Vinyl Gets Its Groove Back 751
theodp writes "Time reports that vinyl records are suddenly cool again. Vinyl has a warmer, more nuanced sound than CDs or MP3s; records feature large album covers with imaginative graphics, pullout photos, and liner notes. 'Bad sound on an iPod has had an impact on a lot of people going back to vinyl,' says 15-year-old David MacRunnel, who owns more than 1,000 records."
"Suddenly"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not surprising... (Score:5, Insightful)
And then the audiophile jargon of "nuanced" etc etc... What a load of crap.
echo....echo....echo (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising... (Score:1, Insightful)
This is true... to an extent (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with claims like this is that they're not falsifiable in any meaningful way. Of course it can be argued that vinyl is "warmer" and more "nuanced" - all depending on your definition of "warm" and "nuanced". What is true is that when accurate reproduction of the source sound is the goal, digital is used nearly exclusively.
This is entirely separate, of course, from the issue of the quality of compressed sound files, such as those most commonly found on iPods. Depending on the algorithm and the amount of the compression used, it can certainly have a dramatic influence on the sound quality - in some cases making it clearly lower quality than records.Re:Not surprising... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please... (Score:2, Insightful)
It also never occurred to me that pops and clicks were really part of a "nuanced" sound, and not the inevitable failure of an archaic mechanical playback process.
One Cannot Identify With An Infinite Supply (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone has a thousand albums on Vinyl, it's a different story. You think something of him. Maybe good, maybe bad, but you can expect him to rather deeply identify himself by his music. Each record was individually chosen, to the exclusion of others. Time was invested, thought was expressed, identity is reflected.
And that, of course, is what not just Vinyl, but the entire shared music experience is really about. Music is more than bits. Music is more than waves of air lapping or pounding at one's eardrums. Music is, or at least can be, about identity. That a fifteen year old kid is desperately trying to assert his should surprise absolutely nobody here.
Vinyl is an awful medium (Score:2, Insightful)
My personal vendetta against vinyl stems from crackle. I have lots of MP3s which have been ripped from vinyl, and you can always tell because crackling (dust on the track) is very difficult to eliminate in a practical manner. I have a high quality audio system so I can hear the crackle very clearly. The first time I noticed it I thought my speakers had developed a severe fault before I realised it was a vinyl rip.
High-end audio is not about the perfect source, but I'm afraid vinyl just falls too far short.
The Wisdom of 15-Year-Olds (Score:4, Insightful)
That's crap. How about rewording it to be a bit more truthful (and accurate): 'Highly-compressed, far less than CD quality sound, on an iPod has had an impact on some people looking for alternatives, including vinyl,'
This kid may have 1000 records, but that pales compared to 100,000,000 iPod sales and still growing.
Besides, portable music is the Big Thing. How are you going to play that vinyl on your portable music player? In fact, it's hard to even find a great turntable at an affordable price any longer. It's not like the old days when a couple hundred bucks could buy a great Dual 1237. Mine still sits next to my computer -- and isn't for sale!
No, it's not (Score:2, Insightful)
MP3 is a lossy format so between those two, who knows, but the 'audiophiles' that claim vinyl is superior make me wretch. And yes, I still have plenty of vinyl because there was a time that was all we had.
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and that's assuming the LP wasn't digitally mastered. If it was, then the point is moot - the vinyl can't capture anything that wasn't in the digital master.
Re:Vinyl is an awful medium (Score:3, Insightful)
Pre-echo normally refers to a digital phenomenon of frequency domain transforms, not vinyl.
Well, that and there's the old print-through on analog mag tape masters that could cause something similar, but that has nothing to do with vinyl and everything to do with bad mastering media.
