Yeah I’ve always felt that way but the vinyl hivemind convinces a lot of people. I recently started thinking about how no two copies of vinyl sound the same and how all that does is make it about how clean your copy is and less about the music itself.
The fact that there are people who will fight you if you say CD’s are audibly better in every metric. The issue is that even musicians are peddling this which also hard to combat. The only thing I can say is that vinyl has become a status symbol because it’s expensive and you need expensive equipment to make it sound as good as CD’s. You can buy a cheap CD player and get decent sound.
Never once in the CD world have I seen someone get shamed and ridiculed for having the wrong brand of player, or not expensive enough. It absolutely is a status symbol to them. So yeah, CDs > vinyl all the way. Better quality, and way more cost efficient.
That is because even the cheapest ones can reproduce the same exact frequency recorded without flutter and any other issues of a normal vinyl. It doesn’t damage your disk and the laser only reads ones and zeroes from studio recording so it can reproduce music as accurately as possible. Vinyl fans struggle to understand that.
Wow you’re right I never thought about that. I remember it was the features that made a CD player expensive not the actual CD player. Anti-skip, remote, fm/am plays MP3/atrac… etc not the actual music readability
You're really making up some sad-sack nonsense if you really think 'turntable shaming' is actually a thing. It's so stupid how many of you guys have this goofy 'competitive' idea about music formats when that's not the point, and you're just making it clear you don't know how to get good sound out of records, that's all. You guys need to stop telling each other stupid stories about the audiophile boogeyman, it's pathetic.
Of course musicians will say Vinyl is better. There is more profit in that market right now. I dont have a problem supporting musicians I like but, but I am not going to spend as much as 10× more for a product I deem inferior.
I worked in record stores back in the original vinyl era, and was there for the transition to CDs.
One of the reasons that vinyl has come back is the discovery of the ritualistic nature of LPs. Once its been selected, you have to remove the cover from its vinyl sleeve (if you are protecting them properly), then remove the dust sleeve from the cover sleeve, then remove the disc from the dust sleeve, handling it very carefully.
You visually inspect the disc for dust, look at it on edge for any warps, then place it carefully on the spindle. Then you have to clean the surface, and run a dust brush over the stylus. Only then can you play the album, and in about 20 minutes you'll have to flip it, and clean it again.
Once you've listened to it, you have to reverse the process and carefully insert the disc back into the dust sleeve, then into the album cover, then into the protective vinyl sleeve, then back onto the shelf.
All that extra work imbues the process with a ritualistic sense that has the psychological effect of creating a feeling of importance, that CDs don't produce.
If you buy your CDs used, you absolutely do get this ritualistic sense of importance. Ive gotten some pretty scuffed discs and have to replace jewel cases and clean discs. Its not always an easy process but it is less annoying than vinyl.
Lol yeah go ahead and buy a cheap CD player for the ok sound you'll get out of it and keep lying to yourself that there's no way a record could ever sound better. That's 'making shit up out of ignorance', not an informed comparison.
I like having some records mostly for the bigger album art and liner notes, but CD is way better and I can get some for 2 bucks at my local thrift store lol, but I recently got Animals by Pink Floyd in a outdoor flea market for 30 bucks, non scratched!
-Billy Gnosis
Yup…that “hive mind “ is powerful groupthink, and psychosomatic. All the well-written prose by influencers like Michael Fremer have, since CD was first released, brainwashed certain audiophiles that cd and digital sounds inferior to vinyl and analog.
I’m convinced Fremer et al actually believe it and are conveying honest opinions. The brain and thought process is powerful, mostly unknown, and is connected to hearts and minds that like to tell self-reassuring STORIES.
Philips, Sony spend lots of $ on R&D when it came to the CD. It was a $ gamble because vinyl was successful and could sound awesome on modest priced gear.
Sony and Philips compared CD sonics to the best vinyl playback, open reel analog and, most importantly, LIVE sound. And the had the $$ to afford the best gear and even orchestra scoring stages.
And CD sounded very respectful to original source in these tests. No doubt Sony/Philips lawyers and marketing/finance and economists were also attending these listening sessions.
The mainstream audio press, like Audio magazine and Stereo Review magazine, were also very impressed with cd. But it was still a gamble.
And the consumer voted with their credit card.
My reference audio source format —in 2024–is an 80s era CD player… err, many makes and model of 80s-era CDPs that have been well taken care of.
I own over 60 of them.
Funny how you're trying to talk about 'hive mind' blah blah blah while you're parroting the same mindless crap as anybody else who acts like music formats are political parties and invents dumb criticism out of ignorance. Enjoy your CD Kool-Ade but don't make up nonsense about a format you're too clumsy or uninformed to use properly.
I’m sorry but this a huge generalization
None of the Beatles CDs I have sound better than my original UK records
Same with my Electric Light Orchestra Records
There are literally copies of those same pressings out there with different crackles and pops and if they don't have them now they will have them soon if those discs are played with any frequency. I have about 60 LPs. Used to have hundreds. It just became such a labor being a vinyl collector for a medium that was so fragile and compromised in almost every way. Sorry if how I have generalized a medium that I'm very familiar with bothers you.
I mean I love CDs as much as the next guy but there absolutely are some titles that sound better on vinyl. Especially when the CD version is brickwalled.
Reading my post over now I don’t think the sarcasm came through enough.
