Why LPs suck

[sunburnwilly]

You know , LP's are actualy great exercise . ( Clean the LP , Clean the Stylus , Sometimes hit it with the Anti Static Gun ) , and in Gary's case , run into the next room to listen to it ... []

[nicholtl]

DrWho said:

"I think there is a generational influence at play here because I grew

up with the clear sound of digital....the pops and clicks on LPs really

drive me insane because I can't tune them out! I know there's always

exceptions to the rule, but it seems a common trend that the younger

you are, the more inclined you are to listen to CDs."

I'm not sure that's true though, Mike. See, you and I are the same age, and yet I feel vinyl is vastly superior. In actuality, we grew up with TAPES. CD's only burst onto the scene with raging glory when we were in our near-teens. But for all intents and purposes, CD's were the format of our formative years.

CD's are crisp, clear, heck yeah they're awesome. But I'm sure you've noticed a lot of younger guys here, crazytubepower (James) for one, me for another, have realized or "discovered" the magic of vinyl. I know you come from a sound engineer's standpoint, and so you view things in a lot more depth and technicality than most. I know from where you come. I learned filmic sound and SFX from Tom Holman himself, creator of THX, at film school.

But, if you gave vinyl a fair, honest, and decent look (and listen!), I think you'd too take back your words.

[DrWho]

But I never listened to tapes - they drove me nuts. In fact, I never

really listened to recorded music until I was done with high school!

[] I spent a lot of time in the studio and doing live sound, but

never really sat on the other side of the fence until I landed a really

boring desk job with a bunch of music shared over the network.

Btw, I have heard good vinyl and have no problem saying that it sounded

great. However, that one little click or pop when trying to relax to

the music just ruins it for me. I'm not sure if it's because I have a

hard time remaining passive when listening to music, or if I would

still lose that perception of nonreality (aka being sucked into the

music) if the flags didn't go up in my head. Either way, I don't have

thsi problem when listening to a digital format.

And like I said earlier, there are always exceptions to the rule and I

had those same people in mind when I made the comment []

[dragonfyr]

...A call for a sanity check!

This vinyl vs CD debate is interesting IF we were talking about the realized potential of both formats!

But as one who has 'grown up' with both and extensively collected both, I can say with some authority (as I still have quite a few defective pressings even after the folks at the stores were quite tired of me opening and rejecting titles! - and finally choosing the lesser of the available evils!) that the quality of the mass marketed vinyl from the ' on sucked! And that's the nicest word I can think of! The quality of the vinyl, with its filler and poor pressing quality, literally stunk!

And with all due respect, to listen to others rave about 'records' (generically) only tells me they either don't have much hands on experience with the format or they are simply repeating what others have stated, as the last 20 years of their life from the '70's on, except for the higher mass pressings (MSFL, German Polydor, Japanese pressings, direct to disk, etc.), records were not the panacea claimed by so many!!! And to mention one title on vinyl that absolutely stunk in mass distribution was Cat Stevens Tea for the Tillerman with the legendary - for all intents & purposes - 'missing' bass! Not to mention the interesting copy of Deep Purple's import Book of Taliesyn (EMI SHVL 751 ) with the Karaoke version of River Deep Mountain High where the vocals were 'conveniently' left out!! Or the original pressing of Fleetwood Mac's Then Play On (Reprise RS 6368) without the revised release's inclusion of Oh Well, where the subsequently revised release has deleted a track and has had the tracks mislabeled ever since!!!! And I won't even mention the number of pristine disks I have with vinyl dimples large enough to allow their use as condiment party trays!!! Impressive, huh!?

And I still have about 2800 pristine records (plus about 350 'VG' records)(as I was indoctrinated in Jr High as a record nerd regarding the handling and care of records and the equipment they were notably NOT played on). And I still have bouchoup complete boxed Polydor collections that are still unplayed after 20 years. And I only wish that I could categorically say that records were better!!!