But yeah, vinyl has issues because of pops and crackles. Good reason to keep your area clean and never touch a record except on the edges. And try a heavier tonearm. :-)
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Digital is utterly neutral, cold and perfect every time. I'm not sure exactly why, but people seem to prefer live musicians over a CD at any form of gathering even though it'll almost certainly be less perfect than the CD. I'm not talking about concerts which are a social event in itself but all sorts of celebrations and parties that would be just the same without the band. I think it's something of the same, they don't want a perfect rendering of the music, they want a personal one. There's something to a record that you know every nook and scratch on. You just can't that kind of attachment to a CD.
Re:echo....echo....echo (Score:1, Insightful)
The problem is very simple though: everyone harping on the "Loudness War" has a different objective than the participants in it. You want the best sound you can get on your CDs. THEY want sales. Louder recordings sell better, even if they sound like shit, because most people aren't very discerning about it. Basic psychology takes over from there, and folks assume louder (bigger) is better.
I'm frustrated by the lack of detail in modern music recording since I spent my formative years as a musician playing trumpet. Every teacher I had harped on the need for wide dynamic range to create a detailed soundscape for the listener's brain to play in. But marketing people don't give a rat's ass about that. They care what sells CDs, and loudness does it. Vinyl is only kept around by a specific audience that doesn't want that loudness, otherwise they'd do the same to your precious records too. Imagine just how shitty THAT would sound.
Accuracy and Vinyl (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll say one last thing. People put down vinyl because it's not as accurate as digital. But accuracy is impossible to achieve in the sense you're going for. When artists record and master music, they listen back to it in a variety of different ways, certain speakers and settings which you have no idea of. And even if you knew, that still doesn't mean you can accurately reproduce what the artist/producer/engineer intended because they are frequently working in "translation" where they are listening back with a certain sound system, but they are actually keeping in mind what it will sound like on other sound systems, with no one way being defined as the exact way it should sound; they weren't intending anyone actually to listen to the music with a pair of studio monitors, even though that's how they were listening to it. So what then could possibly be the "accurate" sound? It's best not to get bent all out of shape over these things I think. The nice thing about vinyl is that you can buy some good albums for cheap at used record stores, but I suppose it depends on what you like, but anyone with a general appreciation for music who isn't too particular can find some good music on vinyl for real cheap.
The "warmer, more nuanced sound" can be reproduced (Score:5, Insightful)
The LP was just never a very good reproduction of the sound in the studio.
But ok, some people prefer the sound the way it is distorted by reproduction via LP/record player, a matter of taste.
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oy vey (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus one big advantage with MP3 over even CD... YOU CAN'T SCRATCH AN MP3. I mean I love vinyl, I always will, I have tons of it in storage, but I'm also a realist. One mishap and you're precious vinyl is fucked for ever. Whenever I hear Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust", even after 25+ years, I STILL expect it to skip during the final chorus because my version got scratched there shortly after purchase. And, of course, MP3 won't break, warp in the heat etc... Vinyl may sound good, but it's a retarded format due to it's volatility.
I've also got CD's that won't play properly due to a scratch being at just the wrong angle etc...
Though I do find it funny that in the late 80's there was all that crap about the ink they use on CD's eating through the CD and rendering unplayable within seven years. Even made the mainstream media. Turned out to be utter garbage, surprise surprise. I've got CD's that are 20 years old and still play just fine.
Vinyl Shminyl. most people just have cloth ears! (Score:3, Insightful)
> passages... MUCH better, actually.
Firstly, as I posted elsewhere, all music recorded today is recorded digitally using either 16bit or 24bit recorders. It is simply not possible for vinyl to improve on the sound of the original digital recording. Perhaps you are referring to the absolute necessity for recordings when being transferred onto vinyl needing to have most of the dynamic range compressed out of it in order to fit within the dynamic range of a vinyl record. 16bit digital audio has approx 100dB of dynamic range available. The only problem with digital audio that I have come across is having too wide a dynamic range for listening comfort and I'm needing to turn the volume DOWN for when the orchestra gets into the seriously loud parts.
