CD OR VINYL?

[rlg118]

[ubu55]

Like many here I have a vinyl collection, @ 1500 LP's (scattered over 2 homes, a storage unit, & Mom's garage), and around 600 cd's, many, duplications of vinyl titles.
As noted, album covers, as Art, give an extra, wonderful dimension. I have a few hundred stacked in & a few displayed, at the base of the shelves holding the stereo, changing the show to suit the mood. Right now it's: 'Garcia', Plastic Ono Band's 'Live Peace in Toronto', the hologram 'Satanic Majesties', Aoxomoxoa, & Slim Harpo's 'Tip on In'. (2 of the covers are (IMO) way better than the album).
There are several hundred more in shelving in the kitchen... but I never seem to play them anymore, and don't even have the turntable hooked up at the moment. So much easier to simply load the 5-cd changer and hit: "all discs", "shuffle". Think the last time I got a new stylus was around 1993, and the cartridge is late 80's probably.

On the same kitchen shelves are issues of Rolling Stone from 1969 to the mid-70's, and dog-eared issues of the Berkeley Barb from '68 to '71 (anyone here remember Roger Calkins & Roger Calkins Music??? How about 'Shake the Quake, Stay High!")

[vo1v0d]

Screw CDs
I thought I might transfer everything to a more durable format, ie. cd so I bought a cd recorder. I checked out bitrates and all that guff and settled for a Philips twin deck so I could edit on the run as it were. The instruction manual looked like a phone book and after four hours I had only managed to burn one cd so it went back in its box ready to go on ebay so some eighteen year old who fancies himself as a dj could avail himself of it.
My nephew gave me a minidisc walkman and I tried recording with it and it was great. The only downside is the compression format is Sony A-Trac. I say downside but it is vastly superior to MP3 but the dumb futhemuckers at Sony rfused to release the code so it languished and died as a format. I ended up buying 5 minidisc decks, one semi-pro which went back in its box with its phone book, two I have outgrown and two I use.
Why bother? The md has the same 80 mins capacity as a cd but you can record over it up to a thousand times. The md is totally covered so is dirt proof and scratchproof. If you dont like the order of the tracks you recorded you can simply change them. You dont like the changes? There is an undo button.
I use my md deck to record five hours of Dab radio at XLP speed ( 4 x 80 mins) and the sound at this setting which is the worst quality still fares well in comparison with mp3.
If I ever find all my vinyl it is going to minidisc.
And another thing; I bought a few cd.s that I originally owned on vinyl and they sounded like crap. My equipment is all valve/valve hybrid and brings out sheer quality and depth and richness providing it is there. The sheer thinness of some old Tamla in comparison with vinyl is staggering in its lack of depth and dynamics. Does anybody know if this is down to digital remastering.
I am against the whole idea of remastering anything as I want to hear the Four Tops the way Levi Stbbs heard them, the Beatles like John Lennon heard them etc.
It is my total dissatisfaction with cds that I have heard when I remeber the vinyl version that makesme say
Screw CD.s

[vo1v0d]

Forgot to mention another aspect of minidiscs; the superior DAC. I am listening to a track on my pc being streamed online and it sounds thin. I pressed record and pause on my minidisc deck so the signal goes through it instead of straight to the amplifier and the full richness of the track booms out. It is worth having a minidisc recorder attatched to a pc for the superiority of the Digital Analogue Converter compared with any soundcard costing less than three figures

[NIN]

At last !

An article that clearly explains what I've always suspected

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2013/07/video-explains-why-difference-between-analog-digital-isnt-what-most-people-think/#more-30013

There is no difference between analogue (which is a misnomer BTW) and digital , which has been incorrectly defined & displayed as 'stair-step' due to digital displaying techniques.

It also blows the desire for so called lossless formats to pieces

well worth watching the video

[daz]

CD! Don't want crackly vinyl

[LeChris]

Normally the sound quality of a record is better. If you compare analog with digital you see the fact. Even if you listen to records it´s way more smoother and the sound nuance is incredible.

First I also thought that records always listen "cracky". This only depends on the condition of the record (no scratches, nearly perfect sound), the record player, stereo-amp and the speakers.

It´s also very important to de-magnatize the records before listening to it.