Unfortunately, I fear the single the biggest advantage to vinyl is the fact that so many titles have yet to be transferred to digital, and most likely never will!

But so with about 3500 CDs as well (not including boxes, special issues, etc....). The fact that they are "digital" (everyone go "oooooooooooooww!" as in 'you') does not infer superiority, although the play time and convenience do kick vinyl's proverbial rear. CD's suffer from their own problems, not to mention perhaps the biggest problem being the Initial releases that were terribly mis-engineered as the legions of engineers tried to discover just what this foolproof medium was - as they valiantly disproved the label 'foolproof'! But I will maintain that many of the recently appearing remasters are vastly improved! (not to mention with much previously unreleased material)...

And my collections are tiny compared to a few friends' collections!

So, with all due respect, come on folks! Both formats have advantages and shortcomings. There are excellent examples of both formats! And spectacular failures in both formats. And all this fawning and drooling over one format to the exclusion of the other has become a bit ludicrous![]

And has been mentioned previously, enjoy the one you find most pleasing on a title by title basis. []

And on that note! I am still looking for a VG+ or better copy of Danny Holien's Danny Holien with Colorado (Tumbleweed Records TWS102)!!!! If you find it, please PM me! And maybe one day Columbia will choose to reissue Steve Miller's Recall the Beginning, Journey from Eden and Rock Love released before he became the king of pop ditties.


Oh, and cassettes.......OK, we have exhausted that topic!!![][]

[maxg]

Every technical argument I have ever read supports the position that CD should provide better quality sound than an LP. Get into the higher resolution formats of SACD and DVDa and the argument should be a no brainer.

It isn't.

Simply put the best systems I have heard in my life have all had one thing in common - Vinyl as the source.

I was one who abandoned vinyl back in 1984 and moved lock stock and barrel into CD. I was told it was better and I believed it. The music did sound strangely naked to my ears but I put that down to the absence of pops and clicks and got used to the new sound.

In 2000 (I think) I was an early adopter of SACD. At that time there were less than 200 titles avaiable but as they were almost all classial titles that did not really bother me. I build up a collection of some 70 titles.

Through a strange set of events - using a MAcGiver like approach I cobled together a very un-audiophile connection between my system and an old Sony all in one system to play a record.

To my amazement and horror it sounded better playing a Simon and Garfunkel record than the CD did. I was shocked. Called Tony my audiophile buddy who hot footed it round to listen.

After a bit of furniture kicking (he too had invested in SACD recently) we both decided that the vinyl simply sounded better on each of the 5 records I had retained.

4 hours later we were both owners of Project RPM 4 turntables with their own cart and the project phonobox.

The rest is a history of upgrades and changes to my present state. I have probably bought some 2000 records in that time and sold on half of those (mainly the rock which I rarely listen to).

Comparitive testing over the years has been done many times against both CD and SACD. These tests have become more meaningless as time has gone by simply because the amount invested in the table has outstriped digital by a factor of about 20 now.

Needless to say, from the very beginning the difference between vinyl playback and CD (and SACD where comparable) has been marked. Of the some 70 titles I have tested over the years maybe 1 or 2 CDs were better to my ears. In each of those cases the vinyl was simply a very poor example of the genre.

Now I want to make it clear that I am in no way claiming perfection for vinyl. There are good and bad productions and bad ones get moved out fairly quickly. Good vinyl though, now that is something to behold. Nothing in my experience comes close to a well recorded vinyl record.

I am also fairly sure that were I to invest $10,000 in an SACD system that too would perform to a very high level. Whether it would match the best of vinyl, of course, is open to debate but let us assume, for the sake of argument, it would. I would still NEVER go that route now. Why?

1. There are bad vinyl records for sure, but, there are also some dreadful SACD titles. Even on this lowly Pioneer 575 I can hear the difference in quality of the recordings I have available.

2. Even today the selection of SACD's available for purchase is laughably small - I dont think there are 10,000 titles all told. I have no idea how many vinyl records have been pressed over the years - probably well over a million titles.

