard to The Beatles. btw.....you do know that there's a dog-whistle i.e. supersonic signal on Sgt Peppers? I did not say or imply that a new MIXDOWN was created for different commercial formats. The Mixdown was over when the 2-t Master left the recording studio. However, cutting engineers made alterations to the overall tone of the product if they deemed it necessary and also applied compression/limiting. If you look up "Orban Equalisers" you will find that they were ubiquitous in cutting rooms so clearly there was some re-equalisation going on. Two things apply here - 1) Cutting Engineers sometimes added a touch of treble boost, compensating in advance for what would probably be lost in the cutting/stamping and 2) Cutting engineers knew that any excess treble would get rolled off by the filters on and limitations of the processes/machines following. The mistake with early CD's was that the record companies just burnt those Masters onto CD's and the extra HF response of the CD format brought it through. Outraged by the hard, sharp sound, Jimmy Page actually remixed the Zep catalogue because of this - i.e. he felt that an entire new Mixdown was often needed to suit the frequency response of digital formats. The 2-t Master produced in the studio at Mixdown was THE Master, the definitive recording of that album. As such it was precious and was used as little as possible. All Masters for any sort of production run were made from duplicates of that original Master but 2t studio machines ran half-inch tape and at a minimum speed of 15 inches per second (ips) The best studio 2-t were 30 ips so although some degradation was inescapable with any tape duplication it was as minimal and insignificant as possible. It's a different world to copying a cassette where the tracks are only 1/32 of an inch wide and the tape is only travelling at 1 and 7/8ths ips! In my studio, I HATED hearing what happened when we duplicated cassettes onto normal ferric-oxide tapes. Hearing all our collective hard work sounding so dull was crushing. So we only ever used Chrome tapes, even swallowing the extra cost ourselves sometimes rather than have dull sounding tapes circulating with our brand on them.
Very interesting post. I’m not technically expert, but I’ve always bought and built the best hi-fi system I could afford, to do justice to good recordings...the down side is that they really show up bad stuff. There’ve always been a few vinyls that have been poorly recorded, but on the whole they’ve provided stellar quality and listening pleasure...I’ve got plenty from the 60’s/70’s that are played to death, but well looked after, and they still sound great. A lot of our listening is from Qobuz at the moment, with some CD. My wife’s into Soul/Motown, and Northern Soul, and many of the reissues transferred from vinyl sound awful...hard to tell whether they were badly recorded in the first place. Thank God for the likes of Jimmy Page, Billy Gibbons etc (and yourself by the sound of it), for going to the trouble of remastering for digital, and putting out good recordings in the first place. I wish all artists and engineers took equal trouble. For instance, we listened to around 15 different recordings of Carmina Birana on Qobuz, to try and find one that was well balanced, and didn’t slice your head of in the louder passages (just as our CD version does). A few came close, but only one recording proved truly listenable, ‘St Louis Orchestra and Chorus, Leonard Slatkin’, with a provocative nun on the cover (can’t be bad)...great sound. There’s another anomaly that keeps rearing its head on digital streaming and recording platforms, where the same album (ostensibly), crops up on the same page, that sometimes drastically differ in quality from each other. One being ‘Otis Blue’ where several transfers in hi-res are quite razor-like, and the one that’s not hi-res, is brilliant, just like a good vinyl. I realise there’s a lot of subjectivity involved, but good recordings/transfers really stand out, and it’s worth sifting through several offerings of albums you like, when downloading digital. Anyway, I thought your enlightening post warranted a bit of a response.
@@nycelectriciandavid7997 Three stages: Analogue recording, analogue mixing, analogue mastering. Anything recorded onto tape, before the digital equipment developed in the late 70s, was analogue. No digital readouts. Seconds and minutes but no digital (number) display. If your player is digital, it'll give you digital reproduction - no way to play analogue on your computer...they're digital files.
One thing that wasn't mentioned is that a phonograph needle travels slower as it moves to the middle and thus the sound quality is lower than on tracks on the outside of the record. I also remember that 12" E.P. vinyl records had much better fidelity thanks to their wider grooves.
Wider grooves for a dance music 12" vinyl was its own Loudness War in itself. It makes the output louder. Bear in mind that a record is mastered to play through an standardised RIAA EQ which is in every phono pre-amp, so even though the cut can be louder the chances of overdriving the playback equipment becomes bigger, especially with consumer hi-fi. A higher chance of distortion further down the chain doesn't really augment the fidelity radically if I'm not mistaken. A well built DJ mixer could take it but not all home equipment. Cut too loud to play on home equipment, it happened.
I was just going to comment about the same thing. I had noticed that quality decreases the further in the record goes. For me digital canes anything that came from vinyl.
@@patricksmith4424 Depends if the turntable has a 'dust bug' or similar, plus the the stylus needs cleaning gently after use. I've also noticed some of my LPs are more prone to dust and distortion than others and they are all stored the same way. Given all that I still prefer a non compressed song any day - that's the reason some radio stations have more 'ears' as it is less tiring to listen to.
Exactly right. Another reason why 45's, despite a faster rotation, had crummy audio.There was no way to compensate for this fundamental deficiency. Also, another deficiency was the tone arm tracking. All mechanical tone arms had points on the arc across the disk where the cartridge was not aligned with the groove. There were expensive turntables that remedied this, but were expensive. The good old days.
@@nigelrowe2204 Are you storing all your records in plastic lined anti-static sleeves? Or keeping the records in the paper/art sleeves most records come in? I find that those sleeves extremely cut-back on dust. Also, a $20 anti-static dry brush is a quick 20 second swipe before you lay down the needle, helps keep everything clean physically and sound-wise🙌
@@RevOwOlutionary woah thats impressive we didn't have many records but tapes used to be really prevalent in my country, i miss my grandma's collection of them
With vinyl you also get superior album cover art. I think another reason for vinyls resurgence, is the "ritual" of playing vinyls: Flipping through the the physical library of music, pulling out a specific album, checking out the cover art, flipping it over looking through the song list to see if what you're looking for is an A side or B side track, pulling the vinyl out of the sleeve, a quick inspection for scratches, laying it down on the turn table, turning it on, dusting off the vinyl (crucial), lowering the needle and waiting for that initial "thump" in the speakers indicating the needle is in the groove. Magic time.
One argument I've heard in favor of vynils that always made me think was that in the process of digitizing the music, audio engineer cleaned the sound, specially on older recording with older, lesser, recording tecniques and, in doing so, while they reduced noise but also reduced nuance in the recordings. I don't know the merit of that, could you comment?
I couldn't agree with you more. I know that the vinyl will sound no better than a CD in a good system, but the enjoyment of playing a record is everything you just stated. Best answer in the talkback by far. Have an up vote.
@@herrerasauro7429 that is called a remaster. When labels rerelease an old record, they usually announce if they remaster it or not. If that version is better or not really depends, but I find that usually, it is. For example with The Beatles, back when they released their albums they had mono and stereo versions of albums. But stereo was completely new and the engineers and producers really didn't know what to do with it. So the original stereo versions are almost unlistenable today, you'll have ALL the drums and one stray guitar on the right and ALL the vocals on the left, and stuff like that, which is just horrible with headphones. So in that case I'll take a stereo remaster any day. In other cases the engineers might go overboard and make a classic record too modern and compressed. There is no rule of thumb, listen for yourself!
the main reason why people think analogue is better than digital is that back before the digital age, audio devices where huge, the internal components where spread apart and didn't interfere with one another, cases where more rigid and wood was widely used, all things that contribute to the sound quality. my father still has a huge clunky east german radio and that thing still makes better sound than most devices you'll find in stroes today. the miniturization and cost reduction that went along with the introduction of digital media is the reason why many people percieve digital media as inferior, because the devices used to play back digital music are of inferior quality, cases aren't as rigid, internal components are grouped more closely together, the whole thing is lighter, the speakers are crap and the list goes on, not to mention the media themselfs get worse over time due to cost reduction as well, back when CD's where a new thing you could still get soudn systhems capable of playing CD's with good quality speakers and rigid construction and CD's back then where expensive, but also much better quality so the sound systhem my grandpa had back then was amazing, especially because he still kept his old ass huge wooden speakers which where even older.
I don’t buy vinyl because it sounds better (and I really wish the myth of vinyl’s superiority would end). I buy it because when I really like a band or artist, I want to support them in some meaningful but cool way, because vinyl is COOL. I like how big vinyl is, I like the artwork and items artists sometimes included with my record, and I like knowing that I am supporting artists. They get A LOT more money if you buy a concert ticket, download their music, or buy a vinyl than if you were to just stream their stuff. Ease of access is great. I listen to most of my music via downloads and streaming. Most people who own vinyl’s do. But streaming music isn’t sexy. Vinyls are sexy.
i have about 250+ vinyl's, being 23 years old, i just like being able to hold my music instead of seeing it as an icon in a computer folder, don't know, just means more to me..
A vinyl from 50 years ago still can be played and still has value for collectors and the like. A CD from 20 years ago is worthless and possibly already corroded.
It does sound better. Not better than an digital signal, but better than the digital signal we have otherwise acces to, which is streams. I am not sure what the difference between vinyl and CDs are, but I can certainly hear the difference of a spotify stream and a vinly. The reason isn't that "analog sounds better" but rather that Spotify uses much less data to play back the music than any physicsl medium would and thst is a good thing, for the most part, because it keeps the data usage down. You can hear the diference if you are used to listen to a song on physical media and then listen to it on a stream (emphasis on listen to it). I know that Tidal offers CD level audio quality, but hardly anyone uses Tidal and I imagine that hardly anyone using Tidal uses that feature since it like doubles the monthly cost. I really dig this video, but wish that he had talked about that. Btw you really don't need to be an expert to notice this. Like I said, if you are used to one level of quality, you will notice a drop in quality.
I love both digital and vinyl. They both sound great, but they’re different experiences. Digital’s convenience means I can explore lots of different artists in a cost-effective way. I love vinyl because I love to treasure hunt at record stores. Nothing beats the feeling of finding a good, used copy of a record you’ve wanted for a good price. Vinyl also encourages me to listen to the entire album and find the deep cuts that most would otherwise skip over. I also like the problem-solving and technical aspect of vinyl and like to explore how seemingly simple changes can make big difference in sound quality: type of turntable, stylus shapes, nude vs. bonded stylus diamonds, cartridge generator types, tonearm adjustments, phono preamp load/capacitance settings, different types of preamps, etc. When you get into it, vinyl is basically a hobby whose side effect also involves listening to music.
Accurate statement as far as I can tell. If the band I am listening to was producing their music pre digital I try to go with Vinyl. Also, as a younger person, I can listen to a concert recording of a band recorded in the 60s-70s whose members are no longer with us, or the band is no longer touring, etc. Listening to a record cut at the venue or cut from tapes of the performance, on gear from the era is the closest I will ever be able to get to listening to that show, other than maybe a video recording to go along with it. Plus so much of the gear in that era was built so well/ so robust. I can listen to the same records, on the same turntable, on the same stereo, that my dad was listening to when he was a young man.
We can not oppose vinyl to digital. Digital what? 8bits/22khz? CD? MP3? Hi-res? DSD? 16bit/44.1khz is not enough for some instruments harmonics. The sampling/recording, mixing, down sampling, depending the way it is done, could result to excellent or shit CD 💿 (both “digital”) As well, some vinyls could become far better (or not) if they have been created with their physical limitations in mind during the recording/mastering. Then, even with less “dynamic”, you hear the scene, you feel the band playing all around you. A feeling that I hear less often with CD, but come again with SACD or hi-res… So digital/vinyl is not exactly a comparable
Since most of us couldn't afford the state-of-the-art turntable that you see in dance clubs, I always said that if you're buying vinyl for the sound, you're missing the point. It's supposed to sound like a product of its time.
If you compare digital to vinyl, you have completely missed the difference. There IS NO COMPARISON between analog and digital except to compare analog to a skateboard and digital as a rocket ship!
At 4:26 the stylus act on a magnetic coil to transform the dents in the groove into electric signal, but that does not occur on the counter weight of the tonearm as displayed in the drawing, that occurs in the cartridge and it is trasmitted to the amplifier through copper wires.
I personally use vinyl because I like actually holding the music, and I feel like its good training for my patience and attention span, as I can't switch to the next song the second I don't like the current song.
I don't subscribe to vinyl worship but you have identified the positives here succinctly. Particularly the not being able to easily switch from track to track if you don't like the first ten seconds of a song, surely results in the positive experience of having a song that didn't first appeal growing on you gradually until it can in some cases become preferable to those 'instant gratification' tracks that you previously first listened to. I have personally experienced this many times in the distant past . . . the seventies in my case. Eventually I came to see an album as a whole work and not just a collection of songs. 'The whole is greater than the sum of its parts'.
The glory days of the true Long Play album. Listening to it as the artist had intended. It's crazy how much popularity difference artists experienced once the "single" was an item. There are very many long play records that are cast aside because they do not have that single smash hit.
Norway 2 - you make a good point about listening to the entire album rather than playing certain tracks you prefer. However, I used to do just that as a teenager even with a record - I just stayed close to the turntable and would move the needle to where i wanted it - bit less convenient but very do-able. Richard Thompson (a fantastic song writer/guitarist and singer from the UK) has also lamented the fact that few people listen to an entire album these days - he sees an album as a collection of songs written to be listened to together.
I have done many A/B tests with high end vinyl and high end digital. I have had friends switch over in blind tests and I rarely select digital. I stress that vinyl is not better than digital but vinyl has a character of its own that I like, just as I prefer the random grain pattern on film photographs, rather than the extremely ordered "grain" of digital. There's more theatre with vinyl, the cover pictures are better and I like watching the disk spin around. Personal preference. Vinyl is more tactile.
Vinyl has ultrasonic frequencies that are also present in live music. CDs don't have most of these ultrasonic frequencies as they were removed by engineers who thought they were being clever. This may be why many prefer vinyl to CDs.
@@dtz1000 That's very perceptive of you. I hadn't thought of that. We think of human hearing as only 20Hz-20,000Hz but there's so much extra going on that happens in the subconscious. Might infrabass be involved as well? I have a fairly high end CD player and I was listening to Jennifer Warnes's Famous Blue Raincoat - doing A/B comparisons. I managed to get the sound levels exactly the same. Friends and I constantly picked the vinyl as the nicer sound. The LP is as clean and clear as I have ever had - (I have an ultrasound cleaner and I use carbon fiber cleaners etc etc). In short, it makes no more noise than the CD. I do believe it was a fair A/B comparison. I'm prepared to accept that the signal to noise, dynamic range and frequency response (according to specifications) is better in a CD but to reduce something as human as music down to a serious of mathematical algorithms doesn't credit humans with any more awareness than a robot. Apart from anything else, I love my Thorens TD 124 Mk2 turntable, my Lux 300b tube amp and my Klipsh "Belle" speakers. I'm not short of a few dollars and if I heard a setup that sounded better to my ears, than my system, I'd probably get it. I've been to some people's places who have systems that cost as much as a house and I wasn't that impressed. They certainly looked good - no argument with that - but the sound was, somehow, "sterile" and unengaging. I'm probably an old dinosaur. I like large format film photography (5"×4" negatives). I think the results look vastly superior to digital and the same arguments as audio apply.. Mathematically, digital is superior - except that it isn't... Analog has an appeal - maybe it's the haphazard representation. The most beautiful girls I've seen aren't quite perfect. It's that "close to but not quite there" perfection that appeals. Maybe that's what I like about vinyl????
For vinyl newbies, note: The 4:40 diagram/animation of the moving stylus is technically correct, but where the magnet is in the process is not. All of that magnet stuff is actually only happening at the very tip of the tonearm, at the cartridge. Where the animation shows the wiggling / magnet is actually the counterweight in most turntables.
I burst out laughing when I saw that. I've also seen gross errors in other videos this guy has done. He simply does not have a deep understanding of the tech that he's talking about. Chances are that you are never going to install a new stylus and rebalance a tonearm, but maybe a couple of you will. Details are important.
@@jservice6594 Might not be him, but the animators mis-understanding. Who knows? Very few people these days will invest in vinyl, if if they do, they will know whats what.
I'm convinced that part of the reason for this "digital vs. vinyl" debate has to do with some very bad audio engineering that happened in CD re-releases. For example: a Stan Kenton recording on vinyl vs. a CD and the vinyl sounds way better. But the cause was that the CD had tons of unbalanced reverb added, and too much audio compression and would sound like it was recorded in a cheap tin foil box. Bad engineering can impact the quality of the sound way, way more than any mechanical format and data transferring quirks.
Yeah, there's a nice video of Seru Giran comparing their release of "La Grasa de las Capitales" vinyl vs CD vs their own remastering (made by the bassist). You can find it here: ua-cam.com/video/H860CDmUst0/v-deo.html. The difference is astounding. I have a CD copy of that record and I had always wondered if the weird stuff in the recording were due to them being old or some other stuff. It turns out the CD remaster was not done with too much love.
I'm curious about which Kenton recording you're speaking of. I used to record in the hall named after Kenton at North Texas in the 90s. Engineering for big bands during Kenton's era was probably crude by even 60s 2-4trk standards. I'd bet someone tried to enlarge the recording with various digital FX. And this reminds me I have a reel to reel of Kenton's band playing at NTU that someone made for my grandfather... No player, just the tape.
Yes, vinyl records are fun and nostalgic, but I remember listening to my best vinyl records and wishing someone would invent a cleaner and higher fidelity medium. When CDs came out it was a dream come true, but I do miss the larger record album covers with fold-out pages of photos and lyrics, maybe that should still be used for CDs also.
@Denis , CDs are of much better quality for many reasons. They will not wear out. They sound the same every time you play them. They have a much larger dynamic range. Vinyl is fun and enjoyable, but it is in no way "better".
@Anvandarnamn, that's not even close to true. Vinyl has an extremely limited dynamic range, as well as inaccurate sound reproduction due to the nature of the medium. CDs will, when mastered correctly, always sound better than vinyl due to the much better sound accuracy and dynamic range. Digital methods can achieve even higher quality "HD sound reproduction" due to higher sampling rates and better algorithms.
@@Anvandarnamn1234feels like you're blind follower like a flat earther. I've just got my vinyl player this weekend, but can't deny what author says in the video. He's not speaking opinions, just facts
@@Anvandarnamn1234 dude have you seen the video? The quality of digital recordings have much bigger bitrate than human eat can recognize. If the author is "just ant vinyl", what of things he said is false?
I own, and can re-sell, my vinyl and CDs. Digital music is fine for the convenience factor, but you don’t get the album art, liner notes, and collectibility of physical media. Additionally, your favorite artists can’t autograph or take pictures with your digital media. So, from the perspective of someone that enjoys the act of listening to and admiring works of art, physical media is superior simply because it provides me a connection with the music in addition to a reproduction of its sound.
Yes you can take a bath on resale, and you should because both vinyl and cds will wear out. The art and notes are great on an album but absolutely suck on a CD and I can look all that up anyway online. Autographs? Please you are trying too hard. Physical media is not superior in any area by your points, and of course you don't mention the upside of files. I can find all my songs and albums or artists in a database in a flash, and I can get out of my house with all 10,000 albums in one hand if I have a fire, or want to take it on vacation. I never get that bummer of the new scratch, and I can give copies to friends if I wish.
4:28 UUhhhhhhhh...? I mean, generally the description is correct but the figure is completely inaccurate. The magnet and coil are located in the cartridge, not anywhere in the tonearm, and certainly not where depicted. That would be the counterweight for the tonearm & stylus assembly, which is a completely static mechanical component.
Could you imagine if they put the pickups behind the tonearm? Like, imagine correcting for that. Imagine having to clean grime off your tone arm because you start to lose highs after a while. Imagine all the products they would be selling, like wooden and glass arms to create different timbre.
@@Thermosporeeven electric tonearms for shellac records (before vinyl ones) had wires transferring results of the reading. Another point to consider: inertia of the whole tonearm is much bigger than of tiny pickup needle, therefore reading waves can't be well accomplished in this design. In ancient records we had needles or stylus directly converting into vibes of membrane of pickup head (soundbox), that were passed further into amplification parts as audible sound waves.
Records are a cool thing to have, something you can actually touch and appreciate. It’s a whole process. You don’t get that feeling from streaming music off your phone
You also dont have to worry about a video (or entire channels) getting taken down for copyright. One of my go to YT Channels for music, Xerf Xpec, got two strikes on his channel, meaning if he were to get another his channel would be terminated making it risky to continue uploading. Fortunately one strike was removed and he continued to upload but this is one example.
vinyl for me is a way of memorializing what I believe to be a truly great album if you really want a physical copy, I think vinyl is superior to a cd for three reasons. First of all, if you’re memorializing it, it isn’t really about practicality and vinyl has a romance to it that the CDs don’t have. It’s really cool that the music is physically etched into the surface. Second you have a larger album art that you can display. And finally there is something extremely cool about listening to modern music in such an old format
You do realise a CD is also pressed wish the data physically on it too? It's not just a shiny plastic disc, it has a groove too, it's just read by a laser and more like a diamond disc rather than an LP.
In my opinion a vinyl record played on a good quality turntable with decent components has an extremely satisfying sound. The actual frequency measurements won't compare to a CD or high bitrate lossless audio file, but to my ears it's a high quality naturally pleasing sound that seems to draw me into the music. I still listen to a lot of digital music day to day, but when I just want to sit down and really take in the music I spin a record.
@@dropit7694, the same can be said of *ANY* mastering that is sub-par. The same *quality of mastering* on CD will produce a much more vibrant and alive sound than that of vinyl.
4:28 I'm pretty sure in most turntables, the needle cartridge (down at the end of the tonearm where the needle is) is what contains the magnet and coil assembly that translates the needle movement to electronic signals. This video makes it seem like this happens in the opposite end of the tonearm where the counterweight is, which is not normally how this works.
Yeah, I think that was a really colossal error the uploader made. You'd get no signal whatsoever at the back end of the tonearm, with a large coil and magnet like that.
Later on, he indicated that high amplitude signals cause the RECORD to bounce around, when he clearly meant the needle & tonearm. This video has a lot right with it, but got some fundamental things quite wrong.
It's unfortunate that a truly glaring error like this was never corrected in a video that's now 3 years old... Perhaps comments about this may have been dismissed as "nitpicking," but deep, profound errors like this show, at best, a lack of knowledge of the subject at hand, and at worst a lack of care. (Seriously, it's a 10-second Google search.) While this is a relatively small part of the picture, at least for me it cast a shadow of doubt over the rest of the content within. The truly baffling thing is how this--as a professional-looking animation, no less!--wasn't caught by someone somewhere in the process.
I can't let this one go. At 4:30, the drawing is completely false. All the electronic parts are located in the front end of the arm, in the cartridge. The part of the arm shown is the counter weight, to keep the arm balanced. It's an engineering video, it should be factually correct.
The biggest benefit of digital recording is they don't degrade with each use. All analog recordings loose quality with every use. Digital also allows you to customize your play list without having to physically change the medium.
I've had a small collection of vinyl my aunt gave me years ago. Been slowly adding to it over the years. It's fun hunting for originals in decent condition at a reasonable price.
