I love the geekery uncovered by this weeks QOTW
A couple of points:
a) great to see so many vinyl lovers on here. Vinyl is indisputably a far superior format to CD or MP3 as they work by playing back a series of samples of the music, while the track on a vinyl record basically mirrors the exact sound which was played into the pressing machine. It's like the difference between seeing something on TV and watching it actually happen in front of you.
b) I don't know where to start with redundant technology as I have loads, but one of my favourite things is my Transit minibus - from 1991 and still going strong (fingers crossed!), she needs a bit of fixing from time to time but mostly she's perfect, has moved me in and out of houses, as well as a lot of my family and friends, taken my band on tour a few times and never seriously let us down - Ruby, I love ya!
(rampants, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 14:37, 43 replies)

I don't agree on vinyl (but then I'm a drummer, not a musician, and as a result more than likely a bit deaf).
To me I can't tell any difference between the two - other than crackles - which can't be solved easily by adjusting the graphics. Personally I like shedloads of bass - I'm quite a dubhead - and clear high-end. Simplistic? Maybe. But I really don't see what all the fuss is, and tend to come down more positively on the side of CD/MP3, as they're a lot more difficult to ruin when you're drunk/stoned/tripping your balls off on some quality acid.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 14:44, closed)

I haven't comapred the two
but in my mind it makes sense that vinyl should be a more faithful reproduction of music because of what the OP says. It's an analogue medium, rather than digital, just like sound.

I guess it comes down to what the ear can distinguish though.

I learnt a bit about how music is produced and mastered differently if it is going on vinyl to if it is CD or digital, but unfortunately I have forgotten the important parts...
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 14:49, closed)

mirrors the exact sound which was played into the pressing machine...
for the first couple of plays...if you got lucky on the pressing...then it degenerates to shit.

edit:

I get why someone likes records over 01010110, but as someone brought up at a time when there wasn't a choice, digital is "better" every time.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Wed 10 Nov 2010, 15:01, closed)

And how many records can you fit in your coin purse to listen to on the tram, grandpa?
Etc.
(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 15:24, closed)

"Vinyl is indisputably superior, blah blah..."
It's well known that the world of audiophiles is not always based in reality, in fact it's right up there with homeopathy, Intelligent Design and the Tooth Fairy when it comes to believing any old bullshit.

If you mean that you prefer the sound from vinyl, that's fine. But trying to build a technical case for it being inherently superior is doomed to failure because the laws of physics and the limits of human perception will always trip you up.

I've been recording / mixing / mastering since the 1970s, and anything analogue can fuck right off.
( MisterPunch did it that way on, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 15:38, closed)

psssst
I've got some quantum nano wave effect speaker cables for sale. They're demagnetised as well, so there's no reflective resonance. Only £1200, they're £2K in the shops.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Wed 10 Nov 2010, 15:45, closed)

*orders twelfty*

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 15:46, closed)

I would buy them
But i'm saving up for the £500 kettle lead and wooden volume knob.

In seriousness, I use 'LT' cable, it's meant for powering things like 12v transmitters and that, nice and thick without the bullshit of hifi magazines.

I'm sure I heard somewhere that hifi magazines don't do double blind because they know fine that the manufacturers would blacklist them if they tried it.
( Slippery Mick ‏, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:33, closed)

There's a page of New Scientist
that re-prints the more outlandish claims for HiFi cables. There's some very stupid, but apparently well off, people around.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:57, closed)

This.
I can think of half a dozen reasons why vinyl is technically inferior to digital, and I'm hardly an expert. For one thing, the surface of digital media doesn't rub off when you play it.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 15:58, closed)

also...
"a vinyl record basically mirrors the exact sound which was played into the pressing machine"

Are you Thomas Edison?
( MisterPunch did it that way on, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:02, closed)

Totally true
But (and there is always a but)

When a number of people say they prefer vinyl, I suspect they prefer the recording and mastering style of the sixties, seventies and (early) eighties. CD (despite being no spring chicken) can achieve amazing results but the current trend for making everything (in popular music circles anyway) AS LOUD AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE means it can sound bloody awful- and I am well aware it is normally a label that asks for it to sound like this for radio/compression work rather than a concious decision on the part of the studio engineers.
(Leonard Hatred briefly did some work on, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:08, closed)

It's a matter of taste, and distortion.
Analogue distortion is mildly palatable, digital is not.