> It has to do with bit depth which decreases as the audio level goes
> down. CDs are mastered with between 12db and 20db of headroom before
> absolute clipping, so you're only using about 14 of your 16 bits
> right there.
Actually, when I was *mastering* CDs I was wanting to have the peak volume no less than 3db from 0dBfs.
Also, the bit depth does not alter at all. It remains that the signal is still captured as a 16bit sample. The fact that the audio level may be capable of being STORED in fewer than 16bits does not change the fact that the voltage difference represented by, say, 65535 and 65534 up near the top end of the 16bit dynamic range is the same voltage difference that is represented between 127 and 126 down near the bottom end of the 16bit dynamic range.
If you take the same, 50dB accoustic signal and record it both digitally and using a good professional analogue recorder, (both set to be capable of capturing an accoustic peek of 96dB without distortion) and then digitally normalise the former to have a peek of, say, 1dBfs, and you playback the output of the former into the input of another likewise good professional analogue recorder, but this time amplifying the output so that it has a peek of 96dB, you will find that both will introduce their own types of distortion into the signal.
The trick really is to record it once, to set the recording levels correctly the first time, and to process the captured signal as little as possible between original recording and final mastering.
The fact that some CD players were so poorly manufactured that they could not cope with the fully dynamic range of 16bit digital audio without the analogue part of the digital/analogue converter itself starting to distort is not in any way a fault of digital audio. People experiencing that should go out and buy a CD player that can do what it claims it can do.
Electronic reproduction is nothing like reality (Score:3, Insightful)
Audiophile nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
There is absolutely NO way that vinyl sounds "better" than CDs. What ever argument you want to put forward, to human beings with our method of processing sounds, A CD with the same source of audio data will reproduce that audio data more faithfully than vinyl. Period, end of discussion. It is up to the audiophiles to disprove this statement.
The nonsense words like "nuanced" and "warmer" and so on are merely way audiophiles with seemingly no real background in engineering, or like fundamentalist christians, somehow fail to shine the lite of reason on their beliefs, are merely ways of describing the distortion that vinyl mechanics adds into the audio.
Now, "sound" and "music" are different and I will grant that there are a lot of things that make recordings sound "pleasing" that are not the quantifiable, but somehow I don't think it is the job of the audio delivery system to inject its own crap into the system.
Also, Audiophiles have an impossible and contradictory view on audio. They'll argue that $7000 speaker cables are worth the money (http://www.pearcable.com/) while also arguing that vinyl is better because it is "warmer" i.e. distorted.
Audiophiles are idiots and they are nothing more stupid people with too much money to spend on stuff that is he electrical/audio equivalent of placebos. In psycho-acoustic terms, if you think it sounds better, then it sounds better. If you are gonna pay $7000 for a cable set and $1000 on your turntable, you have a vested interest in the sound of your system sounding better, so it will. (to you)
Maybe I shouldn't argue with Audiophiles, maybe I should sell them "oxygen free" copper cables at $250 a foot.
The real test is recent vinyl (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? an old album will have been recorded on tape and used classic analog amplifiers, maybe even some valve kit here and there. The modern album is very likely to have been mostly digitally processed.
Simply listening to a modern album and then going back to something recorded in the 70s does not prove that CD or MP3 is less vibrant, it just proves the difference in recording technology. Listening to the same classic album on CD will determine if the format is colouring the sound.
Re: "Digitally normalise" in Audio (Score:4, Insightful)
Its purpose is to make the best use of the available dynamic range. By adjusting the highest peaks to "just below clipping" you avoid using up dynamic range for headroom. Of course this only makes sense if the original recording has a greater dynamic range than the target, otherwise you would just increase the quantization noise along with the audio signal. That is why studios like to use 20 or 24 bit digital equipment.
As an example, assume the sound engineer leaves 10 db of headroom during recording. Then
1) On 16 bit equipment with 96 dB dynamic range, you get an actual S/N ratio of 86 dB. The 10 dB headroom are lost, normalization would be pointless.