@@AndreAndFriends He did. Dont need think too much about it. He did. And then left. Woooosh *we left standing gasping then spending evening explaining it to aþnþan probably ending up on some other subject than the original misunderstanding was all about. He left cuz he wins and being of that quality and worth.. he knew what was best for him... makes it prrfect! Aaaaaaaaaaaaa No contest.. we have no choice but to absorb its genius.. or reject it cuz process it and go nuts in the process celebrating and/or cringe dodging like our primals say🤘😊
You didn't mention a very important fact. The art on the album cover adds so much to our experience of our music. I'm sticking with vinyl no matter what. Have a nice day.
Thermal expansion and radiation from black surfaces may have altered the performance of small electrical components.... but its probably psychosomatic.
@@recklessroges How is it psychosomatic when your brain affects your brain? Those differences people thought they heard were obviously just in their heads. Psychosomatics is when you suddenly have back pain because of stress in your brain.
Albeit, back in the 80's, digital audio recording was nothing compared to what it is today. I'd be somewhat inclined to believe that there was a legitimate difference back then.
I don't think he is wrong. It's just an bad diagram of the cantilever that is inside the stylus head. I think this is what he tried to depict. www.google.com/search?q=stylus+vinyl+how+it+works&safe=off&rlz=1C1CHBF_enSE758SE758&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=bVoKnG5v_e31RM%253A%252CFZ4Y38wUDVnNDM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kTuwqV9Sx51ziNHFisezQrNSQ2gfA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjx25nZvJnjAhWDpYsKHbReCGIQ9QEwGHoECAMQCA#imgrc=m7ixFYXY7jZAQM:&vet=1
A very fine lesson on how vinyl captures the information from acoustic input. I've learnt a lot here. I've been a performing musician on stage and in studio since the CD was invented, 1970s, and I can absolutely confirm that there's no perceptual difference between red book digital and analogue recordings, so long as the turntable and arm/stylus are in perfect condition. What no-one should doubt, though, is that the difference between any kind of recording and the original sound is as great as the difference between a photo album and the holiday it reminds you of. Please folks, don't give up going to concerts 😊
I went to one 'concert'. I see no appeal to it at all. At home, I'm not next to someone coughing. I can readily adjust the volume, I can sit across the room - or I can sit on the speakers. If a performer puts out a recording, one can assume the performer is happy with that recording. A concert is one chance to get it right.
@@millomweb This is a rare opinion, but one I share. Recorded music ideally represents the artist's intent (stress ideally), and unless there is money in the budget to reproduce that sound in a concert venue, there will have to be compromises on the stage. You can't hire an orchestra, back-up singers or a brass section for every show if you don't have the revenue to support those luxuries, so the compromises necessary to perform live often translate to my ear as crude or brash. Live performances can be great in their own way, so I'm not knocking live music, but it's hit-and-miss. Like you, I'd much rather take the time in my own listening environment to enjoy the carefully engineered perfection of recorded music. And this can include live recordings, where care was taken to reproduce the best of what that concert or tour had to offer, but even live albums are perfected for the listener. Leave the coughing guy at the venue and enjoy music without him. 🎧
@@RetNemmoc555 The guy coughing is just an example. There could be clapping or even the crowd singing along etc. etc. I have 2 ears. I have 2 speakers - so why do these audio professionals sing into one microphone ? Does monaural singing/vocals in a stereo sound stage bug you as much as it does me ? (Last night of) the BBC Proms - a grand audio event (even though not necessarily my cup of tea) is DULL ! Compared with the BBC's The One Show end of show music - where the audio is sharp. (Also generall not my cup of tea.) So what's wrong with the sound guys at the Proms ??? The older I get, the more keen I am on sound quality. Last summer, we stopped watching terrestrial TV - in favour of Internet TV. (Digi box failed). It's better in so many ways including audio (although possibly the old TV was ok if the sound had been routed through a decent amp to decent speakers.
I used to work for Audio Note, I had a turntable with one of their bottom end cartridges on and put on the Elgar Cello Concerto. There was some record noise whining at the top. But that evening I had found a lost cartridge, a near top end model. After installing it and rebalancing the arm I put the same disk on and I was blown away at the difference! That 'record noise' was actually the upper end harmonics of the cello! I have two Audio Note DACs and they use the AD1865 DAC chip, known as 'the vinyl chip' which runs as a resistence ladder via current coupled output to the output valve, no oversampling, no noise shaping and the sound is gorgeous, clear, open, stunning! Put it on a scope and it is noisy, but humans can't hear it. The conclusion? Digital is amazing and has come on leaps and bounds in the last 10 years but vinyl just has an indefinable something, the thing that makes this human. People talk of 'warmth' but its not, its the reactance and stereo imaging. You can tell which way a singer is facing on a stage - thats difficult to reproduce with digital, as is brass. But thats a whole other page of text!
@@PrinceWesterburg That's interesting. I remember when CDs first came out and all the experts insisted they were theoretically perfect. They denigrated anyone who thought analogue sounded better. Now they claim to have improved on the original perfection. Bs or wot?
The one thing I miss about vinyl is the artwork, digital album art is a small square and there are no credits, that’s what’s missing for me. It would be nice if the likes of Apple Music and Spotify did more in the way of credits and artwork.
Why are you talking in past tense? Almost all bands release their new stuff on vinyl. And many albums come with many different colored version. vinyl is truly back now
@@HeavyMetalGamingHD, I knew the world wasn't ready for digital electronics in the 70s, but this is completely and utterly ridiculous. Here we are 50 years later and probably 99.44% of people still can't tell the difference between digital and analog. Of course they have probably never experienced the difference since MOST recordings these days still have analog somewhere in the menu and those same 'most' don't even know for what to look/listen. Vinyl will never hold a candle to digital, but sadly, some people are motorheads who think Pioneer, Cerwin Vega, and JBL sound great. :( :( :(
@Erok Magnag It's like, I kind of understand how modulation works. But, thinking about it hurts my brain. Especially with radio waves. It's hard for me to fathom how many electromagnetic waves are passing through me right now loaded with information. It's all magic.
Concerning the introduction of digital; I was attending an Audio Engineering Society meeting where Marshall Buck of Cerwin-Vega was promoting his company's new linear phase speaker. He hauled in the first CD player I'd ever seen..it was large; it was heavy, and only played a single disc. The transient response, low end, and silky highs were like something from another intelligence; at that point I knew the turntable was dead. I wasn't alone; many of the group acutely focused in on the player rather than the speakers (although they were impressive). One problem, however, was serious enough for my many complaints at subsequent CD meetings; the decay of a piano always had a distorted decay just before it went inaudible. This annoying effect was quantization distortion and was solved by Canadian mathematician Dr. Lipshitz.....the solution is what saved CDs in my view. It was called dither. The brute force solution is to go 24 bit and sample at 96 khz, which puts that distortion so low in level it can't be detected, even without dither. This is more common in mastering but ultimately dither is employed when printing to CD, still being 44.1 khz sample rate.
@@emory0, bwahahahahahaha! I have yet to hear any performance on vinyl that caused me to believe I was at a concert. ESPECIALLY pianos! Vinyl has a ~55 dB dynamic range limitation so you will NEVER hear a true piano sound from vinyl. Pianos have more than 100 dB of dynamic range. (Probably in reality more than 150 dB.) Each 3 dB is twice as much power.
@@fmalitz, Cerwin Vega. Might as well be Pyramid. I think they are both the same quality. I also include Pioneer, Sony, Panasonic, Technics, Sansui, and a hundred others in the same light/category. Mid-Fi with a high price to make you think it is good shit! If the HF end doesn't go AT LEAST to 20 KHz, you are missing tons of information. Remember, a 3 dB loss is half of the power. You don't miss that shit ever in a live concert!
@@emory0 Yeah... pianos sound like banging dustbin lids. No. I doubt you or virtually anyone else could tell if a piano had been recorded on a CD, or a high rate mp3.
I like the soul of vinyl, hearing an occasional pop and seeing the record spinning is so much more personal than digital music, although I admit digital music is clearly superior, Its where I listen to the majority of my music, there is something to Vinyl. Also, the fact that the song is mine and can't be removed from my library is appealing. Oh and a bunch of my records were my dad's and my uncle's so there's that too.
The exact same for me. Besides the uncle part. I can’t stop thinking of my dad when I listen to his old records. He died of cancer earlier this year. Playing them seems like what he would have wanted.
Since my streaming playlist has 4k songs, vinyl gives me more connection to my fav songs and artists who are otherwise lost in my sea of music. It also helps remove me from my phone dependency while working.
I love vinyl because of the physical element. There's a stronger connection with the creativeness of not only the music but the visuals as well. It gives more of a story between the artist/band and listener. Plus the liner notes and extra info included. Most streaming digital platforms don't even have basic liner notes. I always learned about what went into music by looking at who the producer was and who played what instruments. And using that knowledge, I could look at other related music (i.e. other music the producer worked on and maybe, for example, the drummer worked with another band) and discover more bands this way. And the digging aspect is just fun, like others have mentioned. When you find something and it's just there in your hands, possibly even being a limited or rare copy, calling your name. Or you come across an album that you thought you'd NEVER lay your eyes on - right there in your hands. YES. There are SO MANY bands and music that only exists on vinyl out there that one can only discover it if they are into vinyl. Many bands only made an album or two, then disappeared into the ether. But maybe they have some great music. If you only stream music, you'd never discover this. And so many ways to create the record sleeve/packaging that it's a whole art unto itself. And because it's vinyl, the way the grooves are cut can even be changed. I had a record that had 3 sides on it - one side had "one side" and the other side had "two sides" - which blew me away when I discovered they could do that. So cool. Love that stuff. I used to have a nice collection until everything was stolen. I had all originals, too. *sigh* But I will always buy records because it gives me joy. That's what matters.
i remember when cd's first came out. the audio quality was mind blowing. i was a big head phone user. the cd's being produced back in the late 70's and 80's, (some were prototype units we were evaluating) I can distinctly remember i could hear everything - every instrument - on the recording clearly. it seems that over the years, the "sound engineers" , or people that call themselves engineers have been mixing and compressing everything so it can be reproducible on small devices with piezo type transducers (which coincidentally sound like crap) so the sound quality would be somewhat acceptable on the small device. but yea, the digital format can hold much more information and at one time sounded so much better. but what a lot of people don't realize that the final mix down of the recording is probably the biggest reason many of the old recordings on vinyl sound so good despite the technical advantage of digital.
That's the hard part these days-trying to find a record label that applies the audio fidelity that you prefer. There are still astonishingly exquisite recordings being made for the mass market.
So true... The CDs were a revelation as they came out, so much superior to anything else but live ... And this is one biggest reason I shun the remasters nowadays - they are ALWAYS inferior in mastering quality to the originals.
I remember hearing complaints about the early CD's especially, having too much dynamic range, causing difficulty hearing the quiet passages. Some listeners were so accustomed to the compression or gain riding required for vinyl recordings, that they had no knowledge of the real dynamic range in music.
indeed. digital / CD may be 'capable' of delivering more dynamic range than vinyl, but almost never is that choice actually made in the mastering process
So true. As a proof of concept, I digitally recorded the output from a vinyl back on to CD and blind tested my Broadcasting professor who swore to the superior sound of Vinyl and he did not realize it was digital, pointing out the "warmth" and transient quality. It's not that he wasn't hearing a difference, it's simple that the difference was made by mastering it for the limitations of vinyl, but the digital output medium captured it just fine.
Exactly. Most people never realize this. Mastering engineers could go on making the mastering on digital medium just how they would deliver it for vinyl. This is something I do every day
For me, it's like the difference between reading a physical book versus reading it on a kindle or tablet. Yeah the information is the same but the experience is just so much better when you have the physical copy. Plus I love the subtle "scratching" Vinyl produces especially in classical music records.
I now listen to novels recorded as audiobooks, the ancient way stories were told and heard. My home was wall-to-wall with thousands of books gradually being eaten by book. Their dead bodies and excrement were the main cause of my bronchial asthma. Still having regrets as I part with these moldering old friends but they had to go.
The biggest problem is the improper mastering and remastering of so much of existing popular music. Also, in the ‘80’s, the digital technology was not yet as mature and widely misunderstood. In fact, it seemed that when they first started they hadn’t learned anything from analog recording, because of so many perceived differences, so no referencing ability whatsoever, hence, a lack of dynamics and tonal balance in a format that was actually even more capable if adjusted appropriately.
@StringerNews1 You’re looking through a different filter (pun). I was referring to consumer audio CD technology, which didn’t come out until the early 80s, and the proof is in the plethora of lousy CDs that exist from over the past four decades. 👨🏻
@StringerNews1 No legal claims have been made or filed on my opinions, so no “burden of proof” is necessary. Also, by definition, an opinion is not a falsehood. Hence, you can “outline” or “claim” whatever, but that doesn’t change anything.
Vinyl sounds better to some people because it doesn't reproduce high frequencies above 16k, so a lot of people prefer this "less crispy" sound, less highs = "Analog warmth" 🤣 and it's cool, a lot of sound engineers today are using Analog vintage gear because of their imperfections. But from a scientific standpoint, vinyl is inferior because you take off information, even when you press, you have to pay attention to sub bass and sibilances because it can brake your gear when you print, so they often use filters etc...
@StringerNews1 digital audio wasn't mature in the 80's if you listen to cd's made at this time, they suffered from aliasing, it sounds like highs frequencies scratching your ears, that made a bad reputation for digital audio. Today we improved a lot on this
Yes, the stair-step presentation of a digital waveform is completely wrong. As you stated, there's something called the nyquist sampling theorem that states and mathematically proves that you can reproduce EXACTLY the original sampled waveform as long as you're sampling rate is double the nyquist frequency, which is the highest frequency you're interested in reproducing. Since humans have a limit in hearing frequencies at around 20khz, using 22.050hz as your nyquist frequency ENSURES that the reproduction of any waveform using sampling rate of 44.100hz is perfect. It ever surpasses your ability to hear and thus allows for anti aliasing filter to be added to make sure ultrasounds (frequencies that exceed your nyquist frequency) won't alias back to the hearing range. If you use even higher sampling rate you just allow the AA filter to be much mellower in slope, thus ensuring there's no issues that steep angle filters can have at the corner frequency. There's a a relay good video regarding this issue and you really can't argue with science of it at all. It's well established and rigorously tested and shown to be a fact over decades. ua-cam.com/video/cIQ9IXSUzuM/v-deo.html
At the risk of asking something covered in the vid, wihich is lquite ong: How comes if I reduce 44100@16 to 44100@8, I either get dithering noise or without dithering a different kind of noise, crumbly, like what you would expect a waveform with a harsh step-pattern would sound like? Doesn't that mean that the audio equipment is pretty good at reproducing the digital signal in those micro-details? Or does this mean my computer is not applying any anti-aliasing filter and we just have to assume other types of equipment specialized for music does? If so, which does and which doesn't? And why have I never encountered such a filter as an option I can turn on or off on my computer? I'm still a believer in 24 bits for listening. (And of course 32 bits for editing.)
@@Dowlphin You think this video is long? THIS here is a long video: ua-cam.com/video/cIQ9IXSUzuM/v-deo.html I strongly recommend you watch it, because it answers your questions. The effects of lower bit-depths are discussed starting at 8:45. In short, you get quantization errors, which lead to a raised noise floor. That's NOT what a "waveform with a harsh step-pattern would sound like". Also, you can't hear the difference between properly mastered 16 bit and 24 bit.
@@Dowlphin Very often the anti-aliasing filter is a physical LP-filter on the circuit board or circuitry inside AD-converter at the input because they assume you never need to set it on/off by choice. And even if it's DSP filter, they usually don't let you mess about with it since you really do need it or you'll get aliasing which is basically never something you want when sampling anything.
@Dowlphwin The raw idea is that with 16 bits, the signal to noise rato is 96db. If your 'quiet' listening room has 30db noise level, then you'll have to listen to your 16-bit music at the volume level of 126 db, before the digitalization noise raises above your room noise. Hardly anyone listens to music that loud and if you did, you'd hear enough ringing in your ears that you wouldn't hear any quiet sounds anyway. For all practical purposes, 16 bits is just about as much as we could possibly hear in ideal condition.For all practical purposes red, green and blue dots on TV screens are enough. It would be nice to have infrared and ultraviolet dots as well. But for practical purposes of human perception, RGB is all we need.
At 4:30 the process that you portray as happening inside the counterweight but the process is really happening in the cartridge on the other end of the tonearm. You also forgot to take the ‘moving coil’ design into consideration here, which is the same process the other way around. Other than that, good video!
It always happens in the cartridge , be that Moving Coil, Moving Magnet (or Ceramic in the 60s ) or any other transducer technology .The tone arm cannot respond fast enough owing to its mass.
I love your analogy in the first few seconds. And the printing press is Digital! The letter 'A' gets transmitted as the letter 'A" no matter how bad the paper, ink saturation, fading over time, etc. The words do not get distorted but are accurately 'converted' back into the original words precisely because they are 'digital'. Digital sound can reproduce the original sound more reliably than vinyl. Blast away. You know this is true.
Terrible analogy. A better comparison would be like eating a pizza using your hand vs eating it with utensils. There's no difference on the end result after eating the pizza, but the latter needs preparation and makes you look pretentious.
@I totally agree with you. Yea,but except ,that records weren’t made to look ,“pretentious “.they were made to be listened to .your analogy failed terribly.
@@nycbass78 That's like saying using a typewriter in a class instead of a computer is not being pretentious because they were made to type texts. We're past the point of using records to listen to music because digital is better in many ways. Anyone who uses records over digital music to listen to "better quality music" is just being pretentious.
I always find it weird when people talk about the nostalgic appeal of vinyl. I grew up listening to vinyl (and occasionally cassette) and I HATED it. Endlessly trying to clean the disk, always worrying about fingerprints and dust, worrying about tracking pressure, worrying about how old your stylus was, the expense of a good turntable, treating disks like they were priceless artifacts, and after all that STILL getting music that was full of pops, crackles and hiss ... Augh!
I always find it weird when people complain about pops and crackles in vinyl. i'm a new collector (only started 5 yrs ago) I have over 300 records, spanning from the 60s to the present. only ~5% of them have what I would call "crackle and pops" the rest are all basically dead quiet.
@@JamesJames-gc2kl I think the problem most have is with releases from the oil crisis era when record labels sought to decrease costs and made records thinner at the expense of sound quality. Many people into older music especially younger people, like a lot of the 70s and 80s output which just wasn't a good time for finding well made vinyl records. Nowadays vinyl is thicc and weighty, so this isnt the issue it once was.
@@KarlBunker Or he plays his albums "wet" like radio DJs used to. Dramatically reduces pops and hiss at the cost of some high frequency response being lost. VWestlife did a good video on it.
After listening to my records on crappy turntables for the last 55 years, I finally bought an expensive turntable and needle that required careful setting up. I have collected hundreds of CD’s over the last 36 years along with more vinyl records. With a great turntable and needle I can honestly say my records sounds as crystal clear as any digital recording. Some records sound more intense with vinyl than others. A lot depends on who mixed and recorded the music and what quality control measures were incorporated into the vinyl record. Some reissued popular records of specific rock bands are far superior than the original releases over 40 years ago. The vinyl record itself is thicker, physically flatter with less wobble judging by the needle travel when turning. Improvements have been made with record production. I am sad many record stores died within the last 15 years but now you find Walmart stocking more and more LP records, which is great for us record consumers.
That is the point. For analog you need rather good and expensive equipment to get all about the stored music. For digital $50 cd player is rather same as $50000 cd player. Yeah there are some differences, but the quality difference in the sound is really hard to catch and needs special instruments to spot (jitter etc). Compressed digital formats are different. In there you can definitely hear difference at least in some instruments and when compression rate is high. But that is competely different matter.
I can appreciate the comments about nostalgia, the hunt, feeling the vinyl and the art. For me I certainly enjoyed those experiences back in the 70’s As time went on I enjoyed all the future technologies like tape, CD and now streaming. Presently I believe I listen to more music now than I ever did as a teenager and young adult. I really like the fact that my collection is available to me by just saying “play ****”. I have spent countless hours listening to music on Apple Music, Stingray and other services and watching vintage UA-cam music videos. BTW: This was a very informative video. Smart dude narrating.
@@nonofurbuzness I think you are misinterpreting my comments. I am relaying my own experiences. As such I am not sure how you can criticize my posts with any authority.
Ah but do you listen properly or is it just music on in the background ?My experience is that streaming or network players seem to dilute the music because there is too much of it available.Streaming for me is a way to discover new music , I will then purchase a cd or vinyl copy (sometimes both)
You are correct but then the quality of music you listen to is poor as you seem to be only interested in quantity and convenience. Try playing Apple Music through a top end Hi Fi system. It’s un listenable. You have to go to Tidal orQbuz to get decent quality.
It’s great that you are including your references in the description. If all UA-camrs cited where and how they formed their opinion and obtained their facts, the Internet, if not the world, would be a better place!
I know it's a video about vinyl but I just want to add that cassette tapes also needs a mention. Creating a music playlist for someone on any of the streaming services is just not the same as making a physical Mixtape....true nostalgia.
@StringerNews1 I agree with you a CD-R mix disc is a special event. I did it with my mixed reel to reel tapes in 1971 and also cassettes starting in 1974 then mixed CD-R in 1998. Still doing the mixed CD-R's did my latest and greatest one December 2020. My car has a Dolby cassette great stereo system and also a CD player all in one great combo player Bose system in my 2000 Acura TL.
Isn't more of an ad for some software. Don't learn about analog because digital is just as good. And by the way, we can both provide you the digital software and teach you how to use it.
Whenever a new LP was purchased it's first use was to make a cassette tape as it was in it's best form. I played around with Metal tapes like Chromium Dioxide and Ferro-chrome got not bad results with regular bias tapes.
As a dj, collecting vinyl isnt about the sound quality, but about uncovering oldies that u just can’t get digital because they were never distributed digitaly. A lot of old electronic music has a distinct caracter to it, derived from the constraints that old machines posed to artists. Its a sound you can only get on vinyl.
Hence the ultimate turntable, with the 17,000 lb unit mounted on a buoyant pole floating in a column of water while the solid granite turntable floated on a cushion of air powered by a pump located half a mile away to minimize induced vibrations...
Some turntables do just fine in clubs with tens or hundreds of people dancing, like the classic Technics or the Stanton STR-8 (I have two of the latter, I think they weigh 18 kilos apiece).
I really enjoyed the presentation. Thank you. One correction: Your image of the phonograph showed movement in the counterweight of the arm at the source of conversion of movement to electrical waves. However that conversion happens in the magnetic cartridge to which the stylus is attached.
I agree with you, although I do wonder whether the original, first magnetic pickups did operate that way, before they figured out how to sufficiently miniaturize the mechanism to actually fit it directly into a reproduction cartridge.
@@mjstow that's not the only thing that is incorrect. Digital sound DOES NOT look like stair steps, the sound is sampled just as he said in the video. For CD it is sampled 44,100 times a second. I have an audio program that clearly shows that digital audio looks EXACTLY like analog audio. There aren't ANY stair steps AT ALL. Trust me if there were you WOULD hear it.
@@darinb.3273 Actually at the highest frequencies as the 22K limit is approached, the wave would become square in shape and some distortion of the wave would occur... Original CD players that sampled the recording at only 44K would have HF filters in the circuit to make this distortion go away... Newer transports and D/A converters make all this a moot point but there is still the limit of the 44K encoding and the quality of the high frequency content still exists for PCM CD format... Higher sampling frequencies help this effect greatly and like in video formats, higher resolution audio hopefully will be adopted uniformly...