I fully believe that digital can render a better approximation of a source than analogue (and that's ignoring things like non-linear reproduction in vinyl, etc). But the problem is that a lot of engineers seem to compress and clip the tits off modern recordings. Vinyl has limits to how strongly this can be applied.

It's a shame that a lot of digital recordings seem (to me) sound shitty. More people should take notes from Elliot Mazer. Heart of Gold is one of the best sounding cd's I own, I hear the SACD/DVDA thingy is even better.

Also, you miss the point that VINYL SMELLS BETTER.
( Slippery Mick ‏, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:25, closed)

and when you take it out of the sleeve
you get a charming static crackling sound
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:54, closed)

The reason a lot of digital recordings sound shitty
is that it is much, much, much cheaper and easier to make music using all this digital technology therefore there is a greater amount of cheaply-made, bedroom-produced crap about than when you had to get cleared and funded by a record company before you could get a disk pressed.

Anyway, what has analog and digital distortion got to do with CDs and vinyl? You shouldn't be hearing any distortion from the medium if it's well produced.
(MrChimp previously Monsieur, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 17:35, closed)

You shouldn't be hearing any distortion from the medium if it's well produced.
That was kind of the point. Most digital productions are shittily produced. Often it's the big names that make an arse of it as well. go and listen to californiacation, it's clipped to fuck.
( Slippery Mick ‏, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 18:06, closed)

So you're saying that all the musicians used to line up and play their instruments directly into the pressing machine?
Sure there wasn't any magnetic tape involved along the way?
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:16, closed)

That's exactly what happened in the early days, it was like a gramophone in reverse.

( Slippery Mick ‏, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:26, closed)

Very much so
In fact in the early 1890s, each recording was a seperate take. Each of the customers would recieve an origiinal, one-off recording.
(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:47, closed)

Fortunate for artists such as Richard Blackwood, who's debut album only sold 16 copies.

(TheColonel, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:57, closed)

Ha
I bet at least 5 of them were him.
(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 17:52, closed)

Vinlyl is inferior
I always feel it lacks the real high end shizzle of CD's.
(The Archduke of South London I'm in your Girlfriend eating her organs, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:18, closed)

Strictly speaking vinyl can get more high end than a cd.
A cd will top out at 22khz. In theory vinyl can do better than that. In practise it won't, and the top will wear off very quickly, and you'll need a very good pickup and fresh styli to hear it.
( Slippery Mick ‏, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:28, closed)

Which if you are above the age of 6 you won't
As your upper register will give up and go home long before that.
(Leonard Hatred briefly did some work on, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:37, closed)

But they can still interact with other sub-frequencies.
In theory at least.

I'm 24, I can still hear above 17khz (as proved by crt-whistle).
( Slippery Mick ‏, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 17:00, closed)

CRT whistle is 15.625kHz
When I was 30 I could still hear above 17kHz. I'm the top side of 40 now - it would be interesting to find out how my ears are deteriorating. I still think I have good hearing!
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 21:18, closed)

Heh, my mate told me he had hearing trouble
As evidenced by a free test down a phone line.

I had to teach him a science lesson in frequency response.
( Slippery Mick ‏, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 23:16, closed)

On the whole digital versus analogue thing
You are incorrect that periodic sampling reduces the fidelity of the signal. As long as the frequency content of the signal is bounded and the sampling frequency is at least twice the highest frequency in the signal, then the signal can be recreated exactly from the sampled representation. When I say exactly, I mean in a strict mathematical sense.

Mathematically, you can show this by considering the effect of convolving the Fourier transform of the signal with the Fourier transform of a delta train.

Since audio signals are inherently band-limited (even the sharpest ears can't pick out sounds much above 22kHz), this means that if you run the signal through a 22kHz anti-aliasing filter before sampling, the sampling interval does not affect the fidelity in the slightest.

