Sound engineers and audio producers will verify the CD is the crappiest audio medium ever. Vinyl is soooo much better sound quality wise. CDs are hollow and tinny.
Yes, but you need quality hardware, a good environment and a good ear to really tell the difference.
I used to travel a lot by car, so that's where I listened to music the most. A CD is good enough for the car.
Paint the edges (inner and outer) of your CDs green with a marker. So said “The Absolute Sound” at the time.
From what I understand, the early digital sampling cut off sampling sounds at frequencies both higher, and lower than the average human ear can discern...but although some frequencies cannot be detected by the human ear, the sound wave pressure can effect other parts of the body including the ear. So the sound is fuller on the old recordings. Also old recordings took into effect the whole studio sounds, including echos or reasonant sounds reflecting off of studio structures. I have read that the newer digital recordings try to include all frequencies and have tried to pick up ambient sounds
Adjust the EQ. 2100 albums, and counting, fit in my pocket. Used CDs are 25 cents to a buck. Old, nasty, dusty, dirty and scratched LPs are what, $8 and above? And, to get the whole LP experience they have to be flipped over? Nah, moved on to CDs many moons ago.
I hate record surface noise, crackles and the ear fatigue that the low and sub bass rumble in the disc and platter (and perhaps a slight warp in the record) cause when listening over an hour or so. Records have a practical dynamic range of 60 to 70 db which drops to 40 to 50 db at the end of the tracks(the center of the record) because the grooves have to be cut and squeezed to accommodate at least 30 minutes to a side on your average long play 33.3 rpm records(record track velocity is slower in the center and faster at the edges so the tracks have to be cut with that in mind and the frequency spectra altered). I often find that the bass at the end of the record has been filtered and the music bright and tinny because reducing the bass decreases the width of the swing of the track and allows more time/music. The Needle and cartridge allows generally 30 to 40 db of stereo separation but a lot of channel cross talk occurs with l-r and r-l mono mixing in both channels. This mixing often causes a pleasant sense of warmer ambiance that sounds pleasant and more enveloping with two speakers but this may not have been the original intent of the producers. That l-r and r-l audio mixing during the stereo signal extraction process and the narrow dynamic range can sound easier and more mellow on some ears and allows a consistent volume to be set without having to constantly jump up to turn the volume up or down. The records scratch easily. It used to be the practice of many record owners like myself to record the first pass of a record onto high quality cassette tape on a middle of the road to high end cassette deck with dolbHX, Dolby C, or DBX(the best noise reduction for tapes but came late as did dolby c). The tapes by then could withstand hundreds of plays without too much loss in fidelity while the record could be stored and protected. The cassette heads had the same sorts of pleasant sounding crosstalk despite their excellent stereo separation since it recorded the record from the signal from the needle and cartridge. Now I think a lot of analog sourced music recorded directly to digital( tube powered audio pre-amps and such like it or analog tape then to digital media) can sound really wonderful or digital music played thru tube amplifiers. The digital recording of analog sources also allow for the lifting of the dynamic range restrictions that have to be imposed on vinyl records especially for wide range orchestral music. Obviously pop, rock, and folk music are generally recorded in a more restricted range anyway. Records generally sound better with a two speaker set up or a 4 speaker set up with the rear speakers wired in a hafler circuit to take more advantage of the l-r and r-l ambiance locked in the discs. Records played through more modern 5.1 surround systems can be a mixed bag and their recording imperfections show up almost immediately depending on the various matrix surround modes one may use, specific to the brand of receiver to play the record back. Best surround modes to my ears to use are the dolby prologic surround modes found in most modern multichannel receivers with the subwoofer set to process all the low bass. Avoid special artificial cinema modes or stadium effects though height effects channels with dolby prologic can sound pretty decent when playing records. Neural X does well will processed pop vinyl. The main drawback with multichannel play back of records is that record noise and sub bass rumble is that it is all magnified in all 5 to 7 to 9 channels depending on the size of your reciever. Instruments and voices can come from odd directions and mono narrations can sound like they are coming from one side of the room(front and back!) and not the center.(especially older records) Heavily multimixed and multitracked stereo records can behave unpredictably though old matrix quad records often sound great...especially in Prologic..since they were mixed to play well in mono, stereo or in quad.(SQ and QS matrixed records do well... sometimes quite startlingly well)
A better paragraph format.(Don’t know what happened with the previous post)
Like anything else recorded it depends on the engineering and what the individual likes and prefers...even sound techs and audio producers.
