vinyl vs cds

**jpp** · November 8th, 2001, 10:04 AM

giovanni n graham both brought up some points about vinyl vs cds...i prefer vinyl, because that is what i grew up on,and i still buy & listen to mainly vinyl... but i buy a lot of cds because of all music being released / re-released on cd. but here's an interesting factoid...

London Observer , Feb 4, 2001

"Sales of vinyl albums are growing faster than sales of of CDs in the UK. There has been an increase of 34% in vinyl album sales since 1999" keep in mind that there is also increased offerings on vinyl, so this is not an apple to apple argument, but the point is that for young kids, the 14~17~20's , vinyl is once again a "cool" format { especially since the kids all want to grow up and be djs / samplers }

**BrunoRepublic** · November 8th, 2001, 10:28 AM

You've made a good point, but there are a few important things to remember when talking about the vinyl "resurgence" in the UK:

1) The cult of the DJ: DJs in the UK are as famous as pop stars, if not more so. I would imagine that your average British kid thinks of Boy George as a famous DJ, and not some figure from an 80s novelty act. There aren't many other places in the world where a DJ can be a household name... so not surprisingly, everyone wants to be one.

2) The popularity of dance music in Europe: In North America, dance music is much more underground, although the rave culture has given it a much larger following. Still, your average North American teenager is more likely to be into hip-hop/rap or rock than anything dance-oriented. In Europe, it's the opposite.

3) If you only want to listen to a song, you can easily borrow a friend's CD and rip the track, or steal it from a file-sharing network. If you want it on vinyl to spin, you *have* to physically have it.

4) Cost: CDs are alarmingly expensive in the UK, so borrowing/downloading tunes there is more of an economic necessity. Vinyl is significantly cheaper... and the British make some nice vinyl, unlike the crap that they pressed stuff on here. Often the vinyl releases will split an LP into 2 or 3 discs, and cut them at 45 RPM to reduce the need for the EQ treatments that I mentioned in my earlier rant. If they were to make records here to those standards, they'd probably charge *more* than they do for CDs.

**Giovanni** · November 8th, 2001, 04:58 PM

Vinyl is the stuff I grew with and this is the reason I will always prefer it to CDs. I was a dj in those years and now I am only a collector. As a collector I still buy vinyl, but I only buy ORIGINAL VINYL and I am also ready to pay a lot for rare vinyls that I miss (luckily I have so many). Since I began to haunt discos and record shops around the mid 70s, when I was a teenager with no money in the pocket, I am trying to find the older records that I couln't afford to buy at that time. But very often I buy a record just to possess it. I am a collector. All my records are well cared and I treat them one million times better than when I djed. Records are not an instrument of work anymore for me. This is the reason why I love vinyl records.

I also have lots of CDs. I buy CDs of contemporary artists or even of tracks that I already own on vinyl, just to listen to them (at work, in my car, in my PC....).

Often I record CD compilations from my vinyls for my friends or for myself. When sometimes I spend a couple of hours alone with my records and decide to record a mixed selection, I do it on CD! I never use cassettes anymore even if I recorded a lot of pirate cassettes when working in disco.

I sincerely think that CD is "the" thing today and we have to use it.

I personally think that all the djs that still use records are out of date, even if I do like them because I understand what they're doing. I saw some younger and unknown djs doing marvellous things with CD consolles, synths and sequencers, deconstructing and rebuilding tracks in a way I wouldn't imagine how to do. These are the greats and the future is theirs. But they are professional djs and make a living from that.

But.... remember, vinyls smells.....

**maarten** · November 8th, 2001, 10:11 PM

Giovanni - the weekly "quote-of-the-week" price must go to you for "Remember, vinyl smells". I love it!

As a poor highschool kid I used to buy vinyl only, and usually I would wait until things would go on sale. And if a song really 'had to be had' I bought a 7" which I could just about afford. I would also buy 7" on sale; they would sometimes go for as little as $ 0.50!

Then I started earning money and the CD came along. I kind of switched and bought CD only. Today, with access to the internet auctions, on-line second hand record stores and all of you I find myself buying a nice mixture.

I agree with Giovanni that CD's are just so convenient. And now that I can make my own, I find I am doing that more and more.

One thing I don't get... and that is making or buying CD's to play in your car. Unless you are driving a Rolls Royce Corniche or Bentley Le Mans (on the latter with a restrained right foot...) the car noice will prevent you from enjoying CD quality anyway.

In the car I play tapes. I always make my own compilations which I started way back when, and called them "Disco Mixed" (hey, I was 17 and thought that sounded pretty cool). When I reached DM100 I changed the title to Disco Mixed + date (like November 2001, which is under construction...).

Because I always bought old and new stuff (even back then) these tapes have a nice mix of songs that are hot at the time, and classics from earlier. What is on the tapes really depends on what I bought in a particular period.

In the mean time I have reached tape 200...