As a young audiophile growing up in the 70s and 80s I collected many half-speed master recordings of all types of rock music of the time and before. Those half-speed master recordings were able to hold much more information and thus the sound was incredibly richer and fuller. Of all the things I no longer have as an adult, I still have all those half-speed masters and don't intend on getting rid of them.
I agree. I've been a professional trumpet player for over 40 years and I know what "live" acoustic musical instruments SOUND like. It's not harsh or exaggerated, but smooth and linear, and as you said, richer and fuller.
Grew up with vinyl, the introduction of CDs and digital recording blew my mind and still retains its clarity. I’ve done a lot of time in studios and when things went digital we could actually take something home from the studio which was identical to what was recorded. FLAC forever for me.
Found the opposite, someone tried to show off with CD in my youth before I'd ever got one which was MUCH MUCH later ( I think when required in PC), perhaps they were using lofi equipment attached to the CD but it just sounded non vibrant flat and dead. Perhaps didnt help we had a relatively expensive Hi Fi component separates at home at the time to compare to - I'd been listening to bands like Def Leppard within this scope sounded almost like it was in live setting other than the odd crackles with the amp firmly cranked to rock ! Which oddly those kind of little imperfections in vinyl for me managed to convince you somehow that its even more "real". Whilst the flat digitally perfect sound or mastering has been a bit offputting for me when listening to music..... go listen to real music in a pub.....its not flat and perfect there are issues with noise etc :D Admittedly the issues with early sound sampling (particularly on PC file quality) which was pretty rubbish early on when compressed, have been replaced with far better imperceivably good quality now with good compression formats. Although I'm not an audiophile now and so haven't invested in the music kit like my dad did back then, it was a clear lesson to me there can be a big difference between HiFi equiptment and others. Perhaps even more important than whether you are listening to one format or another is the cost/quality of the amplifier/speakers or headset too! Though as a rock guitar guy I'm more "crank it and make noise" and not so much the discerning for the most ideal sound type though could be if I wasn't so tight....
@@afoster1621 Yes, back in the day, there was no way a teenager could afford audiophile systems to play their vinyl. I certainly couldn’t! I was always reduced to those ‘all in one’ stacks with tape and radio tuner built in. As for the speakers……😞 When CDs came out I managed to afford another ‘all in one’ unit but this time, as well as a turntable, it had a much sought after CD player. A Panasonic system I think. Even though I already had the vinyl, I purchased Led Zep 3 on CD and discovered the much talked about Bass drum pedal squeak which had been captured on tape during ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’. Even on a basic low-end unit, the pedal squeak was crystal clear. Throw on the vinyl and it was inaudible. Maybe this could be heard on unaffordable equipment on the record pressing, but I’d never get to find out. The CD really opened up my listening experience, even on a basic unit a teenager would get for Christmas. When I finally got separates and better speakers the CD listening experience got better. It was already clear that everything audible to the human ear which had been captured onto tape on original masters had been transferred to CD. All the audible information a human can hear was there. Now it was about what a decent amp and speakers could do to reproduce the same experience the band and producer were hearing when they made the final mixes in the studio control room. Providing the mastering process to CD was faithful (hopefully ‘flat’ because there’s no need for EQ loss compensation like there is with mastering for vinyl), it was finally possible to get a studio control room experience at home. I remember how great it was after a day in a recording studio listening to mixes to go home with a CD of the mixes instead of a lousy cassette tape! With CD, we could test our mixes for reproduction on inferior units, like radios, ghetto blasters and in-car systems. We knew a final mix played on even the most basic of separates Hi-Fi units would sound faithful. Unlike mastering for vinyl where the compromises were about deciding what you could get away with losing to fit on the limitations of the media, mastering to CD was about finding a sound which would be consistent with the limitations of the equipment it would be played on!
I think the quality of the playback equipment must play a part in the puzzle. Back in the 70's a lot of households had some pretty good hi-fi stack systems, even some of the all in one music systems were pretty good. But from the 80's onwards the market was flooded with cheap rubbish, with even cheaper crappy speakers. A lot of the first cd players were built into the crappy sounding systems. Getting something decent sounding these days can be very fairly expensive. Plus today a lot of music is listened to via cheap blue tooth devices, or cheap headphone or ear buds plugged into a mobile phone or tablet. Easy to blame the digital format and overlook the device it's being played back on.
Try CD on shitty amp and speakers and then the vinyl. CD sounds better i can assure you. Also Vinyl technology is not like wine (the older the better) Hi Def CDs are even better There are cases in vinyl that certain tracks have better dynamic range, but that's not very often
@@KKBG Yup. Maximum signal to noise ratio of vinyl is 75-80dB at best, while CD is at 100dB. Also, the physical limits on how the needle can move without skipping makes vinyl at best equivalent to ~45khz sampling rate in digital. Besides, all vinyls released these days are mastered digitally and then transferred back to analog for cutting the vinyl.
@@SgtStinger The irony is that vinyl and HD audio only sounds better because they specifically remaster the audio for those formats. They tend to compress audio less in HD because they expect people to be playing them on good equipment, vs typical downloads they expect you to play on crappy earbuds on your phone. I have downsampled HD tracks I own and its hard to say if there is any difference at all. I suspect they might sound slightly different due to the resamplers I am using being basic open source software, rather than the kind of high-end algorithms a mastering studio would use. Nothing at all to do with the reduction in bit/sample rates. I've also seen it mentioned that HD DSPs are optimised for HD, which can colour audio at lower bit/sample rates due to the limitations of a DSP has to be optimised for a specific bit/sample rate. The further you get from what its optimised for, the more likely the sound will not be quite as accurate. So ironically, standard CDs will be more accurate on SD playback equipment unless they are upsampled before being sent to the DSP. Its all quite fascinating.
I listen to vinyl for the same reason I drive a manual-transmission car. Not because it is the logical choice, but because I find it to be the more enjoyable choice. I just enjoy interacting with machines in action.
Nah, a manual car makes sense in that it gives you more control over the car. However vinyl doesn't give you any more control than digital, in fact I would argue the inverse.
@@CockatooDude depends. I can change quite alot on the music I reproduce just playing around with the RIAA curve. A different phono preamp or usic moving coil instead of a moving magnet cartridge can change quite alot
We people are physical beings and we love physical things to touch and feel. Digital is just not satisfying this need. Because it is against the human nature.
@illyounotme Dude he literally explained that shit in the video. Due to the physical limitations of the playhead's size and movement, audio has to be remastered in a specific way to play back properly on vinyl. That's the cause of that "analog richness". Of course science figured it out; science invented it.
In england back in the day there was a machine in most households called a Mangler. And yes, it mangled people and killed children. But hey, it made life easier and more convenient!
Nobody knows. But notice they were all women except those making the master discs were all men? In either case what a boring job doing that day after day, week, month, years... just to have some new automatic come along in the 50s & lay them all off. No union, no benefits, thanks RCA. Don’t even get me started on what happened to the used chemicals in all those acid baths. See the gloves the dudes wore? Those chemicles were all dumped down the storm sewers back in the day which of course emptied into streams, creeks, rivers & eventually into the ocean. People fished in them, kids swam in them, some drank & cooked in the water. As long as it wasnt human poop in the water we were good. Birth defects were epidemic. Rare little understood & fatal cancers swept over the newly created suburbs created on top of toxic waste sites. Google Love Canal New York.
Indeed. I actually operated one of those (but much larger than the one show here) in my high school in the early 1970s. Amazingly, no one ever got injured, even though a few of us ran it at very high speed (it was variable) as a kind of competitive rite of passage. Somehow your brain just won’t allow you to leave your hand in there-as long as you don’t “zone out”! I can’t imagine that that press is still in that school. And of course letterpress as a reproduction system is certainly dead now anyway. But we used it for business cards, and mostly for printing serial numbers on things like show tickets, not for printing full pages of text, even though that press was capable of printing on large sheets.
4:30 wrong! Analog signal is reproduced in the cartridge. Addressed part in the animation has no magnet or coil. Just counter weight in order to adjust applied force to the stylus
This is a very good video, but it does not cover the quality loss due to lossy digital compression as well as the fact, that today's music usually passes somewhere through a digital stage before getting pressed on vinyl. Vinyl records also wear out. We all know the crackling noise from damages or dust. Lossy formats, like MP3, remove audio information. As lower the bitrate, as more will be removed. MP3 often cuts very high and low frequencies, but it also removes information in the rest of the audible spectrum. There is an easy way to see and hear what MP3 is removing, as shown in the following video: ua-cam.com/video/UoBPNTAFZMo/v-deo.html 320 kbps MP3 are still sound good enough to be played on large systems, but below that the losses may be audible to the younger crowd or just create the feel of less energy. I really liked that the video touched the topic of mastering for vinyl. Even pressing a small batch of vinyl records can be expensive. Screwing up the mixdown or mastering can render the whole batch useless. So, it is a good idea to hire a professional, instead of attempting DIY or using an automated online service. A good mastering engineer can improve the sound significantly. Mastering is an artform in itself, were the decisions are made, which influence the feel of the record. Some vinyl sound better, just because they invested in better mastering. In my opinion, the craft is making the real difference and not the format. Though, working on a vinyl release may result in better mastering decisions. [Added Jan. 14, 2023:] I want to clarify that I meant file size compression (eg. MP3) and not dynamic compression when I was talking about "lossy digital compression". I thought this was obvious. Apparently I did not made this clear enough when looking at some of the answers.
tbh I feel like the lossiness of different formats is largely overstated, ultimately what matters is that the people making the music are actually working within (and paying attention to) the constraints of the compression during mixing. ie, in visual media, paletted images are a form of compression. Poorly downsampled media will look terrible at 256 colors, but there's also artwork that is genuinely stunning because they went in knowing they had 256 colors to work with. A song that's both quiet and loud would want a high bit depth for more dynamic range, but might genuinely be ok at low sample rates if they don't use any of the cut off frequencies. The trouble I guess is that most streaming platforms only want one audio format, even if MPEG/others provide more tuning options.
@@ShinyQuagsireMP3 bitrate limitations are very different from color pallet limitations. MP3 has an algorithm, which removes audio it thinks are less noticeable to the listener. As more you compress, as more noticeable the loss of audible information will be. Maybe don't think of it as reducing the color pallet of a PNG. Think of it more like the quality slider when saving JPGs. As lower the JPG quality, as smaller the file, as worse the picture. Dynamic range compression affects the volume. I do not think that MP3 compression does much in this regard. As a producer you can control that the MP3 is not clipping. Maybe there are some instruments you mach choose, which are not as badly affected from lossy compression, I don't know. But overall it is not very predictable what exactly the MP3 algorithm removes. Of course, you can produce really bad sounding lo-fi crap with glitches and whatnot, where an MP3 compression can't make it much worse. But this would be a very special case. This said, I agree with you that lossy compression is overrated on most home hi-fi systems. Streaming services can get away with pretty low bitrates, but you can fall on your face playing a low bitrate MP3 on a Function-One. I think that 320 kbps MP3 is just good enough and delivers the energy needed for large events, but there are some people saying that they only play lossless on those systems, event though the audience makes a lot of noise, too. This can be debated endlessly and probably depends on the type of music and the type of event.
redbook CD audio has a theoretical maximum sound to noise ratio of 96dB. Most vinyl can't achieve more than 80dB. Thats 16dB of detail/noise floor that is very difficult to explain away objectively as being "equal" in quality. I guess what is really being said here is that, because of the nostalgia factor, most people subjectively feel or perceive no difference. That doesn't mean there is not. Mastering/treatment and the actual quality of the recording plays such a big role in the perceived quality, but if you have *exactly* the same for both mediums, there is objectively more detail that can be perceived with a digital recording
Streaming/downloading digital copies of a recording is infinitely more convenient than dealing with any physical format, and depending on the bit rate and the compression the sound quality can be just as good or better than any physical format. There's no utility in owning a physical copy of a recording anymore. Vinyl is the best physical format because it offers better artwork and liner notes on a big 12" album jacket. 7% of record buyers don't even own a turntable, and nearly half never listen to the records they buy. People don't buy records because they want a useful item, they buy them because they want a piece of art.
@@RedScotland Sorry to break the news for you that using UA-cam will allow "them" to create profiles of you and that your cellphone has GPS to track you. I don't think that they invented the CD back rhen to track us. The average consumer did not even have internet, yet. You can secretly embed encoded information in audio. But this can be done in analog audio, also.
I like to think of vinyl as a whole experience. Sure, I can stream HiFi music or pop in a cd anytime I feel like it but it's harder to appreciate the music for what it is IMHO. When I listen to my favorite albums on vinyl, on the other hand, I have to stop whatever I'm doing, set up my system, and set the record to play. It makes it a lot easier to focus on the music and appreciate the more minute details I might otherwise miss if I was casually listening to the same music in the background. Of course, it goes without saying you don't need vinyl or an elaborate audio setup to relax and genuinely enjoy music, but it is a nice experience and hobby.
@@SeazBreeze Low-pass filters remove any noise above the Nyquist frequency, meaning the output of a sampled wave is just as smooth as an analog one, without all of the inaccuracies and limitations.
@Humans suck There are speculations that frequencies above fn cross modulate frequencies below fn, so cutting everything above the human hearing range as digital sampling does could effect the audible spectrum whilst analogue keeps the audio's fidelity.
When I lost most of my vinyl collection in a flood in 1990 I took the plunge and went for CD. The early regret due to CD player technology and mixing standards is long gone. I went down the digital rabbit hole with most of the now retired audio formats including Sony's portable DAT walkman. My collection of Stereophile, the Absolute Sound and other defunct mags which I used to follow the development of technology, equipment and to discover music was large and very heavy and long gone. Digital technology has matured like a good wine and I get what I want - great sound anywhere. 90% of music I own is on CD, the rest redbook or better downloads. Although I am familiar with Roon and want it, I have not yet subscribed. I guess I am waiting for the time to feel that at that moment, my money could not be be better spent elsewhere and I will buy the lifetime option. Those of us who are not old enough to have had the experience of shopping for music the old way should realize the way things were. We had radio to get our first hearing of "popular music" but if we wanted to explore, you had to go to a record shop and play music. (Of course live music was the other way to be exposed to music, but I grew up in South Africa - getting to Woodstock presented logistical problems). This was a cumbersome time consuming process, store owners did not want the product damaged. Popular albums had sample records you could listen too, but many albums remained sealed. I know I bought an albums because I was attracted to their cover art, and went home to discover the music inside. I was not always happy with my purchase. This process became a lot easier with cd listening stations and they too are gone. Listening to music in my car was an obsession, I started with reel to reel recordings with portable recorders. Then came 8 track and the game was on. Out came the stock radio systems in in went large and way better sounding gear. When stereo cassettes went mainstream, "me and my buddies" spent countless hours transferring albums to tape. Often we edited the music, leaving the runts of the litter to sleep on the record, and of course we made mix tapes. I hand printed all the tracks and details on the inner sleeve, often doing some drawing or "art" on the spine. All these cassettes are also long gone except for one to remind me (actually 85% of that collection was stolen from my car - the loss was heartbreaking because it came in 1984). Now my phone can hold all my entire library compressed to high resolution AAC. I am 68. I have ruminated about my tastes and know how subjective they are, why certain music became" the sound track of my life" while much did not. About why it's difficult for new music to gain a lot of traction in my head and heart now, against that backdrop. There is so much music, so many copied styles, so many artists. Mainstream radio sucks, but now there are hundreds of stations from all over the world to listen to. I love getting the info on music and musicians. I read lyrics far more than I used to and I have started to explore the older catalogues to fill out the music in my library (I love Radio Paradise). Talent and artistry are alive and well, and there are still some young artists who are able to penetrate my mature (old fart) and far less sexually colored lens. developmentstreaming in high resolution. Now it's becoming dirt cheap to and fun to set up a reasonable system. Amazing! For a long time I was a hold out, buying all myrecordings via I still fiddle with artwork, cleaning up album art off the internet, sometimes using a different image for an album, easy to do in the digital world.I make notes and lists of music and artists and really understand why people still have second system to play records and will buy the music they love on vinyl, and these days, often you get the digital tracks for free when you buy the vinyl. Which is better, vinyl or digital? The answer is that it's down to personal taste and engagement - whatever floats your boat. you have to listen!
> Now my phone can hold all my entire library compressed to high resolution AAC. The best lossy audio codec is currently Opus: www.opus-codec.org/comparison/
Sorry to hear about that flood. I am a month from being 68 and much of what you said resonated (pardon the pun) with me. One thing this UA-cam did not mention was what I considered to be a big drawback to vinyl which was (is) dust and debris on the record or the degradation of the record caused by dragging a piece of metal through vinyl media. When I got a record I would listen to it one time and then transfer it to cassette tape. I'm pretty sure I lost a lot of fidelity in that transfer but I kept my original album pristine so I could re-tape it if I needed to. When digital media came out, I could not hear the difference and that was with much better (younger) hearing than today. What was not to love about digital? No tape transfer, clear sound, no degradation of the media and the benefit of shuffling tracks. I was sold. Add to that now the ability to put all your recordings into something that is smaller than a transistor radio which also can take pretty good pictures and make phone calls. Still, after recently moving and having some basement space to tinker around in, I hooked up all my old stereo gear and have been replaying some old vinyl, with all the associated hissing and popping, again. I also had a surround sound amplifier for early home theater use but there was no phono hookup. I guess that hookup was an early victim of the digital revolution. Hooking up the phone to another input did not work. I guess I needed a pre-amp on the phone input or something so I had to use an even older amplifier. I also pulled out my old cassette decks but they are non-functional. The rubber belts degraded and have become almost goo-like. I am going to try and restore the players with replacement belts but I don't know why other than to see if I can. My cassettes are surely lower quality than my CD's. After all these years, when I play an old record, I still stare at the album cover and I can still remember which song is about to come up when the previous song ends. There is one thing about vinyl that really bothers me today. It is kind of annoying to have to flip a record every 20 minutes or so. Today's "kids" don't know how great they have it. But my grandparents would say that about my vinyl LP's. I also have their old Edison and a box full of those cylinder records. They had to change a record after every song!
As digital technology matured, so did your ears! Just like mine. I still have over 500 LPs, but my Linn turntable needs repair. SO I have CDs too. If you know of Stereophile, you must remember the Fulton Js vs LS35As. I still have the Linn LK1 and LK2, which also need repair going on 35 years.
@@Brainstorm69 aaa right, I took that in the first sense that came to mind. I'm not native English speaker so it didn't come to mind that it could be used in such a way, but sure it can be. Thanks for not taking my comment as overly bashing one. :)
At one point, I had amassed something like 2,000 vinyl LPs. But, I've gotta say I'm spoiled by the lack of surface noise of digital. What surprised me in this video is the intentional reduction in dynamic range employed by current digital producers to make the music "louder", which negates some of the extra range available in digital. It sounds like the compression used by radio stations. Back in the days of analog tape I was frustrated with the best equipment I could buy (I had some good gear), when I was trying to make nature sounds recordings. Like recording a thunderstorm, for instance. It was impossible to set levels so that thunderclaps weren't oversaturated, and not have more subtle sounds buried in hiss. Twenty years ago, I bought a Marantz CDR300 portable CD recorder and a pretty nice single point stereo microphone, and was finally able to make recordings that satisfied me. Incredible dynamic range simply not available in analog media. And it seems these producers are taking a portion of that advantage and throwing it away.
@smart451cab, I am so very glad that your statements corroborate my comments regarding digital vs. analog. Some people just can't seem to grasp the concept of an extra 55 dB of dynamic headroom nor zero tape hiss!
That was an interesting choice. Why did you choose a CD recorder for outdoor use, when surely a DAT machine would have been more practical? Did you not have trouble with short battery life and laser skipping?
@@musicandfilms9956 The CDR300 had an optional lead-acid battery (Yup, lead-acid like a vehicular battery only smaller, maybe motorcycle size). The battery charge was more than sufficient to record a couple CD sides. This setup was more luggable than portable, but it suited me alright. No problems with laser skip. Since the goal was the exclusion of manmade sounds, the recorder was always stationary when recording. The biggest problem I had was years later discovering that I failed to finalize some disks and no longer had the Marantz to do it with. A DAT recorder might've worked too. But, with the CDs I could just pop the disks into my PCs optical drive and be good to rip, which was convenient. DAT was winding down at the time, and production of the recorders ended a year or two later. Another option that I used on occassion was to record direct to HDD on a laptop.
As an audio engineer I collect vinyl because it looks awesome and there is something emotional about putting on a record but I mainly listen to music through streaming or ripped cds. Now with HD streaming and Atmos digital sounds great outside of overly compressed loudness masters (Atmos mixes don't have this issue due to needing to have a lot more dynamic range).
Plus, streaming and Playlists afford you the option to skip the songs you do not want to hear unless you don't mind walking over and moving the stylus.
The real issue here is mastering and production. I've heard great mastering and production on vinyl that beats the CD counterpart and vice versa. Example, anything produced or mastered by Steven Wilson will sound amazing on any format.
The finest production of well manufactured analog vinyl recordings to a coterie of audiophiles are sonically more musically accurate than CDs and many other consumer accessible digital sources. Why? The industry standard sampling rate frequency established for CDs was too low of a frequency. Consequently, the upper midrange throughout the higher frequencies of the audio range of hearing of musical instruments do not sound musically accurate with CDs. It's characteristically in audiophile parlance typically a none musical harsh sound to trained audiophiles ears. Digitally produced audio sources are a production process. Analog manufactured produced sources are a reproduction process.
@@mab7175 Shannon and Nyquist say no. And no one who has ever stated what you just have has ever been able to prove it on an abx test. Simple experiment, record your favorite vinyl on a PC with a good sound card and then rip it to cd. Then get a friend to switch between the turntable an the cd and see if you can identify which is which. Spoiler alert. You can't. Buy vinyl because you like it but don't try to tell the rest of us that you have some kind of super power and can hear nuance that we can't.
@@fmbjmf I have heard that the quality of sound has more to do with the master copy. If the master copy is digital at the getgo, the record player will still output that warm sound it is known for, however the old master copies from the studios that was reproduced thru records before digital have a unique high quality. The cd of course is quality all the way (with exception to where cd quality was compromised for budget quantity reproduction of cds years ago). That said the investment into a record, particularly collectibles and the novelty of finding anothers record yardsale garbage can be indeed have value in more ways than one!
Mastering really has a lot to do with what sounds better to the listener. I own both CD's and vinyl, a lot of the same album... and some sound better on vinyl, some better on CD. It just depends on how it was recorded, and mastered, and then pressed to the media (CD or vinyl).
Some sound better on Vinyl, some on CD(e.g. songs which play a lot on sub-20hz soundscape), Streaming is always the worst option. The high-end CD players make miracles out of the CDs, as they leave nothing out of the master version. - Tidal MQA, CD-Quality and "Master" quality all lose on their own to CD on a high-end player(e.g. Denon DCD A-110). Only FLAC competes with the physical versions in Audio Quality. (Tidal VS CD: 35-15% of audio quality is lost on the CD grade, 5-15% on "Master/MQA Master" grade, with a high-end set-up. I mostly keep the Bluesound 2i Streamer as a convenience tool) - If you have a high-end Vinyl, then you really see what true audio quality sounds like. It's mind blowing, as you can with a high-end Cartridge+Tonearm really draw everything out of the Vinyl. Unless you've experienced this all back-to-back VS Streamer at same Decibel levels, you need to hear it to believe it. I usually pull "test runs" for my friends who critizise about my home hifi set(like how much money I've spent on them). I then make them hear the difference of CD/Vinyl VS Streamer, and they're their jaws open at that point. 10/10 people said the audio quality was better with the physical formats over the Streamer. - There's something missing every time when Digital is transferred into Analogue. But when Analogue is turned to Analogue, it's perfect lossless. CDs emulate this pretty well, which partly is the mastering. Partly due to the high-end equipment pushing stuff out from them you never can with e.g. a Computer CD bay. - SACDs only compete with Vinyl, frankly, but as the sky is the limit with Analogue, the more you get out of Vinyl, the more you spend on the player and the Music Cartridge. I'm with Mikhail.