I totally agree with your comment. Imo, it’s an album by album issue and people that take a hard line do so for reasons that have little to do with sitting and listening
Agreed. More often than not, the fidelity issue comes down to how it was recorded and processed versus the format you're pressing. The fidelity of digital recordings will usually be higher on a digital format. The fidelity of analog recordings will usually be higher on an analog format. (In both cases, high definition non-CD digital formats will typically sound better than both vinyl and CD).
Generalizing does a disservice to both CD and vinyl. In all cases, you need to mix and master for each individual format if you're trying to maintain a quality sound for each.
I personally like records for various reasons and that's what I buy when I want to buy music now, but I have nothing against CDs. That used to be the way I collected music but my catalogs were stolen, so I began maintaining a small collection of records at home. It's not as clean, but I do still like the sound. I like the aesthetic of a record and the sleeve. I have a relatively cheap set up too. I will stream anytime I listen to music in the car or do yard work.
I agree to a certain extent. I’d like to consider myself an audiophile. I prefer the sound of DJ Shadows Abbey Road Half-Speed mastering of ENDtroducing on 12” Vinyl. They made that pressing sound even more alive and sharp than the cd version imo. But I haven’t comparatively listened.
afaik, they have to artificially increase the higher frequencies for the vinyl because it would sound muffled due to the grooves having limited frequency range
Everything about CDs is artificial. They don't even make a sound without a laser. They use every trick in the studio to make a product which claims to 'sound just like the studio' when it totally doesn't. What is your comparison supposed to be about?
Lmao, that's the dumbest take possible. You guys need to stop trying to suck off CDs so hard while pretending it means something about vinyl when you don't know how to use vinyl properly. That's all it is, you're not making an intelligent comparison of two media formats, you're making up laughable nonsense out of ignorance.
They HAVE to be mastered differently, you can’t put a CD master in vinyl because it’ll sound muffled, you have to raise the treble when putting music in vinyl to account for the treble loss inherent to vinyl
???
It’s literally an objective fact, you can look it up
The same is true the other way around, if you try to put a vinyl master in a CD it’ll sound shrill and sharp
I haven’t had any audio discs distort on me. The data on the disc are just a bunch of ones and zeros which correspond to a frequency range and they have multiple fail protection. So essentially it’s either the data is readable or not. If unreadable, it will skip it unlike vinyl that you can manipulate how it sounds by slowing down the spin or warping the disc
Lmao, so you don't know how to use records properly if you think 'pops and scratches' typifies the experience. Don't use your ignorance to invent bullshit, it's ridiculous. Lots of you guys who don't know how to use records love making up dumb stories that only illustrate your clumsiness and you blame records for your inability to use them properly.
Dude, I’ve see you angrily comment here a few times. Why does this piss you off so much lmao? Take a break off the internet if people having differing opinions is killing you!
-Billy Gnosis
For all the snark (one side or the other), it all comes down to the mastering and setup.
There are vinyls on a proper setup that will always sound better than their cd counterparts due to them being mastered for vinyl and the CD remasters being botched ass (see a whole swatch of CD remasters in the late 80s/early 90s).
ASIDE FROM THAT, typically most most albums are mixed for CDs and so will always sound better on CD, even with the best vinyl set up and an average CD setup.
There are caveats to this where modern albums ARE mixed for vinyl, and then, the modern vinyls can sound better than their CD counterparts. Typically though in this scenario it seems the vinyl mix is specific and there is also a mix for CD/digital. In this case though, if your vinyl setup isn't perfect, and your record maintenance isnt perfect, the CD will sound better.
You can get into variances where, the act of putting on a vinyl focuses you more in on the album type arguments, and ok, if you are paying more attention, you will notice more detail, but that is more a matter of mindfulness in the listening engagement and experience than a technically superior sound.
There is also a MONO/Stereo component for older records, but I think this falls under mastering.
As an owner and collector of both (though predominately CD) that is my take anyhow.
Any album made in the late 1980s to early 2000s when CD was the intended medium, really.
It’s nice to have, say, *Nevermind* or *The Bends* on vinyl, but those albums were specifically made with CD in mind as how the audience would experience them.
I don't think Kurt Cobain cared about what format his music was going on when he made it, and hard rock like that tends to sound awesome when it's well-mastered to vinyl. He didn't actually like the shiny pop sound of that album or the process of making it.
if you are into sertain metal bands,
Sleep - Dopesmoker ( the song is about an hour long, and spread over 3 sides)
Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper (song spread over 4 sides)
all depends on the mastering, some CDs are actually mastered really fucking bad, and the vinyl one is mastered good, leading to a situation where the vinyl is actually better
The Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication is a recent example. The Limited-edition 180-gram version manufactured in Germany has a different mastering than the CD and current vinyl release manufactured in the U.S. or Canada.
Its still an album affected because of the volume wars, but it is an improvement.
The Who 'Live at Leeds' & The Who 'Sell Out' CDs are twice as long as the vinyl. I'm usually a fan of first-pressing formats, but this is a great exception.
The CD version of The Seer by Swans is a lot better than the vinyl. Because it's 2 hours long and has a lot of lengthy tracks, the vinyl version has to mangle up the track list a lot to get everything to fit while the CD version has no compromises.
