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Vinyl To Signal the End for CDs?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Oct 29, 2007 04:27 PM
from the wtb-10-disc-changer-for-my-car dept.
from the wtb-10-disc-changer-for-my-car dept.
PJ1216 writes to mention that vinyl seems poised to make a comeback in the music industry. Some are even predicting that this comeback coupled with the surge in digital music sales could possibly close the door on CDs. "Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they're right about one thing: Records can sound better than CDs. Although CDs have a wider dynamic range, mastering houses are often encouraged to compress the audio on CDs to make it as loud as possible: It's the so-called loudness war. Since the audio on vinyl can't be compressed to such extremes, records generally offer a more nuanced sound. Another reason for vinyl's sonic superiority is that no matter how high a sampling rate is, it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove, Nyquist's theorem to the contrary."
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The "Loudness War" and the Future of Music 687 comments
An anonymous reader notes an article up at IEEE Spectrum outlining the history and dangers of the accelerating tendency of music producers to increase the loudness and reduce the dynamic range of CDs. "The loudness war, what many audiophiles refer to as an assault on music (and ears), has been an open secret of the recording industry for nearly the past two decades and has garnered more attention in recent years as CDs have pushed the limits of loudness thanks to advances in digital technology. The 'war' refers to the competition among record companies to make louder and louder albums by compressing the dynamic range. But the loudness war could be doing more than simply pumping up the volume and angering aficionados — it could be responsible for halting technological advances in sound quality for years to come... From the mid 1980s to now, the average loudness of CDs increased by a factor of 10, and the peaks of songs are now one-tenth of what they used to be."
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New Analog Format (Score:5, Funny)
Plus, when you're done listening to it, you can make Ramen noodles with Skwisgaar's solos, or maybe even coffee with Toki's Rhythm Guitar parts...
DETHKLOK RULES!
Re:New Analog Format (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:New Analog Format (Score:5, Funny)
They call them CD players I believe.
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Re:New Analog Format (Score:5, Insightful)
And of course, it's a format that's easily damaged, and wears out just by listening to it [and yes, I know you can get very expensive record players that use laser's or some such thing instead of a needle].
I'm sorry, but there are just so many things wrong with that, that I have to reply.
Vinyl is not as easily damaged as one would think. I have a pretty big vinyl collection and a reasonably sized CD collection (about 180 of them) and guess which one's I'm having trouble listening to... I can't listen to my Deftones - Adrenaline CD, because it has a few minor scratches that mess up each and every track on the CD rendering it completely and utterly useless - and that CD is only about 10 years old. Now, I've got a vinyl in my collection that's about twice as old (an old Danish children's record) which I've "borrowed" from my dad. It has been handled a lot by myself and my 4 sisters back when we were kids but it plays fine. The jacket's all torn and I know for a fact that it's been treated really, really rough. Sure, there are the occasional pops and maybe a skip or two when it plays, but if I increase the weight of the needle just a little, it plays the record in its entirety without a single skip... Now, try to do that with my Deftones CD... (Though, I'm not really that keen on listening to it any longer.)
To reiterate:
Re your wearing out issue... If you adjust the weight of the needle right (and no, it's really not that hard) and use a decent one, then you'll be able to play your records for at least as long as your CDs. Remember, CDs deteriorate as well - they don't even have to be played to get all messed up! As long as you treat your LPs reasonably, they'll last for a loooong time - at least, I have some records that are way older than myself (26 yrs) and they play just fine. Besides, CDs can't be treated all that bad either, without rendering them unplayable...
As for the laser-thingy. I can't say much, as I have never actually seen (or heard) one, but from what I've heard people say about it, the sound isn't all that good and definitely not worth it. But as I said, I have no experience with it myself. Try googling it if your interested, that's where I found some reviews back when I was checking it out.
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Re:New Analog Format (Score:5, Funny)
Vinyl and CDs are for suckers.
P.S. Anecdotes are worthless. You fail at science.