@@lev2727 Yes it sometimes, because both are mastered differently. Vinyl masters are often much less compressed and have greater dynamic range. Even though CD as a medium in theory offers a lot more dynamic range, it's often not used. Look up loudness war and compare dynamic ranges of specific albums on dr.loudness-war.info for example.
Also the quality of the player be it vinyl or cd has a major role in how things sound. They vary a great deal due to the quality of the components used during manufacturing and then you have amplifiers and speakers that also colour the sounds of the recordings being played back. You don't realize until you have listen to a quality audio system just what you are missing out on with most of the cheap crap that is manufactured today.
CD marked the most noticeable audible improvement to music playback, in my lifetime. Early ADD recordings were like vinyl, without the pops and static. Of course, now that I have learned to restore and maintain my records, the difference is less concerning. CD was less susceptible to things like subsonic feedback and such when listening at louder volumes. It's just nice to have options.
Collecting vinyl is just fun. The record stores, the hunt, having a tangible piece of art, and listening to an album all the way through is such a lost practice. I love it.
Same thing for me, a lot of albums being produced for digital lost that format.
Sure but vinyl is incredibly toxic and is practically impossible to dispose of.
@@josefnaus5898 I never buy new
@@michptrs that's good
Struth
I like vinyl for the expense and inconvenience.
Weirdly enough, the inconvenience really plays a big part why I like vinyl. I enjoy the convenience of streaming music, for example in my car or if I just want some background music.
But the "inconvenient" procedure of selecting a record, putting it on and not being able to skip songs puts me in a different mindset. I find that I listen to vinyl records in a more attentive, intense way and generally, enjoy the music more because I am more invested in it.
@@nerigalvb8779 Thank you for sharing this
@@nerigalvb8779 I'm similar but with my minidisk collection (although obviously I can still easily skip tracks). I've just started buying some vinyl because the artwork on some albums just shines on the larger format. I'll eventually get to listening to them when I buy a player....
@@nerigalvb8779 I don't like a wireless frequency going crazy around me to stream (I know there are many frequencies all around, but I don't want to direvtly add to it), and having a monitor open around me all the time just to listen to music is really getting old. Vinyl is not digital and that feels so good.
@@nerigalvb8779 IOW, you're interested in emotion, not more accurate reproduction.
as a Gen Z kid, having grown up with technology at a click of a button, a computer in the house, UA-cam etc. and entering my teenagedom with a phone in hand therefore having access to countless videos and music in less than a second, getting my first record player around 3 days ago was another level of joy. the feeling of physically having a copy of a beloved song just hits differently, and i couldn't give less shits about whether it's as "high quality" as the Spotify version, watching a physical and real record spin and the stylus sliding in the grooves physically picking up sound is just such another level of musical experience. digital versions of music is still overpowering analog in my life since i always have my earbuds in when i'm out of the house going somewhere, but analog is much more deeply appreciated by me.
this is before having watched the video, i'm interested to learn! :D
As a gen z kid too, I whole heartily agree. There's just something magical about being able to listen to your favourite tunes play live from a simple disc, and it blasting out of your speakers. I got a few Pink Floyd albums for Christmas and now I play each of them nearly everyday (not just because they're amazing albums) but because there's just a novelty and beauty to them that is hard to replicate for me
Vinyl is better sound quality than Spotify these days. CD is better than both but I prefer vinyl
@@0rgaSMM SACD 😊
@0rgaSMM sadly 😥, u need a nice turntable, reciever to get good sound. These budget USB turntables are laughable. I have a decent audia technica, 350 bucks. I want to upgrade someday
Sometimes I feel like it would have been fun to grow up in a time period when vinyl records, or other physical copies of music like 8-track tapes or cassettes, were the predominant form of collecting music. It seems like it would have been a really cool experience when your favorite band releases a new album and you and your friends can go down to the record store and see all the other people who are fans of the same band, looking to get their hands on the new album. But I probably only think that because I didn't grow up in that time period. It seems desirable because it's not mandatory. Having unlimited access to basically the entire discography of any band or any artist to listen to anywhere and anytime I want to, FOR FREE, is a modern luxury that cannot be overstated. Having a limited supply of physical copies of music, each one only containing one album or a certain number of tracks, and having to pay money for them is not nearly as fun when it's your only option.
I've actually conducted research on digital sampling rate, and that project followed the standards for A/D and D/A audio signal processing that requires anti-aliasing filters. In preparation of that study we monitored wave-forms side by side on a dual channel scope as we processed pure sine waves from 20Hz to 20Khz. While that step-like effect you depict can exist without the filter it is completely removed by the RLC circuit (resistor -inductor-capacitor circuit) of the filter. Across all frequencies the perfect sinusoidal waveform was recreated to perfection. There is absolutely no step like effect on the recreated signal. The real differences between analog and digital recording is that 16 bit amplitude coding, at 6dB per bit yields 96 dB range while the best full track 1/4" professional tape can only yield 60 dB. So actually the vinyl record process is forced to compress the dynamic range. More perceptually important, the instantaneous rise-time of certain musical sounds cannot be reproduced on a record. Neither the lathe cutter nor the playback stylus can reproduce a rise-time equivalent to a gunshot (or a cymbal or rim shot) but digital sampling can. The potential problem with digital processing is that it reveals recording flaws like phase cancellation between multi-miked instruments that were previously masked by analog recorders. It's like having poor eyesight, finally getting a pair of glasses and seeing all that dust! You could go slightly into "the red" with analog recording, in digital that is the horrible sound of chopping the tops off wave forms (clipping). That "warmer" sound on vinyl is not how it sounded to the musicians in the studio.
Nice to see factual information. The comments here are very entertaining though.
Huge vinyl fan and collector and I fully agree with you. I love collecting records because they feel more “real” there’s a certain connection to the music they provide that I cannot get in the digital/streaming form. The whole ritual is something I don’t want to put aside and it forces me to listen to an album in its entirety. Having said that, the clarity and detail offered by a well recorded and produced album in digital (uncompressed) form is something that cannot be replicated by any analogue means, especially not LP.
am I missing something. you mention 1/4 inch professional tape, my understanding is that pro tape can be 2 inches wide running at 30 inches per second.
does this guy know how to party or what?! -waynes world. no but seriously this is a better examination that the video, very cool thank u!
@@colininglis8918 that’s the big multi track tape you’re referring to, that gets transferred to 1/4” stereo tape in the final mix
The picture is bigger on the vinyl cover.
That is a good point, the cover sold the record
@KoivuTheHab Thank you, I spend too much time correcting others and should tend to my own garden more often, but I love that you pointed this out because it shows that you care. Warm wishes.
The picture is what sells the record @KoivuTheHab
Sorry Yeah I liked the picture as did most other people I was making a point. It is surprising what makes people buy things, often it is a simple logo or endorsement by a celebrity. Next time you watch a sports event turn the volume off and you will understand that is as much the atmosphere and commentary as the sport itself. @KoivuTheHab
Never bought any records. I bought a tape recorder and later a cassette recorder and recorded the music off the radio or borrowed the records and taped them.@KoivuTheHab
CDs vs Vinyl?
The true audiophile breaks into the studio and listens to the original master tape!
Probably not many UMG music though...
People think vinyl is better because almost everything digital is released at 16 bit/44.1kHz. The noise floor on 16 bit isn't low enough, it induces audible distortion at low levels. 44.1kHz is just barely passable at high frequencies, 14k upward, turn into saw waves. Everything should be mastered at higher than 32/192k and released at 32/96k. It should also be mastered in 5.1 instead of stereo.
@@NeolithGrey the noise floor on a CD is a hell of a lot lower than vinyl. I have transferred enough of it to digital to know. 80% of the signal coming from vinyl is noise.
Vinyl is a plastic disc where a needle gets dragged along. This generates rumbling, hiss and rice crispy noises.
The best way to listen to analog would be magnetic tape. Hence I'm only half joking in my previous post.
If I took a vinyl and digitally recorded it and played both through a good stereo, the vinyl and the digital file, no one (and I bet any money) will be able to tell the difference in a blind test.
@@jochenstacker7448 I never said the vinyl noise floor was better than CD. 16 bit isn't good enough for low volume because there's audible distortion. Turn the volume up as music fades out, that fizzle you hear is distortion. In 24 bit it's almost nonexistent, in 32 bit it's not there at all. I'm just saying that 24/96k is slightly better than analog tape and 32/192k is far superior. The digital transfers will still be around 100 years from now, the analog tape will have long since disintegrated.
@I've bobbed mi sen Sometimes. If it wasn't too bad, I left it as is. The problem with running the snap, crackle and pop filter, is that you sometimes remove something you don't want to remove.
i just like having the physical media and album art
THIS is the biggest loss to music, in my opinion. Of course, without smaller physical media formats (or digital) we wouldn't have all this great portability. But all those great album covers and liner notes..? (Sniff)
No way.
Literally nobody misses looking at porn on a foldout magazine or on fuzzy low def VHS.
I can appreciate album artwork even more. Best part it it isn’t constrained by a physical media anymore. Remember cassette artwork? It was crap for the most part and full of micro print lyrics that Spotify can read for us now.
CDs are the most convenient physical medium
@@theguynamedgio : what? more convenient than a micro-sd card!
@@dabcorn while ur right I also have to say ur wrong since we're taking physical media that is personalized/dedicated to albums and collections of officially released music
As an "old guy", I grew up with vinyl and the never-ending pursuit of improving my stereo system. Still buy records and play both my old classics and newer versions, but I like CDs and streaming as well. While I have friends and family members who insist the sound is better on vinyl, I honestly can not tell the difference. Some say vinyl has a "warmer", more natural sound. Maybe, but I have never been able to discern it. It's all good when you are playing a great song.
I too collected records since I was 13, and have 500 or 600 albums all together, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t a large collection. But I still have them, and they still play well, and I have no intentions of throwing them out. I too have spent all these years improving my system, and have what I think is a fairly impressive set up. I’ve got about $3500 invested in my vinyl playback setup and I also have a Cary CD player that sold for near $6,000 when new. They both sound great!
But what I find, when listening to the CD player I enjoy playing one, maybe two, and I’m done. But when I play vinyl records, one leads to another, and another, and before I know it, it’s 3am and I’ve lost track of time! That is why I think vinyl is better than CD. It somehow pulls me into the music, I have a greater emotional response, and it leaves me wanting more. I can’t say any particular part sounds better, but the proof is in the listening.
Hey, I like your comment. I compared a lot of different sources on many different components.
To me and my HiFi-friends it seems to be a way better sound while listening to digital music. But this will of course just show up if you use a good DAC, with a good clock and if possible a good streamer. And obviously a high resolution streaming service. We like the sound of Qobuz the most. Spacial information is better on digital music, detail is better, it sounds more neutral so more natural. But for "feeling" you would maybe want to listen to some music like buena vista social club still on vinyl.
Maybe this is some shared impression that makes you try out new things in your music hobby.
But I am so glad to read your last sentence: it´s about the music, not about equipment. We sometimes lose this perspective.
It’s the freaking crackling. 🤦♂️
@@CalikoTube if you don’t take care of you vinyl, that’ll happen. I’ve got albums I’ve had since I was 13, I’m now 60, and they do not pop and crackle. It does require more care than CD’s, and record cleaning machines are expensive.
First, if the CD to which you're listening has an "A" in the format, it is just as much shit as the vinyl or tape onto which it was mastered.
There are very few CD recordings available which are "DDD". Therefore, you won't hear any difference because there is none. If you want to hear impressive CDs, check out Telarc! They have really nice samplers plus hundreds of true audiophile selections where you CAN hear the difference. Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" is also a "DDD" (not from Telarc). You have never heard "Money for Nothing" sound so wonderful. Warm sound, cold sound, bullshit sound! Try to imagine over 96 dB of dynamic headroom bearing in mind that every 3 dB is twice as much power where tapes, at BEST, make around 52-55 dB.
Wanna know why your CDs sound just like the f***king vinyl. Because they were recorded in analog!
buying vinyl to me is like the collectors edition of my favorite albums
not in the 60's or 70's. it was normal. but yes today its weird because you grew up knowing cd or digital as being the only way to listen to music.
@Jimmy Gibbs people buy vinyl they also like digital idk. i listen to digital even though i love my vinyl i just listen to digital more because im lazy and forget i even own vinyl.
@Jimmy Gibbs true
Weirdly enough, I'm really into cd's and not vynil. I'm in my 20s tho so probably nostalgia effect comes to me with cd's.
It really is it makes it official (plus some oldies and rarities can’t be found on digital or disc) ✨
Vinyl, CD? I will not settle for less than a chamber orchestra in my living room 🧐
Ah yes
Yes, the superior audio experience
I just need the piano.
Our local priest is a hi-fi enthusiast. He tried to place choir in a surround configuration to test out the acoustic properties of the church.
Good idea, because some equipment costs more than a chamber orchestra! LOL
I will not watch this video until it comes out on VHS
jondeauxman ...or laser disc.
VHS actually can play back 1080i HD movies ua-cam.com/video/jiu0LPeLQPE/v-deo.html
I want it in Betamax!
oooooooooooooo snaap, hahaha
I'll wait till the book comes out
Honestly, I'm just a fan of their analog nature. I like the idea of the sound literally being encoded in such a way that running a needle through the grooves recreates the song!
It is definitely fun to use records, they just need to make them cheaper.
@@svenlima CDs store music digitally though. Not the same thing. If I run a little needle along the tracks of a music record, the needle will vibrate to recreate the music. Your light saber would not make sound if it could read a CD, you would have to process the data somehow to get music back.
well it has nice harmonic distortion in a nice way not bad distortion good distortion there a difference that way is sounds good
why do you think i got a Moog analog synth well just like Vinyl there sound really good aka warm and fat sound so yeah cool stuff
@@monkeeseemonkeedoo3745, the data is processed so fast that the "delay" is imperceptible.
Vinyl is superior in music storage. None of my records have ever been removed due to copyright infringement.
I see what you did there
nor are they region-locked
@@klausstock8020 That is unfortunate to learn.
I used to keep a list of all the songs I liked on youtube, but after 7 years over half of the playlist was removed.
Nothing beats having your music on your NAS.
Same with compact disks
I just like “owning” a physical object
buy a CD then
@@ShihammeDarcCDs don’t look as nice. You also don’t get the sleeve or the little booklets or the other lil shits
@kjL3080 Absolutely.I like looking at a disc(vinyl) that`s playing what you`re hearing and the physical sellection of them.
@@ShihammeDarc i love cds, their compact and hold ~70 min of audio; nostalgia as a neat bonus
@@kjl3080 Actually, CDs do have booklets! I mean, they're not guaranteed to have extensive liner notes, but a lyrics booklet at least is always there. But yeah, not as nice looking for sure
For me, listening to a record is an experience. When I listen to a record, I go to my living room, I look through all the vinyls there with all the pretty artwork, each one conjuring memories of where the record came from or of times I have listened to it in the past. Then I find a record, I carefully place it on the turntable, gently place the needle and I sit down on the living room couch without a phone, or a book, or a tablet and I listen to the entire album. I just sit and listen to art. Its a process, its something you do with intent.
We've become so accustomed to streaming music that its not something you really do with intent anymore. Its a background task. Its something you do while you do something more important, like read emails or surf facebook, and the music is relegated to background noise, barely listened to. I find myself listening to random songs, but I may become interested in something else and may stop randomly after 2 or 3 songs. I never sit and listen to an album, start to finish. I have some very high resolution audio files, I think that is probably the highest quality audio I own, not my vinyls, but even these, there is not so much intent. It does not engage the mind and memory in the same way. I often dont listen to a full album on my digital files, but I almost always do with a vinyl. Perhaps these are just my peculiarities, but I think there is something to this. Its not the sound quality that I keep going to vinyl for, its for the experience of listening to a vinyl record that I keep coming back to.
You can replace the word vinyl with CD in what you just wrote and you would have the same end result. You don't need vinyl to be able to enjoy an album. It's all on your head. What you're really saying is you don't have the discipline to just sit down and listen to music. You need to artificially limit yourself.
@@Wordsalad69420 Youre absolutely right about not needing vinyl to enjoy an album, and I totally recognized that in my post. As I said, my best quality audio is in my high quality digital files, particularly the DSD ones, not my vinyl. So you clearly dont need to have vinyl to listen to nice music (you dont need DSD files to enjoy listening to music either). I also said that these may just be my own proclivities. My point is only that, for some people, it is the process of listening to a record and yes, the "romance" of it. This is what draws us, and I think that very subjective, purely psychological, benefit can result in something that actually DOES improve the listening experience.
I relate to that. I really love the ritual of finding one of my records and putting it on for a spin. It's the ritual that attracts me. I also listen to tons of music from digital files from my own collection on hard disk, mostly while working and I stream lots as well, but the experience of really choosing a record to put on makes it more special in a way.
@@onomehtenialb there are a few minor inaccuracies with some of what you said, and as for whether we can tell differences in sound at a subconscious level, that's not something I could address one way or the other. And in either case I haven't the energy to argue. One thing I am fairly certain of with audio equipment (not necessarily audio recordings though) is that while it does introduce noise and inaccuracies to an extent, our imperfect human ears like some kinds of inaccuracies. A perfectly reproduced, flat response curve sound tends to be quite harsh. Thats why you mostly only see flat response equipment in the recording and sound engineering industries. So while a tube amplifier may actually reproduce sound less accurately, it introduces the sorts of inaccuracies we find pleasing.
In any case, I am merely glad you are enjoying your recordings. Sounds like you have some good ones to enjoy! I sadly don't have any of my nice listening equipment out yet as we just recently moved and reintroducing that equipment to its new home will take some effort (and also money). Instead I have opted for the opposite, and occupied myself with the creating and recording of music! Enjoy those recordings, and keep those old pieces of equipment fresh!
This is 100% why I've just started to buy my top 100 albums on vinyl. I still stream music but I don't feel I have any ownership of tha music. It's just instant gratification. You see the album art as a thumbnail. With vinyl you get to experience the artwork in all it's glory. The artist has likely chosen that artwork to greater enhance their creative vision for the music. Sure, CDs are sort of able to also do this but having a 12" artwork to look at far exceeds a CD inlay. There's also something to be said about the physical nature of placing a needle carefully at the start of a track you want to hear. There's a bit more connection with the album structure than pressing a few buttons on a CD player. It's an experience and you do feel a lot more engaged with the process as an event.
A few months ago I had zero albums on vinyl and hundreds of albums saved in my music streaming apps. More than I can remember, yet now I can list the 40 or so albums I own physically and I think this helps me to identify to myself my music tastes and what genres and artists are my favourites. It feels more focussed. This may change a little as my collection grows but I feel a lot more connected to my music now I physically own this music. I also like that vinyl comes in recyclable cardboard and it feels a lot more wasteful that the plastic used for CD cases.
As a sound engineer, I have always had a problem with most of the digital v analogue argument, and that is the listeners involved have never heard the master tape - especially when we worked in analogue - so are making the wrong comparison. How close is what you are hearing to the original recording. We often mixed down to tape running at 30 inches per second - normally 1/4 inch tape, but 1/2 inch in some studios. While still being analogue, these were incredibly high-quality recordings. But the resultant vinyl pressings were always disappointing. As you pointed out, they could not reproduce the frequency response of the master, and to that was added increased cross-talk between left and right channels, effectively narrowing our lovely stereo field. And then there was noise. Every time the audio signal passed through another set of amps, the signal to noise ratio became that little bit worse. Add dust, and the final playout via an over-compressed radio station was depressing.
When we first heard digital, especially CDs, it was wonderful! It wasn't completely like the master because the master was played through professional amps and speakers, and home gear (even the so-called high end domestic gear sold at rip off prices) came nowhere close. But it was so much closer than analogue.
Vinyl is fun, it has its own characteristics which are lovely in itself, but it isn't as close to the original as is digital. And for the engineer or producer, that is important too.
That's why the Sennheiser HD 280 Pro studio monitor headphones I use regularly are a mixed blessing. I can hear how incredible a well mastered CD sounds, and how lousy the same music sounds on vinyl. I really wish people could get the ridiculous notion out of their heads that vinyl is in any way superior to CD.
I agree with everything you say there, other than the bit about when we first heard CDs. I first heard them as a teen in the late 80s and knew there was something very wrong with the sound. I later found out it was jitter causing that flawed sound. Although CDs are every bit as good potentially as vinyl, it took so long for affordable dacs to sound good and the jitter to be reduced enough to not degrade sound, that streaming was just around the corner and cd development was no longer viable.
Quadro could never work satisfying on records. The attempt to record and play ultrasonic to encode the additional channels, resulted in records with very fragile quadro information.
The other matrix encoded systems has the problem, that channel separation isn't good enough, therefore you won't find Dolby Surround on vinyl records.
Why did you people hate CBX so much?
When you first heard CDs in the 1980s (like me), Phase Locked-Loop technology (PLL) was already installed even on domestic equipment. Jitter couldn't be heard even way back then because it was removed completely by simple buffers, filters and a highly accurate oscillator. Some of the crappy sound released on CD in the 80s was because Mastering Engineers were still getting to grips with the massively extended Dynamic Range, very accurate Frequency Response, and ultra low noise floor of the IEC 60908 Red Book Standard digital data available to them. Mastering for vinyl often left CDs lacking midrange and bass components; sounding "tinny" as a consequence. This was not a sonic artefact introduced by a flaw in the encoding or reproduction technology, just people learning how to do something new.
Worse problems were evident in many legacy recordings that were being transferred to CD. Errors throughout the recording, mastering, and pressing processes that had been masked by the much lower fidelity vinyl reproduction equipment were now being revealed everywhere. The industry realised that this could cause a problem that might be blamed on the new technology, and many labels included a disclaimer on CDs pointing out that previously inaudible tape hiss, wow, flutter and harmonic distortion could now clearly be heard on domestic systems. CDs did not sound potentially as good as vinyl - they were orders of magnitude better in every measurable respect. They are only surpassed by 24-bit Lossless signals.@@kieranhynes9072
As a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s, coming home from a store with a new album was exciting. Looking at the album art, reading liner notes, etc, was a treat.
I have tonnes of CDs, but today I still enjoy the tactile ritual of removing vinyl from its inner sleeve, placing it gently on the platter, and carefully lowering the tone arm and making sure the stylus is lined up properly to land in the groove at the right place.
Then waiting for the music to begin...
To me that’s part of the whole at home music listening experience.
100% facts!
If you play a record 3 times in succession, it's just about clean enough to listen to on the fourth play - after de-fluffing the stylus again.
Same
...waiting for the crackles to begin.
@Focal Point Images To me? digital music formats is like having sex in the missionary position every single day.