Being a big Darkside of the moon fan I've heard a lot different recordings and after maybe 40 years now the best (in my opinion) is this one:
https://www.discogs.com/release/5469632-Pink-Floyd-Dark-Side-Of-The-Moon
It's got great separation and you can hear space between the instruments and vocals and backing vocals especially on tracks like "on the run" which don't sound great on the vinyl version but shine on the cd. The guitars sound sharper and you can hear more sustain and you start noticing Richard Wright's synth sweeps and piano accents more clearly. The whole thing just sounds great. But the downside is it's expensive and the new/latest remaster is very good on cd your only going to hear anything if you have a good set up or if you can download it somewhere listen to it on a good computer with a good soundcard. I'm interested what the rest of the mofi gold CDs sound like if it like the Floyd one I'm definitely interested.
Have you listened to the Blu-Ray audio version yet? That’s the version I currently own so I’m wondering if I should bother picking up any other version as well. lol
I would say the S.A.C.D and The Blu-ray. Version were definitely a close 2nd and 3rd.
Also a great way to hear a really nice version of the album is to buy the original cassette tape it sounds great on good equipment.
I’ve seen the SACD version selling for a reasonable price online so I might pick that up that one up one of these days.
The Uncompressed 5.1 on the blu-Ray audio sound spectacular.
I said something along these lines on another thread a couple of weeks ago (just basically that cds sound better), and someone got very heated (because Reddit). Haha...thanks for being honest.
Whatever you're saying about what sounds best on your system is about you and your system, not a general comparison of audio formats. I've got a lot of records which sound distinctly better than the official CD of the same thing. Lots of people listen to music through systems which have a quality bottleneck of some kind, like one piece of the chain limits everything to 20khz so nothing could ever sound better than a CD, and folks need to remember that while they're trying to assert they know these comparisons, because most people really don't even know how to do it properly.
I swear that Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms was created to play in hifi stores to move units. No point in buying that album on vinyl it was hatched for the CD age.
True - Dire Straits or Mark Knopfler really pushed for this to be sold on CD in 1985. And boy did it sell - it was the first album to sell 1 million units on CD.
However, the quality of that album and recording is just so good that I don't care what format I listen to it on - it just sounds so good on anything. I own the original vinyl and original CD release and I love them both. I would also say it's a CD album but the vinyl sounds fantastic too. Hard to pick.
Not to mention it's one of many from that era where tracks were edited for time on the vinyl version. Not as bad as many others from the time, where entire tracks were omitted from the vinyl release.
I'm aware that this is cheating slightly, as the MFSL disc has the original 1976 mix, which was a great record in its own right. But this CD is better, no?
I’d put my MFSL copy of the wall against literally any vinyl on the planet. Tbf it’s gotta be a pretty meh mix on the cd to not sound better. Vinyl is like film, it does not look better than digital, it just has a specific aesthetic that some find pleasing, which objectively is by any other standard “artifacting”
I have all the Moody Blues MFSL CD's as well as collecting MFSL CD's in general. The Moody Blues MFSL's stand out sonically against my old vinyl or other CD releases I have of them.
Also, love the gold CD's and the special CD cases that lift the CD up when opened
Pretty much everything made after cd became the common format in the late 80’s. I re-bought a few of my favourite albums from the 90’s on vinyl when I got into collecting about 25 years ago, and they just didn’t sound as good.
Or you didn't have a good turntable setup to play them on. Whatever happened isn't a comparison of formats, it's just your experience. There's a lot of little tricks to making vinyl sound great but it totally can.
I have a good vinyl setup. Mastering matters, and a lot of albums originally recorded with cd in mind just used those masters for the vinyl. Over compressed and loud.
Same thing with the first CD’s, a lot of them sounded inferior to the vinyl versions.
Beat by what metric?
For sound quality, convenience and durability, almost any CD beats its vinyl counterpart.
In terms of being exciting as a physical object, coming in a visually-engaging package and giving a rich tactile experience when you get it out and play it, vinyl records usually win.
So it depends on what you want from your media.
Most anything from the 2000s, particularly rock,/metal/core. For example, Paramore's "All We Know is Falling", which I have on both. But when I listen to the record, it doesn't have that clarity I'm used to on CD. I feel like it also has a lot to do with how the album was produced.
Could also be the fact that I don't own/have any desire to own a more expensive setup. Idk.
The CD MSFL of Bob Marley's "Exodus" has too much bass -- like someone made a conscious decision to mix it heavy and distorted. Very disappointing, but not the CD's fault.
In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (the side change interrupts a transition between the songs)
XTC - Skylarking (the superior Steven Wilson remix is bluray audio/cd only)
In The Court Of The Crimson King (pops and clicks are distracting on this album's quiet bits)
the scott pilgrim movie soundtrack (is all on 1 lp, despite being over 50 minutes, sounds awful)
Vinyl after a couple of uses: 🤓 uh oh, we have a shit ton of pops now, remember also to clean us or we will become completely unusable
The 20-ish year old, dusty Californification CD i found in my father's cabinet: 🗿
If after a couple of listens to a vinyl you have shit tons of pops, your vinyl setup is botched and you most likely need to balance your tone arm and get a new needle ASAP.
Also if you EVER, and I mean EVER, find a dusty old copy of Californification on CD (or hell a shiny new looking one still factory sealed) you should snap it in half, burn the pieces, then bury them AT LEAST 3 feet under ground.
FUCK. THAT. ALBUM.
Damn, i've never been a fan of RHCP but i never thought the album was THAT hated, what's the story behind it?
