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I once was chatting with a producer who worked for Disney for around 15 years. He said the so-called “warm” tone of vinyl vs the “harsh” sound of CDs is really

I once was chatting with a producer who worked for Disney for around 15 years. He said the so-called “warm” tone of vinyl vs the “harsh” sound of CDs is really that the vinyl format acts as a partial low-pass filter. So it’s really just that you’re hearing less high-freq sound on vinyl than on a CD.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
Kind of. Vinyl can't carry much bass, so it's cut with a special EQ curve - called the RIAA curve - that eliminates most of the bass and some of the mids. Phono preamps have the opposite curve. In theory when the music comes of the preamp you get a flat response overall. In reality any added distortion warms up the bass a lot, the mids some, and the treble barely at all. Because what's left of the bass is still cut close to the dynamic range limits of vinyl, it's always distorted. But because of the extreme EQ this rounds out the low end and gives the mids a boost. The overall effect is a warm sound. Vinyl isn't a true hifi medium. It's more like an Instagram filter for music. It can sound very nice, but it's a heavily processed sound, not a realistic one. Digital has other issues. But for ultimate fidelity, personally I would always - no exceptions - prefer to listen to a lossless 24-bit digital recording of a master tape captured with studio-grade converters and streamed from hard disk than from vinyl, CD, or any compressed file format.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  Thanks for this! Comments like this are a big part of why I love HN.
ljcn 7y ago
Perhaps. I have heard they also master differently for vinyl since it can't provide the same dynamic, frequency, or stereo range as digital. Some listeners find the result more appealing.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  That does highlight the one infamous issue with "loudness wars" bringing the quality into the toliet to keep the volume high when we all have perfectly good knobs and switches to regulate them.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  That's essentially correct, and there was an HN article about that in the last few years, but I can't seem to find it.
- atoav 7y ago
  Sometimes the vinyl master is in fact better, because it is less compressed, because a mastering engineer can assume that people listening to vinyl got a decent sound system, while mastering for "web" means people have phone speakers, laptop speakers, hifi systems, whatever.
  - TimTheTinker 7y ago
    That's interesting, but I'm not sure what you mean by "compress". Do you mean data compression, or a compressing audio filter? Web distribution (iTunes/etc.) files come from running the CD master through an AAC/MP3/etc. converter which does data compression only. But a 256Kbps/16bit/44.1KHz AAC (like you'd get from iTunes) is a lot higher quality than vinyl.
    - atoav 7y ago
      You are right thats ambgious, but in this context compression refers to the dynamic compression of the adio wave (so essentially reducing the difference in perceived loudness between the loudest and the most silent parts of a recording). Data compression doesn’t make much sense here, because you usually use uncompressed audiofiles anywhere unless it goes to the web.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

Kind of. Vinyl can't carry much bass, so it's cut with a special EQ curve - called the RIAA curve - that eliminates most of the bass and some of the mids. Phono preamps have the opposite curve. In theory when the music comes of the preamp you get a flat response overall. In reality any added distortion warms up the bass a lot, the mids some, and the treble barely at all. Because what's left of the bass is still cut close to the dynamic range limits of vinyl, it's always distorted. But because of the extreme EQ this rounds out the low end and gives the mids a boost. The overall effect is a warm sound. Vinyl isn't a true hifi medium. It's more like an Instagram filter for music. It can sound very nice, but it's a heavily processed sound, not a realistic one. Digital has other issues. But for ultimate fidelity, personally I would always - no exceptions - prefer to listen to a lossless 24-bit digital recording of a master tape captured with studio-grade converters and streamed from hard disk than from vinyl, CD, or any compressed file format.

TimTheTinker 7y ago
Thanks for this! Comments like this are a big part of why I love HN.

ljcn 7y ago

Perhaps. I have heard they also master differently for vinyl since it can't provide the same dynamic, frequency, or stereo range as digital. Some listeners find the result more appealing.

Nasrudith 7y ago
That does highlight the one infamous issue with "loudness wars" bringing the quality into the toliet to keep the volume high when we all have perfectly good knobs and switches to regulate them.
ravenstine 7y ago
That's essentially correct, and there was an HN article about that in the last few years, but I can't seem to find it.
atoav 7y ago
Sometimes the vinyl master is in fact better, because it is less compressed, because a mastering engineer can assume that people listening to vinyl got a decent sound system, while mastering for "web" means people have phone speakers, laptop speakers, hifi systems, whatever.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  That's interesting, but I'm not sure what you mean by "compress". Do you mean data compression, or a compressing audio filter? Web distribution (iTunes/etc.) files come from running the CD master through an AAC/MP3/etc. converter which does data compression only. But a 256Kbps/16bit/44.1KHz AAC (like you'd get from iTunes) is a lot higher quality than vinyl.
  - atoav 7y ago
    You are right thats ambgious, but in this context compression refers to the dynamic compression of the adio wave (so essentially reducing the difference in perceived loudness between the loudest and the most silent parts of a recording). Data compression doesn’t make much sense here, because you usually use uncompressed audiofiles anywhere unless it goes to the web.