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Re:New Analog Format (Score:5, Informative)
Please, read up a bit about digital signals and the Nyquist theorem, it is counter-intuitive, but it works. There are no "edges" in a reconstructed (played) digital signal!
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not this again... (Score:5, Informative)
This statement is true, but completely irrelevant. The fact that a recording medium is analog does not mean that it is better at accurately recording and reproducing a sound than a digital medium. Magnetic tapes are also analog recordings. Putting a pencil on a string, hanging it next to a speaker, and having it draw a line on a moving sheet of paper is also an analog recording.
It's true that a digital recording can never contain the amount of data in a vinyl groove, but who is saying that all the data in a vinyl groove is more of an accurate representation of all the data extant in the original sound wave than a digitally sampled recording?
This is similarly irrelevant. Compression is a way of altering a sound wave, and has nothing to do with the final recording medium. Overcompression is a problem, but this is not an argument for vinyl over CD--it's just a comment on postprocessing techniques.
Re:not this again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention data degradation as the needle passes over the groove for the hundredth time
The other advantage of a CD is that the data on a CD is precise, an exact copy of the original, and any functioning CD player will interpret the CD identically. Analog information on a vinyl LP, on the other hand, is subject to an analog input system (the needle) which will vary from player to player as to its mechanical properties, which will influence the sound it picks up from the record.
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Re:not this again... (Score:4, Informative)
The other issue though is that pretty much all music produced these days (99.99% of studio music, and a large chunk of "live" music as well) has been post-processed with digital effects and adjustments. At this point, you've already converted everything into a digital format; writing it back to vinyl won't gain anything back, and writing it to CD only down-samples the master audio somewhat and merges the tracks. If you write it to one of the DVD Audio formats instead of Red Book, you don't even get the down-sampling.
There are things you can do when using digital recording equipment that you simply can't do with vinyl, and most of the industry uses digital recording equipment nowadays.
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Re:not this again... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:not this again... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:not this again... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is simply a media stunt by the recording industry's marketing departments to try and popularize a physical object that people must pay for. Vinyl has all the sex appeal to become that object.
Vinyl needs to be compressed even more so than CD's, as heavy bass can be enough to make the needle pop right out of the groove.
However, all the arguments about increased sound quality, as you point out, are absurd.
I am a mastering engineer, software engineer and have worked on audio software. And in all of my experience there are only a couple of things left to improve upon with current digital audio technology, but for a very small amount of return.
When the music is mixed digitally using certain "professional tools" (no pun intended) it is done in fixed point. A few companies have realized that using double precision floating point *does* sound better. And the difference is measurable. Some sound engineers believe it's also very audible.
In short, sampling a signal, scaling it, summing it and then truncating (or dithering) it, does more than shifting it's level and burying the lower end under the quantization threshold. No technical name exists for this type of distortion, but it is a self correlated noise upon the signal, or cross correlated with the other signals being mixed upon it. What it amounts to is to putting the signal thru a transfer function consisting of a jagged diagonal line (instead of a perfect diagonal line, whose slope matches the gain applied) or jagged grid that shifts up and down with the value of the other streams being mixed. This is analogous to rendering a diagonal line on a computer. The higher the resolution (number of bits) the better. But sadly, at the recording and mixing stage, mixing a large number of tracks with say 24 bits of fixed point resolution is ridiculously bad, even if the final master will be dithered and truncated at 16 bits, because this distorting process will occur repeatedly, for each gainstage, for each track summed. One solution to this is to apply gain and sum at double precision floating point. Yet another, less popular solution, is to actually reproduce each track back into the analog world using high quality DACS and sum in the analog domain. Both sound nearly as good, and certainly better than summing at 24 bits fixed point.
Second, there are certain IIR filters that can't be implemented at just 2x the bandwith. Because of this, the choices are: Upsample and downsample just for that filter (which is computationally expensive and if done at all, seldom done correctly) or just run the entire audio stream at 4 or 8x the bandwith.
What is done today by most studios is run the entire project at 88.2 or 96 kHz sampling frequency. This is great, but requires a very high quality downsampler at the end of the chain to convey the final result.