Analog is like picking up a copy of the Kama Sutra. it's different every single time.
adding tubes to your system is kind of like doing LSD but since I've never done drugs I can only speculate :-)
Haha, I love the not-so-subtle use of EQ in the video to provide a nice example.
Graham my audio engineer deserves the credit there!
Hey thanks! I thought it would be silly not to do EQ and compression for the examples
@@Ghaerther Graham cares, if don't nobody else care.
Got my brand new over the ear headphones yesterday. Perfect video to truly listen to!! Thank you!
I have a sinus infection so I kept trying to pop my ears. Once I realized what was going on it adds an awesome extra layer to the video.
I have played some of my records since the 80’s with no commercials or monthly fee.
I'm surprised vinyl players these days don't come with commercials built in before it let's you play your music.
There is another way how to do that digitally and we all know what it is
@@soundmapper Modern ones usually suck unless you're spending a bit. If you're buying a Crosleym you're buying shit.
And they were all free, right?
Don't you pay the electricity bill monthly?
Something not so well known is that since the 1980s, most vinyl has been cut using a digital delay in the signal path, to allow the equipment to adjust the groove pitch dynamically. Even if the album was recorded and mixed using analogue equipment (reel to reel and mixing desk etc.) it will still be turned into a digital signal before and back before it gets onto the record itself.
This, i wanted to search for this info online and i couldn't find it. Your comment is a godsend. I forgot the exact reason why they wrote the signal in digital and you helped me remember!
Imma be honest I just think the spinning is cool I can’t really tell the sound difference
Yes you can. Listen to the vinyl and the digital side by side. Not saying one is better than the other but im 100% sure you'll be able to hear the difference
It's less of a quality difference, and more of a texture difference, I think.
But I agree, vynil is pretty cool
I have figured out that people have very strong feelings about vinyl vs digital and I would like to clarify this was a joke and not serious although the spinny part is cool
@@iLL-iNNeR-GrOoVe how fucking much of your life have you devoted to this shit bruh 💀💀
iLL- GrOoVeS! Yup most morons are speaking about sound with there crosley tables with plastic arms and platters.
There's one more physical issue overlooked here:: The linear speed (speed of the groove past the needle) is much slower towards the center of the disk vs the edge. Which means that the waves get smaller as the record plays, while the size of the stylus remains the same. This results in diminished audio quality at the end of the record. Recording engineers knew this and often placed the more demanding cuts first because they would be at the edge of the record.
That's obvious in hindsight but never thought about it, very interesting, thanks!
I never really thought of that but it is really interesting. Thanks for pointing it out!
Well Wally….Piss off what you don’t understand…..Is it’s all in the ear.
That's why many records leave blank space near the center.
Towards the end he said the sounds were indistinguishable, and the records are equipped with amplifiers to deal with the reduction in grooves.
A lot of the bad reputation that early digital got was about it's hardness and harshness. This was because Master Mixdowns that had been created in the era of vinyl were simply put onto CD exactly as they were originally mixed.
The process of creating a vinyl record involves several transfers and quality can easily be lost during these processes, especially for high-end detail. Skilled Mixing and Mastering engineers allowed for this in creating their mixes so that at the end of the chain of manufacturing processes the final result would be bright enough and detailed enough in the high end.
Taking those vinyl intended mixes and simply digitizing them resulted in a sound on CD which was harsh and toppy.
To do the job properly, the original multitrack master-tapes need to be remixed with digital in mind.
Criticism from respected audio engineers and the recorded artistes themselves soon ended the practice of just burning the original vinyl intended mix onto CD.
But the echos of that initial problem linger still.
- further waffle which may or may not interest you :-)
In the late 70's and the 80's I ran a small studio, mostly doing demos but we did make four - perhaps five - LP's so I had to learn what was required so that the Cutting Engineer did not need to correct my mistakes. I went down to CBS in London for the cutting and spent the time chatting with the engineer and learning what I could so that I could do better on any future projects.
Because the engineer needs to play through every track and make adjustments if needed and then make the actual cut in real-time, it's not a rapid process. We got there at 10am and left at 5.30pm as I recall which is quite a long time considering that the LP overall was about 50 minutes long.
Back in the day, you took your 2-track master tape (stereo mixdown from mutitrack tape) to a cutting engineer who cut a master called a laquer. A laquer can be played but it is so soft that it quickly degenerates if you keep playing it.
Several processes were required to turn that laquere into a Stamper suitable for mass reproduction by pressing it into hot vinyl.
Once the Stamper was made, a couple of test-pressing were made so that the producer, artist and record company could check that the end result was good enough. If it was not then the entire process of cutting a new Acetate and turning it into a Stamper had to be repeated.
If you read interviews with bands and recording techs from that era you will find many instances of people saying things like "We had a fabulous mixdown sound in the studio and when the Test-Pressing came it sounded like a dinner-plate."
The skill of the engineer who cut the Acetate was crucial. They had sophisticated EQ gadgets which altered the tonal balances without introducing any new phase anomolies as well as "transparent" compressors and limiters and they used them to tame any aspects which might cause a problem when cutting the Acetate.
The laquer was a very thin aluminium disk coated on one side with laquer and the cutting lathe had a heated cutter which rather than being a needle was actually a "V" shape, so that it actually cut a channel into the laquer and the hair-thin thread of material it had cut out of the laquer surface had to be sucked away rapidly so that it did not foul the cutting head and spoil the cut.
The biggest disaster you could have was loud out of phase bass - it made the cutting head drive vertically down into the laquer and in the worst cases right through it into the aluminium substrate which not only ruined the Cut you just made, but also destroyed the cutting head itself. Cutting heads were extremely expensive and getting the new one properly set up and aligned etc was a fiddly job.
Each side of a vinyl record needed to be cut onto it's own laquer, so there needed to be two. Each laquer needed to be cut in one pass for the whole thing, so if you were making an LP with seven songs on a side, each song was audio adjusted/corrected by the cutting engineer and mixed to a new bit of tape. The songs were then edited together (stuck together with sticky-tape) to form one continuous tape which was the whole side of the record and this was then cut to an Acetate in one pass and in real-time. (so if you had a 25 minute side to an LP, it took 25 minutes to cut.)
The width of the grooves depended on the frequency and volume of the music - a tom-tom fill under a microscope looks like a string of sausages and needs a wide groove. So cutting a track that was mostly quiet but had a loud bit in one place meant that you had to set the width of the grooves wide to accommodate that loud bit. The quiet bits of course were then spread out quite thin and widely spaced and it was a waste of space during all the quiet bits.
Cutting lathe designers therefore came up with a solution. There was a "read-ahead" playback head on the cutting lathe which "saw" what was going to arrive at the cutting-head in a couple of seconds time and adjusted the width of the groove so that every part of it took up only the space that it needed. So quiet bits have smaller grooves which are closer together so no space was wasted and the cutting lathe would automatically adjust the spacing to widen out just before the loud bit got there and would close them up again as soon as it had passed.
The spaces between songs that you can see on a vinyl record are where bit of non-magnetic tape (Leader tape) was inserted by the cutting engineer when he made his Cutting Master and stuck all the songs for that side of the record together so that it could be cut in one pass, as I explained above. I cannot recall whether the engineer physically pressed a button to spread the grooves out to create those visible "bands" between tracks or whether it was automated and driven from the "read-ahead" function which adjusted groove width.
@Freline Is this the reason as to why they stamp CDs with 3 letters "ADD" as oppose to "DDD"? A friend once told me ADD mean Analog Master to Digital Master to Digital Reproduction.
@StringerNews1 Hi
The frequency response of vinyl changed greatly from it's beginnings. Early on apart from no treble there wasn't much bass either.
quote - "Nobody did separate mixdowns for each medium....." but in the next lines quote "The RIAA equalization for records or pre-emphasis for magnetic tape is applied at the machine itself...." So you are saying right there that different equalisation curves were applied. Correct.
"The Mixdown" i.e. the relative tones and balance of tracks was finalised in the studio and the two-track Master created.
The cutting engineer re-processed that tape and created his own 2t-Master which was then used to cut one side of a record. As you correctly say, RIAA curve was then applied to that during the cut. If the recording was also going to be issuued on Compact Cassette or other medium then any appropriate curve e.g Dolby B would be applied.
Production of cassettes was only done in Real Time in small studios such as mine.
For Mass Production the duplication was done at high-speed. A 2-t Master needed to be made that contained multiple copies of the record/album. This was because cassettes were actually mass-produced by a machine which was loaded with a magazine of blank cassettes. These are merely shells and contain only leader tape, attached to both spools.
The machine was loaded with a "pancake" of tape already recorded. This tape was cassette sized and 4-track with an entire reel of copies of the album one after another. (alternate stereo tracks plus another stereo pair recorded backwards so that it played correctly when the cassette was turned over)
The cassette loading machine pulled the leader tape out of the blank cassette, cut it and spliced it to the start of one side of the album. The entire tape/album was wound into the cassette and the machine then spliced the end of the album onto the leader tape at the other end of the cassette.
The "master" for creating the pancakes had to be created first and track order was often different to the order on a vinyl record. This Master for cassettes needed to have the 4 tracks on it, two forward and two backwards (the other side of the cassette)
Once that Master was created it could then be duplicated at high-speed to produce the pancakes of cassette-sized tape to feed into the cassette loading machine.
For a good while, two actual mixdowns from multitrack were made, one Stereo and one Mono - you can find lots of comment about this with regard to The Beatles.
btw.....you do know that there's a dog-whistle i.e. supersonic signal on Sgt Peppers?
I did not say or imply that a new MIXDOWN was created for different commercial formats. The Mixdown was over when the 2-t Master left the recording studio.
However, cutting engineers made alterations to the overall tone of the product if they deemed it necessary and also applied compression/limiting.
If you look up "Orban Equalisers" you will find that they were ubiquitous in cutting rooms so clearly there was some re-equalisation going on.
Two things apply here - 1) Cutting Engineers sometimes added a touch of treble boost, compensating in advance for what would probably be lost in the cutting/stamping and 2) Cutting engineers knew that any excess treble would get rolled off by the filters on and limitations of the processes/machines following.
The mistake with early CD's was that the record companies just burnt those Masters onto CD's and the extra HF response of the CD format brought it through.
Outraged by the hard, sharp sound, Jimmy Page actually remixed the Zep catalogue because of this - i.e. he felt that an entire new Mixdown was often needed to suit the frequency response of digital formats.
The 2-t Master produced in the studio at Mixdown was THE Master, the definitive recording of that album. As such it was precious and was used as little as possible. All Masters for any sort of production run were made from duplicates of that original Master but 2t studio machines ran half-inch tape and at a minimum speed of 15 inches per second (ips) The best studio 2-t were 30 ips so although some degradation was inescapable with any tape duplication it was as minimal and insignificant as possible. It's a different world to copying a cassette where the tracks are only 1/32 of an inch wide and the tape is only travelling at 1 and 7/8ths ips!
In my studio, I HATED hearing what happened when we duplicated cassettes onto normal ferric-oxide tapes. Hearing all our collective hard work sounding so dull was crushing. So we only ever used Chrome tapes, even swallowing the extra cost ourselves sometimes rather than have dull sounding tapes circulating with our brand on them.
Very interesting post. I’m not technically expert, but I’ve always bought and built the best hi-fi system I could afford, to do justice to good recordings...the down side is that they really show up bad stuff.
There’ve always been a few vinyls that have been poorly recorded, but on the whole they’ve provided stellar quality and listening pleasure...I’ve got plenty from the 60’s/70’s that are played to death, but well looked after, and they still sound great.
A lot of our listening is from Qobuz at the moment, with some CD. My wife’s into Soul/Motown, and Northern Soul, and many of the reissues transferred from vinyl sound awful...hard to tell whether they were badly recorded in the first place.
Thank God for the likes of Jimmy Page, Billy Gibbons etc (and yourself by the sound of it), for going to the trouble of remastering for digital, and putting out good recordings in the first place. I wish all artists and engineers took equal trouble. For instance, we listened to around 15 different recordings of Carmina Birana on Qobuz, to try and find one that was well balanced, and didn’t slice your head of in the louder passages (just as our CD version does). A few came close, but only one recording proved truly listenable, ‘St Louis Orchestra and Chorus, Leonard Slatkin’, with a provocative nun on the cover (can’t be bad)...great sound.
There’s another anomaly that keeps rearing its head on digital streaming and recording platforms, where the same album (ostensibly), crops up on the same page, that sometimes drastically differ in quality from each other. One being ‘Otis Blue’ where several transfers in hi-res are quite razor-like, and the one that’s not hi-res, is brilliant, just like a good vinyl.
I realise there’s a lot of subjectivity involved, but good recordings/transfers really stand out, and it’s worth sifting through several offerings of albums you like, when downloading digital.
Anyway, I thought your enlightening post warranted a bit of a response.
Brilliant comment and fascinating to read. Thanks for sharing!
@@nycelectriciandavid7997 Three stages: Analogue recording, analogue mixing, analogue mastering. Anything recorded onto tape, before the digital equipment developed in the late 70s, was analogue. No digital readouts. Seconds and minutes but no digital (number) display. If your player is digital, it'll give you digital reproduction - no way to play analogue on your computer...they're digital files.
One thing that wasn't mentioned is that a phonograph needle travels slower as it moves to the middle and thus the sound quality is lower than on tracks on the outside of the record. I also remember that 12" E.P. vinyl records had much better fidelity thanks to their wider grooves.
Wider grooves for a dance music 12" vinyl was its own Loudness War in itself. It makes the output louder. Bear in mind that a record is mastered to play through an standardised RIAA EQ which is in every phono pre-amp, so even though the cut can be louder the chances of overdriving the playback equipment becomes bigger, especially with consumer hi-fi.
A higher chance of distortion further down the chain doesn't really augment the fidelity radically if I'm not mistaken. A well built DJ mixer could take it but not all home equipment. Cut too loud to play on home equipment, it happened.
I was just going to comment about the same thing. I had noticed that quality decreases the further in the record goes. For me digital canes anything that came from vinyl.
@@patricksmith4424 Depends if the turntable has a 'dust bug' or similar, plus the the stylus needs cleaning gently after use. I've also noticed some of my LPs are more prone to dust and distortion than others and they are all stored the same way. Given all that I still prefer a non compressed song any day - that's the reason some radio stations have more 'ears' as it is less tiring to listen to.
Exactly right. Another reason why 45's, despite a faster rotation, had crummy audio.There was no way to compensate for this fundamental deficiency. Also, another deficiency was the tone arm tracking. All mechanical tone arms had points on the arc across the disk where the cartridge was not aligned with the groove. There were expensive turntables that remedied this, but were expensive. The good old days.
@@nigelrowe2204
Are you storing all your records in plastic lined anti-static sleeves?
Or keeping the records in the paper/art sleeves most records come in?
I find that those sleeves extremely cut-back on dust.
Also, a $20 anti-static dry brush is a quick 20 second swipe before you lay down the needle, helps keep everything clean physically and sound-wise🙌
For me it has nothing to do with the most "faithful" audio, I just love having my favourite music on a physical media.
Same
then why not CD?
@@CamelliaCorn I like both. I have a massive CD collection, but also a record and tape collection.
@@RevOwOlutionary woah thats impressive
we didn't have many records but tapes used to be really prevalent in my country, i miss my grandma's collection of them
@@CamelliaCorn cd‘s are digital not physical
With vinyl you also get superior album cover art.
I think another reason for vinyls resurgence, is the "ritual" of playing vinyls:
Flipping through the the physical library of music, pulling out a specific album, checking out the cover art, flipping it over looking through the song list to see if what you're looking for is an A side or B side track, pulling the vinyl out of the sleeve, a quick inspection for scratches, laying it down on the turn table, turning it on, dusting off the vinyl (crucial), lowering the needle and waiting for that initial "thump" in the speakers indicating the needle is in the groove. Magic time.
Don't forget rolling a blunt on the cover! 420
One argument I've heard in favor of vynils that always made me think was that in the process of digitizing the music, audio engineer cleaned the sound, specially on older recording with older, lesser, recording tecniques and, in doing so, while they reduced noise but also reduced nuance in the recordings.
I don't know the merit of that, could you comment?
I couldn't agree with you more. I know that the vinyl will sound no better than a CD in a good system, but the enjoyment of playing a record is everything you just stated. Best answer in the talkback by far. Have an up vote.
@@herrerasauro7429 that is called a remaster. When labels rerelease an old record, they usually announce if they remaster it or not. If that version is better or not really depends, but I find that usually, it is. For example with The Beatles, back when they released their albums they had mono and stereo versions of albums. But stereo was completely new and the engineers and producers really didn't know what to do with it. So the original stereo versions are almost unlistenable today, you'll have ALL the drums and one stray guitar on the right and ALL the vocals on the left, and stuff like that, which is just horrible with headphones. So in that case I'll take a stereo remaster any day. In other cases the engineers might go overboard and make a classic record too modern and compressed. There is no rule of thumb, listen for yourself!
the main reason why people think analogue is better than digital is that back before the digital age, audio devices where huge, the internal components where spread apart and didn't interfere with one another, cases where more rigid and wood was widely used, all things that contribute to the sound quality.
my father still has a huge clunky east german radio and that thing still makes better sound than most devices you'll find in stroes today.
the miniturization and cost reduction that went along with the introduction of digital media is the reason why many people percieve digital media as inferior, because the devices used to play back digital music are of inferior quality, cases aren't as rigid, internal components are grouped more closely together, the whole thing is lighter, the speakers are crap and the list goes on, not to mention the media themselfs get worse over time due to cost reduction as well, back when CD's where a new thing you could still get soudn systhems capable of playing CD's with good quality speakers and rigid construction and CD's back then where expensive, but also much better quality so the sound systhem my grandpa had back then was amazing, especially because he still kept his old ass huge wooden speakers which where even older.
I don’t buy vinyl because it sounds better (and I really wish the myth of vinyl’s superiority would end). I buy it because when I really like a band or artist, I want to support them in some meaningful but cool way, because vinyl is COOL. I like how big vinyl is, I like the artwork and items artists sometimes included with my record, and I like knowing that I am supporting artists. They get A LOT more money if you buy a concert ticket, download their music, or buy a vinyl than if you were to just stream their stuff.
Ease of access is great. I listen to most of my music via downloads and streaming. Most people who own vinyl’s do. But streaming music isn’t sexy. Vinyls are sexy.
i have about 250+ vinyl's, being 23 years old, i just like being able to hold my music instead of seeing it as an icon in a computer folder, don't know, just means more to me..
but have you ever claimed that vinyl have better sound? be honest
also when it comes to physical midia, vinyl can easily outlast CDs/DVDs since its much less fragile.
A vinyl from 50 years ago still can be played and still has value for collectors and the like. A CD from 20 years ago is worthless and possibly already corroded.
It does sound better. Not better than an digital signal, but better than the digital signal we have otherwise acces to, which is streams. I am not sure what the difference between vinyl and CDs are, but I can certainly hear the difference of a spotify stream and a vinly. The reason isn't that "analog sounds better" but rather that Spotify uses much less data to play back the music than any physicsl medium would and thst is a good thing, for the most part, because it keeps the data usage down. You can hear the diference if you are used to listen to a song on physical media and then listen to it on a stream (emphasis on listen to it). I know that Tidal offers CD level audio quality, but hardly anyone uses Tidal and I imagine that hardly anyone using Tidal uses that feature since it like doubles the monthly cost. I really dig this video, but wish that he had talked about that.
Btw you really don't need to be an expert to notice this. Like I said, if you are used to one level of quality, you will notice a drop in quality.
I love both digital and vinyl. They both sound great, but they’re different experiences. Digital’s convenience means I can explore lots of different artists in a cost-effective way. I love vinyl because I love to treasure hunt at record stores. Nothing beats the feeling of finding a good, used copy of a record you’ve wanted for a good price. Vinyl also encourages me to listen to the entire album and find the deep cuts that most would otherwise skip over. I also like the problem-solving and technical aspect of vinyl and like to explore how seemingly simple changes can make big difference in sound quality: type of turntable, stylus shapes, nude vs. bonded stylus diamonds, cartridge generator types, tonearm adjustments, phono preamp load/capacitance settings, different types of preamps, etc. When you get into it, vinyl is basically a hobby whose side effect also involves listening to music.
Accurate statement as far as I can tell. If the band I am listening to was producing their music pre digital I try to go with Vinyl. Also, as a younger person, I can listen to a concert recording of a band recorded in the 60s-70s whose members are no longer with us, or the band is no longer touring, etc. Listening to a record cut at the venue or cut from tapes of the performance, on gear from the era is the closest I will ever be able to get to listening to that show, other than maybe a video recording to go along with it. Plus so much of the gear in that era was built so well/ so robust. I can listen to the same records, on the same turntable, on the same stereo, that my dad was listening to when he was a young man.
We can not oppose vinyl to digital.
Digital what? 8bits/22khz? CD? MP3? Hi-res? DSD?
16bit/44.1khz is not enough for some instruments harmonics.
The sampling/recording, mixing, down sampling, depending the way it is done, could result to excellent or shit CD 💿 (both “digital”)
As well, some vinyls could become far better (or not) if they have been created with their physical limitations in mind during the recording/mastering. Then, even with less “dynamic”, you hear the scene, you feel the band playing all around you.
A feeling that I hear less often with CD, but come again with SACD or hi-res…
So digital/vinyl is not exactly a comparable
Since most of us couldn't afford the state-of-the-art turntable that you see in dance clubs, I always said that if you're buying vinyl for the sound, you're missing the point. It's supposed to sound like a product of its time.
If you compare digital to vinyl, you have completely missed the difference. There IS NO COMPARISON between analog and digital except to compare analog to a skateboard and digital as a rocket ship!
At 4:26 the stylus act on a magnetic coil to transform the dents in the groove into electric signal, but that does not occur on the counter weight of the tonearm as displayed in the drawing, that occurs in the cartridge and it is trasmitted to the amplifier through copper wires.
I see you beat me to it. By 8 months. It's SUCH a glaring error, that I had to look at the views count. Oh, 3.5 million, eh... sigh
I saw that and thought "what the heck?" That was when I realized this guy has NO earthly idea what a record player, or turntable, really does.
Only a child could think that's how a record player works.
I buy both vinyl and CDs. I just want to have the music I love the most in a physical format.
I agree! I buy and collect both! Streamers don't get it!! 😂😂😂
@@Lee.Higginbotham I stream too though, but I still want to support some of the artists.
Facts
Ensure you have a way to copy them to preserve the music. Vinyl wears out, and CDs do not last forever... I had learnt it the hard way.
Vinyl is bad for environment
I personally use vinyl because I like actually holding the music, and I feel like its good training for my patience and attention span, as I can't switch to the next song the second I don't like the current song.
That makes perfect sense
I don't subscribe to vinyl worship but you have identified the positives here succinctly. Particularly the not being able to easily switch from track to track if you don't like the first ten seconds of a song, surely results in the positive experience of having a song that didn't first appeal growing on you gradually until it can in some cases become preferable to those 'instant gratification' tracks that you previously first listened to. I have personally experienced this many times in the distant past . . . the seventies in my case. Eventually I came to see an album as a whole work and not just a collection of songs. 'The whole is greater than the sum of its parts'.
The glory days of the true Long Play album. Listening to it as the artist had intended. It's crazy how much popularity difference artists experienced once the "single" was an item. There are very many long play records that are cast aside because they do not have that single smash hit.