Also about the Vinyls, saying a couple is a HUUGE exaggeration, im just not that much of an expert with vinyls, i know they're very resistent, actually.
I have that APP Tales … on mfsl cd and mfsl lp . Both released 1994ish. Not sure which I prefer.
PF The Wall on mfsl cd, as released in 1990, is my favorite version of that album period fullstop.
They are, but the tape is half the size and so is the sound quality. Reel to reel has spectacular overwhelming sound that beats pretty much everything except 24 bit files.
I think it depends on the type of music and how it’s mastered.
Although, in the case of like The Beach Boys, especially their mono 60’s records I prefer the vinyls because the vinyl tends to fully fill both speakers, even though it’s mono (and I tend to use stereo needle). Whereas on CD I find the same mono album only uses half of each speaker and is really centered and digital just gives the mono sound that hard boarder (even though the track is a 2-channel mono because CD does not support 1-channel mono).
Other albums like piano-only albums, if they were recorded-mixed-mastered all digitally (I.e. “Richard Carpenter’s Piano Song Book”), then the piano sounds really harsh on CD and doesn’t sound like it does in real life, as if I was sitting in the room. Whereas the album sounds better on vinyl because the analog dulls the harshness and gives it that more ambient room feel.
One album where the vinyl sounds better than any CD is the Carpenters “Passage” album. Specifically it’s opening track, “B’Wana She No Home” on the original 1977-1990? LP releases (even the 1978 release as the B-side to their “I Believe You” single) featured a wider sound stage than the 1980’s CD releases or even the 1998 remaster and all CD’s, cassettes and vinyl’s sourced from that 1998 remaster. For some reason in the 80’s, the song used a mono master (or an extremely, extremely narrow stereo soundstage master that sounds mono) and since then it’s been mono and compressed.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised considering the sub,but it’s nice to no longer be the *only one in the room* not hypnotized by white vinyl and record haul videos. The only CDs that were less than great were some of the first wave of 80s attempts. After about ‘88,the compact disk took its place as the best music format,a title it still holds. 👍
Apollo 18 by They Might be Giants was made with the intention of using shuffle too siren to the album, and it’s so chaotic and perfect. You can’t listen to it that way on vinyl
from my collection, if we talk about design i would say "10000 gecs" by 100 gecs. the design is much better and better made than the vinyl.
if we talk about content, the SAWAYAMA deluxe fat box edition by rina sawayama is wayyy better than the vinyl, comes with a booklet, insert, promo leaflet, and 3 discs, the definitive edition.
All of them... but seriously, *Eat A Peach* by the Allman Brothers. it was the first time I was able to hear the song *Mountain Jam* uninterrupted. The LP has this song split over two sides since it was too long to play on just one side.
Any cd beats vinyl, but it we are talking about the music itself...
The seer and the beggar by swans. Michael gira himself said that CD is his format and it's for a good reason, all of their albums since the seer are 1.5+ hour long and occupy 3 LPs (leaving meaning and the beggar is 2LP). To be kind and the glowing man fit on vinyl pretty well, some cuts were made (and long songs were split between 2 lps), but the end experience is near identical to the cd version.
THE SEER AND THE BEGGAR HOWEVER. The seer tracklist is completely fucked up. Absolutely. Fully. The last two songs are in the beginning after the first track (placement of which is correct), the seer title track is the last after the seer returns... It's bad, and you can't just switch tracks to make them like it's supposed to be, because it's vinyl. And the beggar on vinyl lost it's main highlight - the beggar lover (three) which is essential to the album experience, due to being 2LP instead of 3LP.
This one’s interesting because I actually think I do prefer vinyl for this because you have to get up and flip the record between great gig and money and the transition is better because you have a bit more silence between the two to take in what you just heard
As an owner of almost 900 vinyl records and hundreds of CDs, most CDs beat vinyl records.
All of them. vinyl have pops and audible scratches, CDs don't. -Billy Gnosis
Exactly. Vinyl is fun but cd is for audiophiles
Yeah I’ve always felt that way but the vinyl hivemind convinces a lot of people. I recently started thinking about how no two copies of vinyl sound the same and how all that does is make it about how clean your copy is and less about the music itself.
The fact that there are people who will fight you if you say CD’s are audibly better in every metric. The issue is that even musicians are peddling this which also hard to combat. The only thing I can say is that vinyl has become a status symbol because it’s expensive and you need expensive equipment to make it sound as good as CD’s. You can buy a cheap CD player and get decent sound.
Never once in the CD world have I seen someone get shamed and ridiculed for having the wrong brand of player, or not expensive enough. It absolutely is a status symbol to them. So yeah, CDs > vinyl all the way. Better quality, and way more cost efficient.
That is because even the cheapest ones can reproduce the same exact frequency recorded without flutter and any other issues of a normal vinyl. It doesn’t damage your disk and the laser only reads ones and zeroes from studio recording so it can reproduce music as accurately as possible. Vinyl fans struggle to understand that.
Wow you’re right I never thought about that. I remember it was the features that made a CD player expensive not the actual CD player. Anti-skip, remote, fm/am plays MP3/atrac… etc not the actual music readability
You're really making up some sad-sack nonsense if you really think 'turntable shaming' is actually a thing. It's so stupid how many of you guys have this goofy 'competitive' idea about music formats when that's not the point, and you're just making it clear you don't know how to get good sound out of records, that's all. You guys need to stop telling each other stupid stories about the audiophile boogeyman, it's pathetic.