**Mixmachine** · November 10th, 2001, 12:15 AM

Believe or not, but friends that still are involved in the music business credit Hip Hop/ Rap with saving vinyl from extinction (in the US anyways) until the last few years when the Rave/Trance scene took off and popularized vinyl even more.

In any case there is a resurgence of vinyl going on in the US too, you can buy many classic and new titles on fresh vinyl and turntables sales to DJ’s and audiophiles are increasing.

I never liked the CD sound especially when playing classic Dance/disco music, the bass doesn’t sound the same and digitized music when compared to Vinyl always sounds unnatural to me, but because of the convenience factor I still buy and burn CD’s to use in my car and home multi disc player, but I will always prefer the vinyl sound over CD.

SACD sounds a lot closer to vinyl but they don’t have any “disco” titles yet HaHaHa.

[ This Message was edited by: mixmachine on 2001-11-10 15:07 ]

[ This Message was edited by: Mixmachine on 2001-11-10 15:09 ]

**Masdefi** · November 10th, 2001, 08:00 AM

I stopped buy vinyl records when CDs were strongly increasing on the market. But really after some time I stopped buying the CDs too. And then now I do not buy anymore, but just I'm looking for old disco vinyl and hard-to-find shops, wherever my work drives me or during vacations.

I hate CDs. Specially when we are playing disco, I can't feel as vinyl. Vinyl you see turning, you can scratch it, you can mix it, you can see it! No comparison is possible with CD.

And last (but not least) the cover... CD cover is bad, small...

Vinyl is like your baby: you have to clean it! At the moment my collection is about 700 vinyls between Lp and 12", just 50 CDs....

**Funky Dude** · November 11th, 2001, 05:51 AM

Getting on the technical side of things, vinyl does have its advantages over CD's:

1 - The sound from vinyl is a precise infinite analogue sound wave whereas CD's sample the analogue sound into a finite digital sound wave which is not as accurate

2 - Vinyl uses all frequencies when played which I guess you can feel the low frequencies whereas CD's use a bandwidth of I think 20Hz to 20Khz which you cannot feel the music as much as you can on vinyl

And I agree with Masdefi regarding album covers, I myself reckon they look better when they are nice and big.

The only thing I hate about vinyl is that they get scratched and dust and crap gets in the grooves and when I play the record the playback is hissy, scratchy and pop-click, whereas I don't have to worry about that on a CD unless it is severely scratched.

And what I like about vinyl is that there are more disco on vinyl than there is on CD. I know there are a lot of classic disco albums and 12"s released on CD, but there are still thousands of rarer disco records still yet to be released on CD.

There is one thing that shits me about modern stereo systems in shops, the majority of them don't have record players on them. This is obviously because the majority of people where I live who want these super duper stereo systems are teenagers. Still they are available say one in ten have a turntable. The one I bought back in mid 1999 was a Philips AS680C stereo with 3 CD changer, double cassette deck, semi automatic turntable, virtual surround sound, and large speakers and a remote.

Anyhow I buy vinyl moreso than CDs because they are a hell of a lot cheaper and I find what I want on vinyl moreso than on CD. This year I've been doing more downloading of music off the net than buying record or CD. My vinyl collection is about 350 to 400 which includes 7"s, 12"s and LPs, most of them are disco, funk and soul and some of them are classic 70's rock and heavy metal (70's is the best era of rock as well as disco). I have something between 30 to 50 CDs.

I've heard sometime in the near future, DVD audio will come out which has a much higher sampling frequency than CDs and I hope it will utilise all frequencies, not just 20Hz to 20Khz.

All I can say is both vinyl and CD have their advantages and disadvantages.

**BrunoRepublic** · November 11th, 2001, 08:50 AM

On 2001-11-11 06:51, Funky Dude wrote:

Getting on the technical side of things, vinyl does have its advantages over CD's:

1 - The sound from vinyl is a precise

I would argue how "precise" it is after you factor in all the distortion you'd get on an average system. Secondly, although a CD has a finite frequency response, it is completely flat, whereas this is never the case with vinyl. Odds are that your preamp doesn't quite match whatever emphasis curve was used when cutting the LP, and secondly, almost all vinyl has further EQ applied to it, either reducing the bass all across, or reducing the treble towards the end of each side.

2 - Vinyl uses all frequencies when played which I guess you can feel the low frequencies whereas CD's use a bandwidth of I think 20Hz to 20Khz

That's partially true. But when it comes to bass, this is one area where digital audio is definitely superior. A CD can go from almost 0 Hz on up. Most records have nothing below 20 Hz; it's deliberately filtered out -- because if they don't do this, the grooves are so enormous that the stylus would be more prone to skipping, you'd get only a couple of minutes each side, and this is of no benefit to the average system which cannot reproduce such low frequencies. With the steadily-increasing amount of bass in dance music, I have seen exceptions to this in recent years -- but often the audio signal is compromised in other ways. However, the current practice of applying massive amounts of compression and limiting right on the master tape makes this easier now than it was before.

