With vinyl making a comeback over the past few years and a lot of people are switching over to this medium, which do you prefer, CDs or vinyl? For me it would have to be CDs because I like the clearer sound.
gofar99 Messages: 1949 Registered: May 2010 Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Hi, Was this a trick question? I didn't know there was anything but vinyl. Actually I use both plus DVD audio and some stuff in 24/96 and 24/192 on a dedicated PC. Vinyl is the one I prefer though. The resurgence is true IMO and there are likely several reasons. First when compared to digital music (on servers) you can actually touch the disks. You really own them. If your favorite cloud server goes down (or bankrupt) you are SOL. For CDs the issues are a little different. You can hold it in your hand and do own it. The two biggest problems I have with it are: first it is only 16/44 and even with really good players you can get a sound that can have artifacts. second is that much of the music on CDs has been severely edited and altered. I do have a number that are exceptions to these problems though. Most are SACDs and HDCDs which are really different animals from the standard CD. Vinyl has issues as well. Higher distortion, lower S/N, and can be just as badly recorded as the CDs. Still when played on a good system it seems to me to have a higher quality emotional content. To sound overly simple it sounds to me to be more musical. Yes it makes no sense, but neither do a lot of other things. Now....for the future....I see high resolution digital 24 or 32 / 192 to 320 taking over. It seems to be mostly a matter of cost of storage and conversion back to sound at the user end. Recordings made in those formats and mastered well will certainly IMO be extremely hard to distinguish from the real sources. I doubt that vinyl will go away though as there is a huge reservoir of legacy music on it and much will never end up as high resolution digital. In any case which ever you prefer...just sit back and enjoy it.
I prefer vinyl because that's what I grew up with. The sound is something you don't forget. "Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only The Piano Player" sounds better on vinyl because the sound is true to the way it was recorded. The sound may be clearer on CD, but it isn't a "true" kind of clear.
I read that vinyl's most glaring weakness compared to the CDs or the digital formats is the bass. Vinyls can't capture the low-end bass sounds as good as their competitors. I have grown to appreciate the low notes which enrich the songs, so I wonder if I would have disliked vinyl too.
When I was a teenager (back in the dark ages), we had bass. We had plenty of bass. Sometimes the whole trunk was dedicated to the speaker system and WE HAD BASS!! I must admit though, that today CD's and digital are much more convenient.
gofar99 Messages: 1949 Registered: May 2010 Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Hi
"I read that vinyl's most glaring weakness compared to the CDs or the digital formats is the bass. Vinyls can't capture the low-end bass sounds as good as their competitors."
Humm....I get an easy 20HZ with my system. To be truthful there really is very little in any media except for DVDs of movies below 50HZ. I have all of those capabilities plus reel to reel tape. The response (bass or other) is dictated by: the musician, the recorder, the mix and finally the quality of the disk or other thing that is at the end of the chain. I have as many CDs with so-so bass as LPs. If you go out and get a Crosley record player and say the bass in poor...sure. Same holds true for nearly anything in that price range. This is unfortunately the great divide. A reasonable turntable and the stuff that goes with it is certainly more costly than an iPod (or other similar device). Vinyl reproduction is more costly, but good gear (of either type) will not have deficient response as you have been led to believe.
I think that despite the resurgence of vinyl, the CD still carries the day, in terms of quality. It doesn't hurt to have a mix of both though and I wouldn't blame anyone who wasn't for vinyl, especially those folks that hadn't been born when it was the 'in-thing'.
Wayne Parham Messages: 18786 Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)
I think maybe what some have heard about the bass limitation in vinyl is the problem of the size of the groove, but that is a problem that was solved by the RIAA equalization curve. That has been done since the 1950s. Even before then - like in the 1920s - the earliest recordings had equalization applied too, it just wasn't standardized. Every manufacturer had their own filter.
One should note that this groove size thing isn't a flaw in the system - It's just an application of the laws of physics. Cutting the groove is constant velocity, but what we want is constant displacement. So pre-emphasis equalization is provided to create this condition.
One should also note that digital media has it's own sets of physical limitations and it's own sets of quirks that have to be addressed. After all, the recording isn't even a copy of the original. It's a sliced-and-diced representation which has to be reassembled. So we have anti-aliasing, brick-wall filters to remove stuff at and above the Nyquist frequency and a whole host of quantitative and temporal errors to live with.
Bottom line is both analog and digital recording techniques have issues. I don't dismiss either way - both have their strengths and both have their weaknesses.
As for digital media, I personally prefer BluRay over CD. My CDs are OK, but they don't thrill me. But some artists only offer CD, so that's my only choice. What really bugs me are the artists that only offer music via MP3. I won't buy their music.
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I didn't know there was anything but vinyl. 
Actually I use both plus DVD audio and some stuff in 24/96 and 24/192 on a dedicated PC. Vinyl is the one I prefer though. The resurgence is true IMO and there are likely several reasons. First when compared to digital music (on servers) you can actually touch the disks. You really own them. If your favorite cloud server goes down (or bankrupt) you are SOL. For CDs the issues are a little different. You can hold it in your hand and do own it. The two biggest problems I have with it are: first it is only 16/44 and even with really good players you can get a sound that can have artifacts. second is that much of the music on CDs has been severely edited and altered. I do have a number that are exceptions to these problems though. Most are SACDs and HDCDs which are really different animals from the standard CD. Vinyl has issues as well. Higher distortion, lower S/N, and can be just as badly recorded as the CDs. Still when played on a good system it seems to me to have a higher quality emotional content. To sound overly simple it sounds to me to be more musical. Yes it makes no sense, but neither do a lot of other things. Now....for the future....I see high resolution digital 24 or 32 / 192 to 320 taking over. It seems to be mostly a matter of cost of storage and conversion back to sound at the user end. Recordings made in those formats and mastered well will certainly IMO be extremely hard to distinguish from the real sources. I doubt that vinyl will go away though as there is a huge reservoir of legacy music on it and much will never end up as high resolution digital. In any case which ever you prefer...just sit back and enjoy it.