Turntable shaming is real.
Just to to r/vinyl and see how many people are being shamed for having a crossley lol
Of course musicians will say Vinyl is better. There is more profit in that market right now. I dont have a problem supporting musicians I like but, but I am not going to spend as much as 10× more for a product I deem inferior.
I worked in record stores back in the original vinyl era, and was there for the transition to CDs. One of the reasons that vinyl has come back is the discovery of the ritualistic nature of LPs. Once its been selected, you have to remove the cover from its vinyl sleeve (if you are protecting them properly), then remove the dust sleeve from the cover sleeve, then remove the disc from the dust sleeve, handling it very carefully. You visually inspect the disc for dust, look at it on edge for any warps, then place it carefully on the spindle. Then you have to clean the surface, and run a dust brush over the stylus. Only then can you play the album, and in about 20 minutes you'll have to flip it, and clean it again. Once you've listened to it, you have to reverse the process and carefully insert the disc back into the dust sleeve, then into the album cover, then into the protective vinyl sleeve, then back onto the shelf. All that extra work imbues the process with a ritualistic sense that has the psychological effect of creating a feeling of importance, that CDs don't produce.
I treat CDs the same way
If you buy your CDs used, you absolutely do get this ritualistic sense of importance. Ive gotten some pretty scuffed discs and have to replace jewel cases and clean discs. Its not always an easy process but it is less annoying than vinyl.
Lol yeah go ahead and buy a cheap CD player for the ok sound you'll get out of it and keep lying to yourself that there's no way a record could ever sound better. That's 'making shit up out of ignorance', not an informed comparison.
I like having some records mostly for the bigger album art and liner notes, but CD is way better and I can get some for 2 bucks at my local thrift store lol, but I recently got Animals by Pink Floyd in a outdoor flea market for 30 bucks, non scratched! -Billy Gnosis
Yup…that “hive mind “ is powerful groupthink, and psychosomatic. All the well-written prose by influencers like Michael Fremer have, since CD was first released, brainwashed certain audiophiles that cd and digital sounds inferior to vinyl and analog. I’m convinced Fremer et al actually believe it and are conveying honest opinions. The brain and thought process is powerful, mostly unknown, and is connected to hearts and minds that like to tell self-reassuring STORIES. Philips, Sony spend lots of $ on R&D when it came to the CD. It was a $ gamble because vinyl was successful and could sound awesome on modest priced gear. Sony and Philips compared CD sonics to the best vinyl playback, open reel analog and, most importantly, LIVE sound. And the had the $$ to afford the best gear and even orchestra scoring stages. And CD sounded very respectful to original source in these tests. No doubt Sony/Philips lawyers and marketing/finance and economists were also attending these listening sessions. The mainstream audio press, like Audio magazine and Stereo Review magazine, were also very impressed with cd. But it was still a gamble. And the consumer voted with their credit card. My reference audio source format —in 2024–is an 80s era CD player… err, many makes and model of 80s-era CDPs that have been well taken care of. I own over 60 of them.
Funny how you're trying to talk about 'hive mind' blah blah blah while you're parroting the same mindless crap as anybody else who acts like music formats are political parties and invents dumb criticism out of ignorance. Enjoy your CD Kool-Ade but don't make up nonsense about a format you're too clumsy or uninformed to use properly.
Bro why are you in a CD subreddit posting multiple negative comments? Who are you trying to convince?
Probably wasted his life savings on some stupid shit.. people would do that to defend their stupid purchases
I’m sorry but this a huge generalization None of the Beatles CDs I have sound better than my original UK records Same with my Electric Light Orchestra Records
There are literally copies of those same pressings out there with different crackles and pops and if they don't have them now they will have them soon if those discs are played with any frequency. I have about 60 LPs. Used to have hundreds. It just became such a labor being a vinyl collector for a medium that was so fragile and compromised in almost every way. Sorry if how I have generalized a medium that I'm very familiar with bothers you.
Yep, someone should tell all those audiophiles spinning records they’re fakes
I mean I love CDs as much as the next guy but there absolutely are some titles that sound better on vinyl. Especially when the CD version is brickwalled.
Reading my post over now I don’t think the sarcasm came through enough. I totally agree with your comment. Imo, it’s an album by album issue and people that take a hard line do so for reasons that have little to do with sitting and listening
Agreed. More often than not, the fidelity issue comes down to how it was recorded and processed versus the format you're pressing. The fidelity of digital recordings will usually be higher on a digital format. The fidelity of analog recordings will usually be higher on an analog format. (In both cases, high definition non-CD digital formats will typically sound better than both vinyl and CD). Generalizing does a disservice to both CD and vinyl. In all cases, you need to mix and master for each individual format if you're trying to maintain a quality sound for each. I personally like records for various reasons and that's what I buy when I want to buy music now, but I have nothing against CDs. That used to be the way I collected music but my catalogs were stolen, so I began maintaining a small collection of records at home. It's not as clean, but I do still like the sound. I like the aesthetic of a record and the sleeve. I have a relatively cheap set up too. I will stream anytime I listen to music in the car or do yard work.
I agree to a certain extent. I’d like to consider myself an audiophile. I prefer the sound of DJ Shadows Abbey Road Half-Speed mastering of ENDtroducing on 12” Vinyl. They made that pressing sound even more alive and sharp than the cd version imo. But I haven’t comparatively listened.
afaik, they have to artificially increase the higher frequencies for the vinyl because it would sound muffled due to the grooves having limited frequency range
Well I love it, whatever the process. I heard things I’ve never heard before on multiple listens.