3. Simple economics. I can buy classical music on vinyl for about 1 euro per oftentimes. Sometimes I pay more - rarely above 5 euros except for audiophile recordings which I rarely buy. SACD, over here at least, is a minimum of 12 euros per disk and that for a 2 channel single layer disk that cannot be played on a normal CD player.

One thing I should also mention is this sonic bleeding some report between adjacent grooves. Usually this is a sign of:

a. A very poor recording.
b. A very worn record.
c. An improperly aligned cartridge.

a and b above are not that common IME. C, however, is very commonplace and smacks of an incorrect overhang setting, badly matched arm/cartridge combo or simple wrong tracking weight. One of the main justifications for having a linear tracking arm (for me) is that it enables EXACT placement of the cartridge in the groove at the optimized position to read all in the information contained across the entire surface of the record. Of the 1000 or so classical titles I own I get bleed on about 10 maybe.

Frankly - the more of you that believe vinyl to be inferior - the better it is for me. If demand goes up so will the prices. On the other hand the last I heard new vinyl was still outselling SACD and DVDa titles combined and the growth of the sales of turntables has been one of the few brightspots in the audio industry.

[wheelman]

Dragonfyr that's alot of tunage!

[Coytee]

I gave my vinyl player to my sister....had too much wow & flutter []

[3dzapper]

Some of the "lead in" groove pre-sounds are caused by the master tape bleeding through. This is most noticable on Led Zeplin I's "Whole Lotta Love". Every original stamping has those five chords.

Rick

[dragonfyr]

Max, I am not going to persist in debating the "which format is superior" because for the most part it doesn't matter!

Why?

Since 1990, the choice of formats is severely restricted! It really doesn't matter which format I like! A good 90% of the titles I prefer are not available on vinyl. PERIOD!

So this debate over which is better is MOOT!

Let's see...

A title sounds (of course, as we have determined via forgone conclusion) poor in the CD format. And the same title on vinyl sounds..... strangely silent! - as it is not produced in the vinyl format!!!!

Please, pray tell, debate the finer points of that position!

It's fine to debate the merits of a very small niche market where titles are readily available in both formats. And I guess we will continue to hear the rather absurd debate. But expediency renders the general debate moot. If you can't get the title on vinyl, and the only source is a record treated in a generic manner (read my sister's high school party records!!!!) from the 60's & 70's (you know, when the average turntable was an audiophile unit with a nickel to a quarter taped to the headshell (headshell???)- yeah, right!!!) - sure you can save some money. And for the most part you get what you pay for!

And speaking of which...my father happens to have a best friend from childhood and they subsequently played together in big bands in high school, college and after the war (WW2)- Bob Pfeuffer - who had the distinction of being the highest paid (and best!) bassoon player in the world and who played with the Philadelphia Orchestra for ~30 years. And they had a program whereby they could subscribe to their productions. So needless to say, my dad received EVERY single recording they produced from ~1962 to 1995. EVERY single recording.

Now to debate the quality of this vinyl versus CD library is a bit hard, and rather insane, as the vast majority of titles are NOT available in both formats!!!

So let's see....which is better, CD or vinyl???

And I wish I cared about SACD. A few are ok, but the higher resolution really doesn't matter, as the extremely limited catalog, coupled with the "oh, we have umpteen channels with which to be arbitrarily creative" provides little, if any, advantage, as the goal for many is not some abstract standard of realism where one cannot distinguish "if it is live or if it is Memorex!".

So the entire debate over which is better really doesn't matter. Just as debating the merits of horse versus car in 1869 or 2005. The availability of one or the other is not a matter of simple choice. The marketplace has made that determination for you! So, again, let's see, which is superior? CD or vinyl? Me, I prefer riding my horse on the expressway, although the presense of the cars and lack of places to water it make it rather inconvenient![] Sound silly? Well!!!!!!!!!

(And I haven't even gotten to talk about trying to listen to my records while riding my horse![]) Of course, while we are at it, we could debate the merits of wire recorders as well!

