How I learned to stop worrying and love vinyl | Hacker News Reader

How I learned to stop worrying and love vinyl

news.qthemusic.com

16 pointscoldtea37 comments

Vinyl sounds great for increasing one's hipster cred, but last time I heard a vinyl album it sounded like, well, crap.

The author seems to be comparing the sound of the record shop's nicest player to an MP3, of god knows what bit-rate, played through ear buds.

Maybe what he's really discovered is that a nice hi-fi system goes a long way and he should get more disk space for his audio files and go lossless.

A ton of audiophiles with $5000 stereo systems still prefer the analog vinyl sound over digital if you read the magazines/forums.

It's not quite adventurous or hipster to make that statement.

And some audiophiles would pay up to $500 for a wooden volume knob: http://boingboing.net/2005/11/07/astronomically-overp.html. I don't quite trust those people's judgement.

The same people who buy towers to lift their cables from the floor, perchance?

Unless that $5000 rig is a perfectly engineered house (which it may well be, I admit), it don't make a diff. Especially if the furniture moves, a dog comes into the room, there's movement outside, a butterfly alights in Brazil....

There's a lot shared between oenophiles and audiophiles whose perceptions are seriously skewed by their expectations - as are all of ours, of course.

Now that vinyl is the exclusive domain of hipster audiophiles, the quality of the vinyl experience has increased a hundredfold. Households like the one I grew up in, with our scratched-up records and the player we picked up at Caldor, have no reason to miss it.

Well, yes and no. I had my vast collection of second-hand classical records, and I still hold that string sound from the best of the vinyl ones surpasses anything off a CD. Whether that was a difference in studio techniques and philosophy is another matter — I imagine that Walter Trampler was miked differently in 1975 than Yuri Bashmet in 2001, for example — but the sound from my prize vinyl was warm, full, and smooth, without a hint of the near-imperceptible metallic rattle I hear in even the best of my CDs.

I may, of course, be imagining it. But I still bear a grudge against the people who stole my collection. I should work on that.

EDIT: I'm certainly no audiophile, and my equipment was nothing special.

For shits and giggles, I snagged a vinyl rip of Simon and Garfunkle's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" in 24-bit 96KHz FLAC format online, just to see what all the fuss was about. Some guys who do serious vinyl rips spare no expense, using pristine vinyl on high-end rigs, washing the disk before the first play, etc.. I don't pretend to understand all the jargon.

Now I obviously couldn't perform scientifically sound listening tests on my own. But I did do repeated back-to-back plays (of snippets and whole song) comparing the 16-bit 44.1 KHz FLAC rip I performed on my S&G's "Greatest Hits" CD to the 24-bit vinyl rip. And as skeptical as I was, the sound is a little warmer and seems to have more spacial volume (I'm no audiophile, so my terms are probably making people wince) on vinyl than on the CD. I am using a low-end $60 Sony head-set and all audio from my PC competes with background clicks and chirps from my built-in audio jack due to bad poor grounding in the motherboard (I assume).

I can think of 3 reasons the vinyl rip sounded better to me: 1) It is, in fact, a better sound; 2) The master used to produce the vinyl source was better than the one used for the CD I have; or 3) It's all in my head.

I mostly ruled out #3 because I snagged a few more 24-bit vinyl rips to see if they were any better then my CD sources, but I deleted them due to poor sound.

That all said, regardless of the technical details, I am quite fond of my new 24-bit 96KHz copy of "The Boxer". This song is amazing in its musical layering and depth, and the ever-so-slight improvements I personally hear from the new rip was well worth the bother.

Put several instances of each song into a playlist and hit "shuffle". Try to identify which is which. That's the best way to make sure it's a real difference, not just your head playing tricks.

Agreed. Blind tests are the only reliable way. If nothing else tests in this area have managed to show is that people are not good at judging without bias if they know which is which.

Vinyl is an analog system, as such it suffers from noise sources along the transmission path and so it can easily 'sound like crap' and 'sound exquisite' depending on the path it takes from the recording to your ear.

I've still got a turntable, and I think I have exactly one cartridge left for it (that was the unit that contained the track sensor (the needle) and signal conditioning circuit). My hearing however is such that I can't tell the difference between easily between a 192Kbps MP3 and the analog equivalent. :-)

That said, there is some research that the inner ear is not as oblivious to overlapping frequencies as the original compression algorithms assumed. I don't know if anyone has yet done a rigorous study on it to figure out if that is the 'source' of much of the audiophile complaints or not.

I love vinyl too but I don't like spending $20 on a record any more.

