blasted vinyl

[dudywoxer]

why is it, that you can convince yourself that digits can be just as good, and as enjoyable to listen too as lumps of plastic. You spend a couple of weeks listening using Roon, or CDs. Then having knackered yourself in the garden for a day and half, no rugby this weekend, so think, sod it, I'll have an afternoon with the system. turn on the deck, and phono stage, wait for the amp to come out of sleep mode, lower the arm. Two tracks later, your bloody hooked onto the black stuff again.

 

[Pete the Feet]

It may be like some preferring to listen to a portable radio as opposed to a decent FM tuner in their system. Well maybe not quite but a comfort zone and familiarity type experience.

Sent from my MotoE2(4G-LTE) using Tapatalk

 

[Spider]

Colin, Vinyl rules you know that so why try to convince yourself otherwise.

 

[Audio Al]

why is it, that you can convince yourself that digits can be just as good, and as enjoyable to listen too as lumps of plastic. You spend a couple of weeks listening using Roon, or CDs. Then having knackered yourself in the garden for a day and half, no rugby this weekend, so think, sod it, I'll have an afternoon with the system. turn on the deck, and phono stage, wait for the amp to come out of sleep mode, lower the arm. Two tracks later, your bloody hooked onto the black stuff again.

You Sir are a traitor to the cause , NO alternative compares with a well set up vinyl system 

 

[Mickyricky]

Was it Ascension that brought you back Col ;-)

 

[uzzy]

why is it, that you can convince yourself that digits can be just as good, and as enjoyable to listen too as lumps of plastic. You spend a couple of weeks listening using Roon, or CDs. Then having knackered yourself in the garden for a day and half, no rugby this weekend, so think, sod it, I'll have an afternoon with the system. turn on the deck, and phono stage, wait for the amp to come out of sleep mode, lower the arm. Two tracks later, your bloody hooked onto the black stuff again.

I was in the car and up pops on my random play a track from Rain Dances by Camel .. I think I must stick that on when I get home - so for ease I put on the CD and sit down to listen .. and it sounds flat and lifeless and disjointed like all the instruments were recorded at different times in different places and merged together to make something that wasn't whole.  So I fished out the LP .. and whilst old with a few pops and crackles YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS it was all ok .. the bass definition .. the way it all seems like a performance not a mixed together hash ...... 

I am so pleased my lad collects all his music on vinyl it made me buy a record cleaning machine and clean the 800 albums I have left (took an age but all done now .. i was norty though I didn't replace all the sleeves only those that were tatty) ... and so yes I can understand how you are hooked on the black stuff again ...  the sad thing is it took me four cd players (upgrading each time til I got to a Meridian 506 20 bit) to realise the Pioneer 802 I gave to my daughter was as good as any and having listened to countless others (even the DCS Elgar/Purcel) to finally realise that all CD players sound different but none of them sound right  .  I did a test and burned a CDs from Vinyl (Joan Armatrading 1976 album of the same name and Tracy Chapman 1st album) on my HB Burnit Pro .. I compared my CDs with the factory originals I had bought and what do ya think the outcome was?  The vinyl to CD copies from my HB Burnit Pro whilst not sounding as good as the original vinyl were only a whisker away, whereas the factory originals were not in the same league.

 

[Spider]

I recently attended a get together comparing loads of different digital formats. Which was interesting.

After listening to all those different ways of storing music, the vinyl of the tracks was played. And guess what, there was no comparison. There were parts of the songs that just were not noticeable on the digital mixes that were integral to the song on the record.

I've heard some really good digital systems at bake-offs and they are interesting but to my ears a well sorted turntable will always be more engaging to me.

 

[Guest]

Was it Ascension that brought you back Col ;-)

hahahahahahahahah  .

Well was listening to David Gilmour - On an Island last night using a £16.50 CD/DVD player, and I was gobsmacked just how good it was!  :nuts:

 

[greybeard]

I always find that when listening to vinyl through valve amplification, or a mixture of i.e. Valve pre, SS power, valve phono, it seems to knock the socks of digital. But through an all SS system, digital wins hands down. Is that down to the inherent distortion, in valve and vinyl replay, complementing each other, and vinyl through the more transparent SS amplification, shows it deficiencies against digital. :minikev:

 

[rabski]

Been said so often that it should be engraved in stone somewhere on the wigwam site.

Prefectly recorded and mastered, CD will kill vinyl stone dead, and at massively lower cost in terms of equipment.

Trouble is, the vast, vast majority of digital is recorded and mastered to make it suitable for portable devices and assorted low-resolution means of playback.

If you want a real comparison, try some classical music. I have various things on CD and vinyl where almost universally the CDs destroy the vinyl comprehensively. And that's through a front end where the transport and DAC together cost me less than my cartridge.

On the vast majority of rock, by comparison, vinyl wipes the floor with digital.

 

[greybeard]

Yes I certainly agree that there are a lot of poorly recorded, or compressed digital recordings out there. But as you said Richard, a well recorded CD, will knock the socks of the vinyl version. With classical recordings, CD has the advantage of no background noise, in the many quiet passages, where crackles and pops become very irritating on vinyl.

 

[mickbald]

I find my record player to be better than the CD. Both are pretty decent quality pieces of kit. On a decent recording, specially the new 45 rpm versions, I get no pops or crackles and I just prefer the vinyl sound.

I'm getting a new Cadenza Black and Kore fitted tomorrow so expect an even better sound.

 

[Radioham]

I bought some Vinyl at the audio jumble yesterday and paid between 50p and £1 per disk, then a good clean on my Project RCM this morning. Very impressed with a Decca stereo lp released in 1958.(Mantovani and music from the films).Now listening to Trini Lopez if I had a hammer.....