If the mass market even supported a debate it would be one thing!

But for the most part, you listen to what is available or you don't listen at all! And that is NOT much of a "lively" debate!

So, as far as I am concerned, this issue is a non-starter.....

EDIT:

And the quality of the pressings and vinyl of mass marketed popular music styles from ~1970 on are MARKETEDLY inferior to the more limited productions. And here the debate over the quality of vinyl falls on its face as well! Now we are reduced to debating poorly produced CDs versus poorly manufactured records. What a choice![:P][]

Maybe we should debate the merits of a Joe Forman grill versus the latest Ronco expedition![][6]

Oh, and Max, you are correct, my intent is not to debate the niche environments where quality product is available. My focus is more accurately with those who simplistically maintain that all vinyl is 'ideal' and that all digital 'stinks' (or visa versa!). Such crass generalizations are both unwarranted and unsupportable.

We deal with market realities. But I will say that unless you are going to deal only with such esoteric sources of vinyl, that exhorbitant investments in equipment are not practically justified for the majority of legacy mass market vinyl product available.

Enjoy!!

[maxg]

Dragon,

Whilst I have no argument with anything you have written I think we should look at the title to this thread to place my post in context of that - rather than your well made points.

Further, for you that listens to music recorded from 1990 onwards there are only CD's. For me, I only listen to music from before that date (with a few more recent exceptions - which strangely are now available on vinyl as well - for example the OST from Oh Brother Where Art Thou? Which I rather liked and was amazed to be able to pick up on a vinyl double album) there is much available in both formats.

Overall, I would have to say more of my listening material is available in vinyl than on CD - but that was not really the deciding issue. Most of the Opera's, symphony's and Concerto's I listen to are available in both formats - if not all - the only limit for CD being the productions that have been chosen to convert/produce on CD.

In this thread we have a surfeit of proponents of digital media - that is fine - and I am happy to play devils advocate. My experience of listening to recorded music and what has been presented here are at odds and that was the message I wanted to convey.

If one's tastes are for music from 1990 onwards (to a lesser extent for the last few years) then CD would be the logical choice. For those keen to encompass more of the history of music I would suggest vinyl is the better option. In that I think we agree.

Of course one is tempted to ask is this will apply to MP3? What are we to do with music ONLY released in that format (or equivalent from Apple, Microsoft et. al.) Are we doomed to listen to cut down formats on computer speakers?

I should also point out that I never listen to vinyl in the car. CD rules there. And I never listen to CD whilst out - MP3 holds domain there. In fact the only place I listen to vinyl is my living room.

[Duke Spinner]

Max, I am not going to persist in debating the "which format is superior" because for the most part it doesn't matter!

Ssaaaay .....

90% of my Fav material is Orange Book live recordings ....

what's all this flap about Fidelity ....?????

some of the Recordings absolutely Suck,......... boomy bass, bass

guitar exciting the stage, mid-stream record level changes, saturation/

distortion of the ADAT inputs, drum/ cymbol mic's in/out of phase,

poorly placed mic's,..poorly chosen mic's ..( Hey ...!

...whas Cardiod mean ..??....[8o|]....)...

stage noise, crowd noise ,bottle noise ... poor mic'ing techniques, Morons running things......

sooooo what ..! it's the Music that's the main thing , Right .....???............[8-)].

[Parrot]

Me, I prefer riding

my horse on the expressway, although the presense of the cars and lack

of places to water it make it rather inconvenient![] Sound silly? Well!!!!!!!!!

And I thought I was the only one on the Forum who prefers horse and

buggy! Here in Ohio it's not so unusual. (Not the greatest for hauling

Khorns but you can always borrow an SUV.)

[Audio Flynn]

Unfortunately, I fear the single the biggest advantage to vinyl is the fact that so many titles have yet to be transferred to digital, and most likely never will!

