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Comment by HideousKojima | Hacker News Reader

One advantage vinyl has is that it is often mastered better. Music mastered for CDs often has a much lower dynamic range because otherwise it would be impossible to listen to over the sound of the road etc. in a car.

The obvious answer for this is to release a different mastering in a digital format, but that's not cool and hipstery enough so instead vinyl made a comeback.

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> otherwise it would be impossible to listen to over the sound of the road etc. in a car.

Do you have a source for the claim that CDs are mixed with audibility in cars as a priority? Because, to be honest, it sounds like bullshit, but I'd like to be proven wrong.

I have an in-law who has a Pro Tools setup and does professional mastering, and they absolutely have filters for "what this will sound like in a 2003 Corolla with the stock sound." I don't know how much that kind of thing shapes the actual decision making process, but it's absolutely considered (and it's almost certainly considered all the more for FM/satellite radio broadcasts where in-car listening is expected to be the bulk of the audience).

Also relevant is Lars Ulrich's famous quote defending the disastrous state of Death Magnetic, exposed in part because of how much better the tracks sounded in their Guitar Hero versions:

"Listen, there’s nothing up with the audio quality. It’s 2008, and that’s how we make records. [Producer] Rick Rubin’s whole thing is to try and get it to sound lively, to get it to sound loud, to get it to sound exciting, to get it to jump out of the speakers. Of course, I’ve heard that there are a few people complaining. But I’ve been listening to it the last couple of days in my car, and it sounds fuckin’ smokin’."

Listening back to mixes over a car stereo system is a pretty common practice, but that's more for making sure a mix translates to common listening scenarios and less to do with road noise.

Sounds like OP was describing compression. And there has been a trend toward dialing up the compression — but I thought it was to make the tracks "louder", stand out. I had not heard any car connection.

search for "loudness war"

The loudness war was not about making music audible over road noise

I didn't say it was for "road noise". Car stereos was one of the popular places for listening CDs at the height of loudness war.

> So the recording and mastering engineers began to produce recordings with limited dynamic range that would sound "better" on iPods and car stereos that are used in areas with more ambient noise than a quiet listening room. [1]

> Today, many people listen to music primarily in the car or other noisy places, where louder music cuts through against the background noise. Record companies, especially today, tend to cater to this market of casual, “on-the-go” listeners and make heavy use of compression and limiting in order to make their album louder. [2]

[1] https://sites.google.com/site/dbremaster/home/-loudness-war-...

[2] https://www.grin.com/document/206816

The loudness war was more about mastering for radio; in a world where all listeners are fleeting, you do everything you can to keep them, including making the music as loud as you can fit in your channel.

That’s unrelated to vinyl vs cds

Not for the reason GP mentioned, but you can increase the loudness much more on CDs than on vinyl, since on vinyl the needle physically jumps out if the loudness is constantly high, so it needs to be mastered with more dynamic range. There is also the thing that the high bitrate/high sampling rate masterings sound much better in that regard, since they target a different audience

Sure, if you deliberately refuse to interpret the context.

Vinyl releases have a different target market and are mastered with more fidelity in mind, while CD releases are mainstream, and have been mastered with small dynamic range for decades because of the loudness war.

I'm surprised I had to spell this out explicitly.

https://www.yoursoundmatters.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness...

Yes - it's not the format, and certainly not about audio fidelity.

Vinyl represents the analog that CDs replaced... it represents a tactical, physical romantic "thing" that has since been superseded.

What about when CD first came out?

Players were first made for the home, and while the first CD player for automobiles was introduced in 1984, it was not until mid to late 90s that they became mainstream.

Ironic, too, given CDs have a larger dynamic range than records.

Hence the "Turn me up!" campaign, though it's hard to say how much of a difference it has made.

> but that's not cool and hipstery enough

That can be a problem sometimes :-)

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