2) On 20 bit equipment with 120 dB dynamic range, you get an actual S/N ratio of 110 dB. In this case, you can convert the 20 bit recording to a normalized 16 bit recording that has a S/N ratio of 96 dB. This is how you make the best use of a digital format with limited dynamic range.
On a more personal note, the way you ridicule GP over a few spelling errors deserves modding down as troll. Especially since you obviously don't understand all of the involved concepts yourself.
Re:Oy vey (Score:2, Insightful)
But I've also heard music distributed in digital formats that is just superb. Maybe it's just that there are a lot of dopey kids with enough money to buy some equipment who are calling themselves "music producers" now. I've met a few of the people who are producing pop records. These are not sensitive geniuses for the most part, and subtlety is not part of their vocabulary. I'm pretty sure many of them became "producers" because they provide the band with weed.
Also, from TFA: That's if your idea of "nuance" is clicks and pops. I find it humorous that many of the vinyl records that are held in such high regard were either recorded or mastered digitally.
So in those cases, unless there's some property of vinyl that actually adds "warmness" to music that wasn't already there in the recording, it's just hype.
Me, I'm going back to wax cylinders. Those were really the bomb.
My own experience. (Score:2, Insightful)
Now one day, during a small gathering while he was packing up the store for a move, which he did several times over the years, some of the select few of us were invited into the store for a small party of sorts. We all brought something to the mix, be it recordings or audio gear of some kind, or even a case of grape soda.
One of the guys that was invited, brought along his Kuzma Stabi Reference turntable. He had it fitted with a Van Den Hul cartridge, which ran through a Michael Yee Audio phono preamplifier. All said, I think the turntable and electronics he had set up totaled around $5000 USD, however I'm not sure about what the price would be in today's market. Probably pretty close.
After setting up, we did some comparative listening. We had the benefit of having several recordings that were pressed on vinyl as well as released on CD. Now, the system used for CD playback was by no means a slouch, I believe we were using the shop's Acurus ACD-11 at the time.
We played the releases on CD first. We were treated to the normal feats that CD provides, the details of which I won't go into here. We were very familiar with most of these recordings as the shop owner had been using them in the store, some of them for many years to demonstrate Hi-Fi gear. After we had listened to them, we switched over to the turntable to hear the vinyl versions.
Folks, if you have not had the chance to do anything like this for yourselves, I suggest that you try it. The difference is staggering. The image opens up to triple it's original size. The depth of space pushes back, and opens upwards. The sound that was once sitting patiently inside the speakers stands up as tall as the ceiling, looming over your head and wrapping it's arms around you. It's nearly impossible to describe to anyone who has not experienced it.
People like to compare digital audio and analog audio to the difference between digital and analog tv, but that really isn't a fair comparison. That would be like comparing analog radio to digital radio. I prefer to think of it more like, analog audio is like film. Either in a movie theater or a real photograph from a camera. Digital audio is like a DVD or a photograph from a digital camera. The only problem is, we're stuck at 2 mega pixels. Sure, there have been advancements in digital audio, but it's still nothing near what you get with the right gear and a good analog recording.
Set up your own test and try it. Don't quote numbers and theories. Just go down to a good audio shop that sells turntables and try it. Chances are if they sell turntables, they are already prepared to do the vinyl comparison.
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to disagree with someone on the same side of this issue, but... No, they most certainly cannot sound better. Regardless of quality, a mechanical stylus has something that a CD's laser does not: inertia in its plane of movement/measurement. That alone limits both the dynamic range and frequency response of vinyl (or any mechanically-sampled waveform) to well under what a CD offers (and not even in the same ballpark as DVD-A).
That said, turntables with a laser "stylus" do exist - But these two cannot physically match the quality of a CD, for one simple reason - The vinyl master also used a mechanical stylus to lay down the track.