One could argue that vinyl masters can be cut from a DAC running at 96 kHz and thus have an increased frequency resolution. But that improvement pales in the light of the background hiss level, additional bass compression required for vinyl, preamp distortion, de-emphasis equalizer tolerances, motor speed stability deviations, etc.
I wonder if we just had a tiny speaker on top of a CD player reproducing the very high frequencies that come from the "needle" whether it would finally pass for vinyl.
I bet that much of what is perceived as sounding better for vinyl is the fact that people can hear the sound of the mechanics (the needle itself) as well as the speakers. I remember as a child, that the records sounded a lot better when the turntable lid was open.
-arr
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Re:not this again... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:not this again... (Score:5, Funny)
If only this were true...I'd buy every Styx LP in existence and play them non-stop.
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Re:not this again... (Score:5, Interesting)
As you said, the comment about compression is nonsense. Compression is the removal of dynamic range, and is actually REQUIRED for vinyl to get the low volume sounds out of the vinyl surface noise to make them audible.
The truth of the matter is that vinyl records are crap compared to CD's in every measurable way - distortion, dynamic range, frequency response, signal to noise ratio, you name it. Are they perfect? No, that does not exist in technology. The Redbook standard is a tad short of the maximum theoretical dynamic range and frequency response the human ear is capable of. The conversion of digital data back to analog is tricky to get right. But it is superior to vinyl.
But some people do like vinyl better. Audio tastes are funny. People become habituated to certain types of distortion and other artifacts in the sound. To them is sounds better. But by any measurable means it looks like garbage compared to CD.
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Nyquist's theorem (Score:4, Informative)
Some of this is covered on the design and implementation of direct digital synthesizers.
While a properly made CD will typically sound better than a vinyl recording, the article was correct in stating that CD's lend themselves more to overcompressing than vinyl and that has to do with the process of cutting the record (see points about groove spacing and burning out the cutting head).
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Re:not this again... (Score:5, Insightful)
- produce an approximation that differs from the original by less than can be detected by the human ear, which does have its limits
- produce an approximation that is BETTER than a recording made in a physical medium.
The issue with recording on a physical medium - irrespective of type or method, is that the stylus (whatever it may be) has mass. As such it is subject to Newton's first law and will resist changes to its momentum. This will have the audio effect of diminishing the frequency response in proportion to the frequency. This attenuation of the high end of the audio spectrum is what gives vinyl its 'richer' sound - NOT that it is more faithfully approximating the original sound wave.
Remember EVERYTHING is an approximation - including the pressure wave in the air that was the original transcription from the instrument.
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Re:not this again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Whilst that is true, the problem is that a typical CD recording available today will be overcompressed whereas a typical vinyl recording won't be. Thus if I want to buy a decent recording, it may well be that the vinyl version is better than the CD version despite what the technical capabilities of the two media may be. That said, if vinyl sales rocket and CD sales plummet, we will most likely see a change in how CDs are mastered -- I expect both media to be around for a long time yet.
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Re:not this again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Who says they can't do EXACTLY the same compression on the audio before mastering it to vinyl? Unless vinyl was used to master the audio in the first place and all subsequent copies were made off that, it's ridiculous to suggest that the same processing can't occur before you press the vinyl disc.
It's purely the vinyl 'purists' trying to invent a reason to suggest that vinyl is better.
It's not, end of story, no arguments can be entered into. Vinyl has nowhere near the sonic range, nowhere near the durability, nowhere near the error correction (read, none), it's just not as good.
If the author is trying to suggest that vinyl will replace anything due to any sort of sonic improvement, then why didn't SACD or DVD Audio take off? They both have higher sampling rates and even broader frequency response than CD, and yet they've pretty much disappeared. The masses don't give a shit about audio fidelity. Hence why MP3s are so popular and Home Theatre In A Box's sell in such huge numbers... the majority of people can't hear the difference, and are purely concerned about CONVENIENCE and vinyl is in NO WAY CONVENIENT... No way at all, they're huge, easy to break, wear out VERY quickly and you now need stupidly expensive turntables to get any sort of reasonable sound out of them.