The only noise introduced by digitization is then the amplitude discretization noise which is tiny for a 16bit sampled signal recorded at a reasonable amplitude range.
(Mr T, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:31, closed)

^ this
It's very instructive to hear a 3 bit sample. It's almost unrecognisable as the original sound, until you add dither noise. Then it sounds like an extremely noisy, but exact, recording of the original. Dither noise on a 16 bit system is virtually inaudible, but it renders the sound that you hear a more accurate representation of the source.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 21:20, closed)

I don't like these new gold-moulded wax cylinders.
Sure, they're 5" long and can hold up to three minutes of music, but these new-fangeled Grand Graphophone cylinders require a compatible phonograph with a larger mandrel. Eeh.

Signed,

Old man in 1898


(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:32, closed)

When recording digitally
You're sampling the frequency at 44KHz which is pretty imperceptible to the human ear. But all the same, digital audio is lossy compared to analogue. And mp3s are compresse which means there is a lot of loss and the introduction of noise atifacts.

Besides, you'd never get a perfect representation of the recorded audio because of the laws of thermodynamics. And audiophiles can fuck right off. My mate worked in a hi-fi shop and one customer said he used to have his ears syringed on a regular basis. He also rewired his house with high quality shielded wiring which would have made fuck all difference. And would also stick obscure shaped items on the walls to break up standing waves.

Edit: and another thing I keep hearing is "well vinyl has a much warmer sound", yet when I ask what that means they can't explain it. It's probably harmonics of infra-sound from the rumble of the stylus dragging through a groove which will wear down the edges. You can get turntables with a laser stylus which eliminates that.

Edit: Also, you get gate-fold sleeves with vinyl albums. With a cd you get a small book.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 16:34, closed)

This is why it's a shame F:AC never took off
Sent to your sound processor as it was mastered, not one bit different.
( Cadmus has teh uplikn coeds at, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 18:41, closed)

The warmer sound is more to do with the production, especially the EQ bias, than the medium itself.
Old albums that have been directly transferred to CD from the master tapes still sound the way they did when they were mixed down; quite a few re-releases in the 80s and early 90s were especially remastered for CD with a different EQ bias, so they didn't sound much like the original versions. Conversely, I've got a Tangerine Dream LP from 1984 that's just as crisp and clear on vinyl (barring the surface noise) as it is on CD.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 22:39, closed)

Eq Bias
The mixdown for the cd version of Born In the usa ruined that release. There's a massive hole where the midrange should be.
( Slippery Mick ‏, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 23:19, closed)

MP3 is crap and anyone can tell the difference for certain recordings.

(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 17:45, closed)

Some MP3 is.
If you're listening to a shonky 64kbps compressed version, of course. But if you've got a meaty 256kbps or even 512, then it's much higher quality.
(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 17:55, closed)

It still misses bits.
I'll grant you that for the majority of recordings it's probably fine but for things like modulated white noise and clapping it's not so good.
Storage capacity and bandwidth have grown to the point that lossy compression should be dumped.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 18:28, closed)

I'll be sure to bust out the old record deck whenever I listen to my much-loved copy of 'Now That's What I Call Clapping 2384!"
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Thu 11 Nov 2010, 9:11, closed)

Vinyl Albums, Indisputably better
Have you ever tried skinning up on a CD?

Other than that? Crap.
(ceeej, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 18:04, closed)

All good points but....
...vinyl is way cooler
(jimwon, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 22:45, closed)

This is basically what it all boils down to.

(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Thu 11 Nov 2010, 9:58, closed)

I got half way through the first point and thought
hang on a moment, this needs a reply.
Then I saw that there were 39 replies already, and I thought 'Good. Someone else has seen fit to set this young scampermuggins straight'.
( Sextant goes to him is emotionally erect, on this day, Thu 11 Nov 2010, 8:25, closed)

"Scampermuggins"
is my new Word Of The Day.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 11 Nov 2010, 9:11, closed)