I get so sick of this discussion coming up every few months. I sincerely have to wonder whether to attribute the problem to ignorance or hipster-pretense. This shouldn't remain an open issue like religion or VI-vs-Emacs - We have a very measureable difference between the two mediums, and vinyl fails any way that you look at it. It simply cannot reproduce a waveform as accurately as CD audio, end of story.
Re:Oy vey (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see, to get the BEST sound out of a record, it needs to be NEW and pressed right, then you need a new and high end cartridge on your high end turntable that has lots of mass so that you dont get speed fluxuations. Direct drive with at least 8 pounds of rotating mass is best. now you need the tonearm weight set as light as possible without letting it launch, but not damaging the record.
So finally after spending 3-4 grand to play that record you had better be very still, oh isolate that turntable and not turn it up loud as the vibrations get back INTO the music.
Only raving lunatics think the old albums are better. Cripes I have no intereste in even unboxing that SME turntable from the 80's with it's $1000.00 309 tonearm. Properly mastered CD's on a $99.00 CD player kick the CRAP out of albums except for the very first play.
The problem is there has not been a properly mastered CD released for nearly a decade so most of you dont have a clue as to what a good one sounds like.
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oy vey (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oy vey (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:3, Insightful)
I still do that for my CDs and DVDs - rip 'em and put the originals away. Mostly for convenience - I like being able to access my media from anywhere in the house, but discs are just as easy to damage as LPs were, not to mention those crappy jewel cases!
Another thing people sometimes don't consider until it's too late: buy some of those plastic storage containers and store your CDs, DVDs, LPs, photos, love letters and other irreplaceable objects in them. People will often keep their most precious items in cardboard boxes in the basement. If you have a flood, guess where the water goes? Fires as well - they use a lot of water putting those things out, and smoke causes a great deal of damage too. Of course, if you house burns completely to the ground this isn't going to help, but the majority of "losses" in these instances are not total. Just that something is so badly water damaged, or stinks so badly from smoke, that it can no longer be enjoyed.
Just a word of advise from someone who has seen a lot of people lose things that may have had little monetary value, but were irreplaceable to them.
Re:Oy vey (Score:2, Insightful)
And I'm sick of consumers thinking they are qualified to do A/B comparisons of audio formats. As a musician, I can tell you that they all pretty much suck. I compensate, tweak, & adjust endlessly to get the final digital master to sound the way I want. It's not perfect, but digital recording was a godsend compared to the analog equipment available in the same price range. There is simply no comparison.
So, when the time comes to pick a distribution format, I'm painfully aware of the shortcomings, after hearing the source hundreds or even thousands of times. I don't care about unquantifiable metrics like "warmth", "nuance", or "presence". I've already taken care of that in my recording. I want to be able to switch between the master and the copy and not be able to detect any difference on the multiple playback systems I test. Beyond that, I only care about following a mastering standard that lets the consumer listen to an assortment of music without constantly adjusting the volume control.
It's time for the Crappy Format A vs. Crappy Format B wars to end. It's hard to justify any data compression or audio degredation in light of today's available storage and bandwidth. As a consumer, I just realized I could rip all of my CD's onto a new hard drive in a lossless format at a trivial cost, with room to spare. Who knows? Then I might actually care about what sound card, D/A converter, amplifier, and speakers I use in my home entertainment system.
Re:Oy vey (Score:3, Insightful)
it's actually called even harmonic distortion (as opposed to odd harmonic distortion, which tends to sound "harsh")
regardless, it's distortion, which is to say that it is not the most accurate reproduction of the original as possible. and, what us engineers strive for at every stage of the game, is 100% accurate reproduction. high fidelity, to coin a phrase. while some even harmonic distortion can be aesthetically desirable, and is often added during mastering or applied judiciously and sparingly to individual tracks during mixing, we want absolute control of where and when in the recording process it's added. which is why many of us prefer operating in the digital domain, where it can be controlled, as opposed to the analog domain, where it cannot.