This is a completely ridiculous article.
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Re:not this again... (Score:5, Informative)
Ah, these kids. Never heard of the RIAA equalization curve, I assume? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization [wikipedia.org]
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Re:not this again... (Score:5, Informative)
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New Orthophonic (Score:5, Informative)
For one thing, vinyl has always had a loudness standard: the bigger you make the grooves, the fewer can fit on the record. So LPs were most often mastered at levels appropriate for a 24 minute side. (Extended singles for club play, which have fewer songs on them, are often mastered louder.) Compact Disc Digital Audio, on the other hand, never had a concrete definition of the playback volume.
CD is more portable than vinyl and is often listened to in a moving environment. The loudness race started when portable audio players such as Sony Discman and car units first came out. Some used a cheap op-amp to drive cheap headphones; others were car units that played over the radio. Record producers realized that end users could barely hear Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms over environmental noise, and they pushed mastering engineers to push the levels hotter.
Also, vinyl equalizes the bass down before recording and equalizes it back up in the player's preamp, based on a standardized New Orthophonic preemphasis curve [wikipedia.org]. The limiter algorithms to overamplify an audio signal while fitting it into [-1..1] in the flat-equalized time domain of CD are not optimal for a time domain equalized in New Orthophonic. It's the producer's job to approve a master, and hearing these suboptimal results on vinyl might encourage an ambitious producer to back off on the demands to the mastering engineer.
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loudness standard (Score:5, Funny)
And often overlooked fact.
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Re:not this again... (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't. The parent post to yours is 100% incorrect. Compression (and/or expansion) is a process applied to an audio signal. It makes no difference whatsoever where the signal comes from, or is going, or how it is encoded in the sense that compression can, or cannot, be applied. It can be applied once, zero times, or many times. It can be applied in the analog domain or in the digital domain, or both, in any combination. Digital compression needs to be applied to a digital signal (and you can digitize a signal destined for an analog medium before it gets there, or in the process of playing it back, and then reconvert to analog) and analog compression needs to be applied to an analog signal (and you can convert a digital signal to analog, compress it, and then press, or write, the master), or you can take the analog output of the record, compress it in analog or digital fashion, and then listen to it or re-record it. Etc., ad infinitum.
CD's as a release medium may fall back to relatively minor levels, but this has nothing to do with audio quality (reputed or actual.) If it happens, it will be a consequence of digital file transfer capability everywhere from iTunes to bittorrent to swapping flash cards and pocketdrives.
In the end, there will be a market for quite some time for those who prefer CD's for the convenience, stability and physicality of the media, and there will be a market for (new release) vinyl for those who like album covers, hearing pops and groove noise, are accustomed to severely reduced dynamic range, and who never turn the volume up high enough so that the system enters an uncontrollable LF feedback state. Old release vinyl has the unique ability to bring you performances that you can't find on CD, which is entirely another matter. And there will always be a market for wooden knobs that "add to the purity of the sound", cables that "sweeten the music", and various other "audiophile" mythologies-turned-ripoff-scams. Because (a) people don't understand the audio process, and (b) the entire thing is, by its very nature, extremely subjective. So much so that you can barely find an actual review on specifications any longer.
Back to compression. Make no mistake: There is nothing about the CD as a medium that says it needs to be compressed; the significantly higher dynamic range actually allows for less compression than you typically hear on an old-school LP. The fact that you rarely get to experience this is a consequence of various social factors from radio stations which want to be "as loud as that other station" to a general feeling in the recording industry that if you make an uncompressed recording, your recording will sound "too quiet" compared to everyone else's, and so require the listener to adjust their sound system, an inconvenience unthinkable for some reason that has always been completely opaque to me. But then again, I listen to music carefully, not as background that I require be at a particular level of monotony.