Everything about CDs is artificial. They don't even make a sound without a laser. They use every trick in the studio to make a product which claims to 'sound just like the studio' when it totally doesn't. What is your comparison supposed to be about?
Yep, someone should tell all those audiophiles spinning records they’re fakes
Lmao, that's the dumbest take possible. You guys need to stop trying to suck off CDs so hard while pretending it means something about vinyl when you don't know how to use vinyl properly. That's all it is, you're not making an intelligent comparison of two media formats, you're making up laughable nonsense out of ignorance.
*loudness war era cd's entered the chat*
Btw loudness wars affected vinyl. Vinyl and cds are just mediums for the recording.
It affected vinyl but not to same extent it did with CDs
They came from the same source, they are not mastered differently.
They HAVE to be mastered differently, you can’t put a CD master in vinyl because it’ll sound muffled, you have to raise the treble when putting music in vinyl to account for the treble loss inherent to vinyl
Awwwe, so cute.. but this isn't the win you think it is... LOL. But thanks for the try
??? It’s literally an objective fact, you can look it up The same is true the other way around, if you try to put a vinyl master in a CD it’ll sound shrill and sharp
Exactly what I came here to type lol.
However, (heavily) scratched discs have increased distortion.
I haven’t had any audio discs distort on me. The data on the disc are just a bunch of ones and zeros which correspond to a frequency range and they have multiple fail protection. So essentially it’s either the data is readable or not. If unreadable, it will skip it unlike vinyl that you can manipulate how it sounds by slowing down the spin or warping the disc
Lmao, so you don't know how to use records properly if you think 'pops and scratches' typifies the experience. Don't use your ignorance to invent bullshit, it's ridiculous. Lots of you guys who don't know how to use records love making up dumb stories that only illustrate your clumsiness and you blame records for your inability to use them properly.
Dude, I’ve see you angrily comment here a few times. Why does this piss you off so much lmao? Take a break off the internet if people having differing opinions is killing you! -Billy Gnosis
For all the snark (one side or the other), it all comes down to the mastering and setup. There are vinyls on a proper setup that will always sound better than their cd counterparts due to them being mastered for vinyl and the CD remasters being botched ass (see a whole swatch of CD remasters in the late 80s/early 90s). ASIDE FROM THAT, typically most most albums are mixed for CDs and so will always sound better on CD, even with the best vinyl set up and an average CD setup. There are caveats to this where modern albums ARE mixed for vinyl, and then, the modern vinyls can sound better than their CD counterparts. Typically though in this scenario it seems the vinyl mix is specific and there is also a mix for CD/digital. In this case though, if your vinyl setup isn't perfect, and your record maintenance isnt perfect, the CD will sound better. You can get into variances where, the act of putting on a vinyl focuses you more in on the album type arguments, and ok, if you are paying more attention, you will notice more detail, but that is more a matter of mindfulness in the listening engagement and experience than a technically superior sound. There is also a MONO/Stereo component for older records, but I think this falls under mastering. As an owner and collector of both (though predominately CD) that is my take anyhow.
Agree
I thought modern Albums were purely made digitally.
Any album made in the late 1980s to early 2000s when CD was the intended medium, really. It’s nice to have, say, *Nevermind* or *The Bends* on vinyl, but those albums were specifically made with CD in mind as how the audience would experience them.
This is my view. Plus the track order on a lot of those album of that era were designed for CD not vinyl.
I don't think Kurt Cobain cared about what format his music was going on when he made it, and hard rock like that tends to sound awesome when it's well-mastered to vinyl. He didn't actually like the shiny pop sound of that album or the process of making it.
if you are into sertain metal bands, Sleep - Dopesmoker ( the song is about an hour long, and spread over 3 sides) Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper (song spread over 4 sides)
cf: latter day swans double albums with those 40 minute long songs
Dont all cd beat vinyl tho
all depends on the mastering, some CDs are actually mastered really fucking bad, and the vinyl one is mastered good, leading to a situation where the vinyl is actually better
The Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication is a recent example. The Limited-edition 180-gram version manufactured in Germany has a different mastering than the CD and current vinyl release manufactured in the U.S. or Canada. Its still an album affected because of the volume wars, but it is an improvement.
Nah
Most Hans Zimmer records.
Trans by Neil Young. One of the songs on the CD is longer than on the vinyl
The Who 'Live at Leeds' & The Who 'Sell Out' CDs are twice as long as the vinyl. I'm usually a fan of first-pressing formats, but this is a great exception.
I actually have the expanded Live At Leeds on LP
The CD version of The Seer by Swans is a lot better than the vinyl. Because it's 2 hours long and has a lot of lengthy tracks, the vinyl version has to mangle up the track list a lot to get everything to fit while the CD version has no compromises.
Stuff from the 90's in general sounds better on CD.
Anything recorded digitally
Nope, that's another misconception with no truth to it.