It's entirely possible to build a decent collection from "crate digging" and bargian hunting. But most good albums have increased in price.

You can find 192kHz/24-bit rips of vinyl records on torrent sites or convert them using a USB record player.

Then use a proper audio DAC and it's a perfect audio replication without the additional drag of having to switch records every 15 minutes, lug around heavy vinyl or deal with temperamental needles on record players.

I'm over vinyl too, but it makes a big difference that I started with vinyl as my reference point - so I knew how nice music could and should sound, and the necessary physical interaction with both vinyl and record player helped me develop an awareness of tone and timbre early on.

Agreed, no regrets on the time I spent experiencing vinyl or finding rare old records I would have otherwise never heard of.

Google 'youtube philip jeck' to see what is possible using 'crate dived' vinyl and a host of vintage record players.

I can remember my first CD - nearly damaging my hearing by turning up the volume as there was no hiss or crackle.

The album art I do miss...

> 192kHz@24bits

I know disk space is cheap, but why 192kHz? Why not encode at 48kHz and use the rest of it for more music, or heck, cat videos.

Because I bought an expensive headphone amp and I like using it to its full ability. But 96khz is more than enough.

I tend to accept what is guy is saying when it comes to audio:

http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/index.html

See if you agree with him or not, especially the first 3 demos.

I'm no kind of music fan, and even I can hear how crappy 48kHz sounds next to 192kHz; you can hear it even over a bad pair of earbuds.

You may be confusing kHz sample rate with kbps bit rate.

I do not think you can distinguish 48kHz vs 192kHz over bad earbuds; I have my doubts that most people can tell even on high-end equipment.

An in-depth technical exploration of the issue here: http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

CDs use 44.1 kHz and 16 bits. There is just no way you can tell if it is anything better than that on earbuds, no matter the price.

> even I can hear how crappy 48kHz sounds next to 192kHz

:-) No you can't. All raising the sampling rate does is raise the Nyquist frequency and unless you have super human ears that can hear up to 96KHz (you don't), then all you're doing is wasting disk space.

I thought IvyM said he talking about bitrate; not sampling rate?

Yeah, he probably is. His units threw me off.

I seriously doubt half the newer music you listen to was even recorded at 192kHz, most of music that's put through a DAW is done at 96kHz at the most. 192kHz would be rare.

> However the static is soon forgotten as Whole Lotta Love rumbles out of the speakers and fills the room. Clear and all encompassing, it's as if the audio spectrum has opened up to me and now I'm swimming in the sound, rather than just watching the waves from the beach. Not that I'm trying to sound like I found God or anything, but this has to be the musical version of that revelation. "In MP3s it's all wedged up into one space, everything is compromised," explains my sonic Sherpa, Phil. "Whereas on a record like this on a decent system, you can isolate everything. Just listen to the voice, and now to the drums. Normally, you miss things, like bass players!" The music is like a big, warm melodic bear hug.

Ok, thanks, sonic douchebag Phil. The important part is "on a decent system". It's almost as though having this big set of expensive speakers all around you might make a song sound more "all encompassing" than listening through a pair of $10 earbuds.

I have some vinyl because I like old things, and I agree that it's an experience worth trying, but have you ever listened to an album like The Wall or The Dark Side of the Moon on vinyl? It's great as a chance to listen the way people did when it first came out, but on the other hand, these albums are meant to be listened straight through, with the "songs" flowing one into another, and it really messes up that flow when you have to flip and re-start 4 different times to finish The Wall.

Vinyl is inferior to good (not lossy) digital.

Using vinyl as a medium is daft.

I do miss album covers. I don't miss the noise, defects, expense, and fragility.

Good speakers are worth the money. Vinyl is not in any way worth any money nor is worth obsessing about (unless obsession is the goal).

I do have an un-played Mosaic MQ10-177 available for anyone daft enough to be interested in vinyl. I thought it a worthy specimen of obsolete technology.

> Determined to see if vinyl truly is the superior format

I just stopped there. This is like the people who try to find out if a model T car is a better car than Civic. "Let's conduct a test and spend time and money setting it up". Well, ok, I don't have to conduct a test, I can tell you a Civic is better.

But, if you happen to own lots of records or own a shop in a hip part of town that sells records, by no means, load up on monster cables and vinyl records. For some reasons when it comes to audio, there is never a shortage of people willing to part with their money over dubious claims. I would want to be on the side selling them stuff.

Modern mixing tends to over use dynamic range compression to make everything loud, rather than allowing a full dynamic range.

Thus, when comparing vinyl to MP3 you might not be comparing like with like.