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Re:not this again... (Score:4, Interesting)
Because, as a record company executive, you want your songs to sell. Louder songs stand out more at clubs and on the radio. However, you must abide by government regulations as to how loud a song is, and radio stations play every song at the same volume on their end. However, the difference lies in the fact that humans perceive sounds as loud or soft based on their average loudness, not their peak loudness, and you can make sounds louder on average very easily using CDs. The loudness of the final product is an afterthought.
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Re:not this again... (Score:4, Insightful)
the CD gets a perfect signal right until the brick wall, while the vinyl does not, result: high dynamics sound better on CD.
introduce loudness war: mastering engineers are tempted by the perfect representation of CD at max level, they remove all dynamics by compressing everything to max level. result: flat, dull sound on CD. vinyl stays imperfect in its representation of dynamics, but unlike CD it at least keeps any dynamics to represent.
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In a Related Story... (Score:5, Funny)
Cue digital/analog war (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Cue digital/analog war (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The Missing Background in CDs (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I have noticed that. No matter how much I strain, I cannot hear the background on CDs. No hiss, no pops, no crackle, no distortion... nothing that wasn't in the original music.
OTOH, on CDs I can hear some unwanted background noise that I cannot hear in vinyl, for instance in classical music recordings there's the faint paper rustle when the musicians turn the pages in the score. That sound is very clearly heard in some CDs, but completely masked by the background noise in vinyl.
Well, if you have one of these [feelingretro.com] I can see why. I savage a beautiful Philips turntable from a flea market, built it a new walnut base so it wouldn't look shabby, and gave it the love and care it needed. Along with a proper phono pre-amp it does a fine job of reproducing music. I also keep my records clean and unscratched, so no clicks, pops or anything else. Long ago I figured if I was going to have hundreds of $ in vinyl I'd best take care of the collection. CDs are convenient that you can play carpet hockey with them and still get a reasonable output, but that "error correction" is just approximating and filling gaps.
Worst is so many recordings which originated on vinyl never will be released on CD as they weren't popular enough. Other albums have had songs trimmed to fit on CD, for whatever rationale the musica company had for editing. Last, the crummy "remastering" -- the first Dire Straits, Sultans of Swing was trimmed at the end for CD, eventually restored to its full on a later "greatest hits" release. Wow. One Chicago collection CD was clearly taken from some media in distress, perhaps old master tapes or even copied from cassettes. Terrible.
Music captured as digital and given good treatment, as Telarc do, is a fine thing on CD, but some of the old stuff just never had a fair day in court when converted -- or was initially released as a jobber recording, to be followed by Re-Master, 20 bit, 24 bit, SACD, etc. to garner money over and over again for the same recording.
I keep both, but don't expect much from CDs. When they are good, that's fine, when they aren't, meh.
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Not until (Score:5, Funny)
Mechanical Wear (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me get this straight: (Score:5, Insightful)
And they say technology can't solve social problems. Or, in this case, lack of technology...
-F
Content-free article (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy doesn't know what he is talking about.
Re:Content-free article (Score:5, Insightful)
that vinyl required a good deal MORE compression and severely limited
frequency response (as the needle can only track certain features).
It also has severe inter-channel crosstalk, poor low frequency
response, and a much higher noise floor.
Of course, as a fashion statement, none of these things matter.
However to claim it is in any way technically better is just laughable.
Parent
Digital downloads- maybe. Vinyl- no (Score:5, Insightful)
tick tick .... tick tick .... (Score:5, Insightful)
More important though, there is one thing that vinyl lacks - error correction. A couple of scratches on a CD don't make that much difference usually because the CD player will compensate, but once you've gouged a vinyl record that pop or click is there forever.
Vinyl collection (Score:5, Interesting)
Years ago, when CDs first emerged I picked up a few Telarc disks and was impressed. Stupidly I assumed this meant all CDs would be of high quality and began physically downsizing my music collection. At some point, after unloading some treasures I'll never see again (for less than $$$$ on ebay anyway) I listened through a few recent exchanges and realised a lot of CD re-issues were shite. Bollox! I halted the exchange and have since retained the majority of my vinyl collection and even added to it. Some of that old well mastered stuff is well beyond the means of modestly priced CD player and even some immodestly priced ones.