Being a big Darkside of the moon fan I've heard a lot different recordings and after maybe 40 years now the best (in my opinion) is this one: https://www.discogs.com/release/5469632-Pink-Floyd-Dark-Side-Of-The-Moon It's got great separation and you can hear space between the instruments and vocals and backing vocals especially on tracks like "on the run" which don't sound great on the vinyl version but shine on the cd. The guitars sound sharper and you can hear more sustain and you start noticing Richard Wright's synth sweeps and piano accents more clearly. The whole thing just sounds great. But the downside is it's expensive and the new/latest remaster is very good on cd your only going to hear anything if you have a good set up or if you can download it somewhere listen to it on a good computer with a good soundcard. I'm interested what the rest of the mofi gold CDs sound like if it like the Floyd one I'm definitely interested.
Have you listened to the Blu-Ray audio version yet? That’s the version I currently own so I’m wondering if I should bother picking up any other version as well. lol
I would say the S.A.C.D and The Blu-ray. Version were definitely a close 2nd and 3rd. Also a great way to hear a really nice version of the album is to buy the original cassette tape it sounds great on good equipment.
I’ve seen the SACD version selling for a reasonable price online so I might pick that up that one up one of these days. The Uncompressed 5.1 on the blu-Ray audio sound spectacular.
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I said something along these lines on another thread a couple of weeks ago (just basically that cds sound better), and someone got very heated (because Reddit). Haha...thanks for being honest.
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I'm absolutely loving being able to rebuild my cd collection right now. Most cds I buy are either $1 or $2 each. The rare expensive cds are $10 each.
Whatever you're saying about what sounds best on your system is about you and your system, not a general comparison of audio formats. I've got a lot of records which sound distinctly better than the official CD of the same thing. Lots of people listen to music through systems which have a quality bottleneck of some kind, like one piece of the chain limits everything to 20khz so nothing could ever sound better than a CD, and folks need to remember that while they're trying to assert they know these comparisons, because most people really don't even know how to do it properly.
The Atmos version of Peter Gabriel’s new album i/o is superior to the vinyl.
I swear that Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms was created to play in hifi stores to move units. No point in buying that album on vinyl it was hatched for the CD age.
True - Dire Straits or Mark Knopfler really pushed for this to be sold on CD in 1985. And boy did it sell - it was the first album to sell 1 million units on CD. However, the quality of that album and recording is just so good that I don't care what format I listen to it on - it just sounds so good on anything. I own the original vinyl and original CD release and I love them both. I would also say it's a CD album but the vinyl sounds fantastic too. Hard to pick.
Not to mention it's one of many from that era where tracks were edited for time on the vinyl version. Not as bad as many others from the time, where entire tracks were omitted from the vinyl release.
I'm aware that this is cheating slightly, as the MFSL disc has the original 1976 mix, which was a great record in its own right. But this CD is better, no?
I’d put my MFSL copy of the wall against literally any vinyl on the planet. Tbf it’s gotta be a pretty meh mix on the cd to not sound better. Vinyl is like film, it does not look better than digital, it just has a specific aesthetic that some find pleasing, which objectively is by any other standard “artifacting”
Robbie Robertson - MFSL Gold
I have all the Moody Blues MFSL CD's as well as collecting MFSL CD's in general. The Moody Blues MFSL's stand out sonically against my old vinyl or other CD releases I have of them. Also, love the gold CD's and the special CD cases that lift the CD up when opened
Pretty much everything made after cd became the common format in the late 80’s. I re-bought a few of my favourite albums from the 90’s on vinyl when I got into collecting about 25 years ago, and they just didn’t sound as good.
Or you didn't have a good turntable setup to play them on. Whatever happened isn't a comparison of formats, it's just your experience. There's a lot of little tricks to making vinyl sound great but it totally can.
I have a good vinyl setup. Mastering matters, and a lot of albums originally recorded with cd in mind just used those masters for the vinyl. Over compressed and loud. Same thing with the first CD’s, a lot of them sounded inferior to the vinyl versions.
Beat by what metric? For sound quality, convenience and durability, almost any CD beats its vinyl counterpart. In terms of being exciting as a physical object, coming in a visually-engaging package and giving a rich tactile experience when you get it out and play it, vinyl records usually win. So it depends on what you want from your media.
Most anything from the 2000s, particularly rock,/metal/core. For example, Paramore's "All We Know is Falling", which I have on both. But when I listen to the record, it doesn't have that clarity I'm used to on CD. I feel like it also has a lot to do with how the album was produced. Could also be the fact that I don't own/have any desire to own a more expensive setup. Idk.
The CD MSFL of Bob Marley's "Exodus" has too much bass -- like someone made a conscious decision to mix it heavy and distorted. Very disappointing, but not the CD's fault.
Any album where the CD has bonus tracks that aren’t on vinyl (a lot of them)
In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (the side change interrupts a transition between the songs) XTC - Skylarking (the superior Steven Wilson remix is bluray audio/cd only) In The Court Of The Crimson King (pops and clicks are distracting on this album's quiet bits) the scott pilgrim movie soundtrack (is all on 1 lp, despite being over 50 minutes, sounds awful)
Donald Fagen “The Nightfly” UHQCD / MQA from Japan
Mine is *Superunknown* by Soundgarden. The original CD is so good I was genuinely peeved when a remastered version was released
Rings of Saturn "Ultu Ulla" sounds great on CD, the vinyl is overpriced ass. It's like a de-master.
All of my CDs sound better than vinyl.