@@nofreebeer Singles preceded LPs of course..... LPs were the new thing on the block ....
Norway 2 - you make a good point about listening to the entire album rather than playing certain tracks you prefer. However, I used to do just that as a teenager even with a record - I just stayed close to the turntable and would move the needle to where i wanted it - bit less convenient but very do-able.
Richard Thompson (a fantastic song writer/guitarist and singer from the UK) has also lamented the fact that few people listen to an entire album these days - he sees an album as a collection of songs written to be listened to together.
I have done many A/B tests with high end vinyl and high end digital. I have had friends switch over in blind tests and I rarely select digital. I stress that vinyl is not better than digital but vinyl has a character of its own that I like, just as I prefer the random grain pattern on film photographs, rather than the extremely ordered "grain" of digital. There's more theatre with vinyl, the cover pictures are better and I like watching the disk spin around.
Personal preference.
Vinyl is more tactile.
I agree fully with your discovery, the division in people is not in the ears (hearing) but in the mind (processing).
Vinyl has ultrasonic frequencies that are also present in live music. CDs don't have most of these ultrasonic frequencies as they were removed by engineers who thought they were being clever. This may be why many prefer vinyl to CDs.
@@dtz1000 That's very perceptive of you. I hadn't thought of that. We think of human hearing as only 20Hz-20,000Hz but there's so much extra going on that happens in the subconscious. Might infrabass be involved as well?
I have a fairly high end CD player and I was listening to Jennifer Warnes's Famous Blue Raincoat - doing A/B comparisons. I managed to get the sound levels exactly the same. Friends and I constantly picked the vinyl as the nicer sound. The LP is as clean and clear as I have ever had - (I have an ultrasound cleaner and I use carbon fiber cleaners etc etc). In short, it makes no more noise than the CD. I do believe it was a fair A/B comparison. I'm prepared to accept that the signal to noise, dynamic range and frequency response (according to specifications) is better in a CD but to reduce something as human as music down to a serious of mathematical algorithms doesn't credit humans with any more awareness than a robot. Apart from anything else, I love my Thorens TD 124 Mk2 turntable, my Lux 300b tube amp and my Klipsh "Belle" speakers. I'm not short of a few dollars and if I heard a setup that sounded better to my ears, than my system, I'd probably get it. I've been to some people's places who have systems that cost as much as a house and I wasn't that impressed. They certainly looked good - no argument with that - but the sound was, somehow, "sterile" and unengaging. I'm probably an old dinosaur. I like large format film photography (5"×4" negatives). I think the results look vastly superior to digital and the same arguments as audio apply.. Mathematically, digital is superior - except that it isn't...
Analog has an appeal - maybe it's the haphazard representation. The most beautiful girls I've seen aren't quite perfect. It's that "close to but not quite there" perfection that appeals. Maybe that's what I like about vinyl????
For vinyl newbies, note: The 4:40 diagram/animation of the moving stylus is technically correct, but where the magnet is in the process is not. All of that magnet stuff is actually only happening at the very tip of the tonearm, at the cartridge. Where the animation shows the wiggling / magnet is actually the counterweight in most turntables.
Above said, the entirety of this video is simply an awesome lesson in the subject.
I burst out laughing when I saw that. I've also seen gross errors in other videos this guy has done. He simply does not have a deep understanding of the tech that he's talking about. Chances are that you are never going to install a new stylus and rebalance a tonearm, but maybe a couple of you will. Details are important.
@@jservice6594 Might not be him, but the animators mis-understanding. Who knows? Very few people these days will invest in vinyl, if if they do, they will know whats what.
You were much kinder here than I was with my comment above.
@@jservice6594 , i think its fair to say that, though his knowledge of the subject is impressive, he's never owned a record player.
I buy vinyls for the album art.
Buy the record, throw away the disc and put up the art like a poster :D
Muufle id be happy to take the disc off your hands
basically
The concept of a self contained album has disappeared with the internet, which is quite an irony in the age of media.
@@eamesaerospace2805 Why would you need the disc?
Music is overrated tbh
I'm convinced that part of the reason for this "digital vs. vinyl" debate has to do with some very bad audio engineering that happened in CD re-releases. For example: a Stan Kenton recording on vinyl vs. a CD and the vinyl sounds way better. But the cause was that the CD had tons of unbalanced reverb added, and too much audio compression and would sound like it was recorded in a cheap tin foil box. Bad engineering can impact the quality of the sound way, way more than any mechanical format and data transferring quirks.
Yeah, there's a nice video of Seru Giran comparing their release of "La Grasa de las Capitales" vinyl vs CD vs their own remastering (made by the bassist). You can find it here: ua-cam.com/video/H860CDmUst0/v-deo.html. The difference is astounding. I have a CD copy of that record and I had always wondered if the weird stuff in the recording were due to them being old or some other stuff. It turns out the CD remaster was not done with too much love.
The art of mastering is lost , hell some even do it on a pc.
@@davidspendlove5900 What problem do you have with using a pc to master?
I'm curious about which Kenton recording you're speaking of. I used to record in the hall named after Kenton at North Texas in the 90s. Engineering for big bands during Kenton's era was probably crude by even 60s 2-4trk standards.
I'd bet someone tried to enlarge the recording with various digital FX.
And this reminds me I have a reel to reel of Kenton's band playing at NTU that someone made for my grandfather... No player, just the tape.
@@chestyvulva They did not have pcs in the 60s or 70s
Yes, vinyl records are fun and nostalgic, but I remember listening to my best vinyl records and wishing someone would invent a cleaner and higher fidelity medium. When CDs came out it was a dream come true, but I do miss the larger record album covers with fold-out pages of photos and lyrics, maybe that should still be used for CDs also.
@Denis , CDs are of much better quality for many reasons. They will not wear out. They sound the same every time you play them. They have a much larger dynamic range.
Vinyl is fun and enjoyable, but it is in no way "better".
@Anvandarnamn, that's not even close to true. Vinyl has an extremely limited dynamic range, as well as inaccurate sound reproduction due to the nature of the medium.
CDs will, when mastered correctly, always sound better than vinyl due to the much better sound accuracy and dynamic range.
Digital methods can achieve even higher quality "HD sound reproduction" due to higher sampling rates and better algorithms.
@@Anvandarnamn1234 did you even watch this video completely? He just explained why, what you're saying is totally false.
@@Anvandarnamn1234feels like you're blind follower like a flat earther. I've just got my vinyl player this weekend, but can't deny what author says in the video. He's not speaking opinions, just facts
@@Anvandarnamn1234 dude have you seen the video? The quality of digital recordings have much bigger bitrate than human eat can recognize. If the author is "just ant vinyl", what of things he said is false?
I own, and can re-sell, my vinyl and CDs. Digital music is fine for the convenience factor, but you don’t get the album art, liner notes, and collectibility of physical media. Additionally, your favorite artists can’t autograph or take pictures with your digital media. So, from the perspective of someone that enjoys the act of listening to and admiring works of art, physical media is superior simply because it provides me a connection with the music in addition to a reproduction of its sound.
Well said.
Yes you can take a bath on resale, and you should because both vinyl and cds will wear out. The art and notes are great on an album but absolutely suck on a CD and I can look all that up anyway online. Autographs? Please you are trying too hard. Physical media is not superior in any area by your points, and of course you don't mention the upside of files. I can find all my songs and albums or artists in a database in a flash, and I can get out of my house with all 10,000 albums in one hand if I have a fire, or want to take it on vacation. I never get that bummer of the new scratch, and I can give copies to friends if I wish.
John Smith stfu
@@johnsmith1474 It ain't that deep bro...
Now if we can get people back to using horse-drawn carriages...
4:28 UUhhhhhhhh...? I mean, generally the description is correct but the figure is completely inaccurate. The magnet and coil are located in the cartridge, not anywhere in the tonearm, and certainly not where depicted. That would be the counterweight for the tonearm & stylus assembly, which is a completely static mechanical component.
Exactly. The entire pickup mechanism is in the pickup head.This should be corrected ASAP.
Lol as soon as that graphic came up I immediately starting looking for the first comment to point that out. Good job lol.
Contemporary turntables, yes. But it is possible his diagram is for an older type of record player? Not sure
Could you imagine if they put the pickups behind the tonearm?
Like, imagine correcting for that. Imagine having to clean grime off your tone arm because you start to lose highs after a while.
Imagine all the products they would be selling, like wooden and glass arms to create different timbre.
@@Thermosporeeven electric tonearms for shellac records (before vinyl ones) had wires transferring results of the reading. Another point to consider: inertia of the whole tonearm is much bigger than of tiny pickup needle, therefore reading waves can't be well accomplished in this design. In ancient records we had needles or stylus directly converting into vibes of membrane of pickup head (soundbox), that were passed further into amplification parts as audible sound waves.
Records are a cool thing to have, something you can actually touch and appreciate. It’s a whole process. You don’t get that feeling from streaming music off your phone
You also dont have to worry about a video (or entire channels) getting taken down for copyright.
One of my go to YT Channels for music, Xerf Xpec, got two strikes on his channel, meaning if he were to get another his channel would be terminated making it risky to continue uploading. Fortunately one strike was removed and he continued to upload but this is one example.
@@Trippsy05 i love Xerf Xpec
also large high quality album art is cool
@@nielsbaumann6485 exactly
You can hold CDs, too, and they don't ream out the grooves and collect dust, crackle, and pops over the years.
vinyl for me is a way of memorializing what I believe to be a truly great album if you really want a physical copy, I think vinyl is superior to a cd for three reasons. First of all, if you’re memorializing it, it isn’t really about practicality and vinyl has a romance to it that the CDs don’t have. It’s really cool that the music is physically etched into the surface. Second you have a larger album art that you can display. And finally there is something extremely cool about listening to modern music in such an old format
Welcome to the nineteenth century.
You do realise a CD is also pressed wish the data physically on it too? It's not just a shiny plastic disc, it has a groove too, it's just read by a laser and more like a diamond disc rather than an LP.
@@Martipar A 12" album jacket is better for displaying artwork than a 5" plastic CD jewel box.
@@franciscolopez7101 a poster is even better.
you forgot to mention that the sound is superior to anything else.
In my opinion a vinyl record played on a good quality turntable with decent components has an extremely satisfying sound. The actual frequency measurements won't compare to a CD or high bitrate lossless audio file, but to my ears it's a high quality naturally pleasing sound that seems to draw me into the music. I still listen to a lot of digital music day to day, but when I just want to sit down and really take in the music I spin a record.
Alot of cartridges will go way past 20k hertz easily surpassing red book CD format.
Wrong , some high end cartridges go well over 20 k.
That's respectable. We know that digital and CD's are superior, but love that elusiveness that vinyl gives us.
@@topherkrock Technically superior, but the mastering of the CD can make it sound lifeless.
@@dropit7694, the same can be said of *ANY* mastering that is sub-par. The same *quality of mastering* on CD will produce a much more vibrant and alive sound than that of vinyl.
4:28 I'm pretty sure in most turntables, the needle cartridge (down at the end of the tonearm where the needle is) is what contains the magnet and coil assembly that translates the needle movement to electronic signals. This video makes it seem like this happens in the opposite end of the tonearm where the counterweight is, which is not normally how this works.
Spot on
Yeah, I think that was a really colossal error the uploader made. You'd get no signal whatsoever at the back end of the tonearm, with a large coil and magnet like that.
You are correct: It is a big boo-boo by the Engineer or the illustrator! Cheers, Geoff.
Later on, he indicated that high amplitude signals cause the RECORD to bounce around, when he clearly meant the needle & tonearm. This video has a lot right with it, but got some fundamental things quite wrong.
It's unfortunate that a truly glaring error like this was never corrected in a video that's now 3 years old... Perhaps comments about this may have been dismissed as "nitpicking," but deep, profound errors like this show, at best, a lack of knowledge of the subject at hand, and at worst a lack of care. (Seriously, it's a 10-second Google search.) While this is a relatively small part of the picture, at least for me it cast a shadow of doubt over the rest of the content within. The truly baffling thing is how this--as a professional-looking animation, no less!--wasn't caught by someone somewhere in the process.
I can't let this one go. At 4:30, the drawing is completely false. All the electronic parts are located in the front end of the arm, in the cartridge. The part of the arm shown is the counter weight, to keep the arm balanced. It's an engineering video, it should be factually correct.
at that point I completely stopped listening to his descriptions.
i said the same thing...
Didn't think I'd be the first person to spot that
tru dat
Very good Zed. It's stunning people watched this for 2 months before you pointed this out.
The biggest benefit of digital recording is they don't degrade with each use. All analog recordings loose quality with every use. Digital also allows you to customize your play list without having to physically change the medium.
I've had a small collection of vinyl my aunt gave me years ago. Been slowly adding to it over the years. It's fun hunting for originals in decent condition at a reasonable price.
0:33
My hand hurts looking at that...
Why? I dont understand
@@Ispookk If you got your -hand- ex-hand stuck in it........
@@sabersz *your ex-hand
@@tigara1290 true 😂
Oh God true
Vinyl allows everyone to be record-holders...... I'll see myself out
Lol
PUN ALERT!
What u r talking about.
..... haha I got the joke. Put away beer & enjoyed the pun.
@@AndreAndFriends He did. Dont need think too much about it. He did. And then left. Woooosh *we left standing gasping then spending evening explaining it to aþnþan probably ending up on some other subject than the original misunderstanding was all about. He left cuz he wins and being of that quality and worth.. he knew what was best for him... makes it prrfect! Aaaaaaaaaaaaa
No contest.. we have no choice but to absorb its genius.. or reject it cuz process it and go nuts in the process celebrating and/or cringe dodging like our primals say🤘😊
LMAO!!!
FCKN BRILLIANT! You just won the 'net!
You didn't mention a very important fact. The art on the album cover adds so much to our experience of our music. I'm sticking with vinyl no matter what. Have a nice day.
Buy a poster.
That’s called a cover
Which you can still have presented to you for viewing, even if you can't hold it. What other reasons you got that can be knocked down?
Back in the 80s there were people who claimed they could hear a difference between identical amplifiers if the case was black or silver.
Thermal expansion and radiation from black surfaces may have altered the performance of small electrical components.... but its probably psychosomatic.
@@recklessroges How is it psychosomatic when your brain affects your brain?
Those differences people thought they heard were obviously just in their heads.
Psychosomatics is when you suddenly have back pain because of stress in your brain.
If you want a laugh google for directional speaker cables.
Albeit, back in the 80's, digital audio recording was nothing compared to what it is today. I'd be somewhat inclined to believe that there was a legitimate difference back then.
Nope, it was all people who massively overestimated the quality of their ears.@@BRICK8492
Geee, guys! At 4:45, you show the counterweight as the transducer, which is not how pickups are built!
It's the needles that feel for sound vibration
@@rob6154 I know, but the magnets and coils are both in the pickup, not in the counterweight as the video seems to imply
@@eddieolsson5449 100% correct it is a totally wrong depiction of how it works. the coil is upfront at the end of the needle
I don't think he is wrong. It's just an bad diagram of the cantilever that is inside the stylus head. I think this is what he tried to depict.
www.google.com/search?q=stylus+vinyl+how+it+works&safe=off&rlz=1C1CHBF_enSE758SE758&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=bVoKnG5v_e31RM%253A%252CFZ4Y38wUDVnNDM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kTuwqV9Sx51ziNHFisezQrNSQ2gfA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjx25nZvJnjAhWDpYsKHbReCGIQ9QEwGHoECAMQCA#imgrc=m7ixFYXY7jZAQM:&vet=1
Yup just 100% wrong. Always best to get someone who actually knows how stuff works when presenting it.
A very fine lesson on how vinyl captures the information from acoustic input. I've learnt a lot here. I've been a performing musician on stage and in studio since the CD was invented, 1970s, and I can absolutely confirm that there's no perceptual difference between red book digital and analogue recordings, so long as the turntable and arm/stylus are in perfect condition. What no-one should doubt, though, is that the difference between any kind of recording and the original sound is as great as the difference between a photo album and the holiday it reminds you of. Please folks, don't give up going to concerts 😊
I went to one 'concert'. I see no appeal to it at all. At home, I'm not next to someone coughing. I can readily adjust the volume, I can sit across the room - or I can sit on the speakers.
If a performer puts out a recording, one can assume the performer is happy with that recording. A concert is one chance to get it right.
@@millomweb This is a rare opinion, but one I share. Recorded music ideally represents the artist's intent (stress ideally), and unless there is money in the budget to reproduce that sound in a concert venue, there will have to be compromises on the stage. You can't hire an orchestra, back-up singers or a brass section for every show if you don't have the revenue to support those luxuries, so the compromises necessary to perform live often translate to my ear as crude or brash. Live performances can be great in their own way, so I'm not knocking live music, but it's hit-and-miss. Like you, I'd much rather take the time in my own listening environment to enjoy the carefully engineered perfection of recorded music. And this can include live recordings, where care was taken to reproduce the best of what that concert or tour had to offer, but even live albums are perfected for the listener. Leave the coughing guy at the venue and enjoy music without him. 🎧
@@RetNemmoc555 The guy coughing is just an example. There could be clapping or even the crowd singing along etc. etc.
I have 2 ears. I have 2 speakers - so why do these audio professionals sing into one microphone ? Does monaural singing/vocals in a stereo sound stage bug you as much as it does me ?
(Last night of) the BBC Proms - a grand audio event (even though not necessarily my cup of tea) is DULL ! Compared with the BBC's The One Show end of show music - where the audio is sharp. (Also generall not my cup of tea.) So what's wrong with the sound guys at the Proms ???
The older I get, the more keen I am on sound quality.
Last summer, we stopped watching terrestrial TV - in favour of Internet TV. (Digi box failed). It's better in so many ways including audio (although possibly the old TV was ok if the sound had been routed through a decent amp to decent speakers.
@@RetNemmoc555 Where in the US are you ?
I used to work for Audio Note, I had a turntable with one of their bottom end cartridges on and put on the Elgar Cello Concerto. There was some record noise whining at the top. But that evening I had found a lost cartridge, a near top end model. After installing it and rebalancing the arm I put the same disk on and I was blown away at the difference! That 'record noise' was actually the upper end harmonics of the cello!
I have two Audio Note DACs and they use the AD1865 DAC chip, known as 'the vinyl chip' which runs as a resistence ladder via current coupled output to the output valve, no oversampling, no noise shaping and the sound is gorgeous, clear, open, stunning! Put it on a scope and it is noisy, but humans can't hear it.
The conclusion? Digital is amazing and has come on leaps and bounds in the last 10 years but vinyl just has an indefinable something, the thing that makes this human. People talk of 'warmth' but its not, its the reactance and stereo imaging. You can tell which way a singer is facing on a stage - thats difficult to reproduce with digital, as is brass. But thats a whole other page of text!
@@PrinceWesterburg That's interesting. I remember when CDs first came out and all the experts insisted they were theoretically perfect. They denigrated anyone who thought analogue sounded better. Now they claim to have improved on the original perfection. Bs or wot?
I just now realized that the shape of the A in Real engineering is the shape of the tooth of a gear. Das it mane.
Can't unsee
I thought it was the gateway arch in St. Louis
except theres no videos on actual gears :(
@@extraox3879 I always assumed it was arch because arches have been a part of engineering for millennia.
The one thing I miss about vinyl is the artwork, digital album art is a small square and there are no credits, that’s what’s missing for me. It would be nice if the likes of Apple Music and Spotify did more in the way of credits and artwork.
I agree. Album liners are a must!
Yes, agree. Album art with vinyl was a big plus.
Why are you talking in past tense? Almost all bands release their new stuff on vinyl. And many albums come with many different colored version. vinyl is truly back now
@@HeavyMetalGamingHD true but my point is the digital releases should also include digital art credits etc, a hi res pdf would be nice.
@@HeavyMetalGamingHD, I knew the world wasn't ready for digital electronics in the 70s, but this is completely and utterly ridiculous. Here we are 50 years later and probably 99.44% of people still can't tell the difference between digital and analog. Of course they have probably never experienced the difference since MOST recordings these days still have analog somewhere in the menu and those same 'most' don't even know for what to look/listen.
Vinyl will never hold a candle to digital, but sadly, some people are motorheads who think Pioneer, Cerwin Vega, and JBL sound great. :( :( :(
It always amazed me how all the ensembled instrument's sounds could be reproduced in a single plastic groove.
@Erok Magnag It's like, I kind of understand how modulation works. But, thinking about it hurts my brain. Especially with radio waves. It's hard for me to fathom how many electromagnetic waves are passing through me right now loaded with information. It's all magic.
and now you know
Your comment was balanced and sensible.
If you’re amazed by that wait until you discover a tv.
@@vitorfernandes651
We're not referring to people found their record player in a trash dumpster.
Concerning the introduction of digital; I was attending an Audio Engineering Society meeting where Marshall Buck of Cerwin-Vega was promoting his company's new linear phase speaker. He hauled in the first CD player I'd ever seen..it was large; it was heavy, and only played a single disc. The transient response, low end, and silky highs were like something from another intelligence; at that point I knew the turntable was dead. I wasn't alone; many of the group acutely focused in on the player rather than the speakers (although they were impressive).
One problem, however, was serious enough for my many complaints at subsequent CD meetings; the decay of a piano always had a distorted decay just before it went inaudible. This annoying effect was quantization distortion and was solved by Canadian mathematician Dr. Lipshitz.....the solution is what saved CDs in my view. It was called dither. The brute force solution is to go 24 bit and sample at 96 khz, which puts that distortion so low in level it can't be detected, even without dither. This is more common in mastering but ultimately dither is employed when printing to CD, still being 44.1 khz sample rate.
Pianos never sound real on CD. On rare occasion they can sound real on vinyl.
@@emory0, bwahahahahahaha! I have yet to hear any performance on vinyl that caused me to believe I was at a concert. ESPECIALLY pianos!
Vinyl has a ~55 dB dynamic range limitation so you will NEVER hear a true piano sound from vinyl. Pianos have more than 100 dB of dynamic range. (Probably in reality more than 150 dB.) Each 3 dB is twice as much power.
Cerwin Vega has consistently made the worst speakers in the world for a name-brand. The product is specifically targeted to a non-discriminating user.
@@fmalitz, Cerwin Vega. Might as well be Pyramid. I think they are both the same quality. I also include Pioneer, Sony, Panasonic, Technics, Sansui, and a hundred others in the same light/category. Mid-Fi with a high price to make you think it is good shit!
If the HF end doesn't go AT LEAST to 20 KHz, you are missing tons of information. Remember, a 3 dB loss is half of the power. You don't miss that shit ever in a live concert!
@@emory0 Yeah... pianos sound like banging dustbin lids. No. I doubt you or virtually anyone else could tell if a piano had been recorded on a CD, or a high rate mp3.
I like the soul of vinyl, hearing an occasional pop and seeing the record spinning is so much more personal than digital music, although I admit digital music is clearly superior, Its where I listen to the majority of my music, there is something to Vinyl. Also, the fact that the song is mine and can't be removed from my library is appealing. Oh and a bunch of my records were my dad's and my uncle's so there's that too.
The exact same for me. Besides the uncle part. I can’t stop thinking of my dad when I listen to his old records. He died of cancer earlier this year. Playing them seems like what he would have wanted.