An interesting twist... (Score:4, Interesting)
That being said, I'm pulling out some old vinyl and giving it a try. At least I don't have to worry about it not working on a old turntable (anything made in the last 30 years, at least), or DRM for that matter. Also, cover art looks better on an album than on CD.
Retarded audiophiles (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Retarded audiophiles (Score:5, Funny)
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And Darwin be dammed as well. (Score:5, Insightful)
Damm right my ears are so good that I can toss out the cornerstone of DSP!
Vinyl doesn't have an infinite resolution anymore than a photograph does. You can not keep blowing up a photograph even though it is an analog recording medium. Vinyl does have a finite resolution just like digital methods.
And guess what? They will still use digital equipment in the studios because there is no quality loss when making copies! They will just move the DAC stage from your receiver to the cutting head for the record.
Nope your as wrong as any creationist and showing just as deep an understanding of science.
Yes the loudness wars are making CDs crap but that has nothing to do with digital vs analog.
I hate to sound like a member of the tin hat bunch but I have to wonder if this isn't a brilliant plan by the music companies to sell you the same music yet again! It is a lot harder to rip a record and put it on your ipod than a CD. So they sell you the "Better sounding" record for your home stereo and then the digital download full of DRM for your music player.
Vinyl sounds better? Hogwash! (Score:5, Informative)
Sweet, sweet noise (Score:4, Insightful)
Loudness War (Score:4, Interesting)
Pointless (Score:4, Insightful)
But the FA is missing one REALLY HUGE point:
Most people don't "listen" to music. They use it as a soundtrack to their sad pathetic lives as they schlep their bodies to and from work, or put it on as background during dinner, or an ambient enhancement while reading or cruising the web, or as something to hide the sounds of bedsprings while they fuck their paramour du jour.
But VERY FEW people sit and listen to music with the attention one would need to bother with discerning the subtleties between different recording principles. Music is under competition from a thousand different directions, and people's lives are so busy, that sitting around in a comfy chair with a nice drink and listening, being MOVED by music, being swet away by something that matters, is an increasingly rare event.
I consider this a sad thing, but not unexpected, given the circumstances. There is no urge toward quality. fuck - if there was, then I wouldn't have 160 gigs of 192bps mp3 files. WHY do I, as a lover of fine audio, have so much mp3? Because I can't fit my stereo system into my office, and I like working to music. I am not uncommon. I know MANY people with extensive record and CD collections who have huge mp3 selections. And I also know many people who have huge mp3 collections and very few CDs and no vinyl records at all. They are perfectly good people who CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE. They are not deaf - they just don't care. And more and more people are like that.
So, in short, I think vinyl will NEVER replace CDs. CDs and vinyl will be replaced by high quality digital audio downloads and digital/cable/internet radio. I love my vinyl, but I'm not stupid about it.
RS
Games (Score:5, Funny)
Audiophiles are idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
Devices to demagnetize your CDs. Or your vinyl. Yes, demagnitize your plastic. (I predict that some dumbass will reply to this defending one or both of these devices, with a lot of technobabble they don't understand, because it doesn't actually mean anything.)
$100 speaker cables.
$8000 speaker cables. (Current flamewar going on between manufacturers of the two over which is the bigger pile of steaming shit.)
Tube amplifiers.
$485 wooden volume control knobs for your tube amplifiers.
Magic markers to color the edges of your audio CDs to improve the sound.
Magic laquer to paint on your transistors.
Note that any of these claimed miracles would easily qualify for the $1,000,000 JREF prize - if they worked. None of the manufacturers, or the reviewers or editors for various audiophile magazines, has the time - maybe half an hour - to win a $1,000,000, which they all confidently claim they could win. If only they had the time.
Audiophiles are idiots.
the compression thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nyquist's theorem (Score:4, Informative)
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