BTW, a general mixing rule is that when you want to increase the bass on a track, you do most of your boost around the 50 Hz mark, and actually cut below 20.

There is one thing that shits me about modern stereo systems in shops, the majority of them don't have record players on them. This is obviously because the majority of people where I live who want these super duper stereo systems are teenagers.

It's more than that -- like vinyl, turntables are no longer viable as a mass-marketed consumer product (although the UK is becoming an exception to this, as stated earlier). Chances are that if you're looking for a turntable today, you want either (a) a DJ-style unit with a direct drive motor, pitch control, loads of bells and whistles, built like a tank, etc., or (b) an audiophile model that costs big bucks, has no frills, but delivers the sound. The crappy turntables that came along with consumer systems are useless for either of these purposes.

Still they are available say one in ten have a turntable.

Where I live, they are gone, gone, gone. If you want a new turntable, you basically have three options: a DJ-oriented model, a high-end audiophile model, or a super-crappy cheapo Shitronic™ type that Radio Shack would sell.

I've heard sometime in the near future, DVD audio will come out which has a much higher sampling frequency than CDs and I hope it will utilise all frequencies, not just 20Hz to 20Khz.

There are two standards already. DVD Audio, and SACD (or Super Audio CD). I think they are both capable of 24-bit, 96kHz audio. In digital audio, the maximum frequency response is always half of the sampling rate, so these formats could reproduce frequencies up to 48kHz -- more than double the CD's 22kHz range. Personally, I think the increased bit resolution will have more of an impact than the higher frequency response.... because...

- Very few people have stereo equipment that can accurately reproduce anything above 25 Khz. Most consumer systems top out at 20 kHz.

- Very few recordings would be able to take advantage of the higher frequency range. Most of the digital recordings of the 80s and early 90s were done at 48 kHz. Even in the analog domain, the response of most microphones falls off after about 25 kHz. My own experiments with 24/96 recording (which my sound card is capable of) shows that most LPs have nothing above 30 kHz -- and I can't be sure how much of what's there isn't just harmonic distortion. That being said, 24/96 does have a "smoothness" to it that is lacking in 16/44.1.

- After a few years of city living, going to loud clubs and concerts, etc., very few people into dance music have ears that can still hear anything above 18 kHz.

- For all this talk about audio standards, the fastest-growing format is the MP3 -- which usually cuts off at 16 kHz, completely screws up the dynamics, and has more artifacting and distortion than the very worst examples of 16/44.1!

[ This Message was edited by: Graham Start on 2001-11-11 09:53 ]

**JussiK** · November 11th, 2001, 11:51 PM

You see a person carrying a vinyl bag and you automatically think: now there's someone INTO music in a serious way. Things can be judged by their coolness and vinyl is cool. Cds are not.

**Move2This** · November 12th, 2001, 05:01 AM

It seems like I’m the odd one out on this issue, because although I grew up with vinyl, and recognise that it has some advantages, I feel it has more disadvantages. The first big drawback is that it seems to deteriorate over time even if stored well and not played! Add to this the fact that, in the UK, there was apparently a “vinyl shortage” in the 70s, meaning that inferior material was used for pressings, any surviving vinyl from the disco era is usually in a pretty poor state by now.

I understand the points others made about the technical advantages of vinyl over other formats but have to confess that I’ve never noticed any difference, though I’ve never had the chance to compare the same track on both formats. I’ve not bought any recently produced vinyl – so maybe many of the problems I’ve mentioned above have now been overcome.

Although I’m not a DJ, I would imagine vinyl would be the first choice for most DJs – I’m sure mixing CDs, though possible, is just not the same! I also take the point about the nice big covers used for vinyl – though of course the corners can get pretty dog-eared over time!

All things considered, I think I’ll be sticking to CDs!

_________________

BELIEVE IN THE BEAT!

[ This Message was edited by: Move2This on 2001-11-12 06:03 ]

**Frisky** · May 1st, 2003, 04:29 PM

There´s no doubt about it:

When it comes to disco and the love for this type of music - vinyl is the only right thing. When playing original disco tracks on vinyl you will be able to actually feel and smell bits of the glamorous disco era. CD´s only being digital copies of this time will never allow this feeling.

So keep on spinning, guys - vinyl will never die! :D

Frisky

Denmark

**The Nickel Shoe** · June 14th, 2003, 11:20 AM

It's a matter of total experience...no doubt about it...vinyl's like the groove - unexpecting, :D :o :P , it means 'life', cds just 0s and 1s, kinda dead experience.... :( :roll: :evil:

**ol'skinflint** · November 22nd, 2007, 03:28 AM

I guess the vinyl vs cd argument can get pretty emotional....I prefer to listen to rock and roll and rhythm and blues music on CD and disco on vinyl. I just don't like the fact that you often no longer have choices, many times it's CD or nothing. And a CD's packaging does not have the same visual appeal that vinyl has to me. And most importantly of all, I have hundreds of vinyl records that are not available on CD and I doubt they ever will be....