nimrod said:
For me its a no brainer
I dont want to go back to dusty, scratchy, snap crackle pop LP's thanks
Ive got some remastered CD's (like the Beatles & Yes) and I can hear things I never heard on my old vinyl.
Like George Harrisons 'Long Long Long' finally I can hear it with no crackles
Some of the early (1980's) CD's were rush jobs and were pretty crappy quality though
Vinyl is far superior for the following reason: when you listen to music, you are listening to a couple of speaker cones vibrating, which in turn vibrates your ears. With a vinyl record, the sound from the master recording is transferred to a cutting tool that reacts to vibrations from the source. Vinyl records are then made from the master and the grooves on the record vibrate the needle, which then gets amplified and drives a speaker. From the master recording, it is an analogue signal all the way through.
With a CD, the master recording is converted into a code made of '1's and '0's and put onto a disk. The CD player converts this digital signal back to an analogue output that drives the speakers. There will always be a loss in quality when the signal goes from analogue-digital-analogue.
The trouble with vinyl though is it is bulky, needs a stable platform to play from, it is susceptible to damage by scratching, and crap record players and knackered styluses produce crap sound. The CD was a revolution because it was compact, could be played on any angle, was tolerant to scratching and the optical receiver doesn't really wear out. When you compare the quality of sound from the remastered Dark Side of the Moon CD, taken from the original master tapes, to that of your worn out old vinyl copy that you took to all your mates to listen to when you were getting stoned and played on their shitty Dansettes with fluff on the needle, the quality was bound to be better.
Then we started listening to even shittier 128 kbps recordings on our MP3 players, but this was great because we could fit shit loads of music on something smaller than a fag packet.
Vinyl
is superior to
any digital format,
but you need to listen to records that are in good condition off a good quality record player.
I heard somebody say that due to the popularity of MP3s, vinyl recordings have now overtaken CDs again in sales; I don't know if this is correct, but I can see it happening. I buy everything on vinyl now. Most new recordings come with a code to download the MP3, so I can listen to the quality product at home and still have something I can pick up and plug into the car stereo.
