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Have you ever found vinyl sounding different from its CD equivalent due to the equipment you play it on? The few vinyl rips I have seem to have issues like a h

Have you ever found vinyl sounding different from its CD equivalent due to the equipment you play it on? The few vinyl rips I have seem to have issues like a high noise floor (hearing the amplified sound of the needle pushing the vinyl during supposed silence, as well as random pops). I am curious to know if that's seen as a feature and not a bug.

rainbowmverse 9y ago
That sounds like vinyl crackle. It's such a sought after thing that people make entire sample libraries of it.
squarefoot 9y ago
"Have you ever found vinyl sounding different from its CD equivalent due to the equipment you play it on?" Many CD are remastered if not remixed, so they aren't perfect equivalents of the original vinyl; they usually also add compression to raise the perceived average volume (sometimes beyond clipping!), which kills the original dynamics and quality of the media. Some early CDs may have been direct conversion of the master into digital form, but if we take an old record and the equivalent CD issued recently, they're not the same thing anymore. "The few vinyl rips I have seem to have issues like a high noise floor" That's because of the needle friction and other interference by motor and other mechanical parts etc. all noise which is getting amplified. They've made miracles with pickups, RIAA preamps and other stuff, but we can't make a mechanical device that doesn't generate friction otherwise we would have invented perpetual motion. So yes, records are more noisy and have a much smaller dynamic range, although most modern overcompressed music would falsely suggest the opposite. A search for "loudness war" can bring some interesting information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
- busterarm 9y ago
  You know that vinyls get a mixdown from a tape (open-reel) or DAT master also, right? Vinyl, like CD, has format limitations that need to be overcome. Most notably with vinyl, bass has to be converted to mono and high frequency content needs to be heavily EQ'd. Vinyl isn't the "original" sound, and you should never mixdown a CD from a vinyl source (since in most cases you have the original master or a tape copy of it) unless you have absolutely no other choice.
  - squarefoot 9y ago
    Of course I know about limitations, I stopped using vinyl over 20 years ago. The OP was wondering why vinyl and CD sound different and besides the obvious media limitations I added that even a perfectly new record that doesn't crackle will produce noise because of friction. I also pointed out that today CDs don't come from the same master (1) used for vinyl. Sometimes they're also remixed (2) then compressed and limited (sigh). This may suggest that modern CD sound worse than vinyl while it should be the other way around, but greedy producers force their engineers to ruin the sound to make music louder. FWIW, I am one of hose Rush fans who stopped buying their CDs when Vapor Trails came out. I don't even have the mp3s of that awful sounding crap:( 1. stereo master tape, not the record press 2. from the same multitrack tape (often transferred onto digital) and sometimes with other audio added.
brusch64 9y ago
Well you have to master differently for a vinyl. At least you have to take it into consideration when mastering for digital and vinyl. So it is possible to sound differently to the digital signal. The phono amplifier has to do some filtering, so this influences the sound too. All in all records are a pretty bad medium for conserving music nowadays.. but for many people the experience is the most important thing.

rainbowmverse 9y ago

That sounds like vinyl crackle. It's such a sought after thing that people make entire sample libraries of it.

squarefoot 9y ago

"Have you ever found vinyl sounding different from its CD equivalent due to the equipment you play it on?" Many CD are remastered if not remixed, so they aren't perfect equivalents of the original vinyl; they usually also add compression to raise the perceived average volume (sometimes beyond clipping!), which kills the original dynamics and quality of the media. Some early CDs may have been direct conversion of the master into digital form, but if we take an old record and the equivalent CD issued recently, they're not the same thing anymore. "The few vinyl rips I have seem to have issues like a high noise floor" That's because of the needle friction and other interference by motor and other mechanical parts etc. all noise which is getting amplified. They've made miracles with pickups, RIAA preamps and other stuff, but we can't make a mechanical device that doesn't generate friction otherwise we would have invented perpetual motion. So yes, records are more noisy and have a much smaller dynamic range, although most modern overcompressed music would falsely suggest the opposite. A search for "loudness war" can bring some interesting information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

busterarm 9y ago
You know that vinyls get a mixdown from a tape (open-reel) or DAT master also, right? Vinyl, like CD, has format limitations that need to be overcome. Most notably with vinyl, bass has to be converted to mono and high frequency content needs to be heavily EQ'd. Vinyl isn't the "original" sound, and you should never mixdown a CD from a vinyl source (since in most cases you have the original master or a tape copy of it) unless you have absolutely no other choice.
- squarefoot 9y ago
  Of course I know about limitations, I stopped using vinyl over 20 years ago. The OP was wondering why vinyl and CD sound different and besides the obvious media limitations I added that even a perfectly new record that doesn't crackle will produce noise because of friction. I also pointed out that today CDs don't come from the same master (1) used for vinyl. Sometimes they're also remixed (2) then compressed and limited (sigh). This may suggest that modern CD sound worse than vinyl while it should be the other way around, but greedy producers force their engineers to ruin the sound to make music louder. FWIW, I am one of hose Rush fans who stopped buying their CDs when Vapor Trails came out. I don't even have the mp3s of that awful sounding crap:( 1. stereo master tape, not the record press 2. from the same multitrack tape (often transferred onto digital) and sometimes with other audio added.

brusch64 9y ago

Well you have to master differently for a vinyl. At least you have to take it into consideration when mastering for digital and vinyl. So it is possible to sound differently to the digital signal. The phono amplifier has to do some filtering, so this influences the sound too. All in all records are a pretty bad medium for conserving music nowadays.. but for many people the experience is the most important thing.