@@iamfilleg In really sorry to hear about your dad, I know he’s looking down on you while you’re listing to his tunes. Stay safe out there man
@@Jason-mg3fk Thanks man.
Digital music is NOT superior.... its more convenient.... thats all.
Mostly great points, but flacs/wavs/e.t.c. on hdds or ssds can't be removed either
Since my streaming playlist has 4k songs, vinyl gives me more connection to my fav songs and artists who are otherwise lost in my sea of music. It also helps remove me from my phone dependency while working.
it's not always nostalgia or hording type emotions for vinyl, it's generally an aesthetic or artistic thing.
It's fun.
"How dare you have fun and not live in the most efficient way possible in every aspect of your daily existence ?" - social media probably
"artistic thing"
@Scott Parsons How would you know that? Did they tell you?
@@vnessa33 Believe it or not, some people actually enjoy art.
I love vinyl because of the physical element. There's a stronger connection with the creativeness of not only the music but the visuals as well. It gives more of a story between the artist/band and listener. Plus the liner notes and extra info included. Most streaming digital platforms don't even have basic liner notes. I always learned about what went into music by looking at who the producer was and who played what instruments. And using that knowledge, I could look at other related music (i.e. other music the producer worked on and maybe, for example, the drummer worked with another band) and discover more bands this way.
And the digging aspect is just fun, like others have mentioned. When you find something and it's just there in your hands, possibly even being a limited or rare copy, calling your name. Or you come across an album that you thought you'd NEVER lay your eyes on - right there in your hands. YES.
There are SO MANY bands and music that only exists on vinyl out there that one can only discover it if they are into vinyl. Many bands only made an album or two, then disappeared into the ether. But maybe they have some great music. If you only stream music, you'd never discover this.
And so many ways to create the record sleeve/packaging that it's a whole art unto itself.
And because it's vinyl, the way the grooves are cut can even be changed. I had a record that had 3 sides on it - one side had "one side" and the other side had "two sides" - which blew me away when I discovered they could do that. So cool. Love that stuff.
I used to have a nice collection until everything was stolen. I had all originals, too. *sigh*
But I will always buy records because it gives me joy. That's what matters.
i remember when cd's first came out. the audio quality was mind blowing. i was a big head phone user. the cd's being produced back in the late 70's and 80's, (some were prototype units we were evaluating) I can distinctly remember i could hear everything - every instrument - on the recording clearly. it seems that over the years, the "sound engineers" , or people that call themselves engineers have been mixing and compressing everything so it can be reproducible on small devices with piezo type transducers (which coincidentally sound like crap) so the sound quality would be somewhat acceptable on the small device. but yea, the digital format can hold much more information and at one time sounded so much better. but what a lot of people don't realize that the final mix down of the recording is probably the biggest reason many of the old recordings on vinyl sound so good despite the technical advantage of digital.
That's the hard part these days-trying to find a record label that applies the audio fidelity that you prefer. There are still astonishingly exquisite recordings being made for the mass market.
I concur
@@JazzWithJakeInSF Serban Ghenea and Jaycen Joshua have really fantastic work as mix engineers for the "mass market"
So true... The CDs were a revelation as they came out, so much superior to anything else but live ...
And this is one biggest reason I shun the remasters nowadays - they are ALWAYS inferior in mastering quality to the originals.
I remember hearing complaints about the early CD's especially, having too much dynamic range, causing difficulty hearing the quiet passages. Some listeners were so accustomed to the compression or gain riding required for vinyl recordings, that they had no knowledge of the real dynamic range in music.
it is not about the Medium, it is about the MASTERING!
indeed. digital / CD may be 'capable' of delivering more dynamic range than vinyl, but almost never is that choice actually made in the mastering process
Yes!!!!!!!!!
So true. As a proof of concept, I digitally recorded the output from a vinyl back on to CD and blind tested my Broadcasting professor who swore to the superior sound of Vinyl and he did not realize it was digital, pointing out the "warmth" and transient quality. It's not that he wasn't hearing a difference, it's simple that the difference was made by mastering it for the limitations of vinyl, but the digital output medium captured it just fine.
Exactly. Most people never realize this. Mastering engineers could go on making the mastering on digital medium just how they would deliver it for vinyl. This is something I do every day
Even mastering is all about medium.
For me, it's like the difference between reading a physical book versus reading it on a kindle or tablet. Yeah the information is the same but the experience is just so much better when you have the physical copy. Plus I love the subtle "scratching" Vinyl produces especially in classical music records.
I now listen to novels recorded as audiobooks, the ancient way stories were told and heard. My home was wall-to-wall with thousands of books gradually being eaten by book. Their dead bodies and excrement were the main cause of my bronchial asthma. Still having regrets as I part with these moldering old friends but they had to go.
And you can pick your nose and wipe the snot on the library book, but it messes up your PC keyboard.........
The biggest problem is the improper mastering and remastering of so much of existing popular music. Also, in the ‘80’s, the digital technology was not yet as mature and widely misunderstood.
In fact, it seemed that when they first started they hadn’t learned anything from analog recording, because of so many perceived differences, so no referencing ability whatsoever, hence, a lack of dynamics and tonal balance in a format that was actually even more capable if adjusted appropriately.
@StringerNews1
You’re looking through a different filter (pun).
I was referring to consumer audio CD technology, which didn’t come out until the early 80s, and the proof is in the plethora of lousy CDs that exist from over the past four decades. 👨🏻
@MF Nickster Good response, thanks! 😉👨🏻
@StringerNews1 No legal claims have been made or filed on my opinions, so no “burden of proof”
is necessary. Also, by definition, an opinion is not a falsehood. Hence, you can “outline” or “claim” whatever, but that doesn’t change anything.
Vinyl sounds better to some people because it doesn't reproduce high frequencies above 16k, so a lot of people prefer this "less crispy" sound, less highs = "Analog warmth" 🤣 and it's cool, a lot of sound engineers today are using Analog vintage gear because of their imperfections. But from a scientific standpoint, vinyl is inferior because you take off information, even when you press, you have to pay attention to sub bass and sibilances because it can brake your gear when you print, so they often use filters etc...
@StringerNews1 digital audio wasn't mature in the 80's if you listen to cd's made at this time, they suffered from aliasing, it sounds like highs frequencies scratching your ears, that made a bad reputation for digital audio. Today we improved a lot on this
Yes, the stair-step presentation of a digital waveform is completely wrong.
As you stated, there's something called the nyquist sampling theorem that states and mathematically proves that you can reproduce EXACTLY the original sampled waveform as long as you're sampling rate is double the nyquist frequency, which is the highest frequency you're interested in reproducing.
Since humans have a limit in hearing frequencies at around 20khz, using 22.050hz as your nyquist frequency ENSURES that the reproduction of any waveform using sampling rate of 44.100hz is perfect. It ever surpasses your ability to hear and thus allows for anti aliasing filter to be added to make sure ultrasounds (frequencies that exceed your nyquist frequency) won't alias back to the hearing range. If you use even higher sampling rate you just allow the AA filter to be much mellower in slope, thus ensuring there's no issues that steep angle filters can have at the corner frequency.
There's a a relay good video regarding this issue and you really can't argue with science of it at all. It's well established and rigorously tested and shown to be a fact over decades.
ua-cam.com/video/cIQ9IXSUzuM/v-deo.html
+1
At the risk of asking something covered in the vid, wihich is lquite ong: How comes if I reduce 44100@16 to 44100@8, I either get dithering noise or without dithering a different kind of noise, crumbly, like what you would expect a waveform with a harsh step-pattern would sound like? Doesn't that mean that the audio equipment is pretty good at reproducing the digital signal in those micro-details? Or does this mean my computer is not applying any anti-aliasing filter and we just have to assume other types of equipment specialized for music does? If so, which does and which doesn't? And why have I never encountered such a filter as an option I can turn on or off on my computer?
I'm still a believer in 24 bits for listening. (And of course 32 bits for editing.)
@@Dowlphin You think this video is long? THIS here is a long video: ua-cam.com/video/cIQ9IXSUzuM/v-deo.html
I strongly recommend you watch it, because it answers your questions. The effects of lower bit-depths are discussed starting at 8:45. In short, you get quantization errors, which lead to a raised noise floor. That's NOT what a "waveform with a harsh step-pattern would sound like". Also, you can't hear the difference between properly mastered 16 bit and 24 bit.
@@Dowlphin Very often the anti-aliasing filter is a physical LP-filter on the circuit board or circuitry inside AD-converter at the input because they assume you never need to set it on/off by choice. And even if it's DSP filter, they usually don't let you mess about with it since you really do need it or you'll get aliasing which is basically never something you want when sampling anything.
@Dowlphwin The raw idea is that with 16 bits, the signal to noise rato is 96db. If your 'quiet' listening room has 30db noise level, then you'll have to listen to your 16-bit music at the volume level of 126 db, before the digitalization noise raises above your room noise. Hardly anyone listens to music that loud and if you did, you'd hear enough ringing in your ears that you wouldn't hear any quiet sounds anyway.
For all practical purposes, 16 bits is just about as much as we could possibly hear in ideal condition.For all practical purposes red, green and blue dots on TV screens are enough. It would be nice to have infrared and ultraviolet dots as well. But for practical purposes of human perception, RGB is all we need.
At 4:30 the process that you portray as happening inside the counterweight but the process is really happening in the cartridge on the other end of the tonearm.
You also forgot to take the ‘moving coil’ design into consideration here, which is the same process the other way around.
Other than that, good video!
Yes, AFAIK no turntables work that way.
Said the same, must be talking about some old tech or something.
It always happens in the cartridge , be that Moving Coil, Moving Magnet (or Ceramic in the 60s ) or any other transducer technology .The tone arm cannot respond fast enough owing to its mass.
Thanks! I was just about to write the same.....
That was a throwback to the first magnetic cartridges in 1926 where they had a half pound horse shoe magnet. :D
The references section in your description is amazing
I was wondering what the hell were those numbers showing up on the left bottom corner of the video.
Now I know :)
Wendy's using them too now, which is a really good trend for video essays. Helps to makes the format more serious and rigorous. This should spread.
I love your analogy in the first few seconds. And the printing press is Digital! The letter 'A' gets transmitted as the letter 'A" no matter how bad the paper, ink saturation, fading over time, etc. The words do not get distorted but are accurately 'converted' back into the original words precisely because they are 'digital'. Digital sound can reproduce the original sound more reliably than vinyl. Blast away. You know this is true.
Yet some people love reading physical books. Live and let live.
I appreciate how interactive vinyl is, but I appreciate the convenience of digital.
for me, its the experience you have while putting on a vinyl record. its like fast food vs a nice dinner
Agreed
Terrible analogy. A better comparison would be like eating a pizza using your hand vs eating it with utensils. There's no difference on the end result after eating the pizza, but the latter needs preparation and makes you look pretentious.
@I totally agree with you. Yea,but except ,that records weren’t made to look ,“pretentious “.they were made to be listened to .your analogy failed terribly.
@@nycbass78 That's like saying using a typewriter in a class instead of a computer is not being pretentious because they were made to type texts. We're past the point of using records to listen to music because digital is better in many ways. Anyone who uses records over digital music to listen to "better quality music" is just being pretentious.
@@Vyz3r Bravo for your comment!
I always find it weird when people talk about the nostalgic appeal of vinyl. I grew up listening to vinyl (and occasionally cassette) and I HATED it. Endlessly trying to clean the disk, always worrying about fingerprints and dust, worrying about tracking pressure, worrying about how old your stylus was, the expense of a good turntable, treating disks like they were priceless artifacts, and after all that STILL getting music that was full of pops, crackles and hiss ... Augh!
@No Idol Digital Sucks. Most of us never moved away from vinyl so it's unfair to say that people will be sucked into anything.
I always find it weird when people complain about pops and crackles in vinyl.
i'm a new collector (only started 5 yrs ago)
I have over 300 records, spanning from the 60s to the present.
only ~5% of them have what I would call "crackle and pops"
the rest are all basically dead quiet.
James James: You've either got some great filtering circuitry on your hi-fi equipment, or you've got something wrong with your ears.
@@JamesJames-gc2kl I think the problem most have is with releases from the oil crisis era when record labels sought to decrease costs and made records thinner at the expense of sound quality. Many people into older music especially younger people, like a lot of the 70s and 80s output which just wasn't a good time for finding well made vinyl records. Nowadays vinyl is thicc and weighty, so this isnt the issue it once was.
@@KarlBunker Or he plays his albums "wet" like radio DJs used to. Dramatically reduces pops and hiss at the cost of some high frequency response being lost. VWestlife did a good video on it.
After listening to my records on crappy turntables for the last 55 years, I finally bought an expensive turntable and needle that required careful setting up. I have collected hundreds of CD’s over the last 36 years along with more vinyl records. With a great turntable and needle I can honestly say my records sounds as crystal clear as any digital recording. Some records sound more intense with vinyl than others. A lot depends on who mixed and recorded the music and what quality control measures were incorporated into the vinyl record. Some reissued popular records of specific rock bands are far superior than the original releases over 40 years ago. The vinyl record itself is thicker, physically flatter with less wobble judging by the needle travel when turning. Improvements have been made with record production. I am sad many record stores died within the last 15 years but now you find Walmart stocking more and more LP records, which is great for us record consumers.
That is the point. For analog you need rather good and expensive equipment to get all about the stored music. For digital $50 cd player is rather same as $50000 cd player. Yeah there are some differences, but the quality difference in the sound is really hard to catch and needs special instruments to spot (jitter etc).
Compressed digital formats are different. In there you can definitely hear difference at least in some instruments and when compression rate is high. But that is competely different matter.
That's because most vinyl was recorded and mixed digitally then transferred to vinyl after. It sounds as clear as a digital recording cause it is.
I can appreciate the comments about nostalgia, the hunt, feeling the vinyl and the art. For me I certainly enjoyed those experiences back in the 70’s As time went on I enjoyed all the future technologies like tape, CD and now streaming. Presently I believe I listen to more music now than I ever did as a teenager and young adult. I really like the fact that my collection is available to me by just saying “play ****”. I have spent countless hours listening to music on Apple Music, Stingray and other services and watching vintage UA-cam music videos. BTW: This was a very informative video. Smart dude narrating.
@@nonofurbuzness I think you are misinterpreting my comments. I am relaying my own experiences. As such I am not sure how you can criticize my posts with any authority.
Ah but do you listen properly or is it just music on in the background ?My experience is that streaming or network players seem to dilute the music because there is too much of it available.Streaming for me is a way to discover new music , I will then purchase a cd or vinyl copy (sometimes both)
100% agreed, Rick.
Thanks for the summary ! gonna put it on the list of things for when bored
You are correct but then the quality of music you listen to is poor as you seem to be only interested in quantity and convenience. Try playing Apple Music through a top end Hi Fi system. It’s un listenable. You have to go to Tidal orQbuz to get decent quality.
It’s great that you are including your references in the description. If all UA-camrs cited where and how they formed their opinion and obtained their facts, the Internet, if not the world, would be a better place!
Even so, there are several "facts" this video got wrong.
@@conin.v and because references were included it made it a lot easier to deduce that and add constructively to the discussion…
@@kirkmccormack1 “here are the references I didn’t read properly“
@@kirkmccormack1 I didn't to reference anything to spot the mistakes, to know he was wrong.
@Jan 6 was "Wall Street Putsch" part 2 Exactly so.
I know it's a video about vinyl but I just want to add that cassette tapes also needs a mention. Creating a music playlist for someone on any of the streaming services is just not the same as making a physical Mixtape....true nostalgia.
@StringerNews1 I agree with you a CD-R mix disc is a special event. I did it with my mixed reel to reel tapes in 1971 and also cassettes starting in 1974 then mixed CD-R in 1998. Still doing the mixed CD-R's did my latest and greatest one December 2020. My car has a Dolby cassette great stereo system and also a CD player all in one great combo player Bose system in my 2000 Acura TL.
Isn't more of an ad for some software. Don't learn about analog because digital is just as good. And by the way, we can both provide you the digital software and teach you how to use it.
Whenever a new LP was purchased it's first use was to make a cassette tape as it was in it's best form. I played around with Metal tapes like Chromium Dioxide and Ferro-chrome got not bad results with regular bias tapes.
@@allanpatterson7653 Mix tapes created with love.
@@teachertrx1204 I still use a Revox reel to reel which is simply awesome , long live analog !
As a dj, collecting vinyl isnt about the sound quality, but about uncovering oldies that u just can’t get digital because they were never distributed digitaly. A lot of old electronic music has a distinct caracter to it, derived from the constraints that old machines posed to artists. Its a sound you can only get on vinyl.
How can i get a vinyl player ?
No mention of vibration sensitivity of turntables when dancing! I love my old records but have to remind the kids not to jump up and down.
I know this is late coming but, securing a shelf on the wall solves most turntable vibration issues......
I bet that some of them come with rubber to counteract that. Steel is used, I think
Hence the ultimate turntable, with the 17,000 lb unit mounted on a buoyant pole floating in a column of water while the solid granite turntable floated on a cushion of air powered by a pump located half a mile away to minimize induced vibrations...
Some turntables do just fine in clubs with tens or hundreds of people dancing, like the classic Technics or the Stanton STR-8 (I have two of the latter, I think they weigh 18 kilos apiece).
I really enjoyed the presentation. Thank you. One correction: Your image of the phonograph showed movement in the counterweight of the arm at the source of conversion of movement to electrical waves. However that conversion happens in the magnetic cartridge to which the stylus is attached.
I agree with you, although I do wonder whether the original, first magnetic pickups did operate that way, before they figured out how to sufficiently miniaturize the mechanism to actually fit it directly into a reproduction cartridge.
Thanks for that comment because the animation had me as confused as hell. I thought "no way", but even so began to doubt myself.
thanks, just watched that. editors must have missed, and calls to question...
@@mjstow that's not the only thing that is incorrect. Digital sound DOES NOT look like stair steps, the sound is sampled just as he said in the video. For CD it is sampled 44,100 times a second. I have an audio program that clearly shows that digital audio looks EXACTLY like analog audio. There aren't ANY stair steps AT ALL. Trust me if there were you WOULD hear it.
@@darinb.3273 Actually at the highest frequencies as the 22K limit is approached, the wave would become square in shape and some distortion of the wave would occur... Original CD players that sampled the recording at only 44K would have HF filters in the circuit to make this distortion go away... Newer transports and D/A converters make all this a moot point but there is still the limit of the 44K encoding and the quality of the high frequency content still exists for PCM CD format... Higher sampling frequencies help this effect greatly and like in video formats, higher resolution audio hopefully will be adopted uniformly...
As a young audiophile growing up in the 70s and 80s I collected many half-speed master recordings of all types of rock music of the time and before. Those half-speed master recordings were able to hold much more information and thus the sound was incredibly richer and fuller. Of all the things I no longer have as an adult, I still have all those half-speed masters and don't intend on getting rid of them.
where do you find them?, have a link. I'm having a time..
I agree. I've been a professional trumpet player for over 40 years and I know what "live" acoustic musical instruments SOUND like. It's not harsh or exaggerated, but smooth and linear, and as you said, richer and fuller.
Still dealing with the data compression even if half speed mastered. Nowhere near as accurate as open reel tape.
Had a Revox A - 77
@King Brilliant But half speed mastered vinyl is nowhere near as good as an open reel tape machine. It's a fact.
Grew up with vinyl, the introduction of CDs and digital recording blew my mind and still retains its clarity. I’ve done a lot of time in studios and when things went digital we could actually take something home from the studio which was identical to what was recorded. FLAC forever for me.
Found the opposite, someone tried to show off with CD in my youth before I'd ever got one which was MUCH MUCH later ( I think when required in PC),
perhaps they were using lofi equipment attached to the CD but it just sounded non vibrant flat and dead.
Perhaps didnt help we had a relatively expensive Hi Fi component separates at home at the time to compare to -
I'd been listening to bands like Def Leppard within this scope sounded almost like it was in live setting other than the odd crackles with the amp firmly cranked to rock !
Which oddly those kind of little imperfections in vinyl for me managed to convince you somehow that its even more "real".
Whilst the flat digitally perfect sound or mastering has been a bit offputting for me when listening to music.....
go listen to real music in a pub.....its not flat and perfect there are issues with noise etc :D
Admittedly the issues with early sound sampling (particularly on PC file quality) which was pretty rubbish early on when compressed, have been replaced with far better imperceivably good quality now with good compression formats.
Although I'm not an audiophile now and so haven't invested in the music kit like my dad did back then, it was a clear lesson to me there can be a big difference between HiFi equiptment and others. Perhaps even more important than whether you are listening to one format or another is the cost/quality of the amplifier/speakers or headset too!
Though as a rock guitar guy I'm more "crank it and make noise" and not so much the discerning for the most ideal sound type though could be if I wasn't so tight....
@@afoster1621 Yes, back in the day, there was no way a teenager could afford audiophile systems to play their vinyl. I certainly couldn’t! I was always reduced to those ‘all in one’ stacks with tape and radio tuner built in. As for the speakers……😞 When CDs came out I managed to afford another ‘all in one’ unit but this time, as well as a turntable, it had a much sought after CD player. A Panasonic system I think. Even though I already had the vinyl, I purchased Led Zep 3 on CD and discovered the much talked about Bass drum pedal squeak which had been captured on tape during ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’. Even on a basic low-end unit, the pedal squeak was crystal clear. Throw on the vinyl and it was inaudible. Maybe this could be heard on unaffordable equipment on the record pressing, but I’d never get to find out. The CD really opened up my listening experience, even on a basic unit a teenager would get for Christmas. When I finally got separates and better speakers the CD listening experience got better. It was already clear that everything audible to the human ear which had been captured onto tape on original masters had been transferred to CD. All the audible information a human can hear was there. Now it was about what a decent amp and speakers could do to reproduce the same experience the band and producer were hearing when they made the final mixes in the studio control room. Providing the mastering process to CD was faithful (hopefully ‘flat’ because there’s no need for EQ loss compensation like there is with mastering for vinyl), it was finally possible to get a studio control room experience at home. I remember how great it was after a day in a recording studio listening to mixes to go home with a CD of the mixes instead of a lousy cassette tape! With CD, we could test our mixes for reproduction on inferior units, like radios, ghetto blasters and in-car systems. We knew a final mix played on even the most basic of separates Hi-Fi units would sound faithful. Unlike mastering for vinyl where the compromises were about deciding what you could get away with losing to fit on the limitations of the media, mastering to CD was about finding a sound which would be consistent with the limitations of the equipment it would be played on!
I think the quality of the playback equipment must play a part in the puzzle. Back in the 70's a lot of households had some pretty good hi-fi stack systems, even some of the all in one music systems were pretty good. But from the 80's onwards the market was flooded with cheap rubbish, with even cheaper crappy speakers. A lot of the first cd players were built into the crappy sounding systems. Getting something decent sounding these days can be very fairly expensive. Plus today a lot of music is listened to via cheap blue tooth devices, or cheap headphone or ear buds plugged into a mobile phone or tablet. Easy to blame the digital format and overlook the device it's being played back on.
Yeeeah... No. Even the most shitty amp today has better signal to noise ratio and frequency response than most of the better amps in the 80s.
