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Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

I lived through reel-to-reel, vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, minidisc, and now digital files. Of those, only reel-to-reel came even remotely close to the sound quality of digital. I can now fit my entire music library onto a storage medium smaller than my thumbnail, at better quality than anything before it. I get that many people like the vintage aspect (like folks who carry around pocket watches or walkmans), but there comes a point where it crosses over from eccentric to just plain weird (like going out in a top hat and tails).

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I am a proud owner of a top hat and tails. I also enjoy a somewhat direct mechanism for giving money to artists I admire, and having an attractive physical artifact of that transaction is a plus. For the (ahem) record, not all vinyl purchases are a somewhat-direct-to-artist transaction (though those at the merch table of a small-to-medium sized show probably are).

You should really be more specific. Digital file sound quality can range from crap (<=64kbps MP3) to higher than CD quality (losslessly compressed 24 bit 96kHz audio) - BTW CDs are digital too.

There's no need to be more specific. Those who are interested in serious discussion will take the plausible interpretation. Those who seek a weaker interpretation for attack aren't worth talking to.

As someone who doesn’t know much about it, I appreciated the previous comment.

Vinyl isn’t higher quality than digital, but it certainly sounds different.

It sounds different than a pristine digital version of the same track, although often vinyl tracks are mastered differently due to the limitations of the medium.

If you were to digitally record the output of a record player and play it back, there would be no discernible difference.

> If you were to digitally record the output of a record player and play it back, there would be no discernible difference.

That’s probably true, but nobody does that.

Many people digitize their records, why not?

I also have some which are not available digitally otherwise (or only in remixed or remastered versions)

Sounds different how? Audio is audio. I think you're falling victim to the placebo effect.

Audio is audio? 4 bit mono sounds the same as 16 bit stereo?

Vinyl sounds blatantly different due to analog distortion in the vinyl mastering and playback mechanisms. The distortion, frequency response, dynamic range, are all significantly different. You must be practically deaf to not hear the difference between vinyl and CD quality.

Note CDs are better quality than what you usually put on a thumbdrive.

Pointless conflation of quality and storage capacity.

CDs are stereo 16-bit @ 44kHz PCM with an upper limit of about 80 minutes. That's 80 * 60 * 2 * 2 * 44100 = 846,720,000 bytes = ~807 MiB / 80 minutes.

I can get a 1 TiB thumb drive and put 1200 CD audio ISO images on it. Of course, that's pointless because one can rip tracks as FLAC to get lossless compression.

Blu-Ray audio has options including 24-bit PCM @ 192 kHz. 2 channel stereo is 60 * 60 * 2 * 3 * 192000 / hr = 4,147,200,000 bytes/hr = ~4 GiB/hr. Even with FLAC, I wouldn't expect more than 500 albums per thumb drive.

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