There are plenty of reasons to listen to vinyl and it's fine if you are doing it to be hip. I do it because of the sound quality. CDs were invented in the 1980s. The digital resolution is simply not very high. Remember what the first digital cameras looked like next to film? That's the CD next to vinyl. And MP3s and AACs are so much worse.

It's like comparing a compressed JPG to an Ansel Adams print on a gallery wall.

In theory newer digital audio formats should be able to get a lot closer to the sound quality of analog soundwaves perfectly preserved in wax and traced by a diamond needle. But I've not heard a digital format yet that quite captures it. Hopefully one day there will be. But we're not there yet, not to my ears.

Listening to digital formats is wonderfully convenient but you are simply hearing a pixelated approximation of your music. You're trading audible detail and richness for convenience. That's no crime.

But if you love music, I mean LOVE it, you owe it to yourself to give vinyl a try.

I have access to quite a different formats in our house. Our materials go all the way back to our edisongraph, with the cylinder box-eulas.

The best format I've heard is 24 bit depth, 96KHz full stereo audio files. That is assuming the microphones were tuned appropriately for their response. MP3's clip higher frequencies, as well as 'round the tops'. Other lossy encoders do other hard-but-easy to hear.

Of course, one also has to deal with the Monster crowd and other golden ear audiophiles. I've only seen one true audiophile: I attended an amateur radio club (fellow ham here). A guy named Stephen, who has been blind since birth, brought his 1 watt Argonaut with a crappy little omnidirectional antenna. We were in the basement of the red cross building (in the Midwest). After 10 or so minutes, he starts hearing something.... And initiates a QSO (contact)... With Hawaii! He talks for perhaps 11 minutes before signing off.

Nobody else could hear the chirps of morse code through that layer of static. He could, even in the basement of a steel and concrete building.

There are applications that benefit from high-resolution (bit-depth and sample rate) audio formats, but it's not really clear that listening to music is one of them:

http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

[TL;DR: "Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space."]

I grew up in the analog age. Trust me, there was much rejoicing when CDs came out. Your lament about the digital resolution of CDs is baseless: the resolution is far beyond what the human ear can discern. We've already been through all this in the 80's. It's comical to watch you hipsters stir up this old dust that had settled long ago.

Oh, and it's well-known that some people prefer the sound of vinyl. It's a particular distortion accentuating the midrange. This distortion provides a "warmer" sound. But let's not kid ourselves - it's a distortion.

But if you prefer the warmer sound of vinyl then I suggest you try 7,5 IPS reel-to-reel. It'll knock your socks off!

> Oh, and it's well-known that some people prefer the sound of vinyl. It's a particular distortion accentuating the midrange. This distortion provides a "warmer" sound. But let's not kid ourselves - it's a distortion.

Indeed.

In fact, surely there must be filters (the digital kind) around that simulate the distortion caused by vinyl (both the mastering differences and the effect of the medium itself).

Consumer electronics could have a "vinyl" button right next to the "megabass" button ... :]

Sorry I missed this when first posted. But it needs a response. You say "the resolution is far beyond what the human ear can discern" as though that were undisputed science, which I should simply have looked up. But that is not the case.

You listen to two recordings of a high-hat. One CD, and one high quality analog such as pristine vinyl. And then you tell me you cannot discern the compression on a cd in comparison to vinyl. It's in the highest frequencies that the redbook cd format creates the most audible distortion. (Vinyl has issues too, obviously - but different ones.) But nobody could reasonably claim that redbook CDs are undistorted while vinyl is distorted. Both formats distort sound.

If you can't hear the difference, that's fine, but let's not pretend it is a scientific fact that CDs are somehow "accurate."

Edit: to be clear, I am not talking about frequency (highs and lows), I am talking about frame-rate. And I'm not talking about what is theoretically possible in "digital sound reproduction" I am talking about what is implemented in the standard format for audio CDs sold today.

Regarding reel-to-reel, I bet you're right! But it's not for me.

If you grew up in the era of records, I dare you to go find a record of one of your favorite recordings that you currently listen to on cd.... go find the record and listen to it. I dare you.

Vinyl sounds better however I will admit that digital converters have become really good in the past 5-7 years. If I had the money and the space I would start buying vinyl again just because I find it more fun to mix then mp3's.

The thing I miss most about vinyl is the creative canvas that was the album cover. There's no way to hear _Dark Side of the Moon_ or _Sticky Fingers_ without also seeing the album in your mind.

this is a fucking nothing article.

Goes to record store.

Listens to vinyl.

Likes.

End.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com