Try CD on shitty amp and speakers and then the vinyl. CD sounds better i can assure you. Also Vinyl technology is not like wine (the older the better) Hi Def CDs are even better
There are cases in vinyl that certain tracks have better dynamic range, but that's not very often
@@KKBG Yup. Maximum signal to noise ratio of vinyl is 75-80dB at best, while CD is at 100dB. Also, the physical limits on how the needle can move without skipping makes vinyl at best equivalent to ~45khz sampling rate in digital. Besides, all vinyls released these days are mastered digitally and then transferred back to analog for cutting the vinyl.
@@SgtStinger The amps aren't the issue. The speakers are. You don't get decent 2.1 setups anymore, at least very often.
@@SgtStinger The irony is that vinyl and HD audio only sounds better because they specifically remaster the audio for those formats.
They tend to compress audio less in HD because they expect people to be playing them on good equipment, vs typical downloads they expect you to play on crappy earbuds on your phone.
I have downsampled HD tracks I own and its hard to say if there is any difference at all. I suspect they might sound slightly different due to the resamplers I am using being basic open source software, rather than the kind of high-end algorithms a mastering studio would use. Nothing at all to do with the reduction in bit/sample rates.
I've also seen it mentioned that HD DSPs are optimised for HD, which can colour audio at lower bit/sample rates due to the limitations of a DSP has to be optimised for a specific bit/sample rate. The further you get from what its optimised for, the more likely the sound will not be quite as accurate. So ironically, standard CDs will be more accurate on SD playback equipment unless they are upsampled before being sent to the DSP. Its all quite fascinating.
I listen to vinyl for the same reason I drive a manual-transmission car. Not because it is the logical choice, but because I find it to be the more enjoyable choice. I just enjoy interacting with machines in action.
Nah, a manual car makes sense in that it gives you more control over the car. However vinyl doesn't give you any more control than digital, in fact I would argue the inverse.
Manual transmission is the most common thing in lterally every country beside USA.
@@CockatooDude depends. I can change quite alot on the music I reproduce just playing around with the RIAA curve. A different phono preamp or usic moving coil instead of a moving magnet cartridge can change quite alot
@@CockatooDude "Stop enjoying things that aren't practical." Have any of you guys ever thought that vinyl is popular because it's fun?
We people are physical beings and we love physical things to touch and feel. Digital is just not satisfying this need. Because it is against the human nature.
Sooo i shouldn't get skrillex on vinyl then.
I mean you could just buy a vinyl and violently scratch it 😂
Shouldnt get skirellex on any format. ♤♡◇♧
I own Calamari Tuesday from Feed Me on vinyl which is also dubstep and it sounds amazing
You shouldn't reproduce if you listent to skrillex
@illyounotme Dude he literally explained that shit in the video. Due to the physical limitations of the playhead's size and movement, audio has to be remastered in a specific way to play back properly on vinyl. That's the cause of that "analog richness". Of course science figured it out; science invented it.
Thanks so much for this! I have collections of both digital and vinyl and I love both.
0:30 Yikes! I wonder how many operators of that press had their hand crushed.
In england back in the day there was a machine in most households called a Mangler.
And yes, it mangled people and killed children.
But hey, it made life easier and more convenient!
Nobody knows. But notice they were all women except those making the master discs were all men? In either case what a boring job doing that day after day, week, month, years... just to have some new automatic come along in the 50s & lay them all off. No union, no benefits, thanks RCA. Don’t even get me started on what happened to the used chemicals in all those acid baths. See the gloves the dudes wore? Those chemicles were all dumped down the storm sewers back in the day which of course emptied into streams, creeks, rivers & eventually into the ocean. People fished in them, kids swam in them, some drank & cooked in the water. As long as it wasnt human poop in the water we were good. Birth defects were epidemic. Rare little understood & fatal cancers swept over the newly created suburbs created on top of toxic waste sites. Google Love Canal New York.
Indeed. I actually operated one of those (but much larger than the one show here) in my high school in the early 1970s. Amazingly, no one ever got injured, even though a few of us ran it at very high speed (it was variable) as a kind of competitive rite of passage. Somehow your brain just won’t allow you to leave your hand in there-as long as you don’t “zone out”! I can’t imagine that that press is still in that school. And of course letterpress as a reproduction system is certainly dead now anyway. But we used it for business cards, and mostly for printing serial numbers on things like show tickets, not for printing full pages of text, even though that press was capable of printing on large sheets.
That's what led to Tony Iommi creating Heavy Metal.
@@TheDrexxus In Germany you call it a "Mangel" haha
there is no other way to have your favourite music stored in kilograms.
4:30 wrong! Analog signal is reproduced in the cartridge. Addressed part in the animation has no magnet or coil. Just counter weight in order to adjust applied force to the stylus
Yes, it's all about the cart🎵
Thank you for pointing out the inaccurate animation - it bugged me too!
also, most lowend consumer record players had only piezo pickups instead of mm or mc. man, those were some crappy sounding things
I was perplexed by this as well. Always adjusted the tone arm counter weight as instructed by my Thorens turntable manual.
Maybe the older style phonographs work the way they explained.
This is a very good video, but it does not cover the quality loss due to lossy digital compression as well as the fact, that today's music usually passes somewhere through a digital stage before getting pressed on vinyl. Vinyl records also wear out. We all know the crackling noise from damages or dust.
Lossy formats, like MP3, remove audio information. As lower the bitrate, as more will be removed. MP3 often cuts very high and low frequencies, but it also removes information in the rest of the audible spectrum.
There is an easy way to see and hear what MP3 is removing, as shown in the following video: ua-cam.com/video/UoBPNTAFZMo/v-deo.html
320 kbps MP3 are still sound good enough to be played on large systems, but below that the losses may be audible to the younger crowd or just create the feel of less energy.
I really liked that the video touched the topic of mastering for vinyl. Even pressing a small batch of vinyl records can be expensive. Screwing up the mixdown or mastering can render the whole batch useless. So, it is a good idea to hire a professional, instead of attempting DIY or using an automated online service. A good mastering engineer can improve the sound significantly. Mastering is an artform in itself, were the decisions are made, which influence the feel of the record. Some vinyl sound better, just because they invested in better mastering. In my opinion, the craft is making the real difference and not the format. Though, working on a vinyl release may result in better mastering decisions.
[Added Jan. 14, 2023:]
I want to clarify that I meant file size compression (eg. MP3) and not dynamic compression when I was talking about "lossy digital compression". I thought this was obvious. Apparently I did not made this clear enough when looking at some of the answers.
tbh I feel like the lossiness of different formats is largely overstated, ultimately what matters is that the people making the music are actually working within (and paying attention to) the constraints of the compression during mixing.
ie, in visual media, paletted images are a form of compression. Poorly downsampled media will look terrible at 256 colors, but there's also artwork that is genuinely stunning because they went in knowing they had 256 colors to work with.
A song that's both quiet and loud would want a high bit depth for more dynamic range, but might genuinely be ok at low sample rates if they don't use any of the cut off frequencies. The trouble I guess is that most streaming platforms only want one audio format, even if MPEG/others provide more tuning options.
@@ShinyQuagsireMP3 bitrate limitations are very different from color pallet limitations. MP3 has an algorithm, which removes audio it thinks are less noticeable to the listener. As more you compress, as more noticeable the loss of audible information will be. Maybe don't think of it as reducing the color pallet of a PNG. Think of it more like the quality slider when saving JPGs. As lower the JPG quality, as smaller the file, as worse the picture.
Dynamic range compression affects the volume. I do not think that MP3 compression does much in this regard. As a producer you can control that the MP3 is not clipping. Maybe there are some instruments you mach choose, which are not as badly affected from lossy compression, I don't know. But overall it is not very predictable what exactly the MP3 algorithm removes.
Of course, you can produce really bad sounding lo-fi crap with glitches and whatnot, where an MP3 compression can't make it much worse. But this would be a very special case.
This said, I agree with you that lossy compression is overrated on most home hi-fi systems. Streaming services can get away with pretty low bitrates, but you can fall on your face playing a low bitrate MP3 on a Function-One. I think that 320 kbps MP3 is just good enough and delivers the energy needed for large events, but there are some people saying that they only play lossless on those systems, event though the audience makes a lot of noise, too. This can be debated endlessly and probably depends on the type of music and the type of event.
redbook CD audio has a theoretical maximum sound to noise ratio of 96dB. Most vinyl can't achieve more than 80dB. Thats 16dB of detail/noise floor that is very difficult to explain away objectively as being "equal" in quality.
I guess what is really being said here is that, because of the nostalgia factor, most people subjectively feel or perceive no difference. That doesn't mean there is not.
Mastering/treatment and the actual quality of the recording plays such a big role in the perceived quality, but if you have *exactly* the same for both mediums, there is objectively more detail that can be perceived with a digital recording
Streaming/downloading digital copies of a recording is infinitely more convenient than dealing with any physical format, and depending on the bit rate and the compression the sound quality can be just as good or better than any physical format.
There's no utility in owning a physical copy of a recording anymore. Vinyl is the best physical format because it offers better artwork and liner notes on a big 12" album jacket. 7% of record buyers don't even own a turntable, and nearly half never listen to the records they buy. People don't buy records because they want a useful item, they buy them because they want a piece of art.
@@RedScotland Sorry to break the news for you that using UA-cam will allow "them" to create profiles of you and that your cellphone has GPS to track you. I don't think that they invented the CD back rhen to track us. The average consumer did not even have internet, yet. You can secretly embed encoded information in audio. But this can be done in analog audio, also.
This is my favourite video of real engineering. Where is the heart button when you need it?
Add to playlist > favorites. And awww you got your heart lol ;)
I like to think of vinyl as a whole experience.
Sure, I can stream HiFi music or pop in a cd anytime I feel like it but it's harder to appreciate the music for what it is IMHO. When I listen to my favorite albums on vinyl, on the other hand, I have to stop whatever I'm doing, set up my system, and set the record to play. It makes it a lot easier to focus on the music and appreciate the more minute details I might otherwise miss if I was casually listening to the same music in the background.
Of course, it goes without saying you don't need vinyl or an elaborate audio setup to relax and genuinely enjoy music, but it is a nice experience and hobby.
I use streaming services to listen to albums as a sort of try before i buy approach & if i thoroughly enjoy the album i will purchase it on Vinyl.
One needle traversing one groove and producing stereo channel is still a marvel which is why I love vinyl.
Your transitions are smooth as a sinusoid wave
As an analogue sine
@@SeazBreeze Low-pass filters remove any noise above the Nyquist frequency, meaning the output of a sampled wave is just as smooth as an analog one, without all of the inaccuracies and limitations.
@Humans suck There are speculations that frequencies above fn cross modulate frequencies below fn, so cutting everything above the human hearing range as digital sampling does could effect the audible spectrum whilst analogue keeps the audio's fidelity.
I know a good chiropractor if that reach ever comes back to haunt you.
When I lost most of my vinyl collection in a flood in 1990 I took the plunge and went for CD. The early regret due to CD player technology and mixing standards is long gone. I went down the digital rabbit hole with most of the now retired audio formats including Sony's portable DAT walkman. My collection of Stereophile, the Absolute Sound and other defunct mags which I used to follow the development of technology, equipment and to discover music was large and very heavy and long gone. Digital technology has matured like a good wine and I get what I want - great sound anywhere. 90% of music I own is on CD, the rest redbook or better downloads. Although I am familiar with Roon and want it, I have not yet subscribed. I guess I am waiting for the time to feel that at that moment, my money could not be be better spent elsewhere and I will buy the lifetime option.
Those of us who are not old enough to have had the experience of shopping for music the old way should realize the way things were. We had radio to get our first hearing of "popular music" but if we wanted to explore, you had to go to a record shop and play music. (Of course live music was the other way to be exposed to music, but I grew up in South Africa - getting to Woodstock presented logistical problems). This was a cumbersome time consuming process, store owners did not want the product damaged. Popular albums had sample records you could listen too, but many albums remained sealed. I know I bought an albums because I was attracted to their cover art, and went home to discover the music inside. I was not always happy with my purchase. This process became a lot easier with cd listening stations and they too are gone.
Listening to music in my car was an obsession, I started with reel to reel recordings with portable recorders. Then came 8 track and the game was on. Out came the stock radio systems in in went large and way better sounding gear. When stereo cassettes went mainstream, "me and my buddies" spent countless hours transferring albums to tape. Often we edited the music, leaving the runts of the litter to sleep on the record, and of course we made mix tapes. I hand printed all the tracks and details on the inner sleeve, often doing some drawing or "art" on the spine. All these cassettes are also long gone except for one to remind me (actually 85% of that collection was stolen from my car - the loss was heartbreaking because it came in 1984). Now my phone can hold all my entire library compressed to high resolution AAC.
I am 68. I have ruminated about my tastes and know how subjective they are, why certain music became" the sound track of my life" while much did not. About why it's difficult for new music to gain a lot of traction in my head and heart now, against that backdrop. There is so much music, so many copied styles, so many artists. Mainstream radio sucks, but now there are hundreds of stations from all over the world to listen to. I love getting the info on music and musicians. I read lyrics far more than I used to and I have started to explore the older catalogues to fill out the music in my library (I love Radio Paradise). Talent and artistry are alive and well, and there are still some young artists who are able to penetrate my mature (old fart) and far less sexually colored lens.
developmentstreaming in high resolution. Now it's becoming dirt cheap to and fun to set up a reasonable system. Amazing! For a long time I was a hold out, buying all myrecordings via I still fiddle with artwork, cleaning up album art off the internet, sometimes using a different image for an album, easy to do in the digital world.I make notes and lists of music and artists and really understand why people still have second system to play records and will buy the music they love on vinyl, and these days, often you get the digital tracks for free when you buy the vinyl.
Which is better, vinyl or digital? The answer is that it's down to personal taste and engagement - whatever floats your boat. you have to listen!
> Now my phone can hold all my entire library compressed to high resolution AAC.
The best lossy audio codec is currently Opus: www.opus-codec.org/comparison/
Sorry to hear about that flood. I am a month from being 68 and much of what you said resonated (pardon the pun) with me. One thing this UA-cam did not mention was what I considered to be a big drawback to vinyl which was (is) dust and debris on the record or the degradation of the record caused by dragging a piece of metal through vinyl media. When I got a record I would listen to it one time and then transfer it to cassette tape. I'm pretty sure I lost a lot of fidelity in that transfer but I kept my original album pristine so I could re-tape it if I needed to. When digital media came out, I could not hear the difference and that was with much better (younger) hearing than today. What was not to love about digital? No tape transfer, clear sound, no degradation of the media and the benefit of shuffling tracks. I was sold. Add to that now the ability to put all your recordings into something that is smaller than a transistor radio which also can take pretty good pictures and make phone calls.
Still, after recently moving and having some basement space to tinker around in, I hooked up all my old stereo gear and have been replaying some old vinyl, with all the associated hissing and popping, again. I also had a surround sound amplifier for early home theater use but there was no phono hookup. I guess that hookup was an early victim of the digital revolution. Hooking up the phone to another input did not work. I guess I needed a pre-amp on the phone input or something so I had to use an even older amplifier. I also pulled out my old cassette decks but they are non-functional. The rubber belts degraded and have become almost goo-like. I am going to try and restore the players with replacement belts but I don't know why other than to see if I can. My cassettes are surely lower quality than my CD's. After all these years, when I play an old record, I still stare at the album cover and I can still remember which song is about to come up when the previous song ends.
There is one thing about vinyl that really bothers me today. It is kind of annoying to have to flip a record every 20 minutes or so. Today's "kids" don't know how great they have it. But my grandparents would say that about my vinyl LP's. I also have their old Edison and a box full of those cylinder records. They had to change a record after every song!
As digital technology matured, so did your ears! Just like mine. I still have over 500 LPs, but my Linn turntable needs repair. SO I have CDs too. If you know of Stereophile, you must remember the Fulton Js vs LS35As. I still have the Linn LK1 and LK2, which also need repair going on 35 years.
Wow 68. You're nearly dead
I'm happy you took the time to compare the humble vinyl record.
I think he just shot it down as a audio format...
@@Mtaalas you are right. I was unclear. I meant elevate more in the sense of compare to modern standards.
Edited original comment for clarity.
@@Brainstorm69 aaa right, I took that in the first sense that came to mind. I'm not native English speaker so it didn't come to mind that it could be used in such a way, but sure it can be. Thanks for not taking my comment as overly bashing one. :)
@@Mtaalas no worries bud. You were right in your criticism. I appreciate it. Where are from?
@@Brainstorm69 Finland, from the land of perpetual winter and more metal bands that you can poke a stick at! ;D
At one point, I had amassed something like 2,000 vinyl LPs. But, I've gotta say I'm spoiled by the lack of surface noise of digital.
What surprised me in this video is the intentional reduction in dynamic range employed by current digital producers to make the music "louder", which negates some of the extra range available in digital. It sounds like the compression used by radio stations.
Back in the days of analog tape I was frustrated with the best equipment I could buy (I had some good gear), when I was trying to make nature sounds recordings. Like recording a thunderstorm, for instance. It was impossible to set levels so that thunderclaps weren't oversaturated, and not have more subtle sounds buried in hiss. Twenty years ago, I bought a Marantz CDR300 portable CD recorder and a pretty nice single point stereo microphone, and was finally able to make recordings that satisfied me. Incredible dynamic range simply not available in analog media. And it seems these producers are taking a portion of that advantage and throwing it away.
@smart451cab, I am so very glad that your statements corroborate my comments regarding digital vs. analog. Some people just can't seem to grasp the concept of an extra 55 dB of dynamic headroom nor zero tape hiss!
That was an interesting choice. Why did you choose a CD recorder for outdoor use, when surely a DAT machine would have been more practical? Did you not have trouble with short battery life and laser skipping?
@@musicandfilms9956 The CDR300 had an optional lead-acid battery (Yup, lead-acid like a vehicular battery only smaller, maybe motorcycle size). The battery charge was more than sufficient to record a couple CD sides. This setup was more luggable than portable, but it suited me alright.
No problems with laser skip. Since the goal was the exclusion of manmade sounds, the recorder was always stationary when recording. The biggest problem I had was years later discovering that I failed to finalize some disks and no longer had the Marantz to do it with.
A DAT recorder might've worked too. But, with the CDs I could just pop the disks into my PCs optical drive and be good to rip, which was convenient. DAT was winding down at the time, and production of the recorders ended a year or two later.
Another option that I used on occassion was to record direct to HDD on a laptop.
@@Vector_Ze Thanks for that!
As an audio engineer I collect vinyl because it looks awesome and there is something emotional about putting on a record but I mainly listen to music through streaming or ripped cds. Now with HD streaming and Atmos digital sounds great outside of overly compressed loudness masters (Atmos mixes don't have this issue due to needing to have a lot more dynamic range).
Plus, streaming and Playlists afford you the option to skip the songs you do not want to hear unless you don't mind walking over and moving the stylus.
@@Neal_Schier Moving the stylus is half the fun though!
As an engineer, you should appreciate that the worn records can be painted gold, and hung on walls....
Is there any way to convert Atmos recordings (with their superior dynamic mastering) down to standard 16bit FLAC or mp4?
Neal Schier Its part of my physical fitness training.
The real issue here is mastering and production. I've heard great mastering and production on vinyl that beats the CD counterpart and vice versa. Example, anything produced or mastered by Steven Wilson will sound amazing on any format.
The finest production of well manufactured analog vinyl recordings to a coterie of audiophiles are sonically more musically accurate than CDs and many other consumer accessible digital sources. Why? The industry standard sampling rate frequency established for CDs was too low of a frequency. Consequently, the upper midrange throughout the higher frequencies of the audio range of hearing of musical instruments do not sound musically accurate with CDs. It's characteristically in audiophile parlance typically a none musical harsh sound to trained audiophiles ears. Digitally produced audio sources are a production process. Analog manufactured produced sources are a reproduction process.
@@mab7175 ok. That's good.
@@mab7175 Shannon and Nyquist say no. And no one who has ever stated what you just have has ever been able to prove it on an abx test. Simple experiment, record your favorite vinyl on a PC with a good sound card and then rip it to cd. Then get a friend to switch between the turntable an the cd and see if you can identify which is which. Spoiler alert. You can't. Buy vinyl because you like it but don't try to tell the rest of us that you have some kind of super power and can hear nuance that we can't.
@@fmbjmf
That's funny. That depends on who your friend is. LOL
@@fmbjmf I have heard that the quality of sound has more to do with the master copy. If the master copy is digital at the getgo, the record player will still output that warm sound it is known for, however the old master copies from the studios that was reproduced thru records before digital have a unique high quality. The cd of course is quality all the way (with exception to where cd quality was compromised for budget quantity reproduction of cds years ago). That said the investment into a record, particularly collectibles and the novelty of finding anothers record yardsale garbage can be indeed have value in more ways than one!
Mastering really has a lot to do with what sounds better to the listener. I own both CD's and vinyl, a lot of the same album... and some sound better on vinyl, some better on CD. It just depends on how it was recorded, and mastered, and then pressed to the media (CD or vinyl).
Nothing sounds better on vinyl than a triple D CD, you're still living in fantasy land.
@@lev2727 What are you talking about? I don't even know what that is.
Some sound better on Vinyl, some on CD(e.g. songs which play a lot on sub-20hz soundscape), Streaming is always the worst option.
The high-end CD players make miracles out of the CDs, as they leave nothing out of the master version.
- Tidal MQA, CD-Quality and "Master" quality all lose on their own to CD on a high-end player(e.g. Denon DCD A-110). Only FLAC competes with the physical versions in Audio Quality.
(Tidal VS CD: 35-15% of audio quality is lost on the CD grade, 5-15% on "Master/MQA Master" grade, with a high-end set-up. I mostly keep the Bluesound 2i Streamer as a convenience tool)
- If you have a high-end Vinyl, then you really see what true audio quality sounds like. It's mind blowing, as you can with a high-end Cartridge+Tonearm really draw everything out of the Vinyl.
Unless you've experienced this all back-to-back VS Streamer at same Decibel levels, you need to hear it to believe it.
I usually pull "test runs" for my friends who critizise about my home hifi set(like how much money I've spent on them). I then make them hear the difference of CD/Vinyl VS Streamer, and they're their jaws open at that point. 10/10 people said the audio quality was better with the physical formats over the Streamer.
- There's something missing every time when Digital is transferred into Analogue. But when Analogue is turned to Analogue, it's perfect lossless. CDs emulate this pretty well, which partly is the mastering. Partly due to the high-end equipment pushing stuff out from them you never can with e.g. a Computer CD bay.
- SACDs only compete with Vinyl, frankly, but as the sky is the limit with Analogue, the more you get out of Vinyl, the more you spend on the player and the Music Cartridge.
I'm with Mikhail.
@@lev2727 Yes it sometimes, because both are mastered differently. Vinyl masters are often much less compressed and have greater dynamic range. Even though CD as a medium in theory offers a lot more dynamic range, it's often not used. Look up loudness war and compare dynamic ranges of specific albums on dr.loudness-war.info for example.
Also the quality of the player be it vinyl or cd has a major role in how things sound. They vary a great deal due to the quality of the components used during manufacturing and then you have amplifiers and speakers that also colour the sounds of the recordings being played back. You don't realize until you have listen to a quality audio system just what you are missing out on with most of the cheap crap that is manufactured today.
CD marked the most noticeable audible improvement to music playback, in my lifetime. Early ADD recordings were like vinyl, without the pops and static. Of course, now that I have learned to restore and maintain my records, the difference is less concerning. CD was less susceptible to things like subsonic feedback and such when listening at louder volumes. It's just nice to have options.