I hate record surface noise, crackles and the ear fatigue that the low and sub bass rumble in the disc and platter (and perhaps a slight warp in the record) cause when listening over an hour or so. Records have a practical dynamic range of 60 to 70 db which drops to 40 to 50 db at the end of the tracks(the center of the record) because the grooves have to be cut and squeezed to accommodate at least 30 minutes to a side on your average long play 33.3 rpm records(record track velocity is slower in the center and faster at the edges so the tracks have to be cut with that in mind and the frequency spectra altered). I often find that the bass at the end of the record has been filtered and the music bright and tinny because reducing the bass decreases the width of the swing of the track and allows more time/music. The Needle and cartridge allows generally 30 to 40 db of stereo separation but a lot of channel cross talk occurs with l-r and r-l mono mixing in both channels. This mixing often causes a pleasant sense of warmer ambiance that sounds pleasant and more enveloping with two speakers but this may not have been the original intent of the producers. That l-r and r-l audio mixing during the stereo signal extraction process and the narrow dynamic range can sound easier and more mellow on some ears and allows a consistent volume to be set without having to constantly jump up to turn the volume up or down.
The records scratch easily. It used to be the practice of many record owners like myself to record the first pass of a record onto high quality cassette tape on a middle of the road to high end cassette deck with dolbHX, Dolby C, or DBX(the best noise reduction for tapes but came late as did dolby c). The tapes by then could withstand hundreds of plays without too much loss in fidelity while the record could be stored and protected. The cassette heads had the same sorts of pleasant sounding crosstalk despite their excellent stereo separation since it recorded the record from the signal from the needle and cartridge.
Now I think a lot of analog sourced music recorded directly to digital( tube powered audio pre-amps and such like it or analog tape then to digital media) can sound really wonderful or digital music played thru tube amplifiers. The digital recording of analog sources also allow for the lifting of the dynamic range restrictions that have to be imposed on vinyl records especially for wide range orchestral music. Obviously pop, rock, and folk music are generally recorded in a more restricted range anyway.
Records generally sound better with a two speaker set up or a 4 speaker set up with the rear speakers wired in a hafler circuit to take more advantage of the l-r and r-l ambiance locked in the discs.
Records played through more modern 5.1 surround systems can be a mixed bag and their recording imperfections show up almost immediately depending on the various matrix surround modes one may use, specific to the brand of receiver to play the record back. Best surround modes to my ears to use are the dolby prologic surround modes found in most modern multichannel receivers with the subwoofer set to process all the low bass.
Avoid special artificial cinema modes or stadium effects for records though height effects channels with dolby prologic can sound pretty decent when playing records. Neural X does well will processed pop vinyl. The main drawback with multichannel play back of records is that record noise and sub bass rumble is that, it is all magnified in all 5 to 7 to 9 channels depending on the size of your reciever.
Instruments and voices can come from odd directions and mono narrations can sound like they are coming from one side of the room(front and back!) and not the center.(especially older records) Heavily multimixed and multitracked stereo records can behave unpredictably though old matrix quad records often sound great...especially in Prologic..since they were mixed to play well in mono, stereo or in quad.(SQ and QS matrixed records do well... sometimes quite startlingly well)
Record companies were in such a hurry to crank out their entire catalogues onto CD that they didn't bother remastering anything. CDs were printed from 4th or 5th generation audio tapes. After 15 years or so when the remastered versions started hitting the shelves, the sound quality was noticeably improved. I never knew there was a rhythm acoustic guitar strumming in the background of the Rolling Stone's Satisfaction until I heard the remastered audio.
Of course, consumers were a little peeved, having bought the same album on LP, 8-track, or cassette and then again on compact disk and were now being told there was a new remastered version.
Vinyl has more depth. CDs WERE hollow and tinny until the engineers figured out you had to mix slightly differently. It’s all about experience. I know a guy who mixes for indie records now. There’s the LP mix, the CD mix, the iTunes mix, the Spotify mix... everybody is a little different and your engineer needs to know what he’s doing, just to get them to all sound the same.