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> Also, it's super unpopular to say so, but fidelity and dynamic range from an LP, even on a relatively fancy turntable, lags what you can get from CD or high-b

> Also, it's super unpopular to say so, but fidelity and dynamic range from an LP, even on a relatively fancy turntable, lags what you can get from CD or high-bitrate digital by a measurable margin. While true, that doesn't necessarily mean it sounds better. Vinyl has a certain sound (commonly known as "warmth" that's different than digital. It may be quantitatively worse in things like bitrate butthe human ear may prefer it after going through all of the the messy, analogue, and physical steps that create "sound". We've done (anecdotal, non-scientific tests) of playing the same song from Spotify and Vinyl through our stereo. About 90% of the time we could pick out which was which[1], and generally preferred the vinyl version. 1) We did mute the intro for several seconds to hide the needle drop. Some may have been given away by cracks and pops on older albums, but most were clean and in good condition.

ubermonkey 6y ago
I don't mean to say vinyl can't sound good. It totally can. But if you have a nice enough stereo system, it's not that hard to get to a place where you hit vinyl's ceiling vs. CD source on a couple of fronts. The big one, at least for some genres of music, is dynamic range. There's a physical problem with vinyl that keeps it from even really approaching what's possible with CD, and this matters a LOT in classical music. But the other issue is more universal. Absurdly good audio quality is really, really easy to get from digital media now -- either streamed or local digital or CD source. It'd mind boggling how good that can sound on a nice setup. Vinyl can sound good, but it typically requires more dollars (or $local_currency) per unit of quality (so to speak) than the more modern approaches. There's so much that can go wrong with vinyl -- needle or cartridge issues, tonearm tracking, quality of the record itself, turntable motor interference, issues in the signal chain, etc -- that you can go nuts and spend a LOT chasing gremlins. I threw some money at my setup -- nice Rega turntable, a few hundred at the phono stage, fancy receiver, etc -- and so really well engineered records sound ALMOST as good as well-engineered CDs. But if you're stuck with a Crosley or whatever vs. playing a local CD over the same setup, there's gonna be a very appreciable gap. At least in my experience. (As an aside, I think the obsessive hunt for audio hacks to improve vinyl playback in the 70s is the direct reason so many in high-end audio are taking in by absurd claims of snake oil sales men. 40 years ago, you actually needed to know what you were doing to get good sound in your living room. Just having some money wasn't enough. People heard rumors about things that sound crazy, and tried them, and some of them worked and some of them didn't. Trouble is, most of those folks don't have any grounding in engineering or science, and so you ended up with shit like Tice clocks and $5,000 interconnects and whatever else. Now, in 2020, anybody with a few hundred bucks can have really amazing sound (by 1970s standards) in their home this afternoon. But the (mostly boomer) 70s/80s audiophiles are still there, on the margins, hawking $250 power cables.)
amanaplanacanal 6y ago
If you prefer the way vinyl is mixed and mastered, you can rip that into flac and get the exact same sound in easy to use digital form.

ubermonkey 6y ago

I don't mean to say vinyl can't sound good. It totally can. But if you have a nice enough stereo system, it's not that hard to get to a place where you hit vinyl's ceiling vs. CD source on a couple of fronts. The big one, at least for some genres of music, is dynamic range. There's a physical problem with vinyl that keeps it from even really approaching what's possible with CD, and this matters a LOT in classical music. But the other issue is more universal. Absurdly good audio quality is really, really easy to get from digital media now -- either streamed or local digital or CD source. It'd mind boggling how good that can sound on a nice setup. Vinyl can sound good, but it typically requires more dollars (or $local_currency) per unit of quality (so to speak) than the more modern approaches. There's so much that can go wrong with vinyl -- needle or cartridge issues, tonearm tracking, quality of the record itself, turntable motor interference, issues in the signal chain, etc -- that you can go nuts and spend a LOT chasing gremlins. I threw some money at my setup -- nice Rega turntable, a few hundred at the phono stage, fancy receiver, etc -- and so really well engineered records sound ALMOST as good as well-engineered CDs. But if you're stuck with a Crosley or whatever vs. playing a local CD over the same setup, there's gonna be a very appreciable gap. At least in my experience. (As an aside, I think the obsessive hunt for audio hacks to improve vinyl playback in the 70s is the direct reason so many in high-end audio are taking in by absurd claims of snake oil sales men. 40 years ago, you actually needed to know what you were doing to get good sound in your living room. Just having some money wasn't enough. People heard rumors about things that sound crazy, and tried them, and some of them worked and some of them didn't. Trouble is, most of those folks don't have any grounding in engineering or science, and so you ended up with shit like Tice clocks and $5,000 interconnects and whatever else. Now, in 2020, anybody with a few hundred bucks can have really amazing sound (by 1970s standards) in their home this afternoon. But the (mostly boomer) 70s/80s audiophiles are still there, on the margins, hawking $250 power cables.)

amanaplanacanal 6y ago

If you prefer the way vinyl is mixed and mastered, you can rip that into flac and get the exact same sound in easy to use digital form.