I only got some "beginners equipment":

- Thorens TD-115 MK II with yellow Audio Technika needle
- AVM Phono Evolution P2
- Yamaha Stereo Amp AX-397
- Magnat Monitor Supreme speakers
- "good" audio cables (RCAs and 4 mm² copper audio cables with Nakamichi banana plugs)

Maybe sounds a little bit weird, but got all these stuff for aprox. 400,-- Euro.

With this stuff music is an eperience

OK, maybe I´m a little freak, also got one of the modified Playstation 1 (SCPH-1002). Listening to CDs with this player is also way better

I don´t think that in the near future only mp3s will exist. There will always be CDs and records beside digital audio media
MP3 is a good thing, but if you like to have quality you will listen to WAV (CDs) and records

[old alal]

CD Vs Vinyl jeez, cannot solve that but I am now on digital full bandwidth, studio quality downloads. So lets see I have 1500+ Vinyl albums, 700 + 45rpm singles, 200+ 12inch singles, (used to DJ), 2000+cd's and now some 2.5tb of digital music (not compressed) and 20gb ish of mp3/wmv files for personal players.

I have cd duplicates of about 75% of my Vinyl, and all of this ripped to the digital server storage. Call me a hoarder.

I play Vinyl on an LP12 I've had for 25 years (newer cartridge, tonearm and stylus) Powered and amplified through Akurate amps. Can't afford Klimax but would if I could, and I would go active if I could as well.

All Linn for those not in the know.

My last upgrade was the DSM digital server, hoping for a speaker upgrade next then..... some bastard will bring out something new so I have to start again. Mrs Alal hates the fact that once I replaced the Vinyl with CD and now digital I haven't got rid of anything yet !!!!!

[vo1v0d]

There are serious audiophiles out there who would regard a thousand pound hifi system the way we would regard a 1980's Amstrad boombox (google Nordost Valhalla cables). From thir forums I have learned a few startling facts about cd.s.
A cd/dvd is not designed for optimum performance in a cd/dvd player; it is designed for the manufacturing machinery to be able to be handled with ease. It should not be symmetrical as the signal is allowed to bounce of the edges like Bruce Lee in that hall of mirrors. True audiophiles buy a machine for £450 which cuts the perfect bevel on the edge and claims to improve the sound/information by as much as 12%.
Then there is the crap they coat cds with to make them slide out of the moulds easily; the solvent for that is carcinogenic so there is a washer for £250 to de-crap them. 10% improvement in sound again. There are a few shops for serious audiophiles that have machines that cut and wash cds for about a pound a process but with most cd players we would not notice the difference.
These people have a cd player costing about a grand and a digital audio converter costing half as much again just to get a cd signal to the amplifier.
These people would notice if the second violin was playing flat.
The information I have supplied is totally irrelevant to most of us but I felt I should share the information as to how the music industry compromises its products confidently assuming we would never know the difference.

[andrito]

I have vinyl that I will never part with. I myself personally will prefer a digital high resolution copy of that music, as long as it is transferred the way it supposed to sound ie: on a mobile fidelity release. We all have our preferences and what we like is what we like. I prefer digital in the end simply because I grew tired of the number of issues with vinyl LP's that CD simply eliminated.

pros: no scratches, no pops, clicks, no groove damage, no surface noise, no subsonic rumble, no wow and flutter, no pitch deviation, no replacing needles ever 2 yrs, no warping, no tonal deviation from warping, no noise floor, no pressing variations from different runs

cons: smaller packaging or in the case of purchasing a digital download, no cover art at all, later releases or "remixes and remasters" being compressed, brickwalled, remixes being altered so much you almost can't recognize the original music (original CD releases are almost always superior to their remixed or reissued counterparts)

Digital: WAV or FLAC - lossless - 24 bit / 192 kHz or DSD 1 bit / 2.8224 MHz
mp3 - lossy (garbage)
aac - lossy (garbage)
dolby digital (dvd dolby digital is/was garbage, it was simply a lossy compression. Dolby TrueHD for bluray / UHD is lossless)
DTS (lossy surround, higher bitrate overall then Dolby Digital but still lossy. DTS-HD-MA is lossless for bluray / UHD)