But so with about 3500 CDs as well (not including boxes, special issues, etc....). The fact that they are "digital" (everyone go "oooooooooooooww!" as in 'you') does not infer superiority, although the play time and convenience do kick vinyl's proverbial rear. CD's suffer from their own problems, not to mention perhaps the biggest problem being the Initial releases that were terribly mis-engineered as the legions of engineers tried to discover just what this foolproof medium was - as they valiantly disproved the label 'foolproof'! But I will maintain that many of the recently appearing remasters are vastly improved! (not to mention with much previously unreleased material)...

+++++++++++++

FYR is pretty much where I am at with the discussion.

I would someday like to take old vinyl and "home master" it to 24/96 PCM for archiving and sharing.

Blue Note, Chesky, ECM, NAXOS and a few others make excellent CDs. My DAC makes them sound very nice; I can only imagine what a high end DAC like a Meridian could do for REDBOOK.

SACD and DVD-A I like but they just are a dead end market (DVD_A dying fastest).

If half a$$ed mastering of CD was abolished; I would live with upsampling of CDs and be happy.

[dragonfyr]

Michael, that is one fine looking animal!

(the HORSE, guys!!![])

[JJkizak]

When I ocassionally rip an LP to disc with Sound Forge I have to usually normallize the sound to balance the channels, employ click & scratch filter twice, clipped peak filter once, on the fly low end equalizer boost, a touch high end boost, edit out needle thump at beginning and end, employ noise reduction filter once, some huge glitches have to be cut out because they cannot be processed. After all this they sound pretty good. I have found that I can cut out very loud pops and still can't tell if anything was cut. The low end boost ends up usually +12 db from original and the high end maybe 1 or 2 db. Sometimes have to run through the equalizer again to get rid of low end groove noise. The man is right. They cut the crap out of the bass, compressed the crap out of everything else. And vinyl is better than Disc? Impossible dream.

JJK

[Duke Spinner]

the things you discover when your " re-mastering " .......[*-)]

[pauln]

When I ocassionally rip an LP to disc with Sound Forge I have to usually normallize the sound to balance the channels, employ click & scratch filter twice, clipped peak filter once, on the fly low end equalizer boost, a touch high end boost, edit out needle thump at beginning and end, employ noise reduction filter once, some huge glitches have to be cut out because they cannot be processed. After all this they sound pretty good. I have found that I can cut out very loud pops and still can't tell if anything was cut. The low end boost ends up usually +12 db from original and the high end maybe 1 or 2 db. Sometimes have to run through the equalizer again to get rid of low end groove noise. The man is right. They cut the crap out of the bass, compressed the crap out of everything else. And vinyl is better than Disc? Impossible dream.

JJK

What you describe does not demonstrate deficiency of vinyl so much as it demonstrates the modern and misguided belief that bass is supposed to be real loud. Boosting the low end +12 dB? - absurd!

[middlecreekguy]

I'm in the vinyl camp. The better your rig, the

better music it will make. Music bleeding over from the next groove is

a thing of the past in my system. Aline that cartridge correctly and

most of your problems will go away.

But here is a point that must be

made.

The fact is gentlemen if you only play one format you are missing

out on lots of great music. And is not music what this hobby is all

about?

[edwinr]

Many have tried to kill it. But vinyl is here to stay. There is a wealth of music in second hand stores and thrift shops for little more than 50 cents a pop.

[joessportster]

i myself have a modest collection of vinyl (3000 albums) and a mid level table with top notch gear surrounding it and k-horns (a pair of the most revealing speakers available) a vpi 16.5 record cleaning machine. and i have performed a few blind listening tests with people (friends and family) when asked which sound they prefer (not knowing what they are listening to, album or cd of the same recording) about 90 percent pick the vinyl for sound

go leave a cd setting in an attic for 20 years exposed to the high heat in calli. and see if you can repair the warp it gets my money says no!!!!!!

yea vinyl sucks. who would want to buy an item that simply sounds better, lasts longer, and may actually gain in value. guess i should list my collection tomarrow for sale and go buy some more shiney discs

NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!