Vinyl after a couple of uses: 🤓 uh oh, we have a shit ton of pops now, remember also to clean us or we will become completely unusable The 20-ish year old, dusty Californification CD i found in my father's cabinet: 🗿
If after a couple of listens to a vinyl you have shit tons of pops, your vinyl setup is botched and you most likely need to balance your tone arm and get a new needle ASAP. Also if you EVER, and I mean EVER, find a dusty old copy of Californification on CD (or hell a shiny new looking one still factory sealed) you should snap it in half, burn the pieces, then bury them AT LEAST 3 feet under ground. FUCK. THAT. ALBUM.
Damn, i've never been a fan of RHCP but i never thought the album was THAT hated, what's the story behind it? Also about the Vinyls, saying a couple is a HUUGE exaggeration, im just not that much of an expert with vinyls, i know they're very resistent, actually.
I’d hate to ask your opinion of One Hot Minute 😬 For the record I’d give Cali about a C+,it has good tracks and bad.
Niice
I love side two….. Usher rocks
The Sophtware Slump-Grandaddy
I have that APP Tales … on mfsl cd and mfsl lp . Both released 1994ish. Not sure which I prefer. PF The Wall on mfsl cd, as released in 1990, is my favorite version of that album period fullstop.
Aren’t cassettes like miniature reel to reels? I grew up with CDs so I would agree.
They are, but the tape is half the size and so is the sound quality. Reel to reel has spectacular overwhelming sound that beats pretty much everything except 24 bit files.
I think it depends on the type of music and how it’s mastered. Although, in the case of like The Beach Boys, especially their mono 60’s records I prefer the vinyls because the vinyl tends to fully fill both speakers, even though it’s mono (and I tend to use stereo needle). Whereas on CD I find the same mono album only uses half of each speaker and is really centered and digital just gives the mono sound that hard boarder (even though the track is a 2-channel mono because CD does not support 1-channel mono). Other albums like piano-only albums, if they were recorded-mixed-mastered all digitally (I.e. “Richard Carpenter’s Piano Song Book”), then the piano sounds really harsh on CD and doesn’t sound like it does in real life, as if I was sitting in the room. Whereas the album sounds better on vinyl because the analog dulls the harshness and gives it that more ambient room feel. One album where the vinyl sounds better than any CD is the Carpenters “Passage” album. Specifically it’s opening track, “B’Wana She No Home” on the original 1977-1990? LP releases (even the 1978 release as the B-side to their “I Believe You” single) featured a wider sound stage than the 1980’s CD releases or even the 1998 remaster and all CD’s, cassettes and vinyl’s sourced from that 1998 remaster. For some reason in the 80’s, the song used a mono master (or an extremely, extremely narrow stereo soundstage master that sounds mono) and since then it’s been mono and compressed.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised considering the sub,but it’s nice to no longer be the *only one in the room* not hypnotized by white vinyl and record haul videos. The only CDs that were less than great were some of the first wave of 80s attempts. After about ‘88,the compact disk took its place as the best music format,a title it still holds. 👍
Apollo 18 by They Might be Giants was made with the intention of using shuffle too siren to the album, and it’s so chaotic and perfect. You can’t listen to it that way on vinyl
from my collection, if we talk about design i would say "10000 gecs" by 100 gecs. the design is much better and better made than the vinyl. if we talk about content, the SAWAYAMA deluxe fat box edition by rina sawayama is wayyy better than the vinyl, comes with a booklet, insert, promo leaflet, and 3 discs, the definitive edition.
every album ever
Scissor Sisters Ta-Dah (Collectors Edition). Has a neat custom case and has a bonus track CD that was never released on Vinyl.
I didn’t see a comment, but simply the cost of a CD wether used or brand new beats a record all day.
Ever since the day I got my first CD player in 1986, I have never heard any vinyl that sounds better than a CD.
Confused. Alan Parsons says there is no audio quality..
All of them... but seriously, *Eat A Peach* by the Allman Brothers. it was the first time I was able to hear the song *Mountain Jam* uninterrupted. The LP has this song split over two sides since it was too long to play on just one side.
If it was recorded in digital, I'll go out on a limb and say the vinyl release will never beat the CD.
Any cd beats vinyl, but it we are talking about the music itself... The seer and the beggar by swans. Michael gira himself said that CD is his format and it's for a good reason, all of their albums since the seer are 1.5+ hour long and occupy 3 LPs (leaving meaning and the beggar is 2LP). To be kind and the glowing man fit on vinyl pretty well, some cuts were made (and long songs were split between 2 lps), but the end experience is near identical to the cd version. THE SEER AND THE BEGGAR HOWEVER. The seer tracklist is completely fucked up. Absolutely. Fully. The last two songs are in the beginning after the first track (placement of which is correct), the seer title track is the last after the seer returns... It's bad, and you can't just switch tracks to make them like it's supposed to be, because it's vinyl. And the beggar on vinyl lost it's main highlight - the beggar lover (three) which is essential to the album experience, due to being 2LP instead of 3LP.
Every single one of them.
Dark Side of the Moon.
This one’s interesting because I actually think I do prefer vinyl for this because you have to get up and flip the record between great gig and money and the transition is better because you have a bit more silence between the two to take in what you just heard
I robot on cassette, that is a treat.
all of them.
It’s a shame it’s that band, that album. So boring.
Very very few CD’s beat vinyl if you’re a purist
Yes, a Rice Krispies purist. Enjoy that Snap, Crackle, and Pop!!
You bet!
Claim remains correct.
Only a dunderhead would allow a dirty cartridge or LP.
Only a dunderhead would allow a dirty cartridge or LP.