Alan

 

[Von Krolock]

Been said so often that it should be engraved in stone somewhere on the wigwam site.

Prefectly recorded and mastered, CD will kill vinyl stone dead, and at massively lower cost in terms of equipment.

Trouble is, the vast, vast majority of digital is recorded and mastered to make it suitable for portable devices and assorted low-resolution means of playback.

If you want a real comparison, try some classical music. I have various things on CD and vinyl where almost universally the CDs destroy the vinyl comprehensively. And that's through a front end where the transport and DAC together cost me less than my cartridge.

On the vast majority of rock, by comparison, vinyl wipes the floor with digital.

I've one or two classical recordings on both formats & don't agree that CD destroys vinyl. Vinyl can reproduce the timbre of an instrument - strings
for example - in a way that CD doesn't quite match. Also clicks & pops are minor on a clean, good quality record.
Off-centre spindle holes make a big mess of classical music, piano in particular & orchestral climaxes at side ends are a test.

It can be a close run thing though & top vinyl reproduction doesn't come cheap.
 

 

[Ian]

When I can see a Blue Note label spinning round, I am happy The answer to your question Colin is something to do with your soul.

 

[rabski]

I've one or two classical recordings on both formats & don't agree that CD destroys vinyl. Vinyl can reproduce the timbre of an instrument - strings
for example - in a way that CD doesn't quite match. Also clicks & pops are minor on a clean, good quality record.
Off-centre spindle holes make a big mess of classical music, piano in particular & orchestral climaxes at side ends are a test.

It can be a close run thing though & top vinyl reproduction doesn't come cheap.
 

Interesting post Richard. I have to say that virtually every rock recording I have is massively better on vinyl. I also agree that surface noise is totally irrelevant. A properly cleaned LP will have minimal noise, and a decent cartridge will not over-emphasise it. There are distractions with digital as well, let's not forget. dropouts and breakthrough are not that rare.

That said, I have to disagree about classical recordings. However, to be fair the majority of classical that I listen to extensively would not be done justice on vinyl. Bach and other organ works and big orchestral stuff are served very well on digital formats, and comparatively badly on vinyl. A small chamber quartet or similar would probably be a lot better, but Jean Guillou is not ideal on the black stuff.

 

[greybeard]

When I can see a Blue Note label spinning round, I am happy The answer to your question Colin is something to do with your soul.

I love vinyl for exactly that reason Ian, I have over 3000 LP's, 5 record decks and really enjoy listening to it, but it is not superior to digital. I also enjoy driving and looking at vintage cars, but again modern cars are technically better, but that does not stop my enjoyment of vintage cars.

 

[The Strat]

Last night I did something I don't normally do in as much I very rarely compare a recording on vinyl and CD more just accept that both are excellent at what they do and there is little point.  Also as a general rule earlier fully analogue recordings - jazz and 60/70s rock titles tend to be on vinyl and more recent stuff and classical are on CD.

However, Interestingly the first 3 recordings that I purchased on CD on the day I bought my first CDP - Arcam Alpha late '91 - were the Famous Blue Raincoat by Jennifer Warnes, The Nightfly by DF and On Every Street by Dire Straits I have subsequently purchased on vinyl.  Anyway, last night I was dealing with some stuff on the iPad and so didn't want to be up and down every 15 minutes so put On Every Street on the CDP and it came to me on the 3rd verse of the title track - that great moment "the three chord symphony crashes into space" - that this was a shadow of how it comes over on vinyl.  So out came the vinyl and despite not having the almost zero noise floor and perhaps the more accurate resolution of the CDP the soundstage was so obviously bigger, instruments were more authentic, there was more detail if not quite so accurate but it was just a fuller, richer musical experience.

Now perhaps this should not be a surprise for someone who has maintained that if everything else is equal prefers vinyl except that On Every Street is a DDD configuration and presumably DDA (?) on the vinyl so one might have expected the digital playback to be up there.  Of course this means nothing really in as much that if tonight I play the Tennstedt Eroica on CD  - no vinyl available

so no comparison to be had - it will still be wonderful.

It's all good!!

 

[f1eng]

I am with Richard.

Yes LPs sound great but as I know from my work on record players and recording concerts myself digital is more accurate.

I never made a recording on an analogue tape where the recording sounded exactly like the microphone feed, but digital recorders were capable of being incredibly close very early in their development and now I can't hear any difference at all.

LPs have a different mix to CDs. Even with a fairly modest CD system your speakers will be getting a feed pretty well identical to that the recording engineer produced. Your LPs will not.

With an LP there will be not only the difference of the mix, but also the addition of all the colourations added by a record player. Cartridges have typically 2% to 8% harmonic distortion, arm resonance is picked up by the cartridge, lots of vibration from the air and structure is also added to the cartridge output and the tracking error of a pivoted arm does its bit too. The good thing is that with record players you can tune to your own taste whereas with a CD player you are stuck with what the recording engineer put on the disc.

I once made a digital recording of an LP where I had both LP and CD and the recording was indistinguishable (to me) from the LP (I made sure the system was playing at my normal level whilst recording so the structure and airborne additions were on the recording). It was completely different to the disappointing CD, so I am sure it is the mix that is different not the storage/replay medium.

The extra reverb added by the vibration pickup creates a more spacious stereo effect and the boost to the overtones due to harmonic distortion enriches the timbre of instruments.

I have tuned my record player to taste, IME the cartridges vary the most, in both frequency response and distortion signature, I have 4 record players, all sound different but haven't bought a LP in years.

In the end it doesn't matter tuppence why though, it is the music which I am there to listen to, so whether I play a CD or LP is entirely dependant on what I want to listen to next.