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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

I have no nostalgia for SSSSSSSSSSS...

But with vinyl, I do shamefully admit a bit of nostalgia for thunk, rumble, snap, crackle and pop.

The intro and outro were part of the recording. It's like the three thumps on the floor with a stick, from a guy on stage before a moliere play.

I very much enjoyed an album experience and I try to relive it with a CD, but CD encoding de-humanises the inter-track moments. Even the fade-out is sometimes gone. "re mixed for your listening pleasure" as if the beatles didn't record in Mono deliberately.

What works for me, is Keith Jarret and Glenn Gould, because they mutter and fidgit while playing. But I miss that initial thunk,rumble, snap crackle too.

Another "porky" prime cut...

I have nostalgia for my early adopter friend's setup. He had his mp3 player (a jazpiper?) connected to a fake cassette for playing in his car.

I drive a 2004 vehicle. This is still my daily life

Not just that, vinyl does have much higher bandwidth, up into the 50kHz (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eC6L3_k_48) Of course we cannot hear above 20-22k but I expect the non linearities in the equipment to downmix some of that into the audible baseband. "warmth" is not a myth after all ;)

Vinyl warmth is created by the RIAA curve that removes most of the bass and tries to recreate it in the preamp. This adds some nice creamy distortion to the low end.

Vinyl also has a much lower dynamic range than CD.

I've actually come to hate vinyl as a format. I love the artwork, but I hate the impracticality, the cultishness, and most of all I hate the distorted low-fi sonics.

Nothing matches a high resolution digital source file played on good equipment.

I have to disagree: a well-mastered recording on vinyl is superior to a high-resolution, digital recording when the music has been auto-tuned, mastered, remastered, and compressed to death. (I'm talking about dynamic-range compression here.)

Sounds like you're conflating the playback format with the production then.

Nothing's stopping you from putting brick wall compressed mastered music on record just as nothing's stopping you from putting a track with more dynamic range on cd.

You're right, except that in practice some wonderful historic recordings are only available on vinyl, so a blanket statement like: "I have come to hate the vinyl format" should be qualified.

some wonderful historic recordings are only available on vinyl

Now you're conflating the media with the content.

Have to disagree. With the mechanical wear interaction between the stylus and groove, it's often estimated that you start to lose detail after about 10 plays.

Plus a whole lot of EQ compromises have to be made to stop the stylus jumping out of the groove, which don't exist on digital formats.

So if you add up the HF and LF rolloffs, rumble, wow, and general snap crackle and pop from vinyl that probably isn't completely dust-free, you have a grab-bag of imperfections that won't exist in a FLAC file ripped from a CD when it was mint and free of read errors.

There's nothing stopping you avoiding all of these things on CD. All things being equal, the CD will sound superior to the vinyl (at worst equal to it).

Some recordings are not available on CD, or only terribly remastered. I haven't looked into downloads, but I doubt they are better remastered.

This has nothing to do with the technical characteristics of the format.

Of course, but it has everything to do with real-life availability of records.

> Of course we cannot hear above 20-22k

You need a 44kHz digital signal to reproduce a 22kHz analogical one. That's why CDs default to 44.4kHz.

I don't think tapes got anywhere nearly as high.

Small correction: the CD sample rate is 44.1 kHz.

A perfectly recorded metal tape (I believe metal tapes are no longer manufactured) in a very high-end deck can maybe reach 20 kHz under optimal conditions. For normal cheap-o ferric tape you're looking at maybe 12-16 kHz. Add in faster than real-time factory dubbing, tape wear, and substandard playback equipment and you're